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!

The Lion King

So when I was home, I had the awesome opportunity to see “The Lion King” on stage. It was a beautiful production, so well done; the costumes were out-landishly good. While I was watching it though, I had a eureka moment when I realized that for most Americans, their idea of Africa is probably Lion King-esque. Giraffes and monkeys everywhere, savannas and rainforests, people eating grubs and staring up at stars in colorful clothing. That and lots of super poor people.

Let me paint a different picture of what I’ve seen in Cameroon. Women in brightly colored garb, walking around, backs straight as boards, carrying buckets of water on their heads while their cute babies hang from their back, laughing and sleeping. Rainforests filled with flies, snakes, beautiful flowers, monkeys, and brightly colored birds flashing between sun beams streaming through leaves. Men, in long, bright bubus, sitting around underneath a huge tree, the afternoon sun high, glinting off the moutain peaks around them, as they share talk and kola nuts. Smells of frying dough and smoke from breakfast wafting around a dirt path in the early morning sun. The pounding of rain on tin roofs or leaking through the thatch. Giraffes and elephants grazing the day away, staying out of the heat by hiding in bushes. Monkeys running alongside the road, searching for watering holes. Cities: brown bustling trash holes. Rarely a building with more than one story. Women in front of shops selling fish, meat, and beignets. The smell of bodies smushed against each other, sweating, in a crowded bus, windows closed. Babies and children running down the street in tattered clothes, laughing delightedly as they push a tire in front of them with a stick. Grubby hands wanting to shake yours with a shy smile, and then they run away laughing and screaming giddily. Men drinking large bottles of beer at 8 am as they watch their women work away in the fields. Hitting, screaming, polygamy. Men walking down the street holding pinkies. Women walking, dresses streaming behind them, laughing and singing. Muddy, holey, disturbed roads. Dust. Illness. Mosquitos. Prayer, religion. Music blaring from every stereo in town. Crowded classrooms. Hundreds of cows crossing dry river beds, kicking up dust in the setting sun; driven by families on camels, carrying their possessions on their backs. Giant families eating together, outside, underneath a giant arching tree. Tv’s blaring in dark houses. Singing on Sundays heard throughout the entire town as churchgo-ers raise their voices. Prayer mats and chanting, streets closed as men stop to pray together. Guns, and lances, and knives. Pretty pots and clay canneries. Farmlands plowed and seeds sprouting in perfect rows.

Life here is different, but it’s not exactly the Lion King.

Amerrrica- Oh yeah!

The title of this update is a little misleading. This is not going to be a blogpost about America. This blog is not about America. This blog is about living outside America. So I’m not going to take this post to give a blow-by-blow of what I did while I was visiting the states. Rather, it’s going to be more of an emotional and mental journey of reverse culture shock.

Sitting in Yaounde, waiting for my flight, I was excited. But there was also a lot of trepidation buried underneath by bouncing happiness. Being in Cameroon is tough sometimes. Right before I left post, I had many projects face some setbacks. Meetings were cancelled; presentations that I did didn’t have the result I was looking for, ect. Nothing big, just the normal setbacks that I experience on a regular basis. But with those being my most recent work experiences at post, I was really worried about going home. Home means my huge, loving family, my amazing friends, and some pretty stellar former colleagues. 

When I left, I was worried. I was afraid that the love on one side of the ocean was going to conquer my resolve to finish what I started here in Mogode, especially considering the setbacks I was leaving behind. I was worried about going home and eating delicious food. What if I didn’t want to go back to living in the desert with no water, little electricity, and food that doesn’t exactly tickle my taste buds. Basically, America is such a great country. How was it going to feel to go back and throw myself into my world of comfort and love and then pick myself right back up to come back to Cameroon?

With these thoughts in the back of my mind, I reentered civilization. When I stepped off the gangway, I had an urge to kiss the clean, cold ground of an American Airport. My first stop: coffee! I had Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts within minutes of each other. Then, Wendy’s for a Spicy Chicken Sandwich. I was in heaven.

