What is the price of integrity?

What does it mean when someone steals from you? What does the act of thievery say about a person, or even the community in which that act takes place? Recently, I’ve been the target of more theft than I’d like. Some petty, some more serious but each has affected me, surprisingly, almost inversely to the monetary value of the loss, which is why I’d like to address the theme.

Our story starts about a month ago while I was in Yaoundé doing some work in the Peace Corps office. Over the weekend, a couple volunteer friends and I went out to a nightclub. Absent-mindedly, I had left my 16 GB USB key (incidentally, containing all of my Peace Corps photos, work documents and other electronic valuables) in my purse. Not surprisingly, it was quietly removed from said purse without my noticing. Until the next morning.

I was a little upset, but mostly, I knew that I really only had myself to blame. Living in New York City for four years has taught me that it’s a dog-eat-dog world, especially in big, anonymous cities. If you want to keep your belongings, well, hold on tight. I came away from this incident relatively unscathed emotionally, feeling not anger at some anonymous thief, but rather irritation at myself for my carelessness. When a kind stranger came across my USB key and contacted me to return it, I was even happily surprised at the goodness that can and does exist in the world. I felt like justice exists. I know that any time I’ve come across someone else’s lost belonging, I’ve always made a real effort to return them and felt very good doing so. The world, I felt, was paying me back for my past good deeds.

Incident number two was yesterday. Every morning, I check on my plants in my garden. For whatever reason, I draw a small measure of joy from seeing the plants that I’ve nurtured and sweated over thrive and even produce fruit. Because of my daily checks, I know my plants’ progress like I would my own children. When I went to bed Thursday, I had four different eggplants growing at various stages of development. When I went to check my eggplants yesterday morning, the best one of the four had been neatly snipped off the plant. Not taking into account the fact that this is my food, my sustenance, or even the fact that eggplants are hardly even known au village (I get blank stares when I mention them… who would even know what to do with it?), I found this much more upsetting than the whole USB key incident.

Why? Because it means that someone left the road which abuts my house (already a rather isolated and not exactly busy thoroughfare), walked behind my house, up a hill, past my outhouse, into my garden, with something sharp in hand to cut the eggplant off (premeditation… the first time I tried to cut off an eggplant, I had to go back to my house and get scissors) and took my not-even-fully-grown eggplant right out of my backyard. Never mind that the market value of this eggplant was probably no more than 20 cents, its intangible value to me was much greater. It hurts to know that the guy who says hi everyday as I pass his boutique could be smiling to my face and stealing behind my back, right in my own backyard. Or my neighbors. Or one of the innumerable children who scream out “Re-beck-KAH!” any time I pass.

The last incident, also yesterday, has hurt the most, though. I don’t say so lightly. I went up to the sous-prefecture to talk to my parents on the phone yesterday afternoon. The sous-prefecture is up on a hill, and consequently has much better cell phone reception. Because it’s up on a hill, it’s also practically deserted save for the sous-préfét and his assistant who live up on the hill, next to the sous-prefecture. When I left at 4:30 PM, I was distracted, and I left my wallet there on accident. When I realized my mistake at around 8:15 PM, I went right back to retrieve it. Navigating the darkness with a flimsy flashlight, my heart fluttered lightly when the dim beam revealed that the wallet was exactly where I’d left it. However, my heart sank into my stomach when, upon examining its contents, I found all of my money and a small leather coin purse missing.

The monetary contents were about 8500 CFA – about $18.48 – and thankfully my identity cards and credit cards were still there (!). But. My identity cards were there. The thief knew that this wallet belonged to me. You know, me – “Re-beck-KAH!” After all, I’m one of three white people who live in this village – and the other two are a 40-something man and 70-something nun. Hard to go unnoticed or unknown. I’ve estimated before that probably 99 percent of this village knows my name, and I probably know about two percent’s name. Whoever rifled through my wallet came across my identity cards and, knowing exactly whom they were stealing from, went right ahead and took my money.

It bears comparing the eggplant theft with the wallet theft, because one could argue that the eggplant thief also know whom s/he was stealing from. However, the eggplants are a slightly different case – they’re outside and already vulnerable to ravenous animals and other nuisances simply by design. I’m not ignorant to the possibility that the thief was four-legged (though I am doubtful). Not much I can do to reduce that risk. With my wallet, it was a moment of weakness, of forgetfulness, clearly a mistake (who leaves money and valuables just sitting out for anyone to have a gander?), and most of all, a chance for someone to come knocking on my door and earn my undying and eternal gratitude. Indeed, in a small town where everyone knows everyone and everyone DEFINITELY knows the white girl, that’s the decent thing to do. Instead, our thief here said, “fuck that,” took the money, and ran. It not only feels like being kicked while you’re down, but the act feels intentionally directed at me. It sucks, and it hurt me a lot.

The real bummer here is not the mere loss of money but the loss of faith in my community. Before this incident, Ngambé Tikar was to me, a small village, comprised mainly of well-meaning, hard-working, honest folk who have been dealt a short stick in life in so many ways. I felt safe, welcomed and fully a member of this place, and I was happy to “suffer” with everyone else if my efforts could help right some of the wrongs caused by powers bigger than me and bigger than Ngambé Tikar itself. On était ensemble. For the mere price of $18.48, however, our thief has bought Ngambé Tikar a big fat question mark in my mind. Now, among Ngambé Tikar’s short list of good qualities, can I really count kindness, honesty, and goodwill? I don’t know anymore.
Was it worth $18.48? Just what is the value of a dollar? And how much does integrity cost?

And SONEL said unto them “Let there be light!”

Recently, I’ve really felt more like I’ve been in a developing country than a third-world country. SONEL is the only (state-run) power company in Cameroon, and I didn’t really believe SONEL would ever bring electricity to my little village. I’d asked around and been told that SONEL said Ngambé Tikar was far too en brousse and it wouldn’t be profitable. Thus, when the generator that was powering my house every night broke in July, I thought I was going to be in the dark permanently. Fortunately, I was reassured that the deputy (kind of like the congressman for Ngambé Tikar) was going to bring a new generator to village in August.

Imagine my surprise when SONEL showed up in early August and began rapidly installing electricity poles and power lines. I stopped to ask the workers when they thought the power would be ready. They assured me “at the end of the month at latest.” Which could mean by the end of the month, but more likely meant I’d be lucky to see SONEL light up Ngambé Tikar before I leave in December 2009. So I was even further surprised when the power lines and poles were basically installed well before the end of the month.

It was fascinating to watch the process. Large electricity poles were laid on the ground, painted, holes dug, poles installed, power cords strung, electricity meter boxes installed on peoples’ homes, a concrete home for the generator built. Shockingly they were done before August was over. This might be the fastest progress of anything I’ve ever seen in Cameroon.

Meanwhile, on a quite unrelated note, the dirt roads in my village were being “arranged” all summer, which means that huge piles of dirt are dropped on the road and then flattened by a large tractor. This effectively smoothes out the huge grooves and holes carved out by the rain. So at the same time as I watched power lines get raised practically overnight, I also watched the roads become slowly flat and even driveable. Since the whole process has been really interesting to watch, I thought I’d post some photos:

old power lines

the old generator house

the new generator house being built

electricity poles freshly painted and still on the ground before being raised

One of the poles went up right in front of my work

One of the SONEL workers running the power lines through the poles

power lines to the hospital

the roads being flattened

Fall blues

It was super hot yesterday and super rainy and overcast today. Aside from the mud, the weather conditions were great for a run. Thus, I headed out for a run, despite being nearly dehydrated during yesterday’s run in excruciating heat. While running, my eye caught some dead leaves falling from a tree and I was immediately reminded me of autumn. Pangs of missing fall hit me with an intensity to be matched only by the stomachache that hit me at the end of said run. Not that the seasons don’t change here – there’s rainy and dry season. But it’s not quite the same. Today was just a perfect fall day – rainy, overcast, leaves were apparently falling, and it was brisk (or maybe not… I’m not sure I remember what brisk feels like, since temperatures in the 60s could arguably be classed as “brisk” here). It made me sad. I am excited to experience winter in the states again in January, though I’m sure my body will experience shock since I will have been living in summer-type conditions for over a year by then.

Peer educator training ceremony of completion: check

June 27 was the day we gave out the Peace Corps certificates of appreciation to our peer educators for finishing their training. It’s funny – people here go nuts for these certificates. They hang on to them for years, and if they lose them, they’re desperate to find a replacement or copy. So I was pretty happy that the celebratory ceremony we had planned went off well. We had invited about 50 elites to the ceremony and about half showed up, including the village chief. In my opinion, he’s probably the most important elite in village, so I was happy he came. In addition, many of the other elites who showed up are people who I’d consider friends. I was touched because I think many of them came simply as a show of friendship. Magloire and I gave short speeches and then the peer educators performed a sketch they had put together to show off what they had learned. The sketch was a bit rough around the edges since they only had about two weeks to throw it together, but I was proud of them nonetheless. Here are some photos:

Afterwards, we asked the village elites to present the certificates to the peer educators. Regardez:

On the left is Soeur Simone giving a certificate to one of my favorite peer educators, Yawe. Soeur Simone is French, 72 years old and has lived in my village for 40 years. The middle photo is my doctor giving a certificate to another of my favorite educators, George. The last is the commandant of the gendarmes giving a certificate to the only fmale peer educator we trained. Notably, you can see my village chief sitting behind them on the right - he went to college at the University of Minnesota. My village is full of oddities.

