After Much Time

It has been about two months since my last post and much has happened. I am now moved into my house in a jungle like village quartier of a small but bustling city in the South West region of Cameroon. But first I must elaborate on the many interesting things from November and December as training wrapped up and I transitioned to life at post.

November went by quickly. Language training wrapped up after I made level for in French and began taking Pidgin classes. Pidgin is a bastardized version of English. First you drop most rules of grammar, then you simplify most tenses into the most basic forms possible, and finally substitute in culturally adapted simplified words and remove most articles. It is bizarre, humorous, and difficult. My ability to communicate in English is diminishing.

Training continued on in much the same manner; technical sessions and language sessions. I gave three 20 minute presentations in November. One in English on composting, one in French on improved fallow, and one on Cameroonian soccer in French. Of course I passed each with flying colors. We traveled to the North West province for our second field trip where we took a tour of an agroforestry center that was started by a PCV about fifteen years ago. At the center we were able to demo and practice marcotting and grafting tree propagation techniques. We also discussed beekeeping and tasted some delicious raw honey that they produced. The North West region was beautiful. Rolling hills of African highlands. Cool weather and beautiful waterfalls spread across the countryside.

Thanksgiving went quite well. Training ended early (no American Holidays for volunteers) and many of the females went to work on cooking some American style dishes for the fete. Most of the guys simply brought drinks as there were thirty six females and twelves males. As for myself I brought a gallon of palm wine (sweet tasting, fermenting white stuff). We bought a turkery and a few of the girls killed it and cleaned it during the morning. Then it was cooked in an improved cookstove that a few of the agro trainees built. The mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, pasta salad, and turkey as well as the many of dishes were all delicious. Then we celebrated at the training center with drinks and music late into the night. Late into the night during training would be eight pm.