We went to church today. It was one of those things. I thought to myself, "I'll only have the opportunity to go the church in a Cameroonian village a few times in my life." And I have used up that card now. Thank god. The service was supposed to start at 10:00 AM, but of course, here you add at least half an hour to make it realistic. Come about 11:00, the kids started singing at the front and the service began. Being that this village is Bulu, the...

As may be evident by the plethora of posts all at once this week - a) I have no phone or Internet access in the village, and b) I have plenty of spare time. We actually spend about 10 hours a day dinking around on our computers/worrying about our surveys/etc. And Akok is not a bumping village at the best of times! The days are SO hot here that there is little to do besides hiding out indoors. Our afternoons are spent with little to no minimal physical exertion....

"Canadians don't like monkey meat." Happy Valentine's Day…from the kok village (tee hee hee). So today is not exactly a happenin' day on the research front. We had been anxiously waiting to find out when we could get through our first few surveys, and as of 3:00 PM, our village guide/survey scheduler was nowhere to be found. The joys of research. We had our focus group on Saturday. The MARATHON of a focus group - 6 hours (completely unintentional...

T.I.A. Our American friends said it best - This Is Africa. Only, they have no idea what T.I.A actually means.It is day 2 in Akok, and we have had ridiculous rain, (huge) spiders, a bird in the house, have had to go in a hole (and girls have difficulty…directing), had some palm wine, and were woken up by roosters that I think were sitting on our window ledge... Oh, and we carried water from the pump (but not on our heads). And Caitlin is too tall for her mosqu...

I suddenly understand why I've been sticking to the bottled water, and also have recognized that drinking the obnoxiously large bottles of beer is not such a good idea. Two bad mornings this week - and I might have to blame those at least partially on the beer. Otherwise to blame? Eating huge quantities of bread, bagged candies and approximately 2 servings of fruit and veggies a week. Not so nutritious. But here's why. We made it into the American Embassy groun...