Cameroonian Culture

Since I haven't spent much time articulating the differences between the culture and daily life in Cameroon and America I decided to do so in this post.

I'm going to start with the shared taxis here because its a huge difference that we deal with multiple times a day. Its actually gotten to the point where I think using a taxi in the states will be weird for me for awhile. In Douala, there is almost no public transportation. We see sporadic over crowded buses here and there, but they are rare and I don't know anyone here that ever uses them. Shared taxis are the main method of transportation within in Douala, and you cant look down a street for more than 5 seconds without spotting atleast one. They are all yellow dodge cars from the 70s that are in less than stellar shape. Shared taxis are what their name suggests - shared. There are five seats available not counting the driver's. This means 3 people sit in the back (or more if a kid is sitting on someones lap) and two people share the front seat. The cars are all manual, so its not like theres much room in the middle counsel to make this arrangement at all comfortable. Sharing the front passenger seat closest to the driver is definitely the worst seat in the car. So to get one of these taxis you hail one like you normally would, and the car slows a bit as you yell your destination to the driver. If he's going that direction and has room, he will stop the car and honk - indicating you have been approved to take a seat. Sometimes the taxi drivers take a little while to weigh the option of taking you, which is the worst because you end up doing the tango towards the car as it decelerates and then accelerates again. If your destination is convienent and not too far, you pay 200 CFA, or around 45 cents. If you want to go farther you negotiate, usually agreeing to no higher than 500 CFA. There is also the option of taking the car privately, which in french is called depot. Because were white, if we flag a taxi that is empty, the driver usually assumes we want it depot, which costs 1500CFA, or about 3 dollars each. So now we make sure to say pas depot, pas depot before getting in.

Related to shared taxis is the driving and traffic here. I was less phased by it than other volunteers when we first arrived since I had spent time in Vietnam previously, which still holds the title of craziest traffic in the world in my mind. Here though its not exactly normal either. In addition to the thousands of taxis in Douala, there are also a lot of motorbikes. These bikes are what make traffic dangerous, because they a) don't believe that traffic rules apply to them, b) drive like maniacs (although those two things might be one in the same). They weave in and out of crevices between cars, and most surprisingly... and dangerously..., decide to make full uturns into oncoming traffic at will, forcing cars to yield to them. Also unusual about the traffic here is that if there is an accident, no matter how big or small or circumstantial or obvious as to who caused it, it is never ever ever your fault. And not just oh yea its not my fault. IT IS NOT MY FAULT! As in, people get incredibly angry when they are a part of a collision, specifically at the person they collided with. Ive seen many accidents, and been a part of a few tiny ones that include nicking a moto while riding in a taxi (almost always the motos fault), and never have I seen anyone ever admit to the fact that it was their fault, nor accept the other person's involvement in the accident in a calm manner. This applies to pedestrians as well. For example, yesterday I saw someone dart out in front of traffic and almost get hit by a car that most likely didn't see him. After jumping out the way, the pedestrian punched the car window out of anger. It was actually a pretty funny scene. And finally another odd thing about accidents here is that everyone on the street seems to become instantly invovled, and they always seem to take the side of whoever is most vulnerable. So if a drunk driver hits a car and its his fault, they will probably defend him because they know he will be in big trouble if he is found guilty of drunk driving.

Alright now a little bit about politeness. Its probably what bothers me most here, just because I don't like the feeling of being afraid to act naturally in fear of offending someone. Plus i'm naturally messy and not exactly prim and proper so its difficult for me. People dress very nice here, and it usually isn't due to Islam, which is what I first thought. Its more due to pride and dressing respectfully. I haven't had any issues, but the other day for example, Harold was wearing running shorts because he was going to the gym later. A guy on the street yelled out to him saying it was rude to wear that and it wasn't the way they dress in his country. It is also important to say good morning, good afternoon or good night to whoever you encounter, to respect and listen to authority, and my personal favorite (not) is always covering your mouth when you yawn. Seriously its bad if you do that here. One time we walked by a taxi driver who yawned without covering his mouth and Olivia and Jo were up in arms. In the beginning they always covered my mouth for me and I thought they were doing it as a joke but I eventually learned it was not. I asked my French teacher about it and she said they just do it to copy the French but who knows.

The food is also different than what we're used to at home. Their main food starts with a D and I can never remember how to spell it. It's made out of seaweed, peanuts, tiny shrimp, palm oil and all this other stuff. It took us weeks to find out the main ingredient was seaweed, because everytime you ask someone, they say legumes, which is just the french word for vegetables. It looks like creamed spinach if you want a mental image, and as weird as it sounds I don't really mind it, although Im sure many more picky eaters would. They also eat cassava, which is the weirdest looking stuff ever. I dont think I can even describe it, its pale whitish yellow, a mix between a hard consistency and jello, and tastes like nothing with a hint of sugar. I dont mind it but when you eat it it just feels like you're eating to fill yourself, not to enjoy. They also have a lot of grilled fish, which is great except that we eat it every day. My favorite food is their avocado vinagrette salad. Its just chopped up avocado with a really good vinagrette sauce and onions, and you usually eat it with a baguette. All of that, plus about 4 mangoes a day makes up about 80% of my diet.

Their drinking culture here is nice, they have a ton of outdoor bars where people just sit and talk and drink beer, whisky... or smirnoff ice (huge hit here with women and men alike). They always have nice lively music on as well. Which reminds me that I want to share my favorite African songs with everyone, I can only find one on youtube right now, see below. I just went to a big concert in Douala where almost all my favorite artists preformed, including the one singing the song I posted, it was really cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uizpFObeWu0&feature=related

Other random observations... phone calls. Here you are asked for your number frequently, and if you give it out, you will be called constantly until you answer. They also call very early because they wake up very early and I also heard something about it being cheaper to call early in the morning and late at night. And sometimes they call just for a second if they dont have credit so that you will see they called and call them back.

They are also very collectivist. Most of them have big families, and usually when you work, your money is the family's, not yours. Some of our local friends have expressed that it sometimes encourages people not to work, because they know they will see so little of the money they earn. Also, they will do anything for a buck. One job I find particularly comical is the job of filling up a taxi for a taxi driver at one of the big taxi hubs. The driver will tell a guy what neighborhood he wants to drive to, and the guy will hold open the door screaming the name of the destination so that people who need a taxi to that area will come. They usually get the job done in about 30 seconds, and are rewarded with the equivalent of about 20 cents most times.

Money here is somewhat of a hassle. When you go the ATM you are always given 10,000 CFA bills, about 20 dollars. Unfortunately only a few stores except these bills, and you cant have anymore than a 1000 CFA if you want to pay for almost anything - food, taxi, drinks etc. This usually means having to buy someting in a big shop that you dont necessarily need to make change, it's usually a pretty big pain. And if a small shopkeeper offers to make me change I feel guilty because I know they will struggle to give change for the next few hours if they do. Also because we are white, people often try to rip us off, but if you know the local price and are firm you can usually get it for a good amount.

