Happy X-Mas

January 8, 2008

After IST and a few days before Christmas, Tara sent me a text message that said something to the effect of “Tim, I love you, but I changed my mind. I’m going to stay at post with Brad and Abby and Dan for Xmas. You should join us. Hope you’re not mad.” My response was “Tara, I love you too, but I’m going to the beach.” And that’s what I did. I knew there were other people heading toward Limbé for the holidays. And it won’t be for my whole life that I have a tropical paradise 3 hours and five dollars worth of transportation away.

Early Christmas Eve morning, I headed out to the big intersection to find a car headed toward the ocean. A few hours later, I was walking up to the door of Joe and Debbie’s in Tiko. Already there were Angie, Vanessa, Alyssa, Abby, and Abby’s boyfriend and sister visiting from the states. By noon we had all headed to Madison Park. It’s the beach where we went for Thanksgiving, but I was a little bit general in the description, so I’ll tell you more.

To get there, you take a cab just outside of Limbé to a tiny town called Batoké. For the longest time I thought it was called “That’s OK.” Just after the main drag of Batoké is a sign for Madison Park. The cab will drop you there and you walk about ¾ mile down to the beach. Closer to the road you pass a few houses where small children are running around yelling “White man! White man!” but this doesn’t bother you like it might at your post because you’re going to the beach. You simply smile and wave and say good afternoon. Headed further downhill, you pass a small palm plantation on your left as the sound of the waves reaches your ears. When you make it to the bottom, you go through a gate and the first thing you see is a magnificent array of plastic toys. This might catch you off guard at first, but over time, somehow it only adds to the charm. There are countless plastic cars, slides, and basketball hoops of all different sizes. After this somewhat random playground is a grass lawn with umbrellad tables and chairs, hammocks, beach chairs and sometimes tents set up. Down a couple of steps from the grass are beautiful black sand beaches and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s hard not to imagine that if you went straight out to sea, you would eventually end up on the East Coast. (Now that I look at a map, it turns out you would actually end up on the East coast of Brazil, but oh well. I can still imagine.)

This private getaway, known almost exclusively by Peace Corps volunteers, is run by Roland. He always makes us feel at home either by serving cold drinks, renting boogey boards or a tent for the night, or just by striking up a conversation. The tents, by the way, are one of the best deals in Cameroon. For five dollars a person, you get a tent with a nice spring mattress (better than at my post), and sheets. Roland, a francophone, also speaks English better than just about any Cameroonian I’ve met – all this from being self-taught, never learning Pigeon, and practicing with lots of Peace Corps volunteers. He’s a great guy, and because it was Christmas Eve, decided to share his lunch with all of us. We stayed and relaxed until just after the sunset and then headed back to Tiko for the night. Christmas Eve dinner? Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. It’s weird how good that stuff tastes in Africa.

Christmas day, we woke up leisurely, enjoyed some Christmas cookies made by Abby’s mom in the states, and entertained all of the Trick-or-Treaters that came by. That’s right, I guess they needed to make up for not celebrating Halloween. We had numerous kids in large groups ringing the doorbell to wish us a Happy X-Mas (Pigeon for Merry Christmas), some to sing Christmas songs, and then wait for us to give them candy. In all honesty, I’m not sure if giving treats is part of the tradition. Word probably just spread after the first couple of kids that the white folks were giving out candy. Instead of staying home with family, though, like we do, they go and visit their family and friends on Christmas day. This made for lots of people coming to the door to wish us well.

Merry Christmas to everyone back home! (a little late)
Tim

In-Service Training

December 21, 2007

Last week was In-Service Training, or IST, a weeklong seminar that’s scheduled for volunteers and our Cameroonian counterparts about three months after being at post. If you remember from one of my blogs from Pre-Service Training (PST), we had created a petition asking for IST to be combined so that Small Enterprise Development and Education volunteers would meet at the same time. Well…it worked. We were all really happy to be together once again. There were only 31 instead of the 36 of us that signed the petition because 4 decided to end their service early and one was medically separated, but those of us that were there had a great time. One reason – it was in the #1 tourist town in Cameroon, Kribi. Located in the South Province, Kribi has some of the most beautiful golden beaches I’ve ever seen. It made you feel like you were in a screen saver.

