il fait chaud

2006-11-27T17:44:00.000Z

Thanksgiving 2006. Good times, good food, good friends. Good bye.

2006-11-27T17:34:00.000Z

and eating millet

party time, village style

2006-11-27T17:28:00.000Z

There was a big traditional fete chez les Mouyang before I left, in anticipation of the millet harvest. Most of the activity centered around drinking millet beer. And making music.

on our way out

2006-09-16T00:56:00.001Z

me and my leetle friend aya

2006-09-16T00:54:00.000Z

A mountain by where I live in the rainy season so greeny

2006-09-16T00:50:00.000Z

alive but a little bummed

2006-09-16T00:11:00.000Z

What I will miss about Cameroon:

1. Eating in shacks. Where the menu is universal and consists of: eggs, beans and bread, fish, or beef, green leaf in a sauce-like form, and some accompaniment of starch, choices being ngyams (not so sweet sweet potatoes), rice, plantains, or manioc if you’re in the couth which I’m not and don’t regret ‘cause I don’t particularly like manioc.

All of this is not particularly relevant although perhaps interesting to the culinarily inclined, because the point is that the choices are few. On Tuesdays there is jamma jamma with plantains and on wednesdays there are beans and rice. For example. And let us not forget the piment. The red, oily hot sauce you need but a dab of. I will miss the simplicity and the absolute lack of pretentiousness. I went online and looked at the menu for the restaurant I used to work for and it struck me as absolutely ridiculous. Duck medallions in a beef sauce of mango chutney and baby lamb chop pate topped with a dollop of pure bullshit, mmm.

2. Being able to litter. There being no infrastrucure here, there exists no place to put your trash that would shuttle it to a commonly identified “trash place”, and so the trash place is the world people live, walk, and drive around in. The most common item of trash is the microcon thin balck plastic bag, which is considered a gentle and generous gift that accompanies your purchase. Otherwise there is not much opportunity to buy things that are wrapped up in anything other than it’s natural encasing, except for maybe kinder whatever, which is a weird European treat of frosting like white and dark “chocolate” goo with two small balls of corn- encased more-solid than the other substance chocolate stuff... I am not proud, but sometimes I eat it. It comes with a small flat spoon and a toy. It is shaped like an egg. There is a lot of unnecessary packaging and it is definitely not good for you. In any case, I have grown to love being able to throw anything I no longer want to hold on to out the window, into the gutter, or

3. Hissing at people. This is how we call people over who we want something from, and when I say we I mean anyone, and when I indicate wanting things, this can refer to anything from a beer or soda to a pair of shoes to a strange unidentifiable aphrodisiasical root, to ... fill in your blank here. Things available in Ashland. I mean Africa.

Soon to come.....

Whar I will Not Miss About Cameroon

Here is my dog, Scheiza

2006-09-03T19:48:00.000Z

I realize that I tend to use this technology, this link with the outer world, too often as a way of venting the feelings of frustration, impotence and overheating that overcome me from time to time in this hard hot place. Either that or I detail personal activities and enjoyment. At least thatÕs how I feel. ItÕs hard to remember, when you are having a good, productive time, to rush to the computer and convey your enthusiasm. I think more often when I turn my face to the screen, I am feeling the need to get things out which I no longer want to hold in. So let me, consciously, in the light of this thought, share something good, the kind of thing I thought I came here to do.
Last week or so, myself and the other resident members of the Extreme North who were present held a ÔYouth Leadership ConferenceÕ. It was instigated by two Health volunteers, Erin and Mike, a young, attractive married couple. From Florida. Hey, a story gets better with ev
ery little detail, no? So, the idea of this conference was that each volunteer participant would invite one, maybe two, youth from their village who we considered as leaders, with potential, but maybe with need of a little boost of confidence and basic skills. We arrived on Sunday, made introductions in the afternoon and had dinner, and installed the ÔkidsÕ (most of them in their early twenties, really) in their crappy hotel. Hey, we were functioning on five hundred dollars donated from families in the US.
Peace Corps volunteers gave sessions on decision making, communication (me; it was bitchinÕ), how to research resources, how to continue education outside of the formal sector, hotw to protect your health, umm what else wish I had that schedule with me but in my typical disorganized style I lost it straightaway. Anyhow, us volunteers were each responsible for our sessions and they
were all well executed, participatory etc., but what was really great was the Cameroonian-on-Cameroonian sessions. A fellow from the bank came in to talk about micro-finance for young entrepreneurs, and there was a panel of young Cameroonians who had become successful in their ventures (not a simple thing here, I tell you, taking great perseverance and will), and most memorably a fellow infectected with HIV who did a testimonial about how he contracted it, how he lives with it, what he has learned from learning how to live with what is, in the end, just another virus.
This guy currently works at the library where we held the four day conference; he had worked and lived with a previous health volunteer and spoke very well and bravely. This disease is not well understood and it can be a little scary to talka bout it with strangers.

I can't finish this right now. BUt all is life.

got well

2006-08-25T11:10:00.000Z

I ate pizza and a mars bar for breakfast this morning. Mostly because they were there; I had made handmade pizza last night, and spent a dollar on the mars bar when I saw it for sale. Not often you run into such a deal in subsarahan africa.The pizza had green peppers, onions, cheese, mushrooms, salami, and a homemade tomato sauce. Jeff helped and Kate and Rachel helped to eat. We had jack and coke to drink.

That was a couple of days ago and since, I've been thinking about material consumption. Here, it seems so special that when I get a go at the goods, I gorge. Whether it be trashy celebrity magazines that I would never waste my time on in the states or sour patch kids candy, I will savor that artificial goodness until my stomach hurts and my head reels from all the unreality. So, what's going to happen to me when I get back to endless rows of goods all at a low low price and cavernous warehouse spaces full of every item you could ever desire, all for a fixed price, no haggling allowed? I know that when I was home for ten days last June, I returned to Cameroon almost empty-handed; I would go into a store, look briefly at all the Things, and leave almost immediately, content to know that it was still available, having purchased none of it. Telling myself that I would come back later. The thing is I never did.

Do we buy and consume things to make ourselves feel better or more real? Because I don't think that approach is working.

This guy thinks he's hiding

2006-08-06T10:13:00.000Z

Yesterday I entertained for nearly an hour the idea of signing up for another year of my life here. [ Insert sitcom laughtrack here]... Today I find myself doing the math of how many days left on this continent and how to use them up- and how! To get to where I can eat raw leafy greens without fear of the repercussion of pissing out my ass, if you’ll excuse my french, to get to a place where I can walk down the boulevarde without being racially identified every meter, a place where I can wear lipstick and not be hissed and kissed at mercilessly.

While I was entertaining this notion of digging in, I was riding my bike through the countryside with farmer friend Celestin; we were making the rounds, meeting people who had requested an introduction, checking up on the guy with the tree nursery, burning my forearms in the sun. It felt good, and I was feeling frustrated that all of these opportunities are presenting themselves now just as I prepare to pack up and head out, these people approaching me with great ideas for projects (example: the fellow who has a field he want to use to for planting native species of trees, now found only up in the plateau, so as to eat the old-timey fruits), looking for help with things I might be able to contribute to, or want to; but I suppose these are ideas for the next person. And I reckon things always seem perfect when you know you are about to leave them.

2006-07-14T16:00:00.000Z

The gracious hostess of July 4, 2006 finally gets to take a break and enjoy the festivities. It's so much easier to love America when you're not there.

2006-07-14T15:55:00.000Z

2006-07-14T15:48:00.000Z

After certain rains the winged termites pour out of the exit holes they create just for the occasion: randomly scattered across the drenched landscape, they themselves rise up as each termite exudes some something on itÕs way out, thin fragile brown walls framing the open hole where the insects came forth from the earth, only to come back at a later time.

They are attracted to lights, and this is a good thing for those African families with an outside light, and their neighbors. Everyone pours out of their living spaces, with buckets and bowls of water. Once a flying termite is caught it is put into the water, where its wide flat wings will pin it to the surface of the water. They are easily caught; children take greedy handfuls. After, the wings are removed and the fat, red little bodies of the termites are fried up. They are tasty and a superb source of protein. My cat ate all that had been caught in the kitchen when I turned the light off and closed the door. It was a real fox hunt. After their one night of flight the termites settle down, find a mate, spend a couple hours trailing each other around closely, and when they find their mysterious spot, they burrow into the ground, wings dropping off, and I guess they lay eggs once they're in there. Hard not to admire termites for being so damn ecologically successful and all but they're a nuisance to me, eating on everything...

