more on food...

This is "achoo." It is a specialty of the Northwest Region in Cameroon. It's pounded tapioca mixed into a paste with "yellow soup" as a sauce, and there is lots of palm oil involved. Taxi drivers will end their day craving achoo, babies grow up eating achoo, grandmothers eat plates spilling over with this heavy, thicker-than-mashed-potatoes goo. You get the picture... people love this stuff and grow up on it. In my opinion, you either love it or you hate it. You eat it with 3 fingers on your right hand. Be careful not to rupture the nicely formed pocket that holds all the oily, salty & tasty goodness, or you'll get stared at from seasoned achoo-eaters. In the pic above, it's served with a piece of grilled chicken and a strip of cow... something.

bagel & chai

Behold a picture of my breakfast. They have BAGELS in Foumban!! Or, if you're not convinced, it was at least soft yummy bread that resembled a bagel in shape. Meera, Mackenzie and I attended the Ngoun Festival in Foumban, and we were led to a hole-in-the-wall chai tea place for breakfast. It was delicious. You can get a "bagel" for 100 francs and "chai" (i.e. 90% sweetened condensed milk) for the same price. Food is in "quotations" because it is slightly different in Cameroon, but it doesn't make it less good. Plus, we had to descend these stairs to reach it which made it more of an adventure...

festival ngoun

feast of the ram

On Wednesday Nov. 17, Muslims celebrated the Eid, the feast of the ram. It is also called "Tabaski," to remember when Abraham sacrificed a ram instead of his son Isaac. Classes were cancelled for the holiday so a carpenter named Jibo took me, Jacquline & another Peace Corps volunteer named Tim around for the festivities. The day started with morning prayers, people cooked and ate with friends and family all day. I celebrated it in Senegal two years ago with my host family, but this time was different, it was much more colorful & vibrant... and included a horse festival.


I went up to the village of Sabga to watch the prayers which took place next to a breath-taking view of the mountains. Most of the villagers in this village are Fulfulde and are herders. After prayers, everyone walked to the mosque and watched the horse festival, where riders raced across the square and made their steeds jump and prance. The audience cheered for the most showful riders, and horses were adorned from head-to-toe in neon yarn and fabric. Then... came the slaughter and roasting of the ram. I spent Tabaski with two different families that day. Do you like the grill? And the little boy in charge? It was one memorable feast!

happy thanksgiving

Jacqueline & I in front of our house.

This month has flown by and it's Thankgiving already. Sorry I have been neglecting this blog but hey, Happy Turkey Day... or rather Chicken Day! For me, there will not be turkey, but a roasted half chicken Jacqueline and I ordered from a local restaurant. We are celebrating with our own accompaniments of mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, njama njama vegetables (bought ready-made from a local bar or "food mommy").

Since we're on food, this is the local food I've been having:
fried plantain dodo
boiled plantains with tomato sauce
eru and water fufu
ndole (bitter leaf)
vegetable njama njama with corn fufu
fried grasshoppers
rice and meat/tomato stew
beans and puff puff (fried beignets)
achu (mashed white beans with palm oil sauce)
scotch eggs
fish pies
spicy pepper soup with yams
meat tripe (which they call "towel")
grilled fish with "baton de manioc" (a stick of tapioca)
sugar-coated groundnuts
local produce: avacados, bananas, papaya, tomatoes, eggs, oranges, pineapple
soya (grilled meat killed that morning)

I will try to get some pictures of the food up later. I tried baking with a dutch oven, since we don't have an actual oven. What I did was put a baking tray on top of a little can inside of a large pot, and heated it covered on our gas stove top. I made white chocolate and cranberry scones. According to Jacqueline, they were more like cookies but I think she was being nice. They were more like rocks. But they tasted good if you ate them fresh, drizzling some sweetened condensed milk and sipping some hot lemon green tea. It was a luxury- creating an afternoon home-away-from-home. However baking here is more of a hassle than not, so it won't happen again for a while, haha.

graduation

There are moments that can define our entire experience and make us think, it was all worth it. This past Friday was one of those moments that will be hard for me to forget- it was graduation for the first batch of 500 level students at ENS! It was incredible to be there in all the anticipation & festivities.

