Top 6 Silver Linings to being sick this month

DISCLAIMER: the views expressed are my own and not that of Peace Corps.

I've pretty much spent the past 7 weeks sick of one thing or another. It started with the Halloween party (mental note: do NOT share glasses with people obviously struggling to breathe) and was mostly a chest cold. Then it may have been allergies: the dust since the dry season started has been bad and it kept me awake nights for weeks. Then I went to IST (in-service training) at the ocean-side resort town of Kribi on Sunday and instead of beach-bumming and attending classes, spent Tuesday evening-Saturday morning in bed with various stomach issues... a trip to the hospital told me it was typhoid and malaria! Now after a few days at the case in Yaounde, I'm back in Bandjoun and have another chest cold. As a result, I have to cancel my much-anticipated climb up Mount Cameroon over Christmas.

C'mon, Cameroon! Gimme a break.

In any case, I thought I'd frame this in terms of the silver linings. Here are the top 6 advantages to spending the past week in bed:

1. Avoided Robbery. If I hadn't been sick in bed, chance are I would have been at the bar across the street from the hotel in Kribi on Thursday evening at 10pm. That was where I was there Monday evening at that time. So Thursday, 4 men with guns and machetes relieved 21 of my Peace Corps peers of all their stuff. Not to discount the horror (especially the guy kicking in the bathroom door, and then hacking Julia with a machete as she cowered in the corner), but... if I had lost my Blackberry, I would have been very, very, very depressed.
2. Avoided Sessions. Not to say the sessions were more boring than sleeping the entire day (not all of them, anyway), but... putting us in a beach-front hotel and then scheduling training from 8a-5p every day? Are you kidding me?
3. Avoided Hotel Food. 11/43 volunteers were sick that week, the diseases I know about were typhoid and amoebic dysentery. It's kinda hard not to blame the food at the hotel. That and the inference that I have not eating the food at all listed as an "advantage".
4. Avoided spending money. I didn't buy any souvenirs since I didn't go anywhere. The pizza Monday evening was 5,500 CFA, so it was a good thing I didn't feel tempted to go back again. OTOH, I spent 30,000 CFA on the hospital visit and medicine!
5. Enjoyed American movies at the Case! I wouldn't have gone back through Yaounde if I hadn't been sick, and I hadn't been to the Case before. It was a great relief... just like a college dorm! I got to go to an American/European-style supermarket (Casino) and watch movies like Airplane and Spiderman 2. I also had my first hamburger in 6 months at the bar across the street, though I can't say I would recommend it. Hardly any meat. Or condiments. Soggy fries. Beggars can't be choosers!
6. Prescription medicine! Hooray for being able to walk into the PCMO office and walk out with medicine. I got Beconase AQ for my allergies, a medicine I last saw in the mid-90s when my doctor told me it was too expensive and inconvenient to take. Unfortunately I never took it again: it's a steroid that inhibits your allergy symptoms, in my case an incessantly itchy, runny nose. I walked out with a 6-week supply, and have already started on it: very happily too!

Bonus silver lining: not going to Mount Cameroon means I can stay in and work on my websites. I'll be visiting another PCV for Christmas, and hopefully birding Mount Kupe with a guide to find the famous rare shrike. And hopefully some other stuff. I consolidated my photos, videos and sighting reports on a new searchable birding website and noticed my list for Cameroon after 6 months is a pathetic 125! I need to get out and find some of the other 800 species in this country...

Also, from comments and hit counts, I see the Books for Cameroon site is also starting to generate some interest.

End of the First Trimester!

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are my own and not that of Peace Corps.

This week represented my last round of classes of the year. The members of my Stage will be in Kribi next week for training, and after that we have two weeks of vacation for the holidays. This is great news, since the first trimester was very challenging. I had never taught before, I had never worked with children before, I had never had a job requiring me to speak a foreign language, I had never lived and worked abroad, and my allergies were killing me most of the time. It could be bronchitis too - I had trouble breathing at night and was advised to get a chest x-ray and blood work before Kribi. But regardless, I do feel like a major milestone has been reached, and it's all downhill from here!

The students were restless this week, probably due to the impending Christmas holidays. But I did have one good class this week. My first Seconde class actually started responding to some free-flowing discussion, the topic of which was WikiLeaks. Well, really it was how computers impact our lives (the subject of the chapter), but I used the recent news on security breaches as an example of stuff that wasn’t even remotely possible before the internet and the information age. That got them going, many instantly wondering if Assange was still alive (assuming he had been knocked off by an angry government). Others espoused strong opinions one way or another over whether releasing the documents was or was not legal according to the ethics outlined in the chapter. It wasn't sophisticated discussion or anything, but it was awesome to see some spirited interaction. Finally the class was opening up rather than the usual “Oui, Madame” and “Non, Madame”.

That particular class was also in a very good mood because they had done well on the test. 98%of them passed, and the average grade was around 15/20 which is very good. The other classes did not do as well, and were far less attentive. Though I may be mixing cause and effect here.

There was also another round of filling out report cards and other paperwork. After the paperwork of the first sequence had landed so late, I was not worried. I guess I should have been. I was called at home Thursday morning (only 3.5 days after the end of sequence, and 2 weeks before the ‘official’ deadline) to be told I was nearly the last person to do the work and I needed to come in asap. I was then told to schedule a meeting (even though we didn’t have all the grades yet) so we could finish since we were the last department to do so.

Sigh. I thought I had expectations figured out (paper vs. reality), but… nope! Live and learn.

I also had some little visitors this weekend. One of my students (actually my landlord's son) wanted to see his grade before the rest of the class. But he made up a pretense to come inside my house, along with his two sisters. So they wanted to play cards with me. Well, not really. They didn't know the rules, so the girls just passed them back and forth while he watched. But anyway, they were so cute I showed him his grade. And he literally jumped with joy because he passed!

So then I showed them stuff on my computer. The little girls were impressed by pretty much every paltry thing I had in my house. I think they were impressed. Their reaction to everything was, "Ay yay yay!" The colored pencils were a hit, so I gave them most of the ones I had along with my pastels.

This is completely tangential, but I can't think of a good segue. Today I looked out the window of one of my classes, and noticed a pile of trash. It was 3 months worth of students throwing their crap out the window, that led to the back of the school looking like a garbage dump. Yet in the middle of this, I noticed a mother hen, guarding her adorable, fluffy, yellow-and-black chicks under her wing. What an amazing moment. Suddenly two metaphors (‘under one’s wing’ and ‘mother hen’) popped into my mind. Honestly, growing up in a culture where chickens never run around freely, I never really connected either of those expressions with actual animal behavior!

Seeing them like that makes me never want to eat them again.

