February 9, 2007 - This was going to be my best entry to date; but alas i have to put in and take out my usb every time i want to insert a picture and Im not up for it; sorry. I think its still a good story Ill add the pics later:
Hello everyone, I've decided it will be too much of a pain right now to change sites, so well see how it goes slightly editing myself. Right now I'm a little upset because the fridge I bought on a whim isn’t working because of low voltage, which happens almost every night. Hopefully it will keep cold enough even if it goes off for 2-3 hrs a day? I don’t know maybe I can have an electrician come. Anyway I also bought a ping pong table which I'm more excited about, although it’s a little smaller than an official table it works just fine. Tomorrow (meaning today if I get to the internet after) I'm going to sand it and paint it with my friend and reinforce it early next week. He is down right now because his girlfriend got a few gifts from a wealthy gentleman around here which suggests they weren’t just friends. Hes not talking to her but hes having a rough time..he says table tennis should take his mind off her..well see. Anyway after we paint it I'm going to go to the internet and do a few chores and then go to Dschang, the city near me, for banking and to watch Cameroon in the semifinals in the Africa Nations Cup. We're playing Ghana, the home team and we haven’t played great in the tournament so we'll see. Would be great to move to the finals. Its on Thursday, Feb. 7th at 7 or 930 here (so 1 or 330 eastern). Look for it on ESPN2 if you don’t have a job.
**There is also the loudest bug Ive ever heard outside right now, I don’t want to open the door for fear its big and will get inside so I have to kill it. Im also in the middle of a minor cockroach problem and am feeling a little sick, hopefully a good nights rest and dousing the house with insecticide will make me good to go tomorrow. The fridge just came on for a sec and then off again…life must sound bad but it really isn’t right now.**
Last weekend I have a trip to tell you about:Lucky for you I wasn’t lazy and took my camera. My only regret is that I didn’t get a picture with the "father of jesus" but we'll get to that. The night before we were to leave, Marcellus (a friend I went with) went to talk to a guy who was going to show us to "elephant rock" a huge rock you can see in the distance from my post where supposedly elephants used to come and sun bathe. His motivation was that he was going to hunt for animals while we were there. He set a time for 800 when we would leave(gave him 500 francs for something, Marcel couldn’t say no he was doing us a favor), and then we bought food, fishing hooks to go with the line I had bought, and bait. We packed most of it that night. Marcellus and I woke up around 630, he was at my house at 7 we finished packing and cooked some eggs (for the guide too), ate some peanuts on our way to the guys house. We showed up at 5 to 8, and the guy wasn’t there. The kids wouldn’t even go look for him!(VERY rude to say no to anything an adult tells you) Here are the kids:
Anyway we wait around, and by 815 Marcellus is angry. Im used to having to wait for Cameroonians so I just sit, eat more, snap photos of the kids, and wait. The guy shows up around 830, apologizing profusely and says he will go get ready to go. We wait outside until about 845 and go in to see what the problem is. He says now that he cant leave until his wife gets back from wherever she was…Marcellus talks to him and the guy says ok its not far, 20 minutes, and we'll leave at 10 no matter if the wife is back yet (the neighbors would watch the kids, its what you do in Cameroon (I don’t watch any kids)).
We leave our bags at the house and go into town and get a drink (just juice, I thought about a beer though its not out of the ordinary here) and when I went to get some chocolate a guy who sort of looks like the guy says "are you ready?, lets go". Its only 945 so Im excited, were doing better then he promised. I thought it was him but it turned out it was his brother who looked like him. He was finishing a beer(see?) so we said we would meet him after he finished at the house. On our way back we see the guide on a moto towards town! He shouts "I am coming". We had nothing to do but wait at that point. At about 11 we finally got one of the kids to go look for him (we would have just left then but our bags were locked up). He comes back and says his father went to visit someone in the hospital, and we'll go tomorrow. This didn’t work for me, I had to teach the next day so we were out of luck.
Marcel was more pissed than I was, but his complaints which I generally agree with were:
1) we talked to him about this day about a month in advance
2) Marcel went by his house the night before to make sure
3) he still said we were going that morning, 45 mins after we decided to meet
4) the least he could have done was say we weren’t going or we might not go
Im not sure if he wanted to get as much out of us as he could and then not go or if there was an actual reason he had to go to the hospital then, but in any case he left us with our bags fully packed including some already prepared food, looking at hiking during the hottest part of the day if we wanted to still go.
