Allons-y Alonso!

Before coming to Cameroon, the only French words I knew were “Bonjour,” “merci,” “sacre-bleu,” and “allons-y”—the former two from Beauty and the Beast and Doctor Who respectively.  But I feel like I should speak French.  I mean, on the six degree of separation scale, I am definitely only one degree away from speaking French. 

One of my best friends and roommates for two years in undergrad was a French major; surely some French should have rubbed off on me just by breathing the same air, right?  Diffusion?  I guess I should know better having once been informed by one of my friends that it’s impossible to learn a language through osmosis. 

My Spanish professor in undergrad thought I spoke French.  I later concluded that she must have had me confused with someone else, but after failing to correct her the first time, I simply had to smile and nod every time she said “Oh Allison, this [insert tense or grammar or vocabulary topic here] should be very straightforward for you!  It’s similar to French!”

For some reason I’ve had multiple Europeans assume that I’m French (obviously before I open my mouth).  One even went as far as to ask if I was a French ballerina.  He claimed he could tell by the way I walked across the square—though I think it was part of a larger ploy to get my number. 

But despite hovering so close to the language for so long, I had very little to go on after arriving in Cameroon.  I figured that since I already (sort-of) spoke a Romance Language, how hard could it be?  Difficult.  Or difficile.  (Don’t be too impressed, I just looked that up right now.  And then felt dumb because it was so close to Spanish.)

I am not an auditory learner, so when for the first few weeks other members of the field team would try to teach me helpful French phrases while we walked from one field site to the next, they would in one ear and out the other.  To remedy this, a couple of weeks ago I decided to sit down with our French at a Glance book, inherited from Chris, who had inherited it from his advisor when he first came here ten years ago.  It was at dinner so our Cameroonian field assistant was helpfully sitting mere feet away and couldn’t escape my onslaught of questions.  Our conversation went like this:

Me (in the most horrid French accent imaginable):           “So it’s je parle, tu parles, elle parle, nous parlons, vous parlez, elles parlent?”  (pronouncing the words as I would in Spanish, aka “parle” as “parlay”)

Jean Bernard:    Laughs. “Non, je parle, tu parles, elle parle, nous parlons, vous parlez, elles parlent?” (except it sounded like je parl, tu parl, el parl, nou parlon, vou parl, el parl)

Me:        Wait, what happened to the ends of the words!

JB:          Laughs.

Me:        No seriously, I speak, You speak, She speaks, You all speak, and They speak all sound the exact same??

JB:          Laughs.

So apparently, unlike Spanish, French is not phonetic. 

Me (debating banging my head against the table):           Hmmmmm

But after the first few weeks of giving the deer-in-headlights look to everyone who addressed me, I have finally mastered enough phrases to have a (very simple and stilted, mostly one-sided) conversation.  Every conversation I have goes a little like this:

Me:        Bonjour (Hello)

Cameroonian:   Merci, bonjour.  Comment ça va?  (Thanks, hello.  How is everything?)

Me:        Ça va bien.  (Everything is good)

Cameroonian:   [undecipherable French words that I take to mean “What are you doing wandering around the African bush in such ridiculously attractive jungle pants?]

Me:        Je regarde les oiseau.  (I look at the birds)

Cameroonian now with an incredulous smirk:     Les oiseau?  (The….birds?)

Me:        Oui, les petite oiseau.  Pour la science.  Je suis étudiante biologie.  (Yes, baby birds.  For science.  I am a biology student.)

Cameroonian:   [undecipherable French words]

Me:        Je suis désole.  Je ne parle pas bien le Français.  (I’m sorry.  I don’t speak French well.)

The conversations go either one of two ways at this point, either:

Cameroonian:   [undecipherable French words]

Me (having fully exhausted all my French):          [blink and smile as the awkward seconds tick by until…]

Cameroonian:   Ça va, Ça va.  Au revoir!  (It’s fine, it’s fine.  Bye!)

Or they make the switch into English which it turns out they speak much more fluently than I speak French.

But at least I am learning.  Slowly.  And I plan to continue practicing.  Just as I will continue my search for someone named Alonso so I too can say “Allons-y Alonso!”

Fish Heads Fish Heads Roly Poly Fish Heads

Before starting in on the fish heads, I’d like to say sorry for the radio silence on my end for the last two and a half weeks.  In a series of unfortunate events, my computer (and various other items from our house) wandered off into the African bush.  There is little chance that these items will be retrieved—especially considering that the first course of action in the investigation of this theft was to consult some seers and sacrifice a goat.  And so I can only say that I hope that the thieves enjoyed the one hour of Disney music that they were able to listen to on my iPod before it died for good (in a country where Apple products are extremely scarce, it probably would have been a smart idea to take the charger as well.  Dummies.).  Now they have a very expensive paper weight. 

