First day of school

Posted by Thryn on September 7th, 2008 filed in Post

During the past two weeks, in addition to cooking elaborate and delicious meals in our new kitchen, drinking tea and playing scrabble, Gabe and I have been busy acquiring furniture with the help of one of our new colleagues who is incredibly nice and helpful, and preparing for the new school year which starts tomorrow (yes, on none other than the day of our first wedding anniversary)!

We went to the lycee a few times last week to meet with other teachers and administration, and to view the emploi de temps (class schedule). Gabe and I both have classes at the same time in the morning which is nice because the school is actually about a 25 minute walk from our apartment so it will be pleasant to walk together in the morning, holding hands and skipping of course (just kidding (well if there are rainbows we might be compelled to)).

Since our friend and fellow teacher advised us that not many students come to school during the first week since they prefer to sell goods in the market for one more week before starting school, we just prepared a simple questionnaire to give them to find out their experience with computers and what they want to learn, etc. We’ll see how that goes.

While the school was relatively empty of students last week, we took the opportunity to photograph the campus and the beautiful mountains in the surrounding paysage. Above are a few photos we took. The rest will be on flickr later this week.

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Bon Appetit!

Posted by Gabe on September 2nd, 2008 filed in Post

Gabe cooking our first meal at post

It felt good to finally prepare a meal myself! After eating with our homestay family for three months and then at the restaurant located in our building here at post for several days, Thryn and I were finally able to “faire la cuisine” with the basic kitchen appliances we bought at our provincial capital Bafoussam. We bought spaghetti, which isn’t too hard to find, some fish and vegetables, and voila! Dinner for two. The food at the restaurant was actually quite good though. The head chef is a cameroonian trained in french cuisine, so we’re really happy we have that right downstaris! The meal I prepared was a modest one in comparison, but so good all the same. It was a start. Since our first meal, we haven’t stopped cooking. Fish au citron with scalloped potatoes, latkes, even homemade mac & cheese! Yes, we’ve been indulging a bit in what you could call All American cuisine with our new found freedom, but there’s always room for great Cameroonian dishes like koki, couscous, and plantain pile (pee-lay).

We’ve become acquainted with the folks who work at the hotel in which our apartment is located, and we’ve even been told they’d show us how to prepare several traditional dishes. Thryn and I seem to have already become “part of the family.” They’ve been really friendly and helpful to us and we’re feeling at home already. All in all, settling in is going quite well. Tout va bien!

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two years…

Posted by Thryn on August 31st, 2008 filed in Post, Training

We moved to post a week ago and so far Gabe and I are really enjoying our new town! We live au centre ville, across from the market in a spacious (and very empty) apartment. Traveling to post was relatively smooth and enjoyable since we didn’t have as far to go as some of the other volunteers (like those going to the Extreme North!). After we said goodbye to our host families, they divided us up by area of the country and hired busses to take us to (or somewhat near) our posts. Since our town is on a main paved road, we were able to be dropped off right in front of our apartment. Moving in took about 20 minutes since we only had four suitcases, two water filters, a couple of moto helmets and a trunk. Of course we have no furniture, but last week we bought a mattress, some sheets and pillows, and a gas burner (and a can of gas) and some pots and pans so we have the basic tools necessary for eating and sleeping.

We’ve uploaded photos of the swearing-in ceremony to flickr. It’s tradition for all of the trainees to have clothes made of matching pagne for the ceremony. I designed a simple dress (which came out almost like my drawing), and Gabe got a traditional boubou shirt. There were speeches given in French, English, Pidgin, and Fulfulde. The ceremony was followed by a delicious reception dinner with our host families, and then of course a party at which all of the new peace corps volunteers celebrated our first night in-country without a curfew.

This week we have been busy cleaning our new place, settling in, unpacking, navigating the Cameroonian utility companies to get water and electricity (still in progress), working on acquiring some furniture, and next Monday on the 8th, we start teaching young Cameroonian children how to use computers! Our two years of Peace Corps service starts now…

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Art Club–Camerounais

Posted by Gabe on August 30th, 2008 filed in Model School, Training

During Model School, us PCTs were able to organize after school clubs which took place every Wednesday. Thryn and I, along with one other trainee, headed an art club. We were very pleased with the outcome. The students were all very motivated. We did activities like Exquisite Corpse and had them design and create two large multimedia landscapes with local materials such as bark, leaves, and pagne (traditional fabric) that they collected. Also, I was very pleased that we were actually able to give lessons in human proportion, shading, perspective and how to make a caricature (some of my lesson examples are pictured in the photo) all in French. I have some hope that an art club might work here at post. I think it would be very good for the students to have a creative outlet because programs for art or music are rare here in Cameroonian schools. We’ll see!

