Peace Corps Bafut with Kelsey Cornelius: May 2008

Mt Cameroon

Seven months after leaving Cameroon in an avalanche of confusing emotions, and I'm already ready to return.

That's right, I'm plotting my visit. I say plotting not because its going to be a secret event, but because I need to correspond the trip with as many holidays acceptable by my place of business with my sparse (though average) number of vacation days. It wont happen until 2009.

And why? How?

When i first landed back in the US, i faced a steady and fairly overwhelming number of questions, and one frequently asked was "do you miss it?".

And my unabashed answer was a full throated "no," oftentimes followed by a shake of my head and "absolutely not."

It's true. The stress of my return was overwhelming (how can one be stressed sitting on her parents couch, eating Chinese food nightly without tarantulas is anybody's guess.... Perhaps Africa really does do something to people). Someday my folks will get a proper thank you.

I needed to find a job. I needed to get a car. Clothes were a problem at first (mumus and dirty flip flops? Not in October.). I needed to leave the condo/nest. I needed to figure things out that i had put off for awhile (like 2 years). I needed to remember things that I liked and didn't like (hate vacuuming, love sitting on carpet). I needed to re-acclimate to dairy. I wanted to know whether i had a story to tell. And all of these things had a very obvious start date, somewhere around October 2nd or 3rd, whenever the plane touched down at O'Hare.

At least it seemed that way. In reality, my life included no more decision making than it normally did... it was just that the decisions came with the self-imposed poignancy of a RPCV with no plans and no way to process what had just happened.

So I made some plans... and some of them didn't work out, and some of them did.

I got a job with a television station as a researcher, and then I got a bigger job at the same television station after a few months. And before that I moved to Colorado. And after that I decided I would actually try and enjoy my time in Colorado, rather that complain about the lack of culture and overabundance of hippies, crazy Christians, shampoos, military presence and meth. And in doing that, I've come to remember what American culture can be.. and that it oftentimes has its own richness, however buried it seems to be.

This message is getting sappy.

I'm enjoying movies and music. I missed American food terribly, but now i remember that I can't eat half of it, and a good portion of it is crappy, and so it doesn't seem like it was worth missing. The mountains are gorgeous, and its nice to have good friends so close by that understand depth of humor and sarcasm.

Running downtown in Colorado Springs, I noticed a black guy that looked familiar to me. After hearing he had an accent, I asked him where he was from. He sort of despairingly answered "Cameroon" (apparently, he gets that question a lot. I believe my jumping up and down (while running) might have improved the outlook of the conversation), and with further questioning, we found that his grandmother lives absurdly close to where I lived in Bafut. In fact, he is a Bafut man, and grew up one quarter over. That was a surprising Tuesday. He's very encouraging of the wearing of brighter colors and grilled meat, and we hang out.

And everything has settled down. Its nice to breathe again and feel like things are moving in some kind of direction. The sadness of leaving started to creep in around two and a half months ago. Its lessened by the fact that Cameroon isn't so far away, what with cell phones and internet. My host family recently had another baby and named it after me. Maa Marie calls to greet. My friend and supervisor in Cameroon had a baby with his new wife, and they got the baby things I sent. E sent me an email to ask for money. Maurine sent a picture of Kesty.

But there are no plums here. There are no misty clouds hanging over the palm trees in the morning time, and no deluges pounding on my zinc roof. No people "kwan kwan'king" on my front porch in the afternoon, and no children's fingers under the door, begging for cookies from "Auntie Rose". And I can't have a beer around lunch time and feel okay about it, or hop in a taxi to get somewhere for 20 cents. And people just aren't as friendly, or as superstitious or as interesting as in Cameroon. And there's no palm wine.

But it is still there. Its so weird that things don't just vaporize when I leave them. It's still there! And it wasn't all a weird dream (I wont get into a mephlaquin rant). So I have nothing to worry about, really... except getting hit by a bus, or some equivalent to that. Even then, I think i'll not wait too long... maybe a year or two. I think there are more adventures to come, so look forward to more subjective internationally-based blogs down the line. Here are some photos of my days since the plane touched down.