Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Il Faut Innover: On Agriculture, Education, Work and Being a PCV

14-7-12
Sometimes I’m wrong about things. Occasionally. Stubborn though I am, I’m willing to say that I was wrong about the idea I had about how I’d never find work in the East.

Batouri treated me to a few months of meetings that ended with marriage proposals and me coming home to complain to anyone who’d listen. I stressed about how I didn’t have enough to do, how to make friendships that went beyond just surface conversation, and spent a lot of time wondering if I’d ever sound older than a two year old in French. I set my house up, learned the lay-out of Batouri, learned a lot about the problems youth were facing, made a few new friends, got much better at laughing at myself, and, without realizing it, kicked my French up a million notches. I got clothes made, learned how to make good food out of what I could find at the market, and read a lot of the classic literature I always wanted to read in college. Somewhere right around there, though, I realized I had a million ideas for projects and had the luxury of choosing between them. Talk about unexpected surprises.  

A few months ago, I couldn’t have talked about what it was like going au village to do work or what it was like watching projects coming to fruition; now, I’ve had experience with both. I’ve realized more than once that I had three separate things scheduled during the same time slot, which is so opposite of the beginning where I spent a lot of time walking around town trying to make connections with anyone who’d talk to me. I’ve found some fantastic friends who actually care about me as a person, and that most of the time, I’m not relying on volunteers anymore to be social. In short, it’s been a lot of big changes quickly…this may be one of the few times in Cameroon that something has happened so quickly.  I’ve proved myself not only wrong about that whole working in the East thing, but I’ve probably also proved myself to be the biggest perfectionist in Peace Corps Cameroon. Moral of the story: perfectionism pays off.

Seeing the trainees come through on their site visits has helped me to see my service through the lens I saw my post-mates through during my own site-visit, and it’s been a reassuring reality check of just how far I’ve come. Cameroonians asked me to translate their French into English, I explained different potential business projects both in Batouri and outside of it, talked about adjustment and the challenges that are inevitable as a woman in a male-dominated culture, and listened to friends talk about how they’ve seen me grow so much in the past seven months while I blushed awkwardly. Friends are finishing their service, and mine is really only now getting geared up: I’m really NOT the new volunteer anymore, and it’s a fantastic feeling.

I’ve been working with Soy and Moringa through the plantation that Janelle and I started at Esperance. The plantation is a story in and of itself—brought into being in memory of Janelle’s father, expanded in honor of my Grandaddy, and grown dramatically through the generosity of the Women of Faith Bible Study at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church. It’s not exactly that that I want to talk about, but an opportunity that this project has given me. Through these donations, I’ve been able to start plans to expand the project into Mbounou, Mbone, Garoua Sambé, Kentzou, Kpangandi, and Djouth through the organization Coordination Nationale des Ecoles Familiales Agricoles du Cameroun (National Coordination of Family Agriculture Schools of Cameroon.)

I’m biased for sure, but these schools are the best hidden secret in my department and I’m totally confident that they’re going to be able to do great things for their students and their communities with the Soy. Ecoles Familiales Agricoles, EFAs, are Family Agriculture Schools, an alternative source of education for youth that have been somehow already been hurt by the system (jailing, inability to pay school fees, huge class sizes in traditional schools, lack of a nearby secondary school, etc.) EFAs don’t discriminate based on gender, and in an area where only 15% of girls who start pre-school eventually make it to secondary school, this is a big deal. The schools fight for food security in the region, as well as to educate communities about nutrition and sustainable development practices, including fighting against corruption, meaning that they’re passionate about the same factors that drove us to start this project in the first place. And, in the Youth Development aspect of the project, EFAs have a huge focus on life skills and preparing their students for a future in which they responsibly support themselves and their families. Pretty remarkable, no?

Instead of a traditional secondary school, students only complete three years of training but all of the training is directly applicable to their future—English, French, Agriculture, Business, and Life Skills (ie: goal setting, morality, budgeting, etc.) By the end of the three years, students complete an internship, learn the basic techniques of growing and cultivating plants that work for their specific area as well as how to raise and slaughter animals, specialize in a topic of their choice, learn financial management, and complete an original thesis on their topic.

Teachers for these schools are specially trained by the organization rather than the government; each community chooses their teachers out of farmers they trust with their children and who they believe can pass along valuable knowledge. They are held to high standards from the organization, and unlike conventional Cameroonian secondary schools, teachers come from the communities they work with, so they can actually speak the local languages and relate to their students on a cultural level.

I’ve been able to attend a couple training sessions for the school leaders and teachers, and I’ve also had the opportunity to go to a small, isolated village in the rainforest, Djouth, to see the process behind opening these schools and to see the passion that drives instructors. It’s inspiring work, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to continue learning more, even if it does mean many more carsick hours of travel.

