Quittin' Time

Today I logged my last day of regular work here at the hospital. As of today I will never have to write a single letter in that registration book again. The relief is indescribable. I think this Sunday is going to be a general cleaning of the operating room to get it prepared for use, so I might volunteer for that.  One of my coworkers just kind of casually mentioned that now that I'm done working I'm just a tourist. I had never thought about it like that, but he's definitely right! Also, a few people have actually told me that they're gonna miss me. I'm not sure if they're just being polite but it really made me feel good to know that they'll at least notice that I'm gone. I was a little unsure there for a while if anyone even cared that I was here, but it looks like maybe there are a few.

Yesterday I learned that Cameroon observes Cinco de Mayo. Actually it was Ascension day so it's just nationally observed so that everyone can go to their mid-day mass. Even though our staff is predominantly Adventist, a lot of people were late or didn't show up. Far be it from them to refuse a day off! I showed up because I'm a sucker and didn't know it was a holiday. We spent most of the day with a slow trickle of patients. After learning it was Ascension Day, I took an extended lunch break and did a little ascension of my own, up the hill to the grocery store. It was such a beautiful day yesterday that I had to get out and enjoy it some. It was partly cloudy, probably low 30s, and with a breeze so the humidity wasn't as bad. The mountain was in clear view. A 30 minute walk up the hill did me good.

You know, I'm just gonna come right out and confess: I've had phone anxiety for most of my life. I think everyone is a little bit this way, and I don't get really nervous unless I'm making a call to someone I don't know, or someone who is a notorious mumbler. Cameroon has made this problem 100x worse than it was before. First of all, the call quality is a dumpster fire. I would be better off using two tin cans connected by a string. Which would also be nice because of point number two: You pay for every second of call time. Each and every time I have to ask someone to repeat themselves, it's burning through my phone credit. Phone credit is one of the more expensive things here, and you don't get what you pay for (see point 1). The third and final grievance is simple user error. I've gotten a lot better at understanding the accents here,  but I've also learned how much I rely on lip reading to do so. When I'm on the phone, this technique doesn't exactly work. Additionally, there's nowhere you can go in Buea where there won't be a ton of background noise (that's another story though). The last thing is that if you ask someone to repeat themselves enough times, they will remove the phone from their ear, place the receiver about 1 mm from their mouth, and yell as loudly as they can (regardless of who's around or how small a space they're in). This is counterintuitive because yelling into the phone that close to your mouth is the best way to ensure that the other person won't have a prayer of understanding what you're saying. Fortunately, I see people talking in this fashion all the time, so I think I'm in good company when it comes to asking "Could you say that one more time?" For every ounce more phone shy I've gotten, I've found that I'm equally less pee shy at least! People go when and wherever they please. I've even been confronted mid-stream by someone saying I couldn't pee where I was currently peeing. I politely stared them in the eye and smiled as I finished the job, and while zipping up I offhandedly mentioned that it must be the only place in Cameroon where peeing is not allowed.

There's a running joke with me and the Cameroonian nurses here. One day after I was thoroughly tired of being badgered about marrying a Cameroonian and taking her back to the States with me, I said that I couldn't afford two plane tickets back to the States, so I would gladly marry one but she would have to take one of the sketchy big canoes across the Atlantic and meet me in New York. They all thought this was pretty funny, so now that I'm about to leave some of them have been joking to me about buying their boat ticket to New York. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I think making a joke out of it was a pretty good idea because now both sides can appreciate it cropping up in conversation. Before I always cringed and avoided, and dreaded the eventual accusation of only liking white girls. I mean I ain't blind, I've seen beautiful girls here, but my short life has taught me that you can find as many 10s as you want, but if your common ground is a 1, things will suck. There's just such a disparity between my background and a Cameroonian's. So now I just tell people that if a girl can swim or owns a good life jacket that I'm down. I'm still dodging around the questions, but now at least it makes them laugh.

TL;DR My work here is done. Yesterday I had a semi-holiday to celebrate Ascension day/Cinco de Mayo. Talking on the phone here has given me a complex, but Cameroon has increased my ability to brazenly pee anywhere I please. I'm bring back a few souvenirs but a shiny new wife is not one of them, much to the dismay of many eligible ladies here.

 Not sure why they have to overcomplificate things so much, but I suspect they're using fancy jargon to get customers to spring for a muffler bearing flush. Either that or George Bush wrote this sign.