Because we knew the sessions were going to last until 4pm most days, 6 of us decided to go a day early. We got in at about two, found a not-too-expensive hotel on a secluded beach and then went to check out the town and get some dinner. We had a nice meal, most people getting their first taste of crocodile, and then headed back to the hotel where we could sit on the beach. We did more than sit, though. We made a fire and ate s’mores as the waves crashed into the shore.

The next morning we enjoyed the sun and the ocean until about noon, get omelettes from someone making them on the beach, and then headed to the hotel where we’d be staying to meet our friends and our counterparts as they came in. We had a nice dinner that night at the hotel and started the sessions the next morning.

Overall, IST felt useful and well organized. A lot of things from PST were reinforced and we got some new information too. Some examples of some of the sessions were the roles of our counterparts and ourselves, designing sustainable projects and where funding is available, problems and solutions we’ve run into at post, and info on the different volunteer committees that we can join. We also had free time to go out each afternoon and evening and three birthdays happened to fall that week, so go out we did.

It was a great week that ended too quickly, so instead of leaving on Saturday morning, a dozen of us decided to stay an extra night. That’s right – one on the front, one on the end. We headed to a different beach and took a hike to the Chutes, the only waterfalls in the world to fall directly into the ocean. It was gorgeous! Then we hired a couple of guys to paddle us back in a large dugout canoe all the way to the beach where our stuff was. Because we argued them down to a really low price, we bought them each a beer when we got to shore.

That night there was a music festival on the beach strangely similar to what you would see in the US. Every restaurant in town had a booth there selling food and drinks and there was a huge stage with bands planning all night. At one point I noticed a random white person dancing on stage. She actually wasn’t random, though. It was Tara. When we figured it out, four of us went to watch her make a fool out of herself. Unfortunately, though, we got a little too close to the stage and they pulled us up too. We already feel a little like celebrities, everyone watching us all the time solely because we’re white living in Africa. But here we literally got our five minutes of fame dancing on a stage for a Cameroonian festival.

Not what I expected when I left Baltimore, but I’m having a pretty good time.

Tim

Pictures!!

As far as the blog goes, the creative juices aren't really flowing. I thought I'd put up some Thanksgiving pictures from the beach instead. If anyone was discouraged from visiting after reading about how sick I got early on in training, this might change your mind.

Tim

This probably looks pretty random next to the beach pictures, but they're both bodies of water. This was the small lake in my house that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

La Vie est Dur (Life's Hard)

11/26/2007

Thanksgiving was last week and coincidentally fell on our three month anniversary at post. We don’t normally celebrate anniversaries of our time at post. Three months is a milestone only because of a silly rule that the Peace Corps created. We’re not allowed to use any vacation days or travel anywhere that would leave us away from our post overnight for the first three months. With this ban being lifted and Thanksgiving falling on the same day, a few of us decided to head toward the beach.

Joe and Debbie are a retired married couple that are teaching Computers and English about 20 minutes away from Limbé, one of the two beach towns in Cameroon. They were incredibly welcoming saying that they would host anyone that made the trip. My and Tara’s trip was only three hours, Alyssa’s was about the same, Brad’s was six h ours, Abby’s was an hour and a half, and Bill was only about 20 minutes away. From the time we got there until the time we left, it felt like being in America and was an amazing getaway.

Limbé is in an Anglophone province so everyone speaks English. They have a thick accent and some only speak Pigeon English, but it’s English. This made it a lot easier to argue prices and just communicate in general. It was also a little hard to remember that people can understand us when we’re talking amongst ourselves.

