COS

April 28, 2009

Sorry for the hiatus…having lots to do and feeling lazy at the same time makes for a severe shortage of blogs. I am kind of glad that the ‘10 cents a day’ blog was on the top of the page for so long, though. It’s one of my favorites. So what have I been doing for the last weeks/months? Finishing up. I got to my post in August 2007 and my two years of Peace Corps service are nearing an end.

Almost the entirety of my work right now is with my Club Success’ in nearby high schools. It’s a class based on the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I wrote about it back in November when there were two. Now there are five, and with the end of school year fast approaching and a party in the works to join all of the clubs together, tying up the loose ends is keeping me quite busy. I’m really proud of the kids and I think I can already see some of the positive results. After the class is over, I plan on giving a class of the same material to adults.

Literally speaking of the end of my PC service, I attended my Close of Service (COS) conference at the end of March in the capital with all of the rest of my training group that has made it thus far. We met in Philadelphia with 39 and at COS conference we were 26. Losing a third is, I think, a little more than usual but it was still great to reunite with friends that we hadn’t seen in over a year. And we’re still hoping to meet up with some of those who left for medical or personal reasons at future reunions.

Peace Corps treated us really well putting us up in probably the nicest hotel in Yaoundé. It was on a small mountain with our rooms’ balconies overlooking the pool in the foreground and the entire capital city in the background. We also had three really nice buffet meals a day. I felt stuffed for the entire conference and at least a week after.

The conference itself consisted of doing a lot of paperwork and planning logistics for our departures – things like our plane tickets home and closing up our posts as far as things like rent and utilities (for those that have them). My biggest headache right now is doing everything I can do get Saki, my dog, home with me. I decided to take cash in lieu of my plane ticket in order to take care of all the details but it’s proving more difficult than anticipated. I’ll keep you updated. Also during the conference, we spent a day at the embassy for a question and answer session (things like people looking for fiancé visas) and to talk about career opportunities in the State Department and elsewhere.

That’s all for now. I’ll be blogging a lot more – hopefully once a week – when my workload slows down in a few days.

Tim

Ten Cents a Day

February 28, 2009

Looking at this picture reminds me of commercials I used to see in the US asking you to sponsor a child. “For only 10 cents a day…” they would plead. “Sponsor a child today.” Looking at this picture, what do you feel? Do you feel like you should take pity on her? Seriously. Stop and take 30 seconds to look at the picture and think about whether she is in need of assistance and why.

Yes, her button is broken – she’s wearing second-hand clothes. And yes she needs to wipe her nose. She also has a somewhat longing look on her face. Beyond that though, what is it? In my mind it’s just programming – clever marketing that has taken root designed to pull at heart strings and purse strings. Now don’t get me wrong. I have no idea what those organizations that take your 10 cents a day are actually doing. I haven’t seen any of them at work in Cameroon. Maybe they’re doing amazing work for kids that don’t have enough to eat or wouldn’t otherwise go to school. I’m not mad at the organizations. I’m mad at the stereotypes that I let myself be coerced into without even thinking about it. And I have a feeling I’m not alone in holding these stereotypes. Maybe I’m only alone in being able to notice this one because I’ve been living in Africa for almost two years.

Like almost every other introspective contemplation that I have in Cameroon, this one also leads me back to the ‘development question.’ What is it that people really need? Why are some countries considered underdeveloped? What are the criteria and do they really want to be developed? Peace Corps doesn’t send volunteers to Canada or Great Britain because someone somewhere decided that they are not in need. But how do we decide who needs what kind of help? To be fair to Peace Corps, each host country has to request volunteers. But then how do the host countries decide what they need. I think a lot of the ideas of what one considers ‘developed’ are relative – that is, compared to the West and Western standards, Cameroon is underdeveloped as is much of Africa. But if development is relative, in 75 years let’s presume Africa to be living at the exact same standards as Americans are now and America to be somehow 75 years more developed. Are we still going to say Africa is underdeveloped? I would probably strongly disagree if someone tried to argue that the US is underdeveloped today. I think most if not all of Americans would also strongly disagree, and would have done the same 75 years ago as well. But if development is relative, then that means it’s not about a selfless approach to meeting a set of standards that we deem indispensable to every human being. It’s just a game of catch-up – maybe a never-ending game of catch-up.

Now, I do think that there are some standards with regard to health care and education that are not relative and that are actually somewhat agreed upon. People have the right to drink water that doesn’t make them sick and a right to a decent education, for example. There are actually a decent number of NGOs and development organizations working on some of these problems. For the sake of the argument, let’s put those aside for now.

When I think of development, what normally comes to my head are roads and bridges and buildings and economies…and conquering poverty, like the girl in the picture – the idea of development that somehow established itself in my head. People need clean water, but do they need running water? Maybe a family is used to using kerosene lamps; do they need electricity? Paved roads? Automobiles? Where do you draw the line? Or, with a relative idea of development, do we keep moving the line farther and farther away like leading a horse with a carrot.