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Nous sommes les voluntaires!

Posted by Thryn on August 22nd, 2008 filed in Training

Today we were officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers. The
ceremony began with a traditional village dance, and ended with the PC
Cameroon country director being named an honorary nobility. The 36 of
us trainees raised our right hands, vowed to serve and protect the
constitution, and all of that good stuff, and became volunteers.

Tomorrow we leave for post! More photos of the swearing-in ceremony
coming soon…

(p.s. who knew the hand-lettering we did in Typography class would
become useful in Cameroon–12 signs for Model School and 6 signs for
the Swearing-In Ceremony, all done sans ordinateur.)

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End of Stage

Posted by Thryn on August 15th, 2008 filed in Training

Wednesday afternoon art club at Model School

Last week we had the closing ceremony of Model School, and the swearing-in ceremony in which all of us trainees will become official Peace Corps volunteers is this Friday. At the closing ceremony yesterday, I gave a speech on behalf of the education trainees (in French…) in which I talked about what we learned from our experiences teaching at Model School, and how it helped us prepare for the next two years teaching in Cameroonian classrooms throughout the country. There were some fun times, like playing Jeopardy with my students to review Excel and types of networks, and some less fun times, like writing and grading exams and filling report cards. Model school really was a great way to prepare the education volunteers for the upcoming school year. It is a real school, with real classrooms full of students and real report cards, but we have the support of our trainers and model teachers while we learn how the Cameroonian education system works. It’s an ongoing exchange of ideas, where we share some of our teaching techniques with them, such as activities and ways to involve the students in active learning, and they share their techniques for effective classroom management and cultural norms that we as teachers must abide by, in order to gain the respect of our students and be effective.

My 4eme class wins the award for rowdiest students, while my 1ere class (the equivalent of about 11th grade) gets special recognition for asking me for bonbons every single day. I finally gave them cookies on the last day because they all passed their Informatique exam–which means it was too easy because according to the standard here, about half of the class is supposed to fail. I had to curve the 4eme exam to get half the class to pass though, so that one was too hard. We’ll get them right eventually.

It’s exciting and a little unreal that training (a.k.a. stage) is almost over and soon we will say goodbye to our host families and move to post! We’re in Younde for a few days to do banking and admin, but also to indulge in some big city treats like pizza and milkshakes! Very expensive, but so worth it.

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Bafoussam

Posted by Gabe on July 29th, 2008 filed in Training

Bafoussam, West Province, Cameroon

We’ve been to Bafoussam twice now during our time in Cameroon. Bafoussam is the capital of the West Province. Many things can be bought there that might be unavailable in smaller towns like motorcycles, cheese, hardware, and most things one would buy in a supermarket. Yes, I know that was a random list! The first thing that stood out to me about this town was the condition of the the roads–they are extremely bumpy. For the most part they are paved, but imagine crevices the depth of roadside ditches cut across the road perpendicular to its direction. Voila! The roads of Bafoussam. Some of these become ponds filled with muddy rainwater. Even the SUV in which I rode for my first trip there bottomed out several times. There are two main markets, Marché A and Marché B. The latter is where one can find food and the former is for everything else!

We passed through Bafoussam most recently during our visit to our future post. Transportation in Cameroon is a lot like amusement park rides! If you don’t mind being stuffed into a rusty metal compartment with wheels on the bottom, along with a bunch of people & possessions (and possibly goats), you’re good to go. The taxi we took from Bafoussam to our post had a make-shift handle on the trunk but no latch, so it bounced up and down while we drove. I was eyeing our belongings pretty carefully to make sure they didn’t fly out along the way. Our seats were so worn-in that all I could feel were the springs. I have to give it to the Cameroonians though–most vehicles here are imported second-hand from Europe (at least that’s what I’ve been told), and are kept in surprisingly good condition for their age. And the Cameroonian drivers could school a New York cab driver any day of the week. In all honesty, I have to say getting around here is a lot of fun. There is always something unexpected, which makes every day into an adventure.

