Wednesday, September 19, 2012

One Year of Cameroon?

19-9-2012

I’m practically at my year mark in Cameroon, which is the strangest realization I’ve had in a long time. The new Environment, Health, and Youth Development volunteers are arriving to country on Friday. There are no excuses anymore: we’re all expected to be older, wiser, and have life in Cameroon “all figured out.” It seemed reasonable in training to expect a volunteer a year into their service to have all the answers and be able to make everything make sense in an American perspective. Now that I’m on the other side, I’m well-aware that I don’t have all the answers and I can’t make everything make sense using America as a benchmark because it’s usually not the first thing to pop in my head. What I also can't do is make surviving in this heat look effortless, although I DID finally get cold enough one morning to bust out the wool legwarmers that I impulse packed at last second. With that said, though, what I have had is a lot of time to for new experiences, personal growth, and self-reflection. Sometimes it’s been easy and overly positive, and sometimes it’s the exact opposite, but this whole process isn’t done yet: I still have a little over a year to go, and by this time next year, I’ll have even more new experiences, personal growth, and self-reflection under my belt.


Cameroon, too, has been through a lot and grown over this past year. On a national level, Cameroon competed in the Olympics, and left with no medals and seven fewer athletes than they’d come with. Our First Lady, Chantal Biya, has supposedly disappeared and the Cameroonian rumor mill says everything from her husband having her killed off to her having an affair and running away because she’s pregnant. The two most Northern regions (creatively called the Far North and the North) are currently experiencing flooding that has killed crops and livestock, destroyed homes and infrastructure, and injured and killed a few dozen people. As time passes, we can expect the rates of Cholera and Malaria in those two regions to skyrocket because of standing water.

My region, the East, has dedicated the area for a hydroelectric dam (name: Lom Pangar) being built by the Chinese with plans to be completed in 15 years. This’ll allow the whole region to have electricity and phone access, as right now, the majority of our towns and villages have neither. The President recently announced that by 2015, the road from Bertoua to Batouri to Kentzou to Yokadouma will be paved, and we’ve actually already started to see the company’s cars in Batouri on a regular basis—my fingers are crossed that they’ll have started the paving process by the time I leave country in a year. Within Batouri itself, we had a visit from the National Minister of Public Health which ended in a donation of medical equipment, medications, and beds for our new Catholic hospital. We’ve tarred and graveled the two roads in our Administrative Quarter, repaired the walkway/bridge in Centre to be motorcycle accessible, and are currently building our second two-story building in town: a gas station. We’ve opened a new bakery and new bars, we received money from the national government to host a two-month agriculture-and-civic-engagement vocational training for 100 youth, and we’ve had a few major incidences of corruption.

None of that is exhaustive; there’ve been more changes on both the macro and micro levels. It’s reassuring to remember that Cameroon’s changing, too, and it’s not just me who’s been adapting and learning to function in this culture. A year older, a year wiser, right Cameroon?

So, this weekend is the big year marker: how am I going to celebrate? Friday, I’m hosting a big birthday party for a friend of mine in town; he’s never had a birthday party before, so I’m going all out—homemade dinner and dessert, guests, etc. I’ve never seen someone so excited before! Saturday, someone is coming over to help me hoe out my weeds. As I was attempting to machete my overgrown flowerbeds and weeds this week, two neighborhood university students showed up to volunteered to help for the day since they had nothing else to do; they promised to find me a friend to help out whenever I need it. Saturday is always laundry and housecleaning day—this one in particular needs to include washing my floors since they haven’t been conquered since my cleaning woman quit on me. Sunday, my post-mates are coming over for a brunch with homemade bread, and then I’m going to try and get in touch with a friend of another volunteer who just moved to Batouri to start teaching. I’ve been trying to make a female Cameroonian friend my age who’s not married with babies, so I’m pretty excited about this. And, that’s about it. That’s life here. It may not be figured out exactly, but it’s definitely into a more comfortable routine. That’s good enough for me :)
 

 

Thursday, September 6, 2012

A Completed Project!

