Patientiez

September 2, 2010

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” - A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

It’s been about three months since I left the US. According to Critical Periods in the Life of a Peace Corps Volunteer I should be experiencing “fright, frustration with self, loneliness, weight/health changes, homesickness, and uselessness“. I can’t really claim to be feeling any of those things but I am certainly feeling other emotions which point to my extended time away from home.

I am feeling frustration, but not toward myself. I have been in my house nearly a week. When I visited in July the sous-chef told me the people staying here were working everyday on it and were going to install a toilet and lights before I arrived. Unsurprisingly none of that had happened by the time I got here. I spent a week and a day with the sous-chef and started to think he wasn’t in a huge hurry to get me into my house. Every morning as we drank coffee I drilled him with a dozen questions regarding the progress of the house, coordinating with the school, setting up my language courses, and information on how to get around town. As my interrogations became more routine I became acutely aware of my own cultural obsession with organization and planning as well as their lack thereof.

As I am sitting here, 2 weeks after my arrival to post, there are 2 boys crawling around in my ceiling installing my electricity and though they‘ve dug the floor up in my ‘bathroom‘ and installed a lot of pipes, my toilet is sitting upside-down in my living room at the moment. At least it has felt more like Peace Corps since leaving our chic quartier in Bafia. I’ve spent most nights crouched over my gas stove on the floor with a flashlight in my mouth and have resorted to peeing in a bucket at night rather than bothering to go out in the yard. Luckily I like camping because life pretty much feels like that at the moment.

Water is a huge aggravation and something I will hopefully never again take for granted in my life. The village just got ‘l’eau de robinet’ (tap water) prior to my arrival but unfortunately it is available only at the discretion of the water company and they frequently decide to cut it off for days at a time. Plus, with the work underway at present on the house my running water has been rendered inaccessible, period. My kind neighbor Victorine has offered her barrell of rain water, which is currently dry, or her underground water storage container, which is absolutely filthy, but, better than nothing. Sadly, impure water is probably the number one cause of health problems on the continent and it seems so needless because they are easily avoidable maladies with boiling, filtering, or treating the water before consumption. I have not yet understood why people don’t bother to practice these sanitation habits because at least in the case of Cameroon I don’t think lack of education is to blame. Hopefully at the very least I can serve as a reminder of these easy fixers.

Village life is startlingly more different than life in Bafia than I‘d anticipated. More than likely we were sheltered from a great many realities there, however, because of living in such a more posh area of town. For instance, here people have a very limited sense of privacy. The neighbors will look right in the windows if the shutters are open, or even open them themselves if they are not locked. If the doors are open people just walk in, needing only to utter “konk-konk” while doing so rather than actually knocking and awaiting the invitation. Victorine’s 3 small children are seemingly home alone most of the day most days since I’ve been here while she goes out working in her field and they have all taken to coming to my house and staring at me doing no matter what through the bars of my window for most of the afternoon. They also love to just walk right in if the door is open, though I am trying to steer them away from this habit. We were told we may begin to feel like zoo animals but I had to laugh yesterday when it occurred to me what an accurate analogy that is as I glanced at their 3 little faces staring at me in such wonder as if I was the very first person they‘ve ever seen.

Last week when the sous-chef suddenly informed me we were going to the school I began to follow him out wearing Claude’s soccer shorts and thinking nothing of it when he informed me that I could not do such a thing. I responded in my usual stubborn way at first but he insisted and I was forced to go and change clothes. All the more frustrating that he himself was wearing wind pants and a t-shirt but stated that a woman dressed in such a way would be said to be out in public naked.

A few days ago I walked down the street to pay for my phone credit and bumped into some young guys in the military who said they wanted to buy me a drink, a very common practice to welcome me to the town. Peace Corps encourages us to integrate as much as possible so turning down invitations such as this seems in poor taste. They were all very nice and interesting to speak with. Afterward they offered me a lift back to my house which was about a 5 minute walk up the street. I had them drop me at the sous-chef’s because I needed to buy something anyway and as I got out of the car an older lady I recognized from the compound was saying something to the guys in Patois (mother tongue). When I walked past her she seemed annoyed and angry with me and was mumbling something so I inquired what the problem was. She responded, “Ce n’est pas bien. Tu es la pour le travail, n’est pas?” “That isn’t good. You’re here for work, aren‘t you?” and then seemingly went on to discuss how disgusted with me she was with all the old women at the bar at that particular moment for several minutes.

