Beautiful?

Apparently this is beautiful.  The women that did my henna thought it would be fun to put makeup on me also (they think I'm a doll... the next step is to get some fabric and dress me).  I got dark red lipstick with lipgloss that actually smelled amazing, black eyeliner under my eyes, a forehead dot, and my favorite part--the drawn on eyebrows.  I don't know if you can tell, but my left eyebrow goes straight across so it looked like I was confused about something.  This all happened because I got stuck there the other day because of a rain storm.  The picture does not do this look justice.  I thought I looked ridiculous, but they loved it.

Henna

My neighbors have been giving me beauty treatments.  In Cameroon there are two types of henna (no idea how to actually spell the Fulfulde names, but this is how it sounds): Seeppa and Lalay.  Seeppa is the black stuff that you use to draw designs on your hands and feet.  It's really liquidy and tends to run all over the place, especially if you lotion up right before you get it done.  Lalay is the orange stuff you put on the bottom of your feet and on the inside of your hands.  it starts as kind of a light orange, but the more layers you do the blacker (okay... dark reddish-er) it gets.  Lalay is applied as a paste and is slowly blotted on to the whole foot.  The design on my hand was done by putting down electrical tape before the paste.  It takes forever to get it on and then you wrap your feet in plastic bags to let it set for at least 2 hours, depending on the intended result.  I've done Lalay twice so far, and it takes 4-5 hours total to get it done.  The women doing it wanted me to come 5 times but I don't think I can handle it.  People love to see that we get it done and children always yell "A didi seeppa!" (You drew henna!).  It's also a fun bonding activity to get to know women because they are rarely out of the house.  They have a lot of fun with it, so it works out for the both of us.



Fada versus The Butchers

For summer vacation Banyo is organizing all kinds of youth activities, one of which is a soccer tournament.  The teams include all the different neighborhoods, but also random groups like the bakers and the butchers which I think sounds really funny.  The other day was the final match between the neighborhood Fada (blue) and the Butchers (black).  This match took place during Ramadan, while everyone is fasting all day long (no water, no food from 5am to 6:30pm) so I don't know how they survived... the match took place at the end of the day too so they must have been feeling it.  There was a lot of speculation about which team would win.  Fada is the neighborhood where the lamido (traditional chief) lives and where the big mosque is, so a lot of important people live around there.  I think of it as a rich neighborhood because most of the people I know that live there are well off, but who knows if that is accurate or not.  A friend said he thinks the butchers would win because they work all day so they are strong.  Clearly, the butchers had the advantage because they ended up winning (I want to say the score was 1-0).  My postmate unexpectedly had to hand out a medal and certificate to a player at the final ceremony.  I think they wanted me to do it also, but I was not interested.  Can't wait to see who wins it all next year.



Rain, rain, rain

Now that it's rainy season it rains all the time.  When it rains, you literally can't do anything.  People just don't show up for events or meetings and everyone is okay with that, which makes doing any real work during rainy season difficult.  It also really throws off your schedule because you are homebound until the rain stops.  The other day I had no food at my house and it rained all day so I couldn't go to the market.  I had to make do with ramen and onion rings.  My house is at the bottom of a little hill in my neighborhood which gets super slippery and I almost fall every time it's wet.  I went to visit my postmate the other day (about a 15-20 minute walk from my house) after a rain storm and there were no motos out so I had to walk the whole way in a light drizzle.  This is a picture from that day of the bridge near my house.  Normally this is just a tiny stream but since it's at the bottom of a few hills it gets flooded big time.  The next day it looked like nothing had happened.  Sometimes it's nice to have an excuse to be lazy all day, but it rains too much which disturbs my plans so the rain has got to go...

Spring Break: Peace Corps Style

At the end of March my training group (all 48 of us) got back together for In-Service Training (IST) in Ngaoundere, which is the regional capital of the Adamawa.  It was a week of training flashback, both good and bad.  We got to see each other and hang out, but we were basically in class all day.  It was kind of rough to have a 8-5 schedule again after not really being too busy for the last four months.  On the bright side, since we are now PCVs instead of PCTs we had a lot more freedom.

The week after IST most volunteers took the opportunity to "do a little tourism" in the Grand North of Cameroon since it takes a while to get up there and we recieved a travel stipend for IST.  You'll have to look this up on a map, but I left Ngaoundere to go to Lake Lagdo, then from there I stopped in Garoua for a few hours, then on to Maroua.  Waza National Park was a day trip from Maroua.  Maroua was my favorite city so far in Cameroon.  It's really nice, well laid out, and there is a lot of stuff to do.  I spent most of my time in Maroua shopping in the Artisinal Market, eating hamburgers and drinking fruit juice, swimming in hotel pools, etc.  It was a great trip, but traveling from place to place is rough, so I was really happy to finally be back in my house and my own bed.  I didn't take too many pictures of the trip (mostly because I was paranoid that I was going to get robbed since I had so much with me), but here are a few shots of the two highlights:

LAKE LAGDO - North

Lake Lagdo on a hazy morning.

The beach with a little bit of the hotel we stayed at.

The little guy on the left is a hippo coming up for air.

WAZA NATIONAL PARK - Far North

Soo excited to see some animals :)

Not sure what this thing was, but it was cool looking and actually really cool feeling inside.

Elephantz wuz here.

We didn't actually see any elephants (they migrate in dry season) or lions (only come out super early), but we did see a lot of other animals.  Most notable were the ostriches, giraffes (saw a bunch, and even a group of about 10), warthogs, and most of the cast of the Lion King.  I'm not going to bother posting the pictures of animals that I took because they didn't come out very well, but it was awesome.

