The Northwest Comes North (Part I)

I just read a blog post from a friend doing the Peace Corps in Ukraine (http://engagementchicken.wordpress.com/ check it out), and realized I hadn’t written one in a little while, so here we go.  Her post sounds really cool, I’m looking forward to seeing it this January. 

Speaking of which, my trip is coming up so quick.  In just over a month I’ll have to head down to Yaoundé to do the medical portion of my mid-service.  Usually you do it with your sector, but all three of the sectors from my stage are doing theirs sometime when I will be traveling, so I have to do it by my lonesome before I go.  That means I’ll take the train on December 12^th, still flying out at 1 AM on December 17^th. 

Three friends from the Northwest just came up to visit for a little while.  I came up with them from ICT (technology) Committee.  My new job with that is updating the peacecorps.cameroon.gov website.  Basically that means contacting the heads of all of the different sectors, committees, programs, etc. to get updated information for them.  Right now, the website doesn’t even have Youth Development on there, and this is the sector’s third year.  So far I have gotten very few responses, so I’m just going to have to be persistent. 

We all traveled up to Ngaounderé together and stayed there for a few days, doing the touristy stuff like climbing the Hill Mount Ngaounderé and going to the market.  I got more of my souvenir shopping done there.  It’s kind of frustrating writing this and not being able to talk about what I got, but I’m the one who wants it to be a surprise. 

It was really fun to have people from the Grand South in my stage, especially Anglophone (which is what the Northwest is), come up and visit.  One of the things that make us Grand Northerners lucky is that we get to see the Grand South fairly often.  Every time we go down for a training or meeting or something we see the Grand South.  There is never a good reason for Grand Southerners to come up here so they don’t get it paid for, and the expense of taking the train up (not the cheapest option, but the most convenient and comfortable) makes it difficult. 

There were so many things that for me are regular day of life, but that my friends were so surprised by.  When we were on the bus to Garoua we kept seeing villages with nothing but small, mud-brick buildings with thatched roofs.  Apparently they had never seen that – any buildings like that where they are have cement structures all around.  The call-to-prayer was another novelty that at first they were disappointed about (the one by the case in Ngaounderé isn’t too loud), but were satisfied about by the end.  As we all thought would happen, my complaining about the cold when I visited them was made up for by their complaining about the heat.  I told them to come back for hot season, and they all laughed at me. 

My new internet key might be slower than my last, so I wont be uploading any pictures, but I’ll try to catch up with those when I go into Garoua to great the newbies.  Coming up next post: Swimming at the Gorges de Kola!  Garoueen!  Peanut Sauce!  And that’s probably it much more!