Many things I am about to write about. For the moment I just want to relate that the first week back wasn’t intolerable. Wednesday was an assemblée generale, where among other things the most absentéeiste teachers were called out. Highest was something like 84 hours of absence. Turns out every time you don’t take attendance, […]
Some pictures from the mariage. I don’t have too many; it was crowded and I mostly got shots of a bunch of people in a huddle with no clear context. This is a picture of the two ladies who provided the food and eventually found the bride. I’m pretty sure this is one of the […]
On this, the occasion of my 27th birth, I thought it would be appropriate to look back at the last ten years and take stock of basically just how crazy I have been. Sure, there’s the impulse buys and youthful indiscretions, but I’m talking about real, reality-warping, you-ought-to-see-someone crazy. Some highlights: couchsurfing Boston for a […]
For New Year’s, I went to Bamenda, which is the capital of the Northwest region. Of the ten "regions" in Cameroon, the Northwest and the Southwest (which are north and west of the West region, respectively) are the "Anglophone" regions, where most people speak English or pidgin. The other eight are "Francophone" regions, where most […]
Back to post again. I’ve been here for 20 minutes and I’m already bored and morose. I’ve spent the last few days with other volunteers and a lot of time watching movies and TV shows. We deep-fried everything. I think I’m going to try not to eat for a day or two. Going out to […]
We deep fried an avocado, among other things, and as we were lifting our glasses to a toast, we managed: "To surviving the holidays!" So far so good. It still doesn’t feel like Christmas; it’s still tropical, you still sweat walking up a hill. But to the Cameroonians, it’s definitely time to fête! We spent […]
[FB Status: And then I woke up in a pickup truck in a village called Makénéné with a film on my teeth and a clarity in my heart.] When I woke up on the car in Makénéné, I realized very quickly three things: I was lovesick. It’s one thing to have a crush on another […]
One other thing I forgot to mention: when we were in the water, it started to rain — really pour, the first time I’ve seen rain in weeks. Some people climbed out of the water and dashed away, which was confusing — are they taking shelter? ‘Cause we’re already wet — but then later some […]
Apparently skinny-dipping in [this town at this training event] is a tradition at this training event, which is part of why we felt a need to go out and do that. But that it was just the four of us was disappointing by the standards of other, less inhibited stages. (There was also another group […]
OK, great, right now I’m in the real throes of culture shock, which is where I wanted to be when I wrote this post. The combination of high-pressure sales tactics with outright theft — not the thing at training, I’ll write about that next — plus whatever other shit is going on in my head […]