The little things.

During pre-service training, PCVs hear time and time again about the emotional roller-coaster of an experience that they are about to embark on (or rather, have already begun).  If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen the following graph since joining the Peace Corps, well, I could probably retire early (but only by about an hour or two).

This graph doesn't even begin to cover the amount of ups and downs that actually occur.  During the first few months at post, I tried to make a "happiometer", graphing my mood in Excel using a happiness ranking system of 0 to 10.  I quickly gave up after realizing that I am just far too mercurial here: within the span of an hour, I could go from a 6 to a 2 to a 10 and back down to an 8.  Choosing an average didn't seem to do the day justice; it didn't seem right to rank a day at a 6.5 when really it was all over the place.

What the happiometer taught me, however, was that no matter what happened throughout the span of the day, I could reflect back and realize that there were far more positives than negative, that the negatives really were either easily fixable or completely a fault of my own, and that many of the happiest moments came from incredibly simple things. 

The periods of unhappiness or distress, at least during my service, are mostly caused by 1) a feeling of idleness when I wish to be working constantly and seeing tangible results (Solutions:  Find more things to do! Be proactive! Start a garden!) and 2) the constant attention given to me merely because of my skin color: calls of “Nassara, Nassara”, “la Blanche!” or even hissing or kissing noises (Solution: Introduce myself.  "Inde am na Nassara.  Inde am Maria.")

The happiest moments tend to come from the simplest human interactions:  a brief exchange in Fulfulde with my onion man, a group of children shouting "Maria! Maria!" from a distance, or sitting and laughing with Tabitha and her kids.

Today, however, I realized that there are three awesome things in particular that have been complete game-changers in my level of happiness recently.  They are as follows:

1.  Unlimited texting.  

"Unlimited texting?" you might ask... "What’s so special about that?  We’ve had that in America for years!"  Well let me tell you!   

Up until a few months ago, MTN (my cellphone service provider) offered one text at 10 cents (50CFA, but we’ll talk American here.)  However, they offered a special deal where for just 20 cents, you could send 20 messages in the span of 24 hours.  That’s 20 for the price of 2 – not so shabby!  Assuming I remembered to renew this ‘bundle’ each day, I was paying approximately $6 per month on texting, while feeling a bit constrained, constantly choosing my words wisely to limit my characters so as not to go over the 20 text limit.  

Then MTN upped their game a bit.  For only $1 per month, unlimited texting.  BAM!  

Thanks to this bargain, I now feel far closer to my fellow PCVs who are spread all across the country.  Now I can text like it’s nobody’s business, whether it's to rant about frustrations, exchange amusing anecdotes, or just to say "hey!".  It’s absolutely fantastic.  Even my counterpart has jumped on the bandwagon and started texting me instead of calling.

This definitely causes constant upward slopes on the happiness chart.

(I guess this also serves to demonstrate how frugal I’ve become… That $5 per month that I’m saving is a BIG deal.  Seriously.)

2.  Giant campfire marshmallows. 

Okay.  So in each transit house, we have what’s called an “up-for-grabs” box.  This box is where PCVs can dump any unwanted clothes or other items, under the assumption that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.  And boy, oh boy, what treasure did I find the other day in the Garoua Up-For-Grabs?  A giant unopened bag of giant campfire marshmallows!  We're talking GIANT.  Like, 90-calories worth of pure sugar per each delightfully puffy pillow of sweet, sweet happiness.    

Could this be too good to be true?  Did somebody leave these here by mistake?  The packaging may have a bit of a yellow tint to it, but they don’t expire July 31^st, 2014!  (And going by my Mom's guidelines, that probably means they've still got a good 3 years before going bad!)

I asked around to see if they perhaps belonged to somebody else (hesitantly, for fear that somebody might actually claim them).  The only response I seemed to be getting was, “Maria, I really really don’t think you should eat those.”

Pshh.

The past two nights have been full of pure sugary joy.  When the electricity has been out for weeks, what could possibly be more delightful than roasting giant marshmallows by candlelight?  Nothing, that’s what.   

