I recently have begun to realize just how deep the AIDS epidemic reaches, not in terms of who it touches or social patterns of how, but in terms of acceptance, understanding, and prevention. This is the first time since I've been here that I've known someone who has died from AIDS. One of my water project technicians died just about two weeks ago. I knew for a long time, since, specifically, he was forced to stop working, that he was sick. My supervisor, a very educated, wordly man who has worked with PCVs for many years broke the news to me that he couldn't continue the work, which was ok since it was mostly finished. All I was told was that, "Il est gravement malade est il se soin a Mbalmayo." "He is REALLY sick and he is getting treatment in Mbalmayo," a city know for its hospitals and missonary influence.
Everytime I would ask how he is doing, it was the same answer, and I have asked before what is his illness, though never to receive an answer. He was always really nice and very hardworking and young-maybe 30ish. When the villagers were too lazy to turn the cement, he got out there and turned it with his shovel carefully placed on his knee. About a month after starting the work in April (the effects of hard physical labor is something I can't help but wonder about), he was sent to the hospital never to return to his home village. I am greatful he was chosen to work on the project because we were able to pay him good money for his work, and was probably less of a financial burden on his family.
But all this while I kept hearing how sick he is. Of course my mind thought, "Well maybe it's AIDS..." But that is a conclusion you want someone else to draw for you, not one you draw for yourself. Just a few days ago, my supervisor broke to me the news that he died after his long fight, which was the fact that he would bleed when he pooped (I'm not a doctor...) impounded by the fact that he was seropositive. I wondered for a long time why he couldn't just come right out and tell me that he had AIDS. And I honestly believe that while sometimes up to 20% of the population has HIV/AIDS, people still don't believe in it 100% of the time. This was highlighted by a comment my supervisor made a few minutes later. "Oh, you know, there's all that sorcery in village. They thought maybe he would get better once he left the village." This statement came from an educated man about a young man who was on the skinny side and who turned cement for a living. How can anyone in this day and age possibly think that sorcery was what did him in?
No one talks about it. Sometimes people will drop hints like, "Oh, she's not serious." Or, "He's sick." But people make all efforts to avoid identifying what is not ok, which, to me, keeps HIV/AIDS mysterious and silences the voices of people living with HIV. Why is it not ok to talk about it? Why are some afraid to tell their sexual partners, or do some do it maliciously?
In addition, HIV does, generally speaking, have a face. Here, it is often the slightly older, well paid men with good jobs, "sugar daddies" as they are very accurately named, who sleep with very young, very attractive women and girls, sometimes as young as 12 or 13. The price? In the South, it is often nothing more than a beer (1 dollar)or free rides in Mercedes-Benz's. I was once told a story by another PCV who was at the bar with a forester who called an attractive, random young woman off the street to give him a blow job right there in front of his friends at the bar to show off his power in front of everyone. If you're a younger guy with HIV, you might be a mototaximan, and you come pick up your "friends" to bring them to school in the morning are return them in the evening after you've gone out. In this case, they're not rich, but they're young, often from out of town, and have very few expenses.
And condom use? This is generally stigmatized, though slowly becoming more acceptable in certain urban areas. Young women in my part of Cameroon might not necessarily feel like they have the power to demand the use of one, and other women and men say many a thing about their use (although much more bogus than the commonly heard American teenager saying "It's not comfortable."). Women, espeically married women, don't have the right to ask for one in many cases, even if they know their husbands are sleeping with other women. She is, essentially, paid for. I heard a case of a back-alley abortion doctor in another region of the country who is HIV positive, and accepts payment only in the form of unprotected sex (here abortion is illegal).
PCVs are effectively living in another world, trying to start that conversation that took America herself many years to start. While I don't think everyone who has HIV needs to share this information with the world, they need to be ok sharing it with their loved ones, their partners, and close friends. And sorcery is not the cause. Unprotected sex is. I get lost whenever my friends talk about sorcery. I even once told someone that if you don't believe in it, it can't affect you. They could not even understand the analogy that if you don't believe in God, he can't send you to hell (a Jehova's Witness, clearly). So even when my supervisor brought sorcery into this young man's death, I was speechless. I didn't know what to say, but I probably should have created the room for this young man's voice by saying something to make it real. Silence can only perpetuate the disease.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Two years in the making
This is the blog entry I’ve been meaning to write for a while, but I think my emotions hit me hard today when I said goodbye to Amanda at the station for her very last return to Lolodorf, thus inspiring me at last. This is a bit of a multi-session ramble, and though this entry will likely turn out like an African telling a story, I hope I will somehow make a point of some sort…
I’m at the final countdown of a once in a lifetime experience, probably what has been my biggest life-defining experience to date. Just around 2 months to go, more specifically. Some of you may not know that I’m extending, but I am. I’ll be staying for a year with the WWF in Campo on the SW coast of Cameroon, where I will get to put my graduate school lessons to use combined with what I have learned here about the culture. I will be the sole sociologist on staff and I am very excited to start this new chapter in my life, as you can only find limited value in a job that tells you to go out and be fruitful individuals in a society that has no idea why you’ve come except, obviously to throw money at people and problems. Really, where does one even start with such a vague job description?
I was too uncertain of what would happen after Peace Corps, too fearful of how my life would be in America (I mean, do I even remember my ATM PIN number or how to use a credit card or pay my taxes? Will I remember how to drive or keep my mean but funny comments to myself because everyone actually will be able to understand me? Will I even be culturally funny again in America?), and fortunately, since I get to prolong my stay another year, I don’t really have to start dealing with the end of an era just yet. But, sadly, this is the end of my time as an “organic” volunteer. This is the end of my time to sit for hours and hours and think about what it means to be born a Cameroonian, an American, a man, a woman, black or white. This is the end of my time to create work for myself in a culture that doesn’t necessarily want my help or ideas (unless it comes in the form of cold, hard cash). This is the end of my time to forget what day of the week it is because… well, honestly… same shit, different day. This is the end of my time to sit around with my neighbors and bullshit for hours, gossip, tell stories, compare cultures, in short to be effective in being ineffective. I may have not been the most productive, creative, inspiring volunteer (I would give that title to Julia Gallus who gives heartfelt meaning to the word “volunteer”), but I am happy and I am leaving good friends with good memories.
Peace Corps provided me with the experience to not just live in a different country or a small village, to wear clothing with crazy colors, to speak a different language; Peace Corps provided me with an opportunity to think differently in every possible context. Seriously. Just throw everything you know out the window. I guess we can start with language. First you must learn to communicate in French, but a villager’s French mixed in the local village references. Ask a French person what a “Yoyette” is, and I’m pretty sure they’d have no idea that you’re talking about a hip and well dressed young teenaged girl. “Ndjo,” meaning “free,” is market talk that definitely comes from Bantu roots. So, aside from the language barrier, you also have a whole cultural barrier you must first acknowledge exists and then you must figure out to transcend. Like, for example, humor. I can’t tell you how many blank stares I used to get when I would tell a joke here. Now my tailor knows me as the funny one. I hold my own with people in the market when they want to derange… uhhh, bother me, and I use humor to diffuse difficult situations that could possibly end in violence.
