or everyone gets drunk, and kitty makes her kill.
Thursday November 6th 2003
Kitty is growing up. She is getting larger, and more coordinated. She was sitting on my lap, purring, as I was sitting on the veranda talking to Jen and a neighbor, and suddenly she was bolting down the path. All claws and fury. I had no idea what was going on. Pounce, pounce… she cough a frog. She trotted back up with the frog in her mouth, showed it to me, and promptly headed indoors to eat it up. So much for the vegetarian kitty. She downed it in no time at all. Fresh from her first major hunting success, she went right back out and caught a lizard… and polished that off as well. This is great. Now I don’t have to worry so much about feeding her. I’ll give her an egg in the morning, and she can still eat scraps. She is at that very cute stage, where she only runs, attacks, and sleeps. She also follows me to bed every night. Whatever she might be doing, as soon as I head to bed, she shows up, curls up next to me (she has to be touching me), starts purring, and falls asleep. Kitty.
Brian’s project is officially dead. He seems to have wrangled it so that he will be working on a sort of VSO Cameroon Intranet (my idea, thank you very much…). I sent him an email with a list of ideas, but we are going to talk about it more when I head up to Yaoundé next.. which is in a few weeks to ‘facilitate’ a workshop. Ug… but at least it will subsidize my next Yaoundé trip… so can’t complain too much.
I played around with Keynote to put together a short presentation for my job transmogrification to marketing and publicity for all of the ROLD members. It is a pretty decent application. The presentation is simple, but it gets the point across. Charlie and Patrice are both keen on the idea of me doing this. Now it remains to convince Rolf (of the SNV) that it is a good idea, and to find some dough to help repay GECEC for its investment in me. I think this might happen… which would be a good thing for me, I think.
Alex is officially fucking up. I went to get water this morning, and the well manager told me that I hadn’t paid my monthly dues. I gave Alex money for 6 months when I first arrived.. only one month was paid for. Not only that, but I gave Alex some money to buy soap, and lunch for me. He bought the soap, and bought himself lunch. I ended up not eating all day. Michelle (an eco-tourist guide) came to ask me to help him with marketing, and made a whole pitch about having Alex join him in the bush with my camera to take some real pictures for his brochure… Alex in the meantime slowly slumped in his chair, and passed out. Later, when we woke him from his drunken stupor, he staggered towards what used to be his room, breaking a glass on his way. I explained to him that he didn’t live in that room anymore, and that he should go to his room. After a minute of complete incomprehension, he staggered off to his room. There is a context for the drunkenness, but still, it didn’t leave a really good impression with me. The next day, the lies continued. The promises continued. Nothing materialized. Our deal is pretty much done. I’m going to have to let him know where he stands soon.
The context of Alex’s drunken stupor? The Party Party. The political party in power had it’s annual celebration. A semi-official holiday (if you don’t close up shop.. “what, you don’t support the party?”) that consists of several running events (women, kids, men running about 6k), checkers, spear chucking (you read that right), singing, dancing, and… a movie. 21 years of peace and prosperity, the ‘triumph of the will’ Cameroon style. Anyway, I stayed away from it all. There were a lot of imported petty party functionaries. I didn’t want to give them an excuse to hassle me.. not that I felt threatened, but my profile is already higher than I would like. Wandering around during a political celebration just causes more eyes to turn my way. Anyway, they asked Alex to set up the PA system, and some microphones… which he did. While he was hobnobbing, they plied him with drink. He was really fucked up.