Finally, we took a picture in front of the foyer chefferie where we had held the ceremony with everyone who came. Of note is the village chief (in the brown suit front center), the doctor (in blue to the right of the chef), and Jean-Paul, my language tutor (to the right of Soeur Simone, the sole white person in the photo). Also, note how the grand majority of people are not smiling. This is pretty typical of Cameroonians posing for photos. I don’t know why they’d prefer to look unhappy in photos, but it’s pretty standard. Who knew that smiling for photos was an American thing?

After the ceremony, we hustled to get ready for the party that was to be held afterwards at the main bar in town. I had spent about seven hours that day preparing the snacks for the party with a gaggle of other women. We set up traditional wood-fires to fry plantain chips and croquettes, pop popcorn, and grilling peanuts. The peanuts were a particular pain in my ass. You wouldn’t believe how much work it takes just to produce a handful of grilled, salted peanuts – first you de-shell the peanuts, then you soak them overnight in salted water, then you have to dry them in the sun for several hours, and finally, then you build yourself a fire, and grill the suckers for about an hour while smoke from the fire fills your lungs and causes your eyes to tear up. When we were finished, we had reduced a 20L buckets worth of peanuts (with the shell on) to a salad bowl full of salted peanuts. I was so occupied preparing all the food that I didn’t really eat anything all day. By the time the party arrived, I was starving.

Unfortunately, all the food we had prepared was more snack food than something substantial, albeit delicious. Thus, between cooking for 7 hours and running around getting everything in order, and eating nothing substantial, by the time the party was over at 9 PM, I was ready to collapse. My peer educators wanted to party til the wee hours though, so Magloire volunteered to stay out with them. I clocked out at 10 PM; Magloire was out til 2 AM and then awake at 6 AM to train for two hours an upcoming soccer tournament. I see streaks of my former self in his insane energy, so I understand his need to workout for two hours at 6 AM after only 4 hours of sleep, but I also think it takes a certain brand of crazy to do that to oneself.

Anyway, the day was a success. Sylvie, the stand-in for my boss who’s on maternity leave right now, came to the ceremony as well. The next day, before heading out, she came over to do her official site visit. We talked about the work I’ve been doing and I really started to realize how many options for work I have. The talk was helpful, though it certainly made me feel almost overwhelmed with what needs to be done. I need to sit down and sort out what I want to do, what’s feasible, and what’s realistic in my time here.

Meanwhile, since then, I’ve been trying to relax and enjoy myself since the stress of the end of training. My adventures in cooking continue to enjoy success. The night after the ceremony, I made myself pizza (dough and sauce from scratch) that turned out really well. Here’s a picture:

Tonight, I made myself some unexpectedly delicious mushroom risotto. No photo, but it was extremely pleasing.

And, as if this entry didn’t have enough photos, here’s a few more of my neighbors being adorable:

Rebecca, the HIV lady

Today, the preschool at the Catholic Mission had an end-of-the-year celebration, a “graduation” of sorts for the eldest pre-schoolers. This meant that the kids performed sketches, dances, and recitations for the assembled audience. The entire event was fantastic and hilarious. Some kids were all done up to the nines, some in miniature-people suits, others just wearing their normal preschool uniform (which is pink overalls for the boys and pink dresses for the girls, both with a white blouse beneath – absurdly cute). One of the sketches was titled “AIDS intervention.” I was surprised that they would address this subject, and further surprised (and flattered) when one of the six kids on stage turned to another and said “Voici Rebecca!” The “Rebecca” character proceeded to give advice about being prudent to avoid getting AIDS. It was a riot, and just another kick in the butt for me to actually accomplish something here before I leave. I guess I’m now known in the community as the white girl who talks ceaselessly about HIV and AIDS. But on the other hand, when I think about it, this is actually really positive. I don’t know if people really took notice of the HIV/AIDS issue before I arrived, but simply my being here and having HIV/AIDS as my primary focus is good advertising in the community to start trying to take the subject seriously.

I’m also excited because today was an exhausting day of work, but a good exhaustion. After the preschool graduation ceremony, Magloire and I went to meet with the Secretary General at the mayor’s office. Apparently, the mayor is very much a politician – a lot of lip service with no action. We were given the tip that if we wanted a real response, it’d be better to talk to the Secretary General. We met with him yesterday, and had a really interesting conversation.

Primarily, we have been wondering how we’re going to fund the small party we’re throwing to celebrate the end of the peer educator training. We thought of approaching the mayor’s office to ask for a small aid, and when we spoke to the Secretary General, he was extremely helpful, said to write a formal demand and he’d do what he could. We also then got talking about Magloire’s recent nightmare trip helping a friend get on ARVs. Apparently, they were just given the runaround completely at the provincial hospitals; our friend was really weak and sick already, and if Magloire hadn’t been there, she surely would have given up because she just kept getting sent here, there, everywhere without result. I’ve already had in my head that it would be a huge benefit for the community if CD4+ counts could be done in village and people could receive the (government-paid free) ARVs in village. So, with the SG, we got to talking about this problem. It was really encouraging to encounter a VIP in village who is actually concerned about this issue and has thoughtful ideas about how to resolve it.

Having this in my mind – that we’ve identified already somebody in a position of power who could really support this project – afterward, Magloire and I started talking about if it’d be possible to bring the CD4+ tests to Ngambe Tikar. I was not surprised that he knew about all the different kinds of tests and the costs. We began to lay out the steps we’d need to take in order to make it happen – what kind of information we’d need to search for, who’s support we’d need to solicit, etc etc. But it’s exciting for me to start to see a project like this begin to take form, to see that it could be possible, especially when the end result could have really positive results for the region.

But all that was yesterday, also an exhausting-but-exciting-day. After meeting with the SG again today, we had “ratrappage” with some of the peer educators. Our peer educator training is nine weeks with one hour-long session each week. Not surprisingly, a number of our peer educators have missed several of the sessions. We’ve said from the beginning that in order to receive a “diploma,” peer educators need to have attended at least 7 of the 9 sessions. So, I’ve offered to our trainees the chance to make-up some of the sessions they’ve missed. Some of our peer educators really have a lot of demands on their time – school, running the family boutique, taking care of siblings, and it gets hard to make it to the training sessions amidst all this. I understand this. In my mind, if someone is motivated enough to schedule and come to a make-up session, that motivation alone merits the very opportunity itself to make-up the session. It has been a pain for me though; I’ve re-done one session three times already.
But anyway, we did some make-up sessions with four of our peer educators today, and it was some of our peer educators who are still in school and often quiet during the regular sessions. It was kind of neat to work with them in a smaller group today, because I saw them come out of the their shells a little bit. The education system here does not encourage creative thinking, but rather rote memorization. Corporal punishment is still widespread and accepted. So getting kids to feel okay with just saying, “I don’t get it, explain it again” or, furthermore, ask a question about a related topic is a real challenge. Today these kids were just bursting with questions. It was so excellent. We even started talking about some material that is really specific – first line, second line, and third-line ARVs, viral resistance, different kinds of tests for HIV serology, how ARVs work, etc. Teaching can be so rewarding when the students are motivated.

Traveling, harassment, death, and HIV… and other things that just plain suck.

It’s been a sad last few weeks. Though fortunately, I wouldn’t say I’m as depressed as I was before (I guess I’m getting used to village life, even liking it), the last two weeks have not been kind to my life.

I came back to village from a truly terrible banking trip last Friday. I’m still recovering. The travel was altogether exhausting and it felt like everything that could go wrong, did. There were times when I actually feared for my life due to travel conditions. I was also super harassed while in Yaounde (people yelling out, in French, “Go back to your home in Europe!” Mental response: 1) Thanks. 2) Fuck you 3) Honestly, I would love nothing more than to go home. Then, not ten minutes later: a guy telling me in English he loved me and wanted to “fuck” me… deep breath… ignorant assholes), so by the end of the trip, I was kind of shell-shocked and terribly thrilled to return to village, where I don’t have to deal with life-threatening and terrible road conditions, and ignorant assholes who harass me.

The icing on the cake is that all the frustration and harassment and awful travel conditions were really actually pretty normal. Upon return to village, I was telling Magloire about all of it, and he told me it was all extremely normal, and that he’s been through worse. Well, that only made me feel mildly better. Mostly though, it’s depressing – that I am so shell-shocked by what is “normal” doesn’t exactly make me feel capable; furthermore, that it could be worse isn’t exactly an incitement to keep on traveling. Trying to be optimistic, I tell myself that it was a good learning experience. What I learned: traveling within Cameroon SUCKS. Avoid it at all costs.

Which brings me to another point: I was talking with Ralph about how even the negative experiences here can be positive, because often I’ll learn a lot from them. Or even if I’m not learning a lot, I’ll appreciate how things are run in America just that much more. I came to Cameroon so down on the US (I can’t even remember why), and now I cannot wait to get back. Ralph pointed out that yeah, that’s true about learning a lot, but so much of the learning as a PCV is negative learning. Like, learning not-to-touch-a-hot-stove-by-touching-it-and-burning-yourself-learning. I think that’s true. There’s not a whole lot of positive reinforcement – which may account for the whole roller coaster of emotions phenom. When roughly 90% of learning is negative learning, that 10% of positive reinforcement learning is a high better than drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll.

So after I got back to village and nearly collapsed from exhaustion, Magloire had more “good” news for me. There was an old lady who used to sit at this table in the middle of village and sell papayas and bananas and other assorted produce. She was always sitting there, and was really sweet. One day, she called me over and gave me some bananas. She always said hi to me. Well, apparently, she died last Tuesday (I got back on Thursday), and Magloire said she was asking about me, “Where is Rebecca?” the day she died. Though it’s not a tragedy – old people die, after all – it was sad. I welled up when Magloire told me. But that wasn’t the only news.

