Cameroon: Days 1 and 2

I'm posting this from Dr. Kamga's office computer at the University of Buea. I got into Cameroon at 1:30pm (about 8:30am Eastern time) but I haven't gotten a chance to hop on the internet until now.

The flight over wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It was long, to be sure (about 17 hours from DC to Addis), but my seatmate was very friendly, the service was great, and they served food and alcohol often enough to make the flight better than it otherwise would have been. I'm going stop short calling the flight pleasant. I watched all three in flight movies at least once (twice for the kingdom fo the crystal skull), and read through the bulk of the Poisonwood Bible. It is a wonderful book, by the way. I finally finished it in the hotel Ethiopian Airlines provided and was blown away by how much the book was able to contain in 500 or so pages. I highly recommend this book.

Hotel Ararat was a decent hotel room with a small TV and a fridge. They served complementary dinner (disappointingly, not Ethiopian cuisine) and an exceptional breakfast the next morning that put to shame every other hotel breakfast I've ever experienced. I also determined (too late) that each hotel room had it's own hot water heater. After the flight, I felt dirty enough to justify an icy shower on a cold Ethiopian night.

Pretty much all of Ethiopian Airlines' flights to Subsaharan Africa go through Addis Ababa, so rubbed elbows with a lot of interesting folks. There were two women on my flight that were adopting Ethiopian children and were flying over to take them home; Nicole, a perky blonde who was working a 10 week social work internship at an adoption agency; Karen and Janet, two occupational health nurses on their way to Johansburg for a photo safari before going to a nursing conference; and Dr. Emily Vargas-Baron, a former director for USAID in the Clinton years who now worked for UNICEF and the RISE institute. Over the non-Ethiopian dinner, she gave me some powerful advice, mostly about not complaining about cold showers.

The flight from Addis to Douala was fairly uneventful, except when a frenchman spilled red wine on my pants. Now I have a pair of pants with splotches of purple down one leg.

The doctor at the desk next to mine is playing Bryan Adams on his computer. Driving in Cameroon is as crazily exciting as I hoped it would be, and Dr. Kamga, who picked me up at the airport, drives a Mercedes, although the speedometer is forever stuck at 20kmph.

The room at the Presbyterian mission is nice and cozy with it's own bathroom. When I first moved in, there were some oversized bugs here and there, but after their eviction, I've gotten comfortable with the rest of the nonmosquito roommates. Hot water is hard to come by, so I've gotten used to cold showers. It's actually pretty invigorating. Nothing wakes you up in the morning like ice cold water dumped on your head.

What else is there to say? I'm still a little jet lagged, but not enough to stop me from taking a walk around Buea. It's beautiful here and in the morning, the clouds on Mt Cameroon part, baring the summit, which is majestic. Enormous cloud banks roll in under Buea, like a parade of fluffy primordial titans around a sailing, floating mountain.

Underway

I'm about to have dinner with my family before heading off to Dulles for the flight. Turns out I read the Ethiopian Airlines website wrong, and the checked luggage limit was 50lbs, not 70, so we had to rush to divide my one large suitcase into two smaller ones. Rush Rush Rush. Things are becoming more hectic and nervousness is starting to creep up on me. I'm starting to have those nagging feelings that hand on the edge of your mind and tell you you've forgotten something. Gah, I hope they're wrong.
*Deep breath*
Alright, see you guys in Cameroon!

An email from Dr. Jackson:

...You should keep a daily personal log of your activities while in Africa (starting from now) as well as an official record of your activities. This is something that you can regularly attend to in the evenings. The most important thing to take with you as you begin this trip is an open, flexible mind. Divorce any attachment you may have to material things. Stay focused. You will see, smell, and hear strange and sometimes repulsive things, but don't be alarmed. I believe that you will find the people to be as curious about and receptive to you as you are to them. You will experience some periods of loneliness, but at these times, remember the larger goal of gaining knowledge and dig deep in your soul for the committment to perservere. You are going to make a fine health professional. What you are doing now is getting your "in the trenches" experience. If you pay attention and learn from this hardship, it will serve you well the rest of your life. I have every confidence in you and your successful completion of this mission. Just be careful. Don't take unnecessary risks, but be open to new experiences. Other than the things we have for Dr. Ndumbe, don't give all of your gifts away in the first week because you will be meeting new people throughout your stay with whom you may want to give a momento of your friendship. By the end of your stay, however, be free of the gifts. Just so you know, in some places in Cameroon, it is the custom for people to give you something before you return home. But whether this happens or not, you will come away from Camerooon with many rich memories and significant insights that will be directly applicable in your public health career.

