Healy in Africa: My Cameroonian Adventure

My interest in public health (with some luck I’ll be heading off to get my master’s in public health at OSU in the fall) has led me to be keenly aware of how many things are NOT conducive to public health in Cameroon. For example, one of the things I noticed right away driving from Chad to Cameroon is just how much trash is constantly present everywhere. Food is bought on the roadside and put into little plastic bags, usually black, and then just thrown to the ground when done with. Passing by a field, I almost asked S what you called the little black flower plant in French, but then realized that they weren’t plants at all. Just all the food bags that had gotten stuck in the dry ground. I know there are a lot of factors that go into why there is so much trash, the lack of funding for public services namely one/lack of funding for infrastructure in general, but it still makes me a more than a little bit sad to see such a beautiful landscape marred by so much trash. But I digress, this post is about something with a much better, tastier ending.

I should probably start a running list of things that I do in Cameroon that I probably shouldn’t (for the sake of my immune system) but I do anyway because I want to experience everything possible while I’m here. The latest was homemade yogurt. The second herd we visited belonged to S (the man who is hosting me and the director of CARPA) and when we went out to Mindif, we brought with us a couple of empty plastic jars. I asked S what they were for, and he said “You will see!”

As we packed up camp and headed back to Maroua the next day, I saw that A (S’s brother and the person responsible for herding S’s cattle) had filled each container to the brim with fresh, raw milk. We just loaded them into the back of the jeep. I was going to ask where our cooler was to pack them in, but a) my vocabulary isn’t that extensive and b) I am quickly realizing that I am way more concerned with food safety than most people here.

We drove the two or so hour drive back home and I quickly forgot about the milk while gazing at the beautiful landscape around me. After getting back to CARPA, unloading the jeep, and shaking out my gear, it was time to head back to S’s house for lunch. When we got there, S’s wife, H, had already unloaded the containers of raw milk from the jeep (somebody had run them over while we were still at CARPA)- which were now bulging out from sitting unrefrigerated for the entire day. She promptly got a bowl from the kitchen and carefully started to open one of the jars, which began spewing sorta chunky, very fragrant milk from it. The littlest daughter of S ran over and gleefully liked the edge of the jar while her mother wasn’t looking.”That’s kind of gross”, was my initial thought.

S then brought out a smaller bowl, a little dish of water, and some sugar cubes. I watched as he spooned in some of the very fermented milk into his personal bowl, dipped two or three cubes of sugar into the water, and dropped them into the milk. Stirring it well, he looked up and asked if I wanted a taste. Now- knowing full well that the milk had been milked this morning from a cow in the middle of the bush, by a herder whose hands were *maybe* clean into an old plastic jug that used to hold some sort of lubricant for a car, then had been packed into the bag of our jeep without any sort of refrigeration, and driven in the 75 degree heat all day-I of course said “Oui!” And as I tentatively brought the spoon up to my mouth, I thought “Meh, I probably can’t get brucellosis from just a taste.”

OMG. It was fantastic! Anyone who knows me (or my brother for that matter), knows that we’re big fans of yogurt. And this was great stuff. Sweet but with a hint of delicious bite at the end (probably due to the 12+ hours or so of no refrigeration). I probably should have just said “Merci! That was delicious!” and left it at that, but before I knew it- I had an entire bowl of my own in my lap. And I couldn’t get enough. I ate every single drop, and even used some baguette to sop up the stuff left on the sides of the bowl.

My belly full of yogurt, baguette, and tea, I leaned back on my little stool, felt the warm, Cameroonian sun on my face and thought “I am SO probably going to pay for that later. My apologies in advace, GI tract.” But the negative consequences never came. Either my GI tract is super tough, or I just got super lucky. Probably the latter, but regardless, although my Cameroonian yogurt experience was NOT public health, it was definitely delicious. Every last, potentially-disease-inducing, drop.