Ngaoundéré, where everyone knows my name

After taking a nightime train ride through fields and forests, I arrived in Nagauondere, a dusty city in Northern Cameroon, on Friday morning. The suburban area where I'm living is beautiful. The red streets are filled with women in long, beautiful clothing, playing children and baby goats.
I began to explore the downtown area in the afternoon. As I walked further
into the center of the city, it seemed like every other person was shouting my name at me and waving. Hmm, I thought. Maybe this is a sign that I should stay here for my independent study project? Turns out they don't know my name (yet), but were shouting "nassara" which means "white person!" in Fulani, the local language. That first syllable can be hard to hear.

So far, I like this town. My host family is very kind. The father sells plates and pots,
and his wife is a stay at home mom. She's only one month older than me. They have two young children, but they also live in a kind of gated compound that seems to have about twenty members of the extended family. At the moment, it looks like I will in fact be here for my study project at the end of the term, where I will have four weeks to research a subject that interests me. I think I'm going to study the different ways that young Muslim women here find empowerment and liberation in their religion. I've already begun to talk to my host mother a little about this, but hopefully I'll get more information as I become closer to the family.

Before coming up here, I spent a few days in Kribi, a beach town in Southern Cameroon.
Quite possibly the most beautiful place that I've stayed in my entire life. The water was warm
and graceful palm trees extended over the sand. However, Kribi is also the place where the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline meets the ocean. It was quite strange to take walks on the beach in the morning and look out onto the ocean. There were several fishermen in wooden canoes close to shore, and then on the horizon a string e of oil tankers lined up to fill their tanks. A great blazing flame marked the place where the pipeline came to the surface.

I've been thinking a lot about my Grandfather lately, who passed away last week. I was sorry I couldn't be there with my family for the memorial, but I think he would have been happy that I'm doing so well here. He loved living in other countries and did work to empower marginalized Americans and people abroad. Little things have been coming up that reminded me of him all week long. This morning, my host mother suggested to me that I go running, as the students they have had before have apparently been very athletic. I hadn't been considering it, but then decided that it would feel good. I donned the most conservative athletic clothing that I had and
took to the streets. Nevertheless, it felt like every single person I passed was staring or shouting
"Nassara" at me. I remembered that my father told me that my grandpa started to go running in the states in the 1940s, where he probably received similar reactions from people on the street. I kept taking deep breaths, and I thought that maybe he would be proud if he was here.