Day 23 of 71

Sunday

Last night for dinner, Amelie, Chi and I walked down to Molyko Junction to a restaurant that serves Amelie's favorite dish: Eru and Gari. I am not a huge fan of Gari so I ordered my Eru with Foufou. Eru is a traditional dish made with a green vegetable, peppe (peppers that have been dried and ground up that add a very nice spice), crayfish (tiny, whole crayfish that have been dried and added to dishes to give it a fishy/seafood-ish flavor), palm oil (tons of oil) and cow skin. Eru is served in a bowl with a plate of (in my case) Foufou rolled into a ball on the side. Foufou is a relatively tasteless base to go with the vegetable and balance out the flavors (and oil). It has the texture of sticky playdough and is the color of mashed potatoes. In order to eat this, one pinches off a piece of Foufou and squishes it then uses it to scoop up the Eru to eat. (Almost everything is eaten with your hands here...I'm not going to lie, it's pretty fun playing with your food!) This was my first time eating Eru and will probably be my last. There is just something about many of the dishes here I can't bring myself to love: the amount of oil used to prepare it. The vegetable and spices used to flavor the Eru gave it a nice taste, but the overwhelming texture and taste of the palm oil ruined it for me. I am glad that I tried it, though. And eating in a Cameroonian restaurant is always different with each restaurant, so I was excited for a new experience!

After dinner we walked to the apartment of a friend to watch the Germany vs. Portugal football game. Football is such a big deal here and most of the time it doesn't matter which country is playing, the game will be playing on a television and at least eight or so grown men will be screaming in Pidgin at the screen. I love it. It reminds me of home and my mother....except I can understand what she hollers sometimes.

At the apartment, I met a few of Chi and Amelie's friends and they were so curious about life in the States. They wanted to know all about things I liked to do for fun and had heard Chi mention that I hunted with my daddy. They thought it was bizarre (a girl owns a gun, can shoot it, kills wild animals with it AND helps skin it? Wait, whu?) and wanted to know about the animals we hunted and fished for, what they looked like, how we shot them, how I learned to shoot, what kind of gun (very interested in guns....owning them, shooting them...). They also wanted to know what life was like at home, what the people were like. It was fun describing home to them. I think being away from the States for this long in a country that really doesn't know much about it (I am the second volunteer with UAC from the states and the only one from below the Mason Dixon line, so my “accent” is REALLY amusing/confusing for them. I am such an alien here haha) has really made me appreciate what I love about my country (even/especially our government) and especially about my Southern culture. (I've also learned things I'm not too proud of too.) Honestly, home isn't that much different from here. Anywhere you go you realize that people are people everywhere. Granted, the kids back home don't have to walk to kindergarten carrying machetes but...

Being here has made me realize how much I don't really care about what building I'm staying in or the living conditions (to a certain extent...I'm still a spoiled-rotten first-world kid). It has made me realize how little value I've put to certain material things and how much more value I have for my “people” and my relationships with them. While I'm here I've realized how little I care about wearing the same outfit multiple times or how I look without makeup on and clean hair. I've realized how nice it is not being a slave to my cellphone texting or calling all the time, emails rolling in, tweeting obsessively and checking Facebook every five-minutes. The hardest part is not having my people here. I miss my friends and my family and seeing all the things I see here just makes me miss them more because I always think about how amused they would be by it or how much they would like to see it or what they would say about it and I want them here to share it with them in person. That internal struggle of wanting to be here experiencing it and wanting to be with my loved ones has been difficult, but I have to realize that God knows I'm wired like this. I mean, He wired me that way...He's didn't bring me here to make me miserable but to make me learn. And boy have I learned a lot. He's also not going to wire me that way then take me across the planet and not let me have a taste of home. I just have to be patient. Yesterday I got that taste of home. I had the pleasure of talking to a few friends on Facebook yesterday afternoon and even though it was only for a short while, it completely renewed my spirits. I am here because I love people and God brought me here to show that love and His kindness to people I didn't know. But it's little kindnesses and words of encouragement (even if it's just a “hello”) from the people I know and love from home that give me the ability to stay here and share it with others. The emails, the wall-posts, the text messages, the thoughts and the prayers and everything else is appreciated more than you people can imagine! I am truly enjoying my time here and learning so much about myself, life and the world around me that my head might explode.

