Cheers Governor with Cameroonians

I realized that the blog post I wrote about the A2Empowerment Conference didn’t include my favorite part.  One of the nights we went to a friend’s house from Guider, Joseph, for dinner.  His sister is Lucy, who lives in Meskine and is friends with the girl who put on the conference.  I brought over a cassier (case) of beer for everyone and we had some pretty good food.  After that we all took a trip to the bar down the road to have a few more beers.

While we were there, we played a game called Cheers Governor.  It’s a drinking game similar to King’s Cup.  Basically, you go around the circle counting off until you get to 15, instead of 15 you everyone says ‘Cheers Governor’ and takes a drink.  The person who was 15 then gets to make up a rule to replace the other numbers.  You keep going around then with the rules replacing numbers – if you get to a number and forget the rule, you have to drink and the it starts back at 1. 

So now that you know the game I’ll relate the situation.  I was hanging out with a few volunteers and a former PCV who works in Senegal for Whole Foods but travels around a lot of Africa to find different growers and stuff like that.  We also had about 5 Cameroonians there, a couple were Christian so they were drinking beers with us, the other three were from the Far North, all Muslim women, so they were just drinking soda. 

Usually, when people come up with rules for games like King’s Cup or Cheers Governor, they are things like waterfall, categories, or a specific gender drinks; so it was fun to have Cameroonian, especially Muslims, make the rules.  They’re rules were more like you pull a 7 you have to dance, you pull a jack you have to point to someone, they sing and the guys dance, you pull an ace everyone has to walk to the wall on the other side of the bar. 

Goal 2 of Peace Corps is to share cultural things about America with Cameroonians.  I think we got that covered. 

Goal 3 is to share things about Cameroon with Americans; I’m covering that here. 

I just got back to Yaoundé from Bafia, where our training happens.  The new stage is here so I trained them for a couple of sessions on Friday, and I’ll be training for a couple on Monday too so I have to get back before then.  They seem like a pretty good group, though I’ve really only talked to the YD sector.  They are definitely a lot more cheerful and participative than we were – more like what I think of YD volunteers like.  They seemed to be pretty smart and have a lot of experience too, looks like we got a good addition to our group.  One of them will be coming up North to Pitoa, about 15 minutes outside of Garoua.  I’m interested to see who it was. 

I saw my host family for the first time since I left too.  I brought them a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of caramel peanuts, and a bunch of pictures of them and I that I had printed out.  My host parents and grandma were all really excited, and my host-mom’s sister was there too, so I got to see her.  I didn’t spend too long with them, but I’m going to try to go Monday when I get back to Bafia if I stay the night.  We have to go back to train again, we are only here to take the FSOT tomorrow.  I’m pretty nervous about it.  We have to rush back to Yaoundé after to take the train on Tuesday, a lot of traveling.