Polio

Ladies and Gentlemen, Readers and Listeners, Merry Christmas, Happy Channukah, Joyous Kwanzaa, and (a happy greeting) (insert holiday here). This Channukah evening finds me the only Jew for miles around, enjoying my mountain sunset and using what few ingredients I have to try to make soup resembling my mother’s chicken noodle soup (the only vegetables I have are carrots and onions and I’m using beef instead of chicken, but so far it smells good, although, I do have a confession, for bouillon, I used an MSG cube). Having been unable to secure small candles or a menorah, my service tonight involves me imagining a gorgeous, huge menorah and lighting it, while saying the prayers aloud (I have a really good imagination; my menorah is very beautiful). An interesting anecdote: One of the first questions I often get asked is about my religion. Most people just stare blankly when I say Jewish (yes, I am saying it in French), but a few times I have gotten the response “O, well that’s the same thing, like Protestant”. Needless to say, I’ve spent quite a few hours the last few days trying to explain my religion, which, unsurprisingly, is hard with my 1000 word vocabulary (don’t actually know, that’s just an estimate).

People around here are really getting down and dirty getting ready for Christmas. They’ve been preparing since before I got here last week. I’ll be spending Christmas with my neighbors. You’ll get a full account next week.

This week, I’m going to focus on how I spent the last three days. I arrived in Mogode at a very opportune time. On Monday, we started a region-wide (all of the grand north) polio campaign. The idea is that for three days, a team of volunteers go door to door delivering the oral vaccine to every child under 5. It involved this great marking system, marking every house and the little pinky of every child to try to insure no one would be missed.

When I talked on the phone to my mom the other day, her first response was “I thought polio was eradicated.” And it was, in the US. But polio is still rampant here. Polio is a virus for which there is no treatment, only preventative measures (vaccine and good hygiene/water practices). A child who gets polio gets flu like symptoms and can develop paralysis, most notably in the legs. However, polio can strike in most areas of the body and most cases that result in death occur when vital muscles such as the diaphragm are paralyzed. 

When I was 14 and had my Bat Mitzvah, I donated a portion of my gift money to Rotary International, who was sponsoring an anti-polio campaign in Africa. It was an abstract idea back then that I chose to sponsor because one of my dad’s favorite presidents had polio and it seemed like something great to eradicate in the world. When I arrived on Tuesday to start the campaign, I looked at the coolers that all the volunteers were carrying with the vaccines, and, ironically enough, there was the Rotary International logo, campaigning to “Kick Polio out of Africa”. I feel like there was a cycle completed in some way; the money that I donated years ago may have bought the coolers and vaccines that I’m now helping to distribute. For the record, these coolers were older and I have no idea if they arrived with the vaccines or not, and whether or not Rotary sponsored this exact drive, but it felt like a little push of encouragement nonetheless.

So basically, I spent the last few days “helping” the supervisor. On the back of a moto, we traversed our whole health district, bringing more vaccines, making sure everyone was marking houses and children correctly, and checking out the different parts of the district to make sure they were covered. It was very helpful for me because I got to see our whole district, which includes many smaller towns, and explore Mogode while meeting new people. I don’t actually feel like I did a whole lot to help, having been unable to contribute at all (the people we spoke with for the most part only spoke Fulfulde and Kapsiki-another reason to learn as quickly as possible), but I did enjoy it.

On the second day of vaccination, the doctor from the hospital accompanied us out to a little town. It wasn’t until we arrived there that I realized he was coming along to investigate a reported case of possible polio. We arrived at the top of mountain, where this little town was hidden behind a grove of trees. Men were lounging on rugs in front of the Chief’s house as we went into a little mud hut to meet a paralyzed girl. She was about 4 years old, sitting by the door, just staring up at us, confused. When her mother helped her up, I saw that her legs were extremely deformed, creating an X with the lower part of her body. After interviewing her mother, we discovered that she had been this way since birth, effectively ruling out polio. Still, the doctor went through protocol, documenting the case with photographs. As we were about to leave town, another father came up to us, saying his daughter was paralyzed as well. A few minutes later, his 8-year-old daughter came scooting up, dragging one of her legs behind her. She had been sick 2 years before and ever since had been unable to use her right leg properly. The doctor said he was unable to confirm or deny polio just by looking at her, but he suspected that this was indeed a case. He documented this case just like the last, we shared a kola nut with the Chief and left town, as if it was no big deal. It’s just protocol for them: another day on the job. For me, it was like stepping back in time. Polio was a problem for my parents and grandparents. Not for me. Yet, here I am, in Africa, seeing it firsthand. Kinda strange.

It was a great week though. I met tons of people around town and all the Heads of the Clinics in our district. A bunch of different people approached me about possible projects they’d like to see done. The biggest problem in Mogode is water. About February of every year, the wells start drying up. By March and April, there is no source of water in the actual town of Mogode. People can either walk kilometers into the Bush to find another source of water or pay thousands of francs to people who will fetch it on motos. At this point, when I’m considering possible projects, water security seemed like it might be something I’d like to do. Today, the Chief of the Center at Sir (a city close by) approached me about expanding the education program that the previous volunteer had started. She worked with the vaccinator and went out into the Bush with him to give education presentations before every vaccination day to women who rarely go to hospitals and don’t have access to information or education. Again, something I might be interested in doing. This point of my service is all about getting integrated, talking to people, and exploring problems in the community. Advice from other volunteers has been “read a book in the center of town and let people come talk to you”, or “go grab a beer with anyone, meet everyone”. It’s an exhausting period of remembering names, gathering information informally, making friends, and trying to become a part of the community (as much as I can considering I stick out like a pumpkin in a sack of beans). Anyways, Happy Holidays and until next time!

Greetings From Mogode

Salutations to my family and friends. It is the evening of my first day here in Mogode, and I’m sitting down in my own little house, in my own little village to write to my peeps back home. The last two weeks have been a blur of activity. Just a short recap, the last two weeks of training were great. We took a field trip out to the western province to learn about Income Generating Activities such as pig-raising and tofu/soy milk making. We stayed a night in Bafoussam and just had an amazing time. Our last few sessions were busy as we quickly went over what to do on arrival at post, what we should expect, and how to stay safe. Then came swearing in. It was a huge deal. That morning, all of the programs dressed up in their respective, self-chosen pagne (fabric/type of clothing). Ours was a beautiful blue and white design with desert animals all over it. It turns out that it is the regional design of the Western Province, but we didn’t know that at the time.

Heading for the center, we said goodbye to our families’ for the last time. It was nonclimatic in my house. My little sisters accompanied me to the center, carrying my last bag on their head. I had cleaned out my room, left presents behind and said my goodbyes. As terrible as it sounds, especially considering that this family had hosted and housed me for the past few months, I was so happy to leave that house. They were extremely nice people, but the house was just so full of drama. Sisters stole from sisters and ran away. People lied to each other and coveted anything they had bought, defending that they still didn’t have any money (even after the family bought a 100,000 CFA = 200$ armoire). Beatings of the children were something common to wake up to and I was never allowed to sleep in past 7:30, even when I was sick. But they were so nice to me. Except for a small incident when I first arrived, they never took anything from me, they fed me at least twice a day, and helped me learn French. I certainly didn’t have the worst family. Nevertheless, when I said goodbye, I was ready for my own space. Ready to cook for myself, ready to use as much or as little water as I wanted, ready to wake up when I wanted to.

We left Bokito early to make it to Bafia with enough time to drop off the last of our things and make it to the Plaza in time. Most of my stuff had been taken a few days before as the larger items for the people up north was shipped up so we wouldn’t have to deal with it on the train.  The Plaza, which is typically just a grandstand-looking platform and bleachers was decorated and had been covered tents for the teachers, family members (we were allowed to invite 2 each) and the trainees. The PC staff, members of the Cameroonian government and local city officers and honorees were in the grand stand. The ceremony was taped and tons of photos were taken by photographers from different new agencies. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to track either the photos or video down yet, but I’m still working on it. There were a bunch of different speakers, including ministers (of the Department of Youth, and Agroforestry) and PC staff. Three of the trainees did speeches, one in Fulfulde, one in French, and one in Pidgeon English. Extremely entertaining. My favorite saying from the Pidgeon speech: Small small, we go catch monkey (meaning little by little we will perservere). Towards the end, the Ambassador asked us all to stand and take our oaths. We pledged our allegiance to our country and to our mission to protect the Constitution and to do our best to make a difference. And just like that, we were real-life sworn-in Volunteers. I almost wish we’d had hats to through up in the air. It felt remarkably like a graduation.

That night, our first night as volunteers, we celebrated. We no longer had rules of training to hold us back. We weren’t limited to two beers per night or had a curfew of 7 pm. We rented out a club at a hotel (which turned into just a conference room) and some rooms and had one last blow-out for our last night together. We danced, we ate street food, and we tried not to think about the next day, when we’d have to say goodbye.

But Friday came. And as we loaded our stuff into our respective buses, it really was time to say goodbye. Ever since I graduated college in June, I’ve felt like I’ve been floating. I haven’t unpacked all of my bags and was even homeless for a month as I travelled around saying goodbye. It’s become a common thing to leave everything that I know and start again. I finished college and started working full time on an ambulance service, dealing with real life problems 40 hours a week. I was a real-life person. Most of my friends had already moved away and I was living in a different part of Boston with a different group of people (please note: I loved living my sister this summer, this is certainly not a complaint, and I visited MIT often). Then I left Boston and travelled around for a few weeks, saying goodbye and living out of a carry-on. My next destination was Cameroon, where I left everything that I knew and came to a new country with a new language, where everything was unfamiliar. What made it bearable though, was going through the same things with my fellow trainees. We were all having problems with family, language, training, or just Cameroon in general. We went through tough times together and really made great friends. And now, I’m leaving them again. The rug is being pulled out from under me for the last time as I, once again, leave behind everyone I know, go to a completely new place, where most people only speak a language I don’t know yet.  It’s overwhelming. When I sat down to write in my journal last night, there was so much going through my head that I couldn’t write. There was too much to organize and think about.

All of this was going through my head as we said our teary goodbyes in Bafia and headed out to begin our journies to post. I took the same route as last time: bus to Yaounde, train to Ngaoundere, bus to Maroua. I travelled with all the people headed to the grand north and those of us heading to the extreme north said goodbye to people as we dropped them off on the way. The journey this time was much more pleasant as we rented out a massive bus to carry the 9 of us north from Ngaoundere to Garoua to Maroua. We had so much stuff, it was really the only way. All of us have bikes, water filters, two helmets (moto and bike), a huge trunk, and our bags that we arrived with, now much more full with pagne and clothes we’ve had made. We loaded the entire bus up. So much so, that the last three rows were filled with bags that couldn’t fit on top of the bus. So we had a huge bus to ourselves, where, for the first time since in Cameroon, we could spread out and enjoy the ride. It was fun. We bought meat and oranges through the window and watched the landscape change from savannah to mountains to desert.

I stayed in Maroua for a few days, getting some stuff for my pretty much empty house before heading out to Mogode. Maroua was amazing. We took time to explore the city and the huge market. The extreme north is known for its beautiful leather work and the artisan market in town was overflowing with it. Other volunteers told me about bags and boots and even jackets they had had made. We ate like kings! Street meat is a huge thing up there. Since beef is so prevalent, its sold on every corner in the form of brochettes, or skewers, served with a spicy powder (piment). Our last night together we went to the fancy restaurant/hotel in town and got things like French onion soup, tomato and mozzarella salad, and pizza with real cheese! It was freaking amazing. We burned bonfires at the cause and just enjoyed each others’ company.

Then, Tuesday afternoon, we said goodbye and headed to our posts. To get to Mogode, Luke and I rented out a van for all of our stuff. Luke is my postmate, meaning he’s in a town about 45 minutes away, Vite. He is an agroforestry volunteer and super nice. We don’t know each other that well yet, but I figure we’ll have a chance in the next two years to rectify that. Most of the way out was fine. However, as soon as we took the turn-off to Vite, the road got so bad, we were worried the top-heavy bus would fall over. Numerous times we started up one part of the road and didn’t make it, having to try two or three times before getting past that particular obstacle. Eventually, we reached Vite and dropped Luke off at his brand-new, beautiful little house in his really cute little town. I’m actually a little jealous of his post. They have water year-round (Mogode doesn’t- we end up getting water from Vite- I hire someone to get water for me) and it’s a really cute, very small village with really traditional houses, no electricity, and a gorgeous landscape.

From Vite, it was another hour or so (it’s shorter on a moto) to get to my house. By the time we arrived it was dark and we had to get some guys passing by to help me with some of the heavier stuff.

But I was here. At last, in my own little house in the north. It is very empty, but I had done a pretty good job of grabbing essentials before I left town. I made myself a simple dinner and unpacked some essentials before climbing into bed for my first night in my own house.

I never had this much space to myself before. It’s a four room house with two bedrooms, an indoor shower room, and a large common area that is used for the kitchen, dining room, and will be a living room. Outside is my latrine, my outdoor kitchen, and huge compound that I will hopefully turn into a garden. The night before I arrived, NousNon, the dog I’m inheriting from Alice had six puppies. The neighbors been taking care of her since Alice left, so I went and saw them today and they are so freaking cute. Although, I’m not sure I understand this correctly, but I’m pretty sure this is what my neighbor said. Since NousNon is so skinny, she figured she wouldn’t be able to handle all six and killed three. I’m appalled. If I understand correctly, it’s a measure of how Cameroonians think of dogs, and I hope to god I misunderstood. Regardless, there are now only three puppies.

Besides meeting the puppies, I spent most of my day unpacking, organizing, and getting used to my new house. Alice’s counterpart came by to meet me and we talked about what’s going on at the hospital the next few days. Tomorrow, I’m going in to see how the whole operation works and find out how I fit in to it. In the afternoon, feeling a little lonely, I went to town. I sought out some of the women Alice had introduced me to and received such an amazingly warm welcome. They remembered me, invited me into their homes, introduced me to their families, and spent so much time talking to me, teaching me a little Fulfulde and Kapsiki, and walking around town with me. Right before I was about to head home, one women sat me down and gave me dinner, delicious beef skewers with inyam (a root vegetable). She owns a restaurant but wouldn’t let me pay. And it was so good. I walked home feeling so upbeat and welcomed. So many people stopped me in the street to meet me and say hello and welcome me.

Earlier this afternoon, I went over in my head, “Why the f*&k am I here? What am I doing?” I took out some cards that my family had written me that I saved for rainy days and read them. I thought about going home. But now, I know I can do this. This will be hard. Communication is going to be a challenge. Figuring out where I fit it, what I want to do, and what I can do is going to be a challenge. But I’m up for it. The people here are so great and I want to help them. I can make this place my home. What seemed completely infeasible this morning is something that I can definitely do and am looking forward to right now.

Tomorrow, I’m going to wake up early and go to the hospital and explore there. They I’ll walk around the city, meeting people. Maybe set up some tutoring lessons. Maybe go for a run.

The next three months are going to be about learning about this community. I won’t be doing any projects or starting any crazy plans. I’ll be taking the time to figure out what this community needs and how I can help. It’s a big job, but I can do it.

As I sat down to some homemade mac and cheese (my parents and grandparents sent me a care package with cheese in it!) tonight, I felt really hopeful and ready for tomorrow. I think that’s what made sitting down and writing feel doable. It was a long post and full of things that I hadn’t really thought through before sitting down to write. I was talking to my dad the other day about this blog. I was trying to figure out who I was writing for: if I was writing for other people, or for myself. I’m not sure I have the answer in general, but this post, for the most part was written for myself. As a way to process the massive amount of change and craziness in my life and tie myself back to earth. Writing to people back home reminds me of why I’m here, what I can do, the differences between here and there, and that I’m loved and supported wherever I go and whatever I do. So thanks, for loving and supporting me! I love you guys and miss you!

To my friends and family reading this post, I’m getting my house ready for guests! Wink wink, hint hint. 

Arrived at Post

Spending my first night at post in my new house. I'm alive, well, and me and all of my things have made it here safely. A larger update to come soon.

1 more photo

After I took my "weave" out

FOTOS

O yay! Fun times!

Mac and Cheese!

Thanksgiving Football game at the High School

Sunrise in Bokito

Our Thanksgiving Chickens: Before Pic

Thanksgiving Decorations (Thanks Sam's Mom!!!)

Examining the prey

The Deed

The After Picture

The real after picture (I was full for days)

Diversity day dancing

Peace Corps Love!!

That's not even 1/10 of our crap

Sarah and Me!!!!

Swearing in day-In our swearing in pagne!!

Me and Djanabou!

The Ladies of the Extreme North with our Program Director, Sylvie

Santes!! (Health Volunteers) after swearing in

Swearing-in Tomorrow

Blog will be delayed this week due to swearing-in and moving. Tomorrow I will become a real-life Peace Corps Volunteer!

Thanksgiving-Cameroon style

Warning: Graphic food preparations to follow:

So, last week I talked about food that I’ve been eating here in Central Cameroon, native food, food cooked by Cameroonians. This past week, we turned the tables on the Cameroonians and cooked our own Thanksgiving feast within the confines of limitations of various availabilities.

I’m sure your first question is: did you eat turkey? Unfortunately no, there are turkeys here, but they’re expensive and it’s hard to find people who have them who are willing to sell. Instead, we kept with the poultry tradition and went with chicken. This also, surprisingly, was hard to accomplish. Our chicken finders searched Bokito high and low and came back empty handed. Apparently, the chickens wouldn’t be ready in time for our Thanksgiving feast on Saturday. They needed an extra 5 days. Apparently chickens here are only ok after they’ve hit 45 days. I’m not sure what the number of days is in America, but it’s certainly less than that. We had ourselves, a bonified, hormone free, free-range chicken! The downside of this healthy chicken, was it was tougher and stringier than American chicken, and also, once we opened it stomach contents, filled with pieces of plastic and what might have been cigarette butts it had eaten during it’s free ranging…. I’ll let you guys contemplate the merits of this “free range” style.

Anyways, so Friday, our chicken finders managed to procure three chickens from a farm in Bafia. We tied them up, stuck them under a bench in the car (where they proceeded to crap their brains out) and drove them home, listening to oldies and singing along the whole way. Saturday was execution day. After our morning classes, three of the trainees (the same people who were our chicken finders) went out back to begin the chicken preparing process with some of our language instructors and the old man who lives behind the center.

Warning: Graphic parts start here!

Step 1: Hold them upside down. Apparently a blood rush to the head makes the killing less painful and calms them down.

Step 2: Cut off the head. Using a stick with a notch cut into it for our chopping block, the heads were sawed off quickly with a blunt machete. The headless animal was held upside down as the blood drained and the body continued to move. They weren’t kidding about “chickens running around with their heads cut off”. For minutes after the head was removed, the legs and wings kept on going, as if to get away from its fate.

Step 3: Submerge in boiling water. This makes the plucking process easier. Unsurprisingly, Cameroonians never let anything go to waste and the chicken heads were prepared along with the rest of the body.

