From Dinner with the Ambassador to Cleaning a Chicken

The past few weeks of training have been both intense sometimes six days a week (sometimes the days lasting from 7 am - 5 pm some days). We have a 7 pm curfew to ensure that we are with our host families before dark truly sets in. On that note, it was a full moon the other night and the night sky was absolutely incredible and ablaze with the lights of millions of stars – really put things in perspective/hit me that this is my reality.

            Picking up where I left off with the last post: the next few days in Yaoundé were spent doing various interviews, including one for those in the health sector with the program coordinators with questions encompassing: what are your strengths and weaknesses; in which regions would you like to be placed in the country; what are your ideas about the type of projects you’d want; would you mind colonizing a site (being the first PCV there ever), or taking over an existing post; and what are your fears. PC Cameroon has adopted a successful program that PC Uganda uses where they have a ‘bidding system’ meaning that we rank our top three preferences as far as regions to be in (there are 10 regions in the country), and our bottom three preferences, and we are pretty much guaranteed to be placed in one of our top three. At this moment, my preferences are for the West, Northwest, and Adamoua (pronounced “add-a-mow-uh”) or Southwest regions, and my bottom three are: the South, East, and Central and/or Littoral regions. Each region has their own unique flair: the West is typically cooler, and the NW and SW regions are Anglophone, whereas the rest are Francophone. If I went to the NW or SW, I’d also be learning WAPE (West African Pidgin English), which would be cool. Some in the group are dead set on going to Francophone regions, but language isn’t my main criteria for wanting to be in a place – it’s more about the type of projects on which I’d work. Health projects are focused on maternal and child health (MCH) – however, this statement is very deceiving in the fact that MCH encompasses infinite project opportunities. For example, the health (santé) program focuses on malaria, HIV/AIDs, training peer educators, nutrition, and so much more. So basically, although you may have an idea of what your primary project might be, you could theoretically do anything even remotely related to health (wide-scale tofu making projects, for example – something that’s definitely possible and on the list of things we’ll learn in PST). On a side note, we had to learn new hand motions: if you raise your open hand in the American hand signal for ‘stop’, but thrust your fingers forward, it’s a huge insult (aka, saying that your mother’s lady parts are huge). I have a feeling that these little cultural faux pas/lost in translation moments will become a regular occurrence. Hence, my open to anything perspective.

            On Monday, we had dinner at our country director’s house with several important stakeholders who have been important in the country, or with Peace Corps. I met with the CDC director, a wonderfully accomplished lady that offered great insights into Cameroonian culture and what was needed as far as health concerns in the country, and sat right next to the American Ambassador. We chatted about the Foreign Service, life in Cameroon, the merits of being a PCV (he stated that he couldn’t do it, since he likes to have the cushy amenities), his extreme dislike of posed pictures, etc. And then we posed for a group picture…when our eyes caught after the picture, he winked and me as we both of us shared a knowing smile.

