I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a Cameroonian mother, soon-to-be or new. Last week I went with Karla to grind some soy, and the woman whose shop we were frequenting was drinking a beer (mind you, it was 11 am). Then I saw the 6 month old baby. I asked if she was still nursing and she said yes, at which point it became my duty to inform her that nursing moms need to be careful about what they ingest because, well, they’re eating for two. The idea that a beer could stunt the development of her child was taken very lightly, as she acknowledged me with a sort of blank nodding stare. She was probably thinking, “Look at my son,” the little 9 year old boy who was charged with running the mill. “He doesn’t have any problems.” Well, maybe, but he is also a 9 year old who should be in school. Let’s talk about stunting your child’s development… The likelihood that this woman drank while pregnant with her fat little baby and her 9 year old soon is also high, so maybe whatever damage that wasn’t done during fetal stages of development can be made up for in their real life? Even PCVs all joke that Beaufort light, a low calorie Cameroonian lager, is a pregnant woman’s beer of choice. It is light, after all.
This also interests me because my neighbor, a devout woman who doesn’t drink, is approximately 1 month behind on her delivery date. If I were her, I would be at the point of panic, but it doesn’t even phase the Cameroonians as abnormal or worrisome. The entire world that is set up for us Americans just doesn’t exist here. I asked her husband this morning, “Are you worried for your wife’s health?” He said no, because due dates are unreliable. Well, due dates that are unreliable in America are a week or two off, and as long as you’re getting proper check-ups, sonograms, tests, etc., you’re going to have a relatively good idea of when he’s gonna pop out. And if he’s seemingly a little too late, doctors will likely induce labor (like with fetal me). Here women get pregnant and they likely never see a doctor, even the ones living close to town. It is probably only those who fall ill who get a chance to see a doctor. Or a marabou, the local witch doctor. So my friend keeps getting bigger, and maybe the doctors were way off with the due date, but no one but me seems to be panicking for her. I guess I just need to throw my standard of medical care out the window and accept that the due date for a woman in village here is just a general indicator of when she should probably think about not going out to the farm by herself anymore.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Poisonwood Bible
Has anyone read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver? This book is about a missionary American family that moves to the Belgian Congo in the 1950s, right around the time of independence. The family experiences a lot of things that many volunteers in the South, at least, find amusingly relatable. For example, the mother brings a Betty Crocker cake mix for her oldest daughter’s 16th birthday, only to discover on the day of her birthday that humidity has completely turned the mix into an unusable block. I can say that despite packaging 60 years more advanced, drink mixes often suffer the same fate in my kitchen.
Her incredibly spot-on description of the peeling, soaking, and pounding of manioc (what she describes as “full of nutrition as a brown paper sack”) into baton de manioc is a good reminder of why food likely became so pureed out here: lack of dentists means few teeth that are still good for chewing. The idea of fruit as a luxury item is definitely accurate across all of Cameroon, though more pronounced in the rural areas. In the later years of Leah’s life (one of the daughters of this missionary family), Leah, who has remained in Congo with her revolutionary Congolese husband, focuses her community development work on soybean farming to help improve nutrition for families. Needless to say, we are still fighting the same battle.
One of the more critical parts of the book takes place post-independence, when the father has decided that the family will stay with or without help from the church (without, as it turns out). The entire village is suffering a crisis drought time, and the reader thinks, “things can’t possibly get any worse”. One morning they wake up to pounding on the door and screaming from the village: an invasion of ants has flooded the village. The author’s description of how the ants enter into all the houses and kitchens as unstoppable seas, cleaning out all cupboards spotlessly, completely removing all the meat from the bones of anyone left behind, leaves you with a haunting image of a force of nature that is too powerful. Her point is to highlight the work of missionaries in “bringing God” to poor Africans when the Africans already know about plagues of insects (which has generally been left behind in Biblical times to the Westerners) and the capricious balance of nature (which, in my experience, is all the more pronounced in the tropics), but they just might not name that force “God”.
This ant invasion I found especially relevant as I woke yesterday to an army invasion of ants in my house. They were hard at work, and if you interrupted their path, you became their target instead. So, hoping around the rivers of ants at 5 am, I managed to climb into the kitchen where most of their work was being done. For an instant, mostly because I had become their momentary target, I regretted not having insect spray to kill them. But then I looked closely. I saw their puissance in numbers, specifically how they could make so much noise by moving plastic bags and from eating cockroaches. I could hear the ants crunching through the carapaces, almost instantly killing any cockroach that got caught by these shifting seas. They moved these bodies across the floor like crowd surfers at a concert, and I instantly became a fan of their work. You could even see the surviving cockroaches hiding from imminent death on my curtains, with what I am convinced was a look of fear in their antennas. True, some of the dumber ants managed to crawl into my acidic kombucha culture to their death, leaving me no choice but to start new cultures, but earlier this week I was just noticing how my cockroaches were getting out of hand despite my careful cultivation of house spiders and other lazy people’s methods for natural pest control.
I decided that I would let the ants live, let them clean my kitchen of any meat I refused to eat, and then I found out my neighbors were having the same problem. The Jehova Witnesses recommended petrol/water spray as a solution. Here I am, a fallen Jew, living in a part of the Congo that regrets that it is helplessly a part of the Congo, and my neighbors, the God-fearing, recommend a solution to kill God’s creation. I politely declined the exact recipe, insisting instead that I will just leave my house for a few hours. And when I returned to my house, there was no evidence of an ant invasion; Only a kitchen that was silenced from the eerie disappearance of my usual company of cockroaches.
