Making Progress and Attending Bakossi Weddings in Douala!

To kick things off this week I would like to play a song by Don Tom - a very popular Nigerian artist. There is such great music to dance to here! It is not all Cameroonian though, the majority of the popular music comes from Nigeria. This song is super popular here and played all the time :)

 

 Here is another popular song, the video is not very great but the song is :)

I have been busy busy busy and need to make more time to write in my journal and on my blog.

Yoga on the rooftop
I have began teaching yoga classes Monday-Wednesday-Friday at 6:30am on the rooftop of a friends apartment building in Molyko, Buea. I have anywhere from 4-8 students a day. They are really enjoying it and I am having fun too. We started doing classes in the bottom of an apartment building next to my colleague Delegate's (his real name is Max but everyone calls him Delegate pronounced 'Deli-gay') house. It was almost like an open garage and the doors to two peoples' rooms were located just there - so if they stepped outside to go to work or for whatever reason...they were in our yoga class. It was also distracting because on water day (Buea has water every other day) everyone would be filling up their buckets and jugs from the tap that was literally right behind the class. So people would just be staring at us and even sometimes saying things - all in good fun, but it was hard for me to teach and to keep my students focused so we found a better place - right on top of the very same building is a beautiful open rooftop that overlooks Buea and Mt. Cameroon. That is where I teach now, people can't distract us but the noise from the busy street is still there. I will have photos soon :)

Networking and Civil Society Strengthening
Last week I was invited to attend the Press Conference for the launch of the project “Action for Civil Society Organizations (CSO) Strengthening in the South West Region- ACSOS”. It was implemented by Reach Out Cameroon (and NGO in Buea) within the framework of the Civil Society Strengthening Programme- PASC. PASC is a Cameroon and European Union partnership. It was interesting to see where CSO like Social Development International are going in the next year to come and what the Southwest Regions plan is to strengthen their capacity. It was a good networking event and I made a couple of contacts. They plan to made a database of NGOs/CSOs in the region by their themes (what they focus on: eg: health, micro-finance, water/sanitation, youth empowerment, etc) and their location so that organization can work together to meet common goals and objectives. That was a problem I noticed from the start. There are hundreds (literally) of NGOs just in Buea and they are all so small and trying to do all the same things....if they just worked together it would be much more beneficial to the community, the region and the country.

Moving Foward
Things are really starting to come together with the organization I am working for, Social Development International. I said I wanted to start at the grassroots level in this "international development" field...and boy I sure am. I had a meeting with the organization founder (Suliman) discussing transparency, accountability, record keeping, volunteer recruitment and project sustainability/success. The money and finance part sort of went in circles and got no where, but I think he understood my concerns about the way volunteers are recruited and the way programs are run. As a man said during the ACSOS program earlier in the week "If you try to do everything, you will not be able to do anything well" and since Suliman was at that Press Conference, I refered to that quote several times as I was explaining how we shouldn't be running 10-12 different programs with SDI ...we need to focus on a few and see them to completion.
Because of this discussion and what I have seen so far with the way the organization is run... I am in the process of leading volunteer/intern recruitment and orientation section of SDI. I will be creating job descriptions for the interns and start looking for people to fill the position. I am creating intern policies that will list all of their job duties and what is required out of them when they are working. Since there is literally NO record of what people do here, that is one of the first things that needs to change.

Tribal Wrestling in Bakwai village
I was invited by some friends to go see Tribal Wrestling in Bakwai village which is the 'brother village' of Bonduma village (where the SDI office is located). I was so impressed by the quickness and strength of everyone who fought!! We arrived early and sat in chairs behind the elders of the village underneath a makeshift bamboo shelter. I saw the chief and introduced myself, thanking him for allowing me to bear witness to such an event. This event takes place every Sunday for 4 weekends and then it moves to another village. Participants started to arrive by foot singing, chanting and dancing as they neared the wrestling field. Directly across from where I was sitting there was another bamboo structure that held drummers 10feet or so above the ground. They played the entire time :) Soon about 3 villages and their wrestlers had showed up, each taking different corners or sides of the field.

You can tell who the winner is in this one...

