It took about 12 hours for the photos to upload, but they're all there now. I've separated out the first week into a separate group to make them a little more manageable, since there are over 400. I've also added basic labels in case you want to try and match up photos with the stories herein.

Today in Yaounde was an interesting experience. First, we were driven to the bank to cash our first paychecks (we get paid three months at a time) and to another bank to open accounts. I didn't open an account here, since I'll be doing that in Edea (we have a Credit Lyonnais). After that, we went looking for a refrigerator for Michelle. We went up and down the main appliance street bargaining until we were satisfied we found the best deal. We haggled a bit longer, and ended up with a lovely new refrigerator (relatively small) for about $250. We then put Michelle on the train to the Adamoua, 14 hours away with her new fridge, bike and the rest of the stuff she'll need for the next three months, when we're allowed to travel again. Now, I'm getting ready to help Carolyn move to Akonolinga tomorrow morning. Another adventure awaits!

I know you've been waiting for this for a while, but here it is! I've been able to upload the digital photos that I have taken thus far (I have regular film pics as well of different occasions). So click here and check them out! Write me an email to let me know what you think or if you have questions!

Well, here I am in Yaounde. I have made it! I am now an officially sworn-in Peace Corps Volunteer. Up until this point, I was what's referred to as a "Peace Corps Trainee" or PCT. And thus continues the adventure...

But, let me back up a little and talk about the battle of the parties this week. There were three of us living in very close proximity in the quartier of Yom: Joe, Michelle and myself. All of our families know each other, but for whatever reason are not great friends (Michelle told me that her mom said my family was boring). Anyway, Tuesday night, Joe's family had their party. It was a nice, small family gathering with basically just the immediate members of our three families. We ate lots of greasy food that was mostly cold (thanks to my family being a half-hour late and Michelle's being an hour late and waiting for everyone to begin eating), but it was the fried cake that was the best- similar to doughnut holes.

The second party was at my house- Wednesday night. My father had told me the week before that he wanted to have a big party and invite the "grande famille". This immediately meant around 50 people, and I was encouraged to invite many of my Peace Corps friends. We started a bit late as well, but my Papa went all out and hired a DJ to play music all night long (with a microphone) and my other mom's sister came to help out with the cooking during the day. When it was in full swing, there were seven Americans and about 50 or so Cameroonians. My aunt and uncle came from Baffoussam and of course grandma and grandpa came (Mom's mom and Dad's dad). We had taken all of the big furniture out of the living/dining room and put it outside and had lined the room with smaller chairs and benches. We all assembled inside and sat down facing the large table in the middle with tons of food on it. My Papa then made a speech about how happy he was that I was with them, how proud he was of me for getting better in French and that the family was going to miss me when I was gone. It was really very nice. My Papa then asked me to get up in front of everyone and give a speech. So, totally unprepared, I gave about a two minute speech in French, a task that was completely unthinkable just 11 weeks ago. I said that I felt that I had two families now, one in the US and one here in Cameroon. I thanked my family for taking care of me and for treating me as one of their own children. Everyone seemed to enjoy my speech and clapped loudly. After that, Grandpa decided he would make a speech. He stood up with his friend, who is a village notable (a big deal in the quartier) and said in Guamala, the Bandjoun patois, that he was very proud to have me as part of his family. He also gave me some words of wisdom: "Try to avoid the obstacles in life that get in the way of achieving your goals, but if its not possible, then attack and overcome the obstacles." Of course, I had to wait until he had finished and his friend translated what he had said into french for me. I was very touched and thanked him for his words. Then we had the prayer. A family friend who I had not met was asked to give the prayer before eating. I really believe the woman should've been a priest because she not only prayed, but gave a whole ten minute sermon with all of us waiting to eat. The worst part was that it was in patois, so I didn't understand it, and the funny part was that towards the end even members of the family started talking during the prayer to try to get her to end it. My fellow Americans and I just kept looking at each other and laughing.

Dinner was good and then it was on to dancing. We cleared the table and food and the DJ broke out the dance toons. Papa asked all the Americans to get up first and each choose someone to do the first dance. Looking around the room, I made the obvious best choice, Grandma. And the family loved it! My friend, Marissa, choose Grandpa, Michelle took Dad and Jim took Mom. After that it was my parents' turn to choose someone. Mom choose me and Dad chose Michelle. I think my other mom chose Joe. We danced well into the evening, taking only a break to take some of the Americans back to their families who lived too far to walk. The party finally ended around 11:30pm. And when you're used to going to bed at 9:30, that's late.

