Silly Songs with Corbin

Well I'm late this week. The internet is usually pretty good here, but the last couple of days have been exceptional(ly bad). C'est la vie! My pidgin is getting freakin good now if I do say so myself. I'm getting to the point where I actually have been translating for some of my German friends when they don't understand something.

The doctor and his wife have been gone for almost two weeks now. They went to Yaoundé to get their ID cards reissued, and have run into some serious red tape evidently. Only in Africa do the doctor and his wife disappear for two weeks. Pretty incredible! Nothing very exciting has happened this week. My camera has been broken this whole time, but I took it in to an electronics repair shop on Wednesday. The guy said I could pick it Friday. Seemed like confidence to me, at least he didn't hand it back to me and say "Sorry bub, you're outta luck"! I went in to find it fixed, which is the good news. Bad news is that the dude horribly overcharged me, and of course he wasn't there to haggle when I went to pick it up. Cheap shot. Anyway hopefully it's a one-time fix, and I definitely won't be a patron of his in the future. One of the nurses is getting married this weekend, so I volunteered to be "on call" to work for the weekend so that others could attend. That means I'll get Monday and Tuesday off, and I'm hoping to go to the beach on one of those days. What I'll do the other day is anyone's guess. Probably wash my clothes and look on the internet at pictures of food I miss. Some might call it torture, I call it therapy!

My hair is getting long, and I badly want it cut. I've asked the few white people I know, and it sounds like of the many barbers in Buea, not a one of them cuts straight hair well. To be honest I expected this. I guess eventually I'll get to the point of desperation and go try one out. I'm sure no matter what I tell them to do it's going to be a buzz cut. Bleak outlook if you ask me, but I'll have some months to grow it out before I'm back in the States. My only other hope is finding a white person who cuts hair. Considering I know about a dozen of them, the pool is pretty small! I guess anything's possible though.

Christmas is in full swing here. It's not anywhere the commercial holiday that I'm used to in the U.S. but I have seen a few street vendors selling tinsel and other Christmas-y decorations. You can even buy an artificial tree if you go to the right place. My decorating has been pretty minimal. I've got a battery powered string of lights, ceramic nativity scene on my dresser, and a little Christmas tree night light, all received in a care package from the parents. I've found that buying Christmas presents for loved ones back home is a bit trickier than it has been in the past, and I rely a lot on other people to help by picking up and delivering things (you know who you are, and I thank you!)

That's pretty much all I've got for the week, it's been a boring one except for getting a care package from home (one of the highlights was incense: Now my room smells like patchouli instead of rat poison and mildew.). Fortunately I have some more interesting plans developing as noted above, and now I have a working camera to document these plans! By next week there should be an abundance of things to write about: more than you probably will care to read! The last thing I have to share is this video of me singing a song I wrote about my favorite tropical illness. I still cringe when I hear the way my voice sounds recorded. I realize that my vocal talent is mediocre at best, but it gets the point across. And if it makes you laugh (either at the content or at my expense) it's all worth it.