So, it took me over two weeks to get my first marriage proposal here. This past Sunday, while going to the well with my host sister, a bush taxi with five men drove by – with one of the men sitting on top of the taxi, which was loaded with bags and bags of stuff. They shouted, “La blanche!* La blanche! Tu dois me marier! Tu dois faire les enfants!” (“White person! White person! Marry me! Have my children!”) I guess I should feel flattered.

*Here in Cameroon, like Ghana, race is socially constructed so that “white” basically means non-African/non-black. And Asian is a subset of white rather than a separate category as it in the United States. So, as a Vietnamese-American, I’m considered “white” here, and people also assume that I’m Chinese or Japanese, since they’re mostly familiar with those two countries. Or at least what’s how I’ve interpreted things so far.

Anyway, today, I finished my third week of training! This Thursday, we find out our posts – where we’ll be for the next two years. It’ll be hard to really know how I feel about my post until we do site visits in week 7 of training, but it’ll still be pretty exciting to know. Plus, some of us will then start learning Fulfulde, the local language of the North and Extreme North.

At the end of week 5, the Health trainees are switching with the Agros and moving to Bafia. Wooo. While I’ll miss my family in my village, I can’t wait to have easier access to Internet and will maybe write longer blog posts then.