Getting to Know Each Other

These are the posters that the kids made about themselves on the first day. That was what I was hanging up when I fell down on the first day.
The boys on the left are Willy (Cameroon), Julien (Germany), The picture on the left is Billy (Cameroon), Windie (German/Cameroon), Namhla (Cameroon), and Amatullah(I forgot).
They are doing well so far, it is just hard to remember to talk slowly and that they have lower vocabulary about what goes on in the US. I am learning something new by the minute.

Mrs. Schmitt's Fifth Graders

From left to right: Amatullah, Namhla, Windie, Billy, Me, Julian, Willy, Luca. We think we might get another student next week, he's still in Greece. They are great!

First Day

This is Pete addressing the school on the first day. Those are my seven kids and I making faces right before w e headed on down to the classroom.

It's Gettin' Hot in Here...

This is Helen(Pre-K) putting out a fire on the soccer field. As part of our emergency training they showed us how and then a few volunteers got to try it out.

The picture on the left is the "gym". Harry had to go through years of equipment and sort it out. Those are some staff members during the "fire drill", out on the soccer field.

The handlers go in with the baby gorillas and this guy is considered the alpha male. So all the gorillas challenge him all the time and beat him up. We saw the gorilla he's holding punch him an inappropriate place, he actually has to wear a cup. They have gorillas, chimps, and monkeys. All of them have been orphaned due to poaching. They get little funding so we paid $10,000 cfa ($20) to get in and another $5,000 cfa($10) to take pictures. The wheelbarrow is what the animals eat. The bright red balls are what the guide told us was wild ginger. I asked him if we could try it ( I know, who is this person?). You tear it open and it is white and papering on the inside with a pod of black seeds with a clear outer larvae kind of idea. It was citrusy. However you are supposed to just kind of swallow them. Meredith and I chewed them and it was just like eating a peppercorn, yikes!

Plus Size Plants

Harry, Fred, Meredith, Marianne, Pete and I all went to the Gorilla Sanctuary about 45 minutes outside of the city. Behind us is not a boulder, but a gigantic tree. It is 149 years old. They are endangered as they are used to make beautiful carvings and furniture. We got to walk through the rain forest. At one point Meredith walked through the path of army ants and got bit. It was crazy how many and how quickly they moved. Our driver for the day, James, showed us how you can tell they are coming. They make the sound of rain on a plastic roof as they go through the vegetation. There are so many you can actually here it and it sounds like it's sprinkling out. You can also tell if you are in their path as all the other tiny creatures fly or crawl out of the area. We actually saw crickets, butterflies, grasshoppers, and millipedes fleeing the spot he showed us!

Eating Anchou

Rose is the lady standing in the background. She showed us how she made each part of the meal and how to properly eat anchou. Anchou is a root that they pound with mortars, then boil to the consistency of mashed potatoes. But not regular mashed potatoes, more like ones that have been mixed with Elmer's glue paste, however it does not have the delightful minty taste that paste has. In short it tastes like absolutely nothing. It's hard to believe something that takes so much work can taste like absolutely nothing. So you add this yellow stew that has meat in it (no bush meat eaten thus far) and this hot chili sauce. First you put a big plop of the cassava, smear it around with your spoon to make a nice lava bowl reservoir, then ladle in the sauce. You then use your first two fingers of your right hand to scoop it into your mouth. I was the first to try!

Dining With The Director

From the left: Meredith (art), Fred (English), Nanci (Director), Peter & I, Marianne (science), Harry (P.E.), and Valerie (assist. Director).
Last week all of us new teachers went to the Director's (Nanci) house for a real Cameroonian feast made by her cook (Rose). Rose is from the the North west part of the country so she made some regional Dishes. I don't remember all of the names so I will have to get back to you on that one. On the right side of the picture are fried plantains, steamed corn ball type thingys, cassava root steamed, in the middle are two spinachy kind of things. A huge whole fish grilled (the best I have ever eaten), and on the left is Anchou.

Hilton Hotel

This is art work on the walls in the lobby of the Hilton. These little masks are made of the red soil here. They are about the size of my hand spread out.

The wall behind Pete and I is a solid, carved piece of wood. AMAZING!

Boarding House Views

Pete is our front balcony at the boarding house. Our apartments aren't finished being built so we are staying where the kids that board live during the school year. It is like a mansion- 12 foot ceilings, marble, tile, huge doors that you have to reach up to get the door handle. You can see the brown wall behind him, it is the 12 foot security wall that surrounds all houses. That is the road over his shoulder, dirt. Down below in the courtyard the guard has a post he sits in all day. When people come to the gate he slides open a peep hole, like in a "speak easy" to see it is. When you pull up to any gate you beep the horn to let the guard know to check. There is no rhyme or reason to the building, right nest to us is another mansion that no one lives in and then all shacks. It is upsetting to look down the back balcony and see how living conditions REALLY are.
The flowers were in our room. When we went to the market place Pete negotiated for the two lady statues and some jewelry for me. I got the "six pack" of elephants as the men followed us back to the van and kept call out "Missus, Madame, please to look, very, very good". I paid 5,000 cfa, about $10 for the six hand carved wooden elephants.