I made it to Boston, despite some travel setbacks, in time for Katie’s graduation. There I was welcomed by my parents, grandparents, sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles: so many people! And friends! It was awesome. I felt so loved and except for having so much to catch up on, I felt like almost like I hadn’t left the states at all.

Except for some little things. Like being able to plug my computer straight into the wall. Being able to sing in the shower because I didn’t have to worry about keeping my mouth closed. Being able to shower! (No bucket baths for weeks). It was gloriously cold and sunny. The food was an adventure. I lived meal to meal, hitting up every cuisine imaginable with different company for every meal. It was great.

But in the midst of all this positive marvelousness, there was something that just wasn’t sitting right. I couldn’t just slide right back in to where I had left off. It may have been the parasites I brought back with me, but it may have been my altered worldview too.

When I was home in the keys, I was out on a snorkeling boat with some friends. There were a bunch of tourists with us; it was Memorial Day weekend. I was just chilling in the water, enjoying my life, and thinking. These people have lives that allow them to just pick up and travel to the keys for the day, go out on a gorgeous boat, just to swim in some beautiful water and watch some fish and coral. It is an ultimate luxury; to have the time, the resources, to simply make that trip. A luxury that these people that I work with can’t even imagine. A day off for them means staying home and cracking peanuts instead of backbreaking work in the fields. I was frustrated by a huge warring incompatibility going on in my head. I was upset that this didn’t exist in other parts of the world, grateful that it did exist in mine and that I was lucky enough to be able to partake, judging tourists, upset at myself for enjoying myself while children in other countries are digging through garbage just to feed themselves, happy at such a glorious day, so upset that people in our country waste so much, when those in others want so much, and so forth and so on. I was so confuddled! There were too many emotions and thoughts going through my head.

So I made a decision. I could either dwell on the inequality and feel guilty for my fortunate life, or I could accept that I was doing everything in my power to change that disparity and be gracious and grateful that the lot I was given was so full of blessings and ease. So I did; I chose the latter. And I enjoyed myself. I still marveled at clean tap water one could drink, and the variety of fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, at the ease of finding just about anything you could ever hope to buy at a single shopping mall. I went shopping and to movies. I hung out with friends and family. I revisited some of my favorite places and went to places I’d never been before. I had an amazing time. I could not have wished for a better trip home.

Leaving was tough. I got on the plane, talking on my phone with family up until the last second. The planes rides were uneventful; I just checked out and enjoyed my last few hours of western civilization. I was not excited about coming back, but I wasn’t dreading it either. So imagine my surprise, when, as we landed, I felt a tinge of relief and an “I’m glad to be home” feeling. It was a pleasant surprise because I didn’t realize that I felt that way about Cameroon. I was happy to finally get back to post, unpack and say hello to my villagers and friends.

The greatest part about this trip home, though, was the feeling that I now have. Before I left, I was harboring so much anxiety about being away from home and family and friends, and things and places that I love. But making that trip has helped me to feel way more connected. I think, before, I felt like I couldn’t come home, it was just too far, and therefore those things were out of my reach. Now, I understand that everything and everyone is still back there, going about their daily lives, and if I want to, or need to, I can go back and reenter life there, no problem. I feel so much more at ease now. So far, and this might simply be a product of having just seen my family, I haven’t woken up yearning for home or America since I’ve been back. It’s nice to feel at home here, to wake up in the mornings and not wish I were somewhere else. I’m ready to start the day, get to work and make a difference. Whoo hoo!

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. 

Rainy Season Has Arrived

It’s been a while since I last had an opportunity to write. Things here in Mogode have been pretty busy. I’ve been preparing to go to the states for a month while at the same time, working on enlarging some projects and beginning others.

Work wise:

·     Women’s Peer Education Group: They elected a board and started collecting money for a group project (yet unknown). They also came to me yesterday and asked if we could take the group to the next level and start learning an Income-Generating Activity to help the women in the group.

·      Water projects: I started asking around about getting a water committee started

·      Health Education: I started working with the primary school health club. Tomorrow we are meeting to talk about water borne diseases and how you can prevent them.

