PCT-PCV

August 22, 2010
“I woke up and the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was- I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon.” –On the Road, Jack Kerouac
The tick-tocks have added up and it’s already been 2 or 3 weeks since I’ve written. Things have changed a great deal since then. Model School officially closed, the group of 41 Americans I’ve been trotting around with for the last 10 and a half weeks and I were sworn in as volunteers, and now I’m at my post watching a rainfall that seems never-ending.
We had a lot of goodbye dinners and parties to attend before leaving town and all the people of Bafia seemed genuinely sad to see us go. My neighbor said her son Georgie (of the aforementioned brood of brothers) wondered what they will do since Lindsay, friend of all the children, was leaving! I was flattered. My host mom gave me a cute pair of shoes and made me peanut butter from scratch and when I called her from my post the day after arriving she told me she didn’t sleep all night and that Boy, the youngest child at the house, was knocking on my door forever.
Claude and I had some amazing moments together before leaving and so far we are keeping in close contact despite the distance. I was voted “Most likely to marry a Cameroonian” by my peers- go figure! He shed a few tears when he and his entire family helped carry my things to see us off. After all the time I’ve spent with him in the last almost two months it is an added challenge to be missing him in the midst of adjusting to my new life but what better way to figure out if we are meant to be than to face such difficulties from the get-go.
The time here has begun to take its toll a bit. We were given handouts created by volunteers in the 70s which outline the range of emotions and attitudes we should expect to encounter within ourselves over the next 2 years. So far they are pretty spot on. Currently I’m feeling easy irritability and as I become more entrenched in the culture, my patience has started to dissipate.
The cultural norm here is failure to communicate. For example, for the Model School Closing Ceremony all the students and Trainees arrived at 8 am to discover that the program didn’t begin until 10 am. They did the exact same thing to us at the Opening Ceremony stating, after we’d complained about waiting for hours, that we had come early to set an example for the Cameroonians, who, incidentally did not come early and thus never witnessed our fine example. In fact, we waited an additional hour or more after the ceremony was meant to start for all the special dignitaries to arrive. The Closing Ceremony seemed to last forever and we could not hear anything being said because the students were out of control in the tent next to ours and the sound system sucked. Finally it was well past lunch time and we were set free, only to be utterly mobbed by our Girls’ Club because we had never been told we were supposed to select a club President and keep attendance records and therefore they were not giving prizes to the girls. These kinds of things happened our entire training period and may’ve been even more annoying than all the rules we had to live with.
Moving to post was a smoother transition than I’d anticipated although technically I’m still moving. We had a private bus, an outdated Mercedes (how chic!) that we loaded to the brim with our metal trunks, suitcases, bicycles which took up the entire rear half of the thing, and 25 blancs and made our way up the road for the relatively short journey to Bafoussam. There we searched vigorously for all of our things among those belonging to the other blancs not stopping in Bafoussam but continuing on down the line. Once that feat had been accomplished we set off in smaller groups in a pickup truck which had to be once again loaded down and which, highly conveniently, dropped us off right at our front doors!
Unfortunately and also not too surprisingly, none of the things my Director asked my landlord to do and paid for him to have been done yet. Therefore my “bathroom” is still just a smaller room in my house than the other empty rooms and only 2 of the rooms have lights and outlets. Thus, for the last 3 days and until who knows when I am staying at my community host’s house. It has been extremely frustrating, tiring, and boring for the most part and I am overwhelmed at the thought of all the hours and minutes collected ahead of me for the next 2 weeks until school starts. Additionally, my house is entirely empty and the Peace Corps settling in allowance is enough to buy hardly anything at all. I’ve gone through half of it and the only things I’ve bought are my bed, sheets, and a part of my stove. I didn’t go fancy, either! It is all the more infuriating because lots of people moved into already fully furnished houses that volunteers over the years have been adding to and they got the exact same amount of money as me with my big, empty, cold space. I’m trying to make the best of it and be patient and know that before too long I will be at least minimally comfortable in my house but there have been moments over the last few days when I just start to cry because of the aggravation. I didn’t join the Peace Corps to live in luxury and I am becoming more familiar with financial burdens people may actually face, but at this moment I can’t even cook myself a meal or sit down someplace and read. After being a guest in someone’s home the last 11 weeks, I am thoroughly prepared to lounge around my own home, blaring CCR and Radiohead and doing yoga on my living room floor if I feel like! Instead I am currently confined to the sous-chef’s guest room or bar because he too lives in an unfinished house.
The fatigue of eating foreign food, especially that you don’t particularly care for, and not controlling when you eat it, of constantly being told where you’re going and when you’re going there, the aggravation of being entirely dependent on others for every want and need, and moreover, the absolute dullness of not having any work to do yet and knowing hardly anyone in the community is immense. I’m not depressed or even surprised that things are this way at the moment. I fully anticipated a challenging first few weeks as I begin to get in the swing of things here. Mostly I’m learning patience and I’m looking on knowing that very soon I’ll have a very robust schedule, at the least an equipped kitchen and a comfortable bed to sleep in, and that my boyfriend will hopefully visit next month!
In the meantime, I’m also thinking of how lucky I am in my post because I have gone into the regional capital the last 2 days to buy things for the house and discovered that you can find just about anything there including cheese!! I also live very close to a lot of other volunteers and will be able to escape to the comfort of their familiarity when necessary with ease. Volunteers in other regions are truly on their own right now and I can’t help thinking about their hardship and how mine pales in comparison.
I finally feel like I’m really in Africa now that we strapped my brand new bed on top of a bush taxi and were comfortably riding along with the appropriate number of passengers in our station wagon before being bombarded by people trying to get to my village who piled in making us 11 in a car meant for 5. The driver slid and bumped all over sheer clay roads that you wouldn’t imagine even exist while trying to avoid the fine he was certain to pay if he passed a police checkpoint. A fine, mind you, that wouldn’t actually have gone to the government at all but to the policeman himself because that’s how absolutely rampant corruption is.
So far internet is scarce with the service I bought and who knows when I’ll be able to purchase another so posts are going to be a lot more infrequent for now! I can’t believe it’s already almost September. Often there are days here that feel like I should be going to a fall football game in Bethel and that scent on the air is soothing like holding a warm mug of coffee while watching a peaceful snowfall out the window. I hope life at home feels just like it does in my imagination right now!

