7th Week (much-needed) Funtime

I went to a college that had the good sense to use a trimester system. There were three 10-week terms that made up the academic year, and we took a manageable three classes per term. So it's been pretty easy for me to draw parallels between a familiar Carleton term and my 10-week Pre-Service Training. There were always peaks and valleys during each term in college, and it's seeming like those patterns are holding fairly true for this as well. We're in the middle of our 7th week, and I'm hoping all my Carls out there will have a good idea of how I'm holding up. It's the calm before the storm. The end is in sight, but it's still too far away to start coasting. Luckily, the Peace Corps has been doing this long enough to anticipate all of these feelings (it's a little scary how predictable our emotions seem to be) and have conveniently planned another trip out of Bafia, at least for the LIFE (Linking Income, Food, and the Environment) volunteers. This is my program, so my friends and I boarded a bus headed for Bangangte, in the West Province last Sunday. We spent two days there and learned various technical skills and the accompanying French vocabulary. Some trip highlights included a visit to a teaching farm that trains local farmers in ecological practices and a practical session in grafting and marcotting. I've never been one to get very excited about plants (as my friends in my Plant Bio class can attest), but it turns out that plants can do some pretty cool things. I'm not going to describe marcotting here, but look it up. So cool. Learning technical skills in French was a new experience for us and definitely had its challenges, but the accompanying demonstrations allowed us to get a pretty good grasp on the skills. The trip also allowed us a much needed opportunity to spend some time together outside of class, which we took full advantage of. The first night brought singing on the balcony into the night (including some T-Swift!!), and the second a movie night complete with snacks and wine. Not too rough. Other recent happenings-we had a soja (soy) demonstration (also in French-turns out they're pretty serious about this language learning) this past Saturday where we learned how to make soymilk and tofu. The Peace Corps heavily stresses IGAs (Income Generating Activities) as a way to assist local communities, and this one seems like it has a lot of potential. The tofu can be skewered with a little bit of pepper and onion and sold on the side of the road, which seems to be a main sales venue here. It takes quite a while to make soymilk, and even longer to take tofu, but that definitely isn't an obstacle for cooking here. In fact, it seems to be a prerequisite of sorts for any potential meal in Cameroon. There is one type of plant that requires intensive scrubbing before it can be cooked. With a sponge. But I digress. After the women teaching us finished making the tofu, they mixed it with some vegetables and sauce and ended up with the best tofu I've ever eaten. Side note-I heard rumors before I came here that the main seasoning in Cameroon is MSG, which I couldn't possibly believe. The rumors are true. All prepared food contains Maggi, a soy sauce lookalike that is basically straight MSG. I was ardently opposed to it for the first few weeks until I realized that it's in almost everything that we've been eating. My low point came when I caught myself adding it to my lunch at one point during our trip to the West. My last point for today will be on clothing, both new and old. It was pretty tough to pack for this adventure, as I was told that no one wears shorts but that the weather is always hot and sticky. I've been surviving just fine with what I brought, but my stage-mates and I have begun the adventure of having clothing made. The process is completely different than clothes shopping in the US, and begins by picking out the fabric that you want your clothes to be made out of, called pagne, (pan-yuh) which is usually extremely colorful and patterned. You then take the fabric to your favorite tailor, along with a sketch or picture of what you would like made. Theoretically you could just explain exactly how you want your clothes to be made, but this requires a higher level of French competency than I possess and also probably a high degree of trust in your tailor. My first foray into Cameroonian fashion was a dress, with a moderate degree of success. It looks pretty much nothing like I expected (or my picture looked like), but I'm happy with it nonetheless. This summer in the US I finally achieved my longtime goal of finding denim overall shorts (romperalls, if you will). It was with a heavy heart that I left them back home, but I was determined to get a similar (longer) pair made here. It took quite a bit of explaining (and three fittings), but I finally received the finished product yesterday. Pictures will hopefully come soon, but I would say that they're a huge success. TL, DR: My trip to the West Province served as a much needed break and bonding experience for the LIFE volunteers, but we're getting close to finishing up training. We're even starting to look the part!

