Small small catch monkey

Disaster

2009-09-22T13:24:00.008+01:00

It’s the anniversary of two years in Cameroon today! I should be thrilled, but I’m actually extremely upset. In fact, after my visit to the sawmill today, I went to Magloire’s house after and cried and threw a small fit. I’ve said it before (perhaps not to but I really many people in particular, but to myself, at least) and I’ll say it again: I feel like Cameroon has broken me – my hope, my spirit, my optimism for humanity. That may sound drastic, but perhaps it feels so much worse, because I don’t feel like even my best friend here can understand why I’m upset and comfort me properly. Magloire’s response to my being upset was “Becca, you know how things work here, so why are you letting it upset you?” This is so Cameroonian - ie when everything goes wrong, it’s your fault for being upset about it. Geez, I’m just looking for a little sympathy. I even tried to explain that to him before I became a blubbering mess, but once again, I don’t think he understood that all I really wanted to hear was comforting sounds - “I know, they suck, those bastards.”

I guess I should backup and explain what brought this on. While preparing breakfast this morning, Magloire surprised me by showing up at my house. He was supposed to be two days travel away at a training that was supposed to begin yesterday for a government-sponsored project he’s doing. Apparently, this training has been rescheduled for next week, for the same dates as those for our HIV Counselor Training. Now we’ve got to figure out a way to manage this problem, and he’s talking about skipping out on part of our project. I feel confident that I could lead the training alone, but 1) I think it will be more beneficial for participants if he’s there to act as a cultural liaison; 2) I think he will benefit from teaching, it will be a good experience for him; 3) He made this commitment months ago, and I feel like it’s unfair to drop that commitment a week beforehand because some jerk government organization finally got their shit together and planned their project for the same time as we did.

So that was problem number 1. Actually, that’s problem number 3. Problem 1 is the seeming impossibility of getting HIV tests for our HIV week project. I have about next to no faith that I’ll be able to get tests from the government agencies responsible for distributing them. I already know that the Cameroonian government is entirely inept, corrupt, inefficient, and basically incapable of doing anything but put on airs and bouffe money. Perhaps because I wasn’t expecting much from them, this is less disappointing, despite the fact that free testing was kind of the culmination of AIDS Week. I’ve approached other NGOs to try and get HIV tests, to no avail. I actually wonder whether there are any tests physically in the country right now.

Problem 2 is ACMS (Association Camerounaise pour le Marketing Social), a Cameroonian NGO that distributes a lot of HIV and malaria related materials as one approach to combating these two large health challenges. ACMS has long been a reliable partner for PCVs, providing sponsoring for PCV projects. I visited ACMS about a month ago with Magloire, and they gave us the runaround – making us re-write and re-deliver our demande d’aide, fill out additional forms, and then come back on a Friday, (but not the following Friday, when I would conveniently still be in Yaounde). When I thus went back last Friday, I was irritated when the receptionist said that they didn’t currently have anything to give out. Could I come back on Monday or Tuesday? “No!” I wanted to scream, “This is my third trip here! You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep. If you can’t give me anything, can you just say no, so I stop wasting my time?!” But I didn’t say that, I politely informed her that I could not come back the next week because I was traveling back to Ngambé Tikar the next day (Saturday). She said I could send someone in my place, so I enlisted a PCV friend, Ben.

When I called Ben yesterday to see if he had success, he said that the ACMS office was closed on Monday. I couldn’t believe the receptionist would tell me to come back when the office was closed! Was that her way of telling me to stuff it? Or was she actually that stupid and inconsiderate? Clearly, this has angered me. I thought ACMS was reliable – last year, during international AIDS day, it was almost absurd how easy it was to get HIV materials, such as condoms and posters. Many volunteers have successfully gotten sponsoring from ACMS. I now wonder if I did something wrong?

And now for problem 4, which basically triggered my emotional breakdown today. Before I went to Yaoundé last week, I asked Mirko at the sawmill if he had the money that he had promised us for this project – 150.000 CFA, or about 12% of the overall budget, no small contribution. He said he didn’t, but I should come back on Monday and he would have it then. I said I wouldn’t be in village, and he agreed that Magloire could pick up the money. When I called Magloire from Yaoundé so find out if he had gotten money from Mirko, he said no. I encouraged him to be persistent, thinking it was just a problem of reminding Mirko enough times (not unusual here).

When I went to talk to Mirko today, I was not expecting what he told me, which was that he had no money (how that’s even possible – the sawmill just built a brand new office… I don’t want to get into). So basically, he just made a promise, which he may or may not have intended to keep. I can’t believe it. I don’t think a company could get away with that in America – the media backlash would be awful for business. But not in Cameroon! I’m so disgusted with the way this country functions. Which is actually an oxymoron – this country doesn’t function.

In short, everything that could go wrong with the AIDS Week is… and all of it is out of my control, but yet reflects on me. I think this is why I’ve had such trouble with Cameroon, in general: maybe you’ll achieve something great which has little to nothing to do with your particular effort. And maybe you’ll try and try and try to do something meaningful and the end result will be pitiful. It makes you wonder why you should even try since results seem to be so unrelated to effort.

Actually this whole mess has brought me some peace on an issue that has been challenging for me to grope with. Namely, how much does the West owe to Cameroon and to Africa in monetary terms? Should the wealthy West be throwing more money at Africa’s enormous and seemingly insurmountable problems? Should we pity their poverty – their kids’ bellies swollen from malnutrition, their mud brick houses with leaky thatched roofing and dirt floors, their lack of clean drinking water, their endemic malaria? I think I have finally found an answer: no.

If there’s anything to pity here, it’s the overwhelming and stifling lack of hope and sense that people have no power to influence fate, embodied perfectly in that all too common phrase, “on va faire comment?” (“What are you gonna do?”) Because no matter how poor, sick, hungry, or suffering these people are in material concerns, they are far richer in closeness of family and generosity to fellow man (something America could certainly take notes on…). Moreover, if America teaches us anything, it’s that perseverance and hard work can achieve anything, but you must first believe in your ability to succeed. This is something kids are trained to believe since pre-school – who didn’t grow up hearing, “What do you want to be when you want to grow up? You can be anything you want, you just have to try!” All of Africa’s (okay, perhaps I shouldn’t generalize to a whole continent, but definitely Cameroon’s) problems, I firmly believe, could be resolved if people – forgive the cheesiness – had the audacity to hope. Hope, the belief in the very possibility of better, is truly powerful. It can lead people to do extraordinary things – just as it is bringing much-needed health reform to America’s ailing health care system right now. But Cameroonians don’t have this vision. Today, I felt the way they see the world, I understood that lack of hope, fundamentally and viscerally. Why do I care, why do I even try when everything is just as likely to fall apart as it is to work?

No. Don’t pity Africans their poverty. Pity them the colonialism, the traditions, and resulting clusterfuck of disorganization that many countries on the continent have suffered and which crushes hope of making a difference insidiously, beginning with early childhood, until the people become docile and incapable of getting angry in the face of injustice, chalking everything up to fate.

On va faire comment?

Agroforestry training with photos!

2009-04-21T12:55:00.033+01:00

I recently helped organize a training in agroforestry techniques. Specifically, we learned about various types of plants that flower for 10 months out of the year (good for beekeeping!) and also feritilize the earth, how to make germoires, how to increase tenfold the production of banana and plantain trees over traditional methods, and how to obtain carbon copies of existing fruit trees. I decided to put a selection of photos from this project on my blog with explanations. I hope you find the following interesting and enjoy it!

BEFORE:

This is Magloire and Dang Assebe, a member of CAPJ, helping build the hangar where the training took place.

The completed hangar. It just needed to be covered with palm leaves. Notice the huge sacks of sawdust and the wood planks – both materials readily available in Ngambe Tikar for free because of the sawmill. Also some of the main materials that are needed to build the nurseries and employ many of the techniques we learned.

DURING:

Training begun, Blaise Komkom Magloire, the trainer, laying some groundwork, explaining what exactly agroforestry is and why people should practice it.

Here, we are building the “chassis géant” or Giant Chassis. Please forgive my translations. Since I’m not an agroforestry volunteer and the average French-english dictionary doesn’t have translations for random French agro vocabulary, I’ve done the best I could. The first step was to build the groundwork and lay it in place. We then had to assure that the ground was well-leveled before pouring insecticide on the ground.

Next, we needed to construct the framework which would support the clear plastic tarpaulin that would cover the chassis.

Here, it’s clear that the framework is almost complete. The only thing left is to do is saw off the excess length of the wood.

The clear tarp is already attached and we are filling the nursery bed with sawdust. Sawdust is used because it’s light and airy and doesn’t compact as much as soil, and thus provides a good environment for the banana and plantain rejets to sprout (again, rejet is the French word; I don’t even know how to explain it well without showing you a picture of how banana and plantain trees regenerate). Before placing the banana and plantain rejets into the sawdust, we sifted the sawdust and ensured there were no big clumps.

We had bought 200 rejets of banana and plantain trees and there was a huge pile of them (bottom left). Blaise showed us how to clean these rejets so they’d be ready to plant in the nursery. Here, the women (and men) are cleaning the rejets to prepare them for the nursery.

Cleaned and prepared rejets, pre-planting.

Another photo of the prepared rejets. Behind them, you can see how the pile of rejets has been reduced to nothing but scraps.

Blaise explaining how to kill the merystem of the banana rejet. The rejet is what’s used to propagate banana and plantain trees, rather than seeds. Banana and plantain trees naturally sprout 4-5 rejets, which will then become trees themselves when the mother tree dies. Killing the merystem of the rejet makes it impossible for the tree itself to grow. This is desired because then, instead of growing into a tree, the rejet will sprout 4-5 new rejets. When those rejets sprout, we will repeat the process – preparing these new rejets to be planted in the nursery and killing the merystem again so they can again sprout more banana or plantain rejets instead of growing into a fruit-producing tree. When the rejets sprout again from the second generation rejets, however, we will allow harvest the sprouts and let them grow into trees, ie not kill the merystem. Net gain: each rejet that we collected and prepared will eventually give up to 10 trees instead of only one, which is the standard practice.

Planting the prepared rejets into the sawdust nursery bed. After planting, we let them sit overnight so that they would dry out before watering them the next day. This was done to prevent rotting. The following day, we also covered the rejets with a light layer of sawdust.

The planted rejets. When we finished, the entire bed was full.

Building the framwork for the “chassis de reeducation.”

Filling the “chassis de reeducation” with sand.

The “chassis de reeducation,” now with the framework firmly attached and covered in clear tarp. The gap left was to build a door. Whereas the other nursery was not intended to be stepped on, this one is, and you enter the nursery/greenhouse-like space through the door.

Blaise explaining how to place a marcotte on an existing fruit tree. Marcotting is a technique that allows someone to clone an existing fruit tree. The advantages of marcotting over simply planting trees from seeds are: if you marcotte, you know if they tree will give good fruit, give fruit early, big fruits, juicy fruits, etc, because the resulting tree will have the exact same characteristics as the tree it came from. Another advantage is that the tree will begin producing more quickly than a tree grown from seed – in about 2 years, rather than 4 or 5. Finally, a marcotted tree will be of small stature, and won’t grow to huge sizes that take up space when land is limited.

A note about translation: marcotter translates to "layering." I don't love this translation, so I'll stick with the anglicization of the French.

Mama Veronique showing how to place the marcotte. Mama Veronique and her GIC were key hosts in inviting Blaise for his “prise de contacte” or first visit last October. At that time, Blaise showed those present how to place marcottes, so Mama Veronique had already seen the technique and Blaise wanted her to explain it to the others.

Mah Antoine finishing the marcotte that Veronique started, filling the marcotte sachet with sawdust. You can see how sawdust is needed for a lot of this work! Fortunately, Ngambé Tikar has a sawmill, and thus, an almost unending supply of free sawdust.

The first marcotte harvested in Ngambé Tikar, it came from a marcotte we placed last October, shortly before the dry season began. Marcotting can be used on almost any kind of fruit tree, including but not limited to: guava, avocado, all citrus (mandarin oranges, oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes), corossol (a fruit native to tropical zones), mango, and prune (again, a different kind of prune than we know in the US - this prune is small and cylindrical, about fist-sized, with a purple/blue exterior and a bright green interior and a large pit).

Albert preparing the marcotte, now with roots, in a sachet so the branch becomes a tree.

After harvesting the marcottes we had placed last October, we planted them in sachets and placed them in our “chassis de reeducation,” as shown here. In the chassis, the controlled environment will allow the branch to "re-learn" how to be a tree, instead of just a branch - and voila! Once it begins to sprout buds, it is officially a carbon copy of the tree you started with.

Blaise brought a small quantity of calliandra seeds with him, which are good for fertilizing that earth and are in bloom 10 months out of the year. Here, we’ve built a germoire or germinating nursery and are preparing to plant the calliandra seeds.

Everyone pitched in to help plants the seeds. In the foreground of the germoire (or germinator), you can see we’ve planted avocado pits. When the pits begin to grow into trees, they will be used as “porte-greffes” or graft carriers. The next technique that Blaise will teach us will be grafting. In preparation for this next training, he has asked everyone to grow as many port-greffes as possible during the next five months.

Family photo on the last day. Some people were missing from this photo – we had 27 people come to at least one day of the three-day training and 21 people participate in most or all of the training.

AFTER

I took these photos of “La Station,” as we’ve named the training site on April 19, about 2 weeks post-training. In the foreground are germoires for the calliandra and for the porte-greffes. The two closest germoires were created after the training to sprout more porte-greffes.

The calliandra has sprouted and is growing fast!

Isn’t it beautiful?

I was pleased to find that the banana and plantain rejets are already sprouting after only two weeks! In the foreground, the blurry white blob is a sprout, as is the green and pink thing jutting out of the sawdust. Another blurry white blob set against the sawdust in the background is yet another sprout.

What is the price of integrity?

2008-10-04T16:41:00.001+01:00

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!”

2008-09-10T20:27:00.016+01:00

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

2008-07-28T13:15:00.000+01:00

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

2008-06-30T13:53:00.020+01:00

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

2008-05-29T10:27:00.000+01:00

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.

2008-04-28T12:58:00.000+01:00

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

2008-04-11T12:15:00.006+01:00

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

2008-04-05T13:59:00.001+01:00

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

2008-03-30T13:30:00.003+01:00

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

2008-03-11T14:02:00.009+01:00

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

2008-03-05T12:10:00.001+01:00

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

2008-03-01T13:32:00.001+01:00

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.

2008-02-21T15:00:00.000+01:00

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

2008-02-13T13:20:00.000+01:00

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

2008-02-09T13:19:00.000+01:00

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

2008-02-08T13:15:00.000+01:00

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

2008-02-04T08:43:00.000+01:00

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

2008-01-29T07:57:00.000+01:00

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.

goats=tv?

