Friday Lizard Blogging

Back to giving my readers lizardy goodness. It's been way too long.

A Clean Bill of Health

I'm now finished with all my medical exams and have officially received a clean bill of health from the PCMOs. No parasites or tropical fevers or exotic diseases. Zip. La santé va bien!

A Trip to the Dentist

Went to the dentist this morning for a checkup and cleaning. It was pretty much the same as a visit to the dentist in the states.

One thing was amusing: all the dentists and hygienists were wearing smocks with Looney Tunes characters and the slogan "What's Up Doc?" on the breast. Random crap like that is what I love about Cameroon.

I'm lucky to have the Peace Corps to find me a good dentist and pay for it. One of the first things I noticed after arriving here was how many locals are missing teeth. Most Cameroonians either live in areas where there is no dentist, or, they don't have the money to pay for one. For them, there's usually only one option:
Just another reminder of the harsh effects of poverty in people's daily lives here.

The Peace Corps Weight Loss Program

I had my physical with one of the PCMOs (Peace Corps Medical Officers) today and according to him I'm in good health. After that I swung by a lab here in Yaoundé for blood work and to drop off some "specimens" (if you get my drift) so they can see if I've picked up any parasites.

When the doc weighed me we found that I've lost ten pounds since coming here. This surprised me actually - I didn't feel any thinner and my pants still fit. Nothing compared to many other volunteers though. Between a new diet, all sorts of yummy gastro-intestinal disorders, and stress related changes in appetite, weight fluctuations are almost universal for Peace Corps volunteers. I know plenty of folks who have lost twenty or thirty pounds since arriving. One guy (who was pretty big when he arrived) has lost almost sixty pounds. People in the north of the country (where it is generally about as hot as the inside of a pizza oven) usually lose more because they are constantly sweating it off.

I have been mercifully free of any major stomach illnesses like amoebic dysentery, so I attribute the weight loss mainly to the change in diet. Although the palm oil they cook with is loaded with fat and cholesterol, meat is leaner, they eat lots of fish, and the other foods you find here have less fat than the processed foods we tend to eat in the US. Almost nothing besides candy has sugar in it either, so my sugar consumption is virtually nil unless I feel like treating myself to the occasional packet of cookies or a candy bar.

Forget Jenny Craig. If you want to drop twenty pounds join the Peace Corps and come to Africa. Maybe you'll even be able to do it without explosive diarrhea.

Election Day

Today was election day in Cameroon. All over the country elections for parliamentary seats and mayoral offices were held.

Since elections here have occasionally gotten ugly in the past, Peace Corps had us under strict orders to stay at our posts and sit tight for the weekend. Since I had to come to Yaoundé for mid-service medical, I came early and have been hanging out at the Case de Passage next to the Peace corps office in the capital.

The day has been quiet. All the stores were closed and the streets were empty. I went with a visiting former volunteer to visit friends and we passed a number of polling places, most of which were empty. Most people don't seem to be bothering to vote, presumably because the winners have probably already been decided.

Chatting with some Cameroonians, I learned that they don't vote for individual candidates but instead the vote for political parties, who then select the candidates after they have one. Cameroon has a multi-party system, but the ruling party of President H. Paul Biya, combined with smaller, allied parties, always seems to win a majority, presumably because they are doing such a bang-up job of running the country.

Most of us volunteers just stayed inside today. I spent the morning watching Three's Company DVDs and the afternoon hanging out with the afore-mentioned volunteer and her Cameroonian friends. Had some pretty good grilled fish for lunch. Mmmm ... grilled fish ...

Stage and Mid-Service

Currently in Yaoundé getting ready for my mid-service medical exams. All volunteers receive a physical, a check up at the dentist, and tests for all the various tropical diseases and intestinal disorders we tend to catch here. Mid-service lasts about a week, so I will be here for the next few days.

I came to Youndé from the village of Banganté, in the West province. I will write more about this in the future and will eventually post pictures, but I am helping out with "Stage" (training) for the new batch of Education volunteers. Last week this mostly involved teaching a lot of computer lessons to Cameroonian high school students while the stagaires (trainees) observed and took notes.