People here are also very friendly and curious, and after encountering you more than one time you are considered a friend. For example if we have the same taxi driver twice, they will instantly recognize us (for obvious reasons) and will be more willing to take us where we want to go for a better price and less haggling. This has made me feel a lot safer around my neighborhood, because everyone knows me there now, and I think if I was ever in trouble they would come to my defense. Related to that topic is how well your insticts serve you here. Its hard to explain but all of us have felt it. Sometimes a certain area or a taxi driver just give off a bad vibe, you just know what to avoid instictively.

The people here are more blunt, usually in a comical way. For example when a teacher was taking us around the school to introduce us to all the students, in each class he would say in French, "These are your new friends, they are going to help you with school. Are they black???" with the kids responding "NO!!! They are white!!!". Which I found hilarious. Can you imagine the same at home? So ridiculous.

Going out to clubs here is also an experience. The girls dress SO nice, and Ive heard that the girls you see that are very well dressed work on looking beautiful full time, as in they don't work and just primp themselves most days. So it's only rich girls that can do this. They put me to shame in the clubs though, with me wearing flip flops and jeans. Dancing is also very interesting. They learn since they are very small, I see them teaching the little kids at our school and they already look just like the adults at age 5. Its a very slow, specific kind of dance. Whenever I imitate it they go nuts cause its not exactly a common dance for white people. Pretty fun.

Politically its hard to say, but it seems as though they do not like their current president Paul Biya, who doesn't have the best track record. Olivia refers to him as a son of a bitch.

And on that note I think I'm going to wrap this up!

quick update

Hi everyone, sorry for the delay, I’ve been very busy the past two weeks. As for my fundraising activities, I have launched a blog to help raise money for CRES. If you haven’t seen it yet you can find it here: www.supportcres.blogspot.com. I have raised a decent amount of money so far, and I hope to increase this sum when I return with a couple of activities I have planned. First, I will officially launch a website dedicated to sharing the story of the school and the need it faces. Additionally, my friend Sena and I are going to work on creating a book through a website that allows users to design and build a book entirely online. The company supports books that are created for a good cause – managing all payments, productions and sales in addition to making a charitable donation for every book sold. Right now I am taking as many pictures of the kids and school as possible and interviewing teachers and older deaf students so I can share their stories in the book. I am excited to start the project when I return to the states. I also wrote to PricewaterhouseCoopers to see if they would be interested in providing additional support to CRES. Hopefully these activities will eventually pay off for the school.

Friday was the last day of school for all of the non-deaf children. Harold and I bought notebooks and pencils for the top 10 children in each class, and during the end of the year ceremony on Friday morning, the parents of the top 10 children presented their child with their award. I really enjoyed the ceremony, and it was sad to see all the kids go. At the end of the school day, I peeked into one of the classrooms and found a bunch of children still in their desks, crying because they did not want to leave school for the summer. I couldn’t help but think of how different children in the U.S. react to the beginning of summer break.

Since a majority of the children will be gone now, we are spending most of our time on projects around the school. We paid for the back of the school to be cleaned, levelled and cemented over so that it could be transformed from little more than a trash dump into a playground for the kids. Harold brought over two inflatable soccer goals from England, and we are hoping to add a basketball hoop as well. I also have plans to paint a map of Africa on the cement surface and to put up some world flags to add an educational aspect to the playground.

I am also hoping to hire locals to fix the ceilings in some of the classrooms because many of them are in very bad shape.

I have also been filling my time with daily gym visits. I joined a gym about 15 minutes from our house, and at the gym a personal trainer is not only free, but mandatory. My workouts, which would have otherwise been fairly lame, have turned into an hour and a half of exhausting exercise, and although I was ridiculously sore for over a week, I’m glad that I am being pushed to get into good shape.

This weekend we went to a nearby beach town called Limbe. It was Matt, Harold, another volunteer named Kate and I. The trip was about a two hour drive in a hired taxi, and we stayed in a hotel right on the beach. The beach was made of volcanic sand, so it was entirely black. The sand is supposedly very good for your skin, so we sat with all the locals covered in the black sand looking pretty ridiculous. We also spent time exploring the town of Limbe, which is surrounded by the backdrop of Mount Cameroon, which is covered in lush green forest and palm trees, the whole city and beach were very stunning. I think Matt and I will probably return our last weekend here because we enjoyed it so much.

I have a bunch of other stuff to do today so I have to keep this blog post short. Next time I’ll focus on Cameroonian culture.

Approval

I gave my note to our director today and she has given me official approval to begin my fundraising project.

I'm going to spend the weekend trying to get the fundraising website up and running. If you or anyone you know would like to give donations now, you can always send a check or cash to my parents house. I don't know if my parents are comfortable with giving out our address here so please e-mail me at lisa.rudolph19@gmail.com if you need it.

Also you can always use the paypal donation link from my vietnam fundraising project: www.vietnamvolunteer.weebly.com

Otherwise I hope to have a new paypal link up on my new website soon, along with suggestions for school supplies and other materials that would greatly benefit the children at CRES.

Thank you!!

Change of Plans

Today Harold and I sat down with the director and founder of our school. We spent an hour and a half discussing how she started the school and how she continues to keep it functioning. It was an incredible story and as I will explain later, has motivated me to take a more active role in assisting the school.

The director’s deaf daughter was not born deaf. She caught meningitis at a young age, and it was the sickness that caused her deafness. This disability presented a huge challenge for the family. The parents had an incredibly hard time communicating with her, and disabled children in Cameroon are usually denied the opportunity to attend school. The schools do not have the money or the training to deal with any type of disability, so most disabled children are either uneducated ,or if they are lucky, receive home schooling. [As a related sidenote, our Cameroonian friend Raymond, whose legs were crippled at birth and needs two metal walking sticks attached to his arms to walk, tried for years to receive permission to attend school and only succeeded after his family agreed to pay a higher fee for school. ] Faced with this problem, she decided to start the first deaf children’s school in all of Douala. With limited funds and limited time (she worked at an insurance company in order to support her family) she started the deaf school in her own house in 1986. For eight years she hosted the school at her home, and for eight years she wrote the social services department of the government repeatedly asking for a building for her school.

Finally, in 1994, the government granted her request and gave her the building that still serves as the school building today. For a few years the current director did not run the school and hired another person to manage the logistics of the school, because she had to continue working at the insurance company. After having suspicions about money handled by the past director, she decided to quit her job and began to run the school full-time, taking a large pay cut in the process.

Throughout that late 90’s the school was still relatively small, with only deaf children attending for the first 17 years the school was in existence. In the early 2000’s, the director set out to solve a large problem at the school. The children that she was teaching would leave the school around 18 or 19, armed with basic education and practical skills such as woodworking or sewing, and would nearly always end up returning to the school because their attempt at integrating in society had failed. Their inability to communicate with non-hearing impaired individuals, combined with the taunting and teasing they were confronted with because of their disability, almost always sent them running back to CRES (the acronym for the French name of our school).

