On our first beach excursion to Kribi the first weekend of our stay in Cameroon, my dear friend Alie had declared during a tight group picture at Lobé Falls that it was “too hot for love,” meaning too hot for us to stand that close to each other. On this weekend’s second beach excursion to the coastal town of Limbé in the southwest region, we abandoned this philosophy. Though the temperatures were more humid and elevated there, Harry instituted the “hug one person a day” rule and our group came away from the incredible four-day vacation closer than ever.
Before leaving for study abroad, I had been worried about the small group size of 11, thinking that it could either go incredibly well and we’d all get along famously, or backfire terribly and we’d be embroiled in a mess of tension and drama. Luckily, it has been completely of the former, and we function as a genuinely close soccer team, as Mr. Teku likes to refer to us (since soccer teams are made of 11 players). As we boarded the bus on Thursday morning, there was no fighting over seats or seat buddies; we all happily settled in for the 6-hour ride to the coast after stopping at our favourite bakery for quiches and beignets. Driving past Douala, Cameroon’s large port city, we thanked our lucky stars Dickinson’s program is in the cooler Yaoundé, though we enjoyed the sites and herds of long-horned and humped cattle on the street. As Julio, our phenomenal bus driver, zoomed past rubber plantations and landscapes of endless palm trees, we anticipated with overwhelming excitement our arrival at the Holiday Inn Hotel (no connection with the American chain!). Once we arrived, we easily chose roommates by counting off (I got the fabulous Gina Del Tito!) and dropped our bags in our AIR-CONDITIONED rooms before heading down to the hotel restaurant for a delectable buffet of plantains, chicken, fish, SALAD and watermelon! After some quality swimming pool and swingset time, we turned in – I slept like a rock on my hard mattress (a nice change from the overly soft foam one at my host family’s).
I woke up Friday psyched for the busy day ahead. After breakfast of fresh omelettes and hot chocolate, we boarded the bus for the Limbé Botanical Garden, established by the Germans when they first colonized the region, which is now Anglophone. On our tour of the expansive green gardens, we saw pepper, coffee, and rubber plants, and a huge variety of palms. We then visited the Limbé Wildlife Sanctuary, which is one of only 20 primate sanctuaries worldwide. The Sanctuary rescues primates from poachers and people keeping them illegally in deplorable conditions, nurses them back to health, gives them a home and eventually releases them back into the wild. They have the second largest population of endangered drills in captivity and the only Cross-River gorilla in captivity in the world. Kept in large open-air enclosures behind wires, the gorillas, baboons, mandrills and chimps are well cared for and healthy once again. We also saw some relatives of the deer and huge crocodiles before boarding the bus once more, this time with the lava flow as the destination. Limbé is located right near Mount Cameroon, the 6th tallest peak in Africa and an active volcano. It last erupted sometime in the 80s, the lava stopping at the road, but leaving a mess of volcanic rock behind which we proceeded to climb. If ever there was a day for the intense Teva sandals I bought for Africa, this was it. The views were incredible, the mountains leading straight to the ocean, and the group picture is definitely HUB wall quality (for those who don’t know, in Dickinson’s student building there is a picture of each study abroad location changed each year). We also visited the Debunchar (spelling completely negotiable), which is the second wettest place ON EARTH with something like 450 inches of rainfall a year. Which is a LOT of rain!
After all that talk of water, we finally got the chance to enter some ourselves, heading to Seme Beach, home of the black volcanic sands – which are actually more dark brown than black. It was beautiful. After chowing down at the overpriced hotel restaurant, Morgan and I took off with our cameras for some quality beach shots. We came back to find most of the group burying Ben in the exfoliating sands and proceeded to join in, shaping his sand body into that of a mermaid (UB people, think this summer at Lake Michigan, but warmer and in Africa!), rushing to beat the incoming tide that we had ingeniously faced his head towards! Since Ben was covered with sand, several of us decided to follow suit and were soon covered in the stuff, which prompted Mr. Teku to exclaim that he could not pick us out of the crowd anymore since we were no longer white! After a sand-covered photo shoot complete with successful jumping pictures (those ones where everyone tries to jump at the same time and the photographer scrambles to click the shutter at exactly the right moment), we rinsed off as best we could in the perfect temperature of the Atlantic Ocean (which, obviously is the same ocean that touches the East Coast of the U.S. prompting Professor Fanso to suggest we are neighbors!).
