“It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain.” -Walden Henry David Thoreau
I would be lying if I said that I had lost all track of time lately or had forgotten to write. In fact, my internet access has even been more constant than before since we managed to locate a tiny portion of the house where we can manage the faintest connection. The truth is life has just begun to feel a bit routine here and so the inspiration to write, though it is here all around me all the time, has somewhat dissipated.
Life is still chill and without too many problems. I took the GRE in February in Yaounde which was way harder than I’d imagined and was quite discouraging, especially reading an entire study book in the months prior as well as cramming with a few other girls in the Volunteer house for 3 consecutive days before the test. The good news is that everyone else also found it difficult. We’ll see in just a couple of weeks whether I actually stand a chance of being accepted to my first choice graduate program or not- fingers crossed!
Since the test I have been trying to really fixate on my secondary projects in the village. We are expected to do something called PACA (Paticipatory Assessment for Community Action) to establish the needs, resources, and motivators of the community for our projects to be sustainable. Unfortunately we didn’t receive any useful training on that during Pre-Service and therefore my own research and planning of it feels a bit like Alice’s rabbit hole. On the other hand, my Girls’ Club has become quite a hit and I am now working on having a summer camp with a small group to teach AIDS prevention and things like Family Planning and Life Skills. More and more I feel that working with the younger population of the community may be more valuable than with the adults.
I have been dealing with a rather frustrating problem in my house since before going to Kribi in December. My landlord’s son installed my power when I first moved in and my “divisionary” electric meter has been in his wife’s house behind my own. At first my bills were somewhat reasonable but then he started bringing me totals of 3 times what the other volunteers pay, and that was before I even had a refrigerator. When my Program Director called him to explain our policies he simply rearranged the charges so that the total was the same but that now it was coming from my water bill rather than my electric. I refused to pay and my boss had to come and work it out with us.
In January I wound up paying him a remaining balance, still much higher than I should’ve had to, but at last we signed a contract with him stating that the electric company themselves would come and install a meter on my house and that after January 31st I would no longer pay any bills that were not from the company. I also discovered during this same meeting that I have been paying the water bill for his entire compound as well.
At the beginning of February he came again with another outrageous bill, after having refused to take my offer for the remaining balance which was actually owed. With that I talked to my Program Director and he agreed that I could move. I found a house that was absolutely BEAUTIFUL, in fact, probably too much so. We thought that the guy was going to let me rent but, in typical Cameroonian fashion, he was just saving face. Cameroonians have a highly annoying cultural tendency to say they will tell you tomorrow or they need to do something with someone before giving you a response, yet never, in the end giving you one. Their way of avoiding the potential discomfort of saying “No’ outright.
Finally the electric company came yesterday and discovered things were not correctly installed and called him a “bandit international”. Already his kid came again today to do something with the power, which I refused.
Though I admittedly spent about a week dreaming of my new life in the (probably most) impressive house in the village, without dozens of children screaming and wailing nearly every second of the day, I have come back down to Earth now. In fact, I am reading Walden at the moment and it makes me realize how much less we really need than we convince ourselves that we do. Thus the reason we are perceived as rich by most of the world. Sure, the majority of us may be “making ends meet”, living “paycheck to paycheck” or just “scraping by” each month, but in most cases it is probably because we have consumed relative to our income to the point where there is hardly any breathing room. In reality, if people lived in a less superfluous way than we are accustomed to we would probably have thousands of dollars stashed away in bank accounts for a ’rainy day’.
When I first got here there was an ongoing list of things I just had to have in my head at all times. New sofa, refrigerator, guest bed, a variety of more luxurious food items that can only be purchased in the city, including highly priced olive oil. I saw certain other volunteers’ houses and felt pangs of envy because they chanced to fall into homes that were akin really to those we are used to whereas mine has wooden doors and windows and concrete floors, no kitchen sink, and a filthy paint job.
After 7 months in my village it’s easier to differentiate the needs from the indulgences. Now my 170 CFA per month (around $300) salary does actually feel quite rich. After accumulating all the must haves like my stove, bed , a kitchen table, and buckets and bidons for water storage, I have been able to budget to easily have around 40 CFA ($80) left at the end of the month, money a whole family here could probably live off.
After months of sitting on only my wooden or plastic chairs, or, worst of all, in my bed which is essentially a piece of foam already smashed down to practically nothing allowing the body only the sensation of the 2x4s supporting it below, I acquired Christine’s love seat, sofa, and coffee table. Now I feel almost ashamed of the luxury.
Finally I realize that I don’t necessarily have to drink coffee every morning, and on my days off a warm mug of it in my hand while reading a book on the veranda is one of the most exotic and enjoyable experiences I can have. When I allow myself to steal 300 CFA (less than a dollar) out of the week’s budget for a bar of Mambo chocolate, I carefully stash it away until just the right moment in which I break off each piece one by one and let the sultry richness of it melt on my tongue. A few times a month I buy Claude and I bottles of Top soda or a box of wine with dinner and it feels like New Years Eve.
We are programmed to believe that success is always obtaining more. A newer car, a better house, nicer clothes. I think success is a lot simpler than that. Being far from home and thinking back to all the complicated drama that so often exists in the world of excess makes me wish only for the simple joy of a belly full of good, natural food, the warm company of someone you love, the familiarity of a place you’ve made yours on the planet, and peace and contentedness of the present moment. I wish that could be the new idea of luxury in our country of constantly chasing our tails; always pursuing that which is just beyond our reach.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Not in Kansas Anymore
After 8 months in country and already more than 5 months in the village, there are times when it’s easy to forget that I’m even in Africa. Apart from the immediate surroundings, which I’ve adjusted to as anyone does a new environment after some time, and the fact that I am pretty much the only person with white skin that I come in contact with most days of the week, the nuts and bolts of life here seem perfectly natural. And, though people do talk of it, allude to it in offhanded ways, the suffering that is all around me is hardly evident in their friendly greetings, their seeming joy and carefree natures.
Yesterday, however, I was reminded of the realities which I myself escape by my myriad medical examinations, vaccinations, check-ins, extensive education of threats and preventions, and unlimited supplies and care that comes courtesy of the U.S. government to each and every Peace Corps volunteer. While walking to pick up report cards from the office a student in my youngest class stopped to inform me that one of their classmates had died. Though I don’t know all of my students by name, (especially the girls, who are obliged to shave their heads making them difficult to distinguish), as soon as he spoke her name I could see her wide eyes and bright smile shining from the back row of the classroom. I went to say a few words to the class quickly and was surprised to see that things seemed to be carrying on as they would on any typical school day. I mentioned it to some of the staff as I tried to share the initial confused shock and grief that is so unfamiliar to me.
I got little to no reaction from anyone and felt angry when the Discipline Master, who Claude later explained to me should normally be responsible for organizing the students and informing the school of the loss of a comrade, came to ask me to help them plan the Fashion Show for the Youth Holiday next week. Shortly thereafter and 2 hours before school had even terminated they brought out a sound system and started blasting music on the campus. By then my 5ieme class, Olive’s class, was to begin. I went and offered a few words of condolence, asked some details of the cause of her death, and requested that a few students guide me to where she lived so I could greet the parents, offer my support, and ask permission to come to the burial.
A virtual troop of students started walking with me and, deep in reflection, I was practically at her doorstep before I turned and realized that we had accumulated in such a way. I asked the students to stay behind, envisioning that a family who had lost their child less than 24 hours before would be in such a delicate state that a mass of students was wildly inconsiderate and could be a horrible reflection on me in the village. I insisted that 2 students join me and the rest wait, but upon arriving I realized that a crowd was already gathered there. One of my older students greeted me and stood to lead me to what I thought and hoped would be Olive’s parents. To my surprise it was her little lifeless body wrapped in a bed sheet, laid out on the family’s kitchen table under a chalkboard with equations written on it. Apparently all the students, knowing their own culture better than I, disregarded my demands and were all behind me in the room before I knew it. I am not sure whether the students or my gesture, or the two things combined with their grief led all the women assembled there to move into the room with us and begin singing and crying with such emotion it could have vibrated the house. They approached the table and I understood they were telling Olive that her friends and teacher had come from school; they shook her little body as if to wake her and cried harder when their pleas were answered by her silence. Her mother stroked her face and called to her, “Tata Olive”.
My students, who while walking in the road seemed to bear a cold indifference to the loss of their classmate, now began crying, some even sobbing, as well. Even the boys had looks of fear and confusion on their faces and I felt at home suddenly among their pain. Finally, there was the intense sorrow I had expected to find since the moment I heard the news. Finally, the commonality of our humanity was before me; pain, a reaction to death I could make sense of.
We stayed there like that for an undetermined amount of time. I felt a combination of confused, awkward, sad, and somehow more mature than just a few hours earlier as I wanted to reach out to the young girls who were clearly examining the mysterious finality of death for the very first time in their short lives.
Walking back from her house the girls were very somber. They too, I am certain, had grown older in a matter of minutes. I was happy to have Claude here when I got home to turn over the whole thing with him. I kept seeing her face all last night, in the classroom, and then on that table. Her body looking just as healthy as in the class last week. I found her homework on my desk, her words written there by her hands not a week before. And now she’s dead and I can’t quite make sense of why. When you ask people here the cause of someone’s death they always just say, “an illness”. Apparently Olive fell sick over the weekend and by Monday night she was no more.
It is here where true poverty rears its head. Poverty that prevents a family from providing their child with medical care. Poverty that prevents them from understanding why or how their child is gone. Poverty that allows for the possibility of other deaths, because we cannot even learn if what killed her was actually preventable to begin with. In the face of so many unanswered questions, it is simple to comprehend why many people here explain away death by saying that it is simply God’s design, or even more say that it is sorcery, that someone cursed that person and that is why they have AIDS or whatever it may be.
I take a lot of time to try incorporating basic sanitation education, nutrition, and general health in my lessons. A couple Saturdays ago when I was trying to explain so and so “died of” to one of my classes I tried to make them understand that in our context it is always important to know how someone died because you can gather statistics and possibly change the habits of the entire culture if there are seen to be lots of deaths from a particular cause. A student responded that life is just as long as God wills it. I asked him why then do people live longer in my country, does God love us more than he does them? That seemed to sink in.