Step 4: Pluck. This is pretty satisfying for someone who likes to pluck people’s eyebrows. But it takes a really long time. There are so many feathers! We even defeathered the head.

Step 5: A quick grill: Cameroonians, after they pluck, put the chicken over an open fire quickly to allow us to better get at the feathers that didn’t come out easily and to clean it more easily. This was followed closely by more defeathering.

Step 6: Clean the chickens. This is a very large, in depth process. First, the feet are separated. The feet are then skinned and prepared for eating. Then, the chicken is cut, breast to anus. The innards are removed very carefully (if you break the gallbladder, the chicken isn’t good anymore). You have to make sure you get the anus and all of the organs attached to the inside of the body cavity, except for the heart. This requires tugging, cutting, and careful prying. After all these things are removed, you start going through the innards. You remove the gall bladder and throw that out, but pretty much everything else is fair game. The stomach is cut open, the contents and lining removed. Interestingly enough, this is “a part for men only. Women are not allowed to eat the stomach.” We, of course, graciously complied; especially considering the plastic bits we removed from the stomach of one of the chickens. The intestines are then split and cleaned and everything is thrown into the pot to get prepared.

Step 7: Clean the head. Don’t forget about the head! The beak is lovingly chopped up and the neck opened so the esophagus can be removed. This was also thrown in to be cooked

End of Graphic Part

That was the end of our chicken adventure as it was stuffed with tomatoes and onions and shoved into the oven to roast. They turned out amazingly, by the way.

The rest of our feast was also pretty stellar. The rest of the trainees from Bafia came to our Bokito training center to enjoy the day. It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny days and there was so much food! People made hummus out of red beans, fried rice, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with caramelized peanuts on top, green beans (that was my addition), French fries, guacamole, and tons of other delicious dishes.

For desert, Sam’s mom had sent her some pumpkin pie materials so we feasted. Everyone got a bit of amazing pumpkin pie, chocolate cake, pineapple cobbler, fruit salads, and marble cakes.

Everything was so delicious. We stuffed our faces. I didn’t stop feeling full till the next day. Literally, walking was like churning butter in my stomach. But it was just so good, I couldn’t get myself to put the fork down.

So, needless to say, Thanksgiving was a success. We made substitutions (bush mango instead of apples in our stuffing, garlic bread without butter, ect.) and everything turned out delicious. I was so happy.

As stage is coming to an end (one week left) celebrations like these are becoming more and more important and exciting. We are using this time to build up the relationships that are going to get us through the next two years. It’s just as important, if not more so, than all the time spent learning about Cameroon, it’s languages and its people. And I am making great friends. People I will be able to count on in a bind, I’m happy to report. J

As swearing in nears- I’m getting excited to go and dreading leaving. I’ll be so sad to leave these amazing people. However, we will have IST (in service training) three months into our service, when we should be finishing up with our community assessments and getting ready to buckle down and begin projects. So our time together isn’t over, just spread out for now.

Speaking of swearing in: we have apparently been awarded a great honor this year. Our Cameroonian swearing is going to be featured online… somewhere. Apparently it will be taped, broadcasted, and lots of photos taken for the Peace Corps website. I think it has something to do with the 50^th Anniversary of PC Cameroon, but I’m not sure. I’m also not sure where this video or these photos will be available online. I have heard rumors of the PC website, or CNN, or some other random website. Unfortunately, my internet time and speed is extremely limited at the moment and I haven’t been able to find out where this will be. I encourage you, if your interested, to spend a few minutes on google. If you do find the website, please comment on this blog post so other people can benefit from your awesome googling.

Personal update: I got my first package this week and am feeling loved and in touch with my family back home (thanks for the calls guys!). Although, missing everyone immensely. Cravings of the week: Sour cream and onion Pringles, Gatorade, gold fish, and dark chocolate peanut M&M’s.