June 3

Yesterday we prepared plants and the honey for a convention taking place next week. I was in charge of squishing the honey comb between my fingers to break the wax and let it release the honey. African bees are angry bees so I decided to play it safe and put on my bee suit because we put the containers of honey in the office and did the processing in the office and now bees are wild to get it and eat us so we give their honey back. So I put on the bee suit and looked thoroughly ridiculous sitting there and squishing it but I felt relatively safe despite the fact that bees were swarming in front of my face, so that’s good. The bees began to get super pissed and I was done with my job so I left the office. Bees followed me out because my gloves and part of my suit had quite a bit of honey/wax on them. I once again was the weird American walking around looking like I was rushing somewhere, trying to get the 3 or 4 bees following me to leave me alone so I could take of the suit, go inside and wash off. It took me a couple minutes. I took off everything in ten seconds and booked it inside. Lunch was a traditional food that everyone here in Bamenda knows how to cook. It’s called Acho, yes, like the noise you make when you sneeze. It is made out of boiled, smashed coco yam and plantain cooked in banana leaf. Pius’ sister and Linda were making it and they offered for me to try to mash it. It was fun, but if I had to do it for an hour, I don’t think it would be as enjoyable. To eat it, you take it out of the banana leaf (or if you live in a village and don’t have plates you use the banana leaf as your plate) and mould the pasty mixture into a bowl to hold this red sauce with mushrooms and cow hide, which has a distinct flavour that tastes pretty much how you would expect it to—meaty and musky. It was good, but a bit strong. I mostly didn’t like the pasty texture of the Acho—it reminded me of baby food. I decided it would be tasty to dip avocado in the sauce. It was a good combination. At 3 we went to a meeting about Decentralization in Bamenda. There are apparently meetings the first Friday of every month and they invite a speaker. This week it was the mayor of Bamenda. We got there at 3:15 and I walked towards the building and there they were…….WHITE PEOPLE! I have only seen three white people since I’ve been here and it has been from afar. I was excited to talk to these people, wondering what kind of work they were doing here. They were all in their thirties and were working as consultants. Then two women about my age arrived. They are in law school and came to Cameroon for the summer to work with a human rights laywer. I was excited to see them but after a couple minutes I became disappointed when I noticed that they weren’t really interacting with any of the Africans other than greeting them. They were all in a group talking about places to get cherry coke and black tea and talking about tennis. They had all been there a couple years and they didn’t seem to have assimilated. Maybe I’m being a bit judgemental, but I feel like if you live in a place for a couple of years, other than having some things you like that remind you of home, why would you not want to embrace the lifestyle of the place you are living?

The meeting was fine. The mayor talked and people asked questions. Everyone seemed pretty uplifted by his ideas on decentralization and giving more power to the people, but I honestly thought it was mostly talk. On the drive back to the house we gave a ride to one of Pius’ friends. Most men here are not very chatty with me. They greet me, often welcome me to Cameroon and then go on about their business. But this guy was really quite talkative asking about how I liked Cameroon, where I was from etc. Then he told me he knows someone at NMSU who is working as a professor but he has no interest in living in America because it is too liberal and women have too many rights. He had a smile on his face, which most people have most of the time, so it was unclear if he was joking or not. After a moment, since he wasn’t laughing, then he probably wasn’t joking. “Oy” I thought to myself, “Why am I here”?

It rained like I have never experienced. I was afraid that the building was going to wash away. But I had to remind myself that that is normal here and that I would be fine. I am from NM, where a ten minute drizzle is a lot of rain so torrential downpours are something I am NOT used to.

The internet seems to be getting worse. I am not sure if it is because of the rain damaging the phone lines or what but I am having an extremely hard time connecting to my e-mail : (