When I got home I shed several frustrated tears. Despite that my mother is probably reading this and agreeing whole-heartedly with that old bag, it is actually a lot more complicated than it seems. First of all, it was the middle of the day and the whole interaction was perfectly harmless. Of course they turned out to all basically want to date me because it is seemingly impossible to have a platonic relationship with someone of the opposite sex on this continent, but I made it very clear that I was not available in that sense. Overall they were friendly and I accepted the offer of a ride because that is a much less risky gesture than in the States. The old woman apparently saw this car with mostly men and assumed I was whoring around town. The fact that she, who I don’t even know in any way except having maybe greeted her a handful of times, had such a strong opinion that even on a Sunday I should’ve been working instead of being in any situation involving a group of guys was infuriating and made me realize how great it is living in a culture where it is perfectly acceptable to tell someone to mind their own damned business!

My response to her was a light-hearted “Je peux pas travailler chaque jour!” “I can’t work everyday!” but I later informed the sous-chef of the whole story because it had so irritated me. The whole thing was so innocent and casual that for someone I don’t even know to have so much to say about it was maddening! Fortunately the sous-chef sided with me completely on the issue and said it was totally inappropriate for villagers to be concerned about what I’m doing in my personal life. As I described the woman to him he finally said that she is crazy and doesn’t even talk at all to one of his wives because she is so opinionated and has problems with everyone. This made me feel somewhat better but in the back of my mind I felt that she probably did at the very least represent the old fashioned views of some of the people of the community.

Additionally the day after moving into my new house the chef’s (the real chef) wife stopped by and mentioned that I should be staying at my house because it wasn’t good for me to stay so long with the sous-chef and that I would start to cause problems with his wives. This frustrated me as well considering there was certainly no one who wanted me out of his house in a timely fashion more than me and how could I cause so many problems for women who are already sharing a man in the first place when I myself would never agree to such a thing and have a boyfriend of my own! I would add that I am also way too young for the sous-chef and find the very thought of an intimate relationship with him nauseating but it turns out that one of his wives is 2 years younger than me and he married her at 15!

One day on the way into Bafoussam we happened to share a taxi with a very nice man who works at my school. He and the sous-chef started talking about his daughter who had just passed the probatoire, equivalent to becoming a Senior in high school. The sous-chef said she was ripe for marrying now and implied she should marry him. The father of the girl said no way, that he would have to divorce all his other wives first for such a thing to be possible. The sous-chef couldn’t believe he would turn down the proposal of such a prominent figure for his daughter. Finally they arrived on the topic of her being a more suitable match for the sous-chef’s son, an idea they settled on amicably. This entire conversation was a both amusing and sad; a young girl’s future being discussed completely in her absence and without any consideration of how she herself might actually feel about it.

Last night I had a nightmare that school was starting and I showed up 100% unprepared. Not knowing my schedule, not knowing my lessons, and with no clue what to do. As it turns out this wasn’t far from the reality. School starts Monday and so far the only contact I’ve had with school administrators is that which I’ve initiated myself. I was given 4 levels to teach, which is going to be a shit-ton of work. So far I have only 3 of the textbooks, student edition- not the teacher‘s, and have not even seen my actual work schedule. Today I called the discipline master to see about getting a copy of the Schemes of Work which outline broadly the schedule for which material should be presented to the students. He is out of town and said I would get all of that on Monday. I could even show up at 10 am Monday- the first day of school. I cannot get over the absolute lack of preparedness and total calmness about it. The entire student body will be there and that is the day I will find out what times I will be required to come to work and what I will be expected to do. It makes no sense to me and I find it incredibly frustrating. Each time I’ve pressured the staff to give me information it is almost as if they are laughing about my concern over it. They are perfectly content to begin preparations for the year after it has already begun.

I made a new friend the other day just walking down the street. Her name is Linda and unfortunately she lives in the capital and has already gone back. I laughed when she too implied that I didn’t need to stress too much about the first week of classes because that is the week of introductions. A WEEK!? Of introductions!? “Hi, I’m Miss. Caldwell from America and this is English class”; that introduction takes about a minute and then we could actually have class! Now I see why the people in this ‘bilingual’ country do not actually speak English!

Nonetheless, I guess I should try not to worry more than they are worrying. The longer I’m here, the more aware I become with my own “American-ness”. It is pretty fascinating, actually, to see how very different a whole cultural mentality can make a country. It’s like, people don’t connect their being behind with their being totally chill about every single thing. But alas, c’est la vie ici and I guess I’m stuck with it for the next 2 years!