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...