Lessons

1. If you live like you're always being threatened, it's only so long before you become the threat. There are more people out there who want to help you than harm you.
2. Central Africa is built on polyester hair and plastic bags. Every time the rain falls, the hair and bags emerge from the Earth. 
3. Worrying is too much work and never helps. Planning is a much more efficient use of time. 
4. Never give anyone money until they ask for it.
5. You are all you have, even when someone else convinces you otherwise. Trust yourself. 
6. Eat seasonally. Eat locally.
7. If you're gonna be in the freak show, at least be the biggest freak.
8. Jesus was in Cameroon before the Missionaries brought the good word. Trying to convince anyone otherwise – especially an Evangelical minister – will only get you into trouble. Steer all conversations away from the topic of religion. Other topics to avoid: why you don't have children, when you're going to have children, your worth as a woman without children, why you aren't married, why you don't plan to be married, your worth as a woman without a husband, Paul Biya.
9. The ways we've learned to think and the ways they've learned to think make communicating about ideas incredibly difficult. It's much easier – and less rewarding – to talk about tangible, touchable, reasonable issues.
10. Never take someone's first price unless it's in writing, and even then, argue.

bangangte love

23 Months Down

I have nothing to say about it yet that can't be summed up in this photograph. Hat tip to one Elizabeth Harvey for art directing this piece. We may all be better people, but we have been, in so many ways, cameruined here, in completely endearing ways. 

the mountain goats

Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive.

Do every stupid thing to try to drive the dark away. 

Let people call you crazy for the choices that you make. 

Find limits past the limits.

Jump in front of trains all day 

and stay alive. 

Just stay alive.

the gods wait to delight in you

this is how i feel lately. good. marvelous. 

i like cameroon

saturday night i found myself leaving a yaounde nightclub alone around 11pm because sometimes it's just time to go.
it was raining outside and taxis were rare.
a lovely young woman with an umbrella saw me waiting, crossed the street and stood with me for twenty minutes before finding and negotiating a taxi for me.
she was definitely a prostitute and when my taxi driver told me so i said, "everyone needs to work" and he said, "exactly."

i was going to post a picture of a kitty but ran out of internet

My lack of posts is a reflection on how huge of an impact I've been making on my community. How much time I've been spending out in the field, changing lives, curing diseases, holding babies, and exchanging life lessons with my friends and neighbors.

That's not true. My lack of posts mostly reflects my immense writers block, my pages and pages of discarded writing and my complete (to my surprise) comfort here. I used to write about the things that I didn't understand. The more I understand, the less I have to write about. The more I understand, the happier I am here. The more I understand, the more hesitant I am to leave.

Granted, leaving is many months away but it's creeping up and previous volunteers were right when they warned us that right as you start to really settle in and get comfortable, it's time to start thinking about leaving. I finally know most of my neighbors (a grand undertaking in a town like Bangangte), I have real Cameroonian friends, I trust the people around me, I feel more confident than I have ever in my life, I have viable projects that are actually promising and exciting, and I very rarely have the moments of what-the-fuck-am-I-supposed-to-do that ruled my first year at post. I'm comfortable.

Comfortable people don't blog, do they? I mean, what do they write about? Writing is angsty and loathsome and anxious and tired! So for now, until life crumbles around me and I find myself sitting in the rubble, I guess I don't have a lot to write worth reading. Or better yet, I shall find a way to make comfortable writing interesting to read. Years of grad school down the drain!

My lack of posts is a reflection of my happiness, what is there to be said about happy people?