I don’t have many friends here, and many of the friends I do have I’ve met through Magloire and through the work at the youth center. One of the women who’s been involved at the youth center since its beginning (in 2005), has been, if not a close friend, at least a friendly acquaintance, and someone who I like. She recently got herself tested and found out she has HIV. Magloire said she came to him, sobbing, very distraught. It’s upsetting on a few levels, and it takes a bit of explanation to sort out. First of all, it was surprising, given that she’s been involved in work in “le lutte contre le SIDA” so I guess I kind of thought she might have picked up the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors to avoid contracting HIV. Furthermore, I now know several people in the village who have HIV, and none of them has any sort of support. All of them are hiding their status and have told practically no one, as far as I know.

Magloire knows many of the people in village who are HIV positive because he’s practically the only person in village trained in pre- and post-test counseling. So whenever someone tests positive at the hospital, they send the person to Magloire for help. It’s kinda fucked up – why doesn’t the hospital staff get some training in HIV counseling? And there’s really intense pressure not to disclose status, because there’s still insane discrimination for people living with HIV. Even though Cameroonians actually are pretty well-informed about how HIV is transmitted and what behaviors are risky (handshakes = not a risk; unprotected sex = risky), it’s like this knowledge has no effect on behavior. People who are positive are shunned from society, people won’t shake hands with them, won’t eat with them. But then you say, ‘use a condom if you’re having sex with someone and you don’t know his status,’ and that’s seen as absurd. “Condom?! No way!” It’s baffling.

So, in addition to the absolute lack of moral, emotional support, there’s no real medical support either. First-line ARVs (the cheapest ones) are supposed to be free for Cameroonians with AIDS, paid for by the Cameroonian government. However, that assumes that someone who needs ARVs can get to the provincial hospitals where they are distributed and where CD4 tests must be done to prove that someone’s immune system is depressed enough to need the ARVs. The transport to get out of Ngambé Tikar to a hospital where CD4 counts can be done and ARVs administered costs about 5000 CFA one-way, or 10,000 CFA round-trip (about $25).

To give context, I’d say I spend about 10,000 CFA in two weeks in village, but I’m a pretty big spender, comparatively to most villagers. Most people cultivate food, so they don’t have to pay for it – they just eat what they grow. I’m lazy and not Cameroonian, so I buy what others produce and do not grow anything myself. But since food is practically the only thing that I spend money on, I can’t imagine how long I could make 10,000 CFA last if I were your average villager. A month? Two months?? Who knows? So to tell a Cameroonian that he has to spend a month’s wages just to get to the hospital where he can take a test and get ARVs is kind of absurd. Especially since the majority of Cameroonians live in rural areas like Ngambé Tikar, where transport out of village is likely to be expensive.

The point is, rural Cameroon is not a good place to be HIV positive. My friend who recently found out she has HIV didn’t even get tested here in village – she went to a bigger, neighboring village to get tested, because a common perception is that the health center here doesn’t practice confidentiality, and if you get tested there and are positive, everyone in village will know by the next day. It’s such a shitty shitty system. I remember one day thinking that I’d like to get myself tested here to set a good example, but then immediately re-thought the decision, because I knew that everyone would know I got tested. And my irrational mind went to the “what if by some freak occurrence, somehow I was positive?!” Holy crap, I remember thinking about the fear of a small community knowing me to be seropositive, and thinking how I don’t know how I could deal with that. I mean really, I have no clue. On so many levels, it would be overbearingly depressing. My one loophole is that I could always leave and go back to the states, where things are no longer as bad. People here can’t.

I’ve got to work on improving this situation. I’ve got to figure out how.

some photos

Alright, so I thought it about time to post some photos that really show how beautiful my post is. My village is in the middle of the forest. And the savannah. Both really, so the scenery and the views are really spectacular. I took my camera with me on one of my runs recently. About 4K outside of village, there's a bridge over the River Kim, and it's indescribably beautiful. I'm always rendered a little bit speechless and in awe. It's especially nice in the morning if the sun's rising over the river. This particular morning, I was lucky to catch a bit of low-lying fog while running through the forest to the river. Enough words; I'll let the photos speak for themselves (mostly):

This is along the way to the river. Like I said, it was foggy and ripe for a photo op. Don't let the paved roads fool you - they're the only ones around and actually, I believe they're only paved leadng up to and after the bridge. Otherwise, we have only dirt roads here.

This is (obviously) on the bridge, looking west (?? I think??). Let's take a closer look...

Ahhh. Like I said, indescribably beautiful.

The other side.

Another view of the other side.

Having successfully photographically documented the gorgeous scenery autour du village, I decided to hike on up the gawdawful hill to the sous-prefecture, where you can get a really amazing view of the whole village. It's probably the highest hill that is directly next to village, so I did a panorama shot:

And finally, on the way to village is practically nothing but forest. The dirt roads just cut through really rural areas. In the fours hours between Foumban and my village, there is really only one other semi-large village, maybe as big or smaller than Ngambe Tikar. Which is why I find it absolutely hilarious that of all the street signs they could possibly post along this road, someone has posted not one, but two of these road signs:

That's right, bull crossing. Beware of all the frantic bull traffic!! There are no other road signs other than two of these. It cracks me up everytime I go back to village.

of men and kids

Today I decided two things: (1) Cameroonian men are bullshitters, and (2) I adore Cameroonian children.
Some days the level of Cameroonian bullshitting just drives me nuts; the intensely aggressive “give me your phone number,” or the unwillingness to play fair when it comes to selling me things (trying to find Ralph some ebony wood for a cane he wants to get made, for example); the insistence on their ill-informed preconceptions about America, and thus, about me (chez vous, tout le monde est riche!). As I was coming back from my run this morning, some guy approached me. The conversation went a little something like this:
Him: Rebecca, I have a problem concerning you.
Me: (internally: how does he know my name, who is this guy?) Okay. What is it?
Him: Well, it’s a problem and it’s about you.
Me: Okay. I don’t understand. What is the problem?
Him: Well, it’s a problem. You see?
Me: No. I don’t see. You haven’t told me the problem.
Him: Right. Well, I will tell you the problem. You understand?
Me: A little. You’re going to tell me the problem?
Him: Yes. But not now. I’ll write it on a piece of paper and give it to you. But it must be a secret. After you have read the paper, you have to tear it up.
Me: (totally confused) Okay.
This in itself wasn’t terrible but I have a hunch it’s going to just turn out to be another proposal. They just never stop. It’s so freaking annoying. I wonder if this is somehow supposed to be a customary way of welcoming someone? Or is when a moderately attractive woman appears, men feel the need to justify their virility by obnoxiously complimenting her overmuch – just to reassure himself that he can still spot an attractive women? Or maybe it’s just the proverbial shaking of the banana tree – maybe you won’t get anything from it, but who knows? Maybe you will. Never hurts to try.
Argh. I honestly just wish it would quit. It’s annoying as all get out.
Thank god for kids. Sweet, innocent, energetic kids. Jean-Paul’s (my language tutor) kids are the greatest. He has one who has, I swear, an award-winning smile. If there was an international competition for best ever smile, he would take first, second and third place. The best part is that he’s one of the happiest kids I’ve ever met – CONSTANTLY giggling and smiling. And I can’t get enough. During my lessons, while Jean-Paul is writing on the board, back turned to me, I love to make faces at this guy. He ALWAYS laughs. He’s great.
And then, I was sitting on my porch reading this evening when who should show up but a gaggle of kids, dancing and drumming on an overturned bucket. They were pretending to be the “masque,” or masked traditional dancer who performs at various traditional Tikar ceremonies. I take it these “masques” exist in the West, Northwest, and Southwest provinces, too. Anyhow, they’d tied a bunch of small branches of leaves together and then, successively, each in his own turn, put it on his head and did a remarkably good imitation of the actual traditional dances. While the others danced and drummed, the rest of them were laughing, giggling, and generally spazzing out (as kids should). At one point, they went around the corner of my house where I couldn’t see them anymore, certainly plotting something. Tickled, I decided to counter-plot. I heard them coming around the opposite side from which they had left, so I jumped out at them. They ran, screaming and laughing away from me as I chased them. Ahhh, kids.
Afterwards, they actually came and bullshitted with me on my porch, each twisted into his own impatient contortion of “sitting” or lying down or rolling around that belies boundless energy. I like bullshitting with kids. It sure beats bullshitting with adults. At least there’s still hope with kids. I asked them what their favourite colors were and why. “My favorite color is red.” Why red? “Because my favorite color is red.” Ah the logic of kids. I love it.