But anyway, that led me to wonder about aspects of development. There are wonderful things about Cameroon that are lacking in the U.S., and vice versa. Good: intimate moments with free range chickens. Bad: Piles of trash everywhere.

There are more and better examples. But are these the natural by-product of the country’s stage of development? Does developing mean landfills and clean streets while chickens all get stuck in tiny cages in inhumane conditions, and only appear as plucked, dismembered fryers? Can development mean taking the best parts of one's culture and adding to it with good ideas?

Really, I'm wondering if development in Cameroon can mean becoming more like Mayberry than Gotham City? I certainly hope so.

A busy week at post

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are my own and not that of Peace Corps.

Last week, I was hard at work on the Books for Cameroon website. Friday, a few of us will meet to discuss it, along with a few other secondary projects that are underway. Another project is an AIDS/HIV awareness initiative involving Moto (motorcycle) drivers spreading the word. Books for Cameroon is a project started by Cristina's predecessor that is looking for French or English language books for libaries in Cameroon. The website is still under construction, but feedback and comments are more than welcome.

Tomorrow, I'm also hosting a small party for the ICT department at the high school. I was reminded on Tuesday that I'll need to make food as well (and I thought it was just drinks!) I decided against trying Cameroonian food, so I'll stick to simple appetizers (deviled eggs, salad, bruschetta, french fries) and a salad, maybe spaghetti also. We'll see how this goes: it's my first opportunity to entertain Cameroonians in my house!

I also prepared some training for volunteers on creating web sites. No sooner had I written those PowerPoint slides than I was asked to train the teachers at my school also! Not on web site development thankfully, but on Word, Excel and other basic functions. That will start Friday afternoon. Thank goodness I have the projector for both efforts! Probably no surprise, but it was already damaged in another teacher's class (a couple of pins broke on the video connector), but it still works. Now I'm keeping it with me and guarding it like a hawk :(

The students were unusually bad this week. A couple of Cinquieme students started throwing punches and wrestling and I had to run out of the class to get the Censeur. A few others threw punches or pulled my hair: then just rn away went I sent them to the discipline master. It was rather cartoony: they ran as far as they thought was out of my reach, and I had to give their names for punishment later. But overall the Derange-o-Meter still is effective. And kids on average do seem to learning the material. That's the important thing!

A Step Up: the Software Industry vs. Teaching in Cameroon

As it's another rainy night in Bandjoun (we are still in the 9-month-long rainy season), I started thinking about my experience in Peace Corps so far. It has been just shy of 5 months, but I'm feeling that joining Peace Corps has been the most worthwhile thing I have ever done.

To put this in context, I spent 18 years as a software developer, most of it working for a large software company. During that time, I had so many options that I was totally spoiled. Not only did I want for nothing, I never even had to confront difficult issues. I was always interacting with people who were similar to me. Being the software industry, none of us had particularly well-developed social skills, but that was not really a problem because it was easy to find people to agree with. Plus, you didn't have to. Debate is often at the very heart of the creative process: it's the best idea that should win, and the ability to sell an idea doesn't necessarily depend upon the social aptitude of the idea's messenger. (Well, it can and often does, but not when no one around is all that socially adept!)

Needless to say, I also had many options for cuisine and housing and activities. If I didn't like a job, I could move to another one. Or I could start doing different work in my existing job... they usually saw that as "initiative" rather than, oh, say... insubordination. That concept did not exist in practice as long as some sort of results were achieved!

In fact, as a manager, the main problem I had with motivating employees was getting them to do the thing I wanted in the manner I knew it needed to be done. I could just mention something and usually they would have it done in hours or days. If the work was challenging it sold itself. The company rewarded great performance. Again, the only issue was whether I could convince them to write (for example) an object-oriented interface rather than the XML that would have been so much easier though less efficient. Something like that was often pulling teeth, but if the final result worked, no harm no foul from my bosses' perspective.

Even then, I thought my life was way too insular. I found I had little ability to connect with people who were not in the software industry. It was difficult to relate to them or find things to talk about. I also felt completely spoiled by 150 cable channels and access to any product within driving distance. Not to mention (reliable) running water, (reliable) electricity, washing machines, dishwashers, an oven and a hot water heater.

Not so anymore. I don't have any of those things. Plus, I am forced to confront issues I never had to deal with before. I can't escape anyone or any situation that is uncomfortable.

Yet I don't feel the least bit deprived. It's bizarre. For all the problems that exist here, figuring out how to deal with them and seeing the positive result is incredibly rewarding! Probably more so than any technical challenge I ever had in my old world.

I'm teaching computer literacy at the high school in Bandjoun. The high school actually encompasses grades 6-12, so I'm teaching kids between the ages of 12-16 at the moment. Motivating older kids is fairly easy: they understand the connection between success in life and good grades (or rather, paying attention and good grades). So they take notes, pay attention and on average do fairly well on tests. The younger kids (6th and 7th graders - 6me and 5me here) do not make that connection. I tried many things, including rewarding them with time in the computer lab if the class behaved. There were mixed results, initially successful and lately not so much. On Tuesday, it was as if they we were at square one again: most of the students were laughing, running out of the classroom, eating (which is prohibited) and only 2 students out of 60 even raised their hands to answer a question from an assignment they were supposed to have done a week before. It was obvious none of them had done it. They weren't very ashamed of that either (as pictured :)

So I had a long talk with a Cameroonian teacher today for advice. His suggestion: for young kids, give them candy if they answer a question. Geez, that's so obvious. I don't know why I didn't think of it. Another gem: if they're talking in class, make them write a phrase over and over a la Bart Simpson. That will shut them up and punish them, and if its a useful phrase they will learn something at the same time. Classic! Yet if that's what they're used to, it's worth trying.

We had a departmental meeting today, which I was supposed to lead as head of the department. The first one six weeks ago was a bit weird. Mostly I had trouble following the rapid-fire French. Yet I was also frequently reminded that I was supposed to be running the meeting, even though I had no idea what it was supposed to be about. As a result, it lasted 4 hours. That's way too long for my taste! Today, the meeting went incredibly smoothly, clocking 1:30. There was a logical progression, and a plausible solution was proposed for almost every issue raised. I am also proud to report that I understood everything that was said. (Granted, a few things were rephrased at my request.) Plus, we set a date for a social event for the department in two weeks. I'll be hosting at my house. This is great: another bridge is under construction!

The department was also very grateful for the projector I had bought. That was another "aha" moment I had last week. I finally realized that the students were not absorbing the content because they didn't understand it. It wasn't because of my accent, as I had suspected. It was because they have no text books, no photos and no computers at their homes. So how can they be expected to understand words on a chalkboard that have no connection with their lives? How can they understand an optical versus a mechanical mouse if they've never seen a mouse?! OK, maybe they've seen a mouse, but not a tablet PC or a smartphone. Certainly not a mainframe. I thought maybe they could make a connection if they saw pictures and video of these concepts, if not the physical objects.

