Challenges

22 October 2012

When you join Peace Corps, you expect the most difficult thing to be physical discomfort. And, quite frankly, a lot of the times it is. Being far from family and friends from home is never going to be easy, but at least we’ve got a strong community of support amongst the other volunteers since we’re all the same distance away, have the same worries about our families, and have all missed important life events of people we care about. Volunteers get placed in places where there’s no water, electricity, or cell phone service. Others of us get placed in places where all of those things go out frequently and unpredictably. Travel runs late or never takes off, and you’re never quite sure how many times you’re going to break down once you get going. You’re a slave to the weather, and most likely you stand out. Badly. Corruption abounds. The language isn’t your own, and sometimes you make ridiculous mistakes. These are the things that you get good at laughing off fast, because otherwise you’d go insane. If you get a big group of Peace Corps Volunteers together in a room, it’s likely we’re going to be in a competition of who’s got it worse and throwing around the term “Posh Corps” to prove just how much harder we’ve got it. If one-upping was an Olympic sport, you can bet that the US team would be Peace Corps Volunteers. It's one of our more lovable qualities.

What you don’t expect, though, is getting used to the discomfort. I can’t buck the system and magically bring reliable phone service to a whole country, so it’s better to find the positive in it and be thankful that you’ll get a few hours of quiet. Water’s out again? Cool, kids, guess we’re rocking a scarf to cover up the greasy hair. Bus still hasn’t arrived? Great, time to eat breakfast! Go with the flow is the name of the game in Peace Corps Land.

There are some things, though, that you can’t and shouldn’t get used to. There’s a whole host of these things, but everybody’s got their big hot button issue ranging anywhere from animal abuse to malnutrition to the culture’s failure to accept homosexuality. For me, it’s the lack of respect for women. It took moving here to understand just how important the Women’s Rights movement was in the US, but I can tell you right now that I’ll never under-value that again. I have a new appreciation for feminism after living in a place where chauvinism and male-dominance affects every aspect of daily life.

Communities often prefer to get male volunteers over female volunteers. Women can’t easily be friends with men and should expect to lose most over marriage proposals. Females can’t sit in certain seats in buses or cars, and are almost always expected to have some kind of a chaperone. Likewise, women can’t go to places like the mosque, and need to be cautious about being seen in other locations like the bar. Male volunteers can go travelling with their best friends from town, but as a female, this will always be off-limits no matter how close of friends you are. Certain foods like pistache (or bananas in some regions) or cuts of meat are automatically off-limits unless you’re male. Stereotypes about women will affect work and personal relationships. It’s a lot to remember and balance when you’re used to being told that you’re worth at least as much as a man and that if you work hard enough, you can have everything in reason that you want. These things are chump change compared to the realities Cameroonian girls are dealing with, and that’s what makes it the hardest—it’s easier to deal with hardships when you know it’s just you and that those hardships were your choice.

Cameroonian girls are often denied the right to an education, married off at the age of 12 to 40 year old men, can’t demand the right to fidelity or monogamy or condoms, and are underfed in favor of their male siblings. Women are subjected to rape and violence and taught that it’s a normal form of punishment for not serving dinner on time or speaking out of turn. In many Cameroonian ethnic groups, if a women’s husband passes away, then she’s forced to go through humiliating widowhood rituals and sometimes forced to marry the sibling or father of her husband. In some ethnic groups women’s families have to pay a dowry to marry off their daughters making her permanent property of a man, and in the majority of the rest, a man has to pay the dowry to the woman’s family. Women are considered baby-making machines, and it’s not abnormal for a woman to have five babies in five years or less. Men complain and yell at their wives for their failure to give them male children. A woman has no legal right to land or property. In short: both socially and legally, women are viewed as being less than men.

As a woman, it’s offensive, and I hate it. Ever since returning from a week-long trip to small villages in the bush to help distribute materials to the Family Agricultural Schools in my department, I’ve found myself a lot more aware of the super-human strength and willpower women in this country must have to keep on living under these conditions. In one of the communities I visited, women weren’t allowed to speak in front of their chief as a sign of respect for his power, and in another women weren’t allowed to leave their homes after nightfall. I can’t imagine that living under all those prohibitions, especially ones inapplicable to men, gives you a strong sense of self-worth.

I love Cameroon and I love my community, so I’m not willing to give up on it and let it be what it’s always been. These situations and the knowledge of what women here are dealing with give me a sense of purpose, direction, passion, and fight; rather than giving up, I’m starting to work in all 7 of these schools in the department to teach Men’s Engagement, Women’s Empowerment, and Gender Equity for the remainder of my service. In less technical terms, that’s everything from HIV/AIDS education, conflict resolution, teaching about the difference between sex and gender, working with parents to help them speak with their children about puberty, and teaching that violence and rape isn’t what makes a male a man. I’m still working out the details but I’m bound and determined: it’s happening. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, after all. My host organization is arranging for all of my transportation, and each community will be responsible for my lodging, food, and security. Right now, I’m working at doing basic assessments of every community to determine the specific problems I need to target in each and to determine if there’s any correlation between gender dynamics and the success rates of the schools. I start my assessments in Pkanadji and Garoua-Sanbe on Friday.

I’m lucky to have a partner in my new post-mate, but I’m still fairly certain that we’re in over our heads. I might also be utterly screwed language-wise since only a small handful of people in each village (in one village: one person total) speak French and my Kako is limited right now to saying good day, donkey, thanks, duck, mat, and good-bye. That said, I know that I’ve got communities that have been welcoming me with open arms, honesty, and a willingness to work with me to help make changes and improve the social situation of the people in their village, which is a lot easier than fighting people to get them to pay attention. I’ve got next to no idea what I’m doing, but I’ve got a big sense of fight, a motivated national organization to partner with, and a bunch of little villages that believe the future to prosperity is through emancipating their women, and for right now, that’s enough to go off of. Hopefully.