cheater cheater chicken eater

Be forewarned: this one is kind of…ranty.

< rant >

A student was kicked out of the university today. Now this student is not one of my favorite people in the world. The first day I was on campus he came up to me and said, “Madame. I want to be your baby boy. Let me be your baby boy.” So he’s slightly obnoxious and completely full of himself. On the other hand, he’s a hard worker, he speaks English very well, he’s eloquent, dynamic and when he wants to do something he just goes out and does it. I think he has huge potential. It’s his gumption that got him in trouble today.

He took the administrative stamp off the desk of Father V and used it to stamp a letter so he could apply for internships and jobs this summer.

I don’t know if I’ve detailed the importance of stamps in Cameroon, but you basically need a stamp on anything that is official. It ranges from business letters to receipts, and even invitations. Every time I’ve been invited to an event the door guard always looks for the stamp both on the invitation and the envelope. It was awkward when I had doodled all over the envelope the first time I’d been invited to an event like that and the guard gave me this “how COULD you have drawn all over an important document” look. I’m still of the opinion the giraffe wearing the sweater eating lots of hearts needed to be drawn on that specific envelope.

What the student did was serious, but most of the professors are feeling a bit mal a l’aise about the entire situation. The student is in his third year, he’s almost finished with school. He also had been coming around the administrative offices for weeks and weeks trying to get this stamp through legal means (which leads to a whole other discussion on Cameroonian bureaucracy that I don’t even want to get into right now). I am of the opinion that this infraction is similar to people cheating on tests—but no one has been expelled from the university for cheating (and they even caught a lady yesterday).

Cheating is an interesting business, especially on tests. Philo was describing to me how people training to be infermières cheat on their tests. (HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS, OMGS) It’s elaborate but includes writing answers on one’s thighs, cutting open belts to hide notecards within them, wearing huge kabbas, or writing on clothing and wearing the same clothes for every day of the examination period because they’ve been specially prepared to hide information, and fanfolding paper and gluing them to the desk during the exam.

I feel as though this creative energy is being misplaced.

But back to my point: I feel like the light slap on the wrist that is given for the type of cheating listed above (usually  ‘come clean the school every day for a month’ or ‘cut the grass with a machete’) is quite different from the weight of the entire book that has been hurled at this student. Curiously no questions were raised about why Father V left an administrative stamp out on his desk and left his office.

< / rant >

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.

Not finished and not entirely true.

Two priests, count ‘em, TWO tried to run me over with their pickup trucks within the last week.

Now these interactions were of course, quite jokey-friendly (?) and resulted in giant hugs that basically dragged me through the driver’s side window of each, but it does not change the fact that when they saw me they increased the speed of their big metal trucks in my general direction resulting in my having to dive out of the way. I don’t think showing affection needs to be quite this violent and dramatic.

Things are getting exciting around here in Bertoua as we are preparing to have this nice little intercultural celebration where an American blues group, the Taproot Jazz Trio, is coming into town and we are having a concert which will feature them as well as the University Choir and some local musicans in a group called Patengue as well as some Baka (the pygmies) to highlight the diversity in culture of the East Province. I, for one, am super pumped.

Next week I have my last two classes on the Nkolbikon campus and I already had, without my knowledge, my last class on the Enia campus because the schedule dramatically changed as schedules seem to here. Yeah, so now I don’t have to teach three classes? I wonder if I can just recycle the lesson plans for next semester. Probably, there seem to be very few rules. Sigh.

Not finished and not entirely true.

Two priests, count ‘em, TWO tried to run me over with their pickup trucks within the last week.

Now these interactions were of course, quite jokey-friendly (?) and resulted in giant hugs that basically dragged me through the driver’s side window of each, but it does not change the fact that when they saw me they increased the speed of their big metal trucks in my general direction resulting in my having to dive out of the way. I don’t think showing affection needs to be quite this violent and dramatic.

Things are getting exciting around here in Bertoua as we are preparing to have this nice little intercultural celebration where an American blues group, the Taproot Jazz Trio, is coming into town and we are having a concert which will feature them as well as the University Choir and some local musicans in a group called Patengue as well as some Baka (the pygmies) to highlight the diversity in culture of the East Province. I, for one, am super pumped.

Next week I have my last two classes on the Nkolbikon campus and I already had, without my knowledge, my last class on the Enia campus because the schedule dramatically changed as schedules seem to here. Yeah, so now I don’t have to teach three classes? I wonder if I can just recycle the lesson plans for next semester. Probably, there seem to be very few rules. Sigh.

Well I was certainly trying...

Well, so much for being a better blagger.

Since we last talked I have officially hit my 7^th African country. South Africa! It was amazing and a much needed break from constantly feeling lost, confused and oddly overworked. I went down to South Africa, planned nothing, did no research and read about ten books. It was much-needed.

It’s also kind of moved me to seriously consider moving to Cape Town, a beautiful town AND UCT has this African Gender Institute that really works on policy….hmm. This is just to prove that I’d like to spend more time there based on the fact that there is something to do other than it’s pretty. Which it is. Really, really pretty.

One of my favorite views in Cape Town was the clouds pouring down Table Mountain like a waterfall…err cloudfall… I wish I had a photo of it but I think I left those thirty to seventy photos on Rob’s camera.

In Bertoua right now life is kind of a mess—a literal mess. When I left I had finally gotten my piece of wood so I could actually hang clothes in my closet. So I left with no time to put anything away. When I got back I found out that my chairs had been delivered. There are more chairs than space in my house—though I must admit they are deliciously comfortable! At the moment my house is MASS CHAOS. I’m having people over tonight so this should be one of those moments where I need to get my act together and clean my house before Nadege and Ewa come over for dinner. Rats.

However, because I’m still procrastinating because of how overwhelmed I feel about my house I kind of want to document what I’m doing and where things seem to be going at this moment. (I say where things seem to be going because everything changes from moment to moment here.)

**Note** after writing this sentence the computer crashed and Meera ended up cleaning her house really well. It is now beautiful. And functional.

oh and...if you want to read other blag entries....

check out what Brian and Lindsey, Eva S., and Mackenzie wrote :)