The adventures were not over yet as we tried out a game of human foozball on the beach. Yes, human foozball. It was incredible, and is incredibly hard to explain, but just think of a foozball table and imagine people as the plastic figures and that you can move your legs but must keep your arms on the plastic tube that comes across. Lots of fun, a few kicks to the face (don’t worry, Mom, I only got hit in the butt and shoulder) and much competition. But the soccer team emerged in good spirits and ready for the next adventure. This came several minutes later when we RODE HORSES ON THE BEACH AT SUNSET. Which was pretty much like a movie. Morgan remembered pictures of last year’s group doing it and so we had mentioned it to Julio who made it happen for us. A bit rushed since we had to leave in 10 minutes, but each of us paid the equivalent of a dollar to do this and it was glorious! Just wait ‘til you see the pictures! We left the beach rejuvenated and ready for a leisurely evening. We returned to the hotel for a buffet dinner and discussion on widowhood in Cameroon, followed by a nice conversation Morgan and I had with the hotel manager Freddy, who insisted his English was terrible (which is ABSOLUTELY was not!). We discussed Obama and the beauty of Limbé and then he let us return to our swinging. Julio then took us to Down Beach, right on the water, where we chilled and drank beer along the oceanfront and could see the lights of Equatorial Guinea in the distance.
Saturday morning, we awoke to find that Ben was very ill with a stomach malady. He stayed in the clinic associated with our hotel with at IV drip while we headed to Buea to watch the first few finishers of the Buea Mountain Race, an annual event where over 600 runners race up and down Mount Cameroon, the 6th highest peak in Africa at over 4000 meters above sea level. The atmosphere was filled with excitement and people lined the streets while gendarmes held wooden switches to prevent people from crossing in the runners’ path. A bunch of us watched from atop the bus, a fantastic view. We then headed to Max Lyonga’s studio for an incredibly pleasant tour and visit. Max is a phenomenal and talented artist with a Dickinson connection – he did a show on campus my freshman year which I didn’t make it to, but had told myself that I would find him in Cameroon. He is by far the most passionate person I have ever met, and possibly the happiest. While sipping drinks and eating peanuts, he told us the stories behind his works, and mentioned the names of many people we knew at Dickinson. I truly felt like Dickinson in Cameroon, especially after seeing Joyce’s Hall, named after Joyce Bylander, the on-campus coordinator for our program and a great friend of Max’s. He told us of his dream of building an art school for children in Buea, where they can come, tuition paid, and learn to express themselves through art. I was able to buy a small painting with words in Max’s invented language of art (because art crosses cultural and language boundaries), and also a poster of the painting he has done to raise money for his school (Joyce – I have copies for you, Frank, Norm and HOPE Station that I am taking good care of and will bring you in August!). I left with a sense of hope and inspiration, promising to keep in touch.
We returned to Limbé and somehow got the bus up the huge hill to Ben’s clinic. In response to Mr. Teku’s “Let’s storm this clinic,” we entered the tiny, clean facility for some quality cheering-up time. After spending a bit of time with our team member, we went back to the hotel to await dinner by swimming in the pool. After yet another glorious buffet dinner and pistachio and chocolate icecream (which made me crave my grandma’s and mom’s pistachio cake!), I took it easy with a few friends, and watched the Welsh Open on TV with Cecilia (in case you’re wondering, it’s something like pool but more complicated). My roommate Gina and I woke Sunday morning to a torrential downpour and tried to salvage my sopping towel from the balcony. After one last omelette breakfast, we rescued Ben from the clinic and headed back towards Yaoundé, stopping along the way to use the “natural toilets” (aka the woods) and coming out covered in bites from midges that itch like mad. However, they are well worth it for the mini-vacation from the polluted city and four days of quality bonding time for Mr. Teku’s soccer team, complete with many, many never-too-hot hugs.