Every year, about 90% of the thesis proposals submitted by the students of the EFAs in my department revolve around 4 topics: manioc, piment, maize, and peanuts—things that everyone grows and that don’t fetch as much money as other things. To convince us to think outside the box, the coordinator of the schools in the Center, South, and East (Adrien,) cited some interesting statistics: the oranges that fetch the most money in the Yaounde market are grown in the East but aren’t available in our own markets, cucumbers and pistache would grow well in our soil but instead we ship them in from everywhere else, and no one in the past five years has written a thesis on commercializing a product (ie: drying and selling moringa leaves or processing manioc into couscous) although that adds great selling value. Worked up into a lecturing passion that I’ve never seen outside of Cameroon, Adrien dropped a line that’s caused me to do some thinking: il faut innover!

Il faut innover; it’s a simple phrase that means “it’s necessary to innovate,” not exactly a riveting statement in normal conversation, but in a region where people are scared of change, a sentence like that is a big deal. Business-wise, the implications are clear—when you do something different, the chances for a big profit are huge…so are the opportunities for failure. These schools are doing more than that, though, they’re coming up with innovative solutions for the under-education of youth and food insecurity, for example. Community members are held accountable for their community’s development and well-being, and think critically about how to include marginalized groups (Baka-Pygmies, illiterates, young girls.) Where the norm is to produce students that aren’t prepared to handle the real world as anything more than moto-men, these schools are taking the “un-formable” and making them responsible citizens.

Innovation is something drastic, something with the possibility of changing lives: rejecting the conventional solutions knowing of the risk of failure but believing beyond measure in the hope of success. It’s helping those that society has given up on to pull themselves up and prove everyone wrong. Creativity, hope, passion, and risk: to me, these are the aspects that I see as at the core of innovation. That’s asking a lot of anyone of any race, culture, age, or ethnic group, but in places where individuality isn’t valued and where creative thinking isn’t taught, it’s harder to encourage. It’s easy to stay stagnant because it’s what you know, it’s much harder to take risks and take chances because you don’t know what will happen.

We ask our communities to innovate on a daily basis, and it’s frustrating to not see changes quickly, but it’s harder to remember that we need to come up with innovative solutions ourselves and make our own changes. We’d never have been effective if we kept trying to work in the same way we’d work in America. It’s not just the French, it’s the way you address sensitive topics or learning to respect authority in places you never would have thought it necessary or realizing the way you’re perceived in different outfits in different communities. It happens unconsciously through our actions with people, but sometimes (and painfully,) it’s pointed out to you.

That’s where I am right now—aware of the changes I’ve made, knowing that many more are still in store, and taking risks that’ll hopefully pay off big in the long-term for myself, Batouri, and the surrounding communities. And that, my friends, is innovation at work.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Happy Birthday, America!

4-7-2012
Happy Birthday, America! You’re growing into your age with grace, and, I’ve gotta say, I appreciate you more and more every year. Sweet land of liberty and all that jazz, sure, but you’re a land where corruption is not tolerated, where courts uphold the principles of our founders for the betterment of all peoples, a land supportive of creativity and innovation, and a place where being an individual is respected and encouraged. America, you’ve got a place for farmers, business executives, stay-at-home fathers, and young women putting themselves through medical school; we crazy, complicated Americans are united by a desire to push towards being our best in keeping with our own individual principles. We’re a group of many colors, opinions, faith backgrounds, livelihoods, and ethnicities, but you’ve brought us together and given us a common identity to uphold: American. This is one girl who is proud of that identity; keep up the good work, America.

How exactly does one celebrate Independence Day abroad? In true American style: with hamburgers and French fries. If you ever read any food-related literature in the US (the locavore movement in particular, but most eloquent cookbooks tend to romanticize this, too,) you hear a lot about how every meal deserves to have a story behind it, a story more complex than opening a box from the freezer and throwing it in the microwave. In general, I think reality is a more complicated than that, but, hey, it’s a good thinking point. Quite frankly, this Fourth of July meal DID have an adventure attached to it, and I was struggling to think of a blog topic, so this entry pretty much decided itself.

Background: sitting at an office in Alliance with Idrissou chatting about life in Batouri, corruption, development, and bushmeat, when all of a sudden he asks if he can ask me an important question. About 99% of the time when people ask me if they can ask a question, the question is if they can marry me. Luckily, I have more faith in Idrissou than that, and even more luckily, his question has nothing to do with marriage, but with hamburgers.

“Stephanie, do you know how to make hamburgers? Can we make them together sometime?”

Do my ears deceive me? Somebody WANTS to eat American food? Mind you, this is a man with a photo album and many cell phone photos of himself and various former Peace Corps volunteers eating hamburgers together, but, the fact remains: a Cameroonian asked to eat American food. Have I ever actually made a hamburger before? No, but there’s no better time than the present, right?