Food. It is an endless battle. It’s either feast or famine. Today I was offered two very large and complete meals just hours apart, and I couldn’t turn any of them down because I couldn’t figure out what to cook at home anyway, plus you don’t want to offend anyone. Sometimes, I even run out of money at the end of the month and am forced to conveniently visit my neighbors and friends around mealtime. Also, life would be a lot easier if I could just buy dog food in processed morsels instead of verifying each day that I have rice and dried fish pieces in sufficient quantity. Transport is an endless battle, too. It seems like whenever you need a moto urgently, there is not one to be had, and when you don’t need one they’re everywhere. Oh, wait, let’s start with what is a mototaximan in the first place and how much do you pay this person to take you from point A to point B. Water, electricity, money. Sometimes you have these things and sometimes you don’t. You can only imagine how much harder life is without these things, and how it is your relationships that help you get around problems with them. Disease. Volunteers can spend at least an hour a day engaged in personal or indirect contact with other people’s germs, many that come from unwashed hands after they pooped out in the field (or even worked in the field because, let’s be honest, poop is everywhere). I actually told a police officer who was checking moto legal papers that if he didn’t let us go through the control he would get to see a white girl crap her pants. We got through.
And just some of the day-to-day stressors that never help develop my sentiments towards Cameroon. 1) People shouting, spitting at you, “La wat! La Blanche! Nytangan!!” from 3 blocks over, whistling at you like you’re a dog, running over to you, and taking it personally when you don’t want to shake their hand, let alone talk to them. My first year as a volunteer, I would actually hide in my house for days on end to avoid even hearing that. 2) Corrupt gendarme stops on the road when you’re the only one who’s ID gets checked. And, no, that doesn’t make you want to date them. 3) Drinking and chronic malnutrition. Sure, this is definitely a regionalism, but I’m drowning in men and women, parents, pregnant and nursing, who drink from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. And then you see undernourished, underparented children running around on the streets and everything feels so hopeless. You meet functional adults who would be considered very stupid in America, and you can’t help but feel that chronic malnourishment and fetal alcohol syndrome is the curse of bountiful Africa. 4) Never feeling like you can just be friends with men. And not ever really being able to be good friends with women because they’ve almost all had children since the age of 17.
And despite all of this, or maybe because of all of this and my deep understanding (which has turned into a forced acceptance) of all of this, I’m having a really, really emotionally hard time. I can’t believe my 2 years is up. I know this is only nostalgia hitting me, but the reality is, as RPCV Maggie Murphy reminded me, I will never be able to have “this” ever again. What is “this?” I am still trying to process “this” and I am sure I will process it for a long time to come, but it helps to have some contrast to what “this” is not. For example, I heard through my father who heard from my sister that I don’t “really work”. I’m not sure if it is because maybe she thought I was doing amazing, life changing things living/working on 300 bucks a month (which I think is the common outsider reaction a lot of us PCVs get to life as a PCV) and I’m trying to not take it personally because probably my dad misunderstood, but I will try to defend what looks like “not working” to most productive citizens of the developed world.
You are privileged. You were born into a more or less functioning society. Things are more or less easy. Even if you’re poor, you have welfare, you have sliding scale medical clinics, you have food banks, you have schools that provide books free of charge, buses that take you to wherever you want to go with a full seat all to yourself and a seatbelt. And if you’re middle class, you’re well educated, you have health insurance, you cut coupons, you buy food that’s been subsidized by the government and has met FDA health requirements, you work 30 to 80 hours a week at a job that has accountability, goals, standards, evaluations, and seeks to be better, you have a car that gets you places, you will live to be 80something. You’re life is good. Be grateful for what you have and give back when you can.
PCVs, particularly those volunteering in the cursed/blessed Central African area, work in a world that navigates all of the factors listed above, but then throw in the fact that we have no structural support, no financial support, no to very little peer support. All we have are our ideas and the resources (population, structural, ecological, etc.) around us. Human beings are only as good as the other individuals surrounding them. For example, several generations of us stupidly dedicated volunteers of the South Region have been working on a soy project to help combat chronic malnutrition. It is entering painfully slow into the culture. I once even tried to sell soy seeds to a neighbor, an old woman, who told me, “I want soy to eat, not to grow.” The people of the South are stubborn, proud, don’t want to be told that their children are suffering from malnourishment because, “I’m a great cook, my kids have plenty to eat.” The idea of working as a team is completely foreign, and as a result, women suffer endlessly lonely hours at the field trying to be productive as one to feed a family of 10. Tribalism does very little to help combat these problems, and any good Southerner will tell you, “We do not have soy in our culture. It comes from the West Region. We do not work in groups in our culture. That idea comes from the West Region.” People have traveled so little that every problem is automatically associated with outsiders. A murder last year caused a sort of tribal war between the Bamoun (from the West) and the Bulu (the Southerners), as the Bulu blamed the murder of their brother on the Bamoun. In the end, we all learned it was some of their own brothers who killed the guy, but no one took this as a learning opportunity, an opportunity for societal or personal growth.
As a PCV, we have the benefit of being a true participant observer. I am both an outsider and an insider at once. Although I don’t navigate the language perfectly, I know how to get around. I know who to talk to to get things done, where to buy stuff at the market, when someone is lying, how to sit 4 in the front row of a station wagon even when the seatbelt clasp is sticking straight into your butt cheek. I know many of these things better than many Cameroonians, as it is essentially my job to visit villages and hang out with villagers. We (female volunteers) are also caught in a middle gender. I am not quite a woman, not quite a man. I eat with the men, I am allowed to do men’s work sometimes, I hang out with men and drink at the bar with men. But, I know it is very different for actual male volunteers and I can’t ever just be “one of the boys.” I am also kind of a woman. I can sit in the kitchen with woman, hang out with them, go to the field and work with them, but I am often not allowed to work in the kitchen. I also don’t have children and am not married, so I am often seen as a threat to some women. I have unique insider experiences in my interactions with people, but I usually catch people I don’t know very well off guard with how Cameroonian (villageoise) I am. Also, trust is a difficult topic for most PCVs. Many people change who they are when they are around me. They may put on a different face, talk a different talk, seem more serious about working with me than they actually are. I can never know this side of someone, and I usually get the information second-hand, and you’re left wondering who to trust. For example, I once trusted my neighbor until she stole soy seeds from me. When I told this to my former counterpart Judith, she told me, “See, Lauren, not everyone is like me.” And I trusted Judith, until I didn’t trust her anymore because she eventually showed me a different face.
So, knowing what you know now, I hope that you all can understand the many challenges that PCVs face everyday. My first year I struggled to find my groove. I worked a lot to avoid dealing with my limited selection of friends who usually exhausted me, usually because of language. I struggled to find good projects, good people to work with, how to work with these very limited number of individuals. I liked to spend my free time hiding in my house- reading, playing with the dog, playing on the computer, working on the computer. I found comfort in being alone and food and beer. I gained twenty pounds (typical me, typical female PCV) from stress, from a need to seek American-style food, from pushing myself and my need to exercise aside because the social and environmental problems seemed so big and yet so easy to solve with just my help, limited expertise, and lack of financial resources. I had a work breakdown right around October/November of last year and everything fell apart. I started spending more time with friends, more time interacting with the people I like, less time formally working. I picked up my exercise again, which helped give me mental sanity. I focused less on being in America, on being an American with an identity that you can’t touch. I gave in to Africa, to where I am, to my friends and my families here. I tried to better understand life here, and in doing so, found less meaning in driving forward with work that seems, often, pushed from the outside. My ideas of what is right and what is wrong have changed, and I always see more grey than I ever did before.
And maybe it is the grey matter than hinders my work productivity. I will never forget when my mom and sister came to visit and they had so many great, simple solutions to such seemingly simple problems. I felt like, next to them, I had lost all hope to see change here. Or maybe I stopped seeing the need for change in everything that constructs this society. But, I think what has actually happened is that I stopped seeing the “problems” as unique, solvable problems, per se. What used to be a problem has become just how life is and likely always will be, unless local governments step up or foreign aid agencies better understand how interconnected everything is and how life works here. Maybe the problems are too big to even be solved, or maybe the solution is the same one we found in America: immigration and equal rights for all. And maybe that is where PCVs are most effective. We spend money that we earn here. We give ideas to people in passing, we talk to everyone as representatives of America. We encourage idea sharing and we bring the idea of “the customer is always right,” which is usually an idea that is too strange for Cameroonians to comprehend. But maybe this is where we, as PCVs, can be most effective.
