2010 Part One

So apparently I haven't written a blog in ages. Whoops. Sorry. Anyways, life here is going and I suppose that is the reason for the lack of communication. So since I last wrote - I have done a soy training en brousse teaching a group of local women in a village called Deringsing to make tofu and soy milk. It went really well and a number of these womens' husbands have come to me afterward telling me that their wives have successfully made tofu like we taught them - they say it in a way that let's you know they are bragging about their wives, which is cute and doesn't happen all that often. I have also trained two more villages to make lye soap. I will be going to Banyo (which is a few days travel and where one of my friends is posted) to teach women there to make tofu in June.

I successfully completed the AIDS formation - training 25 local women and men on AIDS prevention, transmission, and having them have the opportunity to talk with and ask questions of a person who is currently living with HIV/AIDS. This is probably the most rewarding part of the whole day because most everyone at the conference had never met someone with AIDS who was alive and well and willing to talk with them about it. But, there was a man with HIV and a women with HIV who came from Garoua and spoke with the whole group about what it was like, how they were married with kids and there children where HIV negative and the woman's husband was also HIV negative. These people were healthy and had jobs and family but also were HIV positive. It blew people's minds.

Women's Day came and went. The pagne was really ugly I thought - I have some pics I will try to get up at some point. Also, the pagne had a misspelled word on it in English (all the phrases are written in both French and English and one of the English ones was misspelled - you'd think before you print up thousands of pagne you would check the spelling....). Mike and Phil got to dance with groups of local women at the bars while I took pictures of this and I think a video too. We all wore women's day pagne - even Mike and Phil. I wore green, Mike pink, Phil yellow. It was awesome. People asked them about why men were wearing it and they explained that it was to support the women. Mike talked about how he was going to cook me dinner that night because it was my fete and how they should all go home and cook dinner for their wives. Don't think that happened, but at least people were willing to talk about it - step one.

Now I have a couple of things in the works: I am doing 4 different trainings this coming week teaching people to make oral rehydration solution - it's rainy season and diarrhea is very prevalent. We are teaching them to make it with all local things - salt, sugar, bleach, water, plastic 1.5 liter bottles, and using bottle caps as measurements. I am also planning on painting a world map mural on the wall of the local high school with Courtney while she is here this summer. I have spoken with the director of the school and he gave us the go ahead. Now we are working on finding money! I am also toying with the idea of doing a project with one person in Bibemi and one person in Adoumri where we give people chickens to raise for eggs. This doesn't sound complicated but I promise you would be wrong, it is. The last big thing I am planning will be the first week of August I think. I am planning to, along with Phil and Caitlyn, do a door to door AIDS education campaign where we would bring in peer educators from a provincial capital who are HIV positive where Caitlyn is located to come to Bibemi and Adoumri and go door to door talking with people about HIV/AIDS and living with HIV and the importance of knowing your status and being open about it, etc. Caitlyn has done this is another village with these peer educators and said the results were amazing and at the end of the day 5 people were willing to admit they were HIV positive and they formed a group to support one another. So, we are figuring out logistics and money and everything for that. Again, that doesn't sound all that hard to do but language, culture, and corruption all play big factors in making it more difficult.

Well that is about it here on the Cameroon front. I will try to be better about writing blogs. Hope this finds all of you well!