12 September 2011 - My First Week

Bonjour, tout la monde! So I love Yaoundé. This place is both fantastic and nuts. I love the people here. They are wonderful, and have some of the best and most ridiculous drivers of all time. I don't have much time, but I will try to say everything I can about the stuff you are asking me. My trainer is Elder Tingey, and is the total opposite from your trainer, Dad. He is always setting up tons of stuff in the day. There is never a slow moment here. We are always moving around and teaching. Speaking of which, contacting is pratically nonexistant. We are currently teaching 25 different investigators each of the lessons. More on that later. So Elder Tingey is from Kaysville, like Elder Frazier. He loves missionarry work, and his french has an african accent. He really likes sports, and he is really good at basketball. He is super tall (and I'm pretty short). He is fantastic. No amount of praise could express just how freaking fantastic he is. Let me tell you about what this place is like. Imagine a large set of mountains on Mars, and all over the mountain there is just green foliage. All over the place. The earth here is like walking around on deep red clay, and incredible amounts of green just spring up from the ground. Now imagine a gigantic city right in the middle of it. So you are always going uphill or downhill. That's Yaoundé, and it is beautiful. Yes, the form of french people speak is bastardized english-french pidgeon. It's kind of fun, to be honest. It's funny hearing people say stuff like "Tu est ou? Tu est ou?" or "Oui, il sera okay si vous faites la." The way we get around is by taxi. There are no addresses, just a couple of cartiers (neighborhoods) and important intersections. So you yell at the taxi driver as he drives up to you the place and price, if you want to go under the 200 Francs per person (I would say, to go home "Carfour Bastos, trois cent francs deux places" (Carfour is the intersection, Bastos is where we live, and 300 francs for 2 of us riding). Don't freak out when I tell you this, but they stuff about 5 of us in a taxi. All the taxis are totally beat up because the just whip around all over the place. Basically the rule is as long as it runs, it works. Second rule of Cameroon: everything is negotiable. There are cops who may occassionally stop you and say hey, you don't have this or that. You gotta go through the law (which means paying them money). Typically if you are nice to them and tell them they are doing a fantastic job, they will let you get away without paying anything. Not a whole lot of kids have seen white guys before, so often times kids will yell "Eh, les blancs! Bonjour! Bonjour!" One little girl once ran up to me and rubbed my arm to see what it felt like. I think it's hilarious. Sometimes we are called chinese. As it turns out, Cameroon and China have some kind of secret combination or something. I don't know all the details. So there are quite a few chinese here, and some kids think that we are chinese. Like I mentioned, we rarely go contacting. I never have, and it's because people are so accepting here. In fact, most people beleive in God and that He exists, but as long as you go to church, you are good. They also are pretty superstitious, so they never reject us. There was this drunk bunch of guys once telling me that the United States is the devil. "Les Etats-Unis est le diable! Et Barak Obama est un criminale! Il est le diable! Il est un faux noir! N'est-ce pas!?" They were pretty nice to me because they knew I was a missionarry. They think it's bad luck to be rude to a man of God, so they are pretty nice to us. There are a couple of serious problems plaguing our investigators and people in Yaoundé. First and foremost, marriage is really costly. People have to pay the wife's family a dote (spelling?) which can be upwards of 1 million Francs (about $2000, sometimes far more) and then go through the government to be civilly married (also costly). So law of chastity is a tough one for many to follow because they move in together and start a family, unmarried just due to the costliness of the dote. Many general authorities have come and told members to stop requiring a dote because it's basically forcing the people to break the law of chastity. Word of Wisdom is also tough. Don't freak out about this either, but a lot of people run around drinking and driving. We have hopped in taxis where the driver is drunk. The mototaxis (taxi drivers on motorcycles) drink virtually nonstop while driving around. I gave a blessing in French my first day. That was really neat. It was for a woman's daughter who was starting school. I blessed her that she will learn many things and will continue to learn well if she remembers God. It was really neat being able to say everything and feel the Spirit in French. I love all of you. Thank you for your love and support. I look forward continueing to serve the people here in cameroon. -Elder LaFleur