The pork blowout was a vast success, despite being faced with all the worst cast scenarios in the world. It rained as the fire was being lit, it rained again, the electricity was out the entire time. Nonetheless, delicious pork was prepared and enjoyed, the frisbee was thrown, the beers were cool enough in the relative hot hot weather, the pool was splashed in. It was a party, a truly American barbque. However you spell that.

I left for both of the slaughterings, but I left it in the hands of those I trusted to do it with humanity. They said it went well; they seemed strangely exhilarated after I came back from where I had been. The first day we had planned to kill one and roast it overnight, having the Cameroonians who were helping us (not a good amateur endeavor, pig slaughtering) prepare the second in the 'traditional manner', but the first one turned out so good and the pit ended up taking so much effort to make, that we roasted the second one as well, thus providing ourselves with tender pork meat for a full 36 hours. It was tender, like I said, and juicy, marinated in a wheelbarrow in a brine of onion, garlic, citron juice, oil and piment. At first I had difficulty with the sight of the rubbery body in the wheelbarrow, the face IÕd seen twice a day through the peephole of the fascist pig holding cell, split down the middle... but once that cadaver hit the grill and the smell of roasting pork reached mine nostrils, I was into it, the bloodthirst took hold of my saliva glands and it was smooth sailing until the Grand Finale:

Menu - Fourth of July Pork Blowout, Tokombere, 2006

PORK Millet fed young pork, marinated Florida-style, pit-roasted

served with:

cucumber salad
fruit salad- mango, pineapple, orange, watermelon
potato salad- just like momma used to make
devilled eggs

with intermittent rounds of cinnamon rolls and banana bread as the marmite oven allowed

and don't forget the key 4ojuly ingredient: for Proud Americans everywhere:
BEER
your choice of 33, Beaufort, or Castle Milk Stout
mandarin Absolut available upon request

2006-07-14T15:42:00.000Z

does this picture need any explanation? Methinks not.

2006-07-14T15:39:00.000Z

The ladies prepared food...

2006-07-14T15:35:00.000Z

....while the boys played frisbee.

2006-06-26T07:52:00.003Z

Nice sepia giraffe circa Waza 2006 with a canadian family.

2006-06-26T07:52:00.002Z

Nice sepia giraffe circa Waza 2006 with a canadian family.

2006-06-26T07:52:00.001Z

Nice sepia giraffe circa Waza 2006 with a canadian family.

sporting spurting spotting spitting spewing

2006-06-22T12:53:00.000Z

'Ain't it funny how an old broken bottle looks just like a diamond ring'... just listening to some sad jon prine. 'Well a question ain't really a question, if you know the answer too'...I broke a bottle of earlier, a bottle of honey, the flies are having a field day and drowning in heavy bliss; I cleaned up as much as my patience and the urgency of the situation would allow for.. anyways I just can’t bring myself to love the flavor of Adamaoua honey, I don’t know what smelly flowers those bees are dining on but their essence is not for me. Eating some mints that it looks like some ants have already tasted. My capacity for disgust is huge now, especially after the worm affair. I think at least it can't get any worse.. Maybe I will miss it, the blood and guts of life repulsive, when I get back to America; go kick it on Skid row where there aren't any public toilets and no one has showered for five weeks, to get a whiff of that ripe, replete human stench... naw. I will probably linger at perfume counters and receive free lipstick samples ecstatically for a few months before it comes to that, if ever it does. Perhaps I will become a polished individual with impeccable hygiene. But I believe myself too much of a mountain girl for all that upkeep (most likely I will linger at any counter where they are giving away anything for fee, even the counter of arby's restaurants wth their priceless packets of ketchup, mustard, and I do like that horseradish sauce). Planted some corn in my yard this morning, planning to plant some soy with the next rain. Looks like it might come this afternoon and the air is oppressively hot as it is before a rain. I hope to go into town tomorrow to watch the World Cup match between Ghana and the United States, it should be quite an event here as Ghana's the last team representing all of Africa. If America wins though, I can pose as hero, pretend like I had something to do with it. Spectator sports weird me out in the way fans talk of "us" and "when we scored...". US who? You, darlin, had your ass parked in a chair while the action was enacted by people distinctly not yourself. But whatever it takes to unite humanity... and the World Cup is certainly good for that. I've been following it on the shortwave radio and folks seem to care more about it than the war in Sudan or Iraq or wherever idiot soldiers are killing each other at someone else's bidding.. which is at it should be. I'd rather hear a dissection of hot guys kicking a ball around than five year olds being murdered in a misbegotten ambush. Personally.

rugged good looks

2006-06-11T12:21:00.000Z

Mystery is an impossible state to maintain if you spend too much/enough time with people; if they see you mess up a card game over and over, the same rule that won’t sink in, if they know what you’re like in the morning (I prefer no words for at least fifteen minutes), if they know your family. And yet at the same time there is always that point at which we become a mystery to our selves. Where we are not sure how we would respond or if we would have the right reflexes or wisdom to act or, to not act. To shut your trap and carry on. In french it’s good, ‘laisser tomber’: let it fall. We do live on a gravitationally centered ball, after all.... everything is always falling.

So I am feeling philosophical and sleepy, having gone through a fish dinner, a housewarming party, and three episodes of Six Feet Under. Bless HBO, with their non commercial programming and their characters I care about because they are complex, who curse like people in my world do. It is early enough in the morning that I have just heard a prayer call being sung out, the eager beaver of the muslim faith, hollering ‘it is better to pray than sleep’. I’m not so certain I can feel him. I am looking much looking forward to when my cheek meets pillow. I am not chez moi tonight, where there is some mouse/chipmunk hybrid lodging under my bed, chattering at me from my headboard as I take a stand inside my mosquito nets; and the Evils, the most hideous, big, orange, sentient spider like freaks, and no electricity most of the week so all these other residents are just scuttling around in the gloaming... Oh, and I had a fucking WORM in my fucking BACK. I think cussing is appropriate in this context. Perfectly.

That trip I took into the Adamoua- there was a stowaway on the way back. There are these things called mango flies that lay their eggs in damp clothing hanging on the line in less hot, more humid and jungly environment than the Extreme North. When we learned about mango flies during training I got a little verklempt, had to hold on tight to the armrests of my chair so as to not bolt back to clean, asphalt coated America. I cried. It was my biggest fear, most awful imagining, that I have a worm embedded in my flesh. But I did, and I’m still here. And the worm is no longer in me, thanks to the patience and botanical curiosity of one Rachel Bechtold, good girl. We suffocated the bastard with some gooey antibiotic goo and when it came to the surface to get a breathe, Rachel squeezed it out. Oh, the horror.

Otherwise, I’m really just trying to keep my eye on the prize, and the prize is me with my entire extended family in Hawaii for Christmas. And then I think I will linger. I am somewhat acclimated to warmth and Oregon in February sounds a little unwise, in terms of balance. I’m still feeding the pigs up for fourth of july fete but people seem to be getting cold feet about killing them. We will hire a villager. I doubt I’ll be able to eat any of it but I’m okay with not having to slop those stinky porks twice a day.

