Last Night in Yaounde

I met the US Ambassador to Cameroon. How cool is that? So last night after Geoff was done with his meetings, his fellow peace corps volunteers invited us to the US Embassy to play some ultimate frisbee with the "embassy kids". The taxi was not allowed to let us out in front of the Embassy, only up the street. We were not allowed to bring in any phones or cameras and had to walk through a metal detector, show our id's AND in order to have even been allowed inside, we had to have been previously invited by someone inside the embassy. Luckily, one of the PCVs (peace corps volunteer) had a friend who invited us all. Frisbee was fun, intense and sweaty. I had to play in jeans because all of the shorts I brought to the country are too short to wear in public and we had to travel a ways to get to the embassy from our hotel. Behind the embassy was a beautiful hotel and absolutely stunning manicured landscape. We weren't allowed to play frisbee on that lawn.. The embassy certainly was a reprieve from Cameroon, nothing looked anything like the rest of the country, which I think is the point. During our game, the Ambassador rolled up in his Tahoe complete with US and Cameroonian mini flags on the hood. He waved to us and we waved back, hence, I met the US Ambassador to Cameroon.

After the game, we (about 10 of us le blancs) went back to Bastos for smoothies and shwarme (sh-waar-may). The smoothies were amazing, fruit in Africa is indescribably better than whats imported to the US. Especially pineapple. Shwarme is similar to a gyro, with meat and vegetables wrapped in a thick pita. It was reallly delicious. We took our goods to a bar to watch the Czech vs. Portugal EuroCup game. The bar was really nice, cushioned seats, flat screen TVs, liter sized beer and a pool table. I feel lucky that Geoff's peace corps friends were in Yaounde at the same time as us. They all had to come into the city for their "mid-service" which is their half way point of service in the peace corps. They had to fill out paperwork, have a psych eval and get medical check ups. It is very interesting to see the different types of people who join the peace corps. I hadn't really thought about it prior to meeting the PCVs; I'd just assumed they would all be similar to Geoff. Three stuck out to me as different. Jack, is 27 and married. He and his wife joined the peace corps together. I learned that you can apply as a married couple and be stationed at the same post. His wife was waiting for him back at his post while he was in the city. Jake (25 maybe?) was very put together. He wore a suit to the bar and was easily the nicest dressed out of all of us. He said to me, when I asked him why he was dressed like that, that people treated him with more respect when he dressed nicer and he didn't get hassled as much from children and people begging. There is a secure social hierarchy here, as in all African countries (and all countries really) and Jake wanted to be on the top of it. He's been trying to get a job at an American electric company here who has a monopoly. He seemed to me to be the type of person who would stay in a less developed nation so that he could be one of the elite. I had never expected to find a personality like that in the peace corps. The final anomaly was Christine, who cared so much about how she looked that we had to wait an hour for her to get ready to play frisbee. She was very particular about her make up, clothes and how her hair looked. For me, if I'm going to be in an African country for 2 years, I don't think I could care about that. What you see is what you get. But I do respect her ability to preserve her American nature while in Cameroon.