Post-Mid Service Work

(Part 2 of 2)

  

I've been back in Lagdo from my vacation and mid-service for over a month now, and work is starting to return to the same level as the end of last year.  I knew there would be some struggle to get back into a work groove, but the lack of activity has been frustrating enough to where I've watched both Knocked Up and Superbad with the audio commentary on within the last week.  (Both commentaries were equally funny.  I prefer Knocked Up's but Superbad's sees Judd Apatow get so pissed off at Jonah Hill that he left halfway through.  He had brought his kid to the recording session and didn't want Jonah to curse for the entire commentary, a nearly impossible and almost unfair feat since his career is based around indiscriminate f-bombs.  After a couple slips, Apatow was getting irked, and when Jonah mimicked the "fuck my life" line the liquor store worker said, Apatow walked out.)

 

The main reason for the delay of mon travail was Youth Day, la fête de la jeunesse, which is celebrated on February 11^th.  The main activity for Youth Day is the big parade in front of all the political officials and traditional chiefs and PCVs who sit in the VIP section even though they don't have invitations to do so.  Groups of students from nearly all the schools in the Lagdo arrondissement march in matching uniforms of each school's choice and have a little chant or song, usually along the lines of "It's Youth Day.  Paul Biya is great.  Hello, Sous-perfet of Lagdo.  Hello, Mayor of Lagdo.  It's Youth Day.  Paul Biya is great."  The parade is okay and all, a little long, but it makes working at any of the schools impossible for a guest speaker like I would be.  Maybe there's a schedule for parade marching practice during the build-up to the holiday, but no one seems to know it.  Also, the week leading up to February 11^th has a bunch of different activities during school hours, mainly soccer and team handball games, so I've been waiting for the holiday to pass. (Cameroonians commonly refer to their holidays by the date.  I don't have to say "la fête de la jeunesse" every time I want to say it, "onze février" suffices.)

 

I've continued to go to the nearby village of Bamé and do animations there at the health center on vaccination days.  In addition to going to the health center once a week, I'm going with the agro-forestry PCV in Bamé to a couple different wells per week to start a small sensibilisation on personal hygiene and how it relates to keeping wells and water clean.  We've just started, and I'm looking at it as a test run for recommending to my APCD (boss) that I be replaced in Bamé instead of in Lagdo, which, if it does happen, would mean that there would have to be agro/health collaborations in nearly all aspects of work in and around Bamé. 

 

Starting this coming week: a 4-part HIV/AIDS course with my postmate at the Lagdo lycée in a couple of the English classes she teaches.  (The HIV/AIDS lessons will be in French; the English would be too complicated.)

CAN CAN, Part Deux

(One of two entries today)

 

Hunter Thompson Quote With No Context

 

"I slapped him again, then I gathered my change and my mail and my newspapers and my notebooks and my drugs and my whiskey and my various leather satchels full of weapons and evidence and photographs."

 

Semifinal, Cameroon vs. Ghana: "There's not enough pants where there should be."

 

I hopped on my friend Yotti's moto to go to his house to watch the Cameroon-Ghana semifinal match of the Africa Cup of Nations (CAN – French abbreviation).  I swung my leg over the seat and the seam of my pants from the bottom of the zipper, arguably the most important part of your pants, ripped.  As we descended into the quartier, the breeze in my pants where there shouldn't be one was too much; I knew I'd have to go back to my house.  I also happened to be holding a long baton of fresh sugar cane and a bag of granulated sugar that Yotti handed to me earlier.  I hesitated as we approached his house to tell Yotti that we had to go back since the game had just started.

 

"Yotti, mon pantalon est très déchiré.  Il faut aller chez moi."

"Mais, le match a commencé.  On peut coudre ici."

"Uhh, non, la déchirure est trop grande."

 

Yotti laughed and started to turn his moto around, and I handed the sugar cane and bag of regular sugar to his confused son.  ("But the match is just starting," the son said.)  Yotti zoomed back to my house, and he and the guard laughed at my predicament as I went inside and changed into a pair of jeans, then I got back on the moto and we made a beeline for his house, almost hitting at least two people in our haste.

