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!
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