I occasionally hear some conspiracy theories about the white man trying to keep Africa down. I couldn’t disagree more with them, but we have to admit that we’re not playing on an even playing field. It is suited to those that are already ‘developed.’ We might not be cheating, but we did create the game. The idea of a capitalistic democracy was created by the West because it fit really well with our independent culture. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with it, but it is much harder to adapt, for example, in a collective culture like Cameroon’s. And now there is no longer a choice of whether or not to adapt it. It was decided by colonizing forces long ago and it is too late to go back. We’re stuck in this strange quandary with one puzzle piece left that doesn’t fit no matter how you force it. Cameroon and the rest of Africa, without outside influences, would have eventually developed into their own unique first-world identities. Sadly, we’ll never know what that image of Africa would have looked like.

We’re about to either hit a dead end or start going in circles, so let’s look at the question through a different paradigm: would you rather be a happy-go-lucky poor person or a miserable rich bastard? The idea is who cares about development? People want to be happy. If someone is living in a shanty town without running water but is a part of a loving family, has supportive friends, enough to eat and is not constantly sick, what’s the problem? Is the question how much stuff one needs to be happy or how one can be happy? They’re two entirely different questions. The person seeking the answer to the first question will probably never find enough stuff. The person seeking the answer to the second question, as in my case, will probably find little clues and tidbits of the answer along the way. And he might even find the quest just as enjoyable as the possibility of ever finding an answer.

Maybe it seems like I’ve changed my outlook a bit. It might seem that today I would disagree with what I wrote in the “What’s wrong with Cameroon” series. I don’t. The idea is not that there is nothing wrong with Cameroon – there’s plenty. But I could write another series on what’s wrong with the US or probably any other country after living there for a year or so. The idea is that while some or all of those problems might be causing a look of ‘underdevelopment,’ creating a look of ‘development’ won’t fix the problems. A lot of problems came from the West telling them what their societies were supposed to look like. And examining my thoughts while looking at the picture at the top of this blog, I don’t think we ever stopped. We still have an idea that African society doesn’t look the way it should, and that we need to fix it. I don’t think that development aid should be cut off, especially not in the areas of health and education. But maybe a more hands-off approach or more leadership by the part of underdeveloped countries would help. Maybe the founding fathers got it right when they said our unalienable rights were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Maybe the developed world should take the approach that my parents still take in raising me: “We just want you to be happy.”

Underdeveloped countries have a steep hill to climb and no one can change that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t smile while walking uphill.

Tim

* I took this picture in the traditional animist household I visited in Rumsiki. The girl lives in a nice walled compound with her dad, several moms and plenty of food to fill her belly.

The North, Part III - The EXTREME

February 16, 2009

While Genevieve and I were in the North Province, Angie was great leading us around and acting as our tour guide. And when we were ready to head to the Extreme North, she turned into a travel agent telling us about everything we needed to see and do. She even gave us a list with information and phone numbers to guide us on our way. The first thing on our list was Rumsiki. Rumsiki is a small town out in the bush nestled away among these strange peaks and not much else. It’s become a tourist attraction because of the scenery and also the Crab Sorcerer (we’ll get to him later).

We took a bush taxi from Garoua, in the North, to Mokolo, in the Extreme North. Mokolo is the closest decent-sized town to Rumsiki and happens to be where Fleurange, another volunteer and friend of ours lives. She was coming back from Rumsiki with some other friends the day we were to arrive and we were having problems with cell phone reception. So when our bus arrived, we asked a couple of moto drivers if they knew where she lived. They said they did and took us there. When we knocked at the gate a friendly dog and a tall, thin white girl answered the door. She spoke English like an American, but…this wasn’t Fleurange. It just happens that there are two volunteers in Mokolo. One is Fleurange, a SED volunteer that came in a year after me and that I met during her training. The other (the one whose house we were at) is an Agro-forestry volunteer named Thea that had just arrived at post one week ago – the reason we had never met her before. It turned out Fleurange wasn’t back yet so it was great to meet Thea and lucky that she was so nice as to feed and welcome in a couple of strangers for a few hours. It’s great having a big family – some members you don’t even know about. It’s also nice to know that a bunch of those members, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, are waiting for me back in the States. After a little bit of worry and still no cell phone reception, Fleurange and her friends eventually arrived. They told us about their adventures and we crashed for the night.

Early the next morning – before the others even woke up – Genevieve and I headed into town to eat breakfast and find a couple of motos to take us to Rumsiki. It is possible to take a car there, but the road is horrible and everyone that I know that has been there told us to hop on the back of a motorcycle instead. The trip being as bad as it was on the moto, I don’t even want to imagine what it would be like crammed in a car. It took us an hour and a half to arrive on a bumpy dirt road and my moto didn’t have any back shocks. One time during the trip I had to tell my driver to stop. The scenery is gorgeous and I took some photos, but we really stopped so I could rest my tailbone a bit. I think I remember reading somewhere that the peaks are all old volcanoes. What you are seeing is actually the core where the lava came up, but everything else has eroded away over time.

The view from where I rested my tailbone

When we got to Rumsiki, we pulled into a nice hotel on the outside of town. This is where we hired our guide and bumped into the US Ambassador who happened to be on vacation with her family. She recognized we were Peace Corps Volunteers right away because of our motorcycle helmets (I would say maybe 2% of Cameroonians have helmets because of the cost) so we chatted a little bit and took some pictures before heading into town with our guide.

