The Limited

It’s 5am on Friday morning, and I’m wide awake for two reasons. 1. I went to bed at 9:15 last night. 2. In my state of my early morning half-awareness, the mysterious nibbling sound in the corner of my room managed to transform itself into the unlikely yet alarming possibility that there could be a snake in the room. But I don’t mind being up. In fact I rather like this hour before the rest of the house stirs, a time so limited that it’s liberating. I can’t leave the house for a run or a trip to the well, since it’s still dark (and I don’t have a key to let myself out of the front door); I can’t do housework, since everyone is still asleep and my door creaks terribly; I can’t even do homework (already done!!) I would exercise, but neither the dirty concrete floor nor the rickety bed lends itself well to such a purpose. So that basically leaves studying French, reading, or writing. A liberating hour.

Limitations can absolutely be a detriment to progress, unquestionably. After my first excursion in Africa, I returned to the States with a sense of bitterness toward American materialism and excess. This time abroad, though, I’m learning to actually appreciate what’s available in the U.S. – not all the kitch and junk, but real services, like public libraries and phone directories. My concept of living simply is already shifting, just one month into my Peace Corps training. I think many Americans tend to romanticize the rugged lifestyle we imagine in Africa -- and it can be amazing -- but the difficulty is when you realize that these people aren’t on a mission trip; they aren’t making due for now. This is their life. And they aren’t completely different from us. We’re talking about intelligent, diverse, well-dressed, world-aware individuals making life work without running water. People who get frustrated when their 4-year-olds spill chocolate milk. People who have lazy days when they don’t feel like cleaning up after dinner. People who dress up for church. People who know how much bleach to put in the bidan of water you just carried uphill from the well. People who have to pay the electricity bill even when the power goes out for days on end. People who get in a tizzy if you don’t like the food they cook for you, and try to force-feed you seconds (or thirds) of anything you do like (not like my own mother at all…Ahem.)

Please don’t get me wrong – there are significant differences between Cameroon and the US. The difference is much more with the system than the people. Please imagine for a moment your own children in their third-grade classroom. Picture it. Now remove the posters and other visual teaching aids. Take out the computer(s), make the desks larger and put three children in each. Remove the rug and cozy chairs, the reading books, the water fountain outside. Put two classes of children in one room with one teacher (40-60 students per teacher.)

Yeah, life is different in Cameroon.

My “trashcan” is a deep hole in the back yard, a few feet away from the first row of manioc plants. I’m used to cold bucket baths (legitimately not that bad). I’ve seen three different people severely deformed by polio. A five-year-old in our town died of Cholera last week. There are people who refuse immunizations for fear of sterility, but who give whiskey to small children to prevent meningitis. . Lack of infrastructure, lack of widespread and thorough education, lack of money.  These are the limitations that imprison the Cameroonian people fifty years after independence. This is not living simply, this is living poorly. Nonetheless, the people are a proud and happy people. They value peace and stability. They learn. They encourage. They welcome. They share.

In all of this, the obstacles facing the Cameroonian people and development workers within the country can seem overwhelming. But I’m excited to be here. The country and the people are beautiful, and the potential for change is enormous. While I’m sure our two years in Cameroon won’t solve all the challenges, I hope to help empower members of my community to step up and start working toward change.

As always, I thank you for your prayers, your encouraging words, and your open minds.

8pm, Saturday October 8, 2011

Note to my fourth-grade self: Mosquito nets only make you feel like a princess for the first two days. After that, it really wears on you: the inability to use your bed as a table, shelf, yoga mat, ironing board, seating for guests, and what have you. In a continent known to most Americans has having very little, it’s amazing what does and does not get on your nerves. In many ways, life with my host family in Bafia is much more comfortable than I expected: a room to myself, large enough for a standard-sized bed, desk, and room to move around (ish), a “normal” bathroom (though running water is rare), water within easy walking distance, and a host family that is very conscious of health and sanitation. There’s more than enough food for me to eat, and much more privacy than I had braced myself for. If anything, my nearly negligent culture shock so far could more likely be contributed to WHO I live with, rather than their culture contrasting with mine. I am currently dependent on a 72-year-old woman (Maman Lydie), a middle-aged man (her son), a 17-year old (her nephew), and a 4-year-old (her grandson). Slowly, I’m learning to live as they do, cooking, doing laundry, shopping, riding moto-taxis, and eating Cameroonaise cuisine with them. Oh yeah, and it’s all in French.

So back to the mosquito net. I’m lying on my thin-but-sufficient mattress, freshly “showered” (bucket bath) and sore from Thursday’s game of soccer with a couple of other Americans, a few Cameroonian PC staff members, and a couple neighborhood kids. The game was the first real physical exercise I’d partaken in since my arrival in Cameroon two weeks ago, and the late afternoon equatorial sun beat down through the heavy clouds. An hour of scrambling left us all panting and thirsty, happy and hungry. The short walk home with my 17-year-old host-nephew became an even shorter run as the rain started sprinkling in fat drops, then pouring. The horizon remained clear, the setting sun’s light pouring sideways from the hills onto Bafia’s rich, treed landscape. Jumping over orange puddles and laughing, we clambered onto the porch just before the rain became a violent torrent.

But that was two days ago. Every day in PST feels like a week of life in the U.S. Surrounded by my fellow trainees by day and my Cameroonian family by night, I hardly have motivation to spend any time alone. There’s a great deal to learn from all angles: the informative language, cross-cultural, and technical training sessions, my fellow PCTs, and the Cameroonian people. I feel immersed in an environment of passionate, capable, and warm people. But don’t be fooled: it’s every bit as emotionally challenging as I anticipated. Just as any given day feels many times longer than a normal one, each brings with it several layers of excitement, doubt, frustration, hope, passion, and progress.

For now the schedule is quite busy. We have training sessions from 8am to 4:30pm Monday through Friday, plus Saturday mornings, along with a 7pm curfew, and the limitations of frustratingly short daylight hours. So far, my day usually turns out to be something along the following lines:

5:45-6am Dawn. Up and At’em. No choice: Roosters out back. Prep for the day.

6:45am Breakfast. Usually instant coffee with sugar, fresh bread, and an orange.

7:30am Walk to “school” with my American neighbors.

8:00am Training Sessions. Vary according to the day. Often one French and one Technical session in the morning, with a 15 min coffee/tea break between.

12:30pm Lunch. Served by local women and brought to the training site for us. For the low cost of 1mille (approx. $2, or $1 if I don’t take meat) I can heap my plate full of rice, beans, pasta, fish, beef, chicken, fried plantains, feuille de manioc, a hot pickled cabbage/veggie salad, and more.

4:30pm School’s out. Hang out with other trainees until sundown, usually at the neighborhood boutique.

6:30pm Head home. Clean up, etc.

7-8pm Help cook supper, set the table, and eat with the family. Often a more basic form of what’s served at lunch. Sometimes I get spaghetti. Chat with the family; topics like gender roles, politics, airplane mechanics. You know, the norm.

8:30pm Journal, read, scratch bug bites, sweat.

Whenever, but definitely before 10pm Accidentally fall asleep while in the midst of doing aforementioned activities.

So that’s that. I feel like I’m a little bit on information-overload for now, and I can’t begin to summarize all I’d like to write about, but the next several weeks promise to be a very important and intense passage into my two years of Peace Corps service. Feel free to post questions and comments, and I’ll try to be somewhat diligent about responding.

Also, if you’d like to send mail, you can reach me at the following address:

PEARSON Laura Pearson

C/O Corps de la Paix

B.P. 215

Yaoundé, Cameroon