Thanks, Dr. J!

An unforseen dilemma

Do they have sunscreen in Africa?
I really hope so. I also hope it's not hard to find or really expensive. I'm taking doxycycline as a malaria prophylaxis, and about 10% of people who take it develop a sensitivity to sunlight. I plan on getting a big floppy hat, but I don't want to have to take a bunch of sunscreen with me on the flight.

Speaking of malaria, I've finished treating my bednet with permetherin, and there was still some solution left, so I'm trying to treat two shirts. I'm not sure how well it will turn out.

night blindness and books

My cousin is attending the University of Baltimore for accounting as an international student, so I've been going around with her, most to coach her on her driving and help her out with some administrative stuff. Her driving was initially pretty god awful, but it's improved dramatically. Except for the fact that she has trouble seeing the lanes on MLK blvd at night and her classes end at 8:30pm. On the way back today she switched lanes without knowing it once or twice; thank goodness we didn't get into an accident. I think she has a vitamin A deficiency so I fed her some carrots and my parents gave her some vitamin supplements, but we're going to have her eyes checked anyways to see if her current eye glass prescription is at all accurate.

The good side of all this is that while I've been waiting for my cousin's classes to end, I've gotten a lot of reading done. Yesterday I finally finished Nabokov's Lolita, which I started a long while back. I think I actually read it because I wanted to read Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, but for some reason, in order to do so, I had to first read Lolita. I'm all in all really impressed by Nabokov's writing. I have some mixed opinions about the controversial nature of the story. The book's unique and flowing writing style kind of draws you along, so that the actual obsession between the narrator and the namesake didn't really bother me too much until about the middle of the book, when it takes on a more sociopathic bend. I think this is where I initally put the book down. I picked it up again because I wanted to finish it before I headed off to Cameroon and it would mean one less book to pack, but the end went by faster than I had imagined it would. The writing is amazing immersive and I can see how it was ranked one of the best english language novels. I would highly recommend it.

I had time today, while my cousin was getting some academic counseling, to head into downtown Baltimore and visit the Powerplant, one of the most visually impressive bookstores I've ever seen. The store itself is a Barnes and Nobles and isn't remarkably different than any other besides maybe a larger selection. But they did have the remnants of giant furnaces that made up the base of cyclopean smokestacks that you could walk though. Pretty nifty. Anyways, I picked up some more books for the trip: The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier, the White Man's Burden by William Easterly, and the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I also wanted to pick up Malcolm Gladwell's the Tipping Point, but they didn't have it in stock.

I made my way though to about a hundred in the poisonwood bible today. great so far. I'll probably finish it before next week, and I might post something about it then.

A don wolwa Anglais na?

I just found a page on wikitravel that has useful phrases in Fulfulde! This is awesome!

Hello.

Salaamma Alaikum (This is an Arabic phrase, used when entering houses).

Hello. (informal)

Sannu, Sannuko.

How are you?

Jam na?,

How is your health?

Jam bandu na?

Fine, thank you.

Jam ko dume.

Fine for the moment.

Jam ni towne

What is your name?

Noy inde ma?

My name is ______ .

Inde am ______ .

Please.

Useni.

Thank you.

Useko.

You're welcome.

Koi dum (it's easy

Yes.

Ohoo.

No.

Kai.

See you later

Sey yeeso.

See you tomorrow

Sey jango.

I can't speak name of language [well].

Mi nonata Fulfulde.

Do you speak English?

A don wolwa Anglais na?

Look out!

Hakilo! (Careful!)

Did you sleep well? (good morning)

A waali jam?

Good night (to sleep)

Jam wallah.

I don't understand.

Mi famay.

Where is the toilet?

Toy bao saare?

I want water.

Mi yiddi Ndiyam.

White person.

