Little Life

My mom made me write this post. She said I should write so that “people know it doesn’t just end when it ends.” I kind of thought that was clear with the last five posts, but okay.

So my life right now is…
-living in a DC suburb.
-mastering the Metro.
-trying to get into grad school (for Journalism, not Public Health, like some of you might have heard… that phase lasted, like, 5 minutes).
-wondering why my car is making so many funny noises.
-trying to manage my salary that is only meager because I live in such an exorbitantly expensive city.
-Netflix.
-hanging out in my styled-by-Salvation-Army-and-Craigslist apartment.
-marveling at how fast I can kill a goldfish. (I’m on my fourth one right now, and fingers crossed, he’s hanging in there.)
-working. And working. And working.
-still not getting haircuts as often as I should.
-hanging out with my (much older than me) French club.
-wholly independent.
-volunteering with the SPCA as an adoption counselor and giving fools the boot when I think they don’t deserve a puppy.
-really, really, really enjoying Michaels, AC Moore, and JoAnn Fabrics way too much and being way too crafty again.
-wishing I could wear my Chacos when I have to wear sensible office shoes.
-going to the Cameroonian restaurant in Silver Spring.
-still catching up with friends all over the mid-Atlantic region on weekends.
-figuring things out.
-no, that’s a lie… I’m more often wondering what I have to do to force myself to figure things out, but not really doing it.

Regarding Cameroon…
-I miss it. A lot. I wish I could be there. A lot.
-I talk to Carine almost weekly. I’m very sad that I can’t see her through her pregnancy and the baby when it is born this summer. And I’m very sad every time she puts Hope-Mah on the phone and she says, “Auntie Lindsay, good afta-noooon,” in her almost 3-year-old voice. She only had a 2½-year-old voice when I left her.
-I accosted a woman at a gas station when I heard her accent. She was one pump over, talking on the phone, and I went up to her and (maniacally) asked her where she’s from. When she said, “Cameroon,” I said, “Oh! Me TOO!” She thought I was nuts, but then we talked about how much Paul Biya blows and then she hugged me and now we’re friends. Awesome.
-I go to Roger Miller, the Cameroonian restaurant here, way too much, but I love the people. When I walk in, they say, “Ah-ah! Mbengwi! C’est ma soeur Camerounaise!” That’s worth paying $10 for fufu.
-When I call my friend Elizabeth in Douala, she says, “When will you come home?” And when I say, “I have to be here to make money before I can return,” she says, “What money? Find the airfare and you will never need a franc again! Myself, all of Guneku, you know we’re ready to house you. Just come back and you will need no thing.” She’s serious. She has a plan about how, as soon as I pay off my student loans, I can go back there and, “Relaaax. Just enjoy yourselllf. Enjoy Gunekuuu… You know, Lindsay.” (Have I said how much I love her?)

Regarding America...
-I get frustrated. A lot.
-I get the urge to slash the tires of every pretentious, shiny, nauseatingly oversized monstrosity (I mean Hummers) that I see on the road. Imagine my reaction when I saw a stretch Hummer limo driving through Georgetown last week.
-I love seeing old friends.
-I love mocha frappuccinos.
-I hate drying my hair. So I don’t. Even though I should. Glossy-haired J. Crew wearers who try to make me feel inferior can suck it. So can the people at Patagonia who charge $30 for a t-shirt that says "Live Simply." Stupid. People who really live simply get their t-shirts within the price range of 50¢ to free. (Do you see how America makes me frustrated?)

Okay, I’m going to pause from the list because I’m starting to get onto a (bitter) tangent, and I don’t want things to seem like that, so let me explain myself. Reintegration encompasses a lot of different things. Some are more magnified than others on certain days, but for me, the experience has gone something like this:

- Initial joy.

I survived Peace Corps! I’m back in America! I didn’t lose an eye! (That was one of my irrational phobias in Cameroon.) I have a spring mattress! Hot showers! Chipotle! No haggling! I’m pretty again when I scrub the dirt off and put on some mascara!

This phase burns bright but fast, and then…

- Panic/Overwhelm.

