Desensitization

The word of the week is desensitization. I’ve noticed that there are things that stop being a surprise or are no longer considered odd. For example, if I see ants on the food I’m about to eat, I’ll brush them off. Cockroaches in the bathroom.. normal. The fact that one of my favorite meals here sound like something a three year old would love, (spaghetti and red bean omelette sandwich, with ketchup if I’m really lucky), that’s okay with me. When the water in town gets shut off, when I’m standing there naked in the shower.. I’m not surprised. And I’m certainly not surprised to then find that the car in the driveway got washed with the water storred specifically for this reason. Not to say that it’s getting boring here or not much is interesting anymore, I’m just getting used to somethings. Before I left the house this morning, I asked what was in the bucket in the kitchen (the bucket I normally use for water and to wash my clothes). My cousin told me it was cow skin, for dinner, bien sur (of course). Doesn’t sound too appetizing huh? I’ve had it before, and it’s not.

I’m glad you all enjoyed my story about our little trip to the east. As we were all debriefing our trips in class, we remembered another funny story that I thought I would share. So work was being done on the road that we were taking from Yaoundé to Bertoua in the East, and it was only one way. (alot of the road is really only one way, but I guess they decided to make it legit this time). So there was a worker at the start of the construction with two large flags with like 5 feet poles. We were flagged down with the red flag to stop, and then the construction worker shoved the large green flag into the front of the van. Were we proceded to drive with it, in the car, until we got to the end of the construction were there was a long line of cars waiting to go towards Yaounde and we passed the flag on to the next car.

Other news we’ve been in Cameroon for 50 days! Not bad, however there have been 2 people from the education group who have decided to head back home. They'll be missed but we wish them the best.