La Blanche

Hello hello! I finally have internet at the house, which is magical. Except that I've been checking my email and facebook and now feel guilty about thinking in English for this long. Oh well.

In case you forgot, for a moment, that I am indeed in Africa, here is a picture of a lion:

Clearly, we went to the zoo the other day. This one is in the city, in quartier Mvogo-Betse. We’re going tomorrow to a monkey sanctuary. It’s nice to have a week before classes start because soon we won’t have time for excursions. I’ve spent the week learning how to get around and discovering that hey, I can live here. Neat, huh?

I’m definitely becoming more at ease with my family. I’ve been helping a few of them with their English homework, which helps me with French too, because I have them translate English phrases and can then add words to my list that I’ve been carrying around. And I feel more myself in English, so I feel like I’m getting to know them a little better that way. My French (and how to express my personality while speaking French, which is one of my goals for the semester) is definitely getting better. I took my first lone taxi ride the other day (and by that I mean I got from point A to point B by myself, not that I was alone in the taxi, that never happens)! I came home successfully and was so excited. Since then I’ve done it multiple times and can now go places and do things like a real Cameroonian. Hooray! I even took the bus today, which is cheaper, although you have to wait at the stop for an indeterminate period of time before the bus comes, and then there are about a zillion people all crammed together in traffic. Took me about 2 hours to get home. But, adventures! I live in the quartier Mendong, which is kind of an expansion of quartier Biyem-Assi, is pretty new and far-ish away. Taxis from Mendong cost quite a bit comparatively, 500 FCFA if you are going across the ville. Still, that’s about 1 dollar for a taxi across a city, so I’m certainly not complaining. 

One of the interesting things for me about being here is that I am one of the few white people in the city. There aren’t a lot of tourists and hardly anyone who lives here (except in the quartier Bastos, which has more foreigners) is white. Whenever I walk on the streets (and even more in les marchés) I get calls of “La blanche, la blanche! Ma chèrie! Vous êtes mariées?” (White girl! My dearest! Are you married?). I went to Marché Mokolo, the biggest market in the city, with my host mom the other day. It was the first time going to a market, and it was a little unnerving. No, I’m not married, please let go of hand, no I don’t want to marry your uncle, yes hello Bonjour I’m doing just fine thanks, but really you can let go of my hand now… I’m getting used to it, and tend to just smile a bit and move on quickly, but it’s definitely new. It’s a little frustrating because I know that no matter how hard I try or how much I learn, I won’t ever really fit in here. I’m sure I will continue to write on this topic as I am learning how to fit in.

That’s all for now. Courses start Monday, which is also the day when I find out what courses I can take. A little stressful. Two of our courses are with the program (I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this but there are only four students on the program, it’s new this year), one with the director, Ariane, and the other with a professor. Those will be about Cameroon culture, history, and language. The others I’m taking at the Catho (University Catholique d’Afrique Centrale), and from what I know so far I’ll be able to take classes in government and African relations and development and human rights. I’m way excited to start. 

Here are a few more pictures of animals for you:

Crocodile (Nile)

Ostriches! They walk very bizarrely and have dinosaur feet.

Des Pensés

(Okay I wrote this a few days ago, but am only getting internet now. Hopefully more soon!)

Wow, I have so much to tell you. I wish I could post more often but I simply do not have internet access. The house usually does but I guess it isn’t working right now and we’re waiting for a technician. There are so many details to share – the almost overwhelming excitement while on the plane, seeing the African continent appear below us for the first time; the very friendly nice man we met in the Brussels airport going to Cameroon that offered to give us a tour of his region, insisting that we will love Cameroon; how I got stressed out at the Yaounde airport because two guys came to help us with our luggage and one was talking very fast at me and I didn’t understand and then when we met our director to leave, they said they had negotiated with me for a exorbitant fee. Our driver, Olivier, who is a boss, sent them on their way, but it was not a great arrival for me, especially with the whirlwind night tour afterwards with all of the people waiting on street corners for taxis, lots of bars and loud music. Wow.

The view from our hotel

I am now much more comfortable, settling in. Maybe that’s the way it goes when entering a foreign country – at first, the differences are overwhelming, but after that you can slow down and wait for the similarities emerge. I will give you a few examples in a moment.