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
Now back in Yaoundé, we are back to the grind of classes (which isn’t really that gruelling, trust me, although 5 hours of environmental management was brutal today). It is nice to be back with my host family, although after a weekend of speaking all English the French is a little slow. On Sunday as soon as I got back, I was able to call and talk to both Grammy and Gramp (Happy 81st Birthday!) and Mom, Dad and Becca (all together for the first time on the phone since I’ve been here!), and it is always great to hear familiar voices! Monday, Alie and I got to call our friend Anna before she heads to Brazil this week for study abroad. In case I haven’t mentioned it, it is insanely cheap to call from Cameroon to the U.S. – 25 francs a minutes which is roughly 5 cents. And way less frustrating than dealing with cell phones or Skype connections! On Monday, we visited a privately-owned cultural museum with fantastic masks and paintings among other things (Auntie M, you would have LOVED it), and I was saddened to learn that the government has not awarded any grants to the upkeep of the place, which has holes in the ceiling. Currently, it is run singlehandedly and does not have electricity, so we viewed many of the huge masks by candlelight, which definitely created some nice ambiance, and allowed me to try out the candlelight setting on my camera!
Yesterday, I gave a 21-minute presentation on the rights and duties of the world’s children in French, which I was pretty impressed with. It made me miss Global Youth Forum and Group 11+ like crazy, as I definitely cited the UN’s Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child many times, and mentioned the Lost Boys and child soldiers of Uganda. We discovered a new restaurant, and I had a fantastic spaghetti dinner with my host brother’s that Mama Solange left for us as she got a new hair style at the coiffure.
The rest of this week is pretty crazy with many assignments due, including my first short story of travel writing (subject: the wedding) for my favourite class, Orality and Landscape. I’m still waiting for letters to arrive and will keep y’all posted! Hope all is well in your corner of the world – I’m doing great in mine! Keep the comments coming; emails are also appreciated though not responded to right away (internet is down at home now because the bill needs to be paid!). Miss and love y’all!
Bisous on both cheeks from Cameroon,
kmi
Before leaving for study abroad, I had been worried about the small group size of 11, thinking that it could either go incredibly well and we’d all get along famously, or backfire terribly and we’d be embroiled in a mess of tension and drama. Luckily, it has been completely of the former, and we function as a genuinely close soccer team, as Mr. Teku likes to refer to us (since soccer teams are made of 11 players). As we boarded the bus on Thursday morning, there was no fighting over seats or seat buddies; we all happily settled in for the 6-hour ride to the coast after stopping at our favourite bakery for quiches and beignets. Driving past Douala, Cameroon’s large port city, we thanked our lucky stars Dickinson’s program is in the cooler Yaoundé, though we enjoyed the sites and herds of long-horned and humped cattle on the street. As Julio, our phenomenal bus driver, zoomed past rubber plantations and landscapes of endless palm trees, we anticipated with overwhelming excitement our arrival at the Holiday Inn Hotel (no connection with the American chain!). Once we arrived, we easily chose roommates by counting off (I got the fabulous Gina Del Tito!) and dropped our bags in our AIR-CONDITIONED rooms before heading down to the hotel restaurant for a delectable buffet of plantains, chicken, fish, SALAD and watermelon! After some quality swimming pool and swingset time, we turned in – I slept like a rock on my hard mattress (a nice change from the overly soft foam one at my host family’s).
