Finally, Camtel came through. All right.

Here’s another couple pictures.

Jared and Jenny with the Organization director for Cameroon. My booboo looks much like Jared’s.

Me trying to help cook. My host family thought this was noteworthy enough to borrow my camera to take a picture with.

Me and Claude. My new Africtures (long-sleeved model).

My family "keeps" chickens, although I haven’t seen them actually be useful yet. Some of them roost inside the house; others go behind the house and roost in a tree. The first time I saw that, I thought it was the funniest fucking thing I had ever seen, and spent about half an hour trying to get a good picture of chickens in trees in the dusk. Not easy.

Today we received our bicycles and that means class got out "earlier". My host family said something about going to a funeral, which could be interesting but would interfere with other social activities that are happening today, so I’m hanging out here where there is reasonable Internet and thought I’d upload some photos.

Figure 1 shows me, Jenny, and my host brother Claude at some monuments in the city center. Jenny is mimicking the pose of the statue; the shirt I am wearing was of the two "Africtures" I got.

Figure 2 shows my "community host"’s house at my post. It is in a place that has been dug out of a hill; the picture was taken from the top of the path that leads down to the house. You can see: his mother, his son, his wife, his daughter (note that children may not be related directly by blood) and in the background, in front of the shack, is his actual daughter that is studying pharmacology somewhere.

Figure 3 is a picture of the path that I was on when I took the picture shown in figure 2.

Observation continues. I don’t know why, but it’s the most exhausting part of training so far. Perhaps that is why each day I want to go to the bar and drink. Then again, maybe it is merely my latent alcoholism coming to the fore. Yesterday I watched the above-named lesson ("Chapter 1 continued").

I have two lessons I actually have to give on Monday, about which I am both excited and terrified, naturally. The first one is a lab period, so that’s OK, but the other one is going to be an actual lecture of about an hour. I think my plan is to produce two lessons of about an hour each, or maybe four or five of about a half-hour each, so that I have a buffer in case I run out of material. But whereas last time I told myself to speak slowly, this time I think I need to speak quickly; that’s what the most engaging teachers I have seen have done.

The USB key still doesn’t work, but I received a call from Camtel today that said that they actually got around to telling HQ that a USB key was purchased, and that it should start working "this evening", which was later revised to "dix-sept heures" (5 PM imperial time). Andrew, who has done this training before and is thus bored completely out of his mind, watched me try it during class and ad-libbed an Internet-based Lord’s Prayer. Yeah, it’s been done before, but it was still fairly good. Naturally the key still doesn’t work. If in fact they successfully activated the right USB key, it may start working as soon as tomorrow; but when you consider that this is a giant telecom, and a Third World telecom at that, you’ll understand why I’m doubtful.

Hey, by the way, does anyone know the origin of the term "third world"? I’ll have to look it up when I get some Internet. Anyhow, I’ve seen a few people wearing pagne ("PAN-yeuh", the name of a type of fabric here, which is made of cotton somewhere in Africa and usually printed fairly outlandishly; it’s what you make Africtures out of) with the Camtel logo on it, including one that was an entire suit jacket, and I think I would totally rock that if I got the chance.

Yesterday we went to Lotus Bleu, and Jenny had said she wanted to play Pandemic but instead we ended up gossiping about the other trainees, particularly who is likely to pair up, and assigning each a probability for whether they will hook up with a local. Some, like the one who said my host brother Claude was cute, are easy pickings. Others are harder to say. Perhaps after a few months, people will have lowered their standards for cleanliness enough, but right now there are quite a few who I just can’t picture touching other human beings. (I’m in that group.)

