I want some small pussy, OR, Sleeping out in the Rainforest

So much has happened since the last post...I keep thinking that “oh, after this next event, things will get
more regular and I can blog more easily.” Not accurate. Ok, so to update:
1) Finish of training
2) Swearing in
3) Traveling to post
4) Where in the world is Gloria?

1) Training. After site visit, everyone was kind of “over” training, so it was a bit rough going. But we all made it through model school, and that was good experience to get under my belt. Yes, you can teach science with nothing but a chalkboard. The other fun bit about training was getting to start “talk Pidgin.” Pidgin is a language that is a mix of English and native languages, that developed out of the need for those people being colonized to communicate with their colonizers. So, it's a mix of english words, “poor” grammar, and words and constructions from native languages. Pidgin is spoken in many different places, but it varies from country to country. Some fun phrases:
How you dey (day)? = How are you?
A (ah) di shidon for Mamfe = I am living in Mamfe.
A di shidon for chair = I am sitting in a chair. (same verb!)
A wan go get some small pussy. = I want to get a kitten. (get your mind out of the gutter)
I was apparently the cream of the pidgin crop this year, so I actually gave a speech in Pidgin during our swearing in! There is a video of this event....which may someday be posted. I caught a lot of flak from my fellow volunteers for not throwing in a line about “pussy”...but really, do I want to be that person that said “pussy” in front of the US Ambassador? No, I think not....anyway, that brings me to....

2) Swearing-in. Ok, so we get to all get dressed up in matching fabric, which is blue, and covered with this yellow pattern that kind of looks like bananas. But I liked what I made with it! Then we sat around for some time while various important people made speeches of varying lengths. We swore in! This means that we are all actually official volunteers now!!!! And even better, everyone from our training group made it through training, which I think is a bit of a rarity. We went out to this hotel with a club afterwards, but they wouldn't open the club to us unless we paid a ridiculously exorbitant amount of money, so we just hung in the bar, for varying amounts of time. Good times, plenty of drinks, and lots of laughs were had by all!

3) Travel to post. Oh lord, this really is like the freaking odyssey! Ok, so Peace Corps hired a car to take us and our stuff from Bangangte to Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest province. “We” being myself, Stanson, a Small Enterprise Development volunteer in Mamfe, and several people headed to the Northwest province. We stayed a few days at the Case there (transit house), did some shopping. Bought a giant jar of Jif. SO excited. Couple people got robbed, unfortunately, which extended our stay a bit—no one was hurt, nothing too serious was taken, all is well, and I wasn't even there.

Moving on, we left Bamenda Sunday morning, about 9:30am. Had to pay through the nose for all of our extra luggage (3 bags, a trunk, a big water filter, and a bicycle each!), but it was ok. We reached Widikum, a halfway or so point by about 12:30 or so. Seems like things are going ok.....then the rain started. And the road got worse. And worse. I didn't take any pictures, too busy pushing/pulling the car. Seriously. So the story on this road: it would connect a major city in the Southwest province (Mamfe), with the capital of the Northwest. It's been supposedly going to get paved for a LONG time, but the funding always seems to disappear. Lame. But now, there is some Chinese construction company that is supposed to be really actually paving it. We'll see. In any case, during the rainy season especially, it becomes nearly impassable. So, we reached the halfway mark at 12:30 or so. Following a flat tire, a drop off of a woman in the wrong village (she'd never been there before), a problem with the axle, and COUNTLESS times pushing, pulling, shoving the van into and out of the mud, it finally met it's demise when a bearing went out, and the driver (shockingly!) couldn't fix it with a beanie baby. But oh did he
try. Seriously—I don't know enough about cars to explain it, but he was going to use the stuffing from this little key chain critter to fix the CAR. Ok, so 2:30 am, we can't go any more because of the bearing. So, we take the opportunity to get some sleep. In the car. All 11 of us. Yeah, that's just about as comfortable as it sounds.

For the record: there are plenty of people that would pay exorbitant amounts of money to spend a whole day 4-wheeling in the rainforest and spending the night there.

Light came in the morning, and a few people set off on foot towards town, hoping to find a motorcycle they could catch. We stayed with the car for a while, the driver was able to get the car moving again....until it got stuck in the mud. Now, throughout all these times we got stuck in the mud, everyone kept saying “oh, this is the last bad patch before the paved road” (the road is paved to within about 15 miles of mamfe). Not true. It just kept getting worse! So, on the advice of the other passengers, we got motos to the paved road, taking just our carry on items. Caught a private car going all the way to Mamfe, met up with Melissa, another volunteer in Mamfe in the following state:
--exhausted
--starving (had a couple of clif bars and 4 beignets in a 24 hour period)
--Filthy (funny how standing behind a van stuck in the mud can spray mud ALL over you)
--No clothes
--No shoes
--No toothbrush
Melissa, fortunately, is a saint, and lent us some clothes and some flip flops, so that we could shower and change, walk into town and get some food, buy some new flip flops (at 60 cents american, they're a pretty good deal), and wait to hear about our van and stuff.
The van didn't arrive until 5:30!!! That poor driver—stuck in the mud for over 30 hours!
Lessons learned:
--Don't travel the Bamenda road during the rainy season. Just don't. Or at least make sure you get in a 4 wheel drive vehicle instead of the vans.
--Pack a change of clothes and a toothbrush in your carry on.
--Carry extra food and water. A LOT.
--Trust the other passengers—they know what they're doing.

4) What now? So, my house is currently being renovated. Of course, I found that fun fact out less than a week before I was supposed to move in. Then, 2 days before I left, I was told that the repairs were still going on, but they were done enough that I could move in, and they would finish with me there. Then, 6:30 last night, I show up with my luggage, and, oops, no not finished, can't move in there. So, at the moment, I am in a room at the convent on campus. At the moment, there are no nuns living here, so it's a little creepy—but I'll reassess tomorrow what I want to do. And see how long it looks like it is actually going to take to fix up my house. The original date I was given was september 5th.....I really hope that it doesn't take that long! So, plan of action right now is to stay here for a few days, do some shopping in Mamfe, and then move into the house. We'll see how it all plays out—I hope to be able to talk to some of the workers first hand tomorrow and get a clearer idea of how long I'll be in the convent.

Wish list: I had an awesome list made up, but here's what I can remember from it....moving sucks....
Scented candles
Photographs (of you! I miss your face!)
Dried fruit and clif bars
Loofah (those puffy scrubby things)
Hand sanitizer! Continual need.....
Books/DVD's (you could even send me my own, just ask the parents...)
Tea (Good earth tea, or tazo chai, or celestial seasonings herbals....)
Stationery (fun stuff is hard to come by)
Good pens, especially blue and red (Pentel G2 are my favorites, and I'm sure mine are going to run out faster than I think)
Hard candy
We've been advised to continue to send packages to the Yaounde address—it's safer and usually
cheaper on this end, and typically faster as well. Yay. If you want to send me letters.....let me know, and I'll see if I can have things shipped to the school's address.

Ok, I think this blog has been long enough, huh? Love to all, till next time......