The case of the stolen panties

Time moves here in Bafia as if in a continuum of minutes, hours, days, and somehow already- months. It is difficult to imagine that while merely day after day has passed here there has been nearly a whole season gone by back home. I am certain one of the strangest parts about returning after two years in such a time warp will be seeing how much so many people and things will have changed. Lacey and Brendan’s new boy Max will already be walking and talking and it seems as if I will feel like I just got on the plane to come here!




However, life in Bafia will soon be no more because the week after this we will swear in as volunteers and I will officially never have a curfew again in my life! It is an exciting feeling to be set free in Cameroon at last and to feel again like an adult, yet, at the same instant a little intimidating. After being looked after and taken care of for the last 3 months in our homestay families it is overwhelming to think of how much work it will be to take care of just myself in this country!



There are so many responsibilities of day-to-day life that are substantially more challenging than the same activities in the States, plus the general pressure of teaching 15 hours a week in a difficult setting as well as thinking about my secondary project within the community and being active and well integrated there.



First of all, I’m moving into a house with absolutely no furniture. Furnishing a house in the States is somewhat of a hassle but here it is at least tenfold. I will have to go about negotiating from what is likely an even more than usually elevated price for every item I purchase which means I will need to do a bit of research before setting out in order to know what I should expect to pay. It’s never fun to get home and realize that when you thought you were bargaining you wound up still paying the white man price. Additionally there is the consideration of transporting all of these purchases to said house. I expect that my community host Wambo will be a tremendous aid in this whole process and so I am not sweating it too much but it will be nice to feel settled in sooner rather than later.



Once that happens I will need to worry about feeding myself. Luckily I have been posted in one of the most productive regions of the country and the country is the breadbasket of Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, I read before coming here that if Cameroon closed its borders or experienced a catastrophe that destroyed crops it would potentially starve a number of the neighboring countries. So, the market is chocked full of goodies like almost any kind of bean, nuts, an array of vegetables including carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, yams, okra, eggplant and more, and fruit like avocados, the most delicious pineapples I’ve ever tasted, mangoes, bananas, plantains, grapefruit, papaya and so on! You can also find pasta, bread, and fresh herbs. The only things that are difficult to come by are cheese and fresh milk but you can opt for the powdered sort if you really crave it and La Vache Qui Rit if you’re willing to settle for something that is mysteriously not cheese…



So, cooking should be just as much of an adventure as it had been for me the last year in Los Angeles but I am initially daunted by the thought of needing to discover where and when to find all these ingredients and what’s worse, lighting the gas stoves here scares the shit out of me! Many times I have attempted it in my home and chickened out. I have only done it successfully twice and I felt that I came close to setting my hand on fire both times! Hopefully I can find one of those long lighters we have in the States and put myself at ease.



Other than that, the idea of starting over in a new community is both exciting and fatiguing. There will be the initial integration steps all over again but perhaps multiplied many times by the fact that this time I will not be one of 42 other Americans in the village. I will have to train everyone all over again that my name is not “La Blanche” but Lindsay. I will have to deal with the initial phase of being with people most likely every waking minute of everyday for the first few weeks or months, foregoing the ever-so-comfortable “me” time and space we Americans hold so dear. I will need to try explaining to everyone I meet why I don’t need to eat at every social occasion or drink for every staff meeting and I’m certain I will have to make exceptions and accommodations in this regard in order to please. I will have to start over again in explaining my ‘religion’ to nearly everyone while avoiding the lack thereof truth and implying that I am somehow kind of Buddhist because that’s the religion I feel the most attuned to in general and which seems to be far more acceptable/ easy to grasp than Agnosticism or Atheism.



Yet, in all this starting over there are also new possibilities and opportunities that make it worthwhile and thrilling. I have spent the last 3 months preparing for this departure and have readied myself emotionally for it for practically as long as I can remember. I will finally be living my dream and hopefully touching lives at the same time. I will actually get to know my students and hopefully feel they’ve actually learned something from me unlike in Model School. I will be able to make new friends and become intimately familiar with a place and a people that very few Americans ever have and if all goes well I will throughout my time here find a way to bring something to their lives to improve it someway, somehow.



Since another week has passed I will give a quick wrap-up before closing. Monday I finished teaching around noon and had the rest of the day free so my friend Christine and I decided to take a bike ride out to the river where I had gone last week again. This time I had remembered to blanket myself in bug repellent and so when we got there we stopped to have a drink and unwind a little. We made some friends there who were enjoying playing around with Christine’s binoculars which she has all the time because she is an avid birdwatcher. I tried the “I’m married” trick for the first time on some men who were beginning to flirt and was amazed at how effective it was! Instead of driving me nuts asking for my number or something they just asked if my husband was a really jealous man.

The last time we had gone to the river a man had told my friend Andrew that he had just seen a hippopotamus and this shocked me so I asked a lot of questions about it of our new friends. They assured us that there are many in the water and that you could see them just about anytime.



When we finished our drinks we left our bikes unlocked and wandered down with our new friends onto the ferry to see if we could catch a glimpse of such a prehistoric- seeming mammoth animal as a hippo! Before we knew it the ferry was taking off and we looked at our new friends in shock because we had not intended to actually leave the dock! They told us not to worry, we were coming right back and there wasn’t too much we could do at that point but relax and look for hippos. Unfortunately this story would be better if we’d seen one, which we did not, but nonetheless, it was a beautiful ride on the ferry and the bikes and it was nice to feel like we could escape Bafia a bit.