Our guide, the same one that took the Ambassador around, was very impressive. He was knowledgeable in everything that he was saying and seemed to me very westernized despite never having left Africa. One example of this was him setting up poses that he would take with our cameras. It was kind of cheesy, but you have to put it into context. As far as I know you can’t even buy a digital camera in Cameroon, so our guide who knew how to operate one, framed the image well, and was even creative surprised me.

Cheesy pose

A rather extreme case of a poorly taken photo a few days prior

On the way into town, we talked about the origins of Rumsiki and the makeup of its inhabitants. The town started with one man who was out hunting and found a great cave in one of the peaks in an area with a lot of game. He talked to a nearby chief about bringing his family there to live and the chief agreed as long as he was given some fresh meat from time to time. The town eventually grew from there and even defended attacks from Arabs because of the strategic location of the cave. Now the town is mostly made up of Animists, like its founder, with a minority of Muslims and a few Christians here and there. On the way through town we tasted some traditional millet beer, saw the men’s, women’s, and children’s palaver trees where the Animist community would come to work out any problems, and we also passed artisans making clay pots, weaving cotton and making other handicrafts. I’m not sure how many of those artisans would have been there fifty years ago, though. One square that we passed seemed to be a hub of activity. There were several people spinning cotton into thread, more weaving the thread with looms, and others selling finished products. They were some trying to show us how to spin the cotton, tell us how much they worked and how little money they made, and get us to buy their spindle as a souvenir. Funny thing was, when Genevieve and I passed by the same square later without our guide it was completely empty. Tourism is what drives this town now.

Our first stop was a traditional Animist household. My understanding is that an Animist is one who can see God or the Divine in ordinary objects existing in nature. It could be a tree, a rock, or an animal. Each practitioner or family will actually pick one of these objects to be ‘their God’ and to worship. At the entrance of this polygamous household, our guide pointed out the stone that the family worshiped. Walking in further, we saw lots of round, stone huts with thatched roofs. The first one was for any guest staying the night, a few were where the different wives and children slept and the rest were for stocking grains and other foods. The one way that these polygamous families are different from the Fulbé and some others in the Grand South is that if one of the wives is dissatisfied with the way she is being treated, she can very easily leave and go find another husband. I found that interesting – almost like polygamous women’s lib. (I’ve written about polygamy a couple of times in my blog because it’s so different from what I’m used to in the US. I should probably point out that while the outlook on marriage is very different here, the majority of Cameroonians are not polygamous.)

One of the storage huts – food is stored in the bottom and the top, you can also see the peak that has the cave in the background to the right

After the seeing the traditional household, we went to see the Crab Sorcerer. He, more than anything else in Rumsiki, is the reason for all of the tourists. The Crab Sorcerer is the head elder of the Animist Community. And he communicates with crabs. It is a skill that has been passed down in his family for generations, although it is the crab that decides to which son the skill will be passed, not the sorcerer himself. Our guide is actually his grandson and so has a chance of ending up as the Crab Sorcerer later in his life. Every Animist is required to consult the Crab Sorcerer at least once per year but he also tells the fortunes of all the tourists that come through. As much as was possible, I tried to keep an open mind before seeing him. He looks as authentic as is possible, but after hearing my fortune I have to say I’m pretty skeptical. He only speaks the local dialect, so you have to use your guide to translate for you. How it works is you ask a question; he tells the crab and puts the crab in a pot; the crab rearranges little sticks and stones in the pot; and the Crab Sorcerer, based on the arrangement of the things in the pot, tells you your answer. The question that I asked was ‘What am I going to be doing as far as work after Peace Corps, and where? The answer was either North America or Europe and that I should marry Genevieve. I think he assumed we were a couple. Maybe you understand now why I’m a skeptic. It was still totally worth the experience though – just look at the pics.

The Crab Sorcerer

The crab’s pot

After the Crab Sorcerer we took a short hike up to the original cave that was the reason for the foundation of Rumsiki. As we hiked up we could see what was left of some of the stone walls of the original buildings. And about two thirds of the way up, we arrived at the cave. It wasn’t really like one you would think of in the States, but more of an outcrop that was good for shelter and getting an eye of the land. There was a great view of the different neighborhoods of Rumsiki and even the border with Nigeria. By this time, we were hungry and ready for a late lunch. We had already put in a reservation at The Vegetarian Carnivore, a restaurant on the outside of town. Angie recommended it for us and I’ll do the same for anyone that might be traveling to the Extreme North of Cameroon. It was wonderful. On the way down the peak, our guide took the initiative to help us knock down a fruit from a baobab tree that we took to the restaurant. And as easy as that (ha ha), with our meal we had fresh baobab juice.

The cave/outcrop

The view from the cave

Throwing rocks to try to knock down the baobab fruit

Our aim was off so we had to use alternative measures

Me, victorious, with the baobab fruit

After our meal, and the necessary respite for digestion, we met back up with our moto drivers and rode back to Mokolo. That my moto broke down half-way back was actually a blessing – I ended up switching and getting a much cushier ride. Gen and I slept really well at Fleurange’s place that night and the next morning headed to Maroua, the capital of the Extreme North. Another suggestion for anyone planning to go to Rumsiki: don’t go there and back in one day. Even with shocks, it’s a long, exhausting ride. The hotel on the way into town is gorgeous, has a small pool overlooking the rocky landscape, and is not that expensive. If I had it to do again, I’d stay the night and maybe take a hike in the morning before heading back.