            Fast forward to last Wednesday, the day that we moved in with our host families! My main criteria for my host family was that they be patient with someone just learning French, and I frankly couldn’t have gotten luckier. After dropping the YD and agfo volunteers off in Bafia, the santé kids headed to Bokito, our nerves/anxiety growing by the kilometer. Bafia is indeed a semi-urban area, whereas Bokito is very much a rural village, complete with no paved roads and no semblance of internet (either in internet café form or otherwise). Our town map was a hand-drawn affair, which is eerily on point for navigating the few roads. Meeting my host mother, Mama Pauline quickly put many of my fears to rest, as she greeted me with a huge smile and an enveloping hug. We then went back to hear house where I met the rest of my family: sisters Mireille, Charlene, and Natalie, and host brothers Daniel and Joseph, along with Mireille’s 9-month-old son, Abdel (yay, finally an African child who doesn’t wail, run, and/or hide at the site of a pale, blonde-haired white girl!). Everyone was so incredibly welcoming and very, very patient. We ate dinner (a mound of rice with canned green beans and carrots added in), and then attempted conversation in Franglais (French + English) before I helped with the dishes and passed out, exhausted but grateful. The next morning, I was awoken with roosters and the sound of banging around in the indoor part of the kitchen (the outdoor part is a mud-brick building where three cement blocks have been set up to put the gigantic pots over the firewood for cooking). My family feeds me enough food for three people, and I had to explain early on that I am not that hungry/cannot eat that much, deciding to say that I am like a little bird with eating, to which my family replied that I am a little bird with my size. We've had a mixture of foods so far: fried and fresh bananas, fried/boiled plantains, chicken, lots of fish (you get the whole, staring-at-you fish), rice, avocados, tomatoes, grapefruit, oranges, mandarin oranges, guava, cooked beef, fried tofu on a stick, onions, etc. My family is Pentecostal, and every morning and evening (they have never done it directly in front of me), my family chants their prayers and the whole house seems to hum with their rhythm. As I have quickly learned, Cameroonian culture is very boisterous and lively – at all hours of the day! One of the nights that the power went out, my family and I crowded in the living room that was shadowly lit with kerosine lamps (think circa 1800s style) and my headlamp, and I played my ukulele while my family and I sang songs. The highlight was a four-part harmony to Amazing Grace, which my family recorded on their phone. I'm very lucky - my host family has a flushing toilet that works most of the time (complete with a toilet seat!), and a semi-working shower - I'm one of the lucky ones; some of the others have pit latrines in the same room as the area in which they bucket shower. The next day, after a quick breakfast (something that wasn’t the bread and bread that we ate at the hotel – yay!), I headed with the other santé PCTs to Bafia for the day. As I said before, training is thoroughly exhausting, but I leave each day with so much new information and feeling excited to learn more – definitely a sign I’m in the right place. It’s been a surreal transition going from being a pretty high-functioning adult (very debatable at some times) to effectively a child, unable to express many of even my basic wants and needs to my family – an odd position to be in, but not entirely unexpected.

            The next week was filled with training: safety and security, lots and lots of language (around 15-20 hours per week for the next eight or odd week); health talks – which had absolutely everyone itching phantom bug bites/skin infections, which as we’ve been informed, we’ll no doubt experience, but don’t worry guys, finding 10-inch worms in your stool is totally treatable!; cross-cultural and history sessions. Since I’m the only novice low in the santé group, I have one-on-one language sessions with my language/cross-cultural teacher, Cedric, an awesome person, teacher, and friend at this point. Quite frankly, I’ve been amazed at my progress so far in the language – five+ minute conversations with my family have become a daily occurrence and I couldn’t be more pleased about that.

            In addition to practicing French at school and with my family, I’ve had many other unique experiences with them. Over the weekend, I did my laundry by hand, cleaned a freshly killed chicken, got my hair braided by one of my host sisters, went to a three-hour Pentecostal church service (lots of singing and dancing, despite the apparent government ordinance that several corrupt Pentecostal churches need to be shut down - not sure exactly how that impacts our open-air, cement church out in the bush), and took my host sisters out for beer and sodas (the beer is slightly colder than shade temperature – hooray!). All in all, it was a great weekend. PC has given our families a list of things that we should accomplish over the next 8 odd weeks; simple things like killing, plucking and cooking a chicken and other food; hauling water from the well; and cleaning – should be interesting! Having new experiences consistently every day has been both very challenging, but even more rewarding.

