We've Made It!

We now reside in Yaoundé, Cameroon.  We apologize for our lack of posts as of late, but we just got the Internets working here in our apartment.  Here is a picture of Lindsey cleaning our duplex in Ames.  What a nice place.  I will miss it, and sadly I don’t think any place we live in from here on out will be as cozy. 

Africa has been an adjustment, to say the least. We left Des Moines at 1:30 on the 9^th... 

...and arrived here at 8:00pm (GMT +1) on Saturday the 10^th. Our connecting flight was out of Chicago, where we waited until 7:00 pm.  From Chicago, we flew to Zurich.  Switzerland from the air looks a lot like the Midwest, except for the whole Alps thing.  (They were gorgeous.)  Finally from Zurich we flew down to Yaoundé.  On this flight we got bumped to business class.  I always wondered why people would spend the extra money.  Now I know.  So much more room, and they give you champagne, hot towels, newspapers, little bottles of wine, and a three-course dinner menu.  I had the rosemary chicken. 

I had no idea how big Africa was.  The flight from Zurich down to Yaoundé was nearly as long as it took to fly from Chicago all across the Atlantic to Switzerland: 8 hours and 7 hours respectively.  Upon arrival, we were quickly rushed through a series of uniformed women speaking French.  We had to provide them with proof of our vaccines….see previous posting.  (I felt like a dog with everyone wanting to know if we’d had our shots.)  We picked up our luggage and were magically whisked away by the school’s bus drivers to our director’s house for dinner.  The school provided us with cell phones so that we could call home.  It was nice to be able to talk to my family and get some grounding after the shock of arriving in a new continent.

After dinner, we were temporarily deposited at the school’s student boarding house.  Here is a view from the balcony of our room. 
We stayed there until Wednesday the 13^th with the five other new hires.  This worked out well as it helped to dull the shock and the jet lag, and allowed us to get to know one another and not feel so isolated.  (No man is an island. Except me of course.)  The first few days here were kind of trying as we could not do anything without the help of the school’s drivers.  (We’ll do a separate post on them—they are characters.)  It was frustrating; we couldn’t even eat without the help of someone to translate.  (Incidentally, my French is coming along nicely.  Le cheval ne nage pas. That means:  The horse does not swim.  It’s a very useful phrase.)  During our time at the boarding house we did a lot of sightseeing.  Here is a picture of the seven new school hires and the director on the balcony of our apartment, and the series that follow are pictures of Yaoundé itself.

The food here is quite good.  On Tuesday, we were given an authentic Cameroonian meal.  Tom, a teacher at the school from Minnesota, has lived here for about 13 years now--he came with the Peace Corps and never quite left.  He has friends all over the place and had some of them cook us a nice dinner. 

What you see here is (spellings are approximate) fu fu (the white blob) and jamma jamma and ndole (the green stuff next to it).  The yellow thing is a plantain.  There was also baton de manioc (the object that looks like candle wax), grilled fish, and a plum (the potato-looking thing at the top).  You eat all of it with your hands.  

Fu fu is a paste of corn and yams that is used as a base, kind of like rice or noodles.  You tear bits of this off and scoop up the jamma jamma.  Jamma jamma is a mixture of greens, beef, and some sort of seafood that tasted like oysters.  Ndole was a lot like jamma jamma.  Plantains are bananas, but here they have a lot more starch in them, and the people use them much the same way we use potatoes back home.  Baton de manioc is what tapioca is made from, and the fish was mackerel.  All of these were delicious.  I wouldn’t try the plum if you visit, though.   

Finally, we were able to move into our apartment.  It has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a balcony and is really quite spacious.  While it is furnished, it’s sparse, so it echoes a lot; we’ll fix that as we decorate.  The UN actually has offices in our building, which I think is kind of neat.  The power and the water have a tendency to turn off from time to time, but since our building was built by the State Department we have a generator and extra water supply.  I’ll explain the water situation later.  Here is Lindsey in our living room/dining room. 

We're fully aware that we still have to finish our Peru posts.  Now that our internet seems to be working we’ll be able to be more on the ball….I hope.  In the meantime, we miss our friends and family back home and would love to hear from you!  We’ll be in touch.