The Goat Who Laughs

There’s a goat whose sole purpose, I’ve decided, is to laugh at me. Occasionally she leaves her post—right outside my language classroom (read: tin roof that hovers every so carefully over a wood platform)—and goes to find guava leaves. It just so happens that I too love guavas, so she makes sure to come back with an occasional leaf or two in her mouth. What a taunting little minx...

Jokes on her, though, because ironically enough, I finish French classes in a week or so. Perhaps I should say jokes on me. The PC has decided that now I know enough French to teach my farmers the supposed skills that I have acquired. This has, so far, proven to be a fruitless task as I spent a painstaking fifteen minutes the other night trying to explain to my family what I did last summer—sadly we never made it past that word because despite mad gesticulations of sun, and a rather impressive display of swimming on our dirt floor, the word was lost on them.

French classes will soon be replaced by my Fulfulde lessons—a local dialect which the town (yet to be named) may or may not speak. My lessons, however, are progressing rather slowly. I saw my teacher today and thought I’d catch her off guard with a little “jabbama” (that’s hello) action, but she asked me why I was speaking to her in Spanish. Petit à petit…

Technical classes are, however, going rather well. When you start with nothing, it’s amazing how fast it becomes something. I’ve had sessions on apiculture, vegetative propagation, alley cropping, and proper dendrology identification. For those of you that don’t know what those things are….mwahaha, I do. Kind of…

Our one technical homework assignment is to build a nursery at home. This is a hilarious feat to achieve in a house that has 15 children (I got three new siblings last week…don’t ask). I came home one day, unlocked my door, and my kids, as usual, came rushing into my room behind me. This time, however, they left rather quickly. I knew that they were up to something as they did not hide under my bed and wait for me to kick them out (I’ve gone to bed multiple times with children under my bed). I found the little suckers outside by my nursery with my seed bags, but ironically no seeds. It turns out that they decided to hide the seeds, and eat the rest. Awesome. So I made them dig up the remaining seeds so that I could replant them. I later discovered that they’re smarter than I thought, as my seeds, which are just beginning to sprout, are ironically coming up all clustered together in the same corner of the nursery. Good times with the fam…

After several days of chasing my kids around the house with my machete, no really, I decided that I needed a break from the fam and just the PC in general. A couple friends and I went to Bafoussam, the provincial capital of the West. It was a fantastic trip that included, but was not limited to by any means: cheese, and general fun at the “white-man” grocery store, warm croissants, lots of olives, some touring around (read: drinking beer), and hot water. Essentially it was an orgasm of a city.

There’s so much more to tell, but it’s hard to really convey what’s happening here. I have these moments—like when I’m at my brother’s dance show which is just really his two friends and him dancing in a club where I have to pay a dollar to watch them move—when I’m like, wow, Africa. 2 years. Hmmm. And then there are these times, when I’m on a run (which has happened about two times, I’m becoming a master of the walking in running clothes), and I look at the rolling green hills, gorgeous mountains, and I’m like wow…Africa. Yeah, I can do this. A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B?