So, in short, I have felt useless, frustrated, helpless and hopeless, lonely, and stupid. I have also felt powerful, helpful, driven, loved, and intelligent. I have often asked, “What is the point of PC?”, “Why is the mandatory 2 year service so long?”, “What am I doing here?”, “Why don’t I just go back to a functional society?”, and “How can I work here?”. I have also often thought, “This is the coolest thing I will ever do in my life,” “I can’t even remember life pre-PC, pre-Cameroon,” and “Why is two year service so short?” I have made great friends, I have learned the realities of life here, I have forgotten many words in English, I have become a member of several families, and I have found my two feet. Being a PCV is indescribable, which is why this entry is a jumble of thoughts and emotions. Being a PCV is the most wonderful way to learn. When we first got to country, I remember standing in front of all my fellow stagemates and office staff for self-presentation. I was so hopeful and idealistic. I remember talking about my Masters degree, how I want to work with woman, and when I had to present my fear, I couldn’t really imagine how it could be being a PCV. My fear that I came up with was that I would love it so much here that I would never want to leave. I can’t say that I love every moment here in Cameroon, as I often have dreams of returning to America, but with time I have come to accept the things I don’t love and look past the things I can’t accept. I’m in a good place. It is, as they say, the toughest job you’ll ever love, and I am just not ready yet for it to be over.
I’m at the final countdown of a once in a lifetime experience, probably what has been my biggest life-defining experience to date. Just around 2 months to go, more specifically. Some of you may not know that I’m extending, but I am. I’ll be staying for a year with the WWF in Campo on the SW coast of Cameroon, where I will get to put my graduate school lessons to use combined with what I have learned here about the culture. I will be the sole sociologist on staff and I am very excited to start this new chapter in my life, as you can only find limited value in a job that tells you to go out and be fruitful individuals in a society that has no idea why you’ve come except, obviously to throw money at people and problems. Really, where does one even start with such a vague job description?
I was too uncertain of what would happen after Peace Corps, too fearful of how my life would be in America (I mean, do I even remember my ATM PIN number or how to use a credit card or pay my taxes? Will I remember how to drive or keep my mean but funny comments to myself because everyone actually will be able to understand me? Will I even be culturally funny again in America?), and fortunately, since I get to prolong my stay another year, I don’t really have to start dealing with the end of an era just yet. But, sadly, this is the end of my time as an “organic” volunteer. This is the end of my time to sit for hours and hours and think about what it means to be born a Cameroonian, an American, a man, a woman, black or white. This is the end of my time to create work for myself in a culture that doesn’t necessarily want my help or ideas (unless it comes in the form of cold, hard cash). This is the end of my time to forget what day of the week it is because… well, honestly… same shit, different day. This is the end of my time to sit around with my neighbors and bullshit for hours, gossip, tell stories, compare cultures, in short to be effective in being ineffective. I may have not been the most productive, creative, inspiring volunteer (I would give that title to Julia Gallus who gives heartfelt meaning to the word “volunteer”), but I am happy and I am leaving good friends with good memories.
Peace Corps provided me with the experience to not just live in a different country or a small village, to wear clothing with crazy colors, to speak a different language; Peace Corps provided me with an opportunity to think differently in every possible context. Seriously. Just throw everything you know out the window. I guess we can start with language. First you must learn to communicate in French, but a villager’s French mixed in the local village references. Ask a French person what a “Yoyette” is, and I’m pretty sure they’d have no idea that you’re talking about a hip and well dressed young teenaged girl. “Ndjo,” meaning “free,” is market talk that definitely comes from Bantu roots. So, aside from the language barrier, you also have a whole cultural barrier you must first acknowledge exists and then you must figure out to transcend. Like, for example, humor. I can’t tell you how many blank stares I used to get when I would tell a joke here. Now my tailor knows me as the funny one. I hold my own with people in the market when they want to derange… uhhh, bother me, and I use humor to diffuse difficult situations that could possibly end in violence.
Food. It is an endless battle. It’s either feast or famine. Today I was offered two very large and complete meals just hours apart, and I couldn’t turn any of them down because I couldn’t figure out what to cook at home anyway, plus you don’t want to offend anyone. Sometimes, I even run out of money at the end of the month and am forced to conveniently visit my neighbors and friends around mealtime. Also, life would be a lot easier if I could just buy dog food in processed morsels instead of verifying each day that I have rice and dried fish pieces in sufficient quantity. Transport is an endless battle, too. It seems like whenever you need a moto urgently, there is not one to be had, and when you don’t need one they’re everywhere. Oh, wait, let’s start with what is a mototaximan in the first place and how much do you pay this person to take you from point A to point B. Water, electricity, money. Sometimes you have these things and sometimes you don’t. You can only imagine how much harder life is without these things, and how it is your relationships that help you get around problems with them. Disease. Volunteers can spend at least an hour a day engaged in personal or indirect contact with other people’s germs, many that come from unwashed hands after they pooped out in the field (or even worked in the field because, let’s be honest, poop is everywhere). I actually told a police officer who was checking moto legal papers that if he didn’t let us go through the control he would get to see a white girl crap her pants. We got through.
And just some of the day-to-day stressors that never help develop my sentiments towards Cameroon. 1) People shouting, spitting at you, “La wat! La Blanche! Nytangan!!” from 3 blocks over, whistling at you like you’re a dog, running over to you, and taking it personally when you don’t want to shake their hand, let alone talk to them. My first year as a volunteer, I would actually hide in my house for days on end to avoid even hearing that. 2) Corrupt gendarme stops on the road when you’re the only one who’s ID gets checked. And, no, that doesn’t make you want to date them. 3) Drinking and chronic malnutrition. Sure, this is definitely a regionalism, but I’m drowning in men and women, parents, pregnant and nursing, who drink from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. And then you see undernourished, underparented children running around on the streets and everything feels so hopeless. You meet functional adults who would be considered very stupid in America, and you can’t help but feel that chronic malnourishment and fetal alcohol syndrome is the curse of bountiful Africa. 4) Never feeling like you can just be friends with men. And not ever really being able to be good friends with women because they’ve almost all had children since the age of 17.
And despite all of this, or maybe because of all of this and my deep understanding (which has turned into a forced acceptance) of all of this, I’m having a really, really emotionally hard time. I can’t believe my 2 years is up. I know this is only nostalgia hitting me, but the reality is, as RPCV Maggie Murphy reminded me, I will never be able to have “this” ever again. What is “this?” I am still trying to process “this” and I am sure I will process it for a long time to come, but it helps to have some contrast to what “this” is not. For example, I heard through my father who heard from my sister that I don’t “really work”. I’m not sure if it is because maybe she thought I was doing amazing, life changing things living/working on 300 bucks a month (which I think is the common outsider reaction a lot of us PCVs get to life as a PCV) and I’m trying to not take it personally because probably my dad misunderstood, but I will try to defend what looks like “not working” to most productive citizens of the developed world.
