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Ngaoundere!
I can't explain how refreshing it is to be in an area that is more influenced by Arab culture than US culture. I mean this in two ways: I don't know why it's so refreshing, and that it's really really nice.

Ngaoundere is just prettier too. The boulevard is wide, with a median with plants in it, and there are trees lining the road. Also, there's a mountain here, and I climbed it today! Actually, the people who tried to lead us down had no idea where the trail was, and we ended up climbing all the way down one mountain and then back up and over another. See the thing was, I totally knew that we were going in the wrong direction, but no one would listen to me! They would just angrily tell me to descende! I mean, it was still pretty cool being stuck on a giant rock in the middle of the Sahel, I just didn't appreciate the double mountain thing.
I think I just get tired of people telling me what to do. Especially men. Like when I was playing pool at a bar by my house in Yaounde right before I left, and these guys kept on telling me to take certain shots, and I'd be like, "no, that's a dumb shot, I'm going to scratch, I want to make this shot" and they'd literally grab my que stick and mimic what I was supposed to do. I just felt like yelling, "My french isn't THAT bad! And I know how to play pool even if I am a woman! That's just a dumb shot!"

Anywho, more about Ngaoundere. This is a predominantly muslim area, right on the Sahel (the half way point between Sahara and jungle, or savanah in other words. My host mother is 28, has never been to school a day in her life, got married when she was 15 and has 4 kids. Chris is 28. Enough said.

I love my family here too. I've just been so lucky with homestay families, some how. Here my father is always laughing and smiling and wavy and trying to speak English with me. I have this almost 2 year old brother, who can speak pretty decent Fulfude. He just runs around naked and looks at me and giggles a lot. I have no idea what to do with that. I pick him up and toss him around a lot, and that seems to get a good reaction. But I'm actually kind of scared of doing taht because he hardly ever wears a diaper and just goes wherever whenever he has too...

I should also mention that people speak Fulfulde here more than they speak French. Which is really nice in the way that I'm not always expected to understand the converstation, and really difficult in the way that sometimes I'll in a big group of people, all of whom are speak Fulfulde, and then someone will talk and say to me in french, "why aren't you talking?" and then I'll respond "because you're all speaking fulfulde..." and then everyone will laugh and keep on talking in a language that I can't speak. Hahah, oh well.
If I've learned anything from this trip, it's that you best be used to people laughing at you all the time if you're a white person who wants to go to subsaharan Africa (ok, that may be an exaggeration, I've learned lots of other stuff).

OK, stop. Julian brought to my attention that I did not mention a very important thing about my experience here:people LOVE TV. I watch more TV here than I ever have before in my life. In yaounde I watch a lot of MTV with my siblings, and news with my parents, and in Dschang and Ngaoundere I watch a lot of latin american soap operas, dubbed in French. Also, I accidently put the italics on, and now the ctrl key is deciding not to work, so I can't take it off.

Right now, it is actually just me and my friend Jane here in Ngaoundere, as the rest of the group has gone to Marou to Waza State Park. That sounded really cool, but it was also kind of expensive, and I feel like I came here to meet people and to learn, not to do really touristy things like go on safari. I guess I'm only really gaining 3 days, but when all you have is 2 weeks, that feels like a lot.

Ok, I should go soon, but I really want to explain my bike adventre, aka one of the coolest things I have yet done here.

