C, F, L, R

Here I am now in Yaoundé, at the case for what is probably the last time. I’ve spent the entire week juggling administrivia and Boris, who helped me down from post, and although I haven’t learned any Czech, written the last one or two installments of the fiction, found former Volunteer of my village Dinah Peck (or possibly Diana Peck?), nor seen all the Yaoundé-based people I wanted to see, I’ve still gotten to see some of my favorite Volunteers, weighed myself (around 190 lbs., making my weight gain about 15 lbs.), drank sufficiently, and performed a certain number of medical tests. I’m sure you will all be pleased to know that my stool sample was negative, my weight gain is not the result of a thyroid problem, my blood tests were fine, I’m still HIV negative, and my TB test was positive. It’s been, in short, a pretty fun and relaxing week, and I keep waking up after sleeping too much after going to bed too late with the sensation that I just had a terribly meaningful dream that helped me center and come to terms with my Peace Corps Experience.

Tomorrow I cease to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, and start being Another White Guy in Cameroon. (Although I guess you never really stop being a Volunteer.) The next three days will require a bit of finesse as I bounce from place to place. The current plan is: Friday night at maybe Claude’s, Saturday night in Bafia, Sunday night maybe with Yaya or whoever manages to get a hotel room here in Yaoundé, and then Monday it’s time to go.

One of the traditions here in Peace Corps Cameroon is that COS-ing volunteers sign this wall in the living room. Putting your name, village, years of service, and program are all pretty standard. Lately a lot of people have been adding quotes or jokes. J-Veld and Lindsey D. have this tag-team thing going on, but "Why did the fungi leave the party?/ Because there wasn’t mush-room" is lame in just the right way that I’m OK with it.

Of course, the whole thing is somewhat silly because every few years the wall fills up and they have to repaint it. And anyhow Peace Corps Cameroon is trying to move its office and thus the case. In the end, the whole thing is utterly and absolutely provisoire, and perhaps reflects a deeper, maybe somewhat depressing truth about service, along the lines that you get to fill a role for two years here, but I just don’t believe that an impact has been made. But maybe that’s just a limited form of cynicism that will go away bien tôt — certain Cameroonians have said that their previous interactions with former Peace Corps Volunteers have made them what they are, even if they were not the best students, and that perhaps the impacts of your presence or absence are yet to really be felt.

Allison decided to eschew any pretense of wisdom, and drew a hippo as a reference to a humorous and somewhat dangerous experience she had kayaking down a river and ending up face-to-face with a hippo (one of the more dangerous animals on this continent). She, thinking like me, decided to write it on a bookcase, figuring that it is slightly less likely to be painted over and might even end up being transported to a new case, providing her a better shot at Peace Corps immortality.

As for me, I spent a good long time trying to figure out how to take these biting and depressing insights about the ceaseless parade of warm bodies and shape it into a twelve-to-twenty word sound bite. As with many things, I decided that the most profound way I could express myself was with a quote, namely: "There are no sweeter words than this: Nothing lasts forever.." Out of deference to the cheerful optimism of my fellows, and perhaps a sense of perverseness, I decided to write it "hidden" under a blackboard that’s hanging on another bookcase. I feel like perhaps I could have done better with the whole thing, but all in all I’m a little pleased with the result.

[Edit: I don’t appear to have any pictures of it. But I did take a picture of the thing I wrote down in honor of Jenny Wang, so you get a picture of that.]

Here are the names of some of the gone-but-not-forgotten, including Henry, Austin, Timothy, and Lindsay C.

Some cute pictures of Volunteers relishing their rare time together.

Our gonging-out, which is a ceremony where Admin says "Thanks" and "Good-bye" to those volunteers who have proudly served their countries. Honored Directress Lahoma is already gone — early COS, ha ha — and the new one, Jackie something or other, seems pretty sharp and quite on top of things.

I’m, of course, sitting next to Queen Cristina, and we’re both wearing our Bamiléké outfits. (Mine was a present from the Batié Mayor’s Office. I don’t know where hers came from.) Here I was responding to Francis’s saying that I was a "notable"; I was clarifying that they just gave me the clothes, specifically that I had found a notable in a dark alley in Bafoussam and decided that I could make better use of the outfit.

Volunteers who are all COSing together, meaning doing the same medical stuff and ceasing to be Volunteers on the same day, get to gong out together. Here are the rest of the people from our COS group.

The new Honored Directress.

COSing means you get the coveted Peace Corps Cameroon pin, which depicts the American and Cameroonian flags and the Peace Corps logo. (You can just barely see it near my shoulder.)

I was supported by Claude and Boris, depicted here with Jake.

Family photo! The Peace Corps sign is taken off the main admin building, and we think the orientation is quite stylish.

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