As of today, I’ve spent four full months in Cameroon,
which is really exciting. So much has changed over the past four months, but I
don’t really want to spend this entry being nostalgic about all of that—I think
I’ve covered all that pretty well over the past couple of blog posts. Instead,
I wanted to give you a better update as to what I’m up to work-wise here in
Batouri now that I’ve actually started some semblance of work.
As a Youth Development Volunteer, I have a lot of freedom
to decide what I want to do, with who, and when. Part of that is because the
program is totally new (being in the founding class has its privileges for
sure,) but a lot of that is that the program was designed to combine the
successful aspects of each of the four pre-existing programs and tailor it to a
specific demographic: youth and families. So, over the course of my service, I
could choose to work with young mothers on childhood nutrition, secondary students
on financial management and goal-setting, teachers on how to approach sexual
health in classes, etc. The possibilities are endless, and that’s what I really
enjoy about my program: I’m not constricted to any one subject. I also have an
awesome opportunity to collaborate with the other sectors, which is great
because in Batouri there are volunteers from the Education, Small Enterprise
Development, and Agroforestry sectors. The only sector not represented here is
Health, and that was a good chunk of my training, and there’s a Health
volunteer posted only about three hours away.
Now that I’ve gotten more settled into my house (key word
here being “more,” as I’ve still got a long way to go before being
established,) I’ve been checking out a lot of the institutions and schools that
are active here in the community. Historically, Peace Corps has been really
active here in Batouri, but there are a number of other local, regional, and
international organizations active here as well. My host institution,
Centre Pour la Promotion de la Femme et la Famille, works with women and young
mothers giving technical training and general education. It’s a small
organization that lacks funding, so while they have a lot of big ideas of what
they would like to do in the future, all ideas constantly need to be scaled
down because there’s just no money for them to work with. I’ve had two meetings
there so far to get to know the staff and become more familiar with their work
there, I’m headed back tomorrow with my post-mate to talk more concretely about
some possibilities regarding running a soy and nutrition formation there within
the next few months.
I’ve
also started running some needs assessment-type work at one of the local,
public secondary schools. I’ve found a really dynamic Vice-Principal to work
with there, and that’s been a huge gift because he’s passionate about many of
the same issues I am and he’s not afraid to address these issues head-on. This
past week, I had a meeting with about 40 girls to talk about their lives at
home, in the community, and at the school. In a lot of ways, their complaints
were the same as the ones I would have said at their age: cliques, superiority
complexes, and gossip, but there were plenty of other things that they said
that were really jarring for me (being scared to walk around campus because of
the harassment of boys, teachers blackmailing girls for money and sex, being
forced into prostitution to pay for school fees, and being scared of being
married off before finishing education.) I hope to be able to talk to the boys
within the next week, and with teachers if that’s possible. The next time that
the PTA meets, I plan to attend so that I can get a better sense of parental
involvement and what parents’ reactions to my plans are.
Last
week, I went to visit an organization that’s associated with the Catholic
Mission here, Esperance Sare Jeunes. Esperance is one of the most
inspirational, well-organized places I’ve found in town. They work with youth
whose families can’t afford to keep them at home or send them to school giving
them a place to stay, technical training in agriculture, and paying for their
school fees. Be on the look-out for photos on facebook from Esperance—they tell
the story of that place much better than I do. I’m headed back tomorrow
afternoon with my post-mate to meet with the kids there and hear their stories
and get a better idea of what the kids think that the two of us can do to
improve their situations.
I
have a friend who teaches the local language, Kako, to students at a private
primary school in town, and he took me to his class last week, which was a
blast. Benjamen also teaches illiterate parents to read and write in a village
about 10 kilometers from here, so I’m hoping to go to one of those sessions
soon, mostly just because I think he’s such a powerful teacher and I want to
see what a village out here looks like.
So,
work-wise, as you can see, things are going really well! I’m definitely finding
a lot of interesting potential projects out here but, more importantly, I’m
finding people who genuinely care about the work I want to do and who are
realistic about the things we can accomplish together. If this first month and
a half of post is indicative of what I’m in for during the rest of my time
here, I’m going to be busy but there’s a definite possibility of making a
lasting difference in the community, which is encouraging and exciting. As for
the being busy part, let’s be honest, you and I both know that I’m thrilled to
finally have things to do here (besides just cook delicious things and fiddle
around with house set-up, anyways.)
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