It was the middle of November, but better a little late than never! These graduates will be sent off as teachers in secondary schools with a government contract of 10 years. I sat there in the stands facing a sea of robes, soaking in all of the proud parents, the triumphant students, the paparazzi and and speeches. This is what it must feel to work in education :)

classroom culture

I have been swimming in a sea of fluidity on campus. The key word is: flexibility. I've definitely had to flex it here many times with a fluctuating time table, which means the school schedule changes. For example, I had scheduled a discussion on Thursday at 12pm but another professor suddenly scheduled his class at that hour, so my discussion was apparently canceled without my knowing. Classes are still being added on and starting a month into the school year. How do they do it?

The location of classes changes daily as students and teachers try to claim a classroom, meaning you need to get to class EARLY. Or... students arrive 30 min. early to eventually wait around long enough to discover that the professor has shown up an hour "late." There are both worlds on this campus- one is early while another is late. The rest of the student body (including my baffled self) is left waiting.

Classes nominate "class coordinators" who pass information to the rest of the class when they find out things from the teacher, like a change of time/location. They are in charge of documents that need to be photocopied for class, collecting money so people who want a copy get one. Everyone is part of the huge grape vine to transfer information, either by word of mouth, or phone calls, but most likely the first. Like today I was told, "There is a rumor that there may not be classes on Thursday so people can clean up the campus for graduation on Friday." Ooh... how did you find out? I'm always curious to know. Or at 5 minutes prior, "Did you know about the staff meeting today?"

Yes, culture shock. I thought I was used to African time, and rationalized it in my head. But it is tough when I am actually going through it.

Classes share classrooms. It can get very loud with large lecture halls and concrete walls. On Monday I shadowed a research class that wandered around for 30 min. before finding a space to settle down. The lecturer found a classroom large enough with three sections of desks with descending stairs towards the front. A Computer Science class was taking place on the left side of the room, and the English lecture took place on the right side. The English prof was walking up and down the stairs to talk over the noise and repeating herself twice in order for the upper section & lower section to hear.

This can be frustrating yet I know I cannot be here simply to groan. It's just the fact that some things happen, some things eventually happen, and some things never happen. It's life, no? But on the same token there are things that should and need to happen that are put in a pile labeled "TO DO EVENTUALLY." I'm still attempting to go with the flow, with a lot of endurance and patience. The whole community is finding ways to keep moving on and somehow the system holds together. Flexin' it, until next time.

hold your breath...

it's almost.... loaded... okay. Finding working Internet and constant power was an uphill battle the past few days. I was only able to upload one photo, so here it is! This was taken from the village of Sabga, 20 minutes away from Bambili further up the mountainside. Jacqueline and I took a hike one weekend and saw a 360 panoramic view of this. More pics later, when the internet is up to speed :)

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Jacqueline & I went hunting for waterfalls. This is one we found off the side of the road.

A closer look... the water seems to appear from nowhere.

Typical transportation around here = a moto. Peace Corps Volunteers are required to wear their helmet at all times, at risk of being sent home if caught without it. It goes to show how safe riding these things are... which is not very, as you can probably guess. I've seen motos carrying 3 grown men (and more if they're children), or curled up foam mattresses, baskets of chickens, stacks of eggs or luggage, zooming past taxis and swerving to avoid murky potholes. Women clutch their bags to their chests, tuck in their knees and hang on for dear life. These motos spurt uphill or coast downhill on winding roads, tooting their horns. vroom vroom.

gratitude

I've been in Bambili for a week and let me tell you, it's beautiful. Incredible. I really can't do the place justice with adjectives so I'll have to describe it. On the walk to school I see a waterfall. Around the campus there are rolling green hills and taller mountains here and there. On the road I see bright yellow birds, blue birds and gray birds with a twinge of red flitting back and forth among hibiscus flowers, mango trees and palms.

The next village up the road called Sabga has herders leading their cows to graze along the hills and 3 more waterfalls along the way. Women were washing clothes in the brook which flow from the waterfalls and I spotted houses, fields of crops and horses along the higher rims of the hills.

I walk uphill for 10 minutes from my house to ENS campus (Ecole Normale Superior) on a red earth road that has taxis and motos waiting at the intersection to take people upwards and inwards, leaving behind a black puffs of exhaust. (Breathing that, not so enjoyable but it all fades into the clear blue sky and cool mountain air.) People say here in Bambili, there will be "no problem" and that has been true. I am well taken care of, I feel accepted and people greet newcomers with a, " You're welcome."

