I’ve never been one to miss people when I travel or move cities. Even when I was little and went to summer camp and all the homesick kids would cry at night with the counselors assuring them that everything would be OK and they would see their parents in just a couple weeks. My parents would also get mad at me for never writing them back. The older I get the more I realize how lucky I am for the family I have and how much I never want to lose them.

Today I woke up and fixed pumpkin pancakes and peppermint tea and sat down to a colossal crossword puzzle my parents sent me from the christmas paper. I worked on it for about an hour making a good dent in the 1500+ word puzzle, all the while reminiscing on the mornings I spent living in Chicago riding the L to work with my uncle. We would grab a Red Eye at the entrance of the station, board the train, take off our gloves and set to work finishing the crossword before our arrival downtown. Uncle Peter would always finish the crossword and the sudoku, even on Fridays when it was the 5 star difficulty. Today is his daughter—my cousin, Dallas’s—birthday, and I had the pleasure of celebrating with them a year ago. We woke her up with a tray of hot cinnamon rolls and a computer screen with Skype open and her big sister on the screen to wish her happy birthday from Colorado. I got to spend the beginning of her teenage years with her, and I’m better because of it.

On the other side of the crossword puzzle were locals’ stories of christmas eve traditions and memories. Since college, I haven’t had a consistent christmas in the states. I’ve spent christmas in India with one of my best friends from high school, Artee, and her family who are hindus. It was still one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life and I probably owe my acceptance to the Peace Corps to her. Another Christmas was spent in warm Australia in my bathing suit scanning the great barrier reef and trying desperately to not to be obvious to my parents and little brother as I batted my eyes at the aussie instructors. Babes, all of them. This year I was in Bangangté, Cameroon with 40 other volunteers in a small apartment with a chimney (the reason for the location of the event). I sewed christmas stocking with children in my village and we cooked a mexican feast and ate on anything that resembled a plate closely enough. We tried our best to recreate the feeling of family and tradition with a christmas tree, ornaments, lights and some decorations my parents sent. Who knows why we crave these things.

My family has always traveled to family’s homes for christmas, but I was lucky enough to have enough “traditional” christmases in my childhood to hold onto. I remember the smell of my grandparents burnt orange carpet in their old home in Shreveport, Louisiana and the sound of the train that went by in the middle of the night. I ate all of the m&m’s in the plastic candy cane holder one year and threw up christmas colors. My grandma used to make a gingerbread house with us grandkids each christmas we spent there, and she always bought the grossest candy—minty gumdrops and off-brand peppermint bites—to decorate the roof and walls—perhaps to keep us from eating all of it. On years we went to Chicago to my dad’s parents we got to have a white christmas. There was even a frozen lake behind the house that we were never allowed to walk on. My uncle Stan, who’s Jewish, would give us gallon bags of dollar store treasures each year and I remember playing with a small plastic hinged man with sticky balls at his hands and feet. We would stick him to the top of a window and he would alternate his feet and hands sticking bending at the middle and tumble down the window. Waiting at the top of the stairs christmas morning, my grandmothers’ cookies and candies, Bing Crosby playing..

I didn’t mean for this post to take a christmas tangent, but I just have these moments here where I see a picture or read something and it makes me hurt with how much I love my family and how lucky I am. I’m constantly surrounded with african culture, tradition, values, etc. Sometimes I wish my mom were here just to let me know things will work out and keep me focused on whats actually important. Right now I’m happy and I know everything will work out, but here is just a list of my past month excitements:

-cold
-strep throat
-coxsackie virus
-housing problems- boss finally told me he wants to move me to a village called Bare in the Littoral Region at Easter if I don’t find a house really soon.
-4th annual MLK feast, complete with cheesy biscuits, fried okra, chicken, eggplant, coleslaw, chocolate cake, mashed potatoes, etc.
-new computer lab
-wake-boarded and sailed on a lake by Foumbot
-Tungiasis, pulled 2 sand fleas and a billion babies out from under my toenails last night
-an Elite took me on a moto tour of houses in Bandenkop to try and find one that works!

This is Africa.

The first event was a chat I had with my best friend Honorine. I had stopped by her bar to eat lunch and chat about the holidays. She grabbed a beer and I chowed down on beans and beignets. Her sister had just left to go back to Paris the day before. She had been visiting for a month, and brought with her a Whirlpool freezer so now Honorine wants to start grilling fish at night! This is wonderful since poisson braisé is the best thing that ever happened to cameroonian cuisine after spaghetti omelets.

