Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Updates From the Dust Bowl

It hasn't rained in three weeks. My garden is slowly dying and outside is desolate like the dead feeling of a desert. Clouds of dust pick up like when I played softball and in a strong wind you'd have to turn your head and cover your face to escape the twister. You can literally smell the dust. I taste it while walking to school or riding to Bafoussam. It's like you are breathing with your nose in the dirt. It's far worse than I feel like it was last year. This rainy season was brief and less intense than my first year. Some days I feel like I'm 100% sure I want to extend and others I feel 100% certain that I can't wait to get the hell out of here! This morning while walking to class I realized that after my trip home I'll only have about 6 months left and it blew me away. My time is really... over. Have almost two years really gone by since I've been here? Sometimes it feels like nothing is changing but then suddenly it occurs to me that so much time has gone by. I guess this is all a part of the Peace Corps story. When you're in it, though, you just are. You're just unaware of so much. This is the busiest time of the school year. Between correcting countless tests and essays, calculating averages, completing report cards, while at the same time planning lessons, executing classes, and putting together a weekly program of about 4 hours with the Girls' Club each Sunday, I'm exhausted. I rarely have a moment's time to reflect on the fact that it's all coming to a close and when I do I feel overwhelmed at the thought of it. Anyway, this is why it's gotten so difficult for me to keep up with the journal. Where to even begin it... Well, I went to Yaounde at the end of October to meet with the Country Director for Peace Corps about getting married. After 3 weeks with the 9 page questionnaire from the State Department about "Who is Claude" we finally sent it in yesterday. We expect to hear back in 2 weeks or so about whether they have 'approved' us. After that Claude will have to go to Yaounde as well to meet the Country Director for final approval and that will complete the last of the first round of hoops we have to jump through. After that will be registering for our wedding in Cameroon and then the Embassy. So much is unclear at this moment. I'm finalizing my grad school applications and analyzing all my options. It's tough to imagine not coming home all at once with Claude in tow but I fear it is a possibility. My official Close of Service is in August but usually people begin leaving about 2 months before the date and that is the last group's departure date. If I wind up heading for grad school in September I'll no doubt be leaving in June or July. I am applying to schools in New York, Massachusetts, and Colorado so there will be a process of coming home and then scurrying off to a totally new city... again. Sometimes I freak out at the thought of all the things I'd be adjusting to all at once. I panic a bit and think the best thing to do is STAY HERE! In March we will have our Close of Service conference and I will probably at least apply to extend. That will be around the same time I'll start hearing back from the universities so at least I'll have choices. If I am accepted to a school I may be able to defer for a year if I choose to. If I extended service I'd likely be going to another part of Cameroon and doing a different type of job. It could be with an NGO, which would probably be a really good experience for me. But then, the thought of moving in this country is dreadful, especially to stay for probably less than a year. Not to mention that here we are so central and close to Claude's family. I have adjusted to one way of life and it would be like starting over in some ways. Lately our power has been out pretty regularly and it's made me half mad. I can't imagine winding up someplace that has even fewer resources than the West because I really lucked out with this post. You don't realize how much electricity and water completely shape your existence. I guess if there was anything appropriate to write about on Thanksgiving- this is it! Rumor has it that the power outages in Cameroon are because they export electricity to other bordering countries-- and since it's being exported they pay more! Most Sundays there's no power but it's mostly only during the day and comes back on as soon as it gets dark (which is really early in this equatorial region). Sometimes, though, it goes off at other very inconvenient times. I've gotten used to reading and cooking by candlelight but I cannot get the gumption up to actually sit down and grade papers or do schoolwork when there are no lights. As it is I'm already exhausted after walking to and from school and then being on my feet in a classroom, talking, writing on a chalkboard, and trying to control 60-80 brats. If the power goes out- forget it-- my day is over. I fall into bed lately sometimes before 9 o'clock. Water is much less reliable than power. We don't have it more often than we do. The first months were the toughest with this because it's a matter of a figuring out how many water containers you need to get through the times the water's off. Sometimes I had to pay the neighbor kids to go and carry water. Doesn't it seem so strange that a ten year old child can carry my water bidons and I can't? Well, I can but not very far and not at all gracefully or comfortably. They just plop them on their heads and off they go. It's genuinely a feat of nature. So, now I have about 265 liters of water storage and as soon as you start hearing the hissing from the pipes you have to line them all up and get ready. It's a blissful event every time. During the rainy season it's a dance of buckets inside, buckets outside. At the first menace of storm clouds you rush it all outside and right back in at the buzz of the faucets. We had two REALLY dry months in which I buffed up from my trips to the well. Forty pulls to the top for each 10 liter bucket. All of it has become somewhat second nature now. Survival. It's rare I have to panic about it like I did in the beginning. It's weird to think in two weeks I'm just going to take a vacation from it all in the US. How this simple little fact really makes my reality so outstandingly different from everyone else around me. In the end for me, it's all just one big adventure and for them it really is... just this hard and hopeless. I hate to say that it's hopeless. It sounds so pessimistic. More and more pessimism is what I seem to feel. The problems of education are so infectious. Like ignorance is truly a contagion in the society. Uneducated parents breed complacent students and so on down the line. Worse, parents who have so little ambition or direction themselves have so many children they can't take care of that neglect becomes a serious epidemic. Recently I have witnessed so many cases of this and felt so discouraged. So often children are taking care of children. I'm not talking about teenage parenthood either, I mean leaving the infant with a 5 year old for hours at a time. A couple weeks ago I was walking down to school with next to a mama and we stumbled on a crawling baby who was about to make its way into the street, crying on the side of the road by himself. The mama recognized the kid and saw the older one who must've been about 2. She explained that their mother had gone out so I wound up taking the two of them to a seamstress next door but they were literally all alone. I told her that in my country you would lose your kids in a heartbeat doing that and she said, "Of course! It's not for nothing they created nursery school!" I was happy to at least have this person to relate to about it but I still couldn't imagine anyone thinking this is okay. The other day I was grading papers on the porch and kept hearing a baby crying. I kept thinking it was a little girl in the street and didn't think anything because most of the neighbor kids are boys. Finally I realized it was coming from the compound and went to investigate only to find the three year old and my favorite baby who's 9 months just hanging out by themselves. I sat with the baby until his mom got back and got filthy dirty because his diaper was wet and he had snot, dirt, and tears all over his face and clothes. A few weeks ago when I was putting fliers up all over the village I spent an afternoon pointing nursery schoolers to the side of the road as they walked home. This will probably shock most Americans but here it's perfectly normal for a two year old to walk to school from a mile away all by himself. The funny thing is, they ARE a lot smarter and more independent than we give them credit for in the States but at the same time, a lot of parents here are just very, very lucky that their kid makes it home everyday. Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to a retreat home for a happy occasion for the first time since I've been here. I absolutely cannot wait to spend time with family and friends. The thought of being next to the fireplace with the forbidding cold outside, hot chocolate, warm company. It's so exciting but also kind of sad because I just wish my fiance would be there with me. But hopefully soon enough. Can't wait to see everyone!