The kids and I after a session entitled "the importance of staying in school."

Tried to teach the kids how to play Ultimate Frisbee, definitely was a hit, especially with the girls. Since no girls ever do sports here, it was awesome to see the girls get excited about sports.

The guys of the camp

One of our favorites at the camp. A Central African Republic refugee of less than 2 years who had never frequented before, he surpassed all the other kids in age by about 7 years but brought many smiles to our faces.

A rare moment of silence at the camp. The kids were mesmorized by markers and getting time to draw. They are in the midst of drawing for our health message contest.

American Ambassador to Cameroon with the hospital staff and my country director.

One of my counterparts...he mobilized the women in my community for the arrival of the ambassador.They are outside my house in the midst of clapping for her arrival.

Kids waiting for the arrival of the Ambassador

My sister and I at a waterfall about 10 minutes away from my house

Life Progresses

Asalaa Maalekum,

Life has been progressing here in Tourningal…slowly but surely. Have to be honest, there have been some challenging times these last weeks, times when I long for animation, a social life, friends, family, and some time to cuddle up with my cat. I think the best way to illustrate how villageoise and slow paced my life has become is by my daily schedule. I usually get up at about 5 to the sounds of roosters and cows. Not to pray with the rest of my community, but simply because without electricity my body cannot stay awake past 9—it’s like a nightly fight. After exercising till about 6 (because if I do not run in the morning all of the community sees me and the kids run after me in the afternoon) I need to clean my house, get water and be out of the house by 7, if not, people think I am either sick or not present. Doing chores and cleaning takes up a large chunk of my time. I think I have made up for the past 4 years in college in these past 6 months.

The weather—I realize this is a boring topic…yet, the weather really dictates everything I do here. Without cars, solid infrastructure, and roads, now that the rainy season has begun my slow paced life has become even slower, due to the weather. I have had countless meetings cancelled and generally there is a greater malaise in the community. The rule of law here is: if it rains, do not leave the house. Since is rains almost every day, things do not happen.

The Ambassadors Visit— Quite the gallant affair to happen in Touringal. The community and I were much honored to have the American Ambassador and my Peace Corps Director visit a few weeks ago. She picked Tourningal to visit out of all the province. I felt like an official event planner 2 weeks prior to the visit. Since women and men do not work together, every meeting had to be planned twice. All in all, her visit was wonderful—short and sweet. Various members of the community started changing the plans 5 minutes prior to her arrival (notably by hiring singers and drummers to come and add excitement as she was touring). The highlight of the visit was her coming to my house and meeting with various women group leaders.

Polio Campaigns—Since there have been rare cases of Polio noted in Cameroon within the past few years, the government launched a Polio Vaccination Campagin, which I got to help out with last week. It was a wonderful, yet arduous way to see villages outside of Tourningal. My counterpart and I took a moto into Mountainous villages, seemingly untainted by modernity, for none had any government resources, schools, electricity, stores, etc. etc. Thankfully was not thrown off the moto. For 3 days of back-breaking work, vaccinating hundreds of children, my counterpart was paid about 12 dollars…

Soy—Recently I’ve felt more like an agro volunteer…since I’ve never planted anything in my life, it has been a learning process. With the advent of the rainy season Tourningal has been consumed by agriculture, it’s like a contest…everyone is vying to plant ASAP, searching for seeds, preparing their fields, hiring help etc. I thus am trying to combine my little health education background with my non-existent agricultural one, by planting soy beans. Soy is chock full of protein and since malnutrition is a large problem here and simply the lack of variety of food, thought it might work. We’ll see….if anyone has any soy bean recipes that do not evolve electricity, please let me know.

A human face of HIV—one of the hardest moments that I encountered these last few weeks happened at 5:30 in the morning a few days ago. As I was mounting my normal hill I run up every day, met a woman crying and holding her baby; the same baby that I had noticed a few days prior and asked my counterpart why it appeared so fragile and sickly. The baby that the women was holding was minutes away from dieing, its’ bones protruding from every angle of its body. I learned later that she had walked with the dieing baby kilometers away from Tourningal believing that the sickness, in reality AIDS, was a curse put on the baby by her father. After walking with the women to the nearest village and hailing her a moto, I learned later, minutes after, the baby died. This story, is just one example of the necessity to sensibilize and educate my area about HIV/AIDS. It is one example of how HIV/AIDS affects nearly everyone in the community; whether the community members know they have it, their relatives have it, their children died of it, or how important it is to educate their children about it. Now I’m working to help convince the health center to help convince the woman to get on ARVs.

Well on this sobering note, I should go. I hope that everyone is healthy, happy and is looking forward to the sunny summer months. Felicitations or Barka Kristin and Matt, I wish I could be there...I will think of you guys this Saturday and have some tea in your honor.