Peace Corps Bafut with Kelsey Cornelius

One Year

2008-10-05T03:04:00.005+01:00

It has been one year since coming back to the states. I miss Cameroon enormously, am frustrated with the difficulties associated with communication with my friends back in Bafut and am eager to go back to visit.

I've decided to pursue a night program at the University of Colorado here in Colorado Springs to get my masters in business administration. I'm not quite sure what it will translate into, but I'm hoping it will give me some tools to get back to Cameroon, and with experience and knowledge that might be more appropriate to its bubbling-up economy. We'll see how I'm seeing things after two semesters of accounting.

I'm still working at the television station, learning to sell television airtime and Internet ad space. I've screwed up a lot, failed more than that, and it doesn't help that we've entered utter economic turmoil. Despite all, I have the feeling that I'm getting the knack of it. It's becoming more exciting and rewarding with each trial (and error).

I've also learned a few things about perspectives since returning. Some Cameroonians I've met haven't received me as well as I'd of hoped, not understanding or trusting some of the descriptions of my many experiences. I've been accused of lying and exaggerating, and have heard the word "slander" on several occasions. I feel like I've been sort of disowned, cast-off as a foolish American who spins defamatory tales willy-nilly.

Of course, I don't believe that is entirely the case. I adore Cameroon, its people, its geography, its potential, its fantastic folklore, music and magic. I am critical of many things, but my overall remembrance of the country is positive.

I received a hard lesson in politics. I simply hadn't imagined needing prudence because of the commonalities my friends from Cameroon would share with me. Of course, they being in the US and having lived in Cameroon, would understand my perspective.

I also, fresh off the plane from possibly the most consequential two years of my life, failed to remember that I hardly compared to Cameroonian immigrant in America. Two years was not an entire childhood in Cameroon, raised through economic crashes of the coffee and cocoa sectors, followed by years of hard work in the US, paying for school with night jobs, working tirelessly to rise up the ladder with little to no help from family back home. After all of that, whats the need of reminiscing or debating with an American who farmed with your grandmother a few times?

Furthermore, what do I know? What sort of bias and misinterpretations could I be loudly talking about? I've not had any journalistic training... what am I missing in my storytelling? Perhaps something, perhaps nothing. In any respect, I'm taking a closer look at what pictures of Cameroon I have in my head, and how they might be wrong, to the extent of being hurtful. For anyone that I've significantly offended, I apologize, I never meant to.

So, I've learned to be a bit more respectful and not so hasty with my ex-patriated friends (unfortunately, too late for a few of them). I would highly recommend this tactic for any returning volunteers... things are not as uncomplicated as they seem.

Otherwise, things are going well. There's a lot to look forward to and Colorado is fun.

Seven Months or So...

2008-05-13T06:17:00.007+01:00

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.

First hours back.

Kentucky Derby.

Paddock at Churchill Downs.

Denver.

A Bafut man who skis. There's no word in the dialect for "snow".

Bratwurst in the fridge in Chicago.

Family at the Oktoberfest party.

My namesake "Siyou Kelsey" and host mama.

My host papa Jean... it appears he got to go on a boat.

Bye Bye

2007-10-04T15:52:00.000+01:00

Getting my fancy Peace Corps pin. I'm now an RPCV.

Due to some circumstances outside of my control (or somewhere deep in my conscience), I am leaving Cameroon today... a bit early. Not without all the regalia of "gonging out," though.

It's been fantastic. I'll be back.

2007-10-01T08:21:00.001+01:00

After two beers a few weeks ago, I invited Maa Marie and 10 of her family members to the fancy Dreamland restaurant. I figured she would invite family that I knew, and that we probably wouldn't reach up to 10. She made sure to fill the quota, though.... and surpassed the 1 plate of food, 1 beer limit. 50,000 francs later (100 dollars or so) everyone seemed to be having a really, really good time. In this country, you pay for your own send-off.

Pretty, pretty cameroon

2007-09-30T15:41:00.000+01:00

My mom, after seeing the photo that included the car full of corn, realized that I have never really illustrated Cameroon on a large scale... I think she saw the clouds in the background and mistook them as mountains. So I guess that my blog is lacking in scenery photos and what-not. This is partially due to the fact that the scenery in my immediate area is beautiful, but... I live here, I guess. Not that interested in shooting photos when I walk to get my tomatoes, not to mention showing everyone in my vicinity that I have a shiny camera. In moving around the NW province, I have largely travelled inside 2-door toyota corollas packed to capacity with 8-9 people and enough cargo to turn the hatch-back into an exhaust-catch. I tend to find that the scenery is not beautiful at all when my neighbors armpit is raining on my shoulder and i cant see through the window because the right windshield wiper fell off and was never replaced (really, how necessary is it to have both?).

But lately, knowing that my work (my fine fine work) is coming to a close, I have done my best to take some photos despite the circumstances. So, here is a smattering of Northwest province photos. It really is beautiful. If only it had roads. And jobs.

This was a big guy... probably 3 inches long in his body with equal sized antennea. Just moseying along a cable line next to the balcony where we ate. It's not really scenery, but you can see that there are hills surrounding Bamenda in the background.

Hill with nubbin.

Again, not scenery. But cute. The baby is getting "baba," or strapped to his mama's back with a piece of fabric (or sometimes a towel). I would like it except that babies here tend not to be diapered.

The mountains and valleys on the kumbo side of the plain. The whitish spots are the rain falling and making the grasses oh-so-green.

We had to take an hour and a half detour so the driver wouldn't have to pay at a "mixed control".... it seems he had none of his "books" and it would have been expensive. But I got to walk a bit in the beautiful countryside near Reese's old post.

This waterfall is just up near Sabga, about 35 minutes from Bamenda.

This is coming down the hills of Jakiri, where the foulani people raise cattle and horses. It's a spectacular view, especially in the wet season when you can see all the rain falling. You have to cross that big plain below to reach Bamenda, and the entire road is unpaved. Its.... really muddy.

The road just after Sabga hill, a decent (though steep) portion of the road to Kumbo, which I travelled many, many times.

A waterfall near Sabga. Some of them are really roaring.

Thats my house... hills in the background and the cocoyam/plantain farms in the foreground.

A big storm moving in over the Bafut palace.

Small Small, No Be Sick

2007-09-15T10:53:00.000+01:00

This car was coming from the farm, I suppose. It's full of corn!

This moth was almost as big as Kate's hand. It was really big. She touched it.

I did not touch it because it had these alien stingers. I'm sure they were stingers.

I'm sure that Africa is not the leader among natural medicines. I would guess that that would be china (since many Cameroonian medicine stores sell chinese teas and chinese-processed things). But the Africans are serious believers in most natural medicines (at at times very distrustful of Western medicines). This can be great, in the case of some properly manufactured concoctions (and decococtions), the likes of which we produced during my medicinal plant workshop this past June. But it can be obnoxious and possibly very damaging (as is the case of the "shiny shiny" powder sold on the busses going to Yaounde or other weird medicines sold off the top of people's heads). Furthermore, since a lot of things can be produced locally, its likely there are a lot of people getting duped. You'll see guys pulling up with their car and hawking curative venereal medication from the trunk, saying they can cure HIV and talking through a bullhorn (these are not my favorite people). I guess you just don't know who to trust, and nobody is prepared to say they can't cure something. I'm therefore not big on purchasing these sorts of remedies...

But then theres white cat. White cat, or "small small, no be sick" is a little tin of balm that you can use on/in just about anything. I had heard about the use of small small no be sick before, but had never bought it with any seriousness. Recently, i've been having some sinus problems (either that, or brain worms... i'm not sure). Bought some, placed it around my nose, and voila.... instant cool healing power of the white cat. Amazing! So, brain worms down, I'm now going to try in on cuts and scrapes, scars, dry eyes and ear aches. Really, its just cheap vicks vapor rub in a little tin... but they changed the name and sell it off the tops of their heads, and therefore it seems more like an obscure local medicine to me. I can take orders now if you want to try. I'll need to buy a bullhorn.

COS conference

2007-08-31T16:42:00.000+01:00

The COS conference (COS=close of service) is a time for all we PCV's to learn how to write a resume and spend one last time all together as one. We got to hang out with monkeys and eat breakfast, lunch and dinner for free and sleep on spring mattresses for a few nights. Photos...

The road to Yaounde. People like to come on the bus and sell medicine called "shiny shiny" that is supposed to clean your teeth. We believe it may be finely ground rocks. This man nearly beat me when he thought i was taking his picture.

Ally and I in the Country Director (of PC Cameroon)'s mansion-like home. It has hot water, for goodness sake. And see... I got to brush my hair.

Charles and I planned matching sassy outfits.

The balcony of my hotel room at the Mont Febe hotel. That is the village of Yaounde in the background.

Walking through the wildlife reserve. Gorillas live here.... and TONS of catapillars.

This one was really really fast.

I wanted to pet him, but my flesh would probably burn off. I'm thinking of putting together a line of "alternative stuffed animals" to sell to children. Piglet squids and catapillars of West Africa.

Not-so-fuzzy.

Good halloween costume.

Baby gorilla in gorilla juvy.

We were so close to this lady, we could have shaken hands. If it hadn't been for all of the throwing of sticks and rocks and running of the huge gorilla-ness, I might have tried.

Close enough to punch. They are rascals.

My COS date has become officially booked. And I am not coming home married to a Cameroonian... my dad was so sure that was going to happen. I guess there is still a bit of time.

2007-08-24T14:04:00.001+01:00

"The prince enjoyed a health remarkable even among princes; by means of gymnastics and good care of his body, he had attained to such strength that, despite the intemperance with which he gave himself up to pleasure, he was as fresh as a big, green, waxy Dutch cucumber." -From my current entertainment in Cameroon, Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina"

Here are some other glimpses into my day to day life in the last months of the Peace Corps experience...

Mami only had two teeth on the bottom. She wanted me to pay her for this shot. I did not.

The doorway of the Catholic juju house. Its probably one of the few religions in Cameroon that would go along with something like this. Inside they drink fermented tree juice from cow horns.

You might think these kids were looking at me because i had a camera. In fact, they stared the whole time. This is the interior of a Cameroon classroom in a village in the Northwest. Children of America... consider yourself very lucky and eat your peas.

This is one of the finest moto drivers in the NW. Notice the stereo system he has connected near where his feet should go. He goes just fast enough to give you that stomach feeling, but then it goes away.

I would seriously consider coming back to Africa JUST to weigh babies and wear a lab coat. This one wanted to see me very well.

This health center is run by a fantastic "doctor" who makes 10$ a month. He delivers babies, makes sure women have good nutrition and distributes medicines. See? There still are good people in the world. And babies. This one was in a very healthy weight range.

Doing a soy (soya) milk recipe with the ladies of the health center. Did you know one kilo of soy is equal to 3 kilos of cow meat? Meat is 1200 a kilo. At 350 for a kilo of soy, its a fabulous alternative. Don't I look ridiculous?

Grinding the soy beans.

Straining the milk through a clean cloth. Test tasting came after. Lots of "AB-AHYE!"s. The ladies really enjoyed their liquid meat.

Update...

2007-08-13T16:23:00.000+01:00

Here is a photo of Reese's spider bite.

All day yesterday was the 11th, and today is the 12th.

2007-08-12T15:18:00.000+01:00

I wrote a long and funny something about my anxiety towards travel in the states during my high school and college years, with special emphasis on my fear of flying. I chewed on how I have been downright desensitized in the last year to the uncomfortable and terrifying Cameroonian means of travel. However, I believe some of the photos I took in the last few days will better convey what is so unfathomably normal in this country.

In the last week I’ve of dreamed of airports three times.

These goods waved their fingers at me while i took a picture. It was a truck full of traditional leaders. My car was faster, so i snapped them anyway.

This is where my car fell in a ditch. I have a video of a bunch of boys picking it up and moving it, then another video of it sliding back in the ditch.

This is where they pushed a big truck up a really slippery hill. Note the tire tracks. Note the big truck that small people are pushing up a hill.

Overload heading out from the car park.

Cow Wey No Get Tail.

Ally and I heading to the village. 5 In the back and they were lacking in an actual seat. It was a piece of wood covered in felt.

13 people in the car on the way from the village. This was the front seat.

Heading up to Ndu from the market.

Coming from the village. Ally and I make friends with our seat mates. We had 4 extras.

The Other Toenail…

2007-08-02T17:50:00.000+01:00

Reese in Limbe.

I was made to pick up the chicken "like you would a football". He pooped a lot in his brief stay in my exterior room. It was really smelly. The other one tried to bite Reese twice. We enjoyed eating both of them.

A few minutes later. See how naked?? Not so tough now, eh, chicken??

It's a real treat to stay in the Case with Justin Fugo. Or I guess this was Ingrid Martens. There is a pile of stuff "up for grabs"... this rouge number was inside. We all have motorcycle helmets.

I’m in Yaounde after a brief period at post following my America trip. My boyfriend, Reese, was bit by a bird-eating spider and got his close of service (COS) early (I will try to get a photo of this wound). He's fine. I got to take a little vacation to come to “the Yao,” as Bill Zimmerman likes to call it, and see him off. Last night we had a doggone spread to celebrate Reese’s many achievements. This included slices of ham schmeared with cream cheese (dubbed “Kalamazoo rolls” by the sushi expert), sour cream & onion Pringles, groundnuts (peanuts) and fancy pitted olives. Yessir. Sad to see him go, but who doesn’t love a reason for a party?

He’s not gone that early, though. In a few short months (pending this same spider does not attack me), I’ll be going home too. I will probably fly in to Chicago… in the middle of December. I’m crossing my fingers for unseasonable warmness. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I will be reentering the United States with either toenail. The one that I wrote about a few months ago has ceased its growth. It is a stubby, painful little thing and I am forced to paint the front of my toe to achieve the look of a real nail. Today the left nail came off. It was quite a surprise.

What’s on the docket until November? Tree outplanting, soy milk fabrication, camps and songs, hanging at the palace, and lots of photos. Peace Corps time sure seems to fly by.

Note: The Fon of Bafut is presently in the United States. From what I understand, he will be in Maryland (Silver Springs), Philadelphia, Washington DC, Houston, Chicago and two other cities (maybe St. Louis and San Francisco).

After 21 months...

2007-07-09T04:39:00.000+01:00

The O'Hare airport with my dad. I was very, very smelly and felt bad that I had to get into his new car so stinky.

This is my friend Gayle who is a missionary in Ndu, Cameroon. Yes... we happened to run into each other at Abba: the Music.

Rare parents moment at Katie's wedding.

This was just before the rehersal dinner. See... I'm clean.

Fabulous shoes. Very white legs. People commented on it.

Oopps... heres a couple of Katie photos. Elle est jolie, non?

Katie and Jarrett. Lots of champagne was in the limo.

My brother Chase and I dance the night away... or day away, I guess.

Pretty hair... goofy drink. I had three of them.

Can't a girl get a break?

Finally. I flew in to the US on the 26th to a red-eyed mother (I told her not to cry or I would have a panic attack. She managed to control herself... somewhat). We got into my dads shiny new Jeep and I began to play with gadgets and forgot completely where I had just come from. Except for my odor, which was more african and less america.

Anyway, I had a wedding to attend... that of my middle school friend Katie Phinney (now Katie Hunt) and her now husband Jarrett. So, I got some clean clothes and an eyebrow wax.... and a shower and a hair cut and color (I put some red in there... my mother says it looks unwholesome)... and I ate some crab rangoons just as soon as the ciprofloxin kicked in....... and headed to one of the Carolina's on an aeroplane just in time for the bridesmaid luncheon.

I have not a picture of her, but Katie was a lovely bride. I got to wear some really pretty red shoes at the rehersal and some shiny ones for the wedding and my feet stayed clean the whole time. They got married in a lovely ceremony and that was that... then we drank and ate the night away (and I ended up speaking some kind of french to a senegalese taxi driver that took my brother and i back to our hotel from the 80's bar at 3am).

After that, I got to go hang out with the family dog (who hates me... he is 77) at the most beautiful lake in the world where my parents have a new little cottage. We has pizza and ribs and hamburgers and I got to wear shorts and get a slight tan (which unfortunately caused my shin-fungus to flare up... what???). Also got to sit by another lake in the middle of the state of Michigan and drink beer in cans and watch my cousin's 2-year-old swing tiny titanium golf clubs about.

Now in Chicago, I fly out on Tuesday.... back to culture my fungus. We had Chinese food tonight...... Chimichungas have been saved for last. This is such a fun place, I think I will come back in a few months.

Some Notes on Funerals

2007-06-15T10:38:00.001+01:00

I'm sure I've probably mentioned that funerals are THE event in Cameroon (and if you've talked to my mother, I'm sure she has mentioned those "CRY-DIES" that they have there... caps intended to denote a Michigander accent). The older you are when you die, the bigger the party, it seems. People spend years planning the events sometimes (my landlord and his family have held numerous family meetings over the last year and a half to plan "Pa's die") and spend ridiculous amounts of their dispensible income on beer, tents, plastic chairs and fowls... lots and lots of fowls.

Actually, at times the money spent is not all that dispensible. It seems that Bafut once had a number of people raising cane rats... a profitable business after the start-up costs have been offset... but they sold off the entire lot of animals to pay for booze at Pa or Ma's big celebration. It's not the kind of spending that thrills development workers (even the Rodney Dangerfield type).

What else can you see at a cry die?

Typically at these events people will try to get all matching african material and make matching shirts and skirts.... sometimes whole pantsuits depending on your importance (after that, you can determine who is in who's family from seeing the matching material all over the country).

They set up sometimes hundreds of rented plastic chairs under rented tents. Normally this is in the front yard of the dead person's house... even if their house was an apartment on commercial avenue in Bamenda....... in which case they set up the tent and chairs on the sidewalks and in the streets. Often traffic is blocked. In the francaphone zones, people dance in a circle holding peace plant sprigs and the headshot of the dead individual. Traffic in Bafoussam is typically blocked by a die circle or two when i come through.

The star of the show is really the corpse, a word that the african people use freely and often. Bringing the corpse, presentation of the corpse, burying the corpse, dancing on the corpse to pack the dirt down on the corpse. It's something we shy away from in the states, but it is really in your face here. The carrying of the corpse from the mortuary to the burial site is a big to-do. And I mean big. During your living years you will ride 4 to a seat on a 4 hour trip from Bamenda to Kumbo on a crappy dirt road in the crappiest hatchback you can imagine... but when you die, they rent you an entire land cruiser with flashing police lights and sweet, sweet Backstreet Boys playing out of bullhorns on the top. Bazor funerals in Bamenda has a whole fleet of these classy "last ride" cruisers. The competitor down the street is "Master P" Funerals.

They make t-shirts with the mommie or papa dem's picture on the front. Buttons, too.

So, for awhile I thought that this was all kind of lame (and I still don't approve of the spending when you've not money to spend)... but I think I am undergoing a slow conversion to celebration of death. What else will you defininately get to celebrate but your birth and your death? You might not get married, have kids, anniversaries, big promotions... but you definitely get to die.

I'm proposing that for my funeral, I'm buried in the front yard (somebody's front yard, don't care much who). It will probably be a block party... I would like my face to be screen printed on t-shirts and the butt of sweatpants. Lot's of margaritas... and I demand that my corpse be covered in streamers and tied to the roof of an fallafel truck with the music blaring. People can eat pitas after. Tears and wailing are welcome, as long as followed by dancing, margaritas and debauchery. It's just the way it should be.

Some kine grass where he de cure some kine sick dem

2007-06-09T12:39:00.000+01:00

This week I had the privilege of hosting around 20 folks from Mambu, the village that is about 500meters in elevation from me, at a medicinal plants training. The week holds some of the most boring, interesting and most amusing events of my Peace Corps career. For the most part, participants were chosen based on their previous involvement with medicinal plants or their need to learn for medical reasons. More than half of the group was made of up traditional (or native) doctors (or healers).

I didn’t really know too many native doctors before this week… mainly because they kind of freaked me out. If you look around (ha… next time you are in a taxi in the NW of Cameroon) at the backs of other passenger’s necks, you will see a series of º inch long scars closely packed together. One of the more typical procedures at the traditional doctor’s office is to make these tiny incisions and then pack a poultice of herbs over the top (I learned this week that these are sometimes chewed by the doctor first. Ew.). One volunteer in NW is working closely with the traditional doctor to see how HIV/AIDS might be spreading through unhygienic methods (i.e. lots of Czech-made razor blades). So, there’s the cutting… and then the fact that the doctors are often spiritually oriented… they have been known to make black magic charms to kill people, or to force unruly white women into marriage, or to give an enemy a bad sick. So, yea… I have just kept my distance until this week.

