Home Sweet Second Home

AMERICA!!!!!!!! I blend in right?

I’m back! (in Cameroon) I had the most amazing 3 weeks in the states. Seriously I couldn't have thought of a better trip. I even braved the cold weather like a real vermonter. Just being able to grab dinner with my aunts, babysit my cousin and run errands with my mom was AWESOME. My family's christmas celebration was fantastic as you can see by the decked out living room.

on the 21st of september

I went to DC for a short trip- wayyyyy too short for the amount of fun things to do and people I wanted to see- but even so... amazing. Yeah I had a lot of toasted bagels, pizza, delicious micro brews, loaded sandwiches, okay I can go on and on but seriously being around my family and friends was the absolute best. Family is family. And mine is awesome. Sounds cheesy I know… I also ate a lot of that.

In DC with Amy and Maggie

I just wanted to write a quick blog to let everyone know that I arrived in cameroon safely, no missed flights or problems traveling. Breakdowns and delays started when i got in country but thats all normal. Thank you to my family and friends who spoiled me rotten the entire time, i loved every minute of it. Thank you to those who listened endlessly to my stories, even if you were pretending to be interested, it meant a lot. I'm sorry to those who I didn't see, or didn't get to spend a whole lot of time with. 3 weeks went by SO fast and I hope next time will be a bit longer.

I got a few “Are you ever coming back??” questions while I was home. Yes, I’ll be back. I’d like to be closer to the people I love and that can be somewhere in the states or a job in the continent of Africa that can send me home a couple times a year. As for the blog, I’ve got a new enthusiasm to take more pictures now that my camera is fixed. Oh yeah and I'll write too. Next one is coming up bientot! with love, siobhan

Paul Biya Vacas too

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8236962.stm

Jungle Fever

No no I'm not sick. I'm perfectly healthy and have been very busy with a couple projects that are not yet completed but headed in the right direction. I've wanted to make a post earlier about the work that I've been doing, but unfortunately while I want to talk about the successes, its impossible not to mention the challenges. And ohhhh there have been challenges, many of which I'm not able to blog about. I think as an american I undervalued free speech. The next time I'm in the land of say-anything-i-want I'll be able to say how shitty and malfunctioning the government is. Or I could talk about how money hungry, selfish and lazy the goverment employees are. But i'm not in the states. Or I should say not yet.

I AM GOING HOME!!!!!!!!!! For 3 weeks I am going see my family for the first time in 16 months. We're going to celebrate christmas. I'm going to drive a car. Speak english. Eat cheese until it makes me sick - which won't be that hard. Hang out with friends at a real bar that serves more than just warm beer. See a movie in theaters... I can go on and on. This wasn't exactly a scheduled trip and it also doesn't sound like exotic vacation but I'm so glad to be home for a while, its going to be freaking amazing. It feels like I'm 5x more excited about coming home than I was to move my life to africa.

I'm going to procede to freak out for the next four days until I leave (the neverous excitement started several weeks ago) I'll arrive in the beautiful state of vermont sept 9th. I'm stoked that I'll be in DC sept 22 and 23. Another week at in vermont then it's back to cameroon sept 28th. I would love to see everyone so to get ahold of me, call my house, email, or facebook. Or I'll be the girl overwhelmed in the grocery store or the person ridiculously excited about things like pavement and parking garages.

Ahhhh it's good to be home already. see you soon, love siobhan

winner winner chicken dinner

I'm writing to you to tell you about my latest accomplishment, an unfortunate death of a recent pet, and the adoption of a couple new ones.

First, the pet. The past couple months I've been thinking about getting another animal to have around the house. I did have a kitten but she ran away/I left it outside while I was gone and she probably died. Oh well, so I thought I'd get a bunny instead. They're adorable and not that much maintenance. They are also excellent in a stew. My PCV friend said he could get one for me but the day he showed up with the animal it wasn't a bunny but a week old baby duiker. Duikers are a smaller species of antelope found in central africa and there are several subspecies. This little red flanked duiker was found after its mother was killed and the hunter was giving out the babies. He was adorable, and was just learning to walk around and jump. The fact that I was going to have a small deer running around in my cement courtyard didn't really matter.