Yesterday, however, I was reminded of the realities which I myself escape by my myriad medical examinations, vaccinations, check-ins, extensive education of threats and preventions, and unlimited supplies and care that comes courtesy of the U.S. government to each and every Peace Corps volunteer. While walking to pick up report cards from the office a student in my youngest class stopped to inform me that one of their classmates had died. Though I don’t know all of my students by name, (especially the girls, who are obliged to shave their heads making them difficult to distinguish), as soon as he spoke her name I could see her wide eyes and bright smile shining from the back row of the classroom. I went to say a few words to the class quickly and was surprised to see that things seemed to be carrying on as they would on any typical school day. I mentioned it to some of the staff as I tried to share the initial confused shock and grief that is so unfamiliar to me.
I got little to no reaction from anyone and felt angry when the Discipline Master, who Claude later explained to me should normally be responsible for organizing the students and informing the school of the loss of a comrade, came to ask me to help them plan the Fashion Show for the Youth Holiday next week. Shortly thereafter and 2 hours before school had even terminated they brought out a sound system and started blasting music on the campus. By then my 5ieme class, Olive’s class, was to begin. I went and offered a few words of condolence, asked some details of the cause of her death, and requested that a few students guide me to where she lived so I could greet the parents, offer my support, and ask permission to come to the burial.
A virtual troop of students started walking with me and, deep in reflection, I was practically at her doorstep before I turned and realized that we had accumulated in such a way. I asked the students to stay behind, envisioning that a family who had lost their child less than 24 hours before would be in such a delicate state that a mass of students was wildly inconsiderate and could be a horrible reflection on me in the village. I insisted that 2 students join me and the rest wait, but upon arriving I realized that a crowd was already gathered there. One of my older students greeted me and stood to lead me to what I thought and hoped would be Olive’s parents. To my surprise it was her little lifeless body wrapped in a bed sheet, laid out on the family’s kitchen table under a chalkboard with equations written on it. Apparently all the students, knowing their own culture better than I, disregarded my demands and were all behind me in the room before I knew it. I am not sure whether the students or my gesture, or the two things combined with their grief led all the women assembled there to move into the room with us and begin singing and crying with such emotion it could have vibrated the house. They approached the table and I understood they were telling Olive that her friends and teacher had come from school; they shook her little body as if to wake her and cried harder when their pleas were answered by her silence. Her mother stroked her face and called to her, “Tata Olive”.
My students, who while walking in the road seemed to bear a cold indifference to the loss of their classmate, now began crying, some even sobbing, as well. Even the boys had looks of fear and confusion on their faces and I felt at home suddenly among their pain. Finally, there was the intense sorrow I had expected to find since the moment I heard the news. Finally, the commonality of our humanity was before me; pain, a reaction to death I could make sense of.
We stayed there like that for an undetermined amount of time. I felt a combination of confused, awkward, sad, and somehow more mature than just a few hours earlier as I wanted to reach out to the young girls who were clearly examining the mysterious finality of death for the very first time in their short lives.
Walking back from her house the girls were very somber. They too, I am certain, had grown older in a matter of minutes. I was happy to have Claude here when I got home to turn over the whole thing with him. I kept seeing her face all last night, in the classroom, and then on that table. Her body looking just as healthy as in the class last week. I found her homework on my desk, her words written there by her hands not a week before. And now she’s dead and I can’t quite make sense of why. When you ask people here the cause of someone’s death they always just say, “an illness”. Apparently Olive fell sick over the weekend and by Monday night she was no more.
It is here where true poverty rears its head. Poverty that prevents a family from providing their child with medical care. Poverty that prevents them from understanding why or how their child is gone. Poverty that allows for the possibility of other deaths, because we cannot even learn if what killed her was actually preventable to begin with. In the face of so many unanswered questions, it is simple to comprehend why many people here explain away death by saying that it is simply God’s design, or even more say that it is sorcery, that someone cursed that person and that is why they have AIDS or whatever it may be.
I take a lot of time to try incorporating basic sanitation education, nutrition, and general health in my lessons. A couple Saturdays ago when I was trying to explain so and so “died of” to one of my classes I tried to make them understand that in our context it is always important to know how someone died because you can gather statistics and possibly change the habits of the entire culture if there are seen to be lots of deaths from a particular cause. A student responded that life is just as long as God wills it. I asked him why then do people live longer in my country, does God love us more than he does them? That seemed to sink in.
A Cameroonian Christmas
Well, somehow Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone along with my much needed and much appreciated break from teaching. Already I’ve been back in the thick of it for nearly two weeks and feel less patient with the job than I was for the first part of the year. Luckily I’m told that the first trimester is the longest because there are so many holidays for the rest of the year. I also apparently neglected to notice that the 2nd trimester had already begun before the break began meaning that next week is already time to test students again.
The break was certainly interesting and mostly good. Kribi was beautiful but we didn’t have all that much time to enjoy that aspect of it. It was great seeing the whole group again. It’s amazing how just a few months together in training really did bring us close and to see everyone again after seeing mostly Cameroonian faces everyday was more enjoyable than I’d even anticipated. I, however, was one of the few if not only lucky individuals who did not encounter any major issues while there. Over half of the group was incredibly sick with a myriad of maladies and most of the people who were not ill wound up being robbed at gun and machete-point at the beachfront bar we spent most nights in. Had I not been feeling a little sick to my stomach myself that evening I too would’ve most likely been involved.
We had negotiated to take a free personal day after the seminar had finished but with all the bad vibes floating around I decided to head out on time and meet Claude in Yaounde. I was disappointed to get a rather cold reception from fellow volunteers when I brought him into the volunteer house, especially considering that I had just been asked in Kribi to speak about my experience dating him and how it effects my relationships with the other Americans.
I suppose in some ways I can understand that a lot of people view the volunteer house as a space to be completely American and escape the natives for a day or so, but Claude isn’t like some traditional Cameroonian elder or something; in fact, I have more in common with him than I do with most of the other volunteers. When we left the house I was angry but Claude took it in stride. He said that not everyone joins the Peace Corps for the same reasons and I realized that he’s right. I signed up to be here because I really believe in the idea that human beings all over the world don’t differ all that much from one another. When I am with Claude I hardly even think about our many differences because most of them seem pretty peripheral to our true selves. I spent Christmas with his family and I couldn’t have felt more at home if I was with my own family. They discussed, joked, bickered and appreciated one another the same way any American family might.
I felt a little left behind when all the others were talking about their big travel plans to Mt. Cameroon and other tourist spots but in the end I really enjoyed the break and I think in the long run being with Claude will get me a much more intimate look into Cameroon than probably most anyone else. Plus, I still have nearly 20 months here and I don’ t need to be in a huge hurry to see everything I possibly can. To me, the holidays are far more about the company you share than where you happen to land and I am glad I made that decision. I also got to see my host family and many of the other people I got to know during our time in Bafia. They were really appreciative that I thought of them, especially those who had not heard from their volunteers since they went to post.
Another perk of being in Bafia again was getting to load up my internet key for a couple of days and Skype with Katie on Christmas morning and a bit with my family in West Union that night. Unfortunately we lost our connection before our traditional 12 Days of Christmas singing but it was great to be somewhat a part of the celebration just the same. Since my mom discovered that the phone company doesn’t actually have the international calling package they misleading sold her a month ago she is going to help me pay for internet at the house soon. Hopefully the connection will be decent enough to Skype some more because it is really amazing! Claude got so excited that he picked up the laptop and ran off with it, giving Katie a tour of his house!
I came back to discover that my closest American friend here has flown the coop and gone back to the US for good. Since being here I haven’t spent too much time with really any of the other volunteers aside from her since getting to other villages is pretty much an unavoidable pain in the neck so the reality that she is no longer here is still setting in. At least there are plenty of other people in the area so I can still catch up with them if I feel the need to. I spent the first day back in my classes going over a new list of class rules that I assembled during the break based on my ‘on -the- ground internship’ known as the first trimester. Unfortunately I don’t know if I can ever fully undo the damage that I did by coming in to class being so carefree and lighthearted. Probably the worst mistake I’ve made in country is not heeding the advice to start hard and get softer rather than the other way around. It’s funny, I’ve been watching The Wire the past couple of weeks and there is a guy who gets a teaching job at an inner-city Baltimore middle school in one of the seasons. It’s unbelievable how much his job in the classroom is like mine.
I decided that I wasn’t punishing anyone harshly enough for them to take me all that seriously before. Sending them out required always more distraction from class to ensure they would actually go to the Discipline Master; forcing them to put their nose to the chalkboard, though they don’t enjoy it, didn’t seem to do the trick. I have concluded that once kids are exposed to harsher forms of punishment it is extremely difficult to have much effect on them when you are trying softer approaches. One day I forced a few students to kneel, asking them if they preferred the Cameroonian method, even though it is actually outlawed. It didn’t matter anyway because I felt horrible that I compromised my own principles out of frustration and vowed to never do it again.
Finally I designed a plan to force the worst behaved students to stay after school with me for an hour on Tuesdays. Last week I made 3 kids pick up trash on the campus, whining and complaining all the while but eventually seeming proud of their work. Yesterday I had accumulated about 30 delinquents, though, and without someone to help me the only thing to do was to form a sort of detention. Since the whole concept is new to them I couldn’t get them to shut up or do work until finally the Discipline Master happened upon us. I was so frustrated and angry and he could tell so he too became angry with how the kids were disrespecting me. He called on one of them to explain why he was there and come to the front of the room. He picked up a 2x4 that was on the floor and hit the kid on the butt. He was about to continue beating him but I stepped in and explained that the reason they were there was because I didn’t like beating.
The entire day all the kids who I’d arranged to have after school followed me around complaining that they wanted to do their punishment during school hours rather than after school because there was a traditional dance in the village center that only happens every 2 years. In fact, my youngest class who I am with the last 2 hours of the day got in a lot of trouble because of a (rather clever) stunt they pulled when they rearranged the whole classroom to wash the floor before my class so that I would have to send them home early. When I stopped the Discipline Master he looked at me and said that sometimes you need to be savage to get your point across. I looked at everyone in the classroom and said, “Is that what you prefer? If everyone comes up and takes their 5 beatings you can all go to your party.” Everyone refused and when the Discipline Master left a series of them raised their hands to ask for forgiveness and I didn’t have another problem for the rest of the hour with them.
Some days I feel like teaching English to a bunch of Francophone village kids who barely even know French is pointless. Especially since they don’t seem to get over half the material no matter what. But, since coming back from the holidays, I have noticed some improvements. The things I’ve worked the hardest to drill in seem to have finally stuck and I feel proud of their work and my own. This week and last I had decent turnout for Girls’ Club even though now it is only my own students who come. They have started to open up to me more and are asking questions. Last week I talked to them about feminine hygiene and today we had a mini-sex education lesson. Next week a fellow volunteer is coming to do a yoga class with us.