The first day made me a little nervous. Around 5 of the participants were wrinkled old men in traditional black caps with decorated with Big Man tokens (red feathers and porcupine quills)… they were mostly reserved, some of them looking suspiciously at other participants. We started the training by having them write their expectations and fears for the training program. Three explained that they didn’t have any fears, but if the rest of the group wanted to learn something from them, they would have to pay. Of course, the men who felt so strongly didn’t have the ability to write for themselves, so I copied down their remarks. Well, that was it for the intimidation. This is not to underestimate the traditional doctor’s wealth of knowledge on local concoctions, but I have a feeling that they would need to write my name on the charm for it to work.

We kindly explained that they didn’t need to share anything, but the protection of their intellectual property was going to hinder development of Cameroon… and shortly thereafter, the group discovered the traditional doctors to be nothing more than a group of Old Pas (and one nutty Old Ma) who want to eat their achu and laugh and yell at each other and be crazy. One Old Pa explained that he had been to South Africa, Gabon, Nigeria and Ghana to sell and teach about his medicines. He was a really funny little man. I’m pretty sure he’s never left the NW province, and his trips to Bamenda are probably not all that regular. He really liked me, and suggested that I marry here. We tried to squelch the idea that there is a cure for AIDS (many of them advertise that they have the power), and we clarified what typhoid really is (has nothing to do with your nervous system, Pa). Black magic stayed out of most of the conversation, and we tried to promote safe and effective means of treating people with herbs (teas, tinctures, rubs and such). I doubt that they will give up the slashing or the black magic, but they seemed to take our straightforward training really seriously. It’s a start.

Other than that the week was marked by a good deal of discussion on suppositories, diarrhea and piles (I just kept hearing the work “anus” and “shit” within the garbled pidgin… over and over and over), huge pots of herb water, burnt bones called “black stone” that suck out pus or something, Old Pa gas, and heaps of green that I saw as… well just green… and they all saw as “grass where he de cure some kine a sick.” And it rained every day no later than 2pm, just as we would finish and I had to ride my bike back down the hill.

Did you know I was an Agroforester?

2007-05-30T11:54:00.000+01:00

This month has been my big month for agroforestry. I’ve finally succumbed to the idea that this stuff might actually be worthwhile (though it wasn’t such a willing yield) and have gone throughout the kingdom of Bafut waving the flag of Plenty Fine Stick Dem—or Lots of Good Trees—so that all will remember that Kelsey Cornelius was once here as the seed-bearing Father-EXMASS-like Sister-from-another-mister. I planted 10 nurseries with farmers from all over, riding on rickety Chinese motorcycles with moto drivers determined that I reach safely (I drank a glass of whiskey with one driver before returning from a site, and another smelled like cow meat that had been sitting in the sun and another had a bike that held together by bungee cords). I gave several talks almost completely using my broken pidgin English. I mentioned that instructional sessions will be held on MUMITAA, the local Sunday, and I was greeted with a barrage of laughter and whooping (Auntie Rose! WAAAY! Ha. You de talk Bafut? WAAAY! Wonders!).

Agroforestry does work, its true. It is a vast discipline… though I believe its fertilizing qualities are the bushy green superstar of the field. But it doesn’t walka as well as pig poo walkas, though it might smell better (but doesn’t taste better… that’s the winner for me). And not as well as fertilizer works in the short-term, though it might be cheaper. The real advantage of agroforestry is that it doesn’t cost me anything to do, except time and my unwavering, agroforestry tool-kit thumping advising. There is a fairly large labor component, however (for the farmers, if we want to call the program sustainable)… and if trees have to be nursed first, the time factor can be daunting for a people who live for today. Furthermore, after you reap your fertilizer, you might get a bundle of firewood… but you wont get 50,000 francs and your childs school-fees paid for because you sold your pork. AND its not like you get to sell your massive cassava under an “ORGANIC-TREE POOP GROWN” label and mark-up the price tag 400%.

So, yea… it’s a good program. Or it’s better than nothing. Or it’s cheaper than the other thing. So, okay fine… I admit I don’t buy it. I don’t buy agroforestry as the best thing for the people of the NW and those in Bafut. I want the UN to give my farmers a few million dollars so that they can be trained in enormous numbers of people on livestock and fertilizer production and crop rotation. I want it to be in loan form with ultra low interest so that farmers can pay back and the money can be recirculated. And they will be the biggest exporters of salami in the world and no one will have to worry about the soil (who wouldn’t buy African salami? Mango salami! Pineapple salami! Kola salami!).

But who am I to say? Who am I to know what people need? I have walked away from every nursery planting with something in my hand or in my belly. I received 3 pineapples, 8 mangoes, 1 liter of palm wine, 1 liter of red wine, a beer, a piece of bushmeat, fufu corn and njama njama and 1 fried dough ball upon completion of various nurseries. People are ridiculously grateful for my 30-minute nursery construction assistance, 50 cents worth of seeds and 10-20 minutes of instruction. And I’m planting trees, so I can’t be in the red (unless I were planting eucalyptus, which soaks up all the water in the ground and keeps my toilet from flushing). But its like… somehow I feel I’m in the lifeboat, paddling towards humans lolling around in the icy water (or shark infested… however you like) and I stop to get… a roast beef sandwich with horsey sauce and a jamocha shake (at the fan boat Arby's) and continue paddling on with one hand, drinking my shake.

So, when it comes down to the nitty gritty, it seems that Arby's is everything that is wrong with development.

And in other news, there is a monkey named Tom at the Savanna Botanic Gardens in Bafut. He eats chicken heads and would very much like to sit on your head and hold your ears with his crazy little monkey hands. I know showing teeth is a sign of aggression, but I just can't help but smile.

Yaounde

2007-04-20T14:21:00.000+01:00

I came to Yaounde last Sunday... thinking I would spend a few days down, take care of some medical stuff, talk to some admin. I came directly from Charles Norton's fondom where he (and Jessie Girl... not sure of her last name) was named prince or priest or something good. He got a plaque and we got to drink a lot of beer. Anyway, Bafoussam is already south of Bamenda, so I figured i would just continue in that direction... finish up by Tuesday and head out on Wednesday.

WELL, Peace Corps' transit house was a bit busy with people coming from the beach, and all of the admin was a plane ride away in the northern provinces. Monday and Tuesday went by... no unenventfully. Nate and I made white russians and brie sandwiches (yaounde has refrigeration!) after my 30-minute-long medical session. Wednesday I was sick because of the dairy in the white russians. I still hold that there is no difference between cream and whipping cream. Couldn't go home then. The admin person that was still around couldn't meet on Wednesday, so Thursday it is. Thursday I met with her for about an hour... and watched some more dvds. Thursday night my toenail ripped off (it was black already) when I hit it with my shoe. It didn't come all the way off, and Reese and Ingrid taped it back down because i couldn't look.

Friday we watched Aladdin and made mojitos.... tonight we make chicken breasts. Toenail came off all the way (I'll be very pretty for Katie's wedding. I wonder if I can wear gold clogs?).... and I will be here until next tuesday, it seems. Its just.... the motivation to get into a steaming hot bus with 69 other steaming hot people and lots of weird smelling foods and travel for 9 hours on a scary road... its not there.

Washing the Kitchen Floor

2007-04-11T10:15:00.000+01:00

My Cameroon kitchen is probably where I spend half of my time in the country. Since food preparation is from scratch for the most part (see “Chimichungas in Africa”) and there are sanitary and cook-the-crap-out-of-it techniques to be taken into consideration, if one wants to eat well in Cameroon, he/she must spend a lot of time in the kitchen. So, voila. Spending a lot of time in the kitchen inevitably means that the kitchen will be filthy.

I don’t like a messy kitchen… but sometimes there is only so much a person can do. For instance, in the meat grinding process, oftentimes ground meat bits will fall to the cement floor. This is a space in between the water filter stand and the counter table… and often laden with spider webs. And since the meat grinding process involves cleaning more directly/regularly handled such as the grinder itself and the counter, those chunks are often forgotten… for a little while. They are too small to smell, so instead they form little dried-lava-like blisters on the floor.

One of the more frequent activities is bread making. Flour tends to fly in the process, landing on the floor around the counter… near the door…. On the window. You would be right to think that it could be easily swept up, but I have to wash my hands and get the bowl cleaned and greased and get the counter clean… and it just gets forgotten. For some reason, flour on a cement floor in Africa morphs into a paste which cannot be removed from the floor without sandpaper.

So, its not easy. I did make one enormous error not long after moving into the house that has added the the kitchen mess for some months. I had a bit of a rat problem for a few weeks, and tried a number of different traps. I discovered that “rat glue,” a non-poisonous ultra-strong rubber cement, was the best means of getting the little pooping terrors. You put the glue onto a piece of cardboard, the rats get stuck in it and then you throw their writhing little bodies out to the skinks. Worked great… except the glue changed properties after a little while on the cardboard and oozed off onto the cement. No big deal that I couldn’t get it off (they said kerosene works… but it doesn’t. Dang Nigerians.) as it was in places where I didn’t walk. But then the rats started glueing themselves to the floor. I have to scrape them off with a cutlass after waiting for them to die. It’s terrible, but that’s kind of the consequence for eating my boxes of jell-o pudding, huh? These patches also catch crickets, ants, enormous spiders and hornets.

Other things… if the power goes out for more than 6 hours, the freezer starts to melt a terrible gas or oil smelling water that ruins most things in the fridge and gets all over the floor. Coffee beans sometimes fly (look out!) of the hand grinder and land in places where I don’t notice them until I step on one. Tomatoes rot and bananas go bad and sometimes they hide from me… and sometimes they ooze. We Peace Corps and our gas plates use a huge number of matches each day, and you try to get them all in the trash… but. And I always have people over, and they never put the butter away. And of course, there is that minor detail of very frequently (like… 95% of the daytime), I don’t have running water.

Today (yes, this morning.) I washed my kitchen floor. I’m going to try to make it a more frequent practice… especially since the rains are back and things could potentially get really nasty. The soapy (bleachy) water ran brown out the back door, littered with cricket carcasses and njama njama leaves. But give me a little credit. I do make good bread (… and buttermilk fried chicken, meatball subs, artichoke dip... do you know what we’re up against? Pounded cocoyams and sauce made of limestone and orange oil).

(I’ve also started to regularly burn my kitchen garbage. The kids run to the pile while I pour on kerosene, begging me for “the container,” I say, “no… its trash” and light a match. As soon as I turn my back, they start pulling flaming tuna packets and buttery paper towels out.)

Chimichungas in Africa

2007-04-07T11:05:00.001+01:00

I’m not sure I can adequately express my love for chimichungas. When I come home in June, it has been decided that that will be my first meal off the plane.

I had not realized that chimichungas were something a single person could actually produce… (single non-mexican person?) but I have been shown that just about anything can be deep fried, including burritos. I must say, it was such an enormous process that I feel I need to share the extent of it all with my readers.

Black Bean Chimichungas

Ingredients: black beans, Mexican rice, tortillas, cheese, tomatoes, ranch dressing, deep fried

Black beans: The beans come dry. I boiled for a minute in the morning, then let them soak for a few hours. Later, I pressure cooked (always a little bit frightening… especially when you’re pressure nozzle wont rock because you put it down in varnish one time and it likes to stick to the little hole) the beans for 50 minutes with a few cups of water, salt and a chicken boullion cube. My pressure cooker is like… 18 quarts or something. Thanks, mom for sending me such a practical pot.

Mexican rice: Seasoning packet, onion, tomato and rice for 20 minutes on a simmer. Made that in the morning.

Tortillas: Made fresh and thin and not cooked so long that they would be crisp and unrollable. I am a queen when it comes to tortilla making. My rolling pin is always dusted with flour and ready to go.

Cheese: I was out of cheese on chimichunga day. And a chimichunga needs some kind of dairy. So, we decided to make cheese. I dissolved about a cup of powdered milk in water, heated it to a boil… which takes a bit (so not to scald). Then added a few spoons of vinager to the hot milk to separate the curds from the whey. Then drain off the whey with two different sizes of strainers and voila, cottage cheese for chimichungas.

Tomatoes: More difficult than you would think. I scrubbed them with my brush then let them soak in bleach water for thirty minutes. Standard for raw, unpeelable veggies in Africa.

Ranch dressing: Delicious. Travelled a long way to arrive in Africa.

Deep Fried: Rolled them up and added a little egg wash to seal one side. Under the guidance of my deep frying mentor, I let them cook until golden brown, pulling them out with tongs before eating very hot off the blotting paper. And that is how you make a chimichunga in Africa.

Morning in Bamenda

2007-03-06T09:53:00.000+01:00

Morning is better in Cameroon. Guys are eating their pap (sort of like thin cream of wheat), spooning it into their mouths like little babies. Dipping fresh balls of fried dough in their nescafe, chewing quietly, the pillow creases leaving their faces with each long sip of tea. In a few hours they will be yelling at me; "baby! I want to enjoy with you," "white! you need something???" Some of them will grab. And the music will get turned up and the honking will be more incessant as the temperature rises and the dust lifts into the air.

But in morning, the air is cool and feels a bit damp, and the garbage piles aren't so hot and stinking yet and I feel very hopeful and sure that it can all work out today. It usually doesn't... and I typically feel bad about it. That i lost my temper and yelled at the guy in the greased-up coveralls. That i didn't travel all the way across town to talk to that bee guy. That my motivation is gone. That i no one here seems to understand or care what they might be missing out on. That I don't know how to show them or that its hopeless anyway, so why try. That I might be the one missing something. But then there is another morning and its all just sort of lovely again.

Visit www.nowefor.com that Reese recently finished for news and information on our NGO, the Northwest Farmers' Organization. We need a truck, so if you are interested in giving a tax deductible donation to NOWEFOR, it would be very much appreciated. I have put my mother (suecorn@aol.com) in charge of America-side fund raising.

And I am starting an "I love to read!" campaign (i don't know if I can call it a campaign because its just one nursery school in Bafut). Reading for pleasure isn't really in the cards for most Cameroonians... and these kids are just about the cutest little pumpkin-faced pudding pies you ever saw and they are absolutely in love with me. So, if you want to help out Auntie Rose with some children's books (English primarily, but some in French would work) to put together a small corner library, that too would be great. Suecorn@aol.com again.

Buea mountain race

2007-02-20T16:24:00.001+01:00

Buea mountain race
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

Maa Marie, Shella, and the new small woman

2007-02-20T16:22:00.001+01:00

Maa Marie, Shella, and the new small woman
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

Small Woman at youth day

2007-02-20T16:21:00.001+01:00

Small Woman at youth day
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

Youth Day, Buea, Babies

2007-02-20T15:32:00.000+01:00

My best woman friend from Bafut just had her second child at 21. Maa Marie, the Fon of Bafut's 6th wife gave birth to healthy baby girl on the 12th. She can't name it until after the Fon gives her the traditional name... but it's looking good for Kelsey Rose (2). They have said the baby will be "very black!" (then they snap their fingers and say "tcha"!!) because it's ears are dark.

In other news, I went to Youth Day in Nseh where I have discovered I like to watch handball very much. Lots of cute kids doing nutty traditional dances and karate demonstrations.

In the beautiful town of Buea in the SW province, I witnessed the most amazing feat of insanity and human willpower. Around 500 people ran up and back down the highest mountain in West African in a 44km race called "Mt. Cameroon Race of Hope." A number of people ran in those clear plastic "gelly" sandals, I saw one guy shoeless. The winner crossed the finish line on his butt, winning a few million francs (couple thousand dollars). It was quite hot... and more than a little bit amazing. We plan to hike up and back down over a 2-3 day period. The fastest runner did that in about 4 and a half hours.

Dry Season

2007-01-25T13:24:00.000+01:00

This was a photo from some time last year. I had more, but the internet is not cooperating.

Dry season! Black boogers and an endless, dry hack of a cough. Chapped lips, sunburn, dust clinging to your skin. Everyone is orange! One color, one people! Dust colored!

I don’t remember really hating dry season the last time around. I was excited for wet season because I hadn’t really seen it and I like rain in the States. You get to use an umbrella, sit inside and read or stay in bed. Get in your car and use the windshield wipers. It’s the same here, except then the rain doesn’t stop and you lose your umbrella and end up buying twelve of them. Then you lose those and the handle breaks off your newest one because it was cheaply made in Korea. But you still carry it around handlelessly, the twisted metal cutting into your palm. And you can’t just sit in your house because it smells like a wet dog and there are green things growing on all of your patiently-waiting-for-dry-season clothes and you go outside and get wet and the water comes through your tennis shoes and there is mud on your butt from your shoes getting sucked in to the goop and the goop violently releasing your shoes again and again. Unlike the Africans, for us wet season does not include sitting in the traditional kitchen over the traditional kitchen fire during the evening when you come in drenched and shivering. You feel hypothermia setting in because it’s in the 60’s and you know it can happen. And you know the hospital is far away and you don’t want to bother the medical officer because you’re not sure if its hypothermia… so maybe its not. Probably not. You’d probably know if it was, right?

So, I didn’t hate dry season before. Didn’t hate it, but I was excited for the rain. But then I hated parts of wet season (did I mention the rash I had that just wouldn’t go away?) and was thrilled for the sun to come out and dry everything up: my clothes, my rash, nasal congestion, black mold I was sure was growing in my lungs. Dry season! Glorious. But it seems that every season has its serious downsides. With every passing truck, I watch the plume of dust rise and move towards my front door. It sticks to the cleaned laundry hanging on my porch (cleaned by my hands), then moves closer and leaves little particles on my not-so-clear windows. Some gets into the house, building up on the floor, the tables and chairs. I have already mentioned the blackness that comes from the nose. My eyes are like an advertisement for those lubricating drops…. Like when they put the sand on the huge eye and then pour water over it. When cars pass on a dusty road, I hope I’m on the side the wind is coming from. Sometimes it doesn’t happen and sometimes the air is stagnant and I turn my back on the dust. But it hugs me and finds my face and I taste the attic-y flavor enter my mouth and feel the miniscule pieces of soil sticking to my lungs.

It could be a lot worse. The people on the other side of the ring road have an hour drive on nothing-but-dust part of the road to reach Kumbo (there is no air conditioning in the cars and all windows must be closed… I suppose I should mention it is wildly hot during the day). I come visit there from time-to-time, so I understand a bit. My friend Ally lives after the town of Kumbo on a major part of the ring road. The road is not paved and there is something about the earth up there that allows it to, when very dry, suspend in the air for what seems like hours (eternity, really… the eternity that is dry season). The red air blots the sun out at times, making it seem like rain clouds have collected and are about to break (there is no break). Ally also has no flowing water in her house, and she must (happily) let the “Ndu Powder” settle on her stuff.

So, misery and frustration would be the words I would use. Maybe not all the time, but a lot. Dry season and wet season… the weather here is brutal. You cannot escape it. Luckily for Ally and I, we don’t have to stay here. But its very good to know that people do live with dust or black mold in their lungs at different times of the year, because it really puts American’s coughs and colds in perspective. Or maybe I just don’t have what it takes. I am really looking forward to the wet season.

The Mid-Service: Yaounde

2007-01-12T14:18:00.000+01:00

Fun times with many of my training group collegues in Yaounde this week. It was a week jam-packed with stool samples, blood tests and other bodily fluid evaluations. Still waiting for my results to come in, but I'm hoping for an undulating malaria level and worms.

We crashed at a foreign service officer's beautiful house (he's gone having a baby) and watched his American television. Dozens of new movies in the peace corps transit house to watch and I actually had a bratwurst from one of the fancy supermarches.

Sick boyfriend and closed sushi buffet are the only troubles I face in this semi-developed wonderland. Here are some photos form the foreign service house and out on the town in Yaounde.

Charles wears a jersey and an apron. He made the white sauce and complained all night that my red sauce was crappy and inferior.

We made noodles with two kinds of sauce, garlic bread and salad for a dinner celebrating our friends Grace and Rich and their recent marriage. Rich works at the embassy now, but was a Peace Corps volunteer that trained us.

