Tuesday, November 12,
2013
The best part about my friends coming to visit (other than
seeing them in general) was seeing the North through their eyes. The first time I came up it was so
overwhelming; finding out where I was going to live for the next two years,
trying to buy essential stuff for my place, and seeing the culture for the
first time made everything go by in a blur.
Them being here reminded me what a different place it is, even from the
rest of the country.
After those more general things, the best part was the day we
went swimming in the Gorges de Kola. I
had been there a few times before, but this was the first time when there was
water in it. The water wasn’t near as
high as it must have been at its peak, but it ranged from knee to mid-thigh
high, definitely enough to swim in. We
basically kept walking up part of the gorges and then sitting down in the warm
water and letting it carry us back down.
A couple of times we got a bit close to the waterfall. Luckily no one went down.
A friend of ours who is a moto-driver, Iliasu, took two of
us there and his brother took the other two.
If I ever need to go anywhere that is further away, like the Gorges or a
village in the bush, I call him; he is a really nice and reliable guy. They both came swimming with us. One of my buddies had a waterproof camera and
they must have taken a hundred pictures with it.
That night we made peanut sauce for dinner, a dish we make
pretty often up here. It’s easy and
cheap; we can buy real peanut butter every day on the street. Just add tomato paste, ginger, cinnamon,
salt, magi, garlic, onion, tomato and other vegetables and serve over pasta or
rice. I’m going to have to find a good
way to make that when I’m in America.
The next stop was Garoueen!
It’s the Halloween party that PCVs in the North host every year. Without the Extreme Northerners it wasn’t as
crazy as I’ve been told it was in the past, but it was still a lot of fun. A friend and I went as undercover buddy cops. If your question is ‘Button, was that just a
cop-out costume?’ the answer is yes. As
my friends pointed out, they had seen me wear that exact outfit in the past,
but at least I was matching with someone!
Unfortunately one of the people who came up to visit had to
leave before the party, but I think he had a pretty good trip and we had a
night in Garoua before he left. We went
to Yelwa, my favorite part of Garoua, and had pork sandwiches. They are so good. We always go t a bar there that has a brothel
in the back passed the bathrooms. It was kind of funny watching guys go in and
out of there. The other two left the
morning after Garoueen. I’m sure that
was a fun bus ride back down, they probably left the hotel at 5:30 in the
morning.
While my friends were here I found out that both my post
mate and I passed the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT), the first step on a
long process to become a Foreign Service Officer with the State
Department. The next step is that by the
end of this week we have to submit six-1300 character essays on why we want to
be in the track we chose (mine is Political), and info on our experiences with
communication, management, leadership, and intellectual and interpersonal
problems. It’s pretty hard to write them
with such little space, it is just a couple of paragraphs each. I’ve written and rewritten each, and they
still don’t sound very good to me.
Unfortunately, my Internet hasn’t been working either, so I haven’t been
able to send the updated ones to the people helping me. Sorry guys!
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