On my our way back with our bags we go about 100 yds and see a man in a bubu (a formal dress around here) walking in the other direction. Marcel seems to know him and tells him the story about what happened. After about 30 seconds, the man shakes his head and says "No, come". We start to follow. This shows very well the two contrasts in Cameroon. Some people are always late, want to take advantage of everyone(This is going to be a long parentheses I have another story I probably wont tell unless I put it here..just know now that the guy in the bubu decided to take us, in contrast to the first guy and the guy Im about to tell you about. There was a teacher at the beginning of the year who was a pretty cool guy. He came over a few times and we talked about Cameroon, the government, philosophy of life, he seemed very intelligent and we had some very interesting talks. I was only about 1 month at post and he was probably my best friend at the time. One night he says hes thinking about starting a call box at the school(a call box is basically a pay phone except people sit with cell phones and you can call for cheaper because they buy in bulk, and you can also buy credit from them). It sounded like a good idea maybe students would use it to call their parents, etc. Anyway he wanted 20000fcfa (about 45 dollars) for help with the credit. I told him I didn’t have enough Id have to go to the bank, and he said that whatever I could give him by that weekend he would appreciate because he was going that weekend to buy the credit in the city. I decided to give him 10000, and before he took it I told him of what Peace Corps told us about Cameroonians trying to scam us. He said "in wine, there is truth" in the latin but I forget it (good thing Mrs. Griffin doesn’t know about the blog). I make him sign a receipt saying hes gonna pay it back by a certain time(what I was most worried about) and he said no problem. A few weeks later I realize I haven’t seen him since that weekend, and ask a colleague what happened. Apparently he didn’t tell anyone he was leaving, packed up all his things and moved out of town to take another job. He was completely lying the entire time. I was very surprised, and it was a good lesson to learn for only 10000 fcfa. Later while reading notes the last PCV (peace corps volunteer) left me it said "don’t trust _______ hes a mooch". Teaches me to read help that’s given too. I also discovered a white man store that apparently sometimes (not since Ive been here) has cheese and yogurt. If I get the fridge to work Ill go there more. Back to the story) and some people are the most welcoming people you could imagine. This guy had a plan of going into the field, working all day and meeting his wife in the evening, and decided to help us out instead (might sound nice to skip a day of work to hike around but hiking isn’t easy and farming is his only source of income).
We go to his house, he gives us some food, changes, and we head off around 1 oclock (the sun is sooo hot at this time). Heres a picture of the farmer's (Ernest, our new guide) view from his house). We start hiking, it takes about 1 hr and a half to make it to one of the rivers that surrounds the rock. I am told that the rock around it is part of the large rock, exposed here, covered by bush on the way and uncovered when we reach the place. This is where I take my favorite picture…Marcellus jumping to rock he was afraid to jump (all Cameroonians are better at hiking/rock jumping than me) but something must have rubbed off on me because I made it easily. I was practicing jumping on the side before I went an Marcellus was laughing hard, he said "if you don’t make it youll still have your life". That’s what I was thinking about when I jumped, in the picture I'm thinking "thank god I made it":
We look around, they think about swimming but the water is too rough and Marcellus insists theres a lot of magic around that place, and he wont go in. We start hiking to the rock, Marcellus realizes he forgot his machete and goes back to get it, Ernest and I continue on and make it to the rock.
Ernest:
Me on the rock:
The rock was like this all around, pretty cool not sure how it was made (any real geologists reading? Kaplan at least?)
We decided to eat the eggs we prepared there…the bread was too dry but eggs were good.
Here you can see where we left, my town in the distance. As we were leaving we saw a trap left. They had me pose getting caught in it(hurt more than I thought and almost whacked me in the eye) but the picture of Ernest resetting it was better:
This is where the trip started to suuuuck. We turned out to be going to Ernest's part of the other river, and there was no path. The machetes came in handy but still being 6'4" and going over and under brush is not fun, especially under the equatorial African sun in pants. Ok ill stop complaining for now, we made it to the open area and they decided to swim this time. I REALLY wanted to swim, but the peace corps says we cant because we can get schisto, a disease which is completely testable and curable (you do get worms in your eyes if untreated) but still, got to avoid it by sitting in the sun while they dip in the cool, brisk water. Batteries were low I think that’s why its blurry:
**I just took a break to talk on the phone to another volunteer for a little…if you call after 11 its almost free for however long you talk, really nice considering a 10 minute call is about 1 days salary normally. Anyway we got in an argument about whether a push cart is better called a trolley or a pulley. Im right saying it’s a trolley, right? You start to forget some of the vocab you don’t use here. Sometimes I say something like cake (they call the few cakes here gateaus which is French) and think about how long its been since Ive said that word.**
This is the time when they tell me that to get back to my village; we'd have to hike in the dark. The other option is to meet Ernest's wife in another village and spend the night there. By this time we were so far out our cell phones were out and I couldn’t inform Peace Corps, but I figured it would be safer to go to that village than to hike during the night. We made it there about 530, bathed in a nearby river they said was drinking water right before the spot we were at so I figured it would be safe (sorry ladies no pictures of that) and I took the two of them out for a drink while the wife stayed home and cooked the food we had on us (at least Ernest took the baby to the bar…right?).