I woke up Friday psyched for the busy day ahead. After breakfast of fresh omelettes and hot chocolate, we boarded the bus for the Limbé Botanical Garden, established by the Germans when they first colonized the region, which is now Anglophone. On our tour of the expansive green gardens, we saw pepper, coffee, and rubber plants, and a huge variety of palms. We then visited the Limbé Wildlife Sanctuary, which is one of only 20 primate sanctuaries worldwide. The Sanctuary rescues primates from poachers and people keeping them illegally in deplorable conditions, nurses them back to health, gives them a home and eventually releases them back into the wild. They have the second largest population of endangered drills in captivity and the only Cross-River gorilla in captivity in the world. Kept in large open-air enclosures behind wires, the gorillas, baboons, mandrills and chimps are well cared for and healthy once again. We also saw some relatives of the deer and huge crocodiles before boarding the bus once more, this time with the lava flow as the destination. Limbé is located right near Mount Cameroon, the 6th tallest peak in Africa and an active volcano. It last erupted sometime in the 80s, the lava stopping at the road, but leaving a mess of volcanic rock behind which we proceeded to climb. If ever there was a day for the intense Teva sandals I bought for Africa, this was it. The views were incredible, the mountains leading straight to the ocean, and the group picture is definitely HUB wall quality (for those who don’t know, in Dickinson’s student building there is a picture of each study abroad location changed each year). We also visited the Debunchar (spelling completely negotiable), which is the second wettest place ON EARTH with something like 450 inches of rainfall a year. Which is a LOT of rain!
After all that talk of water, we finally got the chance to enter some ourselves, heading to Seme Beach, home of the black volcanic sands – which are actually more dark brown than black. It was beautiful. After chowing down at the overpriced hotel restaurant, Morgan and I took off with our cameras for some quality beach shots. We came back to find most of the group burying Ben in the exfoliating sands and proceeded to join in, shaping his sand body into that of a mermaid (UB people, think this summer at Lake Michigan, but warmer and in Africa!), rushing to beat the incoming tide that we had ingeniously faced his head towards! Since Ben was covered with sand, several of us decided to follow suit and were soon covered in the stuff, which prompted Mr. Teku to exclaim that he could not pick us out of the crowd anymore since we were no longer white! After a sand-covered photo shoot complete with successful jumping pictures (those ones where everyone tries to jump at the same time and the photographer scrambles to click the shutter at exactly the right moment), we rinsed off as best we could in the perfect temperature of the Atlantic Ocean (which, obviously is the same ocean that touches the East Coast of the U.S. prompting Professor Fanso to suggest we are neighbors!).
The adventures were not over yet as we tried out a game of human foozball on the beach. Yes, human foozball. It was incredible, and is incredibly hard to explain, but just think of a foozball table and imagine people as the plastic figures and that you can move your legs but must keep your arms on the plastic tube that comes across. Lots of fun, a few kicks to the face (don’t worry, Mom, I only got hit in the butt and shoulder) and much competition. But the soccer team emerged in good spirits and ready for the next adventure. This came several minutes later when we RODE HORSES ON THE BEACH AT SUNSET. Which was pretty much like a movie. Morgan remembered pictures of last year’s group doing it and so we had mentioned it to Julio who made it happen for us. A bit rushed since we had to leave in 10 minutes, but each of us paid the equivalent of a dollar to do this and it was glorious! Just wait ‘til you see the pictures! We left the beach rejuvenated and ready for a leisurely evening. We returned to the hotel for a buffet dinner and discussion on widowhood in Cameroon, followed by a nice conversation Morgan and I had with the hotel manager Freddy, who insisted his English was terrible (which is ABSOLUTELY was not!). We discussed Obama and the beauty of Limbé and then he let us return to our swinging. Julio then took us to Down Beach, right on the water, where we chilled and drank beer along the oceanfront and could see the lights of Equatorial Guinea in the distance.
