A Little to the East

As I sit down to write, my first thought is “Wow, it’s been a long time.” I’ve been slacking. Journaling my experience is so important to me, but sometimes I get so caught up in those experiences I forget to take the time to write them down. As I’ve so recently found out, so many more people read this blog than I thought. Thanks for busting my chops about being a more consistent writer. I’ll do my best.

The last time I wrote, I was just getting ready to head south before coming to America for my sister’s Graduation. A lot has happened since then. I’m going to break this up and write it chronologically, but this post is going to focus on what I did before I left Cameroon.

Up until May, I had visited 9 of Cameroon’s 10 regions (Central, South, Southwest, West, Northwest, Littoral, Adamoua, North, and Extreme North). And by “visited” I mean that I’ve passed through. To say I’ve stayed at least at night, that would have brought it down to 7. I’ve only passed through the North and the Littoral Regions. I was anxious to get to America and felt like I was twiddling my thumbs, jumping to get going, so I left post early and headed down to Yaounde (where the airport is) the long way.

“The long way” is a relative term. Normally, I go by train. That journey looks like this:

·      2 hour motobike ride to Mokolo

·      1.5 hour bus ride to Maroua (spend the night in Maroua)

·      8-12 hour bus ride to Ngoundere (leave at 3 am)

·      14-24 hour overnight train ride to Yaounde.

It’s a three day trek, but it’s not a bad ride. Since I had time to kill, I decided to visit some friends and the last region on my list: the East. The East is the largest but least densely populated of all the regions. Peace Corps has the least amount of volunteers in the East, although that is currently changing. It is known for its animal reserves (there’s a few reserves that are home to many different primates including gorillas), its amazingly luscious jungles, and the pygmies. It is one of the less-developed regions, if not the least, with very few villages host to electricity and/or running water. The people in the East are considered to be very poor.

Also in the East are some of my best Peace Corps friends. So I headed on down to visit them. I took my time going down there, visiting friends and posts along the way. I spent a few nights in Ngaoundere and explored the city for the first time. Ngaoundere is considered to be the gateway to the Grand North, probably because that’s where the train stops. There’s a lot of trade, a lot of trucking routes and therefore a lot of prostitution and a higher percentage of HIV/AIDS affected individuals than the rest of the country. There I explored their huge market, full of things I’ve never seen in the Grand North and met a PCV friend, a Lebanese working in Ngaoundere for his family’s oil company. It was very interesting to meet Whalid and see how some people from more developed countries choose to live in a country like Cameroon. Going into house was like being transported to another country. It was a nice little vacation. He had all the amenities that we as PCV’s sometimes like and also luxuries like crystal wine classes, his own water tower (he will probably never not have running water), air conditioning, ect. It made me realize the simplicity that many of us volunteers choose to live with.

From there, I went to Meiganga, also in Adamoua, where I met up with some other volunteers.

I realize as I’m writing this that my readers might not really be interested in trivial social events. I’m choosing to document them to try to extend the view of a PCV past me. Other people have different experiences and problems in-country. Different regions and posts end up with a completely different service experience.

Anyways, Meiganga. There I met with a few volunteers where we had a great evening, drinking and chatting. I learned from them that Unicef was a big part of their service. One girl was working in a small village that was host to 5 different aide organizations in addition to Peace Corps. She said in some ways, people were stepping on people’s toes, everyone trying to do the same thing, but at the same time, accomplishing very little. She went on to describe the problem with some of the aide organizations here in Africa, which can probably be applied to most third world countries. NGO’s come into her town. Maybe they’ll send one person to come and meet the mayor or the principal. He or she will stay a day or two. While they are there, they give out money and or goods, and then leave. Sometimes they’ll continue sending money or goods, and every once in a while come back to check things out, but other than that, they don’t spend their time on the ground. Sometimes the things that they give are useless without other equipment or training. For example, in the Southwest, a volunteer went to post and found a solar-oven that had been given to a community that no-one knew how to use and there it was just sitting there, wasting away. She made that one of her projects. But that isn’t always the case. A lot of time, communities are given what end up being useless, either because they can’t or don’t know how to use it, or because it wasn’t what they needed in the first place. The organization gave it to them without doing a community assessment first.

The organizations that give money, though, they are the ones that cause problems for us. In a corrupt country like Cameroon, there is very little accountability. Send a check that supposed to help build a new wing in a school to a principal, and more than likely, the principal will end up with a new smart phone or motobike before that school sees new benches to replace the ones that rotted away years ago.

