Be ne samba

The success of my social life can be measured by the length of my journal entries. During stage, I wrote daily. Now, I struggle to catch up at least once a week, resulting in chapter-length entries. Inversely, my busy schedule (and limited electricity) leaves little time for blogging. Forgive me, please.

Last weekend was my first Cameroonian veillée. That is to say, a wake. But this is no sombre experience like in the U.S, filing into a funeral home to see the body and hug the family. The atmosphere is much more like a Relay for Life: it's an all-night event for the whole community, complete with bonfires and traditional dances. I can't say it's joyous, because, well, it's a wake, but it's far from depressing. Family members of the deceased (unfortunately a young girl of just 16 who poisoned herself) mourned by masking their faces and walking about barefoot. I stayed for a short 3 hours, among dozens of extended family members huddled in blankets and dancing with the traditional dancers to the sounds of drums and whistles. The church choir belted out redemption songs, and people came and went.

People do that. They come and go. In fact, everywhere you go in Cameroon, you'll here the phrase "We are together." Ironically, these are actually parting words. But already I understand - it's a way of telling someone, "Even though I'm leaving, I'll be around." And they always are. In village I receive random visitors as early as 6am some days... or 3 or 4am on special occasions. These special occasions, more specifically, are the days of termite infestations.

Yes, that's right. Termites. Everywhere. Last Sunday I woke up at 4am to find hundreds of the flying creatures in my living room. I knew I was a true Peace Corps volunteer when my first reaction was, "Great. I know what's for dinner tonight!"

You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. At the time I went back to sleep but just a few hours later recruited my neighbors to help me sweep them all up. There were enough to fill a 5-gallon bucket more than half full, enough to feed the family. Seriously delicious. We ate it in a tomato sauce with some boiled manioc... definitely my prefered way to eat it, though roasted termites aren't bad either! Besides, I need a break from bushmeat, couscous, and spaghetti omelets from time to time.

Much more to say, but for now I'll leave you with one of the few Bamvele phrases I've finally picked up:
BE NE SAMBA. ("We are together." The most typical parting words in Cameroon.)

Waka waka

I need to start a tally. I’ve lost count of the moments where it hits me:

I live in Africa.

You’d think I’d have figured it out by now. I’m four months into my time in Cameroon, I bathe from a bucket, I’ve eaten animals I didn’t know existed, (or had only seen in cartoon form… sorry Toucan Sam) and my house has no electricity. Yet I get the mental catch-ups once every few days. My favorite was last week when my friend Flora, known to the general population as Mamiyanga, dropped by and informed me to grab my dirty laundry – we were going to “the source.”

I should take a moment first to brag, both for myself and for Mamiyanga. I am no wuss. I can hand-wash clothes, no problem. I got pretty good at it the six months I lived in La Reunion. Or so I thought. Homegirl taught me different. This sassy 25-year-old mother of three dropped out of school in quatrieme (8^th grade) and has been with a guy who’s married to someone else, her baby-daddy, for three years, and still manages to show up all the other girls in town with the restaurant she owns and runs single-handedly, 9-month-old child on her back. And it’s not some dinky little bean stand, either. We’re talking rice, beans, bread, fish, meat (of various qualities, most of which would make my friends at the World Wildlife Fund faint to think of eating) couscous, and whatever else comes along. Today I spent three hours with Mamiyanga going to market, negotiating the price of “erison,” which looks like a giant tailless beaver, carrying said erison from the hunter’s house to the restaurant, cooking beans, washing pots, and making sure the dogs didn’t run away with the uncooked monkey meat. And her boyfriend/babydaddy added to the day’s stock the rat he somehow killed with his motorcycle. Yum.

Anyway, the point is that Mamiyanga is a veritable force to be reckoned with. And she’s my best friend in village. She loves to chat, to tease, to dance, and to do anything and everything it takes to make me one of the community. (Unfortunately this involves trying to convince me to marry every unmarried guy in town.) So when she showed up to recruit me as company to do laundry, I was more than happy. Until this point I’d been doing laundry on my veranda with water stored in large plastic containers, hauled from a forage a kilometer away. You can imagine my pleasure when we headed off down a random path into the tall grasses, wash basins on our heads, rolling hills and trees all around, toward this mysterious “source.”

Remember when you were a kid and you watched Fern Gulley for the first time? That’s what it felt like at the source. After a few minutes, the path to the source descends onto a stone staircase that leads directly to the little concrete enclave through which the stream is directed, ankle-deep and cool in the afternoon shade. Four hours we were there. I finished my small pile of laundry in half an hour, but my dear friend had three times as many clothes, four times as dirty (restaurant work and a baby tend to do that), and twice as thorough. Clothes here get USED, like tools rather than decoration, so Mamiyanga was straight-up scrubbing, hard-bristled brush and concrete. And that’s how I learned to wash clothes properly. By late afternoon, when I saw her rinsing the last of the clothing, I was mentally preparing myself to leave, when all the women, one by one, discretely disrobed and began bathing. Yup. For once it wasn’t my skin that made me stick out from the rest; it was the fact that I was still clothed. That was the moment it hit me -  I was at the river with half the neighborhood’s worth of mothers and children bathing, shameless, in front of each other, buckets full of clean, wet, heavy laundry ready to be placed on the heads of the women and carried home to be laid out on clotheslines and roofs and bushes to dry in the sun.

