8pm, Saturday October 8, 2011

Note to my fourth-grade self: Mosquito nets only make you feel like a princess for the first two days. After that, it really wears on you: the inability to use your bed as a table, shelf, yoga mat, ironing board, seating for guests, and what have you. In a continent known to most Americans has having very little, it’s amazing what does and does not get on your nerves. In many ways, life with my host family in Bafia is much more comfortable than I expected: a room to myself, large enough for a standard-sized bed, desk, and room to move around (ish), a “normal” bathroom (though running water is rare), water within easy walking distance, and a host family that is very conscious of health and sanitation. There’s more than enough food for me to eat, and much more privacy than I had braced myself for. If anything, my nearly negligent culture shock so far could more likely be contributed to WHO I live with, rather than their culture contrasting with mine. I am currently dependent on a 72-year-old woman (Maman Lydie), a middle-aged man (her son), a 17-year old (her nephew), and a 4-year-old (her grandson). Slowly, I’m learning to live as they do, cooking, doing laundry, shopping, riding moto-taxis, and eating Cameroonaise cuisine with them. Oh yeah, and it’s all in French.

So back to the mosquito net. I’m lying on my thin-but-sufficient mattress, freshly “showered” (bucket bath) and sore from Thursday’s game of soccer with a couple of other Americans, a few Cameroonian PC staff members, and a couple neighborhood kids. The game was the first real physical exercise I’d partaken in since my arrival in Cameroon two weeks ago, and the late afternoon equatorial sun beat down through the heavy clouds. An hour of scrambling left us all panting and thirsty, happy and hungry. The short walk home with my 17-year-old host-nephew became an even shorter run as the rain started sprinkling in fat drops, then pouring. The horizon remained clear, the setting sun’s light pouring sideways from the hills onto Bafia’s rich, treed landscape. Jumping over orange puddles and laughing, we clambered onto the porch just before the rain became a violent torrent.

But that was two days ago. Every day in PST feels like a week of life in the U.S. Surrounded by my fellow trainees by day and my Cameroonian family by night, I hardly have motivation to spend any time alone. There’s a great deal to learn from all angles: the informative language, cross-cultural, and technical training sessions, my fellow PCTs, and the Cameroonian people. I feel immersed in an environment of passionate, capable, and warm people. But don’t be fooled: it’s every bit as emotionally challenging as I anticipated. Just as any given day feels many times longer than a normal one, each brings with it several layers of excitement, doubt, frustration, hope, passion, and progress.

For now the schedule is quite busy. We have training sessions from 8am to 4:30pm Monday through Friday, plus Saturday mornings, along with a 7pm curfew, and the limitations of frustratingly short daylight hours. So far, my day usually turns out to be something along the following lines:

5:45-6am Dawn. Up and At’em. No choice: Roosters out back. Prep for the day.

6:45am Breakfast. Usually instant coffee with sugar, fresh bread, and an orange.

7:30am Walk to “school” with my American neighbors.

8:00am Training Sessions. Vary according to the day. Often one French and one Technical session in the morning, with a 15 min coffee/tea break between.

12:30pm Lunch. Served by local women and brought to the training site for us. For the low cost of 1mille (approx. $2, or $1 if I don’t take meat) I can heap my plate full of rice, beans, pasta, fish, beef, chicken, fried plantains, feuille de manioc, a hot pickled cabbage/veggie salad, and more.

4:30pm School’s out. Hang out with other trainees until sundown, usually at the neighborhood boutique.

6:30pm Head home. Clean up, etc.

7-8pm Help cook supper, set the table, and eat with the family. Often a more basic form of what’s served at lunch. Sometimes I get spaghetti. Chat with the family; topics like gender roles, politics, airplane mechanics. You know, the norm.

8:30pm Journal, read, scratch bug bites, sweat.

Whenever, but definitely before 10pm Accidentally fall asleep while in the midst of doing aforementioned activities.

So that’s that. I feel like I’m a little bit on information-overload for now, and I can’t begin to summarize all I’d like to write about, but the next several weeks promise to be a very important and intense passage into my two years of Peace Corps service. Feel free to post questions and comments, and I’ll try to be somewhat diligent about responding.

Also, if you’d like to send mail, you can reach me at the following address:

PEARSON Laura Pearson

C/O Corps de la Paix

B.P. 215

Yaoundé, Cameroon