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!