The Adventure Isn’t Over

This post is a difficult one to write. I should probably begin by sharing that I write this post not in Bertoua, but my hometown of Manhattan Beach, CA. I was medically separated from the Peace Corps last week and made the impossibly long trek back to California on Thursday night. To some, this may seem completely out of the blue, but in reality this separation has been a long time coming. My separation came about for a myriad of reasons that I will not go into here. I am very sorry to have to leave as early as I did — I really thought I would be able to stick it out for my second year of service. I am not quite ready to dismiss the idea of Peace Corps service, and would love to re-apply in the future after further education and professional experience, but I had to remove myself from Peace Corps Cameroon. I met some truly incredible people over the past year, and whatever issues I may have had with Cameroon or with my service in Cameroon, I will always fondly look back on my fellow PCVs. My partners in crime. It breaks my heart to leave them this soon.

However, I could not be happier to be home. This is where I need to be right now. It was a difficult decision to make, but I have no doubt in my mind that it was the right one. I am still trying to figure out my next steps, an adventure in its own right. This is the first time in my life that I have not had a clear next step, which is terrifying and exhilarating. Peace Corps had been the plan since I was in Middle School, but somehow in all those years I had never really managed to plan past it. I am glad I didn’t set a plan for myself before leaving for Cameroon, because my academic and professional interests have definitely taken a new turn as a result of my experience. I intend to apply to graduate programs in Development Management or Public Administration (recommendations are encouraged) for next fall, but in the mean time I hope to continue my work as a Youth Development volunteer back here in Los Angeles, giving back to the community that made me the person I am today.

And so I say the adventure is not yet over. I sincerely hope that it never ends. I have just switched out one jungle for another. Switched out over-packed cruisers and bush taxis for sig alerts and LA rush hour traffic; and la poussiere for some lovely asthma inducing smog.

The Sacrificial Generation

The title for this post comes from a comment a friend made to me while discussing troubles with youth development in Cameroon. We were talking about the lack of employment opportunities for Cameroonian youth, particularly those with university degrees, and he explained to me that, basically, the first generation of Cameroonian leaders worked only to establish what infrastructure and development was necessary to ensure their own comfort and power. They did nothing to provide for future generations, and now, realizing the stagnation, are calling on this new generation of youth to work tirelessly to overhaul the system they created for free. There are calls coming from all over the country to put an end to the corruption and to work together for progress, but no one, not even the government is willing to finance it. Government agencies, regional authorities, and local leaders all rely on outside funding (from the UN, the US, France, Germany, China, etc) or young people with no jobs to work for free. As frustrating as this situation may be, I am pleased to report that there are many, many young Cameroonians who have managed to rise to the challenge and are willing to take on all this work without reward to ensure a better future for Cameroon.

Volunteerism, as a rule, is not terribly popular among Cameroonians, but from what I have seen the new generation is starting to embrace it. Let me give the example of my friend Zack, who I have already mentioned in this blog. Zack graduated from the University of Yaounde with a degree in Political Science in 2011 — almost exactly like me. Unfortunately when he returned to Bertoua he was struck with the lack of decent employment opportunities for university graduates; basically his choices were go back to village and farm/do nothing or work at a “boutique” selling bread, sugar, and beer in Bertoua. However he decided instead to go the volunteer route tutoring and starting up his youth association and theater troupe. He and all his friends that work with me on my library project are very enthusiastic about volunteerism, but sadly very pessimistic about their fellow countrymen. Every time we discuss the need for donations from members of our community here, they give me a look as if to say,”do you really think a Cameroonian is going to just help you out of the goodness of their heart? No. They need a financial incentive to want to help us…” Which I find rather funny considering each of them has put in hours and hours of work and even some money already into a project to make Bertoua a better community for all out of the goodness of their hearts. However, they do have a bit of a point talking about older generations, sadly. For example, Zack was telling me just the other day about a conversation he had with his mother about some of the volunteer work he is doing. He has just started taking care of a friend’s kids (because the friend does not have enough money to pay for school, etc.) and his mother asked him why he was doing that… He wasn’t making any money off of his friend… and so he tried to explain to his mother that it was just the right thing to do, to which she responded “but there are white people to do that.”

Cameroon’s youth has their work cut out for them. They are up against 50 years of solidifying the current regime/system, a generation of leaders hesitant to yield power, and a society reluctant to take responsibility for its own welfare. The worst part is that they may never see the fruits of their labor, although I pray they do. I believe in the youth of Cameroon.

National Girls Forum

The National Girls Forum is OVER! I have been stressing out over this event for MONTHS, and could not feel more relieved (or exhausted) now that it is all done. I realized as the forum started that I don’t think I ever really explained the forum to everyone back home. So much is happening over here, that it gets very difficult to update everyone on everything… especially considering the frequency of my updates (despite my constant promises to improve on this). So, perhaps now would be a good time to fill you all in.