I have LOANS to pay. Lots and lots of LOANS. And I have to buy a car. And I have to find a job. And I HAVE TO GET OUT OF MY PARENTS’ HOUSE NOW. I have to wear close-toed shoes. And I have to wear mascara because I have to be pretty because America says I have to and I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO SURVIVE HERE. And all Peace Corps gave me was this lousy $6 grand before taxes. Which makes way for…

- Hatred of "The Man."

All Peace Corps gave me was this lousy $6 grand before taxes and I have to buy a car and find an apartment and pay my loans and get out of my parents’ house. Oh, and my loans are a lot higher now because Peace Corps told me not to consolidate before I left because they forgive 30% of Perkins loans. But when I got home, interest rates had jumped from 3% to 8% and I accrued $5,000 on my Stafford loans because I didn’t consolidate when interest was low and I just found out that my Perkins loan was only worth $900, which means the agency saved me $300 but cost me $5,000 and counting because I’m now stuck indefinitely with this shitty interest rate. And… neat. Peace Corps, you’re really neat. No, no. No thanks necessary for the 27 months I spent chewing on cow bones and bettering the image of America abroad.

To be fair, this phase is really a combination of frustration with America, Peace Corps, and myself. America because, really, it's just too much. Peace Corps because yep, it is a government agency, and, yep, it sucks. And myself because prior to leaving, I was not aware enough of my situation to know that, BFD, it would only be $300. But in my case, as time went on, I came to resent Peace Corps more and more. During my COS medical exams, Nurse Ann screwed something up, so when I got home, PC/Washington called me and said I needed to re-do this exam. They gave me a voucher, but I was denied by all 57 doctors in Peace Corps’ insurance provider’s directory. And two of them turned out to be fertility specialists, which is not what I needed at all… No one at Peace Corps would talk to me about it, and the insurance company just kept referring me back to the directory, so as far as I’m concerned, if they want to do this test/take my body parts or secretions or whatever so they can close out my file, then they can come get it. A-holes.

So, hatred of the man lasts a little while, but in the meantime, the transition into missing your country settles in.

- Missing the Motherland.

Eventually things fall into place. I get a car—with some finagling finesse and by casually mentioning that I did just SERVE MY COUNTRY (whatever, it sounds good) for more than 2 years for no compensation, so I totally deserve a huge discount—and I find a job. It’s not necessarily a job I like, but it’s a job and it’s enough that I can live by myself. I settle. I get some furniture. (And am nearly struck by a police officer and have my windshield cracked on two separate occasions involving two separate pieces of furniture, but those stories are neither here nor there…) I sign up for Netflix. I get a birdfeeder and I have lovely Saturday mornings, taking long slow showers then lazing in my bathrobe for an hour, sipping orange juice out of my ceramic juice cup that I save just for Saturdays, watching Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal peck at the feeder, and I think, “How sweet, they mate for life.” Then I sob because I can’t ride a moto to Bamenda today. Does that transition seem irrational? Good, because it is. It happens and it happens often with no provocation and I don’t know why.

Flashbacks come a lot. I turn a combination lock on a box filled with death review folders at work and think about how I’d wake up and sit on my cold tile floor every morning in front of my trunk, spinning my combination locks to get out my laptop. I put on my Chacos and think about how the dirt that’s still stuck in the crevices was picked up on one of my hikes on the dusty roads behind my house. I think about the sun on my face. I think about how the mornings smelled. I think about how any time I sat down, Wee-Mah would stand between my legs and lean against my chest and stay there just like that for my entire visit. I think about the way the 4 o’clock sun looked coming in through my parlor curtains. I think about the sound of the vibration of my front window bars when my cat jumped through them to come inside. I think about how rough most women’s hands felt whenever they touched me because they were worn from a lifetime of farming. I think about feeling nauseous and overheated in taxis. I think about cold showers. I think about bad macaroni and cheese made with powdered milk. I think about everything. I miss everything. I regret not extending. I pray that the mediocrity of my middle-of-the-road office job doesn’t ever become comfortable.

- Normalcy.