So last week, I bought a projector in Bafoussam. On Monday I brought both 2nde classes to the computer lab, showed them a PowerPoint presentation interspersed with live and video demos and quizzed them every few slides for review. The subject was the components of a PC. They totally got it. It was wonderful to see.

I had disassembled all the computers, so afterwards I told them they had to apply their new knowledge and put them back together to use them. The classes on average were really happy about this, and nearly all of them were able to assemble the computers successfully. Only 2/20 reversed the mouse and keyboard PS/2 connectors in one of the two classes (I made a special point of that distinction). Only 1 in each class failed to notice the disconnected power cord. Better, I have a feeling they will do much better on the test at the end of this sequence.

The next day, I wanted to use the projector on another class, but to my delight, another teacher had noticed the projector and was already using it. So I observed his class: these same 6me students (12-year-olds) who had been so bad in the classroom were now focused and concentrating because the teacher could show them all exactly what he wanted them to do via the projector! I was both amazed and ecstatic at such fast results.

One final point I want to repeat is that I had been living in a large metropolitan area in the U.S. where there are tons of options. Not so here. But I have found that that's actually better: I have found certain market ladies and business owners with whom I have developed a rapport. You can do that in the U.S., but mostly you're dealing with interchangeable staff at megastores. Or shopping online. Here is the difference: your experience is personal, good or bad. If you develop a rapport with someone, don't even have to bargain. My connections even slip me extra product when I buy something now! One wonderful lady kept a school prop I had left in her store one time for nearly a week. And unlike some other business owners who had asked me to pay a deposit to carry away a glass bottle of pop, she didn't care and just sold me a large bottle for 325 CFA (it's 500 at the hotel even without the deposit!) It's a bit ironic that I, someone who made a career out of automating manual processes and removing the human element from everyday activities, I now prefer human interaction for some of those same activities.

So after only 5 months, I can already summarize my "accomplishments". My resume may have a ton of impressive-sounding technical stuff on it, but these I am valuing more at the moment:

• Relating to others outside my demographic: I'd call this nearly resolved. I'm an introvert and will never be a social butterfly, but I have been able to make friends of many backgrounds in a short period of time.


• Dealing with work-related conflicts: still needs improvement, but much better! I tend to take work-related problems too personally. I'm starting to just go with the flow and take advantage of the wisdom of all the other teachers around.
• Food: never was much of an issue. In the past week, I've made (mostly from scratch) spaghetti with tomato and onion sauce, banana pancakes, rice pilaf with mixed vegetables, homemade potato chips, a potato/green bean/mushroom stew, and carrot salad with vinaigrette dressing. There's a lot of variety to be had with a few ingredients, and I don't miss meat at all.
• Patience with neighbors for nosiness/making noise/asking for gifts+favors: just materialized recently. They're so sweet, take in my laundry when it rains, clean my shoes. I'm even used to the loud music on Saturday mornings - I just put in my ear plugs. (I do wish they'd stop asking me to bring them back to the U.S. though...)
• Feeling isolated: wasn't too bad, but no longer feel that way what with the neighbors coming over to watch Cameroonian videos on my laptop, and so many other PC volunteers.
• Patience at not understanding expectations/rapid French: dramatically increased. The rules and expectations at the high school are starting to make sense. I just had a one hour French course today, and the prof basically told me I didn't need it. I'm really down the slang and rapid/slurred speech (especially spoken by young kids) being difficult. But even then, they are now rephrasing more slowly rather than repeating at the same speed, so I'm now able to understand and pick up new expressions.

In any case, this has been an incomparably rewarding experience and I'm sooo glad I decided to do it.

Some Ornithological Show-n-Tell

DISCLAIMER: the views expressed are my own and not of Peace Corps.

Today I am posting a bit of a multi-media presentation. First, a few bird photos taken in the past week:
This is a handsome (and frisky) male Fire-crowned or Black-winged Bishop, defending his patch of corn on Saturday, October 23, 2010. I think they've gotten used to me and the camera. This one barely moved when we approached, and I was also able to take this video of the same bird!

This is a Fiscal Shrike. They seem to be really common here, but so far fairly camera shy. This one was even calling, but they take off the moment I take notice of them. Oh well, they seem to be getting used to me little by little. And they are still not as shy as...

...African Pied Hornbills. These guys are spectacular (though modest compared to many of the other hornbills in Africa!!) This one was calling loudly and sitting right next to the lycée, but the moment I stopped and took out my camera, he went mute. I was able to capture a short vocalization in my video here.

Other recent bird videos are on YouTube here:

Orange-cheeked Waxbill

Red-cheeked Cordonbleu

WARNING: these videos are not high-quality (to say the least), but they do capture the general experience of birding here in Cameroon. Even plain-looking birds can show surprising flashes of color and/or have beautiful songs. It's also useful to capture the songs for later reference, since birding by ear can be a far more useful skill than birding by eyes alone.

Other news:

• My living room set was delivered on Wednesday afternoon. On a rickety wagon. Pushed/dragged up a hill by one single (and rather slight) man. He asked for a tip, and I really wish I had asked in advance what is appropriate. I only had 400 CFA to give him - and he probably deserved a lot more!!
• I bought a projector to use at the high school. It will be much easier to show students how to do things rather than try to describe it in my still-suboptimal French. We'll see how that goes - it seemed to work on another guy's Terminale class on Friday, so we'll see. My biggest fear is the device getting damaged or stolen since I got the smallest model.
• I'm getting more and more confused about the concept of punctuality at the high school.

For more on the last bullet, here's an example: First, they publish a schedule that says that grades for the first sequence have to be filled out by last Tuesday. Yet on Tuesday afternoon, the report cards are still empty. They each need to be filled out by the professor principal. OK, so after checking on this every day for a week, on Wednesday, the names are finally filled in. However, I am also literally the only person filling in grades. One of the vice principals has also left early, so Thursday afternoon I make a special trip to fill out grades for my last two classes. I notice that I am at this point (2 full days past the "deadline") the 3rd teacher of 15-20 who has filled out any of the report cards.

Then on Friday, the vice principal for my (IT) department catches me, is clearly upset, and tells me that my department is behind and I am the last one to report statistics and I need to get him the department statistics (ie, summary of all grades) by Monday at the very latest. I mean, wtf?! If Friday was the "real" deadline for all work to be completed, they should have written Friday on the schedule in the first place. One of the other professors hadn't even given the final exam to one of his classes yet, so reporting is impossible until he collects, grades and fills out the report cards himself! All that said... being Peace Corps, it's not like you can fired for doing something "wrong", but still... still feeling general weirdness about how to interpret "the rules".