This kind of attitude causes problems for people on the ground, like us. We aren’t there to give money, or candy, or goods. But these villagers see the color of our skin, think we’re all the same and expect that from Peace Corps Volunteers. We are there to give them information and help them to achieve sustainable projects. That does not include giving them money or goods. Then the community is disappointed with what we do have to offer, and oftentimes less receptive to working with us. It’s a vicious cycle.

“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

This is a good analogy between the differences in how our organizations view “aide”. This brings up the question of ethics of “aide” work and who’s best interest is really at heart, and whether or not it helps the people we’re “trying” to help. This opens up a whole new line of thought of what “help” is. Are we trying to “help” them become more like a western civilization? Is that help? What are our goals? Whose best interest is at heart? If we left these people alone, letting them operate as they have for thousands of years, would they be better off?

I don’t have an answer to answer of these questions. I’ve contemplated them, argued them, and finally decided that my job here is to learn as much as possible and raise the general level of health in my community. But others grapple with these questions daily. It’s certainly something to think about.

Enough deep questions and back to my little trip. From Meiganga, I headed out to Bertoua (in the East, Yay ,I made it!) and finally Messamena. Messamena is a small village, close to the Dja Reserve and many pygmy encampments, and home to my close friend Eddie. Messamena has no power and no running water. It is more “en brusse” than my small town of Mogode, or even my post-mate Luke, who is 30 minutes away from me, en brusse. Messamena is an interesting post, though, because up until the 40’s or 50’s a hoard of German’s lived there. They built the roads and lined them all with palm trees. Now it’s like walking down the avenues of Miami or Los Angeles. They built a beautiful hospital that still stands. Buildings in various stages of disrepair dot the village as it sprang up around this German post. It’s a gorgeous little town, very reminiscent of our little training-town: Bokito.

I stayed with Eddie for a few days and explored his life. He and his friend have built a little American Mecca in the middle of the rainforest. With bamboo they harvested themselves. They built most of their own furniture, and decorated the place with bamboo planters, a bamboo porch, ect. It was absolutely gorgeous. At night, it was all lit up with candlelight, making it eerily seem like we were vacationing in Bali or something like that.

While in Messamena, we went out on adventures! I myself helped harvest bamboo. I wielded a machete like a mad woman! I chopped and pulled that bamboo down and then dragged it almost a mile back to Eddie’s house. As Cameroonian woman like to say: “Je suis forte!”. Another day, we bike rode down to the river. We took Eddie’s puppy, Jackie Chien, with us too. There, we grabbed some pirogues (similar to canoes) and headed out onto the black river, into the jungle. For oars, we used giant river reeds, or palm stems. While not quite as efficient as our paddles, they worked pretty well. It was a gorgeous day and very soon, we were surrounded by only the sounds of jungle as trees towered over us, sheltering us from the sun. Every once in a while, the tranquility was punctured by Jackie Chien freaking out and jumping overboard, hoping to make it back to shore. It was extremely entertaining; that poor dog. But she definitely learned how to swim that day.

Another day, we went out by motobike, way out “en brusse” to a little village where Eddie was hosting Unicef a few days later. We explored the school, the water source and the surrounding areas. Apparently, mostly pygmy children attend the school. Our interest piqued, we went out for a hike, into the jungle, in search of the pygmies themselves. After about an hour of hiking, we stumbled right into the middle of a pygmy encampment. Their huts were made out of sticks and palm fronds and spread throughout a cleared area of the jungle. In the middle of the clearing was an old woman in front of a fire. As we sat there, chatting, more women returned from their days’ work. As expected, the pygmy women were short, all less than five feet. They were all wearing ragged clothes and didn’t speak French. Our guide was also our interpreter. The women who had just returned were carrying bundles. We opened the bundles to find huge, wriggles masses of grubs! This was their dinner and breakfast. It was disgusting. Eddie says he’s tried fried ones before, and they taste just like bacon. I was glad we were arrived just as the live grubs did, because if they had been cooking when we arrived, politeness would have dictated that we try them if we were offered them, and I’m not sure that I could have stomached it. Although, as I write this, I’m shaking my head, because I would have tried it. Of course, I would have, but I don’t regret that I didn’t have the chance to try.

Anyways, it was interesting to visit this little culture within a culture. The pygmies live separate from town and have their own existence, mostly separate from the currency, language, and education of Cameroon. They trade mostly, often food such as gorilla meat. They live off the land and hunt what they can find, regardless of how endangered they are (I don’t think that concept really exists for them). As a rule, in the East, you always have to be careful when you eat “bush meat”. It could be a primate, a snake, a giant rodent, or some other animal I’ve never heard about. I did not eat any “meat” while I was there, thank you very much.

It was a great little vacation, Messamena. I left there with a new appreciation for Cameroon but also ready to head back to civilization. And so, I headed to Yaounde to catch my flight for the states.