After a while, the smoke begins to clear. Life isn’t always happy and it isn’t always exciting, but it is what it is. This is where I am now, and it’s taken nearly 5 months to get here, and I say it a lot: “It is what it is.” I have a schedule, and I’m used to getting up at 6:50 everyday, showering, eating my breakfast, getting in my car, going to work. Much of my life at this point is lived in memories; even when I’m with friends, I make many references to my time in Africa. I miss Cameroon actively everyday, but it’s not as sore as it used to be. I hate America, sometimes, often, but only parts. Parts like giant SUVs, Kaiser Permanente, George W. Bush. I hate that I feel less free here. If I wanted to run away and live in a cave, I couldn’t. I have bills to pay, so I have to work, and I have to do what I have to do, and I’m not the one deciding. I hate that it’s so hard to live simply here. I hate that it’s weird that I don’t have cable or internet (more so that I don’t want cable or internet). I hate that I can’t go out to dinner for less than $20. I hate that I can’t walk to work. I hate that I pass a thousand people each day and talk to none of them. I miss Cameroon. I miss being abroad.

I have fantasies of running away to Normandy, living in a one-room house on a hill with little rounded doorways and a small wood-burner in one corner and my straw bed in the other, and in the morning an old man in suspenders will knock on my door to bring me fresh cream and I’ll answer wearing a long-sleeve, high-neck cotton night gown, and I’ll sleepily say, “Grand merci, pa.” Wasn’t that like… The Sound of Music or something? If it wasn’t it was borne from it. The grass is always greener. I know that. I miss the best things about Cameroon and forget about the bad, just like when I was there I missed the best things about America.

I’m not quite sure what the next phase is. I think I may just sink deeper into normalcy. Make more friends, go back to school, find a different job, fall in love for real for once. Live my little life. I don’t think it’ll always be here. I’d like to ultimately get out of America again. The world to see, you know. But I thank God that I finally know it’s out there.

Anyway, the whole point of this is that it’s a slow process back into the “first world.” It’s a slow solitary journey into Peace Corps and then back out again. It takes a lot of time to figure out how to melange two very different parts of your life, and in some cases, how to merge the very different person you've become in Africa with your new/old life in America. It’s studded with some amazing and some wretched (mostly amazing) people along the way, but it is, primarily, a very personal path to travel. At least it’s been that way for me. I had to take care of me and be strong for me and I was. That’s a power and a confidence that no one can take. And even now in my little Netflix-petting-abandoned-puppies-talking-to-my-goldfish-working-on-a-cancer-study-Lean-Cuisine-for-one phase, I'm still okay. Because I have to be okay. Because I was okay in a situation often more trying than this. Because I have faith that good things are ahead. Because everything will be okay.

Mohamad Chakaki was a PCV in Wum, Northwest Province 2001-2003. He’s retroactively posting the journal he kept to a blog now. A while ago, he posted a quote that his mother had sent him, and I keep it on a Post-It in my office now:

Travel, you will find recompense for what you’ve left behind
Struggle, for the sweetness of life is in struggle
-Imam Shafi’i

Love

There are certain things I love about having Cameroon in my life. Even though it hurts to have two homes (because you're always missing something), I love getting phone calls at 3 a.m. because Carine can't/doesn't care to keep track of the time difference. I love Wee-Mah yanking the phone from her mother's hand to shout, "Auntie Lindsay, hear how I count to twenty! One, two, tree, foah..." I love going to Cameroonian restaurants in the D.C. area and practically getting high because I'm so ecstatic for the cramped atmosphere, the blaring Nigerian music videos, speaking French with my waitress from Yaoundé, eating egussi and fufu corn with my fingers, sitting next to people who are wearing matching pagne, and running into my Cameroonian French professor from college who I haven't seen since before I left for Peace Corps. I love that the Fon is in Boston presently and that he calls me sometimes to tell me about how he will meet Barack Obama and that I have to be there with him - wearing my traditional outfit, of course - so that "Obama should know you are a very special Mafor, eh." I love that Carine is pregnant!!! Oh, and I love that she plans to the baby Lindsay.