Finding these marshmallows – huge peak on the happiness chart.  I'll be very sad if I find out that it's not a bottomless bag. 

3.  Tea parties with good friends. 

This is not really something new, but something rediscovered.  I forgot how comforting tea can be.

Today was a long day.  I started out with a run at 7AM.  As soon as I returned, before even showering, I set off to work on my computer, helping another volunteer edit his grant proposal.  We finished at around noon, at which point I showered, ate some ramen, and then started washing my laundry.  I don’t know how many of you have ever tried this, but let me tell you – washing sheets by hand is no easy task.  However, it had to be done, because I recently discovered that when it rains, there is a leak in the roof directly over where I sleep at night, filling the bed with musty, rusty water and a very foul odor that I am so happy to have discovered is not actually coming from my own body (it was a rude awakening when it started pouring at 4AM the other day).

After finishing my laundry, I sat down for just a few minutes before Olivier came over.  He was going to help me clean out the termite mound that had formed in the bathroom, the six different wasps nests that had been constructed in various places in my house over the past two months, and the gazillions of spiderwebs.  After ridding my house of most of the creepy-crawlies, we decided to wash the floor.  This meant moving all the furniture around, and eventually led to the discovery of the worst creepy-crawly of all: a scorpion.

Once the house was clean (by about 5PM), we set off to his house.  Tired, dirty, and itching from heat rash and mosquito bites, I was feeling pretty beat.  Tabitha (Oli’s mom) was not home when I arrived, so I sat on the bench with Oli’s sister, Christine.

When Tabitha arrived, it was finally my turn to welcome her:  “Soyez la bienvenue!! …er….chez vous!!!”  (Welcome!!  To your own home!!)  We chatted and giggled and sat for a while, sipping sweet, hot chai.  It was beyond relaxing.

Good company and tea are definitely always upward slopes, if not peaks, on the happiness chart.

These are all simple things, and probably are not things that one might go crazy for back at home (though I always did love marshmallows), but maybe that just goes to show you how the little things in life are all that really matter sometimes.  The little things in life can lead to the happiest moments.

I am the world's best soccer fan.

One thing all Peace Corps Volunteers strive to do is to become well integrated into their communities, or as we say here: “bien integré”.  As Cameroon has a huge soccer culture and is currently participating in the World Cup, I’ve decided that pretending to be a soccer fan would be an easy way to gain some integration points.

Let’s be real:  anyone who knows me well knows that I know next to nothing about sports.  I will gladly (okay, sometimes begrudgingly) sit next to you while you watch hockey or baseball and I'll occupy my mind by playing solitaire or knitting while you shout things at people on the screen who can’t hear a thing you’re saying and probably wouldn’t care about your opinion anyways… point is, I’ll sit there with you, but I wont follow what's going on and I’m beyond pretending to give a crap.

Despite all that, here in Cameroon, I’ve turned over a new leaf!  Errr… Kind of.

Last night was Cameroon’s first match in the World Cup (against Mexico).  I set off at 5PM decked out in my brand new Cameroon jersey (first sports jersey I’ve ever owned!) to head over to my counterparts house.

Neither Madame Tizi nor her husband were home, so I ended up watching the game with their five sons, ages ranging from 2 to 19.

I kept my mouth shut for most of the game, because when I said I didn’t understand what was going on, the boys thought it was because the channel was in French or that my eyes were too bad to see the ball.  Letting them think that was probably better than the reality: I really had no idea what the heck was going on.

I just want to preface this by saying that my youth soccer team won the U-10 tournament back in the day.  I was goalie.  The best goalie.  The goalie of the winning team!  The coach even made a point of keeping me in the net rather than putting me on forward or defense (because 1. I hated running, 2. I severely lacked coordination, and 3. I was the only girl on our team who would not do cartwheels or draw pictures in the dirt while attending the goal).  As champion goalie, I did at least manage to pick up the basic objective of the game: get the ball in the net without using your hands (unless you are the goalie, of course).

