Happy List Monday

I've been INSPIRED lately. God just keeps bringing up the importance of giving thanks for the little things. This entire month, focusing on the positive has cropped up everywhere: in our devotions, in a TED Talk we watched, in conversations with friends, even in a friend's blog (http://joshfeelsfine.blogspot.com/). Every week Josh (who I actually met here in Cameroon a year and a half ago) makes an "Anti-Fear" list about happy things, and I love reading them, and have been trying to make mini lists of my own every day. So now it is going on my blog, to spread the joy and maybe inspire some of you to make your own.

• Rain, for the fourth day in a row in the middle of dry season
• Laughing at the cats with Sarah
• Avocados
• Looking at world maps
• Skyping with my mother and siblings <3
• Writing letters
• Water
• The puppies squeezing through the cat door to come inside
• The Downton Abbey soundtrack
• Mechanical pencils
• Reading and falling asleep with a cat lying on top of me
• Writing this blog and knowing that there are other people out there in the world who like reading it
• Psalm 91
• Singing Phantom of the Opera to Fadi and Maimu, who just laugh and laugh
• Getting a long and lovely email from my sister

Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

And another week has passed - this time without water! Tuesday was our first day low on water, then it completely ran out and we didn't get any more until Saturday! It's a good thing we have braids - no need to wash our hair, so it was okay that I went without showering for 5 days! Haha I make light of it now, but it's quite a terrible inconvenience to have no water for days on end, without knowing when it will be back. But then today there was this major rainstorm with lightning and thunder and wind and hail and everything! It was crazy. Crazy crazy crazy. And our tanks were overflowing! Felt like rainy season again, and it was lovely and wonderful.

We were forced to say goodbye to Karissa this week as well, which was quite sad. Chris and Karen took her down to Yaounde to bring her to the airport and returned yesterday, and we've heard that Karissa is safely back at Biola. But we will see her again in four months! At the end of May, she's bringing a summer team of college students here for about 6 weeks! And that will be splendid and fun.

So many thank-yous to all of you who prayed for us this week and to Jesus! who brought back our water, our internet (which hasn't been working very well or at all the past few days), our electricity (which is always going in and out, but has been especially bad lately), and Chris and Karen from Yaounde. Aaaaaand for the opportunity to talk to my family tonight, after far too long! Hallelujah and good night.

Over the Hills and Far Away

Back from Takui, a most splendid place indeed! We have returned, eaten, washed our feet, and finished the last episode of Downton Abbey; all in all a wonderful end to a wonderful weekend. Takui is a Fulani village, like Sabba Njowra, three-ish hours away and at a super high elevation (don't ask me the number of feet or meters or anything of that sort, it'd be no use), and nestled in the midst of countless rolling hills. (Mostly brown and dry, but still so beautiful - I can't imagine what it's like in rainy season!) Our group consisted of nearly the entire Jackson village, plus a few extra tagalongs we persuaded into joining us! Which included Delaney and Jayson, who came for pizza and a movie on Friday and ended up staying the night. That of course turned into an invitation to come to Takui with us the next morning, which was then extended to Michael and Ryan, the two other guys they live with once we found out about them. Always room or one (or several) more! So it was with a few more people, and a few hours later than planned, that we finally hit the road, armed with long skirts, water bottles, and our trusty ukulele.

Cuisine: fou fou, njamma njamma, potatoes, stew, tea, bread, and geloff rice. YUM.
Lodgings: Two to a bed. That way you can kill two birds with one stone: fit all the girls in the same room, and ward off the freezing temperatures with the help of your cuddle buddy!
Activities: Sitting and talking. Playing football (soccer) in the yard. Watching everyone attempt juggling with boche balls. Walking up the nearest hills for the sunset and again at six in the morning for a very anticlimactic sunrise. Listening to the Lion King soundtrack during said sunrise. Playing the Animal Game with Fulani men (quite possibly THE funniest thing I have ever witnessed). Oh, and not to mention riding shoeless and saddleless over the hills and through the woods as fast as you can get your horse to run! WOOHOO! Riding in Takui is even better than up in Sabba Njowra; the horses are happier, there are more of them (necessary for a group like ours), and there are so many places to ride and to run! We just kept riding over hill after hill, sometimes down through creeks, sometimes through herds of cows, sometimes past other Fulani compunds. LOVE it. Our twenty-four hours there was simply not enough... I could stay up there for weeks.

