First (teaching) day of Model School

Posted by Thryn on July 21st, 2008 filed in Model School, Training

Bienvenue dans la Salle Informatique

Today was the first day the trainees taught at Model School after a week of observing classes taught by Cameroonians and current PCV’s. This morning I taught 4eme (A) and 1ere and Gabe taught 4eme (B) and 2nde, all francophone classes. The kids were much better behaved than I expected them to be. That might be because I told them that if they chat in class, they won’t touch a computer this week and the lab on Thursday will be cancelled. The 1ere students, which are a little older, were more picky about my French spelling when I wrote on the board.

The teacher of the day award has to go to Gabe though. Since each of us is teaching one of the two sections of 4eme, we prepared the same lesson (formatting cells in excel) for both 4eme A and B for today. When I went into class this morning, the 4eme students had not yet been divided into the two sections. Another teacher told me that the proviseur and censeur would arrive soon to divide the class, so I began the lesson. However, they never came to divide the class, because they were apparently occupied with an unexpectedly locked classroom door during the first period. So after I finished teaching the lesson, they then divided the class and sent the 4eme B section to their separate classroom.

I found Gabe during the class break and told him that I had bad news. I had just taught the lesson we had prepared for today, to the entire 4eme class because they never came to divide them, so he had about 5 minutes to come up with a new lesson plan (in French of course) to teach to 4eme B who now unexpectedly will have two hours of Informatique today instead of just one. He improvised quite well and he said the kids behaved themselves nicely! I was so proud of him, being able to entirely improvise a computer lesson in our second language on the first day of teaching. Bravo Gabe!

4 Comments »

un cavalier

Posted by Thryn on July 17th, 2008 filed in Training

After spending two days at our post, we travelled Friday morning to Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest Province. Since our post wasn’t far from the training village and we still had 3 days left of site visit, we took the opportunity to visit other volunteers in the area. Bamenda is a great city, with a large market and even a supermarket that has things like corn flakes! Since the Northwest is one of the two Anglophone provinces, we had to shift gears and go from speaking nothing but French in the West to speaking English and even a few words of Pidgin (which I’m learning) in Bamenda and the surrounding villages we visited. We stayed with a volunteer who is posted near Bamenda, and his friend took us and two other trainees to ride horses on Saturday morning. The view from the summit of a hill we climbed on horseback was so beautiful, it was almost worth the five full days of beaucoup de pain all of us had as a result of the three hour ride. We made some great friends, both Cameroonian and American during our trip that we’re looking forward to seeing again when training is complete.

On Sunday, the five of us who met up in Bamenda headed back to training on a bus that was surprisingly uncrowded for the first few hours of the trip. Then we changed buses. The last hour on the bus was cramped, bumpy, and polluted as a Cameroonian bus ride should be

Leave a Comment »

Le Paysage

Posted by Thryn on July 15th, 2008 filed in Training

After eating a quick breakfast of bananas, fried dough, beans and rice, we left early Wednesday morning and boarded a packed bus with the censeur (vice principal) of our school to visit our future post. We traveled with another trainee, Jim, and his counterpart because our towns are very close to each other. We arrived a few hours later and were met by the proviseur (principal). They took Gabe and I around the town to meet the Mayor, the Sousprefect, the traditional chief, and a few school officials at the Lycee where we will be teaching. He showed
us the school’s multimedia center, which has 23 computers. It’s a great lab, and Gabe and I hope to help them improve it by helping them add internet, and if possible, acquire more computers (since there are usually about 100 students per class).

Our principal was very busy, so after we toured the school, he took us to our hotel. The hotel wasn’t the nicest, but it did have a water-heater that sort-of worked, so I enjoyed my first lukewarm shower since leaving Yaounde a month ago. However the following night we changed hotels and gave up the semi-working water-heater in favor of a room with less mold on the walls.

We spent two days walking around town, talking with the censeur, meeting people, explaining to the PTA president that many Americans do indeed have big families and greet each other on the street (at least in the south) and eating a lot of french fries. We couldn’t be happier with where we will be posted for the next two years. The West Province is abundant with all types of fruits and vegetables, and our town is great, with a big market where I can buy mangoes and avocados to eat every day if I want. The surrounding countryside is beautiful, and we are within a few hours of several other volunteers, including a few around Bamenda which is only about an hour bus-ride away. Gabe and I are really excited to move there in just over a month!

