It has been a good while since my last post, and for that I apologize! Life has been all kinds of madness since New Years. It also did not help terribly that we lost Internet for the last two weeks. The rollercoaster continues, and perhaps it actually is best to report experiences in clumps like this so that I have the time to reflect and recover before unleashing a saga of frustration and disappointment only to be followed up by a log gushing post about how much I love Cameroon and the Peace Corps and all the people I have met here. You all might (would) probably start to question my sanity. So here we are: my rational report of the last few weeks of life out here in the East.
New Years was a wonderful kind of madness. Almost all the PCVs posted out East and even some friends from the South, Center, and North West regions made it out to Bertoua to ring in the New Year, so that we had 11 people sleeping in our little case de passage – there were mattresses all over the floor in the living room to try to accommodate everyone. New Years is celebrated here on the 1st of January, but we wanted to have an American New Years Eve party and so took over the Kristal Night Club Saturday and partied it up with the few Cameroonians who decided to start the party a little early. SUPER fun! It was very chill and we were basically the only people there for most of the night – we even had a countdown! The next day however… I cannot say the same. I generally use the word “derangement” and not “harassment” to describe uncomfortable interactions with Cameroonians, but I am going to have to go ahead and call what happened on New Years Day straight up harassment. We attempted to go out on the 1st to see how New Years is done in Cameroon. I don’t know if I have ever been so uncomfortable in my life: all that grabbing, poking, cat calls, proposals, rude remarks, and general lack of room to breathe added up haha. However, I can thankfully say that despite the inquietude, nothing bad happened. No one was robbed or assaulted – the evening definitely could have gone far worse than it did.
After all the festivities, I had both the fortune and misfortune of having to make the trip out to Yaoundé with everyone heading back to the Center and North West to pick up a computer and giardia medication. By some ridiculous stroke of luck, someone from my Dad’s office had come out to Cameroon for the holidays to visit his family (he grew up in Cameroon) at about the same time as Dad needed to upgrade his computer for work, so here I am with a laptop again!! So exciting! As for the unfortunate reason for my trip, all I can say is it was only a matter of time before I got one of those pesky waterborne gastrointestinal (GI) problems, and at least it wasn’t cholera (knock on wood!). During my stage, we had several cases of dysentery (mostly amoebic), typhoid, parasites, and worms… at least that is all I can remember off the top of my head. We have all just gotten used to feeling uncomfortable, so actually I had had my symptoms for a good month and a half or so at least but had written it off as Africa stomach problems until two of the girls posted just outside BTA were diagnosed with giardia and described my symptoms to a “t.” I took some medicine a couple of weeks ago now, but unfortunately (if we fast forward to present) I have to go back in to YDE next week to do some tests because the pills didn’t exactly help. Nothing to raise concern just yet, like I said, this is Africa after all. Cameroonians deworm themselves regularly, and most PCVs I have talked to here have adopted this practice as well – at the risk of getting too graphic here, a friend posted out near the border of the CAR from my stage decided he wanted to give this a try considering the number of people who fell ill during training and he um well came up with two foot long worms… and we have only been in country since late September. Before you ask, YES we are filtering and bleaching water, and YES we are being careful about what we eat (ok for the most part at least), but this stuff still happens. To some extent it is unavoidable, not that that is any excuse to not take all possible precautions in food and water preparations, but I am just saying nothing is fool proof. To quote Blood Diamond, “TIA: This Is Africa.”
Another TIA moment and another kind of madness I have been dealing with (frustrating this time) is the wonderful African bureaucracy that has dominated my experience of settling in to my new house and job. The next two years are going to teach me the real meaning of the word “patience.” I thought I was a pretty easy going and patient person back in the States, but man do I have a long way to go! Registering for utilities has got to be a frustrating experience anywhere in the world, so I cannot ascribe all of my recent frustrations to Africa or Cameroon alone. However, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that particularities and inefficiencies here do not help the situation. I registered with the water company before New Years and after spending hours going back and forth to different offices, I finally got “running water” a few days ago, although now I am still waiting for the plumber to come back to fix the toilet so it will flush and the sink so it can shut off… I have learned that paying to have running water in your house does not mean that you can count of having running water. Especially during the dry season, the water company tends to cut water at least once a day, so my landlord told me to keep a couple buckets/bidons ready to put water aside whenever it does happen to be on. As far as electricity goes, fortunately my landlord has been kind enough to divert electricity from her house until my counter is installed. I was told two weeks ago that someone was coming later that evening to install it…so silly me, I waited around for the guy to come so I could let him in. Two weeks later still no counter. I have gone in several times to put a little pressure on them (figured it couldn’t hurt) and the woman at the office always just laughs at me and says we Americans are too impatient. Patricia, my postmate tells me it took SONEL 2 and a half months to get her counter out to her, so I have given up waiting. At least I still have electricity in the mean time! I would much rather have electricity than running water, so after my initial disappointment that my utilities will not be what I hoped they would be, I am really quite happy with my situation.
