Recap of this Week

In order to catch up with my blog posting this post is going to be a quick rundown of my past week.


Sunday spent the day unpacking from Kribi and doing homework. Cora came over to my house to work on our research project together. The first research project is kind of like a practice for our final independent study projects. Cora and I are working together to look at the resources available to teachers and students in Cameroonian public school to aid students who consistently fail classes. I got up at 6 in the morning and went with my mom to the outdoor sports facility where there are workout classes. The instructor stood at the top of a set of stairs and the participants stood below following them. There was probably around a hundred people but people came and went throughout. The class was kinda of like a mix between pilates and Zumba.

Monday was our first day back at the office which meant INTERNET! Although, because everyone was excited to use the internet again, it was really, really slow.

The giant place of pancakes (plain and
banana) we made in French class Thursday

Tuesday we had only French class and a quick debrief of the schedule and protocols for the rest of the week. This week we're continuing our module on development organizations and have visited several of them. I headed home early which was really nice and even got to take a nap. I realized that my host siblings all nap for about 2 hours in the middle of the day. My 45 minutes nap was ridiculed as being too short.

Bringing Marianna's cake out (a surprise for all of us)

Wednesday after French class we headed out to visit ACDIC, an organization fighting for the betterment of agricultural workers conditions. The presentation was really great and the organizations work was very interesting. After a very quick lunch at the office we went to visit MUFFA, a Cameroon-based micro-finance organization for women.

Thursday my French class make banana pancakes with Nutella for everyone else just as the other French classes had the past two days. It was also Marianna's birthday so we made her "M" "2" and "1" shaped pancakes. After everyone had stopped  We had until 1 to relax. After lunch we headed to RELUFFA, an organization that focuses on alleviating hunger in Cameroon but does so by addressing many different issues such as resource depletion, deforestations, subsidized imports, and workers rights. A representative from CED, another organization that works with pygmies, also joined us at RELUFFA.

Happy Birthday Marianna!

 Friday (Today) we had no classes until 10am. This morning we visited the World Bank which was a very different perspective from the Cameroonian organizations that we've been visiting. We've had two lecturers refer to the IMF as the "International Misery Fund" and several of them have talked negatively about the World Bank Groups and IMF's development policies in Cameroon and Africa. This afternoon we also had another dance class which, as usual, lots of fun and hard work.

Elias (and Ariane) at the World Bank.

Waiting for the World Bank lecturer to arrive

Pretending to be serious and professional.