The Death of a Chef

The old chef, or chief, of Dschang passed away 2 months ago, which meant his successor was finally allowed to leave the compound! Here are pictures of the ceremony.

On the right, you can see the giant blow up tub of margarine. It was strange to see a lot of modern marketing like this at such a traditional event.



There were several different traditional dances. The first of which was not really a dance as much as people walking extremely slowly looking about eerily with their masks.



There were also people prancing about with swords.





The new chief is the big guy in white with the hat under the umbrella:

Coaching a Girl’s Soccer Team in Africa

I started coaching a girl’s soccer team in my village as a women’s empowerment initiative that is much needed in this extremely male-dominant society, but also just to have fun playing soccer again. We play for an hour and a half 2 days/week and every time there are boys on the sideline who practically beg me to let them play. I try to say no to all of them, but sometimes it’s honestly hard to tell who is a boy and who is a girl. By law, everyone at the high school has to shave their head to cut back on lice, so everyone looks exactly alike in their matching Cameroonian #9 soccer jerseys (the jersey of Cameroon’s best soccer player, Eto'o). This also makes it difficult to learn their names, which are unusual to begin with.

Most of the girls show up to play in jellies or other plastic sandals, while others play barefoot. Occasionally, someone will have actual running shoes, but it’s rare as these are harder to clean after a day of running on the dirt field and Cameroonians must have clean shoes for some reason. I will try and post a picture of the team soon!

Cameroonian Gas Station

Is it dry season already

I have been waiting and waiting for dry season to arrive, mostly so my clothes will dry in less than 5 days, which is hard to do when it pours every single day. The last few days, however it hasn’t rained at all – precisely when I actually needed it to rain. A few days ago, I went to fill up my bucket with water from the tap outside and nothing came out but a few precious drops. Apparently there was something wrong with the pipes. Every day since, the technician said he was going to come, but in true African style, he didn’t come for 4 days. Thinking he would fix it sooner than later, the only thing I did to find water was to strategically station my 5 buckets around the yard to hopefully catch the rain that never came. Meanwhile, dishes were piling up and I started rationing my drinking water until I finally decided I needed to search for water. I armed myself with some of my buckets and set out to find a water source in the village. As I was wandering around I luckily bumped into the technician on his way to my house! I’ve never been so happy to someone.