5-9-2012

Out here, the majority of our phrases can be used in a million ways. “Ashia” can be either something sympathetic when something is difficult like carrying a heavy bedan of water, or snarky and more like a schaudenfraude. You can “du courage” someone as a good luck, or something more like an “ouch that sucks.” In the East, though, the one I hear the most often is “ca va aller,” roughly translated as anything from “yeah, it happens like that sometimes,” “eh, it’ll come together,” to “you can’t do anything about it anyways.” Whether one phrase having so many divergent meanings is being efficient, confusing, or just plain ridiculous, I have yet to figure out. The fact that this phrase is the most popular one in the region tells you a lot about our culture and how it’s so often misunderstood. We aren’t really known as being the core of ultra-motivated, development minded individuals—we’re a lot more like the deep South of the US: hesitant to change and ridiculously slow moving…an area stereotyped as one where only those who would never turn down a challenge choose to trek.

I used to hate the phrase when I moved in, but it appears I’ve given in to it. Ca va aller, non? In an average day, I probably say it about 10 times, but those last two weeks when I was preparing for and completing a major project? Minimum of 20 times a day. Someone doesn’t show up for a major finance meeting? You don’t know if you have food arranged for lunch? You haven’t finished posters yet or remembered to bring presentation materials or found people to present important lectures? You can’t shower before your presentation because waters been out a few days? You need to change the schedule of the day half an hour before starting because two random people showed up and demanded the right to present? Eh, ca va aller, mes amis. It’s only natural that the conference would have followed this pattern, right? This is Peace Corps Cameroon, after all. We’ve all had it happen, we all get frustrated by it, and yet, on some sick level related to procrastination and adrenaline, we all love it. You can fight it, or you can deal with it. It’s either the best part or the worst part of my job, and I’m pretty sure I fluctuate between the two extremes each of the ten times I say it per day. Ca va aller.

Despite all of those major frustrations (and about 30896745 others that I didn’t mention,) we managed to host a pretty darn good conference to train 12 teachers, 40 women, and a French Nun on the benefits of using Soy/Moringa and how to use them, including information on income-generating activities and women’s empowerment. I say “we” purposely; there were PCVs who donated Moringa seeds and sent them down East, PCVs who came through on vacation and helped stuff sacks with dirt for the Moringa seedlings, family members and friends who donated money to finance food and other necessities, volunteers who at the last second decided to come and lend a helping hand, three Cameroonians who stepped up to be presenters at last second, and other volunteers who’d been involved with the project from the get-go. Together, we managed to put together something that I’m pretty proud of. Flawless? Absolutely not. Apparently Moringa roots cure HIV/AIDS (thanks Monsieur Eba,) our soy seeds weren’t quite ready for distribution, and we definitely started behind schedule (or would have if we hadn’t created a schedule morning of,) but that’s not what matters. Actually, that bit about the Moringa roots and HIV could be a problem…I’ll deal with that for next time, but in the mean-time, it made for a great joke for our post-conference mental health vacation.

All things considered, what actually did go right? Remembering that we’re literally starting from a base level of explaining what a soy bean looks like and why it’s important to eat more than just manioc every day, it’s pretty incredible how excited people were and how closely they were taking notes about what we were talking about. People actually seemed to get the hang of the tofu making process, and they were amped about the price difference between soy and regular meat. The grins of people’s faces when they received their moringa trees were priceless. Nothing exactly went the way I’d planned on, but it’s a big confidence boost that it got presented to the national Minister of Public Health this past week. Yep, I think I’m okay with calling this project a success.

We’ve got a whole host of spiders, snakes, and weird tropical illnesses, sure, but these moments of legitimate accomplishment make everything else pale in comparison. It’s just too damn impressive watching a project you’ve worked on for months coming to fruition, even if it hasn’t gone the way you’ve foreseen it to. Those moments make all of those “ca va aller” moments about a million times more worth it. Maybe these Easties are on to something, or maybe they’ve just adapted the idea of Hakuna Matata. Either way, it doesn’t matter: you get only one life, so live it. Why micromanage the things that aren’t micromanageable?

I’ve left this entry short on purpose so that I could upload a few photos to go with it (or would if the internet was fast enough to support it,) but I do want to give a big bit of credit where credit is due. Many thanks to the friends and family of Warren Walikonis, the family of Roger Morris, the Women of Faith Bible Study from Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Cuyahoga Falls OH, Sarah Jennings, Jon Gelleta, Laura Pearson, Justine Little, Mike Burbidge, Janelle Walikonis, Geoff Miles, Jessica Worful, Melissa Lafayette, Patrick Dennis, and Molly Starke. Pretty amazing group for such a small, obscure community, right? Y’all contributed MASSIVELY and I appreciate it!

Thank You!