Baby Chickens, Baby Cats, Baby Cameroonians

Not much changes in my life here in Cameroon, so I decided to give a play by play of a "typical day for Ali" in Cameroon.

I wake up at the crack of dawn, wrestle my mosquito net, slap on some sandels, and open my bedroom door to the most refreshing, invigorating air of my life. There is a special way my bedroom traps humidity, stale air and light. Walking outside in the mornings is like being born again, not the Christian type. First thing, help my ten year old sister with the dishes. My family has a well cordinated plan of morning chores, where everyone is doing something, thereby finishing it all by 6:30am. I scrub away, much of the time using the sand underneath my feet as that special bristly part of the sponge to scrub the dishes,which is an entirely sustainable and natural process. A family of newborn chickens usually scavenge the leftover bits of couscous and our new baby kitten hides under my feet. Sometimes it feels like charlottes web or something, life both animal and human in the morning is indescribably delicious. Once all the dishes are done I typically take a bucket bath. They are quite refreshing and I have come to love them, well except for the smells coming from the toilet. I usually return to my room to find my 10 month old brother proped up on a small bowl in the middle of the courtyard. I have yet to, but most definietly will, take a picture of this sight. There are few other things so completely adorable. Much like an Anne Geddes photo, this tiny baby fits perfectly, in this tiny mixing bowl, a majority of the time completely alone while the rest of the family prepares for the day. It is their form of potty training, but most of the time he starts peeing before he gets to the bowl, or in his underwear. Before learning french, before mastering the Cameroonian public health system, it is my goal to get him to take his first steps. We have the most fun together racing around the familial compound. Sometimes when the family is spitting off in Fulfulde or at times french, I like to just watch him and all his facial expressions. He makes each day a little bit better. That and the rest of the family. I am so happy with them and really fallen into a grove with my life at home.

After filling up my water bottle with so clean you could drink it filtered water I stop in for a quick breakfast. My family seems to pick up on the slightest of cues and always have a piping hot cup of tea and these incredible rice beignets for me. I am not a breakfast eater and they comprise a perfect nibble to get me through the morning. Most of the family has left for school by this time, as school tends to be a good thirty minute walk. Sometimes there is an aerobics class on tv, very entertaining, but mostly I like to just sit in the peace and quiet, a real rarity in my house. But I love the energy. There is always neighbors and friends over, watching tv, eating peanuts, discussing some action that happened in the market. Some nights the girls all sit around and just tease and make jokes at one another. It reminds me of home, in the best way possible. It is filled with so much good humor and love, and is equally dispersed throughout the whole family.

On my eight minute walk to school each morning I pass the local elementary school. Five or six women sit out everyday with peanutes, fried potoates and other snacks to be sold. Various circles of girls playing the infamous "anteka" is the way i think it sounds, a beloved game of odds involving hopping and clapping. I am terrible at it, but I am positive it is endlessly entertaining to my family watching. I love watching all the kids reactions as I walk by, so curious, so shy, calling out Nasarra, white person, because well they really don't know what else to call me. I have picked up a few greetings in Fulfulde and they always seem to go over well. I finally reach the training center and give a nod to our training's mascot, a massive cow with horns that span a good six feet, who has found a home all on his own in the field across the street.

Our center is kept behind a large wall, which makes it feel all at once protected and intimidating. But behind those metal doors is a beautiful garden. There are usualy some morning French tutoring sessions going on. I like to get there early and chat in English a little, before the entire center becomes a zone of "immersion" where we can only speak in french. I hate it and love it both. I think it really helps you to learn french, but so frusterating to not be able to say exactly what you want to. Each day we have one or two sessions of french in classes of three or four. It is mostly conversation based, blah, blah, blah. Boring i know. Then we typically have technical sessions that focus on the type of heath work we will be doing at post. Most of the time a volunteer comes and does a few sessions with us. The topics have been interesting, but seem to go a little slow. I feel confident in my skills to convey these public health messages, but want more of the factual, science-based goods. We have had a few field trips, one to the local hospital and the aids testing clinic in the main city. Both have been extremely interesting learning about what works and what doesn't in these centers. It seems to be mostly routed in a lack of funding and organization.

