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FOTIO DOUANLA Livie Constance Félicien’s older sister Livie passed away at the age of 38 last Friday, the 26th of October, 2018. She had been battling cancer for the last two years, and put up a fight up to the very end. She was one of the strongest women I know. I am glad that I got to meet her back in January when we first visited Cameroon. Here are some pictures from that visit. Although it was a short visit, we kept in touch afterwards, as is much easier once you have met someone in person. She was a truly inspirational woman, always positive, and hard working even through her toughest days. She was the kind of person who inspired me to be a better person, always generous, humble, kind, and not afraid of hard work. She is survived by her husband Rene (pictured) and two children Carelle (11) and Arnold (2).

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As promised, school uniform pics! Précilia’s school doesn’t have a good sign for photos, but you can see the school name high up to the right “WAFO.”

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Back to school!

Summer flew by, as it always does, and already all three of us are back in school. Précilia is at the bilingual school she was at last year, but instead of being on the French side, has transitioned to “bilingual.” Rocklyn is at an Anglophone school across the street for our apartment where he will receive instruction in English, but will take French as a subject. On a side note, Rocklyn has already exceeded our high expectations for him in French! We never got around to enrolling him in any language courses this summer, but nonetheless he has become completely comfortable expressing himself in French, although admittedly his grammar isn’t always prefect. That being said, his comprehension isn’t all the way to a level where he would excel in a classroom where they only instruct in French. He’ll get there.

As for me.... drum roll, please.... I am teaching Physics and Art at a British International School. THAT’S RIGHT, I’M A PHYSICS TEACHER! Literally living my dream! The school is Dewey International School of Applied Sciences, and I will be working there part time (3 days a week). So, I am working part time but I have 5 different classes. Let’s start with Physics. The school follows the British Cambridge program, or should I say programme, and I will be teaching students taking the IGCSE, AS and A Level exams (in the American system this corresponds to 10th, 11th, and 12th grade). I would like to point out that these exams are significantly more rigorous than the US AP exams. My classes are SMALL. It is already a small school, but on top of that not everyone takes physics. My physics classes range from 8 students to 1. Yes that’s right, in 12th grade there is only ONE student taking Physics, so just me and her in the classroom. Ok, now let me tell you about art. Now this was kind of a pleasant surprise. In my interview they asked me about my hobbies, and I mentioned that I liked drawing. When they hired me they asked if I could also teach art to the younger kids. So, I will be teaching Art to K-3rd grade! These classes are bigger as they combine K/1 and 2/3 for electives so I have around 20-25 students in these classes but see them only once a week each. Oh and let me not neglect to mention that I was also elected as the head of art club, so I will also be heading an after school art program once a week open to all students!

All of us went back to school September 3rd. That means while all of you Americans were back home BBQing and celebrating Labor Day, I was diving into my first day of work! But I’m not complaining, I was celebrating in my own way :) So, my school day is from 7:30-4:15 and I can walk to school (it takes me about 20 minutes). This week, I ended up going in Monday for the first day of school, but going forwards, I will just work Tues-Thurs. Précilia and Rocklyn’s schools are closer and their days are 7:30-3:00 (Précilia’s school gets out early on Wednesdays). It was a bit of a hectic first week, as we all adjusted to our new schedules, and Félicien was out of town for a few days, but it ended up going relatively smoothly! Next week I need to get all of our pictures at our respective schools!

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Check out this crazy fruit! It’s called “kola des singes” and it tastes a lot like sugar cane but with a consistency of something between a coconut and an apple. Strange explanation, I know, but that’s the best I’ve got. It was really good. I forgot to take a picture before we broke it open, but it looks like a strange brownish pod, and this one had 5 fruits in it. You can see the fruits inside are very white, and the pits are a beautiful dark red.

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Some pictures from the “maire” or town hall. Got some good aerial pictures from the third floor looking out. Across the street in the first and second picture you can see a grey covered area (in front of all the parked cars) we sometimes stop there to get grilled meat and plantains. Further down the street in the second picture is Tchopetyamo (yellow building with white and red roof). Also note in the third picture a couple of people walking carrying things on their heads (very common here).

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While Félicien was at work today I took the kids for a walk to a friends house, here are some pictures as we walked through their neighborhood.

