The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. -e.e. cummings

Some pictures

2010-03-09T23:28:00.000-08:00

Greetings Friends and Family,

So the last couple of months have been pretty quiet and laid back. Though I have guarded all of the pictures so now when you look at them they will be very exciting!

First you'll see a cultural festival that I went to where an Anglophone tribe celebrated at their local meeting. The guys in the blue smirf costumes are traditional dancers and they were getting pretty crazy, here you'll see one of them is hanging from a rafter! Which is saying something because the building did not inspire strength. You will also see me in my Women's day Pagne which is pretty much so girly I look like a coupie doll. I am also showing off the lovely latrine, don't ask me why, the answer would involved how many beers i drank.

You can also see the arrival of Rainy season, which is pretty awesome the clouds were magnificient. Adn finally in the you see me Siobhan and my counterpart Bertha. These people make Bertoua awesome! Love you all.

Little Story to get your day started

2010-02-06T07:15:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Bertoua
I am back in town after going to Yaounde for the week because I had a meeting for Peer Support Network. It was a really good time. But now I'm back home for my birthday which I think I prefer. So far I have spent most of the day watching movies (Funny People) and rereading my book (Chig gave me it, its about a girl whose half vampire/half werewolf). I'm also currently listening to the new Nora Jones, its makes my feet tap. The ladies are cooking up some food for dinner and the crust to my cake is making the house smell good and kinda radiate with heat, but we'll forgive the oven this one time. I thought now might be a good time to shirk my work responsibilities and to type up an entry I wrote yesterday while waiting for the Bilingualism Day celebration to start. I not only impressed everyone with how much I could write but also how good my pen was (thanks mom). So here we go:

A couple of weeks ago I went with my counterpart, Bertha, to Giwi Yogamo to present our formation on teaching English with songs. It is a small village on the paved road North of Bertoua. We left very early at 5am and arrived at 7:30am. Many of our colleagues had chosen to stay the night at an Auberge- really about 9 rooms that look like closets. Since we arrived early we were ushered into the room of a colleague where we awkwardly sat on the bed ans starred at the wall while listening to the other inspector sing in while taking his bucket bath, which he was having in the shared bathhouse just next to us. Nothings too awkward for Africa

After this we were brought to the principal's house where we were served our choice of a beer or a coke. One of the inspectors took a large beer- note that he was presenting before us so everyone had to wait while he took 30 minutes to drink his beer and chat with me. He has very wiley eyes and essentially flirted with me all morning. Did I mention that he is about 5'6" and 50stomething with at least 1 wife and 7 kids? Nice. Then we are told to wait for an hour while he finishes his presentation and we can start. At this time the chief of the group sends in the only Anglophone in town. I'm not sure if she was meant to entertain us like a court jester, but she was a young teacher and seemed a little nervous. This was the time when, powered by all of that caffeine no doubt, my counterpart decides to give the poor girl an hour lecture about the problems between Anglophones nad Francophones. She continues to explain that Anglophones suffer in the East because n one has respect for them and resents them. Then she talks about the crap school system, the whole time the poor girl looks like she thinks she's being accused of something.

As this is going on, I am looking out the door which gives ma perfect rectangle's view of the women outside preparing for the coffee break and lunch for the conference. They are frying plantains and cleaning fish and its nice to watch their domesticity in full swing. However, as I'm watching one of their sons comes by holding a chicken and searching for a knife. I know what will happen next. I lived in village for a year. The goby grabs a dull knife and literally standing perfectly framed by the door, I watch as he saws at its neck. So the knives here are never sharp enough and the kid has to stop on the bird's wings and saw away. I get to watch the death of the chicken and then watch it run about as it's head is not all off and the boy accidentally freed its wings. As this is going on I decide to find the latrine where I can get away from the slaughter.

A nice woman points the way for me and I go into the small enclosure and get into position and then a parade of children begin to walk in on me. I am squatiing down in all my pagune and my aura of authority and one girl just comes into the latrine adn talkes to me while I'm peeing. I guess talking to the white women is anovelty anywhere- even the latrine. Finally, we go into the classroom and are greeted by about 70 teachers and proceed to give our workshops. Our presentations lasts until about 4. It goes very well, at this point Bertha and I work crazy well together.

We decide to take a taxi home instead of a bus because it'll be quicker seeing as how they drive faster and don't unload as much baggage. The y put me in the front seat because I am not used to being smooshed evidentially because I'm white. Now these cars are about as big as a Geo Metro, but my chauffeur fits 5 ppl in the backseat, then my counterpart sits next to me int eh front seat. Then he stopped again to pick up two more people. He puts one in the trunk where he sits on piles of manioc. The other gets into the driver's side and sits on the drivers seat, and the driver gets in and begins to drive. Now there are 4 ppl in the front, 5 ppl in the back, and one in the trunk. The driver then proceeds to drive at light speed on the windy road dodging animals and honking at children. The whole experience was sereal, but we did get to town in about 1 hr 45 minutes as opposed to 2h30 minutes, I was impressed.

Well anyway, that's all for me recapping stories I thought you'd enjoy. Please don't feel bad for me for being in Africa on my birthday, honestly I'm having a great time. In Yaounde I got to eat a hamburger, mac and cheese, ramen, a cheese sandwich and egg rolls, and chicken. I'm not complaining. Someone even bought champagne! I love you all and wish I could see you today! Big party in 5 months!

Cheers,
Elyse

Call to ARMS!

2010-01-29T03:17:00.000-08:00

Greetings Family and Friends!
So my project is finally on the Peace Corps website ready for donations!

Go to the Link below:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=694-157

or go to: www.peacecorps.gov
Then click donations
then put in my project number to find my project: 694-157
And you can read all about my project. Please send this link to everyone you know, even if you give 20 dollars it would be great, and you can write it off because tax season is coming up.

I love you all and miss you!
Elyse

Siobhans Blog

2010-01-13T04:29:00.000-08:00

So its totally worth it if you have some time to check out Siobhan's blog. Not only does she post more pictures, but she also tells you a little something about the regions we visited!

http://cameroonsiobhan.blogspot.com/

The much awaited continuation!

2010-01-13T04:15:00.000-08:00

Blog continuation
Okay, so we got to Christmas. Alright, well after Christmas we went to Waza. Now getting up at 5 in the morning after celebrating the savior’s birth is never fun! Even if you are going to see animals. But we persevered. On our way to Waza, our car broke down which is a normal occurrence but we were all sad because we were in the middle of the desert and our driver didn’t seem to have any idea what to do, hence the picture of him fixing the car with rope and a prayer and the picture of us looking dejected on the side of the road. However, our car was finally fixed and we were underway. As we entered the park we saw a little family of warthogs which were super cute. Then we paid our guides and started into the park. It is not the season to see animals in Waza because the lions and the elephants have migrated to the Congo but we were still optimistic. After about 10 minutes in we had to stop again to fix our axel so we stood next to a watering hole and looked at Elephant tracks (the picture of the mud below), which is probably as close as I’ll ever get to dinosaur tracks. We also saw some cool birds’ nests and some deer things at the water hole. As we ventured on we were able to see some monkeys, vultures, and yes giraffes! The giraffes kinda made the day, there were tons of them and they were just chilling. We got to see some babies and got to watch them run around which was really surreal, they look so odd when they run like they are in slow motion.
After driving around for some time later, and yours truly taking a totally lame nap on the bus because I was so tired, we decided to head back to Maroua. (Don’t safari when you are tired- that is what I learned)
The next day we decided to go to Mokolo where our friend Fleurange lives and to head on to Rumsiki one of the biggest tourist attractions in Cameroon. Rumsiki has beautiful rock formations and to get there you can take a moto that goes through the hills and is about a 1 ½ ride. Honestly this was my favorite part of the trip. The moto drive was beautiful and really fun, we drove through little villages and drove alongside the donkeys and horses that pepper the landscape. Siobhan even got to touch one when a herd of cows passed and we were stopped.
When we arrived at Rumsiki we decided to splurge and stay at the nice hotel where we were told that we got a 2000Cfa discount and that we didn’t need an air conditioner because we were peace corps. However, because it was tourist time, they were all booked up so we lied and said there were only 2 of us when there were three and we had a very small room with one very tiny double bed. We fixed the sleeping arrangements Peace Corps style by taking the mattress off the bed and making the box spring into a bed. We also took down the curtains to use as extra sheets, as it was a bit chilly up in the mountains. Siobhan said that she would take one for the team and slept on the box spring and every time she moved we got to hear it, but honestly it was pretty comfy for everyone.
My favorite moment of the whole trip was when we decided to spend the next day and a half at the pool. The pool is crazy deep and really cold but it overlooks the valley and it’s quite beautiful. We all put on our bathing suits and bought an overpriced beer and lay out in the sun. I was very amused by their “chaise lounges”, because they must have seen a picture of them or something and tried to build them out of local supplies. As I recall they were small medal bars painted white and welded together and there were not enough bars so you were sorta really uncomfortable. We also did a bunch of pictures where we ran and jumped really high and took the picture in mid air. They’re pretty great, but not particularly flattering, maybe if you buy me a couple of beers I’ll show you.
We also were able to eat at a restaurant that all PCVs love called the “Vegetarian Carnivore” A local guy owns it and he speaks really good English and grows all of his own veggies. He loves PCVs and treated us really nicely. When we arrived he kept telling us, “You are welcome, you live here, and this is your home.” We asked if we could have some drinks and he actually took us into his hut that was used as a kitchen and had us open the fridge and pick what we wanted! It was pretty silly. He then brought out some bread and this roasted garlic sauce that was so amazing that when the bread was finished we started spooning it our mouths alone! He also brought us chocolate croissants. I decided to have to veggie pizza and it was really good. So good I kept saying I was going to stop eating it and I finished every last bite!
Our trip was really relaxing and after we did some hiking on the second day and I finished my girlie beach novel, we headed back on a very enjoyable moto ride to Fleurange’s house. She welcomed us with some homemade peanut curry veggy sauce and rice! It was delicious. Unfortunately you cannot hide long from Africa and I was working some major stomach funkiness that started that day and plagued me for the rest of the trip! It’ll be interesting to figure out what I have.
New Years
It is now necessary to discuss the most memorable part of the trip for me which was New Years. Number one, it is important to explain that this was a very serious event for many people. There was some intense party planning going on. Peace Corps volunteers have taken a page out of Cameroon’s book and we have learned how to celebrate! First off, we had some committees going. We had a beverage committee who produced three different flavors of awesomeness for everyone’s consumption. Next was the lighting committee. You don’t want to find yourself having a dance party with fluorescent office type lighting. The solution (after 2 previous attempts) was to rap the fluorescent bulbs with electrical tape! Booya, instant red lightly dance partiness! The 3rd committee was in charge of music. We made sure to have the best mix of rock and roll, sexy dance, and oldies. We spent the evening dancing up a storm, playing party games, and sitting under the stars. At midnight, which we used someone’s watch to count down on, we spent about 15 minutes just going around and hugging all our new and old friends! It was definitely a moment to remember, as I don’t recall having been hugged that many times in a long while. There was a spirit of brotherly love and hope for the coming year.
After New Years we headed back down to the East. The train proved to be easy compared with our first trip and we arrived in Bertoua just in time for me to wake up 4 hours later and go to class. Honestly, it was one of the best times I’ve had in Cameroon and I really dug the trip.
I think it’s also important to point out that Peace Corps volunteers are some of the best people to travel with I know. If they get hurt, sick, lost, confused…whatever, it’s all part of the experience. Everyone just let’s it roll off their back. There are no cry babies and everyone man’s up! Another thing I love is that we became very adept at traveling together. Siobhan, Lisa, and I became a well oiled machine. What we need to travel tomorrow? Okay- Elyse is in charge of tickets, Siobhan save’s seats on the bus, Lisa takes care of baggage! We remembered to get snacks, to hide money, to charge iPods. We all took care of each other in a totally organized fashion. I love it when a plan comes together! Maybe we got so good at this because we have to deal with so much inefficiency here in Cameroon that we like to control things as much as possible, either way, we should write a book.
I wanted to say that I hope everyone a happy new year and that you get everything you want this year. This year has to be good right?
My brother is getting married. I get a new sister. Tyler finally gets to drink legally! I get to have a quarter life crisis. Dad is looking more and more like Steve Martin (that’s a compliment!). I make my triumphant return to the states and then start a new adventure, only God knows where. Mom decides to join the hippie movement and sits down for a totally of 2 hours in a row! (who are we kidding, this won’t happen). Sounds like everyone will be doing well this year!
I love you all and miss you!
Elyse

The Holidays in Cameroon

2010-01-10T02:32:00.000-08:00

Greetings all,
I know that you are all awaiting my sweet analysis of the vacation that I took and the way that I fell off the planet for the last three weeks. Well I am here on this Sunday to satify your curiosity, and maybe to make you a little jealous that you aren't in the Peace Corps and that you did not have the holidays I had...because you will be jealous!

So for the second week in December I found myself in Kribi for the second time in my Peace Corps service. I was invited back to teach the new stage of education volunteers all that I know and to introduce them to the work that I've been doing in Bertoua. However, what the week was really about (running sessions aside) was the beach! I spent about 5 days on the beach, waking up in the morning and taking a run through the intense humidity, then going to work, and then going back to the beach. As remembered, The Hotel Paradise (as it is translated), still has amazing food and nice accomodations, but I somehow am more impressed with the food the longer I am in Cameroon, the more aware I am of quality cuisine. During this week I even engaged in some pretty intense beach football matches. American football. I found myself bounding around and playing for keeps. Sure it was touch football, but the tide didn't seem to care we were playing so you had to dodge your opponents as well as the surf!

Another notable happening that I shoudl share about Kribi is the position I found myself in during the sessions. You see, all of the presenters have to do this big written report about IST after the5 day seminar. This report has always been a very big undertaking and has not been any of the trainers favorite thing to do. Well after reviewing this problem and seeing that a lot of the counterparts that were attending did not speak English well enough to actually benefit from a lot of the conference, I decided to use the projector and laptop to type what everyone was saying for all to see. Thus, the report was being done in tadum with the conference and people were able to read English which they are better at than listening. However, a small off shoot from this idea came when I found myself translating French into English in time with the person's comments. I was actually sitting infront of about 60 people translating French as they listened. There are a couple of comments I need to make here. 1. I totally was not good enough to be completely correct or to translate everything word for word. But I am good enough to listen and synthesize the points that the people were making. This did two things, it helped people understand and it showed the long winded talkers that what they said could have been summed up 10 minutes before. 2. Who in their right mind would have thought that a year and a half ago, I woudl be translating french! Crazy

THE NORTH
After Kribi I headed back to Yaounde, and found that my packages had not arrived! Sad! But that's not really what christmas is about and I know when I do finally get them it'll be awesome. Maybe it will just be a super crazy birthday this year!

The next leg of my trip was to take the train up North where I would meet Lisa and Siobhan and we would explore those upper reaches of the continent that resemble what you think of as Africa. Desert, heat, people speaking Fufulde, etc.

THE TRAIN
Every person that lives in the north has to take the train to get there, and they are all in agreement of one thing: The train sucks! First off, the train derails all the time and its always late. We were supposed to leave at 6pm and then we were told we would leave at 11pm and then finally we were told we would leave at 2 pm. Wow, not fun. So finally we are allowed to board the train and we are lucky enough to get a sleeper car. Imagine when James Bond is finished saving the world and gets into his train car and there are those pull down beds and then he has to throw jaws out the window. The sleeper cars are a little like that, except half the size and there are 2 bunk beds in the room. Its actually pretty comfortable. The ride is about 14-16 hours or so which sucks, but we actually got to see the countryside pass in the light of day which was quite nice. We arrived in the Adamoua at 6:30pm the next day and found ourselves starving and very tired. We fixed the starving part by going across the street from the case and eating some of the tastiest brochettes ever! Essentially this is like a kabab. Tasty meet on a stick that is painted with a spicy garlic sauce. They were crazy delicious, and so began our two week tour of eating any and all meat in the North. The food up there isnt very good because its desert and you can't grow a lot, so it was a lot like being back in Arizona. They grow cotton, millet (like corn), and they raise a bunch of cattle! It was really odd to see bruised black bananas for exuberant prices and to pay out the nose for any type of fruit. But the yogurt and cheese up there is great!

After the Adamowa we headed up to the extreme north (EN) in a coaster car for about 7 hours on paved roads. I am still amazed by paved roads and think they are the bees knees. We spent Christmas in Maroua where we foudn a slew of very happy and joyous volunteers. We were crazy impressed with the EN because of all the ex-pats that live there. There were white people everywhere! The roads were lined with trees and there were even medians in the roads! Everyone was insanely nice, and I didnt get bothered as much for being a white person which is refreshing!

For Christmas we made cookies and decorated them, the girls from the east made pancakes for everyone, and a big group of us made calzones for dinner which were delicious. A couple of the boys even went out and picked up a large piece of a tree and set it up in the living room hanging from the ceiling and we decorated it and danced around it. We listened to Christmas carols all day and drank a lot of beer. It was a very nice time and I very much enjoyed all of the Christmas movie watching and happy company.

Okay this blog is starting to get crazy long. I will be back later with the conclusion of what I was up to at the end of 2009

Pictures of my trip to the North and Kribi More to come!

2010-01-05T01:36:00.000-08:00

What's up with November?

2009-12-08T03:07:00.000-08:00

So here I am with some very happy Cameroonians who had obviously drunk too much, but Cameroon just won against Morocco so it was only right to celebrate!

Okay, here is Siobhan with our meal we had- mashed potatoes, gravy, candied carrots, stuffing, two turkeys, green bean casserole with mushrooms and home made onion rings on top, corn, creamed peas, cranberry sauce.

We also had appetizers- deviled eggs (you know you miss my signature dish), plantain chips (the closes thing we can get to actual chips, guacamole,and ranch with a veggie dish.

For dessert was: Pumpkin bread and pumkin pie. You can see the pie crust in the next picture, with our eggs we are boiling and our amazing stuffing. My favorite dish!

Here we have the girls of Thanksgiving. Laura came from the South west and Kate and Connie came across country for a collaboration project and stayed on for the food. As always we have lisa, siobhan and myself.

This is my counterpart for basic education. Her name is Bertha and she's such a fabulous lady. She's really motivated, English speaking, and I love seeing a woman in charge in such a chauvenist coultr

Sharing some Pictures

2009-11-20T04:21:00.000-08:00

Okay here is the Halloween Crew

I was in charge of game, here's the apple bobbing!

Here we are hanging out at an sweet bar, with the nicest decor in town. You know that, because of this life sized picture of Averal Lavine

So here is when I locked myself out of my house and then proceeded to use every hanger and crow bar I coudl find. Thanks for the Help Siobhan

Here are Lisa and Evan for Christmas. Evan is dressed as an African Mamma.

Catching up

2009-11-20T03:51:00.000-08:00

Wow I guess its been a little long since I've written. Sorry about that, but I became super busy, which is good for Cameroon and for me, but not for my blogging. I'd like to catch you up so I'll try to summarized the last few months in an interesting way.

Work
Wow, I've been crazy busy. So I have created a CD of 59 songs to teach English and 10 tracks of pronunciation exercises. Then I have been selling them (not for profit but so I can get my money back from making them) to all of the francophone teachers of the East. The result is that the better part of the teachers of the East are listening to me sing "Bingo was his name o" and "I have a head...a head...on my head what can you see". Don't worry, if you want a cd I have plenty!

The other big project I have been working on is writing a book for these basic education teachers to help them better teach English. I finished the book a couple of weeks ago and I am in the process of editing it. I also wrote a grant to try and fund the printing of the book, but more to come with that!

The aformentioned things are all the office work stuff I've been up to, but I've also been out in the field as well. So far I have presented seminars at 6 different Journee Pedigogiques (essentially pedigogical conferences for teachers in the different regions of the east). I have been presenting information about how to use songs in lesson planning at the basic education conferences and this is where I give out my cd. At this point I have given the same presentation like 5 times and I've been solo a few times so its just me in a room full of teachers about twice my age, singing and doing some theatre exercises! Its been really fun but pretty demanding because we have had to travel a bit to get to all of the conferences. (more on this later) I have also presented at two conferences for the secondary education teachers. Here I was able to give a speech (in English don't overestimate me) to about 300 teachers and administrators. I was pretty proud of this because I was able to change the normal format of presenting papers, where the presenter just reads for liek 20-40 minutes and bores everyone to death. Instead I was talking about hte bilingualism game. Essentially its a new thing the ministry is trying to get everyone to do, where the last 5 minutes of their class they play a game related to their lesson in English. (since Cameroon is supposed to be bilingual). So of course, instead of just reading my boring paper I decided to play a game and give an example of the project. All the teachers loved it and came up to me after and seemed happy for the change from the normal procedures. I was also obliged to present during the English workshops where I discussed lesson planning and how to make lessons more student centered and interactive.

So as you can see my work is going really well, even if I'm a bit ready for the holidays. Coming up I have a girl's camp on Saturday where we will speak about health and making good choices and stuff. Then on the 1st of December I will be presenting at the national CAMELTA conference, this is essentially the English Teacher's Union. I've been asked to present two exposes on my own, so I've got a lot of work to do.

So enough with Work...where are your funny stories Elyse?
Well I definitely have a lot of those so I should put some here so you know its not all work and no play here.
1. I went to Abong Bong which is a village about 3 hours from Bertoua where we were going for a conference. The conference was for two days so I stayed at an Auberge with the other inspectors. I was given my own room. You have to understand that I'm the only woman that works at the higher level of inspectors and I'm a white chick so everyone treats me like I'm an idiot. I couldn't go to sleep because my colleagues kept tapping on my door and asking if I had soap, then toilet paper, then they came by to tell me to lock my door- as if I couldn't figure any of these things out. Then I try to go to sleep on the thinnest mattress in the world and you can feel every wood plank that is holding you up. So I decide to rearrange the wood planks so that they are in a less annoying spot. So I lift up the mattress and what do I find? About 40 used condoms on the floor under the bed! Ugg...well at least they were careful?

2. I was in NDiang a village about 1 hour from Bertoua, on Wednesday. Now when you go as an inspector everyone treats you to a meal and gets you drinks and are incredibly hospitable. I can't help wishing however, that their efforts resulted in me eating Famous Dave's Barbecue, or delicious sandwiches for lunch instead of what I get. So for our first break they give me a cold omelet that is 4 parts oil 1 part egg. And as I'm eating it I taste something slimy and can't figure it out, then I look down and realize there are sardines in my omelet. ugh! So for the next meal they open the lids to two pots with great gusto and I look in. First we have plantains mushed together in this sorta spongy side dish (I actually like this dish). Then there is obviously some type of meat in a tomato sauce. So I take a smaller helping to be polite and proceed to try and decide what the meat is. I finished my helping which is mostly fat, by stealthily feeding some to the cat by my feet. Then one of my colleagues asks what kind of meat it is to the lady of the house and she proceeds to say, "tu as goute quoi" "What did you taste?". Then we all laugh and say, no really what was it. And she says, you don't ask in village you just eat it. So obviously we ate some kind of bush meat, who knows what it was! I hope it wasn't dog!

3. So there is some phenomena right now where all of these praying mantises are decending on Bertoua, along with their friend Mr. Cricket. So my front yard is currently a corn field, because my landlord owns it and uses it for his field. So, having a corn field as a front yard sorta encourages these critters to gravitate to my house. I currently have a ridiculous number of them in my house, and its to the point where I'm killing so many I have to make a pile before sweeping them outside. Unfortunately, they are really big, so killing them makes quite a mess. Anyway, so I'm trying to sleep the other night and I keep hearing this crazy sound coming from my ceiling. Now, Siobhan has told about having mouse in her ceiling for a while and I really hope that isn't it. But after listening for a while because I can't sleep, I figure out that its one of those freaking mantises. There is a tile in my roof that has been removed because that's how you get up in the ceiling to rearrange the power lines. Well this piece of ceiling is right above my toilet. So after not being able to sleep I go into the bathroom to pee, and my friend in the ceiling decides to take this opportunity to dive bomb me. However, as he's coming down he decides to find somewhere to hide, and of course choices under my butt in the pot. SO I jump up because I've just been goosed by a huge green bug and I proceed to dance around my bathroom with my pants around my ankles, trying to kill him. Needless to say, I have recently swept out a large pile of these guys.

Well, I think that's probably enough for you to contemplate today. I miss you all and love you!