Our time in Kribi really inspired me to begin some income-generating projects with the women of the village but I’ve put everything aside from my primary responsibilities on hold until after I take the GRE in February. I have been studying everyday and being reminded of how much I hate/suck at math. I only hope I can perform well enough on the other parts of it to outweigh how poorly I’m almost certain I’ll do on that section. It’s hard to believe that it’s already time to be doing something like that to get prepared to go back to a life in the US. It’s funny, some days I dream of being back there where I can wash dishes in a kitchen sink and take a shower without a bucket and a cup but at the same time I know that when I do get back it’s going to be a major adjustment and in the end I’m going to damn sure miss it here. Ever since my first time on this continent it’s been under my skin. It’s a place that just changes you in ways you can’t explain. Maybe it is that being back closer to the way humans were designed to be, farther from all the technology and instant gratification. Where, when I think of my loved ones I’m forced to sit down and actually write them a letter instead of just sending them a text message or a face book chat. Where I have to appreciate every single drop of water that falls from the sky, every positive interaction with someone, where every indication of minute progress in any sense is a blissful reward. In fact, I think on the whole I was far more stressed out and miserable when I was suffering through making payments on time, rushing from meetings, sitting in traffic jams, and attempting to balance the scales of social and professional life without losing my mind, even despite coming home to a host of modern luxuries designed to make life easier and better.
The break was certainly interesting and mostly good. Kribi was beautiful but we didn’t have all that much time to enjoy that aspect of it. It was great seeing the whole group again. It’s amazing how just a few months together in training really did bring us close and to see everyone again after seeing mostly Cameroonian faces everyday was more enjoyable than I’d even anticipated. I, however, was one of the few if not only lucky individuals who did not encounter any major issues while there. Over half of the group was incredibly sick with a myriad of maladies and most of the people who were not ill wound up being robbed at gun and machete-point at the beachfront bar we spent most nights in. Had I not been feeling a little sick to my stomach myself that evening I too would’ve most likely been involved.
We had negotiated to take a free personal day after the seminar had finished but with all the bad vibes floating around I decided to head out on time and meet Claude in Yaounde. I was disappointed to get a rather cold reception from fellow volunteers when I brought him into the volunteer house, especially considering that I had just been asked in Kribi to speak about my experience dating him and how it effects my relationships with the other Americans.
I suppose in some ways I can understand that a lot of people view the volunteer house as a space to be completely American and escape the natives for a day or so, but Claude isn’t like some traditional Cameroonian elder or something; in fact, I have more in common with him than I do with most of the other volunteers. When we left the house I was angry but Claude took it in stride. He said that not everyone joins the Peace Corps for the same reasons and I realized that he’s right. I signed up to be here because I really believe in the idea that human beings all over the world don’t differ all that much from one another. When I am with Claude I hardly even think about our many differences because most of them seem pretty peripheral to our true selves. I spent Christmas with his family and I couldn’t have felt more at home if I was with my own family. They discussed, joked, bickered and appreciated one another the same way any American family might.
I felt a little left behind when all the others were talking about their big travel plans to Mt. Cameroon and other tourist spots but in the end I really enjoyed the break and I think in the long run being with Claude will get me a much more intimate look into Cameroon than probably most anyone else. Plus, I still have nearly 20 months here and I don’ t need to be in a huge hurry to see everything I possibly can. To me, the holidays are far more about the company you share than where you happen to land and I am glad I made that decision. I also got to see my host family and many of the other people I got to know during our time in Bafia. They were really appreciative that I thought of them, especially those who had not heard from their volunteers since they went to post.
Another perk of being in Bafia again was getting to load up my internet key for a couple of days and Skype with Katie on Christmas morning and a bit with my family in West Union that night. Unfortunately we lost our connection before our traditional 12 Days of Christmas singing but it was great to be somewhat a part of the celebration just the same. Since my mom discovered that the phone company doesn’t actually have the international calling package they misleading sold her a month ago she is going to help me pay for internet at the house soon. Hopefully the connection will be decent enough to Skype some more because it is really amazing! Claude got so excited that he picked up the laptop and ran off with it, giving Katie a tour of his house!
I came back to discover that my closest American friend here has flown the coop and gone back to the US for good. Since being here I haven’t spent too much time with really any of the other volunteers aside from her since getting to other villages is pretty much an unavoidable pain in the neck so the reality that she is no longer here is still setting in. At least there are plenty of other people in the area so I can still catch up with them if I feel the need to. I spent the first day back in my classes going over a new list of class rules that I assembled during the break based on my ‘on -the- ground internship’ known as the first trimester. Unfortunately I don’t know if I can ever fully undo the damage that I did by coming in to class being so carefree and lighthearted. Probably the worst mistake I’ve made in country is not heeding the advice to start hard and get softer rather than the other way around. It’s funny, I’ve been watching The Wire the past couple of weeks and there is a guy who gets a teaching job at an inner-city Baltimore middle school in one of the seasons. It’s unbelievable how much his job in the classroom is like mine.
I decided that I wasn’t punishing anyone harshly enough for them to take me all that seriously before. Sending them out required always more distraction from class to ensure they would actually go to the Discipline Master; forcing them to put their nose to the chalkboard, though they don’t enjoy it, didn’t seem to do the trick. I have concluded that once kids are exposed to harsher forms of punishment it is extremely difficult to have much effect on them when you are trying softer approaches. One day I forced a few students to kneel, asking them if they preferred the Cameroonian method, even though it is actually outlawed. It didn’t matter anyway because I felt horrible that I compromised my own principles out of frustration and vowed to never do it again.
Finally I designed a plan to force the worst behaved students to stay after school with me for an hour on Tuesdays. Last week I made 3 kids pick up trash on the campus, whining and complaining all the while but eventually seeming proud of their work. Yesterday I had accumulated about 30 delinquents, though, and without someone to help me the only thing to do was to form a sort of detention. Since the whole concept is new to them I couldn’t get them to shut up or do work until finally the Discipline Master happened upon us. I was so frustrated and angry and he could tell so he too became angry with how the kids were disrespecting me. He called on one of them to explain why he was there and come to the front of the room. He picked up a 2x4 that was on the floor and hit the kid on the butt. He was about to continue beating him but I stepped in and explained that the reason they were there was because I didn’t like beating.
The entire day all the kids who I’d arranged to have after school followed me around complaining that they wanted to do their punishment during school hours rather than after school because there was a traditional dance in the village center that only happens every 2 years. In fact, my youngest class who I am with the last 2 hours of the day got in a lot of trouble because of a (rather clever) stunt they pulled when they rearranged the whole classroom to wash the floor before my class so that I would have to send them home early. When I stopped the Discipline Master he looked at me and said that sometimes you need to be savage to get your point across. I looked at everyone in the classroom and said, “Is that what you prefer? If everyone comes up and takes their 5 beatings you can all go to your party.” Everyone refused and when the Discipline Master left a series of them raised their hands to ask for forgiveness and I didn’t have another problem for the rest of the hour with them.
Some days I feel like teaching English to a bunch of Francophone village kids who barely even know French is pointless. Especially since they don’t seem to get over half the material no matter what. But, since coming back from the holidays, I have noticed some improvements. The things I’ve worked the hardest to drill in seem to have finally stuck and I feel proud of their work and my own. This week and last I had decent turnout for Girls’ Club even though now it is only my own students who come. They have started to open up to me more and are asking questions. Last week I talked to them about feminine hygiene and today we had a mini-sex education lesson. Next week a fellow volunteer is coming to do a yoga class with us.
Our time in Kribi really inspired me to begin some income-generating projects with the women of the village but I’ve put everything aside from my primary responsibilities on hold until after I take the GRE in February. I have been studying everyday and being reminded of how much I hate/suck at math. I only hope I can perform well enough on the other parts of it to outweigh how poorly I’m almost certain I’ll do on that section. It’s hard to believe that it’s already time to be doing something like that to get prepared to go back to a life in the US. It’s funny, some days I dream of being back there where I can wash dishes in a kitchen sink and take a shower without a bucket and a cup but at the same time I know that when I do get back it’s going to be a major adjustment and in the end I’m going to damn sure miss it here. Ever since my first time on this continent it’s been under my skin. It’s a place that just changes you in ways you can’t explain. Maybe it is that being back closer to the way humans were designed to be, farther from all the technology and instant gratification. Where, when I think of my loved ones I’m forced to sit down and actually write them a letter instead of just sending them a text message or a face book chat. Where I have to appreciate every single drop of water that falls from the sky, every positive interaction with someone, where every indication of minute progress in any sense is a blissful reward. In fact, I think on the whole I was far more stressed out and miserable when I was suffering through making payments on time, rushing from meetings, sitting in traffic jams, and attempting to balance the scales of social and professional life without losing my mind, even despite coming home to a host of modern luxuries designed to make life easier and better.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Whistle While You Work
10 December 2010
“I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.” - Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
At last I am free to break from the pressure of the suffocating workload I have been becoming accustomed to and come up for a few breaths of fresh air. I’m not sure what I anticipated when I volunteered for the Peace Corps, I certainly imagined there would be difficulties. I think I envisioned they would be of a different sort, however. I thought I would be learning to live without electricity, suffering through too many quiet hours to myself, boredom like I’d never known before. I guess I believed that the students would be mesmerized by my presence and so appreciative that they’d behave somehow differently than children normally do.
We have passed the six month point and some days I can hardly believe it. Home feels like such a familiar place in my mind but the thought of going back there at some point a year from now seems strange. Walking into the world of technology, skyscrapers, paved roads, running water, filled with so many apathetic individualists seems overwhelming. The world of restaurants, movie theaters, rollercoasters, and so many luxuries my students can’t even wrap their minds around.
Contrary to what I’d pictured, the real challenges have been far simpler such as the insane amount of work that teachers have here. When I first got here I did not understand why more students didn’t dream of becoming teachers as so many youngsters do back home but now I understand that it is hardly a glamorous and rarely a rewarding job to have in this country.