Basically my life has gotten kindof horrifying and filthy. I am looking forward immensely to my return to civilization.

i shall not be moved

2006-06-11T12:18:00.000Z

“la souffrance est un conseil” reads the sticker in the upper right hand corner of the prison bus I am riding through the dead lost countryside of the Adamaoua. The landscape is not dead, au contraire, but the place is dead lost it seems to the outside world. The paysage was in fact green and lush, with respectfully spaced trees and a passable lawn coating the openness between them. Rolling hills and the occasional banana plant. The day before’s travel had been more along the line of dense tangles undergrowth with bright red lilies of some kind and steeper more volcanic hills but always a vast expanse of view. The sticker translated into english says ‘suffering is a counsel’ or advice or some such nuance. I read that sticker over and over and the hard bench I was sitting on rammed out the rhythm of the washboard red ribbed road onto my fesses, transferred vertically to my spine. There were baskets of fish on top of the bus and their pink liquid slimed down the side of the vehicle. A rubber band made of a cut up tire slapped me across the cheek when we were stopped in some unknown mountain village and then a piece of meat was thoughtlessly dropped into my lap and my lower lip started to tremble, but we set off and the wind dried my eyes. Crying makes Cameroonians uncomfortable. I guess no one’s a HUGe fan, but sometimes it just seems the thing to do. Next it began to rain, in vast quantity and startling coldness as it easily circumscribed the plastic sheet standing in for the glass window I was unhappily squeezed up against, four other people on the bench to my right. These prison buses have grilles between the clientele and the driver (and one privileged, socially high ranking sidekick) and no shocks to speak of, so these things were contributing to the grimness of the transport. We were making decent progress were it not for the stops in every blessed village along the route to tend to folks’ personal needs of delivering and receiving doors, woven sheets of grass, and the aforementioned baskets of fish. The fish is delicious, braised on outdoor grills. Everything is outdoor. In any case I made it to my destination, nearly, and dried up quickly enough. I head to village today and will see how the pigs have been taken care of, and the cat, and if the house has been molested at all. Let us hope it is a gentle and uneventful homecoming. Let us remember that this place in the world will hold the home title for me for only five or six more months. And let us give thanks for all of it. Amina.

2006-05-18T10:33:00.000Z

Wow. Sometimes.... life is a wow. You turn around and there, just behind you, shadowing you close all this time; is something you've been looking for, out over the horizon. When really it was just clinging on to your back and you turned and turned like a dog chasing its tail. Silly...

I ate cow tit. A French guy named Thomas (you're not supposed to pronounce the s at the end but I always do) made me. Coeced me, plutot. It was as you would expect, white and rounded, mammary-esque. Tasted like beef but the texture was distinctly uncomfortable. I threw my bit into the fire after a few goes at getting it to disintegrate, but when it refused to surrender it's original form, I threw it into the fire under the gas barrel grill. Kate missed this action of mine and was being tough like me and actually ate it, horrfied later to realize that it was not entirely a shared experience. That's proabably the grossest thing so far; I'm not that much of an adventurous meateeater: although in this place I certainly could be. Once i had ass sauce served to me (donkey) but I was suspicious of the meat (rightfully so, it was revealed) and only dipped the coud cous in the oily red sauce. The crocodile was creepy with the big slab of reptilian skin armoring it, but delicious, white and flaky but dense at the same time. I think I've had blood soup, but the peanut butter provided the majority of the flavor.

It is cooling down here; blessedly. There was a cold breezy rain session in the late night/early morning and today is all chill, making me chill, less prone to angry exertions and sweat production. Ahhh... also I am commencing my Adamoua vacation today, a little foray into the cool foggy highlands. Respite. Life has been particularly grinding and taxing lately, and not in the fun disco club sense. In fact I can't remember the last time I danced. That's poor form.

Aside from that, same old same ole; a freind came back from America last night and it was like Christmas exploded in her living room. Wonderful. America is bursting with material goodness. I am bursting with... something. A parasite hotel, me intestines.

my superhero test results are in

2006-05-08T14:40:00.000Z

And apparently I am Spiderman: You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have greatpower and responsibility.

And here is my horoscope for the week, which suggest that my madness will lead to my greatness.
Do you care? I don't know. But here it is:

Pathologist Paul Wolf has suggested that some of history's great artists may have never created their masterpieces if the wonders of modern medicine had been available to them. For example, what if doctors had cured van Gogh's mental illness with a regimen of drugs like Prozac and Xanax? Maybe he would have been spared the torment that goaded him to the outbursts of genius that erupted on his canvases. It's an interesting theory--one that I invite you to apply to your own life history. Are there ways in which the very things that have driven you crazy have played a role in your finest accomplishments? This is a perfect time to acknowledge and celebrate that ironic miracle.

the way we were

2006-05-08T11:22:00.000Z

Greetings and salutations to all my faithful blog readers. I have been in a dark funk lately but am feeling better now. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I won’t always and forever be here. Here where I feel sick and hot and sweaty and angry so much. Why do I stay, you ask? You are a volunteer and that means you can stop volunteering at your volition. Yes, I respond, true that, but goddamit I said I would if I could and when possible I like to adhere to my word. Thanks for the moral code, mom and dad. Look where it got me…

Anyways it’s really, really hot right now. I sweat and I curse and I ignore the annoying men. I feed my pigs. I am having extremely low confidence about the work I’m doing or not doing, unsure of where I should stick my nose in, who I can help and if my interventions will become a crutch or fill people with unassailable dreams. Some days I decide to just keep it to myself, button my lip and wash my clothes in a bucket, no higher aspirations. Some days I wander about and disperse the little money I have to people who have even less. The lady who sells peanut butter, the moto driver, the kid with follere juice, I say, well that’s something. Better than paying taxes so George can make things go boom; a better way I have with the government’s cash.

But I really love little things like how, in this extremely homophobic environment, men walk about holding hands, and the way they giggle together. I feel like men in ‘my’ society don’t giggle together enough. The way everyone says hello to everybody and every action anyone takes is open to loud public comment, that used to piss me off, but now I participate and grin with the crowd. The woman wandering around with a goat’s head in one hand and four little severed legs in the other; what will she make with her delicacies? Probably bouillon, a thin soup like dish you dip your cous cous in. I am getting hungry. Today I hope to eat plantains and ndole (en-dolay).

my most dangerous idea

2006-04-30T14:37:00.000Z

This is the kind of thing that has led to my interminable low grade intestinal distress; but when people offer you their bil bil it is rude to refuse. Plus I kind of like the stuff, and I read somewhere that the fermentation process renders a higher portion of the protein in the germ cell of the grain available. Check out the beautiful/ugly shirt I wear. That is one of the small pleasures of being here: able to wear the most garish least flattering patterns and cuts, I revel in the poor taste and exquisite self expression that comes of odd and skewed choices.

This morning an Egyptian woman waxed my legs with sugar. She had previously boiled it until it was basically a caramel, and then she smoothed out a fistful of it over my shin and rolled it up, ripping out the hairs, then smooshing it back down and rolling and pulling it up. She provided a tray of thick Turkish style coffee flavored with cardamom at the same time, and had a nest of calico kittens under the bed. A good lady.

one day

2006-04-29T15:42:00.000Z

Recently I have seen: a man dancing in the early morning with a painting of another man on a wall; three scorpions which were soon dead scorpions; the American ambassador; rain, in my own backyard!; four women in identical outfits, headdress included, portraying the Virgin Mary with a glowing green heart; a woman carrying a kitchen on her head; two dead cows without skin and one freshly killed pig; two laughing doves and some nasty pigeons on a hot tin roof.

This morning I fed my pigs leftovers of rice and beans, carrots and lentils. They were into it. I was happy to observe when I saw the dead pig, freshly stuck, that none of the other pigs trotting around the neighborhood seemed to be concerned about their fallen brethren; something about the stress of animals facing death makes me sorry for them. There was a cow at archaeological field school, we were working in the middle of a pasture adjoining a marsh, this cow became known as Boris Beauregard, boy, what a cow that Boris was. He showed me the extent of cow emotion, the true range of bovine sentiment. He heroically tried to save his whole herd from the slaughterhouse, rounded them up, drove them far afield, and then raced back to scream bloody cow epithets at the ranchers prodding their cattle up the gangway.

It rained and the mountains are looking more relaxed and misty already, less gasping and dusty. This morning on the bush taxi into town I was late, and had to sit on the sortof-seat. It’s the little ledge behind the driver and the front-seat passenger(s), facing the first row of other passengers. It’s where kids in America rest their Big Macs, as they gaze up absently at the video viewer. Remember, all these ‘bush taxis’ are really just overworked minivans; no soccer mommy tooling about town here! Anyhow I’m all hunched up and bent into myself, facing a 13 year old girl and and old old woman with comically thick glasses; two more people on that bench and three men on the sortof-seat on my left, with four young children kindof milling about between our legs wherever they could wedge themselves in a gap. Then, behind all this, the row of women with their fiery hearted virgin pagne. The chauffeur says, Kelly, What would the people of America say if they could see you squashed in this car like a sardine!? I said, It’s efficient like this, no?, biting my tongue on the comment that in America, I would just drive myself, albeit in a rusty old Volvo with too many bumper stickers.