Her incredibly spot-on description of the peeling, soaking, and pounding of manioc (what she describes as “full of nutrition as a brown paper sack”) into baton de manioc is a good reminder of why food likely became so pureed out here: lack of dentists means few teeth that are still good for chewing. The idea of fruit as a luxury item is definitely accurate across all of Cameroon, though more pronounced in the rural areas. In the later years of Leah’s life (one of the daughters of this missionary family), Leah, who has remained in Congo with her revolutionary Congolese husband, focuses her community development work on soybean farming to help improve nutrition for families. Needless to say, we are still fighting the same battle.
One of the more critical parts of the book takes place post-independence, when the father has decided that the family will stay with or without help from the church (without, as it turns out). The entire village is suffering a crisis drought time, and the reader thinks, “things can’t possibly get any worse”. One morning they wake up to pounding on the door and screaming from the village: an invasion of ants has flooded the village. The author’s description of how the ants enter into all the houses and kitchens as unstoppable seas, cleaning out all cupboards spotlessly, completely removing all the meat from the bones of anyone left behind, leaves you with a haunting image of a force of nature that is too powerful. Her point is to highlight the work of missionaries in “bringing God” to poor Africans when the Africans already know about plagues of insects (which has generally been left behind in Biblical times to the Westerners) and the capricious balance of nature (which, in my experience, is all the more pronounced in the tropics), but they just might not name that force “God”.
This ant invasion I found especially relevant as I woke yesterday to an army invasion of ants in my house. They were hard at work, and if you interrupted their path, you became their target instead. So, hoping around the rivers of ants at 5 am, I managed to climb into the kitchen where most of their work was being done. For an instant, mostly because I had become their momentary target, I regretted not having insect spray to kill them. But then I looked closely. I saw their puissance in numbers, specifically how they could make so much noise by moving plastic bags and from eating cockroaches. I could hear the ants crunching through the carapaces, almost instantly killing any cockroach that got caught by these shifting seas. They moved these bodies across the floor like crowd surfers at a concert, and I instantly became a fan of their work. You could even see the surviving cockroaches hiding from imminent death on my curtains, with what I am convinced was a look of fear in their antennas. True, some of the dumber ants managed to crawl into my acidic kombucha culture to their death, leaving me no choice but to start new cultures, but earlier this week I was just noticing how my cockroaches were getting out of hand despite my careful cultivation of house spiders and other lazy people’s methods for natural pest control.
I decided that I would let the ants live, let them clean my kitchen of any meat I refused to eat, and then I found out my neighbors were having the same problem. The Jehova Witnesses recommended petrol/water spray as a solution. Here I am, a fallen Jew, living in a part of the Congo that regrets that it is helplessly a part of the Congo, and my neighbors, the God-fearing, recommend a solution to kill God’s creation. I politely declined the exact recipe, insisting instead that I will just leave my house for a few hours. And when I returned to my house, there was no evidence of an ant invasion; Only a kitchen that was silenced from the eerie disappearance of my usual company of cockroaches.
Monday, January 31, 2011
The National Agric Show happens (at last)!
I recently looked at pictures of my village when I first moved in over a year ago. The road was paved, but only poorly and only wide enough for one car to pass comfortably. There was a lot of green grass and few buildings. There was very little traffic. It is in stark contrast to the comments of my friends who, upon visiting me for the arrival of the National Agric Show in my village, commented that, “Lauren, I didn’t know you live in the middle of town.” I guess this was an appropriate comment for someone who saw that there were 3 ice cream machines and a man selling grilled meat (strictly a city delight) across the street from my house. This in a place that often does not have power and even more often does not have running water. But I, too, was surprised to see that for a whole week I did not have to leave my village to get supplies. And I didn’t. The Show (the Comice) was a weird trip, and I wanted to soak it up.
The day I walked out of my house and was surrounded by a traffic jam of cars and people all flocking to see the spectacle, I thought to myself, “Well now is as good a time as any to hide in my house.” Even Owondo, my dog, was acting strangely because of all the fast and sudden change to our neighborhood. His territory where he normally runs around freely and undisturbed became the stomping grounds for hundreds of men and women with guns (police, military, etc.), cows, camels, other weird creatures including a lion, thousands of other people coming from all over the country and from other countries (needless to say the number of white people in my village became at least 20xs what it usually is at just me), and a lot of other (weird) things. I felt as though my village had been magically transformed into a weird hybrid of the city of Ebolowa with the usual characters I see around town, mixed with an American county fair, mixed with really strangely unsettling political power trips. Needless to say, Ngalane became Bizzaro-Ngalane for a week that will never again reappear and will never be forgotten by myself or the villagers of Ngalane.
One of the weirder moments was watching a parade of ghoulish figures and African drummers moving down my street. This is the same street where I run- where I would even run in the middle of the road without fear of being hit by a car. And there we were, all several thousand of us watching a parade moving slowly down the road. The parade followed the arrival of the President, which was also a very weird moment. In anticipation of the arrival of the president, the gendarmes blocked off the road. They were uniformed men standing on the sides of the roads holding large rifles and chasing people off the road, even hitting them with their hands or the butt of their rifles to prevent people from “compromising the security of the president.” Often times they were women. The strangest part of watching gendarmes smacking pedestrians with their rifles was listening to the music that was selected to play during the President’s arrival. This music had me convinced that God himself was about to roll up in a Mercedes-Benz. It was like being beckoned to heaven. Even though we had a booth inside the Comice, the reason we saw the show from the outside on the first day was because it was nearly impossible to enter as the entrance gates were flooded with supporters of the RDPC party, specifically Paul Biya. Because RDPC supporters all have distinct pagne outfit it was more in your face than any presidential candidate rally I have ever seen in America.