The first several weeks of classes in September I spent poring over the insanely dense national syllabus and combining it with the teaching program designed from the painfully lousy textbook to create a more logical schedule that I can also work thematically into a program for development. The past few weeks I have been teaching AIDS prevention and nutrition in my classes, for example. I plan to also teach about politics and democracy, sanitation and disease prevention, budgeting and saving, the environment, human rights and more. With this kind of agenda before me my impact feels far deeper than if I just taught English grammar 15 hours a week.
Due to the horrendous amount of bureaucratic work that is associated with the end of each sequence (half a trimester), we began testing about 4 weeks into school. That means I have to write tests for all 4 of my levels, then correct all 278 of them, most of which have some incomprehensible composition I must try to make sense of and evaluate fairly. Once the tests are corrected we have to average all the students’ grades, fill out several forms associated and then sign out the report cards while on the campus and fill in each one by hand with the students rote grade, the weight of the class in their studies, the weighted average, and then a remark based on their score. I was given the work of class master at my school even though Peace Corps encouraged us to refuse to do it because it doesn’t correspond well with our trainings out of town and is a lot of work we weren’t really trained to do. Given, though, that there are 13 teachers at my school and 13 classes, it would seem rather bizarre to exclude myself from a responsibility that every other teacher has, and it would also mean doubling someone else’s work. Thus, yesterday, for the second time in 3 months, I spent 6 hours in my living room calculating averages for all the subjects for my class of 54, giving them once again a remark based on their overall work, calculating the class average as a whole, and then ranking each student in the class. All things we have been using computers to accomplish in the States since before I was even in Kindergarten. Thank God I complained so much and threw a mini fit when I was originally assigned the biggest class in all the lycee.
So, this morning I will finally take my report cards into school, do a few minor corrections and walk back home in the mindset of my 3 week vacation being underway. On Sunday we head out for Kribi, a tourist hotspot on the beach that promises to be beautiful, at least somewhat relaxing, and to serve up delicious seafood. On the way home I will meet up with Claude in Yaounde, recover my package filled with much longed-for spices and clothes from the PC headquarters where I will perhaps use the uber luxurious washing machine and take a hot shower, then travel with Claude to visit friends and my host family in Bafia, where I had my training. The thought of all the free time I have to enjoy my surroundings for the first time really since arriving here is utterly blissful, and I’m very excited to have some quality time with my boyfriend where I’m not running off to work or too busy grading homework and planning lessons to pay much attention to him.
Other than the workload I have found that the biggest challenges are in dealing with things like seeing my neighbor beat her 2 young children mercilessly with a tree branch while they fall to the ground in their attempt to run away screaming. Yesterday a girl was beat at school, something I had not yet come across here. I initially thought I should just ignore it but to my own surprise I went right into the Discipline Master’s office and asked him what was going on. I told him right away that I didn’t approve of it and that it was illegal but that was really my first reaction from the shock and anger I was feeling. I headed toward the Principal’s office immediately to take it up with him but he was out and that allowed me a few minutes in the teacher’s lounge to blow off steam before I again approached the Discipline Master and spoke to him rationally about my concerns.
Our conversation was frustrating. At first I was trying to give him courtesy and respect by allowing him to finish his thoughts, but then I noticed that each time I tried to speak he had more to say. It occurred to me that my allowing him to silence me wasn’t going to get me anywhere so I finally insisted he let me finish. I know I made no impact on him whatsoever with my little speech on how even a child who may have stolen money from her parents has rights and how the Cameroonian government outlawed corporal punishment for good reasons. He even gave me a little tap on the butt to demonstrate where they hit the kids reminding me as well how inappropriate it is for a grown man to be hitting a little girl in the same way.
Despite all that, I did understand where he was coming from to some extent and I tried to rationalize that it is not a frequent thing at my school so at least they seem to be reserving it as the harshest form of punishment. Perhaps if some of the seriously delinquent children that I went to school with had gotten a red buttocks every now and then at school they would’ve straightened up a bit. He said a student that is too wayward needs a serious wake up call so as not to become later a threat to society.
Many of the kids here are essentially raising themselves. Their parents are in the bigger cities and come back here only occasionally. In the light of all that it stands to reason that the school stepping in to align children better and fill the gap their parents leave in their absence makes sense. In a land free of law suits, rampant accusations of pedophilia, and where people look at everyone’s children as their own, it is difficult to form a solid argument against their case. It still gives me a bad taste in my mouth but hell, my grandmother was beat, my mother and father, and they turned out alright. I certainly feel that the beatings are too brute, especially when given by an angry parent, even so emotionally charged that the parent seems out of control. In that way I cannot stomach it. Yet, after the event yesterday and my conversation with him, I actually did feel calmer, I did see his point of view. That doesn’t mean I condone it or like it but I accept that not everything here can be as progressive as things back home and in a country where government is another word for corruption, where people find democracy to be a joke, it’s also a joke when you come out preaching to them about what is illegal.
My lungs have been seriously suffering in the last month and a half as the rainy season came to an abrupt halt and the dry season has started kicking up dust reminiscent of the Grapes of Wrath. I was happy to hear that Christine is suffering the very same symptoms that I went to the clinic for; the dust must be responsible.
I spent Thanksgiving with she and Claude at her house, we had a meatless meatloaf (way more delicious than it may sound), lumpy mashed potatoes (anyone wanna send me a potato masher?), and banana bread. Now that I have a loaf pan and a good understanding of the Dutch oven I have been baking loads of cornbread and banana bread for all the neighbors who’ve given me loads of things since I’ve been here.
I have so many other things I could add but, it’s simply too much and I should really heat up my bath water and get my day started so I can be on time to meet Christine at the bank this afternoon. Happy holidays back home! 2011- wow! Didn’t I just graduate high school??!!
“I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.” - Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
At last I am free to break from the pressure of the suffocating workload I have been becoming accustomed to and come up for a few breaths of fresh air. I’m not sure what I anticipated when I volunteered for the Peace Corps, I certainly imagined there would be difficulties. I think I envisioned they would be of a different sort, however. I thought I would be learning to live without electricity, suffering through too many quiet hours to myself, boredom like I’d never known before. I guess I believed that the students would be mesmerized by my presence and so appreciative that they’d behave somehow differently than children normally do.
We have passed the six month point and some days I can hardly believe it. Home feels like such a familiar place in my mind but the thought of going back there at some point a year from now seems strange. Walking into the world of technology, skyscrapers, paved roads, running water, filled with so many apathetic individualists seems overwhelming. The world of restaurants, movie theaters, rollercoasters, and so many luxuries my students can’t even wrap their minds around.
Contrary to what I’d pictured, the real challenges have been far simpler such as the insane amount of work that teachers have here. When I first got here I did not understand why more students didn’t dream of becoming teachers as so many youngsters do back home but now I understand that it is hardly a glamorous and rarely a rewarding job to have in this country.
The first several weeks of classes in September I spent poring over the insanely dense national syllabus and combining it with the teaching program designed from the painfully lousy textbook to create a more logical schedule that I can also work thematically into a program for development. The past few weeks I have been teaching AIDS prevention and nutrition in my classes, for example. I plan to also teach about politics and democracy, sanitation and disease prevention, budgeting and saving, the environment, human rights and more. With this kind of agenda before me my impact feels far deeper than if I just taught English grammar 15 hours a week.
Due to the horrendous amount of bureaucratic work that is associated with the end of each sequence (half a trimester), we began testing about 4 weeks into school. That means I have to write tests for all 4 of my levels, then correct all 278 of them, most of which have some incomprehensible composition I must try to make sense of and evaluate fairly. Once the tests are corrected we have to average all the students’ grades, fill out several forms associated and then sign out the report cards while on the campus and fill in each one by hand with the students rote grade, the weight of the class in their studies, the weighted average, and then a remark based on their score. I was given the work of class master at my school even though Peace Corps encouraged us to refuse to do it because it doesn’t correspond well with our trainings out of town and is a lot of work we weren’t really trained to do. Given, though, that there are 13 teachers at my school and 13 classes, it would seem rather bizarre to exclude myself from a responsibility that every other teacher has, and it would also mean doubling someone else’s work. Thus, yesterday, for the second time in 3 months, I spent 6 hours in my living room calculating averages for all the subjects for my class of 54, giving them once again a remark based on their overall work, calculating the class average as a whole, and then ranking each student in the class. All things we have been using computers to accomplish in the States since before I was even in Kindergarten. Thank God I complained so much and threw a mini fit when I was originally assigned the biggest class in all the lycee.
So, this morning I will finally take my report cards into school, do a few minor corrections and walk back home in the mindset of my 3 week vacation being underway. On Sunday we head out for Kribi, a tourist hotspot on the beach that promises to be beautiful, at least somewhat relaxing, and to serve up delicious seafood. On the way home I will meet up with Claude in Yaounde, recover my package filled with much longed-for spices and clothes from the PC headquarters where I will perhaps use the uber luxurious washing machine and take a hot shower, then travel with Claude to visit friends and my host family in Bafia, where I had my training. The thought of all the free time I have to enjoy my surroundings for the first time really since arriving here is utterly blissful, and I’m very excited to have some quality time with my boyfriend where I’m not running off to work or too busy grading homework and planning lessons to pay much attention to him.
Other than the workload I have found that the biggest challenges are in dealing with things like seeing my neighbor beat her 2 young children mercilessly with a tree branch while they fall to the ground in their attempt to run away screaming. Yesterday a girl was beat at school, something I had not yet come across here. I initially thought I should just ignore it but to my own surprise I went right into the Discipline Master’s office and asked him what was going on. I told him right away that I didn’t approve of it and that it was illegal but that was really my first reaction from the shock and anger I was feeling. I headed toward the Principal’s office immediately to take it up with him but he was out and that allowed me a few minutes in the teacher’s lounge to blow off steam before I again approached the Discipline Master and spoke to him rationally about my concerns.
Our conversation was frustrating. At first I was trying to give him courtesy and respect by allowing him to finish his thoughts, but then I noticed that each time I tried to speak he had more to say. It occurred to me that my allowing him to silence me wasn’t going to get me anywhere so I finally insisted he let me finish. I know I made no impact on him whatsoever with my little speech on how even a child who may have stolen money from her parents has rights and how the Cameroonian government outlawed corporal punishment for good reasons. He even gave me a little tap on the butt to demonstrate where they hit the kids reminding me as well how inappropriate it is for a grown man to be hitting a little girl in the same way.
Despite all that, I did understand where he was coming from to some extent and I tried to rationalize that it is not a frequent thing at my school so at least they seem to be reserving it as the harshest form of punishment. Perhaps if some of the seriously delinquent children that I went to school with had gotten a red buttocks every now and then at school they would’ve straightened up a bit. He said a student that is too wayward needs a serious wake up call so as not to become later a threat to society.