KADJI KILLS

2006-04-21T12:03:00.000Z

It’s funny how our perceptions inform our story telling. Everyone’s story has different details, all fed by that person’s insecurities, assumptions, and delusions of grandeur.

When I was at the beach not so long ago there was a day when I was in the company of boys only and we had a day of Spring Break-like behavior. They work as teachers or something and so were really on a break- I was just lounging around. I’m not talking Spring Break in Miami (I swear I never lifted my shirt up in a provocative manner… although at one point I did forget it somewhere); perhaps in Cabo San Lucas or somewhere such. Let’s say this is how it’s done in Limbe, Cameroon. We had been to the place where they sell big draft beers of the brand name Kadji for the price of fifty cents. We each bought a round, and then loopily looked around the roundabout. All we found was another bar with some shifty looking French people in it, and a sorry-looking bakery. We sat and had another drink. Gintonic. Then we looped off to the beach in a taxi. I had discovered earlier that I lost my football-throwing skills, probably somewhere in the last decade, and so I did not participate in the boys’ throwing exertions which took them further and further down the beach. Instead I worked on my body-surfing skills, throwing myself into the task with an abandon that made my mind fly far away from concerns of shark biting and undertow towing. I had great amounts of fun flinging myself about in the surf, and then I was tired and sat on the sand.

At that point one of my compatriots, let’s call him Hubert, joined me. The other two, whom I will hitherto refer to as Frankie and Johnny, trailed after. By the time we had assembled in a foursome, something had passed between Hubert and I that loosely formed a scheme to follow the coastline north to where we needed to be to eat fish later in the day. Frankie and Johnny didn’t like it. We floated away from each other, glancing back longingly, maybe, but not doing anything about our relatively zooming trajectories away. The coastline was formidably guarded by the aforementioned undertow and so we walked to the road, looking for alternatives. Looking for a way. I realized I had forgotten my shirt on the beach. Franky and Johnny had my shirt and all I had was a bathing top, but I was assured that I was vacationing in the realm of sluttiness and it was ok. The first road we found heading west had yelling people all along it, telling us that that was not the way. I was brazen and drunk on the sun and the salty water and the kadji, oh the kadji, and I informed them all there was no problem. We walked to the end of the path of the yelling people to discover they’d been right all along. The next route offered as explanation a sign saying ‘coconut trials’. Hubert thought that meant no entry but I pleaded an interest in agricultural goings-ons and we carried on. There were men sitting under the trees with guns. We turned to go. They yelled at us, “come, come!” It turned out that the men were doing nothing with coconuts but were in charge of a small military outpost on the rocky cliffs, with two giant gunners fixed to the ramparts, pointing west. The hospitable military men took us down to their little patch of beach and we sat there quietly, letting only the waves talk. From there we could clearly see that our plan would never come to fruition, that the expedition was a bust and the coast was rocky and jutting, unsuitable for manual hand-foot transport. Andre the soldier was cheered to discover I was a visitor from the far north and gave me some phone number which would connect me with his people in Maroua; we shared a few words of Fulfulde and left that decoy coconut patch.

By this time Franky and Johnny were sending concerned and vaguely hostile text messages begging us to return from wherever the shit we had gotten to. It was very hot now, and I believe we climbed into a taxi, retracing the hard-earned distance we had covered. That was exhausting enough and we collapsed at the first bar we came to, hoping that it would be magically providing shelter to our wayward pals. No. They were somewhere else and still confused mightily.

I apologize if this story is uninteresting to you; maybe it doesn’t ring of Tales in Africa like you were hoping for. I just had to get it off my chest, and reiterate that my name is not, never has been, and never no way could ever be Pamela. Public domain is the realm of the curious. So… in terms of Africa, people of America, you should just know that I can currently buy five mangoes as big as my face for the approximate retail value of 23 cents. And I had a thrilling elephant threat of a charge recently, but don’t have the picture, so it’s not ready, that story. Instead I am including a picture of my mam in the salty water. I think it’s fitting. Her name is not Pamela either, but Valerie. Turtles and children like her because she is such a high quality human. The End.

civil war in chad? pas de probleme

2006-04-15T15:44:00.000Z

hi all. Yes there is civil uprising in Chad and no that's not very far away, but the situation has zero to do with Cameroon politically, unless someone gets mad about the oil pipeline that goes through Cameroon and ends up in Kribi. ALl the PeaceCorps Volunteers have been evacuated from Chad and brought to Cameroon. They will go home soon. Apparently the violence is all over but we'll see, there's some election in early MAy. Anyhow don't get all excited. I am fine; Cameroon is a peaceful country and no one has any reason to get out of control here. Anyhow. All is well. off to post with my pigs...

tetes de boeuf

2006-04-13T09:20:00.000Z

marche a l'approche

2006-04-13T09:12:00.000Z

avec parapluie

2006-04-13T09:00:00.000Z

moi aussi

2006-04-13T08:49:00.000Z

2006-04-13T08:41:00.000Z

chewy est sportive (c.e.s.)

2006-04-13T08:24:00.000Z

2006-04-13T08:20:00.000Z

2006-04-13T08:13:00.000Z

Don't worry everyone, my drinking is under control...

i have got to get en brousse

2006-04-07T13:25:00.000Z

people: time to go country. too much of me in the world these days. Privacy beckons.

le chat

2006-04-03T11:11:00.000Z

meat market

2006-04-03T10:30:00.000Z

DISCLAIMER: AM IN CRAP INTERNET CAFE AND CANT SEEM TO UPLOAD THE PICTURES IN THE FASHION THAT I HAD HOPED TO? SO IT WOULD BE LIKE A STORYBOOK. BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME. IN THE MEANTIME, VOILA LE TEXT AND I'LL ADD THE PITURES AS YOU CAN. YOU WILL HAVE TO REFERENCE THEM. HOPEFULLY THEY WILL BE IN ORDER. LOVE.

What a strange, unpredictable thing this life is. You think you’re done for, that your organs are poisoned and your future tainted, and suddenly you’re home [m.i.s.b], and surprised that you call this place home [night boukorro], and glad to be home. The people you live with are happy to see you and so is your cat [le chat].

Speaking of pets. I arranged to buy two pigs today. And I hope they are not, in the end, pets per se, but they are part of my inevitable menagerie. I was going to start raising a grip of chickens at the end of this most recent voyage, but the advent of bird flu in Cameroon stopped me from such an endeavor. So I go with Alice to Mokolo on an express mission to buy a pig for the fourth of july. Somehow, fatefully, it has been decided that the pig will live at my house until it is killed, buried, roasted, and eaten. Three months hence. The pigs (we decided to buy two to insure crowd-feeding power and so that they could provide one another with company during their brief and I hope happy lives), to encourage dislike and distance so that we may kill and eat of them without conscience, are named Bacon Cheney and Condoleeza. I hope they are not too much trouble but I am already wondering what I’ve gotten myself into.

Life revolves around the marche here. The other day I [moi aussi] rode bikes with my good girls Kayt [k.a.t.r] and Chewy [c.e.s] to a marche Chewy claimed was going off. And oh, it was. We got a late start due to morning activities but once we were on the road it was good cruising[avecparapluie]. As we approached the market after a good hour and half of hot cycling [marche a l’approche] we heard the distant sound of axes doing their job. We immediately entered the canopy of shade provided by the trees which delineated the market, and once we had done so we perceived the cause of the chopping noise [tetes de boeuf]… apparently the people were gearing up for a fete and needed A LOT of beef to properly party. I can understand that; we just came in at the wrong place, coming off a hot bike ride. Carcasses littered the ground, and ducks were merrily splashing about in piles of refuse, blood and offal. The sound of axes thudding against bone was incessant. The smell was diffuse but rich and meaty. It was like some unnamed level of hell.

But then we got away from the slaughterhouse scene and found a nice ledge upon which to perch and watch people make off with their haunches and other slabs of flesh [viands tetes], and we invested 100CFA (~25c) in bil bil, the red millet beer, and drank it out of the half gourd [je bois non]. Then we had some fried dough balls and a little liver and, as you can imagine, enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

These days there are a lot of mangoes in the markets. As big as your face. And no, they are not two dollars and seventy five cents each; they are five for fifty cents. But for each glut of harvest here there is a giant hole where those things do not exist, whether it be seven, nine, or eleven months of the year. I will not be here to see another guava season.

