Things have been fairly busy in
Kumba. I have been visiting my host
organization and learning about their processes, their organizational set up,
and how they attract new clients. I have
also been meeting with several other groups and individuals to potentially work
with. Other than that Julius the Agro
volunteer also in Kumba has been planning a HIV clinic that all the volunteers
from Kumba and Buea helped with. So we
had three days of classes from 3pm-6pm on HIV, sexual health, sanitation, and
other related topics. We focused on
youth to educate them correctly and have a safe space to actually talk about
sex since it isn’t talked about in schools. Adults were welcome to come but we had far
more school age children. Then on
Saturday the fourth day we had free HIV testing open to the public and pre and
post test counseling while at the same time we held soccer games for the
children. We had a pretty good turnout
of about 200 people who got tested.
Still
taking French but its slow and I need to step it up and do more outside of
class.
In
other news some very exciting news, we have a new European restaurant in
Kumba. The chief is from Sweden who now
lives in Kumba. He has partnered with a
Cameroonian nurse that lives and works in London. Together they opened a little restaurant that
does European/American food breakfast, lunch, dinner, as well as their own
bread. They also are opening a wedding
shop next door to rent out wedding dresses and bridesmaids gowns. This is actually a very clever idea since
American weddings (also called white weddings) are fairly common yet the
dresses are very expensive and hard to afford.
Kumba has also just gotten its first schwarma stand. YAY! On top of that
the vender is a woman. She says that she
was the only vender in Duala and that she now has come to Kumba and is teaching
other woman how to do it.
So far
I’ve been in good health knock on wood.
I hope everyone at home can say the same.
Next
weekend we will have a regional meeting with all of the volunteers in the south
west region. So there will be about 15
people coming to Kumba. After the
meeting we will have a Halloween party Legendary theme. Costume is a work in progress pictures are
sure to come.
Likes – I really like the way that people shake hands
here. They have a couple different ways
to do it but they all pretty much involve a snap. This is only done with friends not with
professional business relations but it can be done with children or adults.
Dislikes- I have seen a few times some woman with a zip on
hair piece which can be removed and replaced with another different top piece
usually the zipper is very visible and sometimes even different colors and is
on the top sides of the head and can be changed to have different top pieces
and when removed completely is basically a horse shoe.
