Some Pics

Diedonne as we walk to our Vaccination Site for the day

The inundated river we had to ford.

Women's group making Neem soap and Lotion

Finished products

Floods galore

Flooding in Northern Cameroon!

The seasons of Cameroon have been a frequent topic of this blog. But today we’re going to revisit it from a different perspective. This rainy season has seen the most rain in 60 years. All around northern Cameroon, towns and fields are flooding, people are being displaced and some are dying.

And I had absolutely no idea. So much for local news!

As the end of rainy season drew nigh, I did see some signs. It’s been raining almost everyday. The roads are terrible, and the electricity is off about 90% of the time. I might get a few hours a week.

A few weeks ago, when going out on a vaccination campaign, we came across a river that had swollen too much to be able to cross it by moto. So we hiked up our pants, walked across this river, and continued our way on foot. I didn’t think a whole lot of it. Just another adventure.

Then, Luke, my postmate, stopped coming in to town. A few weeks ago, I rode my bike out to his post. It was extremely challenging and I had to ford a few rivers with my bike. Apparently though, those rivers are so large now, that you can’t get across. Luke is literally stuck in his little village after heavy rains. He can’t leave unless he drives almost an hour out of the way. To get to Mogode which is south west of Vite, he has to go north for 20 minutes then all the way another large village before hitting the main road and going in the opposite direction for 30 minutes to get to Mogode. I also didn’t think a whole lot of this. I figured this was something that happened every rainy season.

Then we started hearing crazy stories. Last week 3 people died as they tried to cross different streams-turned-rivers on their motos and drowned. Sometimes they find the bodies, sometimes they don’t. There’s a weekly count of the people who drowned trying to cross the different rivers. Most of those are “en brusse” and relatively far away, so I never know the people who drown, but still, it’s a little crazy.

Last Friday, while chilling at the hospital for vaccination day, some guys came over from Rhumsiki, telling us about a house that collapsed during the rainfall the night before. The huts are made out of simple mud bricks. If they get too wet, they turn back to mud. This particular house slept 10 people. It collapsed in the middle of the night, killing 3 people, including a very old man.

And still, I thought this was normal. Very sad, of course. But the normal, rainy season, tragedies, right along with Cholera, Malaria, and Typhoid. And actually, I’m not sure that it isn’t normal. Maybe this kind of stuff happens every year. That would be sad, but it’s possible.

Then I came into Maroua, into the big city, where one gets news of the rest of the country, the world, and of course, has access to internet. Apparently, the country was flooding. The bridge to go south had washed out. Garoua was awash. Hundreds of villages had been completely covered by water and washed out. Volunteers were chilling in Maroua, waiting for rivers to go down so they could go back to post.

I took a bus down to Garoua yesterday and witnessed it for myself. Garoua is a pretty big city situated down in the bottom of a basin. Typically it’s surrounded by flat farmland, with mountains in the distance. It is the hottest city in Cameroon. For a while, we didn’t see anything, except maybe some washed out trees and puddles. Then, all of the sudden, we took a turn and to our left was a lake that wasn’t there before. You could see the tops of trees and the remains of some crops and what might have been homes sticking out through the water. But the water went on for miles it seemed. It was absolutely crazy. Except for the random plants sticking up, you couldn’t be certain that the lake hadn’t always been there. As we got closer, it got worse. Rivers were swollen to easily 20 times their normal size. We saw people poling boats, looking at the new banks, looking for things, probably lost belongings. Entire fields of dead corn poked up beside the road. It was ghostly. And completely insane.

How could a country be drowned like this and we hadn’t heard a word of it in village? Absolutely insane. Just goes to show the importance of news, I guess.

So, what is being done for these people whose homes have been destroyed, family members drowned and livelihoods ruined? I’m not entirely sure. We saw  two semi trucks heading up towards Garoua with Red Cross flags hanging from their grills. That was promising. O yeah and Paul Biya, the President came to visit the families. Although I’m pretty sure he did more harm than good. As he drove up the main road, he shut it down to all traffic for fear of assassination (apparently we recently removed two Garoua council members from office). So for at least four hours, the one and only road coming into Garoua from the South was blocked. Trucks, buses and cars were lined up for miles; food spoiling in the hot sun; tourists and residents alike stalled in their travels. What normally took 9 hours to do by bus took us 15 hours. How could stopping all traffic possibly help these people?! And what possible support or help did he bring or offer? I don’t know, but I have a feeling it wasn’t a lot.

But people here are resilient and community based. As the rains die away, people will come back by the thousands with family members to help them rebuild. In a few months, you’ll hardly be able to tell entire towns had been washed away. Hopefully aide will come in the form of money or goods so these people won’t starve until their next harvest, but even if there isn’t, families stick together here. Kids will be send to uncles and aunts. Money will be sent to the families and they’ll make it through. It will be hard, but they are a strong people. 

Funeral

My life has been surprisingly blessed. In this particular blogpost, I’m referring to the fact that death has never been a major character in my life. There have been very few people that I have loved and lost. Before this summer, that number was 2, my paternal grandmother, who died right after teaching me how to read, and my great aunt, who passed away a few winters ago. There have been other people to come and go in my life, but these are the two that I really associated with my idea of death.

Then I worked as EMT, and my idea changed a little bit. The first time you perform CPR on someone who is pronounced dead as soon as you arrive at the hospital, you feel like you’re wearing death on your gloves. Or when you arrive on scene to a patient that had no pulse when you arrived but a little bit of nar-can had him up and running. But after every call, at the end of every day, you throw out those gloves, take off your uniform and go back to your relatively death-less life.

This past month though, I’ve felt like I’ve had a grim reaper riding on my shoulder. Friends (both in America and in Cameroonian) have passed away and really close friends of mine have been touched by loss. I watched a man get hit by a bus and there was nothing I could do for him. For a few weeks there, I was convinced I was cursed. Scratch that, I’m still not totally convinced I’m not. But the point is, I was experiencing it from all sides.

This Sunday, my landlord passed away. He had been sick for a long time and I had grown really close to his wife. I was literally on my way over to his house when my neighbor caught me and told me that he had passed away while she was in church. I was caught completely off guard and went silently with her to go pay my respects.

Although I’ve had two other Cameroonian friends pass away while I was here, I was not physically there when they passed and wasn’t able to be a part of their funerals. So this was my first Cameroonian funeral.

I was scared. I had no idea what the traditions were. Was I supposed to bring something or say something? I was clueless. So I walked into that room blind. I found my friend, on the floor, crying silently. She was surrounded by three other women that I didn’t know who were also crying.  I sat down close to her, with a whispered condolence as the three other women started wailing. And I mean, they were wailing. Not like crying. Wailing. It sounded worse than a three-year old having a tantrum. They screamed and sobbed and screamed some more. I was scared shitless. Personally, I was tearless. I was way more frightened than sad. I looked over at my friend who had come with me and she had silently buried her face in her shawl.

We sat there in that room for hours, watching as the room filled up with mourners. I began to realize that instead of speaking condolences, the women would try to just out-do each other by crying. One women ran into the room, her top completely undone screaming at the top of her lungs. She grabbed Raissa (the wife) and just started throwing her around the room in a bear hug while screaming, sobbing, and yelling. It was absolutely terrifying. And as soon as one person started crying, the rest of the room would start up again with sniffles and wails. I don’t know how close these women were with my landlord, but after about the 30^th time this sobbing wailing happened, I began to realize that it’s not necessarily the strength of their pain that they’re sobbing, but their condolence. I don’t feel like I’m explaining this well. In a way, it was a drama-queen thing. Crying and screaming louder than that other people in the room was “winning”. But in another way, it was your way of showing that you were supporting Raissa and there for her and feeling her pain.

But Raissa wasn’t into it. She would avoid the sobs and wails as much as politely possible, stuck a veil over her face and didn’t say a word. I stayed in that room for hours, watching this spectacle and feeling their pain, listening to their cries. It was absolutely horrifying.

Today though, I went back. In their Muslim tradition, for the first three days, the house is open to everyone to come, eat, sleep, reminisce and grieve. Easily 50 women spent those days with Raissa. Then everyone but the family leaves and they mourn for 7 days. Then everyone but the immediate family leaves and they mourn on their own, except for the 40^th day, in which you celebrate the 40^th day of mourning.

So I went there this morning, still completely clueless. A friend had told me to bring some food, so I arrived with a bagful of beignets, expecting the horrible scene that I had left. But it was so different. 30 different women were sitting outside Raissa’s bedroom, talking laughing and sleeping on mats. There are 10 women who were making buckets of food. And when I say buckets, I mean buckets. There were huge washing basins filled with dough for “gateau” (it means cake, but it’s not really cake). Women were sitting around drinking bouille (kind of like a porridge). Raissa I found sitting in a corner in a hot stuffy room alone, not partaking, just mourning. I sat with her for a bit and then joined the women outside.

They welcomed me with smile and plied me with bouille. They tested my Fuldulde and my Kapsiki vocabularly. Some women were explaining funeral traditions to me (take down pictures and cover all mirrors). All of the sudden, all the women on the mats got up. Where they went, I can’t be sure. But suddenly, this hall of laughing women turned into a bustling fast food kitchen. Rocks were brought over to balance trays on. Fires were started and “gateau” was prepared. It was amazing. Every fire had 2-3 women tending it. There were all laughing and working together. Women of all ages. Some were speaking Fulfulde and some were speaking Kapsiki, but they were definitely all on the same page. It was a completely different feeling, almost like a party: a family BBQ with no one fighting.

I had never seen so many women working together like this. Women, young and old, tended fires, flipped cakes and broke wood with their bare feet. It was amazing to just be a part of it. Granted I couldn’t understand most of what was said, and I wasn’t helping a whole lot. It was still pleasant to be a part of.

I’ve only ever been to one funeral in my life. But that funeral was morose and tragic. I liked this a lot better. Women coming together and just being and working together for days at a time, remembering and honoring. I think they’re doing something right here. Who says less developed is worse off?

I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I did feel a need to just put some of this into words and share this experience with you. It’s not a happy or a funny one. But life isn’t just the happy and funny moments. And that’s what I’m here to do: live. Live life as these women live. And I got a view of the worst part of their lives this week. 

Pooping in a Rain Jacket

I pooped in a rain jacket this morning. And by that I mean that I wore a rain jacket while pooping, not that I actually pooped into a rain jacket. That would just be weird.

There are some things in America that are nice, comfortable. Like indoor toilets. But sometimes, the alternatives can be fun.

I even have a song I made up for the occasion. Not to rip off “Sitting on a toilet”, I sing “Pooping in a rain jacket.”

It’s probably not something you’ve ever done before. Unless of course you raced home after a long coffee break on a rainy day just so you wouldn’t have to use a public Starbucks restroom. But it was probably more along the lines of

“I’m pooping and I just happen to still be wearing my rain jacket.”

As opposed to

“I put my rain jacket on solely for the purpose of the pooping.”

Please note the difference.

In fact, your thoughts about bathroom activities and weather probably don’t often intersect. Unless, of course, you’re one of those people who are scared shitless of the thunder (literally). Or maybe there’s a window by your toilet that you opt to stare out of instead of reading the paper, and, in the process, you mentally note the weather.

I, on the other hand, and my bowels, bladder, and showering habits (not to be forgotten) do think of the weather quite often.

When the weather is cold, as it is right now, and raining, as it is right now, it makes trip outside….unpleasant sometimes. And then add in that you’ve got to expose a large part of your body to the elements. Well, it just a horse ride in the snow (seemingly fun, but a little uncomfortable for the backside, wet and cold.)

So, let’s make it a game! A puzzle! Can you anticipate how much TP you’ll need? Or should you just bring the whole roll? How do you transport it, keeping it easily accessible without getting it too wet? (Personally, I tuck it under my chin with my hood up)Then, how can you minimize time and things that will get wet? For that, I sometimes (and don’t think me strange, all the African kids are doing it) strip my bottom half and run bare-ass naked all the way to my latrine.

And at this point you’re just having fun. How often have you wanted to run and jump and dance in the rain half-naked? It’s a personal daily goal for me. And I get to do it twice! Before and after pooping!

Also, pooping while water is running down your back and inevitably into your nether regions makes it feel a whole lot cleaner. A free beday, if you will. So fresh and so clean, clean, clean.

So that’s my African moment for the day:

Me: hopping, skipping, and jumping through my garden to my latrine, wearing only my oversized blue rain jacket singing “pooping in a rain jacket”.

P.S. My lyrics to that song is a bit limited. Any suggestions? Feel free to let me know. I’d love to add more stanzas to keep me busy longer. I can’t really bring the Time there with me now can I. 

Rules of Motodriving

     1)   Always wear the most amount of clothes possible. Protect yourself from the elements as much as your wardrobe allows. If the biggest jacket you have is a neon green ski jacket from 1976, wear that. It don’t matter if it’s the middle of hot season and 100 degrees out; put that sucker on.            

  

  2)   If you happen to come across a puddle in the road, don’t worry, if you go through it fast enough, you’ll probably make it through to the other side. Don’t worry about how deep it is, it’s all about speed. If you or your passenger happens to get wet, well, at least you made it through, right? Or wait, you didn’t? You’re moto got stuck in the mud in the unseen 3 foot depth of a puddle? Don’t worry, just scooter it on out of there, and by that I mean using your two feet to walk the moto out while still sitting on it; much like a two year old on a pedal-less tricycle.

   

  3)   If you see a bend coming up and you can’t see what at the end of the bend, don’t worry about slowing down, just beep to let anyone coming towards you know that you’re around the bend. They’ll probably hear and make room for you, even if you do insist on taking the bend in the middle of the road.

   

   4)   Be polite, wave at your friends that you pass by with both hands! 

   

   5)   If you’re listening to Cameroonian music playing from your cell phone while driving, make sure you’ve got the speaker up all the way so your passenger and everyone you pass can hear that you’ve got major (distorted) sound. Everyone wants to hear it. Share the wealth dude.

    

   6)   When taking a road that is partially washed out, make sure to drive as close to the washed out gully as possible. That is, by far, the most secure part of the road.

    

    7)   If your back tire starts fishtailing, it’s not because you’re going too fast or the road is a bit wet; it’s because you’re passenger is too heavy. Be sure to remark how fat they are before continuing on your journey.

    

    8)   The object of the game is to get there as fast as possible. Therefore, for any stretch of road that you can accelerate, do so. It doesn’t matter if it’s only for 5 feet and then you have to slow down, resulting in a stop and go, vomit-worthy ride. It’s all about getting there in the least amount of time possible.

    

    9)   A long moto ride is a great time to convert your passenger. They can’t escape and they run out of excuses pretty quickly. So have your Koran or bible ready!

     

    10)                  Sunglasses are for pussies! In fact, all eye protection is! I don’t care if you’re going an average of 30 mph with flies getting into your eyes or raindrops skewering your face, don’t be a pussy!

    

    11)                  Play chicken with the rocks in the road. Chances are, they’ll get up and move before you hit them. But don’t worry if they don’t. Just make sure to tie your cargo down really well before you go. Oh, you have a passenger? Well, either they go flying or they don’t: Darwinian selection, non? 

Seasons

Growing up in the Florida Keys, seasons meant very little to me. In fact, there were barely seasons at all, at least not the ones they taught in schools: Winter, spring, summer, fall. There was soccer season and softball season. There was hurricane season. There was summer and there was the school year. Other than that, except for the few cold fronts that blew in every once in a while, “season” was a useless term.

I experienced the changing of seasons for the first time when I lived in Germany. I watched leaves change and fall, get covered up by snow and give way to green sprouts. But still, what was a season to me? Most importantly, it was a change in wardrobe. In Boston, I started wearing a second pair of pants in October and wouldn’t go back to a single pair until March or April. I got out my huge, calf-length black coat and my massive, waterproof boots. The sandals went away until the weather was warm enough again. But other than that, what really changed? I went to school if there was school, worked if I had work. My diet was almost completely unaffected. Sure the landscape would change from colorful to brown to white to green, but it was still the same old landscape, same old city.

Here, seasons have a whole new meaning. When I arrived in Mogode, I thought I lived in the desert. Everything was brown. What little that was green was surely dead by May. In the distance, I could see sparse trees and rolling brown hills covered in what felt like cat-litter. Not exactly the sands of the Sahara, but still lifeless. People spent their time sitting underneath trees on piles of peanut shells, trying to escape the sun, cracking peanuts for hours. The only breaks in their day were changing from one chore of cooking to another of sweeping.

But with the rain, all that changed. Overnight, my town changed. I went for a bike ride the other day and got completely lost because everything looks so different. Plants and crops have sprouted up everywhere. There is hardly a space that isn’t covered in green. I don’t live in a desert anymore. Up until last week, when I walked into my latrine, I walked into a rainforest! There was grass higher than my waist and random plants growing up everywhere. (I cleaned it all out, afraid of snakes, but it was cool while it lasted).

People are so busy. They go to their fields at 6 am and stay until 6 pm. They work hard and eat well for the first time that I’ve ever seen. Walking through town in the middle of the day is like walking through a ghost town. The restaurants are all abandoned, the stores all closed up. Even the hospital is slow. They operate with a skeleton staff and take turns going out and caring for their fields. There are hardly any patients.

Our diet has changed. I’ve been able to find fresh vegetables like spinach, cucumbers, eggplant! It’s amazing. It’s a completely different country with the arrival of just a little rain.

Also, there’s less electricity. Hard rains wash away the power lines, leaving us in darkness for days or weeks at a time. As I write this, I’m using a battery powered by a solar panel and sitting in a room filled with candlelight.

There’s water again. Months ago, people went weeks without bathing or washing their clothes, simply because they didn’t have water. Now all they have to do is stick a bucket out in the afternoon and they’re set for a day or two. People are cleaner and mostly healthier. Dry canyons became overflowing rivers, ripping through the trees and plants that dared to grow in the dry river beds.

But with the rain come mosquitoes and health misconceptions that threaten these people’s health. Children wake up having scratched mosquito bites to infection in the night. Malaria is starting to affect this region. Women, who believe you can’t drink water and work, suffer from dehydration headaches. The colder weather brought colds and flues.

As for me, my work is different. Everyone that I normally work with is out “au champs” working their butts off to put food on the table. So, I’ve changed up my routine too. When I’m not preparing things for the school year, I work my own little field. My neighbors planted corn, okra, and peanuts there, which I tend. I also planted my own huge garden. I’ve got squash and pumpkins, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, leeks, beans, lima beans, carrots, and herbs all peaking up out of the ground. My hands are covered in little blisters, but it’s amazingly satisfying. I’m growing food that will feed me and maybe my neighbors in the next few months. I’ve never done that before. When I was little, I remember growing tomatoes once, and lima beans for a science project in first grade. Once in college I had a parsley plant; but I ate it too quickly and it died because it didn’t have enough leaves to keep growing: whoops. I never knew if I had a green thumb or not. I guess I still don’t, we’ll see. But this is such an amazing experience. Fun and satisfying.

But bottom line is, this rainy season didn’t just bring on a rain jacket. It brought on a whole new terrain, new work, new sickness, new people, new food. This is the power of the rain! How crazy is that. It gives me a new appreciation for old mythology. The elements proscribe so much of their world. A bad harvest could mean dead children. I can understand praying to an unknown rain god to make sure that doesn’t happen. While on the other side of the world, our cushy grocery stores import food from all over the world. You can get peaches in the dead of winter. Seasons don’t mean a thing. It’s eye-opening; I understand how much of our world can be dictated by nature, and how far western culture has come from that.

A Day in the Life

One of the questions I get asked most often is: What is your day-to-day life like? In short, it’s different every day. But, more often than not, there are 2 different kinds of days, frameworks if you will. Keep in mind, this is for right now, when there’s no school and everyone is in their fields all day.

Option 1: Vaccination Day

5:15 am: first alarm goes off, snooze for 10 mins
5:25: actually get out of bed, try, fail, and close my eyes again
5:30: stand up, and actually leave my bedroom,
    Breakfast/Morning Routine/Large glass of Caffeine of the day
6:00: Dieudonne bangs at my gate
Down as much caffeine as possible, stumble to the door, putting on shoes, grabbing my helmet and locking the door on the way
6:30: arrive at village and ride around on the moto playing Jingle bells, letting all the     mothers know we’ve arrived and it’s vaccination day.
7:00: after we set up, we wait around for mothers to show up. Then it’s baby-weighing time for me. Dieudonne takes care of the vaccinations
10:00: head back to the hospital
11:00: chat with the nurses and subject myself to the mind-numbing, presumptive and derogatory narrative of the doctor for the day.
12:00: go home for lunch, where I either whip something up or heat up leftovers
1:00 pm: chores that I didn’t do before I left: sweeping, washing dishes
2:00: free-time to either work or play at home, probably on my computer. Maybe prepare for a presentation coming up or just watch a TV show.
3:00 work out
4:00 bucket bath
5:00 visit neighbors time! I stroll around town, talking to my favorite people, hearing about their lives and their days, maybe help them cook dinner, maybe just sit around. It’s my integration time.
7:00 head back home, lock my gates, turn on some music and make some dinner
8:00 entertainment time! If there’s no power, I’ll often go and sit in my hammock and read. If there is, I’ll watch a movie or TV show.
10:30: bed-time!

Option 2: No Vaccination Day

8:30: stir from my coma and Frankenstein into the kitchen for coffee.
9:30: morning chores and/or prep for the day
10:30: go to the hospital, talk to the staff and or patients. Maybe do some work there. Mostly just talk about differences between America and Cameroon
12:00: Lunch time
1:00 work or me-time.
3:00 work out
4:00 bucket back
5:00 visit neighbors
and so on and so forth. I guess the only thing that really changes are my mornings.

I spend a lot of time not doing a whole lot right now. It’s Ramadan, so if people aren’t in their fields, they’re sleeping underneath trees, waiting to eat. It rains almost every day, so I spend more time inside than in dry season. But I have also planted my own little field too. I’ve got potatoes and tomatoes sprouting and this weekend, I planted squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, mesculin, leeks, more tomatoes, peas, beans, lima beans, basil, parley, oregano, chives, and some other things. We’ll see how green my thumb is. I’m pretty excited though. Although, I did make a rookie mistake and forgot sunscreen on the lower part of my back while spending all day leaning over, planting and hoeing. So I am currently nursing a very sunburned back. That’ll teach me! So yeah, my life in Africa!