Written: 14.10.09

His eyes are docile: slow moving but attentive in their own way. They linger on me or my fellow trainee for long after either of us finishes speaking. Perhaps they judge the truth or sincerity in our words, perhaps they probe us to divulge further. But I’m not confident in my French, so I look away and take another drink of the beer he bought me—a Tuborg Gold.

He again offers us a cigarette, but we decline. He’s a businessman in Yaounde—the capital—but he comes from Bamena—where we’re staying. He becomes confused when I offer to light his cigarette with my lighter. You don’t smoke? he asks in French. No. It’s for my…my… I search for the word, …my…candles, when the electricity doesn’t work. Ah, he nods, that slow nod that keeps his half-open eyes fixed on me. Ah, that nod says, I understand.

We talk at length about soccer, the beauty of the Western Region, the Peace Corps, and what we want to do afterwards. My companion mostly talks; I listen and look around while the businessman alternates his gaze between us and takes drags on his cigarette. Et vous? he asks me when the last subject rises. Je ne sais pas, I start and then mumble something about going back to school. Mais, I want to say but don’t, c’est beaucoup des choses faire—-there are so many things to do.

An African Blessing

After we landed at the airport in Yaounde, we packed into like 6 or 7 Land Rovers, Land Cruisers and vans. I was in one that only had a front seat and a back seat as the rest of the back was full of our back packs and we crammed four people into the backseat, “Africa-style” as they said. This small girl named Christina was sitting in the front and had the whole passenger’s seat to herself, she kept asking if somebody wanted to get in there with her because she felt bad that she had that whole seat to herself. As we were pulling away, a peace corps worker named Tiki stopped the car and hopped in with her, so she sat on the console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. We all laughed and the driver said in his heavily accented English, “Welcome to Cameroon.”
As we were driving into the city it started to rain, slow at first--big fat drops that smacked against the windshield with a crack. After a few minutes the rain started to pick up and Tiki spoke up and said that when you arrive at the airport in Africa and it starts raining before you get to your first destination, it’s a blessing.
A few images from the drive in:
a shaggy green canopy with slender trunks and cloud-like heads pop up; mud and cinderblock houses with tin roofs and dirt yards; trash collects in any drain or recess between houses, yards and roads; big, fat raindrops tumble from the dark clouds that reached up for miles; [orange] signs on the corners of bars, restaurants, and road-side stands (what’s that? –fruit? –mobile phone minutes, I think?); fruit stands with large, tattered umbrellas selling green mangoes and fist-sized tomatoes; beautiful hand-crafted furniture stashed in groups under palm trees with thin blue and clear tarps stretched over; a large headstone next to a smaller one in a house’s yard, facing the road; a 15-20 story, abandoned building with a top-to-bottom World Cup advertisement; the slightly sweet, slightly bitter, poignant smell of sweat; dented, rusted yellow Toyota cabs beep and swerve in and out of lanes.

Eesh!

I'm in Philadelphia right now and will probably be waking up in a little over 5 hours to get ready to head out. We're getting our shots in the early morning and then heading to New York to go catch a flight to Cameroon! The Surreal-ness of this whole venture is beginning to slide away and the reality that I will be spending over two years in Cameroon is slowly taking it's place. I almost lost it on the way to the El Paso airport yesterday after I said goodbye to my dog who I will probably never see again and was preparing to say goodbye to my step mom. Insanity. But I am incredibly comforted by the fact that everyone here is essentially in the same boat as me and we're all kinda freaked out. I'm scarred shitless and honestly afraid of what is about to happen, but I'm also so indescribably excited (I don't really think the two can ever truly be separated, right?) that I think all the fear, self-doubt, anxiety, and probable hardships that have and will come will be worth it.

I've met some very cool, nice people here in Philly and I think we have a good group of people. I also think that I'll be able to get along with and make some good friendships with a good number of them.

Too many other things to think of now so I'll just leave off with two quotes/saying that have hit me particularly hard in the last few days:
-This is what Derek told me when I left Seattle: "Hey man, this isn't goodbye. It's see ya later." It's hard to say how much that simple line has helped me when parting ways.
-A tattoo a girl I met today named Stephanie (who is going to Togo with PC) had on her arm: "Make the most of today because tomorrow is a promise to noone." I'm sorry if I got the quote wrong, I'm just typing it from memory, but I think it's a pretty good way of putting how I feel right now.

Thank you for reading. I will be back with more once I'm in Cameroon. I'm not religious, but if you are... pray for me.

Soooo: Cameroon!

Anxiousness: check.
Nervousness: check.
Fear: check.
Excitement: double-check.

As I write this I'm watching the US Open and I wonder if I'll get a chance to see any tennis while in Africa. I'm resigned to the fact that I won't be able to see any baseball, basketball, or football but I wonder aside from soccer what will be popular. Alright, so it is a little over a week until I leave (again), and even with the jeopardy of jinxing it again, I'll share some thoughts and information.