As you all know, the Youth Development program in Cameroon is brand new: my training group was the pilot stage and we have spent most of our service designing the program at the administrative level. To celebrate the successful first year of the YD program, Peace Corps Cameroon wanted to host a national girls empowerment event, and designated my program manager as the coordinator. The poor man has way too much on his plate already, so he reached out to us and formed a committee of four volunteers to help him organize the event: one from each region YD works in. I was the representative from the East, Shanna Beech from the Adamaoua, Sarah Jennings from the Extreme North, and Georgia Gootee from the South West. We had our first meeting back in May to decide on the structure and substance of the event and one meeting in June to decide on participants, presenters, and the schedule; but due to the distance between our posts, we had to do about 90% of the preparation independently, coordinating a national forum with nothing but iffy internet and spotty network coverage. Needless to say, it was a struggle. I found myself spending entire days on the computer at the Bertoua office working on spreadsheets and coordinating with presenters. I cannot say that it was always pleasant, but it was certainly a great learning experience! All of the frustrations I encountered were valuable lessons in event planning, cultural exchange, bureaucracy, and most basically in French.

So what was this National Girls Forum? Exactly that. A platform for the sharing of personal experiences and best practices for individuals and organizations (local, regional, national, and international) that work in the realm of girls empowerment. We did not want a didactic conference or a training. More than anything, we wanted the forum to be a networking event. In Cameroon (as in any developping country, I am sure), there seem to be a gazillion and one aid organizations, most of which are doing the exact same work but with no communication or collaboration. There are local organizations that are limited by lack of funds and huge international organizations that have no idea where or how to invest their money. This becomes incredibly frustrating to watch as a PCV… So we designed the forum to be as interactive as possible, calling on many participants (Americans and Cameroonians) to present on projects they have undertaken in their communities around the country and even included a networking fair where larger organizations could set up tables with information on resources they have available.

Overall, I think it went quite well. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a first in every way possible: first girls forum in Cameroon, first event for YD, and definitely a first for me. I learned a lot and can’t complain. I really hope we have the chance to do something like this again before we leave. At this point Peace Corps Cameroon wants to have this event every two to 4 years, but we are in the process of fighting for it to become annual. I can also see myself doing similar work after Peace Corps. As stressful as it was, it was so gratifying to see the forum come together and to meet all the Cameroonian counterparts that came from all over the country.

Everybody Poops

This past week has been quite an eye opening experience. As I mentioned before on this blog, my program manager in Yaounde asked me a few months ago to start working with UNICEF in the East as part of the new Peace Corps UNICEF collaboration country-wide. I tried months to get in touch with UNICEF to no avail (including a failed attempt to bring a UNICEF representative to a water and sanitation conference in April), and now all of a sudden this project has taken over a good portion of my time in Bertoua. I got a call from a PCV in Yaounde who extended her service for a third year to work with UNICEF on Tuesday of last week, saying that a water and sanitation workshop is planned to take place in Bertoua on Wednesday, and both UNICEF and Peace Corps would like me to attend. EXCELLENT! Sure, I had a few meetings planned for exactly that time, but they were easy enough to reschedule for the next day. I make arrangements with all the necessary people, and show up on Wednesday at the prescribed location (a hotel in the center of town) only to be told that UNICEF left yesterday… Odd considering I spoke with the person in charge of the event the night before and he confirmed the time and location for Wednesday. Now, I have been in Cameroon long enough to take this in stride. This is not the first time a major event was changed at the last second and it certainly will not be the last. Just about the time that I’m ready to give up on the workshop and reschedule my meetings yet again, I get a call from Mr. Tchoualla, the Bertoua UNICEF representative in charge of the event explaining that there was a last minute (understatement… the workshop was supposed to have begun already) venue change to the Nursing Training College. Not a problem. I hop on a moto and make my way out there, but this could not have been a clearer indicator for the way the rest of the worskshop was going to go…

The subject of the conference was Assainissement Totale Piloté par la Communauté or ATPC (in English Community Driven Total Sanitation), a waster and sanitation program begun in Bangladesh in the early 2000s. The program centers around the lack of latrines in rural areas in the developing world that leads to high rates of waterborne diseases like cholera. Clearly the need for latrines is too great for any organization to meet alone or in collaboration, so the point of ATPC is to motivate the community to build its own latrines. Granted these latrines will not meet international sanitary or hygienic standards, but even non-conforming latrines are better than nothing. The participants were comprised of representatives from various delegations (health, communications, water and energy, and basic education), a few nurses, and representatives from development NGOs (like me! Although it goes without saying I was definitely the only white person). All I knew going into this was that a water and sanitation (WASH to Peace Corps and UNICEF) workshop was scheduled to go from 9-3:30 on Wednesday… However, to my surprise it turns out that the workshop is four days long. The first and the last were to be held in Bertoua, but the middle two were to be fieldwork, going out to nearby villages to give small WASH presentations and establish community latrine building committees. To my even greater surprise, I was supposed to co-facilitate.

