A day in the life.

What's shakin America?

I have been in Cameroon for a little over a month now, and I know some inquiring minds out there are dying to know just what exactly I'm doing all day errday (besides sweating), so let me break it down for you: a day in the life of a PCT (Peace Corps Trainee) in Cameroon:

I wake up at 5:30am, which, as it turns out, is not a morning hour conducive to feeling anything remotely like P Diddy, but I prepare myself to hit the city of Bafia nonetheless. I huff and puff my way through a run, navigating the streets of the quartier residential, wowing all my neighbors with my profuse perspiration and my brilliantly white skin. Around 6:30, I make my way back home and indulge in a luxurious bucket bath (no but seriously that blue bucket of cold water paired with my John Frieda Brilliant Brunette shampoo is as close to luxurious as I'm going to get). After bathing, I dress myself- never with a mirror, sometimes without interior lighting- and come out looking fresh 2 death, obvi. I set the breakfast table while Diane and Mama MC (my mom's name is Marie Claire and her BFFs call her MC...ergo she is my Mama MC) rustle up some grub. Last week I got guacamole aka presse for breakfast every morning which was thebomb.com- especially on Tuesday and Wednesday when the guac was paired with leftover red beans and slathered on a baguette for a southwestern fiesta in my mouth. Normally on the non-fiesta mornings I am served a delicious tomato, garlic, onion and piment (hot pepper) omelet with baguette. However, this week I got thrown for a loop when Mama MC fixed us salad for breakfast two mornings in a row! That's right, people: lettuce, tomato, onion, and avocado in and around my mouth. There was an interesting twist to the salad, though: Cameroonian salad dressing, which is made with mayonnaise, sugar, vinegar and oil. Interessante... So the nutrient rich ingredients ended up being almost entirely masked by the dressing and by the baguette on which we consumed our "salad," but hey- a salad's a salad! I enjoyed it. I am ecstatic to report that I have been served Nescafé every morning with my breakfast ever since that wretched week of Ovaltine, so I have returned to stable caffeine levels and all is right in the world.

After petit dej (breakfast), Diane, Mama MC and I leave the house around 7:30 to walk to school, work, and the base, respectively. Mama MC rocks fierce heels every day- just like my momma back home, except Lisa T doesn't have to wade through muddy dirt roads in her fierce heels. It's amazing- Mama MC and I walk together on the same roads, and yet my chacos and rainbows are constantly caked in mud, while her white heels remain spotless.

Side note: My sister is always on my case about my shoes, but last Saturday she legitimately FREAKED out on me for trying to wear my chacos that were, admittedly, exceptionally muddy. She started going off about how she knows I have more pairs of shoes in my room, but for some reason I insist on wearing only sandals, and that it was absolutely unacceptable for me to go out in public with shoes looking like that. I ended up changing my shoes, leaving my chacos at home for Diane to wash to her standards, and walked to school with my tail between my legs and my rainbows on my feet.

So anyways, I walk to the base, greeting everyone I pass, Belle from Beauty and the Beast "Bonjour!" style. Classes start at 8:00 and go until 16:30 (military time is a STRUGGLE for me). We have four different classes every day: 8:00-10:00, then 10:20-12:20, then 13:30-15:00, and finally 15:15-16:30. Each of those four blocks may be a language class, a tech session, a medical session, a security session, a cross-culture session, or a general meeting. Language classes are small, with a maximum of four people in a class, and everyone in the class is in the same sector, so I am in class with three other YDs who tested into the same level as I did. Every two weeks we get a new language instructor, but thus far we are all still learning French, even though the four of us in my class tested out of French before starting classes. We will start learning new languages (Pidgin English, Fulfulde) if need be after we find out our posts on Wednesday. Tech sessions are our Youth Development technical skills training, and are led by our team of tech trainers, as well as PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) that come in for a week or two at a time. Because YD is a new program, there are no YD volunteers to lead sessions, so instead we have had volunteers from every sector (education, small enterprise development, health, and agroforestry) come in to work with us, which has been awesome. We learn about the youth of Cameroon, which groups we will be targeting, what each group's problems are, and how we will be going about addressing those problems. I will spare you the details for now. Medical sessions are always led by Nurse Ann, the Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO). Nurse Ann is hysterical. She's Cameroonian, but has been working with Peace Corps forever, and has formulated a series of opinions about PCVs based on her experience over the past two decades or so, most notably that all volunteers are sexually insatiable. She leads sessions about various medical issues, gives us all our vaccinations and medications, and replenishes our Medical Kit supplies when we run low on anything- especially condoms and dental dams. Medical sessions are a good time. YDs and Agros are usually together for Med, Security and Cross Culture sessions since we are the two groups that live in Bafia. Security sessions are led by Ruth, another Cameroonian with a long history with Peace Corps and probably a lot of preconceived notions about volunteers, but not nearly as obvious as Nurse Ann's. Ruth is sweet, albeit hard to understand at times, but she gets pretty loud when she's making an important point, which is helpful in following her lectures. Ruth talks to us about mitigating risk for robberies, sexual harassment, etc. Good stuff. Cross-culture sessions mostly pertained to homestays at first, but have evolved into discussing Cameroonian gender norms, Cameroonian history and geography, and other aspects of Cameroonian culture. General meetings are for all three groups, so we bus in the santés (health trainees) from Bokito on Thursdays for the weekly GM. GMs are basically a forum for training announcements, since it's the only time we are all together. So yeah those are our classes. Exhilarating, right?

