Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from August, 2007

SAD

Though I won't deny I welcome the slightest sign of spring after a long Winnipeg winter, I would never say I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder on account of the long darkness and the bitter cold. Rainy season, however, is proving to be a different matter. Maybe the short evenings contribute somewhat my distress; as someone from just above the 49th parallel, I associate warm weather with long daylight hours but though the weather is mild enough here, darkness invariably falls by 7:00 pm, and it falls fast. Whatever the case, my outlook is positive and eager on sunny days, but when the sky darkens and the rain begins to fall, my mood plummets and I find myself wishing dry season here as fast as the clouds can carry. No doubt you'll be laughing at me 3 months from now when I am complaining about the heat and the dust and wishing the rains back, but at the moment, I can't say I particularly enjoy rainy season.

Exciting plants

I finally got out of the house to the surrounding countryside a little bit, which did wonders for my mood. The girls were highly amused at my childlike wonder at many of the things they take for granted. I saw my first bamboo tree which was very cool. It's a bunch of huge bamboo poles growing together like sheafs of grain piled on a field. The leaves which sprout from the top are reminiscent of willow leaves. Did you know that coconuts actually have a fruit around them? They don't grow on the tree as you get them in the store -- those have had all the fruit removed. So the coconut tree in the front yard has big green, slightly oblong fruit on it, not little brown nuts as I was expecting. Right around the house the ground is flat so I was astounded to find a sharp, verdant valley with a stream running along the bottom -- just a 5-minute walk from the house. The beauty of all the foliage took my breath away. I saw a huge snail! His shell was almost as long as my hand and he was h...

Monkey kola

Monkey kola From the outside, it looks like a dark, bumpy root or something - which it probably is, I actually don't know. Inside, it has 3 or 4 pieces (hmmm, I'm actually guessing about this as well since I haven't seen it peeled, only whole and on a plate). Okay, the point of this all is that I've eaten one and I wanted to describe it to you. It's a lot like lichee, only firmer, less sweet, less watery and much larger. But really, it is similar to lichee! Well, that was a failure - my attempt to describe monkey kola to you. I'll make it up to you by commenting on the weather. Humidity is high today - as always - but for once it's actually warm. You may think I should not be asking for warm weather, I'll get enough of it soon enough, and I agree with you, however, it has been very cool, not just in Bamenda, but also here in the village, and I was so thoroughly warned about the heat here that I packed pretty much exclusively for that, and have very littl...

Church in the village

My introduction to church in the village (the Baptist church) was no small thing. The night before, Becky said church usually runs from around 10 to around 12, sometimes going a little over. What she hadn't counted on was taking a special collection for funds for a new church building AND communion. We got out of church shortly after 2:00. The small, somewhat dilapidated church building was mostly full, mainly men on the left side, mainly women on the right, four benches facing the aisle at the front containing children on the right side, song leaders, drummers and sundry young adults on the left. There was a visiting pastor giving the message and a new person who was also in some sort of pastoral capacity, in addition to the regular pastor (as I understood it). A few deacons (I assume) also sat on the platform. I was asked to stand and be introduced as a stranger to the group, so Mike mercifully did that for me. The service is all in pidgin English so I catch the drift of everythi...

The meaning of rainforest

After going to bed before 10 last night (which is in itself a record), I was woken numerous times by the rain. At times, it fell so hard it was disconcerting to hear as I wondered if the roof would hold. It continued to rain, unabated, all day. There were moments of harder and less hard rain, but it kept falling till around 3 in the afternoon, spit for an hour or two, was dry and lighter for another hour, then starting raining again. Now, at 8:00 pm, it sounds like it's not raining. Nevertheless, that's a mighty lot of rain. You start to think it will never end. The girls just laughed when I kept looking out the window saying, "I can't believe it's still raining!" "It's called a rainforest for a reason," they said. Indeed.