One big step

Lately (roughly the last month, minus IST), I’ve been feeling a bit blahblahblah. That is, a general malaise, marked by occasional spikes in my spirit, but for the most part, there’s been a decent amount of pathetic self-pity. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself – this experience has been much harder for me than I imagined it would be – but I feel as though in some ways I’m not living up to my own expectations. Ironic considering that all along, I said I had no expectations, but those little buggers just crept up on me, so insidiously. And now here I am feeling… just crappy. Self-doubts plague me: am I doing enough work? At the rate I’m working, will I really make any legitimate difference or contribution to this community? Am I trying hard enough to integrate? Will I ever feel like I have “integrated”? What will it take for me to feel like a success at integrating, to feel like I belong here? All of these doubts make me feel unhappy. Volunteers tell me this is normal, and that after about a year, things just click and you start to groove. Lately I've been doubting that wisdom - at one year, will things click, or will I just become complacent in my unhappiness? Lately, all of these thoughts have made me consider how nice it might feel to just give up and ship back home to the states.
Anyway, it was in the midst of these kinds of thoughts that I was sitting in my living room this afternoon, about to get ready to go to market, when I heard some ruckus outside my front door. I opened the door to find my two male neighbors, tearing apart my decrepit and badly-in-need-of-replacement wooden stairs leading up to my front porch. Awhile ago, the top step caved in (probably from rotting), so now you must make an almost comically large step up onto my porch to bypass the fallen soldier (impossible for my neighbor’s 5-year-old little girl to accomplish).
About a month ago, when it first crapped out, my neighbors commented that I needed to get it repaired. I know, I said sheepishly. I didn’t really know how to explain to them all the barriers involved to resolving this small problem: that I didn’t know who to go to get it done; how much it should/would cost; how to negotiate (indeed the headache there involved) with the landlord that I shouldn’t have to pay for this since the house should just have sturdy steps anyway; the fact that there are so many other problems with my house that this really seemed pretty insignificant by comparison (holes between the floor and the walls where I once found a tarantula, and where, I recently discovered, mice live; a leaky roof with heavy rainy season on its way; lack of ceiling throughout half the house; insect infestation; spotty electricity… the list goes on). The bottom line was – the mere thought of resolving the problem gave me a headache and it honestly wasn’t that much extra work for me to take a giant step everyday onto and off of my porch.
“Whatcha doing?” I asked my neighbors, who had already dismantled the steps and were now digging into the dirt to remove the pieces that were embedded in the ground.
“Fixing your steps.” My neighbour answered. It wasn’t even a question, “would you like us to fix your steps for you?” It was a statement. Almost as if saying, this needs to be done and since, for whatever reason, you haven’t done it, we’ll take care of it. As if I was their family, and not just their inept white neighbor.
Wow. I was dumbstruck and sat down to watch them work for a minute, not even knowing how to properly express my gratitude. I almost started crying out of appreciation. Did they know that they had just saved me probably a month’s worth of footwork in negotiating who would build new steps, who would pay for them and how much they would cost? Probably not. Beyond that, did they know that their actions spoke worlds to me, said more than they could ever have said with words? Maybe. Just when I feel like I can’t possibly fit in and despite my efforts, I suck at integration (indeed, probably my greatest fear at the moment), my neighbors go and do this. They go and remind me that I don’t need to go home to the US to be happy. I’m already home.

International Day of the Woman

March 8 is International Woman's Day. This has caused some confusion amongst villagers who were excited to incorporate American traditions of how the fête is celebrated in America. When I told them that Americans do not celebrate International Women's Day, many asked me then why is it called International Woman's Day. Hell if I know, it's your holiday, I wanted to say.

Anyhow, the celebration began on the 7th with an afternoon round-table discussion whose topic was "Investing in our daughters." I was not officially invited so I wasn't sure if I should go, because I still haven't figured out whether having an invitation is necessary for me to attend an event. I opted to come kind of late and sort of mosey by the venue to see if they'd just let me come participate. They did.

I kept mentally noting how something like a Woman's Day round-table discussion would have been really different in America. The discussion was directed by the sous-préfet and though he made an effort to include the women in the community who hold places of importance, a lot of the discutants were men and a lot of the discussion centered on how women were the matriarchs, the foundations of society because it was they who raised the kids who would become the next generation. Women needed to do their jobs, they said, keep the courtyard clean, do their laundry, take care of the kids. No slacking. It wasn't only the men who said this - it was the women too who expounded along these longs and who literally applauded this line of thinking. There was also some discussion of women needing to take the helms, to demand change if they wanted it, though this line of discussion was taken with less fervor.

Soon after I sat down, the sous-préfet broke out of his French to ask me in English if I could address the crowd with an American perspective, noting that he knew I spoke English, but it'd be better if I spoke in French so everyone could understand. I know he was trying to be accommodating and welcoming by acknowledging that French is not my first language, but I've been in Cameroon for almost six months and at post for three, and I've had conversations with him in French, so I was a little baffled and kind of miffed at his assumption that I couldn't address the crowd in French.

I quickly swung past my irritation, though, to focus on mustering up all of my Lit Hum bullshitting skills to develop a coherent speech on the spot. During training one day, one of the language trainers had asked us to come up with 15-minute long arguments in French on a topic without any preparation. She had warned that this might be demanded of us and it would be expected that we would be able to do this by our communities. At the time I found it irritating and impossible. Now, faced with the same demand, I still found it irritating, but I was at least kind of expecting it from the moment I sat down. Here was an opportunity to both share an American perspective on women's rights, and how I wished I could have had time to prepare something and tuned it to Cameroonian culture so I could have said something of value. I spoke for about five minutes, after which the audience applauded me. I mostly felt the praise undeserved because I wasn't sure I said anything of substance or value, but c'est la vie.

The round-table discussion lasted far longer than it should have and I was waning, not having eaten lunch, but immediately following the discussion was a series of sketches and dances put on by the women planners of the whole celebration, which I just couldn't tear myself away from. I made it home around 10 PM, not having eaten since breakfast nor having anything in my house to prepare for dinner.


The next morning, the schedule I'd received said the community should show up at 8 AM for the 9 AM arrival of the mayor and 9:30 AM arrival of the sous-préfet. When I went by the parade ground at around 8:30, Magloire's brother Kasimi, the resident electrician for the entire village, was just starting to set up the acoustics. No chairs were set up. I know that Cameroonian schedules are not always (read: never) followed, but I still can't quite figure out exactly how late to be. If I thought I was fashionably late showing up at 8:30 AM, then Cameroonians may as well be on the runways of Milan. Anyway, I went back home to hang out and came back to the parade ground at 10:15. The Sous-préfet decided to grace us with his presence at 11:15. There was a march and some speeches, and some what-seemed like chaotic dancing and chanting when that was all over. The afternoon brought a soccer match of two all-women's teams, which I missed.

The evening was marked by a dinner and dancing (and obviously, drinking). There were a several women who seemed to have been highly involved in planning the whole event and they were running around stressed out for what seemed like the whole dinner. After dinner, they started the dancing with a "Tournée d'honneur" in which the most-honored guests are invited to dance in pairs to "open" the dance floor. Each round lasts for literally all of 5 seconds, so I think it's more symbolic than anything, and I was assigned to dance with the sous-préfet and immediately I felt like I was at an awkward middle school dance for all excruciating five seconds of it. The dancing (I'm sure) went on til all hours, but I pooped out at 11 PM and caught a moto home.


One of the traditions at parties with buffet-style food like this is that the most important people (sous-préfet, mayor, village chief, notables, etc) get to serve themselves first and then the rest of people in decreasing order of importance. It struck me that this tradition was followed during woman's day. I kept thinking: these women have worked SO HARD to put together these two days of events - creating and practicing dances and sketches for over a month, having regular meetings for a month, attending daily soccer practices, slaving for hours preparing food, doing cotisations (pooling money) to fund everything... all to have just this one day of celebration. The least the sous-préfet and other VIPs could offer is to honor these women and their work by letting the women be the first-served. Just this once. When I made this comment to Magloire later, he said "but really, the women like to do all that work - it's them who want to do it and put together such a ceremony." Hmphhh. I'm seeing that one of my roles as a volunteer is simply to introduce new ideas and see if the villagers run with them. This is definitely something I want to try and introduce for next year's fete.

Here's some photos from the event:

Here are two women from the Friday night of sketches and dances. These two were pretty well coordinated (outfits and the dance itself). Notice the bowl of money in front of the "stage." One of the traditions I've noticed during any performance, especially dance and singing events, is to come right up to the dancers and press money pieces on their foreheads. Often the dancers barely react, and some other person runs around frantically collecting the money that fell on the floor into the dish before the petits can grab it. You dance, you get paid.

Along with the money tradition, some people decide to momentarily join the performance by dancing with the dancers. Sometimes they just dance along side the dancer(s), but sometimes they coopt the performance. Here the man from the audience was so taken with this lady's dance that he just had to jump in front of everyone and take a swing with her. Inevitably, this causes tons of hooting and hollering, which increases when he drops his cash in her bowl or presses it to her forehead before taking his seat again.

One of the dances on the evening's program was listed as "Tikar dance." I think it was this one with these three women, but my resident cultural translator, Magloire, wasn't with me, so I'm not sure.

Here is the actual day of the march. ALL of the women are wearing dresses made from the same "pagne" or fabric. (Again, more confusion when I was asked earlier in the day - "do they use the same fabric in America? Is it the same fabric the world over?") Some of them just do a kabba (what we might call a mumu in the US), but some ladies get really creative with their dresses. It appears that there were two different pagnes for the woman's day, though I don't know if the distinction between the two signified anything. This is some of the semi-chaotic post-march dancing and hooting and hollering I mentioned.