Reese and Charles next to the MAHIMA supermarket where you can find Havana Club rum and feta cheese... very rare.

At the foreign service house party... From left to right: Ben, Milo (dog), Me, Reese, Lindsey, Charles, Yune (back r to left), Nate, Matt, Grace, Rich, Megan and Kazaam? (francophone, so we didn't talk much).

Update: I have and am being treated for ECOLI!

I done chop Christmas for dey.

2006-12-28T15:04:00.000+01:00

This was our last stop on Christmas night. Shey Dennis bought us a good amount of beer. It was cold and dark and people were dancing with this aluminum casted Jesus.

This was the second or third finisher in the Nseh footrace. The hill was very slippery with dry grass... I fell repeatedly. Some of the runners don't have shoes. It's almost a marathon... with this mountain as the finish.

This is one of many children that painted themselves and put together ragamuffin flags and cheered for every runner that topped the mountain. It made me want to run up a mountain.

Sort of reminded me of Mad Max or Lord of the Flies. They made fun of me while i slipped down the hill in my skirt and flip flops.

Reese was a bit unhappy with these new jujus. He said they just didn't seem angry enough. They wiggled their hips a lot. I liked them.

This was a juju that apparently had to crawl from the palace (far). Old Pas pretend to kill it.

A member of the palace approached Reese with a spear and me with a cutlass during their dance. You have to dance. The Nsehites went wild with my around the world cutlass swing.

They wrapped the Fon's new Rav4 in banana leaves and then shot guns over it. When I finance my first car back in the states, I hope the dealership will do the same... especially since I am Mother of the People of Bafut.

translation... I ate the Christmas there. People like to ask how you ate Christmas.

Had a fun(ny) Christmas with Reese in his village of Nseh. We celebrated the "EX MAAS" by making pumpkin bread and egg strata in the morning, then walking up and down the village. You couldn't walk 20 yards without someone demanding you come in and eat and take a beer. Full is the word I would use to explain the day. Someone gave Reese some yams and I got an orange pop from his toothy neighbor, Mr. Wome Wilfred. I was really hoping the lights in Reese's house would be magically turned on on Christmas morning... but it really would have had to been magical. The wires aren't attached yet.

The 26th ("Madame? How do you see the 26th???") was the Nseh Annual Festival. Lots of sitting and eating fried things (no scotch eggs, much to my dismay) and watching dances and jujus and a football match and more eating and lots of Fon talking. It was really nice (only dat cold be too much for dey). They gave the Fon a car, I danced ridiculously with a cutlass and there was a 30 kilometer foot race that was quite amazing. The annual meeting of Nseh's development committee the next day was a little long winded, but it was worth it to see 400 people fight over fufu corn, njama njama and palm wine upon its completion.

Christmas Blog

2006-12-22T14:19:00.000+01:00

Reese at his late friend Francis' house. They raided the grandfathers bucket-o-guavas when we got up to greet Francis' widow.

Reese's friend Eugene had us over to his house for fufu corn and njama njama, and then for a cup of corn beer. Very nice guy... laughs like Darth Vader, but he's very small.

Ridiculous shot of some of the guys that are supposed to "protect me" in the newest Black Vampire film. The guy on the far left is particularly ridiculous... our Producer, Emmanuel. He likes to give hugs.

Shooting Reese and his film girlfriend in my living room. Reese's lines include, "I love you too too much." She ate all my olives and spit the pits on the floor.

Filming at the funeral parlor... Reese's friend Nukwa, Me and Matt... I picked out Matt's sweater.

Matt takes a break from lying in his coffin to smoke a cigarette. In a bit of a drunken scene later on, he pulled the fake nails off in a rage. It was quite a night.

The Fon of Bafut doesn't eat with others... only drinks.

They sold these shirts on the day of the annual dance. We all bought them... Reese put his on first, officially. Bu i'm sure he wanted to match. That is one profoundly happy birthday boy.

Cute. At the Abin Festival.

We speculated this was some sort of iceskater princess juju. He wandered around between the dancers holding his briefcase? I don't know.

These old men were approaching the Fon with their small band of fifes and drums. They later approached us and drunkenly demnanded monetary dash. Alas, white men who live behind the palace don't carry cash.

Reese and Ally pause in the inner palace doorway. This was the beginning of a two-hour wait for a plate of rice. We got to hang out with two swiss ladies eager to know why we were still sitting and waiting.

Well, Christmas is upon us in Cameroon. It has been quite a different season this time around. I’m not watching people blow up and exposing myself to HIV, for instance. I’m also not alone in an un-electrified three-room house, sans plumbing and in the hills. I have a refrigerator… and am therefore able to make, chill and eat cookie dough containing enormous amounts of butter.

Lots has happened and not happened all at once. I hurt my leg, and went on a lot of antibiotics. Having no stomach bacteria for around two weeks (I believe) made me susceptible to the evil protozoa and tiny wiggly things that originate in African’s caca and make Americans miserably sick (of course both doctors I saw believe that I have normal digestion… I would like to see their poo. I take that back.). I think I just got over that. So, there has been a lot of lying in bed, moaning and begging people to fetch me things. When you’re sick, people like to bring you the local food… even though the spicy yellow soup that accompanies pounded cocoyams is exactly what the protozoas want.

Physical ailments aside, things have been fun. I spent about two weeks in the Banso/Donga-Mantung areas, breathing in the crisp night air and experiencing the excitement of civil unrest. Ally’s town (under 10 kilometers on back roads from Reese’s house in Nseh) was under control of the Army because crazed Cameroon Tea Estate workers had blocked all roads to Ndu. They were demanding that their back pay be… well, paid. Both the army and the crazed laborers are bad things, three people were shot (one died) and Reese and I had reconnaissance and rescue all planned out. I trekked to Ally’s a few days later when a ride home fell through, and everything seemed just fine… mostly just talk (it also gave her a reason to spend a few nights with missionaries and enjoy their American amenities… leather couches, satellite TV, hot water, nice mattresses).

After returning to Nseh I was able to sit-in (sitting was about it… it was the beginning of my gastronomic impiety) on the cane rat training Reese had planned with my counterpart, Walters (Walters is the guy that slapped me on the butt and asked if I would be his forth wife). The villagers were truly excited and it seemed that after the initial planning, Reese had to do nothing but sit back, drink some corn beer and watch it all unfold. They built cages and discussed rat genitalia… soon there’ll be a booming rat market in Nseh (our late program director, George Yebit, would often tell villagers that their rat business will really take root when Americans catch wind of the delicacy that is cane rat… Oh, George). I’m planning similar trainings in my own area.

On the 15th we began to film for Black Vampire 2. Reese comes back as a “power drunk white,” as the script says. I am a nervous, unconfident half-vampire… they wont let me shoot any guns. Matt plays himself (only his name is Martin). He’s moody and drunk. It’s all very inappropriate. Very fun… until they come to my house and stay until past 11pm. Fifteen or so Cameroonians dressed like mobsters and whores, 500-watt stage lights setting my dinner table on fire and innumerable shots of muscles in tight black t-shirts and guys gets to be a little too meaningless in the late hours.

We had a party to celebrate Reese’s birthday on the 16th, inviting some of our Cameroonian friends from town and Matt. I held down two chickens and felt their lives fade in my hands as Reese sawed into their necks… first time that’s happened.

Then came the Abin festival. I’m not sure exactly what the Abin festival means or is… it is also called the “Bafut Annual Dance.” Pretty much the day went as follows… Get dressed up, eat, drink, guns, guns, drink, guns, drink, drink, guns, dance in a huge circle, drink, eat, drink, go home. Maybe throw a few more guns in there and you’ll have it. To personalize, add bake a cake and wear paper pirate hats to celebrate a birthday.

I don’t even know if this sounds like I’ve been doing anything at all. And in actuality, I spend a lot of time reading National Geographics that the post office mistakenly gave to me thinking I was a different volunteer, trying to bake bread and phone texting my friends in the NW province. It’s a nice time. Hope everyone stays healthy (not with dysentery) and safe for the Holidays. Eat a lot of sour cream for me… and cheese in general. Merry Christmas from Bafut!

Thanksgiving

2006-11-29T13:52:00.000+01:00

Nice waterfall. I bought the hat on the side of the road to Douala for a dollar.

Ally and I got a fishing lesson from Reese. We wanted to eat them for thanksgiving dinner. Tilapia. We used cheese rind. I ended up catching a young plantain.

Thanksgiving was a lovely melange of booze, excellent turkey (I helped baste!), par baked pumpkin pie and kitchen debauchery. We stayed at a bed and breakfast near Yune Lee’s post. Apparently arranged by a bunch of French ex-pats, it was the most genuinely nice little place I have stayed at in all of my Cameroon travels. It was only that I was fairly gimpy at the time.

My preparations for Katie Phinney’s June 2007 wedding, in which I will be a bridesmaid, went awry last Thursday. While checking my running form via my shadow, I missed a step and skidded across some large crumbled rocks that composed the “shoulder" of the road. I stood up laughing, but no one around me laughed. I was missing a piece of knee skin the size of a nickel. Interesting. No one came over to help the stumbling, passing-out, bloody white lady trying to cross the road. I wouldn’t have helped either.

Mostly healed now… just in time to be part of "Black Vampire 2". The movie will feature Reese “Charles” Baird and myself, as well as Matt Richmond as “the doctor.” Reese will be some kind of mystic and I think I will be a vampire killer. Reese has been invited to shoot scenes in Italy (not me... the say i'm too mean). Our director has been invited to an African Film Festival in LA. His name in the new movie script is "Storm"... my own name is "Sharon." Details to come.

Cameroon is Fun

2006-11-08T15:10:00.000+01:00

It's fun watching the people run from the scary juju... Reese included.

Pre-gaming for the jujus.

Bowing to greet the Fon...

A little embarrassed having prostrated in front of so many notables... running back from greeting the Fon.

Jill showed up in Douala after very nearly not making her plane in New York some 20 hours before (her roommates boyfriend locked her out of her apartment and she left her yellow WHO vaccination card in her car in New Jersey). I had had a beer and was elatedly watching the planes land (its not something we see every day in Cameroon). The next day we made the 11 hour trip back to Bafut (it shouldn’t be 11 hours, but it was good that Jill was able to get a taste of the transport woes).

Yesterday, we were fortunate enough to have been invited to an enormous Bafut death celebration. The Fon of Mankaninkon, a village on the way to my old home of Akofunguba, had died years before and they were officially installing his son as the new chief. The paramount Fon of Bafut was there, all the jujus and other notables, queens and about 1000 of Bafut’s population. We drank beer and were seated front-row for the festivities. Rains disturbed a bit, but we were able to see the mean juju (the one with the dark helmet made of dead African’s hair) accept his goat-bait at a distance that hardly seemed safe.

Jill’s impression of the event yesterday: “I thought the juju was going to get me. I just felt bad for the goat. They kept body slamming it… like WWF.”

chili cheese fries

2006-11-06T12:28:00.000+01:00

chili cheese fries
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

Thanks to Dr. Sara Walker of Columbia, MO we were able to put Sonic Drive in to shame. Still trying to perfect the Tater Tot Process.

muddy shoe

2006-11-06T12:24:00.000+01:00

muddy shoe
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman.

slug

2006-11-06T12:21:00.000+01:00

slug
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

A hadsome little guy leaving a mucus trail all over the banister.

Cattle punching

2006-11-06T12:17:00.000+01:00

Cattle punching
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

This guy was just hanging out near the Government Primary School in Bafut. Cattle rustling is still punishable by death here.

How for Shakira?

2006-11-02T18:54:00.000+01:00

Sitting at a bar not too long ago, my friends and I were approached by a man with a foot and a half high stack of cd’s in his hands. His backpack, I’m sure, was also full. This gentleman is a part of an enormous network of other gents and boys in Cameroon who sell things off of their bodies. Blankets, machetes, light bulbs, cheap watches, Scotch eggs, pagne, leather flip flops with pink-and-green-dyed cowhide accents are among the goods that one can purchase (not without a fight) while “street shopping.”

The guy begins laying out cd’s that he thinks I’d probably be interested in. They know not to push the Cameroonian makossa or anything from Cote d’Ivoire. They have us pegged. They know what westerners like. Pirated Backstreet Boys and Don Williams cd’s litter the tabletop. No, no, no… Westlife? No. I probably laughed at that point. The seller has an “ah-ha!” moment and he coaxes a disk out from the center of his stack. Something he knows I’ll buy. “How for Shakira?”

Shakira, obviously not. I can think of one sorority roommate that I had that might have liked Shakira… but she seemed to have a twisted taste in music (also a foaming-at-the-mouth-fan of Hillary Duff, Christina Aigulara and Jessica Simpson). Other than short little Amy Schneider, Shakira’s fans are limited to girls in their tweens and the occasional gay man. How does America’s pop culture become so skewed in the flight to Africa that individuals believe that we really adore Celine Dion?

This is not limited to music, of course. What’s hot in Cameroon is what they believe the “white man country” lives on. White bread, for example. After whining to another volunteer about the overabundance of Cameroonian bread containing less nutritive value than a Kleenex, she provided a theory. The picturesque bread of the USA has long been WonderBread, though this is not what people typically choose to eat (that is, people who are not my 21 year-old brother). However, through some Norman Rockwell-like catalog, the idea somehow got here. Despite the fact that the bread is terrible, people buy it because it might be representative of Western “hotness”. Just a theory.

There are other, more obscure examples. Fiber-optic-light flower arrangements, for example. Very popular among the well-to-do crowds. Cameroon might be the capital of in-no-way-natural-colored silk flowers. For some strange reason that may not have any connection to this topic, motorcycle taxis like to hang shoe horns all over the bikes. Young men believe that tight-in-the-thigh, low-rise women’s jeans are all the rage (I mean on them… accompanied with a very tight, sometimes mesh top). Stuffed animals adorn dashboards. Axe body spray abounds… in overpowering quantities. Movies are often ridiculous displays of guns, money and weeping…. I actually like these sometimes (a copy of “Black Vampire” starring Reese Baird and Kelsey Cornelius as “victims” will be coming back to the states in about a week). Romance novels are the primary selection for those who read books for pleasure. I shouldn’t get into Christianity… I wont, really. But it doesn’t quite “come over” in one piece.

The tackiness of it all isn’t really very sad… to us, its hilarious. To be reminded on a daily basis that, for the most part, this is what Africa thinks we’re all about… it makes me glad to have to opportunity to illustrate what Westerners are more often like. But for them, there is a genuine fondness of these (often chintzy) things…and I respect that (unless I get to know someone… they I argue why Westlife isn’t a real band).

The sadness of it sets in only when the rich local culture or beautiful native product is displaced by a poorly manufactured, wrongly assumed Western one. Silk flowers? People can run outside and find beautiful hydrangeas, pointsettias and hibiscus growing at any time of the year. Coca-cola? Pick up a fresh passion fruit (or go to the juice store on commercial ave and drink heaven). How for Shakira? Shakira no fine. Give me some nicely recorded ballophone or an old pa playing the mouth violin. That’s something worth one dollar.

Finally... My Mom Comes to Cameroon

2006-10-04T12:08:00.000+01:00

Apologies to everyone who had anticipated a running commentary of my mother's visit to Cameroon. I was the busiest I had been since training trying to make sure she didn't accidentally sell me off to a Cameroonian speaking in dialect, get her lipstick stolen out of her pocket (that's all I let her carry) or burn down the house with her battery operated curling iron. Here are a few of my favorite moments….

Emerging from the on-ramp, Sue's excitement gets in the way of her sense when she inadvertently gets into the "diplomats and residents only!" customs line. Thankfully, I had warned all of the customs agents ahead of time that CORNELIUS, SUSAN does not speak a lick of French and that she has "much fear."

Moments later, when leaving the baggage claim, we purposefully enter the "Diplomats and VIP" line. It's amazing what you can get done by saying "Etas-Unis" with enough force of voice. Sue learns valuable Cameroon rule… there aren't too many.

Sue makes "observations" from Hilton balcony of the African people in the car-washing trade. She is amazed. I sleep in and order room service and then sleep some more then we venture out. This is the last morning that she makes written observations.

Returning from her first walk around the block in Yaoundé, my mother realizes that her pretty pink wedges are not so great on Cameroonian red mud. She clings to me and gags as we come through an alleyway and pass a dumpster. I laugh. She recalls earlier seeing a man walking on his hands pass the same way. She ponders the fecal-oral route problem while immediately washing her shoes at the hotel.

We get back to Bafut and have "Christmas," where my mom releases the contents of 5 of the 6 bags she brought. The 6th bag, containing mostly meat, is somewhere between Amsterdam and Cameroon. I am overwhelmed and need to lie down.

Sue has difficulty with the schedule. Our first day in Bafut is a Sunday without any market or country activities to entertain. After an exhausting trip to Yaoundé, I find sleep at 830pm and don't wake up until 9am the next morning. Around 11am, I am in the mood for siesta. Sue has been up since 430, thinking about bleaching the walls and tarantulas. She does end up bleaching things before she goes.

Despite my insisting it's a bad idea, Sue consistently handed packets of cookies to the annoying children who hang out behind my house and say "Auntie Rose, I beg for biscuit" over and over and over all day. They are still coming over, nearly two weeks after she has gone. They stick their hands under the bottom of my door and there is one boy who says "Auntie Rose. Bis-cuit. Auntie Rose. Bis-cuit" over and over until I open the door and yell at them.

Sitting and having some beans and fried balls of dough in Bafut central, a man comes to greet us. He is sweaty and has just walked from Akofunguba, my old village (about 15-20km away). As usual with the Cameroonians, he is extremely enthusiastic about meeting Sue and believes that she must be my sister. He welcomes her and tells her he hopes she will have "a pleasant journey." An astounded look comes over my mom's face and she replies, "you have a job with GM?" As in General Motors… as in… this guy has no idea what she is talking about. I realize my mother is truly Midwestern.

In the wake of Sue…

People are still asking me if my mother is gone. I tell them yes, she has gone back to her home. They get all convoluted and sour faced, click there tongues and even cry out. There is one old guy that has asked me twice if she has gone back.

I have made crab cakes.

Oops...

2006-10-02T10:46:00.000+01:00

I have a number of great photos and a post on the toipc of my mother's visit- but I was just shocked twice trying to plug in my flash drive... and thats really all I can take for the day.

Check back soon. Dem dey go come.

Mama Done Come

2006-09-08T18:30:00.000+01:00

She has arrived unscathed!

I picked my mother up at the airport last night. There was some bumbly confusion at the customs line (she was in the wrong one), but after a lot of hand gestures she was able to get through. We got 4 pieces of her checked luggage (plus 2 carry on's). The 80lb bag with full of salami, parmesan cheese and new bras did not make it, but we are in communication with Laurent, the guy who barely speaks English at the Yaounde airport. I have full faith in Laurent. We escaped any customs trouble with the bags by jumping in the “Diplomats Only” line and saying that we were with Peace Corps… as if that would make any difference. But it did, and now she’s here!

She came knocking on my hotel room door at 6:30 this morning with a cup of coffee. She had been making “observations” from her balcony since 5, mostly of the car wash across the street. She wanted to throw money to the man without legs walking down a hill on his hands. And she said she saw a really nice blue-colored bird. She also watched a man in a red coat poo in a grassy knoll next to the Hilton and has been watching him since (she believes he lives there and has a garden… she calls him “Red Coat Man”). We toured the American embassy and picked up some Cheetos from the commissary (that we are not allowed to use… but I have an “in”). My mom was able to see the fraternity house that is the Peace Corps transit house (the bathroom is really gross she says… but I don’t understand. At least it has a toilet) and then had Japanese food.

Tomorrow we leave the comforts of Yaounde and head for Bafut fondom… where my couch is musty and the toilet typically needs to be flushed with a bucket, where climate control lacks and she’ll sleep on a thick piece of foam in a room where tarantalas have been known to scurry. He he he.

ABBA does Africa

2006-08-10T11:56:00.000+01:00

I think I have described before that things can be horribly monotonous… the dirt never changes color, rain falls every day and (almost without exception) Cameroonian men 18-30 are the most obnoxious people on the planet.

But there are sometimes wonderful surprises… and I like to reward such surprises with enormous (relatively) amounts of cash.