2008-01-21T08:35:00.000+01:00

Continuing with more animal fun. The phrase "wild goose chase" has new meaning for me. Except instead of a goose, it's a goat. I was reading in my salon when I saw a goat whiz by in my front yard, a man quick on its heels. the goat was braying something fierce as the man ran after it, circling my house. every now and again, he thought he was close enough to stop the goat by stomping on the rope tied around its neck so he'd make a leaping stomp. Once I even saw him make a full-on dive, arm extended to catch the rope. The neighbors and I, watching, cracked up as he landed, empty-handed. This is better than TV, I kept chuckling to myself.

But it was short-lived. I just saw him carrying the goat behind his back towards the mayor's house, finally caught (though I didn't actually see the moment of capture). Those crazy goats.

cock-fight

2008-01-19T08:27:00.000+01:00

9:44 AM
Two roosters are cock-fighting in my front lawn right now. this amuses me greatly, thought I can't quite say why. I've seen cockfights before, but this one has been going on for awhile. What are those silly roosters fighting about? Hehe.

[roosters in action: first they ruffle their feathers and bow at each other(first photo) and then they pounce on each other with their feet (second photo)]

10:23AM
So apparently one of the roosters killed the other. I didn't even realize that it had been a real, legit, heated fight and that cockfights actually end in the death of one party. Sad. I feel a little bad, because when my neighbors discovered the dead rooster just now, they seemed upset. I feel bad that I didn't try to stop the roosters from fighting or tell someone to stop them, but I also didn't realize this would be the outcome. My bad.

Chugging Along

2008-01-16T21:41:00.000+01:00

So work is starting to get under way. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

Centre D’Accueil Pour les Jeunes
The CAPJ work is progressing. Sort of. I was supposed to have a meeting yesterday with CAPJ members to re-do some training on the PACA tool I started training them on last week, but only Lydie showed up. This is apparently typical in Cameroon – people either come late or not at all to meetings. It’s not meant to be malicious or an indication of irresponsibility – it’s just life. Things come up and they just don’t show. But it makes doing work here pretty challenging. Some volunteers I’ve talked to handle this by imposing a small penalty fee (for example, 500 CFA, or roughly a dollar) for showing up late, money which is then used for group initiatives. I’m not sure yet if, when, or how I might try to implement this. We’ll see. Magloire left on the 13th for a training in Douala, so I’ve been in village by myself. When he’s not around, the CAPJ work is harder to do, because I don’t really understand everything yet, so I can’t really manage it in his absence. Plus, I really think he is the glue that holds the whole organization together and makes sure that people show up to meetings. I’m just going to have to wait until he comes back on the 19th to do anything about it.

Centre Medical D’Arrondissement de Ngambé Tikar
Otherwise known as the hospital for our subdivision. I’ve been curious about how the hospital runs things, and whether or not they could use my help, so I went last week and spoke to the only doctor and asked if I could come and just observe once a week how things operate at the hospital. I also asked if I could attend the pre-natal consultations and vaccinations, which both occur once a month, on the 15th and the 30th of the month, respectively.
Monday was my first day of observation at the hospital. It was very interesting. I’m not sure I completely understand everything, and I don’t even know how to begin to explain why things were confusing. One case I found notable was a little girl with intense third degree burns. I have no idea how old she was, she looked maybe ten years old. (However, it’s usually quite difficult to guess someone’s age here just by looking at them; nutrition is different from in the States, so kids and adults grow differently here. My homestay father in Bangangté once told me that Cameroonians grow until age 30, and I internally scoffed at him, thinking he was wrong, self-assured in the knowledge that people stop growing by about age 20. Now, I think he might be right. It seems that here people’s growth is sometimes slowed at earlier developmental stages, but continues for longer into life.) She had horrible burns covering her entire chest, most of her upper right arm, her legs, her chin – basically everywhere. Apparently, her clothes had caught fire (this was awhile ago) and her skin too. I can only imagine how painful that must have been. Anyhow, she got initial treatment at a hospital in a bigger city, but lives here in Ngambé Tikar; while I was there, she was coming to get her bandages changed and her burn wounds cleaned (which she apparently comes to do every two days).
As the nurses pulled off the bandages, some of the healing wound came with it, and I was struck by the behavior of the girl and the medical staff. The girl was essentially silent the entire time, though clearly in pain. She bore it silently and obediently, letting tears course down her cheeks, barely making a sound. The only physically manifested response she gave while it was all happening was to cover her mouth with her hand and gasp quietly when especially agitated. The staff was gentle with her, but there was no “hand holding” that you might find for a ten year old girl in a hospital in the States, no cooing of “how brave you are!” or “okay, now this will hurt, be a strong girl!” They simply went about their work. When her hand that was covering her mouth got in the way of cleaning the wound, they brushed it away and told her to be still. I couldn’t believe the bravery of this girl.

Yesterday was pre-natal consultations. About 30-40 pregnant women from all around the subdivision came. It’s basically a whole-day affair. It begins with one-by-one taking the women’s stats (weight, BP). Once that is well underway, the nurse comes out to give a session with some sort of information about having a healthy pregnancy. After that, they begin to do one-on-one consultations with each woman. They divide the group into new pregnancies and women returning with existing pregnancies. During the consultations, they do basic information intake and take basic measurements of the woman’s belly to measure fetal growth. It seemed to me, that because of volume, it would be difficult to truly give each woman a really informative consultation, although I did notice the nurse take time to address specific issues with specific women when it came up, which was good. I think in the future, I will try to do some education at the prenatal consultations about basic to have a healthy pregnancy. I was astounded at how long the whole process took. It began before 9 AM, which is when I arrived, and when I had to leave for a meeting at 3 PM, it was still going on. It was incredible. There’s got to be a way to do it faster so the women don’t have to waste a whole day at the hospital. That’s another goal.

Club-santé (health club) at the local high school
Well today, I had my second meeting with the club-santé. The first one was last Wednesday, and it was basically just to introduce myself to everyone. The teacher in charge of the club said that it is not a new club, but it appears that they have just re-begun this semester; that is, there was no club last semester. So I didn’t totally understand how they run things. Today was interesting. The president of the club basically held a vote and asked people what they wanted to discuss next week. The club decided on HIV/AIDS, and that five members would take part in a debate about it, touching on topics such as transmission, prevention, explanation of how it progresses in the body. Afterward, he gave me the floor. I hadn’t really known what to expect, but I had planned a game to do introductions to everyone in the club. What I hadn’t counted on was there being upwards of 30+ members there, and all of their names being in the local dialect and incredibly difficult to understand, much less pronounce. OY. I came hoping to learn everyone’s name, maybe remember five or so. I left, not sure if I actually learned five names correctly. Alllllright then. Anyway, afterwards, I asked to have a little meeting with the club officers to get a better read on how they run things, and what they would like me to do with the club. I still don’t really understand, but I gather that next week, I should come prepared to intervene during the debate to correct any misinformation they might present about AIDS/HIV. I think I might also prepare a game or something to introduce concepts about HIV progression in the body. They also vaguely mentioned wanting to create posters to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS that we could post in village. Anyway, working with the club-santé looks like it could be interesting, if nothing else.

Miscellaneous
One of my other jobs is to integrate into the community. What a vague term. Well, to that end, I planned to have Princess Jeannette come over and teach me how to make croquettes – a snack that is like a slightly sweet, fried ball, the size of a marble. We did it today. It was a fun, interesting process, and now I have a little snack that will last for awhile, since we probably made enough croquettes to last me for a month or two. And, Jeannette and I made plans to eat legumes (my favorite, the all-encompassing term, “legumes” could be almost any leafy green vegetable) this Sunday. I’m so happy to have a friend.

Just another day

2008-01-11T21:41:00.000+01:00

6:30: Get up to my alarm. However, I’ve really been awake since the sun started to come up, around 6 AM. Open the shutters in my room and living room to let in light. However, my house faces northeast and all the large trees in my front yard and the morning fog that settles over the village block a lot of light from coming in the house. My house is always a bit dark in the morning until about 9:00.

6:35: Bathroom + BM, task number one. I have to search for my keys first though, so I can unlock the back door and get to the latrine. I have to remember to bring TP with me and my pissbucket (aka chamberpot) to pour into the latrine. If I forget, it starts to smell.

6:45: Prepare breakfast after washing hands: toast, made by in my frying pan on my two-burner gas camping cookstove, with strawberry and apricot jam and a cup of hot milk, made from two spoonfuls of dehydrated whole milk and one sugar cube. Add boiling water. Enjoy.

7:00: Begin to do dishes, which include those from this morning’s breakfast and those leftover from yesterday. It’s better to wait until they build up, even if this draws cockroaches because it conserves water. Last night, I had left water in my dirty dish tub and found a dead cockroach floating in it as soon as I started doing dishes. Gross. I have to dump that water and add new.
Since the water is not that dirty after finishing my dishes, and it feels like a waste to dump it, I decide to wash my lantern glasses, which are black and sooty after several nights of use without cleaning. This complicates things a bit, because the black soot flakes off, but then leaves a greasy residue in my dish washing tubs, which needs to be scrubbed off before I can leave them to dry.

7:21: Finally, heading out to take my bucket bath in my latrine. It’s been two days since I bathed and I need to look nice because I have a meeting this morning with the Inspecteur Generale of all the local elementary schools (kind of like a superintendant?) at 8 AM. Otherwise, I might not bother. Bring with me: bucket, about half-full with about 7 liters of water (I don’t need to condition my hair this morning, so I can use less water), shampoo, body wash, plastic cup I use to splash water on myself, towel, keys.

7:35: Done with bucket bath, head inside to dress. I’ve already mentally picked out an outfit because I’m nervous about time. Magloire said he’d come by my house at 7:45 so we could go to the meeting at 8 AM, and I want to be ready on time.

7:45: Dressed, hair combed, ready to go. Where is Magloire? I read while I wait – “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand, addictive.

7:55: Nervous because he hasn’t showed up and I don’t want to be late, I head out to the main road to try and meet him halfway so we won’t be late.

8:00: I wait for about five minutes, but then realize that maybe Magloire will come to my house from the other direction and maybe we’ll miss each other. I go back to home to wait for him on the front steps.

8:13: Magloire shows up. We walk to the Inspecteur’s office, very close to my house.

8:20: We reach the office of the Inspecteur. We are told to enter right away.

8:35: Meeting’s over. During the meeting, Magloire did most of the talking, explaining to the Inspecteur why we want to meet with the principals of all the local primary schools to recommence activities with the clubs de l’amitié. He agrees it’s a good idea. I didn’t say much, aside from admiring photos of the Inspector’s son in NYC (really it’s NYC I’m admiring); his son is a student at City College. Mentally, I remark that it is incredible that a Cameroonian salary, especially in this small town, can afford to send anyone to America for any amount of time. I wonder how he can afford it. Not to mention the incredible red tape one has to go through with passports, visa, etc.

8:45: Wanting to take part (maybe even help?) in the upcoming prenatal consultations that will occur on the 15th, I head over to the hospital to meet with the only doctor on staff. I’m told to wait.

9:00: Doctor will see me now. I explain that I’d simply like to observe, maybe even help with the prenatal consultations. No problem. Also, maybe I could come once a week and just observe how things are run? Again, maybe help if there’s a need? Sure thing. We arrange that I’ll come by every Monday, and come for prenatal consultations (every 15th of the month) and for child vaccinations (every 30th of the month).

9:10: Not having anything planned until 3 PM, I decide to head to centre-ville for the hell of it. Maybe I’ll eat something. I come across a mami who (like many others) has prepared beans, beignets. I stop for a bite.

9:30: I continue on towards the market area. That mami was very nice, but she didn’t have bouille, and I have a hankering for it. I locate other ladies who have prepared bouille, and I have a cup of it. Bouille is a kind of thick, starchy, warm semi-sweet broth. It’s mild, gentle, delicious. And comes in many varieties – I’ve had some that are citrus-y, with a smooth texture, and made from corn flour, others that are made with peanut flavor, more chunky, and made from rice. It’s all delicious.

[market in the morning. Notice the cream colored house in the background - this is a REALLY nice house for my village. You can kind of see the forest/savannah terrain mix in the background.]

While drinking my bouille, I introduce myself (as I’ve done many times already) to a few of the market ladies. I am Rebecca Hartog. No, I’m not a tourist. No, I came here alone, there were no other people with me when I came here (I don’t know why people always think I’ve come in some group with two or three other white people, but they’ve left me alone?). I am a volunteer with the Peace Corps, and I’ll be living here in Ngambe Tikar for two years. Yes two years is a long time (as if I needed a reminder). If a Cameroonian man proposed to me, would I accept? Well that depends, I think I would have to know him for at least a year before it came to that. Your brother? Hmm, I dunno… annnnnyway, gotta go. (Lord, the questions people ask)

9:45: Since I’m nearby Lydie’s house, I decide to do the Cameroonian thing and stop by to say hi. Instead, I find Lydie’s mom. She’s just been preparing food to sell at the market at lunchtime. Turns out she’s prepared some of my favorite foods – manioc leaves (“legumes”) and patates. I tell her I’ll stop by later in the afternoon, to save me some.

9:50: I finally walk home. Along the way, I’m greeted by many children, some in Tikar, some in French. I do my best to wave, or respond or be friendly back. The one thing I won’t respond to is “La blanche,” when said in French or in Tikar, which I only recently learned the word for. It drives me nuts. Bizarrely, I think I hear today kids calling out “le chinois” (The Chinese). This is a new one. Maybe I’m not hearing right.

10:00: Home, nothing much to do. I read “The Fountainhead” voraciously.

12:33: Start thinking that I should head to the centre-ville to eat, as I promised Lydie’s mom. But I’ve also determined that I’m going to finally do that protocol with the mayor that I’ve been putting off. I decide to do that first and then head to the market to try and find where Lydie’s mom is selling food. She had vaguely pointed “there.” I’m hoping people know well enough where she usually sells that I can just ask someone in the market area.

12:49: I arrive at the mayor’s office, am told to wait.

13:10: Mayor will see me now. I give him the protocol letter. He reads it. Soyez le bienvenue. Merci. A toute a l’heure.

13:15: Head to market to find Lydie’s mom. When I find her, she says there’s no more food left, but Lydie’s at home, with the food that she saved me. Sweet.

13:20: I arrive at Lydie’s house, she’s boiling the patates now. I sit and wait, not saying much. I don’t really know what to say to strike up conversation, and Lydie doesn’t offer any topics either. I notice that she’s shelling pistaches, so I offer to help. I tell her that the pistaches remind me of pumpkin seeds that we eat during Halloween. She’s familiar with the holiday, says that she had decorations for it this year. She disappears into her house and returns with the remains of her Halloween decorations from this fall. We have a good chuckle about Halloween.

13:45: mmmmm. Hot, boiled patates and mesengai (that’s Tikar for manioc leaves). Sooo good. Patates are kind of like potatoes, but just a bit sweeter, though not quite sweet enough to be sweet potatoes. The manioc leaves are crushed in a big wooden mortar and pestle and then boiled with oil and salt and a little piment – the result is kind of like steamed spinach, but way way more delicious.

14:00: At 15:00, Magloire, Lydie, and I have a meeting with a GIC, so I decide to just wait with Lydie until then, instead of going home before the meeting. I continue shelling pistaches, while Lydie goes inside to change.

