Vive le Dash

Number one question since I've returned: What is the best thing about being back in America?  I always answer food…  I don't even want to talk about food, but saying food just makes me smile and think of how delicious it is here.  In Africa I sometimes wouldn't eat just because food was difficult to come by.  You had to make it or find someone to make it for you and it would be the same food you've had every, single, damn day.  Why bother? A close second is how easy everything is here.  If you want food, you go to your kitchen.  There is food there; I promise.  Even if you think there isn't, there is.  Maybe it's in a can or just some rice or pasta, but you have food.  If you managed to really fuck up your grocery shopping, you can go do that with ease.  Or stop at one of a billion types of restaurants.  OR, and I just discovered this, you can use an app on your phone to pay someone to shop for you!  They'll do your g...

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me be the first to welcome you to the next step in internet pleasure... THE DALEVERSE I wanted to say hello world.  But you aren't the world.  No, you are a select few who have decided that you enjoy listening to me talk.  You have somehow found me, Dale, and fallen into my orbit. Congratulations on whatever good decisions in life brought you here. Is it colder in America or what? I enjoyed writing my blog so I'm just going to crack on.  In honor of my loosely titled  daledoesafrica.blogspot.com , I have managed an even more all-encompassing title. Mostly so that I never have to change it again. For the moment, I am loosely based in the state of North Carolina.  Bouncing between my father's house, my mother's, or my brother's.  So far in the past two months, I've visited Boston twice (for a pretty girl), West Virginia (for a pretty boy... and some snowboarding), and Washington D.C. (for a number of pretty peop...

I'm back.  The vast majority of you likely know that from facebook or the like.  I hope you enjoyed this adventure.  I wanted to entertain you. I think I've done at least that.  I hope too that you learned something.  I wanted you to have a glimpse of what it is to live in Cameroon.  In Africa.  As Americans a lot of what we have comes from the news or commercials begging for dollars.  The news shows war and the commercials show poverty, but there is so much more.  I hope your ideas about Africa were broadened.  Leaving Mbakaou was hard.  I wasn't prepared for it.  I was prepared to leave my country, my friends, my family.  Prepared to learn a new language, a culture, a lifestyle.  I knew working in harsh conditions and in an unknown environment would be hard.  And trying to make friends with so many differences between us could never be easy.  But all that was survivable.  Even failure in those th...

What follows is likely the most important news you will hear in coming months.  Possibly years.  Or even your lives (depending on how central a part I am and how little else you have gong on).  I officially finish my Peace Corps service on October 24th, 2014 .  That's right, ladies and gents, I'm coming home! Now, I don't actually have a flight back yet.  Sure they'd book it for me, but they told me they'd give me two grand and let me do it myself.  Gotta be able to get back for less than that, right? It's been a good service.  Lots of ups and downs.  I'm currently writing a draft of a document summarizing it all.  Apparently this document will stay on record with the US Government "as long as the Union stands".  Kind of intimidating, specially as my once clear mastery of the English language has diminished over my long sojourn here.  (I misspelled three words in that last sentence!)  I'm super ready to go home, see fr...

This is just a bunch of pictures of the people of Mbakaou. Djaro Beupere which just means chief father-in-law.  Mostly because he asks me when I'm coming to pick up my wife from him every time I see him.  Also he's one of the two chiefs. Getting a shave.  These are some of my friends I sit with every day.  The man in the chair in the back is the Imam. Some of the guys I hang out with by the call box where I buy credit for my phone and never call you with it. My buddy Kajiri.  He's decided I know enough Fulfulde (I don't) and keeps trying to teach me Houssa.  Behind his is the main drag into town. Caitlin visiting me with her friend Joe who came all the way from the Extreme North.  In front of our grand village plaza.  Looks better when there is actually an event of some kind. My back courtyard with my friend Assa. The Prince of Mbakaou, none other than Alhadji Awal.  My best bud.  This is actually in Tibati,...

I passed a man on the street today.  He was wearing a nice tan overcoat with some sensible casual outfit on underneath.  In my mind's eye he is wearing a long scarf as well, but I can't recall if that was real.  He seemed plucked from a cobbled road in London.  We said "good morning", though in French, as we allowed each other space to pass.  It was then that I noticed how surreal the moment felt.  We were walking in a particularly muddy spot on the dirt road where only one can pass.  It has been a long time since I walked on cobblestone.  It's been a long time since I walked on a sidewalk.  In fact, the only things I've been walking on for any period of time are the muddy dirt paths of Mbakaou. For a moment I was transported to my daily walk to and from work in DC.  Standing aboveground at the entrance to the metro in Southwest.  I could see the buildings, the streetlights, the cars and roads, and my tree-covered sidewalks lin...

Had an interesting day today.  We've had some  bad press recently since they discovered a possible polio case here.  Considering we report some hundred percent vaccination rates that really shouldn't be possible. Certainly not the first time paper didn't match reality. I went with a friend of mine today and hunted down families refusing vaccinations.  Things are done differently here than America, obviously.  When they do the campaigns, they just walk door to door and give kids vaccines.  They don't have to ask parents or even check to see if they have been vaccinated before.  Since I've been in my village, we've probably done ten polio vaccine campaigns and there are certainly some kids who have been vaccinated ten times (three doses are plenty).  Hell, probably more if they have parents who actually bring them to get vaccinated.  If someone refuses to be vaccinated that just annoys the people doing the vaccines and they move on.  ...