Dust in the Wind

Here are a few tidbits:

 

Backhanded compliment of the week

"Romney is a passionate advocate of each new stance he takes."

            - The New Yorker (Oct. 29, 2007)

 

Mail/COS Dates

While I don't know the specific date I'll be coming home, it will definitely be in December.  Peace Corps Cameroon, up until my training group, started COSing PCVs with December swearing-in dates mid-November through mid-December.  ("Swearing-in" is the day we officially finish training and become volunteers. December 13, 2006, for me.)  Even though we can leave starting 30 days before through 30 days after our swearing-in date, due to some budget thing on the Washington side or some nonsense like that, we'll nearly all be leaving starting December 1.

 

The reason I'm telling you this now is because I'm setting Last Day To Send Jay Mail days in case you feel inclined to make my day.  Because packages take between 2-4 months and I'll be home soon enough, I'm setting June 5 as the last day.  (Packages meaning boxes.)  For letters, je pense que September 15 should be the last day for those.  (Letters meaning things in envelopes.)  Normal letters seem to be taking between 3-6 weeks.  And, as always, thanks again for sending mail, I appreciate it greatly, if only to give the guy at the post office something to do.

 

Newsweek

I think I've mentioned it before, but PCVs worldwide get free international edition Newsweeks because someone high up at Newsweek used to be a volunteer.  While this is nice, we get sporadic issues, and of the issues we do receive, they're nearly always at least a month behind.  (We also realize the international Newsweek doesn't really have good reporting, but that's neither here nor there. It's free!)  Another problem is that it takes a while for things to get up from Yaoundé to Garoua, so that makes them even more out of date.

 

There are a few big supermarkets in Yao that are really nice and just about equivalent to Western supermarkets, or at least as equivalent as you're going to get.  The biggest one, Score, has a magazine section that includes up-to-date Newsweeks.  Therefore, the United States government can't get its employees current issues of Newsweek, but a Cameroonian grocery store can get them on its magazine racks on time.

 

Getting Here

I finally got back to post January 16 after a miracle 21 hours in Cameroonian transportation history.  The train from Yaoundé to Ngaoundéré left on time (6 PM) and pulled into the station at 9 AM, when the earliest I've ever gotten in before has been noon.  (There was also a derailment a couple weeks back.)  I was on a bus to Garoua by 10, in a car from Ngong to Lagdo by 2:15, and back in my house at 2:45 to perhaps the dustiest house I'd ever seen.  Instead of spending the night in Ngong (there's another volunteer there) or Garoua like I had planned, I was sweeping my house down and cleaning the mold out of the fridge.  (I unplugged it for the month I was gone in order to save a lot of money on my next electricity bill… and to save the environment, too.) 

 

This is the middle of the dusty season, which I'm about 95% sure comes from the Sahara.  Either way, it's "winter" and only about 85 degrees in the shade, and it feels really nice if I ignore the finicky sinuses.  I remember this time last year I had the fan on me at all times and eventually turned it off at some point during the night when it was too cold; but now I'm going all day and night sans fan.  This leads me to believe I can make it farther through the hot season without the AC than I did last year.  (I think I made it through mid-March last year, which isn't really that far since that's when the obscene hotness starts in earnest.)