14:30: We leave for the meeting with the GIC. I think it would only take about 5 minutes to walk there from Lydie’s house, but along the way, we stop to talk to people and we walk very slowly, since the sun’s roaring and it’s hot and it’s nice to avoid sweating.

14:48: We arrive at the GIC meeting, early.

15:00: The GIC meeting is supposed to start now, but only two members of the GIC are there, plus me, Lydie, and Magloire. We wait to see if more people will show up.

15:30: Now with only three members of the GIC present, we start the meeting. Magloire explains what he’d like to do – work towards developing the GIC more, so it can be more efficient, help combat poverty. At 16:00, another GIC member shows up (one hour late). At 16:20 (one hour and 20 minutes late), a fifth and final member shows up. This one speaks Tikar better than French, so the next 10 minutes are spent summarizing the meeting for her in Tikar. I’m lost, and bored. I twirl my hair.

16:45: Meeting’s over. Once, outside, Magloire asks if I understood everything that was said. Mostly, I say. Can you explain that part about the delegate from Ministry of Agriculture? He and Lydie spend about five minutes explaining it to me in slow French. Basically, he’s worthless and steals from the GICs he’s supposed to help. Fantastic. Corruption and Cameroon, apparently, go together like mesengai and patates, which is to say, very well.
Anyway, what’s the plan for tomorrow? Another meeting with a different GIC, at the same time as I had scheduled my Tikar lesson. I’ll try to find my tutor to reschedule, I say.

16:50: Mbatoussong Jean-Paul, my tutor, is not at home, but supposedly still at work. This seems unlikely to me, 5 PM is late in the evening to still be working. I probably won’t find him. Crap. I head home.

17:05: Almost home, I decide to detour towards Mbatoussong’s office, which is closeby my house, to see if he’s there. He is. Can we reschedule? No problem.

17:13: Home sweet home. I spend some time recording the day’s activities, I do this everyday. I like to have a record of what I’ve done so that when I feel depressed and like I haven’t done anything with my time here, I can look back and see exactly what I’ve done with my time here everyday. Then I read more of “The Fountainhead.”

18:13: Realizing that the sun is going down already, I decide to prepare dinner, even though I’m not hungry. I can prepare it now while it’s light and then eat later.

18:45: Dinner’s ready. I close the doors, but leave the windows open for the cool air. Since my windows finally have screens on them, I won’t be deranged by mosquitoes. I read by lamplight. The mayor had told me when I branched into his electricity that he’d turn on his generator every night from 6 PM to midnight. This has turned out to be less than true. It seems to come on erratically – maybe 2 or 3 times a week, usually between 6 and 7, until about 10. Sometimes, he turns it on in the middle of the day and then I run to use my computer. It’s a little bizarre.

19:15: Eat. Dinner is a salad of sautéed onion, garlic, and tomato with olives and fresh avocado with an oil and vinegar dressing. Yum.

19:45: Electricity comes on! What a surprise! It seems that the mayor turns on his generator just about every 3 days, and it was on last night. How peculiar that he’d turn it on tonight, especially when he told me earlier today that he was having problems with it. I go plug in my computer to charge. Then decide to play on my computer instead of read, since the electricity is on.

21:15: After playing computer games while listening to music for awhile, I decide to write this blog entry. When it’s done, I go back to playing computer games.

10:30: Electricity is turned off, so I switch back to reading by lamplight once my computer battery craps out.

1:20: Bed. But this is very late for me. Usually, lights out is no later than 10 PM. Tomorrow’s Saturday though, and I have nothing planned until 2 PM. I can “sleep in,” which means, if I’m lucky I’ll sleep til 8 AM.

A good kick in the ass

2008-01-10T21:38:00.000+01:00

Today I led a workshop on PACA tools. Quick overview: PACA tools (Participatory Analysis for Community Action) are a series of activities that health extension PCVs like myself use to work with a community group to begin the process of identifying resources and needs. The idea is that the PCV acts as a facilitator during these activities, guiding the community group to identify their specific needs and the resources available to them in their community. The grand scheme behind this is that once a community group has identified their needs and resources, they can then begin to develop an action plan for how to meet their identified need, using the local resources available. Sustainable development in a nutshell. Kind of a neat idea.
At the CAPJ, we are planning to work with many different community groups to confront the causes of HIV transmission on one hand (ignorance of how it’s transmitted and how to prevent transmission, risky behavior, etc) and the effects of HIV on the other (economic loss due to inability to work, discrimination, illness, death, etc). Therefore, the members of CAPJ are likely going to be conducting the PACA tools with various community groups once we figure out all the groups we’ll be working with. Interesting sidenote: I’ve only recently discovered that the staff of CAPJ is more than just me, Magloire, Lidie, and Chistiane, the only four people I’d met until this week; there were seven people at the meeting today!
So, to continue: today, I was supposed to begin training the CAPJ members on how to conduct the PACA tools so that they will be capable of conducting the PACA tools with other community groups – a training of trainers of sort. In French. Now, I consider myself to be a pretty good facilitator, generally speaking, after facilitating many workshops myself and also training others to facilitate workshops for PHE for two years. But that was in English, and in a cultural context that I understood. Here, I feel a little bit like a fish out of water, because I’m trying to facilitate in French and in a Cameroonian cultural context.
Just some examples of how both culture and language work against me here. In America and in English, I can figure out when people understand me by the way they respond to me (both with verbal and nonverbal clues) – certain actions and words carry cultural significance. For example, attentive, focused faces, without side conversations or fidgeting usually means people are listening, engaged, understanding; the lack of a question often indicates understanding. Here, the same behavior here might mean that people are confused but just hiding it or it could mean that they understand. In Cameroonian schools, there is not a lot of encouragement of asking questions. Most schoolwork involves memorization and repetition, so I think people are taught early not to ask questions even if they don’t understand. Therefore, it can be hard for me to know when people understand and when they don’t. Even if I could tell when people were understanding me well, there’s not just the cultural barrier, but the language barrier. In English, I can think on my feet and deviate from the planned script if people don’t understand something. Here, I don’t feel like I always have the capacity to just “play it by ear” and jump in with the correctly-phrased, culturally-appropriate question to steer things in the right direction when things get off-course.
Fortunately, Magloire was there, to remind me yet again (not intentionally, but just with his actions) of how remarkable an exception he is to the typical Cameroonian. He definitely had a better pulse on the progress workshop than I did, jumping in more than a few times to ask if everyone understood what I was saying, which was met every time with an answer in the negative from at least one person. Not only that, he always seemed to understand what I was saying and then was able to re-explain what I had just said in a way that made sense to the others.
With Magloire’s help, I chugged through the first of what will be multiple PACA trainings. It took longer than I thought it would, but I think it came out alright. At the end, we discussed some ways that the PACA tool I had taught today (doing a community map) could have been done better, and discussed trying it again next time in a different way.
For me, the most positive result was that leading the workshop jumpstarted my motivation. Ever since I arrived at post, I’ve been reserved, tentative in almost everything that I do. It’s a real effort to put myself out there, more so than usual. I feel reluctant to do even simple things, like go to the market and buy food. The reason is because I don’t quite know what to do – not just in certain situations, but at all. When some guy at the market starts harassing me – “hey, you live alone? You need a man.” “No I’m happy living alone.” “That’s crazy. When can I see you again?” – or better yet, when what I’m used to is being just another person on the sidewalk in the streets of New York, but all of a sudden now, I’m The White Girl in village and everyone, their mother, and their kids notices me, I don’t quite know how to respond. There are unwritten rules for behavior in any culture. In America, I know those rules – they dictate my life, they help me organize my life. Here, I don’t know those rules. It’s enough to make me want to hole up in my house with a book all day, everyday. At least a book won’t call me “La Blanche!”
So, in the midst of my reluctance to do, well, anything, this was at least doing something. It also made me realize that I derive great motivation from the quest for improvement; I’ll ask myself, “okay, I did something well, but next time, how can I do it better?” Until now, I hadn’t really done anything, at least nothing against which I could measure myself for next time. However, today, I tried to lead a PACA needs assessment activity; I know I can do this better. But the group was understanding and forgiving of my ineptitudes, and gave suggestions for how I can improve the next time I try to lead another training (next week!), and I learned a little bit from this experience about how I can do better next time. After it was all over, I felt this surge of energy and inspiration and motivation to work so hard so that it’s better next time. The kind that I haven’t felt since college. It was a good feeling.

A good day.

2008-01-07T21:36:00.000+01:00

Today was a really good day. Since I just recently returned from Bafoussam, where I was doing my banking, my house is now a bit better supplied with tasty foods only available in the cities – like jam, and fresh pineapple (sadly, I haven’t found any in village, even on market day) for example. So I awoke, around 7 AM, which is actually a little bit late for me, but this is good because I haven’t been sleeping well lately, so I was happy that I slept a little bit more than normal. Anyhow, I got to have a normal, tasty breakfast of toast and jam and fruit and have a cup of hot milk made from dry milk powder and a sugar cube – something I’ve developed a taste for here, which I never thought I would.
I’m in the process of getting my windows screened. And it is a process. Peace Corps requires volunteer homes to have bars on the windows; they also pay for volunteers to have windows screened (to keep out those pesky malaria-carrying mosquitoes). Most volunteers have screens, glass window panes, and bars on their windows. However, for whatever reason, the Safety and Security Officer decided that my house is just fine and safe without bars and without glass window panes… so instead I have only shutters (that lock closed) on my windows. This is fine (I guess), but the shutters open out. If you think about adding screens into this equation, it doesn’t work because you would have to either have a hole in your screen to open the shutters from the inside (thus defeating the purpose of the screens) or go outside to open the windows (again, defeating the purpose of the shutters as the sole method of closing the windows against intruders).
So. I had to get a carpenter to re-install the shutters so that they’d open inward before I could get the window screens put on. And since screening isn’t sold in my village, I had to wait until I went to Bafoussam for banking to buy some window screening. I had asked the carpenter to come yesterday to continue the work he’d already begun, but he hadn’t shown up. When I went to ask him why, he promised to come today at 9 AM. Okay, sure, I thought, that’s what you said about today.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when he showed up early at 7:30 AM! Sweet! He almost finished the work with the windows today, though there remains a bit to do. Anyhow, he left around noon, and I spent some time reading and relaxing. I was just about to start getting ready for my first Tikar language lesson when Princess Jeannette showed up at my house. Now, I met Jeannette awhile back at a funeraille (kind of like a memorial party for people who’ve died – a semi-religious service of sorts followed by lots of food, drink, booze, and music) and we had chatted a bit. She later invited me over for tea and snacks and we had spent about two and a half hours chatting. I like her a lot – she’s fun and friendly and (importantly) doesn’t want to marry me or date me (in contrast to just about every man in my village, married or not). So I was really happy to see her and have her just stop by to say hi. Most importantly, I took this as an indication that… drumroll, please… I have a friend in village! YAY!
Jeannette walked with me to my Tikar lesson and sat in on it with me. The lesson seemed to end before it started, and I’m not sure I really learned anything except maybe how utterly incapable I am of speaking Tikar. The tones of the Tikar language are like nothing I’ve ever heard or tried to utter before. Some of them I couldn’t even give a phonetic spelling for because the sound just isn’t comparable to any sound in the English, French, or probably any Western language. There was a solid five minutes while we were going over the Tikar alphabet, when my tutor kept saying one letter and I kept trying to repeat it, but I couldn’t get it right (apparently), even though I thought I was saying the same thing he was. Keep in mind that these Tikar lessons are conducted in French – so it’s like twice removed from my first language.
The lesson was really challenging and it didn’t help that there was a crowd of about ten little kids, all under the age of eight, watching and listening to me stumble stupidly through the lesson, while they repeated everything the tutor said in perfect Tikar pronunciation, in between giggling at me and calling me the Tikar word for “the white.” But despite all that, the entire time, I kept thinking how cool it was! I feel so fortunate to have the chance to learn Tikar. Even though I’m basically inept at the moment, I’m excited to see where I’ll be a few months from now. The thought of being able to converse in Tikar is thrilling. I’m really excited to continue my Tikar lessons. This first one was a big pick-me-up, or at least something that really brightened my day. I hope my lessons will be something I can and will continue to really look forward to.

aaaaand.... she rebounds

2007-12-22T16:07:00.000+01:00

Second week at post, finished. I’m doing much better since I last wrote. That first week was probably the toughest, but I’m feeling much better about village life now. First off, my house is much more in order. I’ve finally got some basic furnishings (a dresser, a bed, a bookshelf, a table and two chairs), so now my things are more organized. After three long months, I’m no longer living out of a suitcase… finally. Even though my living room and kitchen are virtually empty (and the other two rooms in my house totally empty), I can at least sleep somewhere, put my clothes and books somewhere, and sit somewhere. Huge improvements over before.

New and improved room – with dresser and carpet!

I also found some “magic chalk” that kills cockroaches. I had heard about this elusive chalk from other volunteers during stage, and had mentally noted that I would probably need to get my hands on some, though I was baffled as to how – was I really supposed to go to the market and ask for “magic chalk” and expect to get a straight answer? But, happily, I stumbled upon it at market, so now I wake up every morning to find an assortment of beetles, roaches, ants, and other creepy crawlies on their backs, still twitching a little, though definitely dead (the chalk apparently targets their nervous system). I prefer them dead to alive, so this is good.

Things are looking up in the realm of work, as well. Beginning with that second week, I began to work in earnest with Magloire on my job at the Centre d’Accueil Pour les Jeunes or CAPJ (literally: “Welcome Center for Youth”), the organization I’m officially partnered with. We spent an hour one day going over Magloire’s vision for the center, and I think this was my turning point, where things started to look up.

Magloire envisions that CAPJ will be, essentially, a youth center, with several objectives: (1) to provide youth with activities that focus their free time so they avoid risky behavior life drinking all day, unprotected sex, etc; (2) to educate youth about HIV/AIDS and/or other health issues that they identify as important; (3) to provide practical training and education to youth that can open them to more opportunities for their futures (for example, computer information classes). As he envisions it, the CAPJ will have several branches of different programs, one being the Centre d’Écoute. The Centre d’Écoute will basically be a peer educator program about HIV/AIDS and STIs, but he hopes to create programs in information technology (with computers), a design program, and others as well. This is all very exciting. At the moment, as far as I can tell, the CAPJ doesn’t have any youth involved in anything, nor are any programs really set up. This means we’ll be starting at square one by recruiting kids to be a part of the Centre d’Écoute, but once we start working with them, I can see how this CAPJ could really come off the ground and be an exciting way to engage youth and provide opportunity to improve their lives.