Speaking of weirdness in the extreme, I also heard something I don't ever want to hear again: someone (a Cameroonian) defending corporal punishment in school by saying that's what colonials did to motivate Africans on plantations in the U.S!! J.C... how do you even respond to something like that??

Here's the context: the guy in question was an English teacher who was answering a compliment posed by one of us volunteers, "How do you speak such good English?" His answer was that his own English teachers beat the students if they couldn't conjugate the verb "to be", etc. So he studied hard. Really, really hard, basically just to avoid being beaten.

OK... So I would agree that discipline is a problem here. Probably the biggest problem other than lack of resources. Actually, discipline is arguably worse, since the kids will not share the resources (ie computers) they have, and they often don't behave or study well enough to deserve using them. Hence why I bought a projector: they don't learn anything in the classroom, so they can't do anything in the lab. At least with the projector I can walk them through the assignment step-by-step.

Yet many of the kids (if not most) don't study, don't care, cheat remorselessly, hit, yell, chat with others with their backs completely facing me as I'm trying to teach them... it's as if they accept failure very easily and have no interest in classwork at all. But good God... I think it has been proven by now that beating people into submission is Very Bad Thing, and that positive reinforcement actually works better in the long run. It would not be a good thing to have my 300 students scarred for life by memories of being beaten by a white chick, screaming "Click with the LEFT mouse button!! HOLD DOWN the shift key! TURN OFF CAPS LOCK!!"

I really don't think those kids would end up liking computers very much... :)

Birding and adjusting... 8 October 2010

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are my own and not of Peace Corps. For real.

Bandjoun continues, for better or for worse.

On the upside, at least I finally got a coveted profile shot of a Red-cheeked Cordon-Bleu! This is a female, so of course it lacks the red cheek. They are very common, but are incredibly fast, especially when someone whips out a camera that makes scary noises when it turns on.

Today Cristina and I hit the road to Kamgo for a quick birding trip. The weather cooperated today, overcast for most of it, then very hot while we returned and then *pouring* rain right as Cristina got into the car to go home. Very lucky... except that I had to wait under an awning with many others for the rain to stop.

Since I wrote last I've had more fascinating experiences. First, I was surprised on Monday to learn that there was a seminar I was obligated to attend the following day. The subject: training ICT teachers to teach algorithms and network topology. Well, interestingly those were the two subjects I practiced teaching in model school. But no biggie. It took place at the incredibly large and well-equipped Lycee Classique de Bafoussam. Pictured are their big sports field and fancy-pants computer lab! The latter has actual grounded outlets, non-wobbly benches and Pentium IV computers. No internet or even a LAN though, but it was very impressive. I dug the curtains too... someone spent some time designing that space!












Anyway, I left around noon because I was not feeling so hot and I also felt that I didn't really need the training anyway. The insight offered to teach algorithms was to use an analogy of a quadratic equation. Except that that glossed over the biggest hurdle I personally had... which was that variables are not the same concept in computer science as they are in math. The one issue I had, and they glossed over it and just used a math problem. So I was a bit annoyed that I was missing teaching two classes to go to this thing... which wasn't terribly useful.

Then I was caught in the rain on the way home. It was actually a bit scary: I could see the dark clouds roll in, spewing thunderbolts as they came right toward me. Unfortunately, I was in a part of town where it is nearly impossible to get a car to Bandjoun. I waved down a few, but they just drove off when I said the name of the town. Yikes.

So I tried walking toward the taxi stand, but it was too late. My umbrella blew apart (causing many chuckles from passers-by) and then I ducked into a hardware store to wait out the rain. It did not stop for 1-1/2 hours! I finally darted across the street so I could at least sit in a restaurant/bar. It said it was that. But it was a bar, actually. No food. Darn it! But it was fine - there was a very nice guy there and we chatted. He flagged down a car to get to Marche A and there made sure I found a car to Bandjoun. That was very nice.

What wasn't so nice is that the next morning I woke up with a horrible cold. I was coughing so much, I almost passed out. Even the neighbor remarked on it since she could hear it through the wall all night. So I skipped school Wednesday also. I sent a text message to two members of the administration, and since I didn't hear back I assumed it was OK. I guess that's how it works here!

So then it gets stranger: I got a phone call from a colleague on Saturday morning. He said he heard I was sick. I said yes, but I'm better now. Then he asked if I would be in school on Tuesday. I said yes, why wouldn't I be? I'm in school Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. He said, no - he just heard I was sick, so wondered if I would be there Tuesday. I said Yes. He hung up. No goodbye or anything. Weird.

So then Tuesday, I walk to school. I pass students and teachers. A large group of students is hanging out at the carrefour. I even pass one of the censeurs (vice-principals) who says Hello to me. But when to get to the school, all the doors are padlocked. There is no one there except a smattering of students. I look around, then ask one of them, "What holiday is this?" The reply: "La fete de l'Enseignant" (Teacher's Holiday).

So... no one told me this, everyone assumed I knew. Even the teachers and the vice-principal who passed me, a white foreign teacher *carrying a bookbag* toward the school on a national (not international) holiday assumed I knew this. Wow. I will never complain about poor on-boarding practices in corporate America again.

So I'm still not sure if my colleague was trying to tell me about this fete and I just didn't understand him, or if what I thought I heard was accurate (in which case I assume he ran out of phone credit rather than just hanging up when I said I would be at school on Tuesday). That was just one of several "wtf" moments caused by information someone in the school assumed I already knew:

• That I had to attend a parade on the Fete de l'Enseignant. Apparently I even had a role to play. That would have been nice to know in advance, not the day after when I found out. I didn't even know there was a parade until my neighbor told me (while I was doing laundry)
• What the heck an "Animateur Pedagogique" does (my role in the ICT department) and what the agenda is for a meeting with the department that he/she is supposed to lead
• How clubs are announced and how they are supposed to function. In model school, they were all posted at the same time, no officers were elected, and we winged it with no ill effects. Here, they seem to have elections the first day and notices that announce them (believe it or not) have to be notarized by the censeur!! Stranger, no other clubs have been announced, but the members of my computer club were downright incensed that the notice was posted in only *one* place instead of being announced in person in every class in the school. (Sigh.) I would know this... how??
• That tests are at the end of sequence, every 6 weeks. I guess that's why the students of one class were so annoyed about being given a quiz (which I only gave when absolutely none of them did their homework).
• What the heck people are saying when they speak slang at break-neck speed. And then they get offended or groan when I don't understand them. Give me a break.