To combat this issue, our director decided to integrate the school with non-hearing impaired children and successfully did so in 2003. To date the school has 300 children attending, and integration has paid off in many amazing ways. For one, it has created much greater understanding in the community and greater Douala. With each new class of students, there are more children and parents of students’ who are sympathetic to, understanding of, and un-phased by the deaf. The children have also more easily learned how to read lips, speak without hearing themselves, and find ways to sign that are more intuitive and therefore easier for non-deaf persons to understand.

Additionally, many parents actually hid their deaf children, ashamed of the impairment and unaware that there were other children with the same disability. The school has shed light on the issue of deafness and has allowed parents to become educated about hearing impairments and proactive about helping their child.

It is fantastic to see the deaf interact with the other students in the school. Because the children are so young and introduced to the deaf at such an early age, they treat them no differently and do not view them as handicapped at all. The school decided to start issuing uniforms about five years ago, and it is an immense source of pride for the children, especially the deaf, to show that their are apart of a school community that they love so much.

While much has been accomplished, it has not come without great struggle or hardship, especially for the director and her family. In giving up her insurance job and completing dedicating her life to the school, the family has not only lowered their standard of living, but has given every extra cent they could come by to help keep the school running.

The main problem with funding is that almost every child that attends CRES is incredibly poor. The school building is provided by the government but no other money is given to support the school. All of the money the school makes is from school fees. It costs a child 80,000 CFAs (approx $180 USD) a year to attend school. These fees are intended to cover all 12+ of the teacher’s salaries; chalk, pencils and crayons; water for the children; utility bills; chairs, desks and school journals, and fabric and wood for the older children who use the materials to make dresses and wood products to sell.

As you may have guessed, many of the children’s families are unable to pay the 80,000 CFA fee. In fact, almost every single child attending the school does not pay the full amount. Knowing that the school is the children’s entire world, and that being forced to leave would be absolutely devastating, the director has allowed all of the children to remain enrolled in the school no matter how many months or years fees they still owe the school. This generosity has of course presented a huge problem for the director, and many times the school was precariously close to shutting down and only survived because of very timely donations from locals who could afford it.

This past August our director faced immense tragedy when her deaf daughter, her entire motivation for creating and continuing to run the school for all of these years, died suddenly (she did not elaborate on the cause of the death). [Note: I had written in an earlier post that the deaf daughter was still alive and working at the school, but it was actually a different deaf teacher who is not related to the director, I misunderstood the first time around because I was very poor at French when I first arrived.]

The director said she was so bereaved that she did not want to continue with the school, because all of the enormous difficulty she faced running the school would be too much to bear without her daughter there with her. However, all of the deaf students began fundraising in the local community in order to ease some of the administrative burden she faced. She also said they provided a great amount of emotional support, and each of them also paid for a bus ticket to a distant town in order to attend her daughter’s funeral, where only the deaf were allowed to handle her casket and bury her.

What I hope to stress here is how amazingly resilient our director is. Not only has she survived the death of her daughter, she has recovered the school from a very damaging fire in 1995, and has continued to carry on despite unbelievable funding obstacles.

When I asked what she would do if she had more money, her immediate response was that she would first pay the teachers a higher salary. Because of the limited amount of income the school receives in fees, the teachers are only paid 70,000 CFA a month, or around $150 USD. While life here is certainly relatively cheaper than in the U.S., this is hardly enough to have a decent standard of living. To put this into perspective, they probably spend 12,000 CFA every month just on their commute to work. Also, I’ve been here for less than a month, and I’ve spent 150,000 CFA – and I don’t pay for my housing or 80% of my meals. I know it is a daily struggle for these teachers to get by, and they work very hard and are exhausted after struggling every day to teach the children (teaching these young children, especially the deaf ones, is very rewarding but very draining – the classes are much too big and it is very very hot in the classrooms). The director laments that her teachers should be receiving at least twice the salary that they receive currently.

Additionally, there are many many other areas that the school needs monetary support in. Wood and fabric are always low in supply, there is not enough water for the children, and many are without proper writing utensils. The school also pays for training for their teachers, so that they are more equipped to work with the deaf, and also pays for a doctor to visit and check the deaf children’s hearing so that the teachers know what level hearing they have.

After hearing this story I knew that I wanted to help the school increase its funding so that it may continue its mission and be able to better compensate its teachers. I think school is of the utmost importance when it comes to development, especially here in Douala. In Cameroon, a good education is one of the only means of staying out of poverty. Most importantly, school is not a handout or a temporary fix, instead, it helps the children help themselves. Furthermore, the students at CRES are not only learning math, French, English and many other subjects, but they are also learning how to accept differences and to treat all people equally. CRES is the only school of its kind in Douala, even 25 years after its founding. Without it, the deaf children in Douala would have no where to turn.

So, I have come up with a plan to help CRES’s monetary situation:

1. I am going to be donating $1000 of my own money to the school. I was lucky enough to earn a $20,000 scholarship, paid Research Assistant position and have support from my parents to attend Georgetown, so I plan to work as many RA hours as possible to make up for this debt.
2. I am going to create a fundraising website, somewhat similar to the one I made to support my volunteer trip to Vietnam. I hope to feature pictures of the director and her family, children and their life hardships (almost every one has a very tough background), and will use this space to explain the need for additional funding at CRES.
3. I am also going to actively seek out grants from non-profit organizations in the developed world. I am thankfully quite familiar with this process because of the nature of my past internships at human rights organizations. Although both 2 & 3 will be difficult with the poor internet connection here, I am hoping to locate a very good internet cafe, which I recently found out does exist.

Before I officially begin any of these activities, I am going to sit down with my French teacher tomorrow and write a letter to the director in French to explain my plan and obtain her approval. While I am fairly sure she will accept a donation from me, I want to make sure she is comfortable with the idea.

Right now all I ask is that you please consider the importance of this school and its survival. If after tomorrow I receive permission to go ahead with these activities, I will post on my blog that I have approval and then I will elaborate on how you can help if you are interested.

Thank you for reading.

Random tidbits

I’m not really sure how to organize this blog post because it’s just a bunch of random small stories, hopefully it’s not too difficult to follow. First I want to go into more detail about Olivia and our living situation because it’s pretty humorous.