And I just love more than I can say that I love a place and a people so much that I can beam all day just because of a simple meal or a short 10-minute phone call or speaking a word of Pidgin. I love a lot.

Hope

Reintegration doesn't come easily. Car, job, apartment. Check, check, check. I still miss them. Photos of the girls and Carine smile down at me in my office. I look at them, at the dirt yards and mud brick walls behind them, and wonder how it can feel so much more like home now that I'm apart from it.

I feel like I should be there. Dust on my feet, sun on my face, cassava in my belly. I should be there.

Lately all I want to do is turn around and run back to Peace Corps, to do something good, to fix something broken in this world, to love somebody, to give a piece of my abundance away to someone who needs it. How can it only be a limited time in my life? I know now that it doesn't make sense. I know now that once you start you don't just stop. I feel it in my bones now that I'm back that even though Peace Corps only lasts for 800 days, once you have your eyes opened to the world, you have a moral obligation and the gift of realization to make better anything you can for the people who can't. It doesn't end. It becomes your life. It is mine. And I have the greatest pain and the greatest joy to be apart from it now and to know that I'll always have the burning in my heart. This path is winding and I may be wandering, but I know I'll be led back there, though I don't yet know from what obscure corner in the world. I know that there's more learning, more hardships, more love, and I take comfort in the fact that life is long but the destination is right and that every land can be the promised one if only we make it so.

Outer Loop

We call this "The Kelli Face."

America's becoming normal again. That's good and bad, I guess.

I've been in Washington for about a month now. In that time, I've gotten a job as a Research Assistant at a corporation in Rockville, found an apartment (which I'm currently waiting to get approved for), seen my friends so many times I could vomit (kidding!), become comfortable driving on the beltway, developed an addiction to Cherry Coke Zero (and World Market and Ten Thousand Villages), and become an expert wood-fire builder. These things, as well as Safeway, Starbucks, and relying on radio stations more than my iPod have all become normalcy.

Cameroon is fading. It's unfortunate. Pidgin is slowly migrating out of my speech pattern. (Although my French is hanging in there because Margarita and I speak it to each other.) I've become so used to hot showers that I cannot fathom taking a cold one. I frequently find myself wanting to slam into somebody with my giant cart every time I enter a chaotic Costco. This from the girl who could placidly (okay, semi-placidly) sit on a 15-seat bush taxi with 30 other people for 10-hour stints. But by far the hardest thing is being away from Wee-Mah and Hope-Mah. It's particularly bad when I visit my friends or cousins who have kids around their ages. I miss them a lot more than I expected and try not to think about the fact that even though I was a big part of their lives for two of their most formative years, I may not see them again until they're teenagers. It's hard.

For the last six months of my service, my mom had a hard time getting a call through to me. I'm having the same problem now with Carine. I've only been able to get ahold of her twice since I've been home. Sometimes she calls me briefly, but it's mostly just to yell at me. Like last week when I was in the middle of Ikea:

Carine: "Sista Lin."

Me: "Yes."

Carine: "Why have you not called me up to this date? What is really wrong with you?"

Me: "I've been trying, eh, the thing is not passing."

Carine: "Okay, I have to go me. I am having no credit."

...I don't know who's dead or alive, who had babies, how the girls school is doing, or if the fon ever made it to America. (Last I heard, he was planning to come to Boston to stay with some of his children so that he could get help for his worsening diabetes.) And while it is kind of neat that I have an African queen who calls me sporadically just to give me a good tongue-lashing, I do wish that I had more of a tangible connection with the people who were my family for two years.