Well, anyway... it's all the continuation of this major adjustment. I guess they only get a new volunteer every two years, and everything is nationalized so Cameroonian teachers all know these rules already. Yet after speaking with other volunteers, it seems like every experience is very different. Only the ICT teachers posted in Lycee Classiques in Francophone regions have to teach in French: a small percentage of us. I haven't found anyone else expected to head a 4-person department and maintain a computer lab to boot.

The expectations of teachers are so high: we seem to be expected to carry themselves a certain way, speak and understand French perfectly, know the subject and how to make students relate to it (which I'm finding incredibly hard, given that I can't relate to THEM). I have to wonder if they are too high, especially for someone with (as seems typical for Peace Corps volunteers) no teaching background.

It will work out, I'm sure. Meanwhile, I should finally get my living room set on the 20th. I can't wait: I feel like I'm living in a cave, with only a bed and a table!

OK, back to birding. Here are a couple more photos from this morning's birding adventures. The first is of a Singing Cisticola. He did sing beautifully! The second is an African Blue Flycatcher, a gorgeous little guy that I've even had in my yard once.

Til next time...

Batie birding 13-Sept

DISCLAIMER: the views expressed are my own and not that of Peace Corps.

There won't be much content to this post. Suffice it to say that I had an enjoyable 4 day weekend! I only have class Monday through Wednesday mornings (with the intention that I will work in the computer lab in the afternoon or Thursday/Friday). I left Wednesday right after class intending to return Thursday, yet there was a power outage Thursday, and then school (and everything else) was closed for the end of Ramadan on Friday. The announcement only came on Friday morning. So it was a very relaxing impromptu long-weekend!


On Sunday, I was back in Batie to do more birding with Cristina. Since the previous trip was a spectacular success, we decided to try it again, taking different routes. We saw more Guinea Turacos right away, along with a few squirrels. I have no idea what kind of squirrel, but it was cool to see a wild mammal for a change!

Actually, looking in my Audubon guide to African wildlife, it looks like they could have been Gambian Sun Squirrels. They were gray, spotty and had short ears.


Pictured is the ubiquitous Dark-capped Bulbul. That was probably the least interesting bird of the day, but it was the only one the instamatic camera I'm using decided to focus on... Two exciting lifebirds of the day were the Yellow-spotted Barbet (one bird sitting in shade and calling softly) and the Green-backed Woodpecker. Those were only the second barbet and the second woodpecker species of this journey!


Only one raptor though (a Common Kestrel being harrassed by a much larger Pied Crow!), and no migrants (yet). Very slim pickin's this time.


As for other things, I must say the scenery was gorgeous. On the left is the tree in which I first noticed the male Green-backed Woodpecker. There was another turaco bit further down the trail.

The trail was also extremely steep and muddy. I'm not sure how we got up and down it!




Wildflowers here are amazing. First and foremost because they attract birds (notably sunbirds).

And some are just plain beautiful in their own right. These look like lilies you could find in a nursery or as a potted plant. Other "house" plants I've seen growing wild here include Poinsettias, Dieffenbachia, many types of orchids, mangos, guavas, avocado, and pineapple. I'm not really up on plants, so I'm sure there are many fascinating species I have missed through ignorance!!

I just liked this picture because I think it reflects very well what the rural parts of this area are like. It's heavily cultivated (hardly an inch remains here), there are non-native eucalyptus trees planted at left for wood and erosion control, a "moto" (the default transportation, it seems) waits to be used along a red-dirt trail. And that red dirt/dust gets everywhere, and is very hard to wash out by hand.

Still, there is a certain beauty and tranquility in this scene. It was very quiet on this trail: bird song was the only thing we could hear for much of this trek. The hills just roll on and on, and get more and more beautiful.

This is Cristina photographing some local kids. At first, they were sort of curiously following us and shouting "la blanche!" ("white woman!") as nearly everyone does here for some reason. But then we started talking to them, and they shyly let us take their picture. Very cute moment!

And finally, I just love Red-cheeked Cordon-Bleus that are found all over the West, but they and my camera have not cooperated. These two photos should represent Bigfoot-like evidence of their existence here. You can clearly see there is a bird with a lot of sky-blue on it, and the little splotch on the cheek is supposed to be red! They really are beautiful (I assure you!!)

Week 3 in Bandjoun

DISCLAIMER: the views expressed are my own and not of Peace Corps.

So as not to completely discriminate against other wildlife here in Cameroon, I decided to post a couple of pictures of animals that are not birds! Both are from Bafia since I haven't managed to get one of the incredible butterflies here in Bandjoun to hold still! At left is one of the grasshoppers that used to hang around the house we used for training. The amazing pattern and green/yellow color on these guys really blew our minds when we first noticed them.

The second exhibit is what thanks to the BBC website I now know is a Common Agama Lizard. I was calling this a rainbow lizard since it's not in my African wildlife book. It's not a very good picture since they were very skittish... but that was another example of the incredible biodiversity here. There are also all kinds of organisms that aren't quite so nice (schistosomiasis, filariasis, malaria, etc. etc.) yet it's all part of the tropical ecosystem!

This week, I managed to get 65% of the computers in the lab working, plus internet and the printer operational. Then a hard disk crashed on one of those that had been working. Oh well. It's amazing that they work at all: they are PIIs and PIIIs mostly with Windows 2000 stickers on their cases. The power was blinking about every 5 minutes at one point, causing all of them to reboot. I'm happy we have as many working as do at this point!

Two of us volunteers also found a nice hike here in Bandjoun - actually near a tiny village called Kamgo. It's a short walk up avery steep hill, but it quickly levels off and has some amazing scenery. The camera battery was dead, unfortunately, but to describe it: the road follows a ridge, and you can see first Bandjoun nestled in a valley, then you see green hills rolling one after another without a house or field in sight. Plus, I managed to add one more year bird: a Black-shouldered Kite! This little raptor was kiting for us along the road, and even sat long enough to let me take a picture with Lindsey's camera.

There was some standard fair (though gorgeous birds) up there: Northern Double-collared Sunbirds, Fire-crowned Bishops, Baglafecht Weavers. En route, we even found magnificent Black-and-White Casqued Hornbills and another Guinea (Green) Turaco! It seems that you just need to get a few hundred yards away from any population of people, and the great birds just fall out of the sky. Literally!

Back to reality... tomorrow is the first day of school at the high school. I will be teaching two blocks of 2-hour classes for the Seconde level (equivalent of 10th grade). I don't have a text book or a scheme of work (yet), so the plan is to do introductions, outline the classroom rules and do some high-level review what they (should) already know. According to the syllabus, they should know stuff like basic network architecture, how to do binary math, and how to format text in Word. This year they will learn how to use Windows commands, basic preventative maintenance tasks, hardware and software architecture, and what computer science consists of. It's definitely my hope that that program will be as much fun for them as for me, but... well...