Weece

Bertoua living the high life

2009-09-26T02:24:00.000-07:00

Greetings Family and Friends,
Sorry about not updating more in depth, we still don’t have the internet at the case in Bertoua so I have to come to the internet café, where the keyboards suck and it takes about 9 years just to log on to email. Boo. Hopefully the situation will change soon because I am buying a new phone which I can use to access the internet from my computer. So what has happened so far with me this month? Good question.
I’ve been extremely busy here in Bertoua with my new job and with school starting. I must confess I find that I like my health, my happiness, and my overall contribution to peace corps a lot better now that I’m in Bertoua. I’m extremely busy and I am actually doing work that I think might be helpful. While I’m sad to be away from village, the fact that the mayor and a few people in town are still giving me a hard time even when I moved away, reminds me that village was not all sugarplums and lollipops. What do I miss? First off, I miss the fact that I had so much time for reading. I also miss the quietness and the community of Ndelele. I miss the forest too, I don’t much feel like going out of my house to run because there isn’t the same type of serenity in town. I also miss my students and the fact that they had a better rapport with me than they do here, simply because I had more teaching hours and I lived right next to them. But, there are somethings I don’t miss, like the horrible travel to get there. The lack of electricity and water (though Bertoua has its share of problems with water), and also the fact that a lot of undeserving people are in power and they abuse that power. I also don’t miss the fact that I didn’t feel very useful there.
On the upside, here in Bertoua I have been having a great time. First off, I moved into my new house last weekend. I’m so proud of myself, I pretty much moved all of my stuff by myself and everyone in my cartier now thinks I’m very strong. The first thing I set up was my kitchen, because with all the awesome food I have gotten in packages it just seemed like the most necessary thing to do. Unfortunaetly, Bertoua has these horrible red ants that are so small you can barely see them or feel them. Anyway, when they bite you its like fire and its pretty much the most horrible feeling ever. Unfortunaetly, they have already decided to live on my countertop that comes to my waste. So I am currently covered in these horrible bites around my waste. I have however, taken new precautions with my food and I have bought RAMBO which is their ant killing spray here. I hope to be free of the problem soon, if only for my mental health. I keep having bad dreams where ants cover me and eat me- very Indiana Jones of me.
The other room I have set up is my bedroom, and its awesome. I have a new bed and a bedside table, and now with the power I’m actually able to plug in my reading lights and my radio so I don’t have to go through so many batteries. I have found a bit of a problem trying to post anything on my walls though. Cinderblock walls have never corporated with nails or screws! So my mirror and all of my posters are looking quite sad in a pile on my floor. The other things I have done is put up all of my curtains, because with out them the people that are still building the house next to mine and my fence, can look right into my room! Not cool.
So I am very much loving my house and when I finally arrive back there every afternoon I feel like I have a bit of a haven, I can’t wait to pick up my new furniture and actually create a living room. One thing I do have to say is that I’m really enjoying the power because Siobhan got me into these workout videos. I work out like an hour a day and I always feel tons better afterwards!
I do want to tell you alittle bit of the work I’m doing in Bertoua right now. First off I teach 8 hours at the Lycee Technique de Bertoua. I teach 9th grade and 10th grade and every time I have a new class I find that I am greeted by more and more students. At this point my 9th grade class has left me about a two foot walkway to maneuver by the board in the front of the class. The students are a bit rowdy, but the faculty is very nice and the school is so big that they have many discipline masters to assist me. I have really been enjoying teaching thus far simply because the kids seem to really respond to my activities and my enthusiasm. In my 10th grade class I had to teach the national anthem in English because they had to sing it and it was such a fun exercise because really the anthem is quite beautiful and the kids sing it really well. They got me dancing and I even had a student act like he was doing the cymbals and make the noise when the band would.
A part from my teaching I am also working for MINESEC which is the ministry for secondary education. I normally go into their office and work on my computer creating didactic materials, sample lesson plans, and things. This week I went to a seminar and gave a presentation on activities to motivate students. Next week I will travel to a village and observe some classes, (thankfully my counterpart has his own car). I am also working with the Ministry of Basic Education. This is where I am doing most of my work right now. I have decided to create an instructional book for all primary students on how to teach English. A lot of the teachers don’t really speak English so this will be a great manual. I am also creating a cd to go with the book of songs and pronunciation in English. This project is proving to be very fun and incredibly exciting. So far my manual is about 75 pages and I haven’t even added 3 chapters. I also found that I can record with my computer and my microphone so I visited some elementary school classes and recorded the students singing, which was about the cutest thing in the world. I’ll have to upload some of the files, it will make your day.
Overall, I’ve been very busy battling the hierarchy as well as trying to be at three places at once. Its been a really good couple of weeks though and honestly I can’t wait for Siobhan to get home so that we can discuss our days over a glass of wine. Can you tell by my long entry that I have a lot to discuss? Anyhow, I hope you are all well and I love you all so much! Big hug and kiss.
Elyse

quickie

2009-09-14T07:36:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone
Im working here in Bertoua and Ive been so busy I havent had time to write. Im also waiting for PC to put in free internet so I havent really been on. I have still yet to move into my new house but i think in about a weeks time ill be good. they did paint the interior walls a really fabulous shade or orange and then the guy told me i should like it because my skin matches. not sure what to do with that information

Last weekend I went to Batouri to do the camp with lisa that fell through a couple of weeks ago when we tried to do it. Thankfully this time we were able to coerce a bunch of students to come. I think the kids learned a lot and it was really successful. I think we planned really diverse excercises so that helped. I was also really happy to hang out with the Batouri clan, especially because Lisa made me her famous chili which is exceptional.

Any way I hope everyone is well and ill work on a more indepth blog later. love you

elyse

Back to life, Back to Reality

2009-08-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

Greetings Everyone,
I hope that you enjoyed my little photo blog. My vacation was really something else. Thank you so much to my parents, Grandma Betty Jo, Grandma and Grandpa Peragine! You guys really helped out a poor volunteer to have an amazing vacation. Thank you to Dave for putting me up for a week, to Jaime, Chad, Dave, and the two humongous cats for spooning so expertly in a queen bed! Thanks to Billy Elliott for teaching Tyler to dance, even if it is in the subway after a few glaces of wine.

So I thought I would make some comments about the photos:
First off, we have a picture of us lazing around Dave's house after we walked the better part of muesums and Brooklyn!
Second is me laying in the grass at the historical cemetary in Brooklyn (all Jaime's idea)
Third is Jaime and our new friend Ivy at a bbq at Daves house (who knew a vegetarian could cook meat so well)
Fourth, this is Dave sleeping, he slept until 12:30 one day! He was very tired.
Fifth, Jaime at the BBQ looking down home and country.
Sixth, Shot of the church at the historical cemetary. I enjoyed this because it had nice bathrooms and was air conditioned.
Seventh, Chad Ramsey sporting his chest as we are leaving. Evidentaly in America showing some chest is okay.
Eight, These are my terribly attractive parents, Who doesn't love this photo?
Ninth, This would be an immigrant slapping my bum.
Tenth, TYler dancing in the subway.
Eleventh, Eating Giloto( sp?) in Little Italy.
Twelfth, Hanging out in the NBA store. One of these things is not like the other...
Thirteenth, tyler with crazy sideburns. This made me laugh a lot
Fourteenth, me in one of my favorite places, hanging out with pastries
Fifteenth, Ethan and ty in little italy
Sixteenth, Ethan eating mac adn cheese in a restaurant that only serves mac and cheese! Tyler's heaven.
Seventeenth, Dad and I in the disney store.
Eighteenth, Mom and tyler doing their Circ de soleil auditions.
Nineteenth, Wow America loves technology!
Twentieth, Me checking out a well sculpted statue!

So there are a lot of photo's there adn Chad and Jaime posted some great ones on facebook. The vacation was great and I think the memories will last me the next nine months. I have a tons of work to do this next year and I'm really excited to start. I'm not sure when I'll next get to blog but just know I'm working hard to help out some peopel in the east, because the lord knows I have been away from my peeps too long. I love you all and I will miss you, embracing the coming fall for me because that's my favorite time of year!

Love you
elyse

Pictures from New York

2009-08-16T05:50:00.000-07:00

First two days in America

2009-08-06T04:01:00.000-07:00

The family is all sleeping right now because they are on West coast time and I am on Africa time so I went to the gym and took a shower and now i'm posting this for all you lovely people. Enjoy the insanity!

In the Douala Airport, wow Africa! Doesnt it look like Adventure land in Disneyland!

Did someone order some New York with a side of Hot and Crusty. Here I am in NY next to a pizza place!

First Grapes in a year! I'm eating them in Time Square, is there a better place for Produce?

Here is a Tussey Family Gem!

I dont think tyler knew he was getting video. Don tworry all the ones of the family are coming soon, i thought i'd just show you some of my antics first!

Greetings from Belgium

2009-08-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

Brussels: I am currently in Belgium and I have a couple of thoughts to share with you, obviously these observations will be solely of the people I have seen and met in the airport. First off, everyone is white here except the people that got off my plane from Africa and then conveniently disappeared. It’s really startling to leave Africa and see so many white people in one place. I know this sounds crazy but it is a really exciting development to not be a minority. Secondly, no one speaks English here, they all talk like the muppet’s scientist guy..not beeker he just beeped, but the Swiss guy. Anyway Dutch is the weirdest language ever and it cracks me up (its Dutch right, not Belgish). Also, everyone and their mom are still speaking French! What do they think they live next to France and they should just keep speaking that language! Lame! Anyway, I am only here for 3 hours before I fly again. The plan was to eat Pizza Hut Express (yes I know it is 7 am). Of course this was thwarted when they told me they don’t serve pizza yet, anyway It would be weird to be in Europe and not get some local foods. So I bought some chocolate bars- if you are nice I’ll share! I also bought one of those fabulous premade sandwiches in a triangle box. After about 10 minutes of deliberation I went with the Chicken and Bacon on 7 grain wheat.

May I take a paragraph to write about not eating wheat bread for a year (hahah some boys just walked by speaking Dutch- they sound insane someone should lock them up!). Anyway, I love sandwiches, they are my favorite food. They are versatile. They can be hot, cold, dry, saucy. And, my, all of the choices of bread! Don’t get me started on how I was born in the wrong time and should have married the Earl of Sandwich. Anyway, this sandwich is currently amazing. The bread is all grainy with little nuts in it and the chicken is not scary at all, and I didn’t have to witness the death of the bird. Of course the bacon isn’t really crispy (Crazy Europeans someone should teach them right) It’s more like meaty ham, but it is still making my palate super happy. The only issue is that the food on the plane was also amazing! (yeah I said it). First off I had really bad free red wine (I was trying to sleep). Then I had “Bœuf” in some brown sauce which was delicious with mashed potatoes and oniony green beans. Then there was the side salad with chunks of fancy cheese and a hold your breath! 1 Pepperchini! Holy moley, I missed those little guys. Needless to say my stomach is already confused as to what I will be doing to it for the next two weeks. Hang in there buddy we’ve got some eating to do. I plan on arming myself with many medicaments when I get to the states, which is in T-minus 10 hours!

Other updates include: I am the most annoying partner on a plane. I had to sit in the middle aisle in the middle seat where I proceeded to move every two minutes so the people next to me couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t like I timed it but I’ll tell you what, I figured out every position needed to alternately make your limbs fall asleep. I’ll write a manual: Yoga in your airplane seat: How to deny others the sleep you crave.

Anyway, obviously you can see I’m super happy and ready to head out. I’ll be boarding in like an hour so now that my sandwich is done I think I’ll take a look at one of those chocolate bars (I also bought gummy bears and fancy Dutch gum). Hold on tight for the next update, it might be called something like “The Reunion of the Century” or “Frantic hugging turns into impormtu leg wrestling tournament”

1 Day more!

2009-08-02T01:57:00.000-07:00

Who is super excited!
This girl!

Oh yeah!

2009-08-01T02:56:00.000-07:00

2 days kids!

Three maids a milking!

2009-07-31T02:04:00.000-07:00

3 days baby! count them 3! I'm getting impatient to hug my family!

For all of us that Love the West Wing

2009-07-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

Dear watchers of the West Wing,
This was written on the back of our West Wing DVD that is distributed by the Chinese. You can a whole season here for two dollars. I think you can agree that this might be a third translation.

Won the Nobel Prize in Economics successful candidate of the Democratic Party Butler entered the White House int eh election played an important role in a number of aides, in charge of the White House office.

President of the Oval Office while the Chief of the centre, but the day-to-day operation of the White House is entirely located in the west side of the White House Office of Administration busy. Rio grand chief of staff- drama, a former alcoholics, it is now the cornerstone of the entire West Wing office, but he ultimately jeopardize the hard work of marriage. Quian Jie is awesome spokesman for the White House every day and the media carried out clever deal, resolving or conceal a pile of press crisis, but never gained the upper hand with her character has made the pursuit of those between Danny relations become quite delicate. Talent full Toby director of Department of Public Information- Ziegler has a bad temper, the president's speech all speech can not be separated from his Miao T Health spent. Young Sam, deputy director of the Department of Public Informaion- Xibaen the capacity to deal with unexpected events class. some dirty, deputy director fo the staff from the public enterprises against political opponents, it is very smart and capable.
All important policies, the birth of the Bill, rejected or adopted, how to combat political opponents one by one, how the federal courts, the national emblem, the Senate expanded the influence of the White House, how for the next presidential elections that paved the way before, and how intervention impact on the other side of the world of international disputes, all of which the White House on this story on several major staff in the West Wing office started slowly big screen.

Early Morning Errand Running

2009-07-30T01:46:00.000-07:00

So, I guess I needed to be reminded how awesome this vacation is going to be because this morning was quite the harrowing experience. My friend forgot her computer cord in Yaounde so I went to send it to her by using the buses we take to get to Bertoua. These buses are a bit out of the city and it takes 30 minutes to get there. So I get up early and grab a bean sandwich and then head out to the routiere. The first car I get in already has 6 people in it and I'm smashed in the front with a very large man who evidently has restless leg syndrome. He keeps asking me to move my arm or my hip, though there's no where to really move them and he keeps giggling like a girl. Then after about 5 minutes of this fun ride my cab driver looks all panicky and pulls over. He tells me I have to get out, so I do, assuming he wants me to try and smooch in the back. So I get out of the car, almost falling down because I can't feel my leg that the large man was sitting on. And the driver yells, "take another cab the police are ahead." (in French). So they aren't supposed to have that many people in the car so I get the boot. Now I'm on a busy round a bout and have to walk a ways until I find another cab that's willing to take me.
So I get in this cab and go with out incident for about 20 minutes and as we get near, as is my habit, I tell the driver that I want them to take me to Orient (the name of the bus service). He starts laughing and saying I should have told him earlier and that he was going toleave me at the round about at the start of the section of all of the routieres. He keeps telling me I'm going to have to faire le sport! Thanks dude. The thing is, I love walking and I don't mind having to get out and traverse the route, but this is one of the most annoyingly intense areas in Yaounde because all of the guys that work for the cars will literally grab you and drag you to their agency so you will take their car. (they get paid money by the drivers if they fill the car). Anyway, I argue with the guy a while but I end up having to get out. I have to walk for about 8 minutes but its hell. I've got guys calling me all sorts of names, I've got creepy dudes touching my arms and I"m ignoring them all because if you react they are like sharks smelling blood and they all come toward you and encircle you.
So I finally get to Orient and thankfully the guys know me there so they protect me and fight off the creepy dudes that are trying to touch me. After sending my package I go back to the road to catch a taxi back into town. I again get accosted by the guys I don't know and then some of the baggage people at Orient start getting in a fight over me. I guess that's nice but I really can't take it at 7:30 in the morning. So then they grab me a cab and I get in. This is by far one of the funniest cabs ever. I get in and the dashboard looks like a carnival. The 'leather' seats are flaking off on my skin. The driver is playing Makosa music (traditional western Cameroonian music). His rear view mirror has a medallion of Marie and Jesus and a tassel is hanging off of it. Then he has little Chinese flags about three of them, tacked into the roof with little tassels hanging off of them. A fluffy Easter bunny about the size of a small baby is sitting on the passenger side dashboard and on the driver's side there is a blue towel with Winnie the Pooh on it. In the air conditioning vents (that don't work) there are heart shaped lollipops stuck in. As I am admiring his decor the other passengers alight and I am left in there with the driver.
He asks me to come sit in the front (which I refuse) and then he switches the channel to 'My heart will go on" by Celine Dion (who they love here) and asks me if I will marry him. At this point I have been in his cab for about 3 minutes. Wow. We pick up some more passengers and a guy gets in and looks at me and says something very excitedly. After about 5 tries I realize he is just yelling "Kentucky Fried Chicken". To which I say what about it. And he says that he's been to American and he loves it. Wow!
Anyway, it was quite an adventure and it would be a good time in Cameroon if someone hadn't have stolen my phone while I was walking to Orient. I looked in my bag and it wasn't there, and I knew it was because I had just checked my credit. So now I don't have a phone but I think I can still get the same number, so we'll see what we can do. At least I've had that phone for more than a year, which is a bit difficult in this country!
Well it is now 4 day until I get to see the fam and though this mornign was a bit of a challenge, I"m super happy!

5 diggity days!

2009-07-29T06:32:00.000-07:00

Not sure what happened here. I was thinking pirate hat, then all I had was green paper. Then I couldn't center my cross bones. But it is the most sturdy hat so there's that!

5 days kids!

Royal Treatment

2009-07-28T03:51:00.000-07:00

My friend Gloria made me this Glorious hat! It's a Crown for day 6 of the countdown!

Countin down!

2009-07-27T04:05:00.000-07:00

7 days till New York- My hat was inspired by Peter Pan!

oh yeah count down with me

2009-07-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

8 Days til Vacation! I can't wait!

Pictures

2009-07-03T01:18:00.000-07:00

So the first picture was a sign posted in a small van that I was traveling in, I thought it was good advice. Next is an adorable baby in the van who was sucking on a mango! Then I was in another car where there were ducks in the trunk and it was very odd making noise the whole trip, later the family ate him for dinner. The next picture was taken after I climbed a mountain in Koumbo in the North west. It's insanely beautiful there, very green! The picture in the house is with my friend Kate, look how pink her house is! She did not ask for this Cameroonians just wanted to paint her house pink I guess. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

On the Road Again

2009-06-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

Greetings all!
I hope everyone is well and happy and not sweating too much with the summer hitting. Not to rub it in at all but it is amazing weather here and simply gorgeous where I currently am. I have just finished teaching in Bangangte and I am now touring the west because I have a week before I have to go back to Yaoundé for mid-service. Mid-service is the time in peace corps where you get to do all of your medical checkups- and let me tell you, pooping in a cup is not on my list of things I want to do.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about going back to Bangangte which was not only great but really eye opening. I arrived with my friends Jim and Mattie (Mattie is in my province in Batouri and Jim lives about 1h 30 min from Bangante in the west). When we arrived we were all hit with how odd it was to be back. It was like returning to your home town after you left as a young naïve teenager. Everything smelled the same, the mud was still atrocious and the rain was still persistant, but we were totally different people. Now I could understand French, and I was coming home as a trainer and not a trainee and I suddenly became an expert in all things Cameroon. We were the first volunteers to come to Bangangte and help the trainees settle in and they had so many questions I felt like I was on a game show for a week straight. I’m really glad I was there and could give encouragement and make people feel more comfortable, but mostly to assuage their fears. Some of the questions seemed really silly in retrospect because of how obvious the answers seem to me now, but the kids have only been in Cameroon for about 20 days so I had to give them a break. They seem like a really good group of volunteers and they are really serious and focused which is always good. We know that we are getting two new TEFL volunteers in the East and that they will both be girls (guess I’m not going to find my future husband in the PC). The girls we think are coming are really great and I’m super excited about so that’ll be fun come August.
However, the best part of being back in town was seeing my host family again. Not only was I prepared this time with a bag full of gifts but my family was crazy happy to see me. I arrived and hugged all 20 of them (remember how many people were living in that house with me?) and we talk until about 9 pm. I was able to understand them which was not only amazing but so rewarding to hear all they had to say. My mother also kept saying that I wasn’t the same person and asking who was I and what did I do with the shy girl that couldn’t speak French. It was crazy fun to share all of my stories and to hear what all the kids were up to. It’s amazing to me how quickly the kids grow up, little Piquita now looks so tall and skinny! Anyway, it was really great and I went back again last night and had delicious dinner with them and asked the mother her opinion about the problems I’m facing at post when dealing with trying to motivate women. I realized my mother is not only really committed to higher education, but also extremely developed in her belief about gender roles. She’s a strong woman who is an equal with her husband and she’s opinionated and not always in the kitchen, and it’s just amazing to see a woman here like that. I really wish they lived in my village, they are probably the best friends I have here and a lot closer to the American mentality than you will find in a village. I also realized while I was in Bangangte how developed it is and how nice I had it for stage. The city is almost all paved and they have a lot of restaurants, internet cafes, and night clubs. My house had running water, an American toilet, and was really clean compared to village standards. I can’t believe how much I complained when I was there and how much I changed my tune when I went back. One of the things they are always telling us in education is to make the learners reflect on their learning experience to see how they learn and recognize the process (metacognitive thinking). I feel like with the insane learning curve and all of the changes I’ve gone through in the last year, it’s pretty obvious the process I went through to be able to come home to Bangante and have such a different feeling.
Anyways, it is now 38 days until I will be back in America seeing my family and friends and I can’t wait. I love you all and hope things are going well.
Love you all,
Elyse`

Pictures from Africa!

2009-06-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

This is from Peace Corps Prom: Post Apocolyptic Winter Wasteland. I made my outfit out of a swim suit and old fabric.

Below is a group of volunteers making family dinner
This is me after I rode my bike to the
hippo tower

This is one of my students preparing food for our end of the year party.

Below is a picture of my girls club meeting at my house.

One Year Anniversary

2009-06-16T04:21:00.000-07:00

June 14^th (it should have been posted June 6^th)

I never got really into the New Year’s thing, with the resolutions and the reflecting and such. Maybe because it wasn’t really a stopping point since I was always in school and it was just a break. No real changes could be made because the bulk of my life would be the same after the New Year. Now, however, being a year in Africa I really feel I have something to reflect upon. How have I changed? What have I accomplished? Who have I met? What has happened? Do I look different? Am I wiser?

I decided to ask myself some of these questions and make some good lists to reflect on my PC experience thus far.

1^st Time Experiences I’ve had in the Last year

1. Seeing hippos up close in the wild

2. Living by a river/biking a lot

3. Being friends with a monkey

4. Petting a baby antelope

5. Eating tropical fruit daily

6. Mouse Capturing

7. Being away from family for 1 year

8. Cooking Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner without family

9. Having a student make me cry

10. Defending my choice not to have children without a husband

11. Pooing in a hole

12. Peeing in an alley, 2 feet from my boss, off a mountain side, with tons of spiders watching, while a man hit on me as he was peeing on my foot.

13. Walking in mud up to my knees

14. Having a 2 hour conversation in another language

15. Seeing a windshield fall off a car and then fixing it, windows falling off, doors closed with elastic bands, children riding on the bumper

16. Riding a moto, riding a moto on Christmas singing Christmas carols

17. Getting water from a well

18. Having no electricity for months

19. Seeing whole exotic animals dead for sale to eat.

20. Wearing pagne, matching outfits with a large group when not performing a dance

21. Dancing with a Sous-Prefet (higher than the mayor)

22. Sat on an engine for 8 hours

Things I haven’t done in a year

1. Driven a car

2. Had really clean feet

3. Been without a sunburn or moderate white girl tan

4. Seen my family/friends back home

5. Seen the Daily Show and the Colbert Report

6. Been to a professional ball game

7. Eaten real pizza

How have I changed?

1. I’m more patient with my time, I’m more prepared to deal with other people’s sense of time

2. I’m more ‘go with the flow’

3. I can prepare an omelet

4. I eat onions on a regular basis (only if cooked)

5. I am more reflective about my moods- For instance, I know how much I can take when I am traveling and I make sure to make new playlists, bring snacks, or crosswords, or simply walk around if the car is broken down so that I don’t get restless or angry about the situation

6. I’m becoming an adult. I might actually be one very soon.

7. I’m a better cook

8. Not scared by new challenges or ways of doing things or new foods (though I have still yet to eat the grubs they fry here)

9. I do all the gross stuff myself-cleaning sinks, toilets, dead animals (I did all that in the states but it’s a lot grosser here)

Things that got me through the year

1. Packages

2. Boxed Wine

3. Foster’s Clark

4. Having 2 watches

5. Parent’s phone calls

6. Text Messages

7. PCV family

8. PCV staff/trainers

9. Rains Down in Africa

10. Promise of a hot shower when I travel to Yaounde

11. Ipod

12. computer

13. Movies/Media

14. Holidays and Provincial meetings

15. Ben’s pool

16. Lisa’s Understanding- and amazing cooking

17. Writing and Reading

18. Contemplation

19. Running/Biking

20. The kindness of Strangers

List of Wish I would haves…

1. Stuck more firmly to my exercise routine

2. Not eaten so much bread

3. Done more with the community and not just the schools

4. Not complained so much when I left Ndelele

Plans for the Next Year of Service

1. Have my girls group become peer educators for the elementary school in town

2. Help Rachel with World AIDS day and make this a very big occasion

3. Create another dance that all of the girls will participate in for Women’s Day

4. Make the English Club work and have regular meetings

5. Do a weekly/biweekly Women’s self defense/exercise class

6. do a workshop on Village Savings in Loan or Saving money in general for the community

7. Lose 10 pounds

Should you be proud of me?

