Today is June 2nd, 2011. By my calendar, that means I have been in Cameroon for one, whole, entire, and complete year. On the one hand, it seems like just yesterday that I was attempting to predict and pack what I would need in Africa for two years and saying my goodbyes. Sometimes I feel that it is uncanny that a year has already come and gone. But other times, I reflect on the events of this past year, and it seems like an almost infinite amount of time of unprecedented changes, learned lessons, and ** in my life.
First of all, I acknowledge the fact that I haven’t written in ages. However, I cannot apologise. I’m a busy girl with little to no internet (let alone electricity) access. And that’s that. But I will revisit some of the events of the past few months in an attempt to make amends.
Ahhh, so this past year living in Cameroon, I’ve had many many firsts. It’s been my first time:
-teaching in a formal atmosphere, in the North and South of the country.
-seeing an entire mountain on fire
-seeing monkeys and four feet long lizards roaming around “en brousse” instead of behind caged bars at a zoo
- chasing wandering goats, sheep, ducks, chickens, etc. out of my yard
-seeing the Nigerian border
-planning my daily activities around daylight, using candles every day (as my friend, Trevor, pointed out, candles will now forever only be associated with utilitarianism- as opposed to romanticism- for us), looking desperately forward to the illumination of a full moon (and the children’s dances and uplift of nightly activities that comes along with it), and being able to notice and appreciate the unadulterated brilliance and clarity of the stars
-being woken up every morning at 5 o’clock by the call to prayer
- paying the equivalent of twenty cents to a moto driver, hoping on the back of his moto, and trusting him to take me wherever I want in whatever town I happen to be in.
- haggling over the price of everything from leather bags to tomatoes to **
- going to a Cameroonian hospital, à cause de my first bouts of malaria and amoebas (at the same time!)
-living alone, and all that comes with that: biking 25 k to pay my rent to my illiterate landlord who only speaks Fulfuldé and getting stuck in the mud, trying to find someone to fix my walls when they split in two (and by fix I mean fill in the holes with cement and leave the issue of the crumbling foundation for the future), and trying to eradicate all my nooks and crannies of termites, flies, ants, wasps, lizards, geckos, mice, cockroaches, etc. that inhabit them
-marching in a parade.
- experiencing a hot season, where it’s upwards of 115 degrees in the shade (I can’t tell how hot it is in the sun, as the thermometer that Dad sent me goes haywire and refuses to function in direct sunlight. I guess it’s just too hot to measure.) You can cook your food by the power of the sun, some of the villagers huts (with their straw thatched roofs) simply engulf in flames without warning, all of your clothes are covered in salt stains from evaporated sweat, and I can’t tell you how many times I thought I had some how spilled some type of liquid on myself, and realised it was just copious amounts of sweat. One day, it finally cooled down a bit and I thought that I actually felt pretty chilly and was going to put on something a bit warmer. Then I looked at the thermometer. It was 97 degrees… But redeeming quality of the hot season: MANGOES!! They are everywhere, it’s the season and people have so many they practically give them away, and absolutely delectable in their juicy and tangy way.
- reading a plethora of books in rapid succession. My count is at 56 for this past year, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten many.
-burning my trash and being painfully aware of every single thing that I consume.
- seeing a Crater Lake
-using a Ditto machine to make “photocopies.”
-fitting 25 people into a car that should seat 8.
- eating goat, mutton, monkey, porcupine, anteater, fish heads (including eyeballs!), chicken throat, cassava (in all forms), millet, a leaf called follère, baobab (fruit and leaves), fresh figs, fresh dates, taro, okra, cashew fruit, koki (white beans mashed up into balls of mush!)
-owning a machete and daggers
-dying Easter eggs with Cameroonians and attempting to explain the Easter Bunny
- riding in a canoe around waterfalls.
-sleeping at least four people to one mattress.
- filling in hundreds of grades on giant sheets of paper with carbon paper to make a copy.
- drinking beers with Congolese priests at a Catholic Mission!
- riding a bike in a skirt.
- writing on a chalkboard only to have the black slate rub off onto the piece of chalk instead of the chalk showing up on the “blackboard,” which is actually just painted on the wall.