Currently my world looks like this [hillside huts] but soon enough it will look comme ca [view from colline]

great things are the offspring of patience

2006-03-28T13:25:00.000Z

waterborne bird

The ocean worked it's perspective and cleansing wetness into me. The Rastas fed me shrimp and herb and gave me a bag of shells which I think qualifies as a marriage proposal. Ah, to be a Rasta wife at the cookstove by the tides. I would be bored out of my gourd, as it were, but they emanated that special genuine happy vibe. Some lucky girl will be simple and aimless enough to stay and enjoy.

I'm pretty sure I have the bird flu. There are syptoms and telltale signs. Like testing positive for pneumococcus, as if I have pneumonia, but coinciding directly with the scientifically determined arrival of the strain in Cameroon, to be specific exactly up there in the Extreme North where I sit on dirt chicken-scratched surfaces all the time.

But I am thinking about whales again, and that is a good sign. I was getting too dry for a spell there, parched soul, and it has been watered good as of late. Apparently when the Inuit hunted a whale they had detachable hooks on their spears; to these they attached a bladder of some animal, let us say a seal, so that when the whale dove deep after having been delivered the insult of the spear, the bladder would inflate like a parachute and tire the great beast even more quickly. They would do this over and over again, patient in the open cold sea in their skin kayaks.

So we see how impenetrable and determined the human can be. The will to live is one thing, but the drive and imagination to live, survive, thrive, in style is the next thing. Many are carrying this out. It is a sacred duty if you look at the truth of the matter, if you take into account the hand that has been dealt.

The most stylish example of living I witnessed today was this girl playing soccer on the beach with a group of boys. She was almost invisible, she was so focused. I also liked the man in the vest and fedora.

There is a major oil rig off the coast now on Kribi, the terminus for a pipeline excavating oil from Chad. The beach used to be white but now it is silver. I suspect they have a McDonalds on that oil rig. It looks like a cruise ship right out there but apparently that is an illusion of lack of perspective and it is really a mile long. I want to skim out to it in a skin kayak tailored for me specifically. With my whale allies, we will dismantle the whole mess.

2006-03-28T11:05:00.000Z

My sources tell me that this here is the only freshwater waterfall on the planet Earth that falls directly into the ocean. So that's a special thing, no? The air was heavy and wet, two kinds of wet

2006-03-28T10:43:00.000Z

So I have been having a ridiculously good time lately, despite phone calls to the contrary. The bird flu or pneumonia or whatever never settled in to my body, which I have been taking from one beach to another in the name of work officially, but unofficially because I thought sickness might be taking me away from this place and I wanted to see the thing I love the most (la mer) from this particular coastline in as many ways as possible before heading west. Which, it looks like won't be happening now, as I am in pristine health. Ah, the healing power of the ocean. Aunt Loisee, this town Kribi is just like Kona, except for all the African people. Ha. ha. But seriously...

2006-03-28T10:33:00.000Z

oh, life is hard as a PeaceCorps volunteer. Pity me.

2006-03-28T10:22:00.000Z

c'est jolie et tranquille, non?

2006-03-28T10:17:00.000Z

This crab was seen draggin this mysterious object suspiciously close to where live the Pygmies of Cameroon. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

2006-03-20T16:02:00.000Z

"Yet this distance, all those abysses unabridged and then unabridgeable by radio, television, cheap travel and the rest, was not wholly bad. People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more. But I am a heretic, I think our ancestor's isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. The world is only too literally with us now"
THis is something I feel like could have come from my own mouth- or pen, or tapping keyboard, or other communicatory orafice- but I must admit the quote is by some fellow named john fowles. I believe. I do not remember the rest of the book much, but this ruminition by the protaganist in the novel made me think. It is a strange thing that I should contemplate this thought within the context of writing, univited, whatever I want and sticking it onto the public domain quelque part. N'importe qui can see and share. And it is paradoxical, to do this and have such sympathy for the hermit, for the ancestral isolation, where there are no maps of what is beyond the horizon and perhaps you live on an island. In many ways, you probably do.

2006-03-20T14:35:00.000Z

2006-03-17T20:51:00.000Z

I was just thinking about my feet; what made me think abou them was when I looked down and saw my grandma's feet for a split second. There's some bright pink on the toenails that I found in the early morning in an NGO workers' bathroom and there were also the grass green plastic flip flops I found in the volunteers' free box and I saw even the precise shape of her toenail in my own right toe sheath and that was enough to get me thinking on the relative permanence of our bodies, and I mean relative in proportion to our own personal existence. That is to say, each time a "being" is alive it is, within whatever "lifespan", existing within the confines and physical realities of it's body. Which is a direct inheritance of our genetic forebears. I didn't get fur; I got hair. I have my grandmothers' toenail. My skin gets burnt more easily than the people whom I live amongst at present and I get angrier than them when I am left to broil in the noonday sun at the peak of the day. With my thigh touching a stranger's hot own thigh. So finally I banged on the side of the van and yelled 'Monsieur il y a le soleeeiil!' and he got in the car and drove us all away from the beach and into the interior. On the way I wore my foot, including the genetic code for my grandmother's right toe.

2006-03-10T11:22:00.000Z

here is a post my mad scientist friend matt so kindly suggested I post on my blooooooooog so folks can see where I'm at, with two turntables and a microphone

http://www.fallingrain.com/world/CM/0/Tokombere.html

2006-03-09T02:31:00.000Z

Hi all,
It's been nothing but adventure and excursion these past few weeks. I am tired. Maybe it's because it's three thirty in the morning or maybe, I'm up at three thirty because I am on a normalized schedule of adventuring? Hard to say, but in any case, I am here yet, and it is three thirty am, cameroonian time. Every time I come into Yaounde I get revved up by the abundance of technology, by the free internet and the movies to watch, and oh, the couches!

Indeed, I have become a savage.

I will tell one story and then, methinks, I must high myself to bed (isn't that how the olden ones said it? meh) ... so, last day of the bike tour, those of us who hadn't been yet or weren't too tired to do so took a hike into Alice's Wonderland. Really it is Mozogo national park, but it wasn't even designated as such until the previous volunteer to alice made it happen... so Peace Corps does get some things done beyond the warm fuzzies... so we found a guide (whom we paid the equivalent of four bucks for a three hour hike and he was psyched- so everyone wins because if the locals can make money off the park without cutting it all down and eating all the meat within [i.e. animals] then than is a good thing, yes? Don't ask me, such development issues are all pandora's boxes in my eyes) and headed for the park.

Just as we were about to enter the periphery of the reserve, the guide bolted away, making a noise that is used to shoo goats and sheeps away, loud somehow gutteral SSH SHH! noise. A small herd of goats was seen hauling ass across the open field, and then... what? The brain had a hard time processing what the eyes were looking at. A hairy ball of motion, low to the ground, moving like something from a nightmare. A dirty baboon with three inch incisors. It grabbed the smallest, slowest baby goat and turned and ran. The baby goat was screaming and it's legs were flopping around in the air; the rest of the flock stopped abrubtly and turned and watched the abduction, their necks straining, their ears flicked foward. Two men on motorcycles zoomed after the baboon into the forest, but the beast was too swift, and someone lost a future investment of about ten mille CFA, or a nice feast. The nasty primate got it instead.

But then I was thinking, aren't we nasty primates as well? When I see a goat being yanked towards the abbatoir on a rope, it's plain to see that that goat knows where it's headed, towards the great pasture in the sky.

The forest wasn't that much of a forest, by my Northwestern standards, but impressive compared to the desert that the rest of the region has become under the hand of hungry man, the nasty primate homo sapiens. Scrubby, thorny brush, most of it not exceeding 10 feet, but some nice trees, particularly the baobab tree that was our ultimate destination. We had been biking in the morning so it was around 11 in the morning, and so aside from the baboon taking his lunch, it wasn't the time to see animals, although apparently there are lots of other kinds of monkeys and antelopes and porcupines and such, no 'large game' like elephants or giraffes, I don't think the park is large enough to sustain such populations like the larger reserve, Waza, to the north, can. Anyhow, this baobab, wow! On the scale of the great redwoods in terms of awe, though totally different in tree personality. Fat and with a silvery grey bark, weird knobs and crevices. Like a tree made of clay. Gorgeous. Ok gotta go bye all.