Men/boys and women/girls of all ages are allowed to wrestle but it was dominated by males. I saw women whom my friend said were going to wrestle, but time did not permit so I was not able to see them. Things worked like this: if you saw someone you wanted to wrestle, you approached them and bowed, if they accept, they return the bow and you both walk to the scored table (which was right in front of where we sat) to sign up together. If you were looking for someone to wrestle one people had started you walked around doing various things that symbolized you were looking for someone to fight. Some walked around with long large grass leaves in their hand shaking them and singing, others wrapped themselves in a Cameroonian flag and just walked with their arms spread open like wings. The matches started with the youngest age group, maybe about 5-7years old and they continued up to full grown adults. You could see the skill level and pure strength increase with every change of age group. I was impressed by even the youngsters... they do not joke around - they take this wrestling very seriously.

Drumming away with an attentive crowd.

When the match would begin, they would be escorted out by their village coach who always seemed to be giving them some sort of inspirational pep talk. The ref would check the two opponents for 'illegal' things such as sharp objects, shoes, etc. He would have them shake hands and then the fun would begin. It wasn't the wrestling I was exposed to in the US... if you are whatsoever flipped on your behind/back area - you lose. There is no 'pinning' for 3 seconds or anything like that....it is all about staying low to the ground and keeping your balance. As the age category increased so did the competitiveness and seriousness. If there was a very good match, were it was going into the 3rd round (the final round where if no one was flipped on their back it would be called a tie), the crowd would start going wild. Whenever a person would win a match like that... it was like making a winning shot at the buzzer during a state championship basketball game - everyone from the crowd would just pour out onto the field screaming and cheering and then soon go back to their respected sides for the next match to begin.
I am seriously considering training for a few days and wrestling one of these weekend - I just dont know if I can find the time between travel and work. It looked like so much fun!! I hope you enjoy this video I made of just some of the matches I witnessed. I had to pay 1,000 cfc to photograph (2USD) but it was totally worth it, and I don't mind supporting village activities like that...even though I'm sure the money just went to palm wine :)

Muea Teen Mother Empowerment Workshops
After working with a handful of social mobilizers in Muea our second Identification workshop had a phenomenal turn out of 30 girls!! We had the mobilizers make lists of who they talked to, so when we arrived at 4pm we called many of them and sent the mobilizers out for one last round of reminders. We explained the program several times, since people kept coming in late, and made it clear that if they didn't want to be there - we didn't want them to be there either. Everyone seemed interested and on board. We helped them fill out paper work and set the date for the next and first official workshops.
A Delegate from the Ministry of Women's Empowerment opened up the workshop with some motivational words. She was actually really inspirational and got the girls singing, smiling and laughing. We stood and sang a couple of songs before our next speakers. Mr. Bate and the Manager both attended on behalf of Buea Mutual Health Care and they gave an introduction on the importance of good health, the benefits of having Mutual Health and how it worked. We had a total of 15 girls attend, which in my opinion - is excellent. We took photos of the girls and their children (if they had any) and also chose topics for the next few months of workshops.

The photo is quite blurry but here we are at the first official workshop in Muea! :)

After all the difficulties in Maumu and talking to several Cameroonians (and a friends/family at home), I am realizing that the way we were trying to go about this program wasn't the best idea. We are complete outsiders, especially me. These girls and their families wont trust me and our project for months. Instead of trying to target 20 teens from 5 different villages, I think it will be better to stick to 2 villages and work with whoever wants to attend. Soon the community and other girls will see the long term and short term benefits of the program. They will see out faces and become familiar with the project and our presence. I am thinking after some weeks or so, more girls will want to join in which case I will start a new series of workshops for a new group of girls in the same village.

Reaching out to Bolifamba (aka Mile 16) with Social Mobilizers
The Manager of Mutual Health has paired me with two women from Bolifamba whom I met with last week. I will be seeing them tomorrow and be doing a training of social mobilizers in the village. I will sensitize these social mobilizers on the Teen Mother Empowerment program and all of the benefits. From there, they will go door to door (as was done in Muea) to tell the community about the program and answer all questions. The identification will be set for sometime next week at the Bolifamba hospital, they already agreed to let us use their room once a week for our workshops.