Thanks to Chris and JB though, we now have a replacement computer to use for the rest of our time here, which I much appreciate.  It arrived this morning along with JB back from Yaoundé.  Though it will work perfectly adequately, whoever manufactured this computer deserves to be smacked upside the head:  half of the key board is in the French arrangement and half of it is in the America.  Major fail.  Luckily I don’t have to look at the keys when I type so once we changed the settings to function as an American keyboard it works just fine.  It just gets a little confusing if I glance down and the “Q” is where the “A” should be, the “M” is where the “;” should be, etc. etc. (the time it took me to type the previous sentence was a testament to the difficulties of looking while I type).  But, as I said, as long as I don’t look down, it’s business as usual. 

The blog entry that I had started before this whole debacle was about food, so I will try to recreate it—though I’m sure it will pale in comparison to the original on my pilfered computer.

So.  Fish heads. I’ve never considered myself to be a particularly picky eater, though I’m sure that others would classify me as such, and I’ll pretty much try anything once (well maybe not the sardines they “prepare” here by setting them out in the sun on a tarp—the fly to fish ratio is just a little too high for me to stomach), but something that I’ve had to get over is my aversion to having my food look at me while I’m eating it.  Somehow if my 24 years of eating fish (which, thanks to the many fly-fisher friends and family members, has not been infrequent) I have always been served fish sans head.  This is not the case in Cameroon.  On nearly our first evening in the country we were invited over to JB’s family’s house for dinner.  When the plate was brought out and there was an eye staring back at me, I wasn’t entirely surprised but it was a tad unnerving.  My first thought was of the silly kids’ song that my good friend Allison Young used to always sing:  “Fish heads fish heads, roly poly fish head.  Fish heads fish heads eat them up, yum.  In the morning, happy smiling fish heads, in the evening, floating in your soup.”  Come to think about it, I’ve never heard anyone else sing that particular ditty and I guess that it’s entirely possible—knowing Alli—that she made it up.  So the lyrics went round and round my head as I ate that delicious fish.  All except the bones and the eyes, though my field assistant Eric helpfully informed me that eyes are especially delicious (fish eyes go in the same category as street sardines).

As it turns out, fish heads are not the most unsettling food that I’ve encountered (again, see street sardines).  One of the most common dishes that you encounter on the side of the road is the classic newspaper full of mystery meat.  I think it used to be a cow.  Though it might be goat.  There are a lot of those running around…no one would miss one or two.  It’s rather gamey but I’d rather that than medium rare a la parasites.  Then there’s the couscous—not real couscous—that I have yet to try.  But all in all we’ve been eating rather well:  JB fries up a mean omelet (egg friation, he calls it) and makes delicious peanut sauce over sweet potatoes, Justin and Eric both got ambitious and made plantain chips and French fries respectively, and Chris made homemade bean burgers that I insist were restaurant quality.  And there’s always plenty of pasta and sauce and vegetables when it’s my turn to cook (I find that my creativity in the kitchen is severely hampered by the lack of an oven). 

Those of you who know me know that though I love to eat, I only get in the mood for serious cooking about once every couple of weeks so it was nice to have five potential chefs for the first month of being here.  My turn in the cooking rotation will come up much more frequently, unfortunately, now that we are down to only three people.  I guess I can count myself lucky however, that we are following the American way in deciding who cooks and taking turns.  After a recent conversation I had, I realized that things could be very different. 

Last week when Eric and I were staying at the Wildlife Conservation Center in a neighboring town while JB took Justin and Chris back to catch their flights from Yaoundé, two of the staff members—both male—were surprised that Eric was cooking one of the evenings.  I thought I had caught hints of that the evening before when they walked us into town to buy some supplies when all the questions about cooking were addressed to me.  (They were especially curious if I could cook over a wood fire.)  The next day when they asked if I had used the kitchen yet and I replied that I hadn’t but Eric had, there surprise was evident.  “Were you not around?” one of them asked in confusion.  I replied yes, equally confused.  “In Cameroon if a woman is around she does the cooking,” he continued.  Ah.  So that explained the pointed questions about cooking over a wood fire.  I explained that in the US whoever wants to cook does the cooking.  They both still looked incredulous and rather amused at the point.  “So if you and I were together, I would have to cook?” he asked.  Trying to remain polite and respect cultural differences I refrained from the “uh yeah, buddy” that I would have preferred and went with “we would probably take turns!”  They both laughed at this and commented that they preferred it the Cameroonian way to which I replied “well I prefer it the American way if that means that I don’t have to spend all my time in the kitchen.”  Both chuckled at that, but I don’t think the take home message of gender equality was fully computing because one asked “can you even cook?”  Yes, yes I can.  Just not fish heads or sundried sardines.