Its name was Donkey. We fed it powdered milk with a baby bottle and let it play with the dog outside. Being that it was so young, she didn't have a whole lot of chances of surviving. A few days later, a sunday night during a thunderstorm, it died. I dug a hole with a spoon in my garden, said some nice words and buried Donkey next to the previous volunteer's monkey.

Next animal.

I killed and cleaned a chicken!!! And I did it by myself. A bunch of us went over to our neighbor’s house to help her prepare my favorite Njama Njama with Kati Kati. I wanted to learn everything including prepping the chicken so that I could make it for other people sometime

Kati Kati's last moments

Not a pretty picture. First you dig a little hole in the ground and put the chicken's head over it so the blood doesn't go all over. Then you have to put one foot on the legs of the chicken, the other on the wings. This way the chicken can convulse under your feet and not all over the cooking area. Pluck some feathers from its neck for a clean spot to cut. Then while holding the head slice at the neck. I accidently cut a little too close to the body and lost some of that precious neck meat that cameroonians love so much but oh well. It wasn't like the knife was that sharp either.

Then you put it in boiling water for a couple minutes and pluck the feathers all off. Then grill it to get the little feathers off. Viola its that easy. Actually it wasn't and thats probably why most of us don't ever eat chicken. We dined on it 4 hours later though and it was delicious. I was very proud, and so were the guys including some of them who chickened out killing the second one.

Other than that, I officially sasha, the little dog at the transit house in bertoua when i moved in and became the Peace Corps Volunteer Leader. She's getting pretty big and not any smarter, but we're working on that. I'm also already planning thanksgiving so I'm sponsoring a couple turkeys that living in the village in the next town over. Another PCV is taking care of them, so let’s hope they turn out better than the previous animals I've had.

A prochain, Siobhan

AH! Its been a month!

It's been a month since I've written a blog! annnnnnd most importantly it's been a whole year! Yup, thats right, I've been here for a year. Crazy huh? So this blog will catch you up with what I've been doing lately.

New trainees!

Cameroon recieved 30 new trainees on June 5th and I was at the airport to welcome them in. Linsdey and I were chosen to be the Host Volunteers. I liked to think of us as their cameroonian mommies, because we were there to help them with every step during their first week in country. Days before their arrival Linsday and I ran around Yaounde and to every Peace Corps office to see what they needed from the new arrivals. Buying one cell phone here is difficult enough not to mention 29 more, so in short.. it was exhausting.

I think was almost as excited to meet them as they were at the airport as they were to finally get to Cameroon. They were also on the same flight as the Cameroonian Lions Football team arriving in country to play a big qualify match against Morrocco. It made security at the airport a little more tight but not so much that a bunch of us could pass by customs & security to the bagage claim to start organizing the mounds of luggage.

As we were traveling back to the hotel, it was funny hearing their comments about their new strange surroundings. Like the crazy driving here, people walking with things on their heads, starved mangy dogs wandering around, the little boutiques and thrown together bars... and many more aspects of cameroon that all seem really normal to me now. The new trainees asked hundreds of questions a day and it made me re-reflect on things and reminded me what cameroon was like at first. I remember being nervous about getting malaria and I never missed my prophoylaxis. The first medical session on mango flies that wiggle underneath your skin, dysentary that will keep you in your bathroom for a week, or the several worms that can make their home in your body... that stuff scared the shit out of me. Now a year later, it's really not that bad.

The new group of volunteers are really fun and they are also qualified for the job. Read the article here on two of the new trainees

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124450268338295907.html#mod=article-outset-box

The best part of being a host volunteer was hanging out with them and catching up on all of the american stuff i missed. I learned about Susan Boyle the British Idol phenomenon. John and Kate are going to need to split up their eight. Yeahhhh and that's just about all i missed. Like I said, the new group is really cool and I loved hanging out with them but they also reminded me of the fast passed, internet dependent, twitter ridiculous life that many westerns live. My previous life included.

Conclusion: one year later and I still really like living here and I hope the same for the soon to be volunteers.

Yaounde is my new home!