You are privileged. You were born into a more or less functioning society. Things are more or less easy. Even if you’re poor, you have welfare, you have sliding scale medical clinics, you have food banks, you have schools that provide books free of charge, buses that take you to wherever you want to go with a full seat all to yourself and a seatbelt. And if you’re middle class, you’re well educated, you have health insurance, you cut coupons, you buy food that’s been subsidized by the government and has met FDA health requirements, you work 30 to 80 hours a week at a job that has accountability, goals, standards, evaluations, and seeks to be better, you have a car that gets you places, you will live to be 80something. You’re life is good. Be grateful for what you have and give back when you can.
PCVs, particularly those volunteering in the cursed/blessed Central African area, work in a world that navigates all of the factors listed above, but then throw in the fact that we have no structural support, no financial support, no to very little peer support. All we have are our ideas and the resources (population, structural, ecological, etc.) around us. Human beings are only as good as the other individuals surrounding them. For example, several generations of us stupidly dedicated volunteers of the South Region have been working on a soy project to help combat chronic malnutrition. It is entering painfully slow into the culture. I once even tried to sell soy seeds to a neighbor, an old woman, who told me, “I want soy to eat, not to grow.” The people of the South are stubborn, proud, don’t want to be told that their children are suffering from malnourishment because, “I’m a great cook, my kids have plenty to eat.” The idea of working as a team is completely foreign, and as a result, women suffer endlessly lonely hours at the field trying to be productive as one to feed a family of 10. Tribalism does very little to help combat these problems, and any good Southerner will tell you, “We do not have soy in our culture. It comes from the West Region. We do not work in groups in our culture. That idea comes from the West Region.” People have traveled so little that every problem is automatically associated with outsiders. A murder last year caused a sort of tribal war between the Bamoun (from the West) and the Bulu (the Southerners), as the Bulu blamed the murder of their brother on the Bamoun. In the end, we all learned it was some of their own brothers who killed the guy, but no one took this as a learning opportunity, an opportunity for societal or personal growth.
As a PCV, we have the benefit of being a true participant observer. I am both an outsider and an insider at once. Although I don’t navigate the language perfectly, I know how to get around. I know who to talk to to get things done, where to buy stuff at the market, when someone is lying, how to sit 4 in the front row of a station wagon even when the seatbelt clasp is sticking straight into your butt cheek. I know many of these things better than many Cameroonians, as it is essentially my job to visit villages and hang out with villagers. We (female volunteers) are also caught in a middle gender. I am not quite a woman, not quite a man. I eat with the men, I am allowed to do men’s work sometimes, I hang out with men and drink at the bar with men. But, I know it is very different for actual male volunteers and I can’t ever just be “one of the boys.” I am also kind of a woman. I can sit in the kitchen with woman, hang out with them, go to the field and work with them, but I am often not allowed to work in the kitchen. I also don’t have children and am not married, so I am often seen as a threat to some women. I have unique insider experiences in my interactions with people, but I usually catch people I don’t know very well off guard with how Cameroonian (villageoise) I am. Also, trust is a difficult topic for most PCVs. Many people change who they are when they are around me. They may put on a different face, talk a different talk, seem more serious about working with me than they actually are. I can never know this side of someone, and I usually get the information second-hand, and you’re left wondering who to trust. For example, I once trusted my neighbor until she stole soy seeds from me. When I told this to my former counterpart Judith, she told me, “See, Lauren, not everyone is like me.” And I trusted Judith, until I didn’t trust her anymore because she eventually showed me a different face.
So, knowing what you know now, I hope that you all can understand the many challenges that PCVs face everyday. My first year I struggled to find my groove. I worked a lot to avoid dealing with my limited selection of friends who usually exhausted me, usually because of language. I struggled to find good projects, good people to work with, how to work with these very limited number of individuals. I liked to spend my free time hiding in my house- reading, playing with the dog, playing on the computer, working on the computer. I found comfort in being alone and food and beer. I gained twenty pounds (typical me, typical female PCV) from stress, from a need to seek American-style food, from pushing myself and my need to exercise aside because the social and environmental problems seemed so big and yet so easy to solve with just my help, limited expertise, and lack of financial resources. I had a work breakdown right around October/November of last year and everything fell apart. I started spending more time with friends, more time interacting with the people I like, less time formally working. I picked up my exercise again, which helped give me mental sanity. I focused less on being in America, on being an American with an identity that you can’t touch. I gave in to Africa, to where I am, to my friends and my families here. I tried to better understand life here, and in doing so, found less meaning in driving forward with work that seems, often, pushed from the outside. My ideas of what is right and what is wrong have changed, and I always see more grey than I ever did before.
And maybe it is the grey matter than hinders my work productivity. I will never forget when my mom and sister came to visit and they had so many great, simple solutions to such seemingly simple problems. I felt like, next to them, I had lost all hope to see change here. Or maybe I stopped seeing the need for change in everything that constructs this society. But, I think what has actually happened is that I stopped seeing the “problems” as unique, solvable problems, per se. What used to be a problem has become just how life is and likely always will be, unless local governments step up or foreign aid agencies better understand how interconnected everything is and how life works here. Maybe the problems are too big to even be solved, or maybe the solution is the same one we found in America: immigration and equal rights for all. And maybe that is where PCVs are most effective. We spend money that we earn here. We give ideas to people in passing, we talk to everyone as representatives of America. We encourage idea sharing and we bring the idea of “the customer is always right,” which is usually an idea that is too strange for Cameroonians to comprehend. But maybe this is where we, as PCVs, can be most effective.
So, in short, I have felt useless, frustrated, helpless and hopeless, lonely, and stupid. I have also felt powerful, helpful, driven, loved, and intelligent. I have often asked, “What is the point of PC?”, “Why is the mandatory 2 year service so long?”, “What am I doing here?”, “Why don’t I just go back to a functional society?”, and “How can I work here?”. I have also often thought, “This is the coolest thing I will ever do in my life,” “I can’t even remember life pre-PC, pre-Cameroon,” and “Why is two year service so short?” I have made great friends, I have learned the realities of life here, I have forgotten many words in English, I have become a member of several families, and I have found my two feet. Being a PCV is indescribable, which is why this entry is a jumble of thoughts and emotions. Being a PCV is the most wonderful way to learn. When we first got to country, I remember standing in front of all my fellow stagemates and office staff for self-presentation. I was so hopeful and idealistic. I remember talking about my Masters degree, how I want to work with woman, and when I had to present my fear, I couldn’t really imagine how it could be being a PCV. My fear that I came up with was that I would love it so much here that I would never want to leave. I can’t say that I love every moment here in Cameroon, as I often have dreams of returning to America, but with time I have come to accept the things I don’t love and look past the things I can’t accept. I’m in a good place. It is, as they say, the toughest job you’ll ever love, and I am just not ready yet for it to be over.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Let the voting begin
October 9th marks the elections in Cameroon. All 23 candidates will compete for the single spot as president, and, considering there are only 2 weeks allotted for campaigning and many unknowns on the list, there is really one sole name on the tip of people’s tongues: Paul Biya.
The reigning president, who has served since approximately my birth, is known for the peace he brings to the country. And it is true, Cameroon is a relatively peaceful nation. It flies low on the international radar, and people are so content with their peace that they never raise a stink about anything, which only gives the impression that all is well over here.
There are some hurdles potential candidates must jump before becoming candidate. One: They must have some sort of petition signed in all 10 regions by at least 50 important government officials (or something like that), for a total of 500 signatures in a period of just a few weeks… Often, at least in other situations, signatures are purchased, so my ellipses here may or may involve substantial bribery. After the petition is deposited, they are looked over very carefully and, in this electoral season, more than half were thrown out. That leaves us with 23 candidates, some of whom are questionably in the race to, when the time comes, hand over votes to the current president. Each candidate must also subscribe with 5 million FCFA (about 10,000 USD), and in return they are given 15 million FCFA from the government to compete in the campaign. The trick here is that each candidate who accepts this money must gain at least 1% of the vote. So, let the campaigning begin.