Although the water seems to be out all the time and the power is about as sketchy as Nanga's, I liked Banganté and what I've seen so far of the west province. It's hilly country filled with farms and is quite pretty. I also got to visit Bafoussam, one of Cameroon's larger cities. A little grungy and intimidating but I had a good time.

Stay tuned for more ...

Beatles Fans

In my General English class this semester I may have inadvertently created a bunch of Beatles fans. As an exercise, I brought in my mp3 player and speakers and played "In My Life" for them. I chose that particular song because it's slow, the lyrics are clear and easy to understand, it's not too long, and it's a nice song. Perfect for low and intermediate level students.

So, I played the song, wrote out the lyrics on the board, explained and discussed them with the students so they would understand it, and then played the full song again.

They loved it. Kept asking me to play it over and over again. One girl came up and used her cell phone to record the song and others approached me after and asked if I could get them copies of the CD. One had heard "Let It Be" somewhere before and when I told him I had that one too he begged me to play it, so he and some others stayed after class and I played that one for them as well.

So, as an American sent to Africa partly to introduce Cameroonians to American culture I have now successfully introduced them to a legendary ... British band.

After the Beatles experiment I tried a little Norah Jones so they could hear a female voice with a different accent. I played "Don't Know Why" for them - also slow and relatively easy to understand. They liked it, but it didn't go over quite as well as the Beatles for whatever reason.

I think next year I'm going to get ambitious and try Motörhead.

The Little Dry Season

Well, not long after I wrote a post on the coming of the rainy season here in southern Cameroon, it suddenly stopped raining.

As it turns out, there are actually two rainy seasons and two dry seasons in this part of the country. There is the Big Dry Season, which lasts from November til about March, which I described here (link). It's followed by the Little Rainy Season, which I described in the aforementioned post.

The Little Rainy Season is then followed by the Little Dry Season, which we are in now, and which lasts from June until about September. The Little Dry Season is not as dry as the Big Dry Season. We've gotten a tiny bit of rain (drizzles mostly) and it is usually very cloudy. It always looks like it's getting ready to rain but never does. Kind of a weird feeling.

I'm told that after the Little Dry Season ends around September, we will enter the Big Rainy Season, which will be a lot like the Little Rainy Season, except ... bigger, and which will last until the Big Dry Season starts in November.

End of the Semester

I haven't posted anything for a while since we just wrapped up the semester at school. The last few weeks have been very hectic. Here's a summary:

• I'm currently in Yaoundé en route to "Stage" (training for new volunteers) in Cameroon's West province. I'll be there over the weekend and will start teaching next Monday in a "Model School" for Cameroonian high school students. The trainees will sit in and watch for the first week, then we'll switch roles and I'll observe and assist after that.
• I taught General English, a required course for all first year students. More on this in future posts, but with over a hundred students and lots of assignments to grade it ended up sucking up most of my time.
• After discussions with my Dean, we decided to do my Informatique de Base (Basic Computing) class again next year for all the students who were supposed to take it this year. Since we'll also have to give the same course to the new students, I'll probably end up teaching it twice. This time, since I know what to expect and the limitations of time and energy, I think it will go a bit smoother. I will also be tag-team teaching the course with another professor and the Dean (who are also techies) in order to handle the number of students.
• For the third year students who were in Informatique de Base and need the credits to graduate this year, I ended up teaching a mini-course for about two hours a day covering basic Windows functions and word processing with MS Word. At the end I gave each of them a short practical exam where I had them demonstrate basic Word and Windows functions for me.
• When I wasn't teaching English or the third year students in Informatique de Base, I was giving private lessons to a local high school student and a pair of teachers at the college (private high school) which shares the campus with the University.

The computers donated to the University by Peace Corps back in April have been a godsend. It took me a while but after a lot of scrounging for parts I now have three Pentium IIs set up in the University's cyber cafe (which has been closed to the public since I arrived and which I am now using as my own classroom). They're old and slow, but they work. Without them I could not have given the mini-course to the third year students or my private lessons.

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