Tuesday one of the Host Country National teachers observed my class of troisiemes, a grade above the quatrieme class I’ve been primarily working with. They were being seriously rotten that day and I was in the process of making them all stand as a punishment when she walked in and they immediately shut up completely. After class she told me that I am not intimidating enough and my voice too high which is apparently true because whatever she’s doing is obviously working better! One of the Americans even got a note from one of his students that said he was a very good teacher and should try speaking French more because he is good at it but that he doesn’t beat them enough. I think there are certain adjustments we American teachers will never make and perhaps as a result certain classroom behaviors we may just have to deal with.



Wednesday we had Girls’ Club and I spent two hours showing four girls at a time how to create their own email addresses before proceeding to the computer lab for another hour with them. Unfortunately when we got there only one computer had working internet so my efforts were in vain. I even used my laptop to work with one girl to set up her account but after we had done all the work and it said, “Felicitations Allison!” it wouldn’t let us sign back in. But alas, c’est la vie en Afrique and hopefully they will know now how to do it themselves if they get the chance.



I had washed my laundry that morning and hung it out on the line to dry while I was gone for the day. My host mother had been ill and so the children were the only ones home that day. When I got back I realized that it seemed like some of my things were missing from the line. I mentioned it casually to my host father, unable to really remember what it might have been but pretty certain they were underwear. He launched into a full-fledged investigation of the matter, all in front of Claude. He called in every kid in the neighborhood who had swung by the house that afternoon and had them all recount the details of their interactions with my panties. Then he told my host mother about it and questioned the teenaged girls in the neighboring houses. Finally he said he wished to take the matter to the police which I declined politely through a bit of laughter and assured him that even if the panties were found I would just let the thief keep them at this point. Overall, a hilarious incident that is still being discussed in the household with the utmost of sobriety.



Thursday I was back with my favorite brutish class and we played some review games to close out summer school and prepare for their exams yesterday. We each had to proctor 2 tests which was annoying because they weren’t for our classes or the tests we had prepared and so the kids were mostly angry with us because we couldn’t help them at all with instructions and if the teacher hadn’t written they could use a calculator we had to forbid it. Nonetheless, the exams finished and only about ¼ of my class actually failed which, believe it or not, is really not so bad. The teachers are thrilled to be finished with Model School as well as hoping that real school will be easier…

The quatrieme nightmare class on our last day

After grading tests Claude and I went to see my host mom in the hospital because she has typhoid. It was a reminder of my days in the clinic in Ouakam and always eye-opening to see health care in Africa. Afterward we stopped by the home of a very sweet woman I pass everyday on my way to school as she tends to her beautiful flowers. She always has a huge smile on and greets me more warmly than anyone in the community so we had promised to come by and see pictures of her kids, 2 of whom married Peace Corps volunteers and now live in the States. She fed us some delicious Sanga, a dish made with corn, spices, and greens, and sent us off with some peanuts freshly harvested from her field as well as the advice that I can not forget her son Claude when I leave and we are a good couple and should be married.



This morning the running club had a race for anyone in the community to participate in and they had a great turn out of over 50 people. It was fun seeing so many kids come out for it, even though many of them were running in chuck taylors or even flip flops! The boy who won third place was a tiny kid in jelly shoes and Claude’s brother took first! I was the only American female who ran so I was pretty far behind most everyone but ran with a couple students which was nice. Then this afternoon we got together with our girls’ club to practice our song for the cultural party this week and they are all very excited to perform.



In a little bit Claude and I are going into town to buy my host sister a present for her 4th birthday this week. Tonight is our curfew free night so we will most likely chill at Martin’s bar and may decide to go do some dancing in the late hours at the night club. Tomorrow I will play Sunday soccer with my other friend Martin and then Claude and I have plans to take a picnic lunch and go on a real hike nearby. I am very excited about this!



As things wind down in training there should be a lot of exciting things happening this week so stay tuned!

All About Sports

I blinked and it is already the weekend again. This week is the last week of Model School already and training is over in 2.5 weeks. It is exciting to think that in less than a month I will be living in my new house, cooking for myself again and not living under the strict regulations of trainee life.

It has been another good week here in Bafia, though. Monday I had a new class which was a bit frustrating considering that the school is almost finished and going into a class you don't know is like starting all over but alas, I survived. After school Claude took me exploring on it wound up being one of the best memories I've made in Cameroon so far. Last week on one of our walks we'd gone down to a little stream for a little privacy and just as we were getting settled on the perfect sitting log I realized I was being eaten alive by these little irritating insects called moot moots. We were forced to leave immediately and I walked home like an antzy child, rubbing my legs together to scratch the horrendous itching I was experiencing. This time when he told me where we were headed, I coated myself in bug spray and put on my jeans!

When we got to the river there was an elderly woman bathing who said she didn't mind if we passed. The water was about knee deep and I was nervous as I rolled up my pantlegs and stuck my toes in so Claude carried me piggyback while oh so gingerly tiptoeing across a log hidden under the water's surface. I closed my eyes and buried my face in his shirt because I was certain we were going to end up in the river with my purse in tow. Even he breathed a sigh of relief when we reached the other side. He then led us up through several isolated plantations on a hillside and when we got to the top we could see all of Bafia off in the distance and beautiful, lush hills that seem to be infinite in the other direction. It was the closest thing I've done to a real hike since being in Cameroon and it was blissful to feel the sense of being someplace less traveled.

Tuesday I finished Model School and had the rest of the day free so my friends Jeneca and Andrew and I hopped on our bikes and rode about 45 minutes away down a dirt road where the children shouted, "Chinois" to us because apparently they haven't had much contact with whites. In certain parts of the country the government has brought in a great many Chinese laborers for things like road construction and so sometimes foreigners in general are thought to be Chinese.

Oftentimes in this country when I find that the view takes my breath away I think to myself that wow, I really am in Sub-Saharan Africa and speeding down dirt roads in dense growth like forest in the middle of nowhere was one of those moments! We rode all the way to where the river becomes very wide and you have to await the ferry to cross. Unfortunately on this particular day I had once again forgotten my bug spray so my excitement for our ride began to wane as the flies biting me pretty much forced all my energy into self-loathing after I'd spent the whole week caring for the unappealing peppering of bites from the week before.