On paper, a REALLY cool workshop. I leave the conference on Wednesday really excited, albeit a bit nervous, for the week ahead. Unfortunately, due to sheer lack of organization, the workshop went from inspiring to nightmarish faster than I could have ever thought possible. Even Wednesday had been incredibly trying — with sessions beginning an hour and a half late, no respect for the agenda we were given, and only eating lunch at 3pm — but I had written that off as a side-effect of the last minute venue change. We were scheduled to leave for our village site visits at 7:30 on Thursday morning, but by 10am we were still waiting at the cars for the UNICEF and ministry representative who were responsible for facilitating the workshop. It was about this time I took it upon myself to go find the people in charge… When I found them, they were preparing the materials for the day’s presentation. This already ridiculously late preparation was further slowed by the fact that no one had brought scissors to cut up the construction paper so each paper was getting ripped individually by a group of people that clearly were in no hurry whatsoever. I couldn’t believe my eyes… here we are TWO AND A HALF HOURS late to leave for the villages and the people in charge were just taking their time, gossiping to each other as they ripped up their props. So I took over… I sent someone to go get scissors and whipped out my swiss army knife (which, trust me, got a reaction) and started cutting up everything that needed to be cut more quickly than the group of four originally working on this project. That out of the way, we finally head out to our first village at 10:30 (yes, three hours behind schedule). Even after dividing the group so we could give two presentations at once (my idea, yet again) we did not get back to Bertoua until after 5pm… at which point we finally got to eat lunch. Let me tell you, low blood sugar, dehydration, and an absurdly full bladder (remember we were sent out to these villages because there are no latrines, let alone toilets… and no one would let the white woman use the sketchy latrines available in some of the villages) do NOT help with the language barrier. Facilitating the last presentation of the day was rough to put it lightly.

Anyway… this is how I managed to get myself on a poop tour of the greater Bertoua area. Part of the presentation was a community mapping exercise so the villagers could show us where people pooped if they did not have a latrine. Most people would assure us that their family only poops way out in the forest, away from their house, but obviously that could not be the case all the time. What about when you get diarrhea at 3am (and trust me this happens… chronic diarrhea is often not even considered a problem, but part of life)? After making the map, we then took the villagers on what we called the walk of shame, where we literally walked around the village to point out the poop that was everywhere in the community. In some cases there was poop right behind houses. My mind was blown. Of course I had known this had to be the reality — if you don’t have a latrine you have to poop somewhere — but it was very different to see it in real life. A majority of the gastro-intestinal (GI) problems that reek havoc in Sub-Saharan Africa (like cholera and typhoid fever) are caused by the fecal-oral cycle, i.e. contamination of water sources and food by human fecal matter. This sounds extreme until you see piles of poop near a river (what happens when the rain comes?) and near houses (ever seen a fly land on your food/drink?) and you realize just how easy it is for this contamination to occur. There is fecal matter literally everywhere here, even if you’re not looking at a poop itself, there are traces of it on everything. To illustrate this, we took a glass of water — clean water straight out of a bottle — and passed around to villagers to drink. Then we took a small stick and touched it to poop we found on our tour, and then put the stick into the glass. The water still looks clear and if the group had not just seen the poop stick touch the water with their own eyes, they probably would have drank the water on the spot. The stick is meant to represent one fly’s foot… and flies have six. They also have a nasty habit of vomiting up a bit of whatever they ate last when they land somewhere. The villagers were mortified.

Even if most of the villages we visited did not understand the connection between deadly diseases like cholera and open-air defecation, they understood that they did not want to keep eating their own poop. We designated a committee that would oversee construction of latrines in each village we visited and invited three members to present a three-month action plan in Bertoua on Saturday — the last day of the workshop. Everyone came, even the least receptive villages, and even though it was made clear that UNICEF was not going to give anyone money or materials for the project. Although it was not the most pleasant four days of my life, I can’t say I regret participating.

WHAT YOU CAN DO!

Two days after landing in Yaounde, I was back to work. Thank goodness I had my recharge in the states, because all of my projects seem to be picking up at once.

1. The National Girls Forum is only weeks away and has become a source of constant stress as the rest of the committee and I scramble to make sure everything is in order and all of our speakers have the proper presentations. (Although this sounds simple enough, I would like to see you tell UNICEF that they can only present on a fraction of their mandate and to respect a 30 minute time limit.)

2. Speaking of UNICEF … the project I have been waiting on since March is finally coming together exactly when I do not have enough time to take it on — go figure.

