Home Sweet Home

I’m Back! I know it’s been awhile since I had a chance to update you on all things Cameroon, but you’ll just have to blame that on a combination of power failures and official In Service Training. Also I have to apologize because I don’t have anything super exciting to update you on this week.
I guess I’ll start with in-service training. Commonly referred to as I.S.T. this is where I have been for the past 8 days. Basically it’s a week long seminar were volunteers get a chance to talk about what they’re doing at post, hear from 2nd year volunteers, learn how to plan and carry out big projects, and learn how to get funding for said projects. All interesting and important things to know, but that’s not really why most people start counting down the days till I.S.T. two months ahead a time. The real reason people get pumped is because the whole stage gets back together, kind of like a reunion of sorts. I know it seems silly, and you might be thinking, but Kate it’s only been 4 months since you saw these people, which is very true, but when you go from spending all day everyday with a group of people and then go cold turkey with your American interaction at post, 4 months can start to seem like a long time. Not that I’m complaining about post, but it’s nice to speak English and not feel limited by a five year old's vocabulary, drink a cold beer without being bothered to by the guy sitting at the next table, and just let your guard down, laugh with your friends, which is exactly what I did from 5:30 (when classes ended) till the wee hours every night. It was great to see everyone and I definitely had a good time, but by the end of day 8 I was ready to be heading home, and actually a pretty cool thing happened as I was rolling back into town… I felt like I was home ☺ I passed my house and waved out the window and a chorus of “Kate, Kate Kate” erupted from the kids. It was a warm and fuzzy moment for the books.
With that being said I’m back in town and back to the grindstone, feeling energized and ready to start some bigger projects. I still have a lot to think about before I jump into anything, but I have some ideas mulling around in the back of my head so I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks flushing them out with Bernadette and picking one to focus on this summer.

One final random note that I don’t know how to cleverly work into this post, but that I definitely want to mention…hopscotch. Yesterday afternoon I played the most competitive game of hopscotch the world has ever seen. Seriously if it were an Olympic sport Haua (age 17), Awa (age 16), and Ladee (age 15) would all be gold medalists. I had no idea there were so many rules and that such an innocent game could be so intense. But after an hour of throwing stones and jumping around like a one legged chicken, I had been “schooled” and my mind had been changed for good!

Another Year Bites the Dust - April 1, 2010

Sorry for the lack of updates, but we are currently experiencing technical difficulties here in Bankim. By that I mean that for the past week and a half we’ve only had power between the hours of 1:00 am and 5:00 am. Not exactly the most convenient time frame for your average resident. On the bright side (although not very bright) I know exactly when the power comes back because my neighbor starts up his big coffee grinder and has his guys work through the night, thus waking me up and giving me a chance to plug in all my electronics for the next day.

So let’s see, what have I been up to? On the work front last week I started a community health and sanitation survey. I have an in-service training (IST) coming up so the goal is to use some of our findings in our report we have to give. Bernadette and I decided to divide the village up into sections and the plan is that over the next couple of days we’ll hopefully visit fifty families from a variety of different backgrounds and then compile the results into a report that can help us to plan effective activities in the future. It’s hard work, but already the results are proving to be helpful, so I’m feeling pretty pumped about that.

In other news I turned the big two three this past Monday. It was fun but low-key. I got to Skype chat with my family at home and received a surprise call from Miss Altice back in the states, so that was very exciting. Birthdays are most definitely not celebrated to the same extent here in Cameroon that they are in the states. For instance you shouldn’t tell a Cameroonian it’s your birthday unless you are ready to give THEM a gift or buy them a drink, kind of backwards from what we do but thankfully my neighbor warned me about this ahead of time so I was armed and ready. Party favors this year came in the form of fried plantains… lots and lots of fried plantains. I enlisted the help of Fadimatou, my 9 year neighbor, and the two of us spent the morning in the kitchen deep frying massive amounts of food, and then in the afternoon I made the rounds to pass them out. I hit up all the immediate neighbors and then my colleagues at the health center and finished up with my friends in the market. I don’t know how good the food actually was but everyone seemed excited that I made them myself.
The real birthday fun came later in the week in the form of a visit from the Mayo Darlé crew. Aislynn and her boyfriend Josh (who’s visiting Cameroon at the moment) came to spend a few days with me, and everyone knows the only thing better then one white person in Bankim is three ;) . I have to say I always love when Aislynn comes; one because I enjoy the company, two because I like speaking American English and not feeling restricted by a five year old’s vocabulary (which is about what I have in French right now), and three because she’s a great cook. In fact, that was her birthday present to me, she and josh made me a steak dinner with potatoes and greens (a real treat since I don’t frequently visit the meat market, which is a whole other story). We asked Haua if we could use her fire pit and did a bar-b-que in the backyard.
It was really funny to watch Haua watch us cook. First we used a big fire where as Cameroonians normally grill on coals, so she kept reaching in and literally pulling the wood out of the fire. Then josh cut the meat into small steaks instead of hacking it into little pieces, and she kept saying, “no no no you’re doing it wrong,” and finally pulled the meat off the grill, went at it with her knife, and chopped it into pieces. So that put an end to the nicely cut steak, but I had to laugh because I know she was trying to help and thought we were going to ruin the meal by cooking in this bizarre manner.
Other highlights from their visit included a hike to the top of our cell phone antenna tower, a visit to the big man bar for drinks, and oven baked pizza. All in all it was a wonderful visit and it was just what I needed give me a push to get through the next week and a half before I get to see all my friends from stage at IST. Speaking of IST I’m not bringing my computer, so this thing will more then likely be dormant for a while. Fear not though, I’ll give you the complete update when I get back into town ;)

Until Next Time,
Kate