5 Comments »

Travels

Posted by Thryn on July 13th, 2008 filed in Training

We just returned from our site visit. We had a fantastic time, and visited a few other volunteers in the West and Northwest provinces. We have beaucoup de photos to share and stories about all of the things we did…after we rest a bit from our travels.

Aside from receiving our posting assignments and going on site visit, we recently had another exciting cultural experience. The week after we studied the chapter on visiting the hospital in my French class, I got to put my newly learned communication skills into action when I visited the hospital here in the training village. Unfortunately it was because I had malaria and typhoid at the same time. First, I want to say that it sounds a lot worse than it was. Malaria is by no means a Sunday picnic, but the prophylaxis we take (to prevent contracting malaria…) makes it milder and less life-threatening than it can be. I’ve finished with all of the medicines and I’m back in tip-top shape.

The hospital was of course vastly different than any hospital I have visited in the U.S. The doctor is so busy and there are always many people waiting outside the consultation/exam room…and I mean outside-outside, with the chickens, goats, and garcons carrying trays of peanuts and bananas for sale on their heads. But I felt very well taken care of. In many ways the examination felt routine, when the doctor took my blood pressure, listened to my breathing, examined my glands, and all the typical stuff, while we heard the occasional rooster crow outside the room.

So mom, you can rest assured that we are all well educated and prepared to battle any tropical diseases or other maladies that may befall us here in Cameroon, and we are well taken care of here. Although I have asked for a different brand of insect repellant. Here’s hoping it makes my exotic white flesh a little less irresistible.

5 Comments »

Our Post

Posted by Gabe on July 7th, 2008 filed in Training

A view of the Lycee through the trees

The past week has been quite intense. The education volunteers (who will be teaching english, science and of course IT) learned where our homes in Cameroon will be for the next 2 years. This was on top of having our language proficiency interviews. Those of us that have reached our target level in French can now study a third language. For Thryn and I, that will be Pidgin English. Our post is here in the West Provence, where French and Pidgin are the main languages spoken. We’ll be living near two provincial capitals–Bafoussam of the West, and Bemenda, which is the capital of the North-West provence. There is a lot of great food in the West, including fruits like bananas, mangos, watermelon, guava, papaya, and pineapple. We’ll be visiting our site this week, and hopefully we’ll learn a lot while there.

Today we finished day one of the Peace Corps Cameroon Counterpart Seminar. Cameroonian Nationals from all over the country have come to the training village to be informed about their specific PC program and to meet their future volunteers. It’s a great opportunity to meet each other and to make sure both sides are on the same page in terms of our goals. It was interesting to learn what each of these Cameroonians thought of the Peace Corps, and what preconceptions they brought with them. I was happy that our APCD cleared up the fact that us PCVs aren’t here to build libraries out of our own pockets or engage in espionage!

2 Comments »

posting announcement tomorrow!

Posted by Thryn on July 2nd, 2008 filed in Training

Today in French class, we had to compare a typical day of ours back in the states to our typical day here at training. While our schedule here is busy, Gabe and I have much more time for things like sleeping and eating breakfast than we did aux Etats-Unix. And let’s not forget about watching spanish soap operas overdubbed in French with our host mom. While I’m enjoying the somewhat slower pace here, a lot is about to happen in the next few days. Tomorrow, after our second language proficiency interview, we receive our posting announcements, and find out where we will live and work for the next two years. Then next week we depart for our site visit, to check out our future post and the conditions there, meet with our counterparts, etc. When we come back, model school starts and we will begin teaching after a week of observing. The computers for the model school computer lab arrived today, which is very exciting!

I’m also happy to report that our training group is still 38 strong after being in country for almost a month. While we may never know what happened to Mark Spooner, the mysterious PCT who never showed up for staging in Philadelphia, the rest of us are determined to stick it out and I personally haven’t heard anyone talk of ET-ing (Early Termination in PC acronym speak).

3 Comments »

Ground Terminal Guard

Posted by Thryn on June 25th, 2008 filed in Training

In our training group, there are 5 of us that will be computer teachers. Today we had a tech session about the maintenance problems we will encounter with the computers in our labs when we go to post. Dust, heat, humidity, electric storms and surges, and viruses are some of the things we will have to make our best effort to guard against. We received our “computer maintenance kits” which consist of some screwdrivers, a multimeter, a hand-operated dust blower, and a few other things.