Joking, but seriously I've been spending some quality time in the capital these past 2 months. Mostly I've been doing work in preparation for the new volunteers but I also had my Mid Service Medical Exams. The mid service is done in groups of a dozen or so and our laundry list of things to get checked up range from the dentist (kind of nervous about that one here in Cameroon but it was legit) to handing over a few stool samples. Not as exciting as the dentist I assure you. In light of this, my friend Thryn decided to make a game out of it.

Diarrhea is the freebie, everyone gets it. The BINGO card was sent out to PC staff and even our medical officers thought it was pretty funny. It was a weird disappointment that I didn't win this game but kind of a good thing that no one has... not yet.

Between preping technical presentations for the new trainees and medical stuff, we had some time to kill. Yaounde isn't the friendliest city and it's definitely not cheap so volunteers often find themselves staying in peace corps headquarters the entire time. Instead of being bored and spending tons of money eating out, we decided to cook because that usually took at least half the day to do. On average we were feeding 15 to 20 hungry volunteers and at most, like on homemade raviolli night there were 25 of us. Other nights we made egg rolls, an indian masala with paneer and nan, amazing pad thai, breakfast burritos, eggplant parmesan and alot more. Vegetarian chili, which i had my doubts about turned out to be good enough to make twice. The second week we cooked, we made it official with a menu and a restaurant logo.

"we make dreams come true" aka delivering american food to volunteers cheap and easy. for them at least. We have 2 locations and are opening a 3rd whenever Thryn and Gabe move to their new post. Here are some pictures and my first plea to Food Network to send some proper utensils along with a mixer and imersion blender please and thank you.

My hand in a metal cup makes a good bean masher

The transit house only has 3 spoons so we eat with measuring cups accompained with beer in a jelly jar.

Nik and his heaping plate of Pad Thai, imitating my pose for pictures

Whats next...

I'm going to have to say goodbye to my postmate Ann-Marie on friday which is going to be pretty tough. We've gotten to be really close and this next year in Peace Corps is going to be completely different with her not around. It might be a good thing though, I'm really looking forward to concetrating on projects and things I want to accomplish before I leave.

This weekend I'm headed to Bagangte the training village. I'll be doing technical sessions on corruption, management consulting, and working with community groups. I'm excited to see the new trainees again! Then, finally, after several weeks spent in the captial, I'll be going back to Bertoua. There's just no place like the East. Lots of love, Siobhan

Pictures

I've been lucky enough to have high speed internet to load lots of pictures I've been promising. Pictures from France to come in a couple weeks..


http://picasaweb.google.com/siobhan.perkins

Home Sweet Home

Paris was amazing. I took the TGV train from Nice. It was only a 6 hour trip and it was nice to see some of the countryside. Unfortunately I have developed some sort of reverse motion sickness. I now do better in those busses I normally take with shitty seats, bad roads and no shocks. Something about the spaciousness and smooth riding makes me horribly sick now.

Alison and I outside the Catacombs

It was great to see my two friends from GW Alison and Esther. I lived with both of them my last year at GW and with Alison years before that. Shout out to the Devenny Fam! It was nice seeing familiar faces and hanging out with people from what seems like my former life. We spent a good time laughing about old stories, most of mine included the library or some horrible sleeping or studying habit. Randomly another friend Eleanor from our first year at GW was in Paris for the weekend and we got to catch up and go out with her which was really great.

Esther and I on a boat tour of the Seine

Highlights of Paris include:
- When I first arrived, I walked around for 2 hours hungry because I couldn't decide on a place to eat. Everything looked that good.

-People watching was an activity by itself.

- We ate at this one crepe place 5 times! It was amazing. They used the same amount of cheese and meat we would use in Cameroon for six people but this time it was all for me. Chorizo, Chevre lettuce tomato onion or feta tarama olives lettuce and tomato were my two favorite.

- Shiny, clean and efficient. Ann-Marie likes to say that the developed world is shiny, and it was. Partly because it’s incredibly clean. Really clean. And nothing is better than efficiency. It was almost too efficient for me to handle. Forming lines, menus to order off from, functioning transportation systems, never waiting more than 5 minutes for anything!