Olivia is 28 years old and has been married to her husband Jo for two years. She went to university in Douala and majored in communications or something similar. She works in advertising at Orange, one of two major mobile phone providers in Cameroon that also has a presence in many other countries worldwide. She loves radio and TV, and hosted a few radio shows when she was younger. She still does a few TV spots, and we were able to go with her to the studio for one of them. Her husband is currently living in Fumban, the city that we went to for the first wedding ceremony. He is living there because his father is very sick and needs help running a local school that he is normally in charge of. Jo will be moving back with us on June 17^th, when the school goes on break for the summer. We’ve seen Jo the past two weekends for the weddings but I doubt we will see him again until the 17^th. I think the fact that Jo is gone played a large role in Olivia’s decision to house us. I think she would be somewhat lonely with the empty house and Jo gone all the time. Other than that I honestly think she wanted us as sort of pseudo-children, which I think will make more sense as I explain our relationship with her.

The first week or two we spent with Olivia was I guess what I would call the honeymoon period. She was very nice and never got upset with us. Everything is still completely fine with her, but now that she has gotten more comfortable with us, our relationship with her has shifted from one of friends on relatively equal footing (although it was always unbalanced because she is responsible for our safety and for providing us with food etc) from one that is closer to one of parent and child.

Suddenly she began scolding us for what we did wrong. For example, when we moved back into our room after all the relatives from the wedding left, we didn’t know what to do with our extra mattress or sheets that we were asked to bring over from the temporary apartment, so we had rolled it up (it was foam) and tucked on the side of the bed until we figured it out. When Olivia saw this, instead of just telling us what to do with it, she yelled at us for making the room disorderly and then as ‘punishment’ took one of our pillows away, so that now one of us has to use a sweatshirt as a pillow. Another night we accidentally left the fan running when we left the house, even though Olivia was with us in the living room when we left (so really it was no ones fault) and when she walked in the door after we returned, she grabbed me by the ear and pulled me inside and asked me ‘what is wrong in here??’ of course referring to the fan left on. I don’t really feel like going into detail about these occasions, but it’s frustrating, not because she is upset, but because of the way she speaks to us. I would much prefer it if she would simply explain her frustrations to us like adults, instead of yelling at us like children. This is especially annoying because she is close to us in age. I think she mostly acts this way because she enjoys thinking of us like children. I know she really really realllyyyy wants kids, and also she goes way out of her way to take care of us, says I love you, calls me sweetie etc (for ex: one day when I had a cold, she made a special honey tea for me and had me stay in bed and drink it). Also she works extremely long days, usually about 8am to 9 pm, so it’s probably also partially due to being in a justifiably bad mood. I really want to clarify that 90% of the time she is very pleasant and fun. It’s only when we ‘mess up’ that we sometimes see this not so pleasant side of her.

On Saturday we went with her to church (it seems like we will have to go with her every week), and at the end of the ceremony as we were walking out, I tried to hand a blind woman her walking stick. The woman grabbed hold of my arm and seemed as though she needed me to help walk her out of the church. Long story short, she ended up holding on to my arm and holding my hand as I walked her right up to her front door on the second floor of her apartment building. Olivia seemed annoyed but I didn’t really understand why at the time. Once we left Olivia told me that the woman was an ‘actress’, which I was confused by because the woman was very clearly blind. Olivia explained that the woman was blind, but that she can walk home on her own. She just likes to have people come with her to have company. Personally I thought that if I could think of one way to be tricked, it would be by an old blind lady who is so lonely that she goes out of her way to hold a stranger’s hand.

Also, I don’t think I mentioned it but we also have a maid named Danielle. She is young I think, if I had a guess I would say around 18, maybe as young as 15 (although it’s very hard to tell how old people are here because they age very well). Olivia does not trust Danielle at all. She will only let her clean when one of us is home to make sure she doesn’t steal anything. Olivia also thinks Danielle is terrible at her job, but apparently it is very difficult to find decent housemaids around here. I like Danielle , she doesn’t always do a stellar job (she’s particularly bad at cooking... going through a bottle of oil in 2 days b/c she uses so much in the food) but I really don’t think we even need her to begin with, I am capable of cooking for myself and the apartment is so small that the cleaning is minimal. Also, it feels kind of weird being waited on by her. She is very poor, and one day she came in with an IV in her arm and waited for Olivia to return from work for over 2 hours. She had a mosquito borne illness but didn’t have enough money to pay for her treatment, which is why she had to wait to get her pay from Olivia. Matt and I have spoiled her a bit, I often let her eat the food I don’t want, and give her extra fruit that I buy. We also try to wash our own dishes and don’t bother having her do it for us. The other day Danielle asked Matt for a chocolate bar in the fridge that we had given to Olivia when we arrived as a gift for allowing us to stay. Olivia hadn’t touched them and Danielle seemed to really want it so Matt let her have it. Later he told Olivia, who was very upset (not at him but with Danielle) because things like this I guess are very bad for establishing a professional relationship b/w Danielle and Olivia. Oops.

A few weeks ago Olivia decided she wanted me to start singing. She puts in a CD of a band called P-Square (a Nigerian band made up of two twin brothers), prints out lyrics of the songs for me, and has me sing them to her. If anyone could see me doing this I would die, luckily Matt is terrible with technology so the chances of a video are minimal.

Also I’ve been learning a lot about how French is spoken here and it’s quite interesting. At school, my volunteer friend Harold speaks fluently to the children, often to explain a math concept or something about computers. The teacher went up to me after the children were having a lot of difficulty, and told me that many of them are very poor at French. This was bizarre to me because I thought everyone in Douala spoke French. Apparently since most of the children come from poor backgrounds, they live in homes where local African dialects are spoken, not French. French is a sort of second language to many of them (or a poorly learned first language), so Harold’s fluent, complicated French is sometimes difficult for them to follow. I spoke with Olivia about this and she told me about fracamglais (not spelling that right) and it is a language spoken by people here who are uneducated. It is a mixture of French, English (the other official language of Cameroon – although Douala is a French speaking region, not an English speaking one) and local Douala language. She gave me some examples of it, and it is a very ridiculous blend of all three, one word can have parts from all three languages. She said people who are good at French in Douala are well-educated, school or lack of it determines a person’s level.

Last week, I was riding in a taxi, wearing a necklace with two of my grandmother’s gold rings. I always wear the necklace and forgot I even had it on. I was talking to Harold and all of a sudden it felt like someone was punching my chest. It turns out someone had spotted my necklace, reached through the open window in the taxi, ripped off the rings from the necklace and was gone, all in about 4 seconds. I was a little shaken but I’m fine, and just bummed because I really loved those rings. It’s an unfortunate reality here, although my host mom, her friends and my french teacher were all appalled and somewhat shocked, so it’s not so common that they had no reaction.

Well this is getting long so I’m going to have to save some stories for next time!

Weddings weddings weddings

Alright I’m going to try to sum up the wedding(s).

In Cameroon when couples are married, they usually have more than one ceremony. There is one for signing the official legal documents, a more traditional church one, and up to three others – usually repeats for families in distant villages who are closely related to one of the spouses. Matt and I attended the first two mentioned.