Once inside, it was fairly easy to forget that you were in Cameroon. There were so many people, many of the middle/upper class, and everything was so (relatively) well organized that it transported you to any fair you’ve been to in America. And except for the lacking of adequate toilet facilities (or lacking of knowledge of Cameroonians of how to use port-a-potties), you could easily imagine, as you drink your tap beer in the beer garden, or eat your cheese sandwich from the dairy cooperative, that you truly were in America. And except for the fact that our booth, as the only booth with a consistent 5 to 9 “white” Americans behind the tables, was the most popular out of all the other booths (likely because people thought the fliers we were handing out must have been dollar bills), it was easy to imagine that you were in a different world.
I guess I can talk forever on how strange it is to experience a complete transformation of your village where you have no running water and no place to buy basic supplies (except beer) to an extension of the city where you still (ironically) have no running water, but where you can get anything you ever dreamed of in a 100 meter walk from your house. But that is development, right? All of the village of Ngalane profited from the temporary boost in economy, but now here we are, back to the same quiet village (thankfully) where you can’t even buy soda at the bar. Only this time we are left will all the trash, human and animal feces, and temporary bamboo structures the Comice brought. Will the Comice mean anything long term for the people here, or maybe will it mean Cholera? Will its effects extend further down the roads to the villages where it is needed the most? Will any of this infrastructure be maintained? There are so many questions that remain and I only have 10 months left to answer them.
Oh, and I haven’t even gotten to the part about how I shook hands with the President and First Lady, Paul and Chantal Biya. After days of anticipating their passage past our booth, they finally surprised us with an unexpected brief visit on Thursday, the 4th day of the Comice. As the organizer of the event, I was the first one to shake hands with them, and as a native to Ngalane (or so I consider myself at times), I greeted them in Bulu. This impressed Chantal so much that she decided to ask me, “Tu est ou? Where are you?” meaning where do you live? I replied, “Je suis ici a Ngalane! I am here at Ngalane!” Upon telling this story to my landlady, quickly everyone found out that I declared my love for Ngalane to the First Lady herself and now all my neighbors love me.
Also, for those of you who remember my, “This is how I got Schisto” blog entry a year ago, during my mid-service check up I requested to get tested for Schisto and the results came back extremely positive. Fortunately the treatment isn’t more than 2 doses in a day, so here I am hoping to stay Schisto free for the next year.
The day I walked out of my house and was surrounded by a traffic jam of cars and people all flocking to see the spectacle, I thought to myself, “Well now is as good a time as any to hide in my house.” Even Owondo, my dog, was acting strangely because of all the fast and sudden change to our neighborhood. His territory where he normally runs around freely and undisturbed became the stomping grounds for hundreds of men and women with guns (police, military, etc.), cows, camels, other weird creatures including a lion, thousands of other people coming from all over the country and from other countries (needless to say the number of white people in my village became at least 20xs what it usually is at just me), and a lot of other (weird) things. I felt as though my village had been magically transformed into a weird hybrid of the city of Ebolowa with the usual characters I see around town, mixed with an American county fair, mixed with really strangely unsettling political power trips. Needless to say, Ngalane became Bizzaro-Ngalane for a week that will never again reappear and will never be forgotten by myself or the villagers of Ngalane.
One of the weirder moments was watching a parade of ghoulish figures and African drummers moving down my street. This is the same street where I run- where I would even run in the middle of the road without fear of being hit by a car. And there we were, all several thousand of us watching a parade moving slowly down the road. The parade followed the arrival of the President, which was also a very weird moment. In anticipation of the arrival of the president, the gendarmes blocked off the road. They were uniformed men standing on the sides of the roads holding large rifles and chasing people off the road, even hitting them with their hands or the butt of their rifles to prevent people from “compromising the security of the president.” Often times they were women. The strangest part of watching gendarmes smacking pedestrians with their rifles was listening to the music that was selected to play during the President’s arrival. This music had me convinced that God himself was about to roll up in a Mercedes-Benz. It was like being beckoned to heaven. Even though we had a booth inside the Comice, the reason we saw the show from the outside on the first day was because it was nearly impossible to enter as the entrance gates were flooded with supporters of the RDPC party, specifically Paul Biya. Because RDPC supporters all have distinct pagne outfit it was more in your face than any presidential candidate rally I have ever seen in America.
Once inside, it was fairly easy to forget that you were in Cameroon. There were so many people, many of the middle/upper class, and everything was so (relatively) well organized that it transported you to any fair you’ve been to in America. And except for the lacking of adequate toilet facilities (or lacking of knowledge of Cameroonians of how to use port-a-potties), you could easily imagine, as you drink your tap beer in the beer garden, or eat your cheese sandwich from the dairy cooperative, that you truly were in America. And except for the fact that our booth, as the only booth with a consistent 5 to 9 “white” Americans behind the tables, was the most popular out of all the other booths (likely because people thought the fliers we were handing out must have been dollar bills), it was easy to imagine that you were in a different world.
