Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Can I get an Ashia!?

Ashia! is a popular Cameroonian interjection used to express frustration, disappointment, or sympathy with someone experiencing said frustration or disappointment.

For example: the other day I saw a girl walking down the road with a big bushel of oil palm nuts balanced on her head. She slipped and dropped them. I reflexively said "Ashia!" in sympathy.

Yesterday I got an Ashia-worthy text message on my cell phone from my fellow tech volunteer Bill. Warning: this post will induce pain among techies reading this but may be incomprehensible to non-technical readers. The message (as typed):
Shit man this is painful. I'm helping an inspector who's a nice guy but doesn't know how to double click with a new 3.5Ghz Pentium dual core multimedia pc with a 20" flat screen & APC he just got from the World Bank. This thing kicks the ass of my system at home several times over & he doesn't know what he's got or how to even begin using it. Meanwhile i'm piecing together old crap to keep my p2s alive. Can i get an "ashia"?
Yes Bill, yes, you can: ASHIA!

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Who Needs a Toothbrush?

Apparently many Africans don't

I don't see too many Cameroonians chewing sticks, but people here do walk around chewing on toothpicks a lot.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Wonders of Nature

I just watched a lizard devour a huge spider on the floor about three feet away from me. Sadly, I left my camera in the house. Now THAT would have been a good lizard blogging picture.

The Rainy Season

A while back I posted on what the dry season was like here in Nanga. Right now we're in the rainy season. Generally, it's cloudy in the morning and occasionally rains and then gets sunny in the afternoon. Some days it stays pretty cloudy for most of the day.

There are two types of cloudy here. There's hazy-whitish-gray-cloudy, which usually means it's probably not going to rain, or if it does rain, it will be pretty light. These are the clouds that are usually present in the morning.

Then there's menacing-angry-black-cloudy, which usually show up in the late afternoon and means the skies are about to open. This can happen fast. It can go from a sunny day with clear blue skies to menacing-angry-black-cloudy in an hour. When you see them gathering, you get in doors quick. Usually big storms like this are accompanied by plenty of thunder and lightening so it's hard to miss them coming. (Big storms also hit in the middle of the night a lot.)

When menacing-angry-black-cloudy does turn to rain, it rains HARD. Heavy, pounding, driving rain. Since my house (and most other houses here) have tin roofs, this make storms here LOUD. Throw in the thunder and there are times I wake up in the middle of the night.

When it rains like this, everything shuts down. It's funny. Before I came here my mother (who was presumably worried I'd get wet and cath cold) convinced me to buy a "rain suit" - waterprooof jacket and pants. I also brought a pair of umbrellas. I have yet to wear the rain suit, or, even just the jacket. I've used the umbrellas a few times when I had to go out, but normally they gather dust. Nobody here has much rain gear. Groundskeepers who have to work in the mud have boots but that's about it. Lots of women have umbrellas but they use them on sunny days to keep the sun off of them.

No, when it rains hard here people just stay indoors. Students and teachers don't go to class. Offices and stores open late or close early. If people are too far from home to get back they'll stay at work or find a bar to sit in until the storms pass. And they usually do pass fairly quickly. I've adopted this habit. If I see it's going to rain I just go home and wait until the storm passes. Since I live on campus this is easy. If I happen to have class, well, I still have the umbrellas and a pair of totes my mom sent me.

Since there aren't many paved roads around here, this means lots and lots of mud. The rainy season's corollary to the dry season's omnipresent dust is lots and lots of mud. Most people here do not wear shoes indoors to avoid tracking in mud or dust (depending on the season). The mud can be annoying, but I think it's far better to just have to clean a bit of mud off the floor or your shoes than to have to try to clean off the layers of dust that settle on everything during the dry season.

The foliage has also become very lush. In spots where there was bare earth a few months ago in the dry season, there are now four or five feet of vegetation. Combined with the absence of dust I think it makes the countryside much prettier.

As I mentioned previously, power is better overall during the rainy season since a lot of Cameroon's power is hydroelectric. During the dry season the water levels in the rivers drop and SONEL (the power company) starts cutting power since there's not enough to go around. This is less of a problem during the rainy season. The power does get knocked out a lot during big storms, but it's usually restored fairly quickly (knock on wood). During the dry season we were going for days or even weeks at a time without power. Now we usually only lose power for a few hours or maybe a day.

The biggest downside I've seen so far is that all the extra water means lots of extra mosquitoes. Lots and lots. Lots of other bugs too. These days I usually smell like a strange mix of deet and hydrocortisone cream.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Mango Flies

I see that Volunteer Jessica (who I trained with last year) has run afoul of one of the many little hazards of life in Cameroon:

Mango Flies.

Fear not, dear readers - I iron my clothes thoroughly so no worms bursting out of my skin yet.

Hey, You Got Something To Eat?

A goat asks: Hey, You Got Something To Eat?

Goats are everywhere in Cameroon, roaming free and wide. My mom sent me some seeds for a garden in a care package. Unfortunately I have no fence or place to put one. Without some kind of enclosure the goats would hoover up anything I put in the ground.

Of course, since they are eventually going to be slaughtered and eaten by humans (including me) I guess we're getting the easy end of the deal.

Finally Teaching Again

Huzzah!

I finally started teaching again last week after a two and a half month hiatus. I have two PCs set up in a room that I can use when I want to. The university shares the campus with a college (which in Cameroon is a private high school - not what Americans think of as a college) that is also run by the church. I have started giving basic computer lessons to several of the teachers there. It felt good to finally get some work done.

This week I got another student - a local high school student who is taking a paying course I am doing for the university. Others are interested as well. Hopefully we can use the proceeds to buy some parts so I can fix up more computers and take even more students.

This week I also started teaching my general English class for all the first years students. So far so good. Power has been cooperative in Nanga lately. Internet has even been semi-regular lately. To cap it all off last night I made the best spaghetti sauce I've ever had (if I do say so myself). It's all too good to be true.

But, Peace Corps life comes in peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. Which means something must be out there ... waiting ... waiting ... (cue Jaws music)