Unfortunately, somewhere between the dancing and food and alcohol, I got really sick (probably food poisoning). I woke up at 2am and let me just tell you, its not pretty when it comes out both ends. As a result, Thursday was not a fun day. I came home for lunch and instead of eating, just took a nap and drank the gatorade that the doctor had given me to rehydrate (the Peace Corps doctor was in town).

Thursday night was Michelle's turn at a party. Michelle was convinced that her family spent the whole day scrambling to improve the size and quality of their party following my family's party the night before. The big coup they did score was David, the training director, who came to their party. My parents had apparently asked him to ours and he was not able to come. They also had a professional photographer, but no DJ. I ate very little, as I had all day.

Friday morning I felt good again. It was a good thing, since it was the day of our swearing-in ceremony. All of the business folks had gotten together and agreed on a fabric (tissue) for our outfits for the day. Its a really pretty light blue and white batik-esque print. The men mostly had short sleeve shirts made (Ted had a tie made out of it) and the women had different styles and combinations of blouses, dresses, two pieces, and headdresses made out of it. All of the other trainees dressed up in either something they brought with them or a traditional outfit if that had had one made.

The ceremony itself was really well done, and both the US Ambassador to Cameroon and the Cameroon Secretary of Education came to be a part of it. My new buddy, the Chef de Batie was there as well (the traditional chief who had hosted us weeks before). We were on every radio station and the national TV station. There were three of our group who made speeches too. Khalil, an African-American from Norfolk, came in country with zero French and made a speech in French. Mike who is going to be a Math teacher gave a speech in Pidgin and Heather who is going to teach English in the Muslim North gave a speech in Fulfulde, the local language there. I was thoroughly impressed by all of them.

Afterwords, there were two receptions. One for the families and one for the dignitaries. I was able to meet and have a really nice chat with the Ambassador and his wife (who is most obviously from Kentucky), and told him that I would likely be taking the foreign service exam in April- which he encouraged. I also had a brief talk with the Chef de Batie and he gave me his email address so I could send him copies of the photos we had taken together- how awesome is that??? I have the email address of a African tribal chief!!!

I made it back to finish packing before going out to the bar for one last goodbye to all of my new friends. Saturday morning, the Peace Corps truck picked me up at my house at 7am. We put all of my possessions inside and drove off to meet the bus that took us here to Yaounde.

Tomorrow, hopefully I'll be able to do some exploring of Yaounde before helping Carolyn to her post in Akonolinga...

One week to go and counting! Its so exciting! In just a few days I will be off to fun and exciting Edea to live for the next two years! I'm sure I'll feel like a giraffe at a lion convention with people thinking, "What is he doing here?" (a fun game for that quote is to repeat it five times, accenting a different word each time to get a new meaning- and all of them apply)

The past week has been, and I'm sure the next one will be filled with mixed emotions. Happy that we're free to live our own lives and make our own schedules, happy that we are moving to our new homes, happy that the "evaluation" period has ended, but sad that the good friends we have made over the last three months will be scattered all over the
country. It will be a lot more difficult to see them, but at the same time, it gives us an excuse to go traveling around the country every once in a while.

A birth announcement: the goat who lives down the street from our training site has just given birth to three of the most adorable baby goats you have ever seen. They don't even know how to walk very well yet without tripping. We haven't named them as yet, but I'm
voting for Larry, Moe and Curly.

We had two of our big parties this past weekend. The first was for the small local companies we have been working with for the past few months. My guy, Jean Guy Kuate, was one of only about five that showed up at the party. We ate a bit, and after all of the local business folk left, a group of us went out for a few beers (a few too many, perhaps). It was a little rough on Saturday morning, I must say...

The second party, on Saturday night, was for the families. I had been asked by David, the training director, to give the speech that night, in French. Once I shook off the effects of the night before, I buckled down and wrote a short and thankful speech with bits of humor. I had to write it mostly in english to make sure it flowed right, and then translated it into my best french. Luckily, Francois, the head language trainer, was there early to do some last minute editing. I'm happy to say he didn't make that many adjustments. So, the party went off very well...I was very nervous making my speech, but I received a number of compliments after I was done. I was just happy people understood what I was saying! We danced after dinner in the Prefecture, the equivalent of city hall, until after eight when the music stopped and my Papa informed me we were going to Grandma's place.
First of all, I love Grandma. She has about three teeth and cannot speak a lick of French, but she's always smiling and is always happy to see me. The thing about Grandma's house at night is that she doesn't have electricity. We drove in Papa's car, and when we got out of the car, I had to take Papa by the hand so he could lead me up the mud path to the front door. When we got inside, there were about 35 children and adults lining the walls of the large, dark living room. There was my uncle sitting at a desk in the middle of the room with two kerosene lanterns lit writing in a notebook. This was the big annual family meeting, and I was being welcomed as a special guest. After talking about money in the patois for a while, they broke out the food. This is, of course, after I had just eaten at the party just a couple of hours before. It was pork and plantains. The plantains were too spicy for me, but the pork was excellent. It had been slow cooked over a fire for many hours and was juicy and soft. I ate some and past the rest of the food on my plate to some of the children who had not yet been served.