Anyways, here are some essential points about my experience pretending to be a soccer fan for the night:

• I did not make any comments about whose mascot could beat whose, as my mom and I would usually do.  I must admit, however, that this was partly because I didn’t know what Mexico’s mascot was (maybe a chihuahua?), and because lions could totally conquer anything.  Living proof:  Simba.
• I saw the ball go into the net several times, but the score never increased. I found this odd.
• At one point, I thought there were three balls, but then realized that one of the players had superbly bright white shoes.  He was the odd man out – most of the players had super awesome neon shoes that probably glow in the dark.
• The Mexican players fell down a lot.
• The Cameroonian players experiment with their hairdos a lot more than the Cameroonians in Sanguéré-Paul.
• For a while I had difficulty knowing who was trying to go in which direction, because the goalies were wearing blue and black and neither of those are Cameroonian colors.  Then it dawned upon me – the goalie in blue was African, while the goalie in black was Mexican.  Duhhh!  (This only took me about 20 minutes into the second half to figure out.  Why am I even admitting this to the whole internet world?)
• Mexico’s fans had way cooler paraphernalia than Cameroon -- sombreros!  They probably were having a lot more fun enjoying themselves with margaritas and shots of Jose Cuervo while the Cameroonian fans were drinking “33 Export” and sachets of Fighter (Sorry CamCam.  We do love your sachets, really we do, but...but... tequila!)
• It seemed to be raining on the audience a lot more than on the players.
• The TV channel did not use any of those confusing magical moving lines that ESPN usually puts on football fields.
• I was told that each half is 45 minutes, and I was really appreciative that they did not stop the clock during each foul or whatever you call it, but I was confused when the first half went to 47ish minutes and was kind of bummed when they tacked on an extra 4 minutes to the end just for funsies.
• Cameroonian soccer players have really nice butts.

That last point is probably the only reason I will continue to watch the World Cup this season.

Gardening Season has begun!

There’s that classic math problem that goes something like “Sarah can wash a car in 5 minutes and Matt can wash a car in 8 minutes.  If they both work together to wash 3 cars, how long will it take?”  (That was a classic math situation, right?  Or should I be thinking about trains colliding or passing each other…or derailing, to add some Cameroonian flavor?)  (Also, sorry Matt Bikoff, but Sarah Edwards could totally wash a car 3 minutes faster than you.)

I like to think I used to be good at math, but I never really cared for that classic car-washing puzzle.  That’s probably why when I saw Tabitha working in the field next to my house, I didn’t put much thought into it other than “hmm…Tabitha could probably weed this field in two hours, while it would take me sixteen gazillion hours.  Looks like fun!"

It didn’t really look like fun.  I had come home from being out of the house for nearly eight hours straight (that’s a lot of time here in Peace Corps Land); I had missed my daily nap (or two), and had a searing headache.  And of course we all remember my horrible gardening failures from "Machetes, Hoes, and Gardening Woes" Parts 1, 2, and 3.  Nevertheless, when I saw my friend working I couldn’t help but say, “hold on just one minute!  Let me change my pants and then I’ll come help!"

Maybe it was the bilbil talking, (on my way home, I ran into my friend Tala and we “went out for drinks together” which really meant chugging bowls of millet beer before even having a chance to sit down, and then parting ways) but I like to think that it was the way my dad had always encouraged me when I helped him in the yard as a little kid: "a little help goes a long way, and even company is better than nothing!" (This was before I realized that I don’t like dirt or bugs or sun or sweat.  Clearly I’m in the right place!)

Anyways, I changed my pants, grabbed my hoe, and started clearing away the dead, dried-up weeds.  I may have learned my lesson “don’t drink and machete,” but no one ever said a little buzz won’t help with the weeding!