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I made some more traditional food! Pate d’arachide — It is a peanut sauce you eat with bobolo or bread. The sauce is made with “peanut butter”, water, dried shrimp, and onions (you can also add another kind of dried fish they call mbounga, but I didn’t have any of that, and I’ll be honest, I’m not really a huge fan…I’ll have to work up to that one).

So, first I grilled the peanuts and then took them to the market to get then crushed into a paste, then put Rocklyn to work crushing up the shrimp and Précilia cutting the onions, added everything to a pot of boiling water and TaDa. I topped with some fresh onions for garnish, and we ate it with bobolo! Everyone loved it especially the kids.

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Here is our second experience in a real restaurant here — first one was Tchopetyamo. Generally we avoid eating out as you can’t trust the cleanliness or standards of food when you go out. But Félicien knows this place and knows the owner. She studied in England and came back here and opened her restaurant. As you can see, we ordered pizza! Of all the pizzas I’ve had in my life this one was not the best haha, but I wasn’t really expecting much. The biggest fail was the fact that they used some other cheese, tasted maybe like Swiss cheese. Overall it was pretty good, but I would stick to the Cameroonian foods next time. The poisson braisé and potato/plantain fries were awesome! This way of cooking fish over a grill or in an oven is a very common dish here and very popular. People will eat the whole thing too, I mean leaving nothing on the plate (yes, even eating the bones)! We didn’t eat all the bones on this one but just left the backbone. I have seen Félicien eat the whole thing though, if he is motivated.

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Today was the second time I’ve seen this kind of “parade” in the last week. There is a presidential election coming up and the last one we saw a presidential candidate sticking his head out of the moon roof and waving as they drove by. (At the time we saw the last one, I asked a stranger—an older respectable looking gentleman—what what’s going on and he didn’t know, another person overheard me asking and told us it was one of the presidential candidates but didn’t know his name.) Not sure who this guy was or even which candidate the last guy was, so not really sure how effective this strategy is, but there you go. This is Cameroon. They’re probably going to elect Paul Biya—the same president they’ve had for the past 36 years.

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So right after I submitted my last post, this happened.

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Trash update! People have finally gotten tired of the trash situation on our street. You see in the first picture what we have gotten used to across from our building. Basically our own personal rubbish filled swamp, a marvelous breeding ground for mosquitos and host to many.... interesting smells! Well, someone decided no more and they put up a wall and have declared no more dumping! So now to dump our trash, we will have to walk about two blocks down the street to a larger dumping site. I am interested to see what they will do with this space.... there are rumors that someone might build a house there. Only time will tell!

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Had a cooking lesson at a friends house this weekend! We made Ndolé with boiled plantains. This stuff is so good! (The white in the sauce is actually crushed up peanuts and the dish gets its name from the green leaf called ndolé). The kids stopped in the kitchen from time to time to observe but mostly ran around outside climbing in the trees and picking guavas to snack on.

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We were visiting the guy who made our bed to talk about adding some shelving in the kids room, when all of a sudden these bulls came out of nowhere! Félicien told me to get out of the way... I thought he was joking. They almost ran me over! Then they proceeded to walk through, I don’t know should we call it the “store” and then back through to a field behind. This was the only picture I snuck in before scampering out of the way!

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There used to be a dumpster by our house (for the block) where we could dump our trash. I guess it was made of plastic and it melted so now this is what trash day looks like. They ended up clearing 2 trucks worth of trash this week.

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Kids in the states go crazy watching the trash pickup. This is way more fun to watch!

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So we haven’t started Rocklyn’s French classes yet, but the kids have been doing tennis! They go 9-11:30 Monday-Thursday for a total of 4 weeks. The courts are about 5 minute walk from our house, so I can walk them there and pick them up. They just have two total courts, and this is the one they use for the lower level kids. They have about 20 kids on this court during their practices, and 20 on the other court. It looks super hectic, but it’s also kind of organized (just of like everything here —organized chaos). Rocklyn has been getting by with his French skills (the coaches only speak French) but, some of the kids speak English, and he has made MANY friends. Rocklyn is happy to talk to everyone and everyone wants to talk to Rocklyn. The official languages in Cameroon are French and English, although we live in a French speaking region, many parents here push their kids to learn English. Many schools out here are bilingual, and have options for English or French dominant learning. We have had Précilia in the French dominant learning side for now, and expect to start Rocklyn in the English dominant side but transition him when his French is good enough.

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Here is our bathroom/ shower. No hot water, but with the warmth/humidity here I haven’t missed it yet. Grateful for running water at least!