Yesterday was a big day. I found out that I had passed my French exam that I had taken on Friday, which means I am officially competent to live and work in the french language! Very exciting! I also made both of my final presentations yesterday, in French, for about a half-hour each. I received good feedback from the trainers on them, so I'm pretty happy at the moment.

Tomorrow, my family is having a big party to send me off, with parties to follow every night until we leave on Saturday morning! Wish me luck as I move my stuff seven hours away!

Monday, August, 11, 2003

I'm back in business for a couple of weeks, I hope. I didn't exactly get my computer fixed, but they set up a couple of old Power Macs for general usage, so I'm here in our makeshift computer lab in the "conference room" of the hotel where some of our trainers are staying. Its technically our "day of recovery", but I have lots of little things to do today, so I got an early start... I need to update this, my blog, and a couple of other emails. I also need to work on my two major presentations which occur on Monday and Tuesday of next week. To show our technical and language competencies, we must present in French in front of our trainers and counterparts. The first presentation is a "research" topic about an aspect of Cameroonian culture- I picked "La Mort", which basically emcompasses what happens between the time someone dies and the time they are buried. The variance from region to region and from religion to religion is quite interesting, and I should have quite a specialized vocabulary. The second presentation is a "technical" presentation, which includes a written report detailing all of the findings and recommendations for my assigned company, the Vitrerie. That should be a bit easier to discuss in French, and its important for me to get down basic business vocabulary.

It has been a few weeks since I have been able to write a full report as to what is going on in my world... First of all, of concern to many who write and/or call me, is my health. I have been, with the exception of the one week over a month ago that I had the flu, very healthy. I have been taking vitamins every day and my malaria medication and that really has been it. I eat well and sleep fairly well (about 8-9 hours per night, but not usually solid sleep due to external factors). I do try to walk a bit, especially on weekends, but other than that don't get a whole lot of exercise. I beleive I have lost a little bit of weight, but not much. And, the important thing is that I feel good most of the time.

Next... I have taken several trips both large and small in the last month, which have been quite fun and interesting. About 3 weeks ago, I mentioned that I had gone to Bamenda. This is sort of the capital of Anglophone Cameroon, and also the seat of opposition politics in the country. I must say that to call the area anglophone is a bit misleading. There are two kinds of English there, what I speak normally is what they call "grammar", and what they speak on a regular basis is called "pidgin". Most people only understand "grammer" if you speak in what Peace Corps people call "special english", which occurs when you talk slowly, in simple words and phrases and enunciate very clearly. Pidgin is essentially the original "jive" talk which somehow came to Cameroon via the Caribbean, from returned slaves or slave traders, I am assuming. Sentences go something like, "Whati be yo name?" and, "Walka fyne" (which means "Be Well" and is said when you're leaving someone). I have only picked up a few words here and there, but the folks going to live there for two years have begun official classes.

Bamenda the city, is essentially in a valley surrounded by mountains and cliffs. Shooting out of several of the cliffs are beautiful waterfalls. There is only one straight street in town, Commercial Avenue, where many of the "Whiteman" stores and restaurants are located (yes, that's what they yell at you as you are walking down the street- sometimes its just to say hi, other times its to ask for money or to try and get you in their stores). The rest of the roads curve something fierce, and I think it would be difficult to get around without a knowledgable taxi driver. There were about 24 of us who went that weekend, so we amused ourselves in the Hotel Mondial- a Peace Corps favorite, and a number of western-style restaurants. We all took long showers in the hot water, which was a real treat, hung out on our balcony which looked onto the facing cliffs, and watched several hours of CNN International (news is not that easy to come by, and the only American news we get is how many soldiers died in Iraq that day and every once in a while something about Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations). We also ate ourselves silly. In two days, I had pizza (frozen, imported pizza, but it still tasted good), cheeseburger (it wasn't beef, but it tasted good, and I didn't want to ask), grilled chicken and fish (excellent) and some croissants for breakfast. Dee-lish.