2006-02-23T12:50:00.000Z

a road in the extreme north... a road I biked my ass down. Surely a hot road.

2006-02-23T12:34:00.000Z

a real nice field of faedherbia albidas

2006-02-23T12:26:00.000Z

on the road from Tokombere to Meri

2006-02-23T12:22:00.000Z

a good notion of the biking terrain

2006-02-23T12:18:00.000Z

Sometimes people ask me to provide them with a rough itinerary of my day. Frankly, in my life as a Peace Corps Agroforestry volunteer, there is no such formula and I have been up til now unable to honor such requests. However, I can give you a precise log of my days during the Extreme North Bike Tour, circa 2006.

06.00-07.30
Awake. Rise and greet the new African dawn. Stretch, roll up the sleeping bag, speak loudly in order to awake companions. Run around the buildings in the sand, poop in a hole, and get the panniers on the bike. Check tire pressure. Share previous night’s dreams.

07.00-08.30
Breakfast.. typically consisting of beans and beignets, small deep fried balls of dough roughly resembling donut holes, though not nearly as sweet. Sometimes ‘chai’, some weird mixture of tea and coffee and citronella and a fistful of sugar. Maybe some bouillie, a rice and flour soup that tasted kindof like cream of wheat, or papaya. Brush teeth and snag water from the bottles provided. Fill Camelbak and strap on bike helmet carefully as the Peace Corps car is with us and to ride with your hair in the wind is voluntary volunteer suicide.

08.00-09.00 (except for that one day when we had to leave at 05.30)
Bike. Bike up hills, bike down hills, bike in the sun, rest in the shade, wave at people, smile at children, pee behind big bare boulders, suck water. Try not to lean on your palms too much and keep an eye out for snakes and humpbacked nomadic cows.

09.00-10.00
Arrive in the village of the day. Deposit bags at place of sleep and/or bike to highschool to do publicity i.e. be heckled by bawdy, fearless high school students. Perhaps turn down a marriage proposal or two. Feel naked under the feasting eyes as they glory in all the sweaty white flesh on parade.

10.30-12.00
Shower amid the bustle of other volunteers trying to do the same thing. This takes a long time. The camaraderie of the sports team open showers comes to light. You can practically hear the sound of flicking towels. Everyone gets respectfully spiffied up for the afternoon’s meeting.

12.00-14.00
Eat lunch. Prepared by people in the village by previous arrangement (except for two villages, each village visited on the tour is inhabited by a PCV) and usually consisting of ngams (white floury yams), some kind of green leaf sauce or red oily meat sauce, maybe some fresh vegetables on a lucky day, baguette bread… fish, beans.. whatever.

14.00-17.00
“Action plan” meeting. Local responsible personalities are invited and often show up at three o’clock instead of two for a meeting discussing stigmatization of people living with AIDS and what can be done is the respective community to fight against such behaviour; the symptoms of fear, hate, ignorance, and so on. We tried to work on letting the community members come up with their own answers, but sometimes that is not such an easy thing to do when you are Americans who think they know all the answers.

17.00-19.00
Eat dinner and prepare for soiree, i.e. put on matching t-shirts. Haul big banner which says “Luttez contre la maladie, pas les malades” (Fight against the sickness, not the sick) and displays a big white AIDS ribbon which over the course of the week will become red as participants pin up their own wee red ribbon. Hang it up and use it as a stage curtain. Rachel says that we should give ourselves the name “Thoughtful Thespians Throughout The Third World” and go on tour with our act, which became nicely polished by the end of the week.

18.30-23.00
The soiree is supposed to begin at six thirty, but we often showed up late on account of dinner being served late and it won’t start until eight or so. During the soiree there are lots of fun and educational activities. I took part in the introductory skit (oh hello Erin, I am so happy to see you because I have some questions about HIV/AIDS and I know you work in Health, non?), a group activity with audience members playing the parts of elephants, one a baby that had to be protected by the adults against the lions, played by vicious clawing PCV’s.- the baby elephanteau was to represent the body, the adults the immune system, and the lions opportunistic diseases, malaria, the common cold, etc. Then I became a hunter who killed all but two of the adult elephants, so when the lions attacked again it was not so easy for the adults, and the baby often died a terrible death, being mauled by white people. The audience loved that. But the real crowd pleaser was a skit that somebody had seen in The Vagina Monologues. Two people held a sheet up between them, hanging to the floor. Music began, if all was running smoothly. ‘Oumarou’ comes out dancing. Soon he is dancing with a cute, dimpled blond girl. They go behind the sheet and dip down. The sheet shakes randily. Oumarou comes back out, alone, dancing. I arrive from behind the curtain, looking around. I spy OUmarou and regard his dancing style and physique with clear appreciation. I grab his arm and lead him directly behind the sheet. Again it shakes and maybe a Yowah! Is thrown out there, depending on the crowd and the level of Muslimity of the village (or, in my case, Catholicism- more later)… the process happens again with two more girls. Each of us is sitting on the floor behind the third sheet, and when OUmarou is in the sack with the third girl, their heads and shoulders remain in view. She asks him if he’s been tested for HIV. He says, “mais cherie, je t’aime” and claims to be a virgin. Around this time the three previous girls rise up from behind the sheet, much to the chagrin of OUmarou, and another fellow comes up next to Issatou, who had also claimed to be a virgin. Golly! Then we hold up papers with numbers claiming number of partners (My card said twenty-nine, making the audience gasp, and my number was in red, indicating that I was infected with the virus! It was truly a bold role I took on), and do the math, and explain how many people can theoretically be in bed with you when you think you are with one sole person.

Kids from each village did their own skits or songs, we gave out t-shirts and condoms and posters and whatnot to those who answered a question correctly, and on the whole a good time was had. There were a few odd exceptions, and often the crowd got a little frenzied at the end of it, wanting t-shirts of their own or something else.

In the second town we did our thing in, Mora, a man came up to the stage at the end, after the temoinage had come to an end. Temoin is to give witness, and each night at the very end we had out witnesses, young people infected with HIV, speak to the crowd about their experiences. It was kindof edgy. There’s a brutal crowd public justice thing that can happen here, to thieves, homosexuals, those who are feared or hated. And there’s plenty of misconceptions about HIV/AIDS here, which we were trying to help dispel. So, in Mora, this man wrangles himself on stage saying he has a question for the witness, then holds up a blue folder and says, “Here I hold documented proof that AIDS was invented in San Fransisco and given by the Americans to us, so on and so forth” and I jumped up from the audience where I was sitting, yelling, “Lies! It’s false!” which probably didn’t help, and then we needed gendarmes to push everyone back with their stripped saplings.

In another instance, in my village of TOkombere, there was a last minute declaration by the old papal Catholic priest that we were not to refer to condoms in our presentation. I was so angry with him but I just stated that I could not agree with him, to which he said, “Yes, that is one of the primary divides between America and the Vatican, the stance on condom use”, and I agreed and left. Senile asshole. Where did he think he lived, where he had been living for the past thirty years? DIdn’t he see that the people were having sex all the time around him? And staggering under the weight of all their babies and contracting AIDS rampantly? So, I consulted with the group and the consensus was that we couldn’t feel right talking about the problem and offering no solution. We decided to cancel the soiree. However Dounia convinced me to talk to the younger father first, Pere Gregroire, who is in his fifties and has also lived here upwards of twenty years. He had an entire leopard skin hanging on the wall over his desk. I brought Mike and Erin with me, a married couple who work in Health and who I knew would keep me calmer. Also they are Christian, they met in their church choir group, and Mike has thought about going into school for Theology. And in fact we had quite an interesting conversation with the father. In the end we dropped the condom demonstration with the wooden penises and the condom relay, and tried to tone down the sheet skit to smooching, lean on the side of abstinence and condom use as the best alternative. I was stressed the whole time, watching for the priest’s reaction. But, he never did pull the plug.