Most PCVs like to step back and ask themselves if they have actually made a difference. The easiest way to make a difference is to change someone’s perspective about Americans, Women, or even the developed world. The next would be to affect others with your friendship and work. Next would be if you affect the community like bettering their health or quality of life. This is just my way to measure things. Its very easy to feel like you haven’t done anything sustainable or developmental for your village so it’s easier to break up your work into different categories. So first of all I think I’ve changed peoples minds or enlightened them more about America and the strength of women. Just running every week, carrying my own things, and living alone are examples of things I do daily that can help villagers see the stronger side of women. Next would be my friendships and my work. I definitely have introduced new ways of learning in the classroom that are more visual and interactive and I think these helped my students. Now will they in the long run be able to speak passable English or go on to University? I have no idea, but maybe for a couple of classes they actually thought school could be fun and that learning wasn’t a waste of time. As for my friendships, these are slowly becoming dearer and more like my friendships at home. It is certainly easier to be a good friend when you understand the other person (yeah my French is getting better!). Also, I feel that by being a leader of my girls group I have been able to be a supportive and a positive motivator of change with at least the 8 girls in my group. We recently had our end of the year party and the girls were very confidant and happy and proud to be a part of the club. Now as far as the betterment of people’s lives? I am not sure how much impact my lessons about English and Health really were. I’m not sure if my students are actually using the condoms that I give them for free. I’m not sure if anyone’s quality of life has changed but if anything, I try not to miss an opportunity to help if someone asks me, or to simply listen if they have a problem.

So is Elyse someone to be proud of? I think in subtle ways I am doing good here, but I don’t want you to think that I’m changing the world or that when I leave here I will have made a hefty contribution to change in Cameroon, I am doing what I can but I also spend a large about of time reading and cooking and doing menial teacher work that really isn’t that impressive or wondrous. So don’t think that I’m over here being all angelic- mostly I’m trying to be a good productive person, its just harder when you don’t have running water, power, or clean feet. I do want to say though, that I know how hard everyone works and how good and caring you all are and that you have made me the adult I am working to become and that your examples are really what should be celebrated.

So its been one year since I’ve seen you all, and I love you and I miss you and I will be in New York in 49 days! So fly over and let’s fete!

Love

Elyse

In the Big CIty

2009-05-20T02:33:00.000-07:00

So i'm sorry I haven't written in a bit but there is a lot to say.

1st I'm happy not to be in Village right now because it was a little tough before I left. We didnt have power (now for 4 months) and our phone service was going in and out. I also ran out of books which is not only inconvient but actually tragic when there is literally nothing else to do after about 6pm.

Some things I have been doing to stay sane and take advantage of Africa are the following.
1. Biking 12 K to the river and watching the hippos. There's a tower where you can sit and watch the river pass you by and the hippos swim around as well as the fisherman. I have learned though to wear pants when biking through the forest, otherwise you look like someone has taken a whip to your legs.

2. Hanging out with my neighbors. A couple of weeks ago I started taking my journal out into the courtyard and keeping my neighbor company when she cooks or washes clothing. She's a good companion that doesnt really bother me when I'm writing but shares bits of gossip. Her daughter does like to look over my shoulder and make comments like, "you write a lot" "you write fast"
"what are you writing" I am going to have to come up with better answers to these questions becaus I dont think I'm entertaining her.

3. I've been doing work for the conference that I am currently attending in Yaounde.

Now for my time in Yaounde! The Picture above is my friend Lisa and I at the observation deck of the Hilton hotel. We decided to get some mix drinks and hang out in a swanky joint. It costs a lot but its a alot of fun. If not just to ride the elevator

We also made Quiche and home fries and a salad. The market in Yaounde is amazing because you can buy all types of veggies and we found a beet! Here I am cutting the beet and looking like I'm bleeding.

We also recently got wireless internet so we are very happy and I can upload pictures!
But its not all fun and great food here in Yaounde, we also are working really hard on planning the training for tne new volunteers. Again no volunteer is from Arizona so I stand alone representing our state in Cameroon, but I am excited about helping out and meeting the new people. I just want everyone to know that I'm doing great and that I'll be here until the 27th or so, alors if you want to talk to me you can get on AIM or Gmail Chat and we can chat it up, its pretty funny because the Case looks just like my dorm lounge looked like in college. Everyone is sitting aroudn with a computer on their lap looking very focused and happy!

Anyway, love you all and miss you! -elyse

Climb Every Mountain....ddahhaha the most boring Sound of Music song

2009-04-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

It’s like taking me to the top of a mountain and showing me the world and saying, “that’s what you can’t have Bennie you fat article” – Circle of Friends

So that quote really doesn’t apply to my recent experience of climbing Mount Cameroon but I found that any mention of a mountain, climbing, or overcoming an obstacle seemed to be fair game when on my 3 day climbing trip. Last Monday I arrived in Buea which is a city on the coast of Cameroon about 30 minutes away from Limbe which is the area with black sand beaches. Buea sits in the south west of the Anglophone provinces of Cameroon and it very developed with paved roads, an actual tourism office with standards, and billboards with advertisements. Taking the agency from Yaoundé I found myself incredibly surprised to here Cameroonians speaking English. For a second I felt like everyone had been holding out on me and actually could speak English but were just saving it up until they crossed the border to the Anglophone region. One minute someone was yelling at the driver “J’ai besoin pisser” and then the next it was “I need to ease myself”. It was incredibly hard for me to switch over from speaking French to Cameroonians to speaking English. I asked a boy who was selling eggs if they were 75CFA and he looked at me like I was crazy, only until I heard a woman ask in English did I realize my mistake. I was also amazed to see how developed this province is in comparison to the East province. We were riding in the car and I actually saw a woman use bottles and not her breast to feed her baby, she also had a baby carrier that she strapped on as opposed to using a piece of cloth on her back. Everyone had a music player or a fancy phone and I actually saw one man reading on the bus! It’s amazing what I see as signs of development, but maybe they are just signs of western influence- for good or bad.

Okay now I must devote myself to explaining my climbing experience. First off, Mount Cameroon is the second largest mountain in Africa standing at about 4, 095M high (13,435 feet). We started at 1000M above sea level and climbed up about 2095 meters the first day, putting us at about 1000M from the top. Arriving in Buea I saw how green and hilly the countryside was and when I looked up into the sky, trying to figure out which mountain I would be climbing, I became a bit daunted. It turns out that Mt. Cameroon is so high that you can’t actually see the peak from the foot because the clouds are always covering the peak. After asking a local to point out which mountain was Mt. Cameroon I started to stare at what would be my challenge for the next three days. For the excursion I was teaming up with my trusty Eastern partner- Lisa and my friend Fleurange and her friend Shawn from the states. So here is a little background on our climbing family. First Fleurange is one of the most well rounded people I have ever met. She’s from Louisiana but has lived all over the world. She’s super athletic, tall, speaks spectacular French and is constantly smiling and contented. Before Peace Corps she went to Clemson and then worked for a development agency in DC then she took a job in Haiti working in development in a very dangerous region where she couldn’t go out at night, now she’s working in Northern Cameroon and honestly this woman is just awesome. Her friend Shawn goes to Cambridge and has an equally impressive resume as well as quite the experience in climbing mountains and participating in hiking type activities. Before they met us the two had been on a 4 day bike ride around the villages of the Northwest! So, needless to say, I was happy to be attempting this climb with such qualified people, if not a bit intimidated by their physical prowess. Then there was my sister in crime, Lisa. I know I’ve talked about here before because she’s my closest family in the far East. She’s from Seattle and her father’s family is from the Philippines. She loves to bike ride and exercise so she was up the hike as well.
So our little group (who would become crazy close during our 3 day challenge) went to the tourism office and paid our park fees and picked up the rest of our mountain family. Our guide’s name was Samuel, he was Anglophone and very nice, incredibly patient, and he made his living by climbing the mountain about once a week and was a personal driver for a local agency. We decided on two porters- Nikolas and Joseph, who we really didn’t see that often because they were either behind us or in front of us carrying our heavy bags. We started our hike at 7:30am where we walked through local farm land to the base of the rain forest. We passed the local prison as well as some very smelly cows that are pasteurized on the side of the hill. Next we came to the rain forest and started our incredibly steep ascent. Carrying two water bottles and three-days’ supply of food on my back didn’t seem like that much of a challenge until I began literally climbing (we are not talking about the kind of hiking that is really just walking in nature) over tree trunks, over rocks. After about an hour of going straight up and watching the town become covered with clouds, I started to feel the burn in my calves. Thankfully Samuel seemed to know that we needed frequent stops and was often stopping to point out local flora and fauna, one time he showed us a Camilion and he gave us history about the area, honestly I was more focused on drinking water and catching my breath than what he was saying, but I did my best to look interested and unphased.
DAY 1: The first day was a 7 hour day of climbing. We should have been to the camp site or Hut 3 by 3:00pm or maybe 4pm if we had a long lunch, but it was not to be. After climbing through the rain forest for 4 hours and stopping at Hut one to eat some peanuts, very smashed bananas, and avocados, we continued even higher and started to enter the savannah. It’s pretty amazing to see the distinction between the different areas of the mountain as you go higher. There is literally a line where the rain forest stops and then you see scattered trees that seemed to be as stubborn as I was because they weren’t saying anything about maybe biting off more than they could chew. The savanna is made up of large rocks and angry shrubs. Honestly I thought that it looked like an evil stair case leading up to the summit. We entered the Savannah and were told we were about an hour and a ½ away from the next hut where we could rest. Unfortuanetly, those clouds continued to eat up Buea and then the wind changed and I was suddenly drenched. I was smart enough to rent a huge yellow rain coat from the Agency so I hurried to put that on over my clothes. Now we had to climb for 1 hour with no possible shelter, in very wet clothes and heavy winds. This proved to be very difficult for me. Not only were my legs starting to do that shake thing where they are really tired and cold, but my bag and cloths were sticking to me and it just seemed to get more steep. Finally I did make it, with a lot of stops and finally just giving in to the reality that I was going to be soaked so why hurry.
We stayed at Hut 2 for about 3 hours. Now the huts really just look like places Dexter (the Showtime series) would take his victims to kill them. They are little wooden lean-to type houses with a lot of peoples signatures in black paint on the walls. From the doorway of our lean-to we saw something totally amazing. First, the storm passed for about 20 minutes and we could see as far as Guinea and Limbe the beach town over. Then we were able to see the storm gather again with angry thunder and lightning and then it unleashed it fury. It rained hard and long! It was really beautiful, be we began to be worried that we wouldn’t make it to the next hut- about 2 hours away. Secretly I was happy about the long break because I was amazed at how tired my legs felt, so we spent our time asking each other interesting questions and I decided to do something I’d never done before. I peed off the side of a cliff in a crazy rain storm- wow was my butt cold (don’t worry mom I was holding on to the hut, but all you could see was clouds below me). I wish you guys could see the pictures of us on the side of the cliff with the clouds all around us, they are pretty beautiful- if I ever get enough patience and a good connection I’ll put them on here.
So at around 4pm our guide told us that we would be leaving and continuing our journey. The next two hours would not have been possible without some people and I must thank them now. Thank you Queen, The Killers, ABBA, Journey, and Jaime Richardson’s Mix CDs! Without the encouragement of my ipod singing me to the top I would have never made it. It began to rain again and now I was tired, hungry, wet, and the mountain seemed to get steeper and steeper. One thing I remember very well is that we kept asking our guide if the far away speck we saw past the clouds was the summit of the mountain and he kept laughing and saying, “You can’t see it yet”. I felt like I was in my own nightmare where you are climbing up an endless staircase and never reach your destination. Finally, after struggling for 2 and half hours and as the last slivers of light began to be eaten by the night, we arrived.
Hut 3 was relatively nice and after taking a second to sit down and change shoes, I realized we were all in danger of getting pneumonia if we didn’t change our clothes. I had read about people climbing the mountain before and I knew two things- 1 put on every piece of clothing you own so that you can sleep because it’s extremely cold and night and 2-there are mice in the huts and they are determined so hide your food. So first I put on 2 pairs of socks, 3 shirts, and a pair of pants and then I gathered all the food and put it in a backpack to hang up on one of the nails on the wall. Then it was time for the tired troops to make dinner. Using an old beat up pot that only fit half of our pasta, we made a spaghetti dinner that tasted a bit like campfire smoke. At around 9pm we finally headed to bed and almost everyone fell right to sleep, not me however because I realized that our mice were very determined and making a hell of a noise. I realized that they were rummaging through the other bags that weren’t on the wall so I got up and found places to hang all the bags. After showing away some big guys I spent the next 30 minutes trying to go to sleep while a confused mouse ran circuits around my sleeping compadres. First he would run between our heads and the wall and then he’d run over our feet. It’s amazing what you can get used to when you are exhausted.
DAY 2: On day 2 we woke up and reheated our pasta eating an even smokier breakfast. We were told that day 2 was the hardest day because it was 10 hours of hiking. Testing out my limbs I saw that I was still very sore but I thought that the most strenuous of the hiking was over. I was very very wrong! The morning of Day two was the hardest I think I’ve ever physically worked, sorry dad- those basketball practices at the Boys and Girls Club were tough, but nothing compared to this. Not only was the hike steeper, but the elevation became a real problem. I was amazed to see how long it took me to get my breath and how much one 5 minute exertion would take out of me. Thank goodness for Lisa, because we seemed to be hurting about the same amount and you always feel better if you are not suffering alone. Another problem was the fact that we were actually climbing through the clouds so it was constantly wet and making my contacts blurry. After about 4 hours I felt like I was totally done. We still couldn’t see the summit and my whole body hurt. I felt like Frodo in Lord of the Rings, but with less gumpshon. At one point I actually looked at Lisa and told her I was happy at the height that we were at and I didn’t need to keep climbing. I haven’t ever really seen the point of climbing mountains, mostly because it doesn’t really serve a purpose other than to puff up your ego and to fulfill some sort of personal quest. I kept thinking about how I didn’t feel like I needed to prove anything, and I had already seen amazing views from the heights that we had already climbed, what’s another 200M higher. However, I did get up and continue to climb because as much as I don’t get it, I’m not a quitter.
The last half hour was the worst and I honestly couldn’t see anything because of the mist and the wind and I could barely breath because of the elevation and I only made it to the top because Samuel came down and climbed beside me giving me in minutes how long I would take to get to the top. 5 minutes, 2 minutes, you can see it now, 1 minute. When I got to the top I only had enough energy to sit down and try not to cry. I don’t know why I had that emotional reaction, I think I was just at the end of my rope but I sat there in complete exhaustion in the miserable cold and suddenly realized, “We don’t have to go up anymore- now we get to go down.” This idea made a lot of sense to me, finally we had a destination I could embrace- warmth, good food, no mice, no more climbing. Just a day and ½ more and back to Yaounde with hot showers. So I stood up, took some incredibly unflattering photos and we started down the mountain. We were only at the top for about 10 minutes ( I was only there for about 7 minutes) and then it was time to climb down the next side.
Now Mount Cameroon is a series of mountains with a bunch of Volcanos within the range. In 1999 about 12 volcanoes erupted with the kind of lava that is really slow so that everyone could be evacuated. But the eruptions from the past left the mountain black at the top with black rocks everywhere. We descended the mountain in 5 hours and went from about 4095, to about 2000M. It was incredibly fast and so much more enjoyable than the previous days had been. For the rest of the trip I was first in line after our guide and I stuck to him like glue. I had a goal now and I was not wussing out (I also think my calf muscles suck and my thigh and butt muscles rule). For me this section was also the most beautiful. We surfed down the mountain once we reached the black sad sections because it was less stress on the body to just let yourself slide. Then we hit the savannah again and it looked like Ireland or Africa where the cheetahs and lions hunt their prey. I once again want to thank some people for keeping me company: Billy Joel, John Mayer, the Beatles, really bad R and B- Boys to Men and Ne-Yo, and many others who helped create the adventurous ambiance. After climbing up a few volcanoes and realizing the group was next to dying, I had to speak up as group leader and tell our guide that as fascinating as the volcanoes were, we didn’t need to see all 12 personally and we were ready to get to the last hut.
Side Note- Why did Elyse became the group leader? In Cameroon they immediately decide that the man is incharge of all situations and so they often give information or ask information from the guy if he is in a group of women. Well when Samuel first started to explain the hike on the first day, he looked right at Shaun and started to explain. Being the feminist I am, I spoke up and said, “He’s not the leader, I am and you can just tell all of us the information we’ll understand.” I don’t know why it makes me so mad, but I hate when people just assume men are in charge!
So the last hour of the day was pretty difficult because of all the ground we had covered and because of the skimpy food supplies we were eating (our avocados and banana’s got smooched and we were eating wheat biscuits, carrots, and smashed produce for lunch). So I told myself that when we finally arrived I would just lay down on the floor and reward myself with 5 minutes of uninterrupted movement. So I do just that! I put my bag aside and lay down next to the hut and after about 10 seconds I realize, I am laying in a red ant pile! I end up having to strip off all of my clothes and try and rip them off of my shirt and out of my hair- they bite down and they are impossible to remove with out actually grabbing them off like ticks. This was my least happy moment of the day. I still have bites on my scalp from when they crawled into my hair.
The second night we ate spaghetti again and then went to bed at 7pm in a grass hut. These are the types of huts you see all over Africa made from palm fronds and with tarps to catch the rain. I twas very cozy in there and I was so tired I was out in about 10 minutes. The next day was the last leg of the trip, about 7 hours through the rain forest and then arriving in Buea where a taxi picked us up and we took a 6 hour ride to Yaounde. (I had to get back to post for school on Monday). The third day is memorable because both my friend Lisa and I twisted our knees and were in a bit of pain as we came down the mountain. This is also the day that my ipod finally died! So the last hour was pretty crappy because I was hurting with new blisters and now a twisted knee, and I had no music. I ended up talking to the guide a lot and he was a really nice guy- its amazing how much funnier I am in English as opposed to French. We finally reached the town at about 1:00pm and Lisa and I parted for Yaounde.
Overall I would say that I was incredibly glad I did the hike and I would probably do something like that in the future, but now that I know what a challenge it is, I would be better prepared. I also think its very interesting that as soon as I got down off the mountain I wanted to talk to everyone I love and see how they are and just get back to something I knew. A lot of new experiences and challenges at once make me want to go home and have breakfast with my family and then watch X-men cartoons with my dad. Anyway, I love you all and hope you are doing well. Happy Easter!

Elyse

Me and my market bag, going to the market today

2009-04-04T04:15:00.000-07:00

Take a trip with me to the Bertoua market…
So when I was in America and I had a day off or some time to go shopping I actually really enjoyed going out and getting groceries and odds and ends for the house. I liked heading down to the store and walking through the aisles and pondering something new for dinner or what fruit was in season. I think it was the feeling after you get home where you have big bags of accomplishment. It was like a tangible plan for meals all week with a little bit of spontaneity mixed in, in the form of fruit snacks or jalapeño poppers. Going to the market or super marche’ (white man grocery store) here in Cameroon is quite a different experiences so I thought I’d give you a glimpse of shopping in one the provincial capital of Cameroon.
Today I needed to go to the market to buy vegetables and ingredients for making calzones with some friends that are in town. I jumped on a moto with my market bag headed to the market. I’m slightly startled by the change when going from the Cos of the East or as I call it, “Little America” to the actual outside world that is so much busier than Ndelele. In Little America we watch American shows and do work on our computers (Right now I’m editing the Education Training Manual- it’s currently 138 pages!). We also read trashy magazines from two years ago and come together to eat things we have had sent from home. Recent meals have included Funfetti Cake, stove top stuffing, Wild Mediterranean Rice, and cheesy instant mash potatoes. So you can imagine that after wrapping yourself in the semi illusion of little America, stepping out into the real world is a fun surprise. You never really forget you are here- no water pressure, often no water, people yelling in French next door, all channels on the tv have Cameroonian soap opera’s, no air conditioning. But, it’s easy to be lulled in a sense of displacement from the everyday villageois lifestyle. Anyways, I go step outside with my market bag and my shopping list and head in.
Bertoua really only has one paved road and a lot of really crowded, poorly planned off shoots. We take the main road watching the hustle and bustle of people going about their spring break lives and signal to turn onto a dirt road heading to the market (the signal is my moto driver raising his hand and then choosing when he’d like to turn). We pass the street where they do wood working, making retro 70’s type couches with crazy fabrics. Then we pass the frippery- the Goodwill of the market with clothes that look like they were rejected by many countries before coming here. You can get a dress or a pair of pants or a crazy hat for less than a dollar on a good bartering day. Next we pass by about a half dozen stalls that just sell onions, garlic, and tomatoes. Then my driver stops me at the beginning of the vegetable market. 100CFA to my chauffeur and a remove of my helmet later and I am browsing looking for the best produce. Most people have a Mamma who takes care of them and who they go to religiously at the market. However, this isn’t my town and I feel like spreading my patronage. I buy 200CFA worth of beautiful green peppers (which every time I eat them I think of crappy cardboard pizza with everything on it from Peter Pipper, as a kid I guess the taste of green peppers was really prevalent on that that pizza). I buy lettuce from a woman walking down the street with a big bucket on her head. She gives me a cadeau or a gift of a smaller head of lettuce because I bought so much. When I am in Lele I dream about eating green vegetables so I make sure to eat as much as possible when I’m in the big city working. Next I go and buy garlic, basil, and limes. The basil is fresh and fragrant and the garlic is everywhere here and the limes a bit expensive but well worth it when we make gin and tonics later! As I walk around the market looking for avocados I begin to be deranged. People are yelling at me from all sides, “La Blanche” and “Nasara” and often I get “Cherie” or “My sweet”. I decide to take the “Diagon Alley Market ways” there are a maze of streets all intertwined together where you walk down narrow alleyways and all different types of wares are being sold. We choose a particularly shaded walk way and begin to make the trek back out of the market. We pass stores that sell only colanders and then a story that sells sweat bands, whiskey sachets, cheap gold jewelry, and thread. We are being yelled at to “Vien ICI” and “I have the good things” and we are being grabbed and steered into dark shops lit by backlights that make the proprietors teeth gleam white, creating an afternoon rave for one. We continue down the street and people are squeezing by with fruit on their heads and some women are sitting in the middle of the road cutting a green grass type food they call koki. I’m nto sure why you would be shopping for hoochie jeans, whiskey sachets, fruit and koki all at the same time- but multitasking is an art here. As I exit the market I am once again on the main street with motos whizzing past and the hustle and bustle again making my little village life seem very quiet and a little drole. I walk over to where the motos are waiting to whisk me home back to Little America but I decide to endulge myself and get an ice cream. A small cart sells soft serve ‘vanilla’ and ‘banana’ ice cream and though it really just tastes like “cold” and not a flavor, it is amazing and just the thing for a hot day. For 100CFA you can get a cone and for 300CFA you can get a big cup. I look around the city eating my ice cream and finishing my market trip, ready to go home and cook for the big group of people who will be eating tonight. Just another day doing errands in Africa.

Searching for Tarzan

2009-03-27T06:04:00.000-07:00

This past week 7 of my fellow Volunteers from the East headed into the rainforest to visit a married couple who volunteer with Peace Corps and World Wildlife Federation on the boarder of the CAR where there is a trio of national parks. This was a provincial project and almost all of the volunteers from the East participated with the exception of some of my friends in Batouri and Rachel because she was sick. The goal of the project was to give different informational seminars about health, business and English instruction to various groups that are very isolated or ‘en brousse’.

I left on Monday and took a Logging Truck to Yokoduma, this was pretty awesome because it was the first truck I’ve seen in Cameroon that wasn’t a private car that had a working gas gage and actually had windshield wiper fluid. We barreled through the forest and as we got closer I realized really how far out there we were going on our trip. I arrived in Yoko in pouring rain and walked through the town with my big bag looking for our hotel. I got there and waited for the rest of the East to arrive. As a group of the east boys arrived we decided to check on transport for the next day and then have dinner. We sat down at the bar and had a few beers and chatted. It was great to listen to the silly boy talk and to laugh really hard. We were then joined by a South African man in his mid forties who was wearing the shortest shorts in the world. Evidently, people had seen him in Bertoua and he was thrown out of a club because his shorts were so short. He ended up talking to the boys for a while and telling them that if they wanted to ride horses on his farm in the south they could, he was a very weird character and spoke no French. He was in Cameroon to find gold and diamonds.

