Update

Since my last post, a lot has happened.

I took time to run a little experiment on my body.  I stopped taking the protein supplement I found in Switzerland to see how it affected me, and got some blood tests done at the low point (nothing major) to see if we could pinpoint something my body was lacking. Didn’t learn much, and just worked and slept for this time, and lost track of this blog, but I’m back at 100% now.

I’ve moved.  I was living in a temporary apartment near my friends from Switzerland, now I’m sharing an apartment in a house nearer work.

I’ve worked hard.  We got all our French resources written and checked.  An error every paragraph or two, pretty good for a American and an Australian.

I had a really good day at work yesterday , my partner was elsewhere as  2 people came in for help…I was able to work with one most of the morning, solving the problems that she came over with.  After my boss came back, I was able to do some of the fun (but complex) algorithm writing to convert Psalms in a far-north language into a usable format and check for errors.

Africa is humbling…what you think you knew, you don’t…and my pride has taken a few major hits.  On the other side, just being white, the people around you expect that you know everything and have unlimited resources.  I had a guy call out to me in Ewondo today, I didn’t understand, and he switched to French.  When I talked to him, he had figured out who I work for and that we did translation of local languages. The first thing he wanted was a book to learn English. Then he asked why if I worked with local languages, I didn’t speak Ewondo, the local language here.  I explained to him that I’d just spent 13 months in Switzerland learning French, and that I hadn’t had time to learn much Ewondo yet even if I wanted to, just “Ashia”, which means sorry.  So… I left with a parting “Ashia” for not knowing everything, and headed off to work on the Psalms in Mambila (Far north of Cameroon).  He lives (or at least works) near my house…maybe one day we’ll do a language exchange, they recommend that the linguists pick up a local language, and my residence card says linguist…why not.  English and Ewondo, with explanations in French, could be fun.

Also today..Ruth-Abigail connected me with a young (my age) Cameroonian guy, and I was able to hang out with him this evening.  We went up to a new part of Yaoundé to have dinner and to talk.  It’s the first time I’ve seen downtown at night, as I wouldn’t yet dare go by myself after dark.  Despite polar opposite backgrounds, we get along very well, and have plenty to talk about.  It was also good to blabber on in French again, it puts him more at ease, and I’ve mostly read or written in the last month.

I leave tomorrow (hopefully) for a long trip to the far end of the country, 16 hours overnight on the train and 8 hours on a bus after that, if all goes well.  I’ll be teaching and helping teach 2 one-week courses in French.