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
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Holidays in Cameroon
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
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
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
What's up with November?
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
Friday, November 20, 2009
Sharing some Pictures
Okay here is the Halloween CrewI 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
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
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
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Bertoua living the high life
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
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
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