The cycle of life in Africa

I was recently sent the book "Dark Star Safari" by Paul Theroux (a former PC volunteer!!!), courtesy of my sister/request of my dad. I am about mid way into it, and it struck me how although his broad generalizations about Africa are about as broad and general as they can get, his point on the idea of permanence, American versus African, is right on. In Africa, there is no concept of something lasting forever. Specifically he gives the example of mud houses that are built, fall into disrepair, and are rebuilt again. I like the example of how people eat here, something that will probably always gross me out. People eat, spewing the bones and other non-edible parts of nouriture onto the floor as they go along. There is no concept of keeping something clean; instead you clean, it gets dirty usually right after, and you clean again.

All of this leads me to announce the death of my host mother. She died sometime last week, very suddenly. I feel very sad, mostly because she was looking after her 5 grandchildren, and who knows where they will live now? But she was old for Africa, at around 60 years old. But this is life, right? Or this is death.

I got this news in a text message from my host brother, sent from host mother's phone, saying "Loren. Grenma is ded. Cedrick." But I got it after returning from 5 (long) days in Paris, or Alam-Paris, the slightly less romantic version located 5 km from the nearest village. Alam-Paris is a village of about 200 people, on a really bad road (which I wrote about in an earlier blog) that sees very little traffic. Although it is only about an hour or so from Ebolowa, life is really different. I arrived on Tuesday with my neighbor, Rachel, and 2 promo guys from Honig Cube, which I found out is directly translated into Bulu as "Honig Cube". This was a 3 days seminar that lasted 4 days and should have been 2 days. After a nice early dinner, I played with the village kids, who at first were TERRIFIED to see a white person, to the point of crying. I later found out that the company of children here is much preferred to the company of adults because the kids are more interesting and, if not, redeemabley adorable.

The next day we started the seminar, broadly around rapid multipliaction of plantains, planning, and my random soy/agroforestry gig. Needless to say, the village was very excited about soy, and at my Lauren Subvention rate of 400 FCFA per kilo of seed (less than a buck), as opposed to the 800/kilo at which I bought it, I had many villagers willing to try. Interestingly enough, when you ask people why they should eat protein, they really have no idea, even when it is written on the poster (La Proteine=La Force). After a whopping 2 hours of seminar, we were done for the day. WHOA. Hold on. For anyone who knows me, idle time is REALLY hard. So, I filled my time walking around the village, taking naps, and meeting the mamas. When the kids returned from school, I felt relief that I had interesting company again. The next day was similar, with 4 hours of seminar. I thought I would die with the 3.5 hours of listening to a professional (jerk, if you ask me) fill out tables of costs for a cacao/plantain association field. I gave a speil on agroforestry, which is an easy sell in formation, but not in practice. And then we were idle again. I thought I would try to come up with an excuse to go home early, as I was tiring of the company of men who sit around and DO NOTHING except talk about the problem of development while the women works their asses off. But nothing came. I was trapped in a village!

The next day was more exciting as we hiked out en bruce to visit two mamas fields. Everything here is really planted in disorder. But one mama farms on a hill, so talking about erosion problems made agroforestry relevant. Then, back at the house, I drank some palm wine and got into the swing of hanging out with the guys for an hour before we started a plantain nursery. At the end of my visit, the last day was spent for the closing ceremony, which really makes for some wonderfully awkward moments. And finally, I returned to civilization, to the wonderful city of Ebolowa (to my house!!! and alone time!!!) to find 85 kilos of soy seeds waiting for me (which is a lot, if you can't imagine it).

Which takes me to huit (8) mars, or Women's Day, the holiday to celebrate all the work women do by giving everyone the day off. Really, this is the day for women to wear matching pagne kabas, and I have heard that women get drunk while their husbands look after the family and prepare food. I have yet to see this. And what is a fete that does absolutely nothing to highlight the inequities in women's lives? The Ministry for the Promotion of Women and Families, in Ebolowa, decided that this year they would do something really big and new: a buffet. Oh. How exciting. How liberating. Even I can't afford the price tag for the buffet... And what does eating with a bunch of strangers do to promote all of the hard work that women do in this country, while everyday the men sit around drinking palm wine, playing mancala, and complaining about their lives and their country. No, thank you! Today, to honor women in this country, I am going to work. I am going to a village to talk about soy and to distribute soy seeds, mostly to the women, with the hope that (maybe?) someday, 'Bonne fete' will mean that women have moved forward from an annual and expensive buffet. That is my rant for today. Bonne fete, to you.