Many of the kids here are essentially raising themselves. Their parents are in the bigger cities and come back here only occasionally. In the light of all that it stands to reason that the school stepping in to align children better and fill the gap their parents leave in their absence makes sense. In a land free of law suits, rampant accusations of pedophilia, and where people look at everyone’s children as their own, it is difficult to form a solid argument against their case. It still gives me a bad taste in my mouth but hell, my grandmother was beat, my mother and father, and they turned out alright. I certainly feel that the beatings are too brute, especially when given by an angry parent, even so emotionally charged that the parent seems out of control. In that way I cannot stomach it. Yet, after the event yesterday and my conversation with him, I actually did feel calmer, I did see his point of view. That doesn’t mean I condone it or like it but I accept that not everything here can be as progressive as things back home and in a country where government is another word for corruption, where people find democracy to be a joke, it’s also a joke when you come out preaching to them about what is illegal.
My lungs have been seriously suffering in the last month and a half as the rainy season came to an abrupt halt and the dry season has started kicking up dust reminiscent of the Grapes of Wrath. I was happy to hear that Christine is suffering the very same symptoms that I went to the clinic for; the dust must be responsible.
I spent Thanksgiving with she and Claude at her house, we had a meatless meatloaf (way more delicious than it may sound), lumpy mashed potatoes (anyone wanna send me a potato masher?), and banana bread. Now that I have a loaf pan and a good understanding of the Dutch oven I have been baking loads of cornbread and banana bread for all the neighbors who’ve given me loads of things since I’ve been here.
I have so many other things I could add but, it’s simply too much and I should really heat up my bath water and get my day started so I can be on time to meet Christine at the bank this afternoon. Happy holidays back home! 2011- wow! Didn’t I just graduate high school??!!
Thursday, November 25, 2010
The Flux Capacitor
November 11
“In the Huerfano you live at the mercy of the sky. Dry Creek’s been dry for two weeks, and the spring box didn’t refill last night. The wildflowers fade and curl, and when the hot wind blows, dust flies up in the meadows.” - A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture: Huerfano, Roberta Price
It is difficult to believe that the holidays are already just around the bend, especially when I walk outside everyday and see absolutely no signs to remind me of them. After 2 ‘winters’ in Los Angeles I have become accustomed to hanging around in short-sleeves right before Christmas but there was still Jingle Bells playing in the Beverly Center in October. It’s fascinating to be living on a school schedule again and it seems to make life move much faster than countless hours spent at a desk in my office. Not to mention how much busier I have become lately.
In addition to teaching my 4 levels 3 days a week I have started a Girls’ Club at the Lycee. That eliminated one of my free days completely since it’s right in the afternoon and breaks my time into highly inconvenient pieces. I was also approached by some women in the community regarding an organization they’ve been attempting to engineer with the other ladies of the village. We’ve gotten together several times now to toss thoughts and ideas around with whichever women come to the meetings. I also started offering Saturday classes 2 times a month to all my students so I spend 4 hours almost every other weekend letting those who come tell me what they’re struggling with. It’s really become the day I enjoy teaching the most because my classes are a bit smaller, there’s no faculty around, the kids are less over-excited and more at ease, I feel like I’m really listening and helping them more genuinely, and the environment is more personal.
Teaching has been getting easier, finally. After attending a seminar for English teachers in the region I feel more like I’m on the right track and fear less that I’m failing my students. I have stopped worrying so much if I speak French to them and feel like they understand far more because of that decision. I finally feel like they get me a little better and I notice that I’m finding my rhythm with them and kicking them out less frequently. They seem to have noticed that I accept far less than I did in the beginning of the year and respect me for it.
At the seminar I spoke with a national inspector who told me that the national syllabus is the most important guideline for my classes, which is what I had thought initially until the staff at my school told me that the textbook was the priority. I explained that I was skeptical of that considering that not all of the schools in the country use the same textbook, but they insisted. I was feeling so frustrated and trapped in the idea of having to teach from a text that is lousy to begin with. Using it as the guide gave me very little freedom to teach the way I want to teach. Luckily, because of what the inspector told me I have now found a good balance using the textbook and my own syllabus that I wrote when first getting into the village.
Unfortunately, in a few weeks I will be forced to coordinate with the other English teachers at the school to write the tests for the class levels that we share. This means that I am unsure of how my students will perform considering that I will not be permitted to design a test that reflects exactly what I’ve taught. To prevent all my students’ grades from dropping considerably I have been giving lots of homework and I will give points to those who attend the Saturday classes as well. Unfortunately this also means I have an insane amount of homework myself in grading them! Reading an essay in elementary level 2nd language English is much harder than it seems. Props to all my French teachers over the years for that!
When I’m not running off to do something work related someplace or to a language lesson, I often walk out my front door and stand on the side of the road waiting for a raggedy old station wagon to come bumping along, squeeze me in (literally), and go into the regional capital or to the village next to mine to stock up on goodies. Bahouan is one of the smallest and least known villages in the region and doesn’t appear on the map. The market is only every 8 days and there really isn’t too much to offer aside from the usual stuff I can get at the local shops anyhow. Therefore when I get low on certain things, need to go to the bank, or just want to chow on something more exotic than the typical veggies I find here, I spend the majority of my day off getting toted around, negotiating prices, and wandering all over the place acquiring stuff.
Cameroon is known to be a bread basket in Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, before coming here I read that if they ever closed their borders or had a natural disaster like a drought, many people in the neighboring countries would run the risk of starving. Now that I’m in my own house and have my gas stove, (automatically lighting, thank Heaven!) I have gone back to my vegetarian diet. It’s been a lot easier than I anticipated and even all the teachers at the school are not at all surprised when I don’t completely load my plate with chicken at our staff meetings.
I can find all sorts of vegetables here; some incredibly familiar and some totally new. Most days I’ve got tomatoes, onions, leeks, basil, celery, snap peas, carrots, and green peppers in the house. It’s a treat if I go into Bandjoan and buy romaine lettuce for a salad but soon I hope to be eating some from my own yard! I’ve found beets a couple of times but think they must be out of season now. There is eggplant, zucchini, cabbage, potatoes, avocados, guava, pineapple, okra, bananas and plantains.
New things include “batons” of manioc; I am not sure exactly what part of the plant they even are but they are incredibly unappetizing in appearance. In fact, I was absolutely disgusted by them when I first arrived here. They come wrapped in banana leaves and are gummy in texture. They are a clear, whitish color with a grainy appearance and really have no taste at all but somehow I have taken a liking to them and snack on them frequently when I get home from school. There is also something they call prunes which is nothing like a prune but more like a tiny avocado but hard. If you fry them in a bit of water and oil they soften and then you eat the skin and the green or white insides around the pit. Another thing I was not too fond of until after a few samples and now really enjoy. There are what the people here call ‘potate’ which is essentially a sweet potato but with a drier and unique sweet flavor.
I am still eating as well as I was in Los Angeles and since my mom sent me the best cookbook for a vegetarian ever (which I recommend to everyone- even carnivores) “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” I cook several times a week. I’ve been eating all sorts of delicious things like homemade minestrone, bean burgers with a side of sweet potato fries, couscous topped with fresh tomato sauce and eggs poached in red wine, vegetable pancakes, cabbage leaves stuffed with lentils and rice, Louisiana style gumbo, breakfast burritos with homemade tortillas and salsa, and pasta with panfried squash and tomato sauce!
Some days it feels as though coming to Africa is what makes time travel possible (rather than Doc‘s invention). A world where you can still find cassette tapes, where McDonald’s and Wal-Mart have not come barging in with hamburgers and low-low prices, on the way to work I pass kids who can’t be older than 3 walking alone down the street, during the day I hear the little boy who lives behind me chopping wood to put on the fire they use to prepare dinner. It’s a world less controlled by politicians and more natural.
At school I have finally adjusted to being allowed to touch my students somewhat without a law suit waiting to happen. Sometimes when I reach out to put my hand on an arm or to demonstrate something, they flea my reach in fear that I’m going to hit them like the rest of the staff. I definitely don’t hit them at all or even use muscle in any way, but I have gotten more used to taking the delinquents by an arm and pulling them to the front of the class to put their noses against the chalkboard.
There are chickens grazing on the side of the road constantly and I can tell the store-owner just up the street that I’ll pay him for my bread tomorrow. When I sit in my language teacher’s little office with his ratty old books I stare into his yard at a well that looks like it should be on Little House on the Prairie with stone sides and a hanging bucket. At night I often find myself working or cooking next to a little gas lantern or a candlelight. When the water is cut off in the house I am vigilant about putting all my empty buckets outside in case of rain and if I hear the water come on I am forced to hop out of bed in the middle of the night and retrieve all the buckets from the yard to fill them as quickly as possible before the opportunity for water is lost again.
I am finally reading the book my friend Bret sent me about the Huerfano Valley in Colorado. It was a commune established by people rejecting the war and the draft and all American politics in the 60s. It’s fascinating how much their little makeshift lives on a mountainside in Colorado 40 some years ago are strikingly similar to mine here. It feels almost strange the marriage of technology and lack of development here. I can hardly ever walk into the bathroom and flush my toilet when I want to but here I am, sitting on my laptop and at the school I can get on the internet and communicate instantly just like I’ve been doing since I was 9 years old. My family calls my cell phone every weekend, and even my students have cell phones.
“In the Huerfano you live at the mercy of the sky. Dry Creek’s been dry for two weeks, and the spring box didn’t refill last night. The wildflowers fade and curl, and when the hot wind blows, dust flies up in the meadows.” - A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture: Huerfano, Roberta Price
It is difficult to believe that the holidays are already just around the bend, especially when I walk outside everyday and see absolutely no signs to remind me of them. After 2 ‘winters’ in Los Angeles I have become accustomed to hanging around in short-sleeves right before Christmas but there was still Jingle Bells playing in the Beverly Center in October. It’s fascinating to be living on a school schedule again and it seems to make life move much faster than countless hours spent at a desk in my office. Not to mention how much busier I have become lately.
