Africa Makes People Crazy... Just like Tequila

Not much has passed since my last post. The dry season is persisting, though we have had a few rainy days. I have a sense of sweet, sweet relief when rain clouds form over the mountains and with those first few pangs of water on my tin roof. If I didn’t stand out already, I would definitely run naked through the streets. The dust that sits inches deep on the road washes away and suddenly Cameroon is green again, instead of covered with reddish-brown chalk that assimilates with skin and clothing and sheets and trees and cars and every can and jar in my kitchen and toilet paper and...

I have traveled some in the last few weeks. Actually, the travel was limited to Reese’s post in Nseh and Bamenda town. I was in Bamenda to go to the hospital… that I did twice. I was having a persistent and mysterious ailment whose symptoms could be described as throbbing in my head and hands accompanied with headache, dizziness, a caving-in throat, difficulty breathing and general restlessness and discomfort. To relieve some of my anxieties, I consulted the book “Where There are No Doctors” that each volunteer is given when they go out on their own. Sitting under my mosquito net with a bushlamp in the blackness and isolation of my post, I matched my symptoms to possible health problems listed in the index. The book’s description of “you will surely die” seemed to correspond perfectly. I just about called Peace Corps to send a helicoptor, but was able to have a midnight Ovaltine and hoped that I would still be around in the morning so I could go to Bamenda. I survived… however, both trips to the doctor (the second one more urgent and tearful… I told the doctor I believed I had encephalitis, meningitis or tapeworm larvae in my brain… his instant bout of laughter was the best medicine) revealed nothing but a well-oiled machine (Well oiled is an understatement… Cameroonians like their food dripping with orange grease). It was finally decided that my physical illnesses was purely psychological, brought on by the delightfully powerful malarial prophylaxis that I had been on for five months.

And so my week-long stay in Nseh. Our Medical Officer decided to switch my medication and told me to lay low with a friend for a few days while the drug left my system. Viola, a free vacation for the other side of the ring road with my favorite stage-mate. I hopped the next bus to Kumbo town and put’sd into the mountains. When I arrived in Reese’s village, they dropped me a quarter kilometer down the road from his house, not knowing that I was staying with the resident Peace Corps (he usually gets door-to-door service). Typically when I travel, I bring along just what a need and what I can carry in my rucksack. But I had left village that morning sure that my brain was melting and that I was going to be evacuated to South Africa... I dragged my 50 pound samsonite with wheels through two inches of red dust laughing with the knowledge that I was an absolute spectacle. The kids came out to watch what was probably the first white girl to sleep in the village, struggling to drag her surveillance equipment up the road so that she can study the correlation of puff-puff consumption and the stagnation of goats standing in the road (because we are always spying).

The timing of my medical issues was perfect, because last week was Reese’s official “installation” into his village. Cameroonians love to have and give titles. If you do something good, or they just think that you might do something good, or if you are from America, you might just become royalty. And not only that, but they will make a really big deal out of it and make you feel awesome. It was truly a nice event. They set up an old-school stage, with flags and a palm leaf canopy. There were traditional dancers and music, speakers, the local king was there and afterward we had a lot of food. Reese received the great honor of a red feather in his hat for doing close to nothing more than being genuinely happy to hang out with Cameroonian nationals. Typically this honor is reserved for those villagers credited with bringing a dead leopard or the severed heads of enemies back to the palace. Planning to plant nitrogen fixing trees to make the potatoes grow big-big seems to work, too. Reese got tons of gifts… a couple hundred pounds of yams, potatos, beans, corn, avocado (pear), two bamboo chairs and two new roosters (named Chicken Marsala and General Tsao). It was such a nice day, not even the torrential rain and walnut-sized hail could damper the tone.

The trip to Nseh was effective. I feel both rested and mentally pure again… like the day I was born into Peace Corps African-dom five months ago. But my sanity seems to slip each time I check my mailbox and there are no packages from America with creamy peanut butter, girly magazines and pretty smelling things. Ponder on that…