Site Visit

I spent last week visiting my village, Bandrefam. Its only about 2.5 hours away from Bafia by bus so my travel was pretty easy. It was raining when I got to the village Kamna so I had to wait a bit before taking a car up the hill to Bandrefam-- its not a fun moto ride when theres a lot of mud! I stayed with my site mate Julie and spent the week visiting the chef, seeing the library, going to several meetings in nearby towns, doing an English class with the neighborhood kids, doing an HIV awareness formation at the high school, meeting people, checking out the market in Kamna...lots to do! The head nurse at the Centre de Sante (health center) gave me a lab coat and I had to apoligize and explain that I'm not a doctor. Regardless, I witnessed a labor which was an intense first day for me. (The mama eventually was sent to the hospital due to complications as the labor was premature.) I also was able to read, took a long walk through the fields and generally relax; it was a nice break from training! We ate dinner several times with Julies counterpart, Immanual, who is also my landlord. I tried and liked the local dish koki, which is kind of like spicy tofu. Also had plenty of guava, passion fruit and avodacos...I'm looking forward to all of the fresh goodies available to me there! Bafoussam is about 45 minutes away and is the capital of the West region; I went there to set up my banking. While there I had some cheese, ice cream and took a gamble on a salad--all was delicious and luckily didn't get sick from the street food!

My house is coming along; I now have a bamboo ceiling, cement floor in my bedroom, a door between the kitchen and bedroom and a window is about to be installed. Theres a bit more to be done (like my latrine needs walls...) but its bigger than I remembered and I am just so excited to paint, get furniture and make it my own! It was hard to come back to training but I feel reenergized now. I have a lot of ideas for work that can be done in village but particularly as I'm opening a post I'll need to take my time, observe, figure out the community needs and generally just not get too carried away!