in cameroon

Hello from Cameroon! the enter key on this keyboard doesn't work so please forgive my structure! Well I just woke up and it is my second day in Cameroon. I flew in the night before last after some 3 days of flying and waiting in airports. The flights were decent with of course the exception of screaming children kicking your seat, a elbow-happy man who has no sense of how to share an armrest and the airplane food that I think made me sick. None the less, I am finally here and loving it. The night I got in, I will be honest, I got pretty freaked out and thoughts such as 'what am I doing here?', 'are you crazy?' and 'what have I gotten myself into?' most certainly passed through my mind that first night. On that note, I advise you never to fly into a city at night...everything is much more frightening at night. I say that becaus the next morning I was perfectly fine, it just all seemed so crazy when i got in. I had heard all about these 'porters' that try to 'help' you with your bag and sure enough I had my own personal stalker at the airport. He literally followed me from the gate all the way outside. I tried to loose him and tried to politely decline his services and actually walked away, and at one point ran, to try to loose him but to no avail. Finally I spotted my bag on a different carosel and I took off running when his head was turned. I busted through the croud and got stuck at the huge mob in front of customs. A woman stopped me and asked me for my luggage tags. I was told not to trust anyone at the airport other than cops, so I asked who she worked for and she was in uniform, so I showed her my luggage tag and somehow just ran through customs without anyone stopping me. In addition to my stalker, a lot of screaming was going on at customs because a fight had broken out and two men were kicking the crap out of eachother...security eventually broke it up but the scene was definately a good introduction into Africa. I make it outside into a swarm of people and unfortunately do not see a sign saying my name or AIESEC, but do not fear, I was not alone as my stalker had followed me all the way outside! Not only this but he brought all his friends over to meet me and offer their many ways of 'helping' me; I met money exchange lady, several taxi men, mobuto man (bus) and several others offering various assistance, much of which I wasn't even sure of because they were all speaking french. Finally, a white guy wearing an AIESEC shirt came to my rescue and we proceeded to the taxis to bargain our fair, it was like a mini wall street, bids going here and there, yelling and gesturing. Finally we agreed on a price and settled into the seat belt-less taxi. We got dropped off and walked home, at one point going through the sketchiest of sketchy alley ways. We got to the AIESEC house that has a locked gate and door and waited for its inhabitant to let us in. I was just starting to calm down as I was finally safe when I was suprised by a giant cockroach crawling near my bag. None the less I hadn't slept for three days so I crawled into my sandy bed under my pink mosquito next with no blankets and no pillow and fell sound asleep. I was awoken the next morning and we went out for breakfast the same place we had eaten the night before when I got in. A little 'cafe' where I ate oeuf spaghetti (egg spaghetti) a concoction of egg, 'egg spice', pepers, perhaps cilantro and spagetti fried into a patty on a flat pan. It's actually quite tasty along with my ovaltine made with sweetened milk out of a can. Unfortunately, something I ate that day caused me to have the pleasure of 'traveller's sickness' for the entire day, allowing me to get much more comfortable with the sketchy bathroom in the house. We continued on into town to exchange my money and buy a cell phone. I bought a pineapple on the street to get some smaller demoninations as hotels don't usually have smaller bills to give you when you exchange money. Something I've noticed here is that when you go to a business, they act as though they are doing you an extreme favour. We handed over the money for the pineapple, he kind of stood around continuing to chop up his goods, then brought some pineapples to who I was informed was his family, he finished chopping and then eventually gave us our pineapple and change. It was the same situation at the restaraunt...all you want to do is pay and they huff and take their time...it's quite funny actually, but I can see why everything takes so long here, no one, I mean NO ONE is in a rush. I enjoyed the pleasure of taking a moto-taxi, a motorcycle while in town and it was great! So dangerous, but totally fun! My doctor in Kingston said, 'the thing you must really be most careful about in africa is traffic.' I laughed at this and then had a bigger laugh when i came here and understood how right he was. There aren't really any rules here and no lanes and tonnes of these little honking motorcyles and taxis screaming around with no care for anyone else really. Honking is used to warn oncoming traffic of your presence rather than to show anger about being cut off; the idea is more like, i'm here so move it rather then 'excuse