Starting about a month or so ago, I got a series of increasingly frantic emails, texts, and phone calls from Julie, one of the returned Volunteers that still lives in NYC. Apparently one of her friends from village, a young lady named Annette, won the Diversity Visa lottery and was coming here, to New York, […]
Nurse Ann apparently got clearance to get my root canal done locally, in Yaoundé, by the same Adventists that drilled the same tooth twice. I politely asked if I could maybe go to any other dentist in the country, since I didn’t have a lot of confidence left in those. Nurse Ann demurred but the […]
I’m writing this from Boris’s apartment in Douala, where I am kicking it for a few days before flying home. I think technically we’re not supposed to be here if we can avoid it, and certainly not while clandoing for a few days to start your vacation early, but Boris is from my village, and […]
The reason we’re here in Yaoundé, of course, is a "workshop" about safety and security procedures, specifically in the case of an emergency. We’ve been arranged largely in "clusters", and I’ve been named the "contact Volunteer" for my cluster. Besides a free trip to Yaoundé, this means I get 2000 CFA a month to maintain […]
So many things to write about. But for right now let’s focus on the big one: being sick. Discussion of the activities of my bowels follows. Please make sure you are not eating and are proximate to a shower before reading this. The sections about my bowels will be called out. The day before yesterday, […]
Title: Sites Today’s Date: Sunday, 2010 June 27 Instructor: Ethan Purpose: To inform about what has happened in the last few days. Objectives: At the end of this session, readers will be able to: repeat correctly at least one funny thing I’ve written recognize the name of my post feel bad for me It’s rainy […]
Currently en route to Cameroon — this is the first leg of the 18-hour trip, which is American Airlines to Brussels with a three-hour layover before a Belgium Air flight to Yaoundé. Readers are encouraged to price these flights (Thursday overnight into Friday; Friday morning) and report their findings. All comments will be lovingly read […]
Staging is done now; tomorrow it’s immunizations and then off to JFK to fly out. I’m taking notes on pen-and-paper again. I spent a half-hour saving pages of the Icehouse wiki as PDFs. The Organization pretty much out-and-out forbids you from writing anything that is negative about the Organization or the country you’re serving, which […]
Impulse bought today: a Cowon D2+ (personal music player: a little pricey as far as these things go, but rated for 52 hours of music playback, and supports OGG and FLAC) and a Aluratek Libre (e-ink reader: fairly inexpensive as far as these things go, and relatively small/lightweight, and I’m a sucker for anything named […]