9-8-11

9-8-11

Wellll welll, what it is computer keyboard and conscious.  This has been a tougher than usual week, but it passed by so quickly.  Tomorrow is Friday and then just have a day of class on Saturday.  I am so blessed in my life.  We got our perdiem for food and walk around money.  I don’t think I broke this down previously, I’m not going to go back and check.  We get 5.000 franc per day for food.  Thats a little over $10 a day for food.  1.000 for breakfast and 2.000 each for lunch and dinner.  If I utilized that all I would be eating like a king here.  I don’t think I’m meeting all my nutrient requirements, thats why I make potty once every 4 day.  Its not even that impressive when it happens.  We get that amount for food, and then 16.000 for 2 weeks of walk around money.  About $172 every 2 weeks to live off of.  I’m not sure how that changes once we get to post.  But that is a fat amount of money here.  Cameroon's biggest bill is 10.000 ~ $20.  They don’t have a bigger bill.  Why?  People don’t need it.  I get rolled eyes when i have to break 5.000 for a lunch that cost 1.000 or 1.500.  Its like I take all the change they acquired the last couple of hours.  Ill practice my french with the guards of the house and ask what they had for breakfast or lunch and more often then not they say nothing.  I’ll say Porquoi?  Then they say no money.  I know they get paid decently by the PC but their money goes to other things.  Asa gives most of his money so his daughter can go to school.  I dunno about John Michell.  He mostly speaks french.  I gotta pick up my game before I can find out.  Or the kids I talk to.  Most of them have coffee, bread with chocolate.  I used to be disappointed with cold showers, but now I really look forward to them.  I feel fantastic at the end of the day cleaning myself with cold water.  Its also a blessing to have running water in the house we are living in.  A lot of people have to get well water and take bucket baths.  That could be me at post so I am appreciating it all right now.  Thats an everyday breakfast thing.  Or at least when I ask them.  This 4 year old told me he had coffee.  I hook the kids up with fruit when I see them now.  But sometimes they follow me to lunch expecting me to buy them something, but I can’t.  Otherwise their friend would come another day because le blanc buys the food.  Next time someone calls me le blanc I will say Je ne suis pas le colour.  Je suis humain!  Je suis sempatie.  I don’t have my notes next to me so the grammar is probably bad on that.  I cannot wait to speak french specifically for the weird things I will say.  Those who have heard my voice know I strive to speak differently.  Maybe I’ll start spelling words in french too.  I’m trying to learn rap lyrics in french, but that will be later down the road.  Like my milk shake brings all the boys to the yard and there like, its better than your, I can teach you, but I have to charge.  The teacher got confused when I tried to say I make it rain in class one day.  

My room is turning into a classroom.  I have poster sheets of verbs and conjugation and phrases.  I must say this immersion is harder than any class I have ever taken in my life and it is in the most low maintenance classroom I have ever been in.  We sit in plastic lawn chairs for hours a day in a small room and just write on brown poster paper which is ripped from a big roll and tapped to the wall.  Its awesome though.  I have learned more french in these 3 weeks than I could imagine learning in a semester at a college level.  Probably because its 5+ hours 6 days a week.  It doesn’t get draining.  I just take each day as it comes.  I had my first real hard day yesterday.  I was so sick of french I didn’t want to say another word at the recap of our independent study.  I just got some sleep that night and was high on life the next day.  The teachers are so kick ass.  They do this year round for PCT.  They are very patient and creative.  At the end of training there is a big party with food and dancing.  I am VERY much looking forward to getting down in my bou bou.  

What was noteworthy this week.  We had an STD HIV and condom use medical session this week.  The PCMO was down with that session.  She allowed me to be silly with my answers for the case studies.  She also brought “her” wooden dildo.  She specifically said “her” rather than “the” wooden dildo.  You know 90% of PCV have had unprotected sex while in service.  That was a stat from the late 90s, but wow. Flesh on flesh.  We get to watch a video about RPCV who got HIV while in service during actual training next month.  That should be interesting.  STDs are terrible.  I don’t know why more people don’t get down with their hands if they are that much in heat.  OH.  They give us condoms and “dental dams”.  Have any of y’all heard of this?  Its a rubber tissue thing covered in baby powder and a scent its used for going down on someone.  Like a bathing suit for you tongue.  Wack.  Speaking of condoms I was going to leave mine at the cyber cafe and I was leaving the house with them in my hand.  Asa stops me and said “what is that.”  I told him it is a preventative measure to prevent seamen from entering a woman's vagina.  I think that was too scientific because he still didn’t know.  I gave him 2 and told him to utilize it during intercourse.  I also decided not to leave them at the cyber cafe because these condoms cannot be bought in town and I didn’t want them to stand out.  I may want some water balloons or balloon decorations later.  Condoms here are interesting.  They do have some name brand, but then they also have the local stuff.  Life a wrapper that has a black man making love with a white woman.  The white woman was clearly photo-shopped into the picture.  I also saw a commercial for a female condom on TV.  It was a cheesy commercial but how does that work.  From the commercial it looks like a flimsy upside down plastic cup.

Enough about sex and condoms.  I elaborated so much because it wasn't french.  No real plans for this weekend.  Study.  Maybe make some videos of what market is like on the weekend.  Or how I purchase my food.  Or what a business transaction is like for fruit.  I have got to wear crappier clothes to market.  I think I look like a cheap bass going to market in nice clothes and then bartering with people for food that is already cheap to American standards.  They already know I have money.  I only try to barter because I get charged a higher price due to the color of my skin.  I had a lady just walk up to me at lunch time, hold out her hand and ask for cent franc.  100 franc, like a quarter.  I said no and she said porquoi.  I was going to get into a conversation but I knew it would lead to a question or sentence I could not comprehend.  So I just walked away.  Its a hard place to be because yes, its not sweat off my back to give 100 franc that the peace corps provided me.  That could buy any of these items:  4 bananas, 4 small tomatoes, 5 mandarins, a loaf of potato bread, 2 individual packs of dish detergent, a big avocado, or 2 batons of manioc.  It can buy a lot.  But then I become more of a point of interest than I already am.  I can’t remember the expression, but Lauren says certain people will come up to her in her village and say “what do you have for me today.”  I’ll see what my experience is like at my final post.

After this weekend there is only 1 and a half weeks of class left.  Wild.  Although it feels like I’ve been in country longer than 3 weeks, it is surpassing to realize we are almost finished with this immersion.  Time is flying right now because we have full schedules, have to be back in at seven, and I pass out at 9 or 10.  Ooooooohhhhh i get to pop a mefloquin tomorrow.  I’m looking forward to some lucid dreams tomorrow night.  I’m trying to be more diligent about writing down my dreams right when I wake up do build up my dream recollection capabilities.  I believe that helps out with lucid dreaming.  Once I get into that I’m going to invest my nightly hours into learning how to control flight.  Or be a Sagittarius since that what I be.  Once I get enough detail about my dreams I’ll post some here.  I tried to catch a chicken in our yard today.  We have a group of them flock each day.  Did not work.  I’m going into it with no technique.  It made the guards laugh and I just said J’ai faim!  Or I like to watch them with this girls binoculars while I have my coffee in the morning.  Can you imagine moving your head back and forth everywhere you move?  Sometimes there will be a cockfight in our yard too.  We used to have goats come in our yard but they don’t come around anymore.  I’m pretty sure they were sold or slaughtered.  A male goat makes a very weird nose when it wants to get down with the female goat.  This post seems sexually oriented.  I’m going to bed.  A plus tard mes amie.  Get down with your life.  du courage!