First Week at Post

As much as I hate the idea of having a blog, I decided that this was the easiest way to keep anyone who cared to stay up to date with what I am doing up to date. So the place I live is called Bikoka/Bibondi which is about 8k outside of Lolodorf in the Southern province of Cameroon. Bikoka and Bibondi are basically the same village, but there is a division about half of the way through pretty close to my house. The two are stretched out about 13k along a paved road, there are a couple of small boutiques, and a bar with cold beer (when there is electricity) pretty close to my house.

This is technically Bikoka

I live off the main road a little bit near the house of the General of Cameroon, and directly behind the house of another military official. Neither of them spend too much time in village, but I'm pretty sure that the fact that the General lives here is the reason that such a small village has running water, electricity, and a paved road. Lolodorf is a pretty small town and it pretty much just has one main street, and even though a lot of stuff is hard to track down, I am close enough to Yaounde that I shouldn’t have too much trouble finding anything I need. 

Lolodorf Main Street

The whole area is Virgin rainforest, and I am in the middle of a small mountain range, so it is all pretty beautiful which makes up a lot for the heat and humidity. 

This is what the rain forest looks like

Lolodorf was first colonized by the Germans (hence the name Lolodorf) and there are a lot of cool old , buildings that are in the process of disintegrating back into the jungle, as well as a surprising number of people who speak German.

This house was actually built by the French but whatever

Yesterday I went out and met the Chef of Bibondi (3^rd degree), and today I met the Chef of Bikoka/Bibondi (2^nd degree) the Chef of Bikoka (3^rd degree) and the Chef of the community forest I will be working with. Apparently the plan is that I will go to each of the 13 different neighborhoods in the village (each neighborhood has its own chief in bringing the grand total to 17) and do do a small PACA event. PACA stands for Participatory Analysis for Community Action, and it supposedly works really well, but some the “tools” seem to be rather contrived, and others seem like things anybody in a new community would do anyways. According to Peace Corps that is all I am really supposed to accomplish in my first three months here, so it is nice to have a counterpart who is going to help me organize all of it, and I will hopefully be done by the end of January. My community host is the director of a technical high school called CAAFBI for girls where I might do some agricultural classes, but I don't really know what type of projects I will be working on yet (that’s what the PACA stuff is for) besides a tree nursery for fruit trees, and Soy, both of which I already know there is a lot of interest in. All of the farmers I have met thus far, and the Chef's have seemed really interested in helping me, but we will see how much motivation there is when it comes down to doing some work.

Moving in to my house has been rather strange, as this is the first time that I have had any time not surrounded by people 24 hours a day in over 3 months. Living with a Cameroonian family during stage was great to learn the culture, but after a few months it gets kind of annoying feeling like you are always under a microscope. It is nice to have a little sanctuary, but if I am not careful I could spend the better part of two years just sitting in my house seeing as I brought a bunch of drawing supplies, bought a guitar in Yaounde, and now I have access to the internet from home. My community host set me up in a pretty nice place with a working bathroom, two bedrooms, a living room, and an attached kitchen. The only way to get to the kitchen is from outside, and as of right now it is still a bedroom so I will have to install a counter, a sink, and buy a stove. For now I am getting all of my meals made for me by my community host, which will be fine for a while, but I don't want to have to eat on their schedule the whole time I am here. They also set me up with a couch, some chairs, shelves, a desk, two beds, and even some curtains for my living room. There is a little bit of work yet to be done in the house, but I am really lucky to have fallen into a mostly furnished house when opening a post because I just talked to someone else that is opening a post and he said that all he had in his house was his footlocker and a mattress. Students in Cameroon receive a grade for manual labor, and the girls from CAAFBI cleaned my house as part of their class which was pretty awesome.

My house

I am going to start getting more pictures of all the people I am working with, and the mountains so that I can post them here, but until then I guess that is all the news that I have.