11/10/11
Yesterday I saw a dead money attached to moto going somewhere with 2 dudes. Big monkey. It made me wonder how close that wild life is here in Bafia. Tonight I ate porcupine and it tasted interesting. My first, but not last, taste of bush meat. I don’t think too much about what I eat. Food is fuel. I’m trying to find a vocabulary word to describe the taste. Its like a musky leather taste. luckily my mom is a great cook and most of that bush meat taste was covered up with a tomato / veggie sauce. I also had it coated with some fresh pimont sauce. When I was eating it I just had the image in my head of eating the guy that put prickers in the dogs face from homeward bound. I’ll reenforce the fact of how beautiful the clouds are here during the rainy season. When I walk home from school I get graced with an amazing view more often that not. I wish I could load up the videos I am making on fb. No point in loading them up in two places. Sorry if your reading this and don’t like chapter books.
The third week of PST is coming to a close. We have mountain bike training this saturday instead of language class. Some new volunteers came in yesterday to help with classes and I believe two of them are skilled with bike mechanics. They were making any necessary adjustments to the bikes we will be receiving this weekend. I found out my sister did take money from me. After I told my brother he investigated and found the money in her backpack. There was an awkward family meeting one morning. Awkward because the whole family was there and papa pimont was trying to tell me that his daughter stole from me. Since my french was not up to par for the situation I asked my brother to translate for me so there was nothing lost in translation. Nothing is awkward in the house though. I don’t act any differently with my family and the daughter doesn't act any differently around me. I dont hold it against her. I stole at her age. I learned my lesson through the experience because knowing theft was wrong was obviously not enough. I have to lock my door whenever I am not in my room which makes me feel awkward. Whenever I take a shower I have to lock the door, and my room is literally right next to the bathroom. So there is just always the sounds of the door locking when I go into the living room, bathroom, or outside to help my mom cook.
Shane and I are going to interview a farmer for an Agro assignment. We came up with the questions today. All of the agro trainees paired up into groups to go out and find farmers in Bafia to discover their practices. A farmer is anything from a father who raises food for his family to someone who works for a government agency. I think this is a great assignment because It will be a large portion of what we will be doing once we get to post. Just talking to people to find out what they have been doing for their lively hood, and then identifying the needs that we could help sustainably develop. We got the grades back for our tree nursery and demo plot, everyone failed except for 1 group just just barley passed. I think the tech trainers were too critical. From what I have gathered from current volunteers it is difficult to transfer the technical knowledge to the natives. I strongly believe if we implemented a formation on how to make a demo plot or build a small scale tree nursery the natives would not see any reason for the specifics. I feel the same way. But all of PST is a long lesson in patience. Patience is also something people say for everything, if your sick, frustrated, whatevz. Today we also learned how to create malaria smears. Its what we are supposed to do if we think we have malaira, but before we take the coartum. Coartum are the pills we pop if we think we have malaria. These slides go to PC HQ to see if we actually have it or not. I saw a dead snake in the road on the way to the tree farm. A big snake. Like a meter long, black, and it was venomous because we opened the mouth with some sticks and saw the fangs. This snake was dead. Someone before us cut it up with a machete. I’ll finish this after le dejune.
I’m finishing this much later than after lunch. Its monday night of next week and immersion has started in Bafia. English is no longer allowed at the school house during school hours and preferably on the weekend. Our first LPI is wednesday, which is the language test to see if we changed levels at all. There is an “open house” tomorrow where all the formatters have different tables representing different situations we might encounter at post. The stagiers get to walk around and simulate each experience instead of having language classes. Last week on Thursday we saw a video on return PCVs who got HIV. None of them were from freak accidents, they were all from having sex with natives who had it. This video was made in the late 80s or early 90s based on the quality and clothing. Watching that video was interesting. It was also after our STDs and STI talk. Hearing these volunteers talk about trusting the counterpart that gave them HIV or making the decision to have unprotected sex was interesting. I don't have a better vocabulary word. Then listening to their advice they give to trainees. This video has probably been watched by thousands of PCV. I cannot remember the exact stats, but approximately 100 volunteers have gotten HIV during service and 4 have died since 1986 I believe. There were also some stats about PEP use. Google PEP. I didn’t do much this past weekend. My brother left for Yaounde to start at the University again. He only left with a backpack and a sack of plantains. It was actually the sac I bought my mom this weekend. There was a PCV who came to PST to give a presentation on diversity. She brought some sacs that prisoners in her village made. So I bought one for mama here. I also went with my mom on Sunday to some interesting meeting. People kept coming in and giving money and recording numbers in a little book. The people dropping off the money all had this same little notebook the size of a passport. There was one dude with a large accountant looking notebook. I think its like a community lottery. Where everyone chips into the pot and then the money circulates so one day everyone gets a fat stash one day to use on important things. Like sending your kid to school or having something necessary for the house, or the house. I’ll find out when my french improves. This girl who lives across the street from me, another stagier, had her mom peace out to Yaounde for 2 weeks. Her mom works for the election committee as a computer programer. Its akward for Molly, because in the house its her mom and her roomate who is a dude she knows from college. So now its the dude room mate and Molly. Molly is chilling at my families crib on the weekends, but I’ve got super cool field trips the next two weekends. Luckily my brother just happened to leave so she has a room to stay in rather than on the couch. These field trips are super cool. The agro volunteers get to visit current PCV post and see what they've been doing. This weekend we are visiting Richard’s post. Richard has been teaching some tech sessions last week and this week. He works with a couple NGOs. We get the opportunity to have some hands on action with the tech training we've been getting and learn how to make shea butter. I’ll have more details apres le field trip of what we actually do, but its going to be super. Oh yea, I got a weave put into my hair so I could have corn rolls. That looked really creepy. Like a pedifile coke dealer. I have on super creepy picture thats going to go up on fb. The braids are out now. My hair was too short and slick to keep them in. In 3 weeks I’ll try again. I’ll pause for the next post since this is so long. 4th week of PST almost done. I will find out where I’m going to be posted at the beginning of November. December 8th is the swearing in. WILD. Toodles.
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