-I went into the Sephora flagship store on Champs Elyse - the 5th Avenue of Paris. It was a total blur, I was overwhelmed. I walked out and didn't even know what happened. We went back a couple days later to put on lip gloss, Chanel perfume and my favorite Nars blush and repeated that same exact step every time we passed a Sephora.

- Wine, Wine, Wine. It was delicious and ridiculously cheap, especially if it came from the store around the corner instead of a restaurant/bar. A decent champagne was also only a few dollars. Got a little too excited about that and accidentally shot off one cork towards the apartments across the street from our hotel. No windows broken.

- I bought two tennis rackets for $25 dollars and brought them back with me so my Cameroonian friend Charles and I can try and play tennis. That wil be funny

-I spent hours just looking around in a grocery store. And I took pictures.

-There were times that my French came in handy, especially in Nice were fewer people spoke English. I feel like it’s more respectful to at least start off speaking the language. Sometimes I would speak in french and people would speak back to me in english. Apparently my french isn't that good and its definitely not parisenne French. I'm hitting to books when I get back home to improve. Little french children were ADORABLE and I'm determined to raise my kids speaking French as well.

-We saw the most famous works in several gorgeous museums. We did the church scene like Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame. We did just about everything you could do in Paris, boat ride on the Seine, Catacombs, Eiffel tower, Bastille, Victor Hugo's hangout spots, Versailles, the list goes on. But probably some of the best times I had were chilling in one of the parks with a bottle of wine and delicious french snacks. Or just walking around into all of the little boutiques, books shops, and gourmet food stores.

- No one gave a shit what "the white girl" was doing. I was completely anonymous and it was amazing.

-Did I already mention the dogs? Everyone has a little dog and they are allowed to go everywhere. Even homeless people had a dog. Even the homeless people were clean too. I had a hard time not laughing when they asked me for money (all of 3 of them I saw). If they're asking for money while drinking a bottle of french wine, I'm pretty sure they should be giving me money.

-I brought back a big bag of cheese to share with everyone. Food always tastes better when you share it with someone else, Cameroonians get to experience something completely foreign and all of us volunteers would do just about anything to have cheese.

The only thing that would have made the trip better:

1. If I could have met up with my family.


2. If it was a bit warmer. (Never thought I would say that) Paris was between 55 and 65 degrees and I was freezing.


3. If Matt Damon was there. The "city of lights'" is also the city of love, tres romantique!
   

I'm trying to put up pictures but since my camera broke (no surprise there) before I left for France, I'm now relying on other people to send them to me. I'm uploading tons of photos right now, it just takes forever here. Until then, if you want check out this link http://alumni.gwu.edu/news/2009_05/aprofile.html Since the three of us are all successful GW grads living in different parts of the world, the Alumni Association at GW profiled us for the newsletter.

I did miss Cameroon a bit. It was weird that no one wanted to have a random conversation with me. I felt like I should have asked the guy at the hotel reception desk where he was from or how his family is doing. I missed the amazing network of support and friends that I have made in Peace Corps. Especially other volunteers, they make living here great. Surprisingly it wasn't that hard to come back to Cameroon. Yeah all of that extra stuff is great, the cheese, the perfume, being able to drive a car, the clothes but really I guess I don't miss it that much. I've lived long enough without extravagance to realize it’s not necessary and in some ways I'm better off without it.

The plane ride back was amazing of course. I watched a bunch of movies that I thought were brand new, but apparently came out last year. I sat between some Cameroonian women and explained to them what the plane food was and how to use their TV screens. The grandmother wasn't interested in the movies but we both enjoyed getting refills on the refreshments. Her gout of choice was Heineken, and the stewardess kept them coming. I knew I was on my way back. Half way through the flight the plane started smelling like B.O. and a latrine and Cameroonian businessmen were gathered around the steward drink stations like it was a free happy hour. Yup, I was almost in Cameroon alright.

I'm currently writing this at our transit house in Yaoundé and by the time I post it, I'll probably already be in Bertoua. Over the past 2 days since I arrived in country the mosquito bites have reappeared everywhere, including on my face! I've already fallen back into the habit of arguing about prices of taxis, beans, bananas etc. And the rat problem at the house right now is something I'm trying to not think about.... Home sweet home.