Field Trip

I’ve been bugging Magloire for awhile to show me his fields – I’m very curious to see farms here since cultivation is huge element of most Cameroonians’ lives. Every morning when I go running I always see people dressed in drab, dirty, holey clothes heading out to their fields, machete perched on their heads or hanging loosely in their hands. It always makes me chuckle too, when I think about how Americans might respond if everyday, farmers headed down the streets of say, New York, for example, casually waving a machete at passerby’s in greeting.
Anyhow, he said to be ready to go out at 7:30 AM, to which I replied, “that’s a bit late, isn’t it?” The sun starts to come up here around 6 AM, and Magloire had told me before that if he’s going to work his fields, he’ll usually head out at 6 AM. He replied that he didn’t want to disturb me, but I said, don’t worry about me, just tell me when to be ready to go. So I woke up at 5:45 AM yesterday to meet him at around 6:10. We walked about a half hour out to his uncle’s field.
What’s interesting about fields here is that they’re totally in the forest and there aren’t really discernible or obvious boundaries between the farms and the surrounding forest. So we turned off the main road onto a small footpath headed right into the forest. Along the way he pointed out all sorts of different plants – palm trees (from which people cultivate palm nuts, which are pressed to make palm oil), the difference between plantain and banana trees (plantain tree trunks are yellow; banana tree trunks are black), both wild and domestic mangoes, cocoa trees, coffee plants, manioc plants. Every now and again, he would exclaim in surprise, “Beck-kah! You can’t recognize coffee plants?!” I think he’s having trouble understanding how the whole domain of farming and cultivation is totally foreign to me. To which I try to explain, “Magloire, I grew up in cities. Have you ever seen a field in the middle of Douala or Yaoundé?” His response: “Well, not fields, but they have mango trees at least.” Oof.
In any case, the field trip (haha, no pun intended) was really fun and informative, not to mention beautiful. Afterwards he headed out of the forest and down the road to his much smaller field where, the day before yesterday, he had cut down three stalks of bananas. He said we would carry them back to village on our heads. I still haven’t mastered that skill (or even really tried… it’s pretty intimidating) though I know enough about it to know that the trick is that people wrap a piece of cloth in a circle and put that on their heads before loading whatever it is they’re carrying. The “coussin” (or “cushion”) gives a more flat surface to work with and helps stabilize the load. We hadn’t brought any cloth to use as coussins, so instead, Magloire fashioned coussins for us out of dead banana leaves. Next thing you know, I was walking back to village with a stalk of bananas perched on my head, greeting passerby’s in Tikar. Granted, I was still using one hand to stabilize my load the entire way, but still. Yesterday, for a short time at least, I was hardcore fulfilling objectives two and three of Peace Corps service: cultural exchange.

flying coyote

Today was a blessed day of nothing, much needed. Work has an ability to simultaneously depress me and buoy my spirits, a balance which is, despite its inherent ambiguity, definitely exhausting. Therefore, it was a wonderful feeling to wake up this morning to face a day, or rather a morning, unburdened by the necessity to head to CAPJ, at least not til the afternoon. It gave me needed time to rest (well…after drawing water, which still stresses me out). I spent most of my day reading an entire book, after which I spent some time pondering why, when I have enough time in one day to read the entirety of a book, I can possibly be so exhausted?
I came to the following conclusion: You know those cartoons with the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote always chasing and trying to catch him? I have a distinct memory of one of those episodes where the Road Runner heads towards a cliff, but in his stealth stops short, so as not to fall. Predictably, the coyote (not as wiley as his name might suggest) doesn’t stop in time, but keeps going, right over the edge of the cliff. There’s a moment where, hanging suspended in mid air, he realizes he’s going to fall a quite far distance before he splats on the canyon floor below him. He feebly holds up a sign declaring “uh-oh…” (or something like that) before gravity grabs him a throws him to the canyon floor the way a penny supposedly rockets to the earth when thrown from a skyscraper. Further, as salt in the wounds, the lightning-fast Road Runner inevitably reaches the canyon floor before the coyote and hangs around just long enough to rub in how badly the coyote has failed to catch him, before he “meep meep”s and jets off again.
Here in Cameroon, in this context that is so unfamiliar, I feel completely like the coyote, like the ground has completely been swept out from under me. However, in some sick, twist of fate, I’m not falling down, but falling up, sideways, and every which way except what I’d expect. To my horror, the one rule I’d expect – gravity - is not even operating. To be honest, even a mile-long drop would be welcome at this point, because at least I’d know to grimace as my body slammed into the ungiving Earth.
Instead, everyday I struggle simply to understand my context, to understand the priniciples under which Cameroonians operate (ie that gravitational principle). I’ll give you an example. Beginning this week, Magloire has been mentioning how he’s needed to make mud bricks. When I ask what he’s building, he says a house. For him? Yes.
Now, Magloire already has a house, a pretty nice one at that, and I’ve noticed several improvements over the three or four months since I first saw it (ie ceiling installed, walls painted, curtains hung, etc), which would indicate to me that he has no intention of moving (why invest all that time and especially money improving a current home just to move?) so naturally I inquired why he’s building a new house. His answer was basically, “because.” Well, if there’s anything I’ve learned the hard way, it’s that when you ask a question here and get an answer that does not answer your question (which happens more often than I’d like), you probably didn’t ask your question right (ie there’s something that goes unsaid and understood in the Cameroonian response which is not immediately apparent to you). So I tried again, “But… you already have a house. Why are you building another one?” Again, the response is something along the lines of “why not?” Okay. Fuck. I guess I’m the idiot. I give it up for the moment.
But today, as we left the CAPJ, we passed the site where he’s building the new house and I said again, emphatically “I still don’t understand why you’re building it.” He laughed, as he often does at my incessant questions, chuckling “you still don’t understand?” And then explained that his father had bought the land and if he didn’t build on it then the people who live around that site would slowly parcel it off. Building on it is a way to protect it from encroaching neighbors. And when the house is built, he can rent it out and make a little money.
Okay! Now there’s an explanation to the question I asked. Why was that supposed to be obvious to me? Why did I let him make me feel so stupid for asking about it in the first place? Afterwards he tells me that my questions surprise him. Who owns land in America? Anyone can. And how do they keep others from encroaching on it, he asks? I try to explain that a person can do whatever he wants with the land and the “contract” he has to the land is what keeps people off (and of course, the government and judicial system, which, in contrast to Cameroon, actually work) – a person doesn’t have to build on it to keep people off. But dimly, I see that here is another fundamental difference between how America works and how Cameroon works (or doesn’t, as the case often is), and probably the root of our mutual lack of understanding.
But this entire process, just to uncover this tiny morsel of a new understanding took a whole week from when I first encountered something I didn’t understand to when I began to understand it. And I’d say that’s a fast turn-around, because most people are not as cued into my utter confusion as Magloire is.
The entire process is positively maddening, exhausting, frustrating, and at times, rewarding. Imagine walking into your kitchen, and opening your fridge to discover that instead of keeping foods chilled, it cooked them, and finding that your oven instantly froze foods – now your butter’s melted, milk’s spoiled and your chicken that you were preparing for dinner is a frozen chunk. But then, adding insult to injury, when you call the landlord/repairman/anyone to ask “what gives?” they look at your sideways, as if you’ve asked why 2 plus 2 makes four, and say simply “because.” What you need is someone to explain that math for you, but it’s so evident to them, they can’t imagine having to explain it to anyone. It just is.
But not to you.
That’s what my everyday is like. Spoiled milk and frozen chicken and meanwhile I’m floating in space like a coyote on a wayward mission to the moon, gravity having taken a raincheck. If that picture is totally nonsensical and non sequitor for you, then congratulations. You understand just a sliver of what I’m facing every-god-damn-fucking day.
In this context, I have plenty of time to doubt myself, whether I’m doing any good, and whether I’m “measuring up” (to what, exactly, is a whole new question – the very lack of any measures, objective or otherwise, makes self-analysis extremely difficult). More often than not, I’ll cling to a recent event as proof of how well I’m succeeding or how miserably I’m failing in this whole experience. Lately, it’s been a bit more of the latter than the former.
So today, while Magloire and I were sharing a drink (at the only bar in town with refrigerated drinks), I was already in a fragile state when he mentioned that Stacy, the volunteer who prospected my post, and was good friends with Magloire, adapted uber-quickly and seemingly without problems. Now, I know enough to know that the average American does not adapt that quickly here and certainly not without more than a few hitches. Furthermore, I know Stacy (she’s still in Cameroon), and I could probably ask her about her specific problems if I really wanted to. The rational part of me was telling me, “ don’t compare yourself to her - Magloire surely doesn’t have the whole story and plus you are doing a good job adapting too.” But the emotionally vulnerable, judgmental, and already slightly depressed part of me gained the upper hand and I was pretty much a party pooper for the rest of the evening.
I know Magloire was concerned by my turn to a depressed state, and furthermore, one of the things that’s been getting me down lately is the lack of a real close friend, someone to confide in here. So I told myself, “Becca, if you want to develop your friendship with Magloire, you have to open up to him,” so in what was my most courageous moment of the eveing, I confessed that his comment about Stacy had made me feel like a failure in some sense. He had no idea, and felt terrible and assured me that was not at all what he meant and could I forgive him. And that made me feel a little better. Only slightly, but it was certainly an improvement over the Negative Nancy that I had been ever since he first made the comment.
Meanwhile, I’m still a floating coyote, frustrated, sometimes-depressed, emotionally-exhausted, with spoiled milk, and throwing frozen chicken bricks, and asking people to explain basic math.

