Twins, Basil!

Please disregard the Austin Powers reference in this post's title that probably only Beth will appreciate. It's fitting, though, bcause I've decided to study twins for my final research project! The Bamilike, an ethnic group located around Dschang, have a lot of respect for twins and have special ceremonies/titles/etc, so in April I'll be looking into the details and the cause of this cultural significance. It feels nice to finally have a topic for my research; that's one less thing to worry about, at least for the time being.

Now for an update on my weekend:

Saturday was really busy. In the morning all the SIT kids visited a waterfall and some caves. The waterfall was really cool. We hiked through a sacred forest to get to it, and it was really big despite the fact that it's the dry season here. Next we hiked to two caves, a "male" cave and a "female cave." The male cave was more impressive: it as deep with a large, low overhanging ceiling.

After the hikes we all went to our respctive homes to get ready for a night at a club and hotel. We had to get to the hotel by 6:30, and we almost didn't make it because my friends and I ran into a bunch of random people on the way who wanted to talk to us. There was an older guy at a local bar who insisted we hang out for a bit; two students who wanted us to help them practice for the TOEFL; a bar full of friendly older men who wanted to talk to us; and an old woman in the market who kept hoping that God blessed us. Finally we made it to the hotel, where the 17 of us shared 3 rooms (mine had 7 people and only 1 bed!)

We had a great dinner, then headed to a nearby club. Ity was a lot nicer than I was expecting, but we were the youngest people there! The power would occassionally go off, and when it didn't com back on after another outage we figured that it was time to leave.

The ext day we hung around the hotel a bit before heading back to our host families. We found some American TV (The Daily Show!) and it was great to watch something familiar for a change.

I'll be leaving Dschang on Friday, then spending 4 days in Bamenda before returning to Yaounde. We're staying in hotels in Bamenda so it should be a great chance to hang out with the rest of the kids on the program.