Tonight I ended up at the other bar (among other highlights: Jacqueline making a fairly involved joke about our bike training tomorrow, particularly how it is going to follow the methodologies we have been taught, and how it is going to have a complicated and meaningless "theory" section about the numbers of teeth on each gear before we actually ride any bikes) and discovered that at some point a committee of Jared (who has all the tattoos) and Andrew (I think the other one — the one who smokes) have voted me and Ben "most likely to masturbate". For the record, let me just state that the logistics of an act like that here are very complicated. (Too much information?) We also noticed that one of the other ICT volunteers who is here to help train us in model school has, completely by accident, had a dress made out of the "official" nerd gear for our stage. Naturally this is great because it validates our choice of fabric; even other nerds gravitate to it (and no one else).

I got another letter from Gus. I have already written my reply to the first one, but it’s been a couple days and I haven’t sent it because I haven’t been able to get her summer address from the Internet (because: negligible Internet). Working on it. Sorry sweetie.

Tomorrow I get to do laundry, about which I’m fairly excited, including washing my towel, which has acquired all manner of fascinating smells, and all the clothes I was wearing when I was sick.

Lastly, I’d like to mention that I have written the word "stagier" ("stagiere" and "stagiers") in some blog posts. Turns out that I had the spelling wrong; it’s "stagiaire" (both masc. and fem., I think). Sorry for the inconvenience.

First off, happy birthday to Chiz (whose birthday it was yesterday). Also, happy birthday to Esther, whose birthday it is today. Sorry I forgot to say something.

Secondly, the model school started today. Actually started, although opening ceremonies were yesterday, because today I observed my first classes. Thoughts:

1. J-P, who is the trainer for ICT stuff, is actually a pretty engaging teacher in French, and the volunteer (AD) who is a teacher for ICT is actually pretty dull in French. The situations are naturally completely opposite in English. I guess this means I really need to get my French in order, and really pay attention to my persona in the classroom.
2. I wore my first booboo today. It’s the same material that Jenny and Jared got at first, but there wasn’t enough for it to be our "official" ICT nerd-gear. The booboo, which is apparently a traditional Cameroonian garment, has been nicknamed "the Jared" because he was the first one to get something made. In fact, in our assessments today, I got something that says "Should try wearing more local fabrics", which is utterly ridiculous on so many levels, but there you are. I also commissioned my second booboo, this one in the "ICT fabric". Pictures will be forthcoming.
3. I talked to the director of education yesterday. He sounded like he was of the opinion that I might have a different post soon, about which I have conflicted feelings. I liked Batié, but I did not like that I didn’t really see a need for me.
4. New French classes; I’m with Ryan and Peter. Ryan is about as good as I am, maybe a little better, but Peter glazes over after the first hour or so. I got a few minutes alone with my trainer and I mentioned to her that there hadn’t been a great need for me, and she repeated more-or-less the thing that Nadege had said about how sometimes the PTA hires teachers if there aren’t any available, but my feeling is that if someone is going to get a free teacher, it doesn’t need to be the people in the West who can afford to hire someone else.
5. USB key still doesn’t work. Will try harassing Camtel tomorrow.
6. Got mail from Gus today! Also a letter from Aunt Jeanie. The US postmarks say: 5 Jun and 11 Jun respectively. The Cameroonian postmarks say 20 Jun. How long has the Organization therefore been holding them? You do the math. Neither has been "clipped" to see if there are delicious candy inside.

This is the report I’m going to send to the director of the education program.

So, although I bought a USB key from Camtel, I am not having any luck getting it to work. Sigh.

This morning started off OK. Highlights: the most delicious pineapple (anana) I have ever had, with hints of vanilla, orange, and coffee. Also, as we left, J-C broke out into "Hello Goodbye" [is that the name? I can’t check right now] by the Beatles. He didn’t have all the words right, but the essence is pretty unchangable: "You say goodbye, I say hello."

We went to the Lycee and hung around for a while. This is where things get a little bizarre. First: they have at least one, possibly two, computer science teachers already (I’m going to use the term "informatics", because that’s what they’re called in French). Second: they also have a computer lab with 11 computers, the majority of which seemed to work OK. Thirdly: when I proposed setting up an Internet connection for ’em, they said that they’d have to check with their "consultant", who is their go-to dude for matters ordinateur. So, basically, what the hell am I needed there for? Hard to say. I tried to ask J-C on the way out of town and he said something like "What are you talking about? It’s better to have someone who’s trained in this instead of other people." I guess he could mean, trained in teaching informatics — but I’m not, really.