A few more bird photos

I found one advantage to the grainy bird photos I'm taking: they are VERY fast to upload over this slow internet connection. But that's about it. I am seriously thinking of how I can have my nice camera sent over here from the States!

One thing that deserves mention is that at my house here in Bandjoun, I have a couple of resident Blue-shouldered Robin Chats. I think they're just gorgeous (black/rufous with a bit of sky blue on the shoulders), and not too shy either. One was just singing at dusk this evening from a wire, and then swooped in to land right in a yellow-flowering bush in front of me! In Bafia, I only saw them during early morning hours, and they did not sing at all. Here is one I photographed early morning near the building where we had Peace Corps training in Bafia. I have not been quick enough here in Bandjoun to get the photo, but I'm working on it!

Another species I did not see in Bafia but have a lot of here in Bandjoun is the Baglafecht Weaver. They are also a bit skittish, and the only photo I have taken is this rather blurry one. It doesn't look much like the field guide other than the black mask and yellow eye, but between my two books and process of elimination, I am fairly confident in this ID.

It has been overcast, so between that and my digital zoom, it has been challenging to get decent photos of birds!




(Many) thanks to Cristina, here are some of the African Gray Parrots that were hanging out by the lycee in Bafia. That morning, there were three in this Acacia tree on my street, and three in the treetops of another Acacia across the street, and this photos is about the best one that came out. At least, they look like parrots more than just blurry spots! You can *almost* make out the red tail on the one on the left.

On more work-related topics... today I managed to get one more computer in working order... ironically by removing the A/V software that was using 100% of the 32 MBs of memory! I shudder at just about every component of that sentence. I also got the server connecting to the internet, another outlet installed and a couple of UPSes working. Better than that, I managed to find a good/affordable electrician I will definitely use again.

I still have one more box to fix tomorrow, and a few more to scavenge after that. I need to try to piece together at least 4 more functioning computers out of 6 already-parted-out boxes: the 6 that are PIIIs (the best available in the pile of non-functioning stuff). I've been given the goal to have 30 functioning computers by the beginning of school on Monday, and I am only 50% there right now. There is a pending shipment of 10 new (donated) PCs that should come next week. So fingers crossed on that! I'm not sure what kind of miracle I can pull out from a pile of dusty computers with Windows 98 stickers on them.

On another note, I did finally break down and buy a gas canister for 30.000 CFA... Tonight, I enjoyed steamed rice with green beans/carrots/onions and sweet and sour sauce (made from mango juice). I made spaghetti with fresh tomato/onion sauce a few nights ago, and scrambled eggs and hash browns this morning. So I think it was worth it!

More on birding in Batie

As mentioned in my previous post, I went birding Sunday morning for a few hours with Cristina, another Peace Corps volunteer in the nearby town of Batie. This was an amazing experience. We did not know where to begin, so we just took a dirt road leading behind Cristina's house. Yet it yielded 10 lifebirds in around 3 hours, and some wonderful looks at scenery and some exotic birdlife. We may have even heard monkeys in the distance at one point!

The beginning was very much like Bandjoun (or what little I've seen of the Western Province so far): Red-cheeked Cordon-Bleus, Common/Orange-cheeked/Black-crowned Waxbills, Village/Spectacled/Dark-backed/Baglafecht Weavers, Narrow-tailed Starlings and the ubiquitous Pied Crow. Cristina's neighbor Billy started to follow and point out these birds, and suddenly said there was a "red bird". This turned out to be a brilliant male Fire-crowned Bishop who scared up some Red-headed Queleas. We had seen those before. Yet following the bishop to the other side of the road, I noticed a pair of striking black and red birds in a treetop, sporting very reptilian-looking bills: Double-toothed Barbets! That was my first lifebird of the day.

The second came moments later when I spotted a few tiny black and white birds, which turned out to be White-bellied Tits.

Billy started trying to call us some perdri, or partridges. We did see a Double-spurred Francolin shortly after that, but I was more interested in a bright green and red bird that darted from tree to tree: I decided it had to be a trogon, but which one? I started to hear the call, and unsuccessfully called back to try to draw it out. But later upon listening to recordings, decided it must have been a Bar-tailed Trogon.

While doing that, we managed to scare up a Gray-green Bush Shrike, a striking bird in the native growth that peppered the cultivation in this area. By now, we were close to the bottom of a small valley in which there was a belt of riverine habitat. So the birds were getting better. This is where I first noticed a Green Turaco, quietly observing us from a treetop! Very exciting, especially when it flew from branch to branch, exposing the brilliant red wings.

The trail became more and more narrow and slippery, but we decided to push on when we found a Black-headed Tchagra, a handsome shrike that responded to my pishing near the stream! A few sunbirds, including the iridescent blue/green/red/purple Splendid Sunbird, even stayed long enough for us to admire them!

We were apprehensive about descending to the river, partially because of the treacherous trail but also out of fear of snakes... but we pushed on, tempted by all the bird songs we were hearing! After crossing, we managed to find a Senegal Coucal (very common), White-chinned Prinias (seen before), more sunbirds and some Black-and-white (or Bicolored) Mannakins... but we were finally rewarded when a brilliant blue bird landed at the top of a tree in the photo above: it was a Splendid Glossy Starling! Later, a few more joined. I was thrilled since as previously noted, I had come up short on colorful starlings to that point!

A bit later, I noticed a Gray-crowned Black Finch in the undergrowth by a small farm. It disappeared quickly, but was very striking by the gray crown and black underparts - most likely a female since it had very few spots on the underparts.

By this point we were hungry, so we turned around. But after crossing the stream again, we found two more Green Turacos, one which flew flashing its brilliant red wings, and a second that posed for us on a branch for a few moments just at eye level. At this point, we heard what we thought might have been monkeys in the distance.

As always, a few birds went unidentified. There was some sort of cuckoo-like call. A different low hooting (which started slow and accelerated a bit like a western screech owl) may have been something interesting, but the bird itself eluded us. There were a few nondescript brownish birds as well which may have been early migrants or juveniles of some sort. Two of the more distinctive ones I identified as a Leaflove and a Little Greenbul.

Many birds were gathering nesting material, and the whydahs (Pin-tailed, Red-collared, Yellow-shouldered) were showing enthusiastic mating behavior. The Pin-tailed Whydah in particular put on a great show, flying around and landing on banana leaves while pursuing a couple of females. Another great day of birding here in Cameroon!!

