Food, glorious food!

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Happy Thanksgiving! I realize I'm a few days behind, but I'm just now recovering from our in-country holiday celebration. It started on Wednesday and didn't end until Monday morning... Yes, it was one of those.

Wednesday afternoon, Shannon arrived in Edéa from Ebolowa. She was planning on coming to Thanksgiving at my house anyway, but I asked her to come a day early to be a guest speaker for the third of my seminar series, "Sources of Financing". She arrived just two hours before the beginning, but we were able to pull it off quite successfully. We even ran over a few minutes and didn't quite finish all we had to do. Shannon brought a nice fresh air to the seminars and reinvigorated all of us.

After the seminar, Shannon and I bought some items for a salad and headed back to my house to eat. The night before I had decided to make a quiche from scratch (the only way to do things around here) for the first time. I had a few logistical problems, but it turned out great. I only at a little of it on Tuesday, so I reheated it. By the time dinner was over, five other people arrived and finished everything off. They also finished the case of beer I had bought that afternoon. The party had indeed begun.

We decided that due to peoples' varying schedules, we would do all the shopping, cooking and eating all in one day. So, we woke up and split up into teams to accomplish our goals. I was assigned to the 'market' team (given my relationships with the market mammas), while the 'white man store' and 'beer' teams went in separate directions. The first stop for the market team was to pick up the special vegetables I had ordered that local folks don't normally eat- spinach, broccoli and cauliflower (all of them virtually impossible to get a hold of in the villages of my friends, so it was a real treat). After dropping that off at the house, we continued on to the "real" market armed with large market bags, hats, suntan lotion and lots of energy. We knew we'd need it.

Its not everyday that four white folks show up in the Edéa market. And while they've become used to me, its still quite an occasion. We made friends quickly by spending lots of money to feed the 15 hungry volunteers who were going to eat that night. A friend of mine even gave us a sack full of grapefruit as a gift for our holiday. When we had finished much of our buying, two of the group went back to the chicken lady and carried home five live chickens (at $4 apiece) and a dozen eggs. Imagine if you can, two Americans riding on the back of motorcycles trying to juggle five live chickens and a dozen eggs. Quite funny. Cheryl and I stayed with the market bags we had already accumulated and went in search of a few last ingredients. By the time we got back, cooking and cleaning was in full swing, with headless chickens running around my backyard. I, however, had to teach, so I took a shower, changed and went to school.

I taught my younger kids all about Thanksgiving and its history- the version we learned in school about the Pilgrims and Native Americans being best friends. It just seems easier to teach it that way. I used it as an opportunity to teach basic vocabulary words like, "cornucopia" and "religious exile", not to mention, "primitive agrarian techniques". No, not really- words like "boat" and "corn" and "turkey" were quite enough.

I returned to my house to find the chaos continuing, but the chickens were now in supermarket friendly pieces, plucked and everything. A few of the women had taken over the kitchen while a couple of the men were out in the living room cutting and peeling vegetables. I decided that my task was going to be grillmaster. With some help from other male grillmasters, I was able to get my brand-new grill going (more like a hibatchi, but it worked just fine).

In the middle of cooking, Shannon decided to take a shower. Gene had already broken the shower head that morning and replaced it (with Gene, we don't ask questions -like about how he broke it). Sometime in the middle, she lost water pressure and discovered that water was leaking from the pipe going into the water heater and spraying all over the hallway. I was called in, and between about four of us, we figured out how to turn off the water from outside the house. The cleanup began, but not before flooding the guest bedroom and hallway. Luckily it didn't get into my bedroom.

By nine o'clock, we had mostly cleaned up the water, and dinner was ready. Just before it was put on the table, my family called from South Carolina. I was passed around the house, and spoke to my parents, brother, cousins, uncles and aunts who were all gathered for the big day. I was sad I couldn't be with them, but next year I'll be there!

In addition to chicken (we didn't go for turkey since its always a "yard bird" here and therefore very tough), we ate green beans, sautéed spinach, mashed potatoes, stuffing, biscuits, gravy, salad, and broccoli and cauliflower with cheese sauce. For dessert, we had carrot cake and papaya pie (which was kinda like pumpkin pie, and tasty). Both Sylvie and Alain came over for the feast and they were a bit overwhelmed by the number of americans, but really enjoyed the food. We spent the rest of the night drinking and catching up.

The next morning, we headed out to the beach at Kribi. Since it was my house, I hung back to wait for the plummer to fix the busted pipe. By four o'clock, the plummer hadn't arrived, so I left with Susan who waited with me, to enjoy the beach. We arrived to find the others making dinner (good timing!) Before eating, I checked into my room just steps from the water and took a shower (since I had held off due to the lack of working shower at my house), after which I felt like a new man.

That night and all of the following day were occupied with swimming and eating. We did have a meeting which was the supposed reason for our being together where we sat around and talked about the things we liked or didn't like about Peace Corps and updates on each of our projects. The beach was perfect, and the water was a little cool for a hot day. For dinner, we were invited to a friend of the Peace Corps' house. He's a really nice Nigerian guy who's been friends with generations of volunteers, and now everyone within four hours of the beach knows him. He also happens to be a great cook, so we stuffed ourselves on shrimp and chicken. Afterwards, we rolled ourselves over to the festival that was going on in town (as I said, its festival season here!), where we stayed until about 3am.

Needless to say, we didn't get out of bed until around noon, when we rolled right into the ocean. After a lunch of shrimp cocktail and chicken sandwiches, we all returned home. It was sad to see everyone leave, but we had a great time!

Monday, December 6, 2004

This past week, the auditor from CAMCCUL regional office in Douala came down and talked about the basics of accounting- principally the importance of keeping receipts and writing things down. He arrived just two hours before the seminar, and since I hadn't been able to contact him by cell phone, I didn't know that he had prepared the accounting session, and not the loan reimbursement theme that we had originally talked about. There was lots of last-minute scrambling, but luckily Mr. Bata is a really good speaker. That was a good thing, since we had a record 43 people in attendance! People really responded to his method of presenting, and I really believe folks learned something! To celebrate, I took George and his daughters out for a drink (since they are 6 and 3, they split a Fanta).
Thursday night, my friend Tina came through on her way back home. She was helping another volunteer change posts since the one she started out with wasn't working out. That afternoon, Will had called to let me know he was coming in for the night from Yaoundé. I told him to pick up something for dinner. A man of his word, he returned with a kilo of pork loin from the best butcher in country. We made a fantastic pork roast with roasted potatoes and vegetables. I had to explain to Tina that we don't eat like that all the time. She's struggling a little in her bank, but we talked about different ways of making that work for her and I know she'll work it out.

Friday morning after Tina took off, I had my hair cut. Mom, its a good thing you're not here to see it, since its the least amount of hair I've had since the day I was born. Its just too darned hot here! Friday night, Will had been forced to stay in town due to a lack of available space in the car returning to his village. The two of us enjoyed an evening at the Mpoo festival, which is Edéa's biggest party every year. We met up in town, and there was a parade of young folks with homemade torches that came down the main drag and over to the festival. We just became a part of the celebration as they were going where we were heading! It was a bit of a slow night at the festival, but I knew a number of folks there, and Will and I sat and had a beer and grilled chicken with fries and fried plantains. Tasty.

The rest of the weekend was taken up with finally submitting Alain's green card lottery application by internet, and Sylvie cooking dinner at my house on Sunday (she made ndolé with smoked fish and shrimp, and I made banana pudding for dessert). And sleeping a lot.