The first ceremony was held two weekends ago in a village called Fumban. It is one of the most visited cities in Cameroon because of the scenery and the colourfully clad women. To reach Fumban we took an overnight bus from Douala. Based on my experience in Vietnam and the little time I had already spent in Douala, I could easily predict it would be an interesting experience, and interesting it was. The bus was scheduled to leave at midnight, but for a reason that Olivia couldn’t fully explain, we needed to be at the bus stop a full two hours before departure. We waited with Olivia and her husband’s best friend Boniface, who is very funny and incredibly helpful – ever since the wedding we have seen him very frequently. Quickly after being seated on the bus we were bombarded with locals trying to sell anything and everything to us, only to be promptly chased off the bus by a very angry bus driver. As we took off there was a salesman on the bus that I guess had been given permission to sell to us. He stayed on the bus for about 20 minutes rattling off in French about his two products: hand soap and toothpaste. I was not advanced enough in the language to understand what he was saying but it must have been convincing because he had about 10 people take him up on it.

Through out the bus ride we made around 7 stops. On each stop, locals who make their living off selling food to bus passengers would beeline for our bus screaming the name of the food they were selling. Mangue Mangue Mangue! (mangos) Maize Maize Maize! Bubalo Bubalo Bubalo! (really weird dried and then recooked yams that are strangely addicting). And when someone on the bus wanted something, they would make a sound like they were trying to imitate a rabbit (thats the only way I can think to describe it) and the vendor would come running to sell them their food. It was pretty difficult to sleep with all of these odd exchanges going on. We got off the bus around 6 AM, and we’re greeted with chilly weather, since the city of Fumban has a much higher elevation than Douala. We took a taxi to our hotel, slept for about four hours, and then met up with Olivia and Boniface who took us on a tour of Fumban. We went to the palace of the Sultan (the town has had a Sultan for centuries and the 19th sultan is currently in power) and went through the markets. The town did not disappoint. The town roads are made of beautiful red soil, there are tons of food markets that add much color to the town, and about 80% of the inhabitants are Muslim, which results in incredibly colourful ankle length dresses and matching headwraps. Sub-Saharan Africa’s interpretation of Islam is incredibly vibrant and beautiful.

Later that day we dressed up for the wedding (I wore a dress with traditional African fabric that Olivia and Boniface were very excited about) and we watched with about 50 other guests as a minister gave a short speech before having each of them sign their documents. Afterwards we had a few drinks and ate from a buffet that the family had prepared and talked with the guests. All in all it was an interesting, relaxing experience that we both enjoyed.
The following weekend we attended the second church ceremony of the couple. If you forgot, the groom is the brother of my host father, Jo (full name Joelle) so Olivia and Jo were very involved in the entire process, especially this second ceremony because it was held in Douala. Being closely related to the couple meant hosting many relatives in town for the wedding. This meant that the room that Matt and I share had to be used for Jo’s father and the living room for Jo’s FOUR sisters (the living room is tiny). Olivia arranged for Matt and I to stay at an empty apartment across the street from our usual residence for the four days that the family was in town. The wedding was held at Saturday at four, and I was expected to go the hairdresser with Olivia and her four sister-in-law’s in order to get my hair and nails done for the big event. I assumed we would go to the salon around noon or so, which would be plenty of time for me to have my hair done and get ready for the wedding, but we had to go at 8am, and that was after the women had already spent the whole day before in the hair salon too.

The experience was definitely a first for me, because I have never really seen the process that black women go through to style and tame their hair. All of the women that went with me had spent the previous day de-weaving and then having various conditioning treatments put in their hair. This day I watched as their hair was cornrowed, weaved and styled, a process that took hours and hours and hoursss. During this time I had my nails done and my hair blowdryed straight, which not surprisingly, they were very good at. While I may have wanted to spend a few less hours at the hair dresser, I have a new found respect for the lengths these women go to control their hair, and I will never complain about having to straighten my hair again!

We finally headed home, got dressed and headed to the wedding. The ceremony was about an hour total, with some lively songs and a part at the end where the bride and groom each held a basket and received people at the ceremony as they put money in the baskets (the money went to the church, not the couple). I of course messed this process up, and instead of taking money in both hands and using those two hands to put the money in ONE basket, I confused the instructions and put one hand in each basket, earning confused looks from onlookers.

After the ceremony we took a picture with just us and the bride and groom, which every single person in attendance did as well – the line was very long (we got to cut because of our connections). These pictures are developed within an hour and are given to you for a price of 1000 CFAs (about $2.50). Because of some difficulties in communicating, and Olivia’s tendency to only give us about half of the information we need, we had no idea that there was a reception after the wedding. We turned a corner and encountered a huge outdoor reception set-up, complete with white tents and beautiful centrepieces. The wedding really was like any other you’d find in the states, except that the guests were using their napkins to dab sweat off their faces and that we were the only white people in attendance. The choir from the church came outside to provide the music, and our very own Olivia ended up emceeing the entire party.

Matt and I spent most of the time eating and playing with the children at the wedding, including a little three old girl who spoke the most ridiculous franglais brought on by her desperation to speak English with us. Her french counterparts could not understand a thing she was saying, and neither could Matt or I, except for the random ‘gimme’ that would pop up. They loved my camera and had me take a million pictures with them, even posing to sit on our laps, kiss our cheeks and throw their arms around our necks in a dramatic embrace. At the end of the wedding I found myself playing an intricate hand game with one of the younger boys there for atleast a half hour.

Weddings in Cameroon are usually paid for by the couple, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen are in charge of cleaning up after the wedding, while the couple retires at around 10pm or so. After helping to clean, we headed to a nightclub, which looked EXACTLY like the nightclub in the movie Carlito’s Way with Al Pacino, if you’ve seen the movie. It had really high AC and Jo and Boniface bought bottle service for us, it turned out to be a very fun night.

I think next time I’ll talk more about Olivia and Jo, and some negative (though still interesting) encounters I’ve had over the past week.

volunteering!

Hello again, sorry it’s taken me so long to repost. I’ve been trying to find a way to get decent wi-fi here but I’ve finally accepted that it’s just not a possibility. I was holding off trying to get a good connection so that I would be able to upload some pictures but I’ve exhausted all of my means of doing so and have officially given up. I’m sure I will lose many readers without cool pics but there’s nothing else I can do! I’ve also realized that now that I won’t be posting pictures online that I have many pictures that are fairly useless to me. For example I took pictures of some strange food that I eat here to show everyone at home, but the pictures are pointless now that I won’t post them because I eat these strange foods on a regular basis and doubt I will need or want photographical documentation of it.