One of Magloire’s other visions is to create an Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PVVS, in French). This is challenging to do discreetly, because there is a lot of discrimination against people who are HIV+, despite a fairly widespread and accurate knowledge of how HIV is transmitted – for example, people won’t shake hands with someone who is HIV+, even though they know that this won’t cause HIV transmission. Generally speaking, therefore, people who are HIV+ usually don’t want their status broadcasted, especially in small villages like Ngambé Tikar where everyone knows everyone’s business; many HIV+ people try to keep their status hidden. To create and advertise publicly an organization for people living with HIV/AIDS would be like creating a flashing red neon sign that said “look! Here’s all the people in your community who are positive!” No one would join such an organization and willingly open themselves to discrimination like that. Magloire wants to use the youth center as a way to create a PVVS Association, but keep it hidden. This way, people won’t need to specify that they’re going to a meeting for PVVS, but they can say they’re going to a CAPJ meeting. It’s fairly ingenious, since the CAPJ will already have several branches of activities, so this could just be another one.

In any case, when Magloire explained this and I finally understood a bit more what my primary project will be here with the CAPJ, I was ecstatic! It’s all right up my alley – training peer educators, doing education about health (especially HIV/AIDS and STIs), working with teenagers, working to create an HIV/AIDS group – it’s really exciting. What is fun and exciting about working with an organization that is not yet formed is the chance to build it from the ground up – there are no rules; instead we get to create the rules, to set the standards, to reach for the stars. It leaves me feeling optimistic each time we talk about CAPJ, even though I know there will be many obstacles to its eventual success.

The Centre d’Accueil Pour les Jeunes with Magloire and Lydie, another woman who is involved at the center (and her kids)

This is the actual building, that is, the CAPJ itself. There is a lot of work to be done; Magloire wants to expand it and spruce it up quite a bit – add cement floors and all that jazz

I’ve also started to discover some secondary side projects that I think will be worthwhile – the principal of the local high school asked me if I wanted to teach an English class four times a week. I politely declined, because my job is not as an English teacher, but I think it could be a worthwhile side project to come in maybe once a week or every two weeks and lead conversational classes for more advanced students; I could even sneak in some sensibilisations about health topics by doing them in English. Another avenue for side projects is working with the health club at the high school; since they’re on holiday break now, I haven’t met with them yet, but I’m hoping it will be fun/worthwhile. Magloire has also created Club de l’Amitiés (literally: “friendship clubs”) at both of the elementary schools, which are comprised of elementary school students who do sensibilisations and animations about HIV and AIDS. Magloire said he created them because he thinks it’s never too early to begin talking and teaching about HIV, STIs and AIDS (I wish you could see how my heart nearly burst when he told me that). I’m hoping to work with these students as well. Other work includes going to the pygmy campements to see if there is some work there that may or may not be incorporated into projects at the CAPJ.

I’m also hoping that I may be able to find some work to do at the hospital. The hospital here is pretty spiffy – it is clean and appears to be well-run, and it has a doctor (I think most hospitals this rural do not) and a microscope, so they can do HIV, malaria, and other testing (again, I think microscopes are a sign of a well-run institution, since they are also hard to come by). Perhaps I could do rounds with the doctor, or provide some other sort of support. Who knows?

Another task for me is finding a tutor to begin learning the most commonly spoken local language here – Tikar. Peace Corps will reimburse volunteers who hire tutors to learn local languages for the first six months of service, so I really want to take advantage of this to learn Tikar. Thus far, I’ve learned just a few greeting phrases, and I have a long way to go. I recently found out the name of a man who teaches (taught?) Tikar at the elementary school, so I think he would be a good person to hire as a tutor.

In any case, I’m happy to find myself with my hands full with long-term home improvement projects, work projects, and the ever-continuing goal to meet people and make friends. Emotional state much improved: now at a seven or eight.

Two Years? Really?

2007-12-15T15:39:00.000+01:00

One week at post! That should feel like an accomplishment, and in some ways it does, but I also feel incredibly overwhelmed most of the time. This manifests itself in bizarre, wonderful ups (teachings some lady friends of Magloire’s how to make banana bread; telling jokes and people actually laughing) and some horrible, I-want-to-do-nothing-but-cry downs (what the hell am I supposed to do now?; this house sucks and I’m poor and cannot even afford to buy a chair).

I think on a scale of one to ten, one being the least happy, and ten the most, I average roughly a three or four at the moment. Ralph and I texted back and forth today, and he put it well when he said “I go from confidence to terror in a typical day.” I wrote back, “roughly the same for me, except I go from terror to more terror.” The main contributors to my unhappiness are (1) my housing conditions (2) work conditions and (3) already bummed about those things, it’s easy to start missing family and friends from the states and even other PCVs here who I’ve made friends with.

I’ll start with my house – I should describe it a bit anyhow. It’s four modest-sized rooms and a large living room, with a small front porch. One of the four rooms will be my kitchen and one is my bedroom. As for the other two, I don’t, at the moment, have the money or werewithal to begin to know what to do with them. The roof is corrugated tin, supported by wooden beams, which are on top of cement-covered mud-brick walls. From inside the house, in three of the rooms, you can see the corrugated tin roof; there is only plafond (or wooden ceiling) in my bedroom and the salon. This does not make me happy. For one, I think it is a security risk, and for two, it makes it too easy for bugs to get in.

Aside from that, though, my house kinda sucks because it’s very lacking in furniture and the PC settlement allowance was nowhere near enough for me to set up my house. I am living modestly indeed – at the moment, don’t even have a table and chairs and my settlement money is all spent (though I do have two stools)! My “kitchen” is thus rendered virtually useless though without bidons to collect enough water to do dishes, I suppose this is a moot point. I guess I never considered how nice it was to move into dorm rooms that already had basic furnishings: a stove, a sink, a countertop. My house was E-M-P-T-Y when I moved in. Just walls and floor and some ceiling. I guess I should be happy with what I got. I’m trying to be, but really, it sucks.

This is my room during the first week. Pretty much all of my belongings are in this one room since I have nowhere to really put anything

The one thing I am optimistic about is my front porch. My front lawn is really nicely shaded by five big trees and my porch will be perfect for lounging in comfy chairs or even a hammock. I dream of when I can afford these things and then sit out on my porch with a cup of tea on the misty, foggy, cool mornings here in comfort and face the day a happier person. Here is a photo of the back of my house. You can see three of the huge trees towering above the house, which are in the front yard and provide that wonderful shade.

My latrine and washing area are in back of the house, up a small hill, from which I have a lovely view of the village, since I lived kind of outside the main area. It is weirdly nice to have such a lovely view of village while squatting down and shitting.

The view from the latrine

I am getting used to the latrine and bucket bath, though the scarcity of water makes it harder to stay clean. That is, there are plenty of water sources in village, but I don’t have water containers yet to gather and store a lot of water at my house. I have two neighbors: the people who live next door to me and one of the mayor’s two wives across the street. My other neighbors are vast cornfields and two papaya trees next to my house, which is pretty sweet – free fruit! My next-door neighbors have goats and chickens that roam freely all over both our front and back yards, shitting everywhere and generally being a nuisance, and a pig and a turkey penned up in back.

Don’t let the ropes fool you, these goats in my backyard are not tied to anything.

The noises of my life are birds chirping in the early morning, wasps buzzing in and out of my window during the day (I think my house used to be their home) and grasshoppers singing in the evening, punctuated by the grunt of the pig or the occasional gobble-gobble of the turkey. One day, recently, I was laying down in my room reading. I had left the side door to my house open and a goat wandered in. When I noticed him sniffing around my bedroom door, I shrieked in surprise. He stopped cold, looked at me (I think noticing me for the first time), and took off out of my house. It’s these kinds of occurrences that make me feel like old MacDonald on the goddamn farm. That and the incessant cock-a-doodle-doo from the neighbor’s roosters (do they ever sleep?)

So having spent the better part of the first week trying to take care of some matters concerning the house, I’m starting to think about beginning work, or rather, what Americans would consider “work.” Really, just being here, meeting people, and trying to learn, observe village life is my job too, and I have been doing that. When I talk about beginning my work, I mean doing needs assessment with the various community groups. Magloire and I talked today about working with the health club at the local high school. Before we can start working with them, though, we need to meet with the responsible of the health club (ie the teacher in charge of the health club). By chance, we ran into him today and I was disappointed to discover that school vacation begins this coming Friday and we won’t be able to begin working with them until the beginning of January. Magloire says we can work with other groups in the meantime, which is fine, I guess, though I am confused about where to find these groups.

I guess what is unsettling is knowing even where to begin. Of course, I understood coming into Peace Corps that this would be part of my job: finding work, finding my way. I even asked for it. But really, it is a bit terrifying. I’m used to having an agenda everyday. Even during stage, there was ostensibly an agenda. Here, really, the first and most persistent question in my mind each day is: “what the hell am I supposed to do?” Magloire has been very helpful. Without him, I would probably spend the better part of each day crying. When we walk through town, he’s introducing me to people, trying to help me get to know people, the village. Sometimes, though, (okay most times) I feel like he is babysitting me – like I am a useless lump without any capabilities to do shit on my own. But then, without his constant aid, I kind of am a useless lump.

Oy. I wish this would get easier fast. I am already sick of this “character-building” bullshit. Before coming here, whenever I thought of Peace Corps in the abstract, I kind of knew there would be trying times, but I really had no idea how they would be difficult. Now here they are, staring me in the face, and the only thing comforting me is that I know it could be worse. That is, this sucks. I sincerely wish this didn’t suck, but I feel powerless to make it not suck. Well not powerless, so much as I know it’s going to take a lot of time before it’s better. Meanwhile, all I can do is sit and wait (figuratively and actually) until things improve. This is how I am sure that this is not the worst it could be, though: because I can envision and see that time will make it better. I think I will know the worst if/when I encounter it, because then I will not be able to see even a glimmer of hope for things to get better. I think that will be when my will is really tested. Probably, right now, this is just normal, beginning-of-service jitters.

I hope.

Small small make house

2007-12-11T15:04:00.000+01:00

So the next day in Bafoussam was actually far less painful than I thought it would be. Abba’s homestay mother had offered to meet us in Bafoussam and help us bargain at the market so we wouldn’t get ripped off. I managed to get many of the essentials (a cookstove, marmites, frying pan, cups, plates, silverware, a cake tin, a colander, mixing bowl, casserole dishes, a bucket, and a large container for storing water) without having to do any of the bargaining; plus her mother knew which stuff was quality and which was knockoff, so I think we got good stuff at a good price. Bargaining still stresses me out a little, so I was happy to get most of that done without having to deal with the headache of it. Plus, Abba’s mom was hilarious bargaining – she would make these priceless faces of disgust at certain price offers, and sometimes just wait around for five or ten minutes until the vendor gave the price she wanted.

I left Bafoussam the next day very early – I had the travel agency come and pick up my things at the hotel and then I met Magloire in Foumban. We left my things at his house while I got the remaining needed items (mattress, bottle of gas, sheets, pillows) in Foumban. Next we bought out an entire bush taxi (not cheap) to go straight to village, without the usual stop in Malentouen. Here are some photos from the trip:

The driver next to the bush taxi loaded down with all my crap. Notice that over half of the backseat is stuffed to the brim. Some things never change – I’m even a packrat in Africa.

This is right at the beginning of the dirt road after leaving Foumban. Notice the tiny dirt path snaking up the mountain in the distance. We would later mount that exact path in the bush taxi.

The “road” to village – it really is gorgeous. Breathtaking. Despite the fact that the road is really no more than a rocky dirt path.

Magloire helping to push the car out of an unexpectedly deep puddle (pond?) that the driver drove right into, causing flooding on the floors on the front seat. I was astonished that the engine wasn’t ruined by this.

We arrived, finally, in village on the 8^th around 5 PM – only about an hour and a half left of light in the day. The house would prove to be a much bigger headache than I imagined. My house was locked when we got there. Magloire ran off to see the landlady, but she didn’t have any keys. I climbed in through one of the windows to enter the house, and was kind of frightened by what I saw. The place was filthy – dirt and garbage littered all the floors. The wooden ceiling hadn’t been installed throughout the house, as it was supposed to be (my boss had given a rare 6-month rent advance so the ceiling would be done), and none of the door locks really worked. Also, the place was infested with wasps, ants, beetles, caterpillars, cockroaches, spiders – well, you name it, it lives in my house – and pigeons were living in the ceiling where there was ceiling (the living room area). Determined not to cry, I set up my still plastic-covered mattress on the floor, got out my sleeping bag, flashlight and some candles and set up camp while Magloire swept and washed some of the floors. That first night, I was a little on edge. I’ve heard enough stories form other PCVs to know that the most common crime is theft/robbery, and with all my possessions in one place, without a means to lock the house, I was freaked out.

I called my boss, Kim, the next day to discuss the issues with the house. She seemed upset that the ceiling wasn’t finished and called Magloire and we got to work taking care of things. The first thing was getting proper locks on the doors, which was surprisingly simple. Next we needed to get a carpenter to install wood panel ceilings throughout the house. The way Cameroonian houses are built here is with mud bricks, which are then covered with cement. The walls are topped by a corrugated tin roof on wooden support beams. Often this leaves a gap between the tin roof and the top of the mud-brick walls open to the outdoors. Wooden ceiling is thus installed in the house to deter thieves. The wooden ceiling was installed in my room and the living room, but not throughout the house, as it was supposed to be and the wooden shutters needed replacement (and the windows screening), so these were additional matters that needed addressing.

I pulled water from the well that is, thankfully, across the street, set up my stove and began boiling some water for drinking. Magloire and I started de-weeding the area around my side doorstep, and I started to feel better about the house.

Yesterday, we went and spoke to the head of the sawmill. He has been very helpful. When I came for site visit, he said he would have two beds made and a table and chairs, all ready to go when I arrived. Even though these things were not ready when I arrived, the only thing that remained was to varnish the bed. With luck I will get to pick these things up today and I will finally have a bed to sleep in. He also said he’d be happy to send over a carpenter to fix the ceilings and wooden window shutters, which might need replacing before I can set up window screens. Also, Magloire and I are going to talk to the mayor, hopefully today, about running a power line to my house, so I can have electricity from 6 PM to midnight, when they run their generator. All in all, I’m still living in a dump, but things are looking up.

What is abundantly clear, however, is that my house is going to need a lot of work before I call it a home. In America, I think safety and/or health codes would prohibit someone from living there. Magloire and I keep saying that petit à petit (little by little), it will get better. But I have yet to get a good night’s rest sleeping on my feather down sleeping bag which causes me to sweat profusely. So until some very basics regarding the house are taken care of, I’m not starting my work. Which kind of sucks, but I think I would cry if I had to work all day and then come home to this mess that I’m supposed to call my house.

Small small catch monkey.

Onward ho

2007-12-06T18:41:00.000+01:00

Today we left, no longer as trainees, but as official Peace Corps Volunteers, for our respective posts. Yesterday was our swearing-in ceremony, which was almost a bit anti-climatic because it was pretty boring and there was an almost palpable feeling of “thank GOD we are done with training.” After the ceremony and a catered lunch, I went home to finish packing.

