Onward ho

Today we left, no longer as trainees, but as official Peace Corps Volunteers, for our respective posts. Yesterday was our swearing-in ceremony, which was almost a bit anti-climatic because it was pretty boring and there was an almost palpable feeling of “thank GOD we are done with training.” After the ceremony and a catered lunch, I went home to finish packing.

That afternoon, the Peace Corps drivers came by everyone’s house and collected their luggage and brought it to the training site, and told us to be at the training site today (the 6th) at one of three times, based on which large city we were going to. The crew of five people headed towards Bafoussam (myself included) were scheduled to leave at 8:00 AM, but by 8:30, the people who were supposed to leave at 7 AM had just left. Needless to say, we finally got out of Bangangté at around 9:30, and after traveling all of about a third of a mile, the van in front of us (headed for Bamenda) broke down, and we had to stop. Fortunately, this was a short-lived stop, and in about 5 minutes, we were on our way again. We arrived in Bafoussam at about 10:30, and Abba and I checked into our hotel and unloaded all of our crap. We then set off right away to take care of necessary money issues – namely, we had had Peace Corps wire the majority of our money to Bafoussam so we didn’t have to worry about traveling with it, and we needed to the find the Express Union where it was wired to.

Well, we asked about five people where to find the Express Union, and each sent us searching in a different direction than we had just come from, only for us to discover that they had directed us to yet another Western Union, not an Express Union. We finally hopped in a cab and found the Express Union. The process of picking up our money was not overly complicated, and the next step was setting up a bank account at the bank of our choice. This would (apparently) not be so simple.

We arrived at the bank around 12:25, and asked where to find the person who could help us set up bank accounts. When we finally found him, he told us to come back tomorrow morning. However, we don’t have a ton of time in Bafoussam and need to do shopping for household stuff tomorrow, so we persisted, and he started us on the epic and unending process of setting up a bank account. We should have been suspicious when, about a half hour into the paperwork, he said, in English (I guess he thought he didn’t understand French very well) “this is very difficult, very difficult.” He then proceeded to spend the next three long, torturous hours filling out the paperwork for three of us to open bank accounts. Which was shocking considering he was doing something for those entire three hours, but god only knows what and why it took so long. As far as I could tell, there were about two quite basic forms – asking for our names, addresses, phone numbers, place of birth, parents’ names and a signature. I don’t know how it took three hours to fill out those forms, but it did. And I was starving, tired, and irritated that I had forgotten to bring something to do during that time. After opening accounts, the plan was to deposit some of our money into the accounts. At about 3:27, I asked him what the bank’s hours were. 8 AM – 3:30 PM. Fantastic. He had just finished with my account, so while he finished up Ralph and Abba’s, I went to the cashier to deposit some money.

I thought he needed to finalize something else with us after the deposit, so I went back to his office after making my deposit. By this time, Ralph and Abba had finished with him, so he was alone in his office. I was absolutely thrilled to have this conversation:

Me: Est-ce qu’il y a des autres choses à faire?

Him [with a sly grin]: Tu veux épouser un Camerounaise?

Me [grossed out and not wanting to encourage where this was going]: Non, pas de tout

Him: Est-ce que c’est parce que les Camerounaises sont pauvres?

Me : No. Est-ce qu’il y a des autres choses que je dois faire pour le compte?

Just what I wanted after an exhausting day of wandering all around a hot, smoky, crowded city – an offer of marriage from a complete stranger. Glad this day is over.