After a tour of the freezer and excitement over new business opportunities, we sat back down and I asked questions about her sister—nurse, husband lives in Yaoundé, she’s been in Paris 4 years and will be there for 8, 3 grown kids in different European countries for school. When I asked her if it was hard for her sister to be so far away from her husband for so long she leaned back in her chair and casually responded that when she saved enough money she’d get out of here, too. She went on to tell me how her marriage wasn’t good and that her husband doesn’t give money to her for food, the kids, anything. She explained how she wants to start grilling fish, but has to figure out a way to get money for the small grill, charcoal and a large batch of fish to freeze. I mostly listened and finished my beans trying to act as cameroonian-mama as I could, trying to hide any eye watering or displays of emotion. I told her that a lot of marriages don’t work out in the states either, but it’s nice that we have the hope that our husband will be our best friend when we are. I don’t know how this sounds to Americans anymore, but here everything is very practical and straight-forward including marriage, sex and child-rearing. I have yet to see a Gilmore Girls relationship or an affectionate husband without a beer in his hand, and usually it’s not his wife.

So that’s the first event.

She followed this up with that her and Seline, the wife of my community host and another one of my mama friends, are no longer friends. They no longer will speak to each other even to say good morning. This is especially awkward since they work right next door to each other. Lucky me.

The last event was the profession of love to me by my friend, Diefe. He’s one of a handful of people I can almost have a real conversation with that doesn’t have anything to do with how to do something, cook something, or say something in patois or french. He was a little tipsy I think, but he used a lot of cheesy lines and has continued to call me every evening to ask me how my day was. He’s leaving the 15th (thank goodness) and wants me to watch his chickens for him. Here are some of my favorite lines. Keep in mind I’m engaged to Tim and kept reminding him of this every 5 min. and insisting that I would not change my mind.

Translated from french:

when you try the water in senegal you must also try the water of the sea and only then can you make your choice between the two.

if you give me a little piece of your heart i will plant it, water it everyday two times, and watch it grow and grow.

do you love bandenkop? bandenkop loves you. but i love you more than bandenkop..

You refuse me? I am suffering. Are you ok with me suffering?

After leaving Limbe a large group of us continued back to the West to Bangangte to spend Christmas in the only volunteers’ house with a chimney. I sewed little stockings for each of the 8 volunteers in the west and hung them on the mantle. We had a tree and lights and some jingle bell decorations thanks to my parents awesome xmas package! All in all it was a really good time and we had a feliz navided theme christmas eve dinner with salsa, guac, homemade chips and tortillas, tofu fajitas and taco meat. Natalie and I also fresh squeezed our own margaritas. As much as I love having christmas with my family, the few times now that I’ve been out of the country for christmas, each time has been extremely untraditional and extremely fun in its own way. I’m so thankful for my ability to conjure up holiday magic no matter where I am.

For the New Year, more volunteers met up in the capital Yaounde to celebrate. For the past few days we’ve been eating pizza, visiting super markets, enjoying ice cream, and going to fairs, reminding ourselves that we’re in Cameroon from time to time.

New Years was fun last night. Natalie and I were in markets around town all day looking for something to wear. We had no luck all day and even gave in to going to marche Mokolo where the stands are 2 feet apart and you’re guaranteed to get grabbed more than 100 times. I’ve never held on to my purse so tight or been proposed to so many times, but it is definitely a must see in Yaounde and Natalie hadn’t been yet. We had no luck and on the taxi home we got let out early after passing what seemed to be the shoe market with blankets and blankets of high heels lining the street. We both found shoes we loved and bargained down to reasonable prices so we had no outfits but really pretty shoes. We met up with everyone at the casino in the hilton hotel and then made our way to Bostos, the swanky part of town where you’re guaranteed to rub shoulders with elites and other “whites”. We got hookah and fancy cocktails, and around midnight we went across the street to the fancy black & white bar for the countdown. It was extremely anticlimactic, but we all stood up and cheered anyway. I headed home shortly after while everyone else went out dancing, which is very un-like me, but I had my new high heels to thank. I toasted myself a mozz, basil tomato sandwich and settled down with some johnny walker on ice and skyped with some of my favorite ladies in the world and got to wish them an early happy new year.

My new years resolution this year is to write something every day. It can be a word, poem, caption or story. Doesn’t matter. But I get so overwhelmed by how much there is to write about here. I hope this helps. Also, as my readers, feel free to yell at me and keep me accountable. Writing in my journal counts, too, so I’m allowed a blog hiatus evey now and then but I really hope I keep this resolution up this year.

What are your resolutions?? Happy New Years friends & family!