That afternoon, the Peace Corps drivers came by everyone’s house and collected their luggage and brought it to the training site, and told us to be at the training site today (the 6th) at one of three times, based on which large city we were going to. The crew of five people headed towards Bafoussam (myself included) were scheduled to leave at 8:00 AM, but by 8:30, the people who were supposed to leave at 7 AM had just left. Needless to say, we finally got out of Bangangté at around 9:30, and after traveling all of about a third of a mile, the van in front of us (headed for Bamenda) broke down, and we had to stop. Fortunately, this was a short-lived stop, and in about 5 minutes, we were on our way again. We arrived in Bafoussam at about 10:30, and Abba and I checked into our hotel and unloaded all of our crap. We then set off right away to take care of necessary money issues – namely, we had had Peace Corps wire the majority of our money to Bafoussam so we didn’t have to worry about traveling with it, and we needed to the find the Express Union where it was wired to.

Well, we asked about five people where to find the Express Union, and each sent us searching in a different direction than we had just come from, only for us to discover that they had directed us to yet another Western Union, not an Express Union. We finally hopped in a cab and found the Express Union. The process of picking up our money was not overly complicated, and the next step was setting up a bank account at the bank of our choice. This would (apparently) not be so simple.

We arrived at the bank around 12:25, and asked where to find the person who could help us set up bank accounts. When we finally found him, he told us to come back tomorrow morning. However, we don’t have a ton of time in Bafoussam and need to do shopping for household stuff tomorrow, so we persisted, and he started us on the epic and unending process of setting up a bank account. We should have been suspicious when, about a half hour into the paperwork, he said, in English (I guess he thought he didn’t understand French very well) “this is very difficult, very difficult.” He then proceeded to spend the next three long, torturous hours filling out the paperwork for three of us to open bank accounts. Which was shocking considering he was doing something for those entire three hours, but god only knows what and why it took so long. As far as I could tell, there were about two quite basic forms – asking for our names, addresses, phone numbers, place of birth, parents’ names and a signature. I don’t know how it took three hours to fill out those forms, but it did. And I was starving, tired, and irritated that I had forgotten to bring something to do during that time. After opening accounts, the plan was to deposit some of our money into the accounts. At about 3:27, I asked him what the bank’s hours were. 8 AM – 3:30 PM. Fantastic. He had just finished with my account, so while he finished up Ralph and Abba’s, I went to the cashier to deposit some money.

I thought he needed to finalize something else with us after the deposit, so I went back to his office after making my deposit. By this time, Ralph and Abba had finished with him, so he was alone in his office. I was absolutely thrilled to have this conversation:

Me: Est-ce qu’il y a des autres choses à faire?

Him [with a sly grin]: Tu veux épouser un Camerounaise?

Me [grossed out and not wanting to encourage where this was going]: Non, pas de tout

Him: Est-ce que c’est parce que les Camerounaises sont pauvres?

Me : No. Est-ce qu’il y a des autres choses que je dois faire pour le compte?

Just what I wanted after an exhausting day of wandering all around a hot, smoky, crowded city – an offer of marriage from a complete stranger. Glad this day is over.

some fotes

2007-12-02T17:14:00.000+01:00

Because we're living in a lap of luxury here in the case in Yaounde, replete with hot showers (third one in three months!), a washing machine and dryer (!), TV and movies, and most importantly, FAST internet. Picture posting time!!!

This is me and my host sister, Abigail. Also known as Sassy McSasster.

Me with the homestay siblings: (from left: Abby, me, Patou, Yoyo)

A nice lady making beignets. Some of my favorite food. yummmm.

I went on a bikeride yesterday through the West Province with some other trainees. We left at 8 AM, finished around 2 PM, completely, 100 percent exhausted after tackling some incredible hills, like this one. By the end of the day my legs were like jelly, but we'd seen some absolutely breaktaking sites...

...like this.

Happy World AIDS Day Eve

2007-11-30T17:08:00.000+01:00

As part of PST, all of the health trainees have had to work with one of five community groups throughout training to develop a final project to be done at the end of training. I was working with a community group of people living with HIV/AIDS, and today, we carried out our final project as part of World AIDS Day (December 1). We went to a local high school with a banner we had made that said (in French): “Protect yourself. Don’t be scared to get tested.” The banner had a picture of one person looking nervous and anxious on the left with question marks are around her head. On the right, we drew a picture of several people dancing together, some with a “+” above their head and some with a “-” above their head. Our community group had identified several messages as important to get across: 1) that people who were HIV+ and people who were HIV- needed to work together to reduce discrimination in the community; and 2) that it was important for people to know their status so that they could then begin to take care of themselves properly if they were HIV+ and they could continue to avoid contracting HIV if they were HIV-.

This banner was meant to illustrate these ideas – that people who are seropositive and seronegative can live and work together happily, and that people who know their status (whatever that status may be) are able to live happier, healthier lives. Below the poster, we had a blank space and we wrote above it, “I promise to live positively with everyone without discrimination.” When we were at the high school today, we asked students to sign it, and after they signed it, we gave them a pamphlet about HIV that we had made. Meanwhile, another group of trainees had worked with a health club in the high school itself, and they led some animations, or activities which were meant to teach about HIV – and many people in the high school participated in those.

I have been dreading this for awhile, because I thought it would be disastrous, but it turned out surprisingly well. For some reason, prior to this, I expected that animations here would be a lot more challenging than any similar work I’d done in the US – they’d have to be really well planned to do any good; furthermore, I thought that they wouldn’t be any good if they didn’t reach or impact a majority of the audience. I’m also accustomed to learning taking place in a classroom, according to a set schedule and set times. However, today, we came during the high school’s lunch break and did this (what seemed like very random) AIDS day animation, and the events turned out not just okay, but pretty well. While to me, it’s really bizarre to go and do animations about HIV during students’ lunch period, it’s actually not that crazy here.
I think this was an important lesson for me, because it helped me realize that my work here won’t be so different from my work with Peer Health Exchange. When doing peer education with PHE, I always knew that any time we taught a workshop, we were probably only really reaching a minority of students – some students just don’t care and aren’t that interested. That’s okay, though, because you teach for that minority of students who do care, who do learn, and who, in turn, make the world a slightly better place. Today, I learned that the same was true here. While I know that not everyone understood everything that happened today, some kids may have learned something or thought about HIV in a different way.

I’ll close with an anecdote that made me happy. A current volunteer has been here this week, helping us out with our final community group projects, and she said she heard two girls at the high school talking to each other about our banner. One girl asked the other what the banner was all about. The second girl replied, “well if you sign it, it means that if you get tested and you have HIV, we can still be friends.”

business matters

2007-11-27T12:03:00.000+01:00

I've been bored lately with training, and spent half of yesterday making a map of my village on the computer. Check it out!Also, the next few days will be busy as stage is coming to a close, and everyone will be trying to go to the cybercafé, so I expect it to be difficult for me to access my email. Here is a schedule of events for the next few days. Don't worry, I'll be alive, just a little more MIA than usual.

Saturday Dec 1: Celebratory dinner with trainees, trainers, and homestay families
Sunday Dec 2: Trainees travel to Yaoundé, stay at the Peace Corps office for two nights while setting up banking and doing "bridge to post"
Tuesday Dec 4: Trainees return to Bangangté and homestay families
Wednesday Dec 5: Swearing-In Ceremony! Country Director, APCDs, and all of Bangangté will be there! woo hoo! By the end of the day, we will officially be Peace Corps Volunteers, no longer just measly Trainees.
Thursday Dec 6: Volunteers depart for their posts

My schedule after that is a bit hairy right now, as it appears to be quite the challenge to find a route to my post that doesn't involve me crossing rivers in very unstable canoes, only a problem when you consider that I will be traveling with the 80 lbs of stuff that I brought here plus the about 100 lbs of stuff that Peace Corps has given me (many books, an enormous trunk, a bike), plus whatever other items I will have purchased to set up my home (e.g. kitchen supplies, food, huge gas tank, a camping stove) so I may or may not be staying in Yaoundé, Bafia, and/or Bafoussam for a night or two before finally arriving at post. Suffice it to say that I should finally, somehow, get to post around Dec 8 or 9. Once there, I don't know how soon it will be before I can get to the internet.

Take home message: if you don't hear from me in about a month (or more), don't worry. That's normal. Hopefully, I'll talk to you... soon (but remember that soon is a relative term).

Bon appetit

2007-11-25T11:46:00.001+01:00

I made dinner for my homestay family tonight. I had brought up the idea Monday night, saying “you know, Papa, I’d like to cook for the family sometime.” He replied, “well, we’ve been waiting. You said you’d do it so long ago, I didn’t know why you didn’t do it sooner. You can do it whenever you want.” News to me. I wasn’t aware I’d promised any such thing, though at that moment, a conversation about me cooking for the family wafted vaguely through my memory – I wondered if we’d had some miscommunication in French. “This weekend,” I promised, “Saturday or probably Sunday.”

So I found myself buying ingredients in market on Saturday. I had in mind a fairly simple meal, easy to make up on the spot without a recipe: fresh tomato sauce (with onions, garlic, green peppers) and pasta with a side of green beans with sautéed onions and garlic. I ran into a snafu this morning, though, when my homestay mother informed me that they had just run out of gas for the sole gas burner that they owned. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was an attempt to get me to pay to refill the gas container, though I kept this to myself. “I can wait to make dinner until it’s refilled,” I said. She didn’t respond. Whether or not the gas was gone, though, I knew that if I wanted to make dinner tonight, I’d have to use the traditional method of cook-fire. Seeing as how I’d already bought all the ingredients, and dropped about 1500 CFA on them (enough to feed me lunch for about three days), I wasn’t about to not make dinner.

So at around 4:15 this afternoon, I dragged my ass out of my room and began chopping with a dull knife, using a marmite lid as a cutting board. I prepared the green beans first and quickly discovered that cooking with a fire is not as easy as it may seem. The onions got burned before the green beans were fully cooked, so I had to take them off the fire, a little too crispy. No matter, I continued with the pasta – had my little sister put some water on to boil. The pasta cooked quickly, I got my little brother to scoop it out of the water with a large spoon, since I didn’t see any strainers available. Both my sister and brother questioned me at this point: was the pasta really done? Yes, I answered; in America, we often ate pasta al dente, I said. I could understand where their confusion stemmed from however. The only pasta I’ve eaten in this house is more than thoroughly cooked through, almost to the point of mush. This hadn’t really bothered me though, since it was usually mixed in with a general mush of a meal – potato, pasta, and a tiny bit of vegetables. I knew the pasta cooked al dente might be new to them, but wasn’t that the point? Cultural exchange.

The final step was the tomato sauce. I chopped up 14 small tomatos, four small green peppers, three onions, and a couple cloves of crushed garlic. Threw it all in a pot and let it simmer. My little sister laughed when I asked for sugar – but really, doesn’t good tomato sauce have at least a hint of it? As the sauce cooked, I started to worry that maybe I had underestimated, not bought enough. Usually my family only eats once or twice a day – dinner is often a big meal. What if there wasn’t enough food?

Silly me, I shouldn’t have worried.

About two and a half hours after I began, dinner was finally ready. I tried to gather up my various family members to eat. I was starving – my hair and clothes reeked of smoke, my hands were sooty and greasy from fanning the coals of the fire with a grimy plastic lid when the fire died down, my eyes still watered from breathing in too much smoke. I knew that we’d have to wait to eat until my father showed up. Where was papa, I asked? Taking a shower, my sister said. Should we wait for him, I asked. Yes, my little sister said. But I’m hungry, I replied. Then eat, she said. I was tempted to start, but I knew I should wait.

A half hour later, my entire family gathered around the table in the living room (save my mother), ready to eat dinner together. I was kind of pleased with myself – I thought the food looked delicious and moreover, my cooking had brought everyone to the same table to eat together for the first time since I’d been in their home. Usually, everyone eats in random parts of the house, the living room reserved for the most important people in the house (my father and I, obviously). I had not once before eaten with my siblings. My father happily asked me to explain what was for dinner. I showed him how I shoveled beans on my plate, then pasta, and then doused my pasta with the spoonfuls of tomato sauce. Pleased, and definitely amused at me, he followed suite. Then my siblings.

My homestay father gushed about how good it was, finished everything on his plate – “I didn’t know you were such a good cook! You should cook all of our meals!” My siblings didn’t serve themselves very hearty portions, and my sister (the youngest) didn’t finish what she had on her plate. I was again nervous that I hadn’t made enough – I knew they were saving some for my mother who wasn’t home yet. I shouldn’t have worried though. My mother’s response confirmed my sneaking feeling that the food was just a tad too foreign to them, and quite unappetizing.

When my homestay mother came home, my father pointed to the food and told her that what was left was for her. She lifted the lid from each casserole dish and examined the contents, perhaps unaware that I was watching her with anticipation. After she looked at the last dish, the tomato sauce, she made a face of disgust. She then sat down, added a scoop of pasta and about three pieces of chopped tomato to her plate, took two bites and proclaimed herself finished. “You didn’t like it?” I asked. “I’m not feeling well,” she said, “I don’t have an appetite.” Hmmm, I thought, my bullshit-meter buzzing in my ear, that sounds like something I would say when I don’t want to eat that fish head that you put on my plate. I guess Cameroonians and Americans politely decline food they find repulsive with the same innocent words.

As it turns out, I didn’t need to worry about there being enough, because there was a ton of leftover tomato sauce and green beans. The only thing they finished was the pasta. I asked my little sister if she didn’t like the meal. No, we all liked it, she said. But their hungry bellies and all the leftover food told a different story.

Despite the hard work, and the fact that no one liked my delicious, nutritious, vegetarian meal except for me (and maybe my homestay father), I was really happy I did this, and at least fairly amused at their response of disgust to my most simple of American dishes. For one, I hope the thought may have crossed their minds: “this food is very foreign – hmm, I wonder if Rebby ever thinks that way about our food?” Second, my little sister Abby seemed very tickled with the whole process of me cooking. From the beginning of homestay I’ve wanted her approval, in some bizarre fashion. But she’s a bit of an oddball, often grumpy, hungry or both, and asking me to buy her food. Her most recent development is running and hiding from me when she sees me walking down the street, though I cannot fathom why. Whenever she is asked to do a chore, such as cleaning dishes or cleaning the floor, or being sent to fetch something, she usually dawdles a bit first, sulking, scowling, knowing she has to do it, but wanting to refuse. Eventually, she’ll do as she’s told, frowning the entire way. Lately I’ve felt a bit defeated, like she just has a permanent scowl. In any case, tonight, she smiled and laughed with me (at me?) as she helped me cook dinner. And she did it willingly, for once, as if she was enjoying the experience. For once, helping out with chores didn’t bring that perma-scowl, but chuckles and smiles instead.

So, taking stock: a family goes to bed hungry but amused after watching the silly American struggle to use a fire to cook a meal that was just ridiculous (where was the meat?! The huge quantities of carbohydrates?!). A girl, at the bottom of a gender and age hierarchy, who gets dumped on quite a bit by every member of the family, got joy out of helping out with tasks that usually serve only to make her angry. And I got to make a meal that pleased my stomach (I’ll even get to have a tasty lunch of leftovers tomorrow). All in all, I'm pleased.

Happy Needless Turkey Murder Day!

