"Putting all the vegetables away / That you bought at the [grocery store] today / It goes fast / You think of the past"

Training is going okay, though the entire experience is intense and can be overwhelming at times.  On top of everything else, there's the fishbowl effect that we're new, different, and unlike anything many Cameroonians have seen in person.  Whenever we go somewhere, it's not uncommon to hear either shouts or murmurs of "Les blanches" (the whites)!  It's a little crazy to be watched all the time, but so far people have been friendly and welcoming. 
My comrades and I all comment on how out of control our moods seem on a day-to-day basis.  It's hard to feel like you're bipolar, going from one emotional extreme to another, but at the same time, nice to know that others are feeling the exact same way.  You start to learn your own coping mechanisms for the bad days.  For me, this means retreating to my room, listening to music, reading a bit (in English!), and occasionally eating the peanut butter sandwich crackers I brought and am carefully rationing.  It's amazing what that 180-calorie snack can do for my mental health!
In other food news, I'm pretty content.  Most days, for breakfast I either have coffee (I wasn't a coffee drinker in the U.S. but don't think it's worth causing a fuss over for 5 weeks) and a piece of bread, or my new favorite: beans and beignets.  Those who are familiar with New Orleans know that a beignet is essentially a doughnut.  These beignets are fried dough, sans the powdered sugar you'd get at Cafe du Monde in NOLA.  Add one of these greasy balls of goodness to a few kidney beans in the morning, and it sounds like a digestive nightmare...but I'm doing okay.  With this, I usually have bouille (pronounced "bwee") that I help make. It's essentially a bit of corn meal soaking in water that you add to more boiling water and keep stirring while adding several cubes of sugar.  The result is a papier-mache looking paste.  Appetizing, right?  While I don't think it will catch on at Starbucks any time soon, I'm coming to find some  comfort in it, and in my role as official "stirrer."
Lunch is usually rice and beans with pimante (an extremely spicy pepper mashed up with oil in a paste).  I LOVE spicy food, but I'll tell you right now that 1/8 teaspoon is all you need for a serving.  Along with this, there are miscellaneous cooked vegetables, (legumes). fried plantains, and occasionally I splurge and get an amazingly delicious piece of fresh pineapple (anana).
Dinner varies, so I'll try in some more posts to describe other dishes, but I'll start with a Cameroonian staple: cous cous de maize.  First off, it's nothing like the cous cous you're used to.  It's prepared by sifting handfuls of cornmeal into piles of dark yellow grits and light yellow powder.  This is then added to a large pot of boiling water and stirred with a giant stick in a particular way before it is scooped out in large gelatenous  portions.   Not the most flavorful thing in the world, but I tell myself it's like cornmeal mush as I dip it into the green side dish that accompanies it.
My integration into my host family has been fine, but very clearly aided by the game Uno.  Seriously Mattel, thank you.  Uno is a genious idea for foreigners as it allows you to play with a limited knowledge of the nuances of more complicated language.  If you can count to 9 and know the four basic colors, you're pretty much set.  Plus, I get to make exaggerate facial expressions, show off my awesome ability to shuffle a deck, and precariously build card houses.  The kids are pretty good about respecting my privacy, but they have started hanging outside my door not-so-subtly saying "Uno, Uno" when they want to play - and I usually oblige.
The other way I hang out with my family is to sit outside the cooking area (la cuisine) helping shell pistaches (not pistachios, but a flat white seed), cut vegetables, and just take in the experience and try to learn rustic cooking techniques for when I live on my own.  My host mom is a pretty good cook, despite preparation practices that would make most people shudder.  No modern conveniences here, folks.  Just two meals where all the meals are prepared over two fires.  It also serves as a storage space for the cooking pots/water/firewood and doubles as a home to the goat and her baby kid as well as several chickens.  I made the mistake of trying to shoo the chickens out one evening before someone told me, "The chicken sleeps here."  Obviously...
There is just so much to learn, it seems.  Language aside (1-4 hours of French class every day), there are development work practices, Cameroonian culture, the health system infrastructure, common diseases and prevention techniques, and the list goes on and on...
Okay, slowly but surely getting you up to speed on my first month in Africa.  More to come...