Since we aren't, in fact, staying up there for weeks, we have instead made plans to braid our hair tomorrow! And fill up Karissa's last two days in Bamenda with wondrous things before we make the dreaded drive down to the airport in Yaounde to send her away. :( Wie schade! But in the meantime we are going to have loads of fun and general jolliness, to be sure. Tally ho!

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

Happy Friday, everyone! It's been a lovely week and it's already shaping up to be a lovely weekend as well. Same ole' same ole' pretty much covers the past couple of days, but they've been full and fun as usual. This evening we had another big pizza and movie night, with some of the same people from last time, an Indian family (who manages one of everybody's favorite places, the Imagine Bakery!) Darcie and her friend Mary, and two others we met today, Jason and Delaney, who stay in Bali and are actually leaving in less than a week. :( That's the thing about Cameroon (or maybe just the type of community we're in), people are always coming or going; upon meeting someone, the first few questions always include how long they've been here and how long they're staying. I love hearing everyone's stories about how they ended up in Cameroon! Some are quite bizarre, let me tell you.

After a whole lot of pizza, THE HOBBIT (which was just wonderful.... just wonderful. Martin Freeman wins all the prizes), a chocolatey dessert that only took me about 6 hours to finally finish (having to make everything from scratch + my cooking skills + my attention span = starting at 4 pm and eating at 10:30), and a lovely facetime date with Toby, it is now time for bed. Tomorrow some of us are setting out for Takwi, a Fulani village in the mountains, and staying the night. While we are there we will walk, visit, eat, and ride horses!! and someone else will take pictures, as there is no foreseen light at the end of the tunnel for my phone. Weh. But technology = way overrated. I'm thankful for it but have come to realize it's not necessary for a good time! Goodnight to all, and happy six months, two days, and 1.5 hours! (of Africa)

Don't Worry, Be Happy

"Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

Look at the birds of the air, for their neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 

Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

Matthew 6:25-34

NKJV

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

You know those rollercoasters and rides that go upside down and make you sick to your stomach, but afterward you forget how bad it really was, and so make the mistake of riding it again? Well, for me, this week was like that second ride. I won't get into the details but I thank all of you who were praying for me this week! I'm mostly over the hill, thanks to good talks with good friends and good music and a good God.

On another level this week was also pure fun! We in the Jackson Village spent our time working, eating, shopping, running, swimming, riding, giving, laughing, singing, and generally living life... never a dull moment! Two friends from Yaounde, Paola and Anneke, came up to spend a few days with us, and we had a full house for pizza and movie night - Mr. Santos with some WA (Wycliffe Associates) people here working on a water project, the Newburns, Darcie, Birte, Paola and Anneke and the rest of us!

Today was the icing on the cake though - the Groves invited us out to Bambalang to go boating with them! After chores Chris drove all us girls out there (nine in all...) and we spent the afternoon eating and talking, venturing out in this huge canoe (all of us fit! Plus Mr. Grove and Anna), and falling into the lake... all Karissa and Anna's fault. :D I told them I was going to end up in the lake before the end of the day, and they didn't believe me! Haha. We took motortaxis back to the Groves' house, which resulted in a thick layer of dust on our already wet clothes and faces. We most definitely got pictures to preserve our grimy merriment forever, and they will be up for your viewing pleasure eventually... alas, my phone and therefore my camera is kaput, and I don't know when it will be revived. Patience.

