Last Week of Training!

It is 6am on a Sunday morning and I am lying under my mosquito net in my host family’s home, listening to the pitter patter of birds on the tin roof. Outside I hear the soft peeps of chicks scuttling around with the mama hen as they search for food. The dogs are fighting as usual outside. I still have a difficult time getting used to hearing dogs tearing each other apart and not being able to do anything about it. Usually I would try to sleep in on a Sunday morning but with the electricity finally being on, there is music playing, drunken men singing next door at the bar, and crying children. It is amazing how light can wake up a village at all hours. My host mom is already awake and beckons my host sister and brother to wake up. I’m content to lie in bed since I’m still fighting off a persistent cough, sore throat, and the usual side effects of a cold. Just can’t seem to fight off sickness here!

Dancing to the traditional music of Cameroon during Diversity Fete!

 

Only a week left here in this village. I find myself torn between wanting to get to my post and getting to work & knowing that I will miss my host family and that I have grown to really love them. Also I will miss my stagemates (our training group is called a stage). I have heard a few people compare our experience to the military because I guess people in the military have the same feeling we have: we are experiencing something together that no one else will understand except us. From the shock of a new culture, living with host families, getting sick a lot, training classes, new language, traveling across Cameroon together, sharing in our successes, sharing in our grief from losing people at home, sharing in our happiness when we communicate with home, and sharing the experience of sitting on a rooftop of a host family’s home, having a beer, and watching the Cameroon sunset. Even after we go to our posts, I have a feeling that we will be stagemates forever and I have made some long lasting friendships.

I have some awesome news to share! After two months of training in French, I have reached the level that I have to have to go to my post; Intermediate High! Learning French was my most difficult obstacle in coming here to Cameroon since I came here knowing very little French and I don’t learn languages easily. I still have a lot more to learn, but now I know that I will be swearing in as a Peace Corps volunteer on November 19, 2014. Plus I get to learn some more Fulfude this week since it is the local language for my village. Jamna!

I also did my final French presentation on the Folklore of Cameroon and I found out some interesting stories! Pregnant women are not supposed to walk outside at night because they will give birth to a snake. Bats hang upside down in caves because the birds and bugs will not be their friend since bats look so odd compared to the other flying animals. If a small green frog comes into your house, someone is going to get pregnant. Luckily I had a green frog in our house the other night and he hung out on my shoulder as I eat my very spicy chicken and batone de manioc. According to my host mom, I will be having a child soon! I also had a run in with a mouse in my bed. He had lived in my room for a while, but one night I must have kicked my mosquito net so that there was a hole at the bottom of my bed. I wake up to a mouse screaming (yes they scream for sure) and turn on my flashlight to see a small mouse hanging from my mosquito net about three inches from my face. I roll over on my side as he falls on my sheets. I throw half of the bed sheet over him and try very unsuccessfully to get out of bed (mosquito nets keep bugs out but they keep people in) I eventually compose myself and try to catch him with a water bottle but he scurries off my bed and back into the hole he came from. My host mom said he is single and just wanted a wife. Oh jeez. We put some mouse poison out after that experience. Sorry Mr. Mouse.

Me & Prince Charming

 

My host mother taught me how to make poisson brassiere (grilled fish). As we gutted and cleaned the fish, all I could think of was the time my grandfather showed me how gut a fish when I was very young. What he would say now while I am cooking fish in Cameroon! I also had to kill a chicken, pluck the feathers, and cook it for dinner. I think we killed some chickens in New York when I was little, but it is not something I do all the time. Turned out to be a lot less messy than I imagined it would be in Cameroon. Have to make this adventure exciting! I made French toast for my family with real Maple Syrup I brought from home in New York. They loved it! Although it was difficult to explain in French how my Dad and I make maple syrup from trees. The look on my host mom’s face was priceless when she walked into the house and saw me cooking on the fire with Celine Dion blasting and a beer in my hand. It is just how I cook! She couldn’t stop laughing!

Preparing fish for dinner



Chicken for dinner

My host sister and I making French Toast

Sam and I making French Toast for the family!

 

We had our workshop where I met my counterpart, the Cameroonian that I will be working with at my post. He is wicked nice and very involved in helping small businesses in the Adamoawa. He is married and his wife is about to have a baby. Also he is Muslim so I am excited to learn about his religion and how it is practiced in my new community. Women play a very different role in my village compared to the United States. I will be myself, but tread a fine line for a while until I understand this new culture.

The rest of my training should go by quick and I am going to try to enjoy every minute that I have with my friends here. I’m so excited to get to my post in the Adamoawa! I am so ecstatic to start my work for Peace Corps and begin a new adventure in another region of Cameroon. I have learned that I can be the Indiana Jones that I need to be to do this job and that I am not alone. My family and friends from back home have been so supportive and are a reminder that I have a home to go back to. I received an awesome package from one of my best friends and I have gotten a few letters in the mail. It means so much to me especially when the package contains food and supplies that I can’t buy in Cameroon!

Package from Alexia!

 

Now onto my last week of training, doing an agribusiness workshop for local entrepreneurs, picking some lettuce from my garden for a nice salad, making some soy milk for our presentation, enjoying some Cameroon sunsets with my stagemates on rooftops, and making it to the swearing in ceremony where I will be singing the Cameroon National Anthem and American National Anthem with an awesome Cameroonian and hopefully officially become a Peace Corps volunteer. My next post will be from my little village in the Adamaowa! Let the countdown begin!