Maroua, for me, was a time to relax. And it was the perfect place to do it. The transit house (Case) for PC volunteers is beautiful, with a large shade-covered sandy lawn. I spent a lot of my time just reading outside and listening to the wind blow through the trees – a sound I hadn’t realized I missed. Compared to the rest of the Grand North, Maroua is full of trees. It’s a beautiful city with tree lined avenues nestled among a large river…except when I was there it was just a river bed. The beds dry up with the dry season, but if you dig just a little you can get to water. It was interesting to see people doing this in order to wash their clothes during the day. There are also plenty of shops and a large artisan market in Maroua. I didn’t get any, but the best things to buy are the leather products – bags, wallets and shoes are all popular items. You can even have things specially made for you.

The road leading into Maroua – I tried to capture the dry river bed out the window of a bush taxi

Other than reading in the shade and walking around the city, the rest of my time in the Extreme North was spent eating good food. Restaurants aren’t hard to come by in Maroua but we did a lot of cooking too. There are always a decent amount of PC volunteers coming through Maroua and this was New Years, so there were even more finding excuses to stop by. A lot of volunteers from the training group that had just been posted like to cook and there’s a nice kitchen in the Case so I felt right at home with them. I don’t even remember what we ate. I just remember it being good. The New Year’s celebration was pretty low-key, just a time to hang out and appreciate the good weather, good food, and good company.

Genevieve and I stopped for one more night in Garoua on the way back, but that pretty much wraps up my time in the North. Of course there was the dreaded train ride back (despite getting a couchette, I was starting to get sick and threw up twice on the ride) but I think I covered almost everything. I had a great time in the North and would suggest that anyone visiting Cameroon make the trip up there. It was a learning experience even for me and I tried to throw in as many of the cultural tidbits that I picked up into these three blogs. I hope you enjoyed reading them.

Tim

The North, Part II - Christmas in Garoua

January 17, 2009

After spending a couple days in Tourningal in the Adamaoua, Genevieve and I headed back to Ngoundéré and then took a bush taxi to Garoua, the capital of the North Province. Garoua is supposed to be the hottest city in Cameroon. It is surrounded by mountains that trap in the heat and humidity. But there was not much heat and no humidity. We heard it was "winter," but knowing that the Adamaoua has a much more temperate climate, we were worried about what the North province had in store for us. We were told that as the bush taxi winds down the road off of the Adamaoua plateau, you can feel the temperature rising. We did feel the temperature go up slightly, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. What caught our eye were the Hermitan winds that bring the "winter" weather, or at least proof of their existence in the form of dust. It didn’t gust or feel that windy. It was just dusty. Visibility was probably around a half of a mile creating an eerie feeling and not allowing us to see the landscape around us.

While it wasn’t hot outside, it did get quite hot in the bush taxi. The majority of the people in the taxi were already used to extreme heat and they preferred it over the dust, so the windows stayed closed for most of the four and a half hour trip to Garoua. Thirty people crammed into a small bus with no circulation was not exactly pleasant, but we eventually made it. Angie and Stephanie met us at the agency and we went for dinner at a place around the corner that had fresh fruit smoothies.

Our time in the North ended up being an interesting mix between touristy, cultural stuff and American time. There were two reasons for this. One is that there are four Peace Corps volunteers in Garoua and lots more in the surrounding area, most of them from our training group. The second is that it was Christmas time. Christmas is one of those holidays where you want to be reminded of home and your own traditions, and being surrounded by Muslim culture, we stuck together a lot.

We arrived on December 23rd, so the way that we were introduced to most of Garoua, the fourth largest city in Cameroon, was in buying things from markets and boutiques to get ready for our own celebrations. On Christmas Eve, about 15 volunteers got together at Angie’s house for a great dinner. We had bruschetta, two chickens, vegetarian chili, mashed potatoes, carrots, and pumpkin pie (actually squash pie) for dessert. Dinner was served under the stars by candlelight with Christmas music playing from a collection of people’s iPods as we ate on a huge straw mat. It was a great ambiance. Then, Christmas day, everyone went to Stephanie’s house. The crowd grew even more as there were probably 30 volunteers at the party. Stephanie actually lives in a primary school. It’s a little surreal, but worked quite well for the party. There were plenty of chairs and tables (even if they were meant for people one third our size) and there was space for everything that she had planned. One room was set aside for Christmas movies, another was for board games, and there was even an area for crafts where people decorated a Christmas tree taped to the wall and cut snowflakes. The food was once again amazing - a potluck with green bean casserole, cheesy spinach dip, hummus and homemade crackers, salad, mashed potatoes, rice and vegetables, Christmas cookies, pumpkin pie, and a lot more that I can’t even remember. We even had a white elephant gift exchange later on in the evening. Because we had partied well into the night on Christmas Eve, this day ended up being a lot more laid back.

