Fasting

August 22, 2011

Fasting for Ramaddan

Day 1: Um what... surprisingly and shockingly good. So I have never fasted before in my entireee life, I don't remember the last time I skipped a meal much the less didn't have my water bottle glued to my hand in this heat. Ramaddan here in village has been well under way for three weeks, and people aren't even phased by it. It is also bean season which means that everyone is working in the fields all day with no food and no water. Um if they can do that, I can give this whole fasting thing a shot. So, with fasting, here are the rules:
-Wake up between 4 and 4:30 am. Eat as much as you can between that time and 4:58 am. Go pray at 5:00 am.
-Don't touch food or water again until 6:30 pm but pray at 1:30 pm and 3:30 pm and 6ish pm
-Chug water and eat as much as humanly possible between 6:30 and 7 pm
-Pray again at 7 pm, and continue the feasting until you pass out around 8:30 pm
-Wake up. Do it all again for one month
So last night I ate with my usual fam and they were all really tired, so I can back early around 8pm. I was still hungry for some reason (of what? fourth meal of the day? it's fine) so I munched on some trail mix in bed while listening to music and fell asleep around 10 pm.
I woke up at 6am, whoops already past 5 am, can't eat. So I didn't. I worked in the garden a bit in the morning, washed laundry, went to another village for drop off a report with someone from the hospital, visited the hospital, came back, worked on a campaign with someone in village who is distributing medicine, made food, brought it over to the fam, and "broke fast" at 18:32 by drinking some bru-ee and munching on cucumber salad that I had made. And then I consumed (in this order): bennets made by Nini with bru-ee, cucumber salad, water, more bru-ee, couscous part 1 with my sauce plus fadi's sauce, cucumber salad, more couscous with meat sauce from a friend.
But during the fast, I wasn't hungry. I wasn't grumpy. I craved water a bit in the afternoon but it wasn't bad. I feel fine. But this makes me worried. Here are my possible reasons for a successful fasting day 1:
1. there is something seriously wrong with my body so not having food or water for 20 hours didn't phase it
2. mind over matter. I knew that I could do this and that I wanted to because everyone else works so much harder than me in the fields and if they can do it, I can do it.
3. It is still day 1. The lack of nutrition hasn't set in.
4. Maybe I'm normally consuming too many "cous-cous calories" so this is a healthy and necessary cleansing process and my body likes the rest from breaking down carbs
5. I was busy today. If I was sitting in my house reading all day and eyeing the yummy trail mix that my mother sent, things may be different.

August 22

Day 2: still fine, visited health center in morning and worked on a medicine distribution campaign in afternoon. Chowed down at 6:32 pm

August 23

Day 3: starting to feel the effects a bit. This is what my body is doing: right when i wake up and at noon I will be so hungry that I can't focus on anything else. But once I tell myself that I can't eat or drink and I'll just have to wait, the hunger subsides and everything is fine and normal. It is a bit crazy how little food our bodies need to still function.

August 24

Day 4: Today was a bit more difficult. It was sunny alll day long and I working on the medicine distribution campaign both in the morning and afternoon. When the kids came to visit and were jumping around and screaming, I had very little patience and was jealous of their amount of energy (children and people who are sick are exempt from fasting during this month). My goal right now is to fast until the fete/festival of Ramaddan, which will complete one full week.

August 25

Day 5: came into the city. Stomach is growling like crazy, baby-lion-style. Stayin strong, stayin strong. I have my granola bar, peanuts and other snacks ready for when 6 pm hits. Food consumed (in this order) starting at 18:30pm exactly: 2 bags of peanuts, fish + baton manioc + plantains, more peanuts, cracker jacks sent from my mother, more peanuts.

August 26

Day 6: Woke up and subconsciously grabbed my water bottle and chugged some water. Darnit. Broke fast at 7 am. Will not make that same mistake tomorrow.

17 august 2011

Some cute little stories:

-I was working in the garden the other day with some kids from the neighborhood. We were weeding and moving around dirt to create another row of beans. We were losing speed and getting tired quickly in the hot sun. An older boy named Ila showed up and started helping us shovel to build the dirt-mound-row. I was going to walk inside to grab some beans that I had bought to plant, when all of a sudden, Ila pulls out a handful of beans from his pocket. He gave half to me and half to a little girl, Sadia, and together we planted the row of beans. I don't know why this struck me as such a cool happening; maybe because during planting season here in Cameroon, beans are like currency/pocket change. Or it makes me happy that farming is such a communal event that requires the help of everyone.

