The case of the stolen panties

Time moves here in Bafia as if in a continuum of minutes, hours, days, and somehow already- months. It is difficult to imagine that while merely day after day has passed here there has been nearly a whole season gone by back home. I am certain one of the strangest parts about returning after two years in such a time warp will be seeing how much so many people and things will have changed. Lacey and Brendan’s new boy Max will already be walking and talking and it seems as if I will feel like I just got on the plane to come here!




However, life in Bafia will soon be no more because the week after this we will swear in as volunteers and I will officially never have a curfew again in my life! It is an exciting feeling to be set free in Cameroon at last and to feel again like an adult, yet, at the same instant a little intimidating. After being looked after and taken care of for the last 3 months in our homestay families it is overwhelming to think of how much work it will be to take care of just myself in this country!



There are so many responsibilities of day-to-day life that are substantially more challenging than the same activities in the States, plus the general pressure of teaching 15 hours a week in a difficult setting as well as thinking about my secondary project within the community and being active and well integrated there.



First of all, I’m moving into a house with absolutely no furniture. Furnishing a house in the States is somewhat of a hassle but here it is at least tenfold. I will have to go about negotiating from what is likely an even more than usually elevated price for every item I purchase which means I will need to do a bit of research before setting out in order to know what I should expect to pay. It’s never fun to get home and realize that when you thought you were bargaining you wound up still paying the white man price. Additionally there is the consideration of transporting all of these purchases to said house. I expect that my community host Wambo will be a tremendous aid in this whole process and so I am not sweating it too much but it will be nice to feel settled in sooner rather than later.



Once that happens I will need to worry about feeding myself. Luckily I have been posted in one of the most productive regions of the country and the country is the breadbasket of Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, I read before coming here that if Cameroon closed its borders or experienced a catastrophe that destroyed crops it would potentially starve a number of the neighboring countries. So, the market is chocked full of goodies like almost any kind of bean, nuts, an array of vegetables including carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, yams, okra, eggplant and more, and fruit like avocados, the most delicious pineapples I’ve ever tasted, mangoes, bananas, plantains, grapefruit, papaya and so on! You can also find pasta, bread, and fresh herbs. The only things that are difficult to come by are cheese and fresh milk but you can opt for the powdered sort if you really crave it and La Vache Qui Rit if you’re willing to settle for something that is mysteriously not cheese…



So, cooking should be just as much of an adventure as it had been for me the last year in Los Angeles but I am initially daunted by the thought of needing to discover where and when to find all these ingredients and what’s worse, lighting the gas stoves here scares the shit out of me! Many times I have attempted it in my home and chickened out. I have only done it successfully twice and I felt that I came close to setting my hand on fire both times! Hopefully I can find one of those long lighters we have in the States and put myself at ease.



Other than that, the idea of starting over in a new community is both exciting and fatiguing. There will be the initial integration steps all over again but perhaps multiplied many times by the fact that this time I will not be one of 42 other Americans in the village. I will have to train everyone all over again that my name is not “La Blanche” but Lindsay. I will have to deal with the initial phase of being with people most likely every waking minute of everyday for the first few weeks or months, foregoing the ever-so-comfortable “me” time and space we Americans hold so dear. I will need to try explaining to everyone I meet why I don’t need to eat at every social occasion or drink for every staff meeting and I’m certain I will have to make exceptions and accommodations in this regard in order to please. I will have to start over again in explaining my ‘religion’ to nearly everyone while avoiding the lack thereof truth and implying that I am somehow kind of Buddhist because that’s the religion I feel the most attuned to in general and which seems to be far more acceptable/ easy to grasp than Agnosticism or Atheism.



Yet, in all this starting over there are also new possibilities and opportunities that make it worthwhile and thrilling. I have spent the last 3 months preparing for this departure and have readied myself emotionally for it for practically as long as I can remember. I will finally be living my dream and hopefully touching lives at the same time. I will actually get to know my students and hopefully feel they’ve actually learned something from me unlike in Model School. I will be able to make new friends and become intimately familiar with a place and a people that very few Americans ever have and if all goes well I will throughout my time here find a way to bring something to their lives to improve it someway, somehow.



Since another week has passed I will give a quick wrap-up before closing. Monday I finished teaching around noon and had the rest of the day free so my friend Christine and I decided to take a bike ride out to the river where I had gone last week again. This time I had remembered to blanket myself in bug repellent and so when we got there we stopped to have a drink and unwind a little. We made some friends there who were enjoying playing around with Christine’s binoculars which she has all the time because she is an avid birdwatcher. I tried the “I’m married” trick for the first time on some men who were beginning to flirt and was amazed at how effective it was! Instead of driving me nuts asking for my number or something they just asked if my husband was a really jealous man.