Every day, lunch ladies come and set up a buffet at the base, and you can fill your plate for 500 CFA (a little over one American dollar), or 1000 CFA if you opt for the meat. You can pretty much count on the buffet consisting of rice, red beans and plantains every day. The other starches alternate between pasta, potatoes and couscous. They also usually have some sort of legume- either cabbage with carrots and green beans, or spinachy/ leafy somethin somethin, but sometimes potatoes are the closest we get to legumes. The meat option alternates daily as well, between chicken, ground beef, meatballs, fish or tripe. The meat is always dang good here, but since I get a lot of meat at home for dinner, I usually go for the vegetariation option and save my 500 CFA for a beer after school. They also usually have fruit that you can buy for an extra 50 CFA- yesterday it was papaya and it was amazeballs. So yeah, let me just reiterate- I am NOT going hungry in Africa.

After classes, we usually all go out for a beer and/or chocolate gateau at the bar/ boutique down the road. And when I say beer, I mean a forty. They only sell forties. So yeah, a forty for 500 CFA, which is a little more than one American dollar. Can you say party time? I am a trente trois girl myself, but for those in the group who aren't too keen on beer, there are the options of boxed wine, Smirnoff Ice, Booster Whisky-Cola, or the increasingly popular option sachets (small plastic baggies of shots of just barely potable alcohol) of whiskey or gin in Top soda. Chocolate gateau is a delicacy up there with grandmas nut balls- it's basically a giant dinner roll slathered with Tartina (Nutella with more cocoa and less hazelnut), and of late we have taken to adding a banana into the mix. Oh baby oh baby. When the sun starts to set, we all pack up and head to our homestays for the night.

At home, I sometimes help make dinner, but lately the fam has been having me wash dishes while they cook. Probably for the best. It's not that I can't cook- it's that I can't cook here. For starters, Cameroonians do not use cutting boards to cut food up- they just cut up everything in their hands. So when I tried to cut up onions last week, the waterworks were OOC- like Titanic caliber waterworks. Other highlights on my cooking adventures have included not having the strength/ stamina to stir the giant vat of cous cous with the monstrous wooden bat of a spoon, cutting myself trying to shave the skin off of manioc, burning an omelet, not being able to toast bread properly, getting a rash from insisting it was easier to peel garlic with my fingernails instead of a knife edge, and so on and so forth. Petit à petit as we say here in Cameroon.

So I bumble around the kitchen "helping" with what I can, trying to avoid injury to myself and others, until it's time for dinner. The one domestic task that is mine and mine alone at our house is setting the table, and let me tell you- I can set a MEAN table! Placemats? All over those bad boys! Plates? Done. Glasses? Forks? Check and check. It's just a gift I guess.

For dinner, we feast. Mama MC hails from the West, and is one hell of a chef. My favorite dishes are couscous de maiz with gumbo sauce (gumbo means okra in French, but it does kind of taste like gumbo from NOLA) and macabo with peanut fish sauce. Omnomnom. Last week Mama MC fixed me tripe because I said I was afraid of it when they served it for lunch one day at the base, and she insisted that I would love it if she made it for me. She was right- that shiz was de-freaking-licious. I've had it twice now. Good stuff. After dinner we watch Fille de Jardiner, and then I announce that I am going to sleep, and go into my room to read until I drop.

So there you have it, a day in the life.

Peace love and poop in a hole.