-So I was over at the fam's house (Fadi, Nini, Saddam and Babba) the other night and Fadi had made potatoes (sweet potatoes and "irish" potatoes) and I told her that I like the "irish" potatoes because chez nous, at my house, we mash them up with oil and salt and they are so delicious. So Nini comes back after selling things and starts making herself some dinner. I told Fadi I was tired and was going to head home, but she said to wait to have a snack with Nini. Fadi must have told Nini what I said because, after the potatoes were all cooked, Nini mashed them up with a millet pounder, added salt and we ate them together :) just like I'm used to.

-So the other day when kids were over at my house, Nini (9 years old) was babysitting a little girl named Habiba (11 months old). Habiba fell asleep on Nini's back, so we laid her down on the mat on my floor. Nini was sitting next to her, and outside, some rambunctious boys started wrestling. Nini is wise beyond her age and has been practicing her French with me more and more. As the boys get louder, she looks over at me and says "vraiment, les enfants comme ca", literrally meaning "really, the children like that", but translating more like, "honestly, these children sometimes". She must have heard me and Fadi say that a lot. It was too cute.

august 3, 2011

Happy Ramaddan to all! Ramaddan started this past Sunday, on July 31st. This means that people wake up between 3:30 and 4:00 am, eat as much as their bellies will allow, and then don't eat or drink anything again until 6:30pm. This will happen for a whole month, and there a grand fete at the end to celebrate making it through the fasting. It makes me a bit nervous seeing guys driving motorcycles down the road or working out in the fields all day when I know they haven't touched water since before the sun came up. Nevertheless, I admire the physical and emotional strength it takes to do this for thirty days straight. I think I'm going to fast for one of the four weeks. I need to plan it out so that I'm not doing too much at that time and can relax (faire de repos)/sleep in the afternoon when the energy and blood glucose level is lagging. We'll see how it goes; wish me luck!

7 aout 2011
So whenever you get an email from me, or skype with me, or chat with me on facebook, it is because I am in the city of Ngaoundere. The voyage here usually takes 45 minutes total. Today, however, the journey was more eventful than others:

8 am left the homestead. I was traveling into the city to meet with my french tutor and have a lesson, so I wanted to head in early. I said good morning to everyone and headed onto the road...

...where I waited 25 minutes for a car to pass by. Because on Fridays the market is far away, all the cars are there. No problem. I sat and chatted with some peeps and when the first car going in the right direction passed, I flagged it down.

....so I am in the car, we pick up three other people. This makes 8 total. I believe this is an appropiate time to talk a little bit about transportation in C-roon. I have no idea how vehicles arrive in Cameroun, but they have already been used somewhere else like America or Euro. The "newest" of cars are still in rough shape, so you can imagine what my bush-cars are like. When I say that 8 people were in this used Toyato, I mean there are 4 of us in the back, 2 in the front passenger seat, the driver, and one other "mini-driver" next to him. My record so far for this type of bush-car has been 10 people: 4 in the front and 4 in the back plus 2 children. No seatbelts, windows don't often roll down, windshields are always broken in ten places...it's a great time. Anywho, so we're driving along and everything is going as it always does, until...

....the car stops. Ok. nothing new. the driver tries to start it a few times. probably needs gas. this has happened before...but what hasn't happened before is the car actually not starting again even when it gets pushed down a hill by some kind passerbys. The driver finds a guy on a motorcycle and sends him to get some gas. Ok, so maybe it was just the gas. The gas arrives, but still the car does not start. So the driver gets out, flips up the hood and starts doing all sorts of things. He tries to start it again, no go. Then he takes a crowbar and starts banging some metal pipe under the car. I'm like please no, if this car explodes, I am stuck right here between two women and one stinky man. He tries pushing the car backwards down a little hill, and it almost starts...but then dies again.

.....Then it starts raining. It is about 10 am now. I'm like this is ridic. Have patience Alison, have patience. Other cars pass by in the opposite direction but none come our way. The driver is still attempting banging under the car and under the hood but nothing works. Finally, a car in our direction arrives. The other-car driver also looks under the hood and bangs under the car, but he says there's no way he can fix it. At this point, myself and stinky man get out and go in their car. Second car driver attaches a rope between the two cars and we head off again towards the city; our now-car pulling old car. Old car still has all my stuff in it.

....So we're off and we reach a big downhill and first car driver is having a hard time navigating and hits the back of our car and the rope breaks due to the impact. So we all stop and re-attach the rope. That happens about 8 times.