The last time we had gone to the river a man had told my friend Andrew that he had just seen a hippopotamus and this shocked me so I asked a lot of questions about it of our new friends. They assured us that there are many in the water and that you could see them just about anytime.



When we finished our drinks we left our bikes unlocked and wandered down with our new friends onto the ferry to see if we could catch a glimpse of such a prehistoric- seeming mammoth animal as a hippo! Before we knew it the ferry was taking off and we looked at our new friends in shock because we had not intended to actually leave the dock! They told us not to worry, we were coming right back and there wasn’t too much we could do at that point but relax and look for hippos. Unfortunately this story would be better if we’d seen one, which we did not, but nonetheless, it was a beautiful ride on the ferry and the bikes and it was nice to feel like we could escape Bafia a bit.

Tuesday one of the Host Country National teachers observed my class of troisiemes, a grade above the quatrieme class I’ve been primarily working with. They were being seriously rotten that day and I was in the process of making them all stand as a punishment when she walked in and they immediately shut up completely. After class she told me that I am not intimidating enough and my voice too high which is apparently true because whatever she’s doing is obviously working better! One of the Americans even got a note from one of his students that said he was a very good teacher and should try speaking French more because he is good at it but that he doesn’t beat them enough. I think there are certain adjustments we American teachers will never make and perhaps as a result certain classroom behaviors we may just have to deal with.



Wednesday we had Girls’ Club and I spent two hours showing four girls at a time how to create their own email addresses before proceeding to the computer lab for another hour with them. Unfortunately when we got there only one computer had working internet so my efforts were in vain. I even used my laptop to work with one girl to set up her account but after we had done all the work and it said, “Felicitations Allison!” it wouldn’t let us sign back in. But alas, c’est la vie en Afrique and hopefully they will know now how to do it themselves if they get the chance.



I had washed my laundry that morning and hung it out on the line to dry while I was gone for the day. My host mother had been ill and so the children were the only ones home that day. When I got back I realized that it seemed like some of my things were missing from the line. I mentioned it casually to my host father, unable to really remember what it might have been but pretty certain they were underwear. He launched into a full-fledged investigation of the matter, all in front of Claude. He called in every kid in the neighborhood who had swung by the house that afternoon and had them all recount the details of their interactions with my panties. Then he told my host mother about it and questioned the teenaged girls in the neighboring houses. Finally he said he wished to take the matter to the police which I declined politely through a bit of laughter and assured him that even if the panties were found I would just let the thief keep them at this point. Overall, a hilarious incident that is still being discussed in the household with the utmost of sobriety.



Thursday I was back with my favorite brutish class and we played some review games to close out summer school and prepare for their exams yesterday. We each had to proctor 2 tests which was annoying because they weren’t for our classes or the tests we had prepared and so the kids were mostly angry with us because we couldn’t help them at all with instructions and if the teacher hadn’t written they could use a calculator we had to forbid it. Nonetheless, the exams finished and only about ¼ of my class actually failed which, believe it or not, is really not so bad. The teachers are thrilled to be finished with Model School as well as hoping that real school will be easier…

The quatrieme nightmare class on our last day

After grading tests Claude and I went to see my host mom in the hospital because she has typhoid. It was a reminder of my days in the clinic in Ouakam and always eye-opening to see health care in Africa. Afterward we stopped by the home of a very sweet woman I pass everyday on my way to school as she tends to her beautiful flowers. She always has a huge smile on and greets me more warmly than anyone in the community so we had promised to come by and see pictures of her kids, 2 of whom married Peace Corps volunteers and now live in the States. She fed us some delicious Sanga, a dish made with corn, spices, and greens, and sent us off with some peanuts freshly harvested from her field as well as the advice that I can not forget her son Claude when I leave and we are a good couple and should be married.



This morning the running club had a race for anyone in the community to participate in and they had a great turn out of over 50 people. It was fun seeing so many kids come out for it, even though many of them were running in chuck taylors or even flip flops! The boy who won third place was a tiny kid in jelly shoes and Claude’s brother took first! I was the only American female who ran so I was pretty far behind most everyone but ran with a couple students which was nice. Then this afternoon we got together with our girls’ club to practice our song for the cultural party this week and they are all very excited to perform.



In a little bit Claude and I are going into town to buy my host sister a present for her 4th birthday this week. Tonight is our curfew free night so we will most likely chill at Martin’s bar and may decide to go do some dancing in the late hours at the night club. Tomorrow I will play Sunday soccer with my other friend Martin and then Claude and I have plans to take a picnic lunch and go on a real hike nearby. I am very excited about this!



As things wind down in training there should be a lot of exciting things happening this week so stay tuned!