As time goes on, missing people is definitely the most difficult part of readjustment for me, but sometimes the transition is overwhelming. Transition can - and does - mean many different things to people in my position, but for me, it mostly means the head-on crash of my newly-acquired Cameroonian sense of time with my long-lost American work ethic. Sometimes I think that I should have never joined Peace Corps at all. If I hadn't, I would have a job and an apartment and be in grad school already. If I hadn't done that for the past two years, I wouldn't have to struggle like this now. I wouldn't have to be squashed under this sinking cement ceiling of pressure to get on with my life while time is pulled out from underneath me like a rug. Both things seem to want to put me on my ass, and they're succeeding. I think one of the bigger parts of the problem is that I don't really have a direction right now and I don't know exactly what the next step is, but everyone around me has a (conflicting) opinion about what I should do and which path I should choose right now and for the rest of my life, and they aren't shy about sharing it. But I seem to have always just stumbled upon the right things in my life, which, by luck, completely changed the course of things. Being a R.A., joining Peace Corps... (The latter of which would have never happened had the first not happened by complete accident.) So now, where's the new path that's going to pick me? ("Choose me. Love me." Grey's... anyone? No? Okay.) I'm waiting for it to show itself so that I can accidentally (and so characteristically) fall flat in the dirt, then look up and say, "Oh... well, there's something!" The American bull-in-a-china-shop in me just wants to force something to happen right now, but my faith in a fate that'll fit and my new Cameroonian slow-trickle hourglass wants to be patient. Sometimes I wish I'd extended.

I guess it's foolish to say that these things just happen to me, instead of me making them happen, and I do, obviously, have a hand in bringing them about, but these opportunities that present themselves to me, often pop up in ways that I don't have much control over. So maybe it is foolish to think that the next great adventure will just lay itself out in front of me and invite me to take a stroll, but I do have a certain amount of faith that everything will be okay. And fun and great and sometimes exciting... because that's what it has to be.

A few months ago, my friend Elizabeth (the well-educated doctor who was from Mbengwi but now lives in Douala) wrote me an e-mail. I had told her about my trip to South Africa and that I was now at home, looking for a job. She's been to South Africa, and to America several times, and she said, "After traveling to other places, I get one simple fact: We carry along with us the potential we need to be happy no matter where we are."

And while I don't know my next step or my dream future, I do know that I have behind me and always with me a love and a confidence that I had to go to the other side of the world to grow. ...And an African queen who cares enough to call and yell at me. It's a pretty precious consolation.

Splat

I took the last of my malaria prophylaxes (yes, more than one) today. Does that mean Africa's supposed to be out of my system?

Things here are still going, going. This blog won't be going much longer, but I think that the readjustment phase is an important part of the whole Peace Corps picture, so I'll do a few more updates until I feel I've come full circle.

The holidays came and went. Whatever. I never have been a very big fan of Christmas, so that was more of the same. Maybe I'm just a brat, but I think a big part of it this year was because I missed my Cameroon family. There's something so much more inclusive about being stranded in Africa – being adopted by a village and being part of a network of people who are going through the same thing, who are alone and apart with you – than there is about being here, being a drudge on the conveyor belt, going through the motions of a traditional Christmas, not because you're into it, but just because it's what you do. Buy a bunch of stuff that no one will appreciate (or be a cheapskate, sure to be hated for a full calendar year if you don't), church on Christmas Eve (hold a candle and sing "Silent Night" or forever be a black-sheep heathen), receive a bunch of things you don't need on Christmas morning (smile and like it anyway or be a rotten ingrate), and it's over. I just never did like it. And while the 10+ obligatory plates of rice that I had to choke down every Christmas day in Cameroon were not something I looked forward to any means, there was something free and refreshing about not getting/giving gifts, but just being with people who are grateful for a day to visit each other. There were so few obligations, so few expectations besides just being there, at least for me, that the holiday was actually a holiday.

Sisters and Christmas.

Cousins and Christmas.

Anyway, beyond the holidays, I'm slowly moving toward my future. ...Actually it's more like one sharp lurch, then a prolonged halt... lurch, halt, lurch, halt. Back to America (lurch), no job, no car (halt). Finally bought a car (lurch), still in my parents' house (halt). Put out a bagillion resumes (squeak squeak squeeeeak), no job yet (halt). Moving to Washington this weekend (lurch), ...then what?! (halt, splat).