In terms of buying, eating, and drinking, we lived extravagantly. The first night we went to a restaurant where the meals cost six dollars. We went to a store with all American products from soaps and shampoos and moisturizers to barbecue sauce and syrup and peanut M&Ms. They even put all of your purchases in Wal-Mart bags when you check out. For our Thanksgiving feast, some things were bought from the American Store and others were sent in packages from the states. Joe baked five whole chickens, we had mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, devilled eggs, and pumpkin pie. To drink we had Merlot, Chardonnay, Absolut, and Bailey’s (all either incredibly hard to find here or incredibly expensive). For the next morning in addition to having leftover pumpkin pie, Joe made his famous banana cake and Alyssa made cranberry apple walnut scones – both amazing!

If all that wasn’t enough, we also went to the beach. Now we’re not talking 5-Star hotels and surf shops. We’re still in Cameroon. But it was pretty nice. It was a secluded beach (nobody but us), fine black sand, hammocks in the shade and beach chairs in the sun, palm trees, and warm water. We also had someone that would bring us cold drinks. We were reminded once where we were when a couple of fishing boats beached at our shore, but it really felt like heaven on Earth.

It was an absolutely amazing trip that I’ll never forget. None of us wanted to leave. In fact, we’ve already made plans to come back for Christmas. La vie est dur en Afrique!

Your Suffering African Brother,
Tim

p.s. Check back and I'll try to get a couple pictures.

Restaurant Woes

November 21, 2007

Last Sunday, market day in Nkongsamba, I was buying things for myself as well as helping Tara buy things for her new house (She just moved out of Yune’s house and into an empty one of her own). We make a pretty good tag team when it comes to haggling prices so it was pretty fun. We had just about finished and decided to get something to eat for lunch.

Restaurants, in my opinion, are Nkongsamba’s weakest point. For the siwe of the town, there are hardly any. There are two that are good but too expensive, charging 4-6 dollars per plate not including drinks. There are a couple others that charge 2 dollars, a little bit more reasonable, but the food’s not that great. Then there are a couple omelette shacks where you can get out for about 60 cents but there’s never any selection.

Constantly frustrated by these facts, Tara and I decided to go exploring for other restaurants we hadn’t seen or tried before.

The first place we went was where we had seen a sign the week before. The sign was on the side of the road with an arrow. We didn’t know whether the sign had been moved or not, but we went where the arrow was pointing. It didn’t look like a restaurant and when we asked, we were told that the restaurant wasn’t there any more. “Oh, you should take the sign down.” I said. They just kind of laughed at this comment. Why did they laugh? Because the two silly white people were the only ones that didn’t know the restaurant had shut down. If everyone else in Nkongsamba knew, why bother taking the sign down?

Marketing isn’t quite the same here. Just as there are restaurants with signs but don’t exist, there are also restaurants that exist but don’t have signs. One reason is that it makes your business look healthier and you might end up paying higher taxes. So how do you know where they are? If you’re a Cameroonian, you either just know or you don’t go to restaurants. If you’re American, you go exploring. One thing we were looking for were white sheets hanging in the doorways. Most smaller restaurants have them. The only problem is a lot of hair salons have the same white sheets. Tara and I took turns peeking inside the white sheets and asking if they were restaurants. One of my funnier experiences in Africa was when Tara peaked inside not a restaurant, not a salon, but someone’s house. The conversation went like this:

“Is this a restaurant?”
“No.”
“Okay (short silence)…You live here?”
“Yes.”
“Okay (short silence)…Have a nice day.”
“Okay.”

What people think of us I have no idea. By this point we had found a couple more omelette shacks and one somewhat sketchy hole-in-the-wall place with only one choice on the menu which was very meaty (still a vegetarian). We were about ready to give up our search when we found a lady walking around with a huge bowl on her head selling rice and beans. It cost us 30 cents per plate and was probably the best rice and beans I had ever had. The only problem was that she was walking around and we might never see her again.

