Cameroonian Grooves

:)

I’ve reached the 5 month mark here in Cameroon! Time is starting to go by fast because I am feeling settled and now have my work cut out for me. My house has definitely become a home. I’ve been working round the clock doing home improvements and when I come home after a long intense day, it is my exodus into a zen state of mind, where I can do yoga or lay out in my hammock.

I’m feeling pretty well adjusted here- the prices at the general store have gone down significantly for me which shows they see me as a local and not just a foreigner which is a good feeling. I’ve opened up to everyone and finally got to show everyone my dance moves at the last community celebration. Let’s just say I broke it down!

 Lets see what happened this month… my neighbor had a baby, the kid who used to clean my floor was arrested for getting an underage girl pregnant, part of the town got some electricity for a few hours a day, two of the staff at the hospital quit and I now have my own office.

One of the Mectizan promotion campaigns we did with the Mayor, Chief, Police Force, Doctors and all other important leaders of town

Late December

Early February

I was at the house of one of the traditional doctors and she had this crazy pet parrot that she caught in the jungle!

Work has been going well. I still go to the hospital everyday to work with the doctor. We have been in the process of distributing medications for the Neglected Tropical Diseases that Cameroon is working on eradicating so I have become an ambassador of campaigning for everyone to take these medications and teaching the importance of taking the medications once a year for the next 7 years (they have already been here for 8). I’ve been shadowing some of the local “traditional” doctors in the area and watching how they treat patients- its been really exciting to spend the day with them and hear their stories… and see some of their crazy houses with pet parrots and other weird animals.

Completely awkward photo but these are a few of my neighbors that I love teaching me how to make a crushed peanut fish sauce!

As a health volunteer we get to have a lot of flexibility as to how we apply “health” into our daily schedule. For example, I did a workshop for some boys in my neighborhood on construction work because they have been asking me to teach them how to make furniture. During that workshop I talked about healthy life choices in an informal setting as they were learning life skills. Additionally, a few of the other Peace Corps Volunteers are putting together a hip-hop summer camp for the youth in a nearby city this summer in which we will also work in health lessons. One of the members from the Helen Keller foundation and I might be putting together a “think tank” ITT conference in the capital to bring together Cameroonians ideas of how to compile health data and make it accessible to the small health centers out in the jungle. I am really excited for this and see a lot of potential that this conference could bring! Also I just got a position with UNICEF to do health education at the municipal schools in the area-I basically get  to do an assessment of the government schools and write up a grant for the projects I want to implement (building latrines, community gardening, summer camps.. endless possibilities) I’m so excited to start and use everything I learned so far in my past experiences.

In Messamena I’ve become good friends with the commander-in-chief at the Police Station. He invites me over his house to have dinner with his family. He is extremely into solar energy and we always geek out on what gadgets are available. I attended a funeral last week and watched a mother bury her son who was stabbed to death in Douala- a city I don’t plan on visiting. The funeral was not sad, it was actually a full-out celebration with drums and singing. It started in the evening and I don’t even know what time it ended.

Im now hooked on bamboo. One of my neighbors let me use some of the bamboo in his yard to make furniture but told me to watch out for the vipers in the yard- they bite hard. I heard them shuffle through the dead leaves but luckily I didn’t get bitten or step on one. The bamboo forest was so gorgeous to see! My house is now filled with bamboo cups, pots for plants, furniture and my chicken coop is being made entirely out of bamboo as well- I’m loving the way it looks!

Im making the best of my time here… but I have to say it is not easy living in a country where gendered stereotypes are heavily placed and women are taken out of the classroom and put into the kitchen and they do not know their rights to speak up to men to wear condoms or to speak up if they have been raped.  Or where homosexuals are imprisoned, people living with HIV/AIDS are stigmatized from society despite the large number of society infected, or where democracy means a president who has been “re-elected” for the past 29 years. But, there are NGO’s that work on all these issues and I am currently working on developing my friends NGO that works with orphans that have become drug users and rejected from the community. I miss the crazyness/openness of San Francisco, but this experience is a constant journey- not always an easy one either!

The winners of the youth day parade

My neighbor's helping to build my chicken coop

My chicken coop in progress with chickens already checkin' it out

Here I am with my friend Flat Stanely, that my niece sent me, in the Peace Corps office in Yaounde

One of the community workshops for avoiding tropical diseases

Walking to work in the morning

Youth Day parade! I was so impressed by ow well organized it was and all the involvement!

A beautiful gigantic bamboo forest

View from my latrine... makes crappin in a hole not so bad.

My hammock in my backyard tied up to a palm and avocado tree

My sturdy bamboo desk I made with not one nail! I love bamboo

Gettin stuck out in the jungle by a fallen tree on our way to a health training/medication distribution. Luckily we had machetes with us to get through.