In addition to teaching my 4 levels 3 days a week I have started a Girls’ Club at the Lycee. That eliminated one of my free days completely since it’s right in the afternoon and breaks my time into highly inconvenient pieces. I was also approached by some women in the community regarding an organization they’ve been attempting to engineer with the other ladies of the village. We’ve gotten together several times now to toss thoughts and ideas around with whichever women come to the meetings. I also started offering Saturday classes 2 times a month to all my students so I spend 4 hours almost every other weekend letting those who come tell me what they’re struggling with. It’s really become the day I enjoy teaching the most because my classes are a bit smaller, there’s no faculty around, the kids are less over-excited and more at ease, I feel like I’m really listening and helping them more genuinely, and the environment is more personal.
Teaching has been getting easier, finally. After attending a seminar for English teachers in the region I feel more like I’m on the right track and fear less that I’m failing my students. I have stopped worrying so much if I speak French to them and feel like they understand far more because of that decision. I finally feel like they get me a little better and I notice that I’m finding my rhythm with them and kicking them out less frequently. They seem to have noticed that I accept far less than I did in the beginning of the year and respect me for it.
At the seminar I spoke with a national inspector who told me that the national syllabus is the most important guideline for my classes, which is what I had thought initially until the staff at my school told me that the textbook was the priority. I explained that I was skeptical of that considering that not all of the schools in the country use the same textbook, but they insisted. I was feeling so frustrated and trapped in the idea of having to teach from a text that is lousy to begin with. Using it as the guide gave me very little freedom to teach the way I want to teach. Luckily, because of what the inspector told me I have now found a good balance using the textbook and my own syllabus that I wrote when first getting into the village.
Unfortunately, in a few weeks I will be forced to coordinate with the other English teachers at the school to write the tests for the class levels that we share. This means that I am unsure of how my students will perform considering that I will not be permitted to design a test that reflects exactly what I’ve taught. To prevent all my students’ grades from dropping considerably I have been giving lots of homework and I will give points to those who attend the Saturday classes as well. Unfortunately this also means I have an insane amount of homework myself in grading them! Reading an essay in elementary level 2nd language English is much harder than it seems. Props to all my French teachers over the years for that!
When I’m not running off to do something work related someplace or to a language lesson, I often walk out my front door and stand on the side of the road waiting for a raggedy old station wagon to come bumping along, squeeze me in (literally), and go into the regional capital or to the village next to mine to stock up on goodies. Bahouan is one of the smallest and least known villages in the region and doesn’t appear on the map. The market is only every 8 days and there really isn’t too much to offer aside from the usual stuff I can get at the local shops anyhow. Therefore when I get low on certain things, need to go to the bank, or just want to chow on something more exotic than the typical veggies I find here, I spend the majority of my day off getting toted around, negotiating prices, and wandering all over the place acquiring stuff.
Cameroon is known to be a bread basket in Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, before coming here I read that if they ever closed their borders or had a natural disaster like a drought, many people in the neighboring countries would run the risk of starving. Now that I’m in my own house and have my gas stove, (automatically lighting, thank Heaven!) I have gone back to my vegetarian diet. It’s been a lot easier than I anticipated and even all the teachers at the school are not at all surprised when I don’t completely load my plate with chicken at our staff meetings.
I can find all sorts of vegetables here; some incredibly familiar and some totally new. Most days I’ve got tomatoes, onions, leeks, basil, celery, snap peas, carrots, and green peppers in the house. It’s a treat if I go into Bandjoan and buy romaine lettuce for a salad but soon I hope to be eating some from my own yard! I’ve found beets a couple of times but think they must be out of season now. There is eggplant, zucchini, cabbage, potatoes, avocados, guava, pineapple, okra, bananas and plantains.
New things include “batons” of manioc; I am not sure exactly what part of the plant they even are but they are incredibly unappetizing in appearance. In fact, I was absolutely disgusted by them when I first arrived here. They come wrapped in banana leaves and are gummy in texture. They are a clear, whitish color with a grainy appearance and really have no taste at all but somehow I have taken a liking to them and snack on them frequently when I get home from school. There is also something they call prunes which is nothing like a prune but more like a tiny avocado but hard. If you fry them in a bit of water and oil they soften and then you eat the skin and the green or white insides around the pit. Another thing I was not too fond of until after a few samples and now really enjoy. There are what the people here call ‘potate’ which is essentially a sweet potato but with a drier and unique sweet flavor.
I am still eating as well as I was in Los Angeles and since my mom sent me the best cookbook for a vegetarian ever (which I recommend to everyone- even carnivores) “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” I cook several times a week. I’ve been eating all sorts of delicious things like homemade minestrone, bean burgers with a side of sweet potato fries, couscous topped with fresh tomato sauce and eggs poached in red wine, vegetable pancakes, cabbage leaves stuffed with lentils and rice, Louisiana style gumbo, breakfast burritos with homemade tortillas and salsa, and pasta with panfried squash and tomato sauce!
Some days it feels as though coming to Africa is what makes time travel possible (rather than Doc‘s invention). A world where you can still find cassette tapes, where McDonald’s and Wal-Mart have not come barging in with hamburgers and low-low prices, on the way to work I pass kids who can’t be older than 3 walking alone down the street, during the day I hear the little boy who lives behind me chopping wood to put on the fire they use to prepare dinner. It’s a world less controlled by politicians and more natural.
At school I have finally adjusted to being allowed to touch my students somewhat without a law suit waiting to happen. Sometimes when I reach out to put my hand on an arm or to demonstrate something, they flea my reach in fear that I’m going to hit them like the rest of the staff. I definitely don’t hit them at all or even use muscle in any way, but I have gotten more used to taking the delinquents by an arm and pulling them to the front of the class to put their noses against the chalkboard.
There are chickens grazing on the side of the road constantly and I can tell the store-owner just up the street that I’ll pay him for my bread tomorrow. When I sit in my language teacher’s little office with his ratty old books I stare into his yard at a well that looks like it should be on Little House on the Prairie with stone sides and a hanging bucket. At night I often find myself working or cooking next to a little gas lantern or a candlelight. When the water is cut off in the house I am vigilant about putting all my empty buckets outside in case of rain and if I hear the water come on I am forced to hop out of bed in the middle of the night and retrieve all the buckets from the yard to fill them as quickly as possible before the opportunity for water is lost again.
I am finally reading the book my friend Bret sent me about the Huerfano Valley in Colorado. It was a commune established by people rejecting the war and the draft and all American politics in the 60s. It’s fascinating how much their little makeshift lives on a mountainside in Colorado 40 some years ago are strikingly similar to mine here. It feels almost strange the marriage of technology and lack of development here. I can hardly ever walk into the bathroom and flush my toilet when I want to but here I am, sitting on my laptop and at the school I can get on the internet and communicate instantly just like I’ve been doing since I was 9 years old. My family calls my cell phone every weekend, and even my students have cell phones.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
The toughest job you'll ever love
“If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emit’s a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, starry, more immortal-- that is your success” -Into the Wild (quoting Walden; Henry David Thoreau)
The Peace Corps slogan has taken on much greater meaning in recent weeks. After being in country nearly 5 months and teaching nearly 3, the initial awe and charm of it all has begun to wear off and it has started to feel a bit like actual work.
Even in the time I am not physically in the classroom or preparing to be, there are so many additional, unanticipated responsibilities to deal with. Things such as being prepared at any minute to receive visitors who arrive spontaneously and insist you serve them an impromptu coffee; being constantly vigilant of my appearance, my dress, my attitude and demeanor. I must be willing to smile and greet any number of people along the road to anywhere I happen to be walking, and willing as well to carry on complete conversations with those who desire it. When a crazy person stops me for an extended period of time while I’m in the market I have to wonder about the culturally appropriate approach to escape (which is actually quite similar to that of the U.S. approach, I learned the hard way, as Claude walked on, leaving me stranded with a woman babbling nonsense at me before a crowd of onlookers for nearly 10 minutes once).
I had envisioned Peace Corps always as this tranquil, perhaps even lonely 2 years of my life. I always figured I’d have a chance to make a hefty dent in my “Read Before I Die” list. To the contrary, everyone in the village seems to notice every move I make. The children of the neighboring compounds have taken favor with playing in the yard and veranda of my house so oftentimes when I am not shouting at kids at the top of my lungs to “STOP NOISE” I am listening to them chase each other in droves, in circles round my house. Yesterday when I went to plant some seeds in the garden, another thing I envisioned being a bit peaceful aspect of my experience here, at least 7 kids stood staring at me, speaking in mother tongue and laughing as though they’d never seen a person put seeds in the ground despite that the entire culture is pastoral.
Leading such a public life is far more exhausting than I‘d imagined and as a result I have found myself slinking into a more introverted personality than ever before. I have begun to look forward to evening and thunderstorms for the opportunity for a few brief instants of freedom from scrutiny and relative calm. Some days I find I do not even feel like opening the shutters because it is the only way to escape the worry of visitors dropping by and children staring at me until I can‘t stand it and move to another room away from their peering eyes.
I suppose that this behavior sounds a bit depressed but that is not the case at all. I am still extremely happy here and never doubt my long carried desire to join the Peace Corps. Some excerpts from my journal can provide insight into the euphoria, in fact, that I am feeling:
15 October-
…Is it really possible that life can be this good? Everyday I feel completely shocked at what I’m living right now.
At the moment I am sitting in the bedroom of my very own house with a glass of warm coffee as a cool breeze is blowing in through my ancient pane-glass window. I can hear the sound of a foreign language being spoken as people barter and exchange goods at the market down the mud road. There are a great variety of birds chirping, the leaves of banana trees swaying calmly in the breeze. Out the window I can see the rusted tin roof of the entrance to the Chef’s quarters, surrounded by an array of fauna including my favorite tree here; long and skinny in the trunk, they sprawl out with scrawny, broad arms and bushy leaves at the top and our polka dotted with a beautiful deep but bright orange flower. When the sun hits them they look like something from a children’s storybook illustration…
…At 25 I don’t believe there’s any place or experience I’d prefer to be having right now. I partied my ass off and lived up my early youth as appropriate; I feel ready at last to march into that period of adulthood where you slow down a little, let a little calm in and start contemplating the next chapters of your story.
