PST: Week Two

I have been at my homestay for almost a week now and everything is going very well!  Myself

and the other health volunteers are living in the town of Bokito, which is very small!  It is definitely

very rural (a.k.a. no internet… hence the lack of blog posts).  I am living with a family of three

people (currently) here.  There is Maman Jeanne, Marie Rose, and Nanoo (not her real name,

but what everyone calls her).  The girls are not her daughters, but they live with her right now.

This is a pretty common situation is Cameroon.  Marie Rose is 14 and Nanoo is 11.  Maman

Jeanne is married, but her husband works in other regions with NGO’s and I haven’t met him yet.

She has had volunteers before and is so helpful by speaking French very slowly and repetitively

for me.  She has also been very sweet about easing me into Cameroonian food by cooking more

tame options for me the first couple of days.  When I ask to try different foods that the rest of the

family is eating she says, “Not yet, in a couple weeks”.  There are some traditional Cameroonian

foods that have been deemed appropriate for me though.  My favorite so far has been couscous

and gumbo, neither of which are what you are picturing.  Couscous is basically like a lump of

dough and gumbo is this goopy, soupy substance made from the vegetable, “gumbo”.  When

eating gumbo it is better to just taste it without looking at it because it has a snot-like

consistency. The flavor is good though, I promise!

This week I was also able to buy my first pagne (fabric), which I am going to have made into a

skirt/top ensemble soon!  I brought it to the tailor today and it should be ready in a week.  I am

ridiculously excited because the fabric is absolutely beautiful!  I will post photos when I have fast

enough internet and have the outfit made!

Most of the time, it doesn’t really register with me that I am training to be a Peace Corps

Volunteer and living in Cameroon.  I’ve just been going day by day and this seems like normal life

already.  That’s not to say that I am acclimated or self-sufficient here at all.  I think because every

small task takes so much more planning and time, it is more intuitive to live in the moment.  I’m

pretty sure this is going to catch up with me at some point in a huge wave of culture shock, but

for now I am happy with where I am.

Other things I have learned in the past week:

- In Cameroon, you should say “Bonjour” or “Bonsoir” to just about everyone you pass.

- I am incapable of doing anything the correct Cameroonian way (laundry, cutting vegetables,

washing dishes).  Pretty much everytime I try to help with cooking or chores, Maman Jeanne just

looks at what I’m doing, laughs, and says, “Oh, Elizabeth”.

- Because the way you see the moon in Cameroon is a different angle, the shadows on it look

different.  Another volunteer’s host sister explained that instead of “the man in the moon”, they

have a mother and a child.  I looked several nights ago and it is absolutely beautiful!

- How to “suck” an orange.  The oranges here have very thick rinds so they are not that enjoyable

to eat the way we do in the states.  Instead they open it part way and suck the juices out.  I finally

asked Nanoo how to do it the other day, which she found pretty funny, but I now know how!

- If you get a bug bite in Cameroon, there are about five different things it could be and the

treatment might include digging things out of your skin.

-Cameroonians can eat massive amounts of food in one sitting and don’t understand why

westerners can’t do the same.

- It is actually very tasty to add spaghetti to your omelet.  Yes, I literally mean dump some

spaghetti in there with the vegetables.  Cameroonians (and now all of us PCT’s) are all about it.

Now, time for me to crawl under my mosquito net and fall asleep to the increasingly more

familiar African/American soundtrack from the bar next door!