Sunday April 3
Was ringing my host parents’ doorbell by 8oclock and was headed back out the door by 9 for mass.
Mass today actually made me kind of homesick. Called home for a bit (ok…maybe an hour) though and felt a jillion times better. I do find that I think of “home” (read: America and all things American) a lot, but I’m going to attribute that to the fact that it’s a sort of a constant mental contrast to my daily life here. I mean, I love Cameroon and am pretty well adapted, but let’s be real—it’s pretty different from the U.S.
Anyhoo, hard to believe that when I set up my mosquito tent today, it was for the last time…
5 weeks straight here in Yaoundé in some ways will be long (haven’t stayed in one town that long since Fall semester, I don’t get to see my new friends much now, and it’s what’s separating me from my return), but I know it will also pass more quickly than I want (ah! ISP work!!).
Monday April 4
Day 1 of ISP! Day 1 at Heifer! It actually went really well—I feel like I’m off to a good start. From what I can tell there are 5 permanent staff members, 1 six month intern, 1 security guard, and me, and everyone is Cameroonian and seems very friendly. Plus, I can tell they’re going to be very supportive of the research component of my project, which is key (in fact, I’m not sure if they’re going to give me anything else to do…hmmm…)
Got my ISP stipend (for lunches, printing expenses, etc); we’re all really going to miss these SIT handouts…
Tuesday April 5
Day number two in the office…feeling (sort of) grown up.
Today I started reading files on participants (whew! I should give them a lesson or two on the value of tabs and organization), helped a bit with translating (silly bilingual Cameroon with your non-bilingual people), and conducted a couple of interviews with staff members.
These people apparently do not stop for a lunch break. I don’t understand. I was quite hungry by the time I got home and ate at 5:30. [I had written ‘starving’, but then thought to my whole day’s work and felt rather guilty…there are whole communities reporting that they only eat once a day…]
I just want to say, Heifer is really really cool. I’m sure you will get tired of hearing me talk about it, and I’ll do a better explanation later of all the great things they do, but I just wanted to put that out there for now…
Wednesday April 6
Getting settled into the office and my new routine, and I like it. One of the staff members even gave me a whole plate of banana and avocado as a morning snack!
Cleaned up my questionnaire translations a bit with another staff member’s assistance (though I must boast a bit—they needed very little help) and got those all printed out. My-oh-my do I miss free printing at TU; printing in Bastos is $0.60 a page.
On my way home I ran into several of my friends, which was quite fun…I miss them!
