A Cloud in the Sky

Lots to do this week so this is going to be a short and sweet post.

On the home front:

Things are slowly getting better with the neighbors. The husband is still not speaking to me (I'm cutting my losses with him) but Hawou has been much friendlier lately, so that's good news.

Beamer is fine but he escaped off his leash in the market last week. It happened outside my friend's bar and at first I panicked but for the most part everyone thought it was really funny so I calmed down a little bit. One guy even started chanting, "He's Free! He's Free!" In their defense I'm certain that if I saw myself chasing a dog around the market I would be on the ground rolling too. Beamer on the other hand was totally oblivious to all public humiliation and he literally ran circles around me for about 5 min while about 15 cameroonian onlookers all called his name at the same time. Most of them were on their 2nd or 3rd hour of Palm wine and they sounded like the seagulls from Finding Nemo.... Mine, mine, mine, Beamer, Beamer, Beamer. It was pretty funny. The dog was supper confused. Finally, he got tired and came back to me, but the icing on the cake was that he didn't just return, he ran back splashing in all the puddles along the way and fished up by and rolling onto his back into a giant puddle of mud. We did the walk of shame back to the house, me slighly embaressed and him covered head to toe in mud. Oh the joys of having a puppy!

Lastly, I'm in the process of doing a major deep clean of my house because I'm expecting visitors on friday. Number one on the cleaning list is to evict all non rent paying residents a.k.a. bats, roches, and mice. I bought some magic chalk and insectiside... i'll let you know how it goes.

On the Work front:

I finished my HIV/AIDS training with my mens group last Sunday. We wrapped up with roleplays and discussions and at the end of the meeting I felt great. Sometime I feel like everything goes in one ear and out the other, but this time I think everything pretty much stuck. The men seemed to get it and they were really engaged. Four months of work... 100% worth it :)

B and I are having a big meeting with represenitives from all the small villages en brousse on Thursday about a project were trying to start. I'm pretty much working on getting things ready for that all week. The meeting is kind of like the kickoff so cross your fingers that people show up and everything goes alright.

Happy Birthday America!

Well my first out of country Fourth of July has come and gone and while things didn’t go exactly as planned I did have a great time celebrating the good old U.S. of A. Aislynn came down to celebrate with me and I decided to invite a few friends over for dinner. The friends are a couple who own my favorite restaurant in town and they have a little 2-year-old girl that is adorable and has a huge personality for such a small person. I invited them a few days ago and they were all about coming over. They even gave me a couple of pineapples to serve and helped me out at the meat market.

Ok we need to detour for a second to talk about the meat market. I can now say with a 100% certainty that I will NEVER EVER EVER take the meat section at the local Farm Fresh for granted again. I think the buying and butchering of meat in my village is almost (key word almost) enough to turn anyone into a vegetarian. After asking around I learned that the trick to getting the good cuts is to get there right after they slaughter the cow (it’s also good because at this point the swarms of flies haven’t descended at full force.) Anyways, I got one of my friends whose boutique is right near the butchers to call me when they brought in the meat and then I came down. When I got there she showed me a good butcher and while yes he had the cut I needed he was also selling the head… were talking the whole head fully intact sitting on the chopping block and staring me down… I felt bad for a quick second but then I remembered how good cheeseburgers taste and sadly all feelings of remorse quickly vanished and it was off to step two…. meat grinding. They didn’t have a grinder at the main market so I had to go into one of the quarters to search for this old mama who said she would do it for me. So ya that was the meat market experience… not a pretty site but totally worth it to be able to cookout on the 4^th of July!

So, like I was saying before the meat market detour, I had invited two of my friends and there daughter over to celebrate the 4^th of July so Aislynn and I spent the majority of the day in the kitchen cooking to get ready. Unfortunately, something came up, and I’m not quite clear on the details, but they never ended up showing. I was pretty bummed because we had a lot of food and I had spent a lot of money, but the silver lining was that I invited Hawou over and she and Rashid actually came in to eat burgers and fries with us. Her hubby was gone so I’m sure that had something to do with it, but none the less it was a huge first step to get us out of this awkward funk! One of my trainers always used to say “Nothing in Cameroon works right, but everything always works out all right.” I couldn’t agree more J

Blogger’s Block...

Sorry I haven’t updated this thing in awhile but I just haven’t had anything too interesting to blog about. Literally the only thing I can think to mention is that I met the new volunteer who’s being posted in the area and I had a fabulous frip find today.

So Wednesday I got to meet the newest volunteer to join the forgotten corner (a.k.a. the western Adamoua ) Her name is Caitlyn and she’s in the education sector. She was very nice and seemed excited to be going to visit her post. We only got to chat for about 5 minuets because she was in route to Banyo, but we did get through the basics… how’s Cameroon? How’s Training? How’s DT? Where you from? Where did you go to school? Well it turns out she’s from Virginia! Talk about a small world. I’m pretty sure the Virginians are taking over this part of the country. We’re 75% V.A. right now… the fact that it’s 75% of four people is only a minor detail if you ask me ;)

Second story is about my adventures at the frip. Ok, so you’re probably thinking to yourself what the hell is a “frip”. Basically, it a mobile thrift store that sets itself up at the back of the market every Friday (Friday being our big market day). You know all that stuff that we get rid of during spring-cleaning? Well I guess after the Salvation Army and the Goodwill somehow it ends up here. The guys selling the stuff layout these giant plastic tarps and just dump out everything and it’s pretty much a free for all. Every time they throw some new stuff on the pile or lower the prices (prices drop throughout the day) there’s this spontaneous sorting frenzy that erupts. I’m not gonna lie it can get a little intense. Personally I think most of the stuff isn’t really worth sorting through to begin with, but most everyone else who’s there means business, and they don’t mess around (were talking mamas throwing ‘bows and steeling things out of each other’s hands). Normally I watch from a safe vantage point but today something caught my eye. Well actually it was two somethings. First I saw this pile of women’s winter fur hats and I thought it was really funny (because it’s like 100* here everyday) and then I saw next to it a pile of random suspenders. There’s a guy that was in my stage named Richard who always wore suspenders so I decided to go see if there were any good ones I could score for him. I didn’t really see anything that caught my eye until, Bingo!... the perfect 4^th of July accessory… red, white, and blue, stars and stripes suspenders. I bought them on the spot and didn’t even bother to haggle for the price. I already know I’m going to look like a big dork but I don’t care I’m gonna rock those on the 4th like its my job. I can’t wait for Sunday when I can sport the red, white and blue and hold up my trousers all at the same time J