2007-11-22T14:53:00.000+01:00

[** I finally figured out how to change the post date on my blog entries. All of the dates should be correct now and in chronological order**]

Phew, it seems that as stage draws to a close, things are happening faster, and much more is happening everyday. It’s kind of like the entire Peace Corps experience in miniature – people always say that the first year is very slow, but the second year flies by. Stage passed quite slowly at first, but now I can’t believe it’s almost over (and I’m thrilled). Anyhow, yesterday was a day of many things, and today is Thanksgiving, so I’d like to share a bit about all of that, and how we stagiares are handling Tday.

So, yesterday, the health group went to a local high school and taught a workshop on HIV/AIDS. David and I (both trainees) and Stacy (a current PCV) all facilitated. The workshop was only about 45 minutes, and in French. Initially, I had thought that I would have no trouble – I’ve facilitated many workshops before, and getting up in front of people has never seemed difficult to me before. But as soon as we got to the classroom, I realized how in over my head I was. We had only planned the workshop a few hours before doing it, and hadn’t rehearsed it at all. As soon as we were up there, in front of about 40-50 students, plus all of the trainees, I just completely blanked – forgot everything we’d planned. The kids were fantastic, very well-behaved, and very participatory. I had some trouble understanding the students speaking in French, which made it very difficult to check whether they understood. Stacy, fortunately, was on top of it, and did an amazing job holding the workshop together. It was a good reality check for me, though, about how difficult it’s going to be to facilitate these workshops, and how much work I will need to put into doing them well, should I do them.

Immediately after that, my group of trainees had a meeting with our community group. One of the projects for the health program involves meeting roughly weekly with a community group (either of women, or a high school group, or with a group of people living with HIV/AIDS) and planning an activity that we are going to do at the end of stage to show what we’ve done. My group is the local PLWHA, and all along the meetings we’ve had with them have seemed to go nowhere. I’ve often thought – how is this ever going to culminate in anything? Next week is when we’re supposed to have our big culminating activity and be done with this project, so we finally needed to settle on something to do with the group. We’ve wanted the activity to be community-group-led, but it’s just been going too slow, and I think we finally realized that we just need to take charge and do some of the work in order to get it done. We kind of made decisions and just told the group what we’re going to do, and kind of hoped that they’d be on board. It’s really not ideal, but it was a good reality check for me in realizing just how long it might take to get things accomplished when at post and working with Cameroonian groups.

The things that have slowed the whole process: the American idea of meetings is very streamlined – people generally understand how things are run and can follow instructions easily. The idea of what one accomplishes in a meeting doesn’t really match up here; things are just slower. Also, Cameroonians often, just in conversation, repeat things a lot, so this can slow things down when you have to repeat yourself a lot. The language and cultural barrier also really slows things down. Even if I explain something in perfect French, I might be explaining it in terms that are really not comprehensible in a Cameroonian cultural context. For example, I had looked up the translation for the word, “banner,” but when I said this could be something we could make, one of the PLWHA group members asked what it was. I guess banners just aren’t a thing here. I think it’s especially tough to lead meetings as trainees when we don’t completely understand the purpose of what we’re doing with these groups. In any case, I think our project, whatever it is, will turn out kind of terribly, but it is at least good for me to think about how slowly projects may go during my service.

Phew, so continuing with the whirlwind day – we ended the day with a staff meeting, and afterward, we found out that one of our fellow stagiares has been kicked out of Peace Corps Cameroon. I don’t think my blog is really an appropriate forum to discuss the details of what happened or why she was kicked out, but suffice it to say that most people were very upset about it. It kind of threw me into a bit of shock and put a damper on my mood, especially right before Thanksgiving. I had been really excited about everyone’s ideas of what we’re going to make for Tday, and how everyone’s really pulling together to enjoy the day and have a huge feast (for 39 trainees and the trainers!). This event really just dampened my spirits and even made me question the operation of the Peace Corps.

But today is another day – Thanksgiving, no less! We had bought eleven chickens to prepare for Tday (turkey is not really available), and we had to begin our work with the chickens by killing them, de-feathering them, and then gutting them, removing all the icky organs and then finally peeling the skin and cleaning all the pieces of meat. It was a very intense process. A few of the trainees tried their hands at killing the chickens by cutting their throat, myself included.

Some of you might say that this is gruesome, but honestly, I think it’s a really good experience to go through if you eat meat. I’ve always thoughtlessly pulled chicken breasts off the grocery store shelves. Killing the chicken myself, and going through the entire process of preparing it to eat was eye-opening, and makes me appreciate the process of food production in a way that I didn’t even think I needed to appreciate it.

I also prepared banana bread last night – I made two loaves, one for my family, and one for the thanksgiving day fête. It was fun to show my family how to make it, and I think they really enjoyed the finished product – they ate the entire loaf in about 5 minutes without offering me a piece. The best part of it was that I cooked the banana bread on a wood-fire! My family doesn’t have a stove, but you can turn any old stove burner or fire into a stove using a large marmite (which is basically a huge saucepan with a lid), putting sand on the bottom and then putting the item you’re baking on the sand. It was dope, and I felt so accomplished.

So, anyhow, while I do miss family and friends in the states, and the traditional Thanksgiving day festivities, our celebration here is set to be really great. One of the perks of celebrating Thanksgiving in a foreign country is that it’s not a holiday here, it’s just another day. So if anyone forgot to buy some ingredients for something – no problem, all the stores are open, as usual. Everyone is contributing something different and I’m really excited for all of it – so far we’ve got a chocolate cake, a few banana breads, chocolate chip cookies, a pumpkin (or squash) pie, apple pie, pineapple pie, banana cream pudding, 11 marinated chickens, a squash puree potash-type soup, onion rings (made from scratch), deviled potatoes, mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans, sautéed squash, stuffing, and cabbage caraway soup. There’s probably more, but I don’t know what it is yet. We even got the afternoon off from training. It’s so great to spend the day with my fellow trainees, cooking, prepping food, baking, and then eating. One of the trainees is obsessed with Christmas, so he is working on making 18 Christmas stockings. Some of the trainees started a “five-piece Irish death-metal acoustic jam band” at the beginning of stage, and they’re set to perform five songs tonight, complete with dancers and a choreographed dance. We’re quite the motley crew. I love this day!

Are we there yet?

2007-11-19T12:07:00.000+01:00

So training has officially become a total drag. Mostly, I feel frustrated because time is used so inefficiently and, moreover, I have very little control over my time. We are supposed to be at the training site from 7:30 AM til 4:30 PM everyday, and then home by curfew at 6 PM. We do get an hour and a half for lunch, but taken in total, this leaves us only about an hour and a half at a time to do anything. And I’m not just talking about hanging out with friends. With new regulations, we (the trainees) are permitted to go out past curfew only on Saturday and Sunday and Wednesday, the night of our weekly dinners together. I am actually feeling okay about the amount of time I spend with other the other stagiares. However, just to get little errands or chores done or to do everyday tasks to stay on top of my life usually take more time than that. Moreover, there’s often dead time during the day that is unplanned for – a training session will end early, or a guest speaker won’t show up on time because the roads are so bad, so then you’re just sitting, waiting for things to pick back up. Sometimes the training sessions are painfully boring and seem basically irrelevant to my work as a Health volunteer – example: a two-hour tech session on how to raise cane rats. Pretty much the only thing there IS time for during these short breaks is eating. Which might explain why I’ve probably gained about 10 pounds since arriving here. That, and my near-addiction to chocolate bars and cookies here.

So, as a stress reliever, this past weekend, I finally decided to go out at night. I’ve been avoiding it, because my family’s home has a large gate surrounding it, which they lock at nightfall. I feel bad coming home late and ringing the doorbell to wake my little brother to come open the gate for me. But, I’ve realized that I need to get out sometimes for my own sanity. And I’ve finally begun to feel a bit more comfortable in town, and even walking home at night by myself, if necessary. Me and about eight others went to this bar that had a pool table (!), drinks, and a club-type scene in the back. It was good time – we ate, drank, danced. I even played a round of pool. One of my favorite things was that in the club-type area in the back of the bar, there was a large mirror (actually one of the only full-length mirrors I’ve seen here), and people just stood in front of it, dancing, and watching themselves dance. It was hilarious. The place wasn’t exactly kicking, but we were having fun. Apparently, the nightclubs pick up a lot more later in the night – around midnight or one – but I didn’t want to be too rude to my family by returning too late so I went home around 10 PM. It was raining lightly, and I had stupidly worn my flip flops, so while me and Danny drunkenly walked home in the rain and mud, belting out songs, my flip flops kicked up mud on the back of my skirt, which I only discovered the next morning. It almost felt just like a night out in New York – even the next morning, one of my friends stopped by to let me know about how she didn’t quite remember how her night ended, except that she did know that she threw up. Twice.

In other news, I feel very at home here in Bangangté. I went for an hour-long run this morning, a bit out of town, and after tackling a number of large hills, I encountered a plateau at the top of one hill that was just gorgeous. I wished I had my camera, as I have at many moments while running. It figures that just as I get to know the environs, to make some local friends, to feel comfortable, I’m going to have to pack up and move to the middle of NOWHERE. My closest postmate is a half-day away, and I’ve come to understand that this is a bit intense, even by Peace Corps standards. The next closest postmate after that is surely a full day away; however, once I travel for that whole day, I have many options, since the full day will bring me to Baffousam, which is only an hour or less away from where many of my fellow trainees are posted. Some current volunteers are even posted in Baffoussam.

I’m realizing more and more that almost anything you might want can probably be found in Cameroon. Granted, it will be in the big cities (Douala, Yaoundé, Baffousam), which will mean a lot of traveling to get there, and then of course, a decent amount of searching once in that city to find whatever it is you want. But. It is possible. Right before swearing-in, all the trainees are going to stay for two nights in Yaoundé to get banking set up. I’ve been dreaming about eating milkshakes and pizza, which I’m told are available. Although the two will cost probably more than an entire month’s living expenses while at post, I don’t care. It’s worth it to splurge every now and again.

And besides that, I’m stoked on some of the Cameroonian foods, which you can’t find in America. A few of my favorites: batons de manioc (literally manioc sticks) – the texture is just about the same as the tapioca balls in bubble tea, but it’s in stick form – it almost resembles a piece of string cheese – floppy, white – but a tiny bit thicker and doubly long. It has very little flavor, but a strong smell, which deters most people (I don’t really notice it). It’s fun to chew on, satisfies my oral fixation for lack of chewing gum. I also suspect that it would be delicious with some sort of dipping sauce, though I’ve yet to discover one that will work well for this purpose. Batons are sold wrapped up in banana leaves (because after the batter is prepared, it’s poured into banana leaves and then steamed), and sold 100 CFA for a pack of eight. I’ve also come to love omelettes de spaghetti and omelettes d’haricots. That is, egg omelettes with cooked spaghetti or beans as the filling. Much better than you might at first think. Usually, there’s a bit of piment (spicy pepper flavoring), onions, tomato, and garlic thrown in too, so it pleasantly sets your mouth on fire. When the pasta omelette is cooked well, the edges of the pasta get fried and crispy – it’s delicious. Beignets and beans is another favorite. Mami’s will often perch themselves on a stool in market, or wherever they can find a spot, set up a huge vat of oil over a fire and then roll these balls of batter with one hand and then toss these balls of delicious right into the boiling oil. Hot, fresh beignets are awesome. I’ve also discovered some that are made from banana batter, instead of just being plain flavored. The beignets are often served with beans. It’s a nice combo. It doesn’t hurt that some of the local fruit is also some of my favorites – bananas, grapefruits, oranges, papaya, pineapple, and I can’t wait for mango season.

And, I’m getting better at bargaining. Which is necessary. Sometimes things have set prices, like when you go into a boutique or a restaurant. However, I’ve been getting such a kick out of bargaining, that when I went to buy candles the other day (definitely a set-price item), I couldn’t help but try my luck at bargaining. And I did well for myself, convincing the boutique owner to give me one of the candles as a “petit cadeau” (a little gift). Bargaining has started to become a game to me – seeing how much I can get someone to knock down the price. And I like the way Cameroonians do it. Sometimes the bargaining can get a bit intense, seeming almost unfriendly, like either side is very unhappy with what’s happening. However, after the price is set, if you continue with a short conversation – inquiring after the business of the day, the weather, etc – the person often becomes friendly, amicable. It’s as if this unpleasant bargaining thing must be taken care of – but once it’s over, it’s over; life can resume in a friendly, happy manner.

So, all is well here, for the moment. Exciting things are coming up soon, with swearing-in and moving to post. I just can’t wait for training to be over.

Meditations on traveling in Cameroon

2007-11-15T17:05:00.000+01:00

Oh and one more thing. My first real experiences with traveling in country bush taxis left me feeling many things. I thought it’d be interesting to share some photos and some of my thoughts that I had while traveling:

- Jesus Christ, how are nine adults going to fit in this tiny car? [5 minutes later] Oh. Ow. That’s how.

- Wow, this countryside is so gorgeous. [trying to get more photos up]

- I am the luckiest person alive to be seeing and experiencing this right now [stupid grin on my face]

- Ohmygod, I am going to die now.

- Please don’t break down, please don’t break down, please don’t break down…

- Please don’t get stuck, please don’t get stuck, please don’t get stuck…

- I wonder how I can move my (insert body part here – arm, leg, buttcheek, hand, head, you get the idea) so that it won’t fall asleep.

- So this is why travel time depends on road conditions.

- Man, if the government would just pave these roads, I bet that would result in an almost immediate jumpstart to the economy, because then this two and half hour ride to go 50 km (~30 miles) would only take about 40 minutes instead and fewer delivery trucks would fall over/get stuck/have shot suspension systems due to the roads that cause them to break down all the time.

- So “good driver” has a whole new meaning here.

- No, no, I am going to die now.

- If Cameroon somehow managed to put itself together a little, have a little bit of infrastructure, have more paved roads, and have an actual tourist industry, this would be a tourist hotspot because it’s so friggin beautiful.

- [During a bush taxi ride with fourteen people in/on the car] I wonder what’s the most number of people that have been crammed into a bush taxi (ie 4-door sedan). I bet somewhere around 25. Hmm, that seems like a lot, maybe less. Maybe only 22 or 23.

- That’s ironic. The truck that fell over and is now stuck in the mud has the logo, “Africa moves, we do too!” on it.

- Well at least I don’t feel bad about not packing light – the guy next to me has a 200-lb sack of rice strapped to the roof and a stalk of 100 plantains in the trunk.

- I really don’t think it’s fair to call that a road

- Did we almost just tip over?

- Is that corn kernels leaking from a bag strapped to the roof? Oh good, the guys who are riding on the roof are taking care of it so we don’t have to stop.

A month in a week.

2007-11-14T16:49:00.000+01:00

So I feel I should address my site visit. It was: exciting, fun, boring, and interesting, and more than anything else, utterly and completely overwhelming – all at one point or another. Ngambé Tikar is, as I detailed in my last post, fairly far away from Bangangté. By luck, we managed to get there in one day, but I think that is a bit unusual, and I also think it takes longer leaving my tiny village then coming to, since only one car per day leaves to go in the various directions that radiate out from the village. And, that one car will wait until it is FULL before leaving.

