Thanksgiving (no Gigli references, please)

I'm going to get to Thanksgiving in just a second, but first I want to say that my homestay father is a butcher.  Last night, getting ready for bed at the late hour of 8 o'clock, I was about to walk out to the pit latrine to brush my teeth.  Lo and behold, my family was cutting up a cow right in front the latrine door because today, Sunday, is market day in Pitoa.  I promptly went back into my room and when I woke up the next morning, I saw four cow legs hanging down from the roof and the head drying out in the sun on top of the house.  Okay, back to Turkey Day...

 

Well, there wasn't a turkey.  There were two chickens and an excellently prepared goat.  There was also some very good stuffing and mashed potatoes, along with some other stuff.  All said, the food was very good, especially since it wasn't cous-cous and gumbo.  Sarah L. and Kate pretty much planned it all, and the PC staff in Garoua let us use their offices and houses (Peace Corps-owned) to cook and to eat.  A few of the language trainers actually cooked the goat, and I don't know what they did, but I didn't think I would enjoy goat as much as I did.

 

It wasn't particularly strange to me celebrating Thanksgiving over here.  It only gets weird when I think about it being the fall and winter back in the States and the leaves turning and people wearing warm clothes because it's legitimately cold (Cameroonians are wimps during the "cold season" now) and it being the middle/end of football season while I'm dodging sheep and piles of trash on the way to language class in the morning.

 

We only have two-plus weeks of stage left, then it's finally time to go to post.  We had a French exam yesterday morning, and I think there's a good chance I reached the level that Peace Corps wants (Intermediate High.  I started off as a Novice-Mid and got bumped up to Intermediate Low after the last test a few weeks ago).  We also have to do a cross-cultural presentation in French that has to last atleast 15 minutes. The fact that we have to do this presentation is a joke, considering that everyday in Cameroon is a freaking cross-cultural experience, but c'est la vie.  My topic is how the Fulbe tribe, the dominant tribe in northern Cameroon (where I am and will be), and Islam intersect and diverge.  I know that sounds kinda complicated, but really, I'm going to be throwing it together at the last minute.  I think Matt said it best when he said that these presentations are made just to piss us off.

 

Yesterday was a pretty good day.  After the language test in the morning, a bunch of us went to Super Restaurant in Garoua then to the Relais St. Hubert, a hotel that's pretty much my home away from home away from home (it goes like this: St.Hubert-Lagdo/Pitoa-Kennesaw), to go swimming.  I had my usual (it's just about everyone's usual), beef with french fries and a jus melange (Cameroonian smoothie).  It was quite delicious. Then at the pool, I ate a Snickers bar.  Then for dinner, karma slapped me in the face and I had yams with this nasty fish sauce.   

 

Lagnooooooo

Well, I just wrote this really long entry about my new post that I didn't get to post before Internet Explorer crashed, so I'm going to start over and try to remember the witty and insightful comments that disappeared into cyberspace...

 

I just got back from a site visit at my new home for the next two years: Lagdo.  It's a small town or big village, depending on your perspective in the North province about an hour SE of Garoua, the provincial capital.  It's on this huge lake, called Lac Lagdo or something like that, and is famous for it's "White Man Hotel", some wildlife (I saw hippos!), and a huge dam built by the Chinese 25 years ago.

 

I'm the third PCV to be posted in Lagdo and am continuing working on a Malaria education project with CARE International, the huge NGO.  This is both a good and bad thing. My French is going to improve rapidly (probably not as fast as my counterparts would hope, though), my house is pretty badass, and I'll become very knowledgable in teaching about malaria, a huge problem for the villages along the lake.  The bad news is that it will slow down my integration in the community, I might get bogged down in office politics, and the project ends in July, possibly leaving me with a housing problem.

 

But let's focus on the positive for now: my house. It's part of the local CARE compound, a grand total of four or five houses with guards 24/7, one of which is mine (the house, not a guard).  It's fully furnished already, with CARE-owned stuff and things that the PCV that's leaving, Danielle, is selling me.  It has: air conditioning, a kitchen with a frige (!!!!), a screened-in porch, a big living room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom with a shower (well, a shower head on a cord) and a toilet. The electricity is very reliable and the water works during the day (it shuts off from about 10 PM - 6 AM).  Posh Corps, anyone?  

