Le Travail

Just to prove that I actually do work at post, here's some photos.

This first one is of a fish farm in Ebolowa that I visited with a farmer from my town. It turns out that the two farmers were related. I guess that's what the Peace Corps is all about -- it brings families together:

This next one shows a tomato farm of Ahmidou, a farmer originally from the Western region of Cameroon.  Although he is of Bamoun origin, he can speak Bulu, the local patois, after many years in the South. I'm hoping to exchange some technical knowledge about farming with him:
This last one is a photo of a village near my town, where I visited a potential site for a water source:
On the way back from the village, we saw a couple of bush meat hunters carrying two dead monkeys. We stopped to talk to them for a while and I pondered taking a picture of them with their kill, but I decided against it.

Facebook's Influence

Perhaps due to Facebook or Twitter's influence, my journal entries (electronically and on paper) have become one to two sentence entries. Hence, the following blog entry with one or two sentence descriptions of recent events or thoughts:

1) My French is as good as my Tagalog, which means that its not great, but I can get by.

2) Speaking of languages, I have found an effective way to learn Bulu, the local language in my village. I just take a French college textbook and translate the lessons into Bulu, with the help of a tutor, of course. This method gives the lessons more structure and less randomness.

3) The sound of Cameroonian drums is pretty awesome. Except when its 5 in the morning, in which case, its annoying.

4) I'm glad that Cameroonians sell rice in the market because frankly, I am Asian and bread is no substitute for rice.

5) I learned how to prepare coffee without a coffee maker (i.e. I use a strainer). A strainer works well with tea leaves as well.

6) I believe in carpooling as much as the next guy, but fourteen people in a car (ie bush taxis) is freaking ridiculous! Thus, I am going to explore other modes of transportation such as a motorcycle. If I just accept the status quo, nothing will change, right? I was thinking that perhaps they could have a bush taxi that has less people but would cost more. Like those VIP buses. VIP bush taxi perhaps? I bet there are people willing to pay extra not to sit in a car with 14 people.

7) Whenever someone says 'Ni ho' or 'Chinois' to me, I feel like I'm in a Seinfeld episode because I feel like shouting: "I'm not Chinese!" And then quickly adding, "Not that there's anything wrong with it."


8) I think solar panels would be great in Cameroon since its an equatorial country and gets more direct sunlight than non-equatorial countries.

9) An acquaintance brought a girl over to my house (his cousin) one night and offered that I sleep with her. Awkward. I declined.

10) Cameroonians love putting the maggi cube in all of their cooking.

11) Had a pretty good meeting with the Forestry delegate at my village. Among other things, I learned that one can sell bush meat at restaurants as long as one had a permit. Of course, the question is: how many have a permit?

12) Recent books I finished: William Easterly's The Elusive Quest for Growth, Roland Bunch's Two Ears of Corn, Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty, Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, and Michael Lewis' Moneyball.

13) I never liked eating raw onions until I ate them with hot pepper sauce and braised fish.

14) Speaking of braised fish, I can no longer eat the braised fish from the street after buying fresh mackerel and realizing how small the street mackerel is.

15) I think I should've brought a portable water filter to Cameroon. Or learn how to make one a la Les Stroud. I've been to meetings where so many water bottles are handed out, which sort of contradict the Environmental-friendly philosophy of my position.

La Vie en Brusse

Things I've done in the past 4 weeks:

1) eaten snake, antelope, hare and porcupine. I draw the line at chat tigre (apparently a tiger cat) and monkey. It was a bit unexpected and a little shocking when someone showed me a monkey head that was part of a carcass being prepared for dinner.

2) not see another American. Although I did see another European since the Catholic priest is from Europe and has been at my community for decades and can speak the local language fluently.

3) drank quite a bit of Top or Fanta but rarely any beer like 33 or Mutzig.

4) had more electricity than I would have expected considering I supposedly live in the bush (the Congo basin according to the map). People tell me though that the electricity will disappear during the rainy season.

5) said the sentences 'je ne comprends pas', 'pardon', and 'qu'est-ce que tu as dit?' quite a lot, which means I still have a ways to go before I'm fully fluent in French.

6) used the text-to-speech feature on my Kindle which made reading more interesting, like a robot narrating the story.

7) occasionally pondered whether I can forego the familiar comforts of American life. Comforts like the easy availability of a nice, fat burrito.

8) finished some good books like Jon Krakauer's Where Men Win Glory, Michael Lewis' The Big Short and Dave Eggers' What is the What?

La Fin ...

... du stage (i.e. the end of training). Oh, blog, how I've neglected thee. How can I make it up to you? How about some pictures? Pourquoi pas? Since I last blogged, I visited three more regions in Cameroon. There's the West region where we had some problems with our van sliding into a ditch. Fortunately, no one was hurt:



There was also the Northwest region, where it rained a lot:



And finally, there's the South region, which I visited before, but not 'en brusse' (in the bush). I had to take a bush taxi, which a Peace Corps volunteer called a clown car since they stuff so many people in there:



Aside from the awesome field trips, my training is nearly over. 53 of us trainees will be sworn in as PC volunteers next week. The following day, we will go our separate ways to our posts all over Cameroon. Its a little bittersweet. On the one hand, its a little sad to say goodbye to everyone. We probably won't see each other that much in Cameroon after swearing in. On the other hand, I think we are happy to start the next phase of our Peace Corps career. One thing is for sure: it'll be weird not to be around so many Americans in Cameroon.

L'électricité

There has been no electricity at our training site for a few days now. We have a generator at school, but at home, there's no power. Thus, I have had to use a petrol lamp to write a paper:


We got our bikes yesterday though, so now we can get around town more easily.

On a lighter note: