Never joke about water

In what I thought was a pretty lame, somewhat funny joke about how visitors get free floor space, but have to pay for their water, I recognized it really is not funny to joke about this. I realized this when I returned to my house after 5 days away, with 2 other PC volunteers for the weekend, and there was no power or water. How exciting. It really keeps you on your toes when you have to limit toilet flushes with 3 people, one of whom was sick. Power was even cut in town for a day. Everywhere except the fancy Greek owned bakery/store had no power (they have a generator). It was chaos, at least for me. But really life was quieter and I was able to sleep through the night without listening to non-stop television.

Finally, I ran out of stored water. This meant I had to walk really far with 2 empty bidons, 2 because I was feeling over ambitious, apparently. I had walked this way many times before, but I never realized how far it was as when I had to walk back with a bidon, mostly full, on my head. I fortunately had the luck of running into my neighbors, who helped me carry one bidon. I am certain my head flattened a little bit. But I could not even succesfully carry water all the way home. It was a 10 year old with a wheelbarrow who helped me get the water home. All the while, I walked home in shame because everyone thought I was crazy for thinking I could carry 2 bidons with my hands.

The road to London is a 2 track dirt road

Yes, that is correct. I have been to London, via Paris, on a 2-track dirt road. This road starts at Ebolowa, and just when you think you are heading to Kribi (THE BEACH!!), you turn off on a road that looks like it hasn't seen a car in years. In fact, the whole time you are on this road, you don't.


The road to Londre is 40km outside of Ebolowa, and it takes 2 hours to get there, including picking up and dropping off hitchhikers along the way (as there are no cars). I was essentially stalked down by Madame le Marie (the second in command to the Mayor) who has run into me several times in town, always insisting that she wants my help. Because she knowns my counterpart, she was able to rope me in (without my knowledge) to go visit the village that she married into (Londre). So, Sunday morning, Madame and her very wealthy friend who works in Doula but has a summer home (if you will) in Londre, picked me and my two counterparts up in his truck. We start on the road to Kribi, but turn off onto the worst road of all of Cameroon (no joke, it was BAD). This road is so bad that there are many many kilometers of bruce (wild jungle, wild farmland) in between each village. For the 2 hour ride, most of it on this 2 track dirt road, we passed through an entire 5 villages. When we finally reach this man's home, I realize that his farm is basically his playland. He has orchards of expensive grafted trees (with the grafted part either eaten by his many cows or cut off by his careless caretaker... meaning he has orchards of expensive unimproved fruits), many cows, goats, chickens. He has fields for corn (also suffering from hungry cows), and many ponds for fish farming. This guy even has solar panels, and therefore electricity in a village that does not have current. After visiting all of this, we sit down to a lunch of expensive bread, butter (real, delicious, salted butter!!!), and salami/ham. It is clear that his farm has a lot going for it, including star fruit. My only suggestion, aside from good fencing and better communication with his caretaker, was food transformation. He watches the fruit overripen on the tree, and with such poor roads, even with a crew to harvest, there is no way he could get it to a good market in time (especially in the rainy season, I can imagine). So, all of this in contrast to the problems of other (most) Cameroonians... money.

This past Thursday was my first real failure, or what my counterpart calls 'development work.' This means that after making a major cultural error of not asking the family first for a moto driver, I asked some random guy on a moto who turns out wasn't even a moto taxi driver. After a great deal of confusion and significant argument (in the Bulu manner: really angry for 10 or 15 minutes and then sharing a drink of palm wine, laughing like old friends), I find a driver for the ride out to Avoundi. We go out at 7 am, get there at 8, and find that the guy we were suppossed to meet to talk about agroforestry trees is out en bruce, in the jungle, 5 km out. He forgot! All of that for nothing! So, my counterpart and I compromise and settle on drinking some morning coffee (aka palm wine) before returning home, frustrated at this thing called development work, and tired from too much morning coffee.

This is how I broke two motos...

Yesterday I spent a total of 5 hours on a moto! Yikes, that does not do wonders for your back. But it was all worth it. My slightly annoying friend Mozart, appropriately named for all the music he brings into my life because he calls me 5 times a day, took me and my counterpart, Serges, out to his village, 50km outside of Ebolowa. We had to ride through the real bruce to get there, most of it on really bad dirt roads. Because of the state of his moto, I had to basically sit underneath him while he drove. Not only was this really awkward, but this was also painfully uncomfortable. On our way out, we stopped to visit some amazing rock formations that just appear out of nowhere. But first, we visit the chef (a female!) to pay respect. The guides, who we we supposed to pay 5 dollars, as I learned later, took us up some very steep volcanic rock (pictures to come soon) to the highest point for many, many miles. This is a sacred place, so one washes hands in the river before and after visiting. There is a strong belief that God has created these rocks, and the village has done a really good job of protecting their rock, particularly through the creation of this guided visit. After the visit, we went back to say thank you to the chef, when the arguing ensued over whether or not we should have paid for the tour. My group's argument was that we are not tourists, as I am here for work, and when my family/friends visit, then we will bring more. This really upset the guides (understandably, it is their work) but the chef was cool that we did not pay. In the lidst of this argument, we abruptly got up and left after throwing down 1000 CFA, 2 dollars. Yikes. That was uncomfortable.

After finally arriving at Mozart's village, we visited his field, and went back to his house where I ran my very first soy formation. Ca va dire, I am hard at work as an extension agent. It is hard to communicate everything in French, but fortunately for me, the village mostly speaks Bulu, so everything I said was translated through my counterpart who has actually cultivated soy. We also talked about the virtues of actively improving fallowing fields through the use of agroforestry trees. It seems like they are a community willing to try both, so perhaps it was a successful day in the field. And then we ate! I am constantly critiqued for not eating when food is offered to me. (Au Cameroon, on mange!) But these days, it seems work cuts into a normal eating schedule so lunch keeps getting pushed back towards dinner time. Which means I, too, eat like a Cameroonian (eg, monkey, again, and fish prepared 2 different ways).

And on the return home, after just a few hours of work au village, I managed to be a bad omen for 2 motos. First Mozart's moto lost an essential part just as we hit the paved road (thankfully), and then the 2nd moto we took lost a major part between there and town. But we made it back safetly, fortunately, after a really long day en bruce.

This is how I became a housewife

Degraining dried corn. That is it. Sitting in a house, watching really bad (but surpringly addictive) Brazilian telenovellas, removing the corn grains from the husk for hours each day. And all I dream about is white wine. So, this is how I became a housewife, though I would much prefer to be a 70's housewife, with a glass of white wine in my hand from morning 'til night.

This is also the blog about how I decided to visit my counterpart by bike last week. Keep in mind that this is the dry season. I rode my bike out to his house, a 15 to 20 minute bike ride. We went out to check out his plantain plantation, which he says is ready to incorporate agroforestry, nitrogen fixing trees (Woah! That was easier convincing than I thought was required!). After we return to his house, the rain starts. A big rain! About 1.5 hours later, which is just 45 minutes before dark, I decide that the rain will not stop and it is better to leave than to stay. And so I found out what the mud in the South is like. Everyone tells me because it is sandier here, the mud is a different quality than in the West, where I recently experienced the long rainy season. I quickly found out that maybe, in fact, they are different, but mud in the South is just as good at sticking in between the tires, the brakes, and the frame. Ride on? Not possible! I could not even push the bike because the tires would not spin! Man, that is some heavy mud. I am not sure how I made it out of that low spot. When I finally arrived home, I was exhausted from pushing my bike, but was saved, yet again, by eager pre-pubescent children who cleaned my entire bike, and even tried to clean inside the tubes. Moral of the story: Cameroonians are really good at cleaning things! And eager children get rewarded with parties involving promises of soda (jus) and popcorn.

Weird things I have eaten

My goal is to scare, disgust, and keep track of all the weird things I have eaten and will eat over these 27 months. Let's give it a go!

-Grubs, soaked in hot piment pepper (Delicious)
-Monkey (that's right, our closest cousin. Mediocre)
-Porcepic (Much like what we know as the porcupine, only cuter. Delicious)
-Rat (not the good cane rat, raised in a cage, but the wild kind, caught in the bush. Not good)
-Bush hog (probably the most delicious meat I have eaten in Cameroon)
-Wild mango (unsellable as fruit due to its inability to keep for long, but delicious especially when given to you by a group of smiling women, cutting them open for the seed, and children, happily eating the fruit as fast as they can, all under the shade of a mango tree)
-The foot of a chicken (very cartiledgy, lots of bones, interesting enough with piment)
-The foot of a village pig (which may make me more un-kosher than the fact that I ate it's lung also)
-Lung of village pig
-A wild bird that looked like a vulture, and, yes, tasted kind of like chicken

It's been a while and j'ai mal au tete.

While I wish the literal translation of "j'ai mal au tete" were correct (as in "I have a sickness in the head," which would be correct for so many reasons), I simply mean to say that I have some unexplained headache, going on 3 days now. So, among my many issues, including stomach related, skin related, and back related, I am now sick in the head. I am not sure of the cause, and the nurses at the hospital who pretend not to understand my french have not helped me further investigate the cause. But likely, it is a cause of manual labor and dehydration. To elaborate further, I will compose some sort of ode to urban farming below. (Be aware, this is not nearly as eloquent as I had dreamed it would be in my many hours hard at work.)

I knew that it was going to be an adventure when it started.
Clearing the land- me, with the power of the machete. Look out!
Next came the holes. It was rather like digging through trash.
And upon retrieving a used condom from this urban field,
I thought, 'Take that, Pope!' and smiled to myself
and used every impliment possible to throw it into another trash pile, in the grass.
Shoes, many used and tired shoes. Probably from too much manual labor.
Doll arm, yogurt containers, broken glass.
Aside from digging holes 1m by 1m, you can find all this treasure while planting, too!
Oh, the joys of urban farming in a city who's solution to trash is 'Burn it!'