The drinks were a little expensive but I was out of potable water and wanted a juice really bad, plus they had both helped me out immensely. It was the only bar in town, and on a Saturday night had 4 people in it when we arrived. There's no electricity in that village so we drank by lantern. We met some interesting people, a farmer there said his daughter was in my class…she came in and introduced herself and I didn’t recognize her. I asked if she was in my class and she said yes she was in Lower6th and took physics. I know both girls in that class by name, and she wasn’t one of them. She's never been to the 2 hrs a week that I teach of that class (many of them don’t come because the 2 hrs before and 1 hr after the teachers don’t come to class). I pretended it was my fault so she wouldn’t get in trouble and a little while she brought food for us to eat…very nice of her but I was so exhausted I wasn’t that hungry and I knew we were going home to food. I ate it all and hoped I wouldn’t have to eat that much at Ernest's house. I talked to the father a bit he was an interesting guy. The most interesting things he said:
1) He said he knows a place about 1 day out in the bush where hes seen elephants and chimpanzees. I would love to see them, and I'm planning on going with him…even if there are no animals it will be nice to make it far out and see what its like. Simon, you up for going out there? BUY YOUR TICKET.
2) He told a story about the only other white man to visit the village before me. He went to meet the chief, and while they were together the he kept "blowing gas"(Marcellus' words after he translated the story later). The Cameroonians near him asked the chief why he wasn’t upset, because if a Cameroonian did that in front of the chief he would be beaten at the least. The chief said the gas was not smelling so it was okay. The Cameroonians in the bar laughed hysterically at this story…apparently comedy translates across cultures(not sure if I'm sarcastic about that, depending on the telling it could have been funny).
3) He told me in English that the man across the bar (who later self proclaimed himself "the father of jesus" to the delight of the bar) used to be a spiritual doctor who could swallow a 22 oz glass bottle, or throw a bottle cap at the wall making it stick. In the end he didn’t keep up the requirements and lost his powers so he couldn’t show us, but he could do it before. The father of Jesus was drunk and spoke very broken English, I couldn’t understand most of what he said but he stared at me a lot, hope he was blessing me.
We left the bar, me regretting I didn’t bring my camera to get pictures of the folks inside, and headed back to the house. The stars were amazing…Im sure theres a limit to how good they can be but there were no lights around except candles and you could see a shitton of stars (sorry about the swearing but its necessary to get the feeling across). Inside Ernest's wife had prepared rice and fish that we had brought (she gave me the ziplock that held the rice back full of garri (yellowish ground…plant I think?)...I don’t like it much and don’t know how to prepare it so I gave it to Marcellus, but my point is they are poor and have a 7 month old baby and are still very generous to guests.
After the meal we played cards (something like UNO) which was a lot of fun, they all trashed talked in English. I have to admit I was a little uncomfortable when Ernest's wife started breast feeding in the middle of the game, Im trying to get used to it but women are not shy here. They also brought me a beer, again very generous.
**MY FRIDGE IS WORKING!! It was out for about 4 hrs…what do you guys think will it keep things cold? Maybe Ill have to move it onto a different plug but that would mean it would be in the bedroom, not convenient.**
By the time we decide to go to bed I am exhausted and ready to pass out. Good thing because turns out Im sharing a bed with Marcellus and Ernest. Im sure it was the only bed in the house, but Cameroonians give the guests nothing but the best. I slept pretty well, woke up around 7 and we ate leftover rice and after giving Ernest some money for helping us out (not sure if it was right to do but he accepted), headed out about 8. I realized that we walked almost all downhill on the way there and it would be uphill most of the way. I wasn’t disappointed. After climbing for about an hour I reached a point where I knew where I was, and about 10 oclock we reached the house. Us in front of my house:
It was a great hike, although I was exhausted and pretty sure I picked something up from one of the many cuts on my hands and arms (I took a Benadryl just in case and passed out after a while). Definitely going to keep exploring the area around me (I told some of you about the waterfall I went to…that was closer and more beautiful than this, if anyone visits we'll definitely go there). Its 1245 (only time Ive stayed up this late was 4am to watch the pats lose in the final seconds last Sunday). Cant say I was too disappointed, it was time for them to lose a superb owl (typed it right but word said it was wrong and suggested this, never realized superbowl=superb owl) and I like the giants. Anyway as usual hope you guys are great, Im doing alright here, keep in touch. Don’t expect such detailed blogs in the future but Ill do my best.
Brad
Joefred about to jump into the water, I have a video too but its too big.
It was the right time to smoke a cigar sent from the states.
The waterfall is huge, couldnt get the whole thing in a picture. Rediculous.