Last Saturday was easily one of my pitiful days in country. I left the Peace Corps transit house at 9:30 in the morning, angry at most everyone I encountered. It took nearly 40 minutes just to arrive at the bus station via taxi (the twenty something young man in the passenger seat spoke at lengths about his desire to go celibate and devote his life to saving the gorillas… or at least that’s what I picked up in French). They actually had no idea where the bus agency I wanted was, but they drove me around and finally demanded I pay for the whole taxi (when they left me at the wrong agency).

I paid an extra 1000 francs for a better seat on the bus and bought some superglue to fix my sunglasses… but there was no glue inside the tube. We left around an hour later, but were stuck in standstill Yaoundé traffic for another hour (cattle crossing? Crazy man in road? No, just a poorly parked dump-truck).

The agencies have not yet caught on to the concept of efficiency, and so we made close to 10 unscheduled stops to drop people off wherever they felt like. We picked up people and dropped them just up the road. We stopped for the driver to buy some plantains. Almost 11 ½ hours later, I arrived at the bus station in Bamenda. In a crazy-white-lady rage, I pushed a smart-ass young man out of the doorway of the bus, where he drunkenly stood arguing with others in the back of the bus.

A taxi had pulled up behind the bus. I offered 2,500f (5 bucks) for him to take me straight to Bafut, alone. In a huff, I got in the backseat while he collected my bags. Suddenly it was quiet and dimly lit with only the Cameroon taxi lights on. Peacefully green and red, like Christmas. The driver had some kind of laid-back saxophone-y thing in the tape deck, and he picked my bags and entered the car. He never said a word.

As we headed up the road, he ejected the tape. This caused me a bit of distress, as did his concentration on picking a new tape and reading the label in the low light. He popped it in and I rolled my eyes, knowing there was no end to a days annoyances.

It was ABBA’s greatest hits. I nearly cried.

I gave him a 7,500f tip (I’m sure he didn’t have change anyway) and told him that it was for keeping his headlights on for the entirety of the drive and for the music (and for not talking to me, but I left that out).

Inappropriate balloon animal hat photos (it wasn’t on purpose, I would say I’m just not ready for such complex balloon art) soon to come.

Kelsey on the spillway

2006-08-07T12:30:00.000+01:00

Kelsey on the spillway
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

That's our driver Mr. Rogers on the left, and tour guide M. Armend on the right. Notice people washing their clothes in the background. M. Armend said that have to send somebody down to shoo them all away each time they want to release more water.

Bamendjing reservoir

2006-08-07T12:28:00.000+01:00

bamendjing reservoir
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

The lake piling up behind the Bamedjing dam is allegedly full of crocodiles, but we didn't see any.

Lucky Pierre Brings Me to the Dam

2006-07-31T14:38:00.000+01:00

Looking for an adventure, Mformi Reese and I decided to investigate a lake on the Ndop Plain. When heading northward from Bamenda towards Kumbo, you climb over the mountain near Sabga and descend into the Ndop Plain. From the crest of the last hill, just before the bush taxi begins to roll faster than its breaks could stop it, you can see Lake Bamendjin. There are hardly any lakes in my area of the NW, and none that I've actually seen. For a long while I thought this enormous expanse of glistening water was a brain trick…the sun shining off corn or beans. Through a bit of research, I discovered that it is all water and that it is a man made reservoir stopped up by a dam.

It seemed from the map that part of the lake was very near to the ring road, and so we left Bafut very early on a clear Sunday morning and dropped in Bamali hoping to be at the lake in an hour to do some fishing and beer drinking. According to Mr. Rogers, the motorcycle driver at car park, Bamenjin was very far and the road was very bad… but he would gladly take us for 12,000cfa because his village is halfway between Bamali and the lake. We bartered and got him to 7,000 and started on our dirt road moto ride. As he lied about the price of petrol and how many liters he would need, I assumed that the trip could not be nearly as long as he had speculated.

We set off, but about an hour later I was beginning to believe that the "Lucky Pierre" seat on the moto is neither lucky nor having anything to do with French cheese. But the landscape was beautiful and the sky was enormous and blue… and we were soon to be lounging in a boat, sipping warm Cameroonian suds. We rode for an hour before reaching Mr. Rogers' village … he said we were halfway, and that the rest of the road was very bad. My spirits waned a bit, but then we got to see 1995 tribal war torn area of Bali Kumban and I was feeling adventurous again.

As we crossed a bridge a little while later, Mr. Rogers exclaimed that we have, "just entered the West Province!!". Surprise! No idea. We had in no way thought we would be crossing provincial lines… this could only mean that we've traveled…. Really very far in a very strange direction. Just go with it. .I smiled, trying to be hopeful, and we continued. We finally were dumped off the bush road onto a nice, wide dirt road and endedn the town of Bamenjin.. nearly two hours and 15 minutes later and on the other side of the lake. Mr. Rogers excitedly took us up to the reservoir we wanted to see so badly (he must have thought we were nuts)… the dam we wanted to see. He had driven us halfway across the Northwest province, into another province (on a Sunday!) to see the Bamenjin Dam. It's a stinking dam, too. We got to go through security and put on white hard hats and get a tour from a guy that only spoke French. Took a few pictures, had some achu for lunch, and headed back towards the ominous, black rain clouds at Ndop.

I wanted adventure… total surprise is what I got. We were even plotted against. Some boys wanted to rob us on the road… but they didn't realize we were strong as oxs and were taking the bush road like a real Cameroonian villagers. Reese even saw a green snake. Sunburned and feeling like I rode on a yahoobuckaroo trail ride for 4 hours, we're eating grilled fish and drinking beer on the couch and feeling no remorse about not fishing yesterday…

And sometimes the King just comes over for dinner...

2006-07-29T16:32:00.000+01:00

The Fon of Bafut came over for dinner last night. When I agreed to have him over, I had imagined making hamburgers and French fries. When I proposed this to my favorite queen, Marie, she agreed that a nice American dish would be suitable… and should be accompanied with fried plantain, boiled yellow yam, tomato fish stew, fried chicken, French style bread, njama njama, fruit and at least two Amstels. I invited Reese to come and help me prepare and for support in making conversation with one of the bigger celebrities of Cameroon. He suggested fried okra would also be nice.

Well, the burgers fell apart on the grill and my pressure cooker spat water and steam from the side at 10 pounds of pressure, so things didn't go terribly smoothly… but after two bottles of wine, the table was set and I was feeling very calm. He arrived in a black cloak, pulled out the Harvard mug the US ambassador had given him and sat down in my rocking chair… he was nervous that it might tip right backward. I think they kill you if your chair makes the Fon fall. Topics included the beating of children in the school environment and my very poisonous, magic-laden chameleon (Kate and I caught a little chameleon walking back to Mambu… his name is Clunky's Best Machine Gun). At the table, he ate two hamburgers and we drank another bottle of wine… and I began to argue (with a king) about definitions of Western culture and (seem to always bring it up with important Cameroonians) the legality of homosexuality in the States, using arm flailing to express the absolute conviction (the wine) of my opinions. He enjoyed the Jell-o Lemon Pudding Pie (thanks to Reese's aunt) and fruit that topped off the evening. They got up and left fairly suddenly…. Its possible he didn't want to tinkle at my house. After reaching the palace, Marie told him she was going to bed but she snuck out and was on my front porch 10 minutes later. She came to pick up leftovers and finish off the fruit and gossip a bit about the night. She felt it went very well and was only surprised that he ate the pie… he usually feels sweets are for babies. I used every dish in the house and had to have another bottle of wine after the he went home, but it was certainly a memorable evening.

We didn't get a photo, but Reese said its cooler not to have one.

Clunky's Best Machine Gun

2006-07-29T12:04:00.000+01:00

Clunky's Best Machine Gun
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

Shaking of the Chickens

2006-07-13T10:55:00.000+01:00

Queens coming out party
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

"Washing" of the masses

2006-07-13T10:52:00.000+01:00

Washing of the masses
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

Palatial Confusion, Nseh

2006-07-11T10:11:00.000+01:00

“If you kids don’t quiet down, we won’t bring back the sun.” –PCV Reese, on the 4th of July to a group of extremely excited Cameroonian kids experiencing their first firework display

The Fon of Nseh had a palace stooge stuff a note under Reese’s door around 6:30 in the morning on Wednesday. The enveloped note was addressed to “Nformi” Reese and stamped multiple times. Cameroonians are obsessed with the rubber stamp. For 3000 francs, or six US dollars, someone will meticulously carve anything you want backwards into a piece of old tire the size of a ritz cracker. For 3000 francs, you create absolute authenticity. Contrastingly, if you don’t have something stamped, there is a good chance it ain’t real. For instance, my friend Ally in Ndu received a stack of certificates for completing a series of health seminars (Cameroonians also love certificates… whether its for spending eight years in nursing school or for touring the local Guiness factory, they’re framed and propped up somewhere prominent). When the certificates arrived unstamped from the Peace Corps office, a coworker refused to accept them as more than just a meaningless piece of paper, despite the fact that they were signed by PC administrators.

The note under the door was an invitation to the Saturday graduation of three queens from the palace. In Nseh, there are multiple queens. However, the queens are not the wives of the Fon (there are also multiple wives). As I understand it, they are the daughters of the royal family who are chosen at a very young age to serve in place if the Fon should die or become busy with major village matters… like goats-gone-rampant or infiltration of petit sized beers. Or the World Cup. We weren’t quite sure what the graduation was to entail. I don’t think we ever found out, but it ended up being quite a Saturday.

The invitation had not included a time (though it was not forgotten that any financial gift would be welcome), so we figured 9am. Also invited was the Al-hajji from Reese’s quarter, and he suggested 10 (he also has a truck), so we decided that was better. We packed into the front seat of truck with five or so Muslims smashed into the seat behind around 11. On the road, Reese was able to pick through a Lamso’ conversation enough to understand that someone went at 8am and ate at the palace and that we might be absurdly late. But when we arrived at the palace, someone said we were early. Really, it’s almost always like this.

We started in one dilapidated room next to the main palace courtyard. There is a small stage in the room that is royally adorned with shiny Korean-made Christmas decorations and a plastic lawn chair covered in brown tapestry. Above the throne are framed pictures of the half-naked, traditionally dressed Fon, President Paul Biya and Micheal Bolton (okay, not MB, but it would be so funny and it’s not completely out of the question!). There are benches around the perimeter of the room where various members of the Fondom sit, somewhat ordered by rank. When you enter the room, clan members greet the empty throne with the standard three claps in prostration, then the declaration of “Mbe” into their clasped hands.

They brought in a huge clay jar and put it in the middle of the room. I’ve been to the Nseh palace some four times now, and so I’m quite familiar with the routine. Reese pulls out his special horn-shaped cup in perfect synchronicity with the other Old Farts while raffia wine is poured into the huge jar. I guess women are not supposed to drink from anything phallus-shaped… we instead drink from bulbous calabashes (or in my case, plastic cups of varying colors and cleanliness). Then anyone with a drinking vessel (who isn’t Muslim) waits his or her turn to take the white stuff (or the white-ish stuff, in the case of gritty corn beer). They pull the wine from the jar with a two-holed calabash. The men are expected to take and take and take. The wine-pourer will stand in front of Reese, fill the horn held in his right hand (that he respectfully supports with his left), he drinks the whole horn quickly (still supporting his right with his left), then places the cup out again (and breathes). It is refilled, and the act is repeated. Two or three times he drinks like this, before waving off the stooge and resting with a horn full of wine. If you don’t do it like this, I guess you’re some kind of wuss, not fit to have two spears or something like that. I guess I’ll never really understand. I knew it was a big day when the two boxes of Baron de Madrid were brought out. Baron is the grape-juice tasting wine beverage that is often mixed with orange Fanta. It’s really awful, but it means big things when you see the yellow box.

Sometimes they have snacks. Old men crunch on bitter pink kola nuts (apparently, some old guys have so few teeth that they have to grate the kola first) and one time there was a bucket of steaming corn kernels (you only get corn when somebody dies, though). The last time we sat in that room, a crazy old francophone came over and gave Reese and I a piece of folded-up banana leaf tied with some brown twine. He told us we could share it’s contents and mumbled some other things. We didn’t open it until we got back to Reese’s house, but when we did, it was empty. Like I said, craaazy.

On my second cup of Baron, the Fon came out and sat in the plastic chair. We all stood, clapped and “Mbe’d” while he sat down. He said some stuff, then there was awkward royal silence, and then he got up and left. Alllright.

So, we continued to drink. After a while, we were brought down into the main palace courtyard, where the council meets and the Fon has a bigger throne. A big, painted rocking chair and a strew of wooden statues, stools, tables and pillars decorate this throne (far less chintzy than the other). The courtyard has a sort of veranda that goes all the way around. In the middle of the courtyard are two stones I figured were for decapitations… this was not a correct assumption, I was told. The part of the veranda closest to the Fon’s throne is lined with around twenty semi-flat, stout stones where the council members are supposed to sit. In a country with (I have heard) a good deal of hemorrhoid problems, this doesn’t seem like the best arrangement for old guys. Ah, tradition! We sat farther back in the courtyard on a wooden bench. I thought the “graduation” would be commencing, but a side door opened and fufu and cow meat appeared and we ate from Christmas plates. When we finished eating with our right hands, we washed them (while Reese has perfected his fufu eating and upon finishing has the stuff sticking only to the tips of his fingers, I tend to get it all over my hand and halfway up my arm… but I am a formidable opponent when it comes to the single-fingered achu eating) and were ushered back to the other room. Back and forth and back and forth. Just relax, go with it.

So, we continued to drink. After a number of glasses of Baron, I went to find a place to “ease myself”. I cut through a neighboring courtyard, this one bordered by blackened doorways. I had found the quarters where the palace-women sleep and cook. Innumerable children with faces very similar to the Fon’s watched me cross the dusty square and cut through a muddy alley (wearing strappy orange stilettos, mind you) to the path leading to some royal latrines. When I popped out of the injurious alleyway, a naked granny, squatting and washing herself among the stalks of corn, greeted me. “Wi ka ju! Wi ka ju, ohhhhh! Beri! Beri! Beri!” she yelled, cocking her head and pressing her hands together, then placing them against her floppy chest, then together again. I squint, smile broadly and nod. “Heeey, ho… ha. Thanks, mama. Thanks. Yep,” I said, my heels erratically sinking into the soft pathway. She was not just buck naked, but also toothlessly grinning… as were the other three Old Mommys lining the path to the latrine. I was bombarded by thank yous and enthusiasm… “Beri! Beri! Way-ohhhhhh! Wha! Wha! Wha!” Seeing naked old women is nothing new (I used to go to the YMCA), but I can’t say it’s a preference. But they were just so damned excited that I forced myself to exhibit nothing put contentment (while nearly wetting myself). I reached the latrines in my orange stilettos, peed and turned back. They were still there... still naked and toothless… still incredibly happy to see me. What did I even do? Laughing and shaking my head, I walked back to the courtyard.

We were moved back to the chintzy throne room, and there was more Baron, raffia wine and corn beer to be had. It was nearly two o’clock now, and it didn’t seem like anything was going to happen. Al-hajji was sleeping, his head bent backward and mouth gaping open. It was bustling outside… it seemed locals were arriving in droves for this graduation (we still have no idea exactly what the graduation is). We were ushered again, this time into the black door courtyard. A few hundred of the Nseh population were lining the perimeter. We were asked to squat down… and after the masses got low, a queen entered carrying a calabash of white wine and a handful of green leaves. She plunged the leaves in the wine, and proceeded to hurl them sideways, forcefully flinging a deluge of starchy wine onto the squatters. She went all the way around…I received a refreshing blow of wine to the ear, and then a good quantity of the next guy’s “cleansing” along my right side, leaving a Aquanet like stickiness in my hair for the remainder of the event. Reese caught a piece of magic wine-heaving leaf… which caused everyone around to “ooo” at Nformi Reese’s good fortune. Means something great is going to happen. I saw another guy with a piece of leaf limply hanging out of his ear. I thought it looked gross… and wondered if gross-looking luck held the same value.

Reese’s neighbor convinced us there was an intermission and that we should go to a bar up the road. There we shared an enormous bottle of corn beer while it rained, then headed back to (probably) wait some more. But we could hear the drums and singing as we approached. I was mildly angry that we had listened to Godlove, and maybe missed the party, but we entered the black door courtyard in a flurry of activity. And when I say flurry, I mean they were holding chickens by the legs and whipping them around over their heads. It was like chicken shot-put without letting go. There were others flailing horse tail brooms, beating drums, the green-feathered-headed jujus out doing their thing, women circling and thrusting decorated spears into the air. I leaned against the wall and watched quietly… trying not to look interested enough that I would be dragged into the dance and be the token foolish looking white man. Reese, who has danced with the jujus on multiple occasions, moved fearlessly around the periphery in his red bubu, taking “snaps” and fighting the urge get down with the jujus.

There was more palm wine with other toothless old women before we left in Al-hajji’s truck. We didn’t go back directly, though… we passed to what I can only call an “afterparty,” held at the Queen Mothers house. This included more palm wine, fufu corn and njama njama. After they filled my plate with the fufu stuff, they brought us our own special dish of baby potatoes and cooked cabbage. Luckily I didn’t have to try and sneak cabbage into my purse or throw it under a bed while no one was looking… we were given a to-go wrapper. No one talked much in a language I understood, so I spent my time at the house pondering exactly what was just celebrated and inspecting Old One-Eyed Pa’s wood carved cane. Doesn’t take much to have a party, I guess… or maybe it was a really big deal. I don’t know if I’ll ever have an inner gauge to tell me what the heck is going on in Cameroon.

Again, not really having any idea what was happening, we were shuffled back in the truck with Al-hajji and (finally) driven back to Mbogwem in the rain. Back in the fairly predictable respite of Reese’s Little America, we played Louis Armstrong on the iPod, added Oscar Meyer bacon bits to the cabbage and potatoes and ate them with Tabasco sauce.

4th of July -- Africa style

2006-07-07T10:03:00.000+01:00

fireworks in Kumbo
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

I thought that a rampaging juju was the fastest way to get African children to run screaming, but boy was I wrong.

Bamenda wedding

2006-07-03T16:26:00.000+01:00

jude mary wedding cake
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

A truly high-brow affair for all the top-shelf cats in Small Mankon-Bamenda for the daughter of the sister of Alhaji Usmaila. The invitation in fact said "Mary, you are the bone of my bones."

Movie Poster

2006-07-03T16:21:00.000+01:00

Kelsey Movie Poster
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

There's already a lot of Golden Globe buzz surrounding this week's straight-to-VCD launch of "Black Vampire".

kelsey's house side

2006-07-03T16:16:00.000+01:00

kelsey's house side
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

If you look closely you can just make out the world-famous "Hollywood" sign in the distance.

My New House

2006-07-03T16:12:00.000+01:00

kelsey's house front
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

I have recently transferred to Posh Corps Cameroon complete with refrigerator, track lighting, French doors, and complementary Volvo washing service.

I Dey fo Town

2006-07-03T15:47:00.000+01:00

Let me start by saying that it was not a very difficult decision. I’m sure some of you might think I’m cold-hearted for leaving and participating in the “massive rural exodus,” as one nice lady told me, but to be downright cliché, I think its for the greater good.

So, out of the village, into the city. Kinda.

I have moved to Bafut Central, Home of the Bafut Beagles (I live about 50 yards as the crow flies from Gerald Durrel’s old German-built Cameroonian-standards castle…. My mother really wanted me to move there, but I told her it’s a museum now. “So what,” she said.).

With the help of around 4 very excited palace stooges, I found a lovely little pink duplex behind the palace. It’s a very close walk to the rear gate, but you unfortunately have to go around some “sacred forest” that’s been unchanged for a whole lot of years. I was told that I could go into the forest, but that I would never come out. Haha… he. Ha. Hmm. Damn right I’m not going in there.

The moment I saw the house with its big square front porch, I knew I was going to have a lot of screen to put up. I made mental plans for cane patio furniture and one of those copper dish things that you put wood in. I noticed the wires coming into the house on the left side. My eye was next drawn to the grey plastic piping that rose up from the ground like a hand of God holding recently dated photos of Elvis, Diana and John John drinking pina coladas in Nauru. Sewer ventilation. There’s a toilet inside. Splendid.

