Good news, I eventually found a dog, and the puppy hunt has come to an end at last. I went back to the monkey man’s house because he said he would show me where I could find some others, but then when I got there he had decided to sell me his instead. It worked out great, I made a new friend, and found a dog for Aislynn all in one fell swoop ☺ After a bit of haggling over the price we took care of the particulars and I rigged up a leash, tied it around his neck, and set out to walk home. Only problem was that he didn’t want to walk…he literally wouldn’t move, so then I had to pick him up and carry him home. When I walked through the market on the way back I stopped to say hello to some of my friends and they all loved him. But I don’t think they got that I wasn’t keeping him because all this week they’ve kept asking me where my small dog is.
When I got home Stacey the sheep almost had a heart attack. She came right over to puppy and me and started stomping her hooves. I think if I hadn’t shooed her away she might have trampled him. I’ve never really witnessed emotion from a sheep but I can tell you she was pissed! After that Haua and Hadijia came over to visit. They were funny because they’re both afraid of dogs but starved for anything new and excited to be at the house so they came straight over to check him out. They would slowly inch up close to the puppy and then as soon as it would lunge at them they would jump back screaming and run around the yard like little kids. This went on for about half and hour and I’ve got to admit it was pretty funny to watch. I feel like they both had to grow up so fast so it’s fun to see them let loose every once in awhile ☺
I had originally decided to leave the dog outside for the night because he wasn’t house trained, but then we have the well and there’s no cover for it and I was afraid he might fall in. I ultimately decided to let him in the house, but first I gave him a bath because he was really dirty! Puppy didn’t really like getting a bath too much, so I had to enlist some help from the kids next door to hold him down. All I can say is that he is truly a Cameroonian dog because the whole time he barked and howled and eventually caused a crowd to form. My neighbors kept asking me why in the world I was washing the dog and when I told them it was because I was going to leave him in the house for the night it just made them look at me like I was even stranger (dogs don’t generally go inside people’s houses in Bankim and they never get bathed) . We spent the evening in and I have to say it was fun to have someone else in the house with me even if that someone did pee on the floor and keep me up whining all night.

Nothing else all that exciting happened this past week until the weekend. Saturday I got to Skype chat with the parents and a friend from college. It was great to see and hear from some familiar faces ☺ My neighbor came in while I was chatting , and he speaks pretty good English so I asked him if he wanted to say hello. He probably only said 2 sentences if that but he was so excited. By the time I got home every one of my neighbors knew that he talked to my mom and they wanted to know how everyone in the United States was… like everyone… one of the wives asked me if I could talk to R Kelly through my computer. Side note: as terrible as R Kelly is he has a surprisingly large following in Cameroon.

The only other thing I can think to report on this week is that the water pump in my part of the village broke this past weekend. I should backup a bit. Most people in Bankim get their drinking water from one of three or four legitimately constructed pumps, and for everything else (bathing, cleaning, etc…) they use water from their own wells or rivers. Now when I first got here and started asking about water sources everyone I talked to told me, “Whatever you do, don’t drink the water unless it’s from the pumps.” I played along and asked them why and they told me it’s because there are microbes that will make you sick in the water. I was really impressed because clearly the people I talked to knew about water borne disease (props to previous Bankim PCVs). But then when the pump broke they all went back to drinking dirty water without filtering it first. There’s this little stream by my house where the cattle herders stop to let their cows rest and it’s also where people drive their motorcycles (and the occasional car) to clean them. The water is really dirty it’s got manure and motor oil and who knows what else in it, and while the pump was broken some families were coming here to fetch their water. The good news is the pump was fixed the next day and the whole thing turned out to be a good teaching opportunity (I taught my neighbor Rose how to filter our well water for drinking) but the bad news is that getting information out there is a whole lot easier then changing actual behavior and it looks like I’ve got a long way to go.
Peace,
Kate