As for my working situation, what began as frustrating madness has now become an exciting madness. I spent last week hating my Youth Center for its inefficiencies and the culture shock of how kids are managed by adults here. Monday was rough: I arrived at 7:30 to watch the flag raising and for an 8:00 meeting with the Directrice… for one, the Directrice did not show until 1pm and then when she did all she had to say was that I needed to talk to the chef de section, and not her. Went to the chef de section he said today is no good, come back tomorrow. So I wasted 5 hours sitting around waiting for a meeting that never happened, and in the mean time got a thorough introduction to disciplinary practices at the CMPJ. More than half of the students showed up late to the center, and so as punishment, they had to sweep up the dust around the center (we’re talking the ground outside the center… not the floors, the patio, or any concrete surface) which I found not only futile, but disrespectful to those who did show up on time because they just had to sit in class and wait for the others before class could start. Whenever someone acted up in class, they were either whipped or taken out of the class and made to kneel for the rest of the period in the office or in the hallway. The first was just so shocking to me I had trouble looking my community host in the eye for a bit – this is definitely a cultural difference that is going to be very difficult for me to get used to. The latter frustrates me because all it does is prevent the students from getting the information from the class (not to mention my knees started to hurt just watching).
The rest of the week went very much the same way, unfortunately, to the point where I just couldn’t take any more and ran away to spend the weekend in Diang (that little village just outside BTA where I spent Christmas) to visit my friend Laura. I just needed to get out of the city. The utilities frustration compounded with hours of waiting for meetings that never happened and with the culture shock of disciplinary practices got me into a serious funk. The quiet and wonderful people of Diang helped restore my sanity, so that I was ready on Monday to face the music. To my wonderful surprise, the meeting with the chef de section actually happened that day, albeit 3 hours late, and in that one meeting I went from frustrated to the point of tears to excited beyond all measure. I am now teaching English, Causerie Educatif (lifeskills stuff like HIV/AIDS, sex ed, general health issues, goal setting, girls empowerment, how to apply for a job, etc), a Cultural Exchanges class, taking on the role of counselor and running the Theater Club (with the job of coming up with a performance for Youth Day on February 11). Besides feeling perhaps a little in over my head, I was ecstatic! To add to all this, I had a meeting the next day with the Director of the Women’s Center and he wants to take me on to teach all the same classes to his students! Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better (or more), I arrived to the center early for the theater club meeting yesterday to talk with my community host about what clubs exist and how they have all gone in the past, and it turns out clubs have only existed for the past two weeks. They were counting on me to set this whole system up. Yea… like I said, madness. I am going to try to set up a student activities program based on what I knew of the programs at Chadwick and GW. I want to start up from scratch because no one really knows what clubs exist right now and/or how they are going to work. I’m in the process of writing up an application to form a club for students to submit: name of the club, purpose, objectives, meeting time/place, faculty advisor (really, really hoping I can get my fellow teachers in on this one… not so sure it will happen, but I feel it would help drastically), and names of at least 5 people who intend to join the club. I hope the next step will make itself apparent once we establish what clubs exist… maybe designate whoever fills out the application the interim president and hold meetings with them as a steering committee… Can’t say I have ever done this before. If anyone has suggestions, please feel free to email or facebook me!
Is this blog post long enough yet? Haha sorry for the volume, but there was a lot to report. I think I will leave it there for now, but will keep you all posted on how my projects go! All of this is happening so fast! Officially I am not supposed to start working until March after I have gone through In-Service Training… my program manager is actually coming through BTA in a couple weeks, so we will see what he has to say about all of this.
