Today

Despite living twenty-one million and thirty-three miles away from home (Google Maps wouldn’t divulge the actual number so I might be off by a couple of scores), I don’t always feel like I’m that far from the folks and the motherland.  This isn’t 1962, 1992, or even 2002.  Peace Corps Volunteers are no longer dropped off in the middle of villages, given motorbikes, told essentially “good luck and see you in two years” by administrators, and hope that their letters reach home within a year’s time.  Times have a changed – at least in some aspects.   In the last few years and even in the year since I have been in country, the spread of the internet has been pretty astonishing – cyber cafes, wireless keys, undersea fiber-optic cables!  Widespread availability, opportunity, and speed aren't exactly there yet, but just give it a little more time.  (Some days, I feel like training people to use Google with its endless supply of solutions right there for the fingertips’ reaping should be a volunteer’s real priority).  I live in a small city so as long as there is power, I could pay for the internet everyday if I wanted.  And, I would wager to say at least sixty percent of volunteers in Cameroon have weekly access as well.  Sure, there are still plenty of volunteers who live daily without power, water, phone, or internet (or some fun combination of those) in Cameroon and in many other countries, but thanks to the technology nerds, there isn’t quite the same disconnect between work and home as there once was.  Nowadays, volunteers, like the rest of the world, get to better keep up with family and friends through the magic of email, Facebook, blogs, and all those other necessary social network tools (while also helping to add to that never-ending, keyboard-created poopy-pile of unneeded shared thoughts that ends up in the interweb's non-coverable burial grounds - wherever they may lie). 

As soon as I left the U.S., all of my family decided to hurry and have babies while I was gone.  I think they feared I might drop one.  I wouldn’t have. Well, I don’t think I would have.  My best friends from college decided to become adults and do things like buy homes, get married, and become doctors and deliver hundreds of babies.  One of my little sisters moved on to high school, and the dog got a new best friend.  Why didn’t anyone tell me that life back home wasn’t going to pause for me??  (Maybe they did and I forgot to listen.)  All to say, I know I am lucky to have use of the modern communication tools -- it helps with the homesickness.  It's the one who lets me know that I am missing out and then helps me deal with those consequential feelings of missing out (making for an unhealthy and twisted relationship). 

But for the moment, as I sit here listening to Raffi and finger squishing the cotton weevils that are living in my mattress, and on the day that Katrina hit New Orleans seven years ago and as Isaac takes his time evilly calculating and circulating over my family, I feel the disconnect -- antsy and useless.  And, like after a week at summer camp, I miss home.  I know that today, especially, I am the fortunate one to be out of a hurricane’s reach, but I can’t say that right now I wouldn't rather be sitting without electricity in a forced and stressful holiday among family and friends playing cards, drinking beer, porch watching the wind and rain, and soon cleaning up the damage.

Tu es là? Oui, je suis là?

 (crater lake in Foumbot, West Region)

To only my father’s disappointment, I disappeared from posting since early June.  (Apologies, Papi.)  I’ve simply been nomad-ing, and like the earliest of Americans was having too many encounters with whitemen (PCVs) - desired and undesired.  Even now after being in Maroua for a couple of weeks, I have to give myself a daily reminder that I am here for good.  Oui, je suis là!*  That Cameroonian Limboland that I was living in is now just a not-so-distant memory.    

So much has happened -- so little has happened. And, I guess before I write another boring, opinionated, and judgy post on Cameroonian life and being caught in the middle of it (which there are a few brewing and coming soon to a blog near you), I’ll just give an ugly-formatted and equally dull update.