So the other day I was walking to my dad's store to buy water with my sister/aunt/cousin/I have no idea how we're related but we live next to eachother and we're the same age. She saw a bike and said something obsure like, "look a bike!" Naturally I answered, "oh no way I love bikes! I have one at home and I ride it everywhere! I miss my bike!" She then said that she would ask if I could ride it. I kind of just assumed that I didn't understand her french, but after we talked with my host dad for a little, she turned to one of his workers and started speaking in Fulfulde. At this point I was standing by the door, looking confused as usual. Suddenly, her, the worker and everyone else in the store turned to me and started laughing. Since I'm used to that, I just laughed and shrugged my shoulders in response. Then she grabbed me hand and told me to get on the bike and ride it through our compound. I should pause to explain our neighborhood first. We live off a dirt road, and down a winding dirt path between concrete walls, and mud-brick houses. This is where I was riding the rickety old bike with half a peddle missing, giggling hysterically and kicking up dust in my wake. Eventually, people started coming out to look at the crazy nasada (white person), but were still being relatively calm about the spectacle. After a few passes through the neighborhood my sister/aunt/cousin person told me to let her ride. I got off and rested against a wall with a few of her older sisters and watched her careen out of sight. A few moments passed before I started to hear a roar or voices. The roar started to get louder and louder and before I could even see my sisterauntcousin I realized the roar was CHILDREN! Suddenly, she burst around the corner with her coverings flapping wildly behind her, followed by at least 15 children screaming and laughing and chasing after her, kicking up a massage cloud of orange dust. Laughing and yellin herself, she told me to get back on, and unsure of what was going to happen, but undeniably excited, I hopped back on. At this point tons of tiny hands started pushed the bike around the bend and up onto the street. I realized my 11 brother was one of the children pushing me, so I turned around and yelled "tu veux montrer?!" and suddenly he yelled "je suis ici!" and when I looked again he was already sitting on the back rack. This mayhem continued on for quite some time. Sometimes I would be peddaling with my auntsistercousin on the back, or vise versa, and then I would give it to my brother, and then all the kids would fight over who got to ride, and then someone would take off down the path and everyone would chase after him or her, screaming and laughing the whole time. At once point I have my 6 year old sister on my back, and was sprinting through the cloud of dust after bike. Since then there's been one other bike adventure, which was no less crazy than the first.
I think that perhaps the most beautiful thing I've seen here, is my auntcousinsister emerging around the corner with her scarf flapping behind her, exposing the tiny tanktop underneath, yelling as she peddals away from a horde of screaming children, and the whole scene engulfed in dust.

Alright,
I have written an absurd amount. I think I'll go to the market now, or go play some games with my siblings.

Oh but quick, I got henna here and it looks so cool! It's black instead of brown, because well, brown wouldn't really show up on people's skin here, but black on my white-ass skin is a bit shocking! Either way, I like the way it looks, and I wish that it wasn't temporary! I'll get some pictures of it up soon.
Bye guys!
Love y'all!

P.S.
it's really hot, hence the title of this blog.

ca va aller

Hello all, sorry that I have not written for awhile. Time is flying here, and I just needed a break from so much internet.

Here's a picture of me trying to help my sister mop the floors. I thought mom would appreciate this, hah! So mopping the floors here is one of the most physically difficult jobs I've ever done. You take a bucket of water, and a rag, and after soaping up the rag you run it over the floor using your hands. Then you have to dunk the rag in the bucket and ring it out, and then go over the floor again. Then you have to ring out as much as the water as possible (which took me like a minute and Michelle like 15 seconds), and go over the floor again to dry it! I was sweating bullets after that. My family thought it was hilarious, which in their defence, it kind of was.

"Ca va aller" is my favorite cameroonisme so far, although it may be said in other french speaking countries, I don't know. I hear it here all the time though, and I just like what it means. Essentially, it's "don't worry, things'll be fine." It just reminds me so much of what my mom often says to me back home, that when I hear it here, I am instantly comforted.


We're in our third week back in Yaounde--on Saturday we go to Ngaoundere. We're taking the train, which I was very excited about before someone told me something about "de-railing" problems...but I'm sure we'll be fine. The train really can't be more dangerous than taking a cab here, or even just trying to cross the street. After two weeks in Ngaoundere we start our independent research which mean that I really gotta get my shit together! It's just so hard to choose a topic when there are so many interesting things happening here. Today I went talk to an ICRAF office here (forget what it stands for but it works with agroforesty internationally) about working with them for a month. As cool as that would be, it would probably be pretty expensive, and I don't know that I want to work with an international organization. I think I'd prefer to work with something that is more grassroots, but who knows. It looks like I'll probably end up in Dschang working with a GIC (groupement initiative commune) that works with men and women who practice agriculture in Foto, an arrondisement of Dschang. I would love to return to Dschang, and I'd like to do something with urban farming, but I'm just so indecisive!




