The Land of Milk and Honey

Before coming to Cameroon we had endless questions.  Many of them very practical but some came from our ignorance of the land to which we were traveling to.  We heard from people that had lived here before that it would be difficult or impossible to find milk or cheese.  If you know Maura or me, we love our dairy indulgences.  Dairy is so important to us that we had it delivered to our home weekly and bought large amounts of cheese from our Co-op, so much that it was embarrassing at times to pick up our cheese order.  We were prepared for this challenge of mission work in Cameroon.  Maura and I worked hard on our Cameroon insurance plan.  My plan involved gaining 12 lbs of insurance weight that I was prepared to lose rapidly upon landing here.  I will let Maura tell you about her insurance plan.  From experience I have learned it is best to let women talk about that issue on their own.  We also packed 1 1/2 lbs of Kraft parmesan cheese so we wouldn’t have to quit cold turkey.

We landed in Cameroon and had our first meal which was delicious; steak, fish, potatoes and ice cream for dessert!  My worries of not having dairy began to slowly fade.  The next day we arrived at our new home to find it supplied with food for us.  Later we found out it really was food for us, Americans; cheese, Ovaltine, powdered milk, jelly and local honey.  These are not foods the local people eat but are available at higher prices.  Let me explain the “cheese” that was supplied for us.  We were grateful for it but it was Laughing Cow brand.  The kind of “cheese” that does not need to be refrigerated.  This type of “cheese” concerns me especially because the ingredients are written in French.  So on our first day in our new home we knew we could get local honey and some sort of cheese type thing.  We figured we could make it 3 years on these discoveries.

A couple of weeks went by and our cravings for real cheese and dairy increased.  We were having dairy withdrawal symptoms.  The Laughing Cow cheese began to taste really good and everywhere we went we searched for the precious commodity.  We did find a 10 lb block of a mozzarella looking cheese thing for $50 but we were not desperate enough to spend our food budget for the week on one block of cheese.  Now we are kicking ourselves for not making the sacrifice.

A group of missionaries in Bamenda meet twice a month for fellowship and invited us to attend.  It seemed like a good opportunity to meet some people and start to develop a support community.  The evening included singing, sharing, prayer and a potluck of desserts.  As the night carried on it quickly became an hour past our kids bedtime and we hadn’t even touched the delicious treats.  Our hosts decided it was time for us to dig into the food and allowed our children to go first.  Imagine a table full of eight different cookies, an angel food cake and one very small plate of cheese and crackers.  Our three kids were so patient waiting for the treats we allowed them to pick whatever they wanted.  All three of them attacked the cheese plate.  We could not get them to stop eating the cheese in the hopes to save some for the rest of the guests.  We bribed them with cookies but they refused until we said they had to take their seats with a small plate of food.  Each one of them returned to the cheese plate until it was all gone and then they were ready to go home to bed.

The next day Maura went to the market to do some shopping and search for a store that possibly sold whipping cream.  As she was out I was talking with a neighbor and she mentioned that the monastery had a shop in town that sold yogurt.  YOGURT!!!  I about jumped through my skin and then said I had to run in to call Maura to find the monastery shop.  Our neighbor said wait to call and she would run down to the shop to get us some yogurt so we could surprise Maura.  I told her to buy as much as she could with my sarcastic tone (my sarcasm does not always translate well).  She returned with 10, one-liter bottles of the freshest, best tasting, organic, local yogurt I have ever had.  It was a dairy dream come true.  We found white gold which I’m not exaggerating by this term either.  We thought the yogurt would be about $1 per liter but it turns out to be $2 so I spent $20 on yogurt.  Remember our weekly budget for food is $50 so this week we are having yogurt for all three meals.  Maura was very pleased with the surprise and was successful in finding the whipping cream as well.

When the question is asked of how is the food in Cameroon, we are happy to report it is better than the food we ate in the States.  The transition to the food really sums up our entire experience thus far of Cameroon.  We were concerned and had many questions about everything upon coming here but the reality has far exceeded our expectations.  The country is beautiful, the people are kind, our home is just perfect (the hot water and oven were big bonuses), our neighbors are welcoming and the food is wonderful.  Maybe we are in the honeymoon phase of mission work but for now we will enjoy this land of milk (yogurt) and honey!

-Ryan