What’s up everyone? Sorry it’s been a while since my last blog update. A lot has happened since the last time I wrote on this. I will briefly go into some of the cooler stuff. After being here for about six months I have been having less and less “Whoa, I’m in Africa” moments that was until I met Franky. Franky is a tribal Prince in Bangangté and lives about a 15-minute walk from me by trail. The Chefferie (where the chief lives) is situated in-between my house and Franky’s, there is another trail that veers off to the Chefferie. It is very important to not take this trail because you will enter the sacred forest and technically speaking the chief can have you killed. It’s pretty doubtful that would actually happen but it’s definitely better to respect the traditions. It is impossible to pass by the sacred forest en route to the Prince’s house (which is basically a tree-house by the way) without having a “holy crap I’m in Africa” moment so in the spirit of Thanksgiving I will say that is definitely something I am thankful for.
Franky is very well connected in this region of Cameroon and has taken myself and some other volunteers on some pretty awesome Saturday day trips. My first outing was to go visit the White Queen of Bangangté, a French woman who was raised in Cameroon, moved back to France and then back to Cameroon where she married the local Chief. She has played a large role in promoting awareness to issues facing Africans globally. She has written several books and was extremely interesting to talk to. Feel free to google “La Reine Blanche de Bangangté” for more information on her. My second outing was to visit the Sulatan of Foumban, unfortunately for us he was busy that day so we bummed around the artisan markets there and what not. My most recent weekend excursion with Franky was to a crater lake in Foumbot (different city than Foumban), it was one of the more breathtaking places I have seen, I felt like I was in a Planet Earth episode. We hiked all the way around the rim of the crater. I will try my hardest to post a picture below but I haven’t been able to successfully do that yet due to insanely slow Internet speeds. To top it all off Franky volunteered to host a Thanksgiving party for the volunteers in this area. There were about nine or ten of us that prepared food and went to his house. He had a giant bon-fire set up and offered us all sorts of fruits from his gardens. On a side note Preston Vaughn, another volunteer, and I killed chickens and gutted them ourselves, it was damn rewarding to eat those birds afterwards…
My in-service training, IST if you will, is coming up in less than two weeks. I will be taking my Cameroonian counterpart to meet up with all the other volunteers in my original training group for a weeklong workshop. I have to prepare a written report and a 15-minute presentation on the city of Bangangté to show my peers and Peace Corps staff. I have had a lot of support from various members of the community to help me complete this assignment and I am excited to get to show off my new town to everyone. We recently found out that our IST will be held in Limbe, a beach town in the South-West region. This couldn’t have been a better location because a lot of us are planning on hiking Mt. Cameroon afterwards, which is only a short drive from Limbe. I’m sure I’ll have plenty more stories to share when I get back from the beach and the mountain.
My in-service training, IST if you will, is coming up in less than two weeks. I will be taking my Cameroonian counterpart to meet up with all the other volunteers in my original training group for a weeklong workshop. I have to prepare a written report and a 15-minute presentation on the city of Bangangté to show my peers and Peace Corps staff. I have had a lot of support from various members of the community to help me complete this assignment and I am excited to get to show off my new town to everyone. We recently found out that our IST will be held in Limbe, a beach town in the South-West region. This couldn’t have been a better location because a lot of us are planning on hiking Mt. Cameroon afterwards, which is only a short drive from Limbe. I’m sure I’ll have plenty more stories to share when I get back from the beach and the mountain.
Happy Holidays to everyone and stay in touch.
- Matt