I guess I can talk forever on how strange it is to experience a complete transformation of your village where you have no running water and no place to buy basic supplies (except beer) to an extension of the city where you still (ironically) have no running water, but where you can get anything you ever dreamed of in a 100 meter walk from your house. But that is development, right? All of the village of Ngalane profited from the temporary boost in economy, but now here we are, back to the same quiet village (thankfully) where you can’t even buy soda at the bar. Only this time we are left will all the trash, human and animal feces, and temporary bamboo structures the Comice brought. Will the Comice mean anything long term for the people here, or maybe will it mean Cholera? Will its effects extend further down the roads to the villages where it is needed the most? Will any of this infrastructure be maintained? There are so many questions that remain and I only have 10 months left to answer them.
Oh, and I haven’t even gotten to the part about how I shook hands with the President and First Lady, Paul and Chantal Biya. After days of anticipating their passage past our booth, they finally surprised us with an unexpected brief visit on Thursday, the 4th day of the Comice. As the organizer of the event, I was the first one to shake hands with them, and as a native to Ngalane (or so I consider myself at times), I greeted them in Bulu. This impressed Chantal so much that she decided to ask me, “Tu est ou? Where are you?” meaning where do you live? I replied, “Je suis ici a Ngalane! I am here at Ngalane!” Upon telling this story to my landlady, quickly everyone found out that I declared my love for Ngalane to the First Lady herself and now all my neighbors love me.
Also, for those of you who remember my, “This is how I got Schisto” blog entry a year ago, during my mid-service check up I requested to get tested for Schisto and the results came back extremely positive. Fortunately the treatment isn’t more than 2 doses in a day, so here I am hoping to stay Schisto free for the next year.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Random slice of random day
In what may be a sign that life in Cameroon has become something resembling “normal,” and having been inspired by a visit from two PCVs, stagemates who I haven’t seen in a long time, I am dedicating this blog entry to a cleft-lipped baby and wooden demonstration penises.
On my way home from a short, mid-day, obscenely hot walk with the dog, I return to my family compound. I cross over a cement bridge traversing the open sewer that has just been put in, and hop onto a 4x8 wood plank that serves as an extension bridge over the awkward walkway that has yet to be touched. Having added another mark to the score of Lauren vs Bridge in what has become an ongoing battle, I hop down safely on the stolen cement walkway that lasts about 20 ft. About 3 months ago my compound members stole cement from the road building crew, the cement that falls to waste when the hot tar is already laid, and made a nice little walkway. This walkway was helpful during its first few months in existence, but then during the rainy season just became another part of the mudpit walk to and from the road. Anyway, on our return to my house, we pass first a monkey, a drill, in his cage, chowing down on boiled manioc. His name is something obscurely amusing, like Pappy or Pepe, and he is always doing something strangely human. Last week, for example, he was sitting up with his legs sprawled over and through the bars of his cage, like a man reposed on the couch watching television. Today he was too distracted to do anything mean to my dog who tried to touch him through the cage. As Owondo unsuccessfully tries to play with the monkey, 2 year old Stephen walks up, seeing only monkey. As soon and Stephen catches Owondo’s attention, Stephen flees, terrified of a pursuit by a now attentive dog. Stephen flees, however, with an empty gin sachet in hand, and a cigarette butt dangling from his lips. I proceed to remove the butt from his mouth, and smack him a little, enough to bring attention to his family of these vices learned too young. I, on the other hand, leave the gin sachet in the small child’s hand, figuring that you have to pick your battles.
On my way home from a short, mid-day, obscenely hot walk with the dog, I return to my family compound. I cross over a cement bridge traversing the open sewer that has just been put in, and hop onto a 4x8 wood plank that serves as an extension bridge over the awkward walkway that has yet to be touched. Having added another mark to the score of Lauren vs Bridge in what has become an ongoing battle, I hop down safely on the stolen cement walkway that lasts about 20 ft. About 3 months ago my compound members stole cement from the road building crew, the cement that falls to waste when the hot tar is already laid, and made a nice little walkway. This walkway was helpful during its first few months in existence, but then during the rainy season just became another part of the mudpit walk to and from the road. Anyway, on our return to my house, we pass first a monkey, a drill, in his cage, chowing down on boiled manioc. His name is something obscurely amusing, like Pappy or Pepe, and he is always doing something strangely human. Last week, for example, he was sitting up with his legs sprawled over and through the bars of his cage, like a man reposed on the couch watching television. Today he was too distracted to do anything mean to my dog who tried to touch him through the cage. As Owondo unsuccessfully tries to play with the monkey, 2 year old Stephen walks up, seeing only monkey. As soon and Stephen catches Owondo’s attention, Stephen flees, terrified of a pursuit by a now attentive dog. Stephen flees, however, with an empty gin sachet in hand, and a cigarette butt dangling from his lips. I proceed to remove the butt from his mouth, and smack him a little, enough to bring attention to his family of these vices learned too young. I, on the other hand, leave the gin sachet in the small child’s hand, figuring that you have to pick your battles.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
BRAINS!!!