Christmas Eve Dinner

The day after Christmas we headed into the Grand Marché so that I could buy a boubou (pronounced boo-boo), the traditional men’s clothing in the Grand North. I can see them occasionally worn in the South, even by non-muslims, but it’s not as common and I had never worn one. For anyone that doesn’t know what a boubou is, it’s a pair of loose-fitting pants with a loose-fitting top that goes down a little below the knees. The top is embroidered around the neck and sometimes other places. One of the reasons I wanted to buy a boubou was because I had brought mostly shorts and t-shirts readying myself for the heat not realizing that they weren’t really acceptable in the stricter traditional standards of the North. But the main reason was just for the experience. When in Rome, right? When we got to the market we found two long rows of tailors making and selling nothing but boubous. It was quite a sight. Not knowing at all what a good price was but having acquired a love of haggling, I spent a long time going up and down the aisles talking to each shop. I finally got to the point where I found a boubou that I liked and told the man in the shop how much I wanted to pay. He had to call the owner who, he told me, was coming right away. I took the fact that he had to call the owner to mean that I was asking for a really good price. During the time I was waiting for the owner to show up, though, I found someone else that was trying to convince me not to buy one pre-made, that he wanted to make my boubou himself. I would be able to pick out the fabric, it would be tailored to my size, he could have it ready by the next morning, and … he could do it cheaper. Though a little bit skeptical, I agreed. It turns out he was a genuinely nice guy and a great businessman. He took me on his motorcycle to two different fabric shops to pick out exactly what I wanted, got me a good deal, and kept his word by having it ready first thing the next morning. It was dark green, almost exactly like the one I was about to buy except I was able to have the embroidery done better because I had saved so much money on the fabric. All that and at two thirds the price! Genevieve ordered something at the same time as me and he’s already picked up orders from at least three other Peace Corps volunteers. He does a great job and his good service is already paying dividends. If you’re ever in Garoua I’m pretty sure his shop is number GI-47 at the corner of the market.

The experience of wearing the boubou is another story all its own. I was amazed at all the respect and attention that people gave me. It was partly because they were proud that a foreigner was embracing their culture, but also because of the importance of appearance and what it represents as far as your social standing. People everywhere were calling me El Hadji which is a title for someone that has made the trek to Mecca. They probably knew that I had never been to Mecca; it was just a way of showing respect. Some people called me El Hadji Nasara. Nasara means white man in Fulfuldé, and while it’s often heard chanted from little kids or done just to solicit a reaction from you, this was very respectful. One of the days that I wore my boubou we all went to Lagdo, a town about 45 minutes outside of Garoua. I remember on one of the legs of the journey, as we were cramming seven people into an economy size car, it was insisted that El Hadji Nasara sit in the front. That is the seat reserved for the most important person. I usually don’t even like sitting there. They fit two people into that one front passenger seat. I would rather be one of the four people they squeeze into the back three seats. Three fourths of a seat is better than one half, right? But this time, the other person that was next to me in front was giving me as much space as humanly possible. He was like an acrobat almost on top of the stick shift giving me pretty much the whole seat to myself. While I felt uncomfortable having people go out of their way for me and judging me solely on the way I was dressed, it was an insightful experience into not just northern but Cameroonian culture. While I don’t necessarily like or agree with the practice, I can definitely see how if I had grown up here, every day I would dress to impress and not for comfort. I remember hearing in our training over a year and a half ago that people will wear the best clothes they have and take pains to keep up their appearance. I saw that it was true, but now I have an even better understanding of why.

The Lagdo trip that I had the VIP treatment for was pretty amazing. In the middle of this desert climate is a town profiting from a hydro-electric dam that creates a lake and some pretty incredible scenery. When we arrived we went straight to the dam. On one side is the lake and nearby hills extending right to the waters edge. On the other, hundreds of feet below, the river continues through a trail of fertile, green earth among the rest of the dry region. At the bottom is also a home for a few hippos that we could see lounging in the water and the afternoon sun. They were pretty far down and all we could see were the tops of their heads poking out of the water, but after seeing one yawn it brought back the reality of what we were seeing. His enormous head hinged open at least ninety degrees. After the dam, we went to have a drink at the Blue Lagoon, a small resort on the waters edge. The serenity of the resort with groups of small huts and buildings scattered on the hillside overlooking the lake made it the perfect place to sit down and soak up the scenery. We took our time, took a few pictures, and then headed back to Garoua.

The lake at the top of the dam

Hippos at the bottom

View from the Blue Lagoon

At the Blue Lagoon (the boubou has an affect on Americans too)

Once back in Garoua, we got a good night sleep, woke up early, and took the first bush taxi of the day into the Extreme North…

Tim

*Don’t forget to check out the photos I just added to the last post.

The North, Part I - Adamaoua

January 7, 2009

I just got back from my trip to the north of Cameroon. I feel like there’s a lot to write about, so I’ll split it up. The “Grand North” of Cameroon is made up of three provinces – Adamaoua (pronounced a-da-ma’-wa), North, and Extreme North. I’ll designate a blog to each one.

The Grand North feels like a country of its own (In fact, I see Cameroon as three countries – Grand North, Francophone South, and Anglophone South which includes the Northwest and Southwest provinces). There are several reasons for this. The first is that every single road that goes into the Adamaoua, or the southernmost of the three Northern provinces, from the rest of Cameroon is horrible. The only reasonable way to get there is to fly, which is expensive and the flights aren’t always running, or take the night train, which is what everyone does. The second reason is the culture. The grand south, the remaining 7 Cameroonian provinces, is predominately Christian while the grand north is predominately Muslim culture creating an entirely different feel to the region. The climate and landscape set it apart too. The Sahel is a much hotter and drier desert climate.