Week 1: First Glimpses and the Longest 10 Minutes of My Life

Firstly, apologies for not posting sooner – the combination of the craziness of the first few weeks, plus not having internet or a converter made posting difficult. This post is dedicated to the first week of my Peace Corps adventure. After spending the day in Philly, my group departed bright and early with enough luggage to make the airline workers cringe and attempt to hide when they saw us coming. The drive and flight from NYC to Brussels was uneventful, except for the fact that the thought of not having cold beer or good chocolate (or non-bacteria ice, strong coffee, non-mystery meat…you get the picture) for a long while made everyone spring into action and desperately look for said items like famished heathens in the Brussels and JFK airports. Fast forward to our long layover in Brussels, where we happened to come across a PCV returning from vacation in Europe. He quickly became like the Gandhi of the group, and no matter when, he was surrounded by members of my group asking questions and listening in with rapt attention – he was our first real entrée into Cameroonian culture, and by god, we were going to milk the connection for all it was worth. Another flight, and then voila, the pilot was telling us that we were in Cameroon! We got in to Yaoundé (pronounced /ya-oon-day/ around 11 pm local time on Friday night. Hungry and exhausted, we gained a renewed sense of energy when our country director, Jackie, and our travel coordinator, Salle, met us at the airport and saved us the hassle of going through customs by ourselves. We gathered all of our things and then headed to the Hotel Felydac (tagline: “clean, comfortable, discrete”). We lugged our bags upstairs (5 flights, no elevator – aww yeah) and then went downstairs to eat dinner (at 1 am). We immediately got several introductory speeches, along with our malaria medication, and ravenously dug into our first taste of Cameroonian food (i.e. lots of starch). By this time, we were all on our second wind and so incredibly happy to have the first hump of our journey behind us. My first real glimpse of the capital was standing on my balcony at the hotel, the air smelling of frankincense, ginger and a mix of smells only Africa can provide, Cameroonian drumming and music in the distance, and the cool 64-degree-air a sweet relief to the sweat of traveling: the combination was almost intoxicating (which may have been in large part due to the fact that it was 3 am Cameroonian time…) The next day, our current PCV trainers (one from each sector) got us started with lots of paperwork: home-stay questionnaire, official resident paperwork, etc.

Then came the first real test (literally) of my time in Cameroon: the language proficiency interview (LPI). One of the trainers mentioned that if you told the interviewer that you didn’t know French, that they would gladly let you off and put you in the lowest level, an ideal plan for someone such as myself who realized that all the ‘coulda, woulda, shoulda’s’ to studying French over the past few months had added up to not really knowing much of the language. With my game plan in place, I set out to the LPI. Never had the best laid plans/intentions gone so wrong. I entered the LPI room with a big smile on my face, thinking that the misery would be over in less than 2 minutes. False. After saying ‘bonjour, I know no French,’ the interviewer gave me an ‘hmmm, we’ll see about that’ look, and then continued the interview. In French. When I shrugged and put my hands up in the universal sign of ‘I have no idea what you just said, please let me die now’ body language, my interviewer would repeat the questions more loudly, slowly, and still in French. Gaaah! Shockingly, I was actually able to understand the majority of the questions (cheers to multiple years studying a Romance language). However, when he asked about my family composition, I had not clue one to tell him that my dad is dead, so again with the hand motions, I slid my hand along my throat, miming what I thought might be a universal sign for ‘dead.’ Apparently not. My interviewer gave me another quizzical, and slightly concerned look, and dropped the subject. My answers were minimal at best (a depiction of our conversation below – all which occurred in French):

“What does your family eat?”

“Well, uhm, they eat rice”

 “Just rice?”

(Me desperately trying to think of another food that I know of in French, and failing)

“Oui, rice only”

“Ask me a question.”

“Uhm, but I don’t know French.”

“Ask me a question.”

“Ah, are you well?”

“Yes, I am doing very well.”

(Me with a satisfied head nod thinking ‘oh thank God, I’m done!’)

“You must ask me two more questions.”

“What??!”

“Yes.”

(Awkward silence and drawn out pause)

“Do you eat?”

(Another of those judge-y, quizzical glances that have become so familiar to me over the past 10 minutes)

“Yes, of course I eat.”

(My last question, and the realization that any last ditch attempt to show him that I am not the idiot I seem to be in French would be futile at this point)

“Do you like Paris?”