I have now officially been to the saddest place in Ebolowa. The morgue. What can I say about it? Well, for starters, it is conveniently located next to the regional hospital. This means that no matter how sick you think you are, you just look out your window and think, “Well, at least I’m not there.” It was also incredibly poorly designed, specifically because there is no “bright side.” The very same place where dead bodies are dropped off, the mourning come to the body viewing 2 weeks after their beloved has passed away. Combining the mourning with the grieving is just not a good idea. I will say that the reason I have somehow managed to avoid the morgue for so long (1 year, half of my service) is that I have no been personally affected by someone’s death thus far. I made my way over there this morning not in mourning of a friend, but in support of a friend who finally lost her long-sick husband. I showed up with Serges a little bit early, which gave me plenty of time to see that the morgue is, in contrast to what I said before, also a good place to socialize. This I can say safely because I knew quite a few people there, including my tomato momma. Her story was that someone’s husband from her village was hit by a car in Ebolowa, a tragedy marked by the fact that his young wife has a 6 month old and herself is widowed at the age of 20.
In the midst of all the mourning, the crying, the moaning, the fainting, the socializing, there also arrives grief. Today, grief arrived in the form of a transport bus that usually holds around 40 people that was empty, save for a passenger, the driver, and a limp body covered by a bloody sheet. Trying to imagine that it wasn’t in fact a dead body, I briefly convinced myself that this bus was a transport bus for people to return with the casket to their village for the burial. As two men who evidently worked at the morgue carried out a gurney to the bus, I realized that this was, in fact, a dead body. As the driver directed the two employees to the body, detailing the story, the bus started to roll forward towards one crowd. He clumsily ran back to put the E-brake on, and I stared, wide-eyed, as these two employees pulled out the corpse, also clumsily because there is evidently not a smooth way to relocated a limp corpse. Soon enough the corpse, a woman, started to spill out brain as she was lifted up and onto the gurney. I saw brain emptying out from this woman’s skull! It was, at once, disturbing and depressing. Making this vision even more depressing is the story of her arrival at the morgue.
Although I am not sure of how this story can be recounted, being as there were no witnesses, apparently this woman was on her way home from the field, on foot, and was walking on the good paved road between Ambam and Ebolowa where cars have been known to go too fast. A moto, probably also going much too fast for the hilly curves, hit this woman, throwing her to the pavement, and then ran off. The results were equivalent to as if she, herself, had been on the moto and flown off upon collision, smashing her head on the pavement. A bus filled with passengers returning from Ambam saw this woman’s body, and amongst them, made the space on the seat, and collected money to send her body to the morgue. So, by the time she arrived, her brains were a pale yellow soup. After removing her body, the young female passenger who remained with the body throughout the process also handed over her 3 machetes and sharpener, probably an important identification (as who carried their ID when going to the field?) for her family. I did I all could to not break down right at that moment, though I could not help but imagine her family at home wondering where mom is, not knowing that mom didn’t return from the field because she is dead at the morgue.
To make matters worse, I had to sit through a church service for my friend’s husband. My friend, although her husband had already been dead for 2 weeks, proceeded to faint/pass out, delaying the service, and eventually returned with an IV drip because… well… because Cameroonians LOVE IV drips. So, I basically marginalized her loss because I was so focused on this way more tragic death that had just happened. After the service was over, I skipped out on every other activity to go the bar. 2 beers in at noon, I was at last able to return to my house where I lost it. It turns out that if there is in fact such a thing as the death season, it really makes me sad.
In the midst of all the mourning, the crying, the moaning, the fainting, the socializing, there also arrives grief. Today, grief arrived in the form of a transport bus that usually holds around 40 people that was empty, save for a passenger, the driver, and a limp body covered by a bloody sheet. Trying to imagine that it wasn’t in fact a dead body, I briefly convinced myself that this bus was a transport bus for people to return with the casket to their village for the burial. As two men who evidently worked at the morgue carried out a gurney to the bus, I realized that this was, in fact, a dead body. As the driver directed the two employees to the body, detailing the story, the bus started to roll forward towards one crowd. He clumsily ran back to put the E-brake on, and I stared, wide-eyed, as these two employees pulled out the corpse, also clumsily because there is evidently not a smooth way to relocated a limp corpse. Soon enough the corpse, a woman, started to spill out brain as she was lifted up and onto the gurney. I saw brain emptying out from this woman’s skull! It was, at once, disturbing and depressing. Making this vision even more depressing is the story of her arrival at the morgue.
Although I am not sure of how this story can be recounted, being as there were no witnesses, apparently this woman was on her way home from the field, on foot, and was walking on the good paved road between Ambam and Ebolowa where cars have been known to go too fast. A moto, probably also going much too fast for the hilly curves, hit this woman, throwing her to the pavement, and then ran off. The results were equivalent to as if she, herself, had been on the moto and flown off upon collision, smashing her head on the pavement. A bus filled with passengers returning from Ambam saw this woman’s body, and amongst them, made the space on the seat, and collected money to send her body to the morgue. So, by the time she arrived, her brains were a pale yellow soup. After removing her body, the young female passenger who remained with the body throughout the process also handed over her 3 machetes and sharpener, probably an important identification (as who carried their ID when going to the field?) for her family. I did I all could to not break down right at that moment, though I could not help but imagine her family at home wondering where mom is, not knowing that mom didn’t return from the field because she is dead at the morgue.
To make matters worse, I had to sit through a church service for my friend’s husband. My friend, although her husband had already been dead for 2 weeks, proceeded to faint/pass out, delaying the service, and eventually returned with an IV drip because… well… because Cameroonians LOVE IV drips. So, I basically marginalized her loss because I was so focused on this way more tragic death that had just happened. After the service was over, I skipped out on every other activity to go the bar. 2 beers in at noon, I was at last able to return to my house where I lost it. It turns out that if there is in fact such a thing as the death season, it really makes me sad.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Political ecology and the National show in 3 weeks!