When I got home the neighbor boys were hanging out at my house. They are a brood of 4 or 5 brothers who like to violently wrestle for fun, but man are they cute! (See photo from last post) I brought out the frisbee Mom sent and we made a game of me throwing it as far as I could and them all racing for it. It was hilarious watching them run as fast as they could and then pile on top of each other!

Wednesday morning was my day off from teaching so I went running and then Claude actually came over to help me wash my clothes. Yeah, I have found like the most domestic African in... well Africa! Then we went to fetch water, a chore I have come to loathe. The containers we must use are impossible to carry comfortably. Not only do they weigh a ton but the handle gives you blisters and you must change hands every few steps or your arm will tire easily. Most of the time women or children carry them on their heads and I am often stopped on the way home and told that it will be easier if I do the same. I always smile politely and respond that I am not Cameroonian.

Girls' Club getting their martial arts on

A bidon used to carry water

After the chores Wednesday a friend of mine from the bar we frequent showed up, as promised, to teach our girls' club some martial arts moves. He did an awesome job of giving us some very useful self defense moves and kept the girls giggling. Afterward we chose the song they will sing for our cultural night at the close of Model School.

The rest of the week was pretty average. Played our usual soccer match on Thursday and I taught my favorite and everyone else's least favorite class on Thursday and Friday. They seemed happy to see me and I felt it went pretty smoothly even though I had to send out two students, one of which was in trouble for saying, "Je n'aime pas les blanches" ("I don't like whites"). I feel I've made an impression on them to some extent. We did an AIDS lesson Friday and they behaved like angels.

Yesterday I went to the less posh side of town than where I live to meet Claude's last remaining grandmother. She doesn't see well but was elated to have us there and said to her niece in her mother tongue while Claude had walked off that if she doesn't live to see tomorrow she will know in Heaven that he and are together because he has never brought a girl to meet her before.

Claude with his Grandma & Aunt

We also got some rather sad news this week. Coincidentally in the photo I of Claude and I in last week's post you can see a brief glimpse of a young man who officiated the basketball match we'd gone to see. Unbelievably while looking through the photos a couple days later Claude informed me that the man was dead. Monday morning, the day after we'd seen him, he went to the clinic to change the bandage he had on his hand after a moto accident he was in. They found that his hand had been infected with gangrene and had gone septic and before they could do anything about it he had dropped dead. It was a shocking and sad reminder that we are not in Kansas anymore and that life is short in general but that life is even shorter for the people on this continent.

On a lighter last note, I forgot to give a special shout out to my awesome friend from LA Bret Rea last week for being the first one to send me something from my Amazon wishlist! I cannot wait to chill at post and learn about the lives of individuals living in a hippie commune in the mountains of Colorado! If anyone else wants to try sending something, it seems Bret was able to send direct shipping from the website so you can try that too if you'd like. However, I also recommend half.com for much too low priced used copies! Thanks again, Bret!

And the way to be happy is to make someone happy...

Voila, it's Sunday afternoon again and I guess that means it's about time for an update. Every week seems to go faster than the one before it and life continues to get better. Living with a host family has started to become sort of draining and I have definitely been more "American" in recent weeks. This means not always sitting in the family room and trying to have some time to myself when possible. Teaching went pretty well this week in spite of some minor blips that I think are simply unavoidable in teaching.

My biggest frustration thus far has been the limits of the language teaching methodology we are expected to use here and the fact that I can literally observe my students getting nowhere because of it. When I was taught ESL education at OU I learned to teach English without needing to use the native language of the learners at all. This is how ESL is taught, primarily because of the growing demand for English teachers worldwide and the fact that such demands could not be met if teachers needed to speak the native language in order to teach. In Cameroon we are expected to use the Communication Method and that means every word I use in class and every word the students use in class is supposed to be English, even when that means clarifying things or worse, that the kids just won't understand me.

My class of quatriemes are now notoriously the worst class in all of Model School and some of the teachers who had them after me last week gave up completely and called in the Discipline Master for help. I, on the other hand, tried another approach and had a heart-to-heart with the class... in French. Our theme that day was stories and when I wrote the definition of the word and that also of 'characters' and they all stared at me blankly and said, "Madame, we don't understand the words you are using", I felt at my wit's end and told them I was going to tell them a story! They said, "En Francais, Madame?!", surprised that I was speaking their language in class. I told them yes, in French because I felt it was incredibly important that they heard me and understood me well. I told them the story of a girl I went with a week or so ago, the sister of my friend, to see the results of her national test to get out of high school. It was the kind of story with which they are all extremely familiar. Here your entire schooling success, the possibilities presented for your future, rest solely on the passing or failing of 3 tests throughout your high school career. We have actually been given samples of these tests and the questions are vague, subjective, and hardly comprehensive at all in consideration of all they are expected to acquire in the seven year span they cover. One English test we were shown had a text about a girl who had turned to prostitution out of desperation and one of the comprehension questions was, "Do you think Mary's mother loved her?"

I asked them what they thought the girl saw when she went to get her results. They guessed she had not been successful. I told them they were right and asked them why they thought that might be. They said she must not have worked hard enough. I explained to them that according to the national syllabus they should all be able to speak English in my class so by their standards they were also not working hard enough. I asked what they thought would happen when it was their turn to take the same test. They said they too may fail. This is all too common. The students who fail must repeat the whole year over again as many times as it takes; many of them just drop out. It's hard for them to see the point at all in the first place when there is so much unemployment and corruption anyway. After this my class was more attentive than ever and they we have still hit bumps in the road some of the worst behaved students in the beginning are now some of the most active.

That night I had an epiphany. I had told them I wanted us to work together for them to learn and that they have to tell me when they don't understand things; I needed to come down to their level more. The next day I came in and changed my definition of characters from: "the people or animals who are the subjects of a story", to: "Who". They caught on easily and did group work to outline all the different parts of some African folktales I'd found.

Friday I had the group of older students again and I was actually impressed by my own creativity. Having been inspired to higher standards after the student stopping me after class last week I made dice for our class boardgame out of tape and wrote an entire murder mystery set in a neighboring town and made them use the grammar lesson from that morning to solve the crime. I feel very lucky because I really enjoy teaching and not of the trainees do; I would hate to think I was going to spend the next 2 years of my life doing something I didn't feel that way about.

Wednesday is club day and our girls' club had specifically requested to play sports that day. We arranged to get some balls and it was fun to see how much the girls enjoyed it when for once, as boys approached to join our soccer match, we would shout to them, "Est-ce que tu es une fille??!" ("Are you a girl??") and then quickly made them leave the field. It's amazing how many boys want to be in our club! After sports we did a self esteem building activity with the girls. This week I'm hoping a friend of mine from the local hangout is going to come introduce the girls to a few martial arts techniques.

Thursday is our sports day in Peace Corps and I have become a regular on the PC soccer field. I am thrilled to be playing and to have so many people to do so with all of the time. My Cameroonian friend Martin even invited me into a new soccer club on Sunday mornings that I played in today. I was the only woman on the field that was not being a goalie and I think as a result they took it easier than usual but they complimented me after the match and told me I have to come back next Sunday.

At the risk of sounding redundent or predictable, I have met someone here. In a somewhat humorous coincidence he is the host brother of one of the other trainees. We have been spending a solid portion of our time with one another. Most of the time we just meet after my classes and walk all around town together to places I haven't seen yet, just talking, joking, laughing, learning about one another. We have an insane amount in common in terms of our beliefs and characters for two people from very different worlds. He usually winds up at my house after walking me home in time for curfew and then we sit on the front porch, holding babies who are usually crawling all over us like monkeys and watching the sunset. Often he comes in to eat dinner because my host mother insists on it and it is rude to refuse, sometimes we play cards with the family. Regardless of what we are doing, we are always totally at ease with one another. It's not something I ever would've envisioned happening with another African really, and particularly not at such an early stage in my Peace Corps life, but he does make me extremely happy for now and I feel that for once in my life I should just try not to analyze it much farther beyond that.

There's something heartily romantic about the simplicity of things here. There's no need to go out someplace and spend money having a date, we just walk and we learn one another. It doesn't hurt either that he's extremely easy on the eyes.

Today was pretty fantastic because I played soccer and Claude made a surprise visit to the field to watch. Afterward we were supposed to go with his family in his dad's car to see the plantation he manages in a neighboring village but his dad was on what we in Peace Corps call Africa Time. That means that while I was at my house waiting for Claude to show up for 3 hours I did some work and watched the neighbor kids hanging on my window, excitedly chattering, "La Blanche, la blanche, Auntie Lindsay, La Blanche"! I was going to go add credit to my phone to finally call him to figure out the situation when I remembered that my American friend and neighbor Martin had invited me over for hamburgers at exactly the time happened to be walking past! Thus, I was the first one there and we ate what I am pretty sure was the best hamburger I've ever had in my life but what may've just been the only American food I've had in 2 months. I will post some pics of the kids hanging on my window and of the bliss on the faces of the Americans mange-ing our burgers!

After watching a terrential downpour from the bar at Martin's house I met Claude to go watch a quickly organized Peace Corps basketball team get totally licked by a far superior and clearly more invested Cameroonian team. After we dropped in on one of the Americans of the slew of them who was diagnosed with typhoid this week, as well as worms and some kind of gastrointestinal bacteria, then stopped by to say hello to Claude's family briefly and headed off to someplace private where we could just relax and be together. Now I am writing this and it is already night because I left the post many times throughout the day so I'm going to call it a wrap! Hope everyone at home is doing well!

Bouncing back from shit is resiliency...

Yesterday was our beloved and incredibly useful "Resiliency Training" where we learned all the healthy ways to cope with stress, disappointments, and really all negative emotions that I learned in 8th grade Quest class. Our group has decided that the best way to cope with these things is to open a big, stinky box of Deal With It! There is Deal With It Body Spray and Deal With It Smoothie- all very useful indeed!

I realized a few days ago that I have not yet given a real account of what my life is like here on a daily basis so today is a good day for that! So, to begin, I typically set my alarm for 6:30 to 6:15 but I don't believe I have ever once actually slept until it went off. With the little ones in the house, roosters crowing outside, and almost always someone washing, sweeping, or cooking something it is difficult to sleep later. In fact, the whole culture here begins in the morning. People frequently call or visit each other before I am even out of bed! What a contrast to the typical roll into work at 1 pm schedule I was living in LaLa Land!

After my bucket bath the time it takes me to get ready is shortened significantly by the fact that I didn't bring a hairdryer (something that will probably cause me to freeze at post). I then sit down for my breakfast of usually an 'omelette' with green beans, tomatoes, and sometimes spaghetti, or occasionally crepes but always with a cup of Nescafe. Mmm... (I am always trying to figure out why people in the countries where coffee is grown always drink Nescafe).

I usually leave around 7:30, walking down the dirt road from my house or through the cornfield trail, depending on where the day's activities begin. On the way I undoubtedly greet a half dozen people or more, unless it happens to be raining in which case it is only the overly ambitious Americans who are going anywhere at all.

Now that there is Model School we teach until noon when we have lunch. Sometimes we eat what some of the host mothers have prepared but it's a pretty hearty lunch so I have been trying to avoid it. Lately I swing into my friend Desiree's bar, where you can find Americans at pretty much any moment of the day that we are not in a session or past curfew (which unfortunately is 7pm). Desiree has become a good friend but initially he wanted me to be his second wife. He could hardly believe it when I explained to him that unfortunately in America women can have as many husbands as they wanted but a man could only have one wife. It took him about 3 weeks before he apparently asked some of the other trainees and told me I had lied to him. So, he now gets where I stand and is just a buddy. In fact, I feel safe around him because he doesn't let anyone bother me and seems to always keep a special look out for that sort of thing.

After our sessions on safety, cross-culture, technical training, language, and medical issues have completed for the day we usually have a beer at Desiree's and then it's already time to rush through the cornfield to get home before 7. At home I usually socialize with the family, play with the kids, and when Terrence was here I played a lot of cards and soccer. I normally fall onto my foam mattress under my mosquito net before 10 and if I'm lucky not every dog in the neighborhood is howling at the same time and I can fall right to sleep, but that's a rarity.

This week we began teaching at Model School and "BE QUIET!" falls under 'most commonly shouted phrase'. You are easily driven to this when you have 40 pre-adolescents in a classroom without windows and with very thin walls. I taught my first 8 hours and I'm very pleased with how it went. We are also required to lead one club and my friends Claire, Liz & I are managing the Girls' Club. We had a good turn out and I'm excited to see what we can get accomplished.

I spent most of the week with the dreaded quatrieme class, equivalent to about 7th graders though the range of ages is very diverse. All the other teachers want to kick this class out of the school but I grew quite fond of them. By Wednesday students were helping me to gather my things and carrying them all the way to the Teachers' lounge for me after class.

I tried to avoid punishing anyone too severely. There are very strict guidelines in the school for tardiness and most of the time when kids are late by even just a couple of minutes they winding up missing the whole first bell and doing manual labor on the school grounds. Something we've all had to adjust to here is the sight of students being given machetes at school. It's difficult to tell so far how effective the manual labor punishment is but it is good to know at least that officially corporal punishment is forbidden by law. From what I've heard it is still pretty common and there's a strong possibility I will see it once I get to my village but at least the mentality and law has shifted away from it a bit.

It was fun seeing how a real classroom environment will feel but it is definitely a lot of work. One of the technical trainers wrote after observing me, "Avoid shouting; by the end of the day you may lose your voice!". So, if anyone wants to send me a gavel or dunce cap, or maybe has some wonderful memories of how your teacher used to control the noise level in your classes, feel free to pass along that wisdom!

It was nice to observe my class with another teacher on Thursday after having them Monday through Wednesday and to see them actually using vocabulary I'd taught them. Yesterday I had the Premiere class who were a treat after having the younger kids. Here the French system makes it so that the lower class numbers are actually older kids so Premieres are like Juniors in high school.

I try to keep in mind how it felt to be a student myself and that makes me want to have as little boring blackboard copying as possible. Yesterday after I introduced prefixes and suffixes, we did some group work and played some games. They seemed to be really enjoying it and so was I. After class a boy came up and said (in his most planned English), "Madame, I really loved your class, it was very interesting; I want you to be the teacher all the time." When I said thank-you, I will be back next Friday he countered, "No, you must come Monday!" It made my day! Hopefully I can live up to their expectations next week!

Today has been very busy. I received the biggest box of all the Trainees the other day because my mom is the greatest mom ever! Among its contents were my running shoes and clothes which I put to use for the first time this morning. It felt good to start running again and I was impressed it was easier than expected. Apparently I have stayed in decent shape in spite of eating potatoes, plantains, and rice nearly everyday and not being able to hike yet!

I came home to help my host mother peel potatoes and clean my room, including a thorough t-shirt floor mopping! I am going to see the seamstress in a little while to have a dress made exactly how I ask and exactly my size for $4! Maybe I will never come home! This evening we are going on a little bike ride and I'm helping my friend Claude with English.

The weeks fly by here and before I know it I will be at post. I am nervous and excited for having some independence and my own home for the very first time! Judging by how things are going so far, I think life will be just fine in Bahouan!

Terrence's story

The rooster has crowed and signaled the coming of yet another Sunday in Bafia. Already only a few remain before we move on with and begin our lives as Peace Corps Volunteers. Life continues to run smoothly and I feel joy at the possibilities offered by each new day.

This week I had the opportunity to go out with some Cameroonian friends and had really meaningful conversations. I feel I am connecting deeply with people and that is the part of my work here that will eventually mean the most. My friend Martin told me the other day that he hasn't enjoyed himself so much in a long time.

This week also marked the opening ceremony of Model School and after waiting 3 hours for all the special dignitaries for which the ceremony was planned we began with the group utterly butchering the National Anthem before the entire population of students, teachers and important folk. Unfortunately I was in the front row and was quietly singing while attempting to stifle my need to laugh hysterically at the spectacle. Luckily I think it's harder to tell when people are singing poorly when it's in a foreign tongue.

We observed a lot this week and I got the chance to watch a truly inspirational lesson from one of the teachers here. The class was the Premiere level which is students nearing the end of their schooling but the age range is anywhere from 15-19 and beyond. The teacher asked the students what career was the most important and a student rose (they stand to answer questions) to say that a teacher was the most important profession because you pass on knowledge to children. Next a student stood to counter this view by saying that a doctor is more important because you can't go to school if you aren't well. Everyone saw this was a good point and laughed. Then a third student stood to say that if the doctor hadn't a teacher they wouldn't have learned medicine and the whole class erupted in applause for he had clearly won the argument.

When they were asked what they wanted to be and why it brought me nearly to tears as they rose one after another to talk of their dreams of wanting to be a translator so as to help people understand one another; being a doctor and building a hospital for those who suffer from AIDS and Cancer but don't have the means to get the care they need; to be an advocate for children around the world because every 5 minutes a child dies from hunger. I was wowed and awed by their wordsand their intelligence and reminded that regardless of where you go the dreams of youth remain linked.

I will beging teaching at the Model School that we undertake during training this week and I am very excited to finally have control of a classroom of children and to see how things go. I think I will learn a great deal from the children and of course, I hope they will learn even more from me!

Yesterday we had a whole afternoon of training in mountain bike maintenance and then brought home our bikes. I am somewhat intimidated but hoping to become at least a better than mediocre biker by the time I return to the States.

