…My first bout with malaria…


It’s been an eventful few weeks. Yaounde, always a flurry of activity, was lovely-filled with work, pool (yes there is a bar with a cheap pool table-I like to pretend I am shark there), bars, coffee breaks, meetings, dancing, and a night with all of the new health and agro stagieres going to the north. I hung out at the Hotel Jouvence for an evening, the same place I had been ushered into as a stagiere exactly one year before. Chatted with many soon to be hard-core north and extreme north agro volunteers trying to give the best responses as possible to their multitude of questions. Hope I didn’t scare any of them.

One of my meetings throughout the week was with Lisette Nkoue, a former Swiss ambassador who funds all many projects in my village. She is incidentally about to open a women’s and computer training center right by the radio station that once upon a time my voice bellowed from when I first got to post (also built, organized and funded by her and the Japanese embassy). An amazing woman who wants desperately to do her best to help the people in my zone any way she can. Her husband, Max, is an architect and just as sweet as Lisette. I spent a lovely afternoon with the two of them in their gorgeous house in Bastos with two large Labradors pouncing around outside, a houseboy cooking us lunch, an unbelievable collection of art surrounding me and a white Mercedes outside waiting to take me back to Peace Corp headquarters. It was a surreal moment when I found myself staring at a picture of Mme Biya and Lisette shaking hands, the same woman who picked me up wearing spandex running pants telling me that her home is now my home.

Anyway, in addition to the centre d’informatique that they have been working on, Max wants to open an arts center, which of course makes me giddy though I won’t be here for much of the actual functioning of the center. I only have about 14 months left of service considering there isn’t a building, funding, supplies or teachers yet, well, I think it’s safe to assume that I will only be helping with initial ideas and designs. At least I can help them get it moving. Lisette and I went to the Institut de Formation Artistique in Mbalmayo to talk to the director and to see how their institute was organized (and of course if they could help in any way). Such an amazing place with a great ceramics studio, three electric kilns, one traditional, a full woodshop, a sculpture studio, and many painting and life drawing studios. I guess they also offer interior design and textiles studios. Such an amazing place.

A few days after my country director Robert Strauss, his family, and a family of friends from the US came to my post to pay a little visit…wow did my ladies put together a reception. Kodi o Christo came out to greet us as we pulled up in a Peace Corp landcruiser. I’m surprised the little one’s didn’t start crying because there was suddenly an insane amount of commotion as 25 Cameroonian women came at us running, hugging and singing and yelling and dancing. We did a tour of the medicinal garden and a few of the porcheries. We moved on to the general meeting room where we chatted and listened to Blandine, a younger member of K o C read an essay greeting my director… after they fed us we rushed our way to Singa where another GIC was waiting for us, all the while eyeing the clouds coming in. Another warm welcome though we only stayed there long enough to eat some pineapple. We had to get out of there tout suite because of the rain and as Robert maneuvered the Landcruiser up ridiculous roads in pouring rain I chatted with his wife and friends, all of us just trying to stay as calm as possible. Funny how I don’t even realize how treacherous my roads are until I’m on them with strangers, especially my country director, his family, and close friends. He did a wonderful job getting us out of there, considering we were literally at a 45 degree angle at certain points. Thank god for reliable seat belts. I don’t ever want to take the road in a car again. Motos are the way to go.

Later that night I realized, as my pulse tried to slow down, that I was really sick…I knew something was brewing but I kept pushing it back thinking that I was just tired or fighting off a bug…after a few days of sweating and delirium, I finally got my finger pricked at the hospital in Nkongsamba, and lo and behold, my blood was teeming with malaria. Fun… I always tried to pull it together when I opened my door to the multitudes of visitors who all seemed to pick the same few days to come around. But when I closed my door, I was hallucinating left and right, changing my clothes 8 times a day because I was sweating through everything or freezing, and tossing and turning in my bed. Although hallucinating in Cameroon is interesting and brought many different insights and insane dreams into my African experience, I don’t want it to happen again.

Another crazy thing, my APCD George Yebit, the man who was in charge of my Agroforestry program, just died in Maroua 2 weeks ago. I went to his enterrement last weekend in Bali, a beautiful village outside of Bamenda, where we sat under the pulpit of a Presbyterian preacher in a packed church and listened to his family and colleagues sing the praises of my now deceased boss. The preacher was an amazing character, glowing white teeth in a large gaping mouth, animated in a way I have never seen. As the bats above woke up to his booming voice I couldn’t help feeling as though I was sitting in some sort of universal hiccup… I forget often that things are totally out of my control sometimes. Being in this country has brought that reality back to me in an undeniable true form. Do what you can but accept what you can’t change.

So there’s my last couple of weeks. I hope things calm down for a little while. I’m used to monumental things happening with at least a week of down time, field time in between. Once I get my energy level is normal again, it’ll back to the original program… small small time.

Ciao