Epic Bakossi Wedding
 Last week on Wednesday I went with Delegate to Douala for his nieces wedding which was a 3-4 day event. We had planned this for about a month since he knew I was interested in seeing 'traditional and cultural activities'. Wow!! What an event! Although it was in the Littoral region (which is Francophone) his family is Bakossi which is an Anglophone tribe so all week we spoke English, Pigdin-English, and their Dialect (Bakossi).

The traditional wedding was on Wednesday evening and it consisted of a massive party with tons of music, dancing and a lot of traditional activities. We arrived around 5pm and rested a bit as more and more family started showing up. Everyone was ridiculously welcoming and kind. After some introductions and some activities we ate. There was SO much food I thought I was going to explode.

Main guys are in the two white shirts. One was the elder brother of the
groom who is in the blue on the right.

So. Much. Delicious. Food.

After we had finished eating it was nearing midnight and I was already beginning to feel sleepy - I was just not used to staying up late. There were 2-3 men who were leading all of the festivities. There was a lot of palm wine drinking from a calabash. As the festivities continued I had one of the Aunties as me to help her with part of a traditional ceremony. I was a bit confused and embarrassed but agreed without knowing what I was doing. She brought me in a room with a couple of other female family members and the bride, Ida. The told me that part of the Bakossi tradition, and many other tribes for that matter, is the 'choosing of the bride' ceremony. The groom is tested by being approached by several women covered from head to toe in fabric and he must choose the correct woman that is his wife. This is what they wanted me to do - cover myself in fabric and walk/dance/sing together with the aunties as we approached the groom to test him. Of course I participated!! As we entered the house and the living room where everyone was gathered, someone spotted my white feet because the sheet/fabric was not long enough... the whole room was bursting with laughter, excitement and surprise! It was hilarious!!! I was told that in some tribes it is very serious, there is no laughter and if the groom chooses the wrong woman he is fined by the brides family. Afterwards, the aunties even gave me 2,000 cfc ($4) as part of the tradition... it was nice...bought my airtime (phone credit) for the next few days!

DJ Delegate and I getting ready to dance Wednesday night!

The men of the families always did this high five hand shake thing the whole weekend. Someone told me that it represented unification of the family and the amount of times that they 'high fived' represented a persons rank. (men of same age = 3, women and young men = 2) They would give three high fives with their right hands and then on the third high five they would grasp hands and then shake their hands as they brought their hands down.
I was warned that we would be dancing until DB (dawn break) but I knew I wouldnt be able to make it that late. I finally called it a night at about 2:30am and the house was still rocking with music. I woke early at about 5:45am and could still hear the music going and people hooting and hollering. I pulled myself out of bed and thought, well, 3 hours is enough sleep - these guys havent even went to bed yet! As I get upstairs I see the house is a mess and people are half a sleep and half dancing and just spread out all over the place.
By 8am those who had went to be (like me) were all awake and the ones who had never slept were still awake as well. The women started preparing the breakfast (tea and bread) while the men just hung out and BSed with each other. I moved back and forth between the men and the women. At about noon or so, everyone slowly started to fall asleep and begin to rest for the day. Thursday, as Delegate had explained earlier, was resting and preparation day. The men slept and the women cooked copious amounts of food for the next day...the court ceremony, church wedding and reception. I helped with whatever I could...washed dishes, peeled carrots, talked to so many family members, politely denied marriage proposals, etc. It remained a pretty low key day for the most part - everyone was just recuperating from the festivities the night before and preparing for what was to come the next day.

On Friday we had the court ceremony at 9am which was really 10:30am. Delegate had to go back to Buea to pick up a niece so thankfully I was in good hands with his family and just went with them. Everyone loved my dress; I had it made especially for the wedding. After court I came back to sleep a bit because I knew I would be up late that night. Delegate made it back in the early afternoon. The church wedding was at 2pm but I went with the second round of family members who arrive closer to 3pm (we didn't miss anything). We were out of the Church by 5:30 and taking tons of photos for at least and hour.

Groom and Bride at the Wedding on Friday.

Beautiful flower girls!

My new family :) I love them so much!

Some of the youngster of the family, they were
calling me "auntie" by the time I was leaving.