Teaching farm in Bangangte

A Taste of Freedom



In my brief time as a Peace Corps Trainee, I've learned that the group of people that tend to be drawn to the Peace Corps tend to be adventurous, independent, and idealistic (although I'm not claiming to be all three…). Because of this, the last 4 weeks that we've spent captive in the small town of Bafia haven't always been the easiest. Many of us feel that our freedom has pretty much disappeared, and one trainee went as far as to claim today that he no longer knows how to crack an egg by himself. Lucky for us, the Peace Corps is aware of many of these feelings, and allowed us a brief reprieve from Bafia last week for our much-awaited site visits! In the past trainees have had the opportunity to visit their future sites and establish themselves as a presence in the community, but due to the shortened length of Pre-Service Training and the length of travel to some posts, we were instead given the opportunity to visit sites that had been randomly selected and were within a day's travel (at least on paper). I was assigned to visit Kumbo, a small city of 60,000 in the Northwest Province with two friends of mine. We set out early Wednesday morning for Bamenda, the regional capital of the Northwest. From there, we caught a taxi to Kumbo and filled the car with 6 passengers (taxis usually take 7 passengers plus the driver-we had to buy the last seat in the name of "comfort"). It's a minor miracle that we fit into the car with all of our things, but our driver was a determined one. The drive was a beautiful one, complete with mountain landscapes, rice cultivation, and even some waterfalls. A shout out to the Peace Corps spirit-at one point during the drive I received a call from a volunteer that I had never met. He had heard that we would be passing through his town and wanted to come out and wave to us as we drove past. And he did! The one hiccup in our journey came when we learned that we had a flat tire (as the sun was setting and the town quickly was getting dark). It was a little worrisome when the driver left us on the side of the road in search of someone that could fix it, but Danielle picked up the tire iron that he left next to the car and we were completely fine. But the slight delay meant that the journey took us more than 12 hours from door to door. It was a pretty wonderful thing when we finally arrived and our host Bridget had an American meal of spaghetti and salad already prepared for us. The next few days were pretty incredible and a wonderful break from training. We went to a yogurt/cheese factory as a way of preparing for my research project on cheesemaking. And to get there we took motorcycles, which was a first for me. So much fun, and at one point we found ourselves weaving through a herd of cows. Not a bad way to do some research. Other trip highlights included visiting the market (which comes every 8 days as per the traditional calendar), making guacamole, hiking to a waterfall, eating my first spaghetti omelet, (such a strange concept but unsurprisingly delicious) and generally getting a feel for life as a PCV. Life seems pretty good in Kumbo, and it was a wonderful break from the regularity of training. But all trips must end, and we found ourselves back in Bafia on Sunday after a 28 hours trip back that included a stay in Bamenda. Turns out that the trip is much more pleasant that way. And a big shout-out and thank-you to Bridget, Shannon, and the rest of the PCVs that made the trip so much fun. Before we left for our site visits, we all completed forms and had interviews to share our preferences for our future site placement. Of course, none of us had ever visited any of the sites (or even the regions, as none of us have ever left the Central region and none of the placements were here). But nonetheless, we all became quite attached to the idea of different regions and sites from the small descriptions we were given and began to get excited about certain posts. Post announcements weren't until the Wednesday following our return from site visit, and they were potentially the least useful two days of training. No one could focus on anything other than our future posts, and tensions were a little high. Many people had listed the same posts as their top choice, but the final decision was completely out of our hands. I can't really speak for my fellow trainees, but for me this was the first time in a while that such an important decision would be made without my final input. Two years is a long time to be living in a place and working at a job that you didn't choose yourself. Although to be fair, accepting the decision of others has been a theme so far in my PC service. But they haven't led me astray yet, and this time was no exception. In the end, I was assigned my first choice post, working with Heifer International in a small village on the edge of Bamenda, which is the third largest city in Cameroon. We got to spend a little bit of time in Bamenda on our way back from site visit, and I've heard that it's a great city, and contains many of the things that Americans living abroad occasionally crave. During our one night there I was even able to find pizza (although I'm not sure if I would have considered it pizza stateside…)! And I'll be living just outside the city limits in a small village, which is exactly what I wanted. Hopefully it'll be the best of both worlds in a way. I will be working with farmers as an extension agent in increase milk production and potentially on a biogas project as well. It sounds like my work is slightly more structured than that of my fellow trainees, which I hope will make the beginning of my service a little easier. Anyway, this post has gotten a little long, so props if you made it all the way through. Life's good here, and we're full steam ahead with training. And now we've got a frame of reference in terms of how to prepare for where we're headed. TL, DR: Site visits showed a glimpse of life beyond training, and life's good in the Northwest region. Lucky for me, I'll be heading there to work with Heifer International in Bamenda (and speaking English)!