The Only Way to Travel

In Cameroon the most important part of the car is by far the horn.  Honking is used to signal passing, to inquire about potential fares, to announce your arrival, to warn off pedestrians (who definitely do not have the right-of-way), to say hello to someone you know, or just generally to add some noise to the already teaming atmosphere.  Other than that, all other parts seem to be optional.  Most taxis look like one big pothole will be the end of them, but having personally acquired the bruises from multiple of those potholes, I can attest to the taxis’ hardiness.  (Luckily I can’t attest to the effectiveness of the fire extinguishers all the cabs have affixed in the front.)  For all I can tell, as with the pirate code, traffic rules are more guidelines than actual rules.  The center line is likely painted simply for decoration and stop lights are possibly-slow-down-or-maybe-just-lay-on-your-horn lights.  Cars travel four abreast on roads with two lanes all the while bikes and motorcycles and pedestrians weave dangerously in between.  After one night out at dinner in Yaoundé, we piled seven adults into the cab Chris ominously said, “You think this is full, wait til you see the taxis in Tibati!”  Comforting thought.

But, as it turns out, the journey to Tibati was a lot more uncomfortable than actually getting around once we arrived.  We set out on a train that left Yaoundé at 6:00 in the evening and traveled through the night.  Through the persuasive finagling of Jean-Bernard, we managed to snag a sleeper car, which made the journey much more bearable.  But by bearable, I mean that at least I was lying down for the 11 hours of being wide awake in a stuffy room listening the slightly ominous creaking of the bed directly above mine instead of the alternative of doing much of the same while sitting.  But the journey passed relatively incident-free other than someone rattling the door to our room in the middle of the night and the concerned attendants who kept having us shut the window—I’m still not sure if they were concerned with someone climbing in or someone grabbing through the open window (I’m inclined to go with the latter since Justin had his glasses stolen off his face through a window in Cameroon years before).  

As soon as we arrived in the train station, the five of us piled onto a 15 passenger van.  Along with 20 other people.  And then, right when I thought that we were going to head out, 10 more people jumped on.  Thus began the most uncomfortable three hours of my life.  Needless to say, speeding down a partially paved road at 60 mph was not kind on my already bursting bladder.  My feet and legs were asleep within minutes due to the precarious piling of both my carry-ons atop my lap. I tried to close my eyes and meditate, but I can safely guarantee that I never reached Nirvana on that ride. 

The whole ordeal made me slightly frightened for traveling around Tibati itself, but I need not have worried.  Though there are a few taxis and buses around, the main mode of travel is neither.  Here we use motor bikes.  And it is fabulous.

Stay tuned; next up:  “The Shrike:  Honey Badger of the Air”

Cameroon Calling

I have resigned myself to the fact that I will probably never get to shower for the next three months.  We are currently staying at the UCLA Research Training Center in the capital—what probably will be the nicest place that we stay—and yet the shower here runs for five seconds and then shuts off for thirty minutes.  This is not conducive to washing anything, let alone long hair.  The rest of the field team, all guys, helpfully suggested that I shave my head.  Or get dreads.  If that’s what it takes to be a field biologist then I am definitely not the woman for the job.  I have to draw the line somewhere.  So fingers crossed that the shower situation improves once we get to Tibati.

Other than that, Cameroon has been great.  We arrived at the airport late Saturday night and were kindly picked up by our Cameroonian field assistant, Jean Bernard, and two taxis.  It took quite a while to get out of the parking lot onto the roads as the entire lot funneled into one exit, so there was a lot of time to get to smell the African air.  As soon as I stepped out of the airport, I was transported back four years ago to getting off the plane in an airport in South Africa.  Africa definitely has a smell.  It’s hard to describe, but it’s a mix of sweat, dirt, spices, and something floral. 

We spent Sunday catching up on sleep—I like to think that I made up for the lack of sleep on Friday night by sleeping double on Saturday—and generally relaxing and hanging out.  I taught two of the others on our research team how to play cribbage and then proceeded to skunk them both, which may not have been the best introduction….

In the evening we had dinner at Jean-Bernard’s house with his lovely wife and two kids.  Dinner consisted of baton (cassava), chips, plantains, and full mackerels (eyes included, which I did not eat despite assurances that the head was the best part)—all quite tasty.  After that it was back to the center in a taxi piled high with the four of us, Jean-Bernard, and his two kids who wanted to accompany us back!  Chris informed us that in Tibati, taxis would have at least two more people in them than that.  Something to look forward to I suppose.  

Jungle Pants Take Manhattan

This is it.  T-minus 8 hours until takeoff.  At this point, all the things I wanted or have forgotten to do before leaving have been rendered obsolete by lack of time.  I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

 

We are flying out of JFK, so yesterday I got a chance to explore, albeit briefly, The City.  As we rode the ferry from Staten Island, where we are staying, over to Manhattan one of my friends texted me jokingly that he heard that NY is just like Montana.  If you replace all the mountains with buildings and all the cows with people, I suppose this is true.  Generally cities are not where I feel the most at home, but I felt even more out of place because, of course, all I had to wear were jungle clothes, which don’t blend in well in one of the most fashionable cities in the U.S. 

