On to PST!

Yesterday we attended a dinner at the Country Director’s home with people from various government organizations and NGO’s.  The U.S. ambassador to Cameroon was also there!  I sat at a table with a representative from the Cameroonian Ministry of Health.  It was one of our experiences dealing with a language barrier in Cameroon.  As a table, all of our French was decent, but not amazing.  It was quite a struggle to get through dinner in all French, but it was definitely good practice.  Because of the language barrier, some of us even got to the point of asking ridiculous questions like, “When is your birthday?”  (en francais bien sur)!  At least it gave us something to laugh about later.  

Overall, we have been filling out a lot of paperwork, learning expectations, and learning how to avoid getting sick (even though it is pretty much inevitable).  I tested into Intermediate-Mid Level French which means that I am only one step away from meeting the minimum language requirement to serve in a French region.  This is big relief and also very exciting because it means that I might be able to learn Fulfulde (a language spoken in the north).  I have already learned a couple words from one of our PCV’s who has been orienting us.  Basically my understanding of Fulfulde right now is that the answer to a lot of questions is “Jaam”.

Today we had a really cool experience at the Peace Corps headquarters.  A man who had served as a PCV in Cameroon in the 60’s and his sister who had visited him for 9 months while he served stopped by.  It was their first time back since the 60’s and they were hoping to meet up with old friends and go back to the town where they lived.  They were so excited to be back and still so enthusiastic about Peace Corps.  He mentioned how he was still in touch with the other PCV’s who he served with and how they had gone on to do really exciting things with their lives.  It was really inspiring to see how excited he was to be back and to see how much the country still meant to him after so many years.

Tomorrow we are moving on to Bafia and Bokito and into our homestays.  Because I am a health volunteer, I will be in Bokito.  It is more rural, which I’m actually really happy about.  I feel like it will be easy to adjust and integrate into a smaller community.  So far I have just been feeling really excited about everything.  Peace Corps has done a great job of taking care of us and preparing (and perhaps overpreparing) us so we are all dying to put some of this knowledge into use and make some stupid mistakes!  Right now I am feeling really optimistic that after PST (Pre-service Training) I will feel ready to move to post and start some work!