By the time we got back to the house, it was just about time to head to the reception. I changed into my 'dancing outfit' and we were on our way. Things started at about 9pm and dancing started veeerrry late, probably after 1am. I danced danced danced until 5am with everyone else!!

Hanging out at the reception, waiting for the dancing to begin!

By the time we got home after dropping everyone off, I wasn't even tired anymore. So I watched the sunrise and chatted with family. All of a sudden I heard large pig squeals coming from the back of the house. I went to watch the Saturday pig slaughter...another part of the wedding tradition. The husband's family gave a pig to the wife's family as part of the bride dowry. It is also like some sort of test - if the family eats it and is sick, then the marriage is not true and it will not work but if the family eats it and it is OK, the marriage will last and it is true love. The pig was huge and it took 5 men to hold him down and kill him. It was really intense but the men insisted that I watch so I can learn all about the traditions :) They then cut up all the parts of the pig and made a list of all the boys in the family (because the big is for the men [although they did share with the women]) and divided up the meat depending on age. Soon I was eating cooked pig skin with pepe (mixture of ground peppers) and holding my own raw chunk of meat to bring home. They really accepted me into the family as one of their own.

The festivities were slowly coming to an end and I started backing up to leave. I found one good cup of coffee and ice cream before I left the city and headed home with other family members who lived in Buea. I made it home before 5pm and tried to catch up on work, but the electricity was out so I just hung out and went to sleep early.

Future Plans
This week I am meeting with the social mobilizers of Bolifamba to set an Identification date for the village and better explain the program so that they can go door to door sensitizing the community about the program. On Friday I will have my 2nd Muea Teen Mother Empowerment workshop and am very much looking forward to it.

I need to find a job in Yaounde because I've made up my mind that that is what I want to do when my contract is done with Social Development International. I am going to Yaounde next weekend (April 27th) to do some networking, apartment hunting and job searching. I was accepted to SIT Graduate Institute for the Intercultural Service, Leadership and Management Masters Program which I would pair with Peace Corps but I will post pone that until fall 2014.

The following weekend, May 4th-5th I will be traveling to Bamenda, Northwest Region to meet/visit a family there. While I was visiting SIT Graduate Institute in February, I met a woman who was going to school there who was from Bamenda - she sent me to Cameroon with a package for her family so I will be bringing things for them and celebrating her younger brothers birthday with them. The Northwest also speaks English and Pidgin and has many historical chiefdoms. I also believe it is the largest exporter of palm wine in the country.

blak man no de di doty

"Blak man no de di doty" is Pidgin (most common language in the Southwest and Northwest regions of Cameroon) and it literally translates to "black man doesn't die of dirt".  It is on some level a type of metaphor or saying here that loosley means, African are very resistant to things here that foreigners will usually get sick from. The examples I was given were water and dust: the water and dust here doesnt make them (black men) sick - but when a white man comes he will get diarrhea from the water and respetory/breathing problems from the dust. 

Found this while cleaning up the SDI office.
"We make a living by what we get. But we make a life by what we give."

Although I have only been here for 26 days, I feel like it has been months and I am already dreaming about extending my stay. Cameroon is such a diverse country with so many places I want to visit and learn about. Cameroonians are genuinely hospitable and truly amazing and caring people. I feel so blessed to be spending my time here. I still have 120 days until my 'planned departure date' but since I have not bought my ticket yet...I am temped to stay. On verra (we'll see)

My favorite meal has come to be grilled fish with 'condiment vert', pepe and bobolo. Condiment vert is the sauce seen in the white bowl. It is a combination of ginger, garlic, oil and other spices. I have not yet learned how to prepare it, but I will post the recipe soon. Pepe is a combination of several spices that are ground together and put with everything to give it a little kick! Bobolo is not in the picture but is is a dish made by fermenting cassava leaves and shaping them in thing long loaf that is then wrapped and twisted to keep shut until serving. I prefer it hot but is often served cold. When Cameroonians living abroad come back to visit (or locals are going to visit family abroad) they often bring a suitcase full of bobolo!

House in Maumu Village, Beau, Southwest Region, Cameroon, West Africa.

