Vive le Dash

We complain about travel in America.  We complain and we really, really shouldn't.  You don't know pain.  You know not suffering. You guys remember that time I had my host family kids stay with me?  Well when I took them back down south we all had to ride on the train.  Since I was buying their way, I bought us all second class tickets.  In the future, I'll choose jumping into a bear pit over this option.  It is an overnight train that is a minimum of 12 hours.  Do you know how second class works?  They just sell as many tickets as possible.  I'm not convinced there is any sort of limit.  We pushed and shoved our way through the eight second class cars looking for anywhere we could find space.  All the seats were taken.  People were laying on the floors beneath.  Even the connectors between cars were full.  There was only standing room in the aisles.  Some lovely humans scrunched up and provided we four...

Alright, it's about time I show you the folks I'm living with.  I may have explained to some of you that I live in a house in an enclosed compound.  My landlord has a few houses in the compound as well where he lives with his two wives and five kids.  Took me forever to figure out which kids actually belonged in the house though... and even longer to figure out their names. Here we go! Here's a group photo missing only the wives.  And one baby. The tall guy above (seriously like seven foot something) is Al-hadji Awal.  I introduce him as the king of the place.  Then myself as the prince.  He laughs off being king, but confirms my own royalty. OUMI!  She may be the most adorable thing in the world.  She was terrified of me for the longest time, but now she's learned to walk and regularly walks inside all on her own in the search for candies.  Oumi is probably not her real name, but that's all I've discovered so far. ...

You're welcome.

I swear that exact song was stuck in my head about a week ago in Mbakaou with the premonition of returning to this crazy country.   Apparently that is a shared feeling as I was linked here. In fact if you are curious about how I feel on anything, you might check out either of these two sites: http://whatshouldpcvscallme.tumblr.com/ http://howapcvputsitgently.tumblr.com/ They accurately depict the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer in a most humorous fashion.  With pictures for those of you who complain my blog has too many words (no matter how funny they may be). Yea, and here's the video:

I’M COMING BACK! Only temporarily yes, but I will set foot on your precious soil in less than a month!  I come to eat your food, drink your beer, and see how many women swoon when I say “Name’s Dale.  I work at a health clinic in Africa.  Helping kids and stuff.  Look!  Here are some pictures of me with them that I had printed immediately upon landing.”  Prepare yourself! I fly into DC, our beloved capital on the 13 th .  I already feel giddy as a school girl.  Spend the weekend there and then head down to North Carolina afterwards.  Likely with a raging hangover.  In fact, there is a good chance I spend three weeks in either a food coma or drunken haze.  Hopefully both.  I just… I just can’t wait.  Tears of happiness are forming. Until then, I’m doing some silly formation that Caitlin dragged me into.  Training people to be peer educators and spread knowledge about HIV/AIDS.  Work, pfft.  I’ll ...

Right, so it has been a bad month for keeping you informed. Part of that I can happily blame on being ever so slightly busy including a weeklong conference in Yaounde with some lovely people that will be helping guide a new program called SMS for Life to Cameroon.  It could potentially greatly reduce supply chain problems of malaria meds and Peace Corps Cameroon will be helping to roll it out.  The other part of this lack of communication is simply that all technology I touch this week withers and dies in my hands (this laptop, graciously lent to me by Caitlin, is falling apart as I type). It started with Caitlin’s camera (she’s clearly overly trusting and a bit of a gambler).  I smashed that thing up good and have little idea how.  I’m rough on cameras though.  Before going to Italy in ’07, my father bought me one that is water-proof, dust-proof, and shock-proof (the German section of the warranty literally says “dale-proof”).  Then my phone broke, an...

Check the farmer's tan.  Thanks, Africa!