We stayed in Yoko for a night in a moderately nice hotel room that seemed pretty spectacular to me. Yoko is a really weird city because it’s the main post for the logging activity coming from the Congo and from South East Cameroon so it attracts all types. It also has been compared to the Old West because of this speculating aspect. A lot of people are looking for gold and diamonds and come through the town. It was interested to feel like you were in the Old west, but with huge logging trucks coming through instead of trains, and young boys harassing you on motos and not horses.

In the morning we set out to Mambele in a WWF truck. This drive is about 5 hours and we were told that it could get pretty bumpy and some people get sick. Thinking that this hasn’t been a problem for me before I volunteer, (seeing as how I did it on family vacations) I decided to sit in the back trunk area that has two benches facing each other so that you are riding sideways. We squeeze into this area with four people and another six in the other seats of the car and we were on our way. We drove faster than I have driven in Cameroon and did not respect the various bumps in the road and quickly I started feeling very bad, (I’m assuming the beers the night before were also not the best idea) and my friend Joe had decided to by soya or street meat that they grill up sorta like Bangle Barbeque but a lot more sketchy meat. Anyway, he gets a huge bag ‘to share’ of this meat, but it’s about 9 in the morning and no one wants meat so he ends up eating most of this fatty stuff alone. Well after about an hour bouncing in the back of the car he starts to look pretty sweaty and white. So we open all the windows and attempt to do mind over matter. I will not lie the closer we got to the deep forest the more I thought I was going to puke. At one point my buddy Nik was talking about silly things he did when he was little and I was laughing so hard and feeling so sick and almost did throw up on him, but I held it together. Finally we arrived in Mambele which ended up being about two boutiques, an elementary school, and a road. The WWF is trying to get more tourism in the area, but it’s near impossible to do so because first you have to get out there and then after you have to stay in the middle of nowhere. Either way they had this campsite set up for us and it was pretty cool. The campsite had a center pagoda thing where there were couches and a table and then it had three houses with a little twin bed in each and three tents with two twin beds in each. I was feeling adventurous so I took a tent with my friend Ann-Marie, who is insanely awesome and is going home in June and it makes me incredibly sad.

So we go and make dinner at Sara’s (one of the volunteers who lives there) house and we open the back door and there in the trees are monkeys. They are calling out to each other and they are swinging from tree to tree in death defying jumps and it’s a gorgeous sunset. You can walk about five minutes down a path in their back yard where you can see a gorgeous waterfall. She told us a story that they say a huge snake in the waterfall not long ago and that you could actually see the snake eating fish! This was slightly terrifying and everyone kept reassuring us that there weren’t any snakes where we were (which is total crap) but we didn’t see any so that’s good. We ate dinner and then went back to the camp and had a little boxed wine for a night cap. At this point I was so tired I was practically falling asleep standing up so I went back to the tent first. I’ll tell you, as my father’s daughter I’ve never been too keen on the whole camping lifestyle, and this trip really didn’t change my mind. I went to the camp and proceeded to be terrified because some creature kept rubbing against the tent right by my head and scaring the crap out of me! It was making horrific noises and when Ann-Marie finally came back I was insanely tense but I was so tired I finally fell asleep so I guess you can will yourself to do anything.

The next couple of days were the business people’s days to do their seminaries with the local groups while we planned our seminars. On Thursday I went to the elementary schools with some teachers and taught the kids for about an hour. We played Red light Green light and a dancing game and sang songs and then Reid talked about health education. It was a great way to give an example of how we conduct class and to show that, even though the student’s level in English is very low, they can still be engaged in the lessons because of the student centered activities.

On Friday the education people finally gave their seminar. We started with a discussion of the problems the teacher’s faced in this incredibly remote and poor section of the East. Problems included: poverty, lack of materials, teachers not being given instruction on how to teach English, the students not having books, absenteeism, lack of motivation, parents not being involved, and lack of support. We were expecting these problems but I was not expecting the teachers to be so motivated and enthusiastic about our program. They wanted information and had extreme patience with our faltering French in order to get as much as possible from our presentations. They asked intelligent questions and had interesting discussions and were very excited about what we were presenting. It really made me feel that our project was not only well planned and timed but necessary for these brave teachers who accept positions in such a crazy remote area.

For my section I presented a pamphlet of activities that can be used to help students learn English. I gave examples of songs, games, and grammar activities that will motivate the students and get them excited about English. My French was pretty iffy at times but I could tell the teachers were with me and they supplied me with pronunciation or words I didn’t know so that they would all understand. They also responded to my enthusiasm and my willingness to act like an idiot for the sake of learning. I told them that we are all actors in front or an audience and our main goal is to keep them entertained and excited about learning. If this means that I must put aside my ‘dignity’ is the word I used, than in the classroom I am going to be a more affective teacher. It is all about not being embarrassed but being effective. After my presentation the teachers actually clapped and some came up to me and asked me how to sing certain songs and things. It’s interesting to field questions about how to sing Old Obama (my alternative to Old McDonald) but it was great to see their enthusiasm.

We continued to present information about how to teach lessons that will teach English as well as community skills by encouraging teachers to include health lessons, alcohol abuse, tribalism, women’s rights, and other things that are problems in the community. Two volunteers presented on prevention of diarrhea and sanitation of the water and though the teachers knew the basics, we showed them the economic gain of these practices and how to enforce these lessons in the classroom. The best part of this was to talk about how to teach HIV to smaller children. One man said that he doesn’t like to use bananas because it wasn’t enough like a penis. We all had no idea where he was going so we thought maybe he though a plantain (a larger banana) might work? I think the seminar was successful and everyone seemed to enjoy it so it was worth going down there.

On Saturday we went into the wildlife park where we would camp one night. We drove about 10 km into the park through a very overgrown dirt road. I felt like Indiana Jones tearing through the brush and bouncing around like no one’s business. At times one side of the truck felt almost vertical and the people opposite us tried to make little oreo cookies with our bags between us. It was a bit of a smush! We were even told to slide our windows closed because snakes could come in. We had 12 people total so when we got to the drop off point we split into two groups. Our group had five Americans one porter (literally a pigme guy carrying our heaviest bag who was about 5’ tall and was wearing flip flops into the jungle). We were lead by the ‘ecological protection officer”who wasn’t much of a guide. He walked at a clipped pace with galosh boots on a full army uniform with a baseball cap and he had a one shot riffle slung over his shoulder (it was held together by a rubber band). In one hand he held a single canister with one bullet. I hoped we only saw one scary animal or poacher because if not we were screwed. The forest was terribly impressive with crazy trees competing for sunlight and all kinds of plants and birds. We often had to jump over fallen trees and it was almost impossible to straddle some. We saw some trees whose trunks were as big as a house. We got through our 5k hike and we really didn’t see any animals but it was still pretty impressive. We arrived at the ‘tree house’ which looked like a prison watch tower in the middle of a large clearing in the forest. We tried to be a silent as possible because our group was so big and I guess the animals could sense our presence.

The tree house was two rooms and you could go inside and open the windows and look through the screen to try and see animals but they couldn’t see you. We waited around most of the afternoon with binoculars and bated breath. We did see a lot of different kinds of monkeys going from tree to tree and we saw a type of African deer come out and sort of prance around. Other than that it was just a long afternoon of squinting and being hot. We then decided to take a small group back to a camp site and cook dinner. The camp site was a bit away from the tree house so we walked for a while, finally happy that we didn’t have to stay so quiet. As we walked we suddenly heard a crazy Growl noise that made us all stop in our tracks and stare at our guide. He gave the sign to run to him so we did and my friend Sioban starts saying, “Gorillas don’t eat human’s right? They just attack us!” It was hilarious and we just continued walking. I guess it was just a warning growl or something because we never did see them. We ended up sleeping in the tree house and watching the sunrise around 5am still looking for animals but we didn’t really see anything.

The next morning my group switched with the other group and got the guide Petit Jean. Also a Pygmie, Jean knew all about living in the forest and spotting animals. He walked in front with his machete expertly chopping stray branches and keeping his eyes peeled. He showed us the bark of one tree that is called the onion of the forest and it smelled just like onion and the smell sorta followed us. He also showed us a vine you can cut and it will pour running water for about 5 minutes and it tasted really sweet. He showed us a tree whose bark you could use for soap. I was very impressed and we all talked about how the Baka (or pigmies) could probably live for a long time with out being effected by the world. Petit Jean continued leading us and at one point I looked down and saw he was wearing Gellies- literal sandal type shoes that were made of a gel plastic, and this was what he was traipsing through the forest in. We did end up seeing some monkeys up close as they jumped from tree to tree above us! It was pretty impressive and very Africa!

Sunday was our last day and we drove out of the forest to Yokoduma in the heavy rain. Thank goodness we had a good car because we passed tons of smaller cars that were stuck in the mud and at one point we had to change a tire and go around a huge truck that was stalled in the road. We did some intense off-roading but ended up getting there in one piece, if not a bit dirty in the process. I went back to Ndelele the next day (after we bought our driver a beer for getting us to Yoko safe!) and on the way to Lele our car was stopped because a huge tree fell down because of the wind. We all thought we weren’t going to be able to get through but the ingenious Africans made a whole new road through the lawn of one of the residents who lived along the road. In about 30 minutes they cut up the tree and shoveled dirt so all the cars could go around. It was pretty impressive.

All in the entire trip was a success and I will not forget it anytime soon. It made me feel adventurous and like I came to Africa for a reason. I love you all and miss you tons

elyse

Review of the Weekend

2009-03-02T09:22:00.001-08:00

I have been thinking about what people’s reaction would be like if they came here and saw me, so I thought I would write this blog about how I’ve become accustomed to living here and certain things don’t phase me anymore.
So last weekend I had to travel because I needed to buy shirts for my girls group and I had to make copies of my Sequence 4 exam so that my students could actually have a decent test- taking experience. Traveling during the dry season is actually pretty terrible. I still can’t decide which is worse. If you travel during the rainy season you end up getting all wet because of the leaky cars and it often takes an hour or two longer to get anywhere because you have to keep getting off the car and walking while they try and push it through ditches filled with water. Then there’s the dry season where everything is covered with a thick redish brown dust that goes everywhere. Everyone is wearing Hospital type mouth coverings and some are wearing protective goggles like wood cutters use. Everyone also has long pants and jackets on in order to protect their clothes from the dust. I like to sit by the window (if there is actually plastic and the car has windows) because it can become so stifiling hot in there that I need the breeze even if it does kick up tons of dust. So after about two minutes I’m covered with dust and can see all of the little hairs on my arms perfectly because of how the dirt covers them. Sometimes you are lucky enough to sweat tons and then the dust becomes mud right on you. Everyone is in a foul mood because of the heat and when you finally get to your destination all you can think about is a shower. The dust is more prominent on us white people because we change such fabulous colors. The other crappy thing about traveling during the dry season is that my allergies become crazy and after I get home I feel horrible like I have a cold and I can’t breath because all of the dust I’ve inhaled. But the things is, I’ve only really thought about complaining about this now, because it’s the way thigns are here.
The best part about traveling is what I must look like when I’m on the bus. Friday I wore a red shirt that I bought at Target in the states. That was when my mom and I thought I had to buy huge clothes so the villagers wouldn’t make fun of me for being ‘sexy’. Well this shirt is at least two sizes too big and because of all the hand washing, actually goes down to about mid thigh just above the knee. I couple this with a peasant skirt my mom sent me that is a good design for Africa but has the colors of vomit, I love you mom but that skirt is real ugly, though it works well with the dirt. I think people believe there is a certain way you should look like a peace corps volunteer and sometimes I look exactly like that- like I don’t give a crap and I’m living in Africa. I then have my hair tucked into a grey conductor’s type hat and I’m wearing hideous 2 dollar fake ray band sunglasses that I bought here. Anyway, imagine that this is what people here think that Americans look like on a normal basis. Either way I looked at myself in the mirror when I arrived and I started laughing so hard it hurt, wow I guess you can get used to everything.
This weekend was good though, even if I did travel for two days and have one day at my destination. We made quiche and peaut butter cookies and it was awesome. I also bought good cheese and made an awesome cheese and bean sandwich. We also made a fire and roasted S’mores with peeps someone got for Christmas. It was really great sitting around the fire and just talking and having a good time. But my most favorite memory from this weekend was when all us girls, with a beer under our belts. Thought it would be awesome to have a Sound of Music Sing a long. We turned on my dvd and did the sing-a-long version and I swear my heart got all warm and gooey I was so happy!
Anyway, now I’m home and gearing up for the 8 Mars, which is Woman’s day. On Saturday is the Soiree Cultural where my girl’s group will do a dance and also show a game that talks about AIDS. We will be marching and wearing our women’s day pagne which I just commissioned my tailor to make me a new skirt and shirt. I also bought shirts for my girls club for Sunday but it turns out that the shop burned down the day after I put down money for them to print them for me. What kind of luck do I have. Either way I feel pretty silly and I hope thye’ll be able to get them to me before the weekend but who knows!
Anyway, I hope you are all well and I think of you all the time! How did it get to be March so quickly? Love you all!
elyse

AFRICA!

2009-02-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

You know you are a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon Living in the Bush When…
My friend Sioban did one of these and I thought it was awesome so I thought I’d do one
• You haven’t looked in a mirror in a week
• You wake up to the sound of barn animals or people playing drums at 5 in the morning
• You can’t tell if your feet are tan or really dirty
• You change colors when you travel
• You respond to “WHITE” and “STRANGER”
• Your automatic response to “How are you” is “Fine thank you and you”
• You have a sheet covering your front door as a ‘screen’ for bugs
• You can tell how hot it is by how many times you have to fill your filter
• You stand by your light switch turning it on and off until that fabulous moment when it actually works
• You only own Blue and Red pens- and they are really crappy
• You live in flip flops and have a formal pair, a house pair, and an outside pair
• You call an omelet dinner
• You call an omelet respectable meat of a sandwich
• Your eggs come with feathers on them
• You can only choose between three types of beer
• You know the jingle to “BBC Africa”
• Your neighbor has a monkey
• You have swept what remains of a mouse out of your front door
• You clean with a squeegee
• You read books like they are going out of style
• Every time someone calls you they hang up after one ring
• You speak in Franglish to other volunteers
• You have cob webs in your house and they don’t bother you at all
• You shoo an animal away by yelling “shh” and waving your hand back and forth
• You wear mou mous
• You think cheese doesn’t need to be refrigerated
• Cold water is a luxery like fine wine or champagne
• You have vivid dreams about Taco Bell or shopping at Krogers
• You are given fruit as a present
• You gawk and stare when you see other white people
• Your ipod has become more dear to you than some family members
• Extravagant purchases include: canned soda, pizza, and cheese
• You have mosquito bites in unspeakable places
• Every time you get sick you assume its Malaria
• Everyone in village knows when you have bought toilet paper
• Your pack of gum becomes soggy and unchewable after one day
• You miss your family and friends so much you find yourself writing a blog!

I also promised to give you a break down of what our Soiree Cultural actually consisted of and so here we go. To begin we waited two and a half hours to start until it was dark and all the kids were almost sleeping. All of the functionaries of the village got to sit down while all the kids stood in a big square around the ‘stage’ which is sorta a glorified gazebo. Students are employed to keep the order and keep students behind invisible lines by using switches made of sticks. The performances begin by singing the national anthem, which I have come to really love and know the words to…well mostly. Then students start doing dances- some are just them standing in the same place for large amounts of time doing simultaneous hand movements while someone in the middle lip sings. They love to lip sing here! Then a group of small kids come out and dance with hoola hoops (which they only use as Fred Astaire used his cane and sometimes swing around their arms) very odd. Another performance was of a guy singing a love song to a girl and him eventually winning her over and then they began grinding on each other- not something a teacher wants to watch her young students doing. There were a few that were done by older students that were originally written comedy sketches which were actually really funny. One was about old men getting drunk and their wives beating them, one was about a guy trying to hit on a girl but she wouldn’t go for him until he brought a wad of money out, and one was about a guy trying to get up the courage to sit next to a girl on a bench and while he was turned away another guy arrives and goes to sit down next to her, and while both of them weren’t looking the girl leaves and then end up both turning to each other leaning in for a kiss and realize it was a guy. They loved this one! The ecole Bilingue did a song about Malaria where the words went like this: Malaria, Malaria, is a very bad sick. They pretty much just repeated this over and over again and then sang it in French so that everyone understood. Other highlights include the fact that students are wondering around selling whiskey sachets and bubble gum. Rachel has given the guy running the music American music and every time it comes on people look terribly confused. The backdrop to the ‘stage’ is three different sheets pinned on a rope, and one of the girls almost lost her skirt during her rhythmic but bouncing . So that was pretty much awesome and lasted until 12:30 at night.
This week has been really quiet, but good. The English inspector of the East came and watched me teach and had some really nice things to say and we had a really productive conversation. I have been rethinking the way I am teaching and have given two very good lessons that make me excited about teaching again. Still haven’t seen my cat, and running low on books but everything else is going great. Big Congratulations to my brother and I love you all!

elyse

I'm back!

2009-02-14T10:37:00.000-08:00

Happy Single Awareness Day
All of you Cynics out there will be happy to know that Africa is not all crazy about Valentine’s day the way we are. There are on awkward greeting cards with glitter or fattening candy. Instead they use it as an excuse to bother all of the women they shouldn’t into asking who their valentine is and if you would be theirs. After you remind them that they have a wife, they seem to be surprised that you remember. Today I had a very lovely day, I stayed in all day reading and then went to a group that I am a member of where we sat around for 3 hours doing I don’t know what and then ate food. Then the electricity came on and I tried to leave early. I then practiced the skill that I feel I will never conquer, walking at the pace of Cameroonians. Not only am I a fast walker but I think I’m a bit of a show-off in the fast walking region. I think it all started when my long legged father and I used to walk quickly to the rides in Disneyland and make fun of my older brother for not keeping up. Ethan has the mentality to do the Cameroonian Amble because he likes to enjoy the moment and doesn’t rush through life. I just want to get home to the electricity and put these thoughts down on paper before I forget them.
So what has happened to me since I last wrote? I took a week long trip to Yaounde where I had a meeting for the Education Committee. I very much enjoyed the meeting where we discussed how to better the training process as well as the handbook we give to people, I felt I had a lot to say, but part of me felt a little silly because I am struggling in a lot of these areas and its easy to write down what new volunteers should do but I can attest to a lot of these things not really working. While I was in Yaounde I was a part of a beverage pong tournament (which I won one game not because I’m a good player but that my partner was a frat guy). I was also apart of the first annual Education Committee and Birthday celebration gala bash. My friends made a big quiche and a cake and gave out silly awards for everyone. The quiche was excellent and I’m going to have to finally side with Chad in saying its one of the superior foods in our world. I then got a lot of provisions so I could have a taste of the foods I love such as pretzels, crackers, roman, and canned raviolios. Then I was back on my way to Ndelele. After traveling from 5:00am to 2pm to Bertoua on my birthday I arrived feeling dirty and very smooched from the traveling. I took a long nap and woke up to a dinner of Falafal, pita, hummas, and roasted vegetable pasta salad. It was a fabulous meal and we ended by watching the movie Slumdog Millionaire which is fabulous and you should watch it.
I then woke up early the next morning and traveled to Batouri where my friends gave me some new pagne for my birthday (very pretty purple and yellow fabric) and then I finally got back to Ndelele. Let me tell you, after traveling for about a week straight in some of the most uncomfortable positions, I was not in the best mood when I got home. I also found out that our power was going to be out for quite a while and then I got here and there was no working telephone reception until today! Well it’s been fun reading and stuff and this has been a really exciting week because it was the Youth week where students have time off school and they do performances and dances and have a parade. I find myself having mixed feelings about the ceremonies. Like all meetings or ceremonies they have here they always start late and normally the children are the ones suffering in the sun or in this case rain. Also I thought some of the dances and performances were not suitable for young children to be performing. I will write more on this later when I’m not worried that the current will go out soon. One sad occurrence was that I was out at one of the activities for Youth Day which was supposed to start at 7pm but really started at 10 and lasted until 12:30am, and when I got home my cat must have snuck out the door as I was closing it and she disappeared. IT’s been about 4 days now and I’m pretty sure someone either ate her during the festivities or killed her somehow and didn’t want to tell me. I’m very sad and my house is terribly quiet now instead of a cat woman I’m a creepy woman who talks to herself. Anyway, I went for a long bike ride yesterday to raise my spirits and evidentally I was supposed to find the allusive Kaidie (totally not how you spell that) river and was again thwarted by the jungle and got a bit lost and a bit dirty because it had rained previously. So maybe oen day my long bike rides will end in success. I also prepared mashed potatoes, samosas, and macaroni salad for our meeting of the professors and people seemed to like that. So even with out reception or power it is possible to enjoy life., though sometimes it feels like I live in Brigadoon a comparison that I find really sums up the feeling of being so isolated and yet sort of enjoying it. But oh where is my Gene Kelly on this fine Valentine’s Day?
Love you all and miss you terribly,
Weece

2009-01-24T02:39:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody only good news coming out of Cameroon today. They found the guy that stole my stuff he was q 5eme student and he fled after they figured out it was him. For all i know the poor kid is still in the bush! They used the picture I found on my phone and figured out it was a neighbor of mine then asked that kid and found out who broke into my house. They went to his house and found all of my stuff! So everything is right again I am out of town but I have all of my valuables and crime doesnt pay! Love you all and thanks for worrying!