3. My library project is taking off! This project was one of the things that made me look forward to coming back to Cameroon. I have never met a more sincere and devoted group of people or known a more deserving cause. As it stands now, Bertoua, the regional capitol of the East has not a single bookstore or public library to its name. Perhaps fitting for the capitol of the most under-educated and under-developed region in the country, but not acceptable. My postmate (who sadly just left to go home!) and I have made a lot of progress working with ASPOSS (the local youth association) to lay the groundwork for an overdue library/cultural center meeting with the Urban Council, the Youth Delegation, microfinance institutions, the post office, etc. We are finally starting to see the light at the end of this framework tunnel and are about to get to the fun part: filling the library! We have already contacted a number of book donor organizations that make shipments to West Africa, and are in the process of filling out the US Embassy Self-Help Fund grant application.

There is also an American organization called the World Computer Exchange that donates refurbished computers to developing countries that has just sent a shipment to Cameroon… although by “donation” I mean sold at a super reduced price. The organization contacted Peace Corps and made a number available for PCVs like me that want to bring computer technology to the youth in our communities. I have requested 5 computers to get the library started (1 for an office, 1 for catalogue/circulation/front desk, and 3 for research). The World Computer Exchange is charging $73 per computer delivered to Douala (so a total of $365 for 5). This is where I need you guys back home. The World Computer Exchange has an online fundraising option. If you go to this website http://worldcomputerexchange.org/cameroon click “DONATE.” Just make sure to indicate that your donation is for the Peace Corps Cameroon Shipment and mention my name. Check out the website and definitely feel free to bug them with emails. They have been very timely in their responses to my questions thus far.

On Being an American Abroad

I will have to admit I was not the most patriotic American before I left the US in September. I was often more critical than supportive of US policy both at home and abroad, and certainly had no qualms with vocalizing said criticisms. I am not sure how it happened, or when, but somewhere in the past 10 months I have become serious ameriphile. I find myself getting defensive when Cameroonians assume that I am European, and giving long sermons to my counterparts how orderly, efficient, diverse, advanced, and awesome America is. I even have an American flag on the wall in my living room, which is something I had never anticipated doing. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and over here that distance is both literal and figurative. Bertoua is thousands of miles and seemingly countless light years away from Los Angeles. My life here and the life I left back in the states belong to two completely different worlds.

The moment I touched down at LAX, it was as if I woke up from a dream. My life in Cameroon belonged in another dimension, and I was astounded at how quickly everything became normal again. I had to keep reminding myself that everything I have done and seen over the past 10 months is indeed real. I saw my American lifestyle in a different light and registered things I had always taken for granted before, but nothing really felt foreign. It was almost like finding an old favorite shirt at the back of the closet: it feels familiar and yet somehow new again.

However,the moment I touched down in Nsimalen Airport in Yaounde. The smells, the sounds, and the instant stickiness woke me with a start and I was heart and soul in Cameroon again and America felt like a distant memory.

african travels

The friendly reminders to update this blog have reached the critical point where I actually follow through on my promise to write a little something. I apologize for being MIA, but everytime I make plans to have a blogging afternoon, life seems to have other plans. Since my last post, Mom came and left. I think I can safely say that I gave her an experience she will NEVER forget. I put her through a lot, but she took it like a champ. I am really proud of the way she handled everything. I got frustrated from time to time, but had to keep reminding myself that it has taken me 9 months to get as comfortable as I am in my new home… and I gave her 9 days. I’m pretty sure if my first few days were at all like hers were, I would have terminated my service (“ET’d” as we say here) long ago. It was an especially rude awakening for her after our 5 days of Paris where our least impressive meal was at one of Saint Germain’s most famous brasseries, Cafe Lipp. After the fact, Mom kind of resented that we did not organize the trip in the reverse order so that we could both freak out at how wonderful and clean Paris was, but selfishly I am extremely grateful that we did Paris before bringing her back to Cameroon. It would have been far more difficult to come back here alone. Not only did I have someone to show around (which is always fun and gives one a feeling of purpose), but I got VIP treatment from all my Cameroonian friends, because everyone wanted to impress my Mom, and I could finally afford to eat at the restaurants that I wanted to try in Yaounde and Bertoua. Cameroon is a dramatically different place when you live on an American salary.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I recieve a stipend to cover food, lodging, travel, and some extra for odds and ends. It is actually possible to live quite comfortably on the money we have, and I know that my bank account is considerably better stocked than many of my neighbors. The whole point is to integrate into the community: eat what and where the locals eat, do as they do, suffer as they suffer. This is a fundamental difference I have seen between Peace Corps and many other development agencies whos employees interact only with other expats and live in crazy walled compounds with food shipped in from home. (The only aid workers I have seen here so far who are more “bien integre” work with this French organization that works in the Catholic church in Bertoua. There is an American there who, God bless her, has managed to forget English in the year she has been here because she interacts only with Cameroonians.) The last time I was in Yaounde, a group of PCVs were invited to a house party thrown by a couple Embassy employees. When we arrived, we just could not get over this house. It was HUGE! My house is big by Peace Corps/Bertoua standards and I’m pretty sure the whole thing could have fit in the living room. There was a pool out back, a guest house, and FOUR REFRIGERATORS. This house for a family of four has one fridge per person. Most of their food is apparently shipped in from the states, so they need the freezer and fridge space because the shipments only come like once a month. They served all kinds of food and drink that even if we saved up several months worth of paychecks, we could never afford in country. Bottle after bottle of nice red wine — the kind that we might splurge on every few months for special occasions (and we would be buying the cheaper variety). They had cupcakes, lemon squares, lettuce wraps (WHAT?), pizza, and so much more. The sad part is that the Embassy employees think this kind of life is still really cheap. What I now consider to be obscenely overpriced is reasonable to Yaounde expats. When we stayed at the Hilton after flying in from Paris, Mom and I almost got into a fight over the beer in the minibar. It had been a rough flight (thunderstorms over Yaounde, so we had to make a couple hour pit stop in Douala until they calmed enough to land a plane), but I refused to let her buy one of the little beers. See, when I go to a bar in Bertoua, a 65ml beer is 500-600 francs CFA… these beers were 30ml and cost 2000 francs CFA. Less than half the beer for 4 times the price. Mom asked me to translate that into USD… and I had to admit that it was roughly $4. Not exactly the obscenity I was making it out to be. It was actually very difficult to see this side of Yaounde. I definitely experienced worse culture shock at the Hilton than I did in Paris (although, as Mom can attest, I certainly experienced my fair share there as well). This was not the Cameroon I know, and not the Cameroon that 99% of the population knows.