Today is Sunday and I am grateful for a day to do nothing. Nathan, Amelie and I were planning to go to a city near Limbe called Bangem and visit the Manengouba Twin Crater Lakes. Unfortunately, Nathan suffered a bad stomach last night and did not sleep. We decided to go next weekend. I was actually really happy about postponing our trip. I want to go and travel and see what there is to see here in Cameroon, but I miss home and attending church services....so I like observing the Sabbath in my own way here. I was glad for the Sunday off to rest, read and really observe the Sabbath as it should be done. (But I do miss my 252 babies a looooot!!)

Right now as I am typing, I have the windows wide open in my room and the light breeze is carrying in the scent of freshly turned dirt. A family that has moved into the apartment connected to our house is cleaning up the plot of land behind it and has turned over the soil. I love that smell. Because they are right outside my window the kids like to stick their faces to the bars and say “Auntie Emelie (they can't differentiate between our names) please for stickahs!” It's cute! I just don't want one of them to pull an Emily and realize their head can fit through the bars and get stuck...

Later, we may go uptown to look at fabrics and stop by the tailors. It's always iffy whether or not the shops will be open on the weekends, though.

I look forward to checking my emails and replying to them. You guys have no idea how much joy I get just from opening them. You don't even have to write anything significant. Once again, thank you so much for your thoughts, prayers, and messages. I appreciate them more than you can imagine!

(Although, Dr. Odom boasting about his milk and strawberries was a little cruel...haha)

Day 24 of 71

Monday

Today has been a good day. We were not understaffed at the hospital today and only a few patients needed dressing changes, so I was able to spend all day in the lab. I was allowed to collect all the specimens and do each test on them on my own while Dave played clerk and recorded my results. It was a nice role switch! Haha I really like the practice I am getting finding veins in all types of patients. The patient I drew blood from today was an elderly woman whose veins were tinsy tiny. I ended up having to use a butterfly needle to draw blood from a vein in her hand. I like how challenging it is to draw blood....especially on patients who have dark, thick skin and small veins. Because I don't want to cause them unnecessary pain or turn them into a pin cushion I try to remember where the veins show up in my own arms and only stick once I'm sure I've found one. So far I've been successful on finding the veins on my first tries! Oh the little joys...Anyway, I was able to use the centrifuge and perform an HIV test, read the Hemoglobin levels and then do both macroscopic and microscopic urinalysis and stool analysis. It was a slow day at St. Luke's today, so in my spare time I visited Charles. He is looking stronger every day! He had complained of pain in his leg during the night so I wanted to make sure he was feeling fine this afternoon. When I asked whether he knew what the doctor had done to him in the Theatre, both he and his mother shook their heads, so I asked if he knew what had happened to his leg when the car hit him. He said, “it broke” but he nor his mother knew any further details. So I sat down and explained what had happened, where the break was and what we had done to fix it. He and his mother had many questions. They wanted to know why screws were necessary, what the drain was and what was it for, why was his dressings changed only on certain days, when could he be put into a P.O.P, would he have to have a POP or could he have a brace instead, etc. It was really cool that I was able to not only answer each question intelligently and accurately but also in a way that people who spoke English as their third language (if you count Pidgin) could understand. (Just to brag a little...ha) It kind of surprised me and when I left his room it really hit me how much I've learned here and in the past few years of shadowing in the hospitals.

Yesterday, three volunteers from the U.S. arrived. One is a career coach working with the organization they are with (the name left me...) and two are soccer players at Harvard University who applied to participate in the program for the summer. They spent last week in Limbe and will spend just this week in Buea before moving on to other African countries. They are here to coach football coaches, officials and players how to use teamwork and team-building exercises to apply life lessons like woman empowerment and HIV prevention. It's a really incredible program and these guys are really awesome to get to know. It's also nice to have people who, like me, haven't been here for ages and are from home. It wasn't until I'd talked to them and heard their questions about living here that I realized how much I've adjusted to this place. I'm trying to be an ambassador for them here and tell them the things I wish people had told me about when I arrived like the easiest way to shower, where to put my trash so the chickens don't strew it before pick-up, which stand on our street sells water for the cheapest, which foods are good to try first to ease you into the African flavorings, & etc. The children here need and love attention from young adults and I think it's amazing that they are so giving of their time and talents to come and play with the kids. God is going to do great things through them.

Tomorrow is Theatre day. Dr. Pale left last week for a month-long vacation to San Jose so we have the doctor from the general hospital subbing in for him. I'm excited to see what kinds of surgeries he brings to the Theatre and what kinds of stories he has to tell.

Oh yeah, we killed a tarantula in our house this morning.

Nathan killed two in his last week.

Averaged size: centimetre smaller than my hand.

I only saw them when they were dead.

I only cried on the inside.