First – the train. The train from Yaoundé to Ngoundéré, the capital of the Adamaoua, is infamous among volunteers and Cameroonians alike. The reason is that it’s a pain in the ass. Getting through the corruption at the station is your first hurdle. Anyone that’s ever had one before will tell you that a couchette, or a sleeper car, is the way to go. The only problem is that your reservations might mysteriously disappear. Being the only reasonable way to get north, the train’s packed every single night and the couchettes are always hard to come by as even well-to-do business men and politicians are waiting in line. Even if you show up first thing the morning of to buy tickets, you shouldn’t be very surprised to find that there is only first class left despite having already made reservations for a couchette. I ended up traveling with 11 other Peace Corps Volunteers who were down for a conference. We reserved 12 couchettes and only got 4 despite Sally making the reservations for all of them. Sally is a Cameroonian Peace Corps employee that knows all the right people, knows the system, and is the person you go to when you need to get things done. That the reservations she made ended up being given to someone else is a testament to how difficult it can be. So, I ended up sitting in first class. The seats were really not that uncomfortable. I would say that it’s similar if not a little better than coach on a plane. The only problem is that it’s a night train and you want to be sleeping, not sitting up. Also this is probably not the only leg of your journey. You might have traveled for hours already to get to Yaoundé and you might need to travel for hours more once the train arrives in Ngoundéré. The other pain is that the train is supposed to leave every night at a little after 6pm and arrive the next day a little after 6am. A 12-hour train ride is bad enough, but it rarely, if ever, leaves on time and rarely, if ever, takes just 12 hours. I’ve heard volunteers posted in the north complain to no end about having to take the train and was not looking forward to it. For my first experience, we left the station at 9pm, three hours late, made lots of stops where there were no stations, and arrived the next day at noon making it a total of 18 hours! As far as Peace Corps stories go, the longest anyone I know has had to wait was 30 hours because of the train derailing, but it’s been in the news that it’s taken 3 days on the worst of trips! Hope they packed some extra food.

My travel plans for the entire two-and-a-half weeks were incredibly vague to begin with. I knew I wanted to spend a night or two with my friend Ali, a health volunteer in the Adamaoua, Christmas in Garoua, the capital of the North Province, and New Years in Maroua, the capital of the Extreme North Province. Beyond that, I just wanted to hang out with my friends and get a better understanding of the entirety of the country in which I’m serving. It just so happened that Genevieve, a friend from my training group, was taking a trip to the north on the exact same dates and had planned even less than me. We decided to do just about everything together. So when we arrived in Ngoundéré, we got some lunch, met up with Ali, and headed out to her post on the prison bus. Yep, you read right…kinda. Something the Adamaoua Peace Corps Volunteers pride themselves in is that it’s the only place in the country where the bush taxis look like prison buses (think old school gangster movies where they load the crooks in the back and slam the door). There are definitely some similarities. It’s a big boxy truck that you load from the back, there’s not much in the way of windows that open, and there is a barrier with bars between the passengers and the drivers. I’m not sure if they ever used to be real prison buses; it reminded me, personally, of a bread delivery truck, but I decided it best not to say anything at the time. Ali, Genevieve, and I luckily got the last three spots on the bus and took off for the dusty hour-and-a-half trip to Tourningal.

Ali had stressed to me at Thanksgiving that I had to spend at least a night in the Adamaoua in order to get a taste of Fulbé culture. Fulbé are the Muslim ethnic group that makes up a lot of the Grand North. They tend to be taller, thinner, and lighter skinned than the other ethnic groups and they speak Fulfuldé. Their highest concentration is in the Adamaoua, probably close to 100% in Ali’s small village of Tourningal, and the farther north you go the sparser they become. While Christians and Animists become more dominate moving north, the Fulbé imprint on the entire northern culture is undeniable. Remember how I said the North had a predominately Muslim culture? It’s Muslim culture, not Muslims. I’m pretty sure I remember reading somewhere that the Grand North doesn’t even have a majority of Muslims, yet you would never know it just from looking. The architecture is different from the South and there are mosques everywhere. You can hear the call to prayer in any city you are in, and the bush taxis even stop at scheduled prayer times. The style of dress has a much more Muslim and conservative feel to it as the men wear traditional boubous and the women almost all have some sort of cloth covering their head. And then there’s the language. Cameroon’s two official languages are French and English, but if you want to do anything beyond tourism in the Grand North, you’d better speak Fulfuldé. You need it to get good prices at the markets and for moto-taxis in any town, and if you live in a village like Tourningal, 95% of your interactions will be in Fulfuldé. The majority of people there don’t even speak French. What about school, you might ask? Tourningal’s school system recently added middle school grades, but for anything beyond that you would have to go and live in a bigger town like Ngoundéré. Ali told us that last year there was one student from Tourningal that passed the Baccalaureate, the High School exit exam, and that everyone was really proud of him.