When you talk to people in villages, they are generally happy with campaign season because, similarly to the logging companies who buy happy villagers with boxes of fish and crates of wine, candidates tend to make themselves known to villagers with food and drink. Candidates who show up empty handed in a village get booed. Paul Biya’s entourage pulled a no-no in my neighboring village by bringing pagne (fabric, usually crazy colored) with Pauly’s face to only a select number of people in village. If you can’t provide to everyone, just don’t bring anything at all. However, the promise of fish and wine (all you can eat for today!) the day before the elections is enough to soothe the momentary anger from running short on pagne.
People in the city tend to be more educated, more aware of the issues, and more likely to get free things from presidential hopefuls. Today, I saw a rocking concert in the middle of town. Moto taximen who ride around performing crazy stunts on their motos as encouragement entourage for candidates get paid decently well for risking their lives. City folks have a more realistic view of how the elections can change their lives, and the minority want to see a change in power. The problem with a change in power, as pointed out by many, is that there is only one well-known, realistic candidate. In America, we were talking about that Obama guy at least 4 years before his famous election. Here in Cameroon, Paul Biya is the only household name. There’s not two names, partly because Paul Biya, as aged as he is, has not named someone other than himself. He has made no effort to prep a future potential president, a replacement. If (when?) he gets re-elected, he will have to serve a term of 7 years. Can a man with almost 79 years run a country until the ripe old age of 86? When does senility kick in? The prediction here is that he will gracefully step down and turn the title (throne?) over to a newly trained replacement. As long as it’s not his son, I think the country will have confidence that this theoretical new guy, too, can work towards maintaining the status quo: peace, bribery, underdevelopment, Chinese, and mediocrity.
Let’s get our election on!
The reigning president, who has served since approximately my birth, is known for the peace he brings to the country. And it is true, Cameroon is a relatively peaceful nation. It flies low on the international radar, and people are so content with their peace that they never raise a stink about anything, which only gives the impression that all is well over here.
There are some hurdles potential candidates must jump before becoming candidate. One: They must have some sort of petition signed in all 10 regions by at least 50 important government officials (or something like that), for a total of 500 signatures in a period of just a few weeks… Often, at least in other situations, signatures are purchased, so my ellipses here may or may involve substantial bribery. After the petition is deposited, they are looked over very carefully and, in this electoral season, more than half were thrown out. That leaves us with 23 candidates, some of whom are questionably in the race to, when the time comes, hand over votes to the current president. Each candidate must also subscribe with 5 million FCFA (about 10,000 USD), and in return they are given 15 million FCFA from the government to compete in the campaign. The trick here is that each candidate who accepts this money must gain at least 1% of the vote. So, let the campaigning begin.
When you talk to people in villages, they are generally happy with campaign season because, similarly to the logging companies who buy happy villagers with boxes of fish and crates of wine, candidates tend to make themselves known to villagers with food and drink. Candidates who show up empty handed in a village get booed. Paul Biya’s entourage pulled a no-no in my neighboring village by bringing pagne (fabric, usually crazy colored) with Pauly’s face to only a select number of people in village. If you can’t provide to everyone, just don’t bring anything at all. However, the promise of fish and wine (all you can eat for today!) the day before the elections is enough to soothe the momentary anger from running short on pagne.
People in the city tend to be more educated, more aware of the issues, and more likely to get free things from presidential hopefuls. Today, I saw a rocking concert in the middle of town. Moto taximen who ride around performing crazy stunts on their motos as encouragement entourage for candidates get paid decently well for risking their lives. City folks have a more realistic view of how the elections can change their lives, and the minority want to see a change in power. The problem with a change in power, as pointed out by many, is that there is only one well-known, realistic candidate. In America, we were talking about that Obama guy at least 4 years before his famous election. Here in Cameroon, Paul Biya is the only household name. There’s not two names, partly because Paul Biya, as aged as he is, has not named someone other than himself. He has made no effort to prep a future potential president, a replacement. If (when?) he gets re-elected, he will have to serve a term of 7 years. Can a man with almost 79 years run a country until the ripe old age of 86? When does senility kick in? The prediction here is that he will gracefully step down and turn the title (throne?) over to a newly trained replacement. As long as it’s not his son, I think the country will have confidence that this theoretical new guy, too, can work towards maintaining the status quo: peace, bribery, underdevelopment, Chinese, and mediocrity.
Let’s get our election on!
Friday, September 9, 2011
Asian invasion
The Asians are everywhere! Even where you don’t expect to find them, they are there. And they are resourceful! And it’s not just the Chinese. (But it is especially the Chinese.)
This blog entry was inspired by a recent meeting with a group of Korean volunteers. A group of 12 young early 20-something Korean college students have just signed on to a year-long volunteer program here in Cameroon. A group of PCVs met with the Koreans to learn more about the two programs, and it was a good opportunity for the very first group of Korean volunteers in Cameroon to glean information from a program that’s been operating in country for 50 years. They were your typical Koreans; adorable, polite, they stood when they spoke, and the group seemed to be genuinely interested in helping the “poor, underresourced, undereducated” Cameroonians. The interesting thing about this group was that they are approaching their work from a team-based approach, which is at the heart of Korean culture. So there are 2 teams of 6; one living in Sangmelima, of the South Region, and the other in a village of the Center Region. Their interests and academic interests were diverse, but they all had one thing in common- they spoke zero French and maybe 5 words of bad English, with the exception of the program director, who spoke English very coherently.
The interesting thing about their program is that they chose 2 or so host country nationals to serve as community guides, and flew them over to Korea for a 4 month training program. The problem is their contacts in country are with government officials, so it leaves little to the imagination of who they chose to send over to Korea. This is also, obviously, the reason these two host villages were selected. The idea of community spirit just doesn’t exist in the forested regions of Cameroon, specifically the Center and the South, but, again, government officials come from these regions more often than not… Soooo… they favored their villages. I can just imagine how these hopeful and idealist young 20 year olds are going to fare work-wise… Particularly when they are teamed up with (corrupt, pushy, unmotivated) government officials. I can only imagine how much more productive I could have been as a volunteer if I had other volunteers at arms-reach, but they have so many odds working against them, particularly because if you’re Asian (or a white girl with blond to brown hair), people think you’re Chinese and people here generally hate the Chinese. Also, their culture is so polite that they will probably get eaten here.
In our Q-and-A exchange, we had some strange moments. One of the strangest questions they asked us for their agriculture volunteers was, “When do the people cut the grasses?” You can only imagine how long it took for us to understand what they were asking. They were asking about field clearing for agriculture. Imagine you have a room full agroforestry volunteers who do almost nothing but observe people all day long, and you can ask them anything. Instead of asking, “What are the major challenges to agriculture? What are some opportunities for us?” you’re going to ask, “When do people clear their land?” I’m pretty sure they should have looked that up on google before they came here. Or they could have asked anyone on the street… For such a tech-saavy nation, they sure weren’t tech saavy. Now, here’s my favorite question from our side of the table. “Why did you decide to pilot this program here in Cameroon?” The director, the only one who speaks decent English, responded, “There are many mineral resources here we want to exploit.” I can’t remember the rest of what he said, but I do remember Richard replying, “That is refreshingly honest.” So, the gigantic cobalt mine in the East and the hidden gold mines in the South are of interest to the Koreans. Everyone wants their piece of the pie, and sometimes they’ll get their foot in the backdoor to secure an entrance to the front door. I can’t say that Peace Corps is much better, as I am essentially here to create a better image of Americans to help stop communism... uhh… terrorism… to spread the joy and belief in capitalism as the only functional system that can ever be.