Yesterday was interesting. Magloire and I had our prise de contact at the ecole protestant and afterwards headed to market. On the way, I saw a bull by the side of the road, a bunch of men beside it. Magloire said they were going to slaughter it.
On my way back home from market, I stopped to watch the slaughter for awhile. They had killed the bull and were now dismembering the body, part by part. An anglophjone man and his friends, also watching, explained certain parts of the process to me. When the butchers pulled out one of the chambers of the four-chambered stomach, still full of undigested grass and started cleaning it, I asked if people eat the stomach. “Of course. They call it the bible because it has so many pages (layers),” he laughed at his own joke. “So if I go to a restaurant and ask for the bible, they will serve me the stomach?” I asked. Yup. He was right, it did have an incredible number of folds, and I thought of all the villi that are on the surface of the stomach to absorb food as I looked at the now-clean, nubby stomach tissue. Next, as they chopped apart the abdominal cavity, one butcher took the lungs, now unattached, and dipped them in the blood that had pooled on the bull’s skin. Like a giant paintbrush, he used the lungs to spread the blood across the skin. “It is to give it (the skin) a nice color, like a dye” the Anglophone man told me. I figured they’d use the skin to make leather goods but then the Anglophone man said that they’d eat the skin, so I wondered why it needed to be a nice color.
I watched as another butcher slowly squeezed would-be shit juice from the large intestine and then dipped the membrane in a bucket of water from the nearby stream where I always see people doing their laundry. Another butcher took a machete and began hacking at the spinal column, as if the bull were a tree he was chopping down. Oh and I almost forgot to mention the reason they were butchering this bull – it had been pregnant but had a breach delivery – the baby bull had died during childbirth, still inside the mother. One of the first things they pulled out from the mother’s body was the giant uterus, baby’s legs poking out the bottom. The Anglophone man told me “Whats [that is, white people – often pronounced like “what” here] like to eat the baby meat, not Africans though.” I wasn’t sure about the validity of that statement, especially since as I watched the bull become less and less a bull and more and more dismembered meat, I was becoming more and more vegetarian.
In any case, then an interesting thing happened. Right there, as we watched a bull get butchered up into sellable meat pieces, like some sick twisted Discovery Channel Special, the talk turned to politics. “Do you support Clinton or Obama?” the Anglophone man asked. Instead of answering, I threw the question back at him. “Obama,” he said. America needed a black president, “ someone who would not do harm, like Bush.” I asked if he knew that Bush was in Rwanda at the moment. Yup, and Condaleeza Rice too, he said.
I found the discussion interesting because, even here, in this small villagee quite out in the forest, people were keeping up with American politics. They were keeping up with a country half a world away, when I, an American, barely managed to keep up with my own country’s news when I lived there. What power America must wield when people across the world, even people who don’t have electricity, manage to tune into the news and find out what’s up in the grand ole’ U.S. of A. It was a bit sobering.
I left them to go home and relax before my animation with the high school health club. I had planned an animation about HIV transmission, and bolstered by what I thought was last week’s successful animation, was hopeful it would go swimmingly well.
I started by asking is anyone could recap what we discussed last week. Crickets. Finally, someone raised his hand to explain that we’d learned about the difference between HIV and AIDS. Good, I thought. I asked if anyone remembered the game we’d played to illustrate how the immune system works and how HIV destroys the immune system. Crickets, again. Finally the same guy raised his hand and gave incorrect answer. Crap, I thought. Maybe I was too optimistic last week.
I hoped that things could go better today, but I don’t think they did. For one, I get the sense that the kids are afraid to ask me questions, or just nervous to speak up at all, so when the comprehension isn’t there, it stays that way because they wont ask me a question to be sure they understand.
This led me to start reflecting on my work with Magloire, who is certainly NOT your typical Cameroonian. All through training, we were warned that we had to be very patient with people, that Cameroonians rarely came on time to meetings, and sometimes just never showed up, that drinking starts at 8 AM and is a full-time job – in essence, that our American sense of urgency need not apply here. On the contrary, my work with Magloire has never borne out the truth of these warnings – he is always on time to our frequent meetings, he works very hard, rarely drinks, and always understands things pretty quickly.
I began to realize that there’s a disadvantage in working with someone so much more in tune with an American work ethic; namely, I’ve been a little blind to the reality of work with people other than Magloire. It’s almost as if my comprehension/integration scale is in fast-forward with regards to my work with him, but is in slow motion with the rest of the community. Only I didn’t realize it until yesterday. Now I’m starting to realize the reality of working with people here – how slow it might actually be. A few days ago, Magloire chuckled at something I said and said “Oh, Beck-a, you are still too American.” When I asked why he said that, he replied “ You still expect things to work like they do in America, whereas here they just can’t work like that.” At the time, I was really stung. I thought I had come a long way in adjusting my expectations, in being flexible, and trying to just appreciate Cameroonian life. I was glad I was wearing sunglasses so he couldn’t see my eyes well up at what I took as a huge insult and he intended as a joke.
But now, I wonder at the validity of his saying that. Perhaps I have been blinded to certain realities – but if so, it’s at least partially because he himself is such an exception to these realities. As I walked home after the health club animation, I got to chat with some of the members. This is one of my favourite parts, the chance to shoot the shit with the health club kids. I think it gives them a chance to get to know me and be less scared of me. As we were walking, a girl, 12 y.o., said “I still have questions about the difference between HIV and AIDS.” I encouraged her, said it was fantastic that she was asking questions – why didn’t she ask them during the meeting? So then, I tried to explain by way of analogy how HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. I used the example of malaria – a parasite enters the body and then causes the symptoms, the malaria illness itself. HIV is like the parasite, I said – it enters the body and causes the AIDS symptoms. Then I asked her to explain the difference to me. She began by saying “First, there’s malaria and a germ in the body…” and then she trailed off. CRAP. Clearly, my analogy had not made anything clearer, but merely confused her more and now she thought that malaria was somehow part of the difference between HIV and AIDS. I tried once more to explain before giving up. How could I make this understandable??
After the health club, I had my Tikar lesson, during which I started to feel like shit. I had felt especially tired after running in the morning, a fatigue that had lasted all day. I started getting a headache and just felt like I was wilting as the lesson continued. Finally, I cut the lesson short and went home, totally wiped. For the first time ever, my neighbour brought me some dinner. I had been hoping for awhile that she would invite me over, but I didn’t know how to finagle this. And she just showed up with a plate of food for me, unasked. I asked if I could come and eat with her and the family, but I don’t think she understood my question. In any case, it was a well-timed, happy surprise for me – it means that my neighbors are starting to warm to me, and this makes me happy. They’re a young family (their two kids are adorable but still frightened of me. Whenever I say hi or try to have a small conversation, they still just stare at me without responding) and both are teachers. They’re not originally from Ngambe Tikar, but I’ve been trying to figure out how I can get into their good graces for awhile. This was a positive sign for me. I asked Carenne, who had brought the food over, if she could show me the whole process of making koki – if we could do it together. She smiled and said sure.
Later, when Magloire came to check on me, I was feeling better and I ended up showing him me “St. Louis, Then and Now” book. As he looked at the photos of St. Louis now, he commented that he wasn’t sure he could live, eat like that – there wasn’t enough nature. And indeed, concrete sidewalks and tall buildings everywhere doesn’t leave much in the way of nature. But I pointed out to him, imagine how it is for me here; “you say you couldn’t like there because it’s so different. I say I can’t live here because it’s so different.” He just chuckled.