Mountain And The Sea

Whooo, we are back from vacation! After our stay in the mountains, we drove down to the coast and spent a couple days in the Atlantic ocean! It took us awhile to get going, but once we were on our way it was great! The closer we got to the ocean the greener it got. Goodbye dust, hello miles of palm trees and banana plantations! We stayed in Limbe, a beach town, at a lovely little hotel right on the water, and had a perfectly marvelous time! It was incredibly hot and humid, so much that just walking around made you sweat buckets, so we stayed in the ocean pretty much the entire time! When we weren't playing and swimming and jumping in the waves, we were sitting in the shade enjoying the breeze, playing cards or the ukelele or reading or having deep talks late into the night. And eating, of course! At the beach hotel they served us French fries and sodas right there by the beach, and we had shrimp and barracuda for dinner (yes, Mother, I ate fish!) more than once. One day we went into Limbe and visited the Wildlife Center where they had chimpanzees, drills, mandrills, baboons, an alligator, a python, a gazelle, and gorillas, one of which we touched! Which I thought was cool; how many people can say they've touched a gorilla? Another memorable day was when Karissa, Katelyn, and I got to ride horses down the beach! Cross that one off my bucket list! It was great, despite the sand and the rubbing and the one horse who I'm pretty sure was insane. Altogether the trip was fantastic and so relaxing, and I didn't want to leave.

The ride back today was quite a singular experience in itself; by the side of the road people often hold up bush meat for sale, bush rats, pengolins, etc, sometimes dead and sometimes alive. We stopped for a second to look at these adorable little pengolins (they look like tiny armadillos with super long tails, and they roll up into a ball like roly polies) and ended up buying one to bring home as a pet! (Much to Chris's dismay, but what can you say against five women? Haha) We have a pengolin! They live in the garden and eat bugs, and are the oddest, cutest-looking animals you'll ever see. We named ours Tarzan (though Arnold and Oscar were in serious consideration) and are loving the newest addition to the Jackson Village already. We counted and realized with the puppies, horses, cats, and now the pengolin, we have 14 animals! Oy vey!

But tomorrow we are going back to school and work and all that rot. Yay.... It will be a rough awakening after a blissful three days at the beach, I can assure you! But we still have plenty to look forward to, like getting our hair braided, and pizza and movie night, and going on a trip up to Takwi, a village in the mountains! Also pictures coming as soon as my phone resurrects! Goodnight and Bonne Anne! (Happy New Year!)

Seconds and Years

Riding - at the end of the world!

Usufu and his chicken! haha

Preparing njamma njamma for dinner!

Basiru found a hat

Even after washing our feet twice a day...

Took us four hours on the road but we made it!

Wow, what a year! And the start of a new one, with endless possibilities! I've had a spectacular year, but it's been rather emotionally exhausting! I began it with road trips with friends, my second semester of college, working at a yogurt shop, and deciding whether or not to go to Cameroon! Now here I am, and here I have been for nearly 6 months, knowing what it's like to eat a grasshopper, haggle over fifty cents in the market, climb mountains in long skirts and flip flops, ride bareback (and fall off) in the African wilderness, see puppies be born, be proposed to numerous times (sometimes in the same day), relearn Geometry to teach Katelyn and Lum, try to take an online class from a college half a world away, and be away from my loved ones for the longest period of time since I've known them. However crazy it's been, I can't imagine doing anything different. This is the life!

Also our last adventure last year (haha.... ) was a wonderful couple of days up in Sabba Njowra! One of my favorite places on earth. No electricity, no showers, no plans! It was all riding and hiking and eating and sleeping and taking pictures and carrying water on our heads! and playing cards and visiting and soaking up all the beauty and nature and simplicity of life. Ahhhh. We rode the horses up there and back, a four-hour ride each way - which makes for sunburnt faces, sore buttocks, and marvelous memories. Yesterday when we got back we were all so exhausted we just sat around the living room laughing at everything and nothing! And then we celebrated the coming of the new year by stumbling to our beds and falling straight to sleep. Good way to go out, I say. 'Twas an unforgettable year altogether. :)

And this year I get to spend six more months in Africa doing strange and exciting and challenging things, see my family, my boyfriend, and all you other dear people, read new books, meet new people, welcome into our family my newest niece (or nephew... due in February!), and throw my energies into hobbies and jobs and adventures I'm not yet aware of. Woohooo! And we are getting off to a good start by spending a few days at the beach in Limbe, starting tomorrow! Life, it's great! Happy, happy New Year to all of you!