The Life of a Peace Corps Trainee, To Continue for 7 More Weeks

Salut tout la monde!

Hope life in the United States is wonderful. You don’t realize how much you take for granted, really. Refrigeration is a big one. Go and kiss your fridge. Do it now. Then go read the Declaration of Independence or Constitution or something.

I have just finished my third week of training. This week was pretty exciting for the agroforestry trainees. We started working on our own vegetable plots (maize, peanuts, beans and sweet potatoes). We are also planting trees at our homestay sites. I spent a number of hours mixing manure into my soil with my bare hands (found some chicken ca-ca in the room next to my family’s outdoor kitchen… just 4 bags or so) and then built a fence with bamboo that I cut from the river near my house (with my machete). Shortly there after, I discovered that chickens can jump, and that a 2-foot-high fence is not acceptable in the African bush. So, I had to return to the fleuvre (river) for some more bamboo.

This is where a lot of the pictures are from. The people in the photos are mostly other trainees (Reese, Nathan and Alex), though we did have quite a posse of local kids following us around. I live on a hill that overlooks the river area, and it’s really pretty around sunset. I apologize for the blurriness, but it’s hard to look for snakes and snap a photo at the same time (I have not seen any snakes. However, I have seen a million lizards and beaucoup de spiders. There are also ants that bite, mosquitoes that bite and something called moot-moot that left big welts around my ankles).

I think that I pretty much never want to eat another plantain for the rest of my life. The starch is overwhelming (as I have said before). In general, the Peace Corps volunteers I have seen so far are not so much thin as they are… round.

Other pictures that will hopefully (pending some agreeable African technology) get posted are of my host sisters, Patricia (4.5) and Joelle (2). They are pretty cute when they aren’t too boogery and screamy (screamy at 5am is especially unbearable). Another picture is of my room… I am hoping to get some better photos of my living conditions (very good by Africa standards), but am waiting to get a bit more comfortable. Note the bars on the windows.



There is another photo of the agroforesters who take their languages classes in the “Blue Maison”. Across from le Maison Bleu is what we call la Cabane d’Omelette. Yes, the omelet shack. Here you can get a warm coca-cola and a fresh cooked omelet (did you know eggs last for days without refrigeration? You test them by putting them in water. Rotten eggs float.). What do they put in omelets here? Well, at my house in the AM, its pieces of leftover fish and tomato. At the omelet shack, you can get one with onions, tomato, piedmont (essentially habanero peppers that make your mouth want to fall away from your face) and spaghetti. Yes, what would an omelet be without spaghetti?? I challenge all of you to try a spaghetti omelet… and if you REALLY want to try Cameroonian food, put your spaghetti omelet inside a baguette (with the spaghetti cooked into it). Then set your mouth on fire, because that’s how piedmont tastes.

Things are clipping along. Training is not that easy and not necessarily always that fun. Four hours of straight French is a bit of a bummer, but it will be nice to know what the heck the kids are calling me. This week we got really down and dirty in agro tech classes, and my hands were out of commission for nearly two days. Hoeing is much different than in the US (for those who know what a hoe is). It involves bending over and sticking your but in the air – and lots of blisters. But three weeks have passed already, meaning there are only seven left. During week six, we will all be making “site visits” to our future posts, meeting with our host country national counterparts and doing an initial assessment of our communities. For now, I am trying to be spongeful and attempting to retain as much language and technical information as I can (put the ca-ca into the hole first, then put in the tree. Bring your neighbor a papaya and you wont get robbed. Don’t eat the things that look like dirty curled up paper – its cow skin, and it will make you sick).

Kelsey from Mboa