·      Hospital: I’m still taking part in the vaccinations “en brusse”. I’ve taken over weighing babies to track their nutrition and try to prevent malnutrition. We are also still doing small educational sessions before vaccinated women’s children.

·      Women’s Literacy Group: A group of women in a nearby town contacted me to ask me help them start a class to learn French and how to write. I’m helping them with their lessons plans and materials to get started.

So basically, I’ve been keeping busy. Since being back, I’ve really made an effort to learn how to prepare Cameroonian food. I’ve spent many an evening at a friends’ house “turning” couscous. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, trust me. My biceps are rapidly developing to handle the new demands.

Also, the rainy season has arrived! The rainy season is partly to blame for why I haven’t been able to write. The rains wash out the electricity poles, leaving me without power about 50% of the time since I’ve been back. The first time it rained was just a few days after I got back to post at the beginning of April. The whole day looked gray and I thought it looked like rain. I asked locals:

            “Hey, do you think it’s going to rain?”

            “No, it couldn’t possibly rain. It’s hot. And it’s not June yet.”

Even after it rained that first time, and then the second time, and then the third time, I would ask:

            “Hey has rainy season started yet? It looks like it’s going to rain again today!”

and they would respond with

“No, it couldn’t possibly rain. It’s hot. And it’s not June yet.”

           

That’s what I love about Cameroonians. They can predict weather down to a day.  They know that every year on February 15^th, the cold weather breaks and it gets hot. The first rains of the rainy season always arrive the first of June. And the heat will break exactly 6 days after the first rain of rainy season.

Well, considering it has rained numerous times in the past few weeks (and before that, I had never seen it rain up here), I’m officially declaring it rainy season; I am disregarding the Cameroonian Farmer’s Almanac for actual weather patterns. Call me crazy, but it just makes sense to crazy ole’ me.

The first rain was crazy. I was sitting out in my hammock, after dinner, reading by flashlight. The power was out. I was enjoying Mansfield Park (I’ve been on a classics kick-electricity-less nights find me reading Jane Austin right now) when I took a break to check out the sky. It was incredible. I mean, I’m from Florida. Despite it’s name as the Sunshine State, Florida has the most lightning out of any state. I’ve seen my fair share of lightning: hurricane lightning, heat lightning, streaky lightning, behind-clouds lightning. But I have never seen anything like this. This was like someone had taken a strobe light and was waving it around the sky. Every second the sky light up. I probably didn’t even need a flashlight to read it was so bright. I’ve never seen anything like it. Soon after that, the rain started. It absolutely poured. The thunder was so loud it scared the dog. The rain came in under the door and started flooding my living room. The best part about the rain: washed the chicken poop from my porch!

The next day I woke, my room was at least 10 degrees cooler. I walked outside and immediately noticed a difference. Where the day before, everything was just brown, kitty-littery and dead, little shoots of grass started coming up out of the ground! The trees were looking less pathetic and the dust in the air had settled. Since then, it’s rained a couple of times and my yard, while looking a little untidy, finally has some color in it! My neighbors are appalled that I’m letting my grass grow (the typical yard here is swept everyday to keep the kitty litter looking nice and fresh and brown.

Things are starting to look up here in dry Mogode. Although water is still expensive and a bit hard to find, I’m sure the wells will start filling up soon and the hardships will ease.

In preparation for my departure to America, I eased another “hardship” of mine. A few months ago, Luke and I got two chickens, a hen and a rooster, to try and get some eggs out of them. When I got back to Mogode, I was so disappointed to not be finding eggs left and right. I figured maybe she just didn’t lay any. I searched my whole yard, even crawling behind my kitchen (which is a tight crawl space and a little dangerous because I threw a bottle back there that wouldn’t open that I’m just waiting for it to blow up. It could blow at any time! There’s fermented juice in there that’s just creating pressure.) One day, Luke came over with his friend and they found an egg in the middle of my yard! Turns out, my dog had been eating them before I found them! I was so excited. The next day, I had two fried eggs for breakfast. It was glorious. My free range, organic chicken laid the most delicious tasting egg.

