Where Has all the Change Gone?

Posted on December 18, 2013 by David

When we would go shopping while living in France, it was common to be asked to provide the coins with the bills when paying for something.  If we didn’t have the coins, we would receive a not so pleasant look, but the cashier had the change to give us.  During my growing up years and adult years in the USA, it wasn’t ever a problem to ask cashiers for smaller bills back when paying for something.  It was common to get smaller bills at a bank.  When eating out, it wasn’t a problem to pay a $1.25 bill with a $20.  France was definitely a helpful transition into life in Cameroon – allowing us baby steps.

One of the first things we were told when arriving is that the biggest bill is 10 000 cfa, but most vendors won’t accept it because it’s too big.  The smallest coin is a 5 cfa, but most vendors won’t accept anything smaller than a 50 cfa coin.  So when you have 500, 1000 or 2000 bills, you try to hold onto them.  When we go shopping we are asked frequently to provide the exact amount. When we hop in a taxi we are expected to provide the exact amount of use small bills if it’s a depot.  There have been times when we’ve waited up to ten minutes to receive our change because the vendor didn’t have it and had to go asking for other vendors if they could make the change.  There have been times when the vendor refused to allow us to buy a particular item because we didn’t have smaller money.

So that leads us to the question, where has all the change gone?  We see people doing business throughout the day either selling their wares or toting people around in the their taxi’s.

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Christmas Memories

Posted on December 16, 2013 by David

It never feels like Thanksgiving or Christmas to us here.   I think that helps my homesickness during this time of year.  For one, it’s hot and two we aren’t surrounded with family and friends.  We keep on with our traditions as a family and had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration.  It’s hard to believe this will be our fifth Christmas in a row celebrating outside of the USA.  We traditionally decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving and that’s just what we did.  The Amy Grant Christmas album was playing in the background as we set-up the tree and decorated the house.

Decorating for Christmas has always been emotional for me (DeAnna).  As I look at ornaments (or ornaments that have molded and need to be thrown away) or different decorations; I happily, tearfully and longingly think of those who gave me or us the decoration.  For example, my sister made us a cross stitch decoration that we’ve hung every year since our first married Christmas in 1999.  We have straw stars we hang on the tree that we received from friends in language school who are living in Norway and those were pretty much the only ornaments we had to adorn our tree in France.  I look at the ornaments that we’ve made as a family over the years.  (We make ornaments every year as a family and have since our dating years, plus it’s how David proposed to me, so it’s a big deal to us and a family tradition).  It truly is wonderful to have these stones of remembrance, regardless of the tear flow.

cross stitchChristmas Tree

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Checkers

Posted on December 13, 2013 by David

I (DeAnna) feel blessed that the neighborhood children call us by name and are comfortable with us.  I’m amazed at the ingenuity of the children.  We see them make all kinds of toys to play with.  A stick, nail and plastic lid quickly becomes a car.  Two sardine cans, bamboo and nails become a car you can steer.  A bra in the road soon becomes hours of teasing among the boys.  Little black plastic sacks that are at pretty much every stand become kites.  Our moldy VHS tapes became many different imaginative things.  The list goes on and on.

The other day I saw two little boys with a piece of pressed board that had a checked pattern painted on it.  They had this board resting on their legs as they faced one another.  The checkers were bottle caps they found on the ground throughout the neighborhood.

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Be Careful What You Wish For

Posted on December 11, 2013 by David

Although I (DeAnna) love to cook and bake, once and awhile I want a break.  There are several times when I wish for the convenience of fast food or calling a restaurant and having something delivered to the door.  I also wish for affordable restaurants to be able to go to as a family and dine without draining the checking account.  We do have some options available to us.  The nicer restaurants here are options maybe three times out of a year.  Other options are minimal and if you don’t want chicken or fish, you’re out of luck.  I know compared to many others we have it cushy.  Anyway back to my point, I was having one of my I don’t want to cook days and we decided to stop at a place that serves chicken, fries, beignets (fried bread balls) and beans.  David placed our order to go and specifically asked for no condiments because in the past they’ve covered the bottom of the container with mayonnaise, ketchup and piment (habanero pepper paste) then placed the food on top of that layer.  When we got home and opened up our containers of food, disappointingly there was condiment covering the bottom of the beans and chicken containers, but something else was disappointing.  When we opened the fries container we had a surprise.  At least the surprise was fried too.

