Thursday, July 21, 2011

28 Days

We have 28 days left in Bafia.  Bafia, as some volunteers have pointed out, is really not bad.  It’s pretty, as we said when we first got here, there are good markets, our host family is nice, and we have running water and electricity now and again (sometimes even at the same time!).  We’re so glad to get to live for two years here in Cameroon – if any place qualifies as a contender for “Garden of Eden” status, Cameroon does – and we’re just ready to be “home”!

So we’re trying not to spend too much time living in the future in Bamenda, and make the most of our time here in Bafia.  Our stage has bought our swearing-in pagne (traditional fabric – only not so traditional, it’s Peace Corps 50th Anniversary pagne), and we’ll be getting clothes made in the coming days.  Everyone’s working hard on language acquisition (learning a third language in a second language is not as easy as you might think), and we’ll be wrapping up technical training and model school and the next three and a bit weeks.  We finally broke down and got an American movie from another trainee last night and it did us a world of good!  Jack has been playing “Don’t Stop Believing” once a day (really, how can a person not be in a good mood after that? Though it does make us want chicken wings with Steven and Denise!), and we’ve instituted tuna melt brunch on Sundays after laundry (two sunburns each from laundry days so far – but still no malaria).

Kiyomi and the other SED trainees visited Bangou, a town in the West region, this week.  It was great opportunity to see a microfinance institution, but the main event of the day was meeting the local chief, enjoying a delicious lunch in his compound, and learning a bit about the Bamileke people (still an anthro student at heart!).  There’s a monument on the site of the old slave market in Bangou that stands as a perpetual memorial and apology from the people there to those who were sold and forced to leave their home in sorrow.  The Bamileke believe partings should always be happy; the monument is a means of making amends to the souls of those who were sold into slavery, and assures that their descendants can be happy and prosperous in the United States.  Because of the history between our two countries, the chief said he and his people see Americans as the grandchildren of Cameroon.

Another highlight this week was when the proprietor at one of our regular boutiques (it’s owned by a family, but the person who usually takes care of us is a boy of not more than 11, who’s been tending bar for at least thirty years) decided to have chicken for dinner.  Probably half of our stage spent at least half an hour chasing a furious rooster all around the property, through corn fields, up the road and back (you can post your guesses as to what hilarious and clever thing Jack said at this point in the comments).  This is Peace Corps approved stress relief – last week in our session on stress management, one of the recommendations, along with prayer/meditation, exercise, talking with friends, and journaling, was “chase a goat.”  Most of the goats are tied up here, and so can’t be chased very far.  We think a chicken was a good stand in. 

Last night we had an object lesson in integration.  Peace Corps recently issued us mountain bikes.  We keep them chained on the front porch during the day when we’re not using them, and move them into the kitchen after dinner for overnight.  We moved our bikes to the back step, for ease of transferring them to the kitchen after dinner, went to eat, and when we went to get our bikes, they were gone. Our host family sprang into action, grabbed flashlights (actually our flashlights), and ran out into the rain, with several neighbors joining in the search for our bikes, while we called Peace Corps.  Within forty minutes our bikes were found (hidden very close by; two mountain bikes chained together are pretty heavy) and returned to us.  An interesting cultural note was the most shocking part of it to the Cameroonians who helped us was that it happened while it was raining (you don’t go out when it’s raining here).  Without our friends and neighbors, we wouldn’t have got our bikes back, and would have spent the day with our training director at the police station filing a report.  In Cameroon, people say, “nous sommes ensemble” – we are together – and last night we found that to be true once again.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Wish List

Some of you have been asking about sending packages.  Our address again is:

I Jack Gaines/ Kiyomi Appleton Gaines

Peace Corps Trainee

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 215

Yaoundé, Cameroon

Padded envelopes work well, and it’s recommended to send things air mail (ground can take over two years) and insured, to ensure it gets to us.

Our wish list is:

Hand sanitizer

Tea (especially echinacea and Tazo Passion)

Hot chocolate packets

Wash cloths

Travel sewing kit

Pictures of our friends and family! (that would be you)

Chocolate chip cookies (store-bought; homemade are better, but they probably wouldn’t make it without preservatives)

Oreos

Snickers

Peanut/Almond M&Ms

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

Mystery paperbacks (take that as you will, as actual mystery novels, or just surprise ones)

Magazines

Calcium supplements

And always, thank you for all the love and prayers we constantly feel coming our way!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

A day in the life…

But in this one, nobody dies.

We made it through our two weeks apart – thanks for all the prayers, guys!  Our future home, Bamenda, is just perfect for us, and we can’t wait to get settled there!  For now, we’ve officially made it to the half-way point in our training.  So what does training look like, you may wonder.  Here’s our typical day in Bafia.

We get up between 6 and 6:30, get dressed, and usually our host-mom has beignets and Ovaltine (or some variation on that theme) waiting for us for breakfast.  No Little Orphan Annie decoder rings here though!  Between 7:30 and 7:45 we’re out the door and walk to our separate training facilities by 8.  Throughout the day we have sessions in language (French and Wes Cos Pidgin now), technical training (general info on small enterprise development or teaching, respectively; Jack starts teaching in both English and French this week), cross-culture training, medical/safety info, and vaccinations.  At 10 we get a twenty minute coffee break, then more sessions until 12:20, when we break for lunch.  Local women sell traditional dishes at each of our locations every day, or there are other places within walking distance in our neighborhood where we can get egg (sliced hard boiled egg and mayo, not a bad egg salad substitute) or avocado-salad sandwiches (one of our stagemates pointed out that these sandwiches are,technically, still African food).  After lunch we have sessions until three, when we have another fifteen minute pause before our final session, and we finish most days at 4:30.  After that we usually return home to drop off our bags, and then meet up with the other trainees at a little boutique, which is sort of like a convenience store with tables and chairs out front instead of a parking lot, where we can enjoy a soda or beer or a snack (or all of the above) and have a little downtime before we all return home for our seven o’ clock curfew.  We usually spend a little time in our room on study/prep for the next day, and then join our host family for dinner prep or getting the table set, and then eat together, usually between 8-9, and join them for a little of their favorite French-dubbed telenovellas (predictable plotlines and simple language make it decent language comprehension practice).  By 9 we’re getting showers or bucket baths, then finishing up work for the next day, and bed.  Saturdays we have a half day of training, and then start laundry (it’s kind of an undertaking), or we go into town for grocery or toiletry items we may need, or just to get a change of scenery, and do homework, and Sundays are filled with laundry, sweeping out our room and lots more homework (approximately sixteen years old, remember?).

So that’s our daily grind here.  Not too terrible, but not terribly exciting either.  We’re looking forward to telling you about life at our post in a few short weeks!  Our site visits came just in time, when everyone was about burnt out on our training schedule and in need of a reminder of why we’re all here.  We both feel refreshed and motivated to push through the next month and a bit – the goal is in sight, and it sure is a pretty sight!  An informal poll of our stagemates says the number one thing we’re all looking forward to is cooking our own food, followed closely by not living in someone else’s space!  39 days and counting!