My first day in Maumu only yielded 6 out of 20 teens who showed up. We arrived at 3pm and walked around the village for over an hour trying to round up young teens who had dropped out of school, were pregnant or already have a child. Everyone was very shy, and some girls even ran and hid from us as we walked around. I was accompanied by good friend and colleague Max (aka Delegate) and a local social worker from Maumu named Henry. By 5pm (it started at 4pm) we had about 6 girls so we talked about future activists and chose and official time and date for weekly workshops. As we left on the moto bike I crossed our fingers for a higher turn out the following week and began mentally planning for next week' s program.

The first official workshop is pictured here: to the right is Max (aka Delegate) and on the left is Henry.

For the second week in a row we had a very low turn out. I was disappointed because I spent the entire last week preparing and planning. I had a delegate from the Regional Delegation of Women's Empowerment open the workshop with words of empowerment and encouragement. Her speech was followed by a representative from Buea Mutual Health. He elaborated the importance of good health and how it leads to productivity. He explained the benefits of Mutual Health (which is a form of health insurance that SDI provides for each participant). The girls were hardly interested and kept turning their attention to the outside world not paying attention. At the end, I explained to them that this program was for their benefit not mine. I stressed the importance of their participation and need for their general interest and want to participate. We took photos of each girl and her child to begin the application process for the health insurance.

House in Maumu.

Before my arrival, SDI had identified 20 teens in Maumu who we would target to work with for the Teen Mother Empowerment program. I am unsure how this identification process took place, but it obviously wasn't the best way - we only had 6 of 20 girls show up. Because of the low turn out 2 weeks in a row and the obvious lack of interest, Suliman (SDI director) Max and I had a meeting with the Chief of Maumu. I wrote a letter expressing my concern about the lack of interested and overall participation. We told him that if we did not have the serious interest of more than 10 teens we would have to take our efforts elsewhere.

Low and behold the following week we waited until 4:30pm (30min after the workshop was supposed to start) and not a soul had showed up. We packed up our things and took a motobike back to town. That was out last effort in Maumu and we will be taking our efforts to other neighboring villages including Upper and Lower Muea, Bolifanba and Dibanda.

Lesson learned:  

You cannot help those who do not wish to be helped.

Mama Africa with Baby Jason. Jason is Bernadette's
(my host family sister) baby, he just turned 5 months.

The markets have always been my favorite part of Africa.

Here at the Muea Market held every Thursday and Sunday, you can find an plethora of goods ranging from used clothing and African fabric to toothbrushes, lotions and perfumes to literally heaps of dried foods and many locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables.

African prints: the patterns and colors are mesmerizing.

Sardines anyone?

I have a tendency of overloading my self with work but I like to stay busy. Besides the Teen Mother Empowerment Program, I took it upon myself to fill as many administrative roles with SDI and in the office itself as I possibly can. Seeing the mounds of paper documents scattered on chairs, shelves and on the floor throughout the office was unsettling; how can this NGO possible get anything done without any sort of organization or record keeping methods? When the internet is not working and I have nothing of immediate concern to tend to, I go to the office and spend my days organizing. I have purchased binders and labeled them with various headings and one for each SDI project. I hope that this organization helps future volunteers to become more equip with the knowledge of what has happened in the past, how people have done things and where to start once they arrive.

While I am here, I am also hoping to create some sort of 'policy and procedure' document for interns, volunteers and other staff of SDI. There is no sort of record keeping in place so when I went to make the 'annual report' for 2012 there were no tangible records I could find. All of this needs to change. The unsustainability of the projects here are being more and more apparent to me so I am sincerely hoping I will be able to collaborate with Suli and other volunteers to improve the effectiveness of SDI's programs so that the community will see lasting results. In addition, I am aiming to also create an Emergency Preparedness Plan and apply for grants to get more funding for current projects. I have a lot of things on my list, things are very slow moving here, so we'll see how much I can get done!!

Paul lives just up the road and comes to visit sometimes.
He also made a new friend: Baby Jason.

Monica and I getting ready for Sara's Passover Seder.

Once I heard that Cameroon was affectionately referred to as "Africa in Miniature" because of its diversity - I made it my goal to visit all 10 regions of the country. Since the kidnappings in the Extreme North I decided not to go there, but plan to spend time in all the other regions. Cameroonians have told me that Cameroon is the best African country because everything you can find in all of African is in Cameroon, but you cannot find everything that is in Cameroon in any another African country. Here you can find beaches, tropical rain forests, mountains, desert and more!

