Date written: Saturday, January 30
Bonjour!!
Sorry it has taken me so long to blog, but, yes, I am here safely! We landed in Yaounde on Tuesday evening when Bobo, the office manager for SIT picked us up! Most of us had been on the flight from Zurich to Yaounde together, which made our layover and the entire flight much easier!
From Tuesday night until Friday morning, we stayed at a monastery on Mont Febe for orientation. During orientation we discussed issues of academics, cultural integration, safety, and health. We were also assigned our first essay on the pre-assigned readings which is due on Monday! There are two Cameroonian university students who will be studying with us as well, Serge and Danielle. Danielle and I have had many awesome conversations—she speaks in English and I speak in French—and we have talked about everything from Beyonce to gender roles in Cameroon and how they affect development. She is currently pursuing her Masters at L’Universite de Yaounde 1 and her research focuses on inner-Cameroonian migration.
Also during orientation we had the “drop off.” Basically an SIT driver just dropped us off at an unknown point in the city. We were put in groups of two and had a list of things to accomplish. I was with Sam, and thankful to be with a boy for my first experience in Yaounde. What we discovered was the great friendliness of everyone we met! I said to one man who was particularly helpful with directions for our task, “vous etes tres gentil” and he said replied that that’s just how all Cameroonians are! The drop off was fun and I really felt like I was getting a feel for the city. At the end, however, it was a bit stressful because we could not find a taxi and were late for curfew because we had to walk up the mountain to the monastery.
On Friday, we moved in with our homestay families. I live in the region Palais du Congres with two parents, the sister of my homestay mom, one 14 year old daughter, and two little ones- a 7 year old boy and a 5 year old girl. When they arrived to pick us up they had to guess which student was theirs. Never in a million years would they have picked me because of my short hair (all of the photos I send them were of my longer hair)!
We live in a nice and very secure house with a gate around the property. My mom’s sister cooks every day and everything is delicious—even the FISH! In Cameroon it’s impolite not to finish your plate which is hard for me, but I’m learning how to eat a lot!!
The kids are super cute. My 14 year old sister LOVES Miley Cyrus and High School Musical so we bonded right away about Disney media. Bryan, my 7 year old brother, is wonderful…he and I played soccer today for a LONG TIME and I am currently exhausted! Laurene, my little sister, is adorable and I thought from the first night that she was shy. Today showed me that that is not the case!!! She hung on to me all day and loves and touches all my stuff. She particularly likes my Nalgene bottle but I have to stand my ground on her touching that because she also tends to put everything in her mouth. I have had to rearrange my room before she dug her finger in my Vaseline or attempts to take one of my vitamins again! Overall, though, the family is very sweet.
My host dad also woke up in the middle of the night to help me. I didn’t know that at night I had to shut my windows all the way and a cat crawled into my room around 1 AM and couldn’t get back out. I awoke to my books falling and my toiletries being toppled. When I saw the cat I FREAKED OUT. At first I tried to shoo it away but it couldn’t escape because of the tilt on the window. So finally, when the cat had crawled under the bed, I yelled “Est-ce qu’il y a quelq’un qui peut m’aider?!!” and my host dad ran to my aid! I unlocked the door and he chased the cat into the house and out the door! Voila my first wildlife experience in Cameroon! Tonight I have my windows SHUT!
I’m really excited to start classes on Monday! Seeing Yaounde has been awesome but I really want to delve into the development issues and French classes. I’m a little nervous about all the interviews we have to do for assignments within the community but it will certainly be a learning experience and a way to practice my French!