Overall I am finding the experience as a whole rather humbling in many ways. I have never been the biggest patriot but after spending a bit of time in Africa, seeing the rampant corruption, stumbling through problems with seemingly simplistic solutions which wind up becoming inherently more complicated than they initially seemed, understanding that though I feel like a poor youth barely out of the post-college ramen noodle diet days, I am actually extremely wealthy here; all of it molds a rather deep appreciation of my country’s accomplishments in a relatively short period of time. Granted most of our success lies rooted in the fact that a few British soldiers relocated, slaughtering everyone in their way to build exactly what they wanted of a nation, but, I am loathe to admit that just a few hundred years later the world is an altogether better place for it. I’m certainly not absolving our nation’s role in a multitude of vile things throughout our history; I did, after all, spend the two years of my life before coming here repudiating such things as our grossly excessive military arm as a career choice. It’s simply more clear now how undeniable it is that the world in general looks on our history, people, and way of life as a model of what they’d like their nation to be and such admiration turns the wheels toward a certain intellectual progress.
As nearly a half a year has already rushed past in my time here and I have already taken on virtually an entirely new identity, it is impossible not to speculate about who on earth I will have become at the end of all this. One near certainty is this, in the long run the impact will be deep and I believe that for the most part the changes will be positive.
The Peace Corps slogan has taken on much greater meaning in recent weeks. After being in country nearly 5 months and teaching nearly 3, the initial awe and charm of it all has begun to wear off and it has started to feel a bit like actual work.
Even in the time I am not physically in the classroom or preparing to be, there are so many additional, unanticipated responsibilities to deal with. Things such as being prepared at any minute to receive visitors who arrive spontaneously and insist you serve them an impromptu coffee; being constantly vigilant of my appearance, my dress, my attitude and demeanor. I must be willing to smile and greet any number of people along the road to anywhere I happen to be walking, and willing as well to carry on complete conversations with those who desire it. When a crazy person stops me for an extended period of time while I’m in the market I have to wonder about the culturally appropriate approach to escape (which is actually quite similar to that of the U.S. approach, I learned the hard way, as Claude walked on, leaving me stranded with a woman babbling nonsense at me before a crowd of onlookers for nearly 10 minutes once).
I had envisioned Peace Corps always as this tranquil, perhaps even lonely 2 years of my life. I always figured I’d have a chance to make a hefty dent in my “Read Before I Die” list. To the contrary, everyone in the village seems to notice every move I make. The children of the neighboring compounds have taken favor with playing in the yard and veranda of my house so oftentimes when I am not shouting at kids at the top of my lungs to “STOP NOISE” I am listening to them chase each other in droves, in circles round my house. Yesterday when I went to plant some seeds in the garden, another thing I envisioned being a bit peaceful aspect of my experience here, at least 7 kids stood staring at me, speaking in mother tongue and laughing as though they’d never seen a person put seeds in the ground despite that the entire culture is pastoral.
Leading such a public life is far more exhausting than I‘d imagined and as a result I have found myself slinking into a more introverted personality than ever before. I have begun to look forward to evening and thunderstorms for the opportunity for a few brief instants of freedom from scrutiny and relative calm. Some days I find I do not even feel like opening the shutters because it is the only way to escape the worry of visitors dropping by and children staring at me until I can‘t stand it and move to another room away from their peering eyes.
I suppose that this behavior sounds a bit depressed but that is not the case at all. I am still extremely happy here and never doubt my long carried desire to join the Peace Corps. Some excerpts from my journal can provide insight into the euphoria, in fact, that I am feeling:
15 October-
…Is it really possible that life can be this good? Everyday I feel completely shocked at what I’m living right now.
At the moment I am sitting in the bedroom of my very own house with a glass of warm coffee as a cool breeze is blowing in through my ancient pane-glass window. I can hear the sound of a foreign language being spoken as people barter and exchange goods at the market down the mud road. There are a great variety of birds chirping, the leaves of banana trees swaying calmly in the breeze. Out the window I can see the rusted tin roof of the entrance to the Chef’s quarters, surrounded by an array of fauna including my favorite tree here; long and skinny in the trunk, they sprawl out with scrawny, broad arms and bushy leaves at the top and our polka dotted with a beautiful deep but bright orange flower. When the sun hits them they look like something from a children’s storybook illustration…
…At 25 I don’t believe there’s any place or experience I’d prefer to be having right now. I partied my ass off and lived up my early youth as appropriate; I feel ready at last to march into that period of adulthood where you slow down a little, let a little calm in and start contemplating the next chapters of your story.
Overall I am finding the experience as a whole rather humbling in many ways. I have never been the biggest patriot but after spending a bit of time in Africa, seeing the rampant corruption, stumbling through problems with seemingly simplistic solutions which wind up becoming inherently more complicated than they initially seemed, understanding that though I feel like a poor youth barely out of the post-college ramen noodle diet days, I am actually extremely wealthy here; all of it molds a rather deep appreciation of my country’s accomplishments in a relatively short period of time. Granted most of our success lies rooted in the fact that a few British soldiers relocated, slaughtering everyone in their way to build exactly what they wanted of a nation, but, I am loathe to admit that just a few hundred years later the world is an altogether better place for it. I’m certainly not absolving our nation’s role in a multitude of vile things throughout our history; I did, after all, spend the two years of my life before coming here repudiating such things as our grossly excessive military arm as a career choice. It’s simply more clear now how undeniable it is that the world in general looks on our history, people, and way of life as a model of what they’d like their nation to be and such admiration turns the wheels toward a certain intellectual progress.
As nearly a half a year has already rushed past in my time here and I have already taken on virtually an entirely new identity, it is impossible not to speculate about who on earth I will have become at the end of all this. One near certainty is this, in the long run the impact will be deep and I believe that for the most part the changes will be positive.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Otia
September 30th, 2010
“One of the greatest rewards of travel is an expanded rubric of understanding. Exposure to different cultures cannot but broaden a traveler’s frame of reference.” - Erika Walburn, Where the Pavement Ends
Wishing my brother and grandmother long-distance happy Birthdays today. I realize it has already been about a month since my last post, a testament to the simplicity my life has taken on and also how much busier I’ve become in the last few weeks.
Things move at a slow pace here which at last I think I’ve begun to adjust to and at times even kind of appreciate. Living a simpler life was one of my motivations for joining the Peace Corps and one that I have already accomplished. After four months in country I barely notice that I have no internet, no television, no radio, no refrigerator, no washer/dryer, no kitchen sink, rarely any running water, never any hot water, and hardly any furniture!
My time has become much more saturated as compared to the two somewhat painful weeks of serious down time after my arrival in village. Since my last post I have spent countless hours attempting to piece together from the horrendously dense syllabus, a program for my classes which I think may actually be useful to my students in their lives rather than the completely irrelevant muck in the textbooks which they don’t understand a lick of anyways. I also started studying mother tongue with a native intellectual who began with the alphabet so that I can actually learn to read as well as speak, something many locals can‘t even do!
School is well underway; in fact, we are already about to close the first sequence, which seems absolutely absurd considering that half the student body and staff doesn’t even come for the first week or so, and considering that I don’t even have a textbook yet for one of my classes and considering that not one person has attempted to verify that I am performing my job well.
There are many frustrations in the day-to-day program. The classes are so large that you can easily spend 10 minutes of a 50 minute period taking roll. The discipline master never rings the bell on time and students are always attempting to trail in late then attempting to persuade me to let them in and eventually standing outside the classroom distracting the others when I refuse. Between my smallest class having at least 50 kids and my attempts to make things less conventional, the noise level can often get out of control. Taking the advice of my trainers in Bafia, I try to avoid doing things that will result in me losing my voice in the classroom. Using the chalkboard, the most traditional teaching tool I can think of, often creates an eruption of chaos as there is a problem of lighting in the classrooms. Each time I write on the board the students on one side will ask me to close a window or a student will just get up and do it, immediately inflaming the students on the other side of the room who become blinded by the darkness on their cornerof the board. This back and forth often continues with another student coming and opening the window and the other shutting it again while all of them are yelling at me and at each other that they cannot see.
I do not like to send students out because they are forced to do manual labor, which I’m not sure really even bothers them in the first place and which also forces them to fall behind in my class. I have started giving extra homework to those who misbehave but the other day when one of my classes was absolutely off the handle I wound up assigning all of them an insanely long sentence I belted out in a fury and making them write it 25 times apiece. You’d have thought I had just given them each 25 lashes they complained so much! Evidently this annoying form of punishment from my youth works in Cameroon too! There are also frequent interruptions which wind up causing overall a substantial amount of class time loss. People come to classes selling study materials or even soliciting donations, disciplinarians come to check that students fingernails are clean or take out students who are supposed to be punished, or to beckon me to see an administrator despite that I’m in the middle of a lesson. The challenges for the students are many and sometimes trying to overcome them is exhausting for me but overall it has been very rewarding so far.
I find it extremely challenging to find the balance between all the expectations of me all around. I have the Peace Corps, my life at home, my life in Cameroon, my reception/ mild celebrity in the village, my responsibilities at school; it really is a juggling act but as time ticks rapidly on I can see it etching out changes in me that I doubt I will ever fully recognize until I am back at home re-adjusting.
Occasionally being here in the capacity of an educator feels silly and seems to affirm my doubts about being capable of avoiding being another stain from the white man on this continent rather than an aid to development. Yet, when I manage to step out of the cloud of the impact living and working in such a foreign environment has on you, I can easily see that touching so many young minds 15 hours a week must be one of the most powerful tools of development possible. I am certain that no matter what I manage to eek out of my time here as far as blatantly visible development, the students are going to remember me the rest of their lives. I have done things in class that surprised even me like rapping a song about the present continuous tense in front of a total of about 250 students or throwing a Frisbee around the classroom. We laugh, we joke, and even when I have to be serious or I start to become angry with them, my handle on things is calm, warm, and reasoning.
Claude arrived for a visit to an impromptu dance party in my living room with about a dozen kids who live behind my house. They are mostly of a brood of children belonging to my landlord and one of his who knows how many wives. Just behind my house is an entire compound of wives and children so numerous I find it impossible to keep track. Soon after the arrival of the few who stay directly behind me I discovered that their mother often leaves for an entire week at a time. The oldest girl is 12 years and in total there are eight of them living in a two room apartment. I found that it was she who was preparing dinner for all the children over an open fire on their floor while some of the older boys (maybe 9 years) were constructing an outhouse. They are responsible for bathing the little ones and getting everyone off to school in the morning, washing all the laundry, and doing all the usual things a parent should be doing. So, I am faced with a personal conflict when my students arrive to class late because I know these are the sorts of responsibilities many of them are facing at home. Despite that the constant knocks on my door, little feet following me down the street, and little brown eyes staring at me through the bars of my windows can be pretty daunting, I feel a certain pressure to be a role model and someone they can rely on in a time of need. I also feel somewhat obliged to constantly give them bread and cakes and things to fill their bellies.
