Category: Peace Corps

Hi everyone!! For the past month, I’ve been working on a project with my fellow volunteers called Camp LEAD. Camp LEAD stands for “Camp de l’environnement et alimentation pour demain” and focuses on teaching kids about health and agriculture topics. My camp occurred the last weekend of June, with the Camp in Fanning and Casey’s village the following weekend, and Krista’s village the weekend after that! Each camp spanned 3 days, with Health topics the first day (run by Fanning and Krista) and Agriculture topics the second day (run by Alec, Casey, and myself). The third day of each camp was devoted to a mural of some kind, a certificate ceremony, and screening of Black Panther in French. The whole experience was amazing, I learned a lot from the kids and from my fellow volunteers, and I had so much fun. While it was exhausting, it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my service thus far.

Each camp started with a reading of the camp rules, assigning teams, and going over the schedule. I have included lots of pictures from the camp in my village, and then some photos of my favorite moments from the other camps! The first day began with an amazing session by Fanning on first aid.

The average age of my kids were late teens, so they took to these concepts extremely well!

The next session was done by Krista, about STIs

We then moved on to the nutrition section of the morning, and the kids learned about balanced meals and drew examples of their “plates” in the notebooks we provided for them. After that, they went off to lunch!

After lunch,  we had a more hands-on activity about malaria. The kids take a soccer ball (representing a mosquito) and a bedsheet (the mosquito net) and play a game that demonstrates the importance of sleeping under a net every night.

The rest of the day was spent on a gender fishbowl activity, which encouraged the boys and girls to share their experiences and viewpoints of gender in their everyday lives, and is always a very interesting activity. After that, day 1 was over!

Day 2 began with Casey’s talk on Moringa trees, how to plant them and their nutritional benefits.

For those who do not know, moringa trees are considered to be a miracle tree because of the massive amount of nutrients contained in their leaves, which can be used to make a powder and put in many local foods. For this reason, it is a very popular project for PCVs in various countries. These trees, once grown, are also VERY resistant to drought, which is another reason for our promotion, as climate change leaves our rural communities the most susceptible to adverse environmental conditions.

We followed that session up with an activity on food security, where each kid got an identity card, and the information on that card impacted whether they took steps forward out of line (practicing integrated agriculture, having a fixed salary, being a farmer) or steps back (being female, illiterate, burning fields, having an illness, etc). This opened up to a discussion on the advantages and disadvantages in life and how/why they impact our forward progress.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The last session of the morning was mine, and I discussed soil fertility and composting! I added a slideshow of pictures of me teaching, mostly for my parents, since they’ve never seen me do a session in french on dirt (and never will!) I then followed this up with a small activity where each team made a mini composter with a plastic bottle.

After lunch, Alec took over with a session on natural insecticides. This session promotes the use of nonchemical and affordable options for insecticides that can be used on a small home garden and the kids loved it! Materials include hot peppers, onions, soap, and more!

The very last day in my village we painted a mural on my Elementary School that promotes Moringa and is a visual representation of its nutritional properties!

After working on the mural during the day, we had the ceremony!

All in all Camp LEAD in my village could not have gone better! We learned a lot from our first camp and were able to take what we learned and apply it to the second camp in Casey and Fanning’s village! This was a similar size to my camp (22 kids) but the age range was younger, which was a nice new experience!

The mural in the second village was a map of the world! The kids got it done veeeeery fast (too fast, lots of drips!) but they had fun. We fixed it up and it was good to go!

The final camp was Krista’s!

So at the end of each agriculture day, Casey taught a yoga class! The best pictures are from the last camp so I put some in here as a closer for this post. The kids had fun in each village and I know it was a favorite for us volunteers.

