Noy Iyeende? / How's the rain?

Several weeks back in Cameroon after my magical all-you-can-eat trip to France and somehow I’m settling back into bucket showers and couscous just fine.  The week before I left, I was having a hard time being back at post and was worried that coming back from the “developed” world would be even tougher.  Luckily, my trip seems to be just what I needed.  However, two other factors have also made me significantly happier here lately: starting work and rainy season.

I was actually dreading rainy season- mud everywhere, stuck wherever you found yourself when it began to pour, mosquitoes.  What I didn’t realize was the variety of food that comes with rainy season.  Although I love Danfili, I had really been struggling with the fact that many weeks, the only fresh foods I could find were onions and bananas.  Turns out once the rain comes, so do avocados, mangos, and tomatoes!  And I’m not talking about just on market day.  I mean everyday of the week.  It is quite literally raining avocados and mangos (when the rain comes, the wind blows so hard that you hear them hitting the ground all around you).  To give an idea of the magic of rainy season and also prices in Cameroon, here is everything that I bought the other day for a total of two dollars (US):

1 papaya             100 CFA           

2 onions              50 CFA

3 eggs                 300 CFA

4 bananas           100 CFA

6 mangos            50 CFA

6 avocados         300 CFA

6 tomatoes          100 CFA

Total:                         1000 CFA or 2 USD

Not living solely off of couscous… priceless.

As far as the other source of my contentment, I wouldn’t say work is moving along, but it is finally getting started.  I am in the planning phases of several projects.  The first, a fairly simple one, is a sexual health/general health course that I will be giving at the high school next school year.  I have found students from each class who have volunteered to spend some time with me this summer to plan the course and then to do a large portion of the teaching to their peers next school year.  The previous volunteer gave a similar course, but was not able to finish so the students suggested that we do the same thing this coming school year.  My second project is much larger scale and much more intimidating.  I am planning to use a model of community health called CARE Groups.  The model trains mothers of young children in the community on certain health topics.  Each mother is then assigned 10 households in her neighborhood who also have young children and is expected to visit each household and teach them what she has learned.  It has worked well in other places because it is a low burden on each volunteer, covers the entire community, and increases community capacity.  The start up work is expected to take around 6 months and involves surveying the entire town to find households with the target population: pregnant women and children under 5.  Right now I am in the phase of introducing the idea to the key players and the community as a whole.

Outside of work, sometimes little things can easily make my day.  Some examples from the past few weeks:

·      The little four-year-old girl who lives in my compound, Hawa, only spoke Baya when she started living with us.  She now speaks some Fulfulde after spending time with our Fulbe neighbors.  I have been informed that Hawa and I speak about the same level of Fulfulde.  This makes me pretty happy because if I can absorb language at the rate of a four year old, I should have this down in no time!

·      The other day, returning from work, I passed a group of four little boys (seven or eight years old, I would guess).  As usual, each of them separately greeted me with a “Bonjour” or “Sanoo”.  As I was walking away, one little stinker added, “Bonjour, debbo am!”… Translation: “Hello, my wife!”

·      I’ve started regularly running again trying to run again.  One evening a bunch of kids were over while I was getting ready to go.  They all thought it would be hilarious to see me run and decided to watch.  About a minute after I started running, I saw a kid running behind me.  I thought, aww how cute he will run with me for a minute.  Little did I know, he intended to stick it out for the whole thing.  Soon after, I had picked up several others and had a small pack of seven year olds following me all around the edge of the village.  I won’t embarrass myself with the amount of time this run lasted, but let’s just say all of them were able to keep up through the whole thing.

·      One day heading back into town towards the end of my run, I passed some women heading out to their field.  One of the women (who I do not know) saw me running, started running towards me, and gave me a hug!  After I caught my breathe from laughing, it gave me the energy I needed to finish my run.

After about a month back at post, I am now lucky enough to be attending a Peace Corps conference on diversity, which happens to take place in Limbe, a beach town.  Life’s not so bad in Cameroon.