But I'm excited to go this weekend. I love my parents, but living in this house does not make me the same Lindsay that I have become over the last several years. Living in this house makes me the stunted adolescent version of Lindsay, in constant need of rigid direction. Coming home is stressful, in general. I'm already walking back into a situation where I have to find and buy a car, find a job, find a place to live, and figure out how to balance my $25,000 school loans and the rest of my bills. I know that all of those things are there. I don't need additional stress by being asked everyday, "Did you find a car? Did you call about insurance? What are you going to do about consolidating your loans? Did you send out resumes? You need to get a job, little girl, your money won't last forever." I know. I love, love, love my wonderful parents who always did what they could and what they thought was right for me, but I know. I'm a big girl. I survived in Africa. Alone. I know. My parents wanted to raise an independent girl. And they succeeded. Ashia for stubborn woman pikin.

I'm hoping that re-entry will start to get easier soon. I know it'll be better when I feel like I'm on my feet and independent again. But that's probably a few months off. In the meantime, I'm finally going to see most of my friends in the upcoming week, which I'm looking so forward to. So far I've only seen four of my friends, and only once or twice. I haven't had a lot of quality time yet or the chance to just chill the eff out and laaaaaugh and talk and be me again. I just hope that we're all the same me's we used to be. ...Or at least that we're new me's who are still compatible. Some of my relationships (gloriously) haven't shifted an inch. But with some people, that's just not the case, and I don't know if it's me or them who have changed. It's just frustrating that everything is, or has the potential to be, a hurdle right now, even things that used to be the most natural parts of my life. Nothing's easy. Halt. Splat.

Peace Corps Hangover

Readjustment is turning out to be more difficult than I had anticipated. Even though I'm only about a week and a half deep, it's rough. I think it's mostly because I have a hard time sitting still, and haven't been without a job since I was 16. But now here I am, an RPCV, with no job, no income, no car. I've only been able to leave the house once in the past week. I'm a 25-year-old loser.

I'm trying hard not to feel that way, but there is a certain pang of uselessness to my current lifestyle. I can't even take the dog for walks in the woods because it's hunting season. So instead, it's me and a whole bunch of America's Next Top Model, which, you know, is cool... I love Tyra, but enough is enough. And 10 days of inactivity is more than enough.

I've applied to about 20 jobs, but that doesn't make me employed. I've organized, renamed, backed-up, and appropriately sorted the 3,000 photos I took while in Africa, but that doesn't make me productive. I've eaten Reese's Pieces, turkey sandwiches, and Special K Red Berries, but that doesn't make me happy. God help me, I miss Cameroon.

I was talking to Kelsey last night about this and she asked that, if I could, right now, get on a plane and fly to Bamenda right now, would I? Well, no, even though I miss it, I probably wouldn't, for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I am happy, in general, to be in America again, even though I'm not happy with the current state of my life.

It's a strange time and it's a difficult compound of circumstances: to have this whole other section of my life, which was my entire life for a very long time, just vanished, swept away, and I'm supposed to forget about it and move on. (Except, of course, when I wax nostalgic in interviews about why it profoundly changed me.) I can't. That's not how it is, and it's not a trivial thing. I know it's life, and life moves forward and you have to leave things and people behind, but it's hard. It's hard because it's real. Africa is not some far off place filled with lions and HIV and poor starving children with flies on their eyes. It's Carine, never looking any less than regal in her tailored dresses. It's knocking down breakfast off of my papaya tree each morning. It's the women who plunk one of their children onto my lap in a crowded bush taxi without asking permission. It's Hope-Mah learning how to roll over, and crawl, and walk in front of me, then one day saying for the first time, "Auntie Lindsay, ashia." It's all of these things and more. And readjustment is hard because I had a life filled with all of these little things, a life that I had carved out and made for myself in a place that was lacking so many creature comforts and now... I'm in the land of plenty, but I have no life. Not yet.

I've been meaning to make a list, and now is the appropriate time, I guess, while I'm thinking about my Africa. Here are some of the things I miss already about my home-away-from-home.


1.) Fufu corn and njama-njama.
2.) Carine and the Fon.
3.) Talking Pidgin. (And French sometimes.)
4.) Being a Mafor.

5.) Songs that the kids made up with my name in them.

