March 14th and March 15th

What an eventful couple of days.
let’s see, yesterday (Wednesday) we went to Bamenda (about the size of maybe the tri-cities). We went to a couple markets and the big city market which was just little store after store after store of just stuff, shoes, clothes, food, kitchen stuff.. I mean basically a massive food and department store, some covered outside and some not. My dad bought Quaker oatmeal, Jim bought some baskets to organize his office.

Then we went to the Pres-Craft, an arts and crap (as Terry calls it) kind of place. Really it was like almost museum-y, gallery-y like not too big of a place with just masks and boutiques (like wall hanging art things), musical instruments, nik-naks, bags, furniture.. all Africa-y things. And below is the Pres-Café where we had lunch. I had a banana-paw paw smoothie (paw paw is papaya here) and a caprese pasta salad. It was delicious. Very American but that’s why they like to eat there. It was very good and very nice. Basically sounds like one of the only places they eat out. For 5 of us to get a delicious, larger salad/meal and a drink (smoothie and/or coke or both) it only cost 20 dollars American. It was Jim, Terry, Godwin (the driver), my dad and I. Quite cheap (for us), but comparatively  to wages that would be very very expensive. We spent quite a bit of money in the Pres-craft.

We also went to the Vatican, a little grocery story like place to get cheese mainly a couple of other errands for the convent and then we returned. The drive is about an hour and a half. We saw so many cows being moved on the road, but the cows are like those big “Brahman” with the horns.

After returning to the house we grabbed some cold beers (which are 23 ounces here) from the fridge and went down to another one of the little houses verandas out back, where the Dutch who come to fix the little crooked legs will stay next week. It’s a nice covered porch and quiet compared to here (Jim and Terry’s hosue) with the like crazy mother you want to call protective services on living next door. It looks out over the cow pasture and the hills. Really quite amazing.

Today (Thursday) Terry informed me not to work too hard because we had to go to the Blessing of the Pigery! Project Hope (the group I work with) raises pigs as an IGA (income generating activity). They just completed lots of construction to the little pig farm so they were blessing it today. At 8:30 Lillian informed me that we better prepare to go down (that is VERY EARLY for Africa time as it was supposed to be happening at 9 (but Africa time that would mean like maybe 9:45 to start). The Sister who is like the supremum or something of all the Sisters of St. Francis is visiting from Rome, so she cut the ribbon. Sister Rose gave a little speech. There are many lifted pens for each pig. I took tons of pictures. One of them is Sister Rose’s favorite and when she opened the little pen he just laid down for her to pet him. It was so cute! Sister Xaveria even climbed up the ladder into the pen ha ha. They are just dang hilarious. I’ll try to post many pictures it was so interesting. That was my “African Wildlife Safari!!” After the blessing they had a little gathering in the hospital library (which is fairly measly) where they had fufu, jamajama, katikati (chicken), and some pork (mmmmm J ). There is no such thing as appetizers here as a gathering, they always have fufu and jamajama and usually chicken. A daily meal though for everyone is fufu and jamajama. Fufu is the ground corn and basically just water that is mashed up into a doughy rubbery kind of mushy ball, and jamajama is the huckleberry leafy stuff they cook and looks like cooked spinach. I tried both, I had to at least once.  The fufu is just mushy kind of bland with a nasty hint of something gross and the jamajama is bitter, would be better with a different spice or something. Of course I even did it with my hands like the locals!!!

This afternoon we had an adventurous walk. We went down around-a-bout back direction and went to the 8-day market (so every 8 days it’s here in Njinikom). It’s really just a local thing with like crap clothes and used looking bras, lots of beans and onions, tomatoes, garlic, cassava root, sugar cane.. that kind of stuff. Nothing too interesting, but it was something to see. We stopped at the Midway and had a beer then headed back. Oh and had ice cream. Which was scary cause if it had milk I was afraid of a stomach ache, but it was kind of sherbet texture but creamy vanilla flavored, even though it was pink and white.

On the way back we ran into three little boys doing the tire rolling with a stick up and down the road. It was quite impressive! We watched them for a bit and took pictures and they followed us all the way back to the hospital rolling their tires and trying to do tricks and showing off for pictures, we even tried it and tried to have them show us but it was a fail. They hold the stick low when they are going on flat and up hills to kind of push it, and on down hills they use the stick on the upper part of the tire. All they need is an old motor bike or bicycle tire and a stick with a Y in it at the end. We also saw lots of other kids and some women coming back from the market with LOTS of stuff on their heads, in their hands, and a baby on the back.

For dinner Prisca made “Salad and Pancakes.” It was cabbage and carrots cut very very small and they stack it and shape it on the serving tray, then onions layed on top and some green beans throughout, and boiled egg on top. She also made some sort of creamy dressing that was pretty good. Pancakes were crepes really, maybe just slightly thicker but essentially the same exact thing.

Today (Friday) the rest of the spam snuck it's way into our soup... it was basically just left over soup. pretty good though.

saw a cockroach in the cupboard with the files, I made Lillian get the rest of the files out for me. 

okay back to work.