This week marks a bit of a sad turn of events in my homestay because the person I've been the closest to in the house, my younger host brother Terrence, is moving on. I want to share his story with you because it has touched my heart and reminded me of why I'm here. Sometimes in the day-to-day it's easy to lose track of the challenges people face. They carry the weight of their burdens with grace and sometimes we seem to have so many things in common that it's easy to lose track of how much different our lives have been.

Terrence is 18 and is not really my host brother. When he was only 16 my family discovered him through another family member. His family was too poor to manage having him at home and needed him to go and work so after finishing only his primary school studies he came far from home to live with my Anglophone family and care for their children. Since I've been living here I have seen him rise every day before 6 am to begin the daily chores including but not limited to sweeping, mopping, cooking, fetching water, washing everyone's clothes, taking care of the children and generally doing anything everyone asked of him at any moment of every day. I have very seldomly seen him do anything resembling the life of a boy his age in the States but I have made an effort to get him out of the house a few times over the last few weeks and to try to get to know him a little better.

In that time he has opened up to me about his girlfriends, his brothers and sisters and his suffering. He has barely seen or spoken to anyone in his immediate family in years and when one of his elder sisters passed away last year after having not seen her for a long time it wore on him. He tells me the family doesn't pay him for the work that he does and he may or may not be telling me the truth about but either way whatever he is being paid is not much. He hardly leaves the house except to run an errand and often when he does he gets in trouble upon his return for something or another, because of the language barriers of Pidgin and broken English it is often hard to decipher the issue.

Last night during a heart-to-heart discussion in which I tried calmly convincing him that his way with one of the little ones was too harsh he opened up to me after I gently persuaded him as he wiped his eyes to hide the tears I saw building up in his lids.  With effort because he was reluctant to share his long-guarded pain with another person, he spoke of how every person in Bafia knows him because he is like the town handiman. He spoke of the suffering he's had from chronic back pain caused by his constant manual labor and how no one has bothered getting him medical attention for it. He described how all his peers are beginning their studies in Form 5, equivalent to Juniors or Seniors in the States, and he has rested the same for the last 2 years, falling behind everyone else. He spoke of his anger, fatigue, frustration and the way he has given and given of himself which had an obvious sense of him having little left at all to give.

This week his family has been calling my host family regarding him. Evidently there was always some kind of arrangement that he would eventually have some part of his schooling in a chosen trade funded by my host family after he had worked for them a given period of time and now that time has come. I'm disappointed to see him go and will deeply miss having him in the house to play cards and soccer and laugh with regularly but I am glad to see some new opportunities on the horizon for him.

Getting to know him has reminded me of so many lost childhoods on this continent and many other parts of the world. It has enlivened a part of me I've never had the chance to feel, almost the love of an older sister towards a younger sibling. Tonight I will give him a long and meticulously worded letter describing what I hope will be words of wisdom and love for him as well as a little bit of money for all the work he's done for me since I've been here, and a mostly deflated soccer ball that he will probably appreciate just as much as one from the States.

Once again I am reminded of how lucky I have been in my life and I hope his story reminds all of you reading from the States as well of your own privileged position in this world.

Back in Ba(h)fia

July 4th, 2010




It’s so hard to believe that it has already been a year since the big 4th of July bash at the Spaulding castle. Growing up I always heard that the older you become, the faster the time seems to pass and every year I look back on it seems to become more true. I am missing my brother and Adrienne a lot today since last year’s celebration with them was so memorable. I have no doubt they are missing me as well and that in itself is a comfort.



Another milestone is arrived today too. It has been a month exactly since I left the States. It feels so much longer than that already but I’m happy to report that I’m not really counting the time anyhow. A really good thing considering that I’d have a pretty long way to go!



I returned from site visit yesterday evening and it was exciting to have some independence for the first time since my association as a Peace Corps Trainee. One of our cross culture training sessions included a depiction of the culture shock continuum; a series of peaks and valleys that we can expect to encounter throughout the next 2 years and once we’ve returned to what used to be our perception of normalcy. I’m lucky because of my experience in Senegal making the first few valleys far less intense and practically unnoticeable for me, but I did finally have a brief culture shock moment early in my site visit on Wednesday.



I believe I’ve already written about the issue of polygamy and in many ways I could already tell the frustration I initially felt at the cultural norm was only going to continue to manifest throughout my time here. I had not yet had an up close and personal encounter with the phenomenon until my trip and seeing it firsthand filled me with agony at the position of my sisters here.



I will give a brief overview of my site first and then go into more detail about what I have witnessed here so far. Our group of trainees headed to the Northwest, Southwest and Western regions of the country left together in a traditional Cameroonian bus on Wednesday with our community hosts in tow. With all the stories we’ve heard and my experiences traveling in other underdeveloped countries around the world, I’d have to say that, despite being 30+ crammed into a miniature bus and needing to change seats in our row when possible to keep our hind ends from going completely numb, our voyage went pretty well. Luckily my post is easy to get to, near the regional capitol, and in close proximity to other volunteers.



My community host turned out to be the second most important guy in my village, known as the sous-chef, and as a result I was treated like royalty the entire trip. We met up with a friend of his who works on national elections in Bafoussam, (the regional capitol), where we ran some errands in his nice Toyota pickup, including opening my new bank account for after swearing-in, before heading on toward my village.



Bahouan is in a mountainous region and the earth all around is red clay. It took about 20 minutes from Bafoussam before we turned down the unpaved stretch that reaches into the village. We pulled up to a discreet bar where the friend told me, “Voila, this is where you’re sleeping”! I laughed but later realized he was telling the truth, my community host’s house was attached to the bar.



After having a Castel with several men from the community (there are rarely ever women in the bars; another frustrating chauvinistic cultural norm), Wambo (the regal name meaning ‘King’ for my community host), gave me the tour of his compound. He himself has 3 wives, only 2 of which reside in Bahouan. The other wife is in Douala where he has another home. It suddenly became clear why when I’d asked him at our seminar how many children he had his response had been, “Au moins, dix” (“At least ten”). The chef of the village who I later had dinner with has 12 wives on his compound, which I’m told is a decidedly small number for someone of his community stature.



