Starting with the good sthuff = )
--In June I had my first visitor! Dave was able to take some time off work and came for a little under three weeks. It was surreal to be riding to the airport to pick him up and realize that I've been in this country long enough to be hosting someone. It was wonderful having him here. Cameroon is not neccesarily the easiest or the most relaxing country to take a vacation in (at least by the standard that most Peace Corps Volunteers live) and you really have to have a lot of patience and understanding to make the most out of your time here. But if you approach your time here with those qualities it becomes an amazing place. With Dave, we spent 8 days doing village life. The people of Dir loved having a white man in town (not only because he brought gifts but they really are honored to have guests from the United States) and the people totally came through showing Dave the Cameroonian sense of hospitality that I have written about before. During his time here we got gifted beer, a chicken, meals, beer, clothes and more beer = ) After village life we spent a week traveling to the Southwest and Littoral regions, where we visited other volunteers, hiked and went to the beach. It was good to see more of this country and really made me appreciate how diverse the landscapes, people, and food are throughout Cameroon. The more I see the more I understand why people take pride in calling Cameroon "Africa in miniature" (not that I've seen the rest of Africa, but you know.)
--In July I helped run a summer camp at the mayor's office. Cameroonians have a traditino that most school aged children go spend their summer vacations in other cities or villages. For example, those who are in cities usually do village life for the summer and visa versa. (People joke that it helps the village children from becoming too "Villageois"...which translated to "villager" and is actually quite an insult in Dir!) So the faces of the youth in Dir completely changed over the past couple of months. With that, the mayor's office recruited 16 motivated youth (ranging from ages 12 - 20 ) to spend a month doing a summer camp. Norbert works at the mayor's office so it was easy peasy to get a couple of days to work with the youth. All in all I did 8 lessons with the youth. 3 days were spent learning about HIV, condoms, and STIs. 3 days were spent doing sport and learning a couple of salsa routines, (it was my first time teaching since Fuego and I can't tell you how happy it made me, although the lessons were far more simplified than Fuego routines!) and 1 lesson was devoted to talking about the differences between American and Cameroonian culture. It was definitely rough getting back into the swing of village after having the company of Dave and being reminded of how much I miss home, but the summer camp was really rejuvenating and gave me a lot of purpose throughout hte month of July. I'm also working with the youth delegate to get Peace Corps funding and put on a similar formatin at the high school in October. So it that works out this summer camp would have been good practice!
--In August, I had a fourteen year old girl named Nina come and live with me for two weeks. She lives in a nearby town, Meiganga, where she is next door neighbors to another volunteer. So I had met her a couple of times when I visit Meiganga and when once in passing she told me she would like to come see Dir I told her she would be welcome. So as part of her summer vacation she came! It was super interesting to spend two weeks sharing a living space with a Cameroonian again, and honestly taught me even more about the culture and why Cameroonians do things the way they do. One of my biggest struggles with the culture here is that Cameroonians share EVERYTHING, but having her live with me made me so much more open to sharing my time, food, and living space with my neighbors.
Now onto the bad. I'm not trying to be pessimistic by sharing the bad stuff, but I think it's equally as important, as its very telling of daily life and the experience here.
--Besides helping out with vaccination and prenatal consultatins I've also started helping out with night shifts at the hospital. One of the nurses suggested I start coming once a week because much happens in the evenings and it is a good place to learn. As a sidenote, nursing care here is a whole different ballgame than it is in the States. Due to a MAJOR lack of doctors, nurses pretty much assume the role of doctor. So they are the ones who consult, prescribe, and treat the patient. (Which you need an advanced degree to do in the States.) That, on top of the fact that the hospital mostly deals with diseases that don't exist in the Sttes really puts me back to Day 1 of nursing school in comparison with the other nurses here. But the nurses are super willing to help me learn and I'm loving how much night shift is teaching me. Although, the first time I showed up I didnt' piece together the fact that Dir has not electricity and just had to laugh when we were doing treatment via kerosene lamp (brings a whole new meaning to the image of Florence Nightingale with her lamp) One of Dave's gifts though was a couple of headlamps, which the nurses went crazy over!
One of the nights that I was helping out we got woken up by a knock at 2 am. Two parents had brought their 5 year old boy from a village 40 km away (deep in the bush). Their child had been feeling crummy for a few days and they had waited it out hoping it would go away (VERY COMMON) but that evening he had become incredibly weak and by the time they got to the hospital (their motorcycle broke down 15 km away form Dir, so they had to walk the last 2 hours!) the boy was severely anemic and convulsing. Instantly, the nurses knew that it was a BAD case of malaria (although you can't do malaria tests @ night because to read the blood smear on the microscope, you need light) and decided to treat him for it. But before starting a perfusion of Quinine, the priority was making sure this little goober got some blood in him. Unfortunately, both the mom and the dad were not acceptable donors (the way blood transfusions work here is you test for blood type, then if that is compatible, you check for HIV and Syphillis. After, you draw the blood directly into an IV bag and transfuse it into the person in need. SUCH a different system than in the States, where hospitals have blood banks, but nontheless, it works.) So since the mom and dad were both incompatible, the problem was how to find a donor at 3 in the morning? The parents knocked on three people's door within one hour, and ultimately a teenage girl was found and able to donate. During that hour, it was a very crazy experience to see this little boy convulsing on the bed and being unable to help him and being unsure if we would be able to. Unfortunately, the little boy died later on that day. Not because the treatment wasn't working, but because the parents decided to take the little boy out of the hospital come morning. That happens far too often here and I'm still trying to figure it out. Some of the nurses say that people expect instant results when they come to the hospital, and when they don't get it they prefer to go to what they know..the traditional healers in the quartiers. Some other say it is due to lack of money to continue treatment.
--As part of the great migration that is summer vacation we had a family come and stay in our concession. We had 8 little kids under the age of 6! Which was equal parts mayhem, equal parts incredible entertainment. They definitely kept out concession BUMPING. One morning as I was walking home from night shift (wanting nothing more than a cup of coffee at my table) I tried to open my door and it wasn't working (my key wasn't fitting into the lock). Turns out that one of the 3 year old boys played with my door hwile I was gone and put a stick of wood in the lock! Fortunately, it was market day so the "door man" was coming from the next biggest town over, Ngaoundal, and arriving at about 9 am. Once I knew that, it was sort of comical that my door was broken. All in all, the ordeal involved waiting 4 hours and ultimately taking my door off its hinges and getting a new lock. I was able to laugh it off by the end of the morning with just a gentle reminder to the little kids to NOT play with my door. TOOO gentle of a reminder, because two days later it happened again! OOOF you should have seen me. There's been plenty of time when I've been annoyed here, or lost my patience, but this was the first time since arriving that I was genuinely PISSED! I was blowing steam off like a locomotive. It felt a little ridiculous to be so mad at a 3 year old and his possee but I couldn't help it. Fortunately, we were able to fix the door without the "door man" coming but I had to stomp through village to find someone to fix it. I was NOT so gentle with my reminder the second time around and the goobers were a little scared of me for a few days. Yikes! But by the end of summer vacation the delinquents and I made peace and spent a lot of evenings playing on my porch, so all's well = )
To leave things on a good note here are two exciting pieces of news: Pistache is preggers! (Should be popping out here babies in a couple of weeks!) And here is a picture of the soy field (this was taken a couple of months ago). Its growing beautifully and harvest should be mid-September, afterwards we'll start doing culinary demonstrations with the women in village!