Nassara

Packing List

Carry-on Packing List
• Sturdy backpack [check] I've got my old search and rescue pack that's about 40-50 liters and is a hair over the size limit for carry ons (22"). I hear Ethiopian Airlines are pretty relaxed about this sort of stuff, so maybe I can get around it. The alternative would be to take my smaller day pack that fits 25-30 liters. We'll see where I am after this list
• Map of Cameroon [check] I had to order it from amazon.com, but it's the only map of Cameroon by itself (instead of say, the whole of West Africa).
• Copies of various documents [check] I've got copies of my passport, Cameroonian visa, and vaccination documents. I just need to get them authorized by the police department in Cameroon to make them "offical copies." I also bought a blue little waterproof case to put folded up documents in, but I can't find it.
• Rain jacket [check] Marmot Precip jacket: wateproof, but light enough to wear in hot climate. I got it with my employee discount and dividend when i worked at REI. Best zero dollars I ever spent on an article of clothing.
• Extra socks [check] mostly thin liner types for my walking shoes. I figure I'll buy a pair of sandals made from car tires in Cameroon. A friend of mine has a pair that's lasted longer than anything normal has a right to.
• Water bottle [check] taking my old nalgene covered in outdoor brand stickers. It's functional, but if I lose it, I won't shed too many a tear.
• Snacks [check] clif bars and clif shots! mostly for the 3 day flight, but the clif shots should help cope with jet lag, I hope.
• Door stop [I still need to get this] a security thing I picked up somewhere. You slide it under a closed door of a hotel or something, and it should keep a door from opening. It's only paranoia if it costs more than 2 bucks, right?... right?
• Travel pillow [check] I'm rethinking this. A pillow might be too bulky for a carry on, especially if I have to take the smaller pack.
• Alarm clock [check] I have a fear that the alarm will go off in the middle of the security line while the clock is buried at the bottom of my luggage and I will have to dig like a prospecting badger to get to it, resulting in an eruption of toiletries and undies :(
• Toiletries [check] toothbrush, toothpaste (I have two full tubes since someone told my mon it's going to be hard to find or really expensive in Africa), razor, soap, shampoo, towels, deodorant, and a few things I don't care about at this point.
• Camera [check] Nikon Coolpix L18. It's a pretty nifty camera that's easy to use but has plenty of features, and is at a decent price ($120ish). I wanted to dub this my Sameroon Cam, but my sister is against it.
• MP3 player [check] RCA Pearl 2gb. It's not ipod, but it's got some interesting features that drew me to it: can record voice memos, takes a microSD card for memory expansion, and takes AAA batteries. I thought the last one was a good selling point since I should be able to get double and triple As in most places, I don't have to worry about getting a converter for the charger, and I can take it on long trips away from outlets (like freakin long ass plane flights)
• Extra batteries [check] have bag o' batts, mostly AA. I'm sure I've seen a colony of AAA's somewhere around the house.
• Books [getting there] This will probably end up being the heaviest and bulkiest part of my carry ons. Here's the list of books I'm considering taking:
Betrayal of Trust by Laurie Garrett
Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers
Epidemiology: An introduction by Kenneth Rothman
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi
Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues by Paul Farmer
Hunger: A Modern History by James Vernon
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingson
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Faheinheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
I'm sure I'll add and remove books as I continue packing.
• First aid kit [check] a pretty standardized first aid kit
• GI pharmacy (lactase pills, peptobismol, immodium AD) [check] Also connected to books, if I can find it, I'm taking How to Shit Around the World: The Art of Staying Clean and Healthy While Traveling by Jane Wilson-Howarth. It is an excellent book and I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking about traveling overseas, especially to the 2nd or 3rd world. It's written by a physician and parasitologist and filled with great information and tips about hygiene, food, water, and sanitation, not just pinching a loaf.
• Hand sanitizer [check] yes, I've become that which I loathe: the traveler that takes hand sanitizer everywhere... but it's just so useful for cleaning your hands, I swear.
• Gifts [check, almost] I've got an assortment of items of individuals in Cameroon, as gift giving is an expected custom. I just need a gift for Henri, who has organized my lodgings for me, but it can't be more expensive looking than a silk tie, which I am getting for the Dean of Health Sciences. Hmmm.