I am now installed with my host family, who have a big house with lots of children (shared with the neighbors). The mother teaches Spanish at a high school, and the father is a chemistry professor (no, Daddo, I don’t know what specifically). They are all Catholic. During the day pretty much everyone is gone, although there is a woman that comes to clean and cook during the day. I’m trying to make friends with them all, although there is definitely a language barrier because although I feel like my French is okay, it is way difficult to understand the accents here and everyone talks so darn fast.

For those of you who had visions of me living in a one-room hovel with a dirt floor, here is my room, and bathroom:

Getting around is not like in the U.S. Everyone travels pretty much by shared taxi, so you stand on the street and yell your destination or route to the taxis as they drive past (they slow down when there is a potential passenger). If they are going in that direction they honk and you get in. This continues until the taxi is full, and then you drop people off, collect more, etc. Seems to work okay. There aren’t really traffic laws – people tend to stick to their side of the street, which is good, but other than that drivers fend for themselves crossing intersections and almost running someone over every other minute.

Food is different too, there are mostly the same dishes again and again – fish, chicken, plantains, beans, a weird bitter vegetable dish. Also, the internet only works sometimes. Likewise with the electricity, and more often, the water.

I feel like these things don’t matter much in the overall scheme of things, though. My family seems more or less like the middle class anywhere. Come home after a day of work or school (although it does take a while to get home), grab a plate of food and take it to one’s room to study or eat in front of the (very nice) television. The first night I was here, I wanted to do something, learn about their “way of life” in some special fashion. But that seems to be about it. It’s like I wanted them to stop living in order to experience life.

In some manner this makes me more appreciative of my own personal way of life. I try not to get too immersed in technology, I don’t watch much television; and perhaps most importantly for me, I think food is to be enjoyed, savored. Family dinner (shout out to Mother), with company, where you can de-stress!

In other ways, though, I am realizing that I am very American. I consider myself fairly open to things generally, pretty easy-going, but I definitely recoiled a bit at the (dead, thank goodness) cockroach next to my toilet, and when I realized the shower has only one setting, cold – although this morning I washed myself without the shower, since it’s been a few days and the water isn’t on (I used one of the bottles of water they fill when the water does work, bit of a new experience). I also am beginning to better comprehend that part of living with another family in a foreign country is, in fact, living with another family. Seems obvious, but it’s harder to be open to a new way of life when I don’t think TV dinner is a particular part of Cameroonian culture.

Anyway, I’m off to read a French dictionary in the hope that I can reduce at least the language barrier, which honestly seems to be one of the hardest parts of being here. Hope you enjoyed my post. À bientôt!

Arrival

Hello from Cameroon!
I am here after some long flights. My body is very confused about what time it should be. I am on a French keyboard in an internet café so there may be mistakes. Post more later; for now, everything is very new and a little stressful. We are staying in a hotel in the city for a few days before we go to our host families. I will try to post pictures but internet is not reliable (it does not work if it rains, for example) so that may have to wait. French is difficult to understand but should improve. And in case you were worried I do have a bathroom, complete with toilet and shower. And the streets are paved although there are not really traffic laws, lots of honking all the time and I feel like we are about to run over someone about every 3 seconds.
That will be all for now, apologies for incoherency.
Cheers,
Shannon

Au Premier

Hello everyone!
Welcome to the obligatory blog of my study abroad experience. I hope to share my thoughts and adventures with you as I learn in an unknown environment. I am beginning with a little note about me before I leave, so you can know what to expect. I will do my best to post somewhat regularly, but I'd rather be out learning another mode de vie than writing in a blog all the time, so it probably won't be super often. And while my blog shall not be in French (an exception to my language pledge, to communicate with friends and family), I will be adding phrases en français every once in a while, for fun and as I learn local expressions. I'm very nervous about speaking French for the whole semester but I know that my language skills shall improve greatly.

A scene of what I will be missing in Montana, my home state (mostly to make sure I know how to add pictures to this thing because they are très important):

National Bison Range, Montana

And in Maine, where I go to school and where I spent last summer:

Boat ride to Squirrel Island, Maine

Those of you who know me well know that I love to cook (and eat), and will be expecting (I assume correctly so) many pictures of food. I'm hoping to learn about the local agriculture while I'm there, so food is definitely on my short list of cultural enterprises I hope to share with you. 

Right now I'm in Montana, running around gathering the last of my supplies for the trip. I've registered with the State Department, gotten gifts for my host family, and figured out how to vote from abroad in the November U.S. elections. Still have to treat the mosquito net I now have, and to pack. Five days to go!