Taxis, Packages, and Yummy Christmas Food

Friday, December 24

Since I am a procrastinator by nature, I put off buying Christmas presents until Christmas Eve. I had a fairly short list for market, so I was hoping for a painless few minutes of shopping. Wrong! It was, hands down, my worst market experience yet! I was walking up the road, lost in my own world, when I walked past a car; the driver was sitting inside, but I didn’t really pay any attention until he started talking to me. “I want to talk to you.” He told me as he pulled me aside. “I see you walking by all the time, but you always look so busy.” I shook his hand, but didn’t say anything.

“I want to see you, where do you live?” He asked.

“Uh… Around here.” I have a really hard time lying, even if they are creepy.

“Can I have your phone number?”

“Sorry, I don’t have a phone.” This lie I justified by saying that the phone wasn’t really mine, it’s Cherilyn’s. Besides, I don’t know the number.

“How will I find you then? I really want to see you.”

“I come to market, but I’m in a hurry today. My friend is cooking and I need to get food for her.”

This interested him. “Boyfriend or girlfriend?”

“My friend.” Why can’t I lie?!?

“Wait, where are you from?”

Germany was the first country that popped into my head, so that’s what I told him. I quickly left him and continued my journey to the market. Since it was the day before Christmas, everyone was selling the main entre for Christmas dinner: Chicken. There were probably ten huge baskets of live chickens on the side of the road. As a child I was attacked multiple times by angry roosters, so I am slightly afraid of chickens now. I’m already frazzled by my conversation with creepy guy, and now I have to walk past ten baskets of the most despicable bird ever to waddle the earth. Finally, I make it to my favorite vendor, where I get my dry goods. Trying to make friendly conversation, I ask if he has any plans for Christmas. From that he gets that I want to take him to Church with me, and he would love to go with me. I told him that I would probably be working all day.

 Cherilyn asked me to get coconut; I looked, and looked, and looked, for it and couldn’t find it. I finally decided to go back out to the street and look there for it. When I saw it, I was so excited about finding it, that I forgot to pay attention to the cars driving by, and when I stepped onto the street I almost collided with a taxi. That was the first time I almost got hit. After getting ripped off, for one of Cherilyn’s gifts, I decided it was time to leave the market. Crossing the street, I made it safely to the median, and was standing there waiting for a break in traffic. I look down the median and see a guy walking towards me with a chicken in his hands. The median is only about two feet wide, and I knew that wasn’t nearly enough room for me to pass a chicken. I had to get off that median! That was the second time I almost got hit. However, I made it safely across the road, just in time to walk right past the ten baskets of chickens again.

Bill and Trixy hosted a fantastic Christmas Eve party. There were about twenty of us there, and tons of super fantastic food: salads, mashed potatoes and gravy, spaghetti, garlic bread, green beans, fried yams, and a whole table of cookies and cakes. Dinner was followed by hours of enjoyable visiting, and sharing of Christmas traditions. It was a great way to start Christmas.

Saturday, December 25

Since it was Christmas, two of our Peace Corps friends joined Bill, Trixy and I at church. The service was followed by a mouthwatering, Cameroonian potluck feast. It was a great meal except that Cyril sat beside me through the whole meal grilling me about my hobbies, family, and work. After lunch Ben, Ashley and I were talking about having a Christmas movie night that evening. I mentioned to them that my family’s traditional Christmas movie was Prancer, but I didn’t have it with me. Cherilyn and I decided that we would wait until 5:30 to open our gifts, but once I woke up from my nap, we couldn’t wait any longer. It took us close to an hour to open everything, and we enjoyed every minute. A huge thank you to everyone that helped make our Christmas packages so fantastic!

In the package from my parents and sister was a movie, Prancer. We had our Christmas movie night, and I got to watch Prancer. The little girl reminded me so much of my sisters, it was unreal! No wonder Sarah loved the movie so much! While watching the movie, Cherilyn and I put together a 3D puzzle that my family sent me for Christmas. Trixy looked up the puzzle online, and found rankings for it: if it takes you less than 16 minutes you are a genius, if it takes less than 60 minutes you are above average, and if it takes more than 60 minutes you are below average. It took Cherilyn and me more than 60 minutes together, so our minds combined are still below average. 

Wednesday, December 29

Trixy came to my apartment to tell me that the woman at the post office was going a little crazy. Apparently, between Cherilyn and I, there were nine packages just waiting to be picked up. I was so excited, you have no idea! When I went to ask Bill if he could take me to the Campost, I tried to be nonchalant about it, but it was hard to keep the big, excited grin off my face. It took the woman quite a while to get all the packages located, and recorded in her book. After about forty-five minutes of waiting, signing papers, and packing the car full of boxes, we were off again.