Up and down, round and round we go

Oof. Life here is so bizarre. I’ve been in village alone (i.e. without Magloire) now for almost a week since returning from my banking trip. This has left me without a ton to do, since he is the very life force behind CAPJ. I’ve had one meeting with GICALAN and today I worked with the club santé, but two meetings does not a whole week’s worth of work make. Yesterday, all I did was suduko. That and cook an okra-tomato dish that was delicious (I think it was the addition of citron). Otherwise I sat around the entire day doing suduko. I didn’t even leave my house once. In fact, when I was getting dressed today, I actually thought, “hmm, I guess I can wear the same clothes as yesterday because it’s not like anyone saw me wearing them yesterday.” At times, I enjoy this lifestyle that allows me to be a complete slacker. At others, I don’t know what to do with myself.
In the absence of the all-consuming schedule I’ve become accustomed to practically all of my academic life, I’ve taken to what some would call neurotic record-keeping; I now keep a record of all my daily activities and one of everything that I purchase. I have a little journal for recording random thoughts, new discoveries and tidbits of info that I want to remember (especially people’s names when I meet them); I write blog entries in addition to maintaining a personal journal; one of my recent projects has been to try to make a more accurate map of the village – around dawn and dusk, I’m out trying to determine which direction the roads face and I’m figuring out distances by timing how long it takes to walk in a given direction. In other words, I’m applying my near-neurotic study habits to my daily life – with interesting overly recorded results. Besides all that, I’ve got a mile-long to-do list for basic home repairs and maintenance and the house can always use a good cleaning (it seems to be immune to sustained cleanliness); in essence, despite Magloire’s absence, I’ve still got a lot to do.
But I’m in no rush to do any of it. Sometimes I chide myself for not being more proactive – for example, for being nervous to approach the landlord and ask her (AGAIN) to please just sign the damn lease that I originally asked her to sign at the beginning of December and can we please work out a deal so I can get my damn ceiling installed that was supposed to have been done before I even moved in? But then I remember something my good friend Dani, former lifeguard, once told me in high school. Dani told me that up on the lifeguard stand, with no one to talk to and pretty much nothing to do (honestly, how often does a drowning or anything resembling one really occur in Clayton??), she would get painfully bored. “Sometimes, I’ll be sitting in class or just doing something and I’ll think something interesting. Then I’ll tell myself, ‘wait, don’t think about this now. Save it for the lifeguard stand!’” she said. At the time, I laughed.
Now I understand. I’ve got a ton to do, but if I do it all now, with typical American expediency, what will I have left to do afterwards? Plus, I don’t have the money to do some of the stuff, like buy living room furniture. And since I’m in Africa, I may as well operate on Africa time, ne c’est pas? So I suppose to spend an entire day doing suduko (actually it was one of those megasudukos and of course, right near the end, after working on it for more than 15 combined hours, I made some fatal mistake and now it is unsolvable. CRAP.), because theoretically I AM working hard. Just in African terms, not American.
Anyhow, in contrast to my utter boredom yesterday, today I had a totally exciting meeting with the health club at the high school. I did an animation about HIV manifests itself in the human body. Which means that I had to write my own “workshop” and then teach it. In French. To students who seemed more nervous to talk to me or ask questions than I of them. I think it went well. Of course, I find it harder to gauge here than in America. Is the silence when I ask them a question to check for comprehension a sign that they haven’t understood or simply a sign that they are nervous because they don’t know how to act with this crazy white woman who’s calling the different white blood cells “factories” and “Mister Captain” according to their function in the immune system? I felt good when we played a game to illustrate how HIV attacks the immune system, and the kids were all laughing (if you’re having fun, you’re 1. engaged and 2. going to remember what you’ve learned much better), and I also felt a lot of the confidence that I usually had when I facilitated workshops for PHE, but I know that it didn’t go perfectly. So, there are things I could improve, and I will try, but I still felt pretty good with today’s work.
After the animation, I walked back toward market with three of the kids, including one of my favorite – a tiny little boy who is far too bold for his age (today he told me he’s 12! I can’t believe it, he looks like he’s only 8 or 9). The very first time I met with all the 35 or so kids of the health club, everyone was very quiet and nervous to introduce themselves. But not Idrissu. He stood right up and cracked a joke that had everyone laughing. And he’s always ready to step up and be the center of attention. I like his swaggering confidence – it’s unlikely in someone so young, and I think I can use him to my advantage somehow, I’ll just have to figure out how. So I’m walking back with them, and for once I’m able to hold a semi-normal conversation.
It’s one of the harder things to adjust here – not knowing what on earth to say, a problem that arises both because I don’t have the same capacities to express myself or ask questions in French as in English, and because I feel like I lack common ground with the people here. My conversations with friends at home are based at least in some capacity on common ground, shared experience – if nothing else, living in and understanding a shared culture. Here I feel like I have very little common ground with people (though it is expanding little by little) and this makes conversation challenging.
Today, however I felt like I had been hit with the chatterbox stick. I was chatting with people left and right, most of whom I hadn’t met before. When I had about 30 minutes to kill before heading to dinner, I was thrilled when the Surveillant Generale (the disciplinarian/vice principal type guy at the high school) invited me to have a drink. And we managed to chat for the whole time! Miraculous! Even his questioning of whether he could by my boyfriend didn’t bother me like usual (this was the first of three such conversations today. I swear to God the romantic attention I get here is enough for a lifetime. I will so happy when I get back to the states and my unshaven legs, baggy clothes, and general plain style of living I employ here will receive the lack of attention it deserves) – this time, instead of the “I already have a boyfriend” tack I usually take (and which is usually easily countered with “but he is in America – how will that work for two years?”), I asked whether he was married. When he said yes, I told him it could never work. I will be no one’s “deuxième bureau.” (i.e. no one’s “dish on the side”) We had a good laugh over that, and were able to move past.
I guess I just find the life here a bit bizarre. One day it’s nothing but suduko followed by a sense of guilt at my slovenliness; the next it’s a high of succeeding at things which had previously inspired terror. Oh this crazy crazy life – how can I make sense of you?

Double Good

Two good things happened today: I had a particularly productive meeting with GICALAN and afterwards I tried to make my first “complicated” dinner meal: fettuccine alfredo with vegetables.
The meeting with GICALAN was scheduled for 13h00. I went by Veronique’s (the president of this GIC) house after my 6:30 AM run to remind her, but she wasn’t there. Fortunately, I ran into her on my way home. It’s a good thing too, because she thought the meeting was at 15h00. I asked if that was alright, if she thought people would come at 13h00 if she told them the change just hours before the meeting. She assured me that they would. I was doubtful.
Imagine my surprise when, in fact, everyone had shown up by about 13h35. This is practically a record for timeliness – most of my previous meetings have involved people showing up as much as an hour and thirty minutes late, with the first arrivals usually around 15 or 30 minutes late.
So in addition to the relative timeliness (maybe I should change all of my meeting times at the last minute), I feel the meeting was relatively productive. We were doing a problem analysis – the ultimate goal of which is to (1) narrow down how we want to tackle the problem and (2) develop a plan to do so. Their identified problem was “poverty.” This is frustrating because everyone here seems to think that the white person will come and bring money. A significant part of my initial work thus involves educating people that I bring my brainpower, energy, and ideas, but (probably) no money. This exercise turned out to be very helpful, because we were looking at causes of and results of poverty, in order to try to come up with some potential solutions to solve those problems.
There have been times in the past in working with this group of women when I’ve felt like nothing was really accomplished, when I felt like the group didn’t quite understand what the hell we were doing (hell, I didn’t totally understand…), but this time, people seemed to get it, and I felt like I finally clicked with my role as facilitator. There was even a moment when I stopped myself speaking mid-sentence to internally acknowledge that I had spoken a French sentence grammatically correct without having to think about it, when previously I would have had to pause and think about how to phrase it correctly. The group appeared to understand what I was saying, the objective of our meeting and (maybe it’s too much to hope for) the future direction of our work. I think this because they came up with great ideas for how to address the problem of poverty.
There is one woman in particular who I’ve noticed is really smart. She pointed out that one cause of poverty is the huge family size (lots of mouths to feed) and that a potential solution could be more information about family planning. This is a fairly insightful idea and requires an ability to see and analyze the “bigger picture.” Usually, I’d have to plant an idea like this in the women’s mind to get them to think about, but she came up with it without any prodding from me. I’ve noticed that she often has insightful ideas like this in our meetings and often understands better than others what I’m asking or saying. I have a vague sense that I want to find a way to work closely with this woman. A woman this sharp in a small village like this is a gem.
Anyway, the work and the meeting was a total high. And it pretty much made up for the fact that no one showed up to my next meeting even after I waited for an hour (best advice I can give anyone doing work in Cameroon: always, ALWAYS have a book with you. You never know when you’ll have to wait for an indeterminate amount of time for one reason or another. There have been so many times already when I have kicked myself for not bringing a book with me.)
Anyway when I got home, I decided without much planning to finally try some “real” cooking. My power was unexpectedly working last night, so I thought it would be on again tonight. It wasn’t but that didn’t stop me from making a solid-first-effort-quality fettuccine alfredo with vegetables. Though it didn’t quite taste like any alfredo sauce I’ve enjoyed in the States, the consistency and taste were surprisingly close, considering that I was working with a hyper-processed cheese (slightly past its expiration date, no less) that doesn’t require refrigeration and powdered milk. Leftovers re-chauffed tomorrow will be sublime.

Bandit

I went to lunch today at my favorite restaurant, La Belle Fourchette. It’s my favorite because they almost always have “legumes” (basically cooked leafy greens, served with some sort of carbohydrate) and also because one of the women who runs it has the most adorable four-year-old daughter, who unlike most children here, has never shown any indication of being scared of me or even surprised by me, but instead orders me around, as if I were her daughter (some might even say she reminds me of me at her age).
Anyhow, when I got there, the legumes weren’t ready yet, so I sat down to wait. I was pissed at myself for forgetting to bring something to read, and just sitting, the only person in the restaurant. Suddenly, from outside the restaurant I heard a woman sobbing and what sounded like pleading with someone else. I also heard a man quietly scolding this woman, a kind of quiet that spoke of controlled rage. Before I could confirm my suspicions just overhearing what happened outside, the woman was pushed into the restaurant, and fell down on the dirt threshold, the man right behind her, not yelling, but threatening. She looked straight at me, our eyes locked for a second before she turned back to him. She stood up and cried out “Bandit!” (something like the equivalent of “bastard!”)
They continued to quarrel, while I was at once on edge, filled with terror. What would happen to this woman? Was the man her boyfriend? Her husband? Who was going to protect her? Could I help her? How? If I got involved, could the man turn his intentions on me? If that happened, who would protect me? I sat there, tense, frozen, watching what was happening, but really just wanting to disappear.
Soon, the two ladies who run the restaurant came out and shoo’d the couple away, and then watched from the doorway, as ostensibly, they continued fighting. I didn’t move from where I was sitting; I didn’t want to see what happened.
The whole scene passed in less than two minutes, but it made me think. There’s no law against hitting children or women here (in fact, an education volunteer recently shared a story of when she was forced to watch one of her students receive 25 lashes from a teacher. She recalls how the teacher stopped after every few lashes, so the student, holding back tears, could try to recover enough to take the next few. She was telling the story to a marine, who asked “don’t their parents do something about it?” “Oh, they want the teachers to do it,” she replied). In the states, when I did crisis counseling, I felt frustrated with the system and with society’s apathy, or worse, blaming of victims/survivors of assault and abuse. But at least there was a system, as imperfect as it is – an acknowledgement that abuse is wrong. This scene quickly brought to my mind the frightening reality that abuse happens here and there is no recourse. Hurting one another is acceptable behavior here. How does one combat a system in which the very idea that hitting someone less powerful than you is okay? If I tried to do some sort of intervention centered around abuse – what kind of progress could I realistically make?
The look in the woman’s eyes as hers met mine while she was still crumpled on the dirt floor will haunt me; as will the defiance set in her back, her posture, as she stood up straight, proud, suddenly after getting up, looked straight at the man and with her chin held up, cried out “Bandit!” African women are fighters; I wonder if this is a battle we can fight?