After getting the keys from the oafish landlady, we took a stroll through the house. It’s a simply enormous two-bedroom with all the civilized amenities. Walking into the nicer of the two bedrooms, I noticed something scuttle away on the far wall. This was the one problem with the house. It seems that because no one had ever lived here and the house had stood for two years, the door was open for man-eating insects and skinks. The tarantula living in my bedroom was a very clear indicator of this. This was the first tarantula I have seen in Cameroon (my friend Liz is never going to visit), and though it was kind of neat, it would have been neater if it had been outside (far far far away).

No big deal, though… get the landlady to clean the place. I’m sure she’ll take care of it. But like I said before, she’s kind of oafish. As far as I can tell, she cleaned the windows. Upon moving in, the tarantula was still residing in my room. Because the movers were right there (it cost be 10 US dollars and 8 Cameroonian beers to have 4 guys come and take two trucks worth of stuff out of my house and then move it in), I decided to temporarily move into the back room. When I spotted its three inch long legs poking out from between the ceiling and the wall, I fetched one of my sweaty men and had him broom it to death. I ran away from the curling ball of fur and hid on top of the table. They thought this was funny, and one ass said that this one was “smaller than the other one.” “What do you mean other one?!” I asked. “This one is the junior brother to the other one,” he said laughing. He then told me (unconvincingly) that he was joking.

That night, despite my being a hallway away and underneath a poisonous bug net, I slept something awful, but I awoke with new courage. I walked up to the door, and entered slowly with my body contorted in such a way that my head could be looking upward while I inched forward. As soon as my eyes passed the frame of the door, I saw the furry, three-inch legs arched up in 8 inverted “v”s. It For a second, I could have sworn his black, compound eyes were scowling at me. He was directly above my head, not more than a foot and a half. I only wish the next moments were captured on my Cirque de Soleil audition video. I was already violently twisted… my lightning-fast retreat may have included several back flips and perhaps teleportation. Either way, I ended up on all fours on top of my dining table.

After an attic spraying, the mammal-like insect was viciously slaughtered by my neighbor boy, Kennedy. I missed the thing’s quick scurry down the wall, and only caught the crushing broom blows that finished him on the hallway floor. In two days, I managed to abandon a needy community and had some possibly rare creatures brutally slain. I feel my life in Africa has just become blissfully sustainable, though a little bit more Posh Corps.

Bafut elephant juju

2006-06-24T10:42:00.000+01:00

Bafut elephant juju
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

This is where all those dopey masks at Cost Plus originate

kelsey piglet 2

2006-06-24T10:40:00.000+01:00

kelsey piglet 2
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

Tormenting the local fauna is a new favorite pastime. The mother of this piglet found us and charged just after this one was snapped.

kelsey lunch bb91

2006-06-24T10:39:00.000+01:00

kelsey lunch bb91
Originally uploaded by rbairdpccam.

A fine lunch of scrawny kabobs called soya and the cheese-like product called Vache que Rit (laughing cow).

Egg Salad Sandwich

2006-06-24T10:25:00.001+01:00

I was wary of posting this because my last post was about food... but it is a pretty central aspect of my life.

There are three categories of food in Cameroon.

1) food I would eat in America
2) food that I probably would not eat in America, but eat regularly in Cameroon
3) food that I hope I never see or smell again in Cameroon

Most things probably fall under the second category. Things like stale corn flakes, powdered milk, chunks of beef fat, Wonder-like fluff bread. The first category usually takes a lot of time investment (unless my mom sent a box of Velveeta and shells… which would technically fall under the second category, though I can’t really understand how that’s possible after all-achu breakfast) and usually a perfect intersection of ingredient availability.

For instance, this morning I had an egg salad sandwich (category 1). I get eggs in town… typically the third or forth day en brousse the eggs disappear. I get 9, one breaks on the way home, I lose three to the cat and two are rotten. I miraculously had one egg left this morning.

This particular egg salad calls for Laughing Cow, an ultra-processed french cheese spread that comes in a little round box. The box consists of 8 individually foil-wrapped pie pieces of “vache.” The “cheese” has a shelf life like a twinkie and a melting point similar to tire rubber. At around 60 calories a slice, the most prevalent cheese-like thing in Cameroon can be consumed in two days at post. There were three pieces left this morning.

Lettuce is a rarity. No one really likes to eat it. If you manage to find a mommy in town that grows it despite the fact that no one but ex patriots and Peace Corps volunteers eat the stuff, it will have to be consumed the same day. Leave it overnight and half the bunch will be dark, semi-liquefied and supporting a small colony of millions of knats. Other option: grow it with seeds from America. My chief-like position in agriculture notwithstanding, I have a very difficult time growing things. The lettuce I planted came up in dense rows, grew about an inch, and then mostly died. This morning I walked down to the little box and picked out some 1-2 inch pieces that weren’t black or yellow. I managed a handful.

As Hellmann’s Light Mayonnaise seems to be an American thing, and all other mayo-like things are repulsive, I didn’t add it. Condiments rot at post. Ketchup, mustard, hot sauce. A delightful 4-dollar jar of raspberry jam will last a week, maybe two. You find by day four you’re adding jam to everything… a little on top of a boiled egg, plain pasta with butter and jam, hot water and jam. You eat a little at every meal. After day 6, you don’t ever want jam again… and leave the jar behind the door in the dark for two days. After someone brings some bread from town, you decide to add a little hot water to an empty jar of JIF to utilize the deliciously creamy residue… and reach for the raspberry jam that wasn’t more than a quarter gone. Except now its full… the ruby red of the jar has turned a fuzzy white… sea foamish maybe. Angry that your sandwich is ruined and you wasted at least 1,500cfa, you vow never to buy another jar of condiments again. In Yaoundé last week, Reese happened on a mustard deal that just could not be passed up. I added one spoonful.

Lastly, there’s bread to be dealt with. The typical bread in the NW looks like a brick. It’s not yeast bread, I don’t think… it has no poof on the top, no airy holes inside. Flat and light brown on every side, the inside of the bread is pure white and completely uniform. Despite the crappiness of the bread, my village doesn’t have it. It has to come from town, usually wherever you are in a vehicle waiting to move. Four teenagers will approach with 10 bricks stacked in their arms. “Whiiiite mhaaaan,” one will say. “Whiiiite maaaan, you need breahd? Support me.” I used to say, “no. I don’t eat your bread. If you used some wheat flour, then maybe I would buy.” Now days, I just buy four bricks for 1,000 francs… and give three to my neighbors. You would think that such a fake-looking loaf would be more twinkie-ish. It usually molds after two days. I had a half a loaf left this morning.

So, you see what sort of perfect synthesis this has to be (its not just a food thing… in general, product distribution, moistness and the number of Cameroonians in your living room determine the favorability of your day).

Oh, and the third category. There are these dog-chew-toy white and brown things in the market that curl inward… its dried cow skin. Then there are these wet, clearish-looking things they put in achu… those are also cow skin, but damp cow skin. Cow stomach is also a favorite achu meat… they call it “towel” because it looks just like a towel… but it’s not like eating a towel, its like eating a burned-off rubber tire. Then we have the dried, smoked carp on a stick. The dried shrimp you can smell from a kilometer away. And the scotch egg typically makes me gag. Then there was this one time, at the Ndu market, when we thought we found pumpernickel bread… and it was really something called “ground meat”…. And I mean like, they were pretending it was grown in the ground. Right out of a hobbit movie. It was similar to eating a spiced Barbie leg.

The End.

2006-06-24T10:25:00.000+01:00

Pepe at the Convent

2006-05-23T10:32:00.000+01:00

Making Pizza at Reese's house... SANS pepe.

“My life makes me laugh.” – Kate Reinsma, my postmate in Mambu

The other day, sitting on the convent dining table at Kate’s post in Mambu, there lay a cleaned-out pickle jar filled with pepe on the table. Pepe is hot sauce for those of you not living in Cameroon presently… hot Scottish bonnet peppers, usually in oil. It is the only standard condiment of this country (Maggi, a delightful MSG-laden-soy-sauce-taste-alike, is a close second…but don’t ever count on mustard… it can ruin a day). Luckily for all of us, pepe is quite good…

Pepe comes in varying degrees of hotness and also different styles of finished product. I have sat in restaurants and heaped two or three spoonfuls of the stuff on an omelet and not only survived but have barely felt a tingle. Other times, I find myself stuffing fermented cassava wands into my mouth to try and absorb the awful burning sensation. Sometimes there is nothing to dig into… folks will press the pepe through a cheesecloth to get pepe oil, chunk free. Then there is my favorite, the ground pepe swimming in orangy-red oil. Another is the lazy mans pepe… common amongst the meat-on-a-stick guys in town… consisting of either roughly cut up peppers in some oil, a whole pepper slightly roasted or dried pepe powder (the latter is a favorite, if only because it was the cause for Alex Lindeman vom-ing in his bed during training… I just adore bloopers– love you, Al).

Back to the convent… “They’re nuns,” I was thinking. I think I read one time that the pious Catholics eat bland things… no fire allowed, unless you’re burning incense or witches. Sister Presca passed the pepe down to me. I’m not really sure why, but Cameroonians think its just wild when you eat something distinctly African... every time somebody new serves up some achu with yellow sauce or njama njama, they ask if I have “this is my own place.” Well, no… maybe at specialty restaurants… but we have a diversity of food unimaginable to your taste bud. “Ah-ah! After 7 months, surely you are used to,” they will say. Well, yes. Used to, and tired of, and ready for horseradish and general tsao.

This is proves to me that many Cameroonians really have no idea what America is. People in my village will eat the same thing three times a day for three days in a row… and it has cow stomach in it. I couldn’t have Chinese food twice in the same week. Not surprisingly, then, that Sister Presca commented on my choice. “You eat pepe?,” she asked condescendingly (nuns!) with a mouthful of something she had for lunch and breakfast and for dinner the night before. “Oh, yes! Toooo much,” I replied while placing one spoonful on my ndole, one on my boiled carrots and beans and one on some cold macaroni… musing, “take that, penguin. I’ll prove to you my tastes are superior. I’m invincible to your boring Catholic pepe. Mwhaha!”

After a few bites, I knew I had made a semi-grave mistake. The kind that would haunt me for about 6 minutes. Horrible, horrible burning! Sr. Presca spat plantain as she laughed. I tried in vain to stifle a flesh massacre in my mouth. It was the kind of holy heat that made you want to cut out the outermost part of your tongue and cheeks, just for a few moments of relief. Sisters passing to put their plates in the sink seemed aware of my ignorance… and their learnedness in the way of hot things. Their eyes gleamed at the education of the white girl living in the Bafut bush… oh, yesss… Catholic pepe is hot. Moments later the lesson is forgotten… and I dig in for another bite of the most flavorfide boiled carrots ever. I’m begging for water (purified or not!) and stuffing myself with excruciatingly hot corn fufu while (it seems) my nose and eyes drain pepe oil. Its that good kind of hurt, when you know you can handle it and the nuns know you actually cant… I’m sure you know.

So, this is Cameroon. I mean, it’s really paining me… but it just tastes so good.

Black Vampire

2006-04-29T11:50:00.000+01:00

After Reese and I had been "devoured"... it's either that or they drink you're blood and you're "initiated"... but they are almost finished with the movie, so they just wanted to kill us.

Reese and vampire that spit blood in his ear.

The entire "Black Vampire" cast and crew.

With two of the seven "black vampires"... the one in the front called herself "The Bride"...

Interesting few days in Bamenda. Staying at the Ayaba hotel… the upscale spot in town. They have air conditioning, elevators… other amenities previously thought unattainable in the NW. I got them to lower their rate for we Peace Corps and I think I have found a new addiction in Africa.

Yesterday evening, while having a set menu meal in their dining room, we encountered several whorish looking women heading out to the pool. They had fangs. A flood light was set up, noticed a camera and a lot of hub bub. Turns out, the hotel was providing a venue for the shooting of “Black Vampire,” one of those awful African movie productions. A guy we had met the night before introduced us to the director, and I suggested that we should be cast in the movie (with my experience as a nun in the Sound of Music, I thought actress in vampire flick would be apropos). They were really happy to slay a couple of Americans speaking simple English.

Pictures should say it all… we were “devoured” by vampires on the floor of the clubhouse after being hypnotized and drawn in by their special powers. Fake blood all over my new Michigan State sweatshirt (that I bought in the market behind Commercial Avenue in Bamenda, by the way). We have a few lines (I call Reese a woman). Should be out in a couple of months… we might be on the movie posters and plan to provide all with copies.

SO funny.

Maa Buh Cornelius

2006-04-20T19:41:00.000+01:00

Allo !

Exciting times for Sister Rose. Wednesday (pronounced Wed Nez Dey) I had my I don’t know the exact tradition, but the stone is a red rock that has been used for hundreds of years, is pounded by the highest ranking queens on one special rock in the palace and is kept inside the temple of the Fondom… a very secret and sacred place.

During the smearing, the Fon tells the people present the new name of the individual. After the smearing takes place, palm wine is poured into the Fon’s own cut (an inverted, hollow cattle horn). He takes a drink, then pours the wine into the ritee’s hands, who is supposed to drink every drop. Then the initiated individual can stand and greet the Fon for the first time. In celebration, a special hollar is used… something like…

“OWWWWOHHHHH! OWWWWWOHHHHHH! LALALALALALALAA”

Turns out, this is exactly what happened for me, except that I was the only person receiving rites (usually a big group). He explained the reason for my name, saying that my noble mission of fighting poverty and bringing new knowledge to my community was worthy of such a title. So, no longer Kelsey Rose, I am now Maa Be (pronounced Mah Buh), meaning Queen Mother of the People. Great pictures… loved being under the hand of one of the most powerful individuals in the Northwest and it was great that most of my friends could be there.

The Mamfor (Queen Mother) and I before I did the rites.

The newest queen's (Marie) daughter, Princess Violet... right before the rites.

Singing right after I greeted for the first time.

Oww oww... royal touch.

Group.

Beatrice and I post rites.

Drinking from the Fon's cup.

Running to greet a bunch of old ladies after the rites.

Having the special rock smeared on me by the Fon.

Palm Wine and Presbyterians.

2006-04-04T16:12:00.000+01:00

If you take out camera, they will come. They love to be "snapped."

Fighting with Matt is not easy. In fact, I got slapped twice. Reese defended me by fencing... Matt's broom was no match for Reese's bicycle tire pump that left a large welt on Matt's head.

Escaping the presbyterians only to find they have all come to the hut to drink.

After the hut, on the walk back... what can I say. Do you love my moo moo?

I was a little tired of the crowd. Ready to walk back to Matt's...

On the walk from Matt's house we encountered this David Bowie look-alike.

Sorry it’s been so long. There just hasn’t been much to say.

Cameroon is still dusty, people still drink more than they work, and I am still living in the same village.

We had our in-service training last month that allowed all of the agroforesters to get back together for the first time since training. It was a lovely debacle of marcotting trees, visiting the nightclub in Bamenda, killing seedlings while practicing grafting and eating… eating enormous amounts of food four times a day.

Though IST is supposed to inspire you to go back and be supervolunteer, I just wanted to go back and take a vacation. The village life is slow… too slow for a recent graduate who polished off 105 pages of thesis in two weeks and spent whole nights under the florescence of the computer lab. Here I go to bed at 8. During the day, its sometimes difficult to know what I should be doing… some have said this is the way it is supposed to be. Country life. Slow. Full of siestas. Imagine yourself in a bubble. Fill that bubble with jell-o and chunks of nerf. Then go to work, and you should have some idea what I am experiencing. Motivation is difficult. Organization is difficult.

This weekend I headed north on the other side of the ring road, the primary artery of the NW. I went to Kumbo and then on to Nseh, the village of my favorite Mfome, PCV Reese. You know you’re bored when you travel 6 hours to go to church events that include 5 grueling hours of sermons, speeches and lively offerings to God. Reese and I walked to PCV Matt’s in Mbiyah (he has electricity)… it was his Presbyterian church that had the “cornerstone” laying. It was actually a hole between the two front doors of the church that had a stone over it…. They put a clear bucket in it with Cameroonian newspapers, a bible, some sermons and some coins (they emphasized to the crowd that they were only putting coins in the bucket… so that no one would come in the night to tear up the cement for 35 cents).

After about 3 hours of speeches (each “Big Man” that attends the event has to give a speech… there were maybe 5-10 of those), Matt and I escaped to find a drink. We sat down with some locals and downed two liters of free palm wine (locals are so generous). The others (Reese, Ally and anon) joined us after they realized we had not left to “make water,” but were tucked away in a hut down the street. We enjoyed a some time there, drinking and lying about where we were from (that was just me, actually… I told them I was from Canada) and promising to bring the more obnoxious back to Canada “Tuesday” (that was only me, too). It made the next few church hours more bearable (Sure enough, when we came back I bought a calabash bowl for 800cfa and too much gusto at the offering auction… round of applause for the crazy white lady in the moo moo).

The next day, Reese and I walked back to his village through perhaps the most picturesque landscape I have seen in the Northwest. Dramatic hills, completely cultivated with even ridges of cassava, beans, Irish potatoes… and the from time to time a grass-roofed hut, for corn drying. The slope was incredibly steep… my legs are very sore today… almost too difficult to walk. Yet, we saw woman bent over their ridges on almost every hillside. Unbelievable. We got back and tried to catch one of Reese’s chickens, General Tsao, so that we could eat him…

Other than these specific events, I am very normal. Excitement is limited to reading over the different degrees of action put in place for avian flu, if I can watch surgery when I go to Kate’s (watched a c-section the other day) and whether or not the road is paved. But life is generally very placid, very quiet (except for the occasional Black Widow-style murder… the Akofunguba hairdresser hit her hubby in the head with a 2x4). Still having a good time.

Greetings to all!

Africa Makes People Crazy... Just like Tequila

2006-03-02T08:55:00.000+01:00

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…

Ahh Bay Fu'u

2006-02-05T16:35:00.000+01:00

Tomato sauce with SIX pepes. Thought I burned a hole to the back of my neck. Belated Christmas party, Chez Alex.

Gwen and I taking a moto from Mbengwi, where we visited Lindsay M. Three of us and two large bags on one bike. WONDAHFUL.

Wedding in the bush... dancing in the wee hours (they told me to sit down... ).

Christmas Party, Chez Alex.

Kids collecting outside my front door after school.

Nate and our Agro-Style Christmas tree. Its magic! Chez Alex.

It’s very common to meet people and become the best of friends in one night in Cameroon. I would even say it is normal to meet, become the best of friends in 6 minutes, end up going over to the family compound for some fufu and njama njama get dragged up to the grandmother’s compound in the bush (five minute hike from the road in the dark) for her little granddaughter’s traditional marriage where you have make a speech to the wedding party (on the topic of understanding and fidelity… because that’s what my fiancé and I have built off of) and finally you end up sharing a double-bed-size piece of old, brown foam with three gigantic African women. Nothing strange about that… I’m sure if there were a Nauruan walking around the local bar at the time of your daughter’s special day, you would demand that she be actively present for the entirety of the wedding ceremony. I tell you, we do not appreciate foreigners enough in America.

Peace Corps volunteers are very warmly received almost all the time. Though, sometimes it can be a touch too warm. Like when you are on your 3rd liter of palm wine with the village councilor, who’s conversation has ranged from the conquests of Napoleon to developmental tools from the Germans to polygamy to… do you want to be my third wife, Miss Rose? Politely, I decline. Maybe if you got a sweet gold bridge to fill in the four you’re missing in front I would consider the proposal. My favorite response of late has been, “I’m sorry… but I’m very expensive…” only used with Guiness-truck drivers and obviously foreign (generally francophone) fresh young men. I’m coping.

And what of work? I have received numerous emails inquiring about what the heck I’m doing. Last night my mom told me it would be nice “to accomplish something.” Well… its dry season, so unfortunately ma, I’m not doing much. Farmers (women) are “preparing land” right now… they are clearing, tilling the soil into ridges… and that’s about all. So, I have gone to a few farms to help do these things. I weeded for six hours with Lem, the woman from my village who also does my laundry. It was a three or so kilometer hike to her farm into the grasslands. When we arrived, she asked me to pray about weeding… then we pulled ferns for hours and hours. We only stopped to sit under a cassava tree and eat some plantains and soup that she had prepared with some chunks of beef knee. I had brought a “Jiff to Go” container of peanut butter, which I shared with Lem… and her beef knees. On the way back to the village, we were invited to the Lutheran pastor’s father’s house for some palm wine. I had two cups of hard wine from the dirtiest glass I have ever had the pleasure to consume from (I’m still alive and I’m feeling fine). The pastor blabbed for a good hour and a half, then sent me on my way with a branch of green plantains, two pineapples, three pears, a liter of fresh palm wine and some kola nuts. I wore gloves, but I still managed to callus the mid-digital knuckle part of my index finger. I carried the plantains the three kilometers on my head… hugely amusing to every Cameroonian I passed on the path. Vertebral stress fractures are funny.