This may possibly be my busiest year to date. If I had succeeded into
training myself to use a planner like I tried in middle school, I may
have filled in every little box and used up all the stickers on the
back page for appointments and birthdays, vacations and minor life
changes. If they had stickers for moving to a village and learning a
foreign language I may have used those up, too. None-the-less it has
also been one of my favorite years.

Looking back at all the pictures looking for the perfect ones to use
for my Peter&Demetra-inspired Christmas card, I got to relive all of
the adventures I had this year. I lived in two different states and
moved countries as well. I took part in the unintentional tradition of
living with your parents after graduating college and was pleasantly
surprised. In March I moved to Chicago to live with family and arrived
just in time to take part in the snowpocalypse of 2011. I got to have
2 little sisters for a small time. I took the subway to work in
downtown Chicago everyday, and ate at every restaurant I possibly
could. I helped Peter and Demetra re-do their kitchen and bathroom
from laying tiles to finding beautiful cabinets on craigslist. I
finally received my long awaited letter from Peace Corps announcing my
departure and post in Cameroon, Africa. In June I left for Africa and
had three months of training while I lived with a Cameroonian family
learning customs, foods and practicing my awkward French. I moved to
Bandenkop, a village in middle-of-nowhere Cameroon, with a few bags
and a cat named Bellatrix Lestrange. I’ve been teaching computer and
english classes at the government high school of Bandenkop since
September—somedays I’m the only teacher who shows up. For Halloween I
dressed up as Rapunzel and danced with Gaddafi, and for
Thanksgiving I spent the day making american “usuals” and eating
around a bonfire outside the tree-house of an African prince.

This year I got to cross three things of my list of things to do
before I die; work for peace corps, live with extended family, and become
fluent in another language.

I am so thankful for this year, and I honestly couldn’t have made it
through without you, my family and friends. I hope you all have a
really wonderful Christmas with your families, because I definitely
would if I could!

I love and miss you. Merry Christmas!

Speaking of thanks, I had the amazing opportunity to have thanksgiving dinner with the prince of Bangangte outside of his hut by a bonfire. It was incredible. And not just because of the aforementioned details, but mostly because we made every typical thanksgiving dish using all cameroonian ingredients, listened to christmas music and spent the day cooking and throwing a football and hanging out, cameroonians and americans. I have had the blessing of having a few of those beautiful moments in life where you take a deep breath and realize you are truly happy, and that night sitting by the fire I added another deep breath to the list.

Other happenings include that I’m moving again. The landlord came home unexpectedly and wrote on my coffee table in chalk about how messy the house was, even though no one told me someone was coming. The next morning i was awoken by the door being open and it was the landlord’s wife. She explained it was her who wrote the note, and that i need to hide my things when they come and that i need to lock my door. I explained that no one told me she was coming. This meant nothing. Then she told me there was no room for me there because when the family comes in for vacation they stay there. So now I’m moving. To the fourth house.

I decided Bandenkop is the Nantucket of Cameroon. There are lots of rich people here who have houses, but not a lot of people who actually live here. This makes it difficult to find a house since they all seem open, but the owners come back and stay for funerals and burials, and vacation time. I have looked at a few now, none of which are very nice like the house I’m in now. I’m guaranteed to have a latrine for the next couple years so I can cross that off my list.. It’s frustrating looking, but now I know why my boss had such a hard time finding a place the first go-round for me.

I also saw the most beautiful thing in the world a couple weeks ago, too. It was a crater lake in a village called Foumbot, and closely resembled the blue lagoon from peter pan with the mermaids. The lake was formed by collected water in an old volcano and was the clearest blue I’d ever seen. The water was a thousand feet below us and we walked around the edges seeing the lake at every perspective and looking out at the view of the rest of Cameroon. We took the trip with Henri, a french volunteer living in Bangangte building latrines in villages, Franky, the Prince of Bangangte, and the Mayor of Foumbot who is a handful of a woman and made our visit wonderful by getting us past the guard for free to see the lake and feeding us before and after.On the way up about 10 children hopped in the back of our truck and walked around the volcano with us in plastic shoes and offering me a hand when I slipped. I’ll post pictures when I can. No promises..

These holidays make me miss all of you guys so much. Having holidays here has been nice, though, because I get all the good stuff, and I don’t have to deal with the American consumer crap like expensive costumes and halloween candy, and black friday. I just get to be happy hanging out with friends and explaining our weird american traditions to cameroonians. Though, I do miss being with my family. Love you all and hope you’re enjoying the season!

xoxo

Wow a long time has passed since I’ve gotten back to the blog. Halloween was a lot of fun despite being the first time I had a freak out and cried infront of african mamas. I found a giant blonde braided weave and a sparkly pink dress to dress up as rapunzel. I was viscous in my bargainng at marché A and almost made the lady cry when I cut her price two thirds. There was no way i was going to spend a paycheck on a halloween costume with sequins. I am SO american, wow. The party was in Bangangte and a lot of volunteers from the west and northwest showed up. I came a day early to cut hair and hang out with kids from my stage (stahj – original training group). My freakout came before arriving in Bangangté, though.

