It has taken me a little longer than expected to get this posted, but now it’s mom’s turn to describe the Cameroon trip! Ian already covered much of the week, so she’ll fill in with some of her own observations:
Since we’ve been back I’ve been trying to write something but I can’t seem to get my head around it all. It was truly an assault on the senses, so I think I’ll just take it from that angle.
Sights
We landed in Yaounde, got off the plane and before noticing the flat landscape dotted with mud huts I noticed the row of soldiers with weapons lining the side of the tarmac.
Daniel’s height makes him easy to spot in a crowd here at home, but in Cameroon he seems to be just average, if not a bit below! But the nice Irish skin tone made him impossible to miss!
The colors that stick in my mind are green (just at the end of the rainy season) and red brown dirt.
The markets just swell with color, from the colorful fabrics (pagne) to the spices, spilling over the stacked bowls on display.
Sounds
The call to prayer takes place five times a day. A male voice calls out “Allah Ahkbar”, business stops and our car pulls to the side of the road so the driver and our local companions can stop in at the local mosque. Focus is placed on the spiritual.
Little boys (it seems the girls have work to do even at a young age) following along beside us, calling out “Nassarra! Bonjour!” Speaking back to them elicited lots of laughter, on both sides.
Early morning cadence being called out by the training army guys near our hotel.
Booming music coming out of bars along the road in the city. Close your eyes, and you could be anywhere in the US, if not for the smells.
The sound of lizards running around over our heads on a tin roof at night. Don’t those things ever sleep??
The way Daniel’s friend, Oumarou Nassourou, spoke. He had a beautiful voice, a nice laugh, and always prefaced speaking to me with “Daniel’s mother”, as in “Daniels mother, do you like Cameroon?”
Smells
Spaghetti Omelette. Yep, that’s what I said. Take some cooked spaghetti, a really hot wok/frying pan, a kerosene fueled burner. Heat the pasta with some garlic and onions,add some local spice mixture, toss in a couple of fresh, slightly beaten eggs (really fresh - the chicken is sitting right there), cook the death out of it (seriously - no amoebas could survive that heat!).
A slight smoky smell as soon as the sun set. No food being cooked during daylight hours during Ramadan and at sunset the street Mamas start cooking all sorts of things. I didn’t usually smell the food, but the fires were fragrant. Everything we had with us smelled of the smoke for a little while after we left Cameroon.
I can honestly say that I relieved myself in more interesting places than I care to remember. But I did it, and survived!
Flying in our taxi through the streets on Yaounde on a Friday night (heading to the airport) we caught the most amazing smells of food cooking along the road and at many many roadside nightclubs (which consist of a palm roof or a tin roof on 4 poles, some colored strings of lights and booming music).
Touch
Well, I honestly tried to avoid touching much in Cameroon. and if I did touch things I was a little like Mr.Monk with his hand sanitizer wipes. But I managed to stay healthy for the most part! I can admit now that I’m back that I was feeling pretty poorly most of the time there - but hard to complain when your host has an acute case of malaria. And then I was told by Dan’s counterpart that the start of school would be delayed a few weeks because of the cholera outbreak. Talk about getting things in perspective
I did shake lots of hands, and I didn’t do the sanitizer thing then! People were warm, and genuinely interested in meeting Daniel’s parents.
I learned quickly not to touch things in the market. If something is touched, men appear out of the dark corners and begin to show everything in their booth. So I put my hands behind my back and just looked. Then they use the phrase “pleasure your eyes, lady, pleasure your eyes”.
Taste
The most exotic thing I tasted was Follere juice. It was dark red/purple and is made by boiling down the follere flowers and sweetening up and watering down the juice. It tasted like a cross between grape and blackcurrant juice.
Spaghetti Omelette from the night market was pretty tasty. I don’t know what spices were in it, but it hit the spot that night.
I’m trying to decide what my favorite part of this trip was. The kids were a highlight for me, and I didn’t mind them calling Nassarra out to us. At one point I took pictures of some little boys that had gathered around and they were having so much fun looking at their pictures on the camera. And I had so much fun showing them. (However, I did have to get them to put their hands behind their backs because they kept grabbing at the camera!). I liked meeting Dan’s fellow volunteers. I’ve been following some of their blogs and seeing them in person helped make their online news come to life. But I think the best part was meeting the people Daniel has been working with and seeing the impact he and all the other PCV’s there have had. I’m not going to get all mushy here and brag about Dan, and talk about Kennedy and the idea of the Peace Corps, and generally be a sappy mom. Daniel would just edit it anyway! I’ll probably never get back to Cameroon, but a few years ago I wasn’t even sure where it was. So who knows?
By Maeve Archibald
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