I'm just beginning the packing process and writing down the few things I still have to get. The current plan is that I'm flying to Philadelphia on the 15th for some orientation/shots/introductions that start on the 16th, which means I'll have almost 24 hours to explore a city I've never been to before! I believe at last tally there's something like 33 of us heading over to Cameroon which I'm happy about because it will make it easier for me and my horrible skills with linking names and faces. On the 17th, we'll be flying out of JFK, through Belgium, arriving in the capital on the 18th. My address for the first three months of training will be:

HH, Peace Corps Volunteer
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 215
Yaoundé, Cameroon

If you mail me something, keep in mind it'll take at least 3 weeks to get to me. Number your letters so I know if one gets lost. If you mail me a package of some sort, don't send something that would majorly suck to have stolen as mail theft is pretty common. That doesn't mean not to send me a CD or something but think twice if it's something sentimentally significant that might not make it. Lastly, I'll have a new address sometime in November or December so make sure to check back and then start sending letters there.

Well, I'm pretty scatterbrained right now and packing is calling me. More later.

Mauritania is so last week.

Well, I got a call last week from PC telling me that our trip to Mauritania was canceled. I was incredibly unsurprised by this as we had been postponed without a new, solid departure date, our visas were still not coming, and the day before the call an American was shot in Nouakchott, the capitol. By Al Qaeda. Soooo, yeah. I was waiting basically waiting for the trip to be canceled and considering how long everything else has taken I'm glad they didn't wait until August to cancel it.

Anyway, I just got an email today with a new assignment that's in Cameroon and leaves in September. I will read some more about it but I'm pretty sure I'm going to accept it as it's still in the same field (Community Health) and Cameroon is still (partially) a francophone country. I know next to nothing about the country so I was a bit disappointed, mostly because I'd started reading up on some other country possibilities and, for no particular reason, this wasn't one of them. Regardless, though, I plan on reading up about it over the next 10 days and then making my decision.

In the meantime, it looks like I'm going to move to Phoenix in a couple weeks and spend the rest of the summer there. Why? Well, a) I have that big city itch again; b) Joey's there and has a room I can rent for cheap; and c) well...that's about it, those are my reasons.

A Correction for the Record

Yesterday, I was really getting the itch to get out and take care of most of the loose ends I still had before I left next week. I studied on Rosetta Stone for almost three hours, ran all over town buying nearly everything I still needed, and then finally rounded out the day with a nice dinner with my parents. Upon getting home, I swung on over to my computer and then facebook where I saw one girl who I was supposed to go to Mauritania had posted her status as "really, REALLY wasn't supposed to go to Mauritania in june... too bad for the future PCVs!" I assumed that something had happened with her and she canceled. Then I scrolled down on my screen and saw that at least half a dozen other people had similar messages up. Insert me freaking out.

I checked my phone and I had no missed calls. I ran next door to my parents' house and we had no messages. My dad did have a missed call from a DC area code on his cell phone but they hadn't left a message. Franticly, I began scouring the internet for who to call and I must have tried two dozen numbers before somebody on facebook gave me the numbers for our regional desk directors in DC, where I then left messages.

And I just got off the phone with the regional desk director this morning and apparently the RIM government hasn't issued our visas. I guess it's not that they denied our visa requests but that they aren't issuing them now and we can only hope that they will after the elections. It probably has something to do with the elections being postponed until July. I was initially excited when I heard there was an agreement for an end to the political crisis in Mauritania that postponed the elections. Furthermore, I was even more excited to BE there when the elections were happening. Now, however, the delay looks to be the reason we can't get visas. We're hoping on a mid-August departure but at this point, I'm wondering if we'll ever get off the ground.

Bonjour et au revoir.

In less than two weeks I'll be on a plane to Senegal.

I'm still trying to take that in and every time I do, multiple waves of fear, anxiety, dread, excitement, wonderment, and confusion settle over me. I just got off a plane from Seattle, I was in LA three weeks ago, KC a month and a half ago, Tucson a little while back, and New York and Denmark in December/January... it's insane to now think that I'll be in Africa so soon. I am incredibly excited and antsy to finally get to Mauritania and get started on training and volunteering but at the same time my abysmal French skills are causing a large deal of alarm. Anyway, regardless of the anxiety, I've been waiting for this for over a year now and very little can possibly stop me at this point!

As for this blog, I'm hoping to be able to update it whenever I can. Maybe once a week (doubtful) but more likely once every month or two. I'm told that during the first two-three months of training my access to internet will be pretty limited, and once I find out where I'll be stationed I'll know what my more regular internet access will be like. If I get the chance I'll try upload photos and give a few impressions about what I'm seeing and experiencing.


For those who might be interested, here's a little map of the traveling I've done in the last six months, as I alluded to earlier...