Waka waka. Welcome to Africa.

Week One of Two Years

 It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. I’ve woken up by 5:30 every day this week, well before my alarm, eyes wide and mind racing. This week, my fellow trainees are quick to laugh, quick to show affection, and giving gifts and cards right and left.

But it’s not Christmas that’s bringing on this feeling – it’s the general mental state of transition. Today is Swearing In.

The final weeks of Stage have been amazingly different from the first few weeks. After Site Visit, everyone had a much better idea of how our training could be concretely applied to our communities, and the subsequent feeling of ownership and responsibility drove us through the end of Stage. A few highlights:

Pagne: (sounds kind of like “pine-ya”) Everyone wears it. It’s a general term we use for the colorful patterned fabrics you find everywhere in Cameroon. Keep an eye out on Facebook for some pics. All the Stagaires (trainees) own at least once pagne outfit; some own enough to completely phase out everything they brought from the U.S.

My host family: They’re convinced that I’m going to be marrying a Cameroonian and staying here for the rest of my life. I admit to fueling the fire by confiding in them my crush on a certain excessively attractive language trainer (you know who you are*) and they thus informed me that WHEN I marry a Cameroonian, they get the dowry. It’s all in good fun, but really, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect situation. They’ve truly welcomed me in as part of the family, and I have every intention of calling my host mom up for advise and encouragement when I get down. She and Maman Julienne (our neighbor) have also made it QUITE clear that they expect an invitation to come visit me in the East once I get settled in.

Superlatives: Within YD (Youth Development), we voted superlatives for each other. You ready for mine?

1. Most likely to incorporate bush mean into their daily diet.
2. Most likely to have a diet comprised solely of baton de manioc.
3. Most likely to get married first. (See above)*
4. Most likely to become the next Stage Greeter (Two PCVs are responsible for the new class of Stagaires in Yaounde for their first few days in country.)

IEP:  I gave a presentation on Sorcery and Traditional Religion in Cameroon for my Independent Exploration Project. It was 30 minutes long and in French. It was awesome.

Motos, Monkeys, and Mbamvele, Oh my!

Sandwiched between my new postmate and my new favorite moto driver, I travel the 40km/one hour from Bertoua to Diang, my soon-to-be-home, watching the hills carpeted with dense forest spread out in all directions. Along the road mud huts and small cement buildings that serve as homes, hospitals, and boutiques present themselves as the locus of village life - people cooking, playing, arguing, working, lounging in the shade of their hengards.*

Diang is, quite frankly, the epitome of an African village. Everyone knows everyone. In my 3.5 days there, I managed to meet the Sous-Prefect, the doctor, all of the teachers and administration of the high school, several members of the Association des Femmes (Women's association), both mayors, the head of the police station, a traditional Chef, and several, several others. I visited several schools, including one primary school with two classrooms and a third "salle" that is simply a covered outdoor classroom. There are three teachers, each covering two classes at a time. What's in that pot? Sure, I'll take a plate of couscous de manioc with bushmeat. Who needs silverware? Yes. I ate monkey. And drank palm wine.

Welcome to life in the East, Cameroon's least populated, least developed region.

For Site Visit, I stayed with Justine, my new post mate. Her small apartment is a spacious two-room studio, not counting the latrine out back. Along with her neighbors, we took a pleasant walk to Kombe, 5km down the road. Along the way we saw fields of corn, manioc (cassava), sugar cane, plantains, and many other crops. I have a promise from my new friend Jean-Pierre to teach me to farm.

A few paragraphs couldn't begin to describe the experiences and transition I've gone through this week, but I hope this post may serve as a brief introduction to my life at post. The people of the East are extremely welcoming, and I can genuinely say I already feel comfortable in village. I can't wait to start working with OREOPRODHU: L'Organisation pour l'encadrement des enfants orphelins et la promotion des droits humains de Diang. With this new self-orientation within Diang, the final four weeks of Stage will have an entirely different atmosphere, and I can hardly wait to take on the challenges.


*I actually have no idea how to spell this word, but it's a reference to the wood lean-tos that most village families have outside their house. It's generally where people hang out - drink palm wine, eat, chat, etc.

DIANG.

That's where I'm going.

Diang, East region.

I'll tell you all about it when I get back from my weeklong site visit!!

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