I have also begun my demonstration plot. This is also amusing to the villagers… the idea of a white American woman getting dirty using a hoe and a machete and growing stuff! When I come back to the village from my plot I get lots of “wonderful”… not even just that, but it’s WON-DAH-FOOL!!! I am going to be growing pigeon pea and sweet potato and using a technique called alley cropping… but it will take two years to grow the agroforestry trees (green manure that will be incorporated into the soil) and have any tangible results. Really, I am starting the demo for the next volunteer.

Other than that, I am trying to participate in other village development activities… mostly the water development… but I am hoping to find the electricity and road committees. I am teaching with my post-mate Gwen Lee in Mundum, about an hour and a half walk (uphill) from my post at the Secondary school there. I’m teaching English and Computer Science… There isn’t any computer at the school, so it’s going to be pretty abstract. I’m thinking of teaching typing in interpretive dance form. And of course, there is the Akofunguba FUN RUN to plan for… a 5k race that will take place in my village in the small rainy season (April or May). (Ridiculously long and tedious) meetings will commence this Thursday to begin planning for the event.

Since last time, two walls have been painted in my house… it now looks a little less like a tortuous prison for baby boys. I made some Paul Biya window treatments that will only hang in my bedroom, for fear of being political. I wonderful dreams about dancing with cake-carrying pous-pouses (wheelbarrows) and am certain that I will have lifelong lung problems from inhaling reddish particulate matter suspended in the air. I ate achu with yellow sauce three times in one day and I truly believe that I will never not scream and violently shake in disgust after killing a cockroach with a broom and watching it hobble (minus two legs and a crushed big brown wing-thing) towards the door.

For my first and last weekly segment highlighting other Peace Corps volunteers living in my province, I want to briefly tell you about Massa Reese from Nseh. He’s tough as a Cameroonian woman (…tough), but has the best manners of any Big Man in his village… better than any other volunteer, in fact. And he makes a mean cornbread.

Heading to Yaounde on Tuesday for some bloodwork and fun times. Send me emails. Previous message deleted. Ashia.

New photos from Kelsey

2006-01-16T16:27:00.000+01:00

Kelsey will add captions later...many are of her house, her pie safe, table & chairs, and kitchen.

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Ako FUN guba

2006-01-14T10:13:00.000+01:00

It’s rained two times in the last few days. Glorious relief. The morning after, I couldn’t believe I was even in the same village. It was so green! It’s not that a little rain gives everything a growth spurt… it’s that the reddish dust is washed from every leaf, branch and zinc roof and the NW province just shines. Not everyone found the rain to be such a blessing. Some of the guys in my village clicked at my “rain dance” with contempt, saying it would really throw them off. Throw them off of what, I am not quite sure. The women do all the farm and house work… if they’re not driving a taxi (admittedly difficult in the rain), they’re drinking palm wine in the shade (I am generalizing… but only somewhat). Anyway, the “Christmas rain” finally came, and I thought it was wonderful. Probably won’t see more for a few months. Haaaa.

I have decided that market days are my favorite days. Everyone gets up early, does house stuff… like cook and sit and cut or pound things. Then they leisurely stroll the 2 kilometers to the market. At the market, you get what you need… and with a selection of about 20 items, it doesn’t take long… then you socialize. Ham it up with the mommy selling sugar cane, shake tons of hands… nod respectfully when people speak and I don’t understand (they do it to me too! Speak normal English and everyone is lost). Then people will find a little house next to the market selling mimbo… alcohol. Ya start drinkin’. You drink white mimbo at 11:30 in the morning. People drink until they can’t drink anymore, then they walk back to Akofunguba and the lights come on and they start drinking again! Market days… are fun.

Wednesday was market day. I didn’t end up going to the market because my counterpart Beatrice was having a savings party. Of course there’s a name for it, but I can’t remember any African names at this point. They all sound the same to me… Mm-bu-bu or Nnn-do-bo or Bo-bo-bo. Anyway, I was invited to the savings party, though I was not going to be a contributer. They just wanted my presence. The club is comprised of seven local people, most of them more “up-scale” in their professions; they are teachers, a nurse, bartender, agricultural post guy… I don’t know what Mr. Peter does. Every month they give money to the group, and then one person gets the whole pot. I don’t know if it really helps anyone save, but they can pay for big things and education and such. After the money is distributed they eat achu and drink. Woo! It was really pretty fun. They are some of the corniest people I’ve ever met. Kevin, the headmaster at a nearby school, went on a 10 minute diatribe about the “new face” and how God has blessed them with this face and that 2006 will bring other new things. Sigh… I’m the new face. I’m probably supposed to bring new things. It was nice, anyway. After one Satzenbrau (it’s a 40… with antioxidants, if you can imagine) I suggested that they turn the group into a book club so they have something to talk about after they distribute the money. It was one unified, blank stare… and then they just started talking about something completely different. I laughed inside and thought of Oprah.

Afterward, I attended the drink-fest at Ako Center (there is no Ako Center… its just what it would be if Akofunguba were in America… and it was a small, rural town with apple cider mills and fudge shoppes). It was there that I was introduced to a local Bafut man who has been living in New Jersey for a number of years, getting his masters degree in Biodiversity Conservation. He is the younger brother of the crazy foo man who was deranging me New Years Eve. We laughed a lot… about how stinking hot it is and you just sweat constantly in the daytime, how it is impossible for me to find a place to pee (ever), about crazy people like his brother, about how Peace Corps volunteers in Africa come back alcoholics. Right in my own village… guy from Compten.

Besides the diet of beer and palm wine, I have been trying to cook. I haven’t given up on American foods yet and gone completely tribal—eating achu every night and kola nuts all day. Some things come out well, some not so much. I made Carol Busse’s All-Day Beef Stew again… it was even better than before (except that my counterpart informed me the next day that the meat I had bought was of a cow that they found dead in the bush and slaughtered later on…. Woooonderful.) I also made Carol’s easy peanut butter fudge… and it was AWESOME. I tried to make focaccia bread, and it was a failure. Bagels were an edible failure. Wheat bread was another complete failure. Peanut brittle was sticky (though I was enthusiastic about it as I roasted and de-shelled my own fresh groundnuts). Hot milk sponge cake was good until I thought I was going to die from eating it. I get a ton of my meals from the old lady next door… some of which I eat, some (like “towel”… cow stomach) I just don’t. Its not wasteful, though… she hands it to me from the back door, and if I don’t want it… I just walk to the front door and hand it to one of the 10-40 children usually hanging out on my front lawn (sometimes they come just to watch my laundry in the wind… no joke).

Things are great. Just remember… you can never send too much American peanut butter.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-06T16:51:00.000+01:00

No, I am normal.

Typical response in village when I ask, “how is it?”

Well, I am back in the big town after about a week in the village. Reese, Matt and I (other Agroforestry volunteers) had to give a presentation for the constituents of our NGO… mostly undereducated farmers. It went well, except that we were the first presentation. Our early start and finish meant that we had to sit through two other fairly painful presentations before we gave up for a beer and beans at midday.

I missed all holidays in village… New Years night I retreated to my house around 9:30pm after drinking some palm wine at my Cameroonian counterpart’s bar. A crazy JuJu man refused to leave me alone and got his crazy self roughly thrown from the establishment. It was a little too much excitement.. and since I get up at the crack of dawn (lie… I am up looong before the sun rises), 9:30 was way past my bedtime. No matter… the 1st is when people really party. Of course, I got stuck in Bafut with Gwen (my post-mate in Mundum) and Kate R. Gwen and I spent a good two hours looking for a car back to Akofunguba…. But as the sun began to set we thought it wasn’t so safe. Alas, we had to stay with Kate and her refrigerator, oven and hot water heater.

Work in village has had a big breakthrough. I discovered that there is another NGO down the road that has a lot of land, a nice truck and a 3000 tree nursery established. Its hiding in the bush a good km off the road. They want to work with me, provide me with demonstration space and other materials… all in all a great discovery that will really set work off on the right track.

Having a lovely time!

Out of the City, Into the Village - Out of the Village, Into the City

2005-12-24T09:16:00.000+01:00

The Road to Post... this is the bus Kate R and I took... the couch is mine! Come sit on it!

Swearing in and other related things...

A gathering after the swearing in. We danced at a little motel porch that had cold beer and yogurt. I fell off a 10 foot wall. It was a great night.

Africa somehow gives you the right to dress strangely or from another era. Chopping after swearing in.

Megan and me take photos with the fam after swearing in.

Mr. Ambassador at the swearing-in ceremony.

Typical glance between Charles and myself.

Agroforestry in their last moments of traineeism.

Dr. Njiti and I right before swearing in. Like my hair? Matthew Richmond cut it... he's the stylist for our stage.

Final family photo. From left to right, Meesh (Aunt), Host Mom (Natalie), Joelle, Me, Host Dad (Jean), Patricia, Flora (Aunt).

Photos from a small gathering in Baf a few nights before swearing-in.

Matt and I enjoy our last evenings as stagiares on a nice porch.

Princess Megan and her pretty red Princess shoes. Gathering in Bafoussam.

I won. Gathering in Bafoussam before swearing in.

Half of the agro boys... they might start a band and use this as their album cover. Thats a big might.

Back porch at gathering in Bafoussam before swearing in.

African-Indian Leg Wrestling... why does this always seem to happen at parties where I am? And why do I always beat EVERYONE?

Alex, PCV Megan and I at the gathering.

My host mom and I at the Host Family appreciation dinner... Papa couldn't make it, and boy was she livid.

These are some older photos of Thanksgiving and the Riba center that I hadn't been able to post before...

Our crew at the Riba center.

The Good Dr. and I at Riba.

Reese and some sheep in... Scotland? Riba center.

Dr. Njiti taking a nap at the Riba Center.

Matt and Reese in a hole. I missed this day... I was sick. They had to comfort each other... root structure is just so scary!

Thanksgiving...

Yune and I making Ginger-Apple-Papaya cobbler at Thanksgiving.

Another photo from Thanksgiving!

The cool back porch of the old doctors house - where we had awesome dinner.

Dinner at the Doctors house... he brought out a bottle of wine he has had behind his bed for three years and double cream french cheese. I was in heaven.

Holy achu with cow skin! So much has happened in the last week! So is my new life in village… fast and slow at the same time. I have seen and learned so much, but much of my days in village are spent just sitting at a local store, attempting to turn down liter after liter of palm wine (sometime palm wine mixed with orange Fanta, sometimes mixed with Guiness) from my friendly neighbors. “Miss Rose! You are strong! You drink and drink but never get drunk!”… ahaaa, my friend! It is because you have had the whole liter and I have only had a glass. I’m just so smart that way. There are always taxi drivers (before they drive to town, of course) and village men sitting in the shade at the hottest time of the day… laughing and bumbling in the Bafut language, drinking and dunking hard balls of fried dough in their wine. I know a few phrases… these are purely grammatical.. i'm sure the actual written language is strange.

A-bell-ah – How is it
A-bone-ah – Its fine (response)
Heen-shee-wah – Good morning.
Ing-guh – yea, thanks
Ah-she-ah – aloha

Then there is the pidgin language, which isn’t so hard to pick up. The old Ma that lives next to me (I cant WAIT to have show a picture of her… she is Mundumian, with markings on her face and one big round tooth that juts out of her mouth) speaks quick pidgin with me always… Sometimes I just nod. “Rows, ROWS..!” She calls me from the my kitchen door. “Yes mommie??!” “Rows, I go go fo brouse.” “Ahhh… okay. Have fun!” Then she hobbles out of the compound with her yellow rubber flip flops and a big basket strapped to her back. The woman is probably 70. She’ll come back with 30 or 40 pounds of yams and then cook them well after dark. In the morning, she calls me again… “Rows! ROWS!” “Yes, mommie??” “Rows, I go go cook fo pig dem. Chop fo pig.” “Oooookay…! Thanks for letting me know! I’ll see you!” She likes to inform me of all of the obvious activities that she undertakes. I really enjoy it.

My house is coming along. I showed up to find the furniture I had contracted was mostly made… unfinished, but built out of local white mahogany. I have a huge table… probably the hugest table in the whole town. My counterpart, Beatrice, says, “This table is TOO big, EH?” every time she comes to my house. They put on new, bright orange steel doors, and put windows on the windows, which really thrilled me. Other than the furniture, the house was empty when I arrived. I had to rent a bus to bring all of my junk with me… shared it with another volunteer going to post who lives nearby… at a hospital with running hot water, an oven, a fridge… it was great that we stopped at her place first before I headed for my dark three-room palace in the hills. The bus stalled on the last big hill before Ako, sort of sideways. The Fulani driver got out and thought we should take everything off the top (regarde- photo of stuff in/on bus) and then he could drive up the hill. My counterpart was angrily adamant that we could push it. The other guy looked to me for consultation… I just looked down at my dirty feet and wanted to curl up in the grass somewhere. They put rocks behind the wheels, and me and the other two stood behind the car (I stood sort of at the side so that I could just run away). After two goes, the engine and our brute force got the thing rolling up the last hill… the driver didn’t stop until he reached the top, and so the three of us marched up in the dust. I had red dust in my teeth from smiling to myself.

The first few days at post were difficult. Its hard to find a rhythm when you have no plan (agroforestry volunteers do not have any work structure – very self-designed), you have few resources, your toilet is outside and hasn’t been cleaned since you were there 3 weeks ago, and you have just parted with your very tight stage group… not knowing when you will see everyone again. Essentially, life at my post is very similar to camping… camping in that Wheatland-camper sort of way. I get up around 5 and light a bush lamp to go outside and pee in the bushes somewhere, then start boiling water… sometimes I don’t even have anything I need boiled water for, but it can always be put for something. I have to light my gas stove with a match… open my big steel back door to let some more light in. It’s COLD in the mornings in the northwest… I wear fleece and put my flip-flops on in the house. The compound starts to wake up… Mommie is usually getting up and going to the bush, the sons of my counterparts grab my water container and head down the hill to fetch me water from the stream. I have french toast with honey or oatmeal, sit down on the couch to read a little while I wake up, and then suddenly the air blowing in the window is warm… its 7 or 8 and the heat has begun.

For the first week, home improvements have filled my schedule. I have washed most of the walls, checked up on furniture, reorganized my clothes on hangers and my spices on shelves, made lists of things that I might want or might need – paint, fabric for window treatments, a rug, a rocking chair. I am going to be living like a real frontier woman. But, I did manage to get out and hike. I walked towards Mundum one afternoon to meet with a woman in my village, Helen. She’s a single mom (not uncommon here… the men just seem to vanish sometimes) who has 6 or so plots of land where she grows cassava… a tuber similar to a yam. She wants money to pay for labor and wants to by a grinder so she can preserve her cassava and sell it in the big market. She wants me to see her farms, and then asks what I can do. She very forwardly, but politely, asks for money. I met with Helen three times, and saw three of her farms… they are all planted steep slopes… and it is obvious that her land has some erosion problems. I can’t give her money, but as I talk to her, I plot the timeline for agroforestry in the area. There is a lot to be done—but I hope that it will not be too disappointing to the village, as very little will have to do with money.

I took another hike down into the valley south of my house, and headed on the bush path towards Mbengwi. Lindsay, another volunteer, has been posted in Mbengwi. She has a fridge. So, I thought I would just walk there. Everyone I met on the road, however, said that if I should be going, I should plan to stay a week. It will take me four hours, they said. It is a long trek. Some women told me I should be accompanied. I walked on, just followed a path that meandered over the hills and through big tall grasses. I got down to a stream with two bridge options. The larger of the two was like a railroad track, with planks running across in two lines, and then other, smaller planks crisscrossing. I stood at the beginning of one of the worn boards, looking fifteen feet down into the rocky, rushing streambed… hmm… The other bridge was nothing more than a bundle of bamboo thrown across the steam with two other pieces lashed to trees for a stable (not really) handrail. This spot was only 10 feet off the ground, though… and despite its shabbiness, I crossed here. The bamboo cracked a lot as I crossed, and I hit a few spider webs—leading me to believe it doesn’t get used as often. At the middle of the bridge, I thought the open planks would have been a better option, and took some large steps to get to the other side. I made it alive, but when I came back I took the other route. All in all, it was a very nice hike… probably 6-8 miles roundtrip.

My village lies on the road between other villages and the biggest market, so there is a lot of traffic of meat and other goods. There was a cow slaughtered right next to my house the other day.. her jawbone is still laying on the path from my house to village. Another vache was being led down the hill the other day, presumably for the market, and went bizerk. He semi-mauled the guy leading it, and then ran towards the audience of Ako villagers sitting at a local store (and me). Everyone freaked and ran for cover in the store. It was hilarious.

Right now I am in Yaoundé at the Peace Corps transit house. So, for my final tale of the first week at post (this one is the prize winner) I will explain why I am here on Christmas instead of dancing it up with my village peoples. On Thursday, the Fon of Bafut (arguably one of the biggest kings in the country… he has 48 wives) had his annual Abit festival, where many Bafutians are initiated into the culture. I was given a “special invitation” when I went to visit the Fon during my site visit. The festival was host to more than 1000 people. A smaller group is allowed deeper in the palace to watch the initiation ceremony. I arrived late, only to find a sole chair waiting for me at the right side of the Fon. The youngest queen (who remembered my name from last time) showed me to my special place and brought me an Amstel and a wine glass (same beer as the Fon, except he drank his from a Mary Englebrite “Believe” Christmas mug.. ha). The Fon sat and rubbed a ground red stone over the naked shoulders of 50 or so people, calling out there names. Then he pours palm wine from a gourd into their hands and they drink. Afterward, they are allowed to address the Fon in the traditional way by clapping and bowing. And I had the best seat in the house! I think it was a real honor… I couldn’t help but laugh as I sat there, feeling like a royal, sipping an Amstel with the Fon.

After the initiation, everyone heads out to the main palace courtyard to watch the dance. The Fon starts by giving people honors, literally feathers in their caps. After this, the gun show commences --- the Cameroonian version of fireworks. They shoot a bunch of rounds, and then go in a circle… when they reach halfway around the circle, they begin to dance back towards the Fon. There are a lot of juju people running around, saying crazy things with crazy eyes, trying to get you to eat the crap they have hanging off their hands, wanting you to give money. People are dressed depicting different ranks in village, they depict different village life scenes in the dance.

Unfortunately, during one of the dances, a man standing near my group and I decided to take a cigarette. He happened to be the man carrying most of the gunpowder for the firing squad. There was a large, deafening explosion to my left, and we ran forward from our seats. When I turned around, the old man was staggering from the smoke, skin hanging from his face and arms. He was still on fire. I ran to try and get him to roll on the ground, but the language and shock of the situation made it difficult to gain control. I kicked dirt on the guy and others began to rip off his clothing. We pulled off his cindering robes, I untied his pants and tore them away, yelling for water. Cameroonians came saying he was fine, grabbing at his arms, where the skin had all been burned away. It happened very fast, but finally two men came and grabbed him and pulled him off to the hospital. Wow. Shell shocked. I turn around to see the other two volunteers with me staring in disbelief. They start up the dance again. Cameroonians are laughing. We look at the ground, wondering if the mans skin is lying there or if its pieces of his burnt robe. Thank God no one was hurt. Then I look at my arms…. There is burnt skin, but it’s not mine. There is also blood, but it’s the old mans. Well, damn. I purell myself, but a few scratches on my hands gives me enough concern to call the med officer, who consults with Washington. As a precaution, I should come to Yaoundé for HIV prophylaxis. So, now I am here in the big city, taking big pills. I’m sad that I can’t be in village, as they have a local ho-down at the meeting hall and everyone was going to bring me food. But this isn’t such a bad set-up… they have Chinese food in town!

Oh, and I think I have giardia too. Ha! Anyway, everyone have a very Merry Christmas! Life is good! Living here is mostly slow and easy, I laugh a lot… mostly by myself, but then later with my friends. And then we laugh about laughing alone.

