So we’re back to the ten day count down! We were looking back over our training calendar as we completed evaluations of the program, and just couldn’t believe how much has happened in nine weeks. We’re passable in Pidgin, reasonably communicative in French, have made some friends we’ll still be calling in twenty years, and have gotten the hang of going about the business of life in a developing West African nation. Not bad for just shy of three months’ work.
This week we’ll be wrapping up training – final advice for what we should do during our first few months at post – closing the model school, and cramming as much more language training in as we can take. We have our swearing-in clothes made now – everything tailored to a perfect fit. I know we haven’t been the best at pictures - the connection is slow when it’s up here - but we’ll get some pictures of our swearing-in and other various scenes of Cameroon posted once we get to Bamenda.
Fun times await, kids! We’re so excited about not being “homeless” anymore, having our own space, cooking our own food, getting to know our neighbors and community… and we know that a whole new adventure awaits. Peace Corps publications readily acknowledge that training has little to do with actually preparing the trainee for living and working in their post community (wait, what?? No, seriously, it’s in official written materials), so here we are, having adjusted admirably to the training environment, we’ve passed the initiation, you might say – yay! But setting up house in a new place is something we were both literally raised to. We visited Bamenda separately, and we’re looking forward to showing each other the different places we each found.
In the meantime, here’s a Top Ten list for you. In no particular order…
Things We’ve Learned in Training
1. Chickens, left to their own devices, fly and roost in trees. Also, now that we don’t eat it so often as to take it for granted (chicken is something of a delicacy here), we realize it’s really, truly delicious. And chasing chicken, or watching others do so, really is great stress relief.
2. The fact that that little bird or gecko is an African bird or gecko really does make it cooler.
3. You can fit two grown adults, one stuffed backpacker’s pack and a guitar on a motorcycle (in fact, you’d be amazed at what can be transported by motorcycle).
4. Cameroon’s lack of development has a lot to do with a lot of things that have nothing to do with colonialism, or the first world at all. Question to ponder: when we call it neglect and others call it parenting, what’s a development worker to do?
5. Hand-washing, with soap, is key. If this simple truth could be transmitted and adopted, training and the health of trainees would be vastly improved. So would the long-term health of local families.
6. Peanut butter makes life better.
7. Antelope tastes like cow.
8. One in forty Americans is an idiot who should never be given a passport. The rest of you, though, start filling out that paperwork!
9. People are always going to behave exactly like people.
10. No matter where we go, when everything else is strange, our God is still God.
And some music for the road… it’s funny because it’s true.
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