It rains almost daily so people tend to carry umbrellas with them whever they go but dry season is approaching, which means the grasshoppers will also be arriving. It is very chilly in the morning and at night. I enjoy the rumble of thunder and the pounding of rain on tin roofs, so I like to sit outside a lot on the terrace. That's where I chill with my housemate, Jacqueline, who is a Peace Corps volunteer, 50+, a grandmother, and has an adventurous spirit yet pratical and down to earth. She's half French, half Cherokee Indian, and lives in Sweden. Truly, America is a melting pot shown by the mix of people here... and I have to explain sometimes that yes, "I am American and Chinese. I am both." Jacqueline teaches Chemistry at ENS and for her, and the million other ways she has made my transition here much eaiser, I am so grateful.

I am getting the hang of pidgin, actually more like learning the rhythms of it, trying to catch the English words I can understand and piecing conversations together. It is the language of the street, the market, of the home. It is not allowed at the university for obvious reasons and a big sign reminds students of it. The extent of my comprehension include: "Afternoon. How?" (Good afternoon, how are you?) "This expensive na." "Cheap-o." "Chop." (food) "Man hand side (right side) "woman hand side" (left side) and "plenty, plenty." I've a long way to go to learn the lingo but this is an Anglophone region, so people generally speak and understand English.

The rhythm of life here starts at the break of dawn (5:30am) when children get ready for school and people get ready for work. So my night ends early around 10:30pm and I go to bed. The rhythm of the university is a bit more uncertain. Some professors arrive an hour early to find no students, and some students arrive an hour early to find their professor has not come for the day. There are no assigned classrooms, which makes the first few weeks of school more difficult and definitely frustrating for first year students and new professors. Today I shadowed a 400-level English class and 4 students showed up out of 40. 10%! But this is how things roll at the start of the semester.

My first English discussion will be this Thursday, and students I've spoken to seem very interested. I hope it goes well! I can't believed things have turned out smoothly thus far and I feel incredibly blessed. Jacqueline said that there are some people you are bound to meet in an exact place that is just too perfect to be coincidence. Some people are just meant to cross your path. I say this because Jacqueline's friend Allison, another Peace Corps volunteer visited this past weekend. Turns out, she graduated from University of Illinois in 2009 and worked at the Career Center as well. I didn't knew her from before, but what a small world, to encounter someone in the middle of Bambili who went to the same school, worked for the same place and knew the same people. I knew she looked familiar... haha.

'Tis all for now. As they say here, "Shortly!"

living out of a suitcase

Ive been living out of my suitcase in a hotel for almost two weeks, and I cannot wait until I finally go to Bambili and settle in with my apartment mate from the Peace Corps. The joy of unpacking all my stuff will be sweet, I can feel it, like an unloading of stuff will also be an uplifting of my spirit. Jade just left this morning at 6:45 to fly to Maroua so I am the last of the ETAs to leave... now I am left toute seule. Kind of.

A lot of my time has been waiting around. Today I waited to get picked up for a ride to church with Gladys but the driver never came so after half an hour I decided to just walk around the neighborhood and stumbled upon a nice little cyber cafe that also happened to have a very slow connection. Not surprising haha. My hotel's wireless connection has taught me lots of patience by now.

Ive been waiting for this internet to load at the cyber for around an hour and by the time I got this window to open along with gmail, i have ten minutes left! So I better type fast.

This weekend I saw the following embassies: Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, China, Netherlands; Senegal, Egypt; Greece, Malta and more I cant remember. Embassy searching is pretty fun, especially since they're mostly in Bastos. Greece is the prettiest one in my opinion, with a huge yellow building on top of the mountain that all of Yaounde can see. Cacti lined the gate all around, but peeking past the iron bars it looked like a mansion in paradise, surrounded by bright flowers, palms and perfectly trimmed grass. Shiny cars were parked on the paved driveway in front of nice balconies and wide windows. It made the US embassy building look pale and confining in comparison. Though I guess Id say the US one is aestetically pleasing with the attitude of a modern art building, in a straight lines white marble, white walls kind of way.

Yesterday Jade and I walked up Mt Febe for the whole day, visited the arts museum next to the monastere, talked to Pere Joseph in his office and got his blessing for our trips. We also got sunburned in the face and chest very badly. It didn't hurt too much, but was probably a side effect of our malaria meds; sensitivity to sunlight.