Mom's update

2005-12-21T01:38:00.000+01:00

Kelsey is at her new post, as of last Thursday or Friday. They had the swearing in ceremony last Wednesday...It is official...Kelsey is now a Peace Corps Volunteer. I still do not know exactly what her focus at her new post will be...Maybe she will be able to fill us in on that. I talked to her when she was in Bamenda last Thursday and she was going out to shop for items for her new digs. She had contracted with some craftsmen in her village to make her some furniture. I am not sure she knew what she was going to get when she "placed her order". She wanted a bed, table and chairs and a pie safe/hutch/storage cabinet. I talked to her briefly on Saturday...we kept getting disconnected...but she was very happy that the craftsmen had made her some beautiful furniture made of solid mahogany. She also mentioned that she had bought some beef and made the recipe of "All Day Meat Stew" out of Caryl Busse's "Cooking with Caryl" cookbook. Caryl is a good friend of ours from Green Bay, Wisconsin. She said it was excellent. She is getting used to no electricity. Why do I think I may get an e-mail saying...All I want for Christmas is a generator. Merry Christmas to all the wonderful friends and family of Kelsey's that supported her decision to make this wonderful journey. Drop her a line or leave her some Christmas wishes.

Love, Sue...Kelsey's Mom

PASSED!!!

2005-12-12T16:14:00.000+01:00

Kelsey passed the French proficiency exam!

Sue (Kelsey's Mom)

More photos...

2005-12-11T17:38:00.000+01:00

Charles and some art at the art man's house.

Pip on the stairs smokin' a cigarette – at the
rich art collector doctor's house.

Sorry...a little dark. Guy making meat sticks. Goat meat sticks. I had at
least 4. Alex ate 10.

Meat Sticks and Madness

2005-12-10T13:24:00.000+01:00

This is a photo of me and a guy selling illegal bushmeat
right in front of the bar we were sitting at… down the street from the
centre climatique (where we have school).

Making compost at the Riba center. You cut branches
from leguminous trees and then incorporate… or something like that.

This is where he keeps a lot of his collection… note the
thatch roof. Not the greatest for preservation.

In one of the art storage rooms, whole group. I am
between the doctor and his friend.

Salut!

Last weekend of training, having a great time. Last night we went to a guy’s house to eat dinner… or at least we thought we were going to eat dinner. We met the guy at the Library and I ate few pieces of pork off their steaming communal plate (and was fairly sick the next day). This interaction turned into an invite… and so we went to this doctor’s huge mansion in Bafoussam at L’entrée de la Ville.

It wasn’t a dinner, but he had a few cases of beer and a whoooooole lot of African art. So we had a beer and looked at his art. Unbelievable… storage rooms with just stacks and stacks of collection… wood, brass, sculptures, masks, stinkin’ art made with insect wings, huge snake & alligators skins…. All just collecting dust on the mildew-y floor. Luckily, we have some art enthusiasts (n’est-ce pas?) among us who are going to help the guy get some climate control. The whole house was right out of Great Expectations (check out the picture of Pip… I mean, Matt… smoking on the staircase that led to a big balcony). It was overrun with vines, the walls were crumbling and there were cobwebs all over everything. It was fantastic. It was a great time. Had such a good time, were going back for dinner on Tuesday.

Afterward, we went to find some meat sticks on the side of the road outside of Bafoussam. Ridiculous. Eating goat in a dugout bar, dipping Alex’s pieces in peimont powder and watching him sweat. Laughing as he tilts his water back, trying to ease the numbing fire. Mwhahaha. Was I just holding onto a 150-year-old oil cask kept in the closet of a chief? I think so. Spitting on the side of the road because of the peimont. Get in the cab and go back to Bandjoun, listening to Benny talk about how his mouth is on fire. Can’t get back in my house because everyone is sleeping… wake up my aunt by tapping on the window. “C’est QUI?” “C’est moi! C’est Kelsey.” Laughed myself to sleep… quite an adventure. Quite a night.

Pray that I will pass my language exam and wont have to stay here in Bandjoun. Monday morning! Enjoy the photos.

Moldy French 33

2005-12-08T16:31:00.000+01:00

How fo you?! I walka fayn.

You may be thinking that I have forgotten you all because it havent written... its actually a good thing, as I am having more fun doing other things than finding the nearest internet cafe to check my email box (which was fairly empty anyway, donc...). I might actually make it in this country!!

This last weekend, the agroforestry crew headed northward to the Kumbo area in my province. We visited an agroforestry center at an old Peace Corps site, now called the Riba Center. They have all sorts of agroforestry demonstrations and its a beautiful setting in the mountains. Had a lot of discussion with the Cameroonian adminstrators there, ate lots of passion fruit (kinda feel like raquetballs on the outside, with little green-alien-pod fruit inside. We walked the grounds under big African skies and danced the night away in Kumbo. We all had unimaginably bad gas pains from some cabbage stew we had for lunch (except for Reese.. but he might not have bowels at all... its just the way God made him). All and all it was a great adventure and a very bumpy road.

Swearing-in is next week. Very much looking forward to it, though I am one of four people in the whole stage who has yet to pass her language requirement. That franglais that was so funny in high school is... just not funny anymore. If I don’t pass, I will have to stay here two weeks more. If I don’t pass the next time, I go home! But, I don’t think it will be an issue this time... one of my fellow stagiares has already passed, though his French is rapidly regressing into the dark side of anglophone... his french is plus crappy que mine.

Other things... I ate half a loaf of blackly moldy bread last night... my phone text message to Matt...“In Africa, never trust a whole wheat loaf in poor light... its a mistake to believe a Betty Crocker degree of moistness exists here...”

I lived, however. I have also been living through the pain in my abdominal region... the meat sticks and Bafoussam “salad shack” has finally caught up with me. I will be making scones and washing my green beans in bleach water in a weeks time!! I have taken up poker and I won last night with three 6’s.... which I just realized is some satanic number... maybe I shouldn’t play poker no more. Ohhh.... we went on a fantastic tour this week of the Trent-Trois (“33”) Export brewery. It was like an developed country wonderland in the midst of poverty. Everything was painted red and white... we saw the mechanized bottling of thousands of bottles of beer.... huge brewery things, shining with chrome. We even got to sample some... coke. One of the “advanced” French classes set it up by writing a letter, and all the agros attended the Francophone tour. I guess it doesn’t sound that cool.. but I love tours anyway, and it was clean.... not like the local palm wine bottling facility.... aka any ground space where empty glass bottles have been picked up off the side of the road and amassed.

I will be sure to get some photos up this weekend, and will leave another note after swearing in. Think of me at 10am on the 14th (4am EST). See you!

and a few more...

2005-11-26T16:57:00.000+01:00

The bar in my village-across the street from my house.
The back of my house. My outdoor kitchen & the back door.
My counterpart on her bike. We rode over 60 km.

More photos...

2005-11-26T16:46:00.000+01:00

Two men that I met in Mundum... one is a
subchief and the other is the mayor. The guy on the right had just
tapped palm wine and was pouring it into old bottles. I drank two
cups.

The local bar in Ako, looking east down the main
road.... it sort of looks towards my house, which is across the
street.

src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4326/1593/400/lookingeastfromfrontporch.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> The front porch of my house in Akofungubah
village, looking east in the morning. There is a path that goes down
to the stream where i will get water that goes right by.

Thanksgiving...

2005-11-26T13:11:00.000+01:00

My latrines
Where I hope to live in six months in Mundum.

Road near my house in Ako, a nice view of the mountains, but shows how bad the road is.

Greetings!

Nothing much new to say. Thanksgiving was a blast. A good number of us crammed into the kitchen on Thursday afternoon after our daily training was finished. Peace Corps was kind enough to give us two hours of the afternoon to cook. I went to the open-air market and haggled for cheaper fruit with some of the agroforestry trainees. They mostly stood behind me and laughed while I demanded outrageously low prices for watermelons. I wanted 4 small melons for 800cfa (about $1.50). I ended up getting three medium melons for the price, though it took me walking away from the salesman after a few minutes of haggling. He lowered his price as I turned to walk away, but I stayed firm, saying, “Non. Huit cent pour le trios.” He angrily uttered the sweet words “donne-moi l’argent” and I got my three pasteques.

I bought 15 expensive, small apples (pomme de France) in the market, brought them back and found some space in the large kitchen at our training site. Every marmite (pot), knife, burner, corner of counter, pat of butter—was in use. Blair was scalding himself over a pan of hot vegetable oil, frying battered zucchini, onions and plantains. Kate was slaving over green beans and carrots. Ingrid fried garlic and smeared it on crusty baguettes. I drank wine from a metal cup and cut apples with Yune, then cut papaya. We shaved down the scraggly ginger I bought from a man in the market who had piles laid out on the ground… 100cfa (20 cents) for two cups or so. I bought real butter at the super marche, and mixed it in with some oatmeal and lots of sugar… Yune and I took turns standing in the corner next to the right back stove burner, stirring the ginger and apples. The kitchen was packed, cases of drinks were brought in, everyone laughing and making paper Indian headdresses. There was Journey on the radio, lots of photos taken. The Cameroonian language teachers and logisticians who live at the centre moved in and out, eyes a little buggy at our fanaticism for the grand American fete. When the gas ran out, we decided we should just eat… after a few words, the line commenced around the table. I had guacamole and fried plantains on the plate next to my mashed potatoes and stuffing. There was more food than the 40-or-so could eat.

We went around the room to say what we were thankful for. Jenny noted that we hadn’t gone around in a circle all together, saying a few words about how we were feeling, since we left Philadelphia. It’s amazing.. really amazing… to see how far people have come. To see who isn’t with us anymore. To look around the room and think… two months ago these people were just illusions in my romantic Peace Corps idea. As I sat on the arm of a chair, eating my ginger-apple-papaya crisp with a tiny plastic fork, listening to the distinct, recognizable voices of other Americans, I couldn’t help but think… I am so thankful that Peace Corps is nothing like I had imagined. It’s the daily revelations that come from the Cameroonian culture, the organization’s differing strategies and (at times) bombshell-esque regulation and the hourly unearthing of the character of my fellow stagiares and current volunteers—that are making the experience so exciting and worthwhile. Who would have thought I would/could make an apple-crisp like that?

Anyway, all this is to say that Thanksgiving was really something special… even though there were no yams with marshmallows or layered jell-o. Looking forward to celebrating a villagois Christmas.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2005-11-24T15:04:00.000+01:00

Turkey day has arrived, and alas, I will be without turkey. However, we are cooking multiple chickens and will have quite a menagerie of other things. I am responsible for the cobbler--- Banana-guava cobbler and apple-guava. Scrumptious in a without-an-oven kind of way.

I still have beaucoup de photos to post, so keep checking. I will try to get that done this weekend.

Enjoy your football Americain!

Back from Site Visit... So Much to Tell... Plan Visits NOW

2005-11-17T13:39:00.000+01:00

Well, I just got back from site visit, and boy am I tired! Wow. Site visit was an intense piece of two weeks. When I packed my bags, I really hadn’t considered how different life would be in the village. Bandjoun is America in comparison.

I met my counterpart, Madame Beatrice before we left Bandjoun last week. She looked “bad-ass,” some might say. Hair all permed-up in a Jelly Curl, all denim, clean Adidas sneakers. She speaks pretty good English-english, and a handful of local dialects. At 7am Friday morning, we headed northward for Bamenda on an autobus. My voice had returned from the laryngitis little Boogers had given me. The autobus ride was incredibly scary, though the calm visage of mentor tata Katie gave me hope, and her words… “If this is your day to go, its your day to go. Just don’t look at the road.”

Bamenda’s nice (I am there now). Clean, somewhat resembles a city, lots of places to do things. Once in Bamenda, Mme. Bea and I broke from the group and headed to Akofungubah. Orrrr… no. We headed to her brothers in Bamenda. There was some confusion here. I had to look at photos for a good hour. Then we headed to Akofungubah… no, again. She wanted to stop and see her out-of-wedlock child that is living at the Presbyterian mission. We stopped to buy cabbage and cookies for him. Little Paul was cute, but I was really hoping to get to my site.

We finally hit the road in a small Toyota taxi. We paid 500cfa apiece extra to have only three people in the backseat, as opposed to the typical four. So, it was a comfortable ride… Mme. Bea made me tie one of the plastic bags she held around my head. She used the one that held the fish, I used the one that was used to double-wrap the fish. Dust. Welcome to the dry season. The temperature in the car was a stifling HOT, and I had a plastic grocery bag tied around my head. I had to laugh. I had to sweat.

Hour and a half of seriously ridiculous roads. All dirt, all dry… cant imagine what the canyons and slopes turn into in the wet season. We went very slow, but I was thankful for that. The scenery changed into beautiful grassy hills, then into bigger hills, with more hills behind that. It’s hilly. We crossed a few big rivers with decent bridges… by decent, I mean not made of bamboo. Arrived at Akofunguba. Its on the side of a hill, kind of nestled in (awww…). It’s a collection of maybe 20 or so buildings at a gentle curve of the road that crests a hill if you continue on. We are on the eastern side of the hill, and when you cross to the West, you enter the mountainous area of Mundum (another village in my work area).

Alright, so this is typical… I was greeted by a ton of people. Everyone wanted to shake my hand. Tell me “you are welcome.” Ask me why I am here. What I am doing. Will I come see their farm, etc. etc. Joyous. I drank at least a gallon of coke in the first two days, because the custom is to buy the person a beer. After a few marriage proposals…many questions… I am shown my quarters for the week. The room is on the other side of a room where Mme. Bea’s elderly mother sleeps. Next door is my apartment for the next two years. The whole building is pink… one of the only buildings in the village that does not have exposed red mud bricks. She shows me the three room apartment, all wired for electricity… and no where to go. The toilet is around the back. My two stalls are locked from the outside… two simple chambers with holes cut in the back and two pieces of tin roofing hinged on the front. One has a big hole, one has a smaller hole. Spiders live in both. Big spiders. I’m going to have to work on that.

The first night, Mme. Bea serves up rice with large pieces of meat on top. Looks like tongue. No problem, I can handle it. Its cow intestine. Now I’m having a bit of a problem. Gag reflex. I get one piece down and smile for Bea, but when someone calls her to the get a beer (she owns the local bar), I swiftly bring my plate down to the floor and ladle the pieces back into the pot. Seinfeld moment that kept me chuckling well-after I blew out my lantern.

Sooo! That was only the first day. To save your eyes, I will not go too much further. I rode on the back of Mme. Bea’s 20-year-old blue Suzuki motorcycle every day. I only thought I would fall off about 30 times… We traveled to all the big sites in the area… probably 50 or 60km of coverage in all. This is my work area. Its huge. We visited the mayor of Bafut, many chiefs. Went to the Palace of the Fon in Bafut. Very big Palace. 48 wives or something like that. I met the newest queen, a 16 year old girl named Maria and her 1st daughter-by-the-Fon, Violet. I told her my middle name was Rose, a flower like her daughter. She said, “Now I will have to name my next daughter Kelsey Rose.” Ah, so that’s cool. My African Princess namesake. I have been invited by special invitation to a dance at the Fon’s palace in Decemeber. I gave him a Vermont calendar. They had their last human sacrifice there in 1945. Ha. All this makes me laugh.

Visited Mundey. Incredibly mountainous. Motorcycle had some trouble and I had to let Bea ride ahead while I walked uphill in the 90- degree heat with my 6 lb red ninja moto helmet on. Oh, what a laugh. Met a new young chief and didn’t know it, tried to shake his hand. You don’t shake the chiefs hands! Ugh. I ate two kinds of fu-fu and more cow intestine, went to the market and saw the butcher block, was installed as a Assitant Chairwoman at the Presbyterian Church on the hill. I ran out of pages in my book on Wednesday afternoon. I took to sketching palm trees, then reading the bible. I will be better stocked when I come to live.

That’s about it. As I was leaving this morning, a report came in that an Old Pa that had been in village yesterday had done some wizardry on a mute man that lived in the Bush. The mute man was found dead this morning (sounds au naturalle to me, but this is Africa). There was some kind of a man-hunt type thing going on as I was pulling out in the taxi. Sista Bea thought it was funny, so it couldn’t be that serious! Very happy to be back in town and will have a very good idea of what I need to bring when I come back in mid-December. But all-in-all my village seems really great, the people are something else… real characters. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a ton. More stories to come, I am sure!

Sorry for the change in tenses and probably spelling errors… Have a great week… I will get photos up just as soon as I get my camera connected!

P.S. Akofunguba means “Bush of Fungubah”. Laugh on.

The Non-Negotiables

2005-11-10T12:53:00.000+01:00

What I have learned is that, in Cameroon, non-negotiables are always negotiable. At times, non-negotiables are not even negotiated… you just have to deal with it.

And so, when I sat on one of the more comfortable foam-padded chairs in the country and looked into the eyes of my formateurs and heard the words “sans electricite,” I knew that I was going to be okay. It was not because I didn’t cry or argue about the loss of easy computer use, bright lights or a the ability to charge my batteries, but that the non-negotiable was immediately ameliorated in my mind. Its good. It’s meant to be. It’s going to be romantic. It’s going to hard. It’s going to incredibly annoying, and probably scary sometimes. But it’s great. It’s FINE.

You have to be able to change your mind in Cameroon, because the rules and ideas are as shifty here as the winds off the Sahara in mid-November (which have shifted, I think. We are in dry season).

Woo. So, bottom line--- I’m living in a very small but very large village in the North-West Province for the next two years. It’s very small because I wont have too many neighbors. It’s very large because I might need a horse to take me to meet all of my farmers. I’m about 35 km outside of the provincial capital of Bamenda, 35 windy, mountainous kilometers. There is a valley near my house that has a lot of bananas. There are farmers and there are grazers, and there are issues needing some third-party attention. My house, provided by the community, is without electricity and without running water. My water will have to be carried from nearby streams.

Like I said. This is a bottom line in Cameroon. Adaptation is quite a thing. I leave for Ambukfungdo on Saturday to spend the week orientating myself to the area, and will be back Friday. Look for a post in two weekends detailing my first solo experience here in Cameroon. And if you’re the praying kind, well :)

Kelsey's Post Assignment

2005-11-09T20:17:00.001+01:00

I got a telephone call from Kelsey today...very excited to have received her information about where she will be for the next two years. In the "interview" process, she mentioned that she really...REALLY would like electricity. You know, she has to power up her laptop, her I-pod, did she take an electric shaver? Maybe not. Well...she is very excited but...she will have no electricity and no running water. We had a good laugh on the phone about that! She will fill you in on more detailed information, this is what she told me. She will be in a mountainous region in the North West Province. Her village of Ako Funguba (she also mentioned Mundum)...is west of Bafut...which is north of Bamenda. Of course on the map above it does not show her village. She was not sure there really is much of a road to it. She said it is 35K from Bamenda and 30-40K from the Nigerian border. I will let her fill you in on what her duties will be and the different languages they speak in the area. She will travel to the area on Saturday and spend a week. Wow...little Kelsey Rose! I tried to put a map up...and it did not work.

Happy End-of-Ramadan, Everyone!

2005-11-05T17:11:00.000+01:00

That actually occurred on November 3^{rd, for those of you not well immersed in Islamic culture. My location in Cameroon is actually not primarily Muslim, though there is a high population of Muslims in the North regions.}

Not much has happened since my last posting. We celebrated Halloween by carving a pineapple (and later eating the blackened interior), making guacamole and tortilla chips and playing cards. It was a fun time for all.

Next week, the location of our posts will be revealed. We agros know that the majority will be in the Northwest and West provinces, and a few will head to the Littoral region. I have asked for electricity, though that will not be the determining factor in my placement. I am hoping I will be able to open a post because my experience in Young Life mirrors the beginning stages of a Peace Corps post. Contact work, hanging out with Cameroonians, and club are all pretty much Peace Corps tactics, too.

We visited two more volunteer posts since my last posting. We headed to Natalie's post near Dschang last week and Rich's post in Bangang this week. Both were really enriching experiences and helped us all to get a better idea of the volunteer's role. At Natalie's, we walked into the hills (beautiful vistas) and saw some really intense farming sites (steep, exposed slopes). We ate with the village members (who had written songs about agroforestry), met the chief (chef) and drank a few glasses of palm wine before heading home. At Rich's, we actually participated in cutting down young trees that had been planted in a field as an alley-cropping demonstration. We cut with our machetes, and then watched the local farmers cut another line with their machetes far more efficiently than we had. They said our machetes weren't sharp enough. We also saw a medicinal garden at Rich's, and ate (of course!) some local food with LOTS of piedmont (habanero hot stuff). Once again, half of my face became numb.

