By mariacort3s
Hi Everyone!!! Welcome to my first blog post! I have been in Cameroon for almost four weeks now and have been riding a rollercoaster of emotions ranging from sadness, happiness, nervous, excited and finally coming to ease and contentment. Cameroon is known as Africa in miniature due to its 200+ linguistic groups and diverse environment! Cameroon is officially bilingual, using both French and English. There are some conflicts in regards to that but I’ll keep that for another post!
I am currently in Yaoundé, known as the political capital of Cameroon. It is chilly in the morning and night, but mid-day is h o t! Any who, the city is filled with beautiful Afro-Centric architecture in the centre-ville, mountains, delicious spaghetti omelets (for less than $1 and served in plastic bags), and lots of traffic. My program consists of ten students from the US (who all happen to be women, two of them from GWU #GoGDubs) and two Cameroonian students, a man and woman.
Each morning, I meet with four other students and we walk to the neighborhood of Bastos where our classes are held. We start our classes at 8 in the morning and finish at 3:30 PM (or 15:30 – the 24-hour clock is used here). Of course, we have many breaks ranging from 5, 10, and 30 minutes in between where you can lay on the bed in the student room and/or eat bananas, bread, crackers, peanut butter, and Tartina (Cameroon’s better version of a chocolate spread). Our lunch is 1 hour and 30 minutes, so plenty of time to cool down. However, it is still different from what we are used to in the US where I could have a class at 9:35 AM and then again at 11:10 am and be done for the day.
It has been difficult to adjust to an 8-hour day of constant learning with the addition of coming home to a homestay and having your brain on because you have to speak a different language and engage with your family. Study abroad isn’t just happening in the classes but its all around me from hand washing my clothes (some students have washing machines at their homes) to adjusting to Yaoundé’s taxis which are basically their version of UberPool (picking up people with destinations that are all near each other [beware you can be denied if your location is out of the way] until they maximize their profit by sitting two in the passenger seat and sometimes four in the back).
Even though for the first two weeks my allergies took over my body and now I’m a bit sick, there is nowhere I would rather be. Of course, it is easy at times to think about my bed and the conveniences of home but at the same time it is important for me to be here and sit in my living room with my host sister, brother, and cousin and watch Mexican novelas (Rubi! For any novela lovers reading this) that are dubbed in French or The Voice Kids: France while the friendly souris (mouse) of the house shows up each night in search for food. I have even learned to share the bathroom at night with the two cockroaches that never fail to show up. The three of us have definitely learned what it means to “stay in your lane” so no one is bothered. Haha, you gotta laugh at the small things.
It’s been a journey and I think the biggest challenge for not just me but my classmates is how exhausted we feel and how ready we are for bed by 10 P.M. each day. But this Tuesday (the 19th) we are traveling for five days to Kribi, a coastal city, to meet an indigenous group in the rainforest called the Bagyelis and understand how they are conserving their culture and fighting for their rights while having to integrate into modern society.
The classroom is only a small portion of study abroad!