Kum Ba Ya

While driving to the village, we were listening to a kids' praise and worship tape. The patronizing voice of the woman giving cliched Christianese introductions to the songs said, "This is an African song that means Come By Me." Thinking of a friend who hates this generalization, I turned to Becky and asked "Does it bother you when they say it's an African song?" I figured she might actually know which language or dialect it was. She laughed and said, "Actually, it's pidgin English!" As soon as she said that I heard it: Kum = come, Ba = by, Ya= here.

Into the village

We cut an hour off our journey on the trip from Bamenda by taking the newly refinished Dschang road. It wove down the mountainside in a series of tight curves, leaving me in awe of the beauty of the countryside from Bamenda to around Dschang. The verdant green hills are so pristine, dotted by only a few tin roofs which look like white patches in the distance. After Dschang it levelled out more and the countryside contained cropland or long spreads of grassland. At Loum, we turned off for Kumba. What a shock! I understood that the Kumba to Big Bekondo stretch would be an adventure, but I hadn't realized the road from Loum to Kumba is unpaved. Mostly it was just rutted but there were one or two big "brace-yourself" mudholes which put a huge goofy grin on my face as I thought "Now I'm in Africa!" It's like what my sister and I say about driving in blizzards: "I love driving in a blizzard....I mean, I love being in the car while DAD drives through a bli...

Journey ahead

If all goes as planned, we're heading out to Big Bekondo tomorrow morning. It'll be a journey and a half but I'm looking forward to seeing "home" for the first time since coming to the country. Posts will likely be fewer and farther between from now on. But we'll see. Who can tell what the future holds?!

Finally, some photos!

While in Bamenda with internet access, I thought I ought to post some photos before I lose my chance. The bright young ladies who are my charges. The young man and the ever-cute Laura. A view of Bamenda, focusing on the Cameroon Baptist Convention's compound (the green roof and surrounding area). The adorable pre-schoolers, Gr 1 and Gr 2 kids singing "I wanna be filled with the Spirit" at the closing program.

To market, to market

After a couple of trips into town, I’m beginning to get a sense of the place. I’m still far from comprehending how Cameroonian cities work, but I’m beginning to see what is going on. Before I continue, I should perhaps mention that we wrapped up FES with a lovely program Friday with all the kids showing off something they learned. We are now all very knowledgeable about chocolate and nearly–though not quite–“chocolated” out. Facing yet another chocolate dessert at supper after yet another afternoon of working with chocolate in art/cooking class, one 8th grader commented “Chocolate again! After that book we read [Chocolate Fever], I beginning to worry I’ll break into brown spots like Henry [book character]!” Elsie took me for a quick trip to the market this afternoon which was great fun. She’s a hard bargainer and she explained some of the different types of cloth and pointed out various things. I picked up two voluminous ready-made dresses with pretty detail and an overly large pair of...

Trip to the police station

You may remember me reporting some tension about the acquisition of my visa in June. It was all needless, of course, and I received my visa without any difficulty. The visa, however, was only for 3 months which basically served to get me into the country. Apparently they know no happy medium, because now that I’m here and planning to stay for 10 months, the advised course of action is to acquire the 10-year, multiple-entry permanent resident card. So, today, instead of watching sundry parent-less children for the afternoon, I pawned them off to Bob—the only unoccupied adult left—and trotted away to get my visa with Mike and Becky. First, we conferred with George at the Cameroon Baptist Convention office where it took a while to assemble all the documents as he hadn’t anticipated my joining the Scotts. Once “all our ducks were in a row,” we headed to the police station in town to meet with an official. I’m always overly on edge when dealing with government officials of any stripe, so I ...