Early Friday morning I was required to go to a teaching seminar about how to teach english, and would last from 8:30 to well into the afternoon I was told. One of my colleagues at the lycee came with me. I had no idea he taught English, too. We shared a car and then a moto when we got to Baham where the seminar was. Once at the venue, a bilingual highschool in Baham, I realized I’d left my bag in the trunk of the taxi. Luckily my colleague knew the name of the driver so I called my landlord and he told me he’d call Calvin the chauffeur. I walked into the seminar holding my phone awaiting Sam’s call. The classroom was full of english teachers from around the Haute Plateau region with anglophone and francophone teachers alike. The seminar was led by two volunteer teachers and a woman from the ministry with a lot of years of teaching under her belt. Aside from her, the english was so heavily accented I could hardly understand what was going on, which wasn’t good seeing as I was the only obvious english speaker was used as a prop in many discussions, not to mention that I was thoroughly distracted with my lost bag and the fact that I didn’t want to be there. I also had to pee since my arrival and came to find out there were no restrooms.

We got one 10 min break in-between 8:30 when it started and 3:30 when I snuck out as elusively as a white girl in a room full of africans can. Oh, also, my colleague never returned after the 10 minute break when he told me he was going outside to smoke. The second half of the seminar I was in fumes, jealous of my crafty colleague and extremely uncomfortable by the man who had taken his spot on the bench next to me. He alternated between loudly whispering prayers under his breath, inching closer and closer to my until we were touching legs, and looking at me “inconspicuously”. The seminar itself wasn’t the greatest, with everything begin said 3 times, dumb questions being asked, and a workshop session that was really just more theory. Cameroonians can’t get enough theory.

The brought in sandwiches and drinks at 3:30 along with the principal, and while the room filled with the scent of delicious food and our hungry tummies rumbled they proceeded to thank the principal numerous times, sing a couple of songs about being happy and then begin a prayer. This was when I took the opportunity to sneak out.

I caught a moto to the center and caught a taxi to bafoussam. Sam had told me that the driver had left my bag with a mama named Maji at the taxi stop. I arrived and asked someone about her stand and they pointed to some closed doors and said she had left for Bandenkop. I was so mad. I went around searching for her number, got it, called her, couldn’t understand her and could get her to understand how to turn up her phone volume. Found someone with calivn’s number and he said he didn’t give it to Maji and that he dropped it off in bandenkop at the sofina. I called sam back and asked him to see if he could get in the sofina since it was closed. wasn’t there. etc. etc. more phone calls. more bad french. Then i cried. Infront of an african mama trying to help me (they don’t cry. ever.) I had no idea where my bag was. Finally my fav driver showed up and filled his car with passengers. I told him if someone gives him my bag in bandenkop to bring it back to bafoussam.

I left for the office to use the bathroom like i needed to all day. I grabbed a diet coke i’d left in the fridge—thank God. I sat and took a breather and vented to some poor volunteers who were in the office using the computers. They had come for the halloween party, too and invited me to get ice cream with them. A couple hours later, and after a call from sam, I headed to the taxi line to wait for a cab that my bag was allegedly in.

Also I forgot to mention my costume was in this bag!

The volunteers from the northwest arrived, just at the same time as the taxi with my bag, to catch a car to banganté for the party. We got in the car, waited for it to fill up with people until we noticed the driver was wasted and slurring his words. We got out, went to a different taxi stop for taxis headed to bangangté and paid extra to have it to ourselves and leave right away.

And then we made it. I couldn’t believe it. What a horrible day.

The next day was awesome and filled with touch football, carving a pumpkin, poker, dancing, drinking, eating candy corn. Costumes were great and very resourceful. There were the Spice Girls complete with an African Spice (or Maggi cube which is maybe MSG maybe beef bouillon and used in every dish). Eriika and Liz were the twins from the Shining and had their dresses custom made. Ghaddafi was there, the ghostbusters and a zombiliké which is a zombie from the Bamiliké tribe which makes up most of the peoples of the Western Region.

All in all it was a god weekend. Someone said during training, “Nothing in Cameroon is working but everything works out. ” This is the most true statement I’ve ever heard in my life, but man is it frustrating.

Whew. I’m glad I finally typed that up. Kim’s first freak out. The end. My second was this past weekend. I’ll type that up sometime soon, too.