This leads me to think that I should be careful what I wish for.  Although I want a break from cooking every now and then, it’s probably better for our family’s health if I swallow my selfishness and make something at home.

Quiz time:  Do you know what’s in the fries?

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Marching Ants

Posted on December 9, 2013 by David

I (DeAnna) remember the many cumulative hours of watching Dora the Explorer when the boys were young.  I also remember a specific episode with a song about the marching, marching, marching, marching ants.  It was sung like ants going into battle.

We have been amazed at the ants here since the day we arrived.  We were forewarned not to leave any dirty dishes on the counter and to wipe away any crumbs.  It’s amazing how fast they appear from out of nowhere.  Really, where do they hide?  How do they know?

Jonah was finished with his breakfast and placed the container on the counter next to the sink.  I finished my breakfast and headed to the kitchen, less than 30 minutes later.  I saw his container swarming with ants.  I immediately thought to myself the Dora marching ants song and wondered if these ants were singing it in French, English or Ewondo as they marched to cover this container.

Just in case you are wondering, we do use ant killer to try and get rid of the ants – that’s the photo with the bottle caps.  We place the poison in the bottle caps.

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Wedding Part Three

Posted on December 6, 2013 by David

The wedding was almost finished when Sophie came to us and asked if we were ready to leave.  We were it was now 1:15 p.m. and the boys patience was thin and their stomachs were growling.  Sophie was planning on riding back to our house because I was asked to make the wedding cake.  She was going to pick up the cake and head to a place to prepare for the celebration feast later that night (8 p.m.).

As we tried to exit onto the main road the way we entered, it was blocked because a trench had been dug to put a pipe in.  We hired a motorcycle taxi to lead the way through very rough, muddy roads to get us onto the main road.  That was the first time I went mudding after a wedding – I had flashbacks to mud run days; thankfully we didn’t get stuck.

We arrived back to the house and I removed the large, heavy cake from the oven.  Our refrigerator isn’t big enough to hold the cake and it’s not possible to leave it out with the ninja ants we have here, so we turned our oven into a make shift ice box to store the cake in.  We placed frozen water bottles on the floor of the oven and the cake on the rack.  It worked great!

Sophie was very pleased with the cake, commented on how heavy it is, asked for taxi money and left for phase two of the wedding celebration.

Wedding Cake

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Wedding Part Two

Posted on December 4, 2013 by David

According to the invitation the wedding was supposed to begin at 10 a.m. precise.  It’s funny because we have yet to attend any function that begins on time (precise).  Since we searched for quite a while to find the church, we arrived at 10:45 a.m., but guess what, we were still early.

Around 11:15 a.m. the bridal party arrived and things were starting to get under way.  The blaring music started and the ceremony was beginning.  Carole, the bride is Catholic, so it was a traditional Cameroonian Catholic service.  We attended another wedding here in 2012.

Most of the service was difficult to follow and there are things that happened in this wedding that we’ve never witnessed in any weddings we’ve seen in France or attended in the USA.

(1) There was a time to dance down the aisle to offer an offering.  The bride and groom stood at the front holding a decorated basket while the guests dance down the aisle to place an offering in a basket.

Wedding Offering

(2) The bridal party lined up to dance their offerings to the front.  There were small children holding bottles of palm oil, packets of spaghetti; some of the older ones were carrying vegetables, pineapples, eggs; but things got more interesting when two men carried in a regime of plantains, a bridesmaid carried in a live chicken and we were told that there was also a sheep as an offering, but it needed to stay outside.

Offering of Chicken

(3) Here to show excitement there is a loud, scream type celebration sound people make.  Many of the wedding guests were making this sound and it was irritating the priest so he told everyone to wait until they finished the portion of their promise to one another, presentation of the rings and he officially announcing their union.  He got to that part and it was the time for the kiss and he told the couple they had five minutes to kiss and the crowd went wild.