End of first week at Post

DISCLAIMER: the views expressed are my own and not that of Peace Corps

Milestone! As of today, I have been at post here in Bandjoun for one full week. It has been a fun and interesting week as I've been able to furnish my house (more or less), hang out with other volunteers in the West, meet some of the people I'll be working with, and start getting the computer lab at the school in order. I don't have any new photos to post, but I wanted to get some initial impressions down.

First, the computer lab at the high school: I first saw it in early July when I just walked through and saw a huge pile of broken monitors in a corner, and 28 PCs all set up - 10 connected to a network. I thought that was great. Then on Tuesday, I returned to the school to meet the principal and find out my class schedule. The latter wasn't ready (though they told me I would be teaching 6, 5 and 2 - the equivalent of 6th, 7th and 10th grade in the US system), so the proviseur gave me the keys to the lab and wanted me to start putting it in order right away. So I briefly tried each machine and found that the vast majority had issues ranging from broken mice and/or keyboards to having bad hard drives or not booting. There was a printer in the server room that responded to a print request, but ejected a blank piece of paper. Toner was 0% on both cartridges! The modem that is supposed to connect the network to the internet did not respond at all. So I decided to return later and inventory the whole situation.

So that was Wednesday: over 8 hours, I managed to fix 15/28 of the computers to the point where they would at least start and run Word and Excel, in some cases scavenging parts from the other 13 broken boxes. The others I relegated to a pile sorted by make and model and plan to part them out later on. Today, I went to Bafoussam to try to get some RAM for a 16th machine that will not start or even run Windows setup because it only has 32 MB presently! I tried to find toner for the printer, but I may need to order it: the shop I went to didn't seem to have that particular type in stock, but there are more shops to check I suppose.

So... with around 11 days til school starts, I have some things in order, and a lot of work left to do. I haven't even started lesson planning yet, though I have already decided to spend a bit of time on keyboarding and security. Only one box has AV software (and thanks to it is too slow to be usable) and I also noticed that that free product didn't detect the viruses that are actually present in the lab(!!) Curses to whoever wrote Tazebama and its kin. t

Sadly, my USB key also got infected while I was using it to fix the lab machines. That gave me a scare, but thankfully the AV product I was using on my laptop caught the problems right away and I was able to fix them manually.

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I've already been to Bafoussam probably 4 times in the last week. It's surprisingly easy to get around, as long as you're going between the center of Bandjoun and anywhere on the road to Marche A. You just grab a taxi in Bandjoun, and 10 minutes later you're in the market. My postmate was kind enough to show me around on Saturday so I could get some stuff in the "Frip" (not sure if that's the spelling), a more informal market area behind the main market in the center of town. You can get pretty much anything there, mostly used stuff, and all obtainable really cheap if you bargain aggressively.

Now that part is very hard: I got a guy down to 5,000 CFA for a blanket, but my postmate's reaction was so indignant ("more like 1,000!" she muttered at him), I just walked off and got a similar blanket for 3,000 across the way. They seem to start at least 4x the actual price, but there's also a "foreigner price" aspect you can't detect if you're new at this, as we all are. I still haven't quite figured out the bargaining thing. I just know you lowball, seem disinterested and be prepared to walk away. It's exactly like buying a car, only doing that exact dickering for every item you need in your life (other than most food) - ugh. At least you don't have to sign papers or talk to the manager.

Marche A is really impressive, especially after spending 11 weeks in the residential part of Bafia! It's almost like a mall in the sheer volume of people, stores and stuff you can get there. We walked through a hundred yards of shops selling electronics, then a long stretch of housewares, then clothing, then pagne, and it just goes on and on like that. Most of it is at least partially covered, though the passages between them are generally open-air.

Even neater than that is sitting in a sidewalk bar or restaurant, and the street vendors come up to you, one after another, selling any type of merchandise that can be carried. Here's a list of stuff I've seen sold by wandering vendors: men's suits, children's shoes, bras and panties (not kidding), screwdrivers and hammers, cigarettes, toilet paper, tissues, sunglasses, watches, jewelry, and many, many items of food: peanuts, popcorn, shish kebabs, cooked potatoes, fried plaintains, bread, beignets, "plums" (a meaty purple relative of avocadoes). Who needs to go out when you can drink a beer or a coke and the salesmen come to you??

Overall, tis has been a rewarding and fun experience already. How else can you have this type of adventure, other than being given a difficult job with limited means in an exotic country, with a tiny amount of money and a near-empty house to furnish?

Bandjoun photos (and a couple from Bafia)

DISCLAIMER 1: the views expressed are my own and not of Peace Corps
DISCLAIMER 2: apologies for the poor photo quality - my good camera is back in the states!

I thought I would post a couple of photos from Bafia of a couple of very common birds, especially since I haven't seen them here in Bandjoun yet. The Mosque Swallow (at left) looks and behaves like a large pale Barn Swallow, though in flight they are bulky and have red rumps. In Bafia, they were often hanging around treetops and utility wires. Other aerial birds I saw in the residential quarter included the blue-and-white Ethiopian Swallows, long-tailed Palm Swifts, white-rumped Little Swifts and all-black Square-tailed Sawwings. Here in Bandjoun, I have seen Little Swifts and Ethiopian Swallows so far, and a possible Banded Martin back in early July.



The Speckled Mousebird deserves mention also: they are common in Bafia, but reaaally cute. They often hung upside-down from branches, and seemed to curl up together. The kids in my environmental club called it the sauve-souris. Usually they are in medium-sized trees and banana plants, though this particular one was sitting on the stone wall next to my host house family's house, which was lined with broken glass... ouch!



I also saw this species in South Africa, so it seems very common and wide-spread on the continent.


Fiscal Shrikes seem to be fairly common here in Bandjoun. This species was the first that I saw when I arrived for site visit: there were two on the wires right in my yard when we pulled up! Later, I saw a pair feeding a baby opposite the Hotel de Ville, and I just found this one this morning in a tree next to the house. I also heard its call for the first time, and it was a bit harsher than I expected.

This is not a great angle, but essentially they are elegant, average-sized black and white shrikes.

Moving on, I am still amazed by how many birds here in Cameroon are incredibly colorful and/or have spectacular tails. Many of the male whydahs have these long trains while the females are usually drab and brown! The photo below is of a male Red-collared Widowbird (or whydah) which I saw for the first time in my yard just yesterday!


There seems to be a pair hanging around, since I noticed the female on the road this morning. This male was kind enough to pose for a bit here around 9am on the 21st of August.

That's all for now. Hasta luego (pardon... a tout a l'heure)!

Au revoir, Bafia!

DISCLAIMER: the views expressed are my own and not that of Peace Corps.

Today, I wanted to take the opportunity to finally blog about the training, the people and the town of Bafia itself.