We arrived in village at around 4 PM. My counterpart, Magloire, who has enough energy to fuel two or three people, was ready go and do stuff, but I was exhausted from riding in cramped bush taxis for 9 hours in the hot hot sun. I took a bucket bath and called it a day and passed out. I got up early the next morning, and went running with Magloire. He’s a superstar runner (and superstar soccer player), and basically put me to shame. Meanwhile, everyone was just stop-walking, jaw-dropping staring at us (or rather, me) while running, so that was a bit uncomfortable.

After bathing, we began meeting EVERYONE important in village. It’s not uncommon to have many important people in village, and as someone new, it’s pretty important for me to know these people. I should preface this by saying that EVERYONE we met was incredibly welcoming, friendly, and told me something along the lines of their home was my home, which was really nice to hear. I felt incredibly welcomed into my village and it seemed that people were thrilled to have me. I felt even more fortunate later, when I was staying with a current PCV in a nearby village, and she told me her story of meeting the mayor of her village [see below]. My counterpart even told me a very endearing story about how they’ve been trying to make accommodations to get a volunteer in Ngambé Tikar for more than a year, and he was SO excited to finally have one.

Anyhow, we began with the député and then tried to find the priest of the Catholic mission, but he wasn’t there; we walked to the house of the chef du village (village chief), who called Magloire his “son,” and said if I ever had problems, to come see him. The chef du village is a bit of an intellectual and told me that he went to school in Minnesota (!) and played in the snow and built snowmen, etc etc. So that was cool. Next, we went to see the local hospital/center du santé, which was one of my favorite things. I met with the chief doctor, who is actually the only doctor who works there, and he was nice enough to give us a proper tour of the hospital. The hospital is incredibly clean and appears to be well-run – the doc told me he has a staff of 15 people. It even has a microscope in their lab!! Which is unusual, especially for such a small village. Also, they had ingeniously set up the microscope so that the direct sunlight came straight thru the window to light up the slides. With this, they can do testing for HIV, malaria, and any other illness that requires a scope. Dope.

Anyhow, we then met the chief of the gendarmerie, sous-prefect and the adjoint sous-prefect, who basically acts as sous-prefect when the sous-prefect is away (I don’t completely understand what the sous-prefect does or what that means, but I do know that prefects and sous-prefects are Important People in Cameroonian culture). Also, the sous-prefecture is on a large hill that overlooks my town and the surrounding scenery, so from there, you can really see how the village is divided between forest and savannah. It’s a gorgeous view, which, fortunately, is pretty close to my house. I’m thinking that it will be nice to trek up the hill every now and again, just for the view.

Like I said, my house is quite close to the gendarmerie and the sous-prefecture, so we also saw that. It seems like it’ll be nice – and really fun to put together. Right now it’s completely empty. It has a pretty large living room area and four modestly-sized rooms. I’m hoping to turn one room into a kitchen space, one into a study, and the other two into bedrooms. My pit latrine and shower area are in a separate “building,” about 15-20 feet from the house (which is probably good). There was also a large turkey wandering around my house, which seemed a bit strange, since I haven’t seen any of those yet. Magloire asked me what I thought of the house, and I said I thought it was nice. He seemed quite relieved and told me that he had been really nervous for me to see it, and was thus thrilled that I found it acceptable. Anyhow, after meeting so many people, I was totally pooped and the sun was really roaring. We grabbed a bite to eat and then I passed out for five hours until dinner time.

That first day was the hardest. I was just totally overwhelmed, and I couldn’t take in ANYTHING. We met so many people, and the sun was so hot and we walked all over, that I was kind of in shock. I even completely lost my appetite. The next day, I was a bit apprehensive to even face the day, but I knew we had a lot to do, so eventually I dragged myself out of bed. Over the course of the three days there, we finally met the head of the Catholic mission, the head of the sawmill that is in town, and the mayor. Everyone was consistently welcoming, friendly, fantastic, and said that I could come to them for anything. Since there’s no furniture to buy in town, the head of the sawmill even offered to have two beds and a table and chair built and ready for me when I arrive, since they have a carpenter on staff. It was a relief to be so unconditionally welcomed. And Magloire has been a remarkable counterpart. He let me stay in his home (honestly, there wasn’t really anywhere else for me to stay in my tiny, tiny village); and I feel especially fortunate, because he just seems incredibly motivated, energetic, idealistic, progressive and simply fantastic; in essence, a rarity in Cameroon.

I will share several good signs that I think indicate how great he will be to work with. First of all, one of the first things he said to me was that he wants to create something concrete for the community – that is his vision. And he spoke about this with such fervor and enthusiasm. He seems very genuine about it. He also seems to have ideas of what those things might be (for example, a centre d’écoute or “listening center” – which I think basically means, a counseling center, but I’m not totally sure yet). Second, the PC volunteer who site prospected my post knows him well, has worked with him, and thinks highly of him. I think it’s a very positive sign that an existing volunteer has a strong, positive relationship with him and esteems him as highly as she does. Another time, we were discussing marriage in Cameroon and he said that here, when a man gets to be around age 25, people start saying he should be married, having kids. Magloire is 27, unmarried and has no kids. He told me that he doesn’t want to do any of that until he has accomplished his goals. In this way, he is an unusually progressive and determined individual. What we might call a “positive deviant.” Moreover, not only did all of the responsables and notables in my village seem to have great relationships with him, so too did practically everyone else in village. Making the short loop around village, we stopped no less than five times so he could go greet someone or go tease a little kid. He seems to know EVERYBODY and everyone likes him. And he learns quickly and is observant. He noticed my hair twirling habit (who hasn’t?) and at one point said to me: “you do that when you’re working or when you’re bored,” which is, of course, true. Added bonus: he laughs at everything. I feel like the funniest person alive when I’m chatting with him. I feel like the most fortunate PCV in the world to have been placed with him. I’m posting a photo of him being goofy at the river we had to cross by ferry to get to village.

Anyhow, site visit was very overwhelming, but by the end of three days, I was beginning to feel really excited to work with Magloire and my village for the next two years. The next step of site visit was visiting a current PCV. Magloire was kind enough to accompany me to visit my closest postmate, who is also his friend. This turned out to be a good thing, since we took a bush taxi (like the last time, a 1980-something four-door sedan) with fourteen people in/on it to a river, which we then crossed in canoes, and then waded barefoot thru knee-deep mud to reach the other side, where we took a 10-minute moto ride to reach the next village. I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t have known how to get there without him. We left Sunday morning around 7 AM and arrived around 12:30 PM. This is the PCV who is currently living in the same village where my closest postmate (Ralph) will be located – that is, he is replacing her.

It was really great to discuss village life with her. Her village seemed a bit bigger than mine, and seemed to be quite a party village – bars everywhere, lots of drinking. We ate some of the best fish I have ever tasted and just chatted about lots of things. I realized that I was even more lucky to have had such a welcoming village when she told me her story of meeting her mayor. Apparently, when she met him, he said to her “you have breasts like African women,” and reached over and grabbed hers. I can’t imagine what I would have done if I had encountered that, but it would have certainly turned me off to the whole experience. Moreover, another trainee here told me that half the men in her village were really welcoming and half were really creepy; apparently a number of them asked if she was just like the volunteer she was replacing and thus would not sleep with them. So all things considered, although it might seem like it should be a given to be welcomed into a community (and not harassed), I guess I feel pretty fortunate that I was so welcomed and not harassed.

Another great part of site visit was coming back from it and seeing all my fellow trainees again. We’d all only been apart for a week, but somehow, when we all saw each other again today, I suddenly felt a lot closer to everyone. It’s strange, but true, that distance makes the heart grow fonder. I guess we all went to post, realized how alone we’d be (in terms of seeing other Americans) and then coming back together, we just valued being together all the more. Despite that, I am super psyched and ready to go back to post. Training has really become a bit of a drag. It’s annoying because even free time during the day is not free time. There’s not much to do at the training site, and I could go home, but then my homestay father would be confused why I was home and I wouldn’t want to have to explain it to him. We’re not doing that much anymore in training, and I’m ready to just start getting settled at post. My French is just pretty kickass right now, and I can basically communicate with anyone, and even joke with people, which is nice. I guess I do need to start focusing on learning pidgin English and maybe some Tikar, which is the most prevalent local dialect in my community.

So, despite the initial shock of reaching village and realizing how completely alone I’d be in a home with no electricity and no running water and only a pit latrine, I’m now pretty stoked. All those things are kind of superficial, and it’s easy enough to get used to. What I think is more important and can really make or break a PC experience is the work itself and one’s counterpart. I don’t want to say that I have the best counterpart ever, but I really think I do. So I’m just stoked about that. BRING IT ON.

Bush Taxis 101

2007-11-07T11:47:00.000+01:00

07 Novembre 2007

Picture: eight people crammed into a 1982 Toyota Something, carving down a dirt road, with about a ton of shit strapped into the open trunk of the car and the top of it. And when I say eight adults, I mean it – full-size, no kids here. Four in front, four in back. I was crammed in the front seat, second in from the passenger door in a position that can only be described as a cookie cutter gone awry. My counterpart, next to me, sat half in the driver’s seat, straddling the clutch, which the driver had to operate in what I thought was the most absurdly sexual manner. Really, I use the word “road” lightly. A more accurate description might be a dry, rocky riverbed, that, at times becomes sort of flat, as it meanders its way through the (gorgeous) hilly countryside in the West Province. This car was not made to off-road, and as such, I named it “lutteuse” (or “fighter”) because despite the road conditions, the ton plus weight of passengers and luggage combined, and the fact that the car was older than me, it didn’t tomber en panne the entire way. At one point, I looked over at the speedometer to see how fast we were going. While I was trying to figure out whether the speedometer was in kilometers or miles, I noticed that the needle hadn’t moved at all, even when the car sped up. Right, I thought, why WOULD the speedometer work? The stiff edge of the seat was jammed into the small of my back, making it *extra* comfortable. I was actually quite thrilled when the car pooped out, mid-ascent of a steep hill and we had to get out and walk because the car just couldn’t support the weight of all eight of us and all of our crap, even in first gear.

THIS was the slow passage from Foumban to Malentouen. I say slow because I was crammed as such for more two hours.

This was actually the third leg of a four-stage voyage from Bangangté to Ngambé Tikar, my post. The first leg brought us (my counterpart and me) from Bangangté to Bafoussam, a trip I’ve done before. Nothing new there. The second brought us, again in a minibus-type vehicle through an agence de voyage from Bafoussam to Foumban. This ride was notable because it was the first time I’ve seen a live goat strapped to the roof along with other cargo. Without a cage. Apparently, this is quite common. I’ve heard of 22 live goats being strapped to the roof and having several shoved in the van itself.

The third leg, as I already detailed, was the death ride, which brought us to Malentouen. We were making great time at this point and caught another bush taxi just as it was almost full. A note about taxis and travel agencies: here, when you go to a travel agency and buy a ticket for a set route or when you catch a bush taxi, you have to wait until the vehicle is full before you can leave. There is effectively no schedule. This can have its perks and pitfalls. Today, we managed to catch rides quickly because many were almost full and we (the two of us) brought the taxi to full, so we didn’t have to wait long to leave. However, sometimes the wait can be upwards of 2 or 3 hours. In Malentouen, they were waiting for one more person – however, me and my counterpart made two more. No worries. Just when I didn’t think you could cram more than eight people in a four-person sedan…voila! You can! This time, nine of us piled into a hatchback/station wagon-style car (again, circa 1980-something). Since this one wasn’t as full with luggage, I suggested someone sit in the trunk area (this is the kind of car where you can reach into the “trunk” behind the backseat); my counterpart looked at me like THAT was a crazy idea. Right. But nine people and all their 800 lbs of luggage in a 1980-something vehicle made for four, traveling along bumpy dirt roads – THAT’S fine.

Here is another fine example of Cameroonian crap-piling onto ancient four-door family sedans. I always knew there was a reason I loved those four-door family sedans.

Anyhow, we arrived in great time and collapsed in his living room. Then we went to sit outside, which was nice because the sun was past its hottest and the weather was really pleasant. Magloire told me about his goals and hopes for the work. It seems, from the way he talks about it, that he is extremely motivated, extremely idealistic and full of hope for what we can accomplish. In this sense, we are peas of the same pod. He also seems to be well-known and liked in the community. As we walked to and from his house, he must have stopped no fewer than five times to say hi to people and introduce. I couldn’t be happier to be paired with him for the next two years.

On first blush, my village is gorgeous – much nicer than Bangangté, I think. Granted, I was exhausted and starving from my day of travels, but I was pretty enchanted with it. We’ll see how I feel after I’ve used the latrine…

Post Announcements

2007-11-02T16:47:00.000+01:00

This has been a really exciting week! On Wednesday, all the stagiares mustered up some good ole’ American tradition and creativity to throw a pretty damn good Halloween fête. We had beans and beignets (from Abba’s mom – the best in Bangangte), booze, candy, and even some proper decorations. And practically everyone came out in a costume, which ranged from a ghostbuster and slimer duo, a duo of a moustique (mosquito) and moustiquaire (mosquito net), an intestinal worm (specifically, Andy’s), various cats and animals, a very good Dr. Njiti impression, and a jazzercizer (“Let’s Get Physical!”). The Halloween fête was way fun, and it conveniently coincided with our regular Wednesday night group dinners, so we already had permission to be out past our 6 PM curfew. The party was rockin’ til almost 9 PM! Wooo!

Also thrilling was the announcement of everyone’s post yesterday. I will be opening a brand spankin’ new post in Ngambé Tikar, a small village in the Center Province:

That’s “nn-GAHM-bay tee-kar” phonetically. The village itself is apparently quite small, and it is located in the northwest corner of the province, very close to Adamawa and West provinces. The capital of Cameroon, Yaoundé, is also in the Center Province, and this is also where the Peace Corps office is located. Initially, I thought that I would be going to the provincial capital to do my banking – and this would mean getting to stay at the Peace Corps office in Yaoundé about once a month, where theoretically, I would have access to the Peace Corps office internet, as well as the potential to meet up with fellow volunteers. However, more careful inspection has revealed that a closer and more likely place for me to do my banking will be Bafoussam, the provincial capital of the West Province (and I’m told, the 3^rd largest city in Cameroon).