My first adventure took me on a 5 day trip to Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon in the Central Region. Sara, Monica and I left Friday morning and arrived back Tuesday evening. In Yaoundé we visited the Mefou National Park, made tons of friends, went out to the clubs and cabarets and discovered the city on foot.

Ape Action Africa: works on the front-line of great ape protection. Their goals are to address the immediate threats faced by gorillas and chimps in Africa, and to work with communities to develop long-term solutions to ensure their survival in the wild. They rescue orphaned and injured gorillas and chimpanzees, some only days old, hours from death

Baby chimpanzee and mommy.
The DNA of chimps are more than 98% identical to that of humans.

Peek-a-Boo!

Silverback Gorilla

Reminds me of Lion King.

Mandrill

Monkey

On the left you can see bruise marks and on the right you see a scratch.
While visiting Mefou I was attacked by a monkey that somehow got out of
her enclosed habitat.

Our guide was showing us around the sanctuary when I saw a monkey walking around out of the enclosure. I told our guide, Elvis. At first I wasn't scared but then it ran around Elvis and headed towards me! Earlier that day Monica had told me a story about an Australian woman who had her faced ripped off by a monkey - - that story was racing through my head as the monkey latched onto my leg. Elvis advised me not to move or try to run just to be still. I listened. It let go of me and climbed a wooden poll that was directly to my right, the monkey was now at eye level with me so I slowly turned away so that my face was not in front of him, I couldn't get that story out of my head...I did not want my face ripped off. As soon as I turned, the monkey grabbed onto my right arm. She grabbed even tighter and then as she went in to bite me Elvis open hand slapped it off the wood post and onto the ground. She then became very angry and I was very scared at that point. Elvis began to distract the monkey and try to use his body as a barricade. He advised both Monica and I to slowly start walking away and moving down the path away from the monkey. I was convinced she was going to follow my scent and attack me again but thankfully she didn't and we made it out alive. Elvis said I was very lucky it was not a male or the alpha male because it would have been much more aggressive and would have bitten me for sure.

As I wondered around Yaoundé on Easter Sunday I stumbled upon Le Musée Camerounais de la Blackitude (Cameroonian Museum of Blackitude). I figured it was closed so I went to look at the hours as it was open. As I approached the front door a women came out of her house (which was situated right next to the museum) and offered to open the museum for us right then and there.

The artifacts in this museum had several different traditional purposes and significations. Most of them were from the West.

Making the long walk up Mount Fébé in the Bastos area of Yaoundé to see Le Musée d'Art Camerounais (Museum of Cameroonian Art) was definitely worth it. Unlike the first museum I visited, there was tons of information to read on nearly every peace of art in the 3 rooms. I would have loved to buy the book for future reference but it was out of my budget.

The first room had several wooden pipes of all different shapes and sizes in display cases smoked by several different classes of people and for many purposes. The book explain how all members of society smoked cannabis sativa (no joke, that was in the book); the larger the pipe base and mouth piece the high status: therefore women traditionally smoked very small pipes and chiefs smoked the largest. There was one pipe with 2 bowls and one pipe with 3 bowls which were smoked by a father celebrating the birth of twins or triplets.

Traditional masks used for ritual dances.

The next room is pictured below. It was full of statues, masks, stools and beds. Several things were made with geometric patters and/or spider legs. Spiders represented wisdom so it was used often.

One of the 3 rooms in the museum. Notice the stools on the ground: chiefs and quarter heads
would carry these from meeting to meeting, village to village - it was like their portable throne.

View of Yaoundé from Mount Fébé!

I spent the last night in Yaoundé was with some friends at Dani's house (the Algerian Consulate to Cameroon) eating homemade Algerian soup and couscous whilist taking about his work throughout Africa. We had met him our first night out on Friday at a bar where he immediately extended an invitation to dinner. We saw him quite a few more times over the weekend and was very happy to have made that connection.

In only 5 short days I feel in love with the Francophone capital. I made so many friends that I cannot wait to visit again. I know I will be going back soon - it was a 7 hours bus ride but very worth it. It is a fantastic place to improve my French as well - not many people speak English.