Food by any other name

Plums. Cameroonian plums. They make beautiful trees with their pink fruit before it ripens. They're eaten cooked - crispy, papery, purplish skin covering a scanty layer of avocado-reminiscent fruit ensheathing a large pit. Plums, eh? Pears. Cameroonian pears. We had them for supper again today and I think I like them. I've always been ambivalent about "pears" but the way these are prepared appeals to me. They're cooked, pit is removed and the hollow filled with a salad of tomatoes, onions and some other vegetables in a light oil sauce (because everything is cooked in oil here). Getting the feeling they're not really pears yet? Avocadoes.

Trip into town

The thrift store. Literally, a man in Maryland fills a shipping container with garage sale rejects and sends them off to the American Thrift Store in Bamenda. So the contents are a random selection of items possibly not found anywhere else in Cameroon, and of either great value or no use to anyone. I saw a new, still-in-its-box Iced Tea Maker, an old colourful iMac, and replacement straws for a particular sippy cup, of which none of the original product were to be seen. You get the picture. They say it can be a goldmine or a total waste of time, depending on the day you visit. The bookstore. Now, there were actually many bookstores along the main shopping street, but this was the biggest, most formal-looking, and the only one I went into. The stock was a curious mix of Cameroon-specific books, new books (mostly school material) and really old books. Books were piled horizontally (in the style of the U of W bookstore) on shelves. I found such things as a brand new student copy of Juliu...

Church

The church is an enormous building with dual services -- one at 7:00, one at 10:00. The draw for the 7:00 service is that it has to end relatively on time thus cannot drag out interminably as the 10:00 is wont to do. The draw for the 10:00 (besides the later start time) is the choir. The sanctuary was only half in use while the other half was filled with scaffolding to put up a ceiling to improve the acoustics. Of the half used, only half was full. But appearances are important in Cameroon, so making a large church to make a good impression is a priority. (Hmmm, I guess looking at some North American churches, one might suggest we are not unfamiliar with this phenomenon.) I was entranced by the music. Harmonies were strong but not overwhelming -- I was even able to hum along myself to a non-melody line here and there. The drums were great, the clapping is rhythmic (1,2,3,rest), many of the songs of the call-answer variety with a strong leader voice singing out a line and the congregati...

Sounds in Bamenda

I was going to call this "the sounds of Africa" but I thought someone might be offended by the generalization, and I realized it’s probably specific to where I am now. The sounds of Big Bekondo may be of a whole other variety. A cacophony of car horns – beeping and honking…and no, that’s not redundant, they are distinct types. Particularly around “rush hour,” the distant din is constant. Crickets. And boy, are they ever loud. Also unrelenting. Rain pounding on the corrugated tin roof. Shouts from an impromptu soccer game on an improvised pitch. Trills of birds of a variety of shapes and colours. The pounding beat of distant music blasted in the streets or from a car. The whining of the somewhat feral dog somewhere on the compound and the yowls of the phantom cat outside my windows as I attempt to go to sleep – a cat I have yet to actually see in the daytime. And today, for the first time in all the rain, the loud roll and crack of thunder, quite close, heralding a heavy but b...

FES starts

FES (Field Education System) started last night with a wonderful ice-breaker games kick-off. My favourite thing to do. Not exactly. For one of the games we each had a small bean bag on our head and had to move around the room, following instructions such as "walk backwards," "hop on one foot," etc., without holding the bag nor having it fall off. A few Cameroonian kids who live on the compound were watching through the windows as we did this and I couldn't help but think they must think us crazy! Here's these strange white people challenged and amused by walking with a little bean bag on their head when the Cameroonian woman carry on their heads anything from their Bibles on the way home from church to a sewing machine across town! Working with my strengths, this morning I was assigned to help in the Grade 5 Math class, and then to watch the pre-schoolers for the remainder of the morning. Can you see the sarcasm dripping from that statement? Actually, it wor...