Me and Genevieve in Tourningal

When we arrived, we went to Ali’s house to get cleaned up, got a quick tour of the village (it doesn’t take that long), and headed over for dinner at her family’s house. This family essentially adopted her for her time in Cameroon. It’s a polygamous family and the wife that she is the closest to just happens to be the best cook. The wives take turns cooking for the husband and all the kids, but each wife usually prepares for herself and any other possible guests even when it’s not her turn. When it’s not her turn, the kids usually go to Ali’s mom after their dinner to see if there is anything better-tasting left over. She is a really good cook. While we were there we ate two different leafy green sauces with rice couscous, cassava in fresh sweetened milk, steamed squash, fried rice cakes, and doughnuts. There was always sweet lemongrass tea, sometimes with fresh milk. I think we ate breakfast lunch and dinner there for two solid days. It was wonderful and there was always more than could imagine eating. The biggest difference in the food for me was dairy. In the south there are hardly any dairy products while in the Grand North, cattle are a huge part of the economy. You can see them being herded everywhere and they look a lot healthier than the ones you see in the South. The opposite is true with fish. It’s everywhere in the South and very expensive in the North.

Ali and her adopted family

If eating food with dairy in the bedroom of one of the wives in a polygamous compound wasn’t enough, the other thing to throw me off a bit was the language – not only how little French Ali’s mom spoke, but also how well Ali spoke Fulfuldé. She kept trying to be modest and say she wasn’t very good, but not once did I hear her struggle to get her point across or understand what someone else was saying. And this is where Genevieve and I started trying to pick it up. Luckily, unlike a lot of other local languages in Cameroon, Fulfuldé is pretty straight forward. You pronounce everything pretty clearly, it’s not a tonal language, and there are only two sounds that don’t exist in English. We learned our basic greetings and thank yous, and then I asked her for a phrase that really helped me throughout my vacation – A ho’okan am na’ay noy, jay bangugo mo? It means ‘How many cows will you give me to marry her?’ I had a lot of fun with it. Fulfuldé is spoken everywhere in the Grand North, but it’s much more possible to get by with just French the farther north you go and in bigger cities. Some of the Peace Corps Volunteers that I met up with later on in my vacation didn’t even know what I was saying when I tried to sell them to their friends.

There was one other thing that we weren’t expecting – the cold! The north is supposed to be HOT. The Adamaoua Province is on a plateau and not supposed to be as bad as the North or Extreme North, but Ali had to lend us some fleeces and we were still shivering wearing socks to bed and sleeping under blankets. Volunteers in the North are glad to tell you their sob stories about it being 140° in the shade, but I had never heard anyone tell me they had a winter! That’s actually what they call it. The Hermitan Winds pick up for about 6-8 weeks in December and January cooling things off a lot. In the South, it’s the middle of the dry season and the hottest time of the year. In the North, it’s their coolest time of the year. To be fair to all of the sob stories, the coolest in the North is not that far off from the hottest in the South. To me, the days still felt like summer and the nights like fall. The other difference in the climate was the dryness. Dry season in the South means no rain, but it’s still sticky and humid. In the north there was no humidity – zero. For not being used to it, the dry air felt like it was going to give me a bloody nose every time I breathed. My lips became instantly chapped. And while I didn’t have any skin problems, Genevieve, who’s African-American, was putting on lotion 10 times a day.

No water or electricity at Ali's post (and notice the fleece a couple sizes too small for me)

Soaking up the Fulbé style of life (and the good food) in and around Ali’s post, we decided to stay an extra night. While we were there, we ended up seeing three different waterfalls, the ranch of the former president Ahidjo, and a town called Idool. Idool is a very interesting place. It’s a very traditional and conservative Fulbé village. It’s unique in that the founder was into city planning. All of the roads are straight and lined with trees, everyone lives in walled compounds, it’s kept very neat, no one litters, and we even saw a lake in the shape of the map of Cameroon. Another interesting note that I probably wouldn’t have even realized had Ali not pointed it out was that we never saw any women. It is so conservative that women either aren’t even allowed out of their houses or have many chores to do.

Idool

Waterfalls of Tello

The touristy stuff like the waterfalls were great, but the best part of our stay was just experiencing Fulbé village life. I completely agree with Ali that to fully understand the culture of the Grand North, you need to spend some time in the Adamaoua. We really enjoyed ourselves there.

Tim

Next Blog

December 16, 2008

I'm going on vacation over Christmas and New Years to the three Northern provinces. This is where it's hot. The hottest days of the year get up to 140F in the shade! As long as I don't melt, I'll tell you all about it when I get back.

But...if you want something before then, help me out. I think one of my best blogs, or at least one with the most reaction was when I responded to questions from my mom's book club. So how about Round II? I should have internet access where I'm going and it's less work for me if you all come up with what I'm supposed to write about. I'm also curious who's reading. I've been told by countless volunteers that their mom reads my blog. And I know that it's a lot more than Peace Corps moms. I recently installed a counter on the site and the statistics are interesting. While it wasn't so much a 'surprise' where a huge number of the hits came from - Surprise, AZ is where my parents are living - some other details caught my eye. Eight percent of my readers are in the UK, and there are others from Ireland, Australia, Kenya, France, South Korea, and plenty of other countries (Cameroon was actually hardly existant on the list). In the US, a lot of places were predictable like Arizona, Indiana where I grew up, and Maryland where I went to school. And there were other places that caught my eye either because it seems random, like North Hero, VT or Lilburn, GA, or because I have friends there that I've lost contact with for a long time.

So partly because it's easier for me if you choose the topic, and partly because I'm curious who's out there, send me a line! Ask me a question, or just let me know you're out there. You can comment to this blog or, if you're shy, you can email me at thartman2pccam@yahoo.com

Tim

Piggy Bank Project

December 10, 2008

The Piggy Bank Project that has lived in our heads for so long now has finally been carried out. Our plan was put into action around the Thanksgiving holiday and was an absolute success! And now I’m spent. It was a lot of work.