Alright so back to Africa. I think I will spend most of this post talking about our volunteer placement. We work at school that in French is roughly translated as a center for the deaf and hard of hearing. It’s not really a center or an orphanage though, it’s simply a school. About 90% of the children in attendance are what the teachers at our school would call ‘normal’. They do not have any physical or mental disabilities and are simply attending school as any other child their age would. The remaining 10% of children are deaf or partially deaf, and a very small percentage of those kids also have some type of mental disability as well. The kids range in age from 3 to 12, and then there are also two classes of older deaf boys and girls who are learning specific skill sets so that they can earn a living after graduating. The boys are learning woodworking and make lots of different items, such as wooden trays and dressers. Right now their problem is finding a way to sell these items to the residents of Douala. The girls are learning how to sew and cook.

The school was founded by the current director, who I would say is probably in her 60s, although it is incredibly difficult to tell how old people are here because they age so well. The woman has a deaf daughter and had a lot of difficulty raising her and finding a school that would accommodate and work with her disability. This eventually inspired her to create the school, which has now grown to over 300 children, and is still run by her and her husband, with two of their daughters, including the deaf one, teaching at the school (among about 10 teachers total). The school building is not the greatest, but none of the buildings here are the greatest. It was donated by the government of Cameroon and there is also a small computer building with 5 desktop computers donated by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The reason the school has integrated deaf children with non-hearing impaired children is two-fold. For one, they found that if deaf children interacted only with each other, they tended to be much more aggressive. I can personally attest to this, as we see it in the classes that isolate deaf children in order to teach skills such as math that need to be taught in sign language. The children get very frustrated because they only have their hands to grab your attention. When we are in the class with them they are incredibly excited and want to tell us their name in sign, or ask us a question in sign. However one child will throw their hands up, and then another will swat their arms away so that their message will be the one that is focused on. This of course often results in hitting and yelling, so I can definitely understand why it’s good integrate the deaf children. The second reason for doing this is more practical. Deaf children do not live in a world filled with deaf people. If they spent their entire youth in school surrounded by other people that could sign and then were expected to function in a society that could not, they would struggle much more. By attending school with children that can hear properly, they learn how to read lips and even speak without hearing themselves (the deaf teacher, daughter of the founder, can now speak even though she is almost completely deaf).

In the week that we have worked at the center I’ve picked up a bit of sign language. I learned the sign alphabet sophomore year, forgot some of it but I was able to get it back pretty quickly after practicing. The first thing I learned was my name, and the kids LOVED it when they asked me my name (taking your index and middle finger together on each hand and tapping them together) and I could sign back my name. I’ve also learned ‘I’m hungry’ ‘I’m thirsty’ ‘I love you’ ‘How old are you’ ‘ball’ ‘thank you’ and ‘hello’. Sign language is not universal, which I think was a terrible idea if it was actually a conscious decision to not have one sign language for the whole world. There is an English sign language and a French one, and while there are similarities there are many differences.

We work at the school Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 1 PM. After visiting the school, we were asked to write a list of our skills to see what we could contribute and how we would interact with the children. I wrote down computer lessons, cooking, teaching English, math, and art projects. I also put down soccer just to show that I would be willing to take part in sports with them, most of my friends and family know I cannot play any land sports. They took our suggestions very literally, and these six activities are how we spend our days. Some of the activities are very difficult because I am not fluent in French. I am so thankful for our friend Harold from England who volunteers with us. He is fluent and is a huge help when we are trying to explain something to the children. All three of us do everything together, so its a huge relief that he is there. Teaching kids how to use Microsoft Word with limited French is very challenging for me, but I have gotten much better at it. I think my vocabulary is unevenly improving in the computer and technology area, but I’ll take what I can get.

When we do art projects with the little kids we draw something and they color it in. Things like butterflies, cars etc. For the older children we give them a theme and supervise them. We had our first cooking lesson on Friday and made crepes with nutella for them, which they loved. Later that day we had our first soccer day. The ‘field’ is not close, and walking 50 plus 8 year olds there is a little overwhelming. While we were walking a man around 25 or so snuck up behind me and punched the soccer ball out of my hands. It was not meant to be funny, since he was making not so friendly comments about white people before, and the only thing I could think to say as all the little kids looked at me was ‘Il n’est pas gentil!’. Which is he is not nice! They loved that (they are very excited to hear me speak french since i was severly struggling in the beginning) and started chanting to him that he wasn’t nice. I can’t think of better revenge than having the cutest kids in the world on your side telling your harasser that he is not nice!

So after the first week I would say it’s going very well. I love the kids, especially the little ones. They are so so so cute and so excited to us. They chant LISA LISA LISA everytime I walk by their classroom, and are always waving hello. I’m sure I will have more funny stories about them as time goes on and I can more easily understand what they are saying to me.

After finishing at 1 PM I have a French lesson everyday from 3PM to 5PM. This is helping me immensely and I think I will continue them throughout my stay. For the next post I will go into details about the wedding trip. There was actually a second wedding for the same couple yesterday that we went to, so it’s a long affair and Ill save the descriptions for next time. Au revoir!

And we're back

Note: I wrote this post about three days ago and finally got wifi again to post it. The dates are a little off but I hope to catch up soon!

Well after a whirlwind trip I have finally landed in Cameroon! I will try to shortly summarize my two week vacation before explaining my current situation in Douala.

After leaving Hanoi, I flew to Seoul, South Korea to visit many of my friends from college who are teaching English over there. I had a fantastic trip and found it very interesting to compare Korea to Vietnam, mostly because they have nothing in common besides the fact that they share a continent and that their inhabitants are hilarious without trying. Korea is just an Asian interpretation of the western world. Everything is new, clean, high-tech and it is incredibly safe. There is great shopping and the food is very different but delicious. I also spent two days visiting the schools my friends teach at, where I was greeted very enthusiastically. At Zoe's school a boy ran into the class and screamed I LOVE YOU!! to me before running out giggling.

After Seoul I flew to Madrid via a horrendous layover in Moscow, and waited for my parents to arrive the following morning. It was a great vacation and there is really nothing better than staying in nice hotels and eating nice meals after living in a developing country and having only traveled in Europe previously by penny pinching and staying at hostels and eating muesli for every other meal.

I left my parents early on April 29th and flew from Sevilla to Paris to meet Matt. We spent three days relaxing in Paris and eating nice meals since I couldn't knock the habit I developed with my parents. On May 2nd we got on a direct flight to Douala and landed there at 7:30 pm. We got off the plane and walked into the most run down airport I've been to. We literally had to walk through dirt sideways in the airport to get to border control. It was like the airport was only half-finished, which is very possible.

At baggage claim there were a lot of locals trying to convince us to come with them in their overpriced taxis, and we had an incident there that I will not repeat for fear of scaring my parents but it all worked out fine. People from our volunteer org picked us up and drove us to our host family's house, which was about 25 minutes from the airport.

