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.