In both of these trips, the actual driving there was an enormous adventure. We took Peace Corps vehicles both times, and drove up some roads that were really, really… bad. Steep, with huge holes and lots of mud. Coming back from Rich's post, we had a bit of rain… and a bit of slope. The combination was… well… scary. Megan at one point yelled "HIGH SIDE!"- If that helps to paint a picture. I pressed my whole body against the window in semi-hysteric state. We slid down a couple of hills sideways and ended up pushing the red van for awhile (I watched.. hehe).

Last week we were also given the honor of visiting a Chefferie in Bamenjoun. This was really pretty cool (hopefully I can get some photos up from the event). This particular Chef has a pretty big kingdom and we were allowed to enter his palace. When we arrived, we were greeted by three groups of dancers, each performing a different dance. One was a huge circle of women singing and dancing. Another was a circle of men dressed in white robes with red hats (the "purification" dance). My favorite was a war dance that was made up of men dressed in fur robes with hollow nuts on their legs. They danced to a strong, fast drumbeat. We sat in a smallish room and were able to ask the chef questions.

His entrance was an interesting one, none of us really knowing what to expect. He came in with a guard who would periodically "Yelp!" and wore what looked like an upside-down colander on his head. He had two ministers with him dressed in traditional clothing. He sat in a large chair of a dark wood, completely carved with African symbols and scenes. We had to bring gifts, and I believe we ended up pitching in together for 20 liters of oil and a huge thing of rice. We gave him a box of condoms, too. I didn't really get that. The guy has 14 wives. He gave us a tour of some of his palace, and we saw his "museum" that was mostly full of pictures of the chef at various stages of his life. He did have some interesting statues, pelts and carvings. After the tour, we were brought to the main court of the palace where another dance was taking place. This one was done by the medicine man. I called it the "scary dance", because it was… it was scary. Scary masks, scary statue of witch. Scary. Also intended to "purify" us.

Other than these activities, training has continued to slowly plug along. French is still a struggle, but my host-Grandfather told me today that he thinks I am improving. He pointed at his ears, and then at me and said "Tu comprend!? Bien!!" and shook my hand vigorously. Then he said "bien" about a hundred more times, and shook my hand with each bien. Thanks, gramps!

My next posting will probably be about my post! This is big, as it will determine my surroundings for the next two years! Very excited! Can't wait to cook my own food and eat vegetables not deep-fried or surrounded by carbohydrates!

Oh, yea.. and I hurt my foot. Sprained a tendon. Apparently, not worthy of a trip to S. Africa (not even worthy of a Cameroonian hospital visit). I have been told to "take it easy". Haaaa. Suuure. Oh, and I puked last week. First time. It was the boiled bananas and meat in peanut sauce. But, I made it a month!

Affectionately African,

Kelsey

hi!

2005-11-05T10:04:00.000+01:00

hi... doing fine. african computers are NOT my favorite. hopefully get my big post up today.

My room in Africa a plus stank que my room in des Etats-Unis

2005-10-26T16:07:00.000+01:00

Men playing drums

Men dancing

Dancing

Planting trees

Soccer

Greetings from Camie!

We are in our forth week of "stage" or training for those of you outside the Peace Corps. Things are progressing right along. Many in the group are ready to go to Post already, even though we have 6.5 weeks left.

We find out in three weeks where are posts are, and then we actually go to our posts for a week and if we are replacing a volunteer, we get to hang out with them. If not, you go and stay with your Cameroonian counterpart and learn about the community and do some initial "need assessing". This will break up the monotony of the training a bit.

It's rained for almost three days. It wouldn't really bother me, except that I spent three hours on Sunday washing my clothing by hand, and it's "drying" in my room. Hence, my room smells a little bit like wet dog. I'm probably breeding Malaria in here. I purchased some French laundry detergent to supplement the soda soap that my family uses for their laundry. Their soap is really great at getting stains and things out, but it smells a bit like glue or animal renderings… maybe a little of both. Luckily the dry season is right around the corner so my room wont smell like lavender dog forever.

I think I have mentioned previously that the roads in Cameroon are dangerous. Well, this manifested itself about a kilometer away from our training site. A seven-year-old boy was killed last week while walking along the side of the road… he was hit by a car. Tragic. Tragically common. They had a funeral for the kid on Saturday. I did not attend the first part of the funeral (where there is a burial and a lot of crying), but I did go to the fete that occurred in the afternoon. It was quite the cultural event. In Cameroon, there is always a huge party that goes along with a death. If there isn't enough money to throw a party, the family will sometimes wait up to 10 years to save and throw a decent one. This particular fete occurred outside the Catholic Church. A big xylophone type thing was brought, and a few men played it. Then the crowd made a huge circle and men without shirts danced around, carrying swords, tassels and spears with rattles at the end of them. They danced to the beat of the drums and xylophone. I was one of three stagiares at the event, and we were quite the commodity. We were all pulled into the circle to dance. I was given a sword… and I danced with it? I don't really know what I was doing, but a lot of people were looking at me and speaking in Patwa, and so I smiled a lot and bounced with the sword in my hand.

We visited a volunteers post last week, a fairly interesting event. She served us cake that she made in a pot with sand in the bottom.. Dutch oven, essentially. We at it in her little three-room house and watched the kids running around outside. She brought them some cake.., I think they were pretty excited about it. It was really great to see a volunteer in action, and we surveyed some of her work with local farmers. We got to see a successful nursery, seed banks, alley cropping… even planted a couple of nitrogen-fixing trees.

My sisters are currently outside my window wailing. My mom calls my littlest sister (Joelle) "la championne de pleurer" – the crying champion. I think, for the most part, children in the US get a different reaction from parents and siblings when crying ensues. Here, well… its just different. The Bamileke people of the West province, where I have my homestay, are a very… aggressively vocal people. The local language sounds harsh. Sometimes it is an intended harshness, though oftentimes it just sounds mean. It's not my most favorite language at 4:30 or 5 am when my little sisters get up.

If you have any suggestions for unique camping recipes (that's essentially how I will live for the next couple of years, as if I were camping) that utilize limited food resources, let me know… I am looking to expand my culinary horizons and kitchen resourcefulness over the next month or so…

Ciao for now!

Kels

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

2005-10-21T17:33:00.000+01:00

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

Only 8 weeks of Training to Go!!

2005-10-15T17:40:00.000+01:00

Salut!

Sorry for the delay in posting. The last two weeks have been interesting ones, to say the least. They have involved enormous transitions and uncertainties. If you hadn’t known already, I do not speak French. Since my last post, I have moved in with a French-speaking Cameroonian family. Peace Corps calls this “emersion”. I call it total dependency and frustration. Ha.

Alright, I’ll admit it’s pretty effective. My french is improving daily, and I am able to communicate just about anything in broken French or fraglais. Such communications include. Le car, est pour moi? Ou est la car? Tu takez moi pour la maison blue pour l’ecole (direct translation. The car, is for me? Where is the car? You (franglais) takez me for the blue house for the school?) .

The Cameroonian family life is pretty good. My family has some Western amenities, such as an indoor (flush) toilet, running water and electricity. They even have a television that has one channel (airing mostly horse races, bad news and Mexican soap operas dubbed in French…). Some other trainees have home-stays that are not as nice as mine… pit latrines in the backyard, no indoor plumbing and there are a number who live on pork farms.

Thus far, I have consumed many things. I have not really enjoyed many of these things, but I am trying them all the same. My first night in Cameroon, I was served spaghetti and fish head sauce. Yes, fish head. I don’t even like mayonnaise. Fish heads? Since then, I have had fish soup, a dried-fish sauce over eyams (very dry tubers), and several omlettes with fish in them. My family likes fish, I think. Last night, we had the real sticker. Current PCV’s serving in Cameroon warned trainees about the “viscous soup” that some of us may experience. It is a “soup” made of okra and some kind of something that is taken from the bark of something (maybe if I knew it would be easier for me to eat). Essentially, its like eating snot. It’s green, warmish, and slimy. Viscous. My family ate it with their hands (they usually eat with silverwear), slurping and lapping it off their fingers. They use what they call cous-cous (think sticky, bland Cream of Wheat) to scoop the viscous matter out of the bowl. Totally grossed me out. Definitely ate a bowl and a half of the stuff with my right hand.

The training has been going great. Language classes are tedious most of the time, but they are very small and comfortable. Nathan, Yune and I have all made the cut as “Novice-Mid” french speakers (Novice-Low is the bottom rung…. Only have to climb 4 rungs to qualify for service). We laugh a lot in a small, blue room in the back of some house where we are taught by real Cameroonians. Agroforestry is also going well. We are beginning technical training next week (we received our machetes on Friday. I am not joking.).

My family is great. I have a host mom and dad, the brother of my host father, the sister of my host father, and then four children ranging in age from two to fourteen. However, I am not sure if all of the children belong to my mother and father. There are two fourteen year olds, and they don’t look alike, so I don’t really know what’s going on with that. I have decided I may never know… maybe when I speak better french. They are really great though. On Sunday, they took me to the “white man store” in Bafoussam… a grocery store. My mom got dressed up to go, and when we got there, they wanted to buy me all sorts of things. They ended up getting me a toilet brush, some peanuts, a bar of chocolate, six bottles of water, and a piece of cake. When we returned to their house, they explained that I am now a part of their family. So, that was a pretty important part of my experience so far.

The agroforestry trainees received their machetes this week. This is one tool among half a dozen… but really, who cares about hoes and shovels? I have a machete. The only real instruction I have received thus far is to think of the machete as an extension of my arm. A large, rusty, sharp extension of my arm.

This week-end, the agroforesters will begin to make tree nurseries at our homestays. We will be graded by Dr. Njiti, the zany professor that runs most of our technical trainings and activities. Zany might be an understatement. Njiti is maybe the most enthusiastic prof. I have ever had, and is definitely a well-read (and published) academic. I must also give a shout-out to TaTa Katie, who is a current PCV in Cameroon, and has been a great guide for we newbies.

Things are going great. I am liking it, looking forward to winning the pugnacious battle against the French language that I have been fighting since my freshman year of high school. I have not yet had any convoluted stomach experiences (I’m not saying its pleasant all the time, but no major issues). I do know that there was a health volunteer that pooped her pants. I do not know who this was, but I congratulate this anonymous person on her determination in being the first to “join the club”.

If the pictures aren’t up with this post, its because I am in Cameroon and there are more than a few technical issues that come up. Please be patient! Images are to come soon! Regular postings from now on (or at least during training).

Love you!

Peace Corps Trainee
B.P. 215
Yaounde, Cameroon
Africa

(Don’t forget to mark as Par Avion … more details on krosey.org).

Kelsey in Bandjoun

2005-10-11T22:51:00.000+01:00

Kelsey in Bandjoun...

Kelsey's Mom here...She wanted me to post a note to say that she is now in Bandjoun. She will probably be able to update this site on Saturday when she goes to Bafoussam. I have been getting bits and pieces of information and hope everything is correct. She is living with a family of eight. It is a husband and wife, four children ages 2-14, the husbands brother, and 18 year old sister. The grandpa and grandma live close by. Kelsey has her own room, bed with mosquito net, toilet, and somewhat of a shower, a spigot with a drain. Her family keeps the house extremely clean...The mother even taught Kelsey how to scrub the floors and do her laundry...which she said was the hardest thing she ever did...All by hand. She thinks that the father has something to do with lumber trading and that the mother is a nurse. She lives about a 5 minute walk from where she does her training and has other PCV's in training close by. So far, three other trainees have gone home. She is not loving the food yet...Her telephone works well there...So give her a call. I am sure she will have a nice LONG update on Saturday. Later! Sue

First Week of Training

2005-10-04T16:49:00.000+01:00

Oh, just sitting in my hotel room watching CNN. Yes, they have Anglophone CNN here in Cameroon. And no, there is no internet in my room. It is Sunday night, and due to the difficulties associated with the french-style keyboard (it just ain’t right) I am forced to type on my own computer and transfer. So, if you become a frequent reader, you may want to be aware of this to mitigate confusion.

WOW! I am in Africa. And so far I have found that there is a lot of normalcy here, but mostly its really pretty different. For example, they have no shower curtains (I should be thankful for a handheld showerer(er), cause I will likely be without organized shower shortly). Another example, you cannot leave your hotel in Yaounde at night. Different. Another example, bananas grow in your backyard.

Wow. I’m really not sure where to begin (but I can assure you this is only the beginning). The Delta leg of the plane ride was miserable – the Air France part was awesome. Which one just filed for bankruptcy? Ooooo… we have a winner (loser)! Actually, it was probably due to the African flyover that included Tunisia, the border of Libya and Algeria then the border of Nigeria and Chad and down into Cameroon. We entered the Sahara desert and I was blown away. Then I took an hour nap, and saw the Sahara again, and was again blown away. Then I took a two hour nap, woke up, and saw that the Sahara was still outside… and really I was just kind of tired of seeing nothing but sand and finding that I was blind from all the reflection. You would die if you went to the desert. There is nothing there. Really. I flew over it for like… 4 hours.

Then we flew around a couple of the hugest thunderstorms I have ever seen. I was glad that we flew around them, but then we flew into Cameroon (aka one huge thunderstorm). The best part is that we had to land twice in Cameroon. The Country Director, Robert Strauss, met us at the airport and my passport, inoculation card and baggage tags were all taken from me. Of course, I was so tired I would have given up just about anything for a PB&J and a clean mattress (only one of these needs was met in the end). A bunch of people lost their bags, but not me! No, I got them both. Everyone that overpacked got their bags. That’ll teach you rule-abiders a lesson. We sat at the airport for at least two hours, and when we left (to drive for an hour in a van into the city of Yaounde… in the wind and rain and dark) it was.. .really late? Yes. Really late. There were people just about everywhere. Lots of grills set up cooking.. meats. Meats that were not so appealing when you slept 3 hours and haven’t eaten anything since your pear flan and chicken in white sauce on the plane. There were also people walking on the road. In the rain. In the dark. And these people are not easy to see. I thought we might kill someone.

Got to the hotel and sat down for dinner. My first meal in Cameroon was interesting. I think they are really into starch here. We began with a delightful cold chicken salad and onion thing…. Then our entrée arrived.. a heaping plate consisting of fried fish in a white sauce, spaghetti, and rice. Yes, spaghetti and rice. Breakfast.. bread. Lunch.. rice, friend plantains and stew. Being fat is really awesome here.

On Sunday evening, we headed to the Country Directors home in Yaounde. He lives in a large home with 12 foot walls with glass shards and barbed wire on top. He has a guard. And a gardener. And a cook. And really awesome art. I met his daughter’s rabbits and had one beer (which I promptly thought to be a bad idea… higher alcohol content = red face faster = no more beer). We played hearts for a couple of hours outside this evening.,. until the hotel turned the lights off on us. We had nicknames. They called me “Ms. Information”… because I provide many of the interesting statistics and facts about snakes, spiders and bicycle safety.

Tomorrow (probably today, Monday)... training really begins and we get more shots. More info to come… and perhaps some photos… :)

-----

This was a post written two days ago. Since then, I have received two more shots (Typhoid and Hep A) and my arm has only just recovered. I did get into the "Novice Mid" language group... aka, I have a long way to go. We were issued our water filters and a lot of French books today. Rained this morning.... went to the corner store and bought a snickers bar (but did some situps).

LOVING IT! CALL ME IN THE EVENING! (237) 535-9889!!!!

Love, Kels

Bonjour from Africa

2005-10-02T14:42:00.000+01:00

Hey! I made it! Travel was really long and I was exhausted last night.... countryside is absolutely GORGEOUS. Saw the Sahara from the plane window... totally awesome.

I am definitely in that culture shock phase. especially with this keyboard! I will type more later... love, kels

Still in Phili.. but in under 24 hours......

2005-09-30T02:40:00.000+01:00

Salut from Phili!

Had a great day today in training for the Peace Corps. We learned a lot more about what we are doing when we land in Cameroon (no one had any idea… and we leave TOMORROW!). Tomorrow we are heading to the clinic in the AM. There are about 12 shots that everyone needs (people who have lost their childhood immunization records have to get them all). I will only have 8 poles all told. Luckily, we are taking the shots in chunks… tomorrow I will only get two while most people will get three.

Then we head to JFK airport to fly to Paris! We are going to be absolutely dumbfounded at the airport. I don’t think any of us knew we would actually do this!

We get to Yaounde, Cameroon and then head to a hotel in the city (30-40 min drive) where we will eat and sleep. Then the whole first day is spent relaxing in Yaounde. We stay in Yaounde for around 6 days before heading to our Pre-Service Training site in Bafoussam. It’s in the Western Province, just south of the border of Nigeria and not far from Mount Cameroon. There we will stay for 10 weeks, until we meet our requirements and are sworn in on the 14th of December at 10a.m.!

Anyway, I am in my last moments in the U.S. We have the most glorious beds at the Sheraton and I had my last cheeseburger this evening with a group of trainees. I am feeling far more comfortable after getting to know my colleagues better (and we have a Euchre group formed, so I will officially be OK!). There is a picture of some of my new friends below at a Pub in Philadelphia... click on it to make it bigger.

Next post will come from Europe of Africa. Track me… Delta Airlines flight #16 departing JFK at 6:10pm.

LOVE and MISS YOU ALREADY,
Kelsey

Ode to Candy the Nurse

2005-09-25T02:12:00.000+01:00

I was visting my uncle Thom
In a hospital in Zi-On
Shooting the bull and watching the drip
When Candy came over to hear of my trip

“Africa,”? she surmised
“I hope that your life is not compromised”
“Why thank you Candy”, I happily thought
And then she continued, and de-light she brought.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “those needles are long”
speaking of shots I will get be strong (in Africa, that is).
“That will inflict, a great deal of pain…
something like being hit in the arm with a train”

Candy, wide eyed and honest as peas,
Thank you for the comfort in your expertise.
This is an ode to you, Candy the nurse
I appreciate the image, I’m feeling quite worse.

Preparations, Continued...

2005-09-24T01:54:00.000+01:00

After a short jaunt to Vermont and back (took 9 hours to get there, around 3 days to get back with a trailer bigger than my mom’s car and packed full of junk) I am back and continuing with my Cameroon preparations. I will spare you the full list of items that have taken over the library “staging” area, but I will mention a few of my most favorite things.

~A Rain Hat (purchased at West Marine -- think Gorton’s Fish Sticks) Its rained for about three weeks straight in Cameroon
~30-40 packets of Gravy and other sauce seasoning – every time my mom goes to the grocery store, she picks up a new flavor of gravy
~Black Velvet coloring books – extremely tacky gifts for the kids in my host family… ha, yea right.. im keeping them all
~New tube of mascara and a new eyeliner – for big events… light the slaughtering of a cow

And my most favorite item….

~Box of Splenda…. “its light,” my mom says. Just what Africa needs, food with no caloric value.

All told, my gear needs to fit inside three bags (two checked, one carry-on) and must be under 80lbs between the two checked bags. Might have to leave a gravy or two out.

What I am reading right now:
Conflict Resolution essays
Cameroon/PC travel books
Ahab’s Wife or The Star Gazer – Sena Jeter Nasland (will likely finish on the plane)

Preparations

2005-09-17T20:19:00.000+01:00

Well, I would say that I have entered the countdown. The point of no return. I am preparing my farewells. Sayonara. Ciao. Goom-bye. Peace. Peace Corps, that is.

Sue and I are going shopping today for some supplies (supplies!) for my little trip to Cameroon. My last day of work at the law firm was yesterday, and now it’s the weekend. It doesn’t feel like weekend, though. It feels more like two weeks before I enter a whole different milieu. One huge weekend. Huge, sleepless weekend. We are going to the Safety First store on Diversey so that I can buy some Quick Clot, tincture of benzoin and a few oral airway openers.

I wanted to express my thanks to the Women of Wheatland (or should I say, Women who Hate Wheatland) for throwing me a delightful little Hotmud Holler-style bash after the wine tasting. Kim, Marilyn, Jane, Sherry… many thanks for the gifts!

For those of you who want to receive mail from another continent, be sure to send me an email at kroseycorn@gmail.com in the coming weeks with your address. Book or music suggestions are also appreciated.