A Cameroon Adventure: Ngaoundéré In Summation

Our time in Ngaoundéré went by so quickly, I guess as all things have here. We worked a lot on our presentations but also had free time to explore. There are very few taxis in Ngaoundéré, almost exclusively motos (too dangerous to take) so we walked a ton - a half an hour to school and back every day, 20 minutes to lunch, etc. On average we probably walked around 2 hours every day, especially when we would go out exploring just to see what we could find. Ngaoundéré truly felt like a different country than the parts of Cameroon we have seen before. The dress isn’t nearly as European influenced, a lot of long robes and felt hats for men and headdresses for women. There is a lack of street food compared to the rest of Cameroon, I think because women aren’t allowed to leave the house and typically it is women who sell street food as a second source of income for the house (even though she will make only about $10 per week.) It is, generally, pretty clean, definitely due to the Muslim presence. Families are extremely different because of the gender power roles but girls go to school now. And the language difference was very difficult, people either didn’t speak French at all, or only spoke a little and therefore had a hard time understanding our accents. Living in Fulfulde speaking families was weird too because they would talk and talk with each other and I would sit there not understanding anything until someone would start talking to me in French. It was lonely at times, but I had a lot more independence than I’ve had which was really nice. And they didn’t force feed me like my other families do. There was a very relaxed atmosphere that we all liked a lot. It was hard to leave yesterday because our families were all so great and the city was so pleasant to live in. But we’re moving on to the next step.. individual study projects (ISPs)!!