Castel or 33

Thanks for all the comments, keep them coming.  And, yes, UB, there is beer.  A lot of it. The two big brands are Castel and 33, and Guinness is usually available, too.  Especially popular is a type of homemade beer called bil-bil.  Cameroon is about 30% Muslim, but most, if not all, of them are centered here in the Grand North (the Adamaoua, North, and Extreme North provinces), so there's a lot of drinking going on among the non-Muslim populations (not to say all Muslim's don't drink, smoke, and have extra-marital affairs).  Also, here's a little Cameroonian history for you to give everyone a better idea about where I am:

 

The Grand North is consistently the poorest region of Cameroon, money- and health-wise.  The first president of post-independence Cameroon was a Muslim from Garoua (where I'm writing this now) and put a lot of money into the north.  Also, the Grand North was one huge province.  When the current president, Paul Biya, a Christian, took power,  Biya split up the Grand North into the three provinces it is today.  He basically did the tried-and-true "divide and conquer" strategy to squash the resistance that came from the north (there was a coup d'etat attempt around 1984, I think, and a lot of people from the Grand North disappeared), and in turn, the Grand North has taken a serious downturn in prosperity.  People from southern Cameroon basically think the North is the boondocks.  Another fyi, the biggest area of resistance to Paul Biya comes from the Anglophone region of Cameroon.

 

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Somehow I passed my French exam with flying colors.  Really, there must be something wrong with the evaluation because I got an Advanced Low ranking (Intermediate High is passing).  The ironic thing about passing the language exam is that I hardly ever speak French now because I don't have a real class.  I did my cross-cultural presentation yesterday and we have another small group presentation Tuesday, then stage is basically over.  In ten days, I'll officially be a Peace Corps Volunteer.

 

I had a whole bunch of things to say here, but I've forgotten what they were.  I should write my ideas down in my Ronaldo (when he was skinny) or Japanese Zidane notebooks.  I also have my eye on this 8-foot hight Ronaldinho poster for my house, but I can't seem to find the store again in Garoua.  I think the storeowner might be in Nigeria (I'm not just making a wild guess, he said a couple weeks ago he was going to be there), where things magically appear and come over to Cameroon on the black market.  Come to think of it, there's so little regulation here, the black market just might be the Market.

 

I'm also pumped to see that USC lost and my hope of an OSU-Michigan championship game is still possible.  Also, to paraphrase Bill Simmons (anyone want to print out some of his columns and mail them to me?), there's comedy, then there's Whitney standing around for no reason in her moto helmet.