....So we reach a police checkpoint/toll road. The rope breaks at the checkpoint (of course right) and the toll road boys help push car #1 so that it's not blocking other cars; inadvertently putting it in front of our car. A police comes over and starts blowing his whistle for us to move along so our car comes up behind car #1 and pushes it to a place where we have room to re-attach the rope. But this of course breaks off the entire bumper and rear headlights. Great.

.....So we're back on the road and we slowly make it to the city before Ngaoundere called Dang. At Dang, we stop and retrieve our things from car #1. Yes, finally. It is 10:45 am now. We leave car #1 and....right before we are in Ngaoundere, we hit a line of traffic and have to stop in the same spot that a huge truck is making a turn around us...and hits our car. I'm like you've got to be joking me. No major damage was done because the truck was moving slowly, but I just thinking in my head about how many bad omens there were to not go into the city today.

....I arrived for my french class at 11:20 am.
Total time of travel: 3 hours 20 minutes. Cost of trip: 1000 FCFA, about $2. Memories: Priceless

Just some things about my life here in Cameroon to-date:

Running Creature Count/ RCC: Cockroaches 13, random dead cockroaches (I didn’t commit the act but somehow they are in my house and they are not alive) 4, little spiders 20, big spiders 11, earwigs 5

Last movie watched out here at post: The Life Aquatic, which i highly recommend :) great film

Top-2 nicest things said to me thus far:

1. After explaining an alternative method of adding fractions to a boy doing his math homework, he said that I was a really good teacher and no one has ever explained math in simple terms like that to him.

2. After taking out my braids one morning and leaving my hair down and curly, one of the nurses at the health center said it looked pretty. No, I said, here in Africa, it's prettier to keep my hair in braids. No, he said, you are beautiful, all beautiful, just the way you are.

Top-2 not-so-nicest things said to me thus far:

1. While walking to work one morning, an anglo-phone man (one who speaks english) greeted me and asked what the things on my forehead were. I explained that my acne is from eating a lot of oil here. He said, and I quote, "You have a lot of pimples. You should do something about that".

2. Over a month after Ashia has passed away, a woman that I don't even know came up to me and said she heard that my dog died. And that she thought I shouldn't have cried, it's not like it was a person.

Top-3 American food cravings:

3. shrimp cocktail

2. fried haddock

1. salmon and lemon sauce

hmmmmmm seafood craving anyone?

Travels with Fadi:

So my mama out here at post is named Fadi. She is a farmer and grows beans, corn and peanuts, but she also works at a weekly market. Every Sunday, she and three other women from our village go and sell things in the city of Dang. This means that every Friday and Saturday, she is busy gathering vegetables and flour from various people to sell on Sunday. It is always an adventure when I'm at their house on those days because we go to all different places and houses to pick up things for her to sell. Most recently, we went in search of millet flour last Friday. Since it is almost Rammadan, she said, everyone wants to buy millet flour to make bruee (water + millet flour + rice + sugar, drink up yum yum). So we're (Fadi, Nini and me) off with two empty sacs and two flashlights on Friday evening after dinner. It has raineddddd all Friday, so we trek through puddles and mud like I have never seen before to house #1. When we arrive, we walk down a hill that is slick with mud and make it to her friend's concession, but he's not there. Oh great, so we climb back up (Nini is holding on to me at this point so she won't fall), and, with now-mud-ladden flipflops, continue on. We arrive at house #2. We enter into the kitchen where some women are boiling millet wine over the fire. On the floor is a week-old goat. Do vino, the women say. Welcome. There isn't much room inside the small kitchen so Nini sits on my lap and picks up the goat to pet on her lap. Fadi's friend has the flour that we are searching for, and so they lay it all out on a sac and begin counting bowl-fulls. As I'm shining my flashlight on the counting process, I notice the women is bare-footedly stepping on something. Oh right, just the skin of the cow that was slatered to sell in town today on Friday. The head, hooves and tail are close-by. Classic. The counting is then done and we head on back through the mud to our neighborhood....

Kids reading National Geographic in my house

So my mother sent me some french books for the kids here to read/learn from. One book permanently stays at Fadi's house; the First 1000 French Words. The kids love it, they look at it every night and we play a game where I say the french word and they find the object on the page. However, I've come across a few minor problems with some of the words. When Nini asks me what a toaster is, I don't know how to explain that in French so that she will understand. And would she even understand if I explained that it's an instrument to cook bread? Nini would say that bread is already cooked. Or teaching the kiddos words like "picnic" "park" or "trashcan" don't seem to make much sense if they will never use these words in their life. So, usually, I just stick with objects on the page that they will recognize and use in the future.