I think Casey and I loved the yoga activity a lot for the same reason I love to jog in village. It gave us a chance to demonstrate that woman are strong and capable of “doing sport”. After a long weekend of airing out sexist cultural gender norms, it was nice to see the boys struggling to do poses that Casey and I (although more Casey in all fairness!) did with ease. You could see the kids having to reevaluate their ideas of what yoga was and go from viewing it as “easy” to something that takes practice, strength, and determination, but can be done by anyone with enough hard work! After painting a banner for the health center on mosquito nets and the ceremony, our last camp came to an end! I could hardly believe that 3 weeks and 3 camps had already come and gone! I think it went by so quickly and smoothly because of all the initial work and organizing we did as a group before the camps even began, as well as uncompromising teamwork and great counterparts day in and day out. I mean it when I say that the camps would not have been as successful without such an amazing group of volunteers. I truly believe that PC work really shines when we are able to collaborate, work to our strengths, and impact as many people as possible by combining forces. One volunteer could not have held a 3-day camp in 3 villages for 60 odd students. It was truly an honor to learn and grow so much along with Alec, Casey, Fanning, Krista, and all of our great counterparts! I hope that this camp, which has been done in other PCV countries with great success, can be continued with the next volunteers in our villages, and in other parts of Cameroon as well!

Well, that’s it for me! Camp has really been the majority of my last month or so, but I hope to have a few more updates on work and general life before Close of Service in November. But, for now, see yeeso and au revoir!

Hello friends! It’s been awhile! This post is in honor of Father’s Day. I figured since I posted on Mother’s Day as a gift to my mom, it was only fair to do the same for my dad! He was bummed when I sent him pictures yesterday of my guava picking hike and sent zero photos of my face, so prepare yourself for way more pictures of myself in this post than I am comfortable with. My last post was about the beekeeping training, and since then I’ve had several meetings with the apiculture group in my village, getting them on track for the hive installations. Power has been off for pretty much the past 3 months, other than a few days here and there, and the group has been having issues making the metal supports for the hives without electricity. So, my counterpart, Hady, decided to just go ahead and install the hives in trees for the interim.

I visited Fanning in her village for Easter, and went to a morning church service. There was a lot of singing and dancing.

 

We then went to Dorien’s house (she’s our friend that makes grilled fish for us on market day!).

 

After the guys left (I think the hair styling had something to do with that) we had fun doing a bit of dress up and dancing!

More recently, I visited Fanning and Casey again for Eid Mubarak, the party at the end of Ramadan. While I didn’t fast during the month of May, I did start using an app to count my calories that was recommended to me by a fellow volunteer that uses it to make sure she’s getting the right nutrients. While I haven’t lost much weight using it (not having the luxury of lots of vegetables and having to eat a fair amount of bread/rice/pasta) I have noticed it has changed my relationship with food and I feel leaner and healthier! I definitely make more conscious decisions about meals now, based on what I need to fuel my body, and less what I want and is easiest (mac and cheese, always). It’s also forced me to get creative with my recipes! Wish I had used it sooner in my service. So, while I hadn’t been fasting, I had definitely been depriving myself of junk food and empty calories for a month, so when Fanning made chocolate cake balls for the celebration, I may have eaten my weight in them.

 

Later that night, Fanning made the amazing cake balls and then we feasted on this meat sauce with noodles that she slow cooked for hours. It was AMAZING.

Just days later, there was another party, this time in my village! It was in honor of the return of power to my chef de village, after his younger brother had temporary power during the regular chef’s absence.

After that party I was all partied out, and it was a relief to get some work done.

I also got to finally visit the orphanage where my fellow volunteer Ella worked in Ngaoundéré, right before she left for the states to go to veterinary school! I brought my projector so the kids could watch Hidden Figures, and this little one spent most of the movie crawling all over me.

The last big event was my project manager visit to my site! She met with my counterpart and the twins insisted that we all drive out to see the hives, where she took our photo. It was great to see how proud they were of their achievements!

Now, to wrap up this post, here are some pictures from my guava picking adventures yesterday! It’s my new favorite pastime, as the groves are right next to the hives and allow me to check on the bees and collect fruit at the same time! Win-Win!

