Day 6

I spent the majority of the morning churning peanut butter. My grand plans to spread glorious, golden peanut butter on glorious, toasty toast this morning were dashed upon opening the can. As I pulled back the tab and peeled away the lid, I realized why the can was so damn oily: the peanut butter had separated into peanut oil, and peanut concrete. Mixing the two together was an epic, cosmic struggle: it took an hour and a half, and left a few blisters, but by all that is holy, I got it.
It tastes awful.

Breakfast was saved by some awesome French toast courtesy of Lexi before she left for Dschang, in the West province. Thanks!

I spent most of the day at the University, in my new office. I haven’t talked that much about my work so far, mostly because it’s not that interesting, but also because not much has happened. Mostly what I’ve been doing is literature review, which means reading a lot of papers on prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, then searching and researching for more papers.

In the evening, Kamga and Njole, who both work at the University, took me out to experience some Cameroonian nightlife. At the Jupiter nightclub, I was introduced to Cameroonian beer—Castel; a new drink mix—Guiness and coke (not that bad); and Cameroonian music from a live band. The singer was particularly interested in me, especially when he found out I was American, and not Chinese. The place was quaintly decorated with strings of Christmas lights and the Castel branded tablecloth had little inspirational snips that I really liked.

Most importantly, I learned where to find fish mamas in Buea!