The New Bane of my Existence

The New Bane of my Existence – Sunday, September 30, 2012

Well I’ve discovered the new bane of my existence: washing clothes by hand.  I knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant, what I didn’t know was that it would take me three hours.  I guess I did have more than 2.5 weeks of clothes, but still.  Plus I got a bit a rash from the bleach.  Luckily, I’ve seen Tom Cruise do it in Far and Away, so I knew I had to scrub hard instead of pulling a Nicole Kidman, so everything seems like it got pretty clean.  Not quite sure about the rope sandals yet, but I think I did a pretty good job on them, maybe didn’t get all the soap out though.  Either way, this is going to be a once a week thing from now on instead of a once every few weeks.  I really hope that once I get to post I can just devote a portion of my budget to someone doing it for me.  In the information packet, it said that many volunteers hire someone to cook for them – I can cook, so maybe laundry would be a better option. 

My host family is great, but my host brother is starting to be a bit of a pain in the ass.  He just walks into my room if I leave it unlocked.  This could be at 7 AM, 7 PM, or after I’ve been in my room for a few hours ‘in bed.’  Not only that, but he’s taken to asking for stuff rather tenaciously, and not exactly politely.  “Give me your IPod.  Buy me chocolate.  Give me your headphones.  Give me your bike.”  Then when I say no, he calls me a bad person.  His mom was out of town for a couple of days, so I’m hoping that now he’s back he’ll knock that stuff off; he has for now.  Either way, doesn’t change the fact that he’s in that annoying 14-year-old stage and acts really squirrely a lot of the time. 

So after two nights of the bottom of my bed falling out, I finally told my host mother.  Within a couple of hours a guy was there and fixed it, so I probably should have just said something earlier.  I also told her that I really didn’t like ‘saucissons,’ which she usually served as part of my breakfast.  Basically think of a mixture between hot dog and spam, with a kind of bitter taste, served cold.  Luckily most of the other things she serves are delicious, so I haven’t been going hungry or anything.  I’m out of the bottles of water they gave me and am relying solely on my gross-tasting filtered water now.  Hopefully it will start tasting better over time.  I think tomorrow, since I just started using my filtered water, I’m going to use it for my ‘shower.’  Hopefully that will run it through once and make it taste better. 

We’ve already had our first hookups in our training group.  More than one couple started in Yaoundé.  I’m not sure how it works with the host families and all, but hey, more power to them.  We’ve also had our first rip-offs.  One of my fellow trainees had their host-mother make them buy groceries for the whole family – something that PCTs definitely should not have to do.  The Peace Corps pays the families enough for us to get the food we need and all that, plus a bit extra.  Not necessarily enough to make a living or anything, but enough to make it worth their while.  Some host families like to take advantage of this, so hopefully the Peace Corps will fix this situation for the PCT. 

I am more than halfway through my autobiography by Bruce Campbell and got to the part where he made Army of Darkness, one of my favorite bad movies.  I can’t wait to watch it again, so a few of my fellow PCTs and I are going to watch it after training tomorrow.  The good thing about having around 250 movies is that you can sort of dictate what you are going to watch with fellow PCTs, so forcing people to watch one of my favorite B-movies isn’t difficult.  Next stop – Hamlet II?  Not really sure yet, but I can’t wait. 

The story my friend told me about being ripped-off made me a bit nervous.  I gave my host-mom 10,000 CFA to buy me some stuff yesterday.  She only gave me 2,500 CFA back, but I think since she got me such a big thing of detergent that it was probably legit.  Also, my host mom seems pretty great, so I trust her.  It was a bit more than I wanted to spend, but it will last a while, so I’m good. 

I’m getting pretty nervous about how I’m going to get all of my stuff to my post in the end.  So far, aside from my two bags that are about 100 lbs. between them, and my backpack, I have gotten a regulator the size of a car battery, a medical kit, a motorcycle helmet, a bike, soon to get a bike helmet, plus several decent-sized manuals.  I had enough to carry without all of the extras, and I really doubt that they have a plan for these things. 

