Jenny‘s gallivanting off in the States right now, and I’m catsitting for her. Her cat’s a little dude named Aristotle (her rationale being that in Cameroon, she needs the assistance of the Father of Logic) and he’s pretty sweet now that we made it back to post. Pets and kids are a good combination, though […]
Haven’t had much in the way of Internet access lately. Can’t tell if it’s just Camtel’s usual bag of suck or if there’s a proximate cause — weirdness at the Camtel office yesterday that is too trivial to really go into. Suddenly the end of the school year is upon us. I knew it was […]
Affecter means "assigned", and sometimes "reassigned". Thus, teachers are "affected" to schools, and because teachers are technically civil servants, that’s where they go. We’re not technically civil servants, but we’ve been assigned to our posts too. Well, for the most part. There are so few ICT volunteers that we get a little bit more leeway. […]
[Retcon: Zhenae is now spelled differently, so as to be pronounced in English. I’m also thinking about the changing the human language to not be English, like let’s say "Panlac". This chapter’s a little weaker; it’s just to get towards the next chapter, which is considerably juicier.] The less said about that night before we […]
Maroua is the capital of the Extreme North region, which (together with the North and the Adamawa regions) are called the "Grand North". The first, best way to access the Grand North is via the train, which goes from Yaoundé to Ngaoundéré, and then buses from there as normal. As you take the bus to […]
One thing I utterly love in French is the verb se tromper, "to make a mistake", but literally "to fool oneself". Be careful because tremper, "to soak", sounds almost exactly the same. Mnemonic: "trompe l’oeil", which we adopted into English, means "fool the eye", or idiomatically "optical illusion". It’s dangerous to argue from etymology, of […]
Spring break is almost over, and I’m on the long journey back to post. It’s been a long, strange trip and overall I’d count it as a success. I hope to write about it later, once I figure out how to leave out all the important parts. For the time being, here’s a picture we […]
The GPS trail would probably tell the story better than I could. I’ve seen it overlaid on a map of Capital City, and it doubles back in lines and knots, tangles like my hair on a sweaty day. Also like my hair, I’m perversely proud of it. It’s a scar on my informational life like […]
Last night I heard the tell-tale noises of mice again and this time I caught two — one who was just kind of standing there deer-in-headlights as I dropped a tin over him, and the other one running around in the bathroom trying to climb the wall, I think in an effort to escape. This […]
Here is a recorded session of me trying to learn patois via French. It is taken with Pegap Anatole, colloquially referred to as "Pa-Na", who is a surveillant at the lycée. It is about 32 minutes long. I recorded it on the inbuilt mike on my D2 (personal music player), so it is very quiet […]