I had the Teen Mother Empowerment identification on Wednesday after I returned and had spent the entire previous week preparing. Last week I went around to different radio station in the area to broadcast messages about the program, met with the Upper and Lower Muea chief and had a friend pass out announcement/introduction fliers to all 25 churches in the village. I was certain there would be a satisfying turn out. 

As I walked around Muea Village before the identification workshop, I noticed that there were some (just 1-3) very nice looking houses amongst more normal looking ones like in the picture of Maumu earlier in the post. I mentioned it to Max and he told me that when someone passes away and there is a funeral celebration, it is usually held at the families house. The family does the major remodeling/redecorating in honor of the deceased loved on and for the funeral celebration. The houses I had seen he explained, had recently had a family member die.

There was a somewhat disappointed number of attendance but my hopes are still high! I had tons of community support and many local adults were interested in helping with the program. They told me that the community center (where the workshop was held) should be full, the message was just not getting out to the teens. They suggest that we find 'social mobilizers' who will go from door to door

I'm starting to understand the logistics of the country/regions/cities here as well. Buea is a huge city - there are more than 200,000 people living here (which is a lot to me). Buea is in the Fako division (like a county) of the Southwest region (like a state) of Cameroon. Inside of Buea there are tons and tons of small villages. These small villages each have their own chief. Traditionally, the chief is an inherited position but sometimes it is chosen by local elders. Below the chief are "quarter heads" which are just in charge of a very small area (like a couple of blocks ) of the small village. Also within the village is a "town crier" which is someone who runs around from door to door spreading news of some sort. Sometimes the town crier is paid other times he is not. What a neat form of communication.

Yesterday I went to the villages of Bolifamba and Dibanda which are also known as Mile 16 and Mile 14 respectively. The chiefs were not around so we left the letters introducing the program with their wives asking him for cooperation and to mobilize the 'quarter heads' and the 'town crier' so that we can get the maximum amount of participation. As we were walking around looking for the chiefs 'palace' (it is just the name of the chief's house: it is not usually like the palace on Aladan or anything) Max explained the tradition of greeting a chief. Here in the Southwest region of Cameroon and in the Littoral region right next door to us, people are allowed to greet a chief by simply shaking his hand. The Southwest and Littoral regions are both coastal regions and are what Max calls "more liberal and civilized" because they were the first areas to be infiltrated with white men, they picked up the custom of handshakes. In every other region you must greet the chief by bowing your head and getting on one knee. That is a good thing to know for when I am traveling.

Locally grown fresh bananas: 12 for 300 cfc (= $.60).

10 mangos from Maumu for 500 cfc (=$1).

While I was traveling and studying in 2011/12 I spent some time in Senegal which is where I first discovered this wonderful purple sweet juice. I never learned the name of it but frequently bought it on the street, and even paid one of my friends to make me a couple of bottles to enjoy at home. Once I left Senegal I never saw it again. To my surprise, it is a traditional Cameroonian drink and they call it Folore.

I am pleased to present you all with my first of many recipes from Africa and specifically Cameroon. Here is a short video of the preparation, continue scrolling down to see the full recipe.

Folore - le jus des ananas et des hibiscus 

Ingredients
2 Pineapples
2 ½ cups dried hibiscus leaves
2 cups dried hibiscus powder
2-5 cups of sugar (to taste)
10 liters of water
*have rubber gloves available*

Directions:
Put all dried hibiscus leaves in a big bowl with the water.
Cut pineapples into large 2-3 inch chunks and put in bowl. Save all scraps in separate bowl.
Using your hands, squeeze together the pineapple chunks and the hibiscus leaves extracting all of the juice. Literally squeeze and rub the hibiscus leaves and the pineapple together – twist, rub and smash them. When finished, let it sit for 30min-1hour or more.
Transfer to large pot and add remaining pineapple scraps.
Bring to boil and then remove from the heat and set it aside to cool.
Once cooled, put on your gloves.
Remove all of the large pineapple and hibiscus chunks by squeezing all of the juice out.
Strain out all solids with a strainer.
Add sugar to taste.
DRINK and ENJOY!!!