First 6 weeks of 2010!!

January

So I had my mid-service medical exams in January. I am totally healthy. AND, when they ordered my new glasses they needed some measurement they didn’t have so I had to go to the optometrist in Yaoundé and my left eye has gotten better! My eye sees better now than it did when I arrived! Who knew!

I got the money from the mayor to do a day long AIDS training of trainers in March and have been working on planning and organizing that with my counterpart. I have been making copies, we have a room at the Lycee reserved for the day, we have a list of invitees, and a list of presenters, and we picked a date – March 13th!

We went en brousse to a small town called Adi and taught a group of 30 people – about 10 men and 20 women, to make soap out of Lye and peanut oil. They had asked us to come and teach them to make soap before Christmas and Mike and I were both finally in Bibemi together in January. We set a date and then the day before Mike is told he has to go to Garoua to get a swine flu shot (I got mine in Yaoundé) and so I went with his counterpart myself. It was a great success and they seemed so enthusiastic. I got an interesting question – so we had been teaching people that you have to have vinegar on hand when using Lye but vinegar is slightly expensive for people in villages and only available in boutiques – which the villages often don’t have. I had a women ask me why she couldn’t use citrons instead. I thought about it and told her I didn’t know – but I would find out. It takes 3 weeks for the soap to be usable and so we promised Mike and I would come back in February with the answer. My mom asked the chemistry teacher at her school and I think you can use citrons – citrons grow everywhere here and are basically free soooo it is much easier for people to have available. We are going to test it on me at home here – I have vinegar so if it doesn’t work for some reason I can stop the lye from burning me. I will keep you all posted.

February

This week Mike and I are also doing a soy animation. We are going to teach women at the pre-natal consultations to make soy milk and tofu. We bought the soy this past week and have to get it ground into powder. We are hoping today to find a women who is willing to do the animation with us and actually be the one who makes the foods. One of my friends is coming to help us, she does this all the time in her village so she is sharing her expertise on the matter. I won’t get this posted until it is done so I will be able to let you all know how that goes.

Tofu and soy milk were a success!!! The women all really liked it and seemed really into the whole experience and paid close attention. We blew peoples’ minds when we stopped the process before the frying step (the tofu they sell in village is fried) and made everyone try raw tofu. The didn’t really care for it but thought it was funny we ate it like that. Then, Tuesday, Kauleen and I tried to make it at my house! It is kind of a long process and involves going to get the soy nuts ground up after soaking them for an hour. We were successful in making tofu but it wasn’t quite as good as the lady’s. I think we added too much vinegar in the process – the women making it at the health center had used tamarind which is much less acidic than vinegar so our frame of reference was off. But, we did make it – it just didn’t stick together as well as hers. So, Tuesday for dinner we had tofu stir fry MADE FROM HOMEMADE TOFU. Well done us.

Wednesday, Mike and I taught an hour of English at the CETIC (local technical high school) and we taught them to play telephone. We worked all day on making sentences and I realized how poor my knowledge of English grammar terms is and then we played telephone, starting with small sentences of three of four words and ending in this one “Yesterday, Mike smelled like feet”. The kids thought it was hilarious that this was the sentence I made up. It’s the little things people, honestly 

Youth day was the 11th of February. The two nights preceding it there were cultural soirees put on by the local schools. The kids prepared sketches and dances and poems and everything to present at the Sous Prefecture. I cannot describe how hilarious these events are – with the awful sound systems making so much static you cannot understand a word they are saying, the bass of the music making your body shake it is so strong, grands in town (and Mike and I) sitting in plastic chairs in front of the stage while the whole rest of the town circles around us in a horseshoe formation to view the stage and when they get to close to some grands they are chased off with reeds. Honestly, you have to be there. But, I have lots of pictures of the day and the 2 preceding evenings. The night of youth day we spent at the bar with the teachers from the bilingual school (some of them Anglophones) and some of our friends in village drinking and talking and it was great. I have some funny funny pictures of us all together at the bar after. Nothing like drinking, switching between French and English every other sentence or so, and sweating because of yes – THE HEAT IS BACK! Fun times had by all!