Looking for Ms. Mars

2009-01-21T11:06:00.000-08:00

So the last week has sorta been a nightmare but I want to say that I have handled it really well (I think) and until last night I was a positive attitude kind of girl with a get back on the horse look on life. Then I lost the music, sigh there is always a line and Africa crossed it. So here is the story. Monday I went to school and was there the whole day because the process of making a test that is actually on paper and the students don’t copy from the board is quite arduous. First you have to type the test on a typewriter on this special paper, and then you have to run it through this hand cranked copier machine. (If you have watched Animal House lately there is actually one of these machines displayed (though it must use electricity because the secretary wasn’t cranking anything). Anyway, it’s a lot harder than it sounds because you also have to barter for paper because they won’t give you any since it’s so expensive. The other professors were a lot of help but I can’t help feeling like my entire computer skills will have to be relearned when I get home. Now, as this took me the better part of the morning and I was teaching two long classes in the afternoon I was at the Lycee all day. During my 15minute break I sent a text message to a friend about giving her my encyclopedia Britannica so I know I definetly had my phone. Then I went to 5eme to teach for 2 hours. I forgot to mention that I have a cold and I couldn’t breathe out of my nose and felt awful. I slept most of the day before. Anyway, I try and teach the 5eme class and they are acting ridiculously. So finally I tell them that they must finish the work on the board and they can’t leave the class until I see their work in their notebook. So I place myself at the door and literally 100 kids bum rush me! They are climbing under my arms and pushing me out of the way and it’s a bad situation. So finally I look at most of their papers and I let the rest go because I don’t have a lot of fight in me. I get my bag and flee the premises.
But what happens when I finally get home and all I want to do is eat something and sleep before my Girls Club meeting? My keys aren’t in my bag but my house is locked so I know I had them. My neighbor gives me my spare set and I let myself in. I decide I deserve to pity text a friend and when I look for my phone it isn’t in my bag either. So I jump on my bike and go and look at the Lycee, and it’s not there and no one has seen my stuff. So Rachel calls my phone for me and someone answers and says their name and then when they realize I’m looking for them they hang up. So I get home and I have my girls club meeting and everything is great and I decide to take care of my locks the next day because maybe someone found my keys and you really can’t get any good locks in Ndelele and I really don’t have any money in town because I lent it out because Cameroon forgot to pay their teachers for the last two months so I thought I would help my colleagues eat.
So I get up and one of my neighbors comes over and says the radio has found a phone and it’s probably mine. So I rush over there but the time I get there the radio is closed and I have a class. So I get to the Lycee and the Discipline master who is my friend is really pissed about the whole ‘people stealing the white girl’s stuff thing”. HE has the kids on their knees the whole day trying to figure out who stole my stuff. I feel horrible because I know 99people didn’t still my stuff and they have a test coming up and they need to review. So I finish some work and go back to the radio. I end up waiting there for an hour and missing a class with my little kids at the Ecole Bilingue to find out that there was no lost phone and my student had misheard the announcement which was an advertisement for a call in show. (oi )
So I get home and I’m super bummed out and haven’t eaten again this day and I decide to grade some tests. The students did horrible on the test and it takes me the better part of 2 hours to grade them all. So I finally finish and I’m ready for some food and some rest when Rachel arrives and invites me out to fete Obama. Needing some friendship and to get away from my sad situation I grab some stuff and leave because people are waiting for us. I am out 2 hours and when I get home I realize a couple of things. One my stuff is all misplaced and two my iPod is nowhere to be seen. Someone has used my keys to come in my house and steal my stuff. After closer inspection I see I have lost my camera, my calculator, my markers, my flashlight, as well and a bag of pens my mom sent me (don’t ask me why they stole my pens). This is really crappy so I go over to Rachel’s for some support and she calls all the bigwigs for me. The mayor, the commandant of the gendarme, the discipline master, and Ruth who works for safety and security with Peace Corps. So the Commandant comes to my house and takes a report, the mayor visits me today and I need to call Ruth.
Here’s the good news, after more threats the students gave back my phone and we didn’t know who did it because they just left it on a table in a deserted classroom. However, the idiots made videos and took pictures with the phone so hopefully someone will recognize them. It just sucks because there haven’t really been classes all week because of this and had I have changed my locks earlier or hidden my iPod this wouldn’t have happened. I have no idea why the idiots didn’t take my computer or my radio but maybe they were too obvious to steal or something. Anyway it looks like my phone is okay which is awesome but the loss of my iPod is really horrible. I had tons of media on it and I was using it as a hard drive as well as an iPod and it was my source of entertainment during the day. I’m pretty bummed. I do have enough saved to buy another one and sent it to Yaoundé so if they don’t find it I might do that. Anyway it’s getting better I guess. If anything everyone has been really great and really supported. It really isn’t frequent that stuff is stolen in a small town like this and people seem to think they might be able to find my stuff. I wish we had a Veronica Mars in Ndelele so I could hire here. Anyways Love you all! Elyse

Happy Thursday

2009-01-15T11:36:00.000-08:00

Alright so a lot to report since last week I am proud to say. It’s been a really busy week and I feel like it’s been really successful! First of all I want to say that I’m listening to Rodrigo Y Gabriela and let me say, first Chad you were right and Chiggie you have fabulous taste! Also that I feel like I’m cheating on Africa with latin rhythems. It’s like eating a hamburger at a Mexican restaurant, but I digress. Okay so this week started of steady with my girls group. After a rigorous day of teaching I ran home and set up my house to create a comforting and girly atmosphere. I guess it worked because 18 people showed up. Some of whom are my older students and they are super cool. Some of the students that are in even older classes came as well and some of them already have children (which will be slightly awkward during the abstinence speech- or maybe helpful?). But these girls are really driven and know what they want. It is however slightly odd that they all see the height of their possible achievements to be a functionaire of a village, (this would mean they married the principal or high ranking teachers at a school or they were/married an employee of the government. It is a big thing to be a functionare, you get to set up parties and stuff, but no one really cared about anything earth shattering, but I’ve realized out here that that’s cool too. We did an activity where they had to draw themselves as they were now and write three adjectives (thanks mom for the markers!) and then on the back they drew themselves as they would like to be in the future with three adjectives. This is the first time in Cameroon where I’ve seen a large group of people actually be creative and not follow my example exactly!
This week also saw me cracking down and stop coddling my students. I am writing them harder lessons and harder tests and I’m not so worried that htye are all going to fail (because mostly I was told everyone expects this and they aren’t happy with all of my passing students). The students will soon realize they have to work to pass my class and it is not easy and ub so will nto repeat directions four times. This is a hard lesson for me to learn as well as them because I actually want them to succeed and I hate when they are sad. It has also been good because my relationships with the students have become closer and they like me outside of class more so they tend to be better to me in class when I ask them why they are acting so bad when they were so cool the day before. I’m also writing a lot more reading comprehension exercises and not using their horrible book so much. The sutdnets have been reading about Barak Obama (much to their delight) as well as about 15 year old conjoined twins (there was an article in one of my newsweeks). The students are interested finally and they seem to be enjoying the lessons more.
This week was also the beginning of ht eEnglish club. My English head told me I couldn’t bribe them with points to come ot the club so I bribed them with cookies. This worked until I got swarmed and felt like a small child who has gone into that cage at the zoo to feed those scary green and red birds and they don’t have enough apples to feed everyone. It was really scary and those kinds acted like animall when I dropped some cookies they swarm in and actually sotle my bag to get them all. I don’t think they earned more cookies for next meeting. But I do have a very good club president and we played 2 English games- one for grammar (like a puzzle to put together a sentence) and one for vocabulary (a modified scattegories) they liked these a lot though they are scary competitive ( I guess this happens when cookies are on the line). I also pitched them my idea for a sketch for Youth week and they liked it so next week we will be writing it together.
That was pretty much my week, but I did just pass a small child that fell in the dirt and tried to help her up and she started scrying so loud when she saw me everyone came running. Turns out she fell in the dirt because the white woman scared her so bad! Wow, nothing says Africa loves you like a terrified toddler.
I hope you all had a great week and are continuing to have one. I want to tell everyone to enjoy the cold if they have it because it is terribly hot here right now, I don’t mind it so much but it makes you sorta sluggish- something we know about in Arizona. Also my parents pitched an idea to meet in New York this summer so I oculd see them and as I recall tons of you folks have moved out there so let me know if you want to get a drink in NY in the summer and if you make the starving volunteer pay for it you won’t go to heaven!

Love you all and miss you!
Elyse

Back in Buisness

2009-01-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

obIt's almost been a week weiht out power here in the Lele. It came on tonight (obviously I jumped for joy and ran home). This means my ipod has no charge, my computer won't start up and my phone has one bar. My neighbors have finally arrived after not being here for 6 months. They are Eveline a largery jolly woman who I imagine as Aunt Jamima adn her 6 year old daughter Doris adn now 4 month old baby. Let me tell you, things have changed. What was once a quiet hamlet of solitude adn contemplation is now the parade groudn for visitors and out doors loud talkicity. In real African style this lady (and family are crazy loud adn live so close to me they ought to be in my living room. It's acutally quite ridiculous not acknowldeging each other when I'm in my living room adn she's int eh courtyard sitting under my window. I feel sorta naked. but it also feels a lot less lonely. When you live alone and sei-secluded you miss the everyday noises of other people. Just the chit chat or banging of pans and I have that now, adn all that good and bad it comes with. The other funny thing is my neighbors daughter has a doll that plays the tune of "its a small world" and she can not get enough of it. At first it mad eme a mixture of sad/nostalgic and now it just gets into my head and I sing it all day.

So what does one do with their time in the dark without power? 1 make eleborate dinners- I made pita bread, fajitas, rice and taco sauce for dinner the other day. 2- Read a lot. Thank you to Jaime for sending "the Brief and Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao" very interesting read. And a big thanks to Chiggie as every for keeping me reading interesting and fun stuff. These books actually kept me awake past 8am which is the normal bedtime for a person with out electricity (jsut in case you didn't know). 3- Painting my nails and giving myself facials- thanks for the face mask Jaime. and 4- My neighbors showed up monday and wanted to do my hair African Style. I got it "rastaed" their word not mine, which means fat corn rows! You would be so jealous! I actually took it out after about 3 days because it was really itchy and they didnt realize I"m not blonde so I looked liek a cross between a crack hoe and an african albino beauty queen.

But those are just my days from about 5-9. I am actually back to some serious volunteer work. I started a girls club that I'm organizing with the help of students> I got a student to tutor me once a week, but I fear I'll have to teach her how to teach before she's actually effective. I am starting an English club where I hope to use my theatre skills and I met with Mr. Fonkau who is the other English teacher to evaluate my work so far. Turns out I'm actually not a very good English teacher, and I'm the first to admit it. My year plan is sorta all over the place (might be the lack of love for English) and I don't emphasis the communicative aspect of the language and focus on the grammar and the vocabulary. I am starting a new planning program and I will be a much tougher teacher now. I fear that the problem with all new teachers is the hope that all their students will pass, and that is just not accepted in Cameroon. Everyone is upset that 80 percent of my students are passing (I'm too easy and offer too much extra credit). Anyway, I'm getting a lot better at French and really settling in here Which it's about time. It has however turned ridiculously hot! So its a little bit difficult to stay my cheery self when I'm sweating all over the place, but it does mean its easier to run because there aren't huge mud puddles everywhere!

Anyway, I miss you all and I'm super excited to have current again and be able to communicate with you.

Love you All!

Elyse

The Holidays

2008-12-28T09:23:00.000-08:00

Dear Everyone,
I hope your holidays are going well and that you got everything you wanted for Christmas. I want to give a shout out to Ethan and tlel him I hope he had a great birthday and to Lisa whose birthday is coming up on the 31st, I love you guys and I hope you had/have a great time.

So what does one do in Africa for Christmas well I'll tell You.

First off I havent been home for 3 weeks adn just arrived last night to enter my house and be lovingly greeted by my cat who in 3 weeks grew up and is now fisty and kills huge cockroaches! that's my girl.

For the first week I traveled through Yaounde picking up cool people as I went. I traveled with my friend Lisa from Batouri who has quickly risen to be my favorite person in country. She has boundless energy is always smiling and get super excited over very simple things. In short she keeps me from being down and makes it impossible not to have fun around her. We went to Bertoua and then Yaounde where I was able to go shopping at Landmark- the white man store (you can say that to the taxi drivers and they actually know what you are talking about). At landmark you can get exciting things like oreos, velvet mac n' cheese, brownie mix, smelly good candles, and where they actually played Christmas Carols. I also went to Pizza Roma and got a salad, liter of Sprite, and a mushroom pizza while lisa got a pizza and a vanilla shake! It was heaven.

We then headed for Kribi where we would stay about a week. Kribi is in the Francophone section of cameroon but it is a tourist location so there were a lot of white people there which was really odd. I was able to stay at a really nice hotel and breakfast and lunch was catered from the PC and they have been going there forever so they made french fries with every meal and actually put out Ketchup. The hotel was about a 2 second walk to the beach and there was a bar on the beach where the water actually laped just below the deck with tables. There were home made hammocks, cold beer, and gorgeous waves! It was really weird to see everyone again, mostly because it felt liek forever and also because you feel a bit guilty fo rnto keeping in touch! But honestly I was super happy to see them. I had a lot of really great discussions with a lot of peopel I really respect and I seriously enjoyed my time there. My counterpart was with me and he was quiet but seemed to be excited about the ideas we were generating and I hope that we can make some changes and be more proactive when school starts again next week. He's a good guy, even if I don't agree with some choices he makes in his personal life.

I also asked our Education Director if I could head a project where I consideated all the materials and lesson plans in the different subjects that have been working for people in order to give them to our counterparts as helpful guides and to future PCVs. I think thi sis a way for me to spread my ideas of using theater in the classroom while generating some great source material. I have also started a weekly newsletter that will include teaching ideas nas stories from Cameroon. So i hope that goes well.

In kribi we foudn this really great sandwich place that had fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese sandwiches and I ate there almost everyday. If you know me you know how I feel about sandwiches and i twas good to get my fix. Finally we went to the Limbe falls which is a group of waterfalls that is about 20 mintues away from Kribi it is the only plac ein the world where fresh water flows into the ocean. It's also really neat because the falls are in a cove and you can swim from one side of the beach across the ocean to another side. At first glance this seemed like an easy feat but after swimming agains the current I thought I was going to lose it for a second but my friend Fleurange was with me the whole time and made sure I was okay. Its really nice to have someone who is totally level headed around. We ended up figuring out the current and swimming really quickly back to shore so it was all good and I felt accomplished.

After kribi we went back to yaounde for a couple days and spent our time watching Christmas movies and shaking our packages while wondering what was inside. I also went and got Egg rolls at the chinese restaurant where they play R and B favorites! Oh Yaounde you are full of awesomeness.

Next we travled back to Bertoua and stayed there for Christmas. It was really nice and layed back. We prepared for Christmas day because we were spending Christmas in Djong (i spelled that wrong) or au village with our friend Reid. His family made us a big Cameroonian style dinner (he's living with a woman down there and her kids) and we drank palm wine and have a very interesting time. His village is beautiful and very quite and we stayed in a little house down the way from his thta only had a laterine and 4 bedrooms. It felt like a Camping Christmas because we were roughing it andwe didn thave a lot of amenities but it was definitly memorable.

We then motoed back the next day which is about an hour ride and my friend Lisa and I sung Christmas carols all the way to Bertoua. I'm not sure the driver appreciated it but I know know that Fa la la la la is the best song ever and I will never forget that ride. We then got back to Bertoua and made a lasagna with eggplant, and one wiht just cheese, salad (with home made salad dressing), mashed potatoes, stuffing (sioban got some sent from the states- i think i ate it all), green bean casserole (from scratch), sweet corn, glazed carrots, and brownies. It was an amazing meal and we made it a little under 2 and a half hours, we were really proud. We then opened our packages nad le tme say thank you a million times to my mom, chiggie, jaime and stephanie! Your packages made me so happy it hurt. I actually cried when I read Jaime and Stephanies letters! I've been downloading my new media since I got so much music and its making me really happy. I can't wait to read my new books and I am loving the crazy magazines. I also smell liek honeysuckle now which is a big improvement so thanks everyone!

I'll be sending New Years in Batouri so I can do some banking and hit the dance clubs. I guess they dont really go all out for christmas here but they really love new years so we'll see how it is. One thing that is weird is that its super hot now that its dry season and when we travled yesterday it was so dusty that when we got off the car my whole body had changed colors and I looked like I had been travelign on the Sahara, I guess I wasnt that far from it.

Favorite things about my vacation:
-Body Surfing in Kribi
-Night swimming
-Wrestling in Dresses wiht my friend Fleurange and then hugging it out when we called a tie
-Hot showers
-Good food
-that my cat is still alive
-decorating the coz in Bertoua it looked like christmas
-opening my packages
-talking to my family
-my email from Chad
-new clothes
-smelling good

Love you all and miss you!
elyse

Cultural moments

2008-12-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

An Overcast day Africa
Yesterday was quite the experience for me. I woke up early to find that I was very happy. I was leaving in about a week for a tropical beach get away and I was going to see my friends for the first time in months. I decided to finish some work at the high school and whistled all the way to the school. I then came home to find out I had inadvertently put A Charlie Brown Christmas on my Ipod, which to my delight rang out proud and clear in my little house as I decorated it for Christmas. I found a huge leaf shaped like a tree and taped it up and then took silver rapping from the awesome cookies my mom sent me and made little Christmas decorations. I then scavenged for the right greenery to make a Christmas wreath. I even colored some pages in my Candyland coloring book and put up the peppermint man and the gingerbread man. I was feeling really good, even though a mist of rain kept disturbing the drying of my sheets outside. I knew in the afternoon I would be going to a funeral, but I had heard funerals in Africa were really like parties so I was thinking of it like a cultural observer and not really a person. The funeral was for my post mate’s counterpart whom she worked with everyday and who was an incredible man, he died suddenly and because there wasn’t the right medicine or medical care in the East and he was on his way to Yaounde when it was too late. He left behind two young kids, I teach the daughter at the Lycee and she is an incredible girl, one of the good ones. He also worked at the Catholic Misison so you can just tell this guy was good stuff.
Well I arrive to the house of the family and it seems that all of Ndelele was there. They had created a little courtyard with a trellis decorated by local plants and flowers and they had the white casket set underneath that. A large picture of the gentleman was set out and a sign that read in French: You will be able to go to the sky, after you are on the earth. (that’s the exact translation but I’m sure its more poetic). I recognized groups of my students from the Lycee, the mayor, the principal, all of the important people in town, and then the family sitting on the stoop of their house. Hundreds of people were standing including Rachel and I and they had marimbas playing and awkwardly jolly calypso type tune.
First they had a Catholic mass and then they had speakers. The son spoke in Kako so I didn’t understand but he was pretty composed and for being about 16 or 17 he seemed to be taking on the man of the family responsibility pretty seriously. Then the sister went up and in the fashion of Cameroon she recounted his last days. She told about how he kept telling everyone he would be back to work in a few days and it was just a passing sickness. Then about how he went to Bertoua and they told him they didn’t have the medication that he needed so he would have to go to Yaounde. At this time he was so weak he could barely travel, and the conditions here for travel are horrendous. He was in the car on the way to Yaounde when he died. As the sister was telling this story she was very animated and clear spoken, but as she got to the end she became very emotional. She knelt by the casket and started to talk to her brother asking where he had gone and why God would do this. She then became hysterical and had to be walked away from the casket. The principal then gave a short speech that sounded like a well known poem and everyone was invited to walk around the casket and say goodbye. I followed the crowd and was very surprised to see that it was an open casket. They have these little door type things on the top of the casket, like a Christmas advent calendar, and you could look in and see him. It was very disturbing and Rachel got very upset because we were not prepared to see that. At this point his daughter, whom I teach became very hysterical and her sobs were horrible. They seemed to go out over the crowd and touched everyone. The wife was too weak to help her daughter so her friends and the other English teacher from the Lycee tried to calm her down. You always read about people wailing and knashing their teeth, its one thing to read about it and another to see it. But in a way, I think it really said something about the quality of this man, that he could inspire such sadness.
Next they buried him in their family’s compound about 20 feet from the service. It wasn’t the choreographed burial that Americans have, there was a huge pile of dirt and they had to try and put the casket evenly into the ground with ropes. Then they put long cement slabs on top, I’m not sure why, and finally the dirt. Then we were invited to go to the Bar to eat and drink. The family stayed at their home completely numb. The night before everyone was invited to the Catholic Church for the wake, which consists of everyone singing and sleeping in the same room as the deceased. Overall, it was an intense experience and I can’t help feeling helpless and very worried for the family. He had a really good job and was the sole provider for the family so you have to worry about what they do next, especially with so much grief. As an American it is hard ot imagine someone dying so quickly from something that can be cured. This man grew up in the East, went to school in the east, spoke the padua and was proud of this province, but ultimately it was the lack of development in this province that killed him. It’s just sad and needless for a good man to die when the world had come so far in medicine. Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to read about let me know what you think.

elyse

Thanksgiving

2008-12-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

Greetings everyone,
sorry its been so long, evidentially when things actually happen to me I have no time to write them down, so now that I’m back in my village I’m ready to write my narrative! I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving and ate tons and prayed or listened to Godspell songs if you were around my mom! All good gifts baby! Anyway, my thanksgiving was in Batouri where my friend had been raising turkeys just for the occasion. Has anyone ever seen a turkey in real life before, they are freakin huge and pretty scary if they charge you. I decided to forgo the meat again seeing as how we had looked each other in th e eye and bonded for three months before he was dinner. Anyway, my friend is the chief of the tobacco company in Batouri so he’s sort of a big wig and has all of the amenities, he even has a pool which I mentioned before! So I got to Batouri on Wednesday night to see everyone else in the East province and we met a the bar and ate some bean sandwiches and caught up. We are quite the site, all speaking English and scaring the locals with so many white people together at one time. On Thursday we went shopping in the market, I was incharge of the salad, deviled eggs, and helping make key lime dessert bars, I also insisted on a lot of stuffing. We then headed over to Bens where he has a gorgeous kitchen with a Refridgerator and tons of good booze like Scotch and cold soda and vodka and beer! I helped prepare the stuffing I helped with the turkeys a bit and made my deviled eggs which let me just say were phenomenal. I was in the kitchen for the better part of the day sweating my butt off most of the time. We also had a makeshift green bean dish sorta like a casserole! It was pretty great though because as the turkey cooked I got to drink a beer in pool in November . But like every holiday we had a couple of people have a huffy misunderstanding. Between all 20 of us at the house we used up 10,000 gallons of water swimming and taking hot waters and ended up drinking the really good wine that we were supposed to save. Some people got upset and it really felt like a holiday with people being all emotional. Anyway, the holiday was good and I think everyone had a good time.
On that Saturday we went to a big party at the tobacco company for their 10th anniversary. It was the best party I have been to in Cameroon. They had a live band from the Anglophone region called Daddy Black that was really good and great dancing and a lot of good scotch. I ended up opening the dancing with my friend Ben and then danced with everyone he asked me to including the man who sweeps the floors, the best driver, the best guard and then the drummer of the band who evidentally had a thing for me. I was a dancing fool, one of the guys even picked me up and swung me around- which let me tell you is not easy to do! I think my favorite thing about the ‘roon is the great time I have when I go dancing, they don’t seem to mind my crazy moves here and can keep up with anything I throw at them, it also helps that everyone I dance with tends to have a superior talent and make me look good. Either way it was a great party and I stayed out until 2:30am for the first time since I got here!
Well that’s all I have for now, I hope everyone is having a good December. Sing come carols for me, I seem to have forgotten to bring some. Christmas won’t be the same with out you guys but I am going to kribi to hang on the beach and see all of the Americans because we have our In Service Training! I can’t wait, I leave next Friday! Love you all
elyse

Weekend update

2008-11-12T11:08:00.000-08:00

happy Birthday Jaime! My reso has been down so my phone works half of the time and doesnt have a signal the othe rhalf, but finally I was able to get on the net! I love you darling and I hope your day was fabulous! Wish I was with you.

This was an interesting weekend, and by interesting I mean pretty freakin awesome! I had a really bad day on Thursday because it was the president’s anniversary of getting inaugurated the first time (he’s been president for like 20 odd years) but they decided to still have class because we were going to have a fete Wednesday night but the power went out so they figured the kids wouldn’t be tired so we’d have class. Well the kids were insane and I’ve never seen them so unruly it was like a mob not a class of students. Well I went home and had a few drinks because sometimes you need to relax after such a crappy day. Well I get a text message from my friend whose birthday was Friday the 7th. She said they were going to do a lot of fun things in Batouri and she wished I could be there. So, not having anything to do on Friday and being insane (because it would mean traveling for about 8 hours in crappy Cameroonian conditions to be in Batouri for a day) I decided to go. I left the next morning and gave my very silly present to Lisa. Then we made omelets and took a long bike ride into the forest where there is this amazing rock formation that is like a mountain. We climbed up it and you could see the whole countryside. It was very cool and really beautiful, I have pictures and one day I’ll try to upload them. Then we raced back to her house because we were trying to beat this storm and we were GOING SWIMMING. That’s right folks, swimming! We changed into our bathing suits and let me tell you that was a weird feeling because we dress so modestly here that I haven’t showed that much skin in a long time.
So there is this ex-pat and former volunteer named Ben who works for a Tobacco company in Batouri and he has this house that has an above ground pool with chorine and no creepy diseases and its amazing. We got to his house and met his pet monkey who was very friendly and enjoys climbing on people’s heads! Next, we made a whirl pool and swam for about an hour or so and it was awesome. I’m an Aquarius so I love to swim! Then Ben, who used to manage a ton of restaurants, made us this amazing pizza because he has an oven! We ate two kinds of pizza- with real cheese! It was an amazing day and we stayed up very late talking about all manner of things nad drinking good wine- from a bottle not a box! It was really great and Ben has had quite the life so it was fun to learn about that too. I left at 5:30am the next day because I had stuff to do in lele and unfortanuetly got a bit sick and I’m feeling a bit better now. I have had a fever since I got back but it broke last night as I was trying to sleep but was listening to this huge storm with the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard! Anyway, it was a great day.
Happy Birthday Lisa!

Traveling, and Minoing

2008-11-03T09:48:00.000-08:00

Blog: October 31^st

Wow, have I got an update for you folks! It’s been one heck of a week and I am in very high spirits. Its funny how you realize how alike your parents you really are. For instance, I knew I had this big trip to go to the provincial capitol of Bertoua and meet up with the other volunteer of the east and talk about business, but some of the anticipation for weeks was the best part. I packed and unpacked my suitcase. I made a Halloween costume from scratch, and I got new clothes from the tailor. I even made travel tortillas for when we got hungry and saved my last pack of gum to share with the Americans who would appreciate it. My dad taught me that half of the fun of a vacation is looking forward to it and researching, so I did and it was great, except it turns out the actual meeting was just as fun as the planning, even more so! So here’s what we did.