Yesterday while running on my road that was, not long ago, a two-track road so muddy it was impassible by anything but moto, and is now a two-lane paved road with an improved bridge, I considered some of the impacts of the National Agro-Pastoral Show (Comice) on my village/Ebolowa. While there is no way to know how things are going to turn out, the political ecologist in me has become increasing good at using the hatchet to break down the problem. Here goes my best effort. Keep in mind this is completely speculative.
Environmental: The most obvious problem to any environmentalist is…. er…. environmental. We are talking about oil spills on the roads that often spill into the rivers, the wetlands, run off onto farms, and get tracked into my house. We are also talking about air pollution. I decided that until this whole thing is over, I can no longer afford to run because it seriously burns the lungs. This is probably compounded because of the fact that the air in the rainforest is relatively stagnant, and the humidity traps the gross stuff until it finally rains. These two compounded with building of permanent roads, of course, have major impacts on wildlife. So long, African Grey Parrot! And who can forget… CEMENT! Cameroonians LOVE cement. Now we aren’t talking about a healthy relationship. We are talking about a refusal to use wood or mud (materials that are a. local, b. readily available, c. quick to use, d. durable) because cement is more expensive and imported. Does this mean that it is better quality? I can tell you from personal experience that cement here is really poor quality. The blocks fall apart easily possibly because they have to dry in the sun (we are now in the rainy season) which isn’t very strong to begin with, as there is lots of tree cover. This is probably also due to the fact that the cement is low grade quality, imported from China. I can’t even begin to discuss the environmental factors there… And finally… the clearing of the land to build houses and other structures. I guess we can’t debate the merits of development, but perhaps we could start to talk about a little something called city planning. Yes, this is a relatively new field of study, but Cameroon is getting fiber optic internet. Maybe someone could have looked this up. Specifically the idea that building up is often times better than building out. Especially in one of the last remaining tropical rainforests of the world.
Jobs: There has been a huge increase in the availability of jobs due to construction of the roads, hotels, houses, anything you can think of. Unfortunately, most of these jobs are going to people from other regions. I guess this can only be blamed on the Bulu people’s far too-often confirmed reputation for laziness. While there are some local people who are benefiting from jobs (we are talking mommas who realize the possibility to sell food, the few men who don’t bitch about manual labor, existing businesses, villagers who can sell bushmeat at exorbitant prices, and, of course, bars and the Brasserie), most of the workers are imported. Also, many of the businesses that existed pre-comice have been razed to make room for “better” structures, classier joints, that will likely never be built. This not only includes formal structures, but things like the fripperie/flea market, the regular food market, and random other stuff that I used to be about to locate. Now, for example, I have no idea where to get my stove fixed. My breakdown of jobs also includes the sale of sex. I feel only slight hesitation to lump this in here, but women of the night… uhhh prostitutes… are certainly getting good business. We are not talking exclusively about formal prostitution because I would say that most of the prostitution I see is rather informal. Ca va dire, women want money, so women accept all sorts of presents and may even become a sort of “copine” for her sugar daddy (likely married) who is here only for a short while. So, as long as they protect themselves, keep up the good work. If not, I will expand this to include STIs and HIV/AIDS. Which I guess could fall into health care work? And then this all will likely be compounded during the weeklong event of the comice. This also means that I get to accuse everybody who asks me for money of being lazy and uncreative. (Is there any question that Cameroon has made me more sympathetic?)
Food security: Where to begin? Baton de manioc, one of the staples of the South, has doubled in price in town. My postmate used to buy a large sack of garlic at 2.000, and she recently reported the cost at 3.500. All kinds of food has become harder to find and much more expensive. This is because more people are buying and many of the food markets have been torn down. I have no way to know what the situation will be in the time leading up to the Comice, but it is certain that many, many people will be coming into Ebolowa from other regions, from Gabon, Eq. Guinea, and probably from European countries to buy food. So anyone who knows the basic rules of economics knows that when the demand increases, the price can, too, if the supply hasn’t. And trust me, it hasn’t. Subsidies were given so tardy to local producers that I am even skeptical that the people who received them will be able to harvest before the Comice. Like, for example, the plantain rejets that were given to the farms surrounding the field for the Comice. A plantain takes 1 year to maturity, which means in approximately 10 months I will be eating lots of cheap plantains. Not into time, clearly, for the Comice. Assuming that people will get fed up with the South, or that the government will start stealing money again and development will come to a screeching halt, this is good news for life post-Comice.
Security and well-being: Everyone knows that when a city doubles in size in a matter of months (or a week), the poor become poorer, people become disillusioned, people see quick opportunities, and crime becomes a major problem. The Bulu tell me that the only crimes committed in Bulu-land are committed by people from other regions, usually the West and the NW. I am not certain of the reliability of that data, but I am going to guess that crime will become an increasing problem, particularly during the Comice itself. This may be rapes, robberies, or break-ins, and it will likely be committed by everyone. Fortunately there are now street lights by my house, so assuming that the electricity is not cut for the week, I should hopefully be good to go. On my early am walk home the other day, however, I realized that some of the houses that were half-torn down to make room for road expansion are still inhabited. That can not be good for city-wide security or well-being.