I talked a little bit to Nadege when I got back and she said that it’s pretty common, because there’s a dearth of teachers, for schools to hire arbitrary people to teach courses in stuff like informatics, and it may be that it’s much cheaper for the school to have a "real teacher", especially a volunteer, instead of those "vacatiers" (substitutes/temps). But it doesn’t make me feel like an especially productive development worker.

I’ll talk to Gaby tomorrow — I also have to write up a report about the housing situation — but I have seen that in general, everything the Organization does has at least two reasons, possibly three, so I’ll take it on faith that there really is some kind of need there for me. But so far it’s looking like I’m scoring pretty low on the Organization Suffering Sweepstakes. I’m a little bummed because my priority has always been where I am needed most, and I feel like this is probably not it. But who can say.

Gonna try to reboot into Windows to get the USB key working.

A few things stick out here at post. The first and most obvious is the climate. The first night I tried to sleep with just my sleep sack, which is awesome, but not warm enough at night. When I wake up, my lying-piece-of-shit watch (before it was broken) tended to say high-60s for temperature. The first time I took a bucket bath, the air pressure vacuum-sealed my deodorant, and water evaporating off of my body looked like steam.

Another was the mayor’s office. There are mayors for each region as well as sous-prefêts and prefêts (called in English "Divisional Officers" and "Senior Divisional Officers"). Mayors are popularly elected whereas the prefêts are appointed, and I get the impression that certain things follow from this — the prefêts think they’re hot shit and have real power, whereas the mayors are really awesome and do what they can with what they got. There’s also "traditional chiefs". It’s almost like Cameroon has two or possibly three parallel systems of government (which is kind of par for the course).

Anyhow, the mayor’s office was pretty cool. The power wasn’t running at first, so we had to open a window to let the light in. The doors were locked — the mayor himself wasn’t there, we were seeing the second adjoint to the mayor, or "second vice mayor" — but the cabinets inside had the keys in the locks, and the handles were shiny-looking plastic in the form of polished wood and gold. I was just struck by it, I guess.

The thing that I’m the most sick of right now is hanging out at J-C’s house with the kids and playing the same card game over and over again. Right now I’m actually hiding at Wendy’s, who is a current Volunteer who is going to be ending her term of service before I actually start, and using my laptop without hiding in my room and pretending to be asleep. I guess in practice I probably could be a little bit more open about what I’m doing but I don’t have power to do a demonstration because I don’t have a lot of battery and J-C doesn’t have a regulator to protect my fragile electronics from the shitty power. I’m hanging out here with two trainees from my group, one of whom (Christina) is going to be posted here with me, and another (Jessica) is going to be posted not too far away.

I bought a USB key, so in theory I have Internet right now, but in practice I can’t make it work, perhaps because Wendy’s house is in a little valley and the signal isn’t very good. Maybe the account isn’t active yet. I’ll try to get it to work once I’m pretending to be asleep again or back at training. Oh, and power just went out. It’s the 4th, but we’re not really celebrating. I’ve heard there’s another celebration at a town some number of hours away, but I have to be here tonight so I can speak to the proviseur tomorrow.

Another thing I want to write a little bit about is music. I have still been thinking about A Weather, specifically "Spiders, Snakes". It’s good music for doing sit-ups with the strong drum beat, and although the rest of that album "Cove" doesn’t hold the same emotions for me that it did in December and January, there’s still a bit of resonance here and there.

Did you mean the things you said?

Were you pulling ankles and legs?

Do you read when you go to bed?

Do you lie there shaking instead?