Moving on… The Japanese have also come. They, unlike the Koreans, have come more openly as capitalists, not cached in the selflessness of volunteerism. They rented or purchased about 5 hectares of land here in my village, on the site of the former Comice. They are paying my neighbors weekly (so it’s actually a good job) to work in the field that will very soon see its first rice harvest in generations. These are actually the guys who paid for the tractor work to be done on the land here that I talked about in my last blog entry. I talk about them like I’ve seen them or talked to them. I’ve never actually seen any Japanese person here. Ever. But people talk about them. People also have told me that the reason they are cultivating rice here is because there is some insect blight in Japan, so they’ve had to externalize their rice production. Apparently, if this is true, all this rice will head straight back to Japan. They are also farming NERICA, New Rice for Africa, which is a paddy-less culture that was likely introduced about 30 years ago, but never took off since rice is purchased much cheaper from Pakistan or Thailand.
And finally… I haven’t officially announced it yet, as I still have yet to receive official confirmation from both Peace Corps and the WWF, but I am hoping to spend next year volunteering in the Campo Ma’an National Park with WWF here in Cameroon. I am apparently a gluten for punishment. I mentioned earlier a cobalt reserve in the East, traversing to the Congo where there are no rules. Well what is the best way to exploit inland mineral (and probably forest) resources? A railroad, of course! In images that remind me of the Chinese building the US railway system, I picture a new kind of slave-driving, the Chinese as boss, Cameroonians as underpaid manual labor. And all for the profit of the Cameroonian ministers and the Chinese. Talk about echoes of 18th and 19th century Americas. All of this plays into the National Parks System here in Cameroon because the railway is going to at least skirt two national parks, Campo Ma’an being one of them. The railway will eventually head to an as-of-yet existing port in between Kribi and Campo, and will just miss the north-edge of the park. The potential consequences are unlimited, but mostly I am imagining heavy illegal logging with an easy way to get out of the forest (since the roads are so bad), forest fragmentation, climate change that necessarily comes with opening up the forest canopy, changes in animal migration patterns, increased marginalization of pygmie groups living in the forest or at least increased HIV/AIDS rates, and more hunting for bush meat in and around the park, as accessibility to the park will be opened up. We can thank our insatiable need for electronics and other consumer goods, growing middle class China, and our increasingly relatively poor world citizens, like the pygmies.
All of this is to say that we live in an increasingly globalized world, and even those who do not wish to participate or who can’t participate as consumers are the victims. And since China is going to be the number 1 world power very soon, one day we, too, may be the victims.
This blog entry was inspired by a recent meeting with a group of Korean volunteers. A group of 12 young early 20-something Korean college students have just signed on to a year-long volunteer program here in Cameroon. A group of PCVs met with the Koreans to learn more about the two programs, and it was a good opportunity for the very first group of Korean volunteers in Cameroon to glean information from a program that’s been operating in country for 50 years. They were your typical Koreans; adorable, polite, they stood when they spoke, and the group seemed to be genuinely interested in helping the “poor, underresourced, undereducated” Cameroonians. The interesting thing about this group was that they are approaching their work from a team-based approach, which is at the heart of Korean culture. So there are 2 teams of 6; one living in Sangmelima, of the South Region, and the other in a village of the Center Region. Their interests and academic interests were diverse, but they all had one thing in common- they spoke zero French and maybe 5 words of bad English, with the exception of the program director, who spoke English very coherently.
The interesting thing about their program is that they chose 2 or so host country nationals to serve as community guides, and flew them over to Korea for a 4 month training program. The problem is their contacts in country are with government officials, so it leaves little to the imagination of who they chose to send over to Korea. This is also, obviously, the reason these two host villages were selected. The idea of community spirit just doesn’t exist in the forested regions of Cameroon, specifically the Center and the South, but, again, government officials come from these regions more often than not… Soooo… they favored their villages. I can just imagine how these hopeful and idealist young 20 year olds are going to fare work-wise… Particularly when they are teamed up with (corrupt, pushy, unmotivated) government officials. I can only imagine how much more productive I could have been as a volunteer if I had other volunteers at arms-reach, but they have so many odds working against them, particularly because if you’re Asian (or a white girl with blond to brown hair), people think you’re Chinese and people here generally hate the Chinese. Also, their culture is so polite that they will probably get eaten here.
In our Q-and-A exchange, we had some strange moments. One of the strangest questions they asked us for their agriculture volunteers was, “When do the people cut the grasses?” You can only imagine how long it took for us to understand what they were asking. They were asking about field clearing for agriculture. Imagine you have a room full agroforestry volunteers who do almost nothing but observe people all day long, and you can ask them anything. Instead of asking, “What are the major challenges to agriculture? What are some opportunities for us?” you’re going to ask, “When do people clear their land?” I’m pretty sure they should have looked that up on google before they came here. Or they could have asked anyone on the street… For such a tech-saavy nation, they sure weren’t tech saavy. Now, here’s my favorite question from our side of the table. “Why did you decide to pilot this program here in Cameroon?” The director, the only one who speaks decent English, responded, “There are many mineral resources here we want to exploit.” I can’t remember the rest of what he said, but I do remember Richard replying, “That is refreshingly honest.” So, the gigantic cobalt mine in the East and the hidden gold mines in the South are of interest to the Koreans. Everyone wants their piece of the pie, and sometimes they’ll get their foot in the backdoor to secure an entrance to the front door. I can’t say that Peace Corps is much better, as I am essentially here to create a better image of Americans to help stop communism... uhh… terrorism… to spread the joy and belief in capitalism as the only functional system that can ever be.
Moving on… The Japanese have also come. They, unlike the Koreans, have come more openly as capitalists, not cached in the selflessness of volunteerism. They rented or purchased about 5 hectares of land here in my village, on the site of the former Comice. They are paying my neighbors weekly (so it’s actually a good job) to work in the field that will very soon see its first rice harvest in generations. These are actually the guys who paid for the tractor work to be done on the land here that I talked about in my last blog entry. I talk about them like I’ve seen them or talked to them. I’ve never actually seen any Japanese person here. Ever. But people talk about them. People also have told me that the reason they are cultivating rice here is because there is some insect blight in Japan, so they’ve had to externalize their rice production. Apparently, if this is true, all this rice will head straight back to Japan. They are also farming NERICA, New Rice for Africa, which is a paddy-less culture that was likely introduced about 30 years ago, but never took off since rice is purchased much cheaper from Pakistan or Thailand.
And finally… I haven’t officially announced it yet, as I still have yet to receive official confirmation from both Peace Corps and the WWF, but I am hoping to spend next year volunteering in the Campo Ma’an National Park with WWF here in Cameroon. I am apparently a gluten for punishment. I mentioned earlier a cobalt reserve in the East, traversing to the Congo where there are no rules. Well what is the best way to exploit inland mineral (and probably forest) resources? A railroad, of course! In images that remind me of the Chinese building the US railway system, I picture a new kind of slave-driving, the Chinese as boss, Cameroonians as underpaid manual labor. And all for the profit of the Cameroonian ministers and the Chinese. Talk about echoes of 18th and 19th century Americas. All of this plays into the National Parks System here in Cameroon because the railway is going to at least skirt two national parks, Campo Ma’an being one of them. The railway will eventually head to an as-of-yet existing port in between Kribi and Campo, and will just miss the north-edge of the park. The potential consequences are unlimited, but mostly I am imagining heavy illegal logging with an easy way to get out of the forest (since the roads are so bad), forest fragmentation, climate change that necessarily comes with opening up the forest canopy, changes in animal migration patterns, increased marginalization of pygmie groups living in the forest or at least increased HIV/AIDS rates, and more hunting for bush meat in and around the park, as accessibility to the park will be opened up. We can thank our insatiable need for electronics and other consumer goods, growing middle class China, and our increasingly relatively poor world citizens, like the pygmies.