White people: WOW! There are so many white people here now. I guess this is especially strange because before I knew all of us, and I could count us on two hands. I saw 2 new ones yesterday, and 3 driving around in a fancy SUV the day before. Recently I have been called a tourist, and yesterday some crazy lady accused the Comice of being a white person thing. Ahh… really?
And prison: It is likely that some grands who have been linked to stealing Comice cash for the past 20 years will spend some of their near future in jail. I’m not totally clear on how this will work specifically because of the impending election, but I am guessing that unless the grands are able to buy off a lot of people, they will be forced to watch television and sit on cushy chairs and drink wine from inside the prison walls. At least until the elections are over. Talk about justice.
This is my oh-so-scientific synopsis of some of the major problems/opportunities that are currently happening around me. To take a political ecology lens is always difficult: not because it is hard to use the hatchet (anyone who knows me know I am good at finding the problems), but because it is hard to plant a seed (because I am uncreative maybe?). So, on my next run I hope to process some of this and find the seed amongst all the litter. But likely not.
Environmental: The most obvious problem to any environmentalist is…. er…. environmental. We are talking about oil spills on the roads that often spill into the rivers, the wetlands, run off onto farms, and get tracked into my house. We are also talking about air pollution. I decided that until this whole thing is over, I can no longer afford to run because it seriously burns the lungs. This is probably compounded because of the fact that the air in the rainforest is relatively stagnant, and the humidity traps the gross stuff until it finally rains. These two compounded with building of permanent roads, of course, have major impacts on wildlife. So long, African Grey Parrot! And who can forget… CEMENT! Cameroonians LOVE cement. Now we aren’t talking about a healthy relationship. We are talking about a refusal to use wood or mud (materials that are a. local, b. readily available, c. quick to use, d. durable) because cement is more expensive and imported. Does this mean that it is better quality? I can tell you from personal experience that cement here is really poor quality. The blocks fall apart easily possibly because they have to dry in the sun (we are now in the rainy season) which isn’t very strong to begin with, as there is lots of tree cover. This is probably also due to the fact that the cement is low grade quality, imported from China. I can’t even begin to discuss the environmental factors there… And finally… the clearing of the land to build houses and other structures. I guess we can’t debate the merits of development, but perhaps we could start to talk about a little something called city planning. Yes, this is a relatively new field of study, but Cameroon is getting fiber optic internet. Maybe someone could have looked this up. Specifically the idea that building up is often times better than building out. Especially in one of the last remaining tropical rainforests of the world.
Jobs: There has been a huge increase in the availability of jobs due to construction of the roads, hotels, houses, anything you can think of. Unfortunately, most of these jobs are going to people from other regions. I guess this can only be blamed on the Bulu people’s far too-often confirmed reputation for laziness. While there are some local people who are benefiting from jobs (we are talking mommas who realize the possibility to sell food, the few men who don’t bitch about manual labor, existing businesses, villagers who can sell bushmeat at exorbitant prices, and, of course, bars and the Brasserie), most of the workers are imported. Also, many of the businesses that existed pre-comice have been razed to make room for “better” structures, classier joints, that will likely never be built. This not only includes formal structures, but things like the fripperie/flea market, the regular food market, and random other stuff that I used to be about to locate. Now, for example, I have no idea where to get my stove fixed. My breakdown of jobs also includes the sale of sex. I feel only slight hesitation to lump this in here, but women of the night… uhhh prostitutes… are certainly getting good business. We are not talking exclusively about formal prostitution because I would say that most of the prostitution I see is rather informal. Ca va dire, women want money, so women accept all sorts of presents and may even become a sort of “copine” for her sugar daddy (likely married) who is here only for a short while. So, as long as they protect themselves, keep up the good work. If not, I will expand this to include STIs and HIV/AIDS. Which I guess could fall into health care work? And then this all will likely be compounded during the weeklong event of the comice. This also means that I get to accuse everybody who asks me for money of being lazy and uncreative. (Is there any question that Cameroon has made me more sympathetic?)
Food security: Where to begin? Baton de manioc, one of the staples of the South, has doubled in price in town. My postmate used to buy a large sack of garlic at 2.000, and she recently reported the cost at 3.500. All kinds of food has become harder to find and much more expensive. This is because more people are buying and many of the food markets have been torn down. I have no way to know what the situation will be in the time leading up to the Comice, but it is certain that many, many people will be coming into Ebolowa from other regions, from Gabon, Eq. Guinea, and probably from European countries to buy food. So anyone who knows the basic rules of economics knows that when the demand increases, the price can, too, if the supply hasn’t. And trust me, it hasn’t. Subsidies were given so tardy to local producers that I am even skeptical that the people who received them will be able to harvest before the Comice. Like, for example, the plantain rejets that were given to the farms surrounding the field for the Comice. A plantain takes 1 year to maturity, which means in approximately 10 months I will be eating lots of cheap plantains. Not into time, clearly, for the Comice. Assuming that people will get fed up with the South, or that the government will start stealing money again and development will come to a screeching halt, this is good news for life post-Comice.
Security and well-being: Everyone knows that when a city doubles in size in a matter of months (or a week), the poor become poorer, people become disillusioned, people see quick opportunities, and crime becomes a major problem. The Bulu tell me that the only crimes committed in Bulu-land are committed by people from other regions, usually the West and the NW. I am not certain of the reliability of that data, but I am going to guess that crime will become an increasing problem, particularly during the Comice itself. This may be rapes, robberies, or break-ins, and it will likely be committed by everyone. Fortunately there are now street lights by my house, so assuming that the electricity is not cut for the week, I should hopefully be good to go. On my early am walk home the other day, however, I realized that some of the houses that were half-torn down to make room for road expansion are still inhabited. That can not be good for city-wide security or well-being.