12 aout 2011

8 months ago to the day, I was at the health center in my village of Dan Turke in Niger weighing babies when I received the call that all Peace Corps volunteers were being evacuated. So much has happened since then on this journey. There is the physical evidence to show what has changed; a new village, home and life here in Cameroon and photos to chronical to journey through Morocco and Cameroon. There is evidence in the way I speak that I have re-learned French and now Fulfulde and Dii words are driving into my subconscious. But what can't be seen? How do I feel about all of this? What of the evidence that only I know about; the mefloquine dreams about other Niger volunteers who I became close friends with, the way I feel today about Africa and international aid, and the Cameroonian friends I have made here in village? This evidence has become what I live by and my reality. And the truth is, really, that in terms about what I feel about all of this... I feel pretty good. I am taking the different roller-coaster-of-emotions every day as it comes and facing each new obstacle knowing that I can surpass it if I put my mind to it. These obstacles currently include learning Dii, teaching children the french alphabet instead of just memorizing sounds as they are taught in school, and finding a way to approach preventive healthcare here that will be sustainable and worthwhile. I feel happy and grateful for where these past 8, well actually in total, close to 10, months have taken me and I'm ready to keep on keeping on as the journey continues.

Just a little note about this whole blog thing:

It's always bizarre to me whenever I come into the city of Ngaoundere and look at my blog, or edit it with new tales of my village. I open up the website, right, and I see the words that are my stories and thoughts. I see the comments people have left me, photos I have posted, and links to friends' blogs. If I go to another link, I see photos of my friends here, my house, and the health center...But all of that is a bit bizarre to me because I'll look up from the computer screen and see the city of Ngaoundere and I'll hear the sounds of the city and smell the aromas of the city and listen to the people speaking in Fulfulde or Hausa, and that's when I realize....that really this blog is just no good. Ok, let me explain. I could post a photo of my house; I could even take a video of my house and post it, and you would look at it because you want to see what my life here is like and where I'm living, but really, that photo/video is not actually my house. It is a building yes, the photo can describe a 1,000 words, but there are so many other things that will be left behind. Because even if you see the photo of my house and I describe it to you in even a million words, you still can't:

-see the children sitting on the floor in my house looking through the National Geographic magazines and you can't hear them yelling out about the weird/cool photos they encounter and create stories about in their native tongue of Dii

-smell the Rambo bug spray that I use to terminate too-friendly cockroaches
-hear the rain pelting on the tin roof and falling off the roof to the ground and making mud as strong and annoying as quick sand

-smell the soy being boiled down to milk as I experiment how to make different healthy foods

-taste the basil and parsley fresh from the garden

-touch and hug and kiss the babies that are brought into my house strapped to their older sibling's backs

So you see, these photos and the words on this blog, I'm sorry, but they are just no good. They are not the whole story or experience, they are just fragments and pieces. Only do I have the whole memory and all the feelings and secrets of my village and of this place...and I love that.

30 juillet 2011

These are things that have happened that i COULD tell you about:

-crashing down my bicycle in my house at 10pm in a successful killing of a cockroach

-people telling me that i know dii very well

-planting morenga in my garden with children

-riding my bicycle to the next town in search of tomatoes, and getting a flat tire on the way

-giving my supervisor's puppy a bath and watching the fleas and ticks jump off of her after

-teaching Nini, a girl neighbor, how to write her name

but instead I'm going to say:

just having some normal every-day kinda days out at post. things that would have phased me before or made good stories are now just part of my normal, everyday life. i'm just getting used to everything and, although it's less exciting than when i first arrived, i like it that way because it shows that i'm just living.

Nothing beats a sunset in village

My hands will never be the same. at the current moment, these are my hands:

left hand fingernails: painted black from henna (called seepa here)

right index finger: cut from chopping up ochre/gumbo into little pieces to make a sauce

both thumbs: blisters from using the shovel all day in the garden

both ring and pinky fingers: tiny cuts from employing my hands as a mower for the sharp, long grass around my house

right thumb: healing cut from cutting hakondiam last week to make a sauce

under fingernails: dirt, dirt and more dirt from working in the garden and planting beans

joints: achy from making kneading dough the other night with my friend to make bennets

Little Sadia falling asleep (mid-biscuit) on my floor during a rainstorm