Arrival in Yaounde

After around 26 hours of traveling, the thirty two of us in our training group arrived at our hotel in Yaounde. Since then, we have been completely cloistered, spending all of our time in either the hotel or the Peace Corps compound. The official reason is that we don’t have Cameroonian ID cards, but I suspect that that isn’t the whole story; there are gaurds with Kalishnikovs posted on the bottom floor of the hotel. We’re stuck here until Thursday, when we go to our training site in Bangante, where we’ll have significantly more latitude.

Our training group at JFK. I’m in the lower right.:

Two views from the hotel:

  This is the view out of my window, where you can see a freight train yard, among other things. I like to watch freight trains being built in the morning. Also, in the right, you can see a man driving some cattle through the freight yard. There is also some good bird watching out my window. I’ve been putting old bread out on my window ledge. I’d like to bust out my binoculars to see the birds in the trees in the foreground, but in front of them are some people’s houses, and I don’t want to be “le blanc” who’s spying on the locals below.

You can see the soccer stadium in the background of this picture.

Training has been necessarily boring. My arm hurts from my Hep A and Typhoid shots. I’m addicted to Bananagrams. I’ve found someone to play mandolin. I really miss being able to cross my legs (it’s rude here.) I unexpectedly tested intermediate low in French this morning. Thanks Rosetta stone! My French examiner was the very first person whom I’ve ever spoken to in French for an extended period of time. Everything else is fine, but I can’t wait to get out and explore. I do miss you, though. You know who you are.