I left Thursday morning with my postmate to Batouri where my close friends live (about 5 hours away). It’s rainy season so the roads are horrible, you wouldn’t think it was possible for a bus to get through some of these potholes (I’m not sure that’s what we can call them though because they are so massive- lets go with craters). Well one crater was so big that when we went through water actually came up through the floor of the car, which is pretty crazy! So we got into Batouri at a good time and I ate waffles, and homemade yogurt and a very cold Sprite. There is the Catholic mission who has a waffle maker and we always go there to eat, and I’ve never really seen anyone else in there, but I’ll tell you, its heaven. Next we went to the bank and finally picked up some more money so I could go shopping and buy exciting ‘white people food’ as the locals call it. I got food such as Ketchup, sweet corn, and laughing cow cheese. Then we had dinner at my friend Mattie’s house, we had Senegalese rice, which is sorta like rice with a tomatoey sauce. The next day we traveled to Bertoua and the road was a lot better. We had 5 people in the bus and we created quite the stir because people don’t see that many white people together everyday. Every baby in the car starred. We were also talking really loud in English like giddy school kids on a fieldtrip (which is sorta what we were). We even tracked our progress on my friend Mattie’s GPS (he personally designed a map for Cameron because there weren’t any existing ones that were cheap). Next, we arrived in Bertoua where we were staying at the Peace Corps Leader’s house, she is actually the girl that lived in my house and had my post before me so we had a lot to talk about. We came in and saw CNN on the television and got super excited, about television and American television no less. She also has Discovery channel so we watched animal shows for quite a while. Then, I was lead into the back room where in a huge pile I found 6 packages all for me. Christmas came early folks! I want to thank my mom, Jaime, Chiggie, and both my grandmas for sending me such great stuff! People laughed atme as I got teary looking at Jaime’s package and all my letters. I also ended up sharing a lot of food with people because there’s nothing like Americans to appreciate why ranch sauce or Starbursts are so good.

The next day was our meeting where we all give reports on what we are doing and discuss a possible project for the whole province to participate in. A lot of people wanted to go to the most remote village in the region and do a sort of workshop so we could teach about health and whatever else we could fit in. I proposed an idea where all the schools have there students create an artistic impression of how they view themselves and their local trips. I though we could pick a theme and then compile a book or a slideshow to show in the capitol as a representation and expression of who the East is. It’s a sort of undefined idea but I hope that we try it, I was the only one pushing an artisitic idea and people where a little hesitant but some people thought it was cool. Later that night I went to the market and shopped for our dinner which was for 16 people. I ended up making tacos with beans, Spanish rice, and tons of tortillas. The tortilla crew which I was a part of, worked for about an hour and twenty minutes and made about 60 tortillas or so, I was pretty proud of us! Then had our party for Halloween! My friend was a hick because she found overalls at the local Frippery (or goodwill sorta), one guy was a moto driver (taxis here are just motorcycles and the drivers all look like they are dressed up for winter because of the wind I guess, and they have numbers on their chest), three people decided to be beer girls for the beers (there are about 4 kinds you can get anywhere- Castel, 33 trente-trois, Mutzig, and Guiness). And of course there was me, I dressed up like an add for condoms. I made a shirt with the local brand of condoms- Prudence and made this huge graduation type hate that looked like the packaging. I figured since we are all out here to promote AIDS prevention, why not be blunt about it! It was pretty funny and I think I won the contest because everyone kept taking pictures of me. We then got changed and went out to the dance club. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a celebrity? Just be white and come to Africa! We showed up and they let us in for a discounted price and gave us two bottles of whiskey and played American music for almost 2 hours (which is pretty unheard of- but we out numbered the locals so I guess it was a smart call). We danced our buns off and I ended up dancing with one of the other volunteers friends who she works with and he was an amazing dancer. We salsaed and swing danced, and everyother type I can think of. It was a great night and not one I’ll forget soon. We ended up going home and talking and joking around until early morning.

The next day was another travel day and when I got back to Batouri I found out I had to stay for two more days for a teaching conference that no one told me about. I got to hang out with my friends for even more time and it was awesome. I ended up getting home Wednesday night carrying a ridiculously large bag full of my new treasures! I just set up my kitchen and it looks like I went to America and not Bertoua! I also spent last night eating tuna on crackers and having raviolis that I found at a ‘white man store” in Bertoua! The only problem with the trip was that its going to be really hard to get back into the working groove. It was great to speak English and be around people who get you! It defiantly didn’t help my French, but I’ve got time to get better and I’m surviving. I hope you are all well and are feeling optimistic about the upcoming election! Love you all and miss you!

Elyse

Addition: So I got my cat, my very own little ball of joy. She’s super small and we are not sure is she should even be away from her mother yet, but the people that had her were not nice to her, it would seem that s got bleach poured on her, or she got into some bleach, and she’s so young she doesn’t eve make a meow song, instead its like a half meow. Anyway, last night we started to get to know each other and she ended up peeing on me and puking on me through out the night. I do not think we will continue to be bedfellows! She is super cute though and she keeps me company which is good. They don't say meow here when they are talking about cat noises, they say meeno- its pretty cute. Oh and I found a leech in my bathroom! Oh Africa!

I'm a rural woman!

2008-10-18T11:47:00.001-07:00

utoCher e famille,
Greetings from the land of rain and more rain. Not that I mind it, but I guess if I decide to move to Seatle it won’t be much of a transition. Except there are paved roads there so you can actually get from point A to point B with out getting your feet and the back of your dress totally dirty, not htat I’m complaining mind you, I still find all of this adventurous. Give me another couple of months and I’ll start complaining like a real native! So I have some updates for you. This is my 7th or 8th week in Ndelele and I feel as if I’m starting to get the hang of it. This week was exam week, which is sorta the best for a teacher because you just play fun revision games and the kids actually care about learning because they are able to imagine an actual grade they have to give their parents. I’m starting to actually like teaching again, which I find a relief seeing as how I was going to kill someone if things kept going the way they were. My 5eme class which I have now deciphered has 108 students in it is actually my favorite. I know who the trouble makers are and they are the kids who are older and haven’t made it past the class yet, I’ve decided to use shame with them or just to give them some more respect so that they’ll see I recognize they are older but I’m still not going to let them give me crap.
This week was also Rural Women’s week! Talk about awkward. I had this big moo moo (totally not how you spell that) dress made that was pink and had the different plants that the different regions cultivate on it (all fabric or pagne here is totally busy- those crazy Christians on channel 23 would love the flash). It also has pictures of women with babies on their back and working these grinding machines they have here. I felt like a poser because I do not carry babies on my back, I don’t really eat the local plans (because maniac has no nutritional value and is the consistency of snot), and I don’t work in the fields. POSER! Anyway, I still went with Rachel and we ended up having to be in the presentation. We mouthed the songs we were supposed to know and we danced and ended up parading down the street of Ndelele. This was funny because it was a very simple song and I caught on fairly quickly, even though the words were in Koko. Well after a refrain you turn 3 times and bend down and then continue walking. Well when I joined in people started laughing and pointing and getting all around crazy! I guess if you are a crazy white girl and you are actually doing some passable French dance moves its funnyi I guess it’s the same when we hear a non native speaker try to speak English and we think its adorable. Anyway, rural women’s day was a success and people were very exicted to see me in native dress and all day people yelled ‘Bon fete’. The only problem is that I have no women friends in the village because getting to know women is super hard, especially because there aren’t any at the Lycee. For example, today I brought some Papaya to my tailor and her friends (or her husbands other wives, I haven’t figured out how exactly the family is set up) and I passed out the fruit and they continued to talk in kako and it was really awkward until I took some pictures of them and then left. Aww well small steps I guess. I do have one woman friend and she’s Anglophone and the directrice of the Bilingual school.
I started working at the Bilingual school last week and its totally the best thing I do here. I just show up and sing songs. This week we sang about the face and drew a face together. We are working our way down to the torso next week. Who’s excited? The kids are! They are so cute, none of them speak English because this is only the second year of the school and there are only 2 classes. The youngest kids are 4 and the oldest are 7 so it’s a pretty awesome crowd. Some of them only have little chalk boards to write on and I find myself thinking about little house on the prairie when I show up. I hope to increase my time there and start some theater exercises. The teachers give me complete reign of the classroom and anything I want to do (which doesn’t seem very organized, but they are tired and they don’t get a reprieve all day) so I play games and try and throw in some interesting things for them to learn English.
Now for the most frustrating part of this week, we had a ‘debate’ at the school Thursday about discipline. The sous prefet (big guy) came and watched viewed some posters and left, but here’s how the day went. The students stopped their studies at 12 and stood in the hot sun for an hour and a half. They had not gone home to eat yet. Then the sous prefet arrived and they sang the national anthem and then stood in the sun some more while he looked at posters. Then they sat down in the conference class room (which is just a bigger classroom with a tin roof and goat poo everywhere. There were 4 teachers who were giving the points of the debate and everyone was supposed to listen. Well it started raining, crazy loud rain where you couldn’t hear yourself think. We ended up waiting another 30 minutes so it would let up and we could hear the speeches. Then the teachers gave these ridiculous 10 page long speeches where they rambled about discipline and the problems of the school and how the students suck. Well I though this was a very important assembly and it was handled so poorly. The students weren’t listening because they weren’t being talked to they were being talked at. There was no participation or interesting activities or simple activities like asking the students questions. The teachers just droned on and on and on. Wow don’t give some of these guys a stage or you’ll be there to the end of time. So finally the speeches were done after an hour and a half and we opened the floor for questions. At this point it was 30 minutes after the actual school day and the students still hadn’t eaten. The kids asked some questions most of them about how the teachers were disciplined if they didn’t come to school or weren’t prepared or had relationships with the students (these questions made me laugh). I’ll tell you what though, the whole thing was totally frustrating. As someone that helped set up performances for the better part of my life and who understands how to get people interested in a topic, it hurt to watch. Later as the teachers were congratulating themselves I asked me head of department if I could give some suggests for the next time or be involved in the planning. I was obviously passionate about this and he listened to me when I gave some ideas and explained what I think the problems were. Then he condescendingly told me he would take my thoughts nto consideration and that they didn’t have a lot of time to plan and this is just how they do things here.
This is not what you tell a riled up volunteer that is here to make change, so now I’m determined to help the students. I have talked to 3 teachers about my thoughts so far and most people agree with me so I’m hoping I can change the program for the next time, if not to spare the students at least to make it worth their wile. The language thing is starting to get annoying though, because when I become passionate I am the worst at speaking in another language and it’s a lot easier to condesend me, and how I hate condescension! Anyway, I’m happy to report that I understood almost everything said during the debate and I no longer just nod my head to agree with people because I actually know what they are saying. All I need now is to be able to respond in kind.
Love you all, thanks for reading this, I know they tend to be long and ranty! Miss you all and love you.
Weece.

Fete- Africa Style

2008-10-07T12:27:00.001-07:00

5/10/08

Today is teacher appreciation day and it is a big deal in Ndelele. I don’t know why it’s a Sunday but not a lot of what they do here makes sense. So this morning we started the day with a ‘Marathon’ at least that’s how it was explained to me. All of the teachers were to meet at 6am at ‘the meeting place” yes, there is actually a place called the meeting place and people meet there even though it sorta in the middle of nowhere. Well I’m not a big one for completive running but I wanted to be part of the gang and at least represent the women seeing as how I’m the only female teacher. I was also quite inspired by miss Maryann Green and all of her running (if you are reading this I hope you are doing well and kickin some butt). So last night I have all of these dreams about running, and in one I’m stealing Tyler’s running shorts and Ethan’s shirt that is supposed turn your sweat to a cooling system or whatever- the ones he got from working at U of A. Anyway I’m all hyped and I get up at 5:30 and do some stretches and run to ‘the meeting place” and of course, as Cameroon will do, no one was there. I don’t know why I thought this would be different, maybe because it was a race and I didn’t want to miss the start. Anyway I stay there for about 30 minutes and the Chef shows up and then slowly a couple people come. After an hour and a half the proviseur (principal- I will call him proviseur from now on so keep up) he shows up on a Moto (of course he wouldn’t walk, or even run!) and he gets all upset because there are festivities all day and we need to be on time and where is everyone. I was glad he was as impatient as I was. Finally he calls a bunch of people, and my friend who has just come to say ‘go’ and write down who won, gets yelled at for not participating and has to run in a sweater and sandals. So it ends up that there are just 4 people running and it’s not a marathon, we are just running about a mile around the village (that’s how big the village is). We have a couple of media people there (but they are at everything and they know when the Chef coughs or sneezes because its probably news). The race starts and we run behind some guy on a moto who is blowing a whistle- I guess this was so that people would make way for us. 3 of us are jogging together pretty nicely but when we hit the last stretch, which is of course up hill they put the fire on and start running very fast. I’m proud of myself for not stopping, not being winded, and pacing my breathing, anyway I’m not that competitive. But then my friend with the sandals and sweater starts to gain on me and I have to leave him in the dust as I cross the finish line (which they have written in chalk on the dirt). I came in 3rd of 4 and 1st of the women, but I was the only woman so I guess I can’t be that proud. I also got interviewed and was very political by giving my comrades props and saying, “they challenge me in sports as well as in the classroom to be the best I can be.” People will love this!
Later there will be a parade where everyone is supposed to wear the same teacher’s day fabric (but it didn’t get sent to Ndelele so that won’t happen) Anyway if you know me you know I’m not into matching people (I made fun of ethan a lot when I heard him and Becky wore matching Easter clothes)- but any time I cannot stand out here is good! After the parade we will go to the stadium and there will be a football match and a handball match. I hope not ot have to play football because they are so serious about it here and I’m horrible, also I have twisted my ankle a couple of times and its starting to get pretty swollen. After that there will be a ‘balle” yeah that’s right, another name for fete is ball- like Cinderella. But really there will just be food and drinks and the party should last all night long. I asked about school the next day and my friend said that the proviseur will just change the start of school- he can do that, he’s the chef.
I find it very funny that the people here told me at that the fete would have a lot of Castel beer and legumes (veggies) I didn’t realize everyone knew my beer preference and that I’m a vegetarian! It’s pretty funny, but as long as I’m not eating monkey and drinking a cold beer the night seems like It’ll be really fun, maybe I’ll break out some of my famous dance moves. Sometimes I like to decide what beers my family would like the most here, I think dad would like Castel and ethan would like 33 and mom, she would hate them all, and chiggie would go for a Beauforts light, Tyler would hate them all but drink Fanta or Pomplemouse (grapefruit soda)or Grenadine (red soda) with wisky- you should come to Cameroon and see if I’m right! I love you all and miss you!
Elyse

Continuation of the Fete of the Teachers!
So I ended up not going to the parade because the leader of it was supposed to call the white people and tell us that it had started, but he forgot to call and I had to lay low because my proviseur was a little upset- but it was a fete so no one really cares that much, and my friend Mattie from Batouri was in town so we had him as an excuse too. We then went to the dance party and here are my impressions:
First of all, I think it was Jane Austin meets Africa. Its very interesting because there is strict protocol here for everything. When the ‘grandes’ or people who have important positions in society arrive you have to greet them a certain way and say certain things. Well because we were at party and there were grandes around they invite the important people up to ‘open the dancing’. Of course because I am one of only about 8 women at the fete and I’m the new white woman they choose me as one of the couples. Turns out I am introduced last with the sous prefet- who is the big cheese in my village. He’s the top dog, and technically this means I’m the most important woman at the party- no pressure. Then we do some awkward slow dancing to some saxophone jazzy versions of bad r and b songs. Turns out the ‘opening of the dance’ is only about 30 seconds which suits me fine. At least I didn’t fall on my butt!

So next we are all served a round of beers and people get up and cut a rug. Now let me just say I expect everyone to be great dancers, but even the best dancer can not be brilliant for the 8 minute Cameroonian song. (do you know how long 8 minutes is when you are dancing?) The music here is like a mixture of a Salsa type and African drums. Its really easy to dance to and they are minimal on movement. Even the worst dancers would do great here because it doesn’t really take any skill.

Well, I hate to say it but this is sorta the first time I’ve been on stage in a while (because everyone is watching the white woman to see how she dances) so I am hamming it up. The best dancer there keeps stealing me from my partner and we are doing all these crazy turns and shimmying down and stuff. I guess lots of people formed a circle around us as we were dancing. It was really fun and really tiring but I totally loved it. This is where the Jane Austin stuff starts though. I get asked to dance and led out to dance by a number of my colleagues from the Lycee including the Proviseur. It was one of those- wait how many times has the white girl danced with so and so and does that mean she’s interested in so and so. I guess everyone was keeping tabs on my dance card. One guy in particular who has been paying a little of attention to me tried to dominate my dance card but I gave him a lecture on how American woman are independent and can handles themselves and I went and asked some new people to dance. Anyway, what ensued was a sort of pissing contest between a lot of my admirers in ndelele and it made me a little angry. I was there to have fun and people were more interested and showing off that they were dancing with the white woman instead of dancing with Elyse. It’s not very fun to be a symbol of something instead of a person. But, either way the night ended up fun and I defused a lot of the situations by hanging out with the happily married men and women or talking to the men that are old enough to be my grandfather and have no teeth. I wish there was a way to go on the radio and say “I’m not here for romance people so move along” Anyway love you all and miss you!

elyse

Rambly mc rambleson

2008-10-01T11:18:00.000-07:00

Just another Wednesday in Africa,
Today was a very good day. I woke up feeling not up to the craziness of teaching, because yesterday was the end of Ramadan and we got a day off (though I realized this after meeting some people in the market who were confused why I was dressed up for work). Its nice to have a surprise day off but it really screws up your week and your mindset. The next day to work is always a bummer. But yesterday I spoke with the two Anglophone teachers at their house and they seem very interested in my help and my ideas, though I think I overwhelmed them because I throw so much at them at once, they seemed a little confused. I guess if you are Anglophone it doesn’t mean you can understand American English, I guess it’s the same with me when I try to understand Cameroonian English- its very funny.
However, today my students were angels. I’m not sure if someone scared the life out of them or what happened but they were great. They were interested in the lesson and I varied the lesson and they were understanding things and motivated it felt like teaching mattered again. Then I taught an hour early in my 4eme class because they don’t have a professor before me and I used the idea of getting out of school early to make them behave. This lesson was productive but we are already totally behind. I also taught the kids how to do the I-love- you sign language and they keep doing it to me and I think they are raising their hands, its very annoying. But what can you do?
Something very interesting happened today though. I was out for my run- which was incredibly brutal because its been terribly hot all day- there’s nothing like Africa with no air conditioning, tin- roofs, and no air-flow to get you sweating! Anyway, I’m running down a particularly rural road which I run down often and this woman stops and starts doing this interesting hand gesture to me and muttering lot, so I take out my ear phones as I’m running past her and say Bon Soir, and she continues in sorta a daze and looks as if she is either blessing me, protecting herself from the white woman, or sending me courage and health on my run. She didn’t seem upset or scared so this leads me to believe that I’ve been blessed today, literally, which is sorta cool.
I’m sorta mad though because now as I’ve been running more my knees and my ankles are killing me, is my young body not as awesome as it used to be? C’est vrai!
So I’ve started using a new tactic in my English classes, I’ve started using a lot more French. I find that the kids are behaving themselves and very happy with me because I’ve relented, maybe we’ll get somewhere now.
Also, tonight my neighbor who I made tortillas pb and j sandwiches and popcorn for came over and gave me dinner- legumes (mixture of vegetables that has an interesting taste to it and looks like its made of grass) and plantains (these can taste like potatoes if boiled, sweet French fries if fried, and a mixture between a banana and potato of heated and that’s my favorite way and that’s how he made htem. It’s pretty exciting to not have to cook one night, but now I have to eat the veggies I bought this morning for breakfast or they’ll go bad. Anyway, this post is really random, I’m watching diamonds are forever as I type- Connery is a bit old in this movie- but at least they aren’t dressing him like an Asian.

Cheers,
Lov eyou all
Thanks for the emails from everyone- elyse

Through BS comes clarity

2008-09-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

Its very funny because the title of this blog has changed three times. It started off as “my first X on the calendar”. I was told this story about a PCV who decided that everytime she had a day where she wanted to ET (early terminate) she would put an X on her calendar and then wait one week and if she felt the same way then she would seriously consider it. Yesterday was an X day. I decided that this didn’t work though because the story continued. Next I decided to call it, “mamma said there’d be days like this”, but that didn’t seem to work either because I couldn’t just sit back and let Africa bitch slap me. So I think I’ve settled on “Through bullshit comes clarity” I think it works. Read the story and you decide.
Yesterday was Wednesday, which to me means two things. 1- Hump day and 2- Boring meeting day. Every Wednesday it seems the school calls these incredibly boring meetings which take up 5 hours and bore everyone to death. No one questions these meetings or challenges them, they just accept- like a dog with a collar. I guess it takes the new girl and some very interesting doodles on her paper to shake things up a bit. After teaching for four house (which doesn’t seem like a lot until you’ve been in a Cameroonian classroom when you are still figuring out how to discipline kids with out hitting them- everyone else’s method). My kids had deranged me insanely all day and I had to send some to the Discipline master which I hate doing because I know he beats them. Well I was already feeling the stress this week because I’ve been here a month and still haven’t made any significant friends except my post mate- Rachel’s- cat whom I was taking care of. Well Rachel returned on Wednesday and I knew I had to give the cat back. There was a light at the end of the tunnel though, I am going to Batouri to fill my gas tank for the weekend- and I am super excited. Well anyway, I was very stressed out and after the meeting started 40 minutes late I sat through the reading of what seemed like dozens of pieces of paper talking about different problems with the education system- the same problems we had all discussed last week with no solutions. Anyway, I’m doodling away and most of the teachers are watching or falling asleep when the Proviseur gets a phone call. This is no uncommon and he exits the meeting which he is running and talks for a while. While he is gone th eDisicpline master decides its time to humiliate me. Infront of everyone he starts telling me that my classes are too loud and I’m not trying and I’m not strong enough and I need to hit the kids. This is the first I’ve heard about this and he decides to yell at me infront of all my collegues. I try to tell him that I am having a competition in my classes where the students are in teams and they are given points for responses to questions so they are very involved in the lesson and often loud. This doesn’t seem to matter he is still angry.
So I am a bit upset but its all good, critizism even if it ocmes in a crappy package is still good and constructive. But then the meeting continues for another 2 hours and as I am planning a quiz for the next day and not even trying to listen because my French skills at this point are totally gone, I hear “Miss” and in French “are you paying attention this is all about me” Then the proviseur (principal) proceeds to echo the comments that he didn’t know the Discipline master had already yelled at me about. Except the proviseur has even less tact, I’m not even sure he knows the word. After a while I am in tears and trying to be cool and deal with the meeting. No one backs me up and no one lets me explain- if I could in French. So the meeting continues and now when I finally think its over- it turns out we have to all eat together and then get a beer. Well after a little cous cous I call it a night because I have to go get Rachel’s cat and give it to her.
So I walk home very upset and trying to not be overwhelmed. I get home and clal my very good friend Gloria who is an angel and she starts talking me off the ledge, when my neighbors arrive with the cat- they are holding it upside down by the tail. They tell me it got run over by a motorcycle. Wow- could the day get better?
Thankfully Rachel was totally nice about it and said it was okay and it happens (but she didn thave to see the body) I take a ridiculously long run so I don’t freak out. But when I get back- after being totally upset, I realize I have 10 texts from different people in Cameroon who care about me and are sending me their love and support. Then today I decide to tlak to the proviseur about his lack of tact and my new method of discipline and after having a very annoying discussion where I wasn’t understood or given a chance to speak, my friend the German teacher asked me what was a matter. And sometimes you just need a sympathetic ear.
We ended up talking for an hour about discipline and tact and my experiences and my new teacher status and pedagogy- all in friench! And it was awesome, I even cried which was totally embarrassing and he was really nice about it. Then I taught and it went a really well and the students were very nice to me even after I punished them, like nothing happened. Then I went to Rachel’s and had a great time talking about her trip to England and meeting her new cat (she brought one back to give to someone but decided to keep it). Then my neighbors came over (2 12 year old girls and their 5 little sisters) and we translated French songs to English and english songs to French for each other and talked for a long time. Then I went to the market and met a man on the street who talked with me a long time about various interesting things. I think it’s the first time I’ve had an actual interesting conversation with someone.
I realized that shitty things happen, but people are the same anywhere- they have your back and care about you, they just don’t know how to show it when you aren’t very well acquainted. I’m going to continue being myself and doing what I do and trying to understand the culture I know there are going to be some really crappy days- but even if I feel totally alone I’ve got friends all over the country, well the world that have my back and care, and sometimes you jus tneed a text message that says ‘screw it- when you come to Batouri this weekend we’ll go dancing” That’s what got me through today with a good outlook. I’m doing well everyone, even though shit happens. Love you all and miss you! Elyse

I wrote this a few days ago so I just wanted to update it and say that I went to Batouri and had a fabulous time! We made stuffed tomatoes adn went dancing and watched tons of The Office season 3. I'm really glad that only 5 hours away are some really great people that have my back I love you all and please don't worry about me, I"m having a great time and enjoying the challenges that every day brings.