6.) Lots of public transportation. (Miserable though it may be.)
7.) Colin.
8.) Climbing hills.
9.) Good cheap bakery bread. (Not to be confused with the square bread.) ... (Or with Pee Bread.)
10.) Feeling like I accomplished something after cleaning the house/washing my clothes because it took all day long.
11.) The Case.12.) Bargaining.
13.) Being okay with not doing a lot (by American standards) because I was still doing as much as I could.
14.) Not having internet, cable, hot water, a plush bed, phone service, a refrigerator, an oven, or whatever else in my house. ...Seriously, how can you truly appreciate anything if you always have everything?
15.) Looking forward so much to market every 8 days! 16.) Shopping for fresh foods then spending all afternoon making my dinner.
17.) Bootleg CDs/DVDs. (All y'all still over there, we can work out a package-exchange plan, if you'd like.)
18.) My preschool class.19.) All (okay, like 99%) of the women in my village.
20.) My village in general for that matter.
21.) My pretty house that I worked so hard on.
22.) Shortwave BBC and tea in the morning.
23.) Reading by bushlamp.
24.) Smol Smol No Be Sick.
25.) Adam fruit. (!!!)
26.) Cheap sangria in 2-Liter bottles.
27.) Making my excellent Not-Spinach-and-No-Artichoke dip.
28.) Sleepovers in Bafut. 29.) Kids coming to greet/playing in my yard/generally loving me just because.

30.) Getting soaked washing my dishes in the rain.
31.) The immense excitement of having a new TV show on DVD passed on to me.
32.) Having my iPod be the most expensive and precious thing I owned.
33.) Building relationships over text message. (i.e.- Gaining so much happiness out of no more than 240 characters at a time.)
34.) Hiking mountains to get to a place where I had enough service to send/receive text messages.
35.) Afternoon naps under my tin roof during rainy season.
36.) My deaf neighbor's dog, Pelle, who was the only dog I ever saw come running because she was happy to see me, instead of constantly cowering around people because she was beaten so much. (A week before I left post, someone poisoned Pelle and she died.)
37.) Khokki corn.
38.) Being independent.
39.) Constantly learning, growing, and feeling like my life and my outlook was shifting for the better.
40.) Little kids with cute hair, before they have to shave it all off to go to government school.
41.) Limbe. ...Specifically going to the beach in Batoke for the first time on each trip, trekking on a path through the bush down a steep grade, buying mangoes from the man that lived in a shanty on the way, to get to the place where the shore suddenly spreads out in front of us, and men nap in their hollowed-out fishing boats until it's time to pull them into the water again. Yeah, I miss Limbe. 42.) Titus the Tailor and his sometimes completely wrong creations.
43.) Living in Chacos and flip-flops.
44.) Poisson brassée and baton de manioc.
45.) Getting together with other stir-crazy volunteers and finally having a lose-your-breath laugh for the first time in 3 months.

(Starring Ingrid, Stacy, Lindsey, Jenny, and Justin. imu!!!)

46.) Pagne everywhere.47.) Loud, overbearing, blunt people. Mostly just because I could be loud, overbearing, and blunt without having to feel bad about it.
48.) Lizards chirping in my ceiling.
49.) Benskin rides.

50.) The pleasure of receiving packages.
51.) Awesome/insightful/ridiculous phrases painted all over anything with wheels.
52.) My girls, Wee-Mah and Hope-Mah, who never failed to make the most wretched day somehow bright again.

"AFRICA: Not For Sissies?" (Holiday in South Africa)

During my vacation in South Africa, I met a man named Joseph who wore a hat that read, "AFRICA: Not For Sissies." In Cameroon I would have agreed. In South Africa I did not. A sissy could fare just fine there. Shopping malls in every little town, KFCs on the corners, and superhighways linking them all, so that your pedicured little toes never have to step in any less than a Mercedes. Granted, I did not see the interior provinces, so I'm sure some parts are rough; there is Peace Corps in the country, though I'm still scratching my head as to why, and despite all of the mansions lining the most pristine of coastlines, South Africa still boasts the highest HIV rate in the world. (I say I don't understand why Peace Corps is there because, although some people do live in shanty villages, they're all under the jurisdiction of a government that can afford and realize impressive infrastructure, quite unlike most other African nations. So even though the need is present, it seems that it can be satisfied without the help of other countries' development organizations. But, who am I to say Tschetter should reconsider? After all, I've only been to the hoity-toity parts. ...But I mean, still... they're there.)

