Greetings All!

So first things first, welcome to my mother’s faithful email army, and to everyone else (if there is anyone else… I’m starting to think mom and dad are the only one’s who read this thing) thanks for the interest. I’m sorry to say but I had to cut her off, I know some of you might be sad that the weekly emails have seen their final days, but I realized last week that if she dictates our weekly phone calls into emails, I’ll be left with nothing of interest to share. So, thank you mom for keeping everyone updated of my Cameroonian happenings but as promised I’m going to start updating this thing regularly.

One story that I forgot to write about last week, but that is definitely note worthy was my official presentation at the Lutheran church last Sunday. Upon my arrival to Bankim, I quickly realized for all its diversity, religion runs this town. To speak on diversity, in my neighborhood alone, to the right of my house is a Baptist church, to the left a mosque, directly across the street is the catholic mission, and I work for a Protestant health center. Needless to say balancing the Peace Corps’ a-religious stance, the religious spectrum in Bankim itself, and my own personal beliefs is proving to be no easy task. On a lighter note when I showed my counterpart, Bernadette, a picture of all my VBUMC friends she decided that it was of the upmost importance that she officially present me in church the following Sunday. I asked what exactly that entailed and she said all it was a quick introduction so that people in the community would know who I was. Pretty straightforward, pretty painless, so I thought… Turns out Bernadette is a church elder which means that she sits at the front facing the congregation, and you guessed it, I got to sit right next to her which meant for the next 4 hours (and no that’s not a type-o it really lasted 4 hours) 500 pairs of eyes were on me like white on rice. Besides the fact that it was in French I couldn’t tell you a lick of what was said during the service because I was afraid to move. I also don’t think anyone in the congregation could tell you what went down because they were pretty intent on watching the strange new white girl the entire time. I totally get the fishbowl analogy now. When it came time for introductions, Bernadette gave me a lovely intro and then unexpectedly through the floor to me… YIKES! No one told me I had to say anything! and I didn’t have anything ready! (side note; it’s super hard to bullshit you’re way through things in another language) So I mumbled out a quick couple words and then sat down sure that everyone was going to think I was a bumbling American idiot. I couldn’t have been more wrong! All this week people have been coming up to me in town telling me they saw me in church and welcoming me to Bankim. I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome, and thanks to my 4 hours of fame at church I feel like the integration process has gotten off to a great start.

As far the rest of the week, Wednesday I went to the clinic to help with the baby vaccination day and got peed on by an squirmy 6 month old baby boy, Thursday putzed around and hung out with the nuns at the catholic mission, and then Friday went back to the clinic to help out with prenatal visits. That was pretty cool, because I got to sit in on all the ultrasounds. One woman came in from a village way out “en brusses” because her midwife told her that she felt the baby’s head in two places and was worried. Turns out after the ultrasound they realized the women was pregnant with twins. I immediately wanted to go over and tell the mom-to-be congratulations but decided to wait on her reaction first… still waiting… by that I mean there was no reaction at all. It was strange to me, I thought either she would be really happy to have two healthy children, or she might be really worried about the extra mouth to feed, at the very least some sort of emotion, but alas, nothing.

Saturday I got a nice surprise when another volunteer on her way to Yaoundé for her close of service called me. She said that her bush taxi had broke down about 10 k outside of Bankim and so she was getting in a small car headed to town where she was going to wait for it to get fixed, and did I want to get lunch with her. Of course I said yes and so I spent a couple of hours with her chatting about this and that and picking her brain about things she had done during service.

When I got home I decided to take a bucket bath because I was going over to eat dinner with my neighbors that night and I knew they probably wouldn’t approve of the dirt tan (seeing as how they bath three times a day). So I got the water ready, striped down, reached for my towel, and had it half way around me when I saw something move on it. At first I thought it was some sort of mutant mouse-like- tree-frog, but then quickly realized it was actually a bat. I threw down the towel, grabbed some clothes, and ran to my neighbor’s house. No one was home, so I went to the next, again no one home, so finally I left my compound looking like a hot mess and went to the one next door (where I hadn’t officially introduced myself yet, I only knew a couple of the kids). I found one of the wives and was like, “hi I live next-door and I need one of the little boys who live here, I know there’s a bunch of them.” In hindsight it probably wasn’t the best idea to go up to a complete stranger and ask for their little boy… oh well live and learn. The wife asked me if I was ok and I sad yes, but that there was an animal (whose name I didn’t know in French, so which in my Franglish came out as, and I quote, “the thing that’s like a bird, but not a bird because it has hair, and flies at night”) in my house and I needed help getting it out. After about 2 minuets of contemplation I guess she decided I wasn’t deranged and so she called for one of her sons to help me out. Thirty min. after that, with the help of a 12 year old Cameroonian boy and my baseball cap we corralled the bat out of my room, out of my house and back into the wild. You know how people sometimes say, “this isn’t funny now, but it will be someday” not true in this case, here it was funny pretty much the entire time. I guess it’s a good thing I finished up with that series of rabies shots last month ;)