About a half-hour into the work (and I actually was weeding at about the same speed as Tabitha, which I like to think makes our math problem a wee bit simpler), Tabitha asked me if my hands were feeling sore.  She looked down at her own, and pointed at the blisters forming.  Even for her, because of dry season, she’s gone months without this kind of work. That’s when I remembered that my mom had mailed me gloves after my last gardening disaster!  (Multiple pairs, in a variety of pretty colors to suit all of your gardening moods, obviously.)  I ran back to my house and chose green for myself and pink for Tabitha (she loves all things red or reddish, much like my own Mama).  After that, we worked much more quickly and comfortably.

We finally called it quits for the night when the sun started getting too low.

I am beyond willing to admit that I don’t know much about farming, and I definitely have very little authority in advising local people on agricultural methods (other than being a resource, or a connection to resources).  I was quite thankful when our sector name changed from “Agroforestry” to “Agribusiness”, because quite frankly, that meant less actual agricultural knowledge would be necessary on my part.  That all being said, I am beyond excited to learn.  Tabitha promised me that she would make sure I’m there the day that she plants corn in our field (our field being the one that we cleared today), and I’m going to be darn proud when we finally feast on very own couscous de maïs several months from now.

In other news: it rained last night!  (Hence why we’re preparing our fields!)  It rained buckets and buckets, literally!  In about an hour, I was able to collect over 100 liters, and can now do laundry, wash some dishes, and even flush my toilet!  The only downside is that the power went out during the horrible wind storm that preceded the rain, and my guess is it wont be coming back on anytime soon.  Nevertheless, rainy season has begun, the grass is beginning to grow, and it's time to plant our crops! 

#MedHold4Lyfe – A Tale of a Troublesome Eyeball.

Remember way back in April when I attended National Girls Forum?  Well, what I’ve been failing to mention in my blog is that ever since a near-fatal sand fight on the beach that week in Limbe, I have been perpetually on and off of “medical hold."

Towards the end of the forum, I found myself in the middle of a sand fight, and quickly learned why mothers always tell their kids not to throw sand at each other, but not before I received a tightly-packed fistful of fine, oil-laden, black sand smack-dab in my left eye.  Hit at full force from only five feet away, I went down.  My first instinct was to rinse the sand out in the waves.  Eventually, I gained the attention of some awesome fellow volunteers who pulled me aside, hijacked someone’s sacred bottled water, and helped me flush out my eye as I whimpered like a baby.

They did a pretty good job at rinsing most of the sand out, but there was still a pile in the bottom lid that just would not leave.  My eye was sore and it pained me to blink, but I was not the least bit concerned and assumed it would magically figure itself out overnight, the way bodies tend to do.

Two days later, my eye was still a bit sore, and it still bothered me to blink.  When I looked upwards, I could see a small cluster of black spots, as if a flock of birdies were constantly following me around, even indoors.  It didn’t bother me too much though, and I still assumed that it would figure itself out on it’s own.  The birdies would eventually go away.

Then a buddy of mine woke up with his eye swollen and red (sympathy pains?) and clearly infected.  When I heard that PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Office) had prescribed him antibiotic eyedrops, it finally dawned on me – hey!  Maybe I should call PCMO!!!

The conference came to an end, and our PCMO nurse, Mishna, requested that I come to Yaounde for a week and see an ophthalmologist.  Having 20-20 vision (at least up until this point), I had never had a really intense visit with an eye doctor, and certainly was not thrilled that my first time would be in Cameroon.  The doctor, however, turned out to be very nice, and very accommodating to my childish squirming and fear as she put funky drops in my eye and attached sheets of paper DIRECTLY TO MY EYEBALLS (seriously…is this what is supposed to happen, or only in Cameroon?!).  A few hours later, I walked blindly out of her office, my eyes too dilated to even recognize my own friends back at the case (transit house).

The ophthalmologist had found that my cornea was scratched, and prescribed some sort of goop to pour in my eyeball every night for a week.  At the end of the week, my eye was no longer sore and the birdies had disappeared, but I was still seeing spots whenever I moved my eye around.  After a lot of begging and a realization that there was really nothing more she could do, Mishna released me back into the wild, allowing me to return North and attend the “Men as Partners” conference that another volunteer, Lola, had organized in Garoua.