me!' We headed back home and stopped in for a 'Cameroon juice' which was like grapefruit pop, quite refreshing. Soon after returning home, we (tiery my host and I) were joined by Awa, one of the AIESEC people for Buea, where I will be going for my internship (currently in the city of Douala about 1.5 hours away). Although Tiery was very nice and accomodating, he didn't have a lot to say. Awa on the other hand was the exact human being I was so excited to meet here in Africa. He is an English and French major at his university, incredibly intelligent, philosophical, loves jazz and writes poetry! We had the most amazing 3 hour conversation about everything in life and it was so great. I found out that he is one of 16 children and his father had two wives and is a prince of Buea. His grandfather was the king of his town/village and had something like 8 wives. Polygamy is still legal here in Cameroon but is not practiced as much in people my age, but their fathers, if within their means, can have more than one wife. Awa certainly expressed to me that he would never want two wives and said times have changed; he's looking for love and complete longlasting committment to and from one person. Anyways, i was relieved to meet someone that I was hoping to meet here and luckily he is from the town I am going to. The night was fairly uneventful as we were joined soon after our conversation was nearing it's end by Bernice, a very humorous young man who would not leave me alone. He followed me around the house and later on in the night took me to the equivalent of 'look out point', the train station, i think in an attempt to 'make his move.' Luckily however, i kept my distance and conversation going on a very non-personal/sexual topic of development in Africa. He is so nice and sweet but just a little bit much for me, haha. I did however get an invite to his village where they also have a king protected by things like lions and leopards apparently and still have very traditional values and ways of life. I am very excited to see more traditional Africa! Other than all of this, right before I took my first shower since I left (which is a shower head on a hose that you hold over yourself and drain in the floor), I was greeted by a spider the size of my hand. I of course said 'holy shit!' and jumped back and called Bernice over who proceeded to of course laugh at me. Apparently that's 'small' and he said there are even butterflies with wings the size of his hand (that being the size of one wing). I guess some other fun tidbits to mention is that there is power and running water here but the power i constantly flickering and going out, in fact it was out almost all of yesterday and was out for several hours at the nairobi airport. Other than that, right now I'm waiting for a text from Awa saying when we are leaving because of the rain. I can't wait to get to Buea as i don't much like the city or cities in general and Buea is a much smaller community at the root of mount cameroon, cooler and fresher (apparently, as it is QUITE muggy here) and only 20 minutes away from Limbe where there is apparently a black sand beach on the ocean! I can't wait to meet my host family, although it'll be interesting to live with a family and a curfew again. Oh, i just remembered, i forgot to tell you about Amsterdam! I had a stopover in amsterdam for about 9 hours; I met a girl in line for the plane who was also going to africa (nairobi for a tour) and so we decided to tour amsterdam on our lay over. We hoped on the train and went downtown. We wandered around people watching and observing oddities such as a carnival (like with titla-whirl and such) right downtown amsterdam in the city square...it was really odd. we finally settled down at a table outside a small pub and began pounding back the pints, soon enough (due to lack of sleep etc.) we were well on our way to intoxicated. Then of course we were only meters from the 4 20 cafe...so we enjoyed all the most obvious aspects of amsterdam while we chatted with some aussies next to us. A little less coherent we stumbled back to the airport (thankfully finding our way in this state after only half of what we purchased from the cafe) and found our gate. It was a great little stop and MUCH better than my 10 hour layover in the Nairobi airport which is filled almost exclusively with duty free shops, about 95% of the stores are duty free and the other 5% selling the exact same souvenirs...it was really quite odd and painful layover as it was long, i hadn't slept in days and there was nothing to do and little options in terms of food; the power went out and no gates were posted for most flights so I had to run end to end to find my gate. Anyways, sorry this was so disorganized and random but I tried to update the blog earlier to keep events and thought seperate but the power and later the internet was out yesterday, SO, here it is in it's glorious form. I miss home already but am excited for my adventures! I have a cell phone and apparently it doesn't cost me anything if someone calls me so if you feel like it and have a phone card, give me a call at + 237 75 89 17 53! hope to hear from you all soon!