‘Cause it works both ways with the rain

Leaving the words unread

And I want to have you again

Listening to Bedhead

…

I like having to run

When I don’t run, and it leaves me

So so tired

I want better for you

And for my son

than the lies we’re leading now

—A Weather, "Spiders, Snakes"

One time I thought while I was picking fish bones out of my mouth the other night was "Canticle" by Simon and Garfunkel, a song I haven’t really listened since I decided to boycott RIAA. Isn’t there a line about a cherry without a stone? I can’t look right now. Anyhow, I was put in mind of the time I went to karaoke with Gus and her friends, and I chose "America" by Simon and Garfunkel, and sang it badly, but Gus hugged me anyhow and said that hippie music felt like home to her. I miss her.

Gus asked me in an email whether there were any cool phrases I’ve picked up. Here are a few.

1. "laisser tomber". I was on the fence about this. There’s no French verb for "drop", as in "I dropped my cell phone." Instead you say you "let fall" something. This seems silly but in fact I think it’s pretty convenient for cases like this morning, where I moved something that nudged my watch off the ledge to plummet six feet to the ground, cracking the liquid crystal irreperably. I didn’t "drop" my watch, but I sure did "let fall" the cheap piece of shit. J’ai laissé tomber ma montre.
2. "il menace de pleuvoir". "It is threatening to rain." This made the list first because I like the way it sounds. Each morning I check outside to see whether I should wear my boots or can get away with the sandals (I don’t wear my sneakers because not appropriate and my dress shoes because too annoying to get the mud/dirt off of them.) Each morning il menace de pleuvoir and I decide to go with my boots. But from what I’ve seen there’s a lot more menace than pleuvoir — even yesterday, when it really started to come down, it let up ten or fifteen minutes later. This is "rainy" season, but I guess there is also a "very rainy season" which might be more severe. In any event my boots are starting to smell, so I might let ’em air out for a few days and take the sandals anyhow (once I get back to training, that is).
3. "ils s’occupent de toi". The verb "s’occuper de" + something has a basic meaning of "spending time on" + something. I’ve heard it used in meanings that tended towards "He’s busy with you" as well as meanings more like "He’s taking care of you". The above was what my host brother said of the people at the Peace Corps who were taking care of me when I was sick.
4. "Du courage". "Take heart." This is what my host family says when they see me struggling with French, or with laundry, or with other trivial tasks that are nevertheless really challenging all of a sudden. It’s also what the trainers tell me when they see me panicking that I will never be a real teacher. Somehow hearing it always makes me feel better.
5. "ado", short for "adolescent", which you can probably guess at. I like it because it reminds me of the English word "teenager".

There is another French thing I wanted to mention and that is the gender of nouns. This is one area of the Romance languages that a lot of my friends probably think doesn’t make any damn sense. Even one of my French grammar books says something like "French nouns are arbitrarily assigned to genders. It will take you some time with the language before you get a feel for how gender of nouns is used." But the thing to realize about grammatical gender is that it is not a gender of a concept, but a gender of a word — it’s an orthographic property, not a physical property.

In other words, you may be tempted to say that it doesn’t make sense that, for example, "pomme" meaning "apple" or, in usage, "potato" (pomme de terre) is feminine, since the potato or apple doesn’t really have a gender. But that’s like complaining about the spelling of word "dog" by saying "How can this little Chihuahua be spelled the same way as this huge St. Bernard? You should be using capitals for the St. Bernard." Get it? It’s an orthographic property, and it has nothing to do with the objects themselves. It’s "arbitrary" in the same way that other forms of spelling are arbitrary, and it is difficult to remember and apply in the same way that, for example, tonal languages take time to get the hang of, for the same reason — it’s an orthographic property that we don’t use in English, and your brain just doesn’t have space for it in each word. But there are words for which that spelling/pronounciation difference actually has consequences — for example, "une tour" is a tower, whereas "un tour" is a turn. ("It’s my turn.") And even when it doesn’t, getting it wrong marks you a rube the way any other shitty pronounciation/spelling mistake marks you a rube.

