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| White sands of Kribi |
6 Month Mark!
This month was an amazing journey. It started off in Messamena, I was finishing up my survey for UNICEF and visiting the schools and meeting the teachers and directors of the nearby schools. Every time I passed the river I would stop by and take my pirouge out for a quick trip- I finally had mine made for me and I’ve been learning how to use it standing up. I was in Messamena until March 11th and I was there for the big International Women’s Day Celebration on the 8th, where there was a large parade then dinner in town and I made sure to dance the night away with the town.
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| Black sands of Limbe |
After that, my vacation began! At the 6 month mark in Peace Corps service we have a group meeting and weeklong workshop. On the way to that workshop a few of us met up and visited a nearby black sand beach for 4 days in Limbe… it was so beautiful! It was so nice to swim in the ocean again after swimming in the black river/swamp near my house. Limbe is in the Southwest region.. which is one of the 2 Anglophone regions in Cameroon. English… is not exactly what the speak here though. They call it pidgin English and here’s an example;
How you dey? I go chop fine and shake skin plenty
Translates to-
How are you? I’m going to eat dinner then go out dancing tonight
That is just an example- I didn’t think it would be so hard to communicate in English here but it was. Haha.
But Limbe was a beautiful black sand beach and we all set up hammocks and tents right on the beach. It was paradise!
From there we all went to visit another volunteers house, Kristin’s post in Njinikom and got to go on a 5 hour hike to a nearby summit in a crazy landscape. It was so great to be back together with everyone again! It was cool to see other people’s places- it made me realize how rough the East is sometimes.
Then next day we took a motorcycle through the mountains to another volunteers house for a big reunion to celebrate St Patricks day in a town called Fundong. We had a blast!
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| Crazy landscape of Cameroon's mountains |
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| In-Service Training with my coounterpart Bick and Amanda and her Counterpart Norbert |
From there we all traveled to Bamenda for our In-Service Training (IST) with our counterparts. I was there with my counterpart, Jean Bick for the week. It was a week of meetings and workshops.. and partying with all the volunteers every night… until… I got Malaria. Saturday afternoon after our sessions I had a horrible headache and took a 3 hour nap. 3 hours later I woke up in a pool of sweat with a fever of 103, no strength to stand up. This lasted 4 days. I was hovering at the line where there could be possible brain damage from the high fever. One hour I was sweating, the next I was shivering beyond control. I was laying in bed, in my own puddle of sweat, with my eyes rolling backwards and I was beginning to hallucinate. It was rough, but if there was there was a place to get sick, at this hotel was the place for it to happen. I had a cozy bed, running HOT water, a toilet, AND a bathtub… not to mention all my friends who kept taking care of me.. they all wanted to make sure I was sick because I love to play practical jokes and they all know I never get sick. After the medications for Malaria were through, I was feeling back to normal and we all headed down to a place called Kribi- a white sand beach town. It was tropical paradise and it had a freshwater waterfall that spilled into the ocean that you could jump 30ft off the cliff. It was so epic!
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| One of the rare freshwater waterfalls that pour into the ocean |
Now back to Yaounde and I just had an awesome meeting with UNICEF. I just finished a school survey and complied a report to present to them. I scheduled a meeting, which I thought was just with one person, and walked into a round table interview with 6 of the head representatives of UNICEF here in Cameroon. The interview was over an hour long and they loved everything I had to say and present to them. They rearranged their schedules and planned a trip to Messamena next week. Afterwards they were showing me around the office and introducing me to other representatives as, “This is Edward from UC Berkeley, he’s now working with us for the next two years.” I felt pretty damn good. My program manager of Peace Corps is stoked for me. Later that day I had a meeting with the CEO of a start up ITT company and him and I are putting together plans for a think-tank conference here in Yaounde to help draft ideas to bring technologies to health care centers to compile and share data faster and more efficiently. So exciting!
Next month I’ll be traveling again because I was chosen to attend a Water and Sanitation conference in Bamenda, then back to Yaounde for follow up meetings with UNICEF, then to Bertoua for a regional meeting. Traveling is so much fun but Im missing my house, boat and garden in Messamena!
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| Going down the river in my pirouge |
