Parched Land

Posted on February 3, 2014 by David

There are two seasons in Cameroon; dry and rainy.  Although we are about 300 km north of the equator, we have opposite temperatures than the states David and I grew up in.  So that means Christmas is hot and dry and summertime is wet and cooler.

The biggest dry season begins in November and lasts until February.  This year the dry season started a bit later (around mid December).  During dry season many things happen.  Not only is it dry with the dirt becomes as hard as cement, but it’s also the time of harmattan – when the winds blow across the Sahara Desert and brings the dust to us.  So everything gets covered daily with thick dust.  We must cover our appliances to keep the dust from ruining them.  The positive side to dry season is our clothes dry very quickly when hung out on the clothesline and it’s a great time to enjoy swimming.

During PE class on January 27th dark clouds started rolling in.  It looked like rain clouds, but one can’t be too hopeful.  The boys and I walked home and I decided to start taking down the dry clothes hanging on the line.  I heard a rain drop hit the roof, but didn’t feel any rain.  In my head I thought maybe the rain drops were evaporating in the hot weather.  Then I heard another and another until I saw a marking on the cement where a rain drop hit.  Sure enough, rain was falling.  Although the picture doesn’t do justice to what I was seeing with my eyes, every time a rain drop hit the ground a little puff of dirt flew up and the end result was a little mud dot.

parched ground

 

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Goin’ Postal

Posted on January 31, 2014 by David

I (David) supervise several staff that spends the majority of their day building relationships in town and waiting in lines for our organization.

An expat that I work with approached me and said that he purchased 45 CABTAL calendars and wanted to send them to his home country in Australia and asked me to find out how much it would cost him to send them to his home country.

So first I sent someone to DHL and asked how much it would cost to send 25 pounds to Australia. He came back with an estimate of $400. So I sent him to the local post office to see how much it would cost. He came back with a cost of $200. Finally I sent him with one calendar to see how much it would cost to send it and he came back and told me it cost $5.

I thanked him and asked him for the calendar back and he informed me that he mailed it to Australia. I asked him what address he used since I didn’t give him a specific location to mail it to. He said, “I just used Australia.”

So, somewhere between Cameroon and Australia there is a CABTAL calendar that is on its way.  If it arrives at your door you now know why.

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Christmas Greetings

Posted on January 29, 2014 by David

We have received in the past two weeks, Christmas cards.  Thank you for sending us a Christmas card.  We enjoy getting mail and enjoy receiving these cards.

Christmas cards

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Water

Posted on January 27, 2014 by David

The human body is approximately 60% water.  We need water for our organs to function properly.  We also use water for bathing, cooking, cleaning, etc…

Our first term in Cameroon we lived on a compound with 22 other family units.  There was a communal laundry room with a red light on the outside.  When we arrived the light would automatically illumine to alert all the residents that the city water was turned off and the compound was now using the stored water, so no laundry or washing cars in an effort to conserve water.  After we returned in 2012, we moved into a free standing home in the neighborhood.  We feel very blessed and fortunate that the family who lived here before us constructed a château (a holding tank like a water tower).  Our château holds a little more than 900 liters of water.  There are pipes attached to it so when the city water is turned off, we can turn a lever at the base so the château water will flow into the pipes supplying our sinks, showers and one toilet.  This is wonderful!  Although the flow is quite slow, it’s so nice to have this system in place.  On average city water is turned off about twice a week, so we use our château about twice a week.  When the city water returns, we turn the other lever to refill the château.  It’s great!

chateauchateau levers

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Crossing the Road

Posted on January 24, 2014 by David

Why did the person cross the road?  To get to the other side.  Crossing the road is something most children are taught at an early age.  Look both ways, walk behind cars on cross streets, use a crosswalk if it’s there, press the button and wait for the light at intersections with lights and if there are sidewalks use them.  Did you know that everything we do from learning to cross streets, thinking of the consequences of our choices (if I cross in front of a car I could be hit), risk, etc… are learned things and are cultural in the way we are taught those things.

Living outside of one’s familiar country there are things you’ll never understand or get or get used to or accept.  One of those things for me (DeAnna) is crossing the street.  Something that seems so simple yet is not.  Here it’s like playing Frogger, but with your life, to cross the street.  It ups the ante when crossing with the boys in tow.  Even though Joshua is 10 years old, I still have him hold my hand to cross the street here.  One would think with the stop and go traffic it would be easy, but then you have motorcycles weaving in and out of cars, other cars passing on the shoulder (if there’s a shoulder), other cars passing each other creating another lane of traffic and oncoming traffic needing to swerve to the opposite shoulder to avoid a head-on collision.

Yesterday I needed to cross the street.  The lane of traffic closest to me was at a standstill.  I crossed between two stopped cars and looked and waited for the motorcycle to pass, so now I’m standing in the middle of the road.  I look the other direction at the on-coming cars and could cross at a quicker pace than just walking, so I did.  Now I had my back to the on-coming traffic walking down the shoulder near the gutter.  There are 2+ feet deep concrete gutters on the side of the road because during rainy season it rains buckets in minutes so the gutters are needed.  Usually if a car is swerving it lets out a beep to alert the pedestrian to move or cross the gutter for the dirt.  Either this particular car didn’t have time to beep or misjudged their size and the side mirror grazed my left hand.  It spooked me a bit to know it was that close, but I was also thankful it was just a graze.  I’m not scared to cross the street, just extra alert.

frogger

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Cars

Posted on January 22, 2014 by David

I’m a Saturday Night Live fan or I should say I’m a fan every 3 years or so.  I remember watching Saturday Night Live and there was a specific set about a car made of clay.  This was about the time my sister was learning to drive, so we all teased her she needed this car.  Especially after jumping the ditch at grandma’s house in the escort.  In this comic set, the driver would crash into things then get out, hand sculpt the exterior clay and then keep going.