Snacks on Snacks?

I grew up in a house with a Jewish mother. Any time any of my friends came over, my mom was quick to offer snacks and ensure that we were all properly fed. In my four years of college, I received very few care packages that didn't contain at least a few granola bars tucked in for good measure (although I did get one containing just chocolate and underwear "All the life essentials!"). At least once during my childhood my mom told us "food is love". Long story short, food has always played an important role in the Silver family way of life. I can't claim to have adequately researched Cameroon before I stepped on the plane, but I definitely looked into the food situation. One of the guidebooks I found described Cameroonian cuisine as "functional". I was worried. Almost a month in, I can't claim that these claims were entirely unfounded but I have definitely been happily surprised more often that I would have expected. The diet (at least in Bafia in the Central Province) is relatively starchy and a meal usually consists of a carbohydrate/sauce combo. Some of the names are a little deceptive; I wasn't too worried when I heard that we would be eating a lot of couscous and gumbo. I was in for a bit of a surprise when I was served these dishes, as neither of them are the same as their American counterpart. The advantage to this cuisine is that it's been quite easy so far to keep up my vegetarian ways. The downside is that my palate is quite confused and doesn't yet know what to make of all these new foods. And for the first few days I was pretty sure that the only method of cooking here is deep frying. Not exactly my jam. Although fried plantains are pretty delicious. But in all seriousness I've been eating a lot of rice, fish, beans, and sandwiches (see section on peanut butter). And they serve us lunch every day at the training center that usually contains some pineapple (anana in French) and avocados/tomatoes.

            I have had a few culinary successes already. Early on in staging I expressed my love of peanut butter and my host brother Peggy and I scoured the market for it. We were unsuccessful (although we did find both jam and ketchup!!) but Peggy showed me how to make my own and it's relatively easy to make and delicious. We've made it consistently since then and whipped up another batch tonight. Another success came this weekend when a few of us set out to make a cake for a friend's birthday. We decided to make it at Anna's house and she went to the market to get the ingredients with her host brothers. Word got out about our project to all of the boys of the neighborhood and before we knew it the kitchen was filled with small children cracking eggs into the bowl. The cake turned out miraculously well and we brought it to our group's soccer game (word also got out about that-there were probably 15 Americans and 35 Cameroonian boys present). A few days ago one of our current PC Volunteer trainers told us that a motto for PC Cameroon is: 'Cameroon-where nothing seems to work but everything seems to work out". This is sounding more and more accurate the more time I spend here, and it's oddly refreshing. At no point during the cake baking did we ever panic-not when Anna went shopping without a recipe, not when the kitchen was swarming with children, and definitely not when Anna's host sister showed us the toaster oven that we would be baking the cake in. No powdered sugar? No problem, nothing a little chocolate and milk powder can't fix. And the language barrier just presented a whole other set of of obstacles. But we ended up with at least three cakes and the one we tried wasn't too bad at all.

Did I mention that I've been eating avocados almost every day? There's really no problem to speak of here.

TL, DR: I've got my work cut out for me in terms of getting used to the food here. But at least I know how to make peanut butter now!