I MADE IT!!!

I’m officially a volunteer, I’m officially at post, and I’m officially on my own, well sort of on my own, I do still have to report to Peace Corps, but for the most part I’m doing my own thing, which is kind of scary, but kind of exciting at the same time.

So last I left off day one of traveling to post was about half way over, and let me tell you that was the better half of the day by far. Right after I left the internet café, I was blind sided by a terrible case of what I suspect was food poisoning. I’ll spare you the details, but just know that it’s no fun to be violently ill in a room without running water… Thankfully my bout of sickness only lasted 24 hours and I woke up the next morning feeling considerably better, which was good news for me because Aislynn and I had the bulk of our traveling still to go.

The ride was pretty uneventful and can be summed up with three words: long, bumpy, and dusty. It’s the dry season now so whenever a car goes by it kicks up about 5 inches of pure dust that’s always sitting on top of the roads. Good news is I’m looking really tan these days, bad news is it’s actually just the dirt. Oh well , I’ll take it!

Day one at post, I literally walked in the door dropped my stuff, found my bed and crashed for 5 straight hours. It was fantastic!

Day 2 I figured it was probably time to start unpacking and cleaning my house. Side note, in the 2 weeks that Ralph left and the house was empty the spiders, cockroaches, and mice pretty much took over. I think I might get a cat to get rid of the bugs and mice, no mousetraps in Cameroon. Anyways, I unpacked in the morning, and then headed into town for the afternoon. While I was there I ran into some people from the health center who were giving vaccinations for the national vaccination campaign. I know I’m supposed to take a week or two to move in and get situated before I get stared with actual work, but I just couldn’t pass this up. Turns out I made a good call, I got the chance to see some of the neighborhoods, and met a ton of people in the process. I think at the end of the day we had visited almost 300 houses and vaccinated close at 400 kids for Polio, Vitamin A deficiency, and intestinal worms. Needless to say I was wiped.

Monday, I was planning to finish up with unpacking, but I got a phone call at 6:30 am (another side note: I can’t sleep past 6 am anymore, it’s bizarre, I never thought I would ever be saying those words) from a very excited man at the district hospital named Joseph, who I had met during my visit in November, wanting to know If I wanted to take a day trip “en brusse” with him to see all of the small villages in the Bankim district. Again I could hear my boss saying, “take it easy, you have 2 years to do this,” but I was just excited to see the area so I said sure and 15 min. later I was in a 4 wheel drive truck heading into the bush. All I could think while we were driving from village to village was how beautiful the landscape was and how incredibly strong the people who live here must be. Their lives are no walk in the park (no electricity, no running water, limited water sources in general, and roads impassable in the rainy season) but each time I waved hello, or greeted someone they all flashed me huge smiles and friendly faces. One final word about Monday’s outing; we stopped for lunch, and I had cuscus and jamajama, and I ate it with my hands, and it was awesome.

Today, was pretty unexciting compared to the previous parts of my week. I went around and passed out protocol letters, which means I went around to introduce myself to all the important people in town to be like , hey I’m here. We don’t really do anything like that in the states, so I always feel a little awkward just walking up to someone who’s a big deal, and being like good morning, I’ve arrived. The most intimidating letter to deliver was to the traditional chief. You have to pull out all the stops and be super formal, so needless to say I kept the conversation super short with him. The last thing you want to do when you’re new to town is piss off the chief of the village by insulting him with bad French.

So ya, that’s what’s new with me in Cameroon. I’m going to try and make it out to the place with internet once a week so I can keep everyone posted. On my happenings here in Bankim.

Until Till Next Week!

Kate