I met Jean-Claude at a carrefour (intersection), and the first thing he did was invite me to sit and have a soda while he got me some bread to eat, and then another bread after I told him I was milk-allergic. Then we sat in a bar and he talked in the local language with the lady who was running it. (We were the only three there.) That basically sums up J-C this visit — honestly, sometimes stunningly hospitable and gracious, even generous, but with a startling proclivity to lose track of other people, drop into "patois", etc. The local language doesn’t even have a name, although J-C has tried to explain to me a little bit and I think it’s a member of the Bamtu language family? Haven’t had access to the net so I’m a little lost. Anyhow, I kind of wish I’d gotten the community host with the purple hair, she seemed pretty cool. Well, anyhow.

We parted with what was left of the bread and began visiting what authorities we could find. There’s a certain amount of "doing protocol" which means telling local authorities that you exist, and then, with all the grace and dignity you can muster, listening to them tell you that you are very welcome, how nice it is you are here, make yourself at home and if there are ever any problems, etc. Well, in theory. I still haven’t actually met the chief of the local Gendarmerie, who was absent, and in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if the commander of something like that didn’t spare me six words. Most of the authorities that day were in fact absent; we left notes with seconds-in-command, decided to come back later, etc. The principal of the school (proviseur) is still absent, and will be until Monday, the morning of which I hope to speak to him/talk him into some good ideas, etc.

So instead we bounced around on motos, J-C on one moto and me with my helmet and my backpack full of crap (including my laptop! But also two water bottles, because Americans need "special water") and clinging onto the things I had been unable to pack, including the bread. The bread got a little beat up. But we (I) ate it the next morning so who’s counting.

Getting to J-C’s residence, we met an old lady who was trying to climb up the slope to the road. She seemed like a fairly sweet old lady, and I tried to greet her, but she didn’t speak any French. J-C informed me in English that she was sick. I guess I took that to mean "aged, with dementia". He fairly firmly escorted her down the ramp back to the house. I was a little alarmed, maybe even disgusted — is this how they treat their infirm here? Just leave ’em lying around and have random neighbors cart them off in anger? Hey, is this that culture shock I keep hearing about? — but then it became clear that this was J-Cs aged mother. That made me feel better. But now I don’t know if she really is his actual mother or not, because "African family" basically includes everyone; she may actually just be some old lady that his family happens to care for. But at least she’s a member of the family, so I guess it’s fine.

Besides "doing protocol", one thing I’m supposed to be doing is visiting the house where I will be living, and optimally crashing there. That was the main draw for me; I wanted to be out of the house and someplace I could kind of be alone for a while. So imagine my surprise when we got to "my" house and there was a family already living in it. In the US, it would be outrageous, astonishing, or at least ludicrous. Here it’s not even that uncommon — other Organization volunteers have also found similar situations with their houses. I’ve heard that even after service starts, some volunteers have to live with other volunteers because their houses aren’t "done".

So in the mean time I’m staying with J-C. Right now I’m in a spare bedroom, which is technically the children’s bedroom but they’re being displaced while I’m here. It’s not unpleasant, but I’m still a celebrity to this family, and their kids are a lot less self-possessed than the older-adolescents/young adults at the Alemi household so I have to be on display a bit more. We keep going back to the house and seeing that it is still not done in one form or another. Today the family is gone, but so are all the furnishings. I have with me a sleep sack, which is nice, but not really enough to "camp out" with. (It might be enough back in training, which is in a town that is always hot, but here it gets a bit colder.) There are still a few things that need to be done for me to feel optimally "safe" (read: personal space), and each time we find they aren’t done, J-C flips out at whoever is handy in a blend of the local language and French. This is the one time that it is awesome that he loves to talk in patois — he can really chew someone out. And I’m really grateful he does this; I really feel like he’s going to bat for me. But after the first few minutes it gets boring for me, since it’s already obvious I’m not going to be staying the night there. Last night I spent some time looking and feeling bored (but in pitch black, since the power was out) before deciding that perhaps it would support J-C a little better if I looked incensed, and then after that I tried disappointed. But I still felt bored, possibly because it was still pitch black.