The illusion shattered after Mom got on the plane back to the US, and I had to head back to my funny little house in the jungle once more and get back to work. At this point I had spent 3 weeks away from post, but 4 away from work since I spent Mom’s visit showing her around instead of teaching at my youth or women’s center, so “going back to work” was easier said than done. Both centers were “en stage” when I got back, which means that the second year students were working month-long internships in town, and the younger students were put to use as manual labor cleaning various delegation buildings etc (my favorite…). The teachers at my youth center decided that clubs did not make sense while half the students were not there, so I had neither class to teach nor clubs to run. I used this opportunity to try to seek out other organizations in the area, but unfortunately ran into far more dead ends than possible collaborators. My UNICEF project that had gotten me so excited in March was starting to look like a ruse. After months of emails and calls by the Health program manager and myself, we still had no word from UNICEF. They failed to show in Bamenda and seemed upset with Peace Corps for switching volunteers on them without following protocol. Very much like back in December/January when I made my sundresses and quilt, I began to read compulsively. After finishing 4 books in 5 days, I was starting to get depressed, but just in the nick of time, I found a new organization.

ASPOSS is a national youth association with branches in each of the 10 regions. Each branch has its own identity depending on the leaders of the group. Bertoua’s ASPOSS is basically a theater troupe that puts on shows of traditional Cameroonian stories in an Aesop’s Fables kind of way. They often work with the missionaries at the Catholic church, putting on shows with the kids and tutoring after school and on weekends. Their dream is to build a public library/cultural center in Bertoua to encourage literacy in Bertoua’s youth and create a forum for arts and culture. As they pitched their idea to me my jaw literally dropped. I could not have come up with a more perfect youth devlopment activity in this community. I had noticed the lack of libraries, bookstores, and well literacy in general when I first arrived, but did not think I could create a sustainable program by myself — and suddenly here is a Cameroonian youth association that is willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The leader of the group has a very clear vision of what he wants this project to become. To hear him speak about youth development in Cameroon and Bertoua’s deficits, you would think Peace Corps gave him a script. The best part about all of this is they do not want any money from me. They know what Peace Corps is and they know that is not what we do. They understand the concept of sustainability and the dangers of dependence on foreign investment. What they want me for is help in drafting proposals and doing Project Design Management (PDM), and honestly to come as arm candy to meetings with officials.

The sad reality in Cameroon is that having a foreigner (the more caucasian looking the better) on your team gives you a weird ligitimacy in the eyes of the government. You are more likely to be seen by the people you need to meet with, more likely to get things done in a timely matter, and WAY more likely to get resources. My postmate who is from Haiti was brought to a meeting by her Cameroonian friend recently, and the receptionist found herself in a rather awkward position by first telling the Cameroonian that the person they were meant to meet with was not in, and then telling Grace that she would be seen in just a few minutes. Grace was not connected to this porject at all… but her friend begged her to just come sit in the corner so he could be seen. It worked.