 

"I love speed," says Yotti as we approached a large group of people walking.  "On the road to Garoua, I get up to 120 km/h."

 

We didn't need to be so much of a hurry.  Cameroon lived on the edge until Nkong scored the only goal of the game in the 75^th minute.  He grabbed a pass from Eto'o Fils as he streaked into the goal box on the left and chipped the ball past the goalie, quieting the home crowd.  (CAN is in Ghana this year.)  The Cameroonian defense, led by my hero, the captain, R. Song (#4, not to be confused with A. Song, #15), were the MVPs of the game.  Cameroon never really controlled the ball, but they capitalized when it counted.  The most bizarre moment of the game came in the 88^th or 89^th minute when Song was being carted off the field (he would miraculously recover, like most soccer players, two minutes later), and one of the nurses did something to make another Cameroonian player inexplicably push – yes, push – the nurse to the ground in front of the referee, earning a red card and leaving Cameroon with 10 men with 4 ½ minutes of injury time left and everyone else confused as to why he would pull a Zidane.  (My definition of  "to pull a Zidane" is to do something so stupid at such a crucial time that you just stare at the replay not knowing what to say.)

 

After the game was over and an audience at the TV studio in Yaoundé sang the national anthem, Lagdo was "feteing" and kids were running down the street in glee, and the moto ride back to my house was happy and the stars were bright.

 

Finals, Cameroon vs. Egypt: Pink Eye

 

The stars on the night of the final against Egypt were dull.  I caught a case of pink eye the day before because, well, if you've seen Knocked Up, I hope that's not the reason, so my vision was a little fuzzy.  I've never had pink eye before, and I have to say I never knew pus could flow from a person's eyes like tears. 

 

I woke up Saturday morning and my left eye was watering nonstop, and I thought I just had something in it.  I started washing my eye out with saline solution, and I watched in the mirror as my eye got redder and began to swell.  When it started to be painful, I knew I had to go see the doctor.

 

Luckily for me, Lagdo has an Ophthalmologists Without Borders (OSF), the eye doctor equivalent of Médecins Sans Frontières, within the district hospital that's 100 yards from my house.  I walked over there, they were open on Saturday morning, and the Cameroonian guy working there just looked at my eye for a minute (shined a flashlight in my face, actually), handed me some special eye drops, and asked for 2,000 cfa ($4), 1 mil for the consultation and 1 mil for the drops.  I went back to my house, and the drops with the saline solution have cleared everything right up within a few days.  (Also, OSF has had French or American doctors come and work in Lagdo since 1987, when it opened, up until a few years ago, so it's all Cameroonians now.  I've always heard about nasaara doctors in Lagdo, and now I know what they did.)

 

By Sunday evening, my eye had stopped leaking pus and was merely red and scratchy.  (My right eye had a mild case, so it was mainly just red.)  I went over to Yotti's house again, and we watched with his family as Egypt dominated Cameroon, continually pressing forward and being tougher.  Still, Cameroon's defense held off the Egyptians until a defensive blunder by my homey R. Song at around the 75^th minute.  Song couldn't get control on the left side of the box as he chased the ball toward the Cameroonian goal with an Egyptian tailing him.  The Egyptian was able to poke the ball to an open attacker, who shot it under the diving goalie.

 

The Egyptians were the best team throughout the tournament, never losing a game.  They were more cohesive and tougher than their opponents, and they have who is considered the best goalie in Africa.  When Egypt beat the tournament favorite Cote d'Ivoire, led by Didier Drogba of Chelsea, in the semifinal, Cameroonians were worried because the Pharaohs were the only team to have beaten Cameroon during the group stage.  Egypt has now won six Africa Cups, and they won the last tournament in 2006, so they're on a roll, and Cameroon continued to show that they are soccer power on the continent.  Next up is CAN in Angola in 2010, which I think acts as a qualifying tournament for Africa for the World Cup in South Africa later that year.

