Saturday June 7, 2004 Day 4

This whole day was dedicated to traveling. I mean the whole day. As I mentioned in my previous message we flew out of Philly last night at 7pm. We arrived at our hotel in Cameroon at 11pm local time, which is about 6pm east coast time. Long Day. In Paris, our plane was two hours late, and the worst part of it all is that we were already boarded and they would not let us get off the plane. When we landed in Yaoundé (the capital) a staff of about 15 Peace Corps staff met us with a well-needed greeting. They took care of everything: customs, luggage ect. We were able to relax. It is important to realize that this airport is no comparison to Orlando, Boston, and London. First of all, we were not allowed to walk outside without the proper supervision. Also, we were warned right away to remove our wallets from our pockets and lock or tie our zippers on our backpacks for security reasons. Finally we were transported to our hotel in a fleet of Peace Corps vehicles. The arrival to our hotel was much appreciated. Fortunately, dinner was ready at the hotel as well as a few cold Cameroonian beers. I soon retired for the night.

Sunday June 8, 2004 Day 5
A quick side note- the reason I have not posted any pics is because my digital camera broke on Friday. It should be repaired and returned to me at the end of the month. In the mean time, when I have the time, I will place links on my site to another volunteer.

The plan for Sunday was a nice day to relax and a relax more. The staff drove us around the city to get a better feel. A very beautiful city, but it is nothing like I have ever seen in my life. It is difficult to place into words the way the lifestyle is here. As many of you have tried to picture what Cameroon might look like in the city is probably a pretty good idea. Very poor and run down city. Apparently the unemployment rate is about 60%, if not more. I believe most of the jobs that are available are street vendors in the various markets across town. When I described it as beautiful, it is in its own unique way.

Our hotel has an old French colonial look and feel to it. It seems to be one of the nicer ones in the city, but nice in a 3rd world country standard. The rooms are simple twin beds with a shower (kind of) with no curtain (very tricky showering without flooding the bathroom) If I do not take the showerhead off, the water sails directly into the bidet. A fun game to play while washing!! To touch back on the security issue, the back and sides of the hotel is surrounded by 15 foot walls and barbwire. Just like home.

Tonight the country director of Peace Corps Cameroon had all of us over for dinner/cocktail party. The food was great and Deputy of the US Ambassador was their to great us and have dinner. I think today was the first introduction to the many different types of food I will be trying. Part of the dinner spread included fried chicken feet. That’s right, not wings, chicken feet. Maybe many of one have had the pleasure on gnawing on a toe, but I believe this was my first and final time. There is something very strange about eating the meat off a toe of a chicken. I guess that is enough of that. Good night!!



Monday June 9, 2004 Day 6

I happened to wake up at 500am this morning for no particular reason. I think part of it was the malaria medication that I have to take effects the way I sleep and the freaking weird dreams that I had. Breakfast was at 645am, so I didn’t have too much time to kill. Our morning started off at the Peace Corps Headquarters for a day long series for introductions and a French language placement test. I think it probably is clear to most of you that I placed in the lower half of the novice group. The test consisted of a opening statement of “Bonjour” and closed soon after with “Au revoir.” Of course a day would not be complete without a few more shots. Today brought the beginning of the Hep A and meningitis immunizations.

I have found it interesting that for the past two days I have been living on less than $ 3 a day. Pretty strange. Most of everything has been paid for and the liter beers are about $1.50 or 900 CFA, so one would have try fairly hard to spend to much. In addition, they gave us only $14 until Friday. ATM’s are not widely used either, so we all need to be very careful with how much we spend.
Tonight has just been another quite evening at the compound hotel. Hopefully tomorrow we will get our Peace Corps ID’s, so we can walk around a little bit.

I hope to get a phone this week. Everything Takes a while.
Love ya all