Lunch is an exciting puntuation in our day. Our lunch lady, who honestly doesn't seem to like us very much, although she completely overcharges us for the exact same meal every day. It is a chance to drink cold sodas, the most I have ever had in my life, and talk about our lives back home. It is always so odd to make friends when you are abroad. You have them in this very narrow and isolated enivornment and so a life back home with family, friends, boyfriends is almost non-existant. Walking to the home of our lunch lady can be quite the feat of endurance, under the brillance of the sun and the large trucks that create windstorms of dust. There is this one elderly lady who we always find along the route, sitting in her doorway, shaking her fists at us and saying something in Hindi. At first we thought she wanted money, then we thought she was cheering us on, now it is back to the begging, but we just smile and wave as if it is the more preferable option. On our way back to the center, we typically find our cheery and plump peanut lady, with these little sacks of roasted peanuts, to which I have formed a serious addiction to. She always tries to expand our Fufulde repitoire past hello, which I thank her kindly for. My face hurts from all the smiling I have done here.

One of the highlights of the week for me is our community group meetings. All the trainees have split into four groups, each working with a different community group. Mine is the youth group, a collection of mostly male 18-28 year olds who can't seem to find work from the government and so have begun cultivating land for a small profit. We are supposed to find a few health topics they are interested in and present four animations for them. In french. They are extremely patient with us, always show up on time and in large numbers. It is a great "throw you right in" opportunity of what post work will actually be like. I always get incredibly nervous beforehand and flow on a natural high cloud after it is finished. I love it. The first two meetings we just got to know them and made seasonal calenders which map out what type of work they do certain certain parts of the year and when certain illnesses hit certain seasons, ect. Last week we did our first animation on Malaria. It went great, we went over the lifecycle of maleria in the body, to explain and often difficult to catch symptoms. We showcased different techniques of prevention with two giant drawings of what not to do and what to do. It seemed a bit infantile, but a good hands on exercise. They started asking really complex questions, that took us about twenty minutes to translate in french and then ultimately couldn't answer. That made us feel a little stupid, but we got past it with shrugging shoulders and laughs. There are only three women in the group and although they are quite outspoken, I worry for them sometimes. When we were picking topics to do animations on, the men explained that maternal health wasn't important to them. Our wonderful Bradley jumped in trying to explain the imortance of male particpation, but it seemed like a futile attempt. I think we are doing it anyways, coupled with sexual health to keep the attention of the men.

In the evenings, we have taken it upon ourselves to grab A SINGLE BEER at a local bar in our town and unwind the day. Then as the packs of bats start to fly over us and the sun sets, the call to prayer, really just calls us home. I come home to my family, throw off my chacos, pull out the french grammar books and plop down on the mat with the rest of the family. I eat a dinner of couscous and a spinachy-peanuty sauce or spaghetti and tomatoe sauce with fish. My homestay sister is a wonderful cook in our partially falling down kitchen. She cooks my dinner in complete darkness, over a wood-powered fire, cutting tomatoes in her hands. I don't know how she does it, my very own superwoman. I am schemeing to come up with some type of plan to make her life easier, or at least healthier. Then my favorite Brazilian soap opera(in french) comes on, where somebody who loves somebody else, but can't be with them because of money, the baby or he is a "sheik". I typically crawl into bed several hours before the rest of family. They must wonder what I am doing with all this sleep and close my eyes to the wonder that is my ipod.

Well I am boring myself now. Things here are really just to difficult to explain on the computer. I am still incredibly happy and fitting in nicely here. You will all just have to come visit.

Next week on Thursday we get our POST ASSIGNMENTS. This is a really big deal, as it decides our home for the next two years! Then we meet our counterparts, the Cameroonians who will partner with us for all of our work at post. Then it is a week of site visits, where we go stay with the current volunteer at the post, if there is any, and get a feel for the place. This is all after our very exciting Halloween party we have got planned. I am going as Chiquita Banana, as the local outfit here, pagne, is a perfect picture for ms. chiquita and I plan to wrap banana in my matching head wrap.

So hopefully the next time I write, I will have much more exciting news. I still miss everyone and will love to hear back tidbits from people. I hate to turn into one of those volunteers who always talks about packages. But if you want to send something, I would love crayons or other coloring materials for my future work at post, really thick, deep novels you can only read in the middle of nowhere and of course some candy.

I don't think I can watch the election coverage as I will be at the site visit during that time, but my every thought will be on it. I hope this next post will be in a bright new shiny light!