Saturday morning, we awoke to find that Ben was very ill with a stomach malady. He stayed in the clinic associated with our hotel with at IV drip while we headed to Buea to watch the first few finishers of the Buea Mountain Race, an annual event where over 600 runners race up and down Mount Cameroon, the 6th highest peak in Africa at over 4000 meters above sea level. The atmosphere was filled with excitement and people lined the streets while gendarmes held wooden switches to prevent people from crossing in the runners’ path. A bunch of us watched from atop the bus, a fantastic view. We then headed to Max Lyonga’s studio for an incredibly pleasant tour and visit. Max is a phenomenal and talented artist with a Dickinson connection – he did a show on campus my freshman year which I didn’t make it to, but had told myself that I would find him in Cameroon. He is by far the most passionate person I have ever met, and possibly the happiest. While sipping drinks and eating peanuts, he told us the stories behind his works, and mentioned the names of many people we knew at Dickinson. I truly felt like Dickinson in Cameroon, especially after seeing Joyce’s Hall, named after Joyce Bylander, the on-campus coordinator for our program and a great friend of Max’s. He told us of his dream of building an art school for children in Buea, where they can come, tuition paid, and learn to express themselves through art. I was able to buy a small painting with words in Max’s invented language of art (because art crosses cultural and language boundaries), and also a poster of the painting he has done to raise money for his school (Joyce – I have copies for you, Frank, Norm and HOPE Station that I am taking good care of and will bring you in August!). I left with a sense of hope and inspiration, promising to keep in touch.
We returned to Limbé and somehow got the bus up the huge hill to Ben’s clinic. In response to Mr. Teku’s “Let’s storm this clinic,” we entered the tiny, clean facility for some quality cheering-up time. After spending a bit of time with our team member, we went back to the hotel to await dinner by swimming in the pool. After yet another glorious buffet dinner and pistachio and chocolate icecream (which made me crave my grandma’s and mom’s pistachio cake!), I took it easy with a few friends, and watched the Welsh Open on TV with Cecilia (in case you’re wondering, it’s something like pool but more complicated). My roommate Gina and I woke Sunday morning to a torrential downpour and tried to salvage my sopping towel from the balcony. After one last omelette breakfast, we rescued Ben from the clinic and headed back towards Yaoundé, stopping along the way to use the “natural toilets” (aka the woods) and coming out covered in bites from midges that itch like mad. However, they are well worth it for the mini-vacation from the polluted city and four days of quality bonding time for Mr. Teku’s soccer team, complete with many, many never-too-hot hugs.
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
Now back in Yaoundé, we are back to the grind of classes (which isn’t really that gruelling, trust me, although 5 hours of environmental management was brutal today). It is nice to be back with my host family, although after a weekend of speaking all English the French is a little slow. On Sunday as soon as I got back, I was able to call and talk to both Grammy and Gramp (Happy 81st Birthday!) and Mom, Dad and Becca (all together for the first time on the phone since I’ve been here!), and it is always great to hear familiar voices! Monday, Alie and I got to call our friend Anna before she heads to Brazil this week for study abroad. In case I haven’t mentioned it, it is insanely cheap to call from Cameroon to the U.S. – 25 francs a minutes which is roughly 5 cents. And way less frustrating than dealing with cell phones or Skype connections! On Monday, we visited a privately-owned cultural museum with fantastic masks and paintings among other things (Auntie M, you would have LOVED it), and I was saddened to learn that the government has not awarded any grants to the upkeep of the place, which has holes in the ceiling. Currently, it is run singlehandedly and does not have electricity, so we viewed many of the huge masks by candlelight, which definitely created some nice ambiance, and allowed me to try out the candlelight setting on my camera!
Yesterday, I gave a 21-minute presentation on the rights and duties of the world’s children in French, which I was pretty impressed with. It made me miss Global Youth Forum and Group 11+ like crazy, as I definitely cited the UN’s Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child many times, and mentioned the Lost Boys and child soldiers of Uganda. We discovered a new restaurant, and I had a fantastic spaghetti dinner with my host brother’s that Mama Solange left for us as she got a new hair style at the coiffure.
The rest of this week is pretty crazy with many assignments due, including my first short story of travel writing (subject: the wedding) for my favourite class, Orality and Landscape. I’m still waiting for letters to arrive and will keep y’all posted! Hope all is well in your corner of the world – I’m doing great in mine! Keep the comments coming; emails are also appreciated though not responded to right away (internet is down at home now because the bill needs to be paid!). Miss and love y’all!
Bisous on both cheeks from Cameroon,
kmi
