
So, I spent a week visiting the little village where I will be spending the next two years of my life!
The communication was hard, although my French has improved, because their accents are different and some would switch into the local language (Bafang) and I couldn’t understand anything or even know where their French ended and the Bafang began. I will also be the first volunteer in this town so I worry about what kind of expectations they have for me. A couple of people asked me, “Qu’est-ce que vous allez apporter?” Or “What is it that you will bring?” (Or, more accurately, in Cameroonian French it is “Vous apportez quoi?”) I think many assume that with me comes money and that is just not true. So, by the end of my visit I ended up just smiling and saying “Juste Moi” or “Le Connaissance” (knowledge) even though I don’t know how true that is.
The town is small. It consists of one main paved road where all of the bush taxis and trucks come through on their way to or from Bafoussam and Douala. Also, it is definetly more tropical then Bangangte, which is up in the mountains, and therefore hotter. I was able to look at my house that I will be living in, which was nice! Although, I do have pigs. I told the guy I didn’t know anything about raising pigs and he told me he would try to get rid of them before I arrived, but I guess I will see. I may have to learn how to take care of pigs. Swweeeet!
After my stay in Kekem I went down to Nkongsamba which a big city about an hour south of Kekem where I met up with some other volunteers and got to eat cheese (Yipee!) and I got my first bad bout of food poisoning (Not so yippee).
By the time I arrived back in Bangangte after a three hour trip in a “bush-taxi” or a van for 12 with 18 people squeezed in it, and a moto ride I was excited to be “home” in Bangangte where my homestay family came out all excited and gave me big hugs. I have come to really like Bangangte. There are only 2 more weeks of training left and Bangangte has become a little haven (no relation to my sister, who should call me!!:) for me. I know the names of the people who work at the boutiques next to the training center and I have made friends with the employees of my assigned company and the thought of starting all over again sans my American support system that I have now makes me a little nervous. I just need to remind myself that after some time in Kekem I will feel the same way about it. There is a lot of work to do in Kekem and I am really excited to get started, but at the same time I am scared out of my mind!
I also have a bit of an interesting side note. A couple of days ago I saw a different side of cameroon. Firstly, it all began as I was watching T.V. over breakfast and these people on the news were wailing and accusing this woman of using witchcraft to kill some other women’s baby and make another man sick. The newsman went to several sick people around the town and they all vehemently swore that the lady was using witchcraft to make the people in the town sick. The poor woman, who did indeed look strange as the gendarmes were pulling her away, was being blamed for misc. maladies around the town and probably just because she was weird! I asked my host mom if she actually believed in witchcraft. She assured me that she didn’t, but then five minutes later said, “You don’t have this kind of thing in the U.S. but there is a lot of it here and it scares me.”
Additionally, later in the week I was visiting my assigned company, just chatting with them and one of the guys who works at a store across the way came over and we started chatting. He was young, probably mid-20s, and was at university in Douala. About an hour later this man came hobbling up to our store with about 4 pieces of bark in his hand and started to tell us how it could cure malaria and all sorts of other diverse maladies. To my surprise the guy I was talking with started acting really interested and asking all of these questions. The man selling it explained how to administer it and to my surprise the young guy paid him a pretty good chunk of money for it! And then he started EATING IT! I asked him how he knew it was going to help him, and how he was sure that he wasn’t eating the tree next door and he started to vehemently defend this “natural remedy” even though there was no way that he could know where the man who sold it got it from. Also, the man who sold it to him had a limp! It is amazing to me how so much of the superstitions and beliefs in witchcraft are still so prevalent here in Cameroon and even among the young and educated.
Interesting stuff and tons of good times. The rainy season is starting to really get under way, so by november I should have webbed feet.
Anyways, I will eventually get pictures up here before I leave the land of the internet. I miss you all and hope that you are doing well!
If you want to see some pictures of our training group and the town I am staying in right now you can go to www.39strangers.com
Bisous!
Autumn Brown