Site Visit

Pardon my hiatus last week, but I was busy travelling Cameroon. Last week, we were on Site Visit, meaning we visited our assigned posts, where we will be living and working for the next two years. It is a visit designed to help you figure out how to get to your post, meet any volunteers you are replacing or volunteers in the area, and hopefully meet people you might be working with. It’s a good chance to see the community and your host institution before the second half of training. It ended up being our first taste of freedom here in Cameroon and an amazing experience.

My post is Mogodé. It’s in the Extreme North region of Cameroon (there are 10 regions). The Extreme North is known for being deserty, Muslim, hard to get to, and for having meat (such as beef), which isn’t widely available in the rest of the country (note: no refrigerated trucks). It also takes a butt ton of time to get there. But we got to take a train!

So Saturday morning, 7 am, all of us meet up with our Community Hosts (mine is Genevieve, a young, spunky business women who is going to be amazing to work with). We got on a “Super Amigo” chartered bus (Cameroonian style- so 5 to a seat) and headed toward Yaoundé. Yaounde, if you remember, is the capital of Cameroon where we had our Orientation for our first week here. This time, though, we weren’t confined to a hotel. As our train didn’t leave till 6:30, and we had arrived around 11 (with some difficulties), we were free to explore. We went and had an amazing lunch: salad!!!! which none of us had had since we had been here. I really don’t understand the Cameroonian mentality surrounding fruit and vegetables, but no one seems to eat raw things here, and its been driving us nuts. From there, we headed out to Casino, the import grocery store that has everything a white person living in Africa could ever dream about. On the way, we stopped into a boulangerie for real ice cream and pastries. It was amazing. I didn’t actually feel adapted to Cameroon until I walked into this completely western shop and realized how out of place I felt. Getting that ice cream, while amazing, felt so weird: I loved it. From there, we walked across the street to Casino.

Funny thing about white people in an African nation, they stick out. They are targets. Locals always think we are rich, white people just there to hand out money. Apparently, people in Yaounde didn’t think differently. As we were crossing the street to enter the store, someone ran up to us and grabbed my friend’s necklace from her neck and ran away. It was only seconds, but it was so scary. He left huge red welts on her neck. It was such a reality check. We don’t blend in, we are targets. After that terrible event, we were ready to leave Yaounde.

As we boarded the train, our excitement mounted. The train was an overnight journey and each of us had a bed in little cabins of four people. We were with our counterparts but mostly clustered together. The trip was supposed to last anywhere form 12 to 15 hours, although it has been known to last up to 23 due to multiple derailings: transportation in Cameroon: C’est la vie. This rail system is different from anything I’ve encountered before. There is one path and only one route. Yaounde to Ngaoundere leaves at 6:00 pm, once a day, and Ngaoundere to Yaounde leaves at 6:20 p.m, everyday, once a day. This easy system has an awesome effect though. As you travel north, and make your different stops, everyone knows when the trains are stopping (or at least when they should be stopping). So, tons of vendors come out to the train tracks and are out there, selling local specialties on their heads, through the windows at each stop. We bought baton (fermented cassava), tons of fruit, and a few random things, like honey. Our counterparts were going crazy, staying up all night to bargain through the window for fruits and vegetables they don’t get up north. I woke up in the morning to bags of food literally covering our compartment floor. It was hilarious.

The train ended in Ngaoundere, where we disembarked, met up with some amazing people staff from PC, and tried to arrange the next part of our journey, the bus ride north. Those of us in the extreme north were taking a bus to Maroua, the capital city. So bus rides and purchasing tickets is super strange here. You go up to the counter, and reserve your spot on a bus. Then, as buses arrive, and enough people buy tickets that a bus is full, they call out everyone’s name who made it on the bus. Then there’s a mad scramble to load your luggage and get seats. Needless to say, even after all the spots are assigned, it takes about an hour or so for a large bus to leave. Sometimes, if you’re waiting for a bus to fill up, you can wait for an hour or longer before they even do the roll call.

So, we arrived in Ngaoundere and tried to get on a bus. However, lucky for us, due to a school holiday, tons of people were waiting around trying to get on buses to get back to school up north. We were told we might be on the 3^rd bus. We had arrived at 7:30 in the morning. By the time we left, on the 4^th bus, it was 1 pm. It was also the last bus of the day, leaving tons of people stranded in Ngaoundere for the night. We got lucky. Our little bus pulled away, filled to the brim (again Cameroonian style) and we started out 10 hour bus ride to Maroua. On the way, whenever we stopped, people would come up to the windows, selling food and wares through the windows. Such a bizarre custom but I loved it! We started seeing meat being sold on the side of the rode. As one break, we got out and tried it, and oh my god, best meat I’ve ever had in my life. It had powdered piment (a spicy pepper similar to jalapeno) on it, and I could tell I was going to eat well during my visit. Don’t ask me what kind of meat it was, but it was good.

We arrived in Maroua late at night and headed to the Case: the Peace Corps hostel for PCV’s passing through. We were welcomed by PCV’s, two of them being PCV’s we were replacing, and headed out to town. As soon as we left the Case, I could feel a difference in this city compared to Yaounde. I felt so much safer. There was no one “deranging” (franglais, I know) me, meaning, no one yelling “la blanche”, or making tsking noises to get my attention, or trying to get me to buy anything. Sure, some people watched us go by, but no one bothered us at all. It was completely different from the south. And amazing. The city automatically felt more welcoming and like home than Bafia has ever felt.

Anyways, our night passed with awesomeness as we got to know other PCV’s and heard about people in the area and our posts. The next day, we explored the city a bit as we opened up bank accounts and got smoothies (yay!). I rode my first moto in Cameroon. I’ve been on a motorcycle once before, but I was freaking scared. I climbed onto the back of this puny little bike, with my huge flashy helmet and away we revved through the streets of Maroua. It was already dry season up there, so dust flew up in our faces. As we crossed over a river, I saw that it was almost completely dried up, with people doing laundry in the river bed with the little puddles that remained of what probably is a pretty imposing river during the rainy season. The city was so quaint and much prettier than Yaoundé. I loved it. The PCV’s showed us where we can buy cheese and kitchen supplies, and salads! We ate some grasshopper a woman was selling on her head and basically just enjoyed freedom without a strict schedule in a new city.

Since it had taken so long to open bank accounts, Alice (the PCV I’m replacing) and I decided to wait till morning to leave for Mogode. The journey out there is a bit long. You go an catch a bus (similar procedure where you could be waiting for an hour or so) to Mokolo, which takes about an hour. From there, you grab a moto and head out to Mogode. It’s about a 1.5 hour drive on the back of a moto, through dusty desert on an unpaved, pretty bad road. It’s a butt bruiser. But its freaking gorgeous. You start up, just going up into the mountains, passing cute little compounds with round houses, horses, and the occasional tree. Then all of the sudden, you go over a turn, and there’s a gorgeous valley right in front of you, opening up to volcanic spires and beautiful rock formations everywhere. If I hadn’t been clinging to moto for dear life, I would have taken some amazing photos.

Mogode is also gorgeous. It’s nestled in an almost-valley in between a bunch of volcanic spires out in the middle of the desert, in the mountains. The stars at night are amazing! It’s a small little village with a post office, a police station, a few boutiques, a hospital, some schools and not much else. There’s a large catholic mission just down the street from my house. I didn’t get a chance to meet the Italians who run the place, but I’m looking forward to getting to know them.

The house I’ll be moving into is amazing. The two huge, blue steel doors are the entrance to my compound. Inside is a huge yard. I plan on doing some major gardening/minor farming projects. Since I was arriving at the end of rainy season, everything was turning from green to brown, but it was still gorgeous. Alice had soybeans, corn, tomatoes, and cucumbers. There is an outdoor kitchen that Alice has been using as a doghouse and a pit latrine (real, without a built in throne). My first night there using the latrine resulted in an embarrassing episode involved pee in places in shouldn’t be. I was out of practice, and let me tell you, it’s hard as a woman to squat an pee into a little hole! But practice makes perfect, I’ll get better as I perfect my technique.

My house is beautiful and simple. The small porch opens up into a big kitchen/living/dining room. I have a portable gas stove! Then there is a beautiful bedroom, a washroom, and a spare room that I’ll turn into another bedroom.

There is no running water in my house, so the washroom is just that, a room to bathe and let your bucket bath water go down a drain. My water comes from anearby forage. I’ll have to hire a guy to go and get me giant containers of water on his moto.

Also, I might be inheriting a dog: Kelly (renamed Nous-nous by the neighborhood). She is a gorgeous Cameroonian mutt: a one year old puppy. She is so sweet. Unfortunately, while I was visiting, she came home with a machete wound to the shoulder. Cameroonians don’t really get pets and see dogs as either guard dogs or food. Nous-nous, being American raised, was probably being overly friendly and annoyed someone with a dull machete. Anyways, we patched her up as best we could and she’ll be fine.

I spent my two days in Mogode, exploring, hiking, eating, and meeting tons of people. We hiked one of the beautiful volcanic formations and looked down into Nigeria. We ate local food and made amazing food like lentil stir fry and cucumber salads. I had these awesome local beignets (fried dough things) made from local white beans that tasted similar to chicken nuggets and almost made me melt inside. They were awesome.

I also went and visited the hospital with whom I’ll be working. It’s a small district hospital with a birthing room, laboratory, some over night wards and a non-operational operating room. After 2 years of not having a doctor, three months ago they acquired a generalist who refuses to do even any basic surgery. There were some major problems that the nurses pointed out right away: Cholera, an extremely low number of mothers giving birth in the hospital, diarrhea, ect. My mind was racing with potential projects.

The next day, we went out “into the bush” for a vaccination day with a local village. Under a giant tree, we watched one of the nurses give vaccinations and a small presentation on the importance of breastfeeding to these women carrying infants and small children on their backs on their way to the fields. Let me tell you, this is the difference between first world and third world problems. These women, so strong and overworked, still had a sense of humor while waiting for their turn for vaccinations. Unfortunately, I couldn’t understand it. In the region where I will be working, very few people actually speak French. I’ll have to learn Fulfulde (a language most of the north speaks) and Kapsiki (the tribal language). Many women don’t ever go to school and even more don’t make it past primary school, so very few speak anything other than their tribal language. I have my work cut out for me.

But I’m excited.

Ooo, another benefit to living up north in the desert: funny thing about deserts: there’s very little water. Funny thing about mosquitos: they need water to breed. Yeah, you guessed it; there is very little malaria in the north! I’ll only have to worry about it for a few months out of the year as opposed to every day!

This long update is coming to a close, I promise. We traveled back without incident, making it back to Bokito in one piece, although missing our posts the moment we left. Most other people had a similarly great and welcoming experience in our stage. I will also have a “post-mate”: an agroforestry volunteer in a nearby village (about 15 km away).

This week has been tough readjusting to school and stage. But at least we know what’s coming now and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. We’re spending these next few weeks just enjoying our fellow stagieres and learning as much as possible before heading off to our remote locations to start changing the world.

That’s a lot for now, there’s still more I’d love to say, but I’ll spare your sore eyes. Miss you all, thanks for supporting me with emails of encouragement, and thanks for reading my long, drawn out editorials on my life. Life is good. Keep on dancing. Ciao!