Muah- Big hug

Pee on the floor

2008-09-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

So What's new in Africa?
Today was hilarious because I decided to go for a run in between the crazy rain that' s been going on and I was running down the main road- where all these 18 wheelers come through every once and a while and I'm listening to Eye of the Tiger and I'm running up this crazy hill and I see these boys who have a puse - which is like a three wheeled cart they use to gather wood and then push back up to their house (the verb to push is congegated puse) anyway, the kids love to sit in the puse and roll down the hills- well I guess in my mind they can steer because I see them coming toward me and I think- hmm that's looks fun and I think- oh they'll move. But then they get closer and we do one of those- both going to the same way moves and of course I am about to get hit by this huge cart barreling down a hill and I decide to ditch it. I jump off the road into the ditch that is full of mud and I realize after I get back up that two of my colleagues from the school are taking a walk and see the whole thing. I'm sure it'll be the talk of the town tomorrow.

So I had a really good weekend because my friend decided he would take me around town to take pictures. Since he speaks Kako- the local language it was so much easier to meet people. We passed a house that had a monkey tied to a tree and we played with it a while. I have a video it was awesome, but then Will told me that they were going to eat the monkey. Which is really sad! I also went and saw where the Pygmies live and I met some of them. It was really awkward because it was obvious we were coming just to see them like they were an attraction and they treated us like royalty. It was really interesting. They use coke bottles as grave markers and they half dig them into the earth and they represent their lost children. One of the women explained this to me and I found it really interesting that they used old coke bottles. Here the glass bottles are a very serious item because you get money back for them and they reuse them- i assume it would be a sign respect to not turn in a bottle and use it for a grave marker.

I am trying to start a theatre or dramatics club at the Lycee but its really hard because things don't happen here fast. Everyone tells me to wait until school is underway (which it has been for 2 weeks) and they want me to be head of the English club instead! Well too bad they are going to use their imaginations if it kills them. We'll do theatre exercises in English!

The people are starting to warm to me I think- on Sunday I had tons of visitors to my house including my two 17 year old friends who come and take care of gross things like when the cat eats mice and brings them into my house or sweeping my porch. This friendship is a little odd but I have had extensive conversations about how they are my brothers and nothing else. then I have 4 young neighbors who show up and put on my bike helmet and touch all of my things- which is annoying and a little cute. Then I have some girls that come from the Lycee that ask for gifts and touch all of my things and dance to my music. These girls brought their baby brother who is probably 9 months old and he wasn't wearing any clothes. One of my big questions was answered when he started to pee in my house and it went everywhere. Lets just say I cleaned my floors a lot this weekend.

Well that' s all from me. My internet is becoming more reliable and with it my sanity is returning. I think its very interesting because I thought that I was goign to be battling the tough living conditions and different food- and that's hard and all but you can get used to anything. Right now its just hte lack of friends and an oppurtunity to have some fun that I'm missing. It'll all come with time but its hard not to be able to go out and get a beer after a long week!

Miss you and love you!

Happy Belated birthday to Sam and Tara!

love,
Elyse

Running on Empty

2008-09-16T12:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that I love you all tons and the fact that my internet connected tonight actually brought a tear to my eye I was so relieved. This is very funny because I was on the internet 10 days ago and some volunteers will only be on once a month, but when you go to crazy measures so that you won't be crazy isolated it really sucks when your region decides it doesnt want to give you the internet, but with a little prayer it seems like I'll be able to get it every week or two which is good.

Right now it is a little hard for me because I'm going through a big adjustment. I know I've said before that living in Ndelele is like living in Wikenberg or some passing throuhg village. I wanted to give you a visual so I actually looked at the layout of the town and realized its about as big as the U of A Campus. It's really spread out so htat's why, there are definetly not as many things as the campus has. My walk to school from my house is about as far as Centennial Hall ot the Administration Building and my walk to the restaurant Amadus (where the y sell omlets and beans daily) is liek from Centennial Hall to University Street. Baturi (the big city where the other volunteers are) is like west phx but just takes 3 times longer to get there because of the crappy roads adn cars.

somethings that you might find interesting:
The people of Ndelele are getting used to seein gme running and are now telling me I look beautiful when I run- which is weird but whatever

Small children are now visiting me and I'm not really sure how to entertain them. They do however always end up eating all of my bananas, which I normally have about 4 of for random snacks- little vultures

I put up those Gap adds of Aaron Eckhardt and Jeremy Bivens on my wall and they are a nice complimetn to the three maps and pictures of the beach I have posted with random pictures of everyoen I love as well.

In a hilarious moment when those kids were at my house they were looking at my pictures and one runs over with a picture of me and Chad and he says, "C'est Chuck Norris." Oh man I fell over laughing. Evidentally I'm best friends with walker Texas Ranger.

I went to a big fete for literacy recently and I got to dance with everyone and I made friends with a Japonese Nun- it was a very bizarre day.

Rachel's cat, who i'm cat sitting, likes to bring me little lizards and mice as presents which is weird and relaly odd when they are still moving. I've stopped being so freaked out when I see it though.

I am slightly obsessed with the Office and have watched all the seasons except for half of the seond and half of the third, but i think they are hilarious and watch the 4th season over and over- I am so happy for Jim and Pam!

I think that's all for now,
I will write a longer more comprehensive blog soon now that I knwo the internet will work every once an da while. Don't forget me and know I totally dig you guys!

et

Home Sweet Home

2008-08-27T13:18:00.001-07:00

Greeting everyone,
I'm officially in my house, in my new village where I will live for the next two years. It was quite a trip trying to get here because its been really rainy (go figure, its the rainy season) and I had tons of stuff. I had a mattress, 5 bags, a bike, and a trunk. We had a car hired for all the people going East which was awesome, but then when we got to Batouri we were on our own! I ended up staying in the big city (reminds me of Tucson- where as Bertoua (the provincial Capital) is sorta like Glendale). I live in Surprise before anyone ever moved there or had heard about it. Or maybe I live in Wikenburg- that's probably more applicable.

Anyway I finally got on my car for Ndelele yesterday afternoon and the Chef of th eAlliance Voyage (the car that takes me to Ndelele from Batouri) is super nice and helped me a lot. But unfortunately our car broke down and after a lot of yelling we were told we were going ot have to go back to Batouri afte we were half way. so our car turns around and drives for 10 minutes and then all of a sudden it turns around again and heads for ndelele, I dont know why they decided it would be okay but we ended up getting there. Unfornuntatly it started raining and I was sitting by the window, where there was no windwo pane and I ended up getting soaked wiht my computer bag under all my clothes- I took one for my electronics.

I got here and 4 boys helped me with my luggage to my house and all I had to say was I was the replacement for Miss Kate and they knew where I lived and everything about me. They found my house, which I couldnt have done in th edark and the rain, where I showed up holding my flip flops- totally soaked. We got all my stuff inside and I paid them for their help and started moving in. I was smart enough to buy dinner so I ate a sandwich and started setting up my place while watching the Office.

This morning I met my post mate- Rachel, who is super awesome and really nice. She brought me breakfast and we went to th eMarche where I bought some necessities. Then we met the Mayor and paid him because he's my land lord. I then spent a large portion of the day arranging my 4 things of furniture in various configurations and learned what lived behind those pieces of furniture. I met my friend MR. Mouse and we chased each other around while I killed more Spiders than I have ever seen in one place. I dont have a lot to complain about though, my place is really clean and I probably woundt have met these creatures so soon if I hadn't moved my furniture.

I really like my house, its small enough that I wont feel lonely adn big enough that its comfortable. Some things that are trerribly amusing is that I get my water for my house from a well in my compound. Now I'm talking, freaking bucket on the end of a string- Jack and Jill shit. It's awesome, until the bucket fell in and I was told I could tell any child adn they would climb down the well adn get the bucket! Haven't they watched CNN- Child in the well is a classic tragedy, anyway I guess they are adept at this so I'll trust them.

I also went for a run today and got stared at liek I was wearing a Mouse costume or my hair was on fire. Evidentally a woman running is super impressive and odd. I'm glad I can give them excitment. I also had kids running with me but I"m glad to say that I smoked them. Though it might be because they are malnuritied and wearing flip flops.

I'm super excited to make all of my own food now. Today I made sandwiches adn found carrots and ate them with the ranch sauce mom sent me. It was delicious! Rachel and I also made veggie fajitas tonight and it was more nutrition that I could handle! I think I am raring up for a new bucket bath so I shall depart but Its good to know my internet works here as long as I have reso, so you'll be hearing from me!

love you all and miss you like woah!

Africa says Hi

2008-08-13T02:22:00.000-07:00

Blog 13-8
So there is this game that the kids play in Bangangte, I’ve titled it le mot dernier I’ll leave you to translate that. Its where the kids says Bonjour and then you say Bonjour (or Bon soir if the kids is confused about the time) and the kid continues saying Bonjour as you reply. I, unlike most stagaires, am focused on winning and making sure these kids do not get le mot dernier. Yesterday I walked down a whole street exchanging greetings as the child ran after me. I was bested! Evidently, if you grew up in a town where le mot dernier is the only thing to do, then you have more practice than a stubborn white girl. Did I mention the kid that I was doing battle with was probably 3, does that say anything about me?
Other updates- model school is over and my club de danse performs today, I get to dance on the side in the front because our girls asked because they are scared they’ll mess up! Well who says I wont mess up- its also the first time the other stagaires will see me dance which is not exciting for me- especially because my sports bra is still drying (too much info?). I am all about performing but I’m not totally confident at this point so I’m a little worried, but its all in fun and the girls are around 9-11 years old so the bar isn’t too high. There is one super ridiculous thing that me and Connie the other stagaire that essentially fixed the dance and made most of it and taught most of it- while I supported her, anyway while we were choreographing I encouraged her to add a ‘drop it like its hot’ move. If you know what this is the thought of a bunch of pre-teen Africans doing it will probably make you laugh or disappointed in me- but let me tell you, these kids are dancing sexy at much younger ages here. I think that if we didn’t add some sexy moves they would be disappointed, It’s also true that half of them came to model school to get a husband so what can you do- just go with the flow, I’ll help them developmentally when I get to my post, during stage I’m just learning the way of the locals.
In an exciting tidbit- I received 3 packages from my mother recently and it was like Christmas. I’ve never been so happy to see Frosted Mini wheats, shock tarts, and mac and cheese. I almost cried it was so exciting, it was the best Swearing In present. I also received a post card from Staci- I hope she is reading my blog because it made me so happy and it was so unexpected! You rock!
In other news, evidently if you want to be a teacher here you have to be a math wizard because nothing is computerized. I have spent the week calculating averages and weighting grades and stamping papers so they look official. I’m glad I have the practice though because my papers look like the white out monster attacked them- wow deleting a document and adding new numbers is so much more efficient than making friends with white out. I’ll try not to complain about the computerized public school systems in the US ever again, I have no problem sitting in front of a computer and inputting grades- bring it on!
Last night I had the best meal I have had in Cameroon. Lets talk food- Normally because my mother here has recognized that I am turning veggie and I’m super scared of their fish, she gives me veggies or cous cous with crazy sauce. Well last night we had company and they made spaghetti with fried eggs and peimont (red peppery stuff) and it tasted like pad tai or asian noodles. I ate so much that I was up all night trying not to die. My stomache has shrank quite a bit and I ate 3 bowls of this stuff. My family kept commenting that they’d never seen me eat so much and all of these crazy things! I’m not sure how it rivals the awesome sandwiches I have been making but I’ll tell you what- I’ll be making this at post, and I might add a bit of peanut sauce!

Everybody was Dancing

2008-08-03T02:49:00.000-07:00

You have to love Africa on Sunday morning. Everyone is going to church and they are all in their best clothes and the kids take off their shirts with the holes in them and their broken shoes and wear their one nice outfit and they all go to church. Somehow they all sit for 3 hours and listen to a very long sermon and sing and dance their hearts out. And me, I get up early and I go for a run. Often in the mornings it is lightly raining and I put on my trail running Nikes and I take off. I run to the football field which is really just a dirt clearing and I run laps and then I run up and down the hilly paved roads of Bangangte. It’s crazy because the people here all look in wonder, some look at my shoes and say in confirmation, “tu fais le sport?” “You are doing the sports?” They really like to point out the obvious here it sorta cracks me up and sometimes it makes me really annoyed. For instance, last week when I was washing my clothes my host cousin who has been living with us for a few weeks sat down and watched me and even took a picture of me saying, “Tu laves” yes I wash, its pretty amazing to see a white woman doing work I guess.

Anyway this morning was fabulous because I think I got some of my frustration out by taking my run. Its also great because the power and water are back on. Yesterday I used all of my computer battery on writing lesson plans and the final exam for the 6eme class I’m teaching but I really wanted to watch episodes of Alias. Have you seen that show? It’s awesome and I didn’t even like Jennifer Garner, but I do now! Go check it out, the pilot is amazing. Anyway, yesterday was also pretty sweet because I had my final test in French which determines if I am qualified to be a volunteer or if I have to stay behind for two weeks for more training (this would suck because I’d have no down time to move into my house before school starts and I wouldn’t be able to go to the cool parties we are going to have after swearing in). But my test went pretty well and I’m pretty sure I’ll go up one level and be able to move to my site with everyone else. Then later on Saturday we made chicken and onion rings! Oh yeah. I’ve taken to being one of the top chefs here in Bangangte because I like to feel useful. Also I’ve really stopped drinking a lot here and since most people are drinking beer and chit chatting during our Saturday soirees I feel like I am more useful in the kitchen. So I took over the onion ring duties and by the end of the night I was saturated with the onion smell, all of my clothes reeked of onions, but let me say- they were delicious. Another interesting change that I have encountered is that I think I’m going vegetarian. I’ve said this before but I thought back on it and I haven’t had a piece of meat (with the exception of 1 piece of chicken 4 weeks ago and maybe a piece or two of ham on a pizza I split with someone) for about 2 months. Yesterday we paid two local kids to kill 5 chickens for us and piece them and help us get them to unrecognizable pieces that we could eat. Let me just say- if you were there you wouldn’t eat it either. I have a picture and I’ll try to upload it and you can decide if you can identify the different body parts of our former farm friends.

So this week was a bit hard because we all received our instructions to go to site because we only have three weeks left of stage. Here’s what that means. In three weeks I say goodbye to the best friends I’ve made here who are going to Adamowa (the northern center province) and the North West ( on the coast of Africa- couldn’t be farther than me) and the the Extreme North (By Chad and in the hot section of Cameroon). Evidentally I thought it was a good idea to make friends with people who I will never see again. I feel like the last 6 months of my life have been spent saying good bye to people, and I get to do it again. Also, I’ve come to really love stage, and bangangte, and I have found a routine here that I love. I really enjoy teaching at the Model school and my host family, though sometimes loud and insane, are truly supportive and the most chill of all the host families. I am going to be very sad to say good bye to this part of my PC life. Also, I have much trepidation about my site, but I finally got the number to my post mate so I hope to ask her a ton of questions so my transition will be easier. It is going to be a little shocking to move to such a small town where Rachel and I are the only white people who speak English. We just had a meeting on diversity where we talked about how you don’t think you are diverse when you are a white female in America, but here I make up about .01% of the population. But I am trying not to dwell on the things I can’t control so I have created a list of things I’m excited about at my post:

1. Cooking for myself finally

2. Planting a garden

3. Having my own house with no roommates!

4. Really being immersed in French

5. I stole a ton of movies from my friends who burned them on their computer so I have those to watch.

6. I have internet on my computer now so I know I can be in touch with the people I love anytime

7. Reading! I plan on reading tons of books

8. Writing a play or two

9. Teaching at my new school and starting a theater club

10. Going to Batouri for Thanksgiving

Well that’s a far as I got, but it’s all good stuff to look forward to. If you want to get on Aim and chat for a while because you don’t have money for a phone card email me and let me know what day and time are good- remember it’s an 8 hour difference, but I really want to chat with you kids. I love you all I will write again soon!

Happy Go Lucky

2008-07-19T04:38:00.001-07:00

Greetings Toute le monde!
When you go to post and can't speak to everyone you come back with a new passion for learning french, for me its a bit of an obsession. I write new words on my hand and try to use them during the day and last night I had a crazy dream about a waterpark where one ride would kill you and the only way to live is to eat haricots- which is beans in french, so I dreamed one french word. Do you think I'm on the way to being fluent?

Before I go any farther I want to wish my mom a happy birthday or bonne anniversaire! I love you and if there were things worth buying in my small african town I would buy you some!

I digress... people keep telling me that my blogs scare the crap out of them - interesting tidbit the word for toad in french is crapeau or crapo it still makes me laugh- so I have decided to make an whole entry where I make you smile and envy africa.

Africa is not only tons colder than Arizona it also has amazing clouds and weather. Ive actually been wearing a hoodie the past few days.

After my time traveling I have no problem climbing out of a bus window running into the bushes and peeing- who among you can say that and still have dry feet?

I am now excited by the similest of things like the fact that our curfew is extended til 9 pm tonight instead of 7pm- its like christmas, the word for distrubing the class is deranging in french and for some reason it cracks me up and people say it all the time, yesterday i came home to my whole host family dancing in the living room to cameroonian music including the father mother aunts uncles cousins qnd kids- over 20 people. They then switched it to cElion Dion- this country is insane.

I dont watch tv almost at all here and i read a huge amount, im actually attempting to read a Cameroonian play in French Right now the title translates to: the sorrowful wedding party.

I just received my pooh bear stuffed animal in the mail from my mom and my happy level went up twelve points! I started a Firefly club and we watch episodes and last night we made mac and cheese- a sad first effort but we will use more seasoning next time.

I know have to go lesson plan for next week because I will be teaching 6eme or the equivalent of 6th grade here I hqve about 60 students and Im teaching them for two hours a day starting monday! Im exciting to give it a go but discipline here is a real problem so I working on my scary face. I'm off the clean my clothes in a bucket and to hang them up before the sun hides again. love you all, love the emails! Send me more news on the electrions and any news you want to share. How was the batman movie?

love
et

Head to Toe in Dust

2008-07-13T16:25:00.001-07:00

I'm back from site visit!!!!!
So it turns out that everyone gets really freaked out on site visit and doesnt know what to do! My site visit was horrendously memorable. Where to start... Well we left Bangangte on Wednesday and ended up staying in Yaounde on Wednesday night. The case (said like cause) is this frat-like house in Yaounde that has a kitchen and a punch of hostel type rooms with beds, adn the best part is that it has hot water for showers adn a washer and dryer! Who is jealous? So while we were there we ate pizza and I had a hamburger (no one is sure of the meat but it was delicious). We also ate lots of french frys. Then on Thursday we gotup crazy early and went to Bertoua (the provincial capital of the East) This trip was on a bus which should hold 18 people but held about 30 and it was horribly hot and with the delays adn the stoppign it took about 6 hours to go 250 KM (thankfully the road there is actually paved). Then we stayed in Bertoua with a local volunteer and had a coupel of drinks at the bar adn saw the bigger townt that will be about 5-10 hours away from us dependign on travel conditions. Then we got up super early again and took the car to Batouri the town which is pretty big where my friends Lisa and Trevor will be posted. We had lunch there (2 oefs for me and some fufu or cous cous for my counterpart- I was travleing with the Censeur or Vice Principal of my school).

After Batouri we finally left again at 3pm and a drive that is only 100KM that shoudl take no more than 2 hours took 7 hours because the roads were so bad and the car kept breaking down. You know its bad when people have to run behind a car to get it to start adn that when they lift the hood it billows smoke regularly. I'll never complain on car trips int eh States again!

Finally we got into Ndelele my new home for the next two years and let me just say I was a bit freaked out. There is one main road and 1 hotel, 1 radio station, adn about 50 houses. Its a town of 5000 adn looks liek a ghost town. I ended up meeting the Proviseur who many people tell me that he likes to abuse his position adn make the studetns sleep with him! Of course we are all disgusted but here that is pretty normal. So knowing that it was very odd to share a beer with the man. I think I already made some mistakes while at my post (even though I was there for only 14 hours) I told them I'm not a vegetarian and they got super excited which means I will be given creepy bush meat for the next couple of years.

Some good things about my post are that my house is very cute and slightly small but I'm in a very small compound with 3 neighbors who will evidentally take care of me. There is a local nurse who lives next to me and a primary school teacher. My kitchen is outside of my house which is sort of odd but I think because I have two bedrooms I might just make one into the kitchen seeing as how I have no running water so I'll just put a table in there and my gas powered two burner stove. Teh other good thing is that it comes with a kitchen table and chairs, a couch, a book shelf, and a bed! These are all great things because moving stuff in Cameroon as you can imagine will be insane.

So I'm happy about my house, I am totally freaked out about how small my town is thruogh. I asked what kind of foods are good there and evidentally Mangos during the season are everywhere adn you can always get fresh pineapple. Also you can get plaintains adn coco yams all the time but no pototatoes. It sounds like the soil is really furtile thought so I guess I'm trying my hand at a vegetable garden so I can get some good things in my diet. Anyway, I'm feeling better about my life and sorry to Dad who called me when I was staying in Ndelele when I was sort of freaked out. I'm better now and lookign to all the oppurtunities that the village has.

Lastly, After walking around Ndelele and seeing my house and my school- that is a whole nother description. I went to the gandarms (police barracade at the end of the village- a 3 minute walk) and waited to hitch a ride back to Batouri to spend the night at Matty's house- the heath volunteer who has been here for 8 months. I ended up getting a ride in a Semi Truck which was hauling huge trees that looked liek old red-woods. It was a very odd ride because we picked up a chicken on the way and I had to hold him between my feet! However, I foudn out that the ride in a semi took only 2 hours because it blasts through the horrible divits in the road with its huge engine, and it doesnt have to stop every other minute to let someone off or pick someoen up.

When I got to Batouri the volunteers talked me off my ledge and we made fetticini and drank wine and I stole all of Matty's music and put it on my ipod. After the power went out we sat around chattign for some time adn then we got up super early again and traveled for 12 hours today. I am not in Yaounde adn we leave tomorrow to go hoem to Bangangte~ Wow I didnt think I'd be so happy to go home, but I'm super tired adn want my own space for a while. The good thigns is that I"ll have clean clothes because I'm washing them now in the electric washer!!!

The last thing I want to recount is how we looked when we finally walked into the Case at 10pm tonight. First of all the roads from Batouri are nto paved adn we sat by the windows in the car so I had a layer of red dust all over me. It looked like we all had the worst tans every and had aged 4 years. It was so bad that when I touched my face my hand came away covered in dust. It took a good 15 minute shower to get it all off adn I am still discolored in places. Oh the East! This is going to be an adventure!

We dont beat them to kill them

2008-07-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

Greetings once more from bangangte, I am writing earlier this week because I travel to my new home on wednesday. I will be living in the East almost exactly on the border of the Central Republic of the Congo and Cameroon. IT is a rainforest and from what i gather I will be seeing manu gorillas. I am very excited because it will be the real peace corpse experience but i guess i will really be roughing it. Today I met my counterpart who is the local community memeber that traveled here for the workshop before helping me travel to my site. HE told me that I have a house ready for me and that it has two rooms, a salon or living room, a kitchen, and that we get water from a well and the electricity only comes on for about 4 hours a day, when it does come on. I am assured I will have service, i f not in my house in the village. I will be living about 15 miles from another peace corp member who lives outside of the forest, but i guess we are seperated by a large river that you have to take a canoe across because there are no bridges- welcome to the third world!

Some other things I learned today that were unsettling were the following:
1 many counterparts thought that we were going to invest our own money into the village and that we were bringing a lot of financial backing with us, I dispelled this rumor by explaining my debt after I laughed a long time, then I was chastized for not speaking French and talking too fast

2 When told we couldnt use corpral punishment a counterpart leaned over to my friend joe and said "sometimes you will want to punch the kids, and you are able to do that, but we dont hit to kill." Oh good, im glad they have priorities

3 We are only supposed to teach 12-18 hours a week because it will take us double that time to prep and to grade hundreds of papers, but the counterparts got very mad because I guess we are the only english teachers at a lot of schools for instance my town only has 1500 people in it and our school only has 500 kids so i think im the only teacher, but they didnt understand that xe have other goals as pc members like creating girls groups, teaching about AIDS, and creating theatre groups - well maybe just me with that one. So we have a lot of responsibibilites and teaching cant be the sole one.

