First Days

May 28th

After two 6 hour flights I landed in Younde on the 28th. I had befriended a woman on the plane to Yaounde. Her name is Carole. She
and I spoke in French and talked. She is from Yaounde but lives in Paris now working as a secretary. I told her about my work at NDEf and my worry about Mispa, the wife of Pius who is the coordinator, not being there to pick me up. She told me that she would wait with me at the airport until she came. As soon as I got through customs there Mispa was, with her two cousins, Melanie and her sister. They had a sign with my name on it. My huge smile tipped them off (as well as the fact that there were only two white people in the airport and the other one was a nun) that it was me they were picking up. They hugged me and welcomed me to Cameroon and then we took a cab to the cousin’s house. I met one other woman who was also living at the house and a couple of the neighbors’ kids who came out to check out
the visitor. The youngest girl who looked to be about 5 just starred at me. She wasn’t sure what to do. We ate boiled rice with a spicy tomato sauce with fried fish in it for dinner. They played Cameroonian music for me and then I went to bed. Throughout the night there were heavy rains, heavier than I have every heard in my life. But no one else seemed to be fazed by it.

May 29^th

We got up at 6 with the sun and I went out of the house to check out the scenery. There were baby chickens outside and people wiping off the mud from the passageway to their houses. The rain had brought in a lot of red mud. I brushed my teeth outside with Melanie because the bathroom was occupied. As people came out of their houses to brush their teeth, wash dishes and do laundry, they looked at me and kept about their business. I think they weren’t so much shocked to see a white girl but wondering why I was there, or who had brought me. Then we went to the bus station and bought tickets. People kept coming by selling perfumes, jewellery and watches. Then almost an hour and a half after the scheduled time we took off. Each time we drove through a new town there would be speed bumps and vendors would take this opportunity to sell coconuts, pineapple slices and other fruits. After about three hours we stopped at a large market where Mispa’s relative sells fruit and we bought roasted plantains and roasted plums. The plums were extremely sour and I couldn’t eat them but the plantains were delicious. When we got into Bamenda Pius picked us up in his car and we headed home. Three children were there to greet me along with Linda, the nanny.

May 30^th

This morning for breakfast was an egg and pasta thing. It was pretty much an omelette with the addition of pasta. It was good but it was a bit strong for that early in the morning. It would have been a great dinner though. So I opted out for two mangos and some green tea I brought from home—this morning just didn’t seem like a dried milk and instant coffee day. I started my work day no more than 30 steps away from the kitchen. The office is right next to the house. We had a meeting at 8, planning for the rest of the week. Pius, Maribelle and I were the only one’s there. Apparently there is someone else that works for them but it was unclear why he wasn’t there. We introduced ourselves and then planned out the week on our time sheet/calendar. After lunch Mispa and I went downtown to get me a SIM card for my phone and try and get to an ATM. The line for the ATM was horrendous so we decided to come back a day when it would be less busy. Then we waited in a long line for a SIM card. Afterwards we headed off to a market where they sell just about everything—bananas, other fruits, women selling food, clothing, flip flops, baskets and things for tourists. We visited Mispa’s mother’s stall and I bought two small baskets. Then we went to go have Mispa’s hair done. While she was getting it done I began to play with kids who were hanging around. I became a tickle monster and chased them as they screamed with laughter. The two children then turned two five and then to seven. There was a whole group of little children waiting to be scarred by the while girl. It was a blast.

Dinner was boiled cassava and this soup with pan fried fish in it. Boiled cassava is a really dense carb so it was a but heavy on my stomach but the fish was delicious and getting to eat with my hands was nice. I miss that from my time in India.

May 31

I wrote a grand proposal for NDEF and how their agroforestry techniques combat global climate change. It was the first time I have written something like that. I wouldn’t want to do it every day all day, but it was kind of cool trying to figure out how to clearly describe how NDEF helps combat climate change—trees create a forest of resources, which because they are not uprooted every season become sinks for CO₂ while decreasing erosion, providing food and firewood. The power shut off around 2pm so we decided to go downtown. It rained and rained and rained. That was the theme of the day.

June 1

Today Maribelle and I emptied pots and arranged the nursery. Then Pius talked to us about the various ways to graft trees and why and then he showed us how. It seemed fairly simple, at least straightforward but I think it was his mastery that made it look easy. I struggled a bit with the angle of the cuts on the plant as well as fusing them together with this long strand of plastic. Before learning how to graft I wondered why people didn’t do it more often because the results are amazing: they bear the fruit you choose and they are able to do so in as little as 2-3 years after being grafted. It was after I began to do it myself that I realized not only it is a pain to do and quite time consuming, but apparently the success rate is quite low. We put our names on each one we grafted to see if we did it correctly. Out of the 10 I did, I am not sure any will succeed. You are able to tell in a couple of weeks, so I will see then, whether I did it correctly or not.

June 2

Today is a Catholic holiday. I was expecting to go to the service with Maribelle but apparently arrangements weren’t made. So Pius and I got an order of seedlings together for a pickup. Pius cut down a passion fruit from a tree on their property, which I ate and then we headed to town to run some errands like buying work clothes and going to the ATM.

Interesting things I’ve noticed so far:

• Because we are near the equator there are 12 hours of night and day. With the relative lack of electricity people get up and start doing things when the sun comes up around 5:30/6. They do things in the morning that we would think of as a post dinner activity such as washing dishes.
• Women sing out loud to songs on the radio, which before this I have never witnessed.
• Women shave off their eyebrows and pencil them on. I find this a peculiar practice because the humidity is so high here that it tends to melt and smudge on their faces. No one seems to comment when eyebrow pencil has made it up to their forehead or onto their nose. The smudges are all ignored.
• TV is on almost all the time in the living room. Music videos, news or some soap opera type show are playing. The bad signal causes there to be many “skips” where there is no audio or visual for a second or two and then it resumes.
• TV shows all have extremely dramatic music and dialogue. They remind me in a sense of Bollywood films except there is no singing or dancing.
• Meals are not eaten together. They are usually prepared in the morning and put in a “cooler” type thing that keeps things hot and you eat whenever you are hungry during the day. At night we eat when the food done being prepared and then when we are done eating we move three feet over to the couches and continue to watch TV.

I tried to upload photos but the very slow computer would simply not allow it. I might be able to find a high speed internet café and add them at some point.