Day Of: I wake up at 7 and the sun is so blazingly bright that I am positive that it’s going to be the greatest day and these hamburgers that I’m going to construct are God’s gifts to all other hamburgers. I’m definitely going to be able to return to the US and open a diner with hamburgers that are so famous that people will travel across the country to eat them and food spies will constantly be there trying to divine my secrets à la Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I drink my tea, get dressed in a kaaba (big like a muumuu but far uglier) since the market will only be like 40 minutes max, and hustle out my door to catch a moto to the market.

I’m lucky enough to have an everyday market, but normally our produce isn’t too great since very few people actually grow food out East; by the time the majority of our vegetables make it out to us, they’re on their last legs. But, hey, I’m a hamburger goddess, and the world seems to be cooperating: all these veggies look fresh and beautiful today! Forty minutes later, my market bag is totally full and I’m still missing a number of the most important items on my list, most importantly: the meat.

Since I live in a Muslim area, it’s easy to buy cow meat, as a few cows are slaughtered every day. I visit the usual meat guy of the volunteers, and he cuts me my kilo of fillet, surprising me by being nice enough to get some of the fat off. Upon asking him to get the meat ground, his face falls…the grinder isn’t there today, it’s not going to be arriving at all today, and, no, he doesn’t know where else I can go get it ground. Panic sets in. I visit the peanut paste Mommas to see if I can use their grinders at their houses—these Mommas know everything, of course, and inform me that the grinder has to be there and I just haven’t looked. Panic sets in harder, and I trek over to another volunteer’s house to drop off the veggies so that I can lighten my load and continue my epic search for a meat grinder. On the way, a moto driver finds it necessary to point out the color of my skin and to almost hit me in the process, but to my surprise, random Cameroonian woman comes to my defense. What is this ridiculous world in which grinders don’t exist but feisty women defending my honor (okay, fine, my skin color) do?

Trekking back to the market, I get a phone call from another volunteer, the new Kentzou volunteer is in town on his layover, can I come hang out? I’m unshowered, wearing a muumuu, carrying around raw meat, and this endeavor is already far longer than the forty minutes I expected: hamburger goddess is frazzled. New volunteer leaves an hour later, so I check with two friends to see about using grinders at their houses. Nope. I check the market again to see if the grinder has returned. Nope. Full blown panic ensues. Favorite market Momma sees hamburger goddess on her third tour of market of the day:

“You’ve been doing the market a long time today.”

“Well, yes. I need to get this meat ground and the grinder is nowhere and no one will help me.”

“It’s not here?”

“No. I’ve checked already. Many times. I need this meat by tonight.”

Momma takes charge and explains the sitch to the meat-men, earning my business probably for forever, as she saves my hamburgers from certain doom. Meat-man whips out his machete and proceeds to “grind” my meat by chopping it over and over and over and over; a little less beautiful than the pre-packaged hamburger meat you get in your local grocery store, but, hey, I’m not picky. Besides, by now, I had almost resigned myself to making “Steak Burgers” for dinner. Hamburgers > Steak Burgers.  Total time of the adventure: three and a half hours. Total damage to the pocket book: 8,000CFA.

Hamburger goddess stocks up on candles just in case, drinks a Diet Coke at friends’ boutique (nothing quite like the splurge of a Diet Coke on a stressful day,) and returns home to prepare for what is shaping up to be a truly interesting dinner party with volunteers and #1 Hamburger Enthusiast.

Dinner-Making Commences: All is going well in the magical land of hamburger creation; lady liberty is clearly smiling from abroad on my fantastic efforts to honor her birthday. I may have accidentally bought cabbage instead of lettuce, but who eats those weird green leaves anyways? The French fries are cooking, all the vegetables are cut, I’ve prepped the meat, and just as I get ready to light the oven, the power goes out, and stays out for the next three hours. Luckily I had bought those “just in case” candles, right? This is an inevitable part of every dinner party I host; thanks, Janelle, for passing down this tradition ;) There is nothing quite so fun as inspecting a hamburger by candlelight to see if you’ve managed to get it cooked all the way through or if you’re going to be at dire risk of Salmonella.

More fortunately, it was a lovely dinner in the company of friends and food. You can’t put a price on a good dinner party, and it turns out that may be the one big skill I’ve picked up in Peace Corps. Cheesily enough, maybe it’s true that good food nourishes the soul. We had great conversation about politics and religion (aren’t those supposed to be two things you never talk about with people if you want to retain their friendship?) And, perhaps most importantly, it turns out that maybe I DO know how to make a pretty solid burger. As for the future of hamburger goddess, she’s soon going to teach the boys how to make hamburgers with the important caveat that they cook burgers for her: making feminism happen one burger at a time. End of story.

Happy belated America Day, everyone!