All of this is to say that we live in an increasingly globalized world, and even those who do not wish to participate or who can’t participate as consumers are the victims. And since China is going to be the number 1 world power very soon, one day we, too, may be the victims.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Tea for the Tillerman
The technology of tractors may seem less than enthralling nowadays. We have tractors that can do just about everything- thresh grain, dig holes, seed corn- all with the help of GPS so that the farmer in the cabin doesn’t even have to touch a single control. Here in the South of Cameroon, one is hard pressed to find land that is cultivatable with the help of tractors. With the Comice, the 2011 agric show, came a tractor assembly factory just a half a mile from my house. Here, outdated tractor technology is mostly out of the average farmers hands, primarily because of financing, but also because most of the land that the average farmer farms in the South is hilly, rocky, and often laden with trees or tree stumps. These factors, combined with the fact that Ebolowa is really just out of the way from major ports, or the entire North (which is, in contrast, cultivatable by tractor), just emphasizes poor government planning.
Aside from the fact that I believe that this factory will likely lead to environmental issues, particularly polluted water (in an area where people still rely on untreated ground water), I also get more and more upset everyday by the fact that Ngalane is slowly becoming an industrial park. This is evidenced by the presence of increasing numbers of shipping containers filled with tractors littering the site of the Comice. And even though people farm past the grounds of the Comice, the tractor factory owners bought out the land where they are storing the shipping containers and have now put a gigantic fence around their newly acquired land. This means that my neighbors who used to be able to take short cuts directly through the site of the Comice are now forced to walk around the entire perimeter when most of the area inside is not even being used. And I don’t know who to be more angry at: the tractor assembly factory for not caring about the people who use the land, or my neighbors because they sold their land in the first place in order to have a really good Christmas 20 years ago.
But the reality is the tractor assembly factory is here and they are here to show off what they can do. There are several hectares of land that are flat and relatively free of tree stumps right by me. These fields are found on the Comice land, and are cleared of tree stumps because the government cleaned out the fields several decades ago in anticipation of the Comice. Now, post-Comice and in order to test the usefulness of the tractors, the tractors are sent out to clear a few hectares of land. But, instead of using the green manure from cut grasses to help fertilize the soil, they sent out manual labor to burn the piles of cut grasses. Then, they resend out the tractors to till the soil, which is now conveniently free of nutrients, and then they send out more manual labor to seed the site. It is so frustrating to watch the teams of men working together to make piles of dead grasses to burn. What is the point of a tractor, particularly in the 21st century, knowing what we know, if you’re going to interrupt its work with underpaid manual labor? Doesn’t anyone read? If you’re going to have the costs of tractor upkeep, you might as well get the most bang for your buck. Or you should probably just try something cool and innovative, like NOT burning the grasses, but rather using them as organic manure. In America, we talk about no-till farming, organic farming, niche farming. If Cameroonians with the capability to make large financial investments simply looked at trends in other parts of the world, I think worldviews could be transformed. Instead, they are just going to do something mediocre at best.
Aside from the fact that I believe that this factory will likely lead to environmental issues, particularly polluted water (in an area where people still rely on untreated ground water), I also get more and more upset everyday by the fact that Ngalane is slowly becoming an industrial park. This is evidenced by the presence of increasing numbers of shipping containers filled with tractors littering the site of the Comice. And even though people farm past the grounds of the Comice, the tractor factory owners bought out the land where they are storing the shipping containers and have now put a gigantic fence around their newly acquired land. This means that my neighbors who used to be able to take short cuts directly through the site of the Comice are now forced to walk around the entire perimeter when most of the area inside is not even being used. And I don’t know who to be more angry at: the tractor assembly factory for not caring about the people who use the land, or my neighbors because they sold their land in the first place in order to have a really good Christmas 20 years ago.
But the reality is the tractor assembly factory is here and they are here to show off what they can do. There are several hectares of land that are flat and relatively free of tree stumps right by me. These fields are found on the Comice land, and are cleared of tree stumps because the government cleaned out the fields several decades ago in anticipation of the Comice. Now, post-Comice and in order to test the usefulness of the tractors, the tractors are sent out to clear a few hectares of land. But, instead of using the green manure from cut grasses to help fertilize the soil, they sent out manual labor to burn the piles of cut grasses. Then, they resend out the tractors to till the soil, which is now conveniently free of nutrients, and then they send out more manual labor to seed the site. It is so frustrating to watch the teams of men working together to make piles of dead grasses to burn. What is the point of a tractor, particularly in the 21st century, knowing what we know, if you’re going to interrupt its work with underpaid manual labor? Doesn’t anyone read? If you’re going to have the costs of tractor upkeep, you might as well get the most bang for your buck. Or you should probably just try something cool and innovative, like NOT burning the grasses, but rather using them as organic manure. In America, we talk about no-till farming, organic farming, niche farming. If Cameroonians with the capability to make large financial investments simply looked at trends in other parts of the world, I think worldviews could be transformed. Instead, they are just going to do something mediocre at best.
Monday, August 1, 2011
The Motherland Calling
About a week and a half ago, my very faithful mother sent me a few articles from the MetroWest, a NY/NJ Jewish weekly. One of them was about Israeli’s work in Africa, and the other was about young Jews who don’t believe in God, but still believe in Judaism. I immediately connected with the second article about young Jews who don’t believe in God, particularly because here EVERYONE is religious and they always take it upon themselves to extol the virtues of Jesus and being saved. This kind of drives me insane, particularly because I’m a liberal American. “Hey, man, if you want to believe, that is up to you. Just do right by your mother.” However, my doctrine doesn’t really work here. Often times, before even learning your name, people will ask you, “Tu est quoi?” You are what, specifically referring to what church you belong to. Because “I am Lauren, I am an American,” doesn’t suffice as a response to this question, I’ve taken it upon myself to tell everyone that I’m a Jew. Now, as anyone who’s ever read the Erin and Lauren Do God blog can tell me, I’m a sceptic, a doubter among doubters, and I often use my Star of David only when it comes in handy (sometimes to make fun of the Jews or to make myself sound more responsible/serious than I am). But the beauty is that here I can use it all the time because no one’s ever met a Jew before. They all know we have been prosecuted throughout our history, so if anything, I think it makes Cameroonians like me more (they can identify with my people). And no one (except the Muslims) can really grasp the idea that I don’t believe that Jesus was our Messiah. It’s true, too, that I’m not really sure of this whole God thing, let alone the waiting for the Messiah, but I’ve never before in my life been more of a cultural Jew without even having the culture. The only Jew you meet can speak on behalf of all the Jews and still be correct. And since we’re the chosen people, well-educated, a minority, not white-bred, I’m happy to be the only Jew most Cameroonians will ever meet. At least now they know that Jews are hilarious.
The strange thing is that Saturday, while avoiding the wedding that was happening right next to my house (they were so proud to fight against tribalism in a marriage of Bulu with Bamoun), I ran into the director of an agricultural school that is right by my house. He invited me to this special reception of The Israelis who were coming to check out the ag school, to see what opportunities and constraints existed, and probably to do some ground truthing to make sure that the school actually exists. I wasn’t excited until I realized it was just a husband/wife couple who were actually interested in talking to me. After a very awkward ceremony dealing with language differences and cultural differences, I had a nice opportunity to talk to the husband, a guy who works with the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, African development sector. It makes sense that Israel would want to invest in African agriculture. They know a lot about limited resources, they know all about war, and they need as many friends as they can get. Well, they have a friend in Cameroon, especially considering that the person in charge of country security (or something or other like that) was an Israeli, many people in agriculture here have studied in Israel or with the Israelis, and that the only coffee house in Yaounde is owned by Israelis. Anyway, it turned out to be a great networking opportunity for me and I might be able to send some women farmers to an agribusiness seminar for West Africa in February (totally cool). It was clear to me that this school (who has come knocking on my door looking for funding) was just looking for funding. They couldn’t care about the other cool things that the Israeli was talking to me about (counter-season production, specifically, to help with the fact that they’re cultivating in the rainforest), they were just excited about the connection and the possibility that they would get money from the Jews. Who have a lot of it, as we all know.
It was good to talk to this super-Jewish couple who kept using big Hebrew words that I didn’t know, like the one that refers to doing God’s work everyday. (Actually I realized I can only remember the words for “shut up please” and my name in Hebrew…) They reminded me that it is difficult to keep Kosher (tell me about it, and I don’t even try), that I am still a Jew even if I’m in Africa and that I need to visit the motherland. And I was reminded of how nice it is to be able to have an excuse to not go to church on Sunday.
The strange thing is that Saturday, while avoiding the wedding that was happening right next to my house (they were so proud to fight against tribalism in a marriage of Bulu with Bamoun), I ran into the director of an agricultural school that is right by my house. He invited me to this special reception of The Israelis who were coming to check out the ag school, to see what opportunities and constraints existed, and probably to do some ground truthing to make sure that the school actually exists. I wasn’t excited until I realized it was just a husband/wife couple who were actually interested in talking to me. After a very awkward ceremony dealing with language differences and cultural differences, I had a nice opportunity to talk to the husband, a guy who works with the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, African development sector. It makes sense that Israel would want to invest in African agriculture. They know a lot about limited resources, they know all about war, and they need as many friends as they can get. Well, they have a friend in Cameroon, especially considering that the person in charge of country security (or something or other like that) was an Israeli, many people in agriculture here have studied in Israel or with the Israelis, and that the only coffee house in Yaounde is owned by Israelis. Anyway, it turned out to be a great networking opportunity for me and I might be able to send some women farmers to an agribusiness seminar for West Africa in February (totally cool). It was clear to me that this school (who has come knocking on my door looking for funding) was just looking for funding. They couldn’t care about the other cool things that the Israeli was talking to me about (counter-season production, specifically, to help with the fact that they’re cultivating in the rainforest), they were just excited about the connection and the possibility that they would get money from the Jews. Who have a lot of it, as we all know.
It was good to talk to this super-Jewish couple who kept using big Hebrew words that I didn’t know, like the one that refers to doing God’s work everyday. (Actually I realized I can only remember the words for “shut up please” and my name in Hebrew…) They reminded me that it is difficult to keep Kosher (tell me about it, and I don’t even try), that I am still a Jew even if I’m in Africa and that I need to visit the motherland. And I was reminded of how nice it is to be able to have an excuse to not go to church on Sunday.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
You did what with her what?!?!?!
I’ve recently made friends with Sharifa, a market mommy. She’s from the West like most successful market mommys, Foumban precisely, and she lives here in Ebolowa with her husband and daughter and other random family members. I’m not really sure we have all that much in common, and often we sit in silence watching her television when she invites me over to her house. It is really refreshing, however, to have an entrepreneur friend from the West because she doesn’t share the same habits as Southies and she always feeds me. And I think we both appreciate each other’s company and perspectives since we are both outsiders.
I will often ride my bike to the market and sit with her while she sells her dried and smoked fish. It is a habit that takes much getting used to, as the fish attracts obscene amounts of flies and always smells a little too fishy. Her neighbors in the market have become like another family for me, and we often greet each other as old friends. I enjoy people watching when I’m there. We always remark the pregnant 11 year olds, the women who got meningitis and no longer walk with 2 functioning legs, her friend who used to sell folere, a cold, sweet hibiscus tea, who recently married an old white man from France. The people watching is endless.
Last week while sitting with Sharifa and the muslim men from the North and other fat women from the West who sell onions, garlic, peanuts, beans, and dried maize, Sharifa pointed out a young woman who was wandering helplessly around the market. Her neighbor, a young muslim man, was apparently hiding from her. She teased him and got everyone else to join in. The reason that he was hiding from this young woman was, according to Sharifa, that they slept together and he put her very large breasts in his ears and now he is having hearing problems. Weird, huh?
This ties in with the known sorcery powers of Southerners. Southerners have very strong connections to sorcery. People say that you should never accept food from women who may be interested in your husband, because inevitably they are trying to get rid of you. You should never accept perfume as a present because someone is trying to seduce you with other sorcery scents they mixed in with the perfume (think “Love Potion #9). And apparently some women’s breasts have the power to make you somewhat deaf.
The weirdest part of this whole scenario was that the accused young woman came by and just stood looking over the young man she slept with. She knew that we were all talking about this weird story, and maybe she was just looking for some sort of apology or explanation from the very cowardly nordist, but his fear of her powers caused him to not even look over in her direction. He never even acknowledged her presence. Now, for me this is not ok. The poor girl slept with this young man and everyone knows, everyone is talking about it. She’s been accused of intentionally messing up his hearing, probably for no good reason or purely as a coincidence, and the guy can’t even look at her because he is too afraid of her powers. I felt bad for both involved parties and clearly I don’t know the whole story, but Ebolowa is a small city and she will likely be stigmatized for a long time.
I will often ride my bike to the market and sit with her while she sells her dried and smoked fish. It is a habit that takes much getting used to, as the fish attracts obscene amounts of flies and always smells a little too fishy. Her neighbors in the market have become like another family for me, and we often greet each other as old friends. I enjoy people watching when I’m there. We always remark the pregnant 11 year olds, the women who got meningitis and no longer walk with 2 functioning legs, her friend who used to sell folere, a cold, sweet hibiscus tea, who recently married an old white man from France. The people watching is endless.
Last week while sitting with Sharifa and the muslim men from the North and other fat women from the West who sell onions, garlic, peanuts, beans, and dried maize, Sharifa pointed out a young woman who was wandering helplessly around the market. Her neighbor, a young muslim man, was apparently hiding from her. She teased him and got everyone else to join in. The reason that he was hiding from this young woman was, according to Sharifa, that they slept together and he put her very large breasts in his ears and now he is having hearing problems. Weird, huh?
This ties in with the known sorcery powers of Southerners. Southerners have very strong connections to sorcery. People say that you should never accept food from women who may be interested in your husband, because inevitably they are trying to get rid of you. You should never accept perfume as a present because someone is trying to seduce you with other sorcery scents they mixed in with the perfume (think “Love Potion #9). And apparently some women’s breasts have the power to make you somewhat deaf.
The weirdest part of this whole scenario was that the accused young woman came by and just stood looking over the young man she slept with. She knew that we were all talking about this weird story, and maybe she was just looking for some sort of apology or explanation from the very cowardly nordist, but his fear of her powers caused him to not even look over in her direction. He never even acknowledged her presence. Now, for me this is not ok. The poor girl slept with this young man and everyone knows, everyone is talking about it. She’s been accused of intentionally messing up his hearing, probably for no good reason or purely as a coincidence, and the guy can’t even look at her because he is too afraid of her powers. I felt bad for both involved parties and clearly I don’t know the whole story, but Ebolowa is a small city and she will likely be stigmatized for a long time.
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