I leave you with another beautiful picture of the sunset over the lake, facing my home. The next post will be all about Camp LEAD, the 3 day camp for kids that we are holding first in my village (the 28th-30th) then in Casey and Fanning’s village the following weekend, and finally in Krista’s village the weekend after that! It’ll be a crazy 3 weeks, but we’ll have each other to help out! It’s a great opportunity to be able to hold such a large scale training for students on health, agriculture, and other important topics, and wouldn’t be possible with just one volunteer, so we are really lucky to be close enough to each other to make this happen!

Thanks for reading! Until next time!

(P.S. Enough pictures of me, dad?)

 

The long awaited beekeeping training took place this past weekend, April 5th-7th, in Ngaoundéré. Casey and I arrived in the city the day before the training in order to meet with out replacement trainer (our initial one had fallen through last minute…) and to secure the lecture room and a mama to provide lunch for the trainees. This all went well, which was a huge relief after all of the bad news we’d received the week beforehand, and we set out to make copies of the beekeeping manual for each of our group members. We truly lucked out with the organization (Centre de Formation Agropastoral et Informatique de Marza) and our trainers, Richard and Oumarou. The center not only had active beekeeping, it also had intensive chicken and rabbit raising, as well as a newly installed irrigation system for their tree nursery. They were already practicing grafting in the nursery, and Casey and I were very impressed with their various pursuits. The trainers were very knowledgeable and each day of their program covered a vital part of apiculture. I’ll provide a brief overview of what we discussed each day (with photos!) so you can get an idea of what a (very good) hands-on agricultural training in Cameroon looks like.

Day 1:

The day already started successfully, as all of our expected trainees arrived and we managed to start around 9:30 am. The first day was all lecture, but went over very crucial aspects of beekeeping (roles of bees in the environment, parts of the hive, reasons for practicing apiculture, the evolution of beekeeping from traditional methods, and the materials of beekeeping). These subjects opened up the conversation to not only the technical aspects of beekeeping, but the environmental impact of sustainable beekeeping. It was a very pleasant surprise to Casey and to me that we covered these subjects so thoroughly. One of the biggest concerns that we have as agriculture volunteers is the overuse of pesticides and insecticides. The trainers explained that the overuse of these chemicals can harm all insects, even the beneficial ones such as bees, and that it is in the best interest of the beekeepers and environment in general to keep their use to a minimum. A big win! After lunch we reviewed the plants that promote healthy bees, and the trainers showed us the Kenyan Top Bar hive, the type of hive we are promoting and providing for our groups.

 

Day 2:

The second day we began our practical section, which started with hive installation. To be a beekeeper, you must have bees, and to do that you have to bait the hive. But first, you sterilize all parts of the hive!

After we baited the hive, we went out to set it up, and stopped by a few hives that were already colonized and discussed the best stands and locations for hives.

The day ended with a classroom session on how to select the best hive location and how to set the hive up.

Day 3:

The last day of the training may have been my favorite day of the whole training. We started with a classroom session on harvesting honey, with all trainees participating in a mock honey harvest. An actual harvest was not possible at this time, as none of the hives were ready for harvesting, but the mock session allowed the instructors to give advice and fix errors. Casey and I are also considering arranging for one of the trainers to be present at harvest time to guide the groups through their first harvest. This option is yet another benefit of gaining new resources and contacts.

Richard asked the group what materials are best for filling a smoker to smoke out the bees. Without hesitation a trainee suggested plastic because it would burn easily. This was a great learning opportunity. A big issue here in Cameroon is the use of plastics to start fires. Not only is this harmful and toxic to humans as the fire releases chemicals in the plastic, it is also very harmful to the bees. Richard explained this and made sure everyone understood to never burn plastic in the smokers. We were thrilled!

The next session was on transforming the harvested materials. First we began by rinsing previously harvested honey comb with water, creating a honey water that can be fermented into a honey beer, or, after a longer period of time, a stronger whiskey-like beverage.

