I arrived safely in Cameroon on the 19th of September, 2010 and am undergoing my Pre-Service Training (PST). I’m currently living in Bafia with a wonderful home stay family. I have a lot of host sisters and a brother so, after spending a busy day at the training site with 24 other Agro PSTs, I return home and am kept busy talking, playing, retrieving water, and cooking with my siblings. This is my final week with this family. Next week I will move to a village called Lable (it’s within biking distance of where I am now) and live with another family. There are three wives at this family (each has their own mud hut, but I will live in the main house) so there are many children.
I have 11 weeks of training and during this time I will be living with two host families. The family I’m living with now is welcoming and happy to be my host. I have 4 host sisters and 1 host brother. The kids are ages 2-16 so the home is always bustling with activity. The house is modern and I have my own room. I get water with my siblings at least twice a day from the well across the street and I’ve been enjoying my daily bucket baths.
At training, I spend time learning French and technical skills; however I just tested out of French last week and have been placed in one of the two English speaking regions in Cameroon so on Monday I began learning Pidgin. After only two days of classes I know this will be a challenge (especially considering my Pidgin text book is written in French...). The good thing about the North West region that I’ll be working in is that it isn’t as hot as many of the other areas in Cameroon. It’s been hot in Bafia so I’m looking forward to the cooler weather in the coming months.
There are 49 people in my training class, but only 25 are in Agroforestry; the others are in Health. There are some training classes that are combined with the Health group, but most of them, and all technical courses, are taught with only the Agro group.
There are 10 regions in Cameroon and this past weekend I took a field trip with the Agro group to the West. It was a nice break from our intense 10-hour days, 6 days a week program. We saw tree nurseries, successful farms, and apiculture sites. Along with this, we also learned 3 methods of cloning trees--pretty cool stuff!
Once I’m at my post I’ll have more time to update this blog, but for now, this is the best I can manage. I did learn that I’ll be living in a house with both running water and electricity (many of the volunteers do not have these luxuries). I am opening a new post (no other PC volunteer has been in the village) so there are a lot of opportunities for sustainable growth.
Thank you everyone for all of the support and I look forward to being in touch!