I’m not sure how I feel about all that – kind of ambivalent – but I am excited about my closest post-mate: Ralph! Ralph is posted in Adamawa, but he’s right on the Southwest border of the province and is very close to me, in Bankim. Ralph is a 63-year-old retired ski patrolman who once worked in the French Alps, Vietnam War veteran thrice over, French language enthusiast, and generally wise man, not to mention one of the most good-natured people I’ve met, considering he is far and away the oldest person in our 42-person stage (the next oldest person is 27). The other day, I asked him whether he thought sex and food made the world go ‘round. He answered, “definitely.” Then I asked which he thought was more important. “Food,” he replied. And Why? “Because, we’ve all been here in Cameroon for a month now without any sex and we’ve survived just fine, but where would we be without food?” Such sagesse. That’s “wisdom,” for you Anglophone folks. This is Ralph, with fellow stagiare Kate Legner:

So, although Ralph is only about a 45-minute moto taxi ride away (in the dry season), there is really not anyone else very close to me. Like, at all. In fact, one of the current PCVs who was here for training this week and who has seen my village told me flat out that it’s in the middle of nowhere. Which is both exciting and absolutely terrifying. Ten of the stagiares in our stage were placed in the West Province, and another ten were placed in the Northwest province, both of which are fairly small provinces, so these people are pretty close by one another, relatively speaking. Not like they’re all going to be partying with one another all the time, but if they’re having a rough time, any number of fellow PCVs are pretty close by to commiserate, etc. So I’m a bit scared about being practically all alone (speaking strictly about Americans). But at the same time, I’m not sure I’d want to be at a post so close to so many others. I guess the grass could always be greener if I dwell on this, so I’m pretty much just forging ahead and hoping everything comes up roses.

Which brings me to the things that I’m really excited about. The PCV who I will be staying with during my upcoming site visit, Stacey, has apparently pushed very hard for there to be a post in my village. Apparently, she thought that my future counterpart, who runs the local youth group, was so great and she thought the village itself was so great that it needed a PCV. Furthermore, my boss (APCD), Kim, confirmed me that my counterpart is very dynamic and motivated. These are things that I had mentioned to her as being important to me, because I think one of the toughest things to encounter in my work would be working and working and working and having no one in village motivated enough to work with me or give a shit. The community itself was asked to identify its needs, and they mentioned wanting to set up a “Centre d’ecoute” – literally, a listening center, but I think this roughly translates to a counseling center. Which is really exciting, as anyone who knows me knows that counseling is one of my favorite activities. They also listed about ten other categories for interventions, including my interests in family planning, repro health, and STIs/HIV, so I’m pretty excited to have the chance to work with a variety of health topics (including water sanitation and nutrition – bring it on, “maison de nourriture”). And I think I’ll be working with kids a lot, which I can say, based on my past experience teaching high school students, is a double-edged sword, but which is also ultimately rewarding. All in all, I feel at least a little at ease with regards to my work.

I had also mentioned wanting to be in Adamawa; there were only three health posts in Adamawa, one of which had to go to a man (Ralph), but my post is about as close to Adamawa as you can get without actually being there. In addition, Kim told me that the Tikar people are extremely proud of their tribe. Ngambé Tikar encompasses both Savannah and forest, so wildlife of both terrains abounds, and because of the forest, there are Baka people (otherwise incorrectly known as pygmies) there as well. So basically, it sounds like a fantastic, diverse mélange of really different environments and cultures – my own mini-Cameroonian version of NYC, n’est pas? As for amenities – I don’t know about running water, though I hear electricity might be a go (at least some of the time), and there is apparently cell phone service in some parts of the village, potentially my home itself.

I will close with the story of when I told my homestay father about my post. The conversation went a little something like this:

Father: so where is your post?

Me: oh right, I’m going to be in the Center Province, in Ngambé Tikar.

Father: …[long pause, in which he looks confused, concerned?] Merde!

Which, roughly translated, means, “Fuck! Child, you’re going to be SOL in the middle of nowhere.” Fortunately, our training director had told all of us, after finding out our posts, that when we told our homestay families where we were going that we shouldn’t listen to anything they said. Because, just like in the US, people have certain ideas about certain places, even without ever having gone there themselves (everyone in Kentucky marries their first cousin at the age of 15, right?). So I wasn’t overly concerned. But just in case I was, tonight at dinner, he told me that he had spoken to his friend here in Bangangté who is from Ngambé Tikar. He reassured me while shaking my hand, that Ngambé Tikar is actually a “nice village.”

As my fellow stagiares, Kate Wright, would say, I’m totally stoked.

Soon to be at post

2007-10-27T15:14:00.000+01:00

So I forgot to mention that yesterday, we had meetings with the APCD, Kim Ahanda. She talked with each of us individually about our preferences for post placement. Basically, I told her I’m interested in having the chance to do reproductive health, or gender-related work, and that I want to be in a French-speaking province. I mentioned that the Adamawa province (which is part of the grand north, which generally tends to have more of a muslim influence) is of particular interest to me as well, but that I am pretty flexible to go anywhere. I also said that if it was possible, I wouldn’t mind being in a house with electricity. I’ve decided that running water is not super important to me, because it will be easy enough to fetch water myself or send petites (read: little kids... apparently, it's pretty common to just always send the wee children to do errands, so I'm gonna try not to feel bad about this) to get water for me. Bucket baths don’t really bother me, they’re actually kind of fun. But having a computer is like drugs to me. I am sure I would adjust just fine not having the ability to use one regularly (ie without electricity), but it really is nice to have one right now.

So we are going to find out our post placements this coming Thursday, November 1. I’m really excited. Thinking about being at post is exciting. It’s going to be wonderful to have my own space, to be able to decide how to structure my days, and to just have some privacy (granted, not a ton, because I don’t think PCVs ever really have privacy, since we tend to stick out). I’m excited to cook for myself, to do household chores, to begin to really get to know a community, and to do everything else I need to do at post. I’m also a little nervous, because as we get closer and closer to leaving for post, I realize more and more that I will be completely on my own and responsible for making myself productive. This is a little frightening. It helps that we will have a concrete objective during the first three months (i.e. to do community assessment), but it’s still a little unnerving to think about being all alone, no Americans nearby to sound off of everyday. I'm also a bit nervous about protocol. Protocol is the process of introducing oneself to a community - it's a way to sort of show respect to the notables, i.e. the people in power. Protocol is extremely important, because if you do it wrong somehow, you could fail to gain the support of the powerful people (like village chiefs, fons, or notables) in your community. And if I fail to have the support of those in power in my community, I will be, in essence, screwed. I will basically be unwelcome, and unable to do any of my work really. Plus, I probably won't be so safe, since the power-wielders in the community won't have welcomed me. Therefore, I'm pretty nervous about making sure protocol goes well when I get to post. It's supposed to be task numero uno upon arrival. To conclude, right now, I am a little nervous about the unknown, but mostly, excited. It also helps that we’ll have a chance to visit our posts in about a week and a half, which I expect will also be really fun/exciting/interesting.

Some new sh*t

2007-10-26T15:06:00.000+01:00

So, I’d like to share some things that I find hilarious/interesting/fantastic/terrible about Cameroon, that are pretty commonplace (or at least, not that unusual):

-I was running today and I saw a moto taxi (motorcycle taxi) with a “bumper” sign that read, “Jesus knows your problem.”
-goats and chickens run around like they don’t have owners. They do have owners, but usually, they roam free. The other day, I was walking by a chicken, and perhaps I walked too close, because it flipped out, squawked and ran right across the road in front of me, until it felt like it was a safe distance from me. Kind of amusing.
-Cameroonians are very direct. If you’re fat, they’ll tell you that you’re fat. If you’re white, they’ll tell you that too. The concept of being politically correct is basically non-existent, and I kind of like it that way. By the same token, they’ll comment that you are gaining or losing weight. Generally, putting on weight is a good thing, so if someone tells you that you are “prendre les poids,” that’s a compliment. I was less then thrilled though, the other day, when my homestay father pointed out that I had “pris les poids” since arriving. Joy.
- Not so commonplace, but the other day, I was walking by myself from the market where I had just bought some bananas, and I walked past a groups of young guys. One of them followed me for awhile, and opened with “Give me 100 CFA (the monetary unit).” I said no, I didn’t have any money. Then he said “Okay, well then give me a banana.” I said no again. Then he left me alone. It was so bizarre though, as if he thought that 1) I was rich because I was white and 2) that because I was apparently white/rich, I would just give out my money/belongings if he only asked. It was really bizarre, and a bit unsettling.
- When you’re running, or do any sports, strangers who see you will greet you and say “Du courage,” which doesn’t exactly have an English translation, because its basically a way of cheering you on, or saying something like “keep it up!” It’s awesome to have a village of cheerleaders when you go running.
- Little kids think white people are hilarious. It doesn’t matter what I do, my mere existence is wildly entertaining. One day, I was walking to market, and I had an entourage of wee little followers. Most often, they’ll just say “good morning” or “good afternoon” – sometimes in English and sometimes in French – and then crack up when you reply in kind. This day, however, they were actually following me, so I turned around suddenly and play-screamed at them and they all cracked up. The kids here are fantastic.
-If it’s raining when you’re supposed to be going somewhere, you’re just not expected to be on time. One morning, I was getting ready to go to training, and I came into the living area of my homestay house to get breakfast, but nothing was ready. My father said, “what’s the hurry? It’s raining, it’s fine. Wait until it stops raining to leave.” So I was late. Which was fine, but it’s just funny how that’s pretty much an acceptable excuse for tardiness. In fact, Cameroonians would say it’s more important to be well-dressed and presentable than to be on time.
-I haven’t had a hot shower in over a month now. And I’ve pretty much gotten used to it. And that’s fantastic.
-People will often try to get your attention by making a kissing sound at you. And this is not necessarily always a call for sexual attention – it might just be that they want to alert you to the fact that the moto taxi is there in case you were looking for one. It’s also used during soccer matches to alert fellow teammates that you’re open for a pass.
-Guys hold hands. This is wonderful.
-I went out tonight wearing a tank top and gauchos and felt like a slut almost the entire time. People dress really conservatively here, so this was a very racy outfit. And I had wet hair because I had just showered. Wet hair is considered really sexy as well, so I basically just looked like a whore.

Some pictures

2007-10-12T15:27:00.000+01:00

Another note about my blog. You can ignore the post date – the REAL date is when I write the blog in the comfort of my own little home. The post date is simply when I finally got my ass in gear to a cyber-café to post the entry. I opted to post some photos this time around because I haven’t yet done that, and I bet people are already sick of reading my meandering and often boring thoughts on life here. Pictures are far more digestable. So here we go:

The skies in Cameroon are quite different from the US. Maybe it’s because there’s less electricity, pollution, etc etc, so there’s less distortion, but the clouds sometimes do crazy (read: fantastic) things. Like this day, when the sky literally turned completely orange-pink right around sunset, and I felt like I was enveloped in a giant peep. What was remarkable was just how pervasive this pink-orange glow was. It made the air feel different. It was pretty dope.

Did I mention that where I currently live is gorgeous? I don’t think I have, but it is.

This was supposed to be a photo of this gorgeous view just around the corner from my house, but it didn’t quite come out as I had hoped. Bangangte is quite hilly, so there’s an awesome view of something around just about every corner. This one’s nice because it’s so close to home.

I would love to post more photos, but it took about an hour to do just these three, in this tiny small format, so I think this will have to suffice.

A note about the title

2007-10-09T15:23:00.000+01:00

A note about the title of my blog. One of our training activities introduced us to a number of proverbs from various cultures. The proverb I was given was “small small catch monkey,” which is apparently a Cameroonian proverb in pidgin English. Two of Cameroon’s ten provinces speak English and many of the border regions of these provinces speak pidgin English, which is a combination of two languages, in this case English and native Cameroonian dialects (I think). The proverb means that no one can catch a monkey if he jumps at the primate quickly and suddenly – it takes time. That is, little by little, if you work slowly and carefully, you can sneak up on the monkey and catch it.

I chose to title my blog as such because I think this is a pretty great metaphor for the entire Peace Corps experience. In so many ways, Peace Corps is a slow, gradual process, exacted in baby steps – of adjusting to an unfamiliar culture, of learning a new language, of becoming a member of a community and not just “white man” (although, many current PCVs have told us that we may always be referred to as “white man” regardless of how integrated into a community we become), of recuperating after being ill, of working towards behavior change in a community, of learning about oneself. For me, this proverb seems like it will embody my experience in its entirety, and it was altogether too perfect not to name my blog as such.

If I ever contact you upset about something, ready to pack up and ship home, I’d appreciate it if you could remind me, “small small catch monkey.”

I have arrived

2007-09-24T12:37:00.000+01:00

Today:

- introductions to everyone

- food and water safety lecture – probably good they gave us that on the first day since I think ability to concentrate will drop off significantly as training progresses.

- typhoid shot (vaccine #4 pour moi) – also Hep A and B for some

- medical intake interviews

- interview with Kim Ahanda, APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director) for the Health program – PC apparently has a lot of acronyms, so I’m going to try to keep them in order

- French assessment examen – could’ve gone better. I understood my language tester well, but had trouble putting sentences together in a fluid manner

- first internet in Cameroon at the PC office. Was good to re-connect with the world

- met Richard, the 70+ volunteer in the North who my mom wrote to before I left. Was very kind, expressed concern at my mother’s anxiousness. Commented that (and I am not joking) “she seemed especially anxious,” perhaps more than the average parent. I reassured him that that was just my mother.

- lunch was delicious – some sort of curry beef with rice and potatoes (and of course, bread), followed by a citrus-y yogurt that was more liquid-y than most yogurts I’ve encountered

- dinner was also a knockout – a spinach/fried fish combo with potatoes (cassava?) and plaintains

- did laundry for the first time with Brian and Ralph (laundry party!) on the third floor and soon realized that water pressure was better in my room, so relocated. Yay clean clothes!

- Sat around the training office WAITING. A wee taste of what’s to come, perhaps?

- came downstairs to find music and dancing. June (one of our PCVLs or Peace Corps Volunteer Leader) had invited a band to come and play. They were missing two bandmates but it was still fantastic. Had one of those moments where I thought: “This could not be more right. Cameroon is amazing.” Thunderstorm was brewing, hard rains pounded the patio, creating a 3 inch pool, lightning (beautiful and purple, lights up the sky), and some thunder. We were all outside, but under an overhang, and the lights went out. They played a very slow-paced, chilled-out song, in line with Bob Marley and the rasta vibe – I’ve already forgotten it, but it sounded at once familiar and foreign, fantastic. The entire moment, the scene felt like a microcosm of how I think Africans live. That is, Shit happens – the electricity goes out, the rain is falling falling falling and you’re trapped inside a hotel. But you know what? We got music and dancing (and alcohol) and one of the most beautiful settings in existence. We’re gonna keep on rockin. Really felt like a solidifying moment where pieces fell into place. I want a record of this feeling because I’m sure times will come when I’ll need a positive, reaffirming memory to fall back on

- Remarked to myself that the red earth is positively magnificent and will surely eat me up whole (or at least, my lightest clothes). The dust, the mud is incredible. I’ve never seen earth so fiery. It’s as if the sun were smothered by the dust and the dust remained as red as the coals that resulted.

- Some people are beginning to feel antsy about being let out into the city because being on lockdown in the hotel is not so fun. The PCVLs say its a bad idea and they’re probably right (just picture forty-two silly, ignorant Peace Corps trainees wandering around a very foreign city, and it surely doesn’t sound like the best idea), but it still feels like being cooped up, like we’re going stir crazy. June told me tonight that they might let us walk to the PC training office in a day or two, which is absolutely thrilling, but she also said that this is a BIG PC no-no, or at least, hold-your-breath type of activity.