It’s been nice having Claude here. When I’m not working we do a lot of exploring, relaxing, and cleaning! With his help I think we have finally rid the floors of their irritating coating of mud and my formerly cold and empty house is beginning to feel like home. The other day we started my garden and I’m extremely stoked for the veggies to start coming in abundance, especially the lettuce which I have been missing! He and I work extremely well together for two individuals from two extremely different places. We have little tiffs over silly things like him not being terribly keen on my American cooking (except hot baguette sandwiches, which he loves), or sometimes because of things getting lost in translation, but overall I am the most comfortable with him that I have ever been in any relationship and that’s pretty damned remarkable considering our backgrounds.
Some days it still has not set in that I’m here, living this dream. Every morning I awake to exquisite sunrises over the valley in front of my house. The usually damp mud road is serene and peaceful as birds of myriad colors sing their morning songs while fluttering past me on my walk to school. I greet people in mother tongue and smile to myself as they oftentimes continue on behind me laughing together and saying, “C’est bien ca!” (That’s great!), tremendously impressed that I can already speak a few words of Gomala.
My life is drastically different than six months ago among the hustle and bustle of L.A.; I do not miss the brilliance and adrenaline of the big city. There is something more refreshing about walking into my front yard at night to a blanket of stars that I’m fairly certain it’s impossible to see in the United States anyplace. In many ways this world is more appealing than mine back home. I would not trade the cold scenery of steel skyscrapers, their lights twinkling in the night as bankers and lawyers plug away plotting their next big grab. Here I am entrenched in row after row of lush mountains, forests rich with banana and eucalyptus trees, the sounds and scents of nature all around. After spending my early 20s in the 2nd largest city in America, trapped often in smog infested traffic jams, rushing always from place to place, working tirelessly to pay that next car payment, it feels amazing, soul enriching, fulfilling, to stop, to breathe, and to reflect life. Though I look out on the horizon and feel a certain comfort knowing I will eventually walk back into the familiar tidiness and rush of my own country, there is no other place in the world for me at this moment than right where I am.
News came last weekend of a fellow volunteer’s death in Lesotho, a country in Southern Africa, and I was struck by the impact it had on me. It reminded me that in many ways what I do is dangerous, something it becomes easy to forget in the hustle and flow of the everyday. It also reminded me that I am part of a bigger community and when someone is lost in a tragic way you feel it just like those in Baghdad and Khabala must, though granted with fewer nightmares. I couldn’t stop myself thinking, wow, that’s me out there; that’s one of us. His accomplishments during his barely a year of service are stunning. I hope to live up to what he did in one year during my two and his death inspires me even more my efforts.
“One of the greatest rewards of travel is an expanded rubric of understanding. Exposure to different cultures cannot but broaden a traveler’s frame of reference.” - Erika Walburn, Where the Pavement Ends
Wishing my brother and grandmother long-distance happy Birthdays today. I realize it has already been about a month since my last post, a testament to the simplicity my life has taken on and also how much busier I’ve become in the last few weeks.
Things move at a slow pace here which at last I think I’ve begun to adjust to and at times even kind of appreciate. Living a simpler life was one of my motivations for joining the Peace Corps and one that I have already accomplished. After four months in country I barely notice that I have no internet, no television, no radio, no refrigerator, no washer/dryer, no kitchen sink, rarely any running water, never any hot water, and hardly any furniture!
My time has become much more saturated as compared to the two somewhat painful weeks of serious down time after my arrival in village. Since my last post I have spent countless hours attempting to piece together from the horrendously dense syllabus, a program for my classes which I think may actually be useful to my students in their lives rather than the completely irrelevant muck in the textbooks which they don’t understand a lick of anyways. I also started studying mother tongue with a native intellectual who began with the alphabet so that I can actually learn to read as well as speak, something many locals can‘t even do!
School is well underway; in fact, we are already about to close the first sequence, which seems absolutely absurd considering that half the student body and staff doesn’t even come for the first week or so, and considering that I don’t even have a textbook yet for one of my classes and considering that not one person has attempted to verify that I am performing my job well.
There are many frustrations in the day-to-day program. The classes are so large that you can easily spend 10 minutes of a 50 minute period taking roll. The discipline master never rings the bell on time and students are always attempting to trail in late then attempting to persuade me to let them in and eventually standing outside the classroom distracting the others when I refuse. Between my smallest class having at least 50 kids and my attempts to make things less conventional, the noise level can often get out of control. Taking the advice of my trainers in Bafia, I try to avoid doing things that will result in me losing my voice in the classroom. Using the chalkboard, the most traditional teaching tool I can think of, often creates an eruption of chaos as there is a problem of lighting in the classrooms. Each time I write on the board the students on one side will ask me to close a window or a student will just get up and do it, immediately inflaming the students on the other side of the room who become blinded by the darkness on their cornerof the board. This back and forth often continues with another student coming and opening the window and the other shutting it again while all of them are yelling at me and at each other that they cannot see.
I do not like to send students out because they are forced to do manual labor, which I’m not sure really even bothers them in the first place and which also forces them to fall behind in my class. I have started giving extra homework to those who misbehave but the other day when one of my classes was absolutely off the handle I wound up assigning all of them an insanely long sentence I belted out in a fury and making them write it 25 times apiece. You’d have thought I had just given them each 25 lashes they complained so much! Evidently this annoying form of punishment from my youth works in Cameroon too! There are also frequent interruptions which wind up causing overall a substantial amount of class time loss. People come to classes selling study materials or even soliciting donations, disciplinarians come to check that students fingernails are clean or take out students who are supposed to be punished, or to beckon me to see an administrator despite that I’m in the middle of a lesson. The challenges for the students are many and sometimes trying to overcome them is exhausting for me but overall it has been very rewarding so far.
I find it extremely challenging to find the balance between all the expectations of me all around. I have the Peace Corps, my life at home, my life in Cameroon, my reception/ mild celebrity in the village, my responsibilities at school; it really is a juggling act but as time ticks rapidly on I can see it etching out changes in me that I doubt I will ever fully recognize until I am back at home re-adjusting.
Occasionally being here in the capacity of an educator feels silly and seems to affirm my doubts about being capable of avoiding being another stain from the white man on this continent rather than an aid to development. Yet, when I manage to step out of the cloud of the impact living and working in such a foreign environment has on you, I can easily see that touching so many young minds 15 hours a week must be one of the most powerful tools of development possible. I am certain that no matter what I manage to eek out of my time here as far as blatantly visible development, the students are going to remember me the rest of their lives. I have done things in class that surprised even me like rapping a song about the present continuous tense in front of a total of about 250 students or throwing a Frisbee around the classroom. We laugh, we joke, and even when I have to be serious or I start to become angry with them, my handle on things is calm, warm, and reasoning.
Claude arrived for a visit to an impromptu dance party in my living room with about a dozen kids who live behind my house. They are mostly of a brood of children belonging to my landlord and one of his who knows how many wives. Just behind my house is an entire compound of wives and children so numerous I find it impossible to keep track. Soon after the arrival of the few who stay directly behind me I discovered that their mother often leaves for an entire week at a time. The oldest girl is 12 years and in total there are eight of them living in a two room apartment. I found that it was she who was preparing dinner for all the children over an open fire on their floor while some of the older boys (maybe 9 years) were constructing an outhouse. They are responsible for bathing the little ones and getting everyone off to school in the morning, washing all the laundry, and doing all the usual things a parent should be doing. So, I am faced with a personal conflict when my students arrive to class late because I know these are the sorts of responsibilities many of them are facing at home. Despite that the constant knocks on my door, little feet following me down the street, and little brown eyes staring at me through the bars of my windows can be pretty daunting, I feel a certain pressure to be a role model and someone they can rely on in a time of need. I also feel somewhat obliged to constantly give them bread and cakes and things to fill their bellies.
It’s been nice having Claude here. When I’m not working we do a lot of exploring, relaxing, and cleaning! With his help I think we have finally rid the floors of their irritating coating of mud and my formerly cold and empty house is beginning to feel like home. The other day we started my garden and I’m extremely stoked for the veggies to start coming in abundance, especially the lettuce which I have been missing! He and I work extremely well together for two individuals from two extremely different places. We have little tiffs over silly things like him not being terribly keen on my American cooking (except hot baguette sandwiches, which he loves), or sometimes because of things getting lost in translation, but overall I am the most comfortable with him that I have ever been in any relationship and that’s pretty damned remarkable considering our backgrounds.
Some days it still has not set in that I’m here, living this dream. Every morning I awake to exquisite sunrises over the valley in front of my house. The usually damp mud road is serene and peaceful as birds of myriad colors sing their morning songs while fluttering past me on my walk to school. I greet people in mother tongue and smile to myself as they oftentimes continue on behind me laughing together and saying, “C’est bien ca!” (That’s great!), tremendously impressed that I can already speak a few words of Gomala.
My life is drastically different than six months ago among the hustle and bustle of L.A.; I do not miss the brilliance and adrenaline of the big city. There is something more refreshing about walking into my front yard at night to a blanket of stars that I’m fairly certain it’s impossible to see in the United States anyplace. In many ways this world is more appealing than mine back home. I would not trade the cold scenery of steel skyscrapers, their lights twinkling in the night as bankers and lawyers plug away plotting their next big grab. Here I am entrenched in row after row of lush mountains, forests rich with banana and eucalyptus trees, the sounds and scents of nature all around. After spending my early 20s in the 2nd largest city in America, trapped often in smog infested traffic jams, rushing always from place to place, working tirelessly to pay that next car payment, it feels amazing, soul enriching, fulfilling, to stop, to breathe, and to reflect life. Though I look out on the horizon and feel a certain comfort knowing I will eventually walk back into the familiar tidiness and rush of my own country, there is no other place in the world for me at this moment than right where I am.
News came last weekend of a fellow volunteer’s death in Lesotho, a country in Southern Africa, and I was struck by the impact it had on me. It reminded me that in many ways what I do is dangerous, something it becomes easy to forget in the hustle and flow of the everyday. It also reminded me that I am part of a bigger community and when someone is lost in a tragic way you feel it just like those in Baghdad and Khabala must, though granted with fewer nightmares. I couldn’t stop myself thinking, wow, that’s me out there; that’s one of us. His accomplishments during his barely a year of service are stunning. I hope to live up to what he did in one year during my two and his death inspires me even more my efforts.
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