A few notable happenings as of late: a large used syringe was thrown at me through a bus window by a “crazy” – a leg stabbing with god knows what consequences evading me by mere centimeters (let me be dramatic!), was recalled to Yaounde for my training group’s Mid-Service Conference (our 1 year mark) and where we celebrated our own country’s Independence Day together in the most appropriate of ways – over a hot grill where greasy meat drippings coated the coals, a government official said “she’s Cameroonian” and begrudgingly gave me the fair price after I wore him down with my stubbornness in refusing to pay a “white man” price, was in a moto accident leaving the right side of my body with surface wounds and more sadly torn jeans – at least at the last moment, I remembered not to pay my at-fault driver, had the un-fun malaria, was given electro-shock tests on my arms during which the Cameroonian neurologist smiled a bit too much for my liking as my face flickered between normal and grimace, saw a freshly-caught five-footer river fish, helped train the new group of volunteers in the arts of such things as “Mountain Biking” and “Transitioning to Life at Post” (things I’m well-known for being an expert), took an overnight train where my top bunk-mates were 7.5 and 12 year-old sisters sharing a bed and traveling alone who strangely found me funny or more likely funny-looking, learned to use the train bathroom only while it was in motion unless I liked the idea of the onlookers, saw crater lakes and mountainous volcanic-plugs, met with a crab sorcerer who granted me one question and answer to help satisfy my cravings for the knowledge of my future self, saw Chad and walked to Nigeria, and celebrated my first End of Ramadan fete with Cameroonians.

First observances from my new home in the Extreme North Region: they have lots of donkeys! and horses, cow and goat husbandry is common so there’s way more beef for me to down and leather products to buy, there are way less greens and few fruits but fresh cheese and yogurt can be found - as well as tasty sesame seed delicacies, dates, and guinea fowl eggs, we’re currently in the three months of rainy season so I’m still inexperienced to the forewarned fear-bringing hot/ dry season, bus travel in the North is much more comfortable because Cameroonians are skinnier here – a mix of genetics and malnutrition, buses also stop during Muslim prayer time, there are about 50 ethnic groups in my region, the encompassing sand is cruelly deceiving as there is no water at any of its edges, most of my neighbors don’t speak French but rather Fulfulde, Muslims probably only account for maybe fifty percent of the population but their culture is dominant here, there are traditional chiefs called “Lamidos” who whenever traveling about have an entourage of men constantly announcing their arrival with long, loud horns, traditional stringed instruments are played to help move cattle, I have a growing obsession with the beautiful, shady and evergreen Neem Trees that grace Maroua and I want to do projects related to them, it’s a much calmer place, I feel uglier here because men are less frequently yelling “Ma Cherie” at me and asking if I want them to accompany me, even “La Blanche” or the local-tongue equivalent “Nassara” feels less nasty when yelled at me, and already, I am beginning to love my new home.

* « Tu es là? Oui, je suis là? »: a good n’ typical Cameroonian exchange/in-person greeting;  Are you here? Yes, (obviously) I’m here.

Thousands of Muslims dressed in their finest gathered at the Grand Mosque in Maroua to celebrate the end of Ramadan and the breaking of the fast, Eid-ul-Fitr

 Traditional Crab Sorcerer of Rhumsiki (Extreme North)

Friday the Thirteenth

My non-superstitious brain was being traitorous.  Somewhere around twenty-five hours north of the capitol city and staring out the bush-taxi window, I started noticing all the paranormal-seeming parallels between arriving at my first and second posts with their strangely similar stormy and cold evenings and their lack of any Cameroonian counterpart to welcome me to their alien homelands.  Plus, it was Friday the 13^th.  Not good.  A dark lightness was appearing, and in an instant, Brainhurt* was spreading throughout my egg-shaped extremity and starting to ring in my ears.  I had been kidding myself.  It wasn’t the last post that was the failure.  It was me.  Changing posts wasn’t going to make it better.  This was no good - forever to be known, at least in my own unread herstory book, as The Great Njombe-Maroua Repeat.

“Oui, à la maison rose.” 

My luckily-short nineteen point two seconds of Brainhurt vanished when a welcomed disturbance came via my friend’s voice.  With the motivation given by an unreasonably hostile and open sky, pelting its unforgiving wet daggers down upon us, and with my two Peace Corps friends darting out of the car like well-tipped porters carrying my unnecessary amount of luggage past the gate to my new home, the unloading went quickly. 

I had arrived, and I arrived to a better place.

*Brainhurt: a lifelong annoying condition arising when my underdeveloped brain becomes (over)worked with having to hold and/or process thought; a chubby kid forced to play basketball in P.E. is an external embodiment of this malady; side-effects are unflattering.

 A view of Maroua, my new home, from Mt. Maroua - a short hike outside of the town

 Rhumsiki - Rainy Season - volcanic plugs - about 3 hours west of Maroua

Kapsiki Peak and donkey at Rhumsiki - Rainy Season