As always I return to my rollercoaster analogy. Bertoua, Cameroon, Africa, the Peace Corps… all of it… life here is full of surprises good, bad, and ugly. For every progressive mind like Zack who is the leader of ASPOSS, there is a corrupt official or a masogenistic, polygamous wife beater, and so on and so on. There are ridiculous treasures like the ape reserve in Belabo we visited last week, or the crater lakes I hiked to in the SW, but you have to be willing to push yourself to the limit to get there. Whether you have to start hiking at 2am or sit 5 to a row in a van with a small child on your lap and a goat under your foot for 5 hours, travel is always a trial here in Cameroon. I have never felt so surpremely happy as I have here, but there have also been moments I have never felt so low. It is wonderful and exhausting.

Paris bound

Time keeps speeding up over here! In the blink of an eye a month has already passed since my last update… What has happened over the past few weeks? Well, upon leaving Bamenda I was guilt-tripped (true) into turning around and heading right back for a water and sanitation conference 3 weeks later. That meant I had only one week back at school (remember both of my centers were on spring break when I first got home) before heading back out. So honestly, I felt a little sheepish when I had to find my directors out of school to sign off on leave requests. The “worst” part was that I already had the next week off to go to PARIS to visit with my MOM… so after my four week break, I came back for one only to leave again for another three… Oops.

However, no one really seemed to mind. It was actually fairly disconcerting. It was as though both of my centers had completely forgotten that I worked there. I came back to give a malaria presentation on Monday, and everyone was busy cleaning the school, so I tried Tuesday to give the same presentation… but the kids were all gone. Tried working with my clubs on Wednesday, but seeing as half of the students were on “stage” with internships in the community, the faculty decided there were not enough kids or reasons to have club meetings. I had similar problems with my womens center. As with women’s week, everytime I came everyone was either busy or absent. So… I’ll have to admit I wasn’t all too upset to head back to Bamenda.

The workshop was awesome – by far the most instructive training I have gotten from the Peace Corps. My luck with Cameroonian counterparts (i.e. host mom, IST counterpart, and now WASH counterpart) unfortunately has continued. I was invited to this conference because of my “work” with UNICEF… but I have yet to meet with a representative to even get a briefing on what my project will actually entail. We tried inviting UNICEF, but even now after the conference has passed I never heard back from them; so, we invited the headmaster from one of the schools UNICEF wants me to work with. We called the Friday before the conference and asked if he could make it to Bamenda, that PC would cover travel cost and give him a per diem, but two days heads up just doesn’t quite cut it I suppose haha. So, I did the workshop by myself. It was quite nice, really. I finished my work well before my colleagues most of the time, seeing as there was no one to disagree with me or fight over spelling and punctuation. We made action plans and drafted proposals (kind of) for water, sanitation, and hygeine projects (WASH) that we want to pursue in our communities that comply with PC and Sphere standards, and also discussed funding/partnership options — SUPER helpful. As an added bonus, I got to hang out with a great group of PCVs, most of whom I had not known very well before, which is always a good thing.

This weeklong conference ended on the 21… and my flight to Paris leaves TONIGHT, April 25… and it takes a solid 2 days to get from Bamenda to Bertoua, so if I had attempted to go back I would only get a DAY at post before heading back to Yaounde, so my Program Manager told me to just take 2 extra vacation days instead. So, I travelled with a few friends out to the crater lakes of the South West Region of Cameroon. A friend of ours is posted out there, and so on Sunday night we took a midnight hike up the mountain to see the sunrise over the lakes! It was surreal… and exhausting. The lake we hiked to (and then swam in) is an extinct volcano and therefore the second deepest lake in the world by surface area — crazy, huh? These lakes are incredible! Our friend’s project is helping the IUCN catch and classify the fish in one of the lakes that has upwards of 19 unique fish species (i.e. do not exist anywhere else in the world). I love this country. Crater lakes, mountains, black sand beaches, desert, jungle, savanna, lions, hippos, French, “English,” Pidgin, Fulfulde, big cities, tiny bush villages… it really is Africa in miniature. Every day is an adventure. Particularly when travelling from amazing place to another. My trip from the lakes back to Yaounde required 2 motorcycles, a van, a bush taxi, and a city taxi, and that was painless. Travelling out here can really take it out of you, but once you start getting used to it, it becomes a couple hours to think and admire the breathtaking country.

I think I’m about to discover just how much I have gotten used to life here… I leave for Paris in a few hours and though I am unbelievably excited, I am also admittedly a little nervous. I think I am definitely going to be in for some reverse culture shock. I will only be there for 4 full days, but that is just fine by me. It should be just enough time to revel in the first worldness of it all: eat as much cheese and icecream as my stomach can hold and have a nice glass of white wine (here we have the option of laager, laager, laager, laager, weird Guiness brewed in Douala, or boxed red wine), but MOST importantly doing all this with my MOMMA! So excited! It has been a little over 7 months since I saw my family, so some quality time with Mom is going to be incredible. Then, the kicker is that she gets to come back to Cameroon with me! I can’t wait to see her reactions to everything out here!I know there are probably tons of things that I found shocking at first that have grown so familiar that I no longer notice them. It will be very interesting to see what she finds the most difficult, and what she thinks of my living situation. Hopefully I’ll get her to make a guest appearance on this blog with her reactions 🙂

Et donc, a bientot tout le monde (not sure how to do accents on pcs); Paris, j’arrive!