CAN CAN

First, I would like to say hello to Sarah Lavin's mom: Hi, Mrs. Lavin. Your daughter is doing well, except for the gangrene.

Pictures

Pictures from Limbé, Buea (Mt. Cameroon, my nemesis), and the case in Yaoundé. Link and password are on the right.

Cup of Nations

In case you didn't know, the Africa Cup of Nations (ACN) has started, just finishing up the group stage a few days ago. (It's set up like the World Cup, but with 16 teams instead of 32: 4-team groups, the top two from each group moves on to the next round, then it's knockout from there.) Every continent has their soccer tournament, the biggest being Europe's, and the ACN is huge. (I think the winner of the 2010 ACN gets an automatic bid into the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, or at least a leg up in qualifying, but I'm not 100% sure.) It's the most legit soccer tournament in Africa. There's a club championship like the Champion's League in Europe, but club football is weak here, so the ACN is really the only thing going.

Cameroon is playing, confirming the fact that the only really thing that unites Cameroonians is the Indomitable Lions. I watched their game against Zambia with some other PCVs in Garoua Saturday (the 26^th) at the supermarché bar (It's directly connected to the supermarché. Publix really needs to look into this.), and I've never seen Cameroonians so excited before. People were going crazy every time Cameroon scored, which was pretty often. I got caught up doing nerdy stuff on my computer during the first half of the Sudan match Wednesday, but when I went out to get a fish during halftime, I've never seen the streets so dead at 7 PM. Everyone was watching the game, except the fish lady, thank goodness. Getting the poisson took longer than expected, and when the second half started up and Cameroon scored, the whole village echoed in cheers as I was walking back to my house. No wonder when Cameroon advances far into these kinds of tournaments, Son Excellence Paul Biya declares a national holiday.

After beating Sudan (poor Sudan) in the last group match (they lost to Egypt and beat Zambia, too), Cameroon, lead by demi-god Samuel Eto'o, moves on to the quarterfinals. You should catch one of the games on one of the random soccer channels if you can. The quarterfinals are the 3^rd and 4^th (Cameroon plays the 4^th – today), semis the 7^th, final the 10^th. (Third place game is the 9^th, but who really cares.)

Favorites

Here is a selection of favorites for really no reason at all:

Favorite…

… Kanye West lyric from Graduation: "I'm like a fly Malcolm X, buy any jeans necessary" ("Good Morning")

… Song featuring T-Pain: "The Good Life," Kanye West. Runner Up: "Kiss, Kiss," Chris Brown

… Song by T-Pain: "Bartender," feat. Akon.

I really don't know any other songs that are just by T-Pain. He's the new Nate Dogg, he sings the hook in every other hit rap song. (Bill Simmons, the ESPN.com writer, also called Robert Horry the Nate Dogg of the NBA for his numerous clutch shots in the playoffs in comparison to the nominal role he played on the team. The Sports Guy asks the eternal question: Was Robert Horry – Nate Dogg – really that good and played a vital role on the team, or was he merely playing for the right team – mid-90s Rockets, early 90s Death Row Records, Tim Duncan-era Spurs?)

… Memoir by a former president: My Life, Bill Clinton

… Memoir by a future (I hope) president: Dreams from my Father, Barack Obama

… BBC World Service show: "The Ticket," BBC's arts and entertainment show, Sunday nights at 19 hours GMT (8 PM Cameroon time)

… Cameroonian beer: I like Mützig or Satzenbrau, but those are hard to find up North, so let's go with "33" (trente-trois)

… French-language African news magazine: Jeune Afrique, although it focuses on North Africa too much, but I think it's published there, so it's understandable.

… Cameroonian soccer player (Not Eto'o category): Song. All I really know about him is he's a defender and might play club soccer in Germany. When we saw the national team play in Garoua (they played Rwanda… poor Rwanda), he was the biggest guy on the field, had dreads, and seemed to be the team leader (Eto'o didn't play, sadly).