I was back up North for only five days before Mishna called and told me that if I was still seeing spots, I should come back down immediately for a follow up appointment with the ophthalmologist.  So I made the 30ish hour trip (I know I may exaggerate a wee bit sometimes, but this is for real) back down to Yaoundé for Med-Hold Round 2.

This time, a different pokey eye doctor did the same old weird drops and paper act, but this time he also put a goop-covered lens directly onto my eyeball and pushed as hard as he could, telling me not to blink as he moved it around for 17-gazillion hours to check my retina.  (I blinked once, silly me, and the whole process had to be started all over again).

The doctor found nothing – even my cornea had healed.  PCMO decided to write up a field consult to Washington DC to see what to do next with me.  But you know, that internet over there in good ol’ America, it’s tricky business.  No way can we respond to someone in less than a week, not even for a medical concern!  After about a week and a half, PCMO finally told me to go home to Sanguéré-Paul, and just forget about it.  Hopefully things would take care of themselves, and if not, I’d come back down for a check-up in a month.

Welp, after another 30 hour trip, I was back in Sanguéré-Paul.  For how long this time?  A whopping TWO DAYS before PCMO called me and said they had heard from DC and I would be medically evacuated to Morocco.  I needed to come back down to Yaounde ASAP.  Luckily I hadn’t unpacked my suitcase yet!

Anyways, after another 5 days in Yaounde (at least I was in good company with other volunteers who were in town for a “training of trainers” conference), I boarded a plane to Casablanca!  Greeted at the airport by a man holding a sign with a Peace Corps logo and my name (I’ve always wanted that to happen!!), I got into a super fancypants car and was driven on the fancy paved roads to Rabat.

In Rabat, I stayed at a hotel with a few other med-evac volunteers (one of my buddies from Cameroon was there getting his tooth fixed, one kid from PC Liberia, and another from PC Sierra Leone) and some PC Morocco volunteers as well.  The other med-evacs had been there for a few days already, and were able to show me around the city.

The next morning, a Peace Corps car picked me up and drove me to the office (I think they were under the impression that I was slightly blinded, when in reality my vision was still 20-20, just with the added bonus of spots).  I had a very thorough physical exam and learned that my reflexes are tiptop, I do in fact know where my nose is, and my liver and spleen are definitely still intact in the correct locations.  (Apparently I am wildly unaware of various body parts that can affect vision).

Then I went to the Moroccan ophthalmologist who had me look into all sorts of fun machines: one that blew air into my eyes, one that showed me a picture of a teddy bear riding a rocket ship, and one that took a picture of my optic nerve (which, if you’ve never seen your own optic nerve, looks just like a jelly fish!).  She then put drops (though much less funky than the Cameroonian ones) into my eyes, and did that same old lens-pushed-up-against-the-eyeball shenanigan.  I didn’t blink this time – learned my lesson!  I was also able to see my own blood vessels through the mirrored lens she was pressing against my eye.  (It looked just like flying over the Sahara!)

Conclusion – the doctor found absolutely no damage to the retina or the optic nerve, which is what the concern was.  The spots will eventually go away once my the weird jelly part of my eyeball regains strength.  One full day in Morocco and I was already medically cleared!

Luckily for me, the following day was National Day in Cameroon, meaning the Peace Corps office was closed and nobody would be around to buy me a plane ticket.  Oh well!  Guess that means I have a few days to sight see without worries!

Below are a few pictures from my brief little vacation in Rabat (if you're friends with me on facebook, you can check out the whole album here).   

Boxes of happiness.  (Rainbow chickens!)

Entrance to the Chellah -- the Roman ruins

Inside the Chellah

Delicious eggplant, pepper, and potato sammiches.

Inside the Medina

A gigantic seaside cemetary.

 

After nearly a month and a half of being yanked back and forth by PCMO and living in cases (though I would like to say hats off to Mishna for being incredibly supportive throughout the whole process, and to all the volunteers who entertained me throughout my seemingly-indefinite medhold), I’m finally back in Sanguéré-Paul, and happy to be here!