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First (teaching) day of Model School

Posted by Thryn on July 21st, 2008 filed in Model School, Training

Bienvenue dans la Salle Informatique

Today was the first day the trainees taught at Model School after a week of observing classes taught by Cameroonians and current PCV’s. This morning I taught 4eme (A) and 1ere and Gabe taught 4eme (B) and 2nde, all francophone classes. The kids were much better behaved than I expected them to be. That might be because I told them that if they chat in class, they won’t touch a computer this week and the lab on Thursday will be cancelled. The 1ere students, which are a little older, were more picky about my French spelling when I wrote on the board.

The teacher of the day award has to go to Gabe though. Since each of us is teaching one of the two sections of 4eme, we prepared the same lesson (formatting cells in excel) for both 4eme A and B for today. When I went into class this morning, the 4eme students had not yet been divided into the two sections. Another teacher told me that the proviseur and censeur would arrive soon to divide the class, so I began the lesson. However, they never came to divide the class, because they were apparently occupied with an unexpectedly locked classroom door during the first period. So after I finished teaching the lesson, they then divided the class and sent the 4eme B section to their separate classroom.

I found Gabe during the class break and told him that I had bad news. I had just taught the lesson we had prepared for today, to the entire 4eme class because they never came to divide them, so he had about 5 minutes to come up with a new lesson plan (in French of course) to teach to 4eme B who now unexpectedly will have two hours of Informatique today instead of just one. He improvised quite well and he said the kids behaved themselves nicely! I was so proud of him, being able to entirely improvise a computer lesson in our second language on the first day of teaching. Bravo Gabe!

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un cavalier

Posted by Thryn on July 17th, 2008 filed in Training

After spending two days at our post, we travelled Friday morning to Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest Province. Since our post wasn’t far from the training village and we still had 3 days left of site visit, we took the opportunity to visit other volunteers in the area. Bamenda is a great city, with a large market and even a supermarket that has things like corn flakes! Since the Northwest is one of the two Anglophone provinces, we had to shift gears and go from speaking nothing but French in the West to speaking English and even a few words of Pidgin (which I’m learning) in Bamenda and the surrounding villages we visited. We stayed with a volunteer who is posted near Bamenda, and his friend took us and two other trainees to ride horses on Saturday morning. The view from the summit of a hill we climbed on horseback was so beautiful, it was almost worth the five full days of beaucoup de pain all of us had as a result of the three hour ride. We made some great friends, both Cameroonian and American during our trip that we’re looking forward to seeing again when training is complete.

On Sunday, the five of us who met up in Bamenda headed back to training on a bus that was surprisingly uncrowded for the first few hours of the trip. Then we changed buses. The last hour on the bus was cramped, bumpy, and polluted as a Cameroonian bus ride should be

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Le Paysage

Posted by Thryn on July 15th, 2008 filed in Training

After eating a quick breakfast of bananas, fried dough, beans and rice, we left early Wednesday morning and boarded a packed bus with the censeur (vice principal) of our school to visit our future post. We traveled with another trainee, Jim, and his counterpart because our towns are very close to each other. We arrived a few hours later and were met by the proviseur (principal). They took Gabe and I around the town to meet the Mayor, the Sousprefect, the traditional chief, and a few school officials at the Lycee where we will be teaching. He showed
us the school’s multimedia center, which has 23 computers. It’s a great lab, and Gabe and I hope to help them improve it by helping them add internet, and if possible, acquire more computers (since there are usually about 100 students per class).

Our principal was very busy, so after we toured the school, he took us to our hotel. The hotel wasn’t the nicest, but it did have a water-heater that sort-of worked, so I enjoyed my first lukewarm shower since leaving Yaounde a month ago. However the following night we changed hotels and gave up the semi-working water-heater in favor of a room with less mold on the walls.

We spent two days walking around town, talking with the censeur, meeting people, explaining to the PTA president that many Americans do indeed have big families and greet each other on the street (at least in the south) and eating a lot of french fries. We couldn’t be happier with where we will be posted for the next two years. The West Province is abundant with all types of fruits and vegetables, and our town is great, with a big market where I can buy mangoes and avocados to eat every day if I want. The surrounding countryside is beautiful, and we are within a few hours of several other volunteers, including a few around Bamenda which is only about an hour bus-ride away. Gabe and I are really excited to move there in just over a month!

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