bush taxi to yaounde

Alright, so I'm mostly past the whole being surprised at Cameroonian modes of transport - the endless waiting (to load the vehicle, to get gas, to leave, to wait while some broken down part gets fixed), the cars that are about as old as me and function as well as someone dying, the driving on "roads" that would never be called such in America, the cars being packed-to-the-gills-and-then-some, the dust visible in the air and filling your lungs. However, yesterday's harrowing 9-hour commute to banking in Yaounde was pretty miserable. See if you can make sense of the following happenings from the day:

- chicken shit on the floor of the van
- wooden canoes to cross a river, carved from large tree trunks... with outboard motors
- stopping every five minutes to say hello to people as we pass by villages
- pretty much everytime we stop, at least one man approaching me to ask for my phone number; some not even repulsed when I say flatout: "you do not interest me"
- "Wow, you got suntanned!" [I lick my fingers and rub my face] "Am I still tan?"
- reading "War and Peace" out of sheer boredom. It's possible that it only makes me more bored. - the guy sitting next to me checking my watch, despite the fact that he's already verified that his watch is one minute faster. The same guy constantly checking over my shoulder anytime I pull anything out of my bag
- the travel agency operator telling two passengers to get out because the car was too full, resulting in a shouting match and general testing of testosterone and manliness between said operator and a passenger. Passenger's screaming delays departure by ten minutes. After the dispute, passenger and operator jovially laugh with each other: "no hard feelings"

Recap

29 January 2008

A lot has been happening lately. Let's recap:

1. Africa Cup. Soccer! Les Lions Indomptables came off to a rocky start but are still in the running. The first match for Cameroon was against Egypt. At half, the Lions were down 0-3. When Magloire and I went to chat with others about the match during half-time, people seemed cautiously, doubtfully optimistic. "We'll even the score," they said. During the second half, the lions came out with a fury and energy, early scoring a goal. Much cheering, jubilation, and people actually began to believe that they might, in fact, score three goals. However, that first goal wasn't followed by a second until near the end of the match and by then Egypt had scored again, and it was clear that the Lions had lost, 2-4. Much grumbling. Afterward, as Magloire and I walked towards market for dinner, I saw him get the most fiery and animated as I've ever seen him, talking to the others who had been watching as well. "That Otto Pfister [Cameroon's new coach] is useless, he's changed the entire line-up; the Lions have never been this terrible" "Usually Egypt is terrible, we should have won."
The second match was against Zambia and considerably more exciting. When the Lions scored their first goal, everyone in the room jumped up, screaming in excitement, hugging one another, slapping high fives, etc. The room was crowded with about twenty men and two women (me and one other). People sat on the floor, leaned against the couch, crammed themselves into the small room to watch. For the first match, we had gone to the deputy's house, where he had a room the size of a rec room and enough furniture for everyone to sit. Magloire had said "Now you'll see how Cameroonians get fired up about soccer." I had been surprised at the relative quiet throughout the match as we watched the Lions get destroyed. Where was the cursing? The name-calling? The frustration with one's team? Now, for the second match, in Magloire's small living room, I saw the fiery emotion and pride of Cameroonians for their soccer team. Each successive goal or save by Cameroon's goalie brought more cheering, happiness - "wow! Eto'o fils!" (Eto'o is Cameroon's star attacker). By halftime, Cameroon was up 3-0. During the second half, they clinched the victory, 5-1. Afterward, Magloire and I again walked to market to get dinner and the centre-ville was quite animated. Music was blaring at one of the main bars and people were out in numbers, celebration. It was an interesting scene.
The third match of this first round of play is the day after tomorrow, against Sudan. I think Cameroon is expected to win, as Sudan is probably the weakest team in our pool. You may be wondering how on earth my little village in the middle of nowhere has 1) the electricity and 2) the networks to watch these soccer matches. The answer is that some people have their own generators, and about a third of the village has power when the generator at the sawmill turns on their generator for the village around 6 PM. Amongst those with power, many have TVs and satellite dishes (sure no running water and sometimes not enough to eat, but let's drop 40000 CFA on a satellite dish…) Voila! Football en brousse!

2. This discussion about electricity brings me to my next point: power in my house. I do not live in the quartier that gets power from the sawmill's generator at night (it's too far away). Initially, I branched a power line from the mayor's house across the street (he has a generator). Recently, however, the generator broke. But not before frying not one but two of my cell phone chargers (the second less than a week after I replaced the first one), and possibly my AC adaptor. I'm now without electricity, which is mostly fine, except for the problem of charging my cell phone. I've heard a little bit about a possibility of getting solar panels and solar power through a Cameroonian NGO, which appeals to me (what better way to make use of Cameroon's proximity to the equator and sun?), though I'm a little doubtful about it. I want to follow up with the NGO when I bank in February, but I'm a little doubtful. If that proves a dead end, I'll be living without electricity for awhile, until I figure something else out (or rather, if I figure something else out).

3. I can measure how much life has started to settle into regularity because I've begun to take up my normal habits from the states again. I've started to cook for myself every now and again. The whole food situation is a little tough since I have no fridge and thus can't cook a huge meal to keep for a week of leftovers, as I used to do. I'm getting accustomed to it, but I haven't really ventured beyond very simple meals. My most common meal is a sandwich I've dubbed "Sloppy Becca's." Basically, I sauté onions, tomatoes, garlic, and some sort of green leafy vegetable, and then throw this mix on a sandwich with either mustard or a hyper-processed cheese that doesn't need refrigeration (yum) - sometimes both. Sometimes I throw a fried egg in there for protein. Other than that, I have tea or hot milk for breakfast with toast and jam almost every morning.
When I don't cook for myself, I eat out at the restaurants in town. This often means some sort of starch (macabo, manioc, plantains, rice, or couscous de manioc, couscous de mais, even couscous taro or couscous de macabo) with a sauce - either a tomato sauce, often with a chunk of meat - or a peanut sauce, often with grilled fish. I really enjoy the couscous's because you eat them with your fingers (hello, return to age 3). Sometimes I have what is basically sautéed legumes (kinda like spinach?) - this is one of my favorite sauces. If it's not any of the above, then it's grilled fish with "condiment" (the catchall term for seasoning/flavoring) with baton de manioc. Overall, my diet is beginning to balance out in a way I'm happy with.
After a rather long hiatus, I've also begun to run again - in the mornings mostly. There are really only two general directions in which I can run, so this may get boring. For the time being, though, it's fine. The roads lead out to untouched savannah and forests which mix with each other without any real boundaries. Where I am is hilly (though not as much as in Bangangte) so there's some pretty views. Haven't seen any crazy animals yet, other than lizards.
The fact that I'm running and cooking means I've kind of figured out my water situation. My ideal would be to hire someone to draw water for me. In the meantime though, I have five bidons and two large buckets in which to store water, when they're all full, they'll last me about a week (maybe more), so I'm content to not have to draw water everyday or every other day.

4. Work. Is good. I've described before the idea behind CAPJ, but for the past few weeks, I've been feeling a little frustrated because I only had a vague idea of what was happening and what exactly my role was in everything. I felt like a common problem was we'd have a meeting and I'd ask what it was for, not really understand the response, and then at the meeting, be expected to give some sort of speech, which I was unprepared to do. Also, I could tell you that the objective of CAPJ was the "mobilization of the community/youth against HIV/AIDS," but I couldn't tell you what this meant in terms of concrete activity. At some point, I realized that I'd need to get more info and that I'd need to ask a lot of questions. Finally yesterday, I sat down with Magloire to try and begin to better understand, in specifics, what we're doing. A lot of things became clearer to me. I kind of finally feel like I have some direction to speak of it feels really good. We also began to sort of create an action plan for what we have to do. If there's anything that I'm realizing, it's that I am SUPER busy, and I think I will only get busier as time passes. This is truly a good thing, because I tend to become listless when I'm not busy.
One element of our work is going to be sensibilizing about HIV/AIDS the pygmies who live close by our village. Magloire says that they've done testing of some pygmies for HIV and that it appears as though HIV hasn't really touched the pygmies yet. I think they are quite insular, so if someone were to get AIDS, it could spread quickly and decimate the tribe, especially since they partake in some risky behaviors, such as sharing razor blades for scarification. For awhile, we've been talking about making a first visit to the pygmy campement closest to Ngambe Tikar (there are seven in our arrondissement). Now for awhile, I've been complaining to myself about how hard life in village is. Mostly petty things - like, it sucks not having power, running water, furniture, etc. I'll even spend a lot of time dreaming and daydreaming about how nice it'd be to go home and have all the "luxes." But if ever there was something to make me appreciate what I have, man it was a visit to the pygmy campement.
I don't want to sound horrible and judgmental, but the campement was… wow. Some things I noticed: no latrines (I didn't ask where they do their business), most of the pygmies were wearing drab clothing - holes everywhere and filthy, many of them weren't wearing shoes and it seemed like most hadn't bathed in at least a week. I often see villagers similarly dressed when they're going out to their farms, but that makes sense - no sense wearing one's Sunday bests if you're just going to be getting dirty. But I couldn't fathom why the pygmies weren’t wearing clean clothes when just sitting around at home and weren't clean themselves. It was startling, really. The contrast of the conditions of the pygmy campement compared to those of my village really jolted me into appreciating what is available in village and the lifestyle here. I do my laundry fairly regularly and bathe roughly everyday. My hygiene, thought not exactly what it was in the States, is at least pretty decent here. I wouldn't say the same for the pygmies. Aside from our work teaching about HIV/AIDS, I think there could be room for some basic health interventions - a la hygiene and clean water. This visit was good for me - very helpful to just appreciating what I've got.