A Day in the Life

My folks told me that apparently everyone is interested in my day-to-day life. I’m telling you now, it’s pretty boring. I usually prefer to pick and choose anecdotes, because they’re more fun for you to read and more fun for me to write, but it was requested, and so I’ve delivered! Last chance to back out. If you’re really, really interested in what an average day is like for me in Cameroon, here is a blow-by-blow retelling of Monday, June 22nd. 

My alarm goes off at 6:00am. I’m already awake, but I hit snooze until 6:15 anyway. It’s a mistake, because now I really have to pee, and there’s someone using the bathroom. I postpone and bring my bright green bucket out to the well to puise water for my bucket bath. I’m really fortunate — there’s a well at my house, which isn’t all that common. It means I can get water without having to change my shirt. 

I bring the water into the bathroom, which is now mercifully empty. After bathing, which I’m not going to publicly describe on the internet, I get all of my stuff ready for school. I’ve forgotten to tell my sister that I’m going in early today, so she’s started to make me breakfast. I ask, haltingly, if I can take it to go. My sentence doesn’t make sense, but the end result is still an omelette in a baguette, wrapped in paper for the road. It’s 7:00. 

I meet my teacher, Marie, at the tin-roofed hut that is our classroom. I drop off my bags and fetch chairs from the training center — one for me, and one for my classmate, Abby. She already told me she was going to be late, which I relay to Marie. Not a problem, says Marie. That gives you time to finish your breakfast. 

The sun is rising. It’s misty, or perhaps just smoky. It’s hard to tell. The sun is pretty, I say to Marie. It’s actually beautiful, but in French, pretty is the best I can do. She agrees with me. It’s going to be hot in the East today, she says.

Tutoring begins when Abby arrives. It’s a compounded review, mostly. We play a game where we each think of a celebrity, and the other has to ask questions to guess who it is. I chose Scarlett Johansson; Abby responds with Chris Evans. There’s some confusion, as per the norm. It turns out that Chris Evans is not, in fact, black, as Abby led me to believe. Who’d have thought? 

Sessions start officially at 8:00. We run a little late when I stump Abby with Quvenzhané Wallis. We walk into a session about transportation safety in Cameroon. The trainers put together  skit, from which we discern that on any given bus, we may be pick-pocketed, thrown up on, asked to hold babies, crowded, stopped by the police, stopped so someone can pray and/or pee, sold medicines that can supposedly cure AIDS, and/or generally harassed, among other things. To be honest, the bus systems here don’t seem all that different than the busses in Chile — the main difference being, I’m a lot more comfortable in Spanish than I am in French. (Edit: having now taken a number of buses in Cameroon, I can confirm that almost all of these things actually happened. I wasn't pick-pocketed, and the woman next to me threw up in a bag instead of on me, but other than that...)

There’s a 20 minute break between classes, from 10:00 to 10:20. Today marks the beginning of immersion, where we’re (theoretically) supposed to speak in only French, Pigin, or Fulfulde from 8:00 to 1:00. What it actually means is those of us who speak French do so, and those of us who don’t either stay quiet, or speak quietly in Frenglish. KC and I started a Marvel/stagiaires comparison last night. His French is excellent, and my French is terrible, so he talks to me and I either nod, shake my head, or look at him blankly. I left a sort of Nutella spread at the training center on Saturday — I steal Sprice’s spoon to scrape the rest of it onto a banana. 

Our second session is one of those sessions that feels like it could be finished in 15 minutes, and is dragged out for 2 hours. We’re split into four groups. My group quickly loses focus and subsequently quickly loses track of the lesson. It’s about management, maybe. Or possibly evaluation. We’re supposed to be filling in a worksheet — we fill it in with puns instead. I’ve got a new business! What is it? I’m making submarines. Are you drowning in invoices? Yeah, bro. That’s probably why business is going under. It’s that flood of paperwork. It’s a lot of pressure. Sink or swim kind of life. Yup. But you've gotta keep the business afloat. We fill in the entire page. 

It’s 12:20 — lunch time. Candice and I count down the minutes until 1:00, when we can speak English again. Lunch is rice and beans, as it is every day. Today there’s pineapple, too, which is the best. Sometimes it’s papaya, which is also the best. It’s never mango, which is the other best. Occasionally it’s bananas, which are not the best. But still pretty good. 

It’s 1:30 — time for the third session of the day. Security #6 — bystander intervention. We pay attention. 

Nobody really knows what time the last session of the day starts. Maybe 3:30. Maybe 3:20, or 3:15. The last class of the day today is language — French. People begin to leave in a trickle, with one or two people leaving for class, and end as a flood. In class, we continue with descriptions — Marie tells us to describe an alien. I describe Stitch. Abby describes the aliens from Toy Story. Class discussion wanders from cultural notes (in Cameroon, it’s not polite to talk about one’s ass in public) to a comparison of mental health and homelessness in Cameroon and the US. We have a range of interests. 

Sessions end at 4:30, but today we’ve set up a meeting amongst ourselves, to talk about a variety of concerns. It’s rare that we’re able to get everyone together at the same time and place outside of class. It’s nice — we should do it more often. That is, in fact, a subject of discussion at the meeting, which is fitting. 

It’s 5:30. One of the volunteers is passing out free hugs. A few of us have been trying to start a hug movement — I think it’s starting to succeed. If it were any other day, we’d go to a bar to “juice”, but after the meeting, there’s not much time today. I sit with Gina and Tressa, who are practicing a poem they’ve memorized. It’s beautiful. Tressa offers to lend me her book after site visits -- I accept. 

Curfew is at 7:00 every night. Usually I’m walking in at 6:58, but tonight I’m early, because I need to pack for my site visit in Dir tomorrow. I usually keep my bedroom door open, but tonight it’s closed to keep out Victoire, the baby. She’s sweet, but she likes to come in and mess with my things, and tonight my things will be everywhere, due to a significant lack of surface areas. 

It’s 7:30. The power’s out, but I’m nearly done packing anyway. Dinner is ready — rice and fish with a spicy peanut sauce. I love it; I think my Dad would hate it. I can get through about half of it before I’m full. The power is back on, and so is the TV. In general, the TV is always on. I watch children’s shows and wryly reflect that, for all its simplicity, I understand less of it than the actual children do. 

At 9:00, it’s bedtime. Or rather, it’s go-to-my-room time. I take the next hour or so to do my own thing — finish up homework, write, read, generally relax and unwind. I go to bed before my host siblings do — I tried to outlast them my very first week, but quickly decided it’s not worth it. In the end, we probably go to bed around the same time, I just choose to read or write rather than finish the day in front of the television. Tonight I finalize my bags and set out clothes for tomorrow. It’s going to be a long day, and it’ll be here before I know it.