Living here and driving with the traffic we do, it’s not uncommon for cars to have lots of dings, knicks and fender damage.  We don’t want our car to be beat up, but at the same time, we know it’s part of living here.  Many times motorcycles trying to cut through traffic and will be going between cars and the handlebar ends are banging back and forth down the side of the car.  People roll into each other since we all drive standard transmissions and no one bats an eye.  Taxi’s will bang into each other and keep going.  The other day while our car was parked just outside our gate, someone came driving up and realized they turned on the wrong road and while turning around backed into our front bumper.  I was out there when it happened and the driver didn’t even look at me while I inspected the car, but drove on since he didn’t hear glass shatter.

For a split second I thought, if the car only had a clay exterior.  Things are handled different here compared to the USA and cars are thought of differently because I remember a time when my mom door dinged someone and that person wanted her to pay for a whole new paint job.

traffic

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Food Preparation

Posted on January 20, 2014 by David

I used to coordinate people to help new arrivals with orientation to life in Cameroon.  The first things being not to drink the tap water, staying inside dusk to dawn to avoid mosquitoes and soaking produce in bleach water for 20 minutes before cutting into it to kill bacteria.  Although I no longer coordinate orientation, I enjoy being asked to share food preparation with new arrivals during their Cameroon orientation course.

A few days ago I conducted a food preparation course for the new arrivals.  I thought I would share some things I shared with the group that I would never have to share in my passport country.

Freeze the flour for a day to kill bugs and eggs in the flour, then sift out the bugs and use.  Note: I find it almost like a game to sift flour because I’ve found an earring before.

Clean the coop stuff off of the chicken eggs before using them.

When cooking rice, don’t worry about trying to remove the bugs from the grains, just put them in the pot, add water and the bugs float to the top.  Once they are floating use a small strainer and skim them off.  Repeat until all bugs have been removed.  Prepare the rice.

Cook all the eggs thoroughly – do not use raw egg – like in mayonnaise or a dressing, do not eat egg runny yolks or sunny side up eggs because of the risk of typhoid and salmonella.

Spices will clump into an unusable block if you don’t keep the humidity out.

I like to store bouillon cubes in the refrigerator to keep them from turning mushy and weeping out.

If you use a wooden cutting board, run it over an open flame to disinfect it before using it.

If you purchase bread on the street, run it over an open flame to kill any germs on the outside of the bread.

When going out to eat, do not get ice cubes with your beverage because more than likely the ice is made from tap water.  Do not use cutlery, plates or glasses that aren’t completely dry.  Stay away from uncooked produce.

Always keep an extra gas bottle so when the gas bottle runs out while you are cooking, you can continue cooking.  It always seems to run out when you are hosting company.

If you are use to the imperial measuring system (1 cup, 8 oz., lbs., etc…), learn quickly the metric system (grams, kilos, etc…).  Also learn the equivalent of centigrade to farenheit.  This is important in cooking, taking someone’s temperature or dosing medications.

How to use a pressure cooker.  Also, how to make caramel using a can of sweetened condensed milk and a pressure cooker.

I go on to explain how to constitute milk powder, make yogurt, make something like cottage cheese, making tomato sauce from tomato paste and more.  It’s a two hour course, we cover a lot.

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Funny School Discoveries

Posted on January 17, 2014 by David

I try to make a memory yearbook type book for each school year for each boy.  Since we are nomadic, we can’t keep many keepsakes, so I decided long ago to scan and create digital books of their school work.  Plus there aren’t yearbooks to purchase as momentos, so that also drives the digital book.  I got a little behind for multiple reasons, like not having a fast enough internet connection.  I decided to try and scan the 2012-13 school year papers and try to upload the scans to the website I use for digital books.  While sorting through their papers and scanning, I came across some items that made me laugh.  That particular school year I homeschooled both boys for half the school year and Jonah for the whole school year.

Doing bestThe scan cut it off a bit.  It ends with mom.  When I asked him if he meant to write man, he said, “No, it’s mom.”

telephoneThe subject was, How has the invention of the telephone changed how we live?  Here is part of the answer that Joshua’s class came up with.

because fractionsAccording to Jonah since 5+1=6, that how you know how many apples there are.

biographyDavid and I like to tell the boys stories from our childhoods.  One night David shared about a pencil tip breaking off into the top of his toe when he was a kid and showed them it’s still there.  Jonah was obviously impressed with that story.

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Sous Chef

Posted on January 15, 2014 by David

Joshua likes to help me in the kitchen.  I call him my sous chef and he thinks that’s funny.  He offers most everyday to help me prepare supper.  His favorite to help with is making pizza since he snags a shred or two of cheese during the process.

sous chef

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Snails

Posted on January 13, 2014 by David

At our home we have an overabundance of snails.  Anyone who comes over at night comments on the numerous snails.  These snails are big and they eat our dog’s food, plus they leave slime trails.  Sometimes when returning at night we’ll accidentally step on a smaller one and feel that crunch beneath our shoes – yuck!

We aren’t sure why they are so drawn to our yard.

snail

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