When we first walked in we met our house mom named Olivia, who is so great. We are living in a nice middle-class apartment. It has two bedrooms, one that Olivia and her husband share, and one that Matt and I share. We have our own bathroom and shower and we share a small kitchen and living room with them. Olivia took us out for pizza after we got settled, and we managed to have a conversation with her even though she only knows a little English and I only know a little French. Being an African country I was expecting them to speak French only as a secondary language, like many other countries colonized by Europeans. But French is the language they use to speak to each other, so I need to improve my French immediately. I am trying to practice but I am hoping that my french lessons here will help me a lot. I like Olivia because she is warm and welcoming, but not overly so. She is very down-to-earth and is very sarcastic, and I can imagine she must be considered very funny by her friends because the few jokes she is able to translate over to us are hilarious.

Also, at dinner I saw a bunch of cakes in a glass window, and I said to her "J'aime le gâteau!". Which means 'I love cake!'. Then with a mix of French and English‚ she explained that Africans eat cake like ‘this’, motioning eating huge chunks of cake with her hands. I was like “really?? I would love to eat cake like that!!” and she looked at me with the most skeptical grin and then told me it was a joke. Matt thought this was particularly funny.
Also this night Olivia invited us to come with her to her brother-in-law’s wedding that was being held over the upcoming weekend. It is a six hour drive away and we are leaving very late Friday night to arrive early Saturday morning. I have to buy two dresses for the wedding so we’ll see how that turns out. The city we are going to is supposed to be one of the most scenic in the country, so I’m really excited for the experience!

Douala is very poor, although there are few beggars here. In Cambodia there are always a lot of children bombarding you either asking for money or trying to sell you something. The difference definitely does not lie in GDP, as Douala is probably in a comparable economic state, if not worse. I think it is mostly due to tourism, since hardly any people come here to tour. Cambodia has largely adjusted to tourism and many people there survive off it. I’m sure Douala would be the same if they received more foreign visitors.

Most of the city is very rundown, and some areas are probably bordering slums. The small apartment building we live in is nice, and looks even better because it is surrounded by very poorly constructed houses with scraps of sheet metal for a roof. As dilapidated as most buildings are, the city seems to function fairly well, which is confusing because at first glance you would think everything is completely stalled here. Douala has a very colorful and vibrant street life though, and maybe I’m crazy but there’s an odd charm to the city that makes me really enjoy it. Then again I really haven’t been to city I haven’t liked, as my mom recently pointed out (although I’m not crazy about Milan) so maybe my opinion in this case shouldn’t be taken very seriously.
As for safety, it’s definitely not a good idea to go out at night here by yourself. Many of the people are honest and good intentioned, but with poverty comes crime, prostitution and illegal drug activity that needs to be avoided in certain areas here. If you are careful though, you can get by just fine.

The atm’s and banks here are especially vulnerable, so all of them are guarded heavily by armed police. It was strange to go to an atm while an officer stood in front of me with a gun and a look on his face that I’m sure would deter most from trying to rob me or break into the atm.

Also another oddity with money here is that you have to exchange foreign currency on the black market. I have no idea how the local Cameroonians from our volunteer org that took us around knew who dealt foreign currency on the street because there a ton of people standing everywhere around buildings. But they always just go up to someone and they can always exchange money for us. Exchanging money through banks in Cameroon would give us a much worse exchange rate, if that was not implied. This was weird for me to partake in, for obvious reasons but also because I wrote a report for the executive director at my internship at the Genocide Intervention Network about how all the banks were failing in Sudan and it had resulted in huge increase of black market trade of foreign currency.
As for the people themselves, they seem mostly uninterested by us. I was told this is not the case outside of Douala, because in Douala there are a significant amount of foreigners because of all the oil companies taking residence in the area. Some people seemed to not like us, but I was told later that they thought we were French, who they dislike for many reasons I haven’t fully uncovered yet. The kids here still seem to be very interested in white people (they call us ‘la blanc’) and yell bonjour! when we pass.

As for the environment, right now the heat is killing me. We don’t have AC, and it is incredibly humid here all the time. The only relief we get comes in the form of a cold shower at the end of the day, and there have been at least five times already where I feel like I will pass out when I stand up too quickly. I am constantly sweating (cute), so no matter how much I drink it never feels like enough. I have finally adjusted to sleeping in the heat though, having had my first full night of sleep last night, so I finally have hope that I will adjust to the heat during the day as well. It is also rainy season here; but it’s mostly sunny and clear skies all day except for once or twice a day when it DOWNPOURS for about an hour. It is the hardest rain I’ve ever seen, pretty cool to watch and not even bad to get caught in since it’s such a nice change from the heat. It’s also so hot here that 20 min after it rains you can’t even tell that it did because the water has already evaporated.

Finally, I am happy to share that there are no mosquitoes in our room. Olivia has a device that releases a smell that only mosquitoes can detect, and they hate it so much that there are none in our room, even with the light on and the windows open in the middle of the night. This will make the chances of us contracting many tropical diseases almost zero, since mosquitoes feed at night.

Today we visited the center for disabled children that we will be working at, and it went very well. I will write more about our experiences there and the wedding trip next time! I hope to post pictures too.

The past few weeks

Sorry its been so long since I last posted. I have been very busy finishing up my time in Hanoi (I can't believe it's already over) and traveling to Ha Long Bay (pictures near the end).

So first, I'm going to recount my experiences teaching at a gifted high school in Hanoi. The president of my NGO, Oanh (pronounced Wang) has a son in his freshman year at this school, and is close with his teacher. When the teacher found out about me, she asked if I would be willing to come in to give a few talks every week on topics related to America. The first lesson was on the American education system, because many of the students are very interested in studying at a university in the states.

For the first class I brought along Lauren and Jenny with me, to have some help and also because all of us were interested in a new volunteer experience. When we arrived at the classroom, the children were ecstatic to see us, to say the least. After all standing in unison when we entered, they immediately began whispering and giggling and pointing at us, and then quickly took out their cell phones to take pictures of us.

I had prepared a power point on American school, which hooked up to a TV that served as a projector. We started with a quiz on the U.S., and it was very quickly apparent that the children had impressive english skills, and I found that even if I spoke at my normal, fast pace, that they could follow everything I was saying. It was so fun to tell them an interesting fact, because the entire class would literally OOOO and AHHH every time. When I asked them how old they thought I was (their guess was 19) and I told them i was 23, the whole class broke out in disbelieving howls.

Throughout the class we took turns explaining how our grade school system worked, and spent the most time talking about colleges in America, since over half of the class raised their hands when I asked who was thinking about applying to school in the states. We talked about topics we knew most about, so Lauren, who went to a catholic school, covered the differences between public and private school. Jenny talked about her high school in New Jersey and her prom, which was accompanied by a lovely picture from her own prom that I was able to locate. The whole presentation was filled with pictures - thanks to my mom who scanned me a bunch from home. I put in pictures of graduation, swim team, and many other big events associated with school in the US. The kids loved the pictures, especially the one of me when I was five on my first day of school.