It’s Been a While

Sorry for the long delay since my last post. Since that time I have written two plays in French (very short, sorry to disappoint), paraded for women’s day, camped on a black sand beach, ventured out to the North West for IST, inherited a big UNICEF project from a friend who has been forced to move to the North, finally managed to acquire furniture, read 4 books (one of which was 1468 pages long, Les Mis), and started tutoring/mentoring a neighborhood girl in return for help cleaning my house. It’s been a little crazy. The rollercoaster continues and I must say that the past month may have brought the most extreme lows and highs that I have felt so far in country. Thankfully they came in that order, so I can report that I am doing very well and could not be happier to be back at post and back to work.

The fete du 8 mars (women’s day) was much smaller than I had anticipated. In the madness that was Youth Week, all I kept hearing was “you think this is big? Just wait for Women’s Day!” So I was admittedly a bit disappointed with what I encountered that first week of March. The only big events consisted of a fashion show (concours du mode) coordinated my the German Non-Profit (GTZ), the cultural soiree at the RDPC Party House, and the parade at the Place des Fetes. I was placed in charge of putting together the skit for the CPFF at the cultural soiree, an intimidating, but exhilarating task. I started the project right after Youth Week, setting up meetings with interested students after classes… setting up being the key part of that sentence. These meetings kept getting postponed for one reason or another until we arrived at the week before the fete, still without an idea for the skit. I finally got everyone in the room and decided that I would just pitch my own idea. I wanted the dialogue to come from improv/discussion because 1. I do not speak French fluently, and 2. I do not understand the subtleties of Cameroonian culture yet to come up with dialogue that actually entertains and makes sense. Everyone got so flustered at the idea of improvising that my entire cast dropped out of the play after the first rehearsal. Sweet. So I wrote play #1. We rehearsed play #1 successfully for a few days before the grumbling came back. They didn’t really understand the meaning of the play and were getting tripped up by my French (um yea… exactly why I wanted this to come from you guys!). So, I met with a smaller group of girls and together we came up with a new story — one that actually applied to the Cameroonian woman’s experience on 8 mars. Again, the idea of generating dialogue themselves intimidated my cast, so I was asked to write play #2. Feeling pretty good about myself for managing to write 2 plays in a foreign language in the same week, I come back to the CPFF to find the center completely empty. The next day I try to meet with my cast again only to discover that there was a special lecture planned on the Cameroonian judicial system — the weeks events had begun. After that, each time I tried to set up a rehearsal there was a special event, mandatory physical labor at the various delegations planned, or early dismissal/no class at all. In the end, I never got to rehearse my play. Instead, I got guilt trips from my Director about not having rehearsals… The day of the event I made one last attempt to corrdinate something, but to no avail. In truth I never actually made it to the cultural soiree. I was sent on a wild goose chase trying to find it. Everyone I asked gave me a different location and a different time. I ran all around Bertoua in the blazing heat (on foot, because I was too stubborn to keep paying up moto money) from delgation to delgation, center to center until I slipped down a hill and tore up my knee… I know this will sound silly, but it was the last straw for me. I had had it up to here with the lack of motivation and organization of this fete and was too tired to really desire pursuing it further… so I went home and spent the evening venting to anyone willing to listen to me. The next morning, we paraded, but it was not nearly as fun or exciting as the Youth Day parade that had such energy and a fair-like ambience. The overcast sky and threat of rain complemented the near-somber attitude of the parade.

After the parade, the “party” began. In Cameroon, there are two ways to celebrate Women’s Day: to drink excessively to all hours of the night, or to eat a nice, calm dinner with your family and call it an early night. Those that celebrate in the first way judge those that celebrate in the second and vice versa. I celebrated with one of my students that identified with second group. My friend Sean and I were invited over for a lovely and quiet meal with her and her family, along with a good hour of photos of her husband’s family in France. Over dinner we discussed how celebrating Women’s Day by getting drunk undermines the cause for women’s rights in Cameroon, and I was informed that it is actually one of the most dangerous nights of the year, particularly in regards to rape /sexual harassment (just as Youth Day has the reputation as the time most young girls fall pregnant). After all of this I was nearing physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. I was depressed and frustrated beyond belief with the work I was trying to do. It was time for a break…

And what better break than a couple days of camping on a black sand beach with close friends? Four days after Women’s Day (I couldn’t leave the day after with everyone else because of course the electric and water companies gave me ridiculous bills that I took a few days to fight, and in truth still have yet to be resolved) I found myself in Limbe, eating fresh seafood, drinking draft beers, and spending hours on end in the water. Those few days could not have possibly been more perfect nor more rejuvenating. I felt alive again. Check out facebook for pictures — this place is paradise.