I was worried that Cherilyn wouldn’t be back from her trip to Manjo, and I would have to sit in our apartment waiting, while all those boxes just begged me to open them. Thankfully, she had been back for a while, and I only had to wait a few minutes. I don’t think I would have lasted much longer. It was one of the best second Christmases I’ve had. It took us over an hour to open all of the packages, and read all the notes. We got puzzles, a homemade Christmas DVD, an album of Celtic Thunder (our new, favorite band), lotions, soaps, books, Sudoku, music, crosswords, band-aids, movies, tons of amazing food, t-shirts, pens, journals, and so much more! We appreciate everything so much! A huge thank you to all of you who made our Christmases so special!     

Bus Rides, Christmas Trees, and Pizza

Since it’s been nearly forever since I last blogged, I’ll try not to bore you with all the details, but I’ll try to mention all the high points. Ready? Here we go!

About a week before Thanksgiving a few of us decided to get together for a delicious pizza dinner.  Before everyone started arriving, Cherilyn and I were sitting up at the hospital enjoying the first signs of the season: Christmas carols blaring from the DJ across the street. Originally, we were planning for a group of about seven people for our dinner, but by the time everyone arrived we had close to twenty people packed in the living room. Ben made up some delicious crust, while Cherilyn and Heather helped cover them with all sorts of yummy toppings. It had been quite a while since we were all together like that, so we really enjoyed our visit.

The weekend before Thanksgiving a bunch of Peace Corps Volunteers were getting together for an early Thanksgiving celebration. There was a big group going from Buea, so I decided to tag along. We arrived at Mile 17 (Buea’s transportation hub) around 7:30 A.M., and purchased our tickets for the next bus headed to Bamenda. Then, we sat. And waited. We boarded the bus about nine, and left about a half an hour later. Ben and I had seats in the very back of the bus, along with three other people. It wasn’t actually as crowded as I had pictured, but with 5 people and all of our backpacks and purses there really wasn’t much wiggle room. It took us about eight hours to reach our destination, and by the time we crawled out of the bus I was sweaty, hot, and tired.

The next day we spent playing tourist in Bamenda. We visited two craft stores, the market, and a fabulous coffee shop. Heather had heard that Bamenda is famous for their grasshoppers, so we scoured the market in search of them. Once we had purchased them we found a shaded patio to sit, and enjoy our grasshoppers. If any of you are thinking about serving grasshoppers for Christmas dinner, I would rethink your menu. However, eating them was an experience I don’t think any of us are soon to forget.

Bali, where the dinner was going to be, was about a thirty-minute car ride from Bamenda. The five of us piled into a car about the size of a Toyota Camry, and we set off. We drove for about 30 seconds before picking up another passenger for the back seat. Then we added one more person in the front seat. With four people packed into the two bucket seats, you can imagine how difficult it was for the driver to shift. And how awkward it was for the two girls sitting in the middle. About half way through the trip, I asked Matt how he was doing. He replied that his left lung had collapsed, so he was having a tough time breathing. You may be wondering what happened to his lung; I was sitting to his left, apparently crushing the life out of him.   

 I was hoping to be back to Buea before dark on Sunday, so Matt and I left Bali about 7:30 to catch the first bus out. We arrived at the bus station about 8:30; just in time to buy our tickets, grab a spaghetti omelet, and catch the 9 o’clock bus. About 10:30, two of our friends who had also been in Bali, showed up, bought tickets, and got on our bus about fifteen minutes before it headed out. UGH! It never pays to be early in Africa! The ride itself was uneventful, except for one woman sitting three rows ahead of us. She did ALL of her grocery shopping on the ride without ever having to get off the bus. At one point the bus had to stop and back-up, so that she could buy more food.

Sunday, December 5

We broke out the Christmas music today. It made me homesick for snow, cold, a numb, burning nose, Christmas tree hunting, fires, hot chocolate, and family. It did help me feel more at home when Josh, Cherilyn, and I bravely attempted to put up Bill and Trixy’s fake tree. It was an uphill battle from the start. We had the tree almost put together (although it didn’t look quite right), when Bill told us that if you look really close, the branches are color coded. So we took the whole tree apart and started from scratch. Finally we got it all up, so it actually looked like a tree, and wrapped it with Christmas lights. It was a beautiful sight.

Cherilyn and I were very inspired, so that afternoon we borrowed a stack of paper from our gracious neighbors, and made our own tree.  Since neither one of us are very artistic, we decided that drawing decorations on our tree would be risky business. Instead, we decided to write on our tree. With blue highlighter we wrote things that we were thankful for; in green highlighter we wrote things we missed; with blue pen we wrote Christmas memories; and with black pen we wrote what we would get each other if we weren’t poor student missionaries. At first, the tree filled up slowly, but once we got started writing, things started coming more easily. For the next few days Cherilyn spent every spare moment cutting out snowflakes to decorate our room with. I made several attempts at it, but after 4 or 5 half snowflakes, I gave up.  A few days later Cherilyn found a string of lights that played awful Christmas music, and even occasionally lights up. They now hang happily on our bunk bed, along with 8 red and green snowflakes—a gift from my mom. But by far, my favorite Christmas decoration is Grover the USB Christmas tree. It actually plugs into the USB port on my computer, so it doesn’t take up space in our voltage converter! It’s fabulous!