Rainy season

It's a learning process, I tell you. I've never quite understood what rainy season meant. I mean, I understood the words, of course, but I had no instinctive sense of what it meant. I think I'm beginning to get a feeling for it. Today, it rained. I guess it has rained every day I've been in Cameroon, but all other days except for my arrival it has waited till after dark. Today, I woke to the sound of rain hammering the roof. I've never had much use for umbrellas. In Manitoba, and in the Netherlands (and my two weeks in England, for that matter), it's always too windy for them to be entirely useful. I'd rather just dress right and be prepared to get wet than to expect this pidly metal frame stretched with thin material to actually protect me, and then get soaked when -- inevitably -- it doesn't. But here, where the rain quite cooperatively falls straight down, whether in torrents or a more manageable shower, here I think I will learn to use an umbrella. I...

Olfactory observations

Smells. Maybe I'm hyper-aware after one character in The Poisonwood Bible commented on it, but I sure have noticed smells here. To be crude and less than flattering, I could echo the sentiment I read or heard recently to the effect of "the smell of Africa is body odour." Nearly all Cameroonians I've met (and some Africans of other extractions I've met elsewhere in life) carry this pungent and striking smell, no matter how well-dressed and well-spoken they are. I don't say this as a criticism so much as an observation. My nose has also caught the smell of burning garbage (from the compound's incinerator), of Malathion (from the worker spraying in the resthouse compound in Douala) and of course, the library. The library is built on a hill, with a half-round circulation desk, and back office on the level of the door while the books and a play area are down 5 steps. A skylight above the reading table in the far half of the room has the place so well lit I spe...

Geckos and books

The sky grew threatening dark as I sat in the library of the Baptist mission compound this afternoon, but the heavens didn't open until after supper -- right when our supper guests might have been considering leaving. It poured and poured at two different intervals in the evening but now all is calm again except for the crickets chirping loudly outside the window. Speaking of wildlife, I saw some magnificently coloured lizards at the resthouse in Douala and was today mildly surprised to find a very large gecko hanging out in the bathroom of the guest apartment another lady and I were outfitting for a soon-to-be-arriving family. He scampered away as soon as he saw us, but I was surprised at his size. Geckos in Myanmar were never more than 2 or 3 inches long, tail included. This little guy was over half a foot. What was I doing in the library all afternoon, you may be wondering? No, not reading away my adjustment period in Cameroon -- I was cataloguing books for the library! Oh, what...

Journey to Bamenda

Saw the countryside today and it was beautiful. Of course, after 6 hours jolting over less than impeccable roads, I was nearly paralyzed by the end of the journey, but Bamenda was a welcoming sight for more than one reason. Kudos to Mike for navigating quite the intense road journey. The hills are beautiful! (Granted, it doesn't take much to impress this prairie girl.) Covered in thick foliage most of the way, sometimes row on row of papaya trees or banana trees, the foliage thinned out somewhat closer to Bamenda showing some rocky outcroppings, steep banks, and the occasional four-sided peaked-roof house. Bamenda itself impressed me much more than Douala which seemed to be made mostly of shanties -- no doubt an unfair assessement as I likely saw only a tiny fraction of the city. Bamenda lies in a bowl however, which you can survey from the top of the hill/mountain as you approach. Friendly, colourful roofs--including two identifiable churches--smile up at you as you approach, and ...

Arrived

Well, I'm here. All went smoothly, even better than I expected, though that is in part on account of the worst case scenario advice I was given before leaving. I met up with another missionary family in Paris so they were my peace of mind for the rest of the trip. Despite warnings that "Air Chance" (Air France) has a reputation for loosing baggage, all of mine arrived on time, Praise the Lord! Spent my first day in Cameroon lazing about with the Scott family who are at the end of their vacation. So far the kids and I get along -- the girls already think I'm crazy so I think we're off to a good start. The little one (Laura, 4) has taken a shine to me it seems and Kenneth has very little to do with me, but that is fine. Played my first game of Settlers, for those for whom that means something. I suspect I may wile away many an evening here playing with either the girls or the Friesens whom I'm told are super-competitive. What can I tell you about Cameroon? Doual...