So you can imagine my horror when, a few days later, I woke to find the chicken dead. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t get close enough to inspect the body (Luke was coming over, so I just asked him to take care of it). It could have been sick, or maybe the rooster had been hogging all the food, or maybe an animal mauled it, or maybe it overheated and cooked from the inside. Regardless, the chicken was dead. No more eggs!

All I was left with was the rooster from satan-ville (trying to keep this PG). This guy was evil! A couple of times I slept with my door open, sometimes in the living room, to try to escape the heat. At four in the morning, he would sneak in and cockle-doodle-doo in my face! I finally figured out how to block the door while keeping it open. So then, he would just stand there, cockling for hours, right in the door. During the day, he would sneak into the house, get into my kitchen and peck at everything. I would come into the room 20 times an hour and find him there, pooping on my floor and eating whatever he could. I would chase him out with a broom only to have him come back in two seconds later. On mornings when I did sleep in my room, he would sleep right beneath my bedroom window, cockling of course.

The rooster had to go. Now, fyi, rooster in French is cock. Le cock. In my frainglais (mix of French and English) state of mind, that is how I think of him. The evil cock, minion of the devil. I decided long ago that this cock would grace our table some fine evening, and with the chicken dead, it was only just a matter of time. So the date was set. Last Saturday, my cock crowed his last cockle. We had a cock-party. At noon, my neighbor came over and helped me catch the rascal.

Then we took him next door and she handed me the knife. I killed that cock. I slit its throat and watched it die. Then we plucked it, cut it up and then I cooked it. We ate that rooster that night. Let me tell you, it was delicious. Whether that can be attributed to the fact it’s the first chicken I’ve eaten in months, or the psychological taste of happiness is an unsolvable mystery.  But he was delicious! And big and fat. I had fed him well. Since then, I have slept like a baby in my quiet little house.

So that’s what’s been going on here in Mogode. Saturday, I leave town for a month. I’m headed to the states to celebrate my little sister graduating from Tufts University (Go KATIE!!!!!! I’m so proud of you). So this might be the last post for a while. But I’ll see you all soon!

6 Month Update

Dear Friends and Family,

Last week marked the 6 month anniversary of my time in Cameroon, so I figured I’d take the time to reach out give a brief update of what I’ve been up to.

For those of you who don’t know, I do try to keep a regular blog of my activities and observations at sgreenman.blogspot.com. If you feel so inclined, more details of my going-ons can be found there.

6 months ago, I and 52 other strangers arrived in Cameroon. Our first impression was a green fertile land that smelled like burning trash. The city, Yaounde, was dirty but exciting. However, we didn’t get to see much of it as our Pre-Service Training started right away. For the next three months, we spent most of our days learning about Cameroon, its people, its languages (French and English, officially) and how we could live here. Lessons included learning how to wash our clothes by hand, how to cook over a fire, how to argue over prices at market. We lived with host families, which was sometimes a blessing and other times extremely hard. Peace Corps Cameroon welcomed our group with open arms and then split us up into our programs. My program, Community Health had training in a small town called Bokito, about 30 minutes outside of Bafia, where the other 30 trainees and 2 other programs (Agroforesty and Youth Development) were held.

We had some great times. For Thanksgiving, we killed and prepared our own chickens for our feast. We helped host an AIDS celebration that taught hundreds of kids about HIV/AIDS and transmission. We had a community group project with which we learned how to teach Cameroonians. Our weekends were spent with our host families or hanging out with the other trainees.

We had some bad times. We witnessed and helped in a serious car accident. Our first trainee left only a week into the program (he was a health trainee). We went weeks without electricity. I got malaria, typhoid, and bacterial dysentery.

At the end of those three months, I could speak French (relatively well- keep in mind, that’s Cameroonian French. Any person from France would laugh me off a bridge if they ever heard me speak). I made amazing friends who are now my support network. I grew as a volunteer and person. And I started developing some pretty awesome immunities to the outrageous number of germs we’re exposed to on a pretty regular basis.

 Then, the newly sworn in volunteers all parted ways and headed to post. I live in the Extreme North of Cameroon, in a small town on the Nigerian border called Mogode. Its up in the deserty Mandara Mountains. The peaks here are volcanic finger-like projections reaching for the sky. It’s hot, and dry. Water is hard to find and water-borne diseases are rampant. There is work to be done here.

The first three months at post, I spent most of my time at the local Health Center, evaluating what my post community’s needs are. I picked up some projects that my predecessor left me and have been pretty busy. Most days find me “en brusse” (in the bush) with my Counterpart, weighing babies while he vaccinates them. I’ve been helping him create sensibilisations for the mothers who come (just a short presentation on a health topic while they’re waiting). I inherited a woman’s peer education group and have worked with them on understanding and preventing malnutrition and malaria in children. They are developing into a sustainable group that will hopefully benefit many local villages. I’ve started getting involved in a group of villagers who want to learn French. They’re putting together their own classes. I’m going to help work with the teachers and put together their lesson plans with them.

At home, I raised three puppies that were born to my inherited dog the day before I arrived. I’ve slowly started to make my house my own, sewing my own curtains and sheets, collecting pictures and things for my walls. I’ve explored in the kitchen a lot. It’s a different experience, cooking here. It’s not like I can just walk to the grocery store and buy all my ingredients. Fresh vegetables I get from the regional capital about once every 3 weeks. The rest of the time, I get creative and cook some pretty crazy things with whatever I can find locally. I have two chickens. The hen has started laying eggs while the rooster has done nothing but managed to drive me insane. He will be eaten shortly. I had a couple tomato plants, but the puppies and the chickens together dug them up and killed them. I’ve started a pretty unsuccessful compost pile (instead of breaking down, the organic material just dries up). I’ve also started learning the local languages: Fulfulde and Kapsiki. So far I’ve got introductions, numbers, and hellos down. That’s about it. But I’m learning-“petite a petite”. My French is also slowly improving-slowly being the key word there, as very few people actually speak French in my village.

At the 6-month mark of our service, all of the volunteers were called down to Bamenda for In-Service Training (IST) to check in and learn about how to plan and execute projects at our post. Of the 53 who arrived in country, only 43 made it to IST.  It was sad to be there without so many of the friends who had started out with us, but those of us who were still in the game are pretty committed to making this work. I took the opportunity while down south to take a little vacation time and travel around. I saw the two great beaches of Cameroon and have now visited 9 of the 10 regions (I have yet to visit the East). I saw gorillas and chimps. I ate crabs and Foo Foo Jamma Jamma Khati Khati (huckleberry leaves with chicken-not my favorite) and crickets. I met a good number of the two hundred volunteers who are here in country.

Bottom line: The last 6 months of my life have been filled with new and exciting experiences and people. I learned, seen, and eaten things I never imagined that I would. I’ve had ups and downs, wanting to go home one day and the next, never imagining being happy anywhere else. I’ve been sicker than I’ve ever been in my life and have taken more antibiotics in the last 6 months than my entire life before September. I’ve met locals and made some friendships that will last my lifetime. I’ve been proposed to at least 300 times. I’ve been iced 6. I’ve carried water on my head and treated blisters on my hands from washing my clothes. Overall, I think I’m doing a great job. I’m having fun. I’m living life.

Thank you for all your support and love. Not a day goes by that I don’t receive an email from a loved one (although, I don’t always get them everyday). People call or write me and tell me how they’ve been reading my blog and offer a comment or suggestion about this or that. Packages and letters come my way from so many different people. Thank you guys. This is not easy for any volunteer. It’s not easy to leave everything you know and throw yourself into a bubble of strangeness for the sake of helping people that you’ve never met. But the support and love that I feel from my friends and family back home helps me get up in the morning when I need it and keeps a smile on my face when I go to bed. This work that’s being done over here, it can be partially credited to you. There’s no way I could stick this out without help from over there. So pat yourselves on the back. Good job. And thank you.

I hope these six months have found you and your family well. Thank you for everything and I hope to talk to you soon!

Sincerely, with hugs from Cameroon,

Suzie (or, as they call me in village, Massi)