Landslide, Lake, and Workstuff

November 13, 2007

Yikes! I just looked at the date of my last entry. If there’s actually anyone that still checks my blog every week, I’m sorry. I’ll try to write more often, but you were warned from the beginning that I felt like I might have been biting off more than I could chew saying I would write every week (Reminder that I can take incoming calls for free on my cell phone. Email me for the number). Part of the problem is that I don’t feel like I have any coherent ideas to write an entry on. Sure little stuff happens here and there, but it’s not enough to fill up a blog. So this one might jump around a bit, but I figured it would be better to get something out.

Three or four weeks ago, there was a landslide in between Kekem and Bafang. The road was completely taken out. This is a big deal because this is the road between Douala and Bafoussam, the first and third largest cities in Cameroon. Nkongsamba, my post, is also on this road. The day it happened I got text messages on my phone from different Peace Corps employees saying that any travel plans should be rearranged. I already had plans to go to a credit committee meeting in Bafang the next morning. I decided to meet my counterpart first and see what he said. After talking to him, we decided to see how far we could get. Most of the cars were already taking alternate routes so we had to find cars that were going short distances, just to the next town. After three short trips we made it to the landslide. It was pretty serious. The road looked like it just dead-ended at this monstrous pile of dirt. There were people everywhere – Some just came to look, others were crossing over it, and others brought their market goods to sell because there were so many people gathered. There was also a new market for boot rental as some areas were extremely muddy. We started to make our way across and after about 20 ft. decided we needed the boots. It cost us the equivalent of 50 cents to borrow the boots and have someone walk with our shoes behind us. It seemed like a lot to pay by Cameroonian standards, but we ended up paying it so I guess the demand was high enough. When you first got to the landslide, you couldn’t tell how wide it was, but we ended up walking for about a quarter mile before reaching the other side. When you got to the road on the other side and looked back, it was about the same – a road dead-ending at a huge pile of dirt. But on this side there was a palm tree perfectly transplanted by the landslide to where it looked like it had always been right in the middle of the path where the road would continue. We made it to the meeting, albeit a little late and had a story to tell all of our friends.

Last weekend the new group of Agro and Health volunteers who are in training had their site visits and so were let loose in the country for a week to see where they would be working for two years. Yune and Ben and the volunteers replacing them, Abby and Dan, came over to Nkongsamba along with Tara on Friday for a hot shower and another one of our soon-to-be-famous “enchilada nights.” It was a full house and we all stayed up playing Suggestions late into the night. The next morning we woke up to find that a small lake had formed in the house. My entryway and hallway were flooded – some areas weren’t bad, but others were up to your ankle. Instead of a sewer system Cameroon has concrete channels about a foot and a half deep on both sides of most the roads. The one right outside my house had gotten clogged and all the rainwater from the storm that night had come flowing in right under my front door! I did all I could to get as much water out as possible, but the stream also brought with it a lot of dirt. It was a mess, but when my neighbour came over to do my laundry, she also helped my by cleaning all the floors and even doing all the dishes from enchilada night (no small task by itself).

I’ve been doing a lot of contemplating recently on what my role should be in working with ADAF, my host institution that supports and audits all the surrounding microfinance banks. I’ve started to realize that the work I’m already doing now and what I’m learning how to do is essentially the work of an ADAF employee. That’s not why I’m here. I’m supposed to be building capacity – that is, making the institution function stronger when I leave then when I came. If I’m working just like an employee, not only am I taking the work and possible salary of a Cameroonian, but they’d be worse off after I left not having anyone to do my workload. After talking to my APCD (Assistant Peace Corps Director) and counterpart we all agreed that ADAF didn’t need much help with capacity, just the huge workload. So my first task now is to see if we can get another employee in the Nkongsamba office (right now it is only me and my counterpart). Beyond that I’m looking for more work to do in the community, which I’m finding somewhat difficult. I’ve already started teaching a management class at the Girls’ Center in Baré but beyond doing that I don’t feel like I’m meeting the kind of motivated people that I want to do any other work with. I’m beginning to think that starting another management class for entrepreneurs in Nkongsamba would be the best way to start meeting those people. We’ll see. I’ll keep you updated on what my “professional life” turns into.