The idea started over a year ago. Autumn and Tara both had very good experiences with starting piggybanks for some kids in their neighborhoods. For some of the kids it was a place for storing some of the money they earned doing chores for the Peace Corps Volunteer; for others it was just a place to deposit a little change that wasn’t spent on candy or other unnecessary purchases. It was an idea that the kids took to very quickly, but as we soon found out, saving was a concept that many were not exposed to as children. It seemed like something easy to teach, inexpensive to implement (the piggybanks started out as empty jars), and able to make a pretty large impact. When Tara and I found out that her carpenter friend next door could make piggybanks, a simple wooden box with a slit in the top, for about 60 cents was when the idea for the project began to take form.

The idea was to bring piggybanks and the concept of saving to as many kids as possible. We decided to organize a series of savings seminars in all of the high schools in the area. We would open each seminar to the first 100 students and give each one of them a locally made ‘piggybank’ in hopes that they start applying the knowledge right when the seminar ended. Already going to all of the high schools in the area and wanting to make the seminars as fun as possible, we decided to tap the help of the other Peace Corps volunteers in the littoral province as well.

Our next problem was funding. While in the grand scheme of things this was a fairly cheap project, hundreds of piggybanks and transportation all around the province was pretty much impossible on a Peace Corps living allowance. So we posted the project on Peace Corps Partnership site where anyone can give a tax deductible contribution to partially fund a Peace Corps volunteer’s project (https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.donatenow&) and at the same time looked for funding from the communities here. You all did your part funding 75% of our project in about 2 weeks, and we didn’t have to look very hard here coming up with the last 25%. The MC² microfinance banks that almost all small business volunteers work with gave the rest. The seven towns where we held the seminars all had an MC². Each one of these community banks chipped in about $20 and we gave them a slot in the seminar program to talk about why it was better to save at a bank in lieu of at the home and to do a little public outreach to the students who could end up as future clients. At this point we placed an order for 700 piggybanks from Tara’s neighbor.

Through with almost all of the hurdles, the last thing that we needed to do was schedule the seminars in a time that worked for all the volunteers in the province. From the planning to the implementation, one volunteer switched posts within the province and another switched posts leaving the province confusing matters. And there was another volunteer that simply couldn’t schedule time away from her work. That left 5 of us to carry out the project. We picked a schedule for the seminars, and then changed it about four times finally deciding on the last week of November and the first week of December.

Tara, Autumn and I set up the final logistical details with each of the schools’ principles and towns’ bank directors the week before and we all crossed our fingers that everything would work out as planned. On November 24^th, we all met at my house to iron out who was going to say what and when in the seminar, and the next day we traveled to Manjo to do our first seminar all together.

In all, we did seminars in Manjo, Baré, Kekem, Melong, Nkongsamba, Loum, and Njombé. This is roughly what happened at each one: First we all had to find bush taxis to our location and someone had to bring two very large bags with the 100 piggybanks to our destination. We would meet quickly with the school administration to make sure that the communiqué was read inviting the students and that there was a room designated large enough for the seminar. For the schools that had one available, we asked for a sound system so we could talk into a microphone and save our voices for the two weeks. We had piggybanks for the first 100 students, but we let in as many as wanted to hear the seminar. There was only one town where we didn’t have 100 students – Njombé had about 75 in attendance – but in Nkongsamba we ended up with about 500 easily making up for it! I would say that the others averaged about 200 to 250. When we got to the classroom/hall the first priority was order. We needed to give numbers to the first 100 students so that they could claim their piggybank and, in general, just keep everyone calm. Dan was great for this. For those that don’t know him, Dan is about 12 feet tall and graciously accepted to fill the stereotype and be our bouncer. The seminar actually started with Tara giving a description of Peace Corps, why we were there, and introduced each of us. Then Abby and Dan (Sandrine et Gilbert) would put on a sketch of two students, one who saves, and the other that ends up learning from her example. I would then take the floor and give an analysis of the sketch which gave three reasons to save – to follow your dreams, for big purchases, and for unexpected expenses. There were Donahue references made as I would often go into the audience with the microphone soliciting some brainstorming help from the students. After me was Autumn, who did an activity with the kids. She had them list all of their purchases for a week and find out how much of that was non-necessary. Then they multiplied to find out how much they could save in a month, in a year, and until they turned 18. You could see some of their faces light up as they realized that all of this information could actually apply to them, that little by little it really starts to add up. Next was the slot for the bank director to talk about the importance of saving in a bank and anything else they wanted to add. And the last thing before giving them their piggybanks was to pump up the energy and make fools of ourselves at the same as time. Tara taught them a song and dance on savings. We took a popular Cameroonian pop song and modified it to remind them to save their money. The kids loved seeing us all sing and dance, and we often heard them singing it as they walked home toward their respective houses. Then, miraculously, we had them leave in an orderly fashion as the first 100 collected their piggybanks on the way out.

It was incredibly fatiguing, but we couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. This is one of the memories I will always take with me from my time here in Cameroon. I’ll try to get some pictures from the project into my next post.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of this project!

Tim