Burning the Mid-Season-Change Trash-Pile

Today is officially Asthma Barrage Day. Mainly because I feel that after multiple attacks (all.day.long.) they must logically turn into a barrage. Normally. The Namas (my neighbors) attribute it to the people down the hill burning their trash. They may have reason, but the weird/good?/interesting thing about today is that I have been productive in a way that can only happen when one is not getting enough oxygen in the brain.

I taught class, baked a cake, made plans to go Yaounde next week, worked on some translation stuff I’m doing for the priests, wrote my plane plans down in the calendar and sorted through about half of the receipts that I have accumulated (by accumulated I mean stuffed in various bags and suitcases) since being here. Then I came home and made dinner (soup, salad and GARLIC BREAD) for Patti and Grace who (when they left) took the mattress that I borrowed in November. My house finally is starting to look like it should!

I still haven’t found the keys to the cabinet where I put my dishes, but if the asthma continues tomorrow I’m sure I’ll find ‘em then.

As the semester is finally wrapping up I’m starting to do a lot more future thinking that I have been for the first half of my time here. I feel like the beginning was just a ‘I will force through this day’ and now I’m in a place where I can start to plan, I know who to talk to and how to go about changing the class schedule (you talk to Mr. Kanette and Stephanie, btw future Bertoua ETA) and I’m enjoying setting things up in a way that will be beneficial for me next semester and beneficial for the next American next year. Hopefully I’ll have paved a clear-ish path through what I feel isn’t the clearest administrative system.

We’ll see—I’m starting small. One English class every week (not 8 hours of English in one day after one month with no English class). Next year—I’m going to try to get them to break the students up into proficiency levels! YAY! Also next year the university will probably employ my neighbor, Francois/Parfait who speaks extremely good English and is a very good teacher (I shadowed one of his classes down at the Bertoua Linguistic Center so I feel comfortable vouching for it). I have had fun with the teacher I’m working with this year, but sometimes I feel that the English we speak is so different that we need a translator. Call me crazy but sometimes one word sentences throw me for a loop. Par exemple: ‘How?’ and ‘Normally.’

Anywhoo. I should headward for bedward. Here’s hoping to be able to wake up in the morning with happy lungs! Normally.

CAKESPLOSION!

The day after Valentine’s Day festivities and all was quiet. Sugar highs had descended into the painful headaches that make the revelers slightly lackadaisical and not on guard. No one in Bertoua was ready for the sudden lava-flow that was hot, sugary and overwhelmingly full of baking powder. Car expodes. Train derailment.

This is basically the movie trailer of what happened to me when I came home today. I came home from a lovely dinner with Patti, Grace and Marie at Secret Fish Place and walked over to my neighbor/friend/mother/sister’s house only to see the kitchen table covered with cake-baking preparatory materials. I was immediately put to work beating egg whites into a froth (which, I am notably still doing with the aid of Philo’s daughter Cecile). She had been conscripted into baking FIVE or SIX cakes for her friend. Each cake involves six eggs, a huge amount of sugar, oil, vanilla, flour, and an entire packet of baking powder.

The last ingredient was not something I realized was going into the cakes until after I heard a commotion in the kitchen walked in to see the cake running over the side of the bundt pan that Philo was using to make her packets. This resulted in uncontrollable, mort de rire laughter on my part and an athsma attack—which is not smart to do around your slightly irritated Cameroonian neighbor is also holding a knife. The fact that she was adding an incredible amount of baking soda completely innocently—dumping a whole packet (2 TABLESPOONS) into each recipe of cake batter had me in convulsions.

I have now been kicked out of her house and she has conscripted my oven to finish baking her cakes because I am clearly not a kind or helpful friend/neighbor/child/sister.

Don't mess with a woman with a knife.