Newlywed Couple

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Wedding Part One

Posted on December 3, 2013 by David

As mentioned in the clothing blog, we recently went to a wedding.  It was Sophie’s sister, Carole who got married.  It’s funny because Sophie shared with me about Carole getting married and how important it is that we attend.  Carole is the person who made our first Cameroonian clothes in 2010 and since she did that culturally puts us in a relationship with her and since we are in a relationship with her, we therefore need to attend her wedding.

Sophie brought an invitation to us.  I (DeAnna) looked at it and set it on our counter where we keep invitations and things we need to remember.  Two days later Sophie asked for the invitation back.  I was puzzled since the invitation had the name of the church and we would need that to get to the wedding, so I asked her why.  She responded that they only had five printed and it was just for me to look at and copy the invitation’s information and give it back.  So I copied the information and gave it back for the next person to have their opportunity to be invited officially.

The day was upon us, we had our wedding clothes on and were ready to leave the house and head in the direction of the church.  It’s very hard to find places here because there aren’t addresses and you can’t just pull up directions using the internet.  As we headed in the general direction, we asked several people along the way.  We received conflicting directions and continued heading straight.  After being on the road for about an hour, we saw a woman walking along the side of the road wearing a dress with the same fabric that we were wearing.  We were thankful for the identifying fabric.  We stopped and asked her if she was in route to the wedding.  After she told us she was, she hopped in the car to show us the way and she got a ride to the wedding – a win, win!

Carole

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Clothing

Posted on December 2, 2013 by David

We will admit that we prefer clothing from our passport country to clothing here.  First of all, we are people who like comfort and 100% knit cotton is soft, breathable and comfortable.  The material here is cotton, but often stiff – more like dress shirt collar texture.

We have options to buy clothing from other places, those items come in a bale (like a hay bale or a bale of newspapers) bound together and are normally second hand items from different organizations from western countries.  A vendor here will purchase a bale of clothing for a certain price then sort the bale and sale the items.  Most of the time there are different pieces of random clothing in a wide range of sizes.  We have purchased some articles of clothing this way, but prefer to try and bring enough clothing with us to last the term of service.  It’s hard to do that since our clothes wear out more quickly here, probably because they are washed in dirty water, hung out to dry on a line in the scorching sun which not only fades the color, but also wreaks havoc on elastic.  Plus, the boys keep growing at rapid rates.

There are times when we need to have clothes made for an event (we live in an inclusive culture so for weddings or events, a specific fabric will be selected for that event and everyone needs to have something made with it so they can wear it to the event and be included).  We went to a wedding on November 30.  So, we needed to have our outfits made.  I (DeAnna) drew on a piece of paper what I would like to have made.  No patterns, just a drawing.  I took that piece of paper along with the fabric to a seamstress (there are many little shops that dot the road).  I took mine to Glory and a week later, she called to let me know the clothes were done.

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Peanut Butter

Posted on November 29, 2013 by David

Before moving overseas I (DeAnna) assumed that peanut butter was common everywhere.  In our home peanut butter is a staple item, especially living here.  We eat 900 grams of peanut butter in roughly 10-14 days.  Jonah starts his day with peanut butter on toast.  Joshua totes peanut butter sandwiches to school.  I smother bananas in peanut butter.  David likes to spread it on crackers.  I make peanut sauce using peanut butter.  I use peanut butter in certain salad dressings that I make.  The list goes on and on.  While living in the USA, I enjoyed the convenience and spread ability of store bought peanut butter.  While living in France we could only find affordable peanut butter in an Asian foods store about a 15 minute walk from our apartment.  I mentioned affordable above because we could find at a store near our apartment a small jar (about 1 cup) of Skippy for about $7 USD and opted to not purchase it.

When we moved to Cameroon I was told of a few people who made peanut butter.  We gave each a try and found our favorite.  When we returned a year ago, our favorite peanut butter provider moved to Douala and we needed to search for a new favorite.  After six months, we found our new favorite.  Once we order it, she makes it and delivers it to our home about two days later.  Many times when she arrives it’s still warm from being processed.  We pay about $5 USD for 900 grams and also need to provide an empty 900 gram container with payment for future orders.

This month is National Peanut Butter Lover’s month.  Enjoy!

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