America!

Birthday cake. Pink lady apples. Broccolli Cheddar Soup. Grapes. Spinach Salad. Stuffed Shells. Portobello Burgers. McFlurries. Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches. Diet Mountain Dew.

America, you are so good at making food. You're kind of incredible. Really. I've missed you. It's funny some of the things you miss that you never cared for when you were in still State-side. Who ever wants to eat meatloaf besides a Peace Corps Volunteer idealizing everything they can't have? If America had to have a taste, I'm pretty sure it'd be ketchup. And your amazing, meat-less meals: those are heaven. To that, all I have to say is: BRING IT ON.

I've been in Yaounde a couple of days now enjoying hot showers, salads, pizza, and English. The city has put up a good fight, but it can't compare: I am so ready to fly out of here and into America tomorrow night. I'll be there from November 12-December 1st, and talking to other PCVs, the general reaction is "Wow. You've lasted this long without leaving the country? Wow." It's time.

There are a lot of predictable things to miss about the US: food, a well-formed justice system, transparent government with only very limited incidents of corruption, women's rights, family, English. There are a lot of other, more strange things that I miss, though--the things that touch your life on the most basic level, things I never really reflected on before leaving to come here.

• Trash Disposal: Garbage menhouse on predictable intervals to get rid of your refuse? HEAVEN! We burn all our garbage here, but since I don't have an area of ground that wouldn't catch on fire, I have to throw things in other peoples' trash piles. Nothing makes you feel so rich as having to reflect on the last pile you threw your Vache Qui Rit wrappers in in hopes that the community won't notice.
• Punctuality: African time runs notoriously a minimum of a half hour behind, almost always more. I've waited up to five hours to have meetings.
• Reliable phone reception: Nothing is more fun than having an important conversation that ends up getting dropped or every second word missing. Truly.
• Restaurants that actually have every item on their menu
• Shop-keepers that don't sleep on the job and get irritated about you waking them off
• Coffee Shops
• Fixed prices
• Not having to worry about termites eating your furniture
• Being able to wear shorts when it's hot outside
• Anonymity

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot I love about this country. There's a lot I get frustrated with about America. It's easy to have an idealized version of what life was like in America and to slam Cameroon for all its negatives. But right now, that doesn't matter: I'm heading home.

My youth group kids singing a song to me that they wrote. They're kind of the best.