 

Another benefit of being in Lagdo is that I'm in close proximity to a bunch of volunteers.  The closest are David, an older guy 7 km away who's is extending for a third year, and Michelle, an agro in my stage about 20 minutes away.  There's also a bunch of other peeps from my stage that can be reached easily.  We're also within 4-5 hours of Maroua and Ngaoundere, the capitals of the Extreme North and the Adamauoa, which is convenient because a lot of my friends from stage are posted way up yonder in the Extreme.

 

In all, I'm looking forward to stage ending and moving to Lagdo.  It's going to be a pretty overwhelming first few months when I get there, a common problem with PCVs just getting to post.  I'm going to have to do a lot of work to integrate into the community and help out, especially when the CARE project ends. In the mean time, I'm going to figure out how goats stay on top of bush taxis as they barrel down the highway.

 

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A note on my address: for some reason, I didn't open a PO box in Lagdo when I had the chance this week, so I'll be doing that in about a month. The Yaounde address will always work, but I'll post my new one when I get it.

 

A note on Scott: Congrats on the job, car, move, etc.!

 

A note on Republicans: hahahaha. 

 

 

Marcel's Goatee

Marcel's goatee allowed me to shave last week. Most of the single guys (a grand total of 5 or 6 of us) had a bet going to grow out our "beards" until swearing-in in mid-December. Well, thank god Kate gave Marcel an awful haircut (short but lumpy) that prompted him to shave down to a goatee, giving Matt and I free bottled water as part of the bet (the brand is called Tangui - pronounced Tangy - these are things you need to know) and baby faces. It took me atleast 30 minutes to shave that night. And, according to most people in my group, there went my child molestor moustache. Yeah, we're a friendly group.

The stress of this last week really did make everyone in the health group start snapping at each other is the most sarcastic way possible. Last Tuesday was the funniest and meanest day of our stage. It was just one crack after the other. We figured out we stay sane by just making fun of each other nonstop.

We took a (pointless) field trip up to Mokolo and Touro Friday farther north. We were visiting a badass PCV who has done a lot of great stuff in his village. He has an awesome house that has definitely got all of our hopes up. There were a couple upsides to the trip: a night away from Pitoa; a night away from Pitoa at a hotel with a bar. It was the first time where we were able to drink in a "safe" situation, and we took severe advantage of it. The downside? Well, how about a two hour drive on the worst road you've ever been on from Mokolo to Touro to visit said super-PCVs house for two hours, then turning back around and driving two hours on that awful (unpaved) road) then four more hours on a bad paved highway. They're not kidding when people talk about bad transportation in Africa.

My French is improving. I started off as a Novice Mid and now I'm at Intermediate Low. You pass the PC language requirement at Intermediate High. I'm about 100 percent sure I'll get there, it's just that the stress of training is getting to me more in the last few weeks than before. I'm having no problems with my homestay family, but I'm ready to get to my post and have my own place. Isn't it crazy that the first time I "move" out of my parents house, it's by myself in some remote Cameroonian village? I find out where that remote village will be this Thursday.

I'm pretty out of touch with the world right now. I caught some of the news at the hotel Friday and saw mass chaos in the Gaza Strip, so I haven't really missed much. Matt and I were talking and we decided that it's such a stress going through our day to day lives here during training - the food, having enough water, tech sessions, god those tech sessions - that being bombarded by news is too much. That being said, I'm about to go check out cnn.com and secretly hope someone mails me some magazines, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

As you can see, I found out how to use commas. You can press alt-shift on a French keyboard and it turns into an American. Sadly, the keys don't magically fly around and rearrange themselves like I had hoped.

Happy birthday, Ben! Hope Mizzou is going well. And the Cardinals? That's the equivalent of the San Antonio Spurs winning the NBA Championship: Boring.