(This earned me both a snort from the hotel lady working in the interview room, and a startled chuckle from my instructor)

“Ah, yes, I think I like Paris, but I’ve never been there.”

And then hallelujah, sweet relief! The interview is over and I leave with absolutely no doubts that my stellar performance has earned me a spot in the “novice low” language category, aka exactly where I need to be.

The next few days were a blur of presentations, paperwork, introductions, and hanging out with the other members of my stag (pronounced like ‘staj’). We also attended a cultural event where we saw traditional Cameroonian dancing and drumming, and participated in a very active performance – everyone left sweaty and happy. The first week of training was a blur of immunizations (we are getting every vaccine/immunization humanly possible over the next 10 weeks), interviews, and presentations. I can already see why many PCVs say that the days are long, but the weeks go by fast. It already seems like months ago that I was in the US, when it’s only been two weeks. Everyone here, especially the trainers and other PCTs have been absolutely incredible so far, as has the whole experience in general. The next post will be little amusing tidbits, the time entertained the American ambassador to Cameroon and the director of the CDC in Cameroon over dinner, moving in with my exclusively French-speaking host family in a rural African village with no paved roads (my LPI experience should offer some insight into how anxious/worried I was for this experience), and how I’ve been having one of the best (and most uniquely challenging) times of my life. It’s been one amazing experience thus far!

To Staging and Beyond!

So this will probably be my last post for a bit, as I'm taking off early tomorrow morning for Brussels and Cameroon with the 54 other people in my 'stage' or cohort, but I wanted to update everyone on my progress so far. With my staging event today in Philly, I officially transitioned from being a Peace Corps Invitee, to a Peace Corps Trainee. Now I know that that sounds trivial and simply a minor word change, but to someone who has been awaiting this moment, and the adventure to come, that seemingly meager word change meant a lot. It means that I'm here - I've made it this far, I'm making my dream happen, and that in and of itself is an incredibly empowering and exhilarating feeling.

Here's a bit of background information that I found interesting about the Peace Corps, and Peace Corps Cameroon. The Peace Corps was started in 1961 by President JFK, and volunteers have been going to Cameroon pretty much since its inception (51 years). In total, PC volunteers are in 139 countries (they recently added Kosovo as a new country). Currently, PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) are serving in 76 countries around the world. Since its inception, there have been 210,000 PCVs, and counting, with 8,095 currently serving (add 55 in November for my group!). There are 165 PCVs currently serving in Cameroon. The average age of PCVs is 28, and the majority (43%) of these volunteers are in the Education sector; Health is the second largest sector comprising 21%. Currently, there are youth development, health, environment/agroforestry, education, and community economic development volunteers in Cameroon. My group is pretty evenly split between the three sectors of health, youth development, and agroforestry. My group's composition is roughly 2/3rds female and 1/3 male - not too much different from the ratio I encountered in my public health studies. Former famous RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) include: Lillian Carter (President Jimmy Carter's mother, who started her service when she was around 60 years old - it's never too late to pursue your passion), former WI Governor Jim Doyle, Bob Bila ("This Old House" anyone?), and author Paul Theroux. 

Our staging started with overviews on the Peace Corps (we delved into the three Peace Corps goals and mission); what we expect as volunteers; what's next; what is expected of us; and a closing activity cementing us as a family. All in all, it was a great introduction to this adventure which will become my reality in roughly over 48 hours. We did a variety of activities and skits (my hand is still dyed pink and green from the colorful hand puppet drawn for a skit that my group did to illustrate a real-world Peace Corps scenario regarding flexibility and tempering expectations) - needless to say, everyone seems incredibly friendly and really invested in this experience. I'm looking forward to sharing experiences and tapping into the talents of my new Peace Corps family. We all depart tomorrow morning for Brussels, and arrive in Cameroon late Friday evening. 

As always, I hope you guys found this interesting, and not just me rambling ad nauseum about my experiences. And please send me letters/emails if you'd like to hear about anything in particular, or just to say hi!