Setting up the computer lab at the school where we will teach won’t just involve installing Windows on a few machines (there are no Macs in Cameroon by the way–except the ones that we brought with us). We discussed how to check the voltage in the lab when we arrive at post, and how to confirm whether or not the electricity is grounded. If it isn’t we will have to supervise the installation of a ground terminal which involves a 2 meter long copper pipe, 2-3 kilos of salt, and a big hole in the ground. They showed us how to hook up the ground terminal here at the lycee where we are setting up a computer lab for model school which starts in a couple of weeks. After showing us how it is connected they took it off, or else it would get stolen. When model school starts and the ground terminal has to remain hooked up all the time, there will be a guard on duty to watch it! We all laughed with our Cameroonian trainers about the job of ground terminal guard, but that’s the reality here.

Leave a Comment »

Au Lycée

Posted by Gabe on June 22nd, 2008 filed in Training

We have now been in-country for 15 days. Time is moving a lot more slowly than it did in the States, but there is still a lot to do. We have a packed schedule of classes every day, most of which take place in the Lycée Technique (technical high school) down the road from our house. It’s a modest complex of buildings into which all of us Stagiers (trainees) come every morning at 8. We slide into solid wooden bench/desk units and receive our training information given by the trainers on flip charts and the blackboard. Our studies are language-intensive, and we’re getter better at French every day!

Last Thusday I had a great experience playing football (soccer) with the other trainees and several Cameroonians. The Cameroonians were of course significantly more talented at the game than we Americans were, but we played really hard, had a lot of fun, and it was a great experience. I even scored a goal! It was quite a sight after we finished, everyone with deep rust-red shoes, clothes, and skin from the dust on the dirt playing field. I’m really looking forward to playing again.

3 Comments »

homestay details

Posted by Thryn on June 19th, 2008 filed in Uncategorized

The morning we met together after spending our first night with our host families, our trainer Monique asked who had to eat a fish head the night before. Gabe proudly raised his hand along with a few others and declared that he had eaten a fish head.

Our new Cameroonian family consists of our mom, one teenage son who is home (the other children are at University) and a 2-year old grand-daughter who calls me “ta-ta” (the French equivalent of “auntie”). Our family is relatively small compared to most of the other trainees. Connie, for example, has been adopted into a family of eleven children! Melissa’s family has some baby bunnies, but I hear they plan to eat them so it’s probably best that I don’t visit and play with them.

My French has improved drastically just in the few days we have been here at our training site. I can talk with our mom about our families, my life in the U.S., things I’ve done here in Cameroon, programs we watch on TV, and politics all in French. She speaks clearly and slowly to us so we can understand her well.

We’ve been watching a lot of football (soccer) on tv in the evenings after training classes. I also took a cold shower in the dark when the power went out as it does just about every night. It was not enjoyable in any way, but I am convinced that I am just a bit tougher inside from it.

And in the latest news, I successfully found a way to use my cell phone as a dial-up modem with my computer (with bluetooth) and I can use my cell phone credits with MTN to get online! So in the middle of Cameroon, I found a way to wirelessly connect my own computer to the internet and have since been proclaimed the most popular person at training (assuming I can help the other trainees do the same, which I plan to do). It’s rather slow and we have to budget our phone credits, but I am very happy with this development.

6 Comments »

3 Steps to successful arrival

Posted by Gabe on June 18th, 2008 filed in Training

{This is a bit late, but internet access until now has been hard to come by}

3 Steps to a successful Peace Corps Arrival in Cameroon.

1. After deplaning in Yaoundé, if there were any questions about what to do or where to go, they were easily dissuaded by the group of Peace Corps staff–including the country director–who were waiting to warmly greet us. We were told to hand over our documents and were given name tags in return. This assured a swift walk through customs, bypassing most of the lines. Cool!

2. It was very important that baggage claim was handled quickly and efficiently. After claiming everyone’s luggage from the carousel, it was stacked onto carts which were put in a line, and we were all herded outside. Also, hydration! 1.5 liter water bottles were distributed to everyone.

3. Transport to the hotel. After baggage was loaded into the caravan of Peace Corps-marked SUVs, we recent arrivals climbed into a bus and started filling out more forms as the trip into the city began. It was hard to make out much of the countryside, since the sun sets at about 6:00 PM in Cameroon, as it is so close to the equator. We saw some palms and banana leaves standing out from the grass. There were also many dimly lit bars and cafés, all with corrugated metal roofs, as well as street merchants selling there wares from beneath umbrellas. Check-in to the hotel and dinner capped off our long and grueling trip.

Leave a Comment »