Minor Absurdities

It did not take long to find that many of the things that had once bothered me in the States are no longer an issue.  Take Monday’s French language class, for example, when I was sitting in the three-sided shack with the teacher and the other trainee and two very common, everyday lizards fell off the underside of the roof and onto my lap.  That’s not weird in Cameroon.  Or how about when you have a layer of afternoon sweat drying on top of the layer that you accumulated during your morning walk to work in the morning?  It stinks, and you stink.  That’s not weird in Cameroon.  Just got buzzed by a passing moto with three men or women on board that was trying to avoid one of many potholes in the middle of the road?  That’s not weird in Cameroon.  Its rather strange the degree to which all of these things are no longer surprising to us.

Being a light sleeper, our training community has presented countless opportunities to get me up throughout the night.  Nevermind the hassle of getting out of a bednet in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom (I compare it to getting out of your tent while camping), the list of nightly distractions both inside and outside our house is quite lengthy.  As my host Mom operates a restaurant in addition to preparing our daily lunch options for $1-2, she will do her cooking late at night or early in the morning.  Not sure about whether the acoustics in the house are dialed in like a recording studio, but it always seems like my bedroom and the kitchen are much closer than being on opposite sides of the house.  Also keeping me up at night are the dogs, cats, birds, and roosters that announce their presence outside my window at all hours of the night.  Close the window, you say?  Bad idea, it’s too hot here for a native Midwesterner. 

Adding to the list of absurdities here in Cameroon is the degree to which everything you see, including yourself, probably has some kind of bug or insect crawling on it right now.  Have an itch on your right ankle?  Too late, the bug was there a few minutes ago and has probably moved on.  Check your other ankle and spray it with repellant to prevent it from happening again.  Did you just see an ant on your morning loaf of bread with milk chocolate spread on the inside?  Brush it off and pretend like it wasn’t there, unless you want to waste that 200 CFA (about $0.40) by throwing it in the trash can --- but oh wait, trash cans don’t exist here!  I may not represent every other trainees’ opinion, but I’d put money on the fact that the chocolate bread will not get thrown out.  

Outside of everyone’s food sanitation concerns is the constant thought that insects will land on our drying laundry outside and lay eggs, which will then find their way onto our skin … which then result in bugs laying eggs in our skin.  While this is not a terribly common concern here in Bafia (more common in the jungle areas), I most certainly iron my bedsheets after washing (to kill any larvae) and am willing to wait the recommended 3-4 days before wearing my underwear.  Based on one PCV’s experience in the jungle when he didn’t dry his underwear and wait a few days before using them, only to have another PCV help extract more than 30+ eggs/larvae/etc. from his undercarriage, it’s certainly worth the wait to ensure you aren’t the subject of the latest horror stories about what can happen to you in Africa.

Also adding to the drastic difference between the States and Cameroon is the relative lack of personal space.  While my host family has afforded me quite a lot of leeway in allowing me to spend time alone in my room whenever need be, most everyone here is not aware of the “buffer zone” that we have back in the States.  No matter whether you are seated, standing, or walking, the people here are not shy about standing very close, touching your shoulder/leg/arm during conversation, or even holding hands while walking down the street.  As strange as it may sound, especially for a country that has made homosexuality illegal, it is not weird to see two men holding hands while walking down the street.  The people in Cameroon are very affectionate and very kind, so I have done my best to avoid insulting both friends and strangers alike by not taking that small step away from those who may have just invaded my American sphere of comfort.

Another interesting example displaying the closeness of Cameroonian friends and family occurred this week when the power was out here in Bafia.  With my host Mom gone to Yaoundé for the day buying all of the ingredients necessary for a proper American 4^th of July lunch celebration (hamburgers with lettuce, onions, and special sauce, french fries, and pasta salad), my host sister owned up to the task of preparing dinner for the both of us --- my 11 year old brother, Jerry, was comatose on the couch after a full day doing flips and handsprings.  These kids have a lot of responsibility at an early age, as demonstrated by her ability to prepare a dinner of chicken, rice, beans, and fried plantains with a gas-powered stove illuminated by an aging flashlight.  In retrospect, this 14 year old Cameroonian teenager was my Mom for the night!  But on the flipside, she ended up on the living room floor the next morning sleeping alongside her brother, and her only explanation to me was that she felt strange and scared sleeping in a bedroom all alone (they share a bed in the room next to mine).  Pretty interesting to hear that from someone who does somewhere between one and two million percent more around the house than the average American teenager!  

Along with all of that good stuff from the past week, I received information about where I will be living and working when training is over in a little over 5 weeks.  After much speculation amongst the peanut gallery, as there was not much information provided to us about the available posts and how the assignments were made, I will be heading to the Grand North of Cameroon, an area that contains three regions – the Adamoua, the North and the Extreme North.  The city in which I will be living is called Guider and is located in the North, which is between the Adamoua and the Extreme North.  With Cameroon’s rich diversity in climate, culture, and geography, I could have been assigned to primarily English or French-speaking regions with climates varying between 60 degrees (in the mountains) and well over 100 degrees (in the dessert).  As Guider is a city of approximately 90-100k people in the dessert, I will most certainly be sweating profusely for a majority of the year.  Add the prospect of having to learn a local language (Fulfulde) when I get one level higher in my French classes, as well as knowing that the North has a heavily Muslim population, I share the excitement and enthusiasm that so many volunteers from that region has passed along thus far in our training.  Scorching heat, learning a fourth language, and living in a heavily Muslim area.  That may be weird for me…but that’s not weird in Cameroon.