Anyway, despite my constant stupefaction at the fact that the roads are paved, that bush taxis are not packed to the point of passengers' painful pins-and-needles, that they're not really "bush taxis" at all, that there's frozen yogurt, that you can wear a purse on your shoulder and not constantly be aware of the fact that someone could just yank it off your body like candy from a baby, that there are trash cans and that it's a crime to litter (what?!?!), it was still a lovely vacation. It's like a commercialized version of what you picture Africa to be like: safari, animals, women in traditional garbs for the sake of a rand. And people were calm. It was nice to let my guard down and enjoy the beauty (and the malls) of the place, but it's certainly not my Africa. People didn't bargain animatedly and get in heated arguments over fufu like they do in Cameroon. I was out of place, and as much as I've complained about how challenging West Africans can be, I miss their vivacity. So by the second week, when I met two Cameroonian men from Buea selling in a market in Stellenbosch, it easily became the highlight of the trip and I had no choice but to stay, speak Pidgin, and enjoy my people. I'm just now starting to realize that I became one of them, now that I'm apart from them; I'm homesick.

But for now, that is neither here nor there. What's here right now are a billion pictures of my fabulous trip:

Kruger National Park

We found this chameleon on the side of the road and then he changed colors to match my outfit. I like that in a man.

Aunt Jean, Margarita, me, and Penni on safari.

Our luxury bush cabins in the park.

Camp's dining area.

First ride every morning at 5.

Leopardshelled tortoise.

...Female for some reason...

Margarita, Aunt Jean, and I.
(I'm, like, way appropriately dressed for safari.)

Mon dieu! Les buffles!


Regardez-moi encore une fois.

Old pa.

The red hornbill that lived outside my cabin.

Going for a Guinness. Typical.

Tree shredded by an elephant.

Plus des buffles!

Bottlenecker.

Leopard...

...killed some baboons...

...took them up in a tree...

...and kept them there.

Rhino.

Bushbucks. Or kudus. Or impalas. Something.

I ate zebra for dinner in Cape Town later in the week. Seriously. It was steaky and delightful.

Our guide Morris.

Cape Town/The Boulders/Cape of Good Hope

A tour bus in Africa? Seriously?


Trip to a township preschool.
Cute. But not as cute as my Guneku daycare.
(In Cameroon to knock, people say "kwonk kwonk." Apparently in SA, they say "kgo kgo." Or something like that.)

Shanties on the road.

Shanties on canvas.

Kids swimming and sunbathing at Camps Bay.

Craft market. Where people take the time it took them to make something into consideration for the price, instead of just the quality of the materials. Weird.

The waterfront under a full moon.

Art in Alfred Mall above and below.

Table Mountain cable car.

Mandela in thread and Mandela in stone.

Football sign in downtown Cape Town.

Baboons on the road.

Baboon in a Dutchman's car.

Baboon on our car.
(He tried to get in, but we'd locked the doors.)

I know that now.

But they still kinda scare me.

Bienvenue to the bottom of Africa.

Birds on a ledge.

Cape of Good Hope.

Petting cheetahs at Spier, who were napping, not tranquilized.

My new friends from Buea, Felix and Thomas. They gave me ridiculously below-cost prices because I be na Kamerun woman.

Me with some penguins at The Boulders.

Quack.

Penguins are no good squashed.
Just like leopardshell tortoises.

What the hell else would you do with your empty Castrol can?

Knysna/Stellenbosch/Plettenburg Bay

Beach at Mossel Bay.

I like elephants.

And they like me.

Trunk kisses.

I also like parrots.

But I got way too close to this one.

How to get to anywhere from Knysna.

Sailboat. Pretty.

Hella ready to see some whales in the Indian Ocean.

No such luck.

Thumbs up for Tsitsikamma and goodbye to South Africa.