The reason Im at this cyber typing on a French keyboard is because I think my laptop came down with a virus. Note to all: if you're bringing your laptop abroad make sure you have your antivirus programs downloaded; updated and running. I learned the hard way.

But all is well. Today is a fairly cool Sunday. Its 10/10/10. I ran into a guy at the embassy this morning, biking with his kids whom I also ran into last night during dinner with Jade at La Salsa. Im friends with the lady who works at the bar and also the lady at the front desk. Thus, even though now Im the last of the ETAs to be sent off to my destination and Im waiting waiting waiting in anticipation, little things have still made me feel like I'm surrounded by pieces of familiarity. Of course this will all change again when Im dropped to Bambili by car on Tuesday. But for now I must soit patience! My time is up. Until next time... Ill be in Bambili!

three days of orienting

Our group just finished our three-day orientation in Yaounde and we wrapped it up with a nice dinner with embassy staff. Meera leaves right away, heading to Bertoua in the East province bright & early tomorrow. To bid her farewell properly, we are attempting to wake up at the crack of dawn and have breakfast at a nice place in Bastos. I realized how much the ETA program has improved since last year in terms of training, preparation, materials and giving us a scope of the program. After all, last year Fulbright sent its first batch of guinea pigs to Cameroon. I feel much more confident now than when I first arrived, and a lot of the credit is owed to last year's ETAs who've forged the road and made the path easier for us.

Jen, our English teaching trainer has been wonderful in providing us with classroom activities and innovative ways to make the most of a resource-scarce classroom. We met with CAMELTA teachers (Cameroon English Language & Literaure Teachers Association) who offered advice about the challenges of a typical Cameroonian classroom and also had presentations on Cameroon culture and school systems. It's nice that we can slowly get acquainted with Cameroon and still have the support, logistics & answers from the embassy before we dive right in. Mignon, the Cultural Affairs Officer has been awesome about visas, cellphones, lost ATM cards etc. Looming questions I've had since forever are getting answered and the picture of Bambili is finally becoming more clear. On Tuesday we had conference call with our university sponsors and I got to put the pieces together of what I'll be doing, what subjects I'll co-teach, class size and living situation. Apparently I'll be sharing an apartment with a Peace Corps woman in her 50s! I will need to buy my own bed since it's unfurnished, but I'm excited to hear her story.

I'm over jet lag, but Cameroon is about 7 hours ahead of Chicago....so more later. Bon nuit.

Bruxelles

Bonjour tout le monde! I arrived in Brussels safely and was met at the airport by the lovely Meera, my fellow ETA friend. It was so helpful to a friend know where to go, where to buy train tickets, help with my luggage and just follow around so I didn't have to worry after a drowsy 8 hour flight. We stored our bags at the lockers at the metro so we didn't have to wheel around 50-pound suitcases. I was lucky that Meera and her friend Nina had already found a hostel so my arrival was stress-free.

Beforehand, I was stranded at O'hare for 8 hours becuase my flight was delayed due to an air traffic controller strike. But 'Bruxelles' (in French) totally made up for it. I saw La Grande Place, which means the big square, the famous statue of the peeing boy (which was pretty anticlimatic) and walked around the park, sitting down in a nice outdoor cafe with some vin chaud and plate of cheese, olives, sausage. I didn't know that Bruxelles was known to be an ugly city. Haha it wasn't so ugly to me, but I can see where it gets its reputation with an odd mix of historic & modern buildings, an assortment of gray cathedrales and slippery cobblestone in the dreary rain. However, the random statues scattered throughout town and the hilly roads which seem to be a complex maze were an adventure. To a passerby, Bruxelles doesn't seem so bad.

Me, Meera and Nina walked to the EU building and to our surprise there was some sort of international festival going on with free food and drinks. It was pretty awesome and we got to try food from Italy, Poland, Italy, Estonia etc. Quelle chance that we should stumble upon free dinner! Well more later. Up next for today, some Belgian fries with mayo and maybe Little Africa and mussels from Brussels for dinner? Yes, you have to say the whole phrase 'mussels from Brussels.' And I'm going to Camroon tomorrow. yay. A plus tard.

2 weeks left

Il reste deux semaines...

