Last week I moved into my first of three home stays. My family consists of a Mama and a Papa who are delightful. My Papa is the manager or CEO of a small store and my Mama is a cashier at the story. I am not too sure of specific details of what they do for a living because in Cameroon it is rude to ask too many questions when you first meet people. I have three little host siblings. Soufaya is 12 and has a hearing impairment so she wears a cochlear implant most of the time. Her speech is fairly good because she went to France for schooling for years while she was younger and has a tutor here in Yaoundé. In fact, my Papa said that he likes hosting exchange students (this is their 4th time hosting) because he feels like the French took such good care of his daughter and he wants to give back in the same way. Then there is my little, energetic, and very helpful brother, Lathif who is 9. He calls himself my protector and loves to show me around and help me whenever possible. Finally, there is Farida who is almost 7 and a darling, happy, playful and curious little girl! We also have cats to keep the mice away!
My family lives the furthest away from the SIT school where we have class everyday. We live in the Muslim section of town, called Tsinga. I have to only family of the group of nine students who is Muslim and I think this has given me a different experience. I wake up every morning to the call to prayer (the Athan) coming from the local mosque. In the beginning I found that this was annoying, but now I actually find it helpful to wake up a little at 5 am so I’m not so sleepy when I wake up at 6:30.
A typical day right now starts with breakfast (gluten free cereal they found for me with hot milk from powder) with my brother and sisters. Then my father drives all the kids to school and drops me off at their school, so I walk about 15 minutes. At school we have French classes, Cameroon history classes where we concentrate on Cameroonian development, and/or research methods and ethics classes to prepare us for our future research projects. The staff has been so helpful with all the classwork and they are getting us ready for our big research project at the end of the semester.
After class we go get fresh lunches from local markets or sometimes out to little cafés. We then return to the SIT center and work on homework or research for future projects or go on runs; we are allowed to stay at the office until 4:30 at which point I start my 40 minute walk home. I am greeted by the smiling faces of my host siblings. We often play, they braid my hair, and twice a week I give them an English lesson. Around 6:30 we sit down to dinner as a family which is often a meat, lots of veggies in a tomato based sauce and some type of starch. All the food is very fresh! Even the herbs like peppercorns and garlic are ground between a flat and round rock!
After dinner Mama and Papa help the kids with homework for awhile and they go to bed at 8. I work on homework until 9 at the latest, but by then I’m really tired and go straight to bed.
You might be wondering about these future projects and research that I have talked about. We are doing an IDI project now that is a mini research project with small groups on anything that we are interested in. I am in a group with my friends Jacky and Margo and we have decide to research traditional medicine doctors in Yaoundé. This project will be finished in the next 9 weeks. After that, we have our 4 week big research project where we can choose our subject and location in Cameroon. I will be researching Francophone Cameroonian women authors and the truth in the themes that they present in their novels. I want to know if the movement from the traditional mother figure to the more modern daughter, a theme that is present in many novels, is a true representation of Cameroonian families or an idealized situation.
There are many differences here in Cameroon compared to back home, but I think the biggest difference is the water. The tap water you cannot drink and must be very careful with around fresh fruits and veggies. Also, there are water cuts all the time. We probably only have running water two days per week. We bathe using buckets and even flush the toilet by pouring in water. Thus, I really appreciate the availability of fresh, clean water that I have back in the states. We really do not know how privileged we are in America. At the same time, I really like learning about how much I do not need to be happy. I’m not even in a rural area, so in the future I am sure I will be made aware even more of what I have in the states.
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