Hello everyone! I’m close to my one year anniversary in Cameroon. Which I guess is a time of celebration but for me I have a big educational event coming up so maybe the week after I’ll celebrate.
So since I last wrote I went to France to meet up with my parents. Was a good time but if I had to do it over I would have come home in that time. It would have been nice to see all my friends, eat some good american food, and avoid the huge price of Europe right now. I met my parents in Paris and after we took the train down to Nice. Before hand I was looking forward to using and practicing my French in France. But when I arrived I quickly learned how many French people speak English and how they do not like to speak French with non-native speakers when they don’t have to. I can understand most things that are said, and can express pretty much anything. But with learning French in west Africa my accent is no where near what a Parisian accent sounds like. So I would always start off conversations in French but when people heard my accent they probably thought I wasn’t very good and often switch to English. Which very often was worse than my French. But I did have many conversations with French people there when they let me speak more than a sentence and realized I could speak French. This phenomenon of people speaking to me in English was very frustrating at times but to put it into perspective, I was in very touristy areas where everyone spoke English as the linga franca. So Germans, Italians, Brazilians, Japanese etc. come in with no French but a good amount of English. Thus they start off conversations with French people in English, assuming everyone knows some. Often made life easier for me but difficult to practice.
Another area where I thought I might have been able to help my parents was with ordering food. But when we sat down at a restaurant I realized the foods were as foreign to me even with my French knowledge. Obviously everything will be different between a village in Cameroon and Paris but I didn’t really think about how different everything was. The French food ended up being a lot of ham, pasta, and bagget sandwiches. Which was fine but not really at the prices they were charging.
Everything went well in France. It was great to see my parents, but after they left I really just wanted to get back to Cameroon and my house. When flying back I almost didn’t even make it to Cameroon. I arrived in the Nice airport to be told my flight to Casablanca was fine but that my flight to Douala in Cameroon had been changed and the site I bought my ticket with had not informed me. Not the best thing when you’re travelling by yourself to a third-world country. The original options they gave me where to spend another day in Nice, or to go to Casablanca and take another a later flight and get into Douala during the night. Not a safe option. But after a while they found a seat on the original plane for me, which was extremely lucky. Lucky to be able to travel for 36 hours straight by myself.
Since I got back I’ve been spending pretty much all my time in village. I have a big hygiene project planned for next week. In Cameroon there is a big problems of food and water borne illnesses. Anything from diherea and worms to tuberculosis. Which takes away from quality of life, loses work and money, and often leads to death in infants. So the presentation will focus on the proper preparation and storage of food and water, and hand washing and general cleanliness. The third day will be a program design and management program to try and motivate people to workand start projects in the community. I’ve gotten the Mayor of the town to commit some money to the project, but I don’t think I have enough yet. But if other people don’t come through with money it just means i’ll cut the project down a little. I’ve tried to look only to local resources for money just to prove to the community that it is not necessary to look to big, outside, NGOs. And maybe it will stop people from asking for money for huge projects from me.
So I’m at my one year anniversery, what does that mean? I’ve met great friends, been able to travel through an interesting corner of Africa, and learned a new culture and french. But there is still a lot missing from my experience here. I still don’t feel productive or sometimes needed in my work. And there is a lot more of the country I would like to see and experience. But so far this first year has been amazing.
I lost part of my blog again which is very frustrating. Have a good September. Ben