(I guess I should be grateful that at least my jungle pants don’t look like this guy’s however.)

I suppose it’s rather an interesting juxtaposition to get to see Ellis Island one day and then leave the US for nearly four months the next.  I’m not sure if any of my relatives came through Ellis Island on their way into this country, but a lot of people did, so it was fitting to have one of my last views of the U.S. for nearly the rest of 2013 be what the first view was for many others.  So long good ole U. S. of A.—I’ll be back.

      

Typhoid Lungsford (or, 1001 ways to die)

Prepping for Cameroon has felt much like preparing to go to war with much of the natural world.  Apparently, there are quite a few things that can kill you in Africa. I’ve done my fair share of traveling, but either I haven’t been to an area quite so fraught with potential disaster before, or I bounced along in happy ignorance during my various middle school, high school, and undergrad study abroad trips (ignorance is highly likely).  If my ever-helpful friends and roommates tell me about one more disease that I can contract while over there, I may spend the next few months in prison rather than Cameroon. 

In the last couple of weeks I have had to get five shots and take typhoid pills as well as pick up my prescription for anti-malarial and broad-spectrum antibiotics.  All of these were provided by the travel clinic where I naively went two weeks ago thinking that all I needed was a Yellow Fever vaccine and anti-malarials.  After all, in the last year alone I’ve traveled to four countries so I figured I was mostly up to date. 

When I got to the clinic they handed me forms to fill out with the name Alison Lungsford on the top—apparently my last name remains rather elusive over the phone.  After a fight with my insurance company over my MIA insurance card, I was ready to go.  As some of you might know, I love shots only slightly less than the diseases they protect me from, so when I found out I was getting four, I was less than amused.  This must have shown on my face as the nurse prepped and administered the shots—two in each arm—because after all was said and done, another nurse who had walked by clucked kindly, “Oh sweetie, you were so brave with all those needles in your arm!”  And suddenly I felt five years old, where it is considered bravery to get four shots.  And subsequently felt less than brave as a 24 year old where a few needles are the least of my worries. 

Ah, all will be well.  But for now, signing off; my typhoid is acting up.

The Woes of Buying Snake Gaiters (or, “No sir, I won’t be needing a snake girdle”)

I’ve found that prepping for fieldwork has not been one of the more enjoyable experiences I’ve had lately. In the past, all this work has been done without me, and all I had to do was show up the first day of the field season and hello transects, audio equipment, waders, mist nets, etc. I’m not so oblivious that I thought all this stuff sprouts from the earth when needed, but I’ve always joined a field team, never spearheaded (or helped spearhead, rather) one before. Without Chris, thanks Chris, I’d be completely lost. Apparently there isn’t a David Attenborough startup kit—complete with a complimentary khaki pants and British accent—that one can order when getting ready to head out into the field.

It’s not only the purchasing of the equipment that’s set my head spinning; I’ve had a hard enough time with outfitting myself for the field. Take when I went to find snake boots for example (Yes, snake boots. One of the glorious things about Africa is the abundance of poisonous snakes). My search first began online, but a Google search of “snake boots for women” comes up with a lovely and completely practical assortment of snakeskin high heels. Passing up the chance to become the most fashionable researcher for the 12 minutes it would take for me to twist my ankle, fall into a pit of mole vipers, and be eaten for the gall of wearing their cousin, I decided to check out some outdoor stores in town and get some help.

Never have I felt so judged as when I walked into a work boots supply store here in Greenville, NC while wearing a dress and asked if they carried women's snake boots. The two employees at the counter gave me an once-over and smirked, no. As I turned on my heel for the door, they laughed and called me back over. “Sorry honey” the woman of the husband and wife clerk team said to me, “I don’t think we’ve ever had someone like you come in asking for that sort of thing.” (For the record, the style guide for not getting laughed out of the store when purchasing snake boots does not include strappy sandals and a flouncy dress.) Once we got down to business however, and I explained my situation—fieldwork, didn’t wander into the wrong store, vipers, don’t actually mean snakeskin heels, Africa, PhD student, mambas—they were quite helpful. But, turns out there aren’t many snake-proof boot options for women. And the unisex boots don’t go down to my size. So we began to explore other alternatives. Then the husband had an idea. “How about snake proof garters? Wait, is that the right word? Garters? Girdle?" . . . prolonged awkward pause while I ponder potential situations where a snake-proof girdle would come in handy . . . “Uh, do you mean gaiters?”

Thus a momentous life event checked off my bucket list: I am now the proud possessor of snake gaiters.

                            (Most likely the shoes that were intended to go with snake gaiters.)