If you weren’t skimming earlier, you saw that one of the things that they gave us was a motorcycle helmet.  Apparently it’s for when we take moto-taxis.  And so we come to my biggest complaint about the Peace Corps (other than the bullshit useless general trainings).  For some stupid reason we can’t get motorcycles.  I’m assuming it has something to do with safety and insurance, but I think I would be much safer driving myself around then taking a moto-taxi from some guy or some crazy bus.  They keep telling us how big of a problem alcohol is in Cameroon, so I’m assuming that applies to bus/taxi drivers too.  Wouldn’t it be a lot safer if we could drive ourselves around?  Here is one of the biggest problems when dealing with government bureaucracy: stupid, asinine rules that seems smart to some pencil-pusher in Washington but doesn’t really make sense in the real world. 

Also, I think Lucy from Burn Notice is the love interest in another of my favorite B-Movies, The Big Hit, with Marky Mark.  Could someone check that for me and let me know if I’m right?  Thanks. 

Now that's a good looking group

My training center

Storms a-comin'

My walk to training

My First Cameroonian Bar

My first Cameroonian bar, Friday, September 28, 2012

I just had an interesting experience at my first Cameroonian bar.  I went with four people from training group (also called stage) with one of their host brothers who didn’t speak any English.  We sat around talking for a while asking him questions, though he didn’t really understand what we were saying most of the time.  While we were there, a guy came up to us and started speaking the local language of Bafia – I don’t really know what that is considering there are over 200 languages and ethnicities here.  He started the conversation by telling us that if we were going to be in his town we needed to learn the language of it, which is not French, apparently. 

According to him, the best way to learn the language was by getting a local man or a woman, which he was happy to provide to each of us.  I’m assuming it would be the opposite sex for each of us considering being gay is illegal.  He seemed like a pretty important guy; he had an entourage and drove around in a big Denali, the nicest car I’ve seen here.  Apparently he has 10 children.  Five of them are in the States, one of which is the only Cameroonian NBA player.  Another is in London, another in France, another in Brussels, and two more still in Cameroon.  He called himself a ‘Patriarch,’ not just for Bafia but for the whole country. He said what he was the Patriarch for, but none of us really understood.  He even told us to stop by his gigantic house down the street. 

The host brother, Samuel, tried to explain it to us, but he wasn’t sure what we had heard from the guy and the language barrier didn’t help.  Apparently he didn’t explain it well enough.  A guy at the next table in a suit, drunk, started yelling at him because he wasn’t representing Cameroon well enough.  Samuel went over and talked to him, but apparently this wasn’t enough, and eventually Samuel and Vanessa had to leave, it was really awkward and we hurried up, finished our beers, and left.  

We finally had our first language classes today mixed in with another round of completely useless Peace Corps stuff.  Why on earth we would need to know the definition of development, why they wouldn’t just send it out in a reading or something, and why we had to spend a few hours on it, is beyond me.  It’s amazing how they can have so many useful trainings mixed with so many useless ones.  Seriously, in what world would us choosing a word for each letter in development help us as Peace Corps volunteers?  It doesn’t help that I just spent the last year studying this in grad school.  I know that they can’t have a special training for each of us, but almost everyone there had experience in development, surely they can modify this training somewhat. 

The language class seemed pretty good, but I hope it has a bit more structure as we go.  We spent most of today arguing about whose hometown was the best and asking things that we wanted to know how to say.  Luckily, there are only four of us in the class, so we have a lot of personal attention.  My French is still improving, Samuel even asked why my French was so much better than everyone else’s, though I thought Lola’s was just as good as mine, if not better. 

My host brother, Willy, likes to be called Wiz Kalifa, and seemed disappointed that I didn’t have any of his music on my computer.  Apparently he studies French, English, and Spanish in school, and wants to practice that last two with me, which can be really confusing when I am trying to use the first one.  I used my water filter for the first time today too.  So far I don’t like the taste, a lot like sulfur, I’m hoping that it will clear up as I use it more. 

We had our first ET today – that stands for Early Transfer or Termination, not really sure.  Either way, the first one to leave.  I’m really bummed out about it too, I thought she was a really cool girl; I hope she’s able to come back.  I guess it had to do with family problems, so you can’t blame her.  Either way, every country placement has a fair share of ETs, so I’m sure this won’t be the last one. 

I thought that we would have tomorrow off, I guess I should look at our schedule.  Luckily, we only have the morning, and then all of Sunday off, so it’s almost the weekend!  Still have to get up early though.  

Holding hands for some reason during training

At the bar

My house