Au debut du Stage

June 18, 2007

I just moved into my host family’s house in a moderately sized town in the West Province. You can tell that it is in the west because of the humidity. I have been consistently sweating all day long, although I attribute that more to the 4 hour, stifling bus ride. It is kind of funny how much I love to travel, and how much I actually hate the process of traveling. At least, when you are traveling in your own private sauna or tube of reprocessed air in the sky.

I have been ridiculously ready to move in with the host family and away from the other volunteers. This is not because I do not like them. In fact, I like them all a great deal. However, for the past week we have been shuttled back and forth between a hotel and an office, seeing little to none of Cameroon or of Cameroonians. No one has had to speak French, and no one has had to take a step outside the box.

Do you get to eat avocados for breakfast? I know that you may be asking yourself if you want to… I’m asking myself the very same question.

The mud is absolutely amazing here. It’s the rainy season, and evidence of frequent cloudbursts has to be scraped off of my shoes with a thin machete every night after I return home. Today, I was so moved by the mud created by torrential rains that persisted for over an hour that I wrote a “franglais” poem portraying my absolute wonderment. It goes something like this:

Je chante a la boue

Qui existe partout

Meme dans ma shoe…

Profonde dans les trous

Elle me rend fatiguee

Et le jour est complet

Si on se rencontre

Au debut

Awful. So bad. And so it begins… It is so much easier to write kitchy poetry if you have more than one language to use for the rhyme sequence. There is only one paved road that I’ve seen in town, and the rest are composed of this deep red dirt, trampled by thousands of feet over god knows how long. Even when the paths are dry, constant surveillance is necessary if one is to avoid falling face first into an inconveniently placed ditch created by runoff from the previous rainy season. Instead of the traditional washboard phenomenon that occurs on dirt roads when there is a lot of automobile traffic during the rain, the washboard takes on a different texture from the overabundance of foot traffic. I am still having problems getting lost on the route from my house to our training house because I have to watch where I’m going so carefully.

Although it rains here so frequently, everyone runs when they feel the first raindrops start to fall and you can find yourself in the company of strangers under an awning, nothing in common but avoiding the downpour and the mud ensemble. The people running by clearly have somewhere to be, or are already too wet to care.

Everyone in the group (myself included) is having a difficult time adjusting to the switch from the hotel to the village. It is incredibly complicated to portray the difficulties of adjusting to a completely foreign culture. It is one thing to cite the obvious differences, such as the inclusion of extended family in most houses, or even the more subtle differences, such as the fact that it is unseemly for women to cross their legs in public. However, knowing where cultures end and real personality begins is the real challenge. It would be difficult for an American to immediately adjust to moving in with a previously unknown American family. Individual strangers placed into situations where everyone else knows each other are going to rarely feel comfortable. Each group has its idiosyncrasies, each its anomalies. Trying to pigeonhole one family into a specific culture is a fruitless endeavor, however, trying to take a family out of its cultural context is also inherently useless. Unfortunately, instead of being able to observe the family and culture behind a double sided mirror, we are placed right in the middle of everything. So what comes next? Somehow trying to discern culture, family and where you fit in exactly. I just thank le bon Dieu that I already speak French and have already visited Africa.

Although, I may have eaten something sketchy today.

While I try to keep the cultural faux pas to a minimum, it is absolutely necessary to have them in order to exemplify the true differences between our culture. I mean, if everything went smoothly, it would be too easy, right? I feel like I can deal with most cultural differences. And then the food decides to blindside me. I thought I would be safe in Cameroon where they have so many fruits and vegetables… Safe until a bowl full of stewed cow hooves are placed in front of me. Three to be exact. I don’t know if I could handle one. I don’t know what it is about food that creates such different habits among people. My host mom knows that cow feet are delicious and that it was necessary for me to try them. There is no doubt in my mind that cow feet are probably delicious if you grow up eating them. They may even be an acquired taste. Mais pour moi qui etais vegetarienne? I don’t think so. It’s not even really a question of wanting to or not. My body, as much as I may push it, refuses to ingest cow foot. Or maybe it’s just the cultural pathways burned in my brain. I’m sure I’ll have to time to experiment with my absolute limits within the next two years.

God knows when I will actually get around to posting this blog.

Last night I was watching a Nigerian movie with my host mom. Although they speak English in Nigeria, my host mom determined that the accent might be too difficult for me, so she translated everything into French. I could totally understand everything they were saying, but I let her. Tonight, she had a friend visit who insisted on speaking in English and I got to see how good her English really is. However, it was honestly très difficile pour moi de parler en anglais après avoir parlé en français pendant toute la journée. We have only been here for a limited amount of time and I can already see the improvement in my language. In fact, I caught myself unconsciously thinking in French earlier. However, it really comes and goes, and I can never tell when I will be able to speak with relative fluency or be completely dumbfounded. I consistency is what I’m aiming for in the long run.

By the way, just so everyone knows, this internet connection is impossible, so infrequency in posting will be normal. Dommage.