J-C himself is still kind of a tool. Sometimes he’s liveable, but other times he can be overbearing or a little flaky. Example: last night, walking back from "my" house to his, we walked a dirt trail down a hill. J-C was carrying a flashlight; I had one in my backpack, and said maybe I should stop to get it out, but he said "No, if you can see, it’s fine." So off we went. He was in the lead, and when he turned on the flashlight (not always), he tended to hold it in front of him, occasionally flashing it behind him too so I could see a little bit of where I was going. So we’re walking along a trail that I’ve been on only one time (by my request because at least it isn’t frequented by motor traffic like the other road) and I’m trying to follow J-C who’s kind of clomping along, stepping over mud and minor ridges, swinging the flashlight to and fro, which gives me basically no idea where I’m walking. I could probably write another 500 words about walking back last night. It was a little trying because I was fairly certain I was about to tumble into a ravine. I tried stepping where I thought he had stepped, I tried using my tiny little solar flashlight which was mostly discharged but was at least handy, I tried shielding my eyes from the flashlight so I could try to retain a bit of night vision — but to no avail. And then as we were walking, we wandered into a fog bank, and I begin to worry that he is going to vanish into the mist. It gets foggy here. J-C: "It’s hard to see where we are walking." Thanks, asshole. But somehow I guess we made it here OK.

It’s hard to tell if J-C maybe just hasn’t decided whether I’m his student, child, or friend, or if there’s something else going on like maybe he’s bipolar. I guess it’s hard for me to pick one of those places because I’m in a limbo between wanting to go crash at a nearby volunteer’s house, wanting not to offend J-C’s sense of hospitality, wanting to stay at his relatively furnished place without actually having to interact with anyone, wanting to go "home" but wanting also to stay to talk to the administration at the Lycee..

J-C’s family tends to be pretty shout-y, which isn’t my preference. It’s a little unnerving between J-C and his wife, and when he chews out his kids (not his by birth; but culturally they are living with him, so they are "his", and he is not supposed to discriminate against them), I kind of don’t like it, even when he’s doing it nominally for my benefit. ("Leave him alone! He’s in his room! Let him rest!") The kids definitely get a "we’re about to be in trouble" quietness when he raises his voice, which IMHO supports the bipolar disorder hypothesis.

OK, battery is too low to spend time sitting here thinking about what else I’m going to write. I better sack out, and this time put the computer away before I sleep so that one of the kids doesn’t see it lying out like they did today. Tomorrow: more about the town itself.

So then the next morning, a few hours after taking my second dose of Cipro, and still feeling a little ill-at-ease intestinally, I decided to set off for my post. One of the Organization drivers took me to the gare routière ("bus station", but literally/Cameroonianly "station for things that go on roads") and helped me pick out a bus to Bafoussam, which is the first stop on the way from training to my post. Well, actually, instead of finding a bus, we found someone that I could trust, the host mother of another trainee (Carmen), who was going to Bafoussam to touch her salary. She shepherded me a bit onto the bus and then we were off.

The transit system is a bit different here, but I think it would be inaccurate to denigrate it with such comments as "if you can call it a system". It is systematic. It’s a hard sell to someone who is used to the regularity, consistency, and let’s say courtesy of our American system, but it’s no more or less self-consistent than the methods you’re used to. Which are:

