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| Water Source before..... |
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| Water Source Afterwards! |
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| Proud members of the Water Committee in Koum! |
At the schools we have continued with our first crop of soy
and moringa to prepare for our larger planting cycle coming up in March with
the beginning of rainy season. With the gardens I started a hand washing
program using rainwater collect from a large barrel and soap that UNICEF had
provided. I’ve been dropping soap off on a weekly basis only to the schools
that always had it available to the students (there were issues with corruption
in the past) and have started ‘WASH’ clubs at each school that consist of 5
older students who are responsible for making sure all the students are washing
their hands and know why it is important to do so. Its been a lot of work but
the Parents, Teachers and Students have all been excited to work together on it
, which has made the work a lot easier to implement.
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| Hand Washing Field Trips |
With the community members I’ve been working on creating
Water Committees to make sure that potable is always available in the villages.
Each villages has a board of about 10 members- A president, Vice President, Secretary,
3 treasurers, 2 technicians and 2 board members who are allowed to vote on the
issues. We’ve worked together to discuss how much they need to collect from
each family in order to start a savings account for if and when their water
source fails in the future. They decided times that water would be available to
the community and who would be responsible for locking it up and opening it
everyday.
In the East people are
known to be very…. Aggressive. Most of these meetings were about 2 hours long
and mostly consisted of people pointing fingers at each other and yelling- a
total catfight hahaha.
But, all in
all they have been working out and we just successfully repaired a Forage in
Koum with the help of UNICEF and are beginning another in Messamena Village
thanks to grants I received from USAID and UNICEF. At the end of these 2 water
projects, over 900 people will have access to potable water.
This has all been a lot of work- but I have really been
enjoying it! My day to day life is never the same and I like that mix. But-
after a few months of this I was lucky enough to be able to take a vacation—to
Cape Verde--- just in time for Carnaval!
My good friends Joe and Amanda were on board for the trip so
although it was difficult to book the tickets, we made it work! We got to spend
a few days in Senegal, 2 weeks in Cape Verde, then back to Senegal for another
few days before returning to Cameroon.
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| Joe, Me and Amanda headed out of Cameroon |
Senegal was awesome- we were all so stoked to take a little
break from Cameroon and explore. Since there is Peace Corps in Senegal we were
able to stay at their boarding house while we were there and even use their
bikes to cruise around Dakar. Dakar is a very pretty city- I was jealous of the
Volunteers in Senegal because when they come to their capital they are minutes
from beautiful beaches, plenty of clubs, paved roads and tons of restaurants
(where you can even find sushi). One night we even went bowling… at a bowling
alley. Dakar is a big city and was such a change from Yaounde. The one
frustrating thing was that our Central African French was not understood by
many people at all- turns out French isn’t spoken by much of the population at
all.
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| Street Parade in mindelo |
Then we headed over to Cape Verde- and I was so excited.
Everything reminded me of Brasil which is all I wanted out of the vacation J But Cape Verde really
blew me away and was above my expectations. The islands were spectacular, the
people were so friendly, Carnaval was a blast, the fresh seafood was delicious
and most importantly- the coffee was awesome! It was awesome to hear all the
music, to practice portugues de novo and be with good friends. It was so fun to
hop from one island to another and see how different each one was- there are 10
islands and they are all so different from eachother- including the local
language and the peoples attitudes.
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| Carnaval Float in Mindelo |
In Cape Verde we arrived on the Island of Santiago and
headed to the capital, Praia, where we were staying with a couchsurfer,
Emanuel. We met him and he immediately took us to a local bar to watch the
soccer match with all his friends. 5 hours of food, music, dancing and laughing
later- we left that bar. It was an awesome way to be welcomed into Cape Verde!
One of the dancers on Amanda’s dance team in Boston had family in Cape Verde so
we got to meet up with them and made more friends and we grabbed some drinks
and watched the sunset- it was incredible. Then we ended up taking a 20 hour
boat ride to the top of the islands to Sao Vicente where we arrived in Mindelo.
There we met our next couchsurfers, Nelson and Marina who just moved from
Portugual and we had great dinners at their place and late night swims in the
ocean. We spent a few days relaxing on the beach and eating some fresh fish and
drinking tons of good coffee. We had a few days before carnaval was about to
start so we took another boat to the island of Santo Antao… it ended up being
the most beautiful island I’ve ever seen, full of huge valleys and cliffs right
up to the edge of the world with beautiful blue ocean below. Amanda and I took
a 7 hour hike along the cliffs and got ourselves lost into one small village
where we walked into a crnaval parade. It ended up being an old Peace Corps
village so we made some friends and they let us stay at their place and made us
dinner… it was awesome! We then made it back to Mindelo and Carnaval was
starting. This time we were staying with another couchsurfer, Kiso- an awesome
guy who knew so much about the island and introduced us to some how his friends
who just came out with their 4
th CD and another guy who was filming
Carnaval as part of his world tour career. It was so much fun! Carnaval was a
blast, as expected… dancing in the streets, awesome costumes, samba music all
around and everyone livin’ it up. The whole trip was such a blast… it was a
like a slice of heaven to me… boarding the plane to leave Cape Verde was
depressing, I did not want to leave (Duh).
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