Greetings from Cameroon!

Hello all! I've been in Cameroon for a few days now, so I thought I'd fill you all in on what I've been doing.

The trip here was long but really not too bad. I had aroud a 6 hour flight from NYC to Paris, then a 5 hour layover before the flight to Cameroon. I didn't get to see the Eiffel Tower, but did order a really good croissant from an airport cafe. Then came a 6 hour flight to Douala, a bit of a layover on the plane, and then the final hop to Yaoundé. We landed around 8 qt night, so I couldn't see much of the city. It was really dark but there were a TON of people out, walking to different snack bars that lined the streets.

I stayed in a church- or monastery-run compound for orientation. My room was right next to the chapel, so I'd wake up to singing during services each morning. We were pretty secluded the whole time, except for the last day (yesterday), when we did a "dropoff" in the city. We were divided into groups and dropped off in random locations throughout Yaoundé with only a list of different places to find. My group decided to eqrch for the US Embassy first, and that was pretty much all we did-we couldn't find it and no one knew where it was, so we just walked around the city for a few hours. We got really far, and it was cool to just take in the sights. The guys in Cameroon are pretty extroverted, so wherever we went we were followed by "bonjour les blanches" and "mes cheries, comment allez-vous?"

Today we went to the SIT office; right now I'm at an internet cafe nearby. We're meeting our host families later. I hope they're nice!






For anyone who's interested (ie mom, dad, and grandma): I was accepted for an internship with the Boston Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights!