Birthday Celebrations

Birthday Update

This Friday was my 23^rd birthday. In the states, I don’t spend a lot of time celebrating my birthdays. It always seemed like a pretty arbitrary day to celebrate; it wasn’t like I had accomplished anything. My thought was if I was going to be celebrating anything, it should be the effort my mom put forward to give birth to me. So, mom, thank you! And Congratulations on my birthday!

This year though, without my typical gaggle of friends and family to surround me, I was not really looking forward to my birthday and surprisingly missing celebrating it. I woke up, feeling like it wasn’t different from any other day here in hot Africa. But then the calls starting coming in. My whole family called me, including my grandparents. Any day that I get to talk to anyone is a celebration in itself, let alone everyone in my family!

My younger sister, Katie, had also sent me envelope, written all over it that it couldn’t be opened until my birthday. So I sat down with my coffee and opened it, expecting a cute card. In the cute card was a USB drive, which I promptly checked out. And lo and behold, here was my family and entire gaggle of friends wishing me a happy birthday. They had all put together a thirty minute video to wish me a happy birthday and send along their love and support. I laughed and cried as I watched all these people I watched them dance, jump, and talk across my screen. It was the best birthday present I could have possibly received. Thank you to all who contributed. Since Friday, I’ve watched the video 5 times. I imagine this will become my rainy day go-to ritual, and I’m pretty excited about it. 

The rest of the day, I spent some time getting stuff together before heading out to Mokolo. There I met up with Luke, my post mate, and some other volunteers in the Mokolo cluster to celebrate. We went all American with salads, PB and J’s and even some sausage from Portugal (where someone has recently returned from a vacation). There was even presents: I got chocolate, a beautiful bracelet, and a jar of “stool sample” or homemade peanut butter accompanied by a lovely poem. Tina even made me a cake! Carrot cake with real icing! It was an awesome night.

The next morning we all headed out to Maroua for our regional meeting, after which we resumed festivities. It was also the birthday of another volunteer up here, so we celebrated together. Our friends had made us a cake and we all went out to dinner. From there the night got crazy. We bar hopped for a few hours before heading to a local club. There were about 20 volunteers taking this club by storm. We danced four hours, harassing the DJ into playing some American music along with the Cameroonian. At some point during the night, a couple of us decided we needed a pick-me-up and grabbed some Kola nuts. These are a traditional food that is full of caffeine. We danced until 4 am and then came home and celebrated some more at the transit house.

I couldn’t sleep because of the Cola nuts so stayed up to skype with some friends. It was amazing. I got passed around and saw some of my best friends from college for the first time in months!

Anyways, bottom line is, we all celebrated Cameroonian style. I had an amazing time and it was one of my best birthdays ever. I miss home more than ever right now but am so grateful that there are so many people on that side of the world who love me and support me in my crazy endeavors. Thank you guys!

This week, I’ll be getting ready for my meeting with my women’s group on Saturday. We’ll be covering Malaria. In addition, we’ve started doing presentation with our vaccinations in the bush. Right now we’re teaching eye health as trachoma and pink eye are a huge problem right now. I’m heading back to post today in a few hours and am ready for a week of work. 

Safety

Hey all,

Things here in Africa are starting to pick up a bit. Travel is in my future.

This last week I spent in Maroua at a seminar for Behavior Change Communication. It was week spent in a hotel, (with running warm water and a pool!!!!) learning about techniques to analyze and help facilitate change in behavior. It was a great learning experience and a wonderful time. About 15 other volunteers were there, all from the Extreme North and we had a good time getting to know each other in addition to learning. The week culminated in the hotel’s nightclub opening just for us on Saturday where we had an amazing night, Peace Corps style. That means so much dancing. We gave the DJ a USB key with US music and danced the night away. The dance floor was surrounded by mirrors, which provided us with hours of entertainment. Cameroonians do this thing we call “mirror dancing”. They do a slow dance with themselves in the mirror for hours. The workshop was done with each of us bringing a Cameroonian counterpart, so our counterparts ripped up those mirrors. I even got in a little bit of my own mirror dancing. I must say, it’s as entertaining to do as it is to watch.

            After the conference I stayed a few more days in Maroua to get some grocery shopping done. We also happened to meet some people from the embassy while we were up there. A couple people have written me to inquire about my safety while I’ve been here. Let me take this time to assure you all that I’m being well taken care of. For those of you who aren’t aware, I am right on the Nigerian border, only minutes away. Right now, there is some unrest there as some riots have erupted in response to some monetary issues in the country. There are also some Christians being expelled from the northern part of the country. First of all, I’d like to make the point that Cameroonians love peace above all else. When the elections were going on and talk regarding Paul Biya as the next president was happening, everyone I spoke to was agreed about peace in the country being the number one priority. That attitude extends to this situation. Not only is our Peace Corps safety officer carefully monitoring the situation, but local police and military presence has stepped up around the border. In addition, I share a wall of my home with the commander of the local military force, so I’m extremely safe at home. He comes running if he even hears me vomit, let alone if I was in trouble.

In addition to all that, the embassy sent a small military contingent up here recently to check out the area and make sure all of us were safe. These guys were the people we met last weekend and they assured us of our safety. They worked with the border patrol to make sure that all t’s were crossed and I’s dotted and assured us that we are safe were we are. So I’d like to extend that knowledge to my friends and family. I won’t be going to Nigeria and I am safe here in Cameroon. Especially here in my own home. To ensure my safety, I won’t be travelling at night anytime soon and lock my doors when I go to sleep. But I’m really not worried about it. I don’t feel threatened, nor does anyone else in my community. I have seen no signs of the struggle in Nigeria affected life here at all, except that gas prices have gone up, and things imported from Nigeria were scarce when the border was closed for a few days. So basically, from the mouths of the Embassy, the Peace Corps, the local military, and my friends here in town to your ears, I am perfectly safe.

If that does change, Peace Corps has an emergency contingency plan set in place to evacuate us quickly. One of the reasons I chose the Peace Corps when I chose to work abroad was because of the safety it offered.

I don’t write this post to alarm anyone, especially if they didn’t already have knowledge of the issues in Nigeria. I’m only writing to dispel any fear or worry you guys have. The bottom line is I’m safe. I will continue to be safe. But if that changes, I can easily and safely get to a safe place. So still your fears! Lots of love from Mogode!

Meres Communautaires

This weekend I had my second meeting with “Mères Communautaires”. This group of women comes to meetings once a month where I’ll be starting a conversation on different health topics. Afterwards, these women have the responsibility of starting these conversations in their own “quartiers” or neighborhoods with their friends. The idea is that peer education is better received and better translated into the local languages.

This weekend, the meeting, which was supposed to start at 8, started around 9:30 and went until 1 pm. The topic was Nutrition for Children. We talked about food groups, proportions, common signs of malnutrition and prevention. While the information could easily have been conveyed in one hour, the prolonged meeting time, in my opinion, is a sign that the women were really getting into it. My friend, Asta, into Kapsiki translated every slide for the women who don’t speak French. Then, the women would ask questions; the questions they would ask were amazing and showed that they were really understanding the topic. In fact, many of the questions were regarding how to deliver the information as opposed to the information itself, indicating they were already one step ahead of me. Also in the room, I had a nurse from the hospital. He was there to help answer any medical questions that I couldn’t, provide any additional information and help make my French understandable. At this point in my service, while my day-to-day French is pretty good, my topic-specific French is lacking. It helps that after I write every presentation I have to translate it into French, but still, my vocabulary is severely lacking for many technical areas. Needless to say, I was more than grateful to both my interpreter and the nurse.

The greatest part of the meeting though, was when we took a break for a snack. We were having beans, beignets and tea. The women, on their own accord starting breaking down the food into their respective food groups and trying to determine if it was a balanced meal or not and what could be added to make it more balanced. Some women mislabeled some of the foods, but immediately other women stepped in to correct them. The entire break was dominated by the same conversation in three different languages. It was so exhilarating. They had learned what I had taught them and were not only internalizing the information but also using critical thinking skills to dissect the information and apply it.

You guys sitting at home may not understand the significance behind this. Here in Cameroon, there is no critical thinking or problem solving. School is about repetition and memorizing lines. In America, we are taught thought processes, such as problem solving and critical thinking from a very early age. College reinforces learning new thought processes as we are introduced to new methods of study. But here, no one even thinks about it (no pun intended). School is not to enrich the mind, it’s not to teach someone how to think or apply learning in new ways. These kids go to school and memorize lines. Their English consists of “Good Morning, Madame. How are you? We are sitting down.” Rarely have I heard any Francophone Cameroonian speak above that level without some sort of private study on their own. So the fact that these women were taking what I was putting down, thinking about it, and applying the information to new data was astounding, especially considering they had just learned it five minutes before. Some of these women have never even been to school, although, in this case, I might be tempted to say that is an advantage.

I am so ridiculously proud of them, and, also, proud of myself. With help, I was able to teach an entire lesson in French and keep them engaged for hours. This week, my words are reaching corners of this and neighboring communities that I’ve never even seen.  I like to think that maybe a pregnant woman is getting enough protein today, or that someone’s kids are getting an extra orange, all because of the conversations these women are having. Yesterday, walking through town, three women stopped me and told me that they hadn’t been at the meeting (one of them wasn’t even in the group) but they had heard it was great and were wondering if I had any extra handouts.  Whoo hoo!

So that’s what making a difference feels like. This is why I’m here, to teach and empower and inspire people to make easy changes in their lives to improve their quality of life. And let me tell you, it feels good!

As for the rest of my life, things are going well. Friendships are being strengthened. My neighbor had a baby yesterday, and apparently, her Christian name is going to be Suzie. I’m flattered and flabbergasted.

The puppies are all gone. Sent to homes of their own. One of them, however, now belongs to my neighbor, the same one who just had a baby, so I still get to see him everyday. He gets so excited every time he sees me, he sometimes pees all over me. Perhaps to replace the lost puppies, or maybe just because Luke and I were craving some eggs, we got some chickens: a rooster and a hen. All Cameroonians believe that hens don’t lay eggs unless roosters are around (not true, according to some awesome googling by Kelley).  The hen doesn’t lay eggs yet though; my neighbor says she might be too young. And the rooster is driving me nuts. He crows 50 times an hour, at least. Every night at 2:30, he starts crowing for about half an hour, without fail. Then, he’s up at 5:30, crowing. They’ve taking a spot right underneath my bedroom window to sleep in at night, so there is no way his crowing could be any louder. I’m sure I’ll be able to sleep through it eventually, but for now, I’ve been tempted to throw things at him every morning. Yesterday, they both got out. I’m not sure exactly how. But my neighbor and I woke up early and started scouring the neighborhood for the rooster (the hen we found right away and chased back into my yard). Have you ever tried to catch a chicken? It’s really hard. They go slowly, letting you get nearer and nearer, teasing you into thinking this will be easy and then they simply go ballistic, running, jumping, kinda flying and screaming away from you. They only way to catch them is to corner them. By the time we found my rooster, we’d accidentally already caught a neighbors rooster that turned out not to be mine. We chased my rooster for a least an hour before getting him into an abandoned house and cornering him. What a freaking adventure. If I ever wanted to live on a farm, this rooster is dispelling that fantasy for me. But at least I know that sometime in the near future, I’m going to be eating this free range, pain in my butt rooster and he will be delicious. And I will enjoy him even more because his crowing will be forever silenced!!! Mwahahahaha (evil laugh). And maybe I’ll get to eat some eggs on the side.

Culinarily, things are still an adventure here. I got a package from my family with spices and herbs and I’ve been going crazy. Last week I made a full Mexican meal; I made everything from tortillas, to refried beans to fajita style green peppers and onions from scratch. Took a couple hours, but hmmm it was so good. Guess what I used to roll out my tortillas: an old giant beer bottle left by my predecessor. Resourceful, eh? I tried my hand at some Indian food with dal, but that didn’t work out so well. Italian food has been much more successful with some minestrone soup and spaghetti making me pretty happy. I’m also getting much better at making break. This morning, I cut into my most recent loaf, crunchy and crispy on the outside and fluffy and fully cooked on the inside. Bottom line is, meal times are so much fun right now, exploring what’s possible and pushing the boundaries of what I know.

So that’s life right now! There are good days and bad, better days and worse, but I’m making a dent and settling down and having fun. A lot of people have been asking about what I’m working on over here, so I might add a section of my blog to current projects, both for PCV’s to use and for you guys who have interest to read. So keep a lookout for the new section. Love to you all back home. Thanks for the support and love coming my way! 

How about a glass of water?

Hey all, first of all, let me just express my thanks openly. When I got to Maroua, I found our PO Box there full of letters, notes, and packages for me. I feel so downright loved. Thank you family and friends for your well wishes, your thoughts, and the action of putting that love in my little mailbox. You’ll be hearing from me!

Unfortunately, now, more than ever, my internet use is super limited. Internet in Maroua was down, and my internet key that I have at post uses a carrier that has been out of service for three weeks at the time of my writing. As a result. I have these updates piling up, as well as emails to check and responses to send. So, please forgive me my delay in answering any email, facebook (although, please I prefer email), or any other type of messaging (although in that case, you’ll probably never get an answer, with my limited internet time, I tend to focus on my email).

Enough for excuses: my update! Today was really extremely successful day, in more ways than one. I woke up at 5:30 to get ready to go “en brusse”, meaning that we went out to a small isolated village where people have a hard time coming in to the hospital. I do this one of my counterparts a few times a week. We end up hitting each of the little villages in our area about once a month. There we do our vaccination campaigns. Meaning, that my counterpart actually sticks them, while I try to communicate with the mothers (very hard considering none of these women in the villages speak French; depending on the village, they speak either Fulfulde or Kapsiki), and when that fails, just make funny faces at kids and sometimes hold one or two. Today, I had the lucky chance to meet a mom and her 3-hour-old daughter. While I still haven’t witnessed any births yet, this isn’t the first newborn that I’ve met and I’ve been able to watch and even help with the Prenatal consultations at the hospital. This village, Ploumtom, is one that I’ve written of before; this is the village with the little girl with suspected polio. It’s a cute little village on top of a hill above a small stream. You can see the mountainous landscape for miles.

When we got to Ploumtom, my counterpart (hereto after referred to as Dieudonne) did the rounds with his loudspeaker that plays jingle bells, letting mothers know we’ve arrived. While we waited for them to show up, we visited some of Dieudonne’s friends. The first house we visited was dark and smoky. We went in and sat on the matt they rolled out for us. Welcoming us into her home was the oldest, skinniest, most lively little old lady I’ve ever seen. You could see every muscle and sinew in her arms and legs. She was so cute. Through Dieudonne, she joked with me about finding me a husband and coming back to the states with me.

From there, we visited the house of Dieudonne’s cousin. She married the village medicine man. When we got there he and his grandson were busy preparing some natural remedies against Typhoid. This consisted of smashing sticks and pulverizing some bark. On the bowl at his feet he already had shredded leaves and what looked like mulch. Dieudonne, who works for the hospital, said his medicine was effective and took a swig of another medicine in front of me. It looked like apple cider gone very bad with cloudy mold floating in it. I politely declined.

From there, we continued with the vaccines. There weren’t many mother’s today, but there was a mother with the first set of twins I’d seen here. They were telling me how here, after twins are born, its required to through a huge party, or else both will die before they reach three months old. On their necks, they had strings with little leather pouches sewed on. Apparently these are to guard the kids against the spirits that come and kill little kids. (bandits maybe? Or a supernatural explanation for natural sickness?)

From there, we left to head back to town, but we took a little detour. Dieudonne took me to see the dam/lake that apparently the Catholic mission is building. I have my doubts about the source of the funding, but I’ll explore. The scene was something out of the Prince of Egypt crossed with Bob the builder. Topless men with hard hats on were wielding jackhammers, pickaxes, shovels, wheelbarrows, and survey equipment. They had, in the last year and half, constructed a huge hole, at least 100 feet deep in some parts. Men with pickaxes broke up the ground as they expanded the hole. Men with shovels worked behind them, throwing dirt into the wheelbarrows which were efficiently carted up by a assembly line of wheelbarrows. On the other side of the hole were men tackling the large stones, breaking them apart little by little with huge hammers. I felt transported back in time to the railroad days. It was something to see. Apparently it will be done in two years time (after I leave of course). But this dam is designed to be the solution to the water problems of Mogode.

Water is a huge problem in Mogode. Wells are abundant, however, wells are not nearly deep enough to get into deep groundwater sources, and therefore, dry up in March. There are two forages in town. One is the Catholic Missions and the other you have to pay 5000 a year to use, eliminated the ability to most of the people of Mogode to use it. A forage is a well so deep that instead of pulling water up, you pump it up, using one of many foot mechanisms. These tend not to dry up, but if they’re not dug deep enough, they can. Starting in March, there’s a huge water shortage here in Mogode. There are local villages that have small streams that you can dig in to find water, or some towns have forages. Mogode, though, is notorious for its water problem. I’ve been thinking about working on trying to get a forage for public use started while I’m here, but it looks like they might already have a solution to the water problem in the works. I’m going to investigate though. I plan on heading over to the Catholic Mission sometime this week.

The rest of my day at the hospital was devoted to teach the head of the Health Center (he’s in charge of day to day issues like inventory, ect) how to use excel. I may have stated this before, but the hospital has numerous computers that aren’t being used. I brought it to the doctors attention in order to try to get one of them made available to the staff and the pharmacy. Stupidly, I volunteered to help teach people how to use the computers and programs. The doctor and one of the other coordinators took this out of context and have officially made me their “IT guy”. They’ve asked me to make wedding invitations, reproduce excel spreadsheets (that already existed) and other stupid things. Being as “nice” or “passive aggressive” (choose the word choice you prefer), I haven’t objected, but I’ve started avoiding the doctor and coordinator. It’s something I’m going to have to deal with at some point. I’m certainly not here to be a computer expert and that’s not how I want to make a difference. I’m happy to teach them how to use computers and reallocate resources to improve their efficiency, but at some point, I’m going to have to say no to wedding invitations. A happy balance will have to be struck.

Life at home is good. A package full of spices and love arrived from my family (sent around thanksgiving) so my food situation has improved significantly. The puppies are so cute, but such a pain in my butt! I’ve started weaning them, which Nousnous caught onto with excitement. In the meantime, I’m dealing with pee-puddles and little turds all over the house whenever I let them in. They’ve started stealing things like paper (pictures that have fallen off the wall), shoes, socks, ect and bringing them into their little doghouse. They’ve dug up one of my tomato plants 5 times. They are trouble makers. But it’s so nice to come home and watch their three cute little faces peek out of the doghouse right before they come running up, jumping and licking me all over. I’ll be happy when they’re gone (3 is too much) but I do love having them here. I’ll try to post some photos. This is particularly long update, rambling and stream of consciousness, but hopefully you followed. All my love!

Under the Bridge

I was on the bus, driving into Maroua (the capital city) the other day, when I looked out the window and saw an “Africa moment”. You know what I mean; a moment when you are most certainly in Africa and couldn’t possibly be anywhere else in the world. A moment when you’re witnessing things that people at home can barely imagine. So I’m going to paint you this picture. Give you a chance to share in this “Africa moment” with me.

I’m in a bus manufactured to fit 25 people at most. We’re crammed in, at least 35 of us. In front of me is a little girl, perhaps a year old. She’s been staring at me the whole hour and half long bus ride. For the first leg, she was crying out of fear; but about halfway through the ride, she looked at me calmly, put out her little hand with her pointer finger pointed up, as if to say “wait”. Then she starts wagging it at me. “One of these things is not like the others.” My white skin sticks out more than if I was riding naked. Which, by the way, would have made the ride more enjoyable. Cameroonians think that the dust kicked up by the road gives people Malaria. Needless to say, every window was closed and locked while the sun beat down, causing a green house effect inside the bus. Next to me is a young man, looking me up and down (granted, as far as Cameroonians go, he was really nice about it. He didn’t propose at all, just asked for my number before I left the bus station).

As we reach Maroua, we drive over a bridge. During the rainy season, there’s a river underneath the bridge. But now, below us is just a huge sandy trench. The sun is setting, a giant red orb obscured by the dust. No clouds anywhere. In the riverbed, there’s so much activity. Little children are digging holes in the center of the bed, trying to find water. Mothers and wives are all on one side of the river, with the holes they’ve already dug visible next to the sheets and laundry laid out on the sand to dry in the sun. The women are busy beating the last of their laundry against the rocks that mark the bank of the river. On the other side of the river, a huge group of boys in ripped clothes, no shoes, and shaved heads are dustily playing a game of soccer. They’ve grabbed huge branches and set up goals that stick up where in a few months time they’ll be swimming. A small cloud of dust surrounds the makeshift field as the boys run furiously after a ball. Weaving in and out of everyone are young shepherds, steering their huge herds of goats in between women and children. A few stray goats run onto the soccer field, where the littlest boys wave their hands and yell to scare them out of the way.

I wish I had had my camera ready for that. This little slice of life felt very declarative to me. “This is what we are. This is what we live.” Just wanted to share this moment with you. Hope you feel like you were there with me.