Tim

Living Alone...But not so Lonely (Finished, with Pictures)

October, 13, 2007
October, 21, 2007

So I'm living in this big house all by myself. I'm the only American living in the quite large town of Nkongsamba (I'd say at least 100 000 people). Everything that we heard before we got here told us that we would be, well, lonely. There would be lots of down time - time for self-reflection, for wondering why we're here. We would read loads of books. The closest volunteer might be two hours away. So far...Not true. I do wonder why I'm here quite often, but it's not because of all the down time - I don't have any. In about 4.5 months time, I've only read 1.5 books and the one I finished was the last Harry Potter which is pretty hard to put down. I'm constantly moving and don't feel like I even have the time for the self-reflection I would be doing in the states. So why am I not lonely? Let me see if I can shed some light on the matter.

First of all, let's be honest. I'm not living alone. From the second I got to Nkong, I've been sharing my aparttment with numerous ants, cockroaches, mice, and lizards. They don't really keep me company, but they definitely keep me occupied. If I don't bleach the countertops after every time I prepare food, thousands of tiny ants come marching in from who knows where. The cockroaches are pretty hard to get a handle on. One of the downsides of having this place already furnished before I got here is that they already have hundreds of hiding places. I'm constantly finding them in places when I think there's already nowhere else for them to hide. I don't like killing them so I don't spray insecticide. When I find one, I trap it and toss it outside. The mice don't really creep me out as much as the cockroaches when they catch you off guard, but they can be destructive. I kind of chase them from one hiding place to another too. They've taken up residence inside both bathroom doors, a bookcase, and a wardrobe. I even found them nesting under my mattress! I don't know where they are now, but I feel like i have the upper hand and they might be leaving soon. Lizards don't bother me so much. They're usually just on the walls outside but occasionally they'll run through.

Thousands will come for the tiniest of scraps
One by one I toss them outside
A cozy little mouse dugout in my bookshelf
Another one in my wardrobe
What I saw when I lifted up my mattress one night
They've got no fear

So other than critters, I hang out with Americans all of the time. There are two volunteers in Baré which is 10 minutes away. I teach a management class every Friday at the Girls' Center there. Tara also teaches there as she is an education volunteer, so I see her at least once a week on her turf. She comes to Nkongsamba at least every Sunday, which is market day, to stock up for the week. Nkong is also the closest place she can use the internet and it's where she does her banking. Yune, the other Baré volunteer is gone a lot because she is helping with the training of the new Agro and Health volunteers right now, but she is going to be replaced by someone we'll probably see all the time. Ben lives in the bush not too far from here and stops through Nkongsamba every time he travels. Autumn lives about 45 minutes up the road and does banking here at least once a month. There are also others that find excuses to come hang out. And why wouldn't they? It's a cool town and I've got a great house (especally with the addition of the hot water heater). Autumn and Emily, the next volunteer up the road past Autumn, also come down sometimes for work related stuff. They are both posted at MC2s (microfinance banks) that ADAF supports. There are trainings here once a month and sometimes they come down for those. I also see them whenever I go to one of their Credit Committee meetings or do an audit of their bank. So I see Americans a lot - so much so that It doesn't even feel like my French has improved since 've gotten to post.

The last reason I'm not lonely is because I'm constantly busy. Things in Africa just take longer. There's no other way to explain it. While I'm not traveling, I only work half-days at the bank. That's because everything else that I do takes longer than I'm used to. Buying things takes longer; the bank, the internet, and other errands take longer; preparing food takes longer; doing dishes takes longer; cleaning takes longer. The idea of time and the resources available are just not what we're used to. When I got to post, I would make a list of 5-10 things I wanted to get done in a day and would only be able to do one or two. The only headway I've made on this is that I pay my neighbor to wash my clothes every weekend. I still have to wait for them to dry and iron them though.

So, lonely? Not so much. I feel like these two years will be over before I even realize it. I'm busy, but trying to make the best of it too.

Tim