After the rinsing, we collected the comb into a bag, tied the ends, and put it into boiling water. This is called rendering, and extracts good quality beeswax for use in candles and soap, while leaving the bad stuff (like dead bees) in the bag. I’ve done a miniature version of this before in my home. Traditional beekeeping does not include this step, which takes more time but results in a much higher quality of wax.

This is another income generating activity that comes from beekeeping, in addition to honey! Beeswax is very useful, and good quality wax can fetch a much better price than traditionally harvested wax at market.

The transformation session ended the training, and after a question and answer session it was time to give out the certificates that Casey and I had printed! The Chef de Poste was kind enough to do this.

This was followed by a great deal of photo taking in Cameroonian fashion, and ended the 3 day training! Casey and I bought a big bottle of honey and headed home that night.

A huge thank you to all the people who donated money to this project. It has been a long time in the making and Casey and I are very appreciative of all the help we received during this process. Our next step is coming up soon, as the hives are arriving and need to be baited and set up! This (big) portion of the project could not have gone smoother (after some initial speed bumps), and we left the training with amazing contacts that can help future volunteers. We couldn’t have hoped for more! Thank you all again, I’ll be posting soon with the results of the installations!

 

 

 

 

Hi guys! It’s been awhile. I’ve been back at post for a month now, and I’d like to update you all on what I’ve been doing during that time! During vacation, I received a suitcase full of toothbrushes and toothpaste, courtesy of a friend of my father’s from high school (A Medina Bee alumna!) Kim Reber Henderickson, and her connections with Mike Franks, with Crest. I traveled to Cameroon with these materials, and then split them in two for my village and Fanning and Casey’s village and we held a hygiene training at each health center! The focus of this training was for women and children, as we know the largest impact will be through teaching the mothers, who then go on to teach their children. We started each session with  information on the importance of dental hygiene and how to properly brush and floss teeth.

At the end of the presentation, the women came up one by one and received a “petit cadeau” of a toothbrush for themselves (and one for their child if they were of the proper age). At the beginning of the distribution we handed out numbers to ensure that women received a brush if they came and watched the whole talk, and not just at the end to get the free toothbrush and toothpaste.

Overall, the two distributions went well! We learned a lot from the first one in Fanning and Casey’s village, and were much better prepared and organized for the second one in my village. We reached nearly 100 families in my village through the mothers, and recorded their names and how many children that they have. In Fanning and Casey’s village, since there we more children than mothers, we reached about 50 families in total. All in all we distributed nearly 300 toothbrushes (in adult and child sizes) and toothpaste. The goal of this project was not to give everyone in our villages a toothbrush, but to give incentives and information to the matriarch of families so that they might, in the future, invest money in dental health for themselves and their children. Again, many thanks to Crest and Kim Reber Henderson for the generous contribution.

Finally, I’d like to say a little about the beekeeping project and grant. Casey and I just received the donor names of the people that allowed their information to be shared, and we’d like to just say a huge thank you! Thanks to you all, we were able to raise the money in only 3 short days, and should be receiving the money soon so that we can begin booking the training and buying materials in time for our set start date!  Many thanks for the generous donations from our family and friends. It means the world to us that you are supporting our work here, and we are very excited for this opportunity to make positive change. I will be updating this blog and our beekeeping blog (https://adamawabeekeepers.blogspot.com/) as the project progresses.

 

Yesterday I arrived in Casey’s concession around 11 for a Cameroonian Thanksgiving. We took some quick pictures (because we looked nice for once) and then the chicken cooking process began. It took all day.

---

We started by watching the slaughter of the 4 chickens (we couldn’t do it or the concession couldn’t eat the meat since we aren’t Muslim and it wouldn’t be halal). I have a video of it, if anyone is curious about the process. We then put the carcasses into tubs of hot water for defeathering. Casey and I did 2. It was weird at first but after awhile it was oddly satisfying to rip the feathers off. The mommas then rubbed the chickens down, removed the icky bits, roasted them a bit, and dismemembered them. After that the cooking started, which Casey and I didn’t see much of because we went to buy soda, watch Ocean’s Eight, and have a dance party.