The weekend before last, we had a big family party. One of the relatives had just finished his undergraduate degree and a number of the kids had done well in school the previous year. Some of the kids were only around for the summer, and so my Papa decided to throw a big party. Both moms and many of the kids cooked all day long, and some the day before. At one point, they had three cook fires going at the same time. We had grilled fish, spaghetti, rice, plantains, salad, beignets (not quite New Orleans, but still tasty) and a couple of other items. All the chairs were placed around the perimeter of the living room, and the big table was loaded with the food in the middle for a buffet-style dinner. There were about 45 people who came, all members of what they called the "petite famille", in other words, most aunts/uncles and cousins were not invited. One set of grandparents came as well. I had gotten two bottles of wine and a large bag of candy for the kids as my contribution to the party. Papa also hired a photographer and a DJ who brought his own stereo for the party. It was quite a rockin' time. I broke out my large Nikon Nikkormat EL (30 year old manual camera) and am picking up the photos from developing this afternoon. After pictures, we ate and after that, the tables were cleared and we all danced. I danced with Grandma and a bunch of the kids (grandma doesn't speak French, so we just smiled at each other). Papa decided to use my candy to have a dancing contest for the kids. The best dancers got the most candy, as judged by me, Papa and Papa's best friend who was there for the festivities. Some of the kids began pandering to the judges, but most were just having a good time. Even Letitia, the 20 month old girl was dancing.

That reminds me, I wanted to say that after 9 weeks, I finally learned all twelve of the kids names in my family.... here it goes from youngest to oldest, roughly and likely not spelled correctly: P-faun (Little King), Constantin, Letitia, Ivan, Stella, Brandon, Willie (girl), Manilla, Nina, Francoise, Fifi, and Cederic.

This past weekend, I went with Cathy to visit two other current volunteers, Leslie and Niff who live in the city of Foumban. It was about a two hour trip, all together, and its a very interesting mostly Muslim city. It has some very beautiful mountains surrounding it, as do many of the cities in the province. Saturday night, we went to a bar where we met some of their friends, many of whom we had met weeks ago in Foumbot when we stayed with Vijay. One of them is a guy named Hoon, who is Korean and runs a photo developing store in Foumban. He doesn't speak English, but speaks good French. Apparently he enjoys spending his money on his friends, and bought all of our drinks and dinners. He was quite nice and I enjoyed getting to know him. After dinner, a few of us decided to go dancing- Niff and Cathy went to sleep, so it was just Leslie and I as the two white folk, with one Korean and about five Cameroonians. We had a really great time and danced quite a bit to both American and Cameroonian music. The place was packed, and I enjoyed myself fully, as it was the first time I have been to a dance club in quite a while. I also met a Spanish guy named David there who works for the European Union doing water sanitation projects. We saw him the next day when we decided to visit the Faun's Palace and Museum. The Faun, or king, of the Bamoun people who live in and around Foumban is a direct decendant of the first Faun of Bamoun who took power around 1392. The palace was built in the early 1900's and has a heavy European influence. The art and artifacts inside were quite interesting with many of the ceremonial outfits and decorations. We even got to see the actual thrones for the last three fauns. The one for the current faun looks very modern and has polished wood paneling and chrome edges with a gaudy fabric- its actually quite pimpish. After the tour, which was in French, we walked down to the famed Foumban Artisenat, which is a large group of houses/workshops where they make and sell handcrafted art. Some of it was quite amazing, including this one guy who did embroidered designs for things like tablecloths and pillow cases. Another guy hand carved large wooden doors and a third guy did some interesting brass pieces, some of them quite large. I didn't buy anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if I went back for a visit and got something. One of the reasons is that I keep hearing horror stories about the destruction of termites here. I don't know if they are in Edea or not, but until then, I'm going to hold off on buying wood products.

On the reading front, I recently finished Catch-22. It took a while to get into it, but after that, I really enjoyed it. I would recommend it to those who haven't read it. I started a new book, "House of Sand and Fog" by Andre Dubus which was given to me by Niff this weekend who insisted that I must read it before I see her again at swearing-in in two weeks. I'm going to try...

We have less than two weeks left now before we all separate and go to post. Its going to be a fun and sad time, as its likely I won't see most of my fellow trainees until our in-service-training which occurs in December. As several people have asked, you can continue sending mail to me at the Yaounde address- that's Peace Corps headquarters, and they will forward my mail wherever I am.