Alright, that is all I got for now… try to put some pictures up too! There will be more…
Lovin-kelly

2006-02-23T12:09:00.000Z

just before heading out on the first leg of motion on the Extreme North Bike Tour of 2006

2006-02-23T11:57:00.000Z

me ans alice protect ourselves against the terrible Harmattten winds, full of fine Saharan sand.

2006-02-21T17:58:00.000Z

Dear folks, Hey now and how now. I am good. .. la vie est belle en afrique, ces jours-ci. That is to say, life is beautiful in Africa, these days.

I have just now, this very afternoon, returned to Maroua. It seems a little mad, filled with rushing cars and moving people, and I can only say it’s probably best I entered on a bush taxi and not a bicycle (the bikes were strapped on top). But I entered triumphant, and as the bike tour had been officially substance-free, we went immediately to have a nice cold beer across the street from the agence de voyage, at a bar frequented by a certain ilk or genre of clientale; of ex pats and upper echelon Cameroonaise, and those associated with The Church. We volunteers refer to it as Chez E. They have delightfully cold beers. I prefer ‘33’ or “Trente-trois”. It is the African cousin of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

The bike tour was just great, I am happy to be able to report. I must confess to having succumbed to feelings of dread and fear and loathing about a month beforehand, but those dissipated in the wake of a big fat good time. We did some world-class biking, saw a good bit of the country, taught folks a few things about AIDS prevention and stigmatization of those living with HIV/AIDS, handed out some t-shirts and condoms. Met good people, had good times, saw beautiful places; the good stuff of being alive, non?

So I am feeling good, if not a bit worked over. I have yet to nail down the precise mathematics of kilometers to mileage, but I hear that we biked around 100 miles, over the course of 7 days. Mind you, we were in the mountains (Mandara range, for those of you interested in geography) many, many, little mountains, and a couple real monsters. But, as they say, ‘petit a petit l’oiseau fait son nid’= little by little the bird makes it’s nest. You just gotta look at the point right in front of your wheel, stay in the immediate unchallenging moment and not think about that hill you just glimpsed coming up. There was a Peace Corps car accompanying us, with Passeri the driver, Donald the bike guy, and Amadou, our regional go-to guy and my immediate supervisor. The Peace Corps vehicles are glorious shiny eggplant purple Land Rovers and it was reassuring to have one closely following us at all times. The terrain up here tends to favor sand and large rocks, along with the aforementioned hills, and things can be a bit hairy at times, like when you’ve just gone careening down a gigantic hill- but how fun and demanding of all your attention!- and hit a massive puddle of sand. But we wore our helmets at all times and there were only minor injuries. In addition, we ate good.

I’m done for now. I’ve been away from all pieces and parts of technology for over a week, nothing but conversation and Scrabble and biking for entertainment, and this computer’s got me tired already. Tomorrow I will put up some more details and stories from what we did and what was done, and some pictures as well. In any case, I live yet and am happy. I hope you all are in the same boat.

2006-01-12T10:54:00.000Z

harry potter and dumbledore bring Halloween to Africa

2006-01-08T12:12:00.000Z

here's a shot of yaounde, the capitol city, "the city of seven hills",where I am now.

2006-01-08T12:05:00.000Z

here's proof I'm living in Africa.

2006-01-08T11:58:00.000Z

Christmas dinner was a tex mex affair.

2006-01-08T11:54:00.000Z

good clean rock skippin fun... though I probably have schistosomiasis now. We're not supposed to get in the water here.

2006-01-08T11:50:00.000Z

these are the freaks I spent Christmas with. Not exactly a traditional family get together...

2006-01-08T11:20:00.000Z

this is where i spent christmas, a little place called poli. Apparently it's the location of an anthropological treatise called "The Innocent Anthropologist". I haven't read it.

2006-01-08T11:08:00.000Z

me and johnny had a really nice christmas together. We are as close as we have ever been.

2006-01-01T14:11:00.000Z

January 1, 2006

“A long December, and there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last”- oui, it’s cheesy to quote the bloody Counting Crows, but I reckon it’s appropriate at this juncture. ‘Cause it was an endless December and I am proud as punch that I survived it. Getting through another long-distance holiday season gives me a little leeway to quote pop bands, I believe. Here’s another: “Na na na na, na na na na naa na na naaa, Na na na na naaaaa”. A direct transcription, that.

So y’all on the West Coast of America have been living in the year of 2006 for an hour or so but I’ve been here for ten!! And let me tell you, you’ve got a lot to look forward to. My New Year’s Eve consisted of getting a little schizzled with villagers on bil-bil, the infamous and omnipresent millet brew; then I went home and did a little laundry in a bucket (washing cordouroys in such a fashion is a valid cardiovascular workout), then my pal and fellow PCV Jeff showed up, us two being the only Americanos left in the area; got to stick together on the holidays, there’s too much temptation to wallow around in your memories, imagining what your family and friends are doing all together in a massive, insanely happy laughing caroling group… we had a bonfire and cooked what Jeff calls “hobo paks”, a hodgepodge of green peppers, basil, carrots, potatoes, meat and seasonings (Maggi, the indispensable cube of tasty MSG, salt, pepper, and imported Spike). I made the fire and Jeff prepared the paks. They were delicious and as it was nearly 11 we were hungry enough to eat two each. Then we had a game of gin rummy to pass the time until midnight, which is way past my African bedtime.

Unfortunately I didn’t sleep that well because of the bizarre and torturous tradition of New Year’s here. Some misguided soul sadly blended components of Halloween and New Year’s at some colonialistic point and now children roam about in screaming hordes from door to door, singing an endless refrain of “BONNE ANNEE, BONNE ANNEE, BONNE ANNEE, BONNE ANNEE”. (Happy New Year). And, when they arrive at your door at three in the morning, you are expected to stagger out with a bag of candy and distribute it equally among their feuding hands. It’s a nightmare. I had good intentions but I also think I have strep throat, so I stayed warm in bed until the morning, at which point I gave the scavenging changelings some banana bubble gum. Then I got the hell out of Dodge- er, Tokombere.

I realize this blog is a mess; please excuse me. I will soon in the capital of Yaounde for Midservice, where they run the full battery of tests on me to ascertain my health (I’m guessing, but I’ll give myself a 4.5 on a scale of 10) and a teeth cleaning as well. In the evenings I shall have endless access to complimentary internet and boy, I’ll whip this here blog into shape, throw down some eye candy, all that.

I hope all of you passed through the season intact and with a few remaining pennies to your name. May the New Year bring you much peace, happiness, and contentment in that which you carry into the world. Much Love.

2005-12-27T11:12:00.000Z

serious case of hut head

2005-12-27T11:09:00.001Z

chez moi

2005-12-27T11:09:00.000Z

not a happy camper

2005-12-27T10:38:00.000Z

il fait 21 december 2005

It is a sad day in the quartier. Screams broke out from a neighborÕs house at around 8 in the, just when the brief seasonal chill (christmastime, relatively) was wearing off. They were real screams, too, not the death ÒcryingÓ that women do. They walk into the compound with a forearm up over their heads, boo hooing for all they are worth. It can go on for days, so you canÕt expect them to be crying incessantly, but I have seen such grief also. ItÕs all so public here, so shared. I have a hard time with it sometimes. I walked outside my gate and there were people converging upon the screams from every direction. The women went in, to where, I presume, the body was (the body had been that of a womanÕ). I got close but, IÕm not a big dead body person, and I didnÕt want to seem a voyeur or do anything amiss. I canÕt yell like that, and if youÕre not making commiseratory noises, you can feel a little useless. So I loitered a little while with the men and children outside and went home.

There have been people working at my house. One, my landlord is building me an outdoor kitchen, and two, some farmer dudes I know are building me a second boukourrou in my yard, for a shady nice place to relax and/or sleep. Once these additions are finished, I will be set up nicely to receive guests, or etrangers as everyone whoÕs not a member of the village is referred to as- a stranger.

Also itÕs almost Christmas and I canÕt help but imagine scenes taking place over there; the crunch of snow, the smell of evergreens, little white lights everywhere. Chocolate and stockings and socks etc. How I would appreciate right now curling up on a couch (!) with a comforter (!) and maybe watching The Grinch and enjoying a hot toddy to fend off the chills. Au contraire, mes amis. ItÕs maybe not quite PC, but it is said among certain of us that Santa doesnÕt come to Africa.

