There is one interesting story that I forgot to include in my last post- which was really completeed on the 30th of September, and begun on the date of the post...

My friend from training, Kelly, is a 33 year old single but strangely engaged woman from Denver. I say strangely because I'm not entirely sure how someone who's engaged could up and join the Peace Corps for two years...
She's a nice woman, but occasionally a little emotionally erratic. So, several weeks ago, I received a text message- thats how most of the volunteers communicate with each other here since calls are so expensive- that said "I'm about two seconds from going home, please help". Well, of course, I returned the text with a 'what's wrong?'. The response I got back was "I can't stop crying. I can't get anything done right and am out of money. I have pissed off 3 of 5 coworkerss and haven't even started work yet. I feel completely worthless". Well, at that, I felt a call was necessary to figure out what was going on, and if I needed to go and try to help sort things out- she was probably closer to me than just about anyone else within a day's drive of her.

I finally decided that I needed to go to her post of Bafia, which had been previously labeled the "seventh ring of hell" by a volunteer who's been here for a while. After riding on two buses and two taxis, I finally arrived six hours after leaving Edea. She was quite happy to see me, needless to say. The basis of the problem was that she had given money to people to do work for her new house before the work was completed. In this country, that's inviting trouble, especially for a single white woman. I spent almost three days there, but finally was able to work out some of the problems and convince her to just forget about the money for now. She has stayed, and today told me that she is enjoying work. I have to admit though, that the people of Bafia are not nearly as kind as most other places, and the heat is a bit intense- but without the humidity of Edea!

I neglected to give the 'book update' in the last post. I have completed George Orwell's "Coming up for Air", which was interesting from a historical point of view, but not all that great of a novel, I didn't think. I'm now knee deep in James Clavell's "Tai-Pan". It was a little rough at the start, mostly because of character accents, but I'm really getting into it now, and HAVE to see the movie at some point.

My friend Isabelle is coming down from her small town of Melong to visit tomorrow, which should be great fun! I love having visitors!

An update on Gabriel- I finally met his girlfriend the other night. She seems very nice and yesterday made a very nice lunch for the two of us. I think this may be one of those relationships that thrives on stress and hightened emotions. Supposedly we're all going to a nightclub in Douala on Saturday night, so I should be able to make a better analysis then.