---

We had a pre and post dinner dance party , so I was pretty tired by the time I went home.

I have to say the chicken was some of the best food I’ve had here. It was even more delicious because I knew I’d helped with it. Casey explained the meaning of the holiday to the concession, and we dug in. All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving! I had mashed potatoes and chicken, got to video call my family and introduce them to all of Casey’s concession kids, and learned something new about Cameroon. Any day I learn something new is a good day here, and there’s a lot I am thankful for while living here. This year I am thankful for newvillage  friends, my fellow volunteers, my adorable cat, my new furniture, and my vacation in 29 DAYS!!! Most of all, of course, I am thankful for my family. I really cannot wait until I see my parents, my brother, and my cousin Emily in the UK. These next few weeks better go by quickly!!!

Long time no post! Since I last blogged we’ve had 2 birthdays, an anniversary, a series of mushroom trainings, and Casey and I have started a beekeeping project. Lots has happened!

Casey had an insanely amazing birthday celebration. The twins took us to some falls around my village and treated us to a meal.

---

I held my first training on mushrooms in village, we took the bottles of mother spawn we were given during the Peace Corps training and inoculated jars to create more seeds.

---

Fanning’s sister visited during our clusters celebration of our year anniversary of living in Cameroon. Ginnie is serving as a PCV in Benin! We took her on a tour of the chefferie in my village.

---

Fanning also had a birthday. It was basically a party for me too since we made sushi and it’s the one food I’ve really been craving since I got here that I haven’t been able to find (for good reason). I almost cried, it was so delicious. We watched “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”, did face masks, and ate brownies and key lime pie. I’m amazed by the cooking and baking skills of Fanning and Casey. I’m lucky to be posted so close to them and that they feed me <3.

---

Casey and I have started a new project that I am very very excited about. We have formed two beekeeping groups, one in my village and one in hers, and are starting to write up a grant to get money to send these groups to a training in Ngaoundere. The current traditional beekeeping methods in the Adamawa use fire during harvest, which is harmful to the bees and produces a smoky, dark honey. Our goal is to train these small groups in improved apiculture methods, and to provide them with Kenyan Top Bar hives and the associated beekeeping tools to get them started. The long term aim is to create groups of trained individuals that will then go on to train other farmers in their villages on these new methods. Our first step was to hold a business plan training for each group. This gave them the tools to express their long and short term goals, and set the groundwork for their projects. Each group filled out a questionnaire which helps us to write out our grant.

---

I’ve also started teaching English class twice a week to four girls and my landlord’s son. I had a great deal of appreciation for teachers before, and I have even more now. It’s not easy to teach kids English via French when students here don’t really have a grasp of French. They speak mostly Fulfulde, and so my classes end up being French and English classes. Am I qualified? Nope. But I’m trying. And that’s all we can really do! Hopefully the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree, and I managed to get just a little bit of the patience and skill that my mom uses every day in the classroom.

 

---

Speaking of my mother, as of today there are 43 days left until I reunite with my parents and my cousin Emily in London for Christmas! We’re going to Wales after that, and then Edinburgh for New Years, where we’ll meet my brother. After Edinburgh, James and I are headed up to Northern Scotland to see the Northern Lights. Then I head back to London, and back to Cameroon just in time for Mid Service Training (MST) in the capital! And I mean just, I’m landing the night before it starts. I can’t even imagine a 3 week vacation right now, but I’m sure it will fly by and then I’ll have just under a year left of service! Ok, that’s all for now, if I don’t update before I go to the UK, I will for sure have a blog post after vacation!

Thanks for reading!