Lately- or, rather, I wonder if itÕs been a constant but IÕve managed to quell it in the name of raw survival- the dynamics created by poverty are really getting to me. Especially my role within all of it. Oftentimes I feel like I donÕt know how to share, but that is combatted my my logic that itÕs no favor to get these folks used to the whitey who gives them stuff. However, I did gift two issues od National Geographic to a friend I went to visit before leaving for the holiday, and it was just a warm fuzzy feeling to see all the kids crowding around the pictures. Dounia, my friend, and a farmer I work with, had a huge laugh over a picture of some Australian Aborigines pointing across the desert, squatting in the sand with a huge blond American guy covered in cameras. It just looked so ridiculous and yet instantly famillar. Interestingly, Dounia assumed that the Aborigines were pygmies in the south of Cameroon; he could name precisely where all the African pictures had been taken, and they were all within Cameroon.

So, my moral dilemna is thus: my mere presence invites all kinds of speculations upon the world and for the most part, I canÕt help but endorse what are largely unfounded beliefs about the place I call home. About the huge riches and the unlimited access to them to any shmuck who arrives in person. See, the American Dream is still alive somewhere!! Newsweek gives us the unsold copies of their international version of their crappy rag, in what I believe is a transparent attempt to transmit their propaganda across the universe (one of their main premises seems to be that everyone needs an iPod- but I, really, I really DO need one).. should I burn them or give them to people? They freak out when I give them english printing with pictures. Am I committing censorship or wise judgment? What really gets to me is the overload of asvertisements in the Newseeks for luxury crap, cars and watches and beautiful expensive white women. In my mind, which is probably overthinking the issue, this creates some unfathamable and unreachable desires in people who will never own a patel phillips watch or go golfing in Miami. Why show them shinyh pictures of it? Of ocurse, I look at fashion magazines, and I certainly wouldnÕt be able to afford the majority of the clothes they feature. HMmmmmm. ....

chaud

2005-12-27T10:35:00.000Z

il fait chaudÔTis the day after Christmas, and all through the house, we are trying to pretend we are not recovering from a distant peculiar holiday. The Amelie soundtrack is on and Jeff says it is good laundry music. Rachel is reading about the guy who cut his arm off when he got it stuck between a rock and a boulder, and I am doing this. I am blogging. It is Monday and I guess since Teddy is at his post of Poli, he is doing work, in his bedroom typing up some meeting minutes. Teddy is the only health worker among us. The three remaning are Agroforestry Volunteers. We tend to be a little more disheveled and stinky than the other brands of volunteers, but we have been told that we have actually raised the bar on Agro cleanliness. IÕve seen photo albums of Agriculture programs in the seventies (peace corps cameroon has been around since 1962) and there was a lot of beard wearing and pigskin throwin in the mud. Huge hippies. Not these days: what we got is a gang of scrawny fine arts majors. Just freed from the universities of America and bound and determined to get out there and make the world a better place!

IÕd like to focus now, in this blog, on the important questions of life... what makes the heart pump and where thoughts from from and how many presents did you get yesterday? Do tell, with detail. Were you surrounded by a crinkling mountain of wrapping paper by the time you were through unwrapping all the boxes and soft mysterious shapes? I woke up fairly early on the morning of Chritmas-I had been having an awful dream about an impending tornao, i could see it hanging from the sky, huge and coal black, twirling around madly, surely eventually going to eat up my inhabitated portion of the world- and so I was relieved to wake up - although just before I awoke the storm had relented- only to awake to the childish disappointment and, frankly a little anger as well, that Santa hadnÕt showed and the stockings hanging were still flat against the wall. Then I remembered where I am.

We had enjoyed a stimulating African dance party the night before, on an open ocncrete platform underneath a thatched oval roof. There was a slight pause when we rolled onto the dance floor but we soon proved ourselves to not be spastic freaks and the party continued. Dancing is a pretty restrained affair here, physiologically. One of my best Christmas presents was when the bartender, Angel, told me after having shared a dance that ÒI can good dance the moukassaÓ (thatÕs my direct French translating- being able to speak a mixture of whatever languages, whatever words, you know, makes talking so much more spontaneouas. Here I can verbose in english, french, and fulfulde. Sometimes a little Ziulgo or Mada for shits and giggles). Yesssssss. When an African girl tells you that youÕre a good dancer, you know youÕre money. In fact it makes you want to go directly to the mirror and give it an enthusiastic mirror dancing performance. There were no mirrors that night, however; we are in a village after all, mirrors are big city flash and classy dazzle.

The Big Day was a little melancholic, to be honest. I know that I for one was trying hard not to go comparing times zones and what people might be doing at that times in other unnamed places. We had a good scrambled eggs and veggie breakfast with tea and made a Mexican feast for dinner. Teddy improvised some rather good peanut fudge. ThereÕs a string of colored lights and the aforementioned stockings. ItÕs not half bad, itÕs just weird and nearly imcomprehensible. I left the house once yesterday, just to be able to say I had, and the sun struck me and I went back inside. There was drumming throughout the day, rythmic and distant. Folks in my village had been disappointed with me for leaving and not fete-ing with them, but frankly, I knew if I stayed they would just impose their liquid kindness, the one thing they always make sure to have in abundance, the Bil-Bil, the gravitational center of all celebrations, upon me and then I would be drunk in the hot afternoon sun and surely have diarrhea the next day. Nahh... think IÕll go congregate with my american brethren who remain in Cameroon (not many) and basically commiserate. ItÕs hard to be without your traditions.

2005-12-18T11:00:00.000Z

Hello everybody! I am officially entering into the vast world of public domain technological communication! Thing is the time lag between when I think of things to tell you and when they've happened, when I send them in an email and when you find the time to check your email (for those of you who spend the work day tete-a-tete with a computer, I've gotta say I'm baffled by how infrequently you seem to do this): in any case, I've gotten kind of self-conscious about the group email; it feels too much like those hated holiday "family update" letters- "bobby got his braces off and suzy's able to get up en pointe in her ballet classes now"- and I just don't want to be inflicting anything on anyone these days. Thus: the blog! This way I know that YOU went of your own volition to check up on me and see how it rolls for me in Cameroon AND BEYOOOOND!!

Now, as a Peace Corps Volunteer there are certain rules I must abide by: wearing my helmet on motos and bicycles, I can drive a bicycle but not a moto or a car, I'm not to go starting any bar fights (what a faux pas last night was) or drinking unfiltered water (sorry Nurse Ann, but when you're in the bush and your farmer friend offers you some freshly brewed amoebic millet beer, it is simply rude to refuse), I am required to ask for vaction days and not go crossing international borders without explicit permission, so on and so forth. In fact not too long ago a Volunteer in the south was Administratively Separated (AdMinSeptd) when the director of the country program's wife Googled his name, found this volunteer talking shit about her husband and his boss while also detailing his adventures on a trip he was not supposed to be on, officially. He took two other Volunteers down with him, back to the States (what punishment! say the Cameroonians). My point is that - now, don't get me wrong, I never have and never will break any of the venerable institutions rules- but if Allah forbid somthing goes awry... well, you won't read it here.

For those of you who are American and speak only one tongue, the title of this blog might confuse you. Directly translated it says "it does hot"; in Frenchy French it's a simple comment on the weather, and an applicable one for almost any day where I am. But that's how I like the French here: everything in the Simple Present Obvious. Here is an example of some scintillating conversation:

Conversant 1: Greetings; you are there.
Conv 2: I am here. It is good. You are there. That is good also.
Conv 1: Thank you, Thank you. You are there with your family; they are good?
Conv 2: All is well thanks to Allah. Your shirt is blue and you are drinking tea.
Conv 1: So it is. So be it. May Allah will that it continue to be so.

Ahhh; so simple and pure, like clouds. When I think of the verbal finagling that took place in college Philosophy courses my face screws up like I'm sucking a lemon ad my head feels like it is ready to melt off my neck.

Anyhow, friends and family, this is just an Introduction. I'll start laying some meat on the bone soon. It's what? Christmas Time? Golly, happy holidays to all then. For those of you who subscribe to other religions and traditions, just hang in there. That music will stop playing soon.

Love to all