This is our front balcony where our room is at the boarding house. The open brown patch is a soccer field that is used all day lone. The high tower in the back is a mosque. The call to prayer is around 4am and extremely loud. It woke me every day until we got a fan in our room. The red roof is the big house next to us with a satellite dish, but no one ever there.

Views around Town

The picture on the left was taken as we were on our way up to Mt. Febe(faybay). the city is much more lush than I has imagined, however there are huge open areas of red dirt as the rain forest was cut back and erosion occurred. The picture on the right is what we call a "Circle of Death". That traffic circle is empty because it was a national holiday (Asuncion?? I think). Normally these are filled with yellow taxis all fighting their way through. This was taken from the Hilton- we met a few staff members for extremely expensive drinks.

Mystery Man

Does anyone recognise this guy? I keep forgetting who people are saying when they talk about "Peter", that's what he's going by now that he's a professional. That box is how the juice is here. It is more like nectar that you would get from a health food store. We were in the back of the school van after our first shopping excursion. That is Pete in his office. The wood here is unbelievable and all hand made. You can see that the windows have slots of glass that open to vent air in and bars on the windows- no screens. His office is actually the nicest room on the whole campus. No AC after all!

What We Left With

This is our luggage. One guitar and case, one suitcase, 2 large backpacks, and 2 small backpacks. It was so hard to believe that we were finally going. At the time we were nervous that the airlines would tell us we had to get rid of something or Pete's guitar would be crushed. Everything made it just fine. Unlike, Fred, a new fellow teacher whose luggage didn't leave the US and came 4 days later!

Back-track to Virginia

These are pictures of "candling". Pete had an obnoxious earache for almost a month from swimming in Lake Erie. After several antiboitics and eardrops we thought this might help, especially since we were moving to a third world country. It is a long tube of this cloth covered in wax. The flame creates a vaccuum to suck out stuff from the ear canal. I was supposed to trim it before it got out of control. The first time we did it it actually worked, there was some gunk left in what was left of the tube. Unfortunatley Pete's ear is still blocked... any suggestions????


This is in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. Jean made this amazing board game entitled "Where the Heck is Cameroon?" The objective was to move the Schmitts in our Geo (Pete's first car) across Africa. He did an excellent job and it was hilarious. A great send off!

Zurich airport

This is in the Duty Free Shop and the $5.50 water that we coveted. We were exhausted, but on the look out for anybody else that looked like they could be teachers flying to the school like us. Didn't spot anyone, Meredith found us first.

Zurich to Yaounde

Bleary- eyed and with bad breath we disembarked the plane to bonny Switzerland. It was a very nice airport- all clean cut, with glass and steel everywhere- so you can see the surrounding mountains. We got off and the first thing I noticed (Yes, that's right Todo we weren't in Kansas anymore!) were that all the signs had English on the bottom. We were still full, but dehydrated so we went to a little cafeteria, that was connected to Burger King to get two normal bottles of water. We hoped they took American, and a lot of it! It was $11.00 for the two bottles of water!!!!! We looked at the Burger King menu and figured out that a chicken salad from there was $11.50. And people were actually buying it!!!!
We then strolled the duty free, in case we needed a huge box of cigarrettes or a bottle of liquor. Nah, nor did we pick up any Ralph Lauren or Polo for 3 times what it would cost in the US. I was tempted to get some Swiss chocolate but figured it would melt as soon as we landed in Africa.

We met two teachers who work at ASOY, Meredith and Fred. It tried to switch our seats as our tickets said H and K, but low and behold they were together after all. This plane was smaller, no movies, distict change in body odor (not good) and none of the air stewards spoke English. Food, food, and more food the best being a little caramel ice-cream--yummy! Slept off and on however, this flight seemed so much longer. We stopped at a little island called Mowabo and some people got off and on. A short while later we landed in Cameroon....

Dulles to Zurich

Pete and I got to the Dulles airport at 1:15 on Friday, August 11 despite the fact that our flight did not leave until 6:00 beacuse of the fall out from the UK. We had quickly rearranged our luggage to make sure we had no liquids/gels that we would have to throw out. We took a shuttle and the driver scared us for a minute when he said, "Are you sure you are at the the right airport?". The tickets were through Swiss Air, but we flew United. They were the old fashioned kind, before "E-tickets". After that heart attack I had a kaniption-fit when I thought I had left my money belt ($500, passport, ticket) on the seat of the shuttle van. Once my heart rate returned to normal we get in the correct line. The next nerve-racking moment was when we had to weigh our three bags. Only one ended up being overweight and the ticket agent didn't remember to charge us, so we lucked out there.
Fast forward to the plane... it was first, business, then us cattle in the back, economy class. Actually it was way better than flying domestic. The seats were 2, aisle, 3, aisle, 2 and we were in the center. Movies played all night long in the head rest in front of you and it was dubbed into 4 other lanugages too. Food was pretty darn good and they fed us all night long. I felt very European as I enjoyed my "cheese course" after the lasagna. Also, the hot towels were raaathah refreshing. We both slept off and on as they went up and down the aisled with more and more food. It was strange to get off the plane 8 hours later and it was suddenly 7 am on Saturday the 12th.