The past two months have been an ever increasing spiral of chaos. Not all bad, not all good… just a lot of travel, movement, work and the like. I am going to recap them in a whirling miasma of impressions and events with the hope of trying to catch my blog up to more recent events, and start posting regularly again. I do want to, however, flesh out a few of the past two month’s events in detail…but I am going to do that in a more democratic manner. That is to say: tell me what you want me to elaborate on, what you think is interesting, and I will pick a few of the most requested topics and elaborate.
OK. So, I left off in mid January. I have lunch in a shack in town with George and Kira (beans if you were interested). On the TV next door a Nigerian soap opera is playing. It is spectacular in its low budgetness. One light, one camera, one take. The actors walk in front of the lighting rigs and off the sets while the camera is rolling.. and you get to see it all. Lots of yelling and wailing. I want to make one of those. Then I travel… for two days. The first is.. well, easy. The bus has a few empty seats, which I have never seen. It is the first day of the Africa’s Cup.. soccer. The driver came pretty close to flying back to Yaoundé. I hung out with Iza, who is going home. She is the first of our flight of volunteers to pack up and go. She is going back for a bunch of reasons. Boyfriend, mediocre placement, money. The works. Day two of travel. I ride in the fancy VSO car, on pavement the whole way. Before that, I get a few hours of internet time… heaven. On the way there, we discuss the shortcomings of VSO’s training with the head of training. I get to Bamenda for our Annual conference in the evening. Say hi to all the other shiny happy volunteers. OK, not so shiny, but it is good to see everyone. It is also interesting to see everyone after the harsh reality of Cameroon has settled in for a few months. I also get to meet volunteers who I have not met yet. We have dinner, and watch football. From here on in, soccer (what a dorky word) will be referred to as football. I mean, seriously, why in the hell did we name our game football. There are only a few times in the game when you kick the ball. It should have a better American name like.. battleball.. or something. Anyway. We watched the match. Cameroon looks mediocre… but I’m not going to say anything about that for fear of death. Two days of meetings. Boring, hypocritical, and ultimately useless drivel. I doodle, and enjoy the gaps in between to share stories with other volunteers. My stories don’t seem that different than most other people’s.. they just seem much more frequent. Its like I have packed 2 years of the most extreme stories into 6 months… like a greatest hits compilation of volunteer experiences. So, I sort of patiently wait for what I really came up here to do. Kill a pig. Dave and Brian bought a pig, and we are going up to Dave’s placement to have a barbeque. Mmmmmm, spare ribs. We spend the morning doing errands, and getting up to his place. Nice placement. All in all, the teachers seem to be having the most stable and rewarding placements. VSO should stick to what it knows best. I carry a few cases of beer on my head. The locals (Bamenda is Anglophone, but I can hardly understand a word) are cracking up at me. I was supposed to assist with the slaughter and preparation.. but Dave has.. something else to do, and Brian is going to film it. Farhan (who is also there) doesn’t want to get too involved with the killing. So its me.. The guy they brought in to guide me is really intent on letting me do it all. I do it all… except remove the intestinal sack from the stomach area. It started by me dragging the pig to the ground, stabbing it in the heart with a dagger. Looking it in the eye, and holding it down until it died. Then cutting it up, removing the hair, and cooking it. It is amazing that there is this moment where it stops being a pig, and becomes meat. It took all afternoon. The meat was good. Dinner was great. I’d like to write something here about cruelty, meat, vegetarianism, and stuff like that.. but truth is, I didn’t have any real agenda with this. I just wanted to help and learn. I did both. The locals liked me. They kept saying how much of a bad ass white man I am. Killing a pig isn’t all that. I left the next morning, and took the bus back with Ed (a teacher in the far north) and Ana (his girlfriend who was visiting). I got invited to have dinner and watch the next football match at Steve’s house (he is an expat who works for the power company). Sarah (another teacher from the north), a totally great, and probably insane, Irish volunteer made dinner. It was totally fantastic. Ed and I watched the football match in the street with a bunch of Cameroonians, while the expats all had fancy parties in their expensive pads. We would have, but we couldn’t figure out Steve’s TV. Cameroon won. I get a package from Gwinn. YEAH. I really really like getting these. Thanks everyone for the birthday card. These packages keep me going for at least a month. The highlights? A new gameboy, comics, movies, malarone (my new anti-malarial).. a baseball hat. I do some shopping and get ready to go back to Lomié. We improvise on the way back.. and take a several hour detour cross country. Beans spill everywhere after we hit a huge bump in the road. I get in a big yelling argument with a baggage guy in A’mong M’bang (pronounced: bon-ban). It was a huge yelling fight over a few bucks for bags. He was drunk, and pissing me off. I went off. It felt really good to be able to give as good as I get. The bus was totally overfull on the way back. The worst its been yet. 24 people, plus kids. We get back and Alex broke Jen’s bike. He is in trouble again.