• within locale, you’re probably going to take moto taxi, unless you’re walking. Organization volunteers/trainees are required to wear motorcycle helmets or else we may get the boot. Back in the States, Igor gave me a ride on his motorcycle one morning, and I’m glad he did, because scary as that was, it was great prep for this.
• to go to nearby locales, you’re probably going to get into a "regular" car taxi. You generally have to know their routes and even where they stop, but you can also flag them down and if they’re going as far as you want, they’ll wave you in. There’s some overlap between distances you can take motos and cars. We have been instructed to take only the yellow taxis, which are reputable, and not any other random car that stops wherever.
• big hops are "busses" generally, which range in size from vans to big coach busses. These you have to find in bigger cities. Well-known "travel agencies" (perhaps more properly called "bus companies") exist, often two or more in the same location, and will apparently pick fights over passengers. Sometimes they will preemptively cart off your baggage in a bid to make you theirs — which is fine if you have a lot of baggage. We have been advised in these situations to "speak rapidly in American English", which apparently overloads their cervical cortex. Yesterday I saw a bus labelled: "Fred Express". Also: "Linda Travels". Well, good for her. So do I, in a manner of speaking.
• there are also: a couple of rail lines, which you need to take if you’re going to the Extreme North. Allegedly that journey is measured in days. Also: a few airlines and scattered non-international airports if that’s your sort of thing. They’re allegedly a little pricier than we can afford as volunteers.

So, we took a bus to Bafoussam. At Bafoussam I had an assignment to open a bank account. From there I took a car to Batié. I met Jean-Claude at the Carrefour Batié ("Batié Intersection", although strictly speaking there are two intersections within "city limits").

One of the rules of transport here is that there’s always room for one more. I lucked out in the bus to Bafoussam, which nominally had seating for four abreast and didn’t tend to exceed it. In the car to Batié, though, we sat four in the back (with a kid in someone’s lap), and three in the front. I cannot say whether this pays off in terms of petrol burned and wear-and-tear on the car, but it sure is a pain sometimes.

Another rule is that buses are roving markets. Whenever a bus stops in a relatively populated area, often the street peddlers (carrying food, water, etc.) will swarm the bus and hawk their wares tempestuously. Sometimes they even open the door and climb in to hawk more effectively. Back home I guess I would find this rude and presumptuous and try not to encourage it, but there are lines of politesse that aren’t crossed — everyone leaves once the bus is in motion again, sometimes people will run alongside the bus to finish a transaction, and if you say no, they move on. In some ways I think the whole concept is kind of neat — think about it as airline food, except it’s fresh, there’s a competetive market for it, and there’s a certain amount of variety. Way better than the crap they serve in Port Authority, that’s for sure.

But there are pitfalls too; I witnessed my travel companion pick out some items from a couple different vendors and then have to try to sort out how much she owed who. Also, if you have a fairly large bill (2,000 CFA for a purchase of only a few hundred) the trick is to ask them to give you your change ("ramboursez-moi d’abord") before you give them the money. Otherwise, they may just take the money and run; since you are in a bus there’s very little you can do. But wouldn’t someone who does that trigger "jungle justice", a.k.a. the brutal mob justice that apparently happens here when a thief is discovered? Look, don’t ask me. I’m still kind of surprised that they’ll both let you take the food AND advance you the difference before you pay them. But I guess just like in the states, trust is given to the customer rather than the vendor.

Aside: I really wish I had said a much bigger thank you to Carmen’s host mom than I did! She was awesome. We talked a little about different things — different regions of Cameroon mostly, since she said she was "from the South" but born and raised in the Central region, and that didn’t make any sense to me. Apparently you are considered "from" the region your father is "from", whatever that means, and you can be "from the North" even if you’ve never been there. The only way that mkes sense to me is that there are cultural differences between regions, namely foods and languages, and I can see how being "from the South" might be a significant point of distinction in a country like this one.

I managed to arrive in Bafoussam and found my own moto to the bank I wanted to go to, and even opened a checking account (or at least, I think that’s what "Compte Courant" means). I consider this a major accomplishment because I was without host and struggling with my French. I was fortunate in that I was a day late, so some other trainee had already done this with the same dude and already knew what was up. Hopefully I can ask that other trainee what the fuck the dude was saying at the start of the conversation — something about the minimum balance and sending me messages by cell phone or email. Well, whatever; I’m sure it wasn’t important.

I’m really tired so I’m gonna stop here. There’s a ton of stuff to say about the visit itself, which is still ongoing, so hopefully I’ll continue where I left off tomorrow.