Sorcery

It is true that once you open your ears to something, you start to hear it more and more. I never realized what a huge role sorcery plays in Cameroonian society until this past week when the chef of my neighboring village was arrested for having sexual relations with a 13 year old girl. The chef, a politically recognized man in his 50s with two wives and a rather extensive village, had been seducing a daughter of his friends for some time with money and sleeping with her. The girl, when confronted by her mom about her sudden weight loss, admitted that the chef had been seducing her for sexual encounters. After an elaborate set up, the police caught the chef naked getting ready to have sex with the girl. Although I am glad he has finally be caught (I have heard from multiple sources that he has been doing this for many years with many young girls) it is extremely frustrating that they had to wait for "proof," specifically they had to arrest the man when he was completely naked. Whatever happened to children's rights?

Even more disturbing is the talk of sorcery's role in the matter. My counterpart, upon hearing the story, told me that sorcery is to blame. As if the man had no part in the matter. What an easy way to wipe your hands clean of the problem! Who is responsible? Oh, don't worry. Someone cast a spell on him to make him want to have sex with minors. And give them cash stashs. Totally normal. While homosexuality is frowned upon in Cameroon (many would easily throw their children to the streets if they found out they were gay), forced sexual relations with minors is caused by sorcery, and therefore not his problem! Fortunately there is some sense of justice here and he will be convicted to many years in prison, though socially he has been excused.

After all of this talk, I find out later a friend's nephew, after writing his bacc exams, died suddenly at the age of 19. This, too, was attributed to sorcery, as it was unexplainable past "He died of mal au ventre". Furthermore, upon discussing the recent break up of two friends, I found out that her infertility, the cause of the break-up, was a result of sorcery, specifically the aftermath of a sorcery battle between her former fiance (who was killed by this sorcery) and his cousin.

So, sorcery is apparently everwhere. It is a real part of people's lives and somehow explains what is otherwise unexplainable. I guess this makes sense in a world where the envionment is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. When nothing else makes sense, it has to be the supernatural. I was imagining how I would write about sorcery yesterday on my way out to the road, and as I was leaving Judith's, an older woman who was talking to herself started talking to me and asking me about my feet. This was all simply strange until I saw her holding something probably used in rituals in her left hand. I tried to dismiss her as simply crazy, bothering the only white person, because she was, afterall, not wearing any shoes. But I still can't help but wonder if something bad will happen to me for dismissing a sorcerer or if she will cure my perpetually sprained ankle.

My three pregnancies and why I am always sad to not be in the NW

Realizing that a usual stint for the average Peace Corps volunteer is 27 months, I realize that I have successfully completed my first 9 months, meaning I have had one baby. What does this mean? That everything has gone from being weird, strange, new, exciting, adventerous, must I go on?... to my everyday. I recently met the new stagieres right after they got off the plane. Fresh off the Boat, and I mean it. It was good practice for me to tell a story that, to me, seems so normal, but to others is maybe hilarious. For example, the fact that whenever I take a car to a village I have learned to wrap my clean clothes in plastic bags because there is a 95% chance a chicken will poop on my stuff. Hilarious, right? Not unless you have had to wear a kabba that stinks like chicken crap. En plus, the langauge. I have now accepted that I entirely incapable of speaking in pure English. This is especially grave if I am talking shop and am forced to use words that I only know in French. So Franglais has become the norm. So being as I will be heading back to NJ in only a few weeks, meeting the newbies (as I am now a sophisticated sophomore) was good practice for what kinds of questions to expect. (For those of you who are dying to know, my favorite questions pertained to how I am the dirtiest person I know in village, which now I realize is not too different from my life in the states, and also where I got my chihuahua from, being as there are no pet stores in Cameroon, right?)

So, here I am, dreaming of the NW. Yes, as in Oregon since I have started to read Sometimes a Great Notion, but really as in the NW of Cameroon where the climate is fresh, there are mountains to climb and beets to be eaten (BEETS!!!), and where I am infinitely jealous of the kind of work PCVs have to do there. First off, the housing is incredible! There is more money in the NW because people are better entreprenuers. Tim has a toilet that flushed with a handle! And tiles. Oh, how much nicer on the feet than cement. But the real heart of the matter is the work. Everything is already set up. No joke. For example, I attended a two day mushroom cultivation workshop. Rad. In the NW, they ask if you want to do animal raising? Great! We will set you up with a biogas tank so you can cook with the methane fuel produced by your animal's crap. Want to fertilize your field? Great! We will take the slurry from the biogas tank and throw it on your fields. And then, with your produce, you can feed your animals! What a complete and perfect system. And everyone you could ever want to talk to is located right in Bamenda. How wonderful. In the South, you are lucky to find anyone who does animal raising, like for a living, not just keeping goats who run around whereever as security. People also have very little need for fertilizer, as the shifting agriculture system keeps the land fertile. And wood? Well, there is too much of it that people don't even value it. So, yes, I am envious. The whole system is already in place and volunteers get to work with what already functions.

But then, on my way home I was yelled at by a security patrol (as in some guy who gets paid to check the buses for functioning fire safety equipment) because I brought my 3 month old puppy on the bus. What do you mean I can't carry him in a market bag? Yes, I can see how this is dirty, but is he really dirtier than a child with snot running down his face? And if he sleeps the whole time, what's the problem? And no, I am not putting him in a cage underneath the bus because he would die. So, the drawback of all that infrastructure is the infrastructure. I was realived when I returned to Mvan bus station in Yaounde to take my agence back to the dirty South and me and my puppy we greeted as family by my friends who work there. In the South we have no mountains or functional international NGOs, but we do have the possibility for something better, a clean slate. And if it is done right, I can see how it can be even better than the NW because we have trees (specifically not eucalyptus) and wildlife and security (no banditary like in the NW). Plus, I dont have to speak slow, special English for people to understand me. I will stick to my struggling French because Cameroonians can learn to adapt to me.