Here is what I wrote in my journal following this tour, “I can only think with this cultural screen which tells me that development of any kind is virtually impossible without women’s equality. Am I judging? Am I biased? Have I had the opportunity to ask the women their feelings? Yes, yes, and no. Yet, it seems that the women themselves are conditioned to accept their positions in society as though they are indifferent to it. I feel my job here is to understand the women and help them value themselves in spite of the cultural norm. I see these women who appear to be just baby-makers and home-makers; they work all day while the men drink and socialize in bars.



I feel luckier than ever in my life to be an American woman. To feel empowered and equal from birth as a human being.”



I boldly took up this discussion with many of the men I encountered at my site, particularly because of how difficult it was for me as a woman to mostly interact with only men the entire visit. At one point the arrogant friend of Wambo’s who had picked us up in Bafoussam ,who was at least twice my age and who had seemed to take a liking to me, said as we were all preparing to eat, “Lindsay, serve-moi!” I wanted to break down in tears and was angry as well but am happy that I didn’t just sit and stew to myself but did react in my defense by saying that I was not a Cameroonian.



I know there is going to be a very fine line to walk on this issue between expressing myself and offending people. I know I cannot assume that even the women will automatically admire me for standing up to their male-dominated culture. In fact, during one of the heated but cordial debates I had with Wambo and another chef du village they both assured me that it is often the women themselves who go out in search of other wives for their men. That, in fact, you are not seen as a real man unless you have many wives. To me this is an obvious barrier to development because of the economic implications of having at once so many wives, often who each have their own home entirely separate from the man’s home which he has to himself, but also so many little mouths to feed that often it is seemingly hard to even know how many.



In spite of this gender stratification constantly creating a rumbling irritation under the surface for me my visit was overall wonderful and I am now eager to actually begin my work in village. Because Wambo was in charge of making the arrangements for my stay he has secured me a house that is far too big for myself alone and which the emptiness of intimidated me greatly at first glance. But, it is a fine home and I am excited to live on my own for the first time in my life. I have 3 bedrooms which I have no idea how I am going to afford to fill with any furniture at all and they are working everyday painting and installing plumbing and lights for me before my arrival. There will be plenty of room for the dog and cat I plan to rescue from the hands of Cameroonians once I arrive who I hope will help keep me company when I’m in dire need of someone that doesn’t speak French. There is a big space in the front for the garden I hope to cultivate, most likely with someone’s help since I am up to this point severely lacking in green thumb. The view from my porch is stunning and peaceful and I live directly across from the main Chefferie. The Chef assured me his protection and my safety at post and I believe it.

Part of the site visit was with the goal of trying to meet important community members before my arrival so we took Wambo’s motorcycle around a bit doing so. One particular ride into a neighboring village to meet the prefet and commander was breathtaking. The red mud road is surrounded by lush forest on both sides and dotted with yellow sunflower-like flowers. Everywhere in this rich part of Africa things are alive. We passed field after field of corn, bean, nuts, manioc and much more. After riding a while a huge valley opened up to our left with rolling hills speckled in rusted tin rooftops of houses the same deep red-brown color as the earth around them and I had one of those enlightening moments of realization of how insane it is that I am here. I look forward to serene walks and jogs around the area to reflect on the beauty I’m surrounded by.

In meetings with all of the political figures in my community it was amusing to note them all remarking on the issue of corruption. Of course none of them implicated themselves as elements of this problem despite the extravagant living quarters many of them occupy and the fact that they do possess so many wives. In the case of the chefs in particular it was fascinating because they receive money from the state but are actually in power due to royal lineage. I’m told it is the chefs whose families founded the villages. While dining with the main chef he caught me staring at a blown up photograph of him in traditional garb dancing at a ceremony. He told me the outfit he was wearing cost more than $4,000 - that’s U.S. currency, money that would go a very long way here. Money that could’ve perhaps funded the road to Bahouan which many people have sited as an obstacle to their community’s development.



I am glad to have only touched the surface on so many issues and to have been given such an intimate look at the hierarchy here during my site visit. I truly believe it will take the full 2 years I am here to integrate myself enough to give straightforward, well-informed recommendations for the villagers. It is difficult to comprehend the marriage of tradition and modernity and I think it will undoubtedly be a challenge in my work. Americans pay quite insignificant attention to tradition and I think regard it primarily as a roadblock to progress. We learn from history but we don’t have the need or the desire to repeat it.



All this being said, I did spend about 2 hours Friday morning talking with a future colleague of mine at the school who stopped by to introduce himself. He worked closely with the last Peace Corps volunteer who went to Bahouan, who everyone kept referring to as though she had just left which I assumed was the case because it is at most sites, but later discovered she left in 2005. Everyone I met pointed out that she interacted very little with the community and barely spoke a word of French at all. I have yet to discern why the hell Peace Corps even placed her there in the first place. Apolinaire, the colleague, did make a good point about the importance of we Americans learning a few things from Africans about communal culture. He was very well versed in our individualistic ways. If I take away anything from the next 2 years, I hope it is related to that aspect of African tradition. I want my time here to be a two-way cross-cultural exchange and I would be want for purpose here if I believed I myself had nothing to gain.



All-in-all I think I made a solid first impression on my community. I made 'cous cous' with Wambo’s third wife, played with babies, attended some ceremonies where lots of people stared at me but giggled with bliss when I greeted them in the mother tongue; even the discussions I had with the men challenging their views on polygamy were lighthearted and we were able to laugh together at the cultural divide. Several people told me they could already tell I was going to be much different from their last volunteer and despite Wambo’s social status being somewhat of a stratification for us, he was very dedicated to explaining to everyone we came in contact with exactly what my goals are for Peace Corps and countering their initial belief that he had taken on a white wife! My first day in Bahouan I could not wait to be back in Bafia but now that I’m back, I can’t wait to settle into my new home!