We are steadily approaching the year anniversary of our departure to Philadelphia and then on to Cameroon. On the 16th of September last year I left my parents and my brother at the Cleveland airport and landed in Philadelphia. There I met the people with whom I’ve been spending the past year. We never would have guessed when we flew out of the US on the 19th what was in store for us.  A lot happened our first few days in Cameroon. I left the US thinking that there was a chance that I would go my entire service living in an Anglophone region and rarely needing to use French. Now, here I am in a Francophone region with a second common language, Fulfulde. It’s been quite the ride thus far.

Since my last post, I’ve done a series of composting trainings in village, visited lakes and waterfalls, built a pepiniere, planted lots of herbs and lettuce, and went to a training on mushroom propagation.

Casey and Fanning conducted a training on the miracle tree, moringa, and I tagged along for moral support (and as an official photographer). They nailed it, it was amazing!

My composting series was definitely a highlight of my service thus far. I had a classroom session on different types of composting and their benefits, and then a second hands-on session where we made Bokashi, a nutrient rich compost that can be made relatively quickly and affordably.  Hady  was an enormous help in translating my French into Fulfulde when farmers needed clarification, and as a result I asked him to be my counterpart for the mushroom training in July.

Here are a few other exciting things that have happened in the past couple of months:

Casey’s friend Scott visited, and we FINALLY swam at the ranch like we’ve been planning to do since the first month.

The mushroom training was great, I can’t wait to get things going in village this month with the information and the “seeds” we were given.

These trainings are especially important because they teach PCVs techniques to use in village that are not included in the agriculture documents that we have from our general pre service training.  At this training we learned much needed “bush” options for sterilization and propagation of mushrooms that don’t include incredibly expensive and difficult to obtain equipment. The trainings also include a community counterpart for each PCV, which makes the exchange of information more sustainable.

After the training, I achieved a months long dream, and got to eat some Indian food that I didn’t make.

I came back after the mushroom training to find that my landlord had vastly improved my pepiniere by vaulting it in the middle, allowing the water to flow freely off the sides. I’ve now got lots of weeding and TLC to do in and around the beds themselves, there are a few things sprouting here and there but I definitely need to resow. I’ve turned down Yaya’s offers to spray the grasses around my garden several times now.  I know it would be a lot easier than manually weeding but I feel like on principle I should avoid chemicals wherever possible, especially since this is such a small scale endeavour. I’m also not a huge fan of the thought of eating lettuce that’s been in close proximity to herbicides, but that’s just me.

My melon fruited while I was gone! I had honestly nearly given up on this bed ever giving anything, what with the torrential downpours drowning the baby plants every other day. The cucumber in the bed next to it has come up as well, so I’m hopeful that those will survive as well, they’re a pickling variety that I’m really looking forward to using.

This is my current view! I’m sitting on my veranda enjoying our SECOND SUNNY DAY IN A ROW. It was the perfect day to wash and get rid of the damp that was clinging to my sheets. When I got back on Tuesday night my whole house seemed to be covered in a fine layer of mildew. That’s what happens in the dead of rainy season when you leave for a week I guess! No open windows = party time for the damp and gnats. Don’t even get me started on the gnat invasion. You leave ONE cup of berries out that you meant to use for seeds and suddenly you’re hosting a swarm of the things. Luckily a jar of sugar water mixed with apple cider vinegar and some dish soap does a pretty good job of attracting and subsequently drowning them. That being said, I did get frustrated and spray Raid at one point yesterday. Which I realize is funny coming from someone dead set against using herbicide in her yard.

Other than the gnat infestation, I’m doing well! Power was on when I got back, but has since gone back out again. This really isn’t a big deal though, since we’ve had so much sun and I’ve been able to charge my solar panels. I’m convinced it’s a present on my mom’s birthday, which is actually why I’m posting this today! I was going to wait until my pepiniere was a bit more presentable, but there’s nothing wrong with showing a work in progress. After all, that’s what Peace Corps service and life is all about. We are all works in progress, and I will be working at integrating and improving and learning up until the day I COS. And then after that I’ll be doing the same somewhere else.

