More Updated Documents and Peace Corps Workers

Wednesday March 7th

I met Mac up at the HIV treatment center and he showed me how to update another one of their document lists. This one is of the mothers with HIV and new babies tracking a month or more after birth to check if they are HIV positive or not. So I typed up all the names, all the villages they are from and baby names and whether or not they were tested positive or not. This took me about 3 hours and then I just helped Lillian and Quinta with the patients folders. She also had me breaking pills and cutting them into 1/3 and 2/3 pieces. She made fun of me cause I made a couple fly across the room and asked “How do I make it so they don’t fly?” so she repeated it over and over and showed me to cup the pill in my hand while I cut. I mean these were crappy craft like scissors on a little pharmacy counting tray.

I came home around 3 pm which was late! I was at work longer than my dad and Jim and it was “Date Night” as Terry and Jim call it. We walked down to the Midway (2^nd story bar place) and got “Music” or Mutzic beer again. I did drink a whole one myself this time. We met Laura, Sal and Kristen, all American Peace Corps workers. Sal and Kristen are in their first year and they are here in Njinikom and Laura is on her second year, she is down in Belo (20 minute bike ride).  I could never be a Peace Corps worker. I can’t imagine living off such a small budget and being thrown into a part of a country alone like that. They each have their own little houses but houses means an African like house. We also had a Soya (that meat stuff on a stick, it’s really very small).  It's not actually monkey meat.. they've already eaten all the monkey's around so they are long gone.

On the walk to and from town  (probably  1 mile one way) there were kids out everywhere and they all saw my camera and all yelled hello and wanted to shake our hands and have their pictures taken. I got TONS of cute kid photos yesterday! It’s so easy to get them when it’s nice and light outside and they all want to be in the picture they stand nice and still. Hopefully I’ll be able to post them when I go and upload this blog.

Last night was Popcorn night also so Terry and Jim made popcorn (on the stove of course) for dinner. I had a small bowl of soup because I can’t eat much popcorn without a stomach ache.  We watched a couple of episodes of Friends (from Season 3 that Danny had given me before I left).

I guess I should describe things other than experiences since yesterday wasn’t too big.

The house we are in is a duplex with a lower and upper part. The lower part we haven’t gone in at all because we are staying with Jim and Terry upstairs in their house. It’s like a main living and dining room pretty large, with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (toilet and sink) and a shower room (because they don’t use shower curtains here so Jim and Terry re-designed parts of the house when it was being built their first few months here cause water would get all over everything). The kitchen is off to the side in another room. The 2^nd bedroom is where my dad and I are, but basically it’s a small bedroom you walk through to get to the actual bedroom. So I’m in the sort of small bedroom sitting room and my dad is in the back bedroom. It’s kind of annoying that he has to walk through mine into his cause he will walk in even after I JUST SAID 30 SECONDS EARLIER… “Dad I’m changing so wait just a minute.” It’s happened like 3 times already he starts coming in. The doors are huge and don’t close easily so only on the bathroom and shower do we ever shut them. There are curtains over every bedroom door though so we just use those. Helps with airflow at night too. So with the curtain closed all the way and I’m changing.. he just starts coming in. He never listens to me.  Thank god we have our own room ish things though. My bed is a little twin cot thing. It’s saggy but pretty comfortable, and the pillows are “ROCK PILLOWS” for sure. Just like these light weight hard stuffed things. So it’s okay with my little make-shift pillow in a pillow case. I’ve still slept well every night so far. And we wake up to the roosters around 5:15 ish and then the sun at 6:10 and that’s when all the people start coming out. The little house behind my window directly has tons of cute kids that you can hear as soon as the sun comes up I swear. Which is fine. I’ve been waking up about 5 (if we go to church at 6) and about 6 on other days, and bed by 8:30 or 9 every night basically. It’s dark and there is nothing to do by then. The hospital opens around 7:30.

We are on the hospital/convent grounds and it’s all fenced in with guards at the entrance and they walk back to us by the back gate. There are many different buildings for different parts of the hospital. Only two or three are 2 story, the rest are just one story. And everything you walk out to get to different rooms but there are covered walkways for the rains. There are people everywhere all the time though. There is everything from extra space for in-patients, private rooms, big wards for about 15 in patients, the lab, the maternity ward.. cookhouse, another doctors house/duplex, our house/duplex, and the convent with several buildings. Right outside is the private catholic school that Terry works at, run by the nuns as well. There is also an orphanage on the hospital grounds with a few kids. This place is in the mountains, the jungle mountain basically… so we are on the side of a hill, walking out the door of the duplex we are 2 stories up but as we walk along the balcony to the gate we are on the ground level.
This is the cookhouse and Dr. Eugene's half of his duplex and the cow pasture down below. This is the view off the balcony out the front door of our house. Gives you an idea of what dry season looks like in Njinikom, Cameroon. Very jungle-y and farmland-y and hill-y and mountain-y. 

One of the sisters has cows that supposedly when it’s not calving season (also one just died so the best milker is raising 2 calves) they have cheese that is supposedly very good that they make right here. Project Hope raises pigs down there also and sells the pork as a fundraiser.

We exchanged money right here with the hospital because they can then use the hundreds and bank them. So that was really easy.

The sisters have been so accommodating to Jim and Terry, they provided them with a TV and satellite tv a dvd player and set them up with internet in the home and almost anything they need.

Prisca is the housekeeper, she does our laundry and irons it (completely pressed and folded, including the underwear), does the grocery shopping (market shopping really), cleans and cooks dinner on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. This week Tuesday we went to the convent so she didn’t, and today is Women’s Day so she won’t be cooking dinner tonight I don’t think.

Monday was mashed potatoes made into large potato shaped things ha ha ha. And steamed vegetables put with tons of oil. Oh I did tell this somewhere..

Okay gotta get ready for women’s day.