North.

I have been in Ngaoundere for the past two weeks. It took us 27 hours by bus to get here, as the train has had 5+ derailments in less than 1 1/2 months and the directrice didnt want to take any chances. The North has been heavily influenced by the Fulbes and their language, Fulfulde. The Fulbe (or Fulanyi) people were Muslims from the Nigeria region who conquered traditional inhabitants of villages in the northern part of modern Cameroon. Today, most people in the north speak fulfulde. My homestay family is Fulbe, therefore we only communicate in Fulfulde, though Mamou and Fatimatu (my parents) speak french sometimes. I wake up every morning around 5:15 to the sound of the Imams beginning their prayers, which are broadcasted from the mosques. Here, it seems there is a mosque on every corner. I live not too far from the grand mosque. Women here cover their heads, arms, and legs with pagnes(colorful cloth) or veils. Im seeing the influence of Islam everywhere - Fatimatu doesnt leave the house without her husband, and she has Bobo (our male domestique, who is about 15 yrs old) sell juice pockets for her at the markets. I live in a compound, and beyond one of our walls, children learn the Koran. Correction, girls learn the Koran here, while the boys learn in schools on the street. My 14yr old cousine does not attend school anymore and is waiting to be married, which is a common age here for girls to become engaged. I walk everywhere, and it's about a 45 min walk to class in the mornings.
Last night, we returned from a 4 day voyage to Waza Parc, which is a wildlife preserve in the "Extreme North." We drove 12 hours to get to Waza, after stopping along the road in two cities - Maroua and Garoua. At each of these places, we exchanged our B.I.R guards for new ones. These BIR soldiers specialize in road bandits, and because the road is often stopped by "coupeurs de route" SIT felt we needed to travel with these guys. The road is especially dangerous at night, and though we didnt have any problems, there were several times when the road was blocked by huge trucks and crowds of men. Our BIRs were pretty cool - they traveled with huge semi-autos and wore camo and desert googles - though it was hot as hell. The ones who travelled to Waza with us even took their guns on safari with us. We took a few trucks into the parc to animal-search. We saw giraffes and ostriches with pink legs and gazelles. About 15 of us went out again at night to look for lions, but we only found tracks :(
Tomorrow, we're leaving for Yaounde again and then the next morning I'm taking public transit to Dschang for my ISP. That bus ride is about 7-8 hours with a switch in btwn. Once I'm in Dschang, i'll be staying with my previous host family!! I'm planning to study the current system of bilingual education at the university, one of the 2 officially bilingual public universities in the country. I have about 3 weeks to conduct interviews with students, faculty, administrations - transcribe these interviews (french ones take the longest), attend Formation Bilingue classes (the classes which essentially teach english to francophones and french to anglophones), participate in student groups, and hold focus discussions. THEN i get to consolidate my information into a 40 page paper that hopefully will provide the university with some knowledge on how the system is efficient or not. My paper will be given to my advisor, who is the Head of the Division of Cooperation and works with the rector of the university and academic affairs. The university library will also receive a copy. I'll write more about this later.