4. They think we might be spies from the US to which I reply in teh Following with my espionage goals for Cameroon:

1 Take all the information from the Pygmies and train Star Wars like foot soldiers to swing from trees and attack enemies
2 Catch all infected mosquitos in Cameroon and release them in our enemies locker rooms or gentlemans clubs
3 Buy all the 3rd world country piece of crap pens and switch them with our enemies quality bics so that we dry up their ideas
4 Learn Pidgin English -essentially ebonics- and teqch to yound children in Americq iso the man can continue keeping the less fortunate down
5 Steal all of the monkeys and send them into space to travel or do our bidding

Thats why the peace corps would send spies to Cameroon because of all their useful information!

Something really good that I learned today:
My counterpart studied in Scotland and speaks fluent English
HE loves theatre and wants to create a group with performances- this is why i think I was sent here
HE has written 2 books and he wants me to read them
He has 4 kids and took in 2 more becaus they didnt have the means for education
He doesnt seem overly religious and he is supportive

So these are all good things!

Love you all- Send me some news!

Celebrating America in lAfrique

2008-07-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

so this weeks post was a bit of a downer and i wanted to make sure everyone knows that things are going great here! i learn where my placement site is tomorrow and this will be my home for the next two years. i also have a language assessment and im a little nervous. sorry this post is shorter the power keeps going out when i have time to go to the internet and it is very frustrating. I went into town yesterday and contracted a tailor to make me two outfits out of the local pagne or fabric- cant wait to post some pictures i need to get some time when i can upload things. I did want to report that the first stagaire out of 38 officially has malaria and typhoid, we otld her she is playing oregon trail and losing. she will be fine though because the malaria we get is less severe because of the drugs we take daily. im feeling pretty good and my family seems cool with me being a vegetarian at their house. yesterday I ordered a new sandwich concoction where i got two dinner type rolls put canned to,mato sauce on it and this creepy sausage that tasted like bologna who knows if il die from it but it wasnt half bad. happy fourth of july everyone! the PCTs are trying to get a fete together but god knows if it will work, they want to grind their own meat for burgers- heres hoping.

love you all and miss you-et

i am a grown ass man

2008-07-02T09:12:00.001-07:00

1st of July, 2008
I’m in my room right now working on my Scheme of Work- or weekly lesson plans for the upcoming model school . I’m working with my friend Matt on the 5eme (Cinqieme- or the equivalent of a junior high class ). Let me set the scene for you so you can picture me here in Cameroon. I am listening to my ipod on which is plugged into my speakers and its playing softly as I work. It has to be soft so my little sisters and brothers don’t run in here and start dancing- even if it would be to the likes of Damien Rice- not the shake your groove things I think they want. I’m munching on my 12th cookie of the day- no joke! I eat so many bisquits here I think I’m going to turn into the Cookie Monster and then my Sesame Street friends will have to have an intervention and I’ll become the Legume Monstre! For dinner I had some rice and this sauce de tomate- which is really just tomatoes some spices and half a fish- hot. However, this is one of my favorite thigns because I can just eat rice with a little of this sauce and if the power goes out my family won’t notice that I’m not eating the fish that they have prepared for me. I’m still working on not gagging when I find little bones or ‘spears’ as I call them, but I think they are little fish tusks that get caught in the body while you are eating. On my desk is a bottle of Tangui- also known as the bottled water here that keeps us from getting sick on the local water- even though I’m filtering mine now and that seems to be going well. I also have my glass of Cameroonian red wine I’m working because today has been a long day. Next to me sits my cell phone that might be the most unused things I own. I only have to plug it in on Sundays because I never use the battery – except for the occasional text from my friends here who want to know if my power is off or my water is off or what I had for dinner. Also on my desk are- millions of books about French and English teaching, hand sanitizer-almost out, flaws, my measuring cups that I use to keep my bobbie pins in and my American pen which makes me the envy of all the students.
Today was a rough day and I’m glad I’m getting to journal about it because I think I need to decompress. We had no language class today, though I did do some tutoring with my fearsome Cameroonian counterpart Sonya! Today was 8 hours of knowledge about HIV and AIDS or VIH and SIDA (the French equivalent). I ended the day with a testimonial from two Cameroonians who are living with the disease. Talk about intense~ The testimonials really took it out of everyone- but I don’t think they were what I was expecting. The first gentleman was about 30 or so and had 7 children and was the principal of a high school. His story started when he started getting petit maladies (little sicknesses) and he kept being away from the school. Well he was in the hospital once and his boss came and had them run an AIDS test behind his back and found out that it was positive. Then the newspaper got ahold of the news and everyone in his town and area knew about his illness- except he did not know. He got fired from his job and people started treating him different and they wouldn’t touch him or shake his hand. Finally someone came over and asked if he was the man in the paper and he finally read the article that told him he had AIDS- he didn’t even know after the whole village had. His mother and whole family abandoned him and his wife died soon after and his 18 year old son blamed him for her death. The village gave up on his children because they assumed they were ‘as good as dead’ though they were tested and they weren’t infected. Though he did have triplet girls who were 9 months old when their mother died. He can’t get work and now travels from place to place doing testimonials because there is no risk for him because everyone already knows about his disease because it is so publicized. He lost all of his friends and his family still won’t speak to him. However, he has an amazing amount of strength and smiled the whole time he was very religious and kept talking about how this was his cross to bear, though he didn’t know how he contracted it. He thought it might be because his grandma used the same knife to cut out the chiggers from the local kids feet, or the dirty knife that was used during scarification (a tribal practice much like tattooing where they make scars to symbolizing things).
The woman who testified told us that her husband was from yaounde (the political capital) and she should have known he was a cheater. He slept with many women and infected her but she forgave him soon after he died and she found out. She had 3 children and they all crowded around her and her son who was 6 went to school and ended up getting into a fight with another kid because he was defending his mother when other children were calling her names. The woman was a hair dresser but all of her clients left here and her whole family disowned her when she was diagnosed, they called her a prostitute and told her it was her fault.
The stigma here is insane and people get called prostitutes or they are thought to have offended God and that is how they got the disease. Others believe the white man brought the disease to Africa to sell condoms! There are so many problems that seem so odd and foreign to me. For instance, it is very common for a very old man to pay a very young her for sex and he becomes her ‘sugardaddy’ and many girls do this because they need someone to pay their school fees. Oftentimes the man has many STIs and ends up infecting the girl who was probably a virgin.
I know that this will definetly be one of my focuses while I’m here and I hope to make a womans group where we can talk about these issues.

Ponderings

2008-06-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Bangangte week three,
So here is the news I have been made the leader of the education group which really means they tell me things first and then i circulate the news and that i have more responsibility. Unfortunately there are no perks like the first to get the good cut of meat or anything like that, but what can you do. Also last Saturday we had a potluck and I made Bruchetta which was delicious with all fresh ingredients, and I helped make this amazing salsa that we at with tortilla chips that we made, they sorta tasted like indian frybread but what can you do? Connie my friend from Austin made banana pancakes and they were devine and Doug from TX made breakfast burritos oh man, along with a few whiskey sachets- whiskey sold in a plastic bag- life was good. Another development is that my youngest siblings are on vacation visiting family for the next week which really sucks because they are who I relate to and they seem to understand me best. Also, my father who is a school principal is having all of the big wigs over tomorrow night for a big dinner and its going to be really awkward because my language is so bad and i offered to help cook, little did i know there were 38 of them- anyone want to help? I openned garlic for about an hour last night!

A note on my mental health: So i guess we are now in stage two of culture shock, stage one is where you are totally jazzed about everything and so excited to do and see anything different, now stage 2 is where you notice all the differences and get frustrated. Here are the things i am frustrated about:

not understanding the language or being understood
the food oh my the food
the mud- its everywhere and constant
living with a family with very little alone time
showering with my new friends- the many bugs that inhabit the bathroom
not being able to pick up the phone and talk to people
No news- no paper that isnt run by the government and very little american news- i should have bought a short wave radio
no internet- well very little of it
no candy- i freaking love candy

okay i think those are my biggest grips and dont get me wrong i totally love what im doing and love the people, but i guess the novelty is beginning to wear off a bit. However it is good to note that im starting to type faster on this french computer, that im beginning to not flinch when a fish head is put before me, that the mud is a companion and not an enemy, that sometimes the internet is running crazy fast like today, and sometimes you get to eat tortilla chips that took 3 hours to make.

Also yesterday I watched Jurassic Park with some friends- Cameroonian and American and it was awesome, then i ate dinner that consisted of cous cous -or foo foo- and a sauce that looked and had the consistency of snot- ahh Cameroon.

One more observation- the bathroom at the Lycee Technique -the high school we have our classes at- has quite the myrid of critters living in it, and when you have sometime in it, which i do often because all the food/drink here does not play well with my stomache, you get to play a game of name the bugs. Here is the low down- under the sink is a huge spider that has caught a big fly and he still hasn't eaten it after 2 weeks, i find myself wondering why. Next, there is a huge wasps nest, yet no wasps, where are those darn things, also there is a gecko or cameleon- who knows that really seems content at watching me wach it, or is it waiting to eat the spiders meal or has it already eaten the wasps, either way this is what i found myself thinking as i was sitting there in Africa in a bathroom that most of you wouldnt throw a rock at let alone spend some quality time in.

I love you and miss you and i miss the food we could be eating together- call me and continue with the emails- By the Way- Where is chad?

yay a blog with spell check

2008-06-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

Blog June 16th, 2008
It is now my 13th day of being a PCT (Peace Corps Trainee) and it feels like I have been here for years. The friendships I have made feel like they will last forever, if not for the reason that we are the only ones who will understand the process we are going through, then because the people here have fabulous values and great courage. I wrote a bit in my journal today and since it’s so hard to get on the internet here and get anything done I am writing my post up before I actually post it so hers what I’ve written so far:

Observations: They eat fish for breakfast here- It’s like living in an episode of Heathcliff. This morning I was given a whole fish and I had to eat it while it looked at me- My mama ate the head thank god! The water goes on and off sometimes for an hour and sometimes for a day and it makes same wonder how you can get used to everyday feeling special and humbling- I guess you forget what it’s like to depend on tabs that you always assume will work. The lights or power go off almost every night unexpectedly and I’m constantly recalling and evening when my whole family was home and I was about 14 or maybe younger and we were still living on Golden Lane in Peoria. The lights and power went off for about hours
because of a wicked thunderstorm and Dad was in a playful mood. WE ended up eating cold tacos, playing blind man’s bluff, and flashlight. I remember dad telling stories about his childhood and us laughing around the flickering glow of candles. It felt like a holiday and very much like a one-time thing as Ethan would call it. I can still remember the experience vividly with some details that have been softened with time. For some reason I am transported to that memory ever time the lights go out and we light our candles at my house in Cameroon. Maybe it’s the intense feeling of family that is present at my host family’s house or maybe the kids feel the same excitement and like the distraction from their everyday routine, but I get excited when the French voices on the TV are silenced and a game of dark Uno ensues. It’s a very odd thing to be adopted into a family when they really don’t know you. Of at least they don’t know the you that you were in the US for the past 23 years.
Other observations, as we sit in French class and the obstinate rooster or le coq crows insensately I cannot help but smile or giggle. I am reminded of the children’s toy where you wind the arrow and whatever animal it lands on the toy cried “The rooster says- cock-a-doodle-doo” Where the heck did we get that interpretation of the noise. Evidentially, no American who teaches animal sounds to children has ever been to Cameroon and met my annoying friend. Other daily observations include the fact that the mud her is dull rust red and when it is smeared on my terribly white legs it looks like cuts or blood like I’m being physically assaulted by the very earth of this country. Also it is almost impossible to keep your fee clean. Sorry lieutenant Dan. You might as well give up because cleanly feet will not last. Even washing my shoes seems silly when every morning it rains and fresh mud can be found ready to cake my feet in its mixture of bloody earth.
Now these are my daily observations. I think about as I continue developing my routine here. There are other things that are quite surprising for instance take a look at the following quotes I have comprised from the various sessions we have taken here:
“If the driver is drunk- get out of the car”
“How often is the driver drunk?” (Trainers look around laughing, “Often”)
“If the bus kills someone it will stop.”
“Watch out for goat pee and if you are sitting by the window keep your mouth closed.”
“Visits from men after dark equal a sexual relationship, except for two white people.”
“Smoking outside for women means you’re a prostitute”
That’s just a few tidbits, there are some very scary/hilarious ones from our medical classes but you don’t want the details.
Some other scary things about my Education Training in particular:
1. They aren’t encouraging differential instruction- they just lecture and note take- yuck
2. Most people haven’t taught before so they don’t think about learning- they think about information instead and not how to present it in an interesting way
3. There are no art classes here. There may be music or dance groups but no theater in Cameroon but Yaoundé has a theater being built for music programs and lectures- ouch.
4. No ART IN CURRICULUM but they do have manual labor=- no joke it’s on the schedule
5. Their “special ed” kids are in special schools and this includes kids with minor physical disabilities, emotional disabilities aren’t even classified.
6. Not all kids have books or pens or seats and the classroom desks are very uncomfortable and crowded
7. They also have a discipline master who hits the kids when they are bad with a rubber lasso type thing or a switch- nice.
That’s about all I have for right now but I think it’s enough to make you interested in what I’m doing here.

thank you to everyone who has emailed me it takes me a 20minute walk and then a 1 hour wait and then the computers are super slow so checking email is way worth it when you give me exciting info. note its really hard to read the comments on the blog because it takes a long time to load so email is the best right now also dont tell me about the good food you are eating or ill stop talking to you also look for me on google if you want to chat and call me

yesterday i played soccer and i have a war aound on my leg its awesome i am truely horrible at that insane game

ok love you all

In Cameroun!

2008-06-09T08:57:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. I have made it to Cameroon, yay finally! I am currently in the Peace Corps office in Yaounde where they have toilet seats, American keyboards and fancy guards with guns. I'm safe!

Some observations since I've been here:
There are a lot of car accidents in teh big city and there are no traffic laws, lights, signs, or even dividers on the road adn the honking is constant any time of day.

There are huge lizards everywhere that are black and orange- My family might remember when we were in the pet store and that lizard scared the poo out of me and I jumped five feet, well I handled these better.

Some other things include how big the beers are here! They are double the size of home, and they cost about 1. 50 in american money.

Some things I"m not so excited about are the fact that the amount of diseases and specifically interesting parasites that we are learning about. Let's just say I think I'm coming back with a stronger stomach.

I miss you all and love you all adn think about you often. Last night I couldn't sleep (jet lag) so I listened to my Ipod adn certain songs remind me of certain people- it was like being home.

Technology didn't corrupt the world it brought us together- that's what I decided.

The national motto here is :Nous sommes ensemble: We are together. People say it when they are leaving each other sort of like when Heman says Good Jouney and not goodbye, except this is awesome because it's in French, anyway I love you all I will hopefully blog again soon I have a video to show of you a swarm of bats!

Love Elyse

Greetings from Philly- the filthy city with few smiles to give.

2008-06-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

I am currently in my room in the beautiful Holiday Inn wasting some time before checking out. We leave today on a 6:45pm flight where we will fly for 7 hours and 40 minutes to Paris and then another 8 hours to Yaounde, Cameroon. WE also get to wait 5 hours before leaving in the airport in Philly because we have no where to go after the hotel kicks us out. Honestly I can't wait to get there. The last two days have been all about giving us some basic information we will need and answering some questions for us, but overall it just wet our appetite for wanting to get in country.

The interesting thing is my training class- we are 38 people! That's a lot of new friends. We are all doing Secondary Education- English or Science teachers or Small Enterprise Development. We have about 15 boys, which is better than can be expected I think. On a side note we were told the first day that a lot of people meet their future spouse in the peace corps- talk about some pressure adn anxiety suddenly felt around the room (but i guess they said that about college too)! The boys are an interesting bunch some are very focused on sports, some seem to enjoy video games, some have taken the hippie route and some look like Clark Kent because everyone has reverted to glasses here.

The girls are a wide bunch of personalities and I am really excited to get to know them, one or two remind me of my girls back home and a few more remind me of my Lexington friends. It's interesting what states are represented we have 3 from Seattle (yes i know that isn't a state), 3 from Austin, about 7-8 from Ohio, 10 Maine ppl, 5 NYers, 2 NJ's, Lots from Louisiana and 1 from Kentucky, some Michigan folks, 1 Arizonian (me), 2 from Oregon, and 1 Californian (I guess they like their pollution too much- take that Ethan), 1 from St. Louis that was telling me was voted one of the most dangerous cities in the US- her car got stolen and lit on fire-, 1 from Chicago, a couple Philly ppl, and others from D.C., Iowa, Tennessee etc. We're from all over, but the west coast isn't really represented.

There is one funny thing I wanted to share, we were doing a get to know you introduction game and one of the questions was "what is something weird that you packed?" Now, we got second place with our team because a girl brought Fraggle Rock DVDs (an old tv show on Nickelodeon) and I was up there with my Tick Key bought for me from my bros (it's a metal bottle opener looking thing that you can remove ticks easily with- thanks guys). However, the best was submitted from a gentleman whose grandma gave him a huge liter of holy water. Evidentially she poured it all over her bags and he is now carrying it around. He said it just looks like a jug with a cross on it. I guess everyone gets their peace of mind in different ways and I'm glad his grandma is passing around the blessings.

Well I guess that's it for me. I should arrive in country in the evening on Saturday night. I start my Malaria medication today and I got my Yellow Fever vaccine so I'm ready to hit it and quit it. Here is my official good bye to warm showers, smelling decent, soft fluffy pillows, quality meat, flip flop wearing, television, the wireless internet, ice, not living out of a suit case, and bagels. I will miss it all but I'm sure it won't measure up to the insanity of living in Africa with a bunch of like minded people for the next 10 weeks. You should hear from me in the next few days, we will be staying in the capital and I will have access to internet.

Love you all,
Elyse 2008 volunteer in the 'Roon

Parlez-Vous avec moi?

2008-05-19T19:00:00.000-07:00

Greetings Friends,
Salut Amis,

I have two weeks left so I wanted to give you my address and all of my contact information. If you are sending me something there are a list of dos and don'ts. All mail takes about 2-3 weeks to get to me and sometimes up to 6 weeks so don't get sad if I don't get it right away. Make sure you read through the following lists because if you don't my stuff might be stolen or stopped by crazy mail inspectors.

(I'm getting this information right from the PC Cameroon)

Mail Contact

Do list

1. Send mail through Air mail
2. Mark all Mail: AIR MAIL and PAR AVION
3. If you are sending letters Number them because I might get them out of order
4. If sending packages, "bubble envelopes" work best. If sending any food items, put them inside a ziploc bag. This will reduce chances that bugs or rodents will devour them.
5. Mark Packages Honestly on the outside so greedy postal workers aren't interested for instance:general description of the contents is sufficient: "clothing and candy" rather than "Nike high top sneakers and 2 lbs. Godiva chocolate."

Don't List

1. Don't send something that you would be really upset if it got stolen (for instance: a baby or priceless diamond toe ring)
2. Send mail through Surface Mail- it can take up to 2 years to arrive
3. Send Heavy things: There is a tax which Volunteers will have to pay on all packages received before they can retrieve them from the post office. This tax varies according to the size of the package. It might be a nice gesture from friends or family to send a six-pack of Mountain Dew, but it may cost a Volunteer up to $10.00 to get it out of the post office.

My Address for the next 10 weeks:
Elyse Tussey
Peace Corps Trainee
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 215
Yaoundé, Cameroon

Computer Contact

Keep in mind that the time change is 8 hours ahead.
My primary email is: tussey.elyse@gmail.com
I will try to be on AIM where my name is: Theatreet6
And you can find me on SKYPE by searching for my email address: tussey.elyse@gmail.com and we can talk live- like a phone for no money! (download this now:http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/)
(I have a video camera as well as a head set so if you get a head set we can talk for free)

Phone Contact

It costs a lot of money to call from Cameroon to the states so I will probably call you and then you can call me back on an international phone card. I will also be getting a cell phone in Cameroon but the signal may not be very good and I'll be mostly using it in country but I'll let you know the number when I get that. The internet is going to be the easiest way to get a hold of me.

Well that was a lot of information but I hope it was thorough. Let me know if any of this isn't clear!

Discovering my former wisdom

2008-05-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

So I've been looking through all of my education folders to see what might be useful in Cameroon and I came across this list I have created. I detail a lot of things I've learned thus far in my life and I thought it would be fun to share it with you. Though I'm not sure how many of these will be useful in Africa.

Things I've learned:
1. Relationships are not always chocolates and roses. Your smile is not always adored, every kiss is not like the first. Every phone conversation doesn't end up with an "I love you". When you realized these things and stop expecting everything to be perfect is when you will being to realize how wonderful the special moments are.

2. No correspondence is ever as good as a letter you get in the mail.

3. It is always better to brush your teeth twice ad ay then once.

4. If you have an opportunity to give, take it.

5. Never think your vote doesn't matter, it does.

6. You aren't always right.

7. Admitting your mistakes is hard but necessary to learn.

8. When something is scary, it's always more fulfilling when you are facing it, than when you run away.

9. Never underestimate the love of an animal.

10. Coloring is always fun, especially if you aren't color blind.

11. Being cheesy is cute.

12. I probably would be a millionaire if I saved all the quarters I put in candy/video game/sticker machines.

13. Nail polish on your toes always makes you feel attractive.

14. Friends can help you through anything.

15. Doing something that has to be done will always be better if you do it right away, then it doesn't loom over you.

16. Don't hold on to things that aren't yours anymore.

17. Refrigerate Chicken Salad.

18. Don't spill juice on electronics and then turn them on, multiple times.

19. A single bed does not two sleep.

20. Get yourself a stuffed animal. They don't cost very much. They give you unconditional love and endless snuggling.

21. If the temperature in yoru room is perfect, you sleep a lot better.

22. Always check for toilet paper before going ot the potty.

23. Anything can be shaken out of a vending machine when its stuck if you are dedicated to shaking it out.

24. Always be early to work.

25. If you are paying for your food get what you know you like, if someone else id payign for your food try something new and expand your horizons.

26. Cussing doesn't make you sound smart.

27. You can never go home again.

28. Friends are what keep you sane.

29. Everybody needs therapy in one way or another.

30. Always wear shoes in a bathroom that isn't yours.

31. Music can affect your mood, utilize its powers of persuasion.

32. Listen to those who have experience, many times you will not understand but when you finally do you will smile and remember that they told you so.

33.You will never appreciate your parents until you are older and see them as people and not parents.

34. Don't judge too quickly you burn bridges, burn opportunities, and never change.

35. Comfortable shoes can make or break your day.

36. Talking yourself out of exercising will always be a disservice to yourself.

It's all happening.

2008-05-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

So I just got back from Congress with Jaime and I looked in my mail box to find my staging packet. This is the last packet the pc will send before I depart. Now the crazy thing is that it includes my itinerary as well as my actual flight information to get to Cameroon. How weird is it that I am actually booked on a flight to Africa!

I was hanging out with my friend Dave tonight who is leaving his teaching job at a local high school to go to grad school for English Education and he hasn't been sleeping very well do to some anxiety he is having. He is going to NYU for his graduate studies so moving to the big city can be daunting. I realized that I have yet to have an anxiety dream or really big freak out so far. This is very unlike me because I have anxiety dreams before and during every new job that I've had or lesson that I introduce. Yet, right now I have yet to really let it hit me that I will actually be in Africa in less than a month.

A piece of paper in front of me says "at 5:05pm on Januarey 08th I will be in Douala, Cameroon starting my training. I'll be flying through Paris. Paris! Who does this?

Anyway, I guess it's all happening.

The first blog

2008-04-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

In my mind blog is something you do after a bottle of wine, a French baguette, and some brie. Alas, it is time for me to join the ranks of the bloggers so that I can tell as many people that want to hear about my experiences in Cameroon. I thought I would start writing about my experiences from about 6 weeks from departure, because anticipation makes things 10 times sweeter.

I really went through the ringer when it comes to being invited to the corps. It turns out that I had a stop on my medical and I probably wasn't going to be able to go. However, about a month ago I finally explained the circumstances to my doctor and she wrote a notes to the corps explaining that I'm good to go. I then got told that I passed my medical and I would know in two weeks. Then I waiting for two weeks and called the corps and they told me it will be another two weeks and I explain that my lease is up and I will graduate in three weeks and I need to know what I'm doing with my life.

Then, about a half hour later I get a return call from a higher up in the corps and I hear that my folder has been processed and that I will be going to Cameroon to teach English and AIDS education. I'm primarily a Theatre Teacher so I am also focused on implementing some Theater for Social Change when I'm over there. Needless to say I am currently in the process of jamming as many French vocabulary words and grammar rules in my head as possible and I'm doing an insane amount of paperwork.

A week and a two days until I'm done student teaching.
Three weeks until I graduate
6 weeks until I leave for West Africa