1 week and 6 days to be exact. If you want to know what it feels like preparing for a trip and just waiting to go, it feels like craziness & idleness at the same time. Craziness because I've been out of town for almost every weekend in the past month, visiting friends, savoring my last days and saying "hello, goodbye... I'm peacing out." Idleness because I have a gigantic suitcase in my room, sitting on the floor with its menacing mouth wide open, warning me to choose my belongings wisely. Maybe another way to put this 'antsy anticipation' is that it's similar to pacing back and forth on a shoreline, waiting to set sail on the open sea.

Lyrics from a Teddy Geiger song popped into my mind:

"I'm gonna muster every ounce of confidence I have and cannonball into the water..."

Anyways... I'm so thankful and kind of surprised that this process has been so smooth. No oppositions, really. My parents are fine with it. Any worry or concern has been expressed in the form of, "You need good shoes. Can you check out those good hiking shoes online?" Yes, okay I'll look at some Tevas. Or maybe some Chacos. Stuff that back-packers, trekkers and outdoorsy people have that I've always liked but never bought myself... yet. If anything, this trip has only been met with support. My lovely aunt would ask about my trip to "fay-jow" which refers to all of Africa in Cantonese. She (and a string of other relatives) would warn me against the mosquitoes or the extreme heat. She even gave me a donation to buy backpacks, books & school supplies for 100 children in Cameroon. whoa. I was so touched. I promised her that if it could not be spent in the form of 100 colorful backpacks jam-packed with supplies, it would be invested in child education for the local community, or contribute to projects/needs of the local area. Amazing. It gave me a more realistic responsibility to make the most of my time there, to keep my eyes peeled and to give. And it was a rather unexpected humanitarian effort and left me in awe of what my aunt envisioned charity to look like.

3 weeks to go

It's slowly sinking in that I'm going. Not quite completely... but bit-by-bit. I have my visa, check. My shots and meds, check. If I wrote out a to-do list it might include a million other things! In about 3 weeks I'm going to step on a plane and fly to a place known as the 'Africa in miniature', boasting waterfalls, a volcano, jungle, beach, desert & savanna. I have not yet started packing but that's okay... (I have a make-shift list) and I know the reality of going to Cameroon won't fully set in until the night before, when I'll be wide awake full of anticipation.

My status: all excitement. And it's so encouraging when I tell people what I'm doing and they are jumping up and down for me! Honestly I don't know what's in store, but I'm so encouraged people want to know... so follow along and I'll do my best. I'll be blogging (for the most part) and passing my experience along to you guys. I'm not an experienced blogger nor do I always write in complete sentences but this will have to do.

I'm going to the English-speaking region of Cameroon in the Northwest (a few hours outside of Bamenda, see map) as an English Teaching Assistant (ETA). I'll be there for an entire school year, 9 months from October until June. Apart from that, a lot is still up in the air like housing, my class size, teaching schedule etc... but I will look for local organizations to work with concerning HIV/AIDS or women's empowerment. I'm also reading 'Your Madness, Not Mine,' by Cameroonian author Makuchi, which are short stories illustrating the everyday lives of the young and especially the women during postcolonial times.

The two national languages are French and English, but people speak over two hundred local languages as well, varying by region. While French-speakers are the bigger majority, some people speak 'pigdin' English, which evolved when tribal people developed their own way to communicate with foreigners. I will be in the English-speaking region, while one of my friends will be in the Far North (extreme-nord), an Arabic-speaking region where Islam has a larger influence. How cool is that? Another of the ETAs will be in Bertoua in the East. We are all pretty spread out, but that will give us more reason to go visit each other and explore the rest of the country non? We each get to be in a different area and get to taste the intricate variety of culture that Cameroon has to offer.

Countdown until departure: 22 days. This is it! I've been looking forward to this opportunity since last summer when I first started the application process. It's been a blur since then and I graduated in May with a bachelor's degree in International Studies. I'm extremely thankful for this Fulbright. Minoring in French and having teaching/international experience helped with the application, but I feel like all I did was hold out my hands. This chance was just placed in my palms and I didn't expect it. I was banking on this opportunity because otherwise I probably would have gone with the PeaceCorps for 27 months. Well I am happy that I'm only going for 9.

What I'm asking for is that Cameroon teach me, just as much or even more so than me teaching a classroom as an English teacher. 'Tis all for now.

PS: Feel free to leave me comments/questions or just a message :)