You're in the jungle, baby!

Le jus de poisson. Literally, the juice of fish. Here's the deal. I learned just over a week ago that my new home for the next two years will be Ngalane, in the southern region of Cameroon. I will live just outside of Ebolowa (google map it!), the regional capital, and just where the road turns into two dirt roads. I will be 1 of 2 agroforesty volunteers in the South, and there will only be 5 of us posted there for the entire region; 2 health, 1 education. We received news of our posts on Thursday of last week, just before Halloween. I almost cried as the South was completely NOT what I expected. However, upon the realization that there are actually natural forests left in the South and that I will have more freedom/independence with my projects/life, I got excited. We all had a 2 day conference in Bangante, my training city, where we met our counterpart and talked about stuff and things. But the good stuff starts here... We left Bangante for a week long visit of our soon-to-be sites on Sunday. After a 3.5 hr trip from the West, a region saturated with agriculture and PC volunteers, we arrived in Yaounde. It took another 30 minutes of travel in Yaounde to reach the most awful place on earth, Mvon, where I take buses to Ebolowa (not related to the Ebola virus). Mvon, the bus station south of Yaounde, is horrible because it is where people do awful things to other people and NO ONE DOES ANYTHING. Barely having survived a few fights I almost started in Mvon, I took a 2-2.5 hr bus ride to Ebolowa, deep into Cameroon's southern rainforest, where I watched the regular western agricultural plots turn into forestry trucks carrying massive logs. This is the real forest where slash and burn agriculture prevails because it can (ie. there is space!). So it is really beautiful out here. And there's lots of interesting social issues, like sorcery, and people working individually (which is contrary to most of Cameroon which tends towards group projects). During my site visit, me and Andrea, my nearest Agro volunteer, saw some African Grays (cool!) while walking down the road that leads from her future post to Gabon. Also, my neighbor has a monkey in a cage. So, stuff is interesting and I'm sure I'll have more good stuff to share really soon. But the real story is on transport from my post to her post. Mvangan, Andrea's post, is just over 100 km east of my post. The roads are not good, and even worse when wet. Unfortunately, the two of us and the volunteer, Sarah, who she'll be replacing, chose to go after a freak late-wet season hail (I KNOW, cause it's hot in the South!) storm. We were going to TPO, her neighbor, TPO meaning Terrible Pouvoir de l'Ouest. So, thinking we were going to have a schwank deal, we loaded our bags, and waited. When it came time to sit in the taxi, it turned out we were going to pack just like every other taxi to Mvangan: double decker. This means 4 up front, 8 in the back. Yikes. Fortunately whities get the front, and the worst seat turns out to be "petite chauffer"-for women with little fannies who literally share the seat with the driver, manual transmission and all. We were not doing so bad until the car broke down less than an hour later. We waited for a while, and as it started to get dark we jumped into the back (ie., the very back/trunk) of another station wagon heading our way. We made 18 people in this car! There were the 3 of us, plus a momma and her 3 year old in the very back. But at least I didn't have to double decker it in the actual seats. This is also the time that the frozen fish, shipped from China and/or Morocco, strapped snug on the top of the car in transport from the big city of Ebolowa to the en bruce city- without electricity/running water- started to melt on top of me. My neck craned to one side or the other because apparently I'm just a little too tall to sit back there comfortably, praying that my bag would actually make it to Mvangan in 1 piece, I needed everything I had to not cry. The worst part was that the mayor of Mvangan was on his way down the same road and, seeing his PC volunteer and 2 other PCVs smuchsed in the trunk, tried all he could to flag down our car. But our driver, thinking we would not pay him for the ride, ignored our cries to stop, and even refused to let us out to stretch. So a potentially 2 hr ride, after fixing a flat, turned into a 5 hr grueling journey. Our bags arrived with TPO 2 days later, untouched. A minor victory. We spent several days in Mvangan, enjoying the (generally, except for cold beer) lack of electricity, the quiet nights, the small town feel where even the local deaf man proposes marriage through the help of a man who speaks villagoise francaise, and etc. It was wonderful and relaxing and I convinced myself that maybe it wouldn't be so bad to visit my friend here at post, until I took the ride back to my city. Thinking that it could only get better than the ride into town, I quickly realized that the driver, who shoved my bag into the trunk carelessly, accepted us to drive into town, only to stop 2 miles into the ride from Mvangan to "fix" a flat with a bike tire pump. This happened a few times throughout the trip, along with a snack break, and a break to break up a fight because of "double decker" conflict. The ride home was not in a station wagon, but in a regular car. I counted 12 inside the car, plus a baby, and 4 on top of the car. I think I will bike there from here on out and at least get some enjoyment out of it. Moral of the story is 100 or so km does not equal 1 or 2 hours of journey, but 5 to 12 hours, jus de poisson smells like urine, it's better to ride where you wont be on someone's lap or someone wont be on yours, always look for a trusty car/driver but expect it wont be, GO WITH THE FLOW-you'll get there, hopefully in one piece and hopefully with your stuff. And laugh. Because it's better than crying when your left butt check is numb and you have been sitting on it for 2 hours on end. PS. I have a new address: Lauren Redmore B.P. 477 Ebolowa, Cameroon