At the end of our lecture (nearly two hours), the kids were allowed to ask questions. They all had a lot of very specific questions about the SAT/ACT and top schools. It was very obvious that many of them were pressured by their parents to succeed in the classroom and on these tests so that they may attend a prestigious school in the US. Other children, who seemed interested on their own accord, were more concerned with scholarships, because college in the states could never be a reality for them without significant funding. I also gave my e-mail address to them so that they could ask me more specific questions, which quite a few of them took me up on. It's great to help them, and funny to read their e-mails. One of the girls wants to go to Stanford, so I told her about my brother, who is trying to help her out (although she is looking for a magic formula to get it, which unfortunately doesn't really exist).

The next week I gave the talk on my own about American culture. This was a fun one because I was able to compare and contrast all the differences between Vietnam and the US, and in the process I could also learn more about Vietnamese culture by asking them to elaborate on certain topics. It was also great because I spend a lot of my timing thinking about all the little differences, so it was nice to be able to discuss them in detail to a very rapt audience. However, by the end of the talk I had almost completely lost my voice. Because all the kids liked our first lesson, the teacher asked if she could add another 25 kids, bringing the total children in the classroom to 55. About 70% of the children can easily understand me, but the others who cannot whisper quite loudly as I try to talk over them. After talking for almost 2 hours straight this results in seriously strained vocals.

Our final week Jenny joined me in talking about famous places in America. Simply because of the nature of the talk, we ran out of things to talk about around 20 minutes before the 2 hour mark. Usually this is filled with questions from the children, but I guess our talk didn't stimulate them as much as usual. Jenny and I got pretty desperate and resorted to a few lame games of hang man, a complicated clapping game, and finally, me giving into singing a song for the class after being begged by a few students. The end of the class was great though, because they had bought us gifts to thank us for coming in to teach them. They bought Jenny black and pink shoelaces, had us deliver a funny Asian notebook to Lauren, and gave me a "Loving Cup", which is a mug that changes colors when it is filled with hot water.

Our first lesson. A student e-mailed me this picture taken on her phone. They love the peace sign here, and everywhere else in Asia. It's actually quite addicting, I find myself doing the peace sign way too much in pictures.

The classroom during a break. Every high school student wears a white and blue jacket, and the design is different based on which school you attend.

My gift!

Last Friday was my last day at my NGO CSIP. They ordered a traditional Vietnamese meal for me, which consisted of Vietnamese salad, spring rolls, rice noodles, and a chili sauce.

The spread.

Huong with the sauce.

My dish.
Huong napping after our big meal.

We had a photoshoot later in the day.

Everyone :-)

At the end of the day, we all sat around the couch and they all said such nice things about having me there. They also unveiled their master plan to have me return to Vietnam: having my honeymoon on a nearby beach town and inviting all of them to come along on the vacation. I promised I would try my best to make it happen. The president ended by telling me they all loved me so much, and then they gave me a journal made by disabled children, filled with notes from them wishing me well and thanking for me my time there. At the end it was pretty hard not to cry, but I had my own little speech telling them how inspiring their work was and how lucky I felt to be apart of it. I also gave them some chocolates.

They also took a lot of their own pictures, and one of them took this hilarious picture of me and Huong. I am grinning so much that it looks like my cheeks will split because they are all saying such nice things, and Huong is sitting next to me, with this huge pout on her face. Hopefully I can get it from them soon.

Huong gave me her own gift. She wrote me the cutest note asking me not to forget her, and she also bought me an owl necklace AND she bought Matt a gift too, a man bracelet of sorts. She also wanted to get gifts for my parents and brother, but she said she didn't know what to buy. I had a huge card for her and some gifts as my own as well. We met up again last night, where we took turns reading Harry Potter to each other, which of course inspired us to actually watch the movie. We ate dinner with her mom and sister, and it was really sad to say goodbye to all of them :-(.

Below im posting some last minute pictures I took of our dorm before leaving, in case you were curious.

View across the street.
Our road.

The dorm.
Road leading past our dorm. The dorm is to the right of where the picture cuts off.
Our bedroom. All of our clothes hanging to dry.
Meal room.
The board in our dorm saying bye to us!

A few other random pictures:

Motorbikes carry EVERYTHING here. I never go a day without seeing ten hilarious things attached to a bike. I really wish I was able to take pictures of all of them and make a picture book out of it.

Store on the street selling this picture with no other than B Spears featured in the middle.
Ho Chi Minh's massive mausoleum.
The view I have from the back of Huong's motorbike when she drives me halfway home every evening.

From Sunday to Tuesday this week, we went on a trip to Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island. Halong bay is the most beautiful place I've ever been, everyone should see it once in their life. We went on a tour that took us to Halong from Hanoi (about 4 hours by bus) and then took us to a boat, where we were provided with lunch, cruised through the amazing rock islands, and finally went swimming and then kayaking. We slept on the boat, and then arranged to be transferred to Cat Ba island, where we stayed in Bungalow huts on our private beach. Below are a bunch of pictures to try to capture some of the beauty of the area, but really it is impossible to show just how amazing the scenery is until you are the middle of the bay, swimming around the huge rock pillars in clear seagreen water!



Above are all various pics I took of the bay. Below are pics from kayaking.

Jenny, my kayak partner!
Cove we found.
Floating village - these houses were in the middle of nowhere, so crazy.
More of the village.
Cave we got off at.

Our boat.
top of the boat.

Our second day/night at Cat Ba island, about 40 minutes from Halong bay:

Our beach. It was enclosed by rocks on either side, so only the part I'm facing with camera opened up into the ocean.
Our resort behind the beach.
Lighting candles on the beach at night.

Phew alright that took forever to throw together. Tonight I am taking an over night flight to Seoul, South Korea, to see some of my good friends from college who are teaching english over there. I am very excited to see them. Then, next Thursday I will get to see my parents and their friends the Lythbergs in espana!! So excited for the next few weeks. In May I will spend a weekend in Paris before flying to Douala, Cameroon for my next volunteering adventure. Thanks for reading my blog thus far, and I hope to add a lot of other interesting experiences here.

Also, as of this morning, I have decided to commit to Georgetown for graduate school. In the end, I was actually deciding between Georgetown and a school in Geneva, because Columbia was just too expensive and a little too rigid in their coursework. Geneva is hard to pass up, considering its excellent location for international affairs, but Georgetown can allow me study abroad there for up to a year if I choose. I have developed a slight neurosis trying to decide between schools, and I am so happy to finally be done choosing. Huge thanks to my parents, who patiently sat through all of my agonizing over schools. They have been a huge help and I can't really imagine having more supportive parents :-). Also thanks to my friends who have heard me out on my choices many more times than they would have liked to. All of your advice and opinions really helped me with my final decision. Also thanks to my brother, who has listened to his fair share as well, especially now that we have found eachother on gchat. So, if anyone knows someone looking for a roommate in Washington D.C. for the next year, let me know!