Bafia is a medium-sized town in the Central province of Cameroon, around 2-1/2 hours west of Yaounde. It has a busy central district and a rather rural residential quarter where we are holding our “Stage” or Peace Corps training. The picture on the left is a square close to the Prefecture and several other government buildings. This view is not really indicative of the town (though there are some really nice spots here, including an adorable bar/restaurant with wicker furniture, umbrellas and a palm-tree setting that would rival any vacation spot). This is a square recently built to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cameroon's independence, and it's near the residential quarter.

Our Peace Corps training began in early June, and will finally end on Wednesday the 18th of August. That will be our swearing-in ceremony. For all intents and purposes, we are done with training as of Friday, but we are now packing and sorting out all the loose ends.

I am personally in the Education program, meaning in my case that I will be teaching Computer Literacy in a high school in Bandjoun. To prepare for that two-year assignment, I had French language training and 5 weeks of “model school” in which I taught IT classes in French to real Cameroonian students. The process was the same as for any other high school: I gave lectures as well as lab practice, gave and graded assignments, gave a final exam and final grades to the students. We had many technical sessions before this to prepare us for doing this. After model school finished, I participated in a lengthy process of filling out report cards and calculating the class averages, best in class, etc. The closing ceremony of model school a week later was attended by local officials and media, and small prizes were given to the top two students in each class. One of my students was interviewed on television since he won the top marks in every subject (in spite of being only 10 years old in the equivalent of an 8th grade class!)

During training, it was very important to start integrating with the community right away, and also to start using and practicing the local language. We all stayed with host families to help with the integration process. Since we were in a Francophone region, we were all initially encouraged to use French among ourselves and with our host families. My host family consisted of a retired couple and some of their grandchildren who are staying with them either permanently or temporarily. At one point I counted 9 individuals staying in the house besides me, yet it never felt crowded. The house was more spacious than it appears from the outside!

There was only one bathroom, however, and that consisted of an outdoor latrine with two entrances. The left was for the parents and me while the right was for everyone else. However, no one felt comfortable using one side if the other side was occupied. That made for some anxious waiting at times!

The father of the family held church services in his home four times per week. These were Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening (5-7) and Sunday morning (roughly 9:30-12). The services consisted of a lot of joyful singing and percussion accompaniment. At times, I chose to stay out later with other volunteers, and that was fairly easy to do. Our curfew was 7pm, the nearest bar/hangout was 10 minutes away, and that was approximately when it became too dark to see anymore!

My host father was also a retired school teacher. He was always very anxious and willing to help with my training projects and language training. For example, I interviewed him for a cross-cultural project on religion in which he shared with me that he had been Catholic and switched to a non-denominational faith because the Catholics discouraged reading the Bible and he felt much of the doctrine was created at the Council of Nicea long after the events happened. When asked what he thought of the proliferation of religions in Cameroon, he thought about it a while and then concluded that poverty was the reason. With the lack of public options for social security here, he felt that churches fill that role in this community.

At the end of June, following language assessment and an interview, we were assigned our posts. These were based on both our skills and preferences, compared with the needs of the post itself. Each of us then had the opportunity to see our posts first hand - very exciting to see the location where we'll be living for the next two years. First, we met our counterparts, host country nationals who are members of the community in which we will be staying, and who personally accompanied us to our posts and would be responsible for us during our visit. At left is the meeting in which we met our counterparts for the first time, and then had break-out sessions to brainstorm how to deal with cross-cultural challenges that would arise.

Afterwards, we got on a bus to Bafoussam, and after a short two hour ride I had the opportunity to see Bandjoun for the first time. It was quite different from what I had seen of Cameroon! Both Yaounde and Bafia are fairly tropical: humid, lush and full of interesting birds. Bandjoun was up in the mountains enough that the air was cooler and dryer, the forests consisted of eucalyptus trees (imported/planted of course), and the avifauna was a bit plainer. Fiscal Shrikes sat on the wires in place of the colorful Little Bee-eaters, for example. What I was able to see of the town was very nice: I saw my rental house, which sat atop a hill from which I could see some montane scenery and beautiful traditional houses in the distance.

The house itself had two bedrooms and two pieces of furniture: a bed and a dining room table. And wooden chairs also. My predecessor had lived there and left a lot of used clothes (many times to small for me) and books. I did appreciate the Simpsons book in French! The power was out frequently, and the water was not running the entire four days I was there, so reading the Simpsons book was a great diversion. Also, the town was only a 5-10 minute walk, and it had everything one would need other than perhaps a 7-11. Though there’s a wooden shack – no other way to describe it - on the corner that takes the place of a convenience store. You can get cigarettes, whiskey sachets (yes, plastic bags of whiskey for the equivalent of $0.20), fresh baguettes, chocolate spread, bleach, soap, and several other common household items.

My counterpart (whose name is Stella) is an English teacher at the high school. She was very helpful, taking me to meet officials and showing me the high school. She encouraged me to try the local cuisine also: beef foot soup (bouillon de patte de boeuf). When I ordered for myself the next today, I took the rice and meat, which is typically in a rich tomato-based sauce. That was delicious, though I was not a big fan of hoof soup.

Returning, I felt very comfortable in Bafia. Bandjoun was a bit cold, and I welcomed the warm humidity of the central region at that time. As the weather warms up at the end of the rainy season, I am now having doubts! I am now looking forward to cold rain (just like back home in Seattle…)

I should mention that my host family was awesome! That’s Alexia, a university student and granddaughter with her own baby at left. The family kept an extremely clean house. They had the meals out early for me, and reheated them if I was late. At various times without my asking they boiled my water, (re)did my laundry, filled large buckets from the well so I could do laundry, swept my room, and made my bed. I had to tell them to stop doing those things because I needed to practice doing them myself!

Only regret is that I could not practice cooking because they didn’t have a kitchen. They only had a fire pit over which they cooked everything. But I think I can handle cooking with the gas stove I have at post. Washing red mud out of my clothes by hand will be an interesting part of life in Bandjoun that I am probably not yet prepared for.

I also want to talk about the Peace Corps staff and other volunteers. The language trainers were very patient and helpful. Although the training at times seemed disorganized, it came together and I feel pretty well prepared for my two years.

I am also impressed with my colleagues, who are by and large mature, well-educated, socially-conscious and adventurous. In fact, it’s humorous for me to watch the interactions between these personalities and the Peace Corps admins, who struggle to get people to follow rules: a 7pm curfew, one beer per day (!), letting PC know every time you leave your house, etc. It sometimes seems like the idea of following rules would be opposed to the personality of someone who would sign up for Peace Corps. But I digress, and that is of course only my own viewpoint - by and large, everyone is conscientious and here to make a difference, not to make waves!

But here we go. Thursday I will start a two year assignment in Bandjoun. I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be, so bring it on.