This picture should seriously be on the cover of something to promote Peace Corps.

This is a part of a mural at the entrance to the park.  From what I gather, the man being dragged is a poacher and he will be shot by excited military men.  Pretty effective for people who can't read.

Baby Cats - Part Deux

Some more cute kitten pics.  I swear this will be my last post about only kittens.  I don't even like cats, but kittens are sooo cute.

My kitten/not-so-kittenlike-anymore cat from the previous litter keeps trying to breastfeed with them, but she is almost the same size as the mom. It’s super awkward (see above). I shoe her away whenever I catch her, but she’s crafty.

This one is my favorite. When all the other kittens had already opened their eyes, this one only had one and a half eyes open (left). It is so cute and fluffy, plus I think it’s the smartest one (at least from my observations). Adorbs.  I reeeallllyy don't need to keep one of the babies because two cats is already more than enough, but this one at least makes me double think it.

(<--new one)

(older one in baby form-->)

This one looks just like my kitten from the last litter (only about 6 months or so ago—the mama cat works fast). Look at the resemblance.  In fact, all four of them have near twins in the last litter.  They definitely have the same daddy.

This is the smallest one and it always hisses when I pick it up. It also is very defensive of its food. Not a big fan of this one.

I think this one is the only male, but it's hard to tell.  He's probably the softest.  He used to have eye infections or something crusty that kept his eye shut for a couple of days.  He was also a really heavy sleeper when he was really little. I legit thought he was dead on more than one occasion because I couldn't wake him up.  Basically, there is a reoccuring pattern that I'm scared/convinced the kittens are dead.

Hopefully they will all be out of my house before the end of May when new owners can pick them up.  They are driving me nuts, running all over and making a mess.

Baby Cats

My cat had four little babes on March 6. Here are some photos because they are adorable and this is basically what I do with my time now since I live alone.

This is mama cat a few hours before birth. She doesn’t look very comfortable.

When they were born they didn’t have hair on their legs so they looked like mice.

Cat pile part one (a few days old) and two (about 7 weeks old). Things don’t change much.

Big sis checking in on the kittens in their box.

After about 4 weeks or so the mama will pick them up by their necks and move them places (like my bed) or hide them. When I got home from my training/vacation after being gone for two weeks during which time this new behavior began I noticed they weren’t in the box and I couldn’t find them anywhere. I’m really paranoid that the mom is going to eat the babies (it has happened to other volunteers…) so I was freaking out a little bit. I looked for 15 minutes and then finally called my neighbor who was looking after them. My neighbor ended up finding them almost right away though and they’re still around, so hopefully that’s not going to happen.

Kitten scratching.

I’m pretty sure that they gave me fleas last week, but I haven’t seen any evidence for a couple of days, so hopefully that’s over.

More to come...

Happy Late-Easter!

I hope everyone had a great Easter. Here in Banyo, my postmate and I got in the spirit by dying hard boiled eggs. My parents sent me an Easter package with an egg dying kit and a windup chick (which my cats are really afraid of) that got here just in time. The eggs here are all a brownish color, but we managed to find a dozen lighter colored ones to dye and it worked pretty well. We only used three of the colors, so we’re going to save the rest for another day.

(the other side of the egg says -non)

On Easter Sunday we went over to the American missionaries’ house which is about 15 minutes outside Banyo to have a special dinner. It was awesome. We ate beef and vegetable potpie, green beans (my contribution), fruit salad, shrimp chips with guac (not really sure what these things are, they taste kind of like the cinnamon twists at Taco Bell, but shrimpy), and mango cobbler with a semi-frozen vanilla ice cream for dessert.

After dinner, my postmate and I left around 6:30 to try to find a moto taxi back to town before dark, which is usually around 7 every day. A really big storm was coming so it was already kind of dark when we left. No motos were coming because it was Sunday (normally there are motos coming and going from the hospital there) and about to rain, so we figured we could walk until we found one. Well, it ended up raining with no motos in sight so we had to walk all the way to town (which has never happened before). Luckily my postmate had a raincoat and an umbrella, so she shared but we both still got really wet. Then her headlamp battery died. We ended up stopping twice along the way at bars when the rain got really bad. I’m sure the people sitting there thought we looked ridiculous and that we don’t have enough sense to get out of the rain. Right before we reached the market where we knew we could find motos there was a giant flash of lightning and all the power in town went out, so there was a collective yell from all the bar goers. After waiting a while in the dark, I found a moto to take me home. We almost fell over in a giant mud/water pool on the way, then he charged me double the normal fare. I ended up paying it anyway because I was just happy to be home after about an hour and a half (again, normally 15 minutes max) and didn’t feel like fighting about it. Long story short: rainy season is TERRIBLE. I’d take the dust back any day.

My birthday

I had a great first-birthday-in-Africa a couple of weeks ago, and here are some pictures to prove it. Earlier in the day, my postmate and I visited the Tiket market just outside of town and (as always) found some great deals.  I got some clothes and fabric to make some more clothes.  Then in the evening, some folks over for a delicious dinner party.  In Cameroon the tradition is to buy other people drinks for your birthday, so that's what I did.  Sorry that some of the pictures are sideways.  I tried to fix it but the internet goes so slow that it would have taken forever.

Some of the birthday dinner--Fish and beer battered onion rings

23!  Also pictured, a giant salad

Dr. Eta (the chief of the district hospital where I work) and Jeremey (one of the Baptist missionaries that we randomly met that morning in the market)

Kaitlyn, Sani (my neighbor), and my African key lime pie birthday cake.  Notice that my candle was literally just a candle, but we make it work here in Banyo.