9 out of 10 Dentists Agree

February 6th

I know it’s been a few weeks, but I’m officially back from my blogging hiatus. I do apologize for the lack of updates, but fear not, I have endured punishment enough in the form of a nagging mother via phone, text, and Facebook (love you mom, pestering from the other side of the world?… a whole wheel of cheese?... I’m not even mad… I’m impressed ;)

All jokes aside I guess the real reason I haven’t posted is because I’ve been in a bit of a funk for the past couple of weeks. After New Year’s I went to Yaoundé for my mid-service medical checkup (I’m good to go, in case you were wondering), and then made a quick trip to Ngoundare with a group of friends. Minus the fact that in order to get medically cleared I had to trek across the capital city in a taxi cab with 6 other people in rush hour traffic in the heat of the day with….. wait for it… wait for it… a fresh stool sample (not a particularly high point in my Peace Corps career), I did have a lot of fun getting to spend time with a bunch of my American friends. The only drawback to so much “quality whiteman time” is that at the end of it all, when your back in village and you’re by yourself again it’s like you’ve got to push yourself through the mental readjustments all over again. It’s kind of hard to explain and I don’t know how this is coming across. I’m not lonely or depressed or anything, I’m just struggling to get back into my groove. Here’s to hoping me and the groove get together real soon ☺

However, in spite of my case of the Bankim blues I have been able to get a little bit of work done and I have a great story to tell you, so get pumped! I have this women’s group that I meet with on Saturday afternoons, and for awhile now they’ve been expressing interest in doing some kind of small income generating project. Thanks to the awesome work of some volunteers in the west I got a copy of this book full of great income generating ideas (woot woot Christina shout-out). After perusing the pages I made the executive call that we should probably start small and work our way up to some of the bigger things. With that being said we decided to go with toothpaste. This worked out great, the plan was to make the toothpaste, divide it up, and then end with a quick health lesson highlighting the importance of brushing your teeth and getting your kids to do the same. Here’s how it went down…

Step one: follow the instructions and mix a little baking powder, a little salt, a little water, and a little of this and that together in a big bowl.

Step two: Not getting the right consistency, opt to let the ladies incorporate what I though might be some local knowledge on toothpaste making and so we add more baking powder.

Step three: still not quite right , before I can stop it even more Baking powder is added.

Step 4: “Just a smidge more Baking powder should do the trick… ooops, that was way more than a smidge.”

Step 5: “Well ladies, I think this is as good as it’s gonna get. Let’s divide it up.”

Step 6: Disregard that part where it specifically says store paste in a plastic container and divide it up in small plastic bags.

After everything was doled out and the baggies tied shut we closed in on the final phase. My lesson was going great, I had just finished demonstrating the proper tooth brushing technique, which was basically me trying to convince them that in fact simply chewing on your toothbrush for a hour while walking around the house doing other chores will not actually do anything at all. Then like a little kid with a roll of bubble wrap: POP POP POP POPPOPOPOPOP… all of the plastic bags suddenly exploded splattering everything in their vicinity with a nice layer of toothpaste. Ooops. ☺

Moral of the story; 9 out of 10 dentists agree following the directions is kind of clutch.


P.S. In the time between writing this and posting it online I’ve been pretty busy and I can say that for the time being the groove and I are like this (I’m crossing my pointer and middle finger fyi). All it took was a good old fashioned Cameroonian fete, a nice solid week of work, and a West Adamaoua cluster meeting to get me back in the swing of things ☺