From Limbe, we made our way up to Bamenda as a group for IST, In-Service Training, a mandatory week of sessions for PCVs and counterparts to discuss PACA (Participatory Analysis for Community Action, i.e. observations we have made of our communities), possible projects, and funding options through Peace Corps, USAID, etc. As both of my centers had all their final examinations, evaluations, and conferences during this week, I had no one to bring from Bertoua… however, by some hilarious twist of fate, my friend Laura, who is posted just outside of Bertoua, accidentally arrived with two counterparts due to miscommunication, and her second counterpart happens to live amd teach in Bertoua! So I had a partner for all of our training exercises afterall. All in all, IST was good. Sessions were long and boring, and all the more tedious because each concept had to be explained twice – once in French, once in English, which was most painful for those of us who understood both languages. However, it was really nice to see everyone from my stage in Bafia, and have the opportunity to explore the NW region a little bit.

Cameroon’s tagline is “Africa in Miniature” and I discovered upon arriving in Bamenda just how true that statement was. I knew there was a big difference between the jungle climate of my post and the steppe/desert of the Grand North (the Adamaoua, North, and Extreme North Regions), but I had not quite realized the diversity that exists within the Grand South. The North West is like a different world. The air was dry and cold; there were literally mountains and pinetrees; everywhere you looked there were farms, not forests; people snacked on carrots and read novels in their spare time. Those of us coming in from the East recieved some serious culture shock. We had always been told that the East was far beyond the rest of the country, but we didn’t realize just how far. After 3 months at post, we had already begun to feel comfortable with our situation and assumed that most of the problems we were having at post applied to the country as a whole… not the case. This realization was both depressing and motivational. We all finished IST with a new determination. After sessions closed, the Health APCD (Program Manager) pulled a few of us Easties aside and gave us a little pep-talk. She told us that Admin recognizes that the posts out East are some of the most difficult in PC Cameroon, and that in deciding placements, Program Managers only put the strongest (mentally, not necessarily physically) volunteers out East… which made us feel pretty good about ourselves.

Which brings us up to the present. I could not be happier to be back in Bertoua, in my finally furnished house, ready to get back to work. I still have another week before I have to start teaching, so I am taking this opportunity to explore the various international aid organizations here and prepare to start my new UNICEF project… but more on that later. All I know at this point is that the project exists. I have not met with UNICEF yet, nor have I visited the villages outside Bertoua I will be serving. I’ll reserve this for my next post… that I promise to write before a month and a half passes again.

United Church of Christ

Ok so this post is for all of my MBCC readers. I had QUITE the conversation with the director of my women’s center the other day about religion…

It started out as an invitation to join in on a forum on family matters at the nearby Catholic Church. After inviting me, my director (a thoroughly creepy man, by the way) asked me if i happened to be a Christian. I replied that indeed I had been raised in a Protestant church.
“Ok, so you’re Presbyterian,” he says.
“Um, no… not exactly,” I respond.
“But then what church do you go to?”
“It’s called the United Church of Christ”
“No. that’s wrong. You can’t have a Church of Christ, that’s just silly. Why would you ever have to say Church of Christ? Church implies Christ and so to say Church of Christ is just being redundant and stupid.”
“Um…. I’m sorry? That’s what the branch is called.”
“No that can’t be write. There’s no way.”

This conversation continued on exactly like this for another 20 minutes. He pulled out a French dictionary to show me that eglise (the French word for church) is defined officially as a Christian place of worship, invariably. I tried to explain that in English we tend to use “church” to signify any place of worship, and he told me I was wrong.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I think I know the English language a little better than you do.”
“Perhaps, but in this case you are just wrong! You need to tell your church elders they need to change the name, because this is just ridiculous.”
“Sir, this church has been around for hundreds of years, like the 1600s when the first Europeans came to America.” (did not have the French to say pilgrims)
“Well I still think you need to change it”
“Sir, with all due respect, I don’t believe you have the authority to say what my church can and cannot be called”

Thankfully at this point his assistant came in to tell us that I was 10 minutes late to teach my class (I arrived 25 mins early if this is any indication) and so I was in a way saved by the bell. He excused me only when I pormised I would be back after class to continue our discussion — HA! I ran out of there once my lesson was over. (Ok, that is actually a lie. I had to talk to one of my students who is apparently HIV positive and pregnant… and cannot get medication from the hospital because the doctors want to see her come down with some serious symptoms before they give her treatment. WHAT?? After talking with this girl and a few more students I shuffled out of the exit furthest from the directors office)