White people: WOW! There are so many white people here now. I guess this is especially strange because before I knew all of us, and I could count us on two hands. I saw 2 new ones yesterday, and 3 driving around in a fancy SUV the day before. Recently I have been called a tourist, and yesterday some crazy lady accused the Comice of being a white person thing. Ahh… really?
And prison: It is likely that some grands who have been linked to stealing Comice cash for the past 20 years will spend some of their near future in jail. I’m not totally clear on how this will work specifically because of the impending election, but I am guessing that unless the grands are able to buy off a lot of people, they will be forced to watch television and sit on cushy chairs and drink wine from inside the prison walls. At least until the elections are over. Talk about justice.
This is my oh-so-scientific synopsis of some of the major problems/opportunities that are currently happening around me. To take a political ecology lens is always difficult: not because it is hard to use the hatchet (anyone who knows me know I am good at finding the problems), but because it is hard to plant a seed (because I am uncreative maybe?). So, on my next run I hope to process some of this and find the seed amongst all the litter. But likely not.
Cacao
Life changes fast! One minute, you’re waiting for the pavement trucks to come and lay down the pavement, and the next you’re watching technicians setting up street lights to line your street, much like foresters reforest an area with a neat and orderly grid of trees.
This post will not focus on the rapid changes to my village (a hospital, a community well, and did I mention street lights?), but will focus, instead, on my counterpart Serges. Serges works his father’s cacao field every year. This year he bought fungicides for the trees with money he borrowed from his village saving group. He worked the field doing all the necessary preparation work, including cutting down the weeds, applying fungicides, monitoring the cacao pods in their development, and harvesting the pods and cutting them open to ferment the interior. The first harvest/fermenting process occurred 2 Thursdays ago. Since he had the opportunity to come with me to Lolodorf for a seminar, he left home last Sunday, just a few days after the harvest. When he returned home 3 days later, he found out that his dad sold all of the cacao they harvested (which, in his hurry, was not yet even dry) and spent or hid all of the money! This means that the 400 or so dollars that Serges expected to come to him will never come, and on top of it all, he still has to pay back the village saving group the fungicide money.
While I complain about how dishonest some people are here, I can not even imagine what it would mean to have my own father steal from me and lie to me and my whole family about the money that could probably greatly improve life. Serges, who is probably the most honest person in my Cameroonian experience, was completely screwed by the man who gave him life! What desperate fit of binging could have possibly overcome this man that he could spend 900 bucks in 3 days in village! I live on 900 bucks a month in Corvallis, and that is drinking and eating well. But the worst of it is probably the change for Serges. This probably means he will have to live a whole new reality, knowing that at any moment anyone, family, friends, or strangers, can screw him over without blinking.
****** A month later, it seems that some things have been cleared up. Serges and his dad had a meeting with the chef of the village at church (aka with God) and it was decided that his dad was to reimburse him the money that was supposed to be his. It was also decided that they will split their cacao field. This means Serges will get a large portion, perhaps half, of the field to work on his own. He will get the profit from his field, and his dad will have to work his own field/spend his own money on inputs. Follow up on this decision led me to find that Serges has given up on recuperating any of his lost money this year and they are waiting to bring out technicians to divide the field for next year.
This post will not focus on the rapid changes to my village (a hospital, a community well, and did I mention street lights?), but will focus, instead, on my counterpart Serges. Serges works his father’s cacao field every year. This year he bought fungicides for the trees with money he borrowed from his village saving group. He worked the field doing all the necessary preparation work, including cutting down the weeds, applying fungicides, monitoring the cacao pods in their development, and harvesting the pods and cutting them open to ferment the interior. The first harvest/fermenting process occurred 2 Thursdays ago. Since he had the opportunity to come with me to Lolodorf for a seminar, he left home last Sunday, just a few days after the harvest. When he returned home 3 days later, he found out that his dad sold all of the cacao they harvested (which, in his hurry, was not yet even dry) and spent or hid all of the money! This means that the 400 or so dollars that Serges expected to come to him will never come, and on top of it all, he still has to pay back the village saving group the fungicide money.
While I complain about how dishonest some people are here, I can not even imagine what it would mean to have my own father steal from me and lie to me and my whole family about the money that could probably greatly improve life. Serges, who is probably the most honest person in my Cameroonian experience, was completely screwed by the man who gave him life! What desperate fit of binging could have possibly overcome this man that he could spend 900 bucks in 3 days in village! I live on 900 bucks a month in Corvallis, and that is drinking and eating well. But the worst of it is probably the change for Serges. This probably means he will have to live a whole new reality, knowing that at any moment anyone, family, friends, or strangers, can screw him over without blinking.
****** A month later, it seems that some things have been cleared up. Serges and his dad had a meeting with the chef of the village at church (aka with God) and it was decided that his dad was to reimburse him the money that was supposed to be his. It was also decided that they will split their cacao field. This means Serges will get a large portion, perhaps half, of the field to work on his own. He will get the profit from his field, and his dad will have to work his own field/spend his own money on inputs. Follow up on this decision led me to find that Serges has given up on recuperating any of his lost money this year and they are waiting to bring out technicians to divide the field for next year.
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