Day 17

Life here is good.
It's a beautiful Sunday. I spent the afternoon at Duke and Harvey's restaurant and treated myself to a chicken dinner with plantain fries while reading a UNICEF report on the maternal and child health mellinum goal. Oh, and I'm wearing a shirt that doesn't smell moldy! Certainly an occasion to celebrate.

Everything mildews here. If it's wet, it mildews. If it was wet, it mildews. Even if it never was wet, I'm sure there's some sort of 'just add water' dehydrated mildew spores all over it. Doing laundry is a dance of putting your wet clothes on the line when there's sun, then sprinting out when it begins to sprinkle a half hour later.

I'm getting used to it; I think I'm finially settling in.

Day 16

The Uninet outage continues. The wired internet has come back online a few days ago, but the wireless is still down. I tried to connect to the system through an Ethernet cable, but was still unable to connect for some reason, so I’m holding out for the wireless. I’ve been using internet cafes, but the problem with them is that they’re very slow. Even internet cafes that advertise ‘fast internet’ are barely fast enough to check my email, and I can’t open more than two windows without paralyzing the connection. Combined with their tendency to inexplicably drop the connection just as I press the send button, they are very frustrating to use. Another factor contributing to the update drought is that fact that the internet café nearest to my room has either been closed or without connection for the past week.
I think I'm going through internet withdrawal...

Day 13

As I am officially a member of the faculty at the University of Buea, I was able to attend a faculty meeting this afternoon. It was very interesting to hear the back and forth between the various department heads and professors. The major topics on hand at the meeting mostly dealt with the results of most recent exams and the administrative procedures for internships for medical and nursing programs. In reality, however, there was generally a lot of arguing back and forth and by and large not much getting done. This was mostly because the dean himself was not present, which apparently meant not much could be definitively accomplished.
Despite the lack of productivity even after going several hours over the scheduled end, the faculty look forward to these meetings, and I soon found out why. In the next room, there was a series of long rectangular tables on which a large variety of Cameroonian delectables: cocoyams, ndole, goat and beef roast, rice, and gizzard, which is traditionally only given to the venerable, but Dr. Kamga insisted I have it and assured me that the fact that he had twins would counteract any bad mojo, which he would confer onto me. I stuffed myself silly. This sort of feast is provided at every faculty meeting—I’m looking forward to the next one.

Don't eat monkeys

HIV is generally accepted to be a descendant of the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) from African apes and monkeys, since monkeys from Asia or the Americas don’t carry any strain of SIV that could cause HIV in humans.
A study presented in 2000 at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections suggested that the first human infection of HIV-1 was in West Africa around 1930. HIV-1 is thought to have originated from chimpanzees and been transferred into humans through the butchering and consumption of monkey meat, NOT by monkey sex as commonly thought.
HIV-2, on the other hand, is most likely thought to have been transferred into humans from sooty mangabeys. The first case was mostly likely in 1940’s in Guinea-Bissau due to consumption of bush meat (again, no sooty sex) and spread by the war of independence from Portugal.
In 2006, a group announced that they had located the SIVcpz strain (that was most likely the origin of HIV-1) in wild chimpanzees in Southern Cameroon.
The moral of the story: don't eat monkeys, you don't know where they've been.

Day 9

I’ve attempted to make some jiedan chao xiehongshe (eggs and tomatoes) with rice, and for the most part, it’s turned out fairly well. I've become comfortable with making rice, but it’s made me appreciate rice cookers that much more. Having the ability to cook rice and keep it warm without taking up cooking pots is very handy.

The local food here is pretty good. My favorite is grilled fish, grilled by fish mamas on street-side stands. You eat it with your hands and it comes with this green spicy sauce. Dr. Kamga taught me how to eat fish Cameroonian style, which involves eating the head. He also made me kiss the fish, which he said was a Cameroonian tradition, but I secretly think it's one of those things the locals make foreigners do for fun. While I have found restaurants nearby that will serve meals for about 500CFA (about $1), the market nearby means I can get fresh (as fresh as I can get at the market, anyhow) ingredients for about 1000CFA that I can draw out for a few days.

The internet at the Unversity has been down for the last couple of days, and the connection at the regular internet cafes has been too unreliable to even do anything on blogger. Last time i tried, the Cameroonian internet troll ate my post. I've been able to upload some photos onto flickr (before the Uninet went down) so when Uninet comes back up, look forward to some pictures scattered throughout the blog.

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!

Day 5

I got very little sleep last night, with the rare z’s filled with bizarre, passionate dreams. The morning was unremarkable except for a botched attempt at French toast. Lexi and I headed to the Ecotourism office in the afternoon for a tour of the nearby tea plantations. The tea plantations themselves were underwhelming, although the opportunity to discuss Cameroonian issues with our guide, Ferdinand, made the trip more worthwhile. The tea plantations of Cameroon went from a reasonably successful government operation to a privatized monopoly which employs a fraction of it’s original workers, lowered wages, and ships the majority of tea overseas, according to Ferdinand.

On the route back from the plantations, he elucidated on the funeral practices of the Bakweri people. In a traditional home, where thatched roofing connects several smaller huts and floors are bare earth, a deceased elder is buried in one of the rooms (huts) of the home and the door is locked. When there is a dispute in the family, a family member is ill, or an issue requires ancestral intervention, the significant individuals enter that room. Outside of traditional villages, this practice is rare, but even in Christianized communities, esteemed family past are buried in front of their homes, marked with small porcelain tombs.

In addition to guiding tours of tea plantations, The Ecotourism office provides services for trekkers on Mt. Cameroon and the surrounding ecosystems, including guides and porters to the summit. The guidebook said that the Ecotourism office hires many former hunters. Indeed, Ferdinand tells us that he himself used to be a hunter on Mt. Cameroon, before becoming a guide for the Ecotourism office.

Once I learned that Ferdinand could track, I tried to get him to teach me, but the tidbits of advice he gave I already knew and his more advanced classes are for only for guides. Still, I think I will pester him some more.

We returned to the mission, and I enjoyed a frigidly refreshing shower. We tried a restaurant off a side street called Prime Cateres with surprisingly tasty fried fish. Lexi’s verdict of the fried chicken was also top-notch. After picking up some fried street-beignets, we took a taxi to Beno bakery. It had a lower selection of western name branded, but more practical items that Cameroonians may actually buy. In short: they had peanut butter! The can is all oily, but the price wasn’t bad (1750CFA=$4) for 1½ pounds. I’m going to spread this on freaking everything. Also grabbed a sausage, a couple of sugary beignets, and beer (Becks!). I’m a happy man.
By the time we were heading back to the mission, it got very dark. We both managed to cram into a taxi with 3 other passengers (in a sub-compact). When they say don’t drive or ride at night unless you have to, they mean it.

New critter update: millipede (not in my bathroom, but in the mission hallway).