Also, after visiting Kribi, I would really like to do something there. Specifically, I'd like to study the environemental impacts of the Chad-Cameroonian pipeline, or see if there's an NGO or ANYTHING that I can partner with there. It was just so beautiful to only spend a weekend there.




Ok, so Kribi is a small tourist town in the South region. The beautiful coastline is only marred be the oil tankards, and an oil drill with a flame that burns like the eye of sauron during the night!




We stayed in a hotel literally on the beach, and I would be lieing if I said that I even tried to explore the town.









Let's see, what else...




I want to explain my Yaounde family a bit. First of all, I finally figured out who's who in my family maybe a week ago. My parents got married a few years ago. The oldest daughter is the daughter of my father from a different woman. My 10 year old sister is actually an orphan whose father had been a friend of my father, so he took her in a few years ago. My 9 year old brother is also an orphan who is a cousin, and was also taken in a few years ago. My youngest brother is the son of my mother with a man who died. She has another son who lives in the village with her mother. See, I just had no idea about any of this until I finally just straight out asked my mother. Also, my mother is a primary school teacher, and she teaches one class of 66 8-9 year olds. 66! And she's the only teacher, all day. No wonder her voice is always so horse, I'm sure she's just constantly screaming at 66 energetic children.

My father is a highschool teacher and while he doesn't have to control 66 little kids, he has 4 classes, the smallest having abotu 50 students, and the biggest having more than 100. And he's the only grader. I have no idea how these people work like this, but I really admire it.

Alright, I should really go force myself to do some school work.
A tout à l'heure!

a bi camille, and a wan chop some fine puff puff

I just tried to say I'm Camille, and I want to eat good beignets in Pidgin.

I am back in Yaounde now, we got in sometime on Sunday afternoon after spending a weekend in Bamenda. Bamenda is crazy and enormous and full of english, or something similair to it. What I mean is that Bamenda is anglophone, but for the most part people speak pidgin english, which I can maybe understand a few words of. Pidgin is the most widely spoken language in Cameroon actually, so I few friends and family members taught me some of the language before I went to Bamenda, and we even had a full class devoted it it, but it really did me no good. I didn't really at all get a feel for Bamenda since we didn't live with host families, and only spend about 3 days there. We did get to meet some very interesting political figures, including John Fru Ndi, the head of the main opposition party, and a member of the SNCN, the anglphone successionist party. Then some of us went out to a bar with John Fru Ndi's son (when will I ever again be able to say that I drank beers with the son of the president of the main opposition party??).

I should probably backtrack a bit to Dschang. I really love it there. It felt more fimilair, and I just generally feel more comfortable in smaller towns. I told my host mother in Yaounde that I'll probably return to Dschang for my month of research and she got very sad. I'm also the first out of 4 students who hasn't decided to stay in Yaounde. I just feel more comfortable in Dschang, and as I'll want to do something with the environment, I really can't stay in Yaounde, because there's not a whole lot of environment here...

I'm starting to get really busy with school. I keep on forgetting that this program is actually pretty academic, all I want to do is run around and explore these cities and hang out with my host families. I should be working on transcribing a handfull of interviews I did about ethnicities, but I needed a break! It's so fricking complicated, all the groups and sub groups and etc, especially when my interviews are all conducted in French.

Tomorrow we start the organization visits! For the next two weeks we'll be running around Yaounde talking to reps from the peace corps, afriland bank, the world bank, and so many more.

Then after two weeks we head to Kribi, to SWIM IN THE OCEAN! gah I can't wait. Also though, we get to meet Pygmies, which is equally as exciting.

Sorry it's kind of a short post, but I've got to run. Me and a few others are going to try and find an electronics store, woohoo!

Also, I had to go the hospital again because my ring worm came back, hahahaha. I don't know what the french word for that is.

Ok, and I can't remember if I told these stories already, but I want to say them before I forget incase I didn't already say: I got trapped in the bathroom one night, and I peed in a sacred woman cave another day. BYAH!

hahah, ok I love y'all!