I apologize for the above, and probably the only reason I wrote it was to savour the memory of finding a used condom. And the doll arm.

Lately, aside from helping plant a piment (hot pepper) field, I have been busy fielding phone calls from a cacao farmer who I will visit next week. He may be crazy, which would account for his 3 calls a day just to say hello. I have also been hard at work learning how to cook, Cameroonian-style! This involves taking almost all ingrediants and turning them into something that does not resemble, for example, an onion. With a flat stone and a round stone, one pulverizes all spices and vegetables until they turn into a dark colored paste. I learned how to clean fish, the highlight, by far, and I learned how to pulvarize plantains into what is called pile, by far my preferred method to eat unripe plantain.

Another entertaining part of life lately has been the fact that my favorite dog is in heat. She likes to hang out in my house, refusing all food I try to give her (apparantly even the starving are picky), and scratching herself because of fleas the size of mosquitos. But we hang out. She might be my favorite neighborhood visitor. Anyway, lately all of the neighborhood male dogs have been visiting and deranging. All of her attempts to just say no to the biggest dog work- she just sits down- but it's the fights between all of the male dogs, at all hours of the night, that really amaze me. I am beginning to think that maybe this is the reason we neuter and spay most of the American dogs, for the peace and quiet of the neighborhood.

Perfect lead in: As Cameroon gets ready to play a big match versus Gabon (the team may be incorrect), the one reason, other than me, to cheer for Cameroon throughout the large tournaments that are happening in Africa, is the president's wife. If you ever get the chance, check out the president's wife's hair on google image. I think I could talk about it until she is done using hairspray.

And with that, this slightly less interesting post is finished. One day I will figure out how to add pictures, but until then settle for the hair.

Slash and burn meets schisto

I will start this blog with a quick note about PC medical office warnings about avoiding swimming in fresh water to not have a risk of getting schisto, those tiny snails that burrow into your heels and live in your brain.

Now, here is what happens when your work is practical... In the village of Ngouselmanna.. (need to get the spelling straight), everyone farms on this one hill that happens to be the most fertile. Trouble is, you have to cross a pretty serious wetland to get there. Every morning men and women wade through water that is hip deep, sometimes standing on underwater logs, usually avoiding tripping on roots, always barefoot, to reach the base of this hill. I had the luck of doing this! We started off this morning with a mama and my counterpart, all of us wearing woven backpacks and carrying machetes, just me wearing boots while everyone else wears sandals. We walk through a cacao field down a dirt path before we reach what appears to be a wet spot. I prepare to figure out a way around before I realize this is a maricoge-a wetland! So, off come my boots, pants rolled up as high as they can go, and weilding a baton and my machete we start off doucement, very slowly. After about 15 minutes of trudging through water with varying depths of knee high to hip high, we finally make it to the other side! Without seeing a snake or a leech, might I add. We passed a few farmers on their way out, and marched with several on their way in. EVERYONE does this twice a day, everyday!

To get to mama's farm is a brief hike through the jungle, barefoot or in flipflops. The earth here is good, terre noire. So every year, farmers clear out some land with trusy machetes and burn off the fallen branches and other plants. Sometimes you can find no trees on this cleared land, but this mama, and probably most people farming on this hill, leave the biggest trees. When you are standing in the field, other than the few visible staple crops, you feel like you are the first person to have discovered this earth. It remains unbelievably natural, whatever that means. We commenced with a brief lesson on macabo cultivation, a delicious tuber with huge leaves. One enleves the plant, pulling at it's base, then one pulls at the tubers to rip them from the plants, one searches the ground for tubers that have stubbornly stuck there, and then one cuts off the leaves, and the base of the bulb to replant for the future. We harvested like this for about an hour, and finally, with my sack full of macabo, which I had to spread out to the other women becuase it was HEAVY (Mamas put me to shame), we return, traversing the wetland once again.

I asked this mama why she picks a new farm every year. Her reply, obviously enough, was because the fertility of the soil decreases. But within her answer I sensed a more engrained recognition that by shifting cultivation among 4 or 5 fields, she is more protecting the soil from degradation than reacting to a degraded soil. It gave me a new perspective on slash and burn, I have to say, seeing this melange of trees and other natural plants mixed with agricultural crops. Even when my counterpart asked me if I thought there would be problems with erosion because of farming on a steep hillside, I decided that probably not, because there was so much vegetation covering the ground, and what was remaining from the "slash" was left on the ground- smaller tree trunks and other plant debris. As an outsider, it is easy to look down on slash and burn as antiquated, even savage, or to romanticize it as natural or native. I recognize it's problems; as the human population increases, land becomes more scarce, augmented by the impending global climate change that will kill us all if we don't protect our forests. But as I trudged through the wetland on the way back out, I realized I had a new perspective on this traditional cultivation method. Also, I probably had schisto.