So, until next time!

See yeeso and Au revoir,

Katie

Sorry about the hiatus everyone! A lot has happened in the 4ish months since I last posted; for example, we had IST (In-service training) during the majority of March (for the crew in the Adamawa who went to the Agriculture training it was about a full month away from site). We covered a lot of ground, and did several presentations during our time in the Southern region of Cameroon, in the city of Ebolowa. We learned how to raise brooding chicks, make organic insecticide, make chicken feed, and lots of other fun stuff.

As you can see in the photo above, we were all very engaged during this break between projects, me especially (far right).

We worked at the model farm of one of my fellow PCV’s counterpart, and made a crazy number of garden beds there.

During IST we also had the opportunity to meet the new Country Director of PC Cameroon, and I love her! Danielle is very nice, and actually visited my post last week.

IST wasn’t all fun and games. The very last day of training I started to feel kind of funny and left to go to my hotel room. I had a slight fever in the afternoon, and things went downhill from there pretty fast. By 2 AM I was in the hospital with a fever of 103.5, nausea, chills, shakes, and diarrhea. I’d taken the rapid malaria test and tested negative, but I still had all the signs so they got me on malaria medication (the lab wasn’t open for tests). I was taken to PCMO in the capital and went to the lab. My blood results came back negative for malaria, which was good news! The bad news was that they weren’t super sure what I had “maybe a bacterial infection or a mixed infection or the flu, or a combination of the three”. All I knew was that my skin hurt and it was the sickest I’ve ever been. The antibiotics they gave me were magical though, and I was able to eat and drink water again a few hours after I took it. I was so happy. I have to say, if you have to get that sick, it’s nice to do it around a lot of PC admin and near the capital.

My brother came to visit me in April, and brought a bag of goodies with him! We packed an insane amount of activities in the short few days he was at my post, and managed to hit all of the important places. James got to experience the market in Ngaoundere, and the cattle market near me. We also had a tour of the chefferie, and got to see the top tourist site near me, Tello Falls! It was a great time.

Shortly after James visited me, I had my latest hospital visit. While doing something really cool and not at all idiotic I cut my finger to the bone. Luckily I was going to the city the next morning, and applied first aid and was at the hospital the next day. The wonderful Dr. Max literally glued me back together and I went on my merry way. A month later and I’ve regained all feeling in the finger and it no longer aches at the end of the day. I also avoided infection, what caused my first visit to my hero Dr. Max. It could have been worse! I used to think I was careful with knives, but I guess I had to be taught a valuable lesson about care around sharp things.

These next photos are just a random collection of images from daily life in Cameroon, I figure I owe everyone lots of pictures after being off the radar for so long!

A week ago (the day before Danielle came to visit) a swarm of bees came into my roof and a few escaped into my house. This is why I keep my spiders!

A hobby I’ve picked up here is bird watching. I’ve done IDs on about a dozen birds so far!

The following photos are all of my house, I’ve made a lot of progress decorating and furnishing it in the past few months!

The last few photos are all of food here. It’s a big part of my life after all!

It might seem kind of odd to end the post with a photo of pizza, but I do seem to think about pizza a lot, so it’s kind of fitting! Sorry for the long wait, things are going well here, my first big training for my village is the 20th of this month, and I’m training about composting. I also want to do a film club in village for the English students, and a cultural exchange with the maternal school and the students at the elementary school where my mom works. Both involve a projector that my parents will be sending with a PCV that is visiting home in July. I should get it in time for the new school year to begin! I also have plans to make a garden near the health center focused on nutrition with the seeds we got from a recent nutrition training. So that’s it project wise for the next few weeks, I’m in Ngaoundere at the moment, but will be leaving tomorrow to return to village. It’s dinner time right now, and I just made chicken taco salad for everyone to eat during our Gossip Girl marathon. It’s a fun night!

Until next time, which will be far sooner than 4 months, I promise!