Palm fronds

The last message was a big hello from the streets of Douala. First off, in francophone cameroon, all the keyboards have some key letters switched on the keypad - i'm getting used to it - but if there is some weird spelling and punctuation, it's all Mrs. Davis' fault. Which brings me to another thing.

This blog is for everybody, but will speak to two groups, people that were in Peace Corps Cameroon and who are familiar with the country, and those that who have not had the chance to visit here. It would be too convoluted and time consuming to explain and separate out different cultural references, things that are specific to people who lived in different parts of cameroon etc. so i'm just gonna throw it all into the mess and hope that overall things make sense and is mildly interesting to read. The Mrs. Davis reference is funny to everybody who has known me since 9th grade. She was our English teacher who i hated with a passion for a lot of reasons that i won't go into here. But I won't explain all the little jokes like but the people who know will understand. This is a new kind of communication for me - anonomous, personal, public, electronic, immediate. I hope it works out.

Enough of this prolog rules & regulations shit. We're in Cameroon, man!!!

After an enjoyable stay in Paris, we were finally able to leave all our lost luggage drama behind and arrived in Douala at 4 in the afternoon under a light rain, and warmish cool humidity. Ahhhh. After the drought we've been having in AZ, the rain feels like a real blessing. We thought we'd make a last ditch effort to find our bags in the Douala airport, no more than 10 minutes of our time since we'd spent so much too much lost luggage time in Paris. People were be much more helpful and on top of it than the people at the Paris airport. No luck. Get a taxi.

After some arguing and standing around confused, not sure how to do things anymore, what the prices are etc. we agreed on a taxi for 1000 CFA p/p. I knew this was too much, but it's OK to pay a little more at the beginning until you know you're safe and have a place to stay. You can drive yourself crazy sometimes here trying to make sure you're getting "the right price". I know Cameroonians who went to a new place or new situation and ended up paying much more than they needed to, so it's comforting to know it's not just a white man thing. A couple notes; the exchange rate is about 500 CFA to $1, and all foreigners, often regardless of skin color, are referred to as white man, or at least are treated as somebody that has a lot of money.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 or so and walked onto the patio of the Procure Catholique where we're staying and where i stayed sometimes as a volunteer, and found a way up to the roof. It was fun to stand up on there and look down on a couple streets watching people do their tired early morning thing. Walking slowly to somewhere, who knows where, all wearing flip flops. A motorcycle driving then shutting down his engine to coast to the bottom of the short hill, then starting it up again at the bottom to save petrol made me smile. The unspoken language of life here. We need to do that more in the US. That should be part of Bush's energy policy come to think of it.

"Fellow Americans. We are addicted to oil, so everybody should conserve gasoline. The most effective way to do this is to turn off your cars and coast down hills." We can learn a lot from the Camerooninans.

Sitting back on the patio I just sat and thought. I did this a lot as a volunteer and at different times of my life, but haven't really had a chance or made time to do it in Tucson for a long time, life there is so busy, so it felt refreshing. There was a lot to think about. I thought about what was happening in Mbongo early Sunday morning. Shit, we could be there by Sunday night if we wanted. It was such a trip to even be so close to there. I looked at a coco palm and imagined the "pinng, pinng, pinng" of a sharp machete cutting through the fronds to make fences or stakes. That is a great feeling and I loved the sound of it. An elder man sitting and reading further down the patio's cell phone went off and his ring tone souded like a Harry Belafonte tune Dana loves to sing "Shake, shake, shake, Senora, shake your body line. Shake, shake, shake, Senora, shake it all the time." Harry sings Senora so it sounds like Sonora. I thought it was pretty amazing the first time I heard it that he would be singing about the Sororan Desert. My one track mind. Cell phones didn't exist in Cameroon even when we left in January '96.

Later in the morning, we walked around downtown Douala, and it was a weird experience for me. I didn't recogniwe anything. Either my memories were wrong, things had changed, or a combination of the two. I saw a couple places that I definately remembered, but the surrounding were completely new. It was a strange sensation. We drove in a taxi through the same place later on that day, and things did start to come back, but it was all so different than what I had in my mind. I realized that things looked a lot more run down than I remembered, but wasn't sure if it was because I just came from the States and France, so of course comparatively would look more run down, or it it really had crumbled over the past 8 years which is totally possible with the government, heavy rains, and intense heat. Probable a nice combination of all 3 things.

So, my time on the computer is about up so I hope everybody's well. Tomorrow, we fly up to Garoua and then take a bus to Maroua where we'll be for a couple days figuring out how to make it to Waza park, the most well knon park in Cameroon and where there is the best chance of seeing elephants and stuff. CamAir no longer has service up to Maroua.