- speaking Fufuldé
-rejecting my colleagues’ marriage proposals
- fitting four people onto one moto.
-dropping my prescription sunglasses in a latrine :( (this happened at the school latrine, and seriously considered if there was any possible way to retrieve them… thankful I realised the preposterousness of that notion and grudgingly continued calculating students’ averages.)
-sleeping on a bed made of sticks (bound together by strips of animal skins) and a mattress made of cotton
- having my every move observed, scrutinized, and judged.
- ridden an overnight train.
- being on any form of transportation and being able to buy (through the window) any type of food or drink, or a surfeit of merchandise like sunglasses, dress material, watches, calculators, pens, candy, cookies, tee-shirts, DVDs, tissues, maps, CDs, magazines, planners or journals, keychains, etc. (this phenomenon is also at any outdoor restaurant/bar- as you are sitting at an outdoor table, a hoard of hawkers will pass you by selling any assortment of said merchandise. It’s even better than on-line shopping! They come to you, and you can touch and prod and try out any product before and buying it, after you bargain down the inflated price, of course!)
- being chased through the street by a pack of children chanting “Nassara, Nassara!” (White! White!)
- buying all types of food from hard-boiled eggs, tofu, meat, beignets, carrots, bananas, avocados, eggplants, etc. etc. from off of someone’s head.
- wearing clothes made out of pagne (the African material that one buys in the market and then takes to a tailor to make an outfit to the customer’s specifications). Identifying what patterns or objects are adorned on pagne, worn by others or in shops, has become one of my favorite activites. Some of the patterns really disguise what objects are printed on the pagne, and its quite a mental exercise to catch the object that is worked into the pattern. For example, here are some of the objects I have seen on pagnes:
screws, pipes, irons, monsters, hamburgers, muffins, roller skates, Maggi Cubes (cubes of MSG that are used to cook every Cameroonian dish), trees, Virgin Mary’s, planets, Lion King characters, mushrooms, keys, purses, lamps, furniture, gas station pumps, CamRail logos (the national railway company), cigarettes, parrots, feathers, genie bottles, leaves, etc. etc.
-seeing the lights illuminating a stage (powered by a generator) go out and literally instantaneously the stage re-illuminated by the spectators shining their flashlights/lanterns/cell phones towards the performer (which was much brighter than the weak generator flood lights!)
-being so incredibly aware of the fact that the treatment of women as second-class citizens (in the better scenairos) or simple property (in the worse cases) destroy any hope of a society progressing.
-pumping water from a communal pump and fetching water from a well
- using a giant clay jar of water, placed in a hole in the ground, to attempt to keep my water, fruits, and vegetables cool (it’s a natural refrigerator!)
- feeling as powerless and helpless as when I hear my neighbour beating his wife and children and can do nothing to stop it, or when I see teachers accepting bribes from students to inflate their grades, or when I see police accepting bribes and imprisoning innocents…
-realised the importance of White-Out in a school where everything must be written out by hand. It’s like gold!!
-washed all my clothes by hand.
Of course this list isn’t exhaustive. Some facets are positive and frivolous and fun. But others are certainly negative and deep and have made me reflect and evaluate my life and my decisions and my reasons for doing the things I do. And to evaluate these aspects of the people who surround me. Like all experiences, there are the highest highs and most beautiful roses. But there are also the lowest lows and sharpest thorns. I really think you need both those components to learn and change and grow. And I have certainly done all those things in the past year. Of course I still feel young and naïve and lost and overwhelmed and confused and frustrated everyday. But interspersed with those feelings of inadequacy are the breathtaking African sunsets, the unblemished natural beauty of this continent, the smiles of my students, and the compassion/loyalty/optimism/joie de vivre of so many of the Cameroonians that are now a part of my life. I can’t wait to see what first the next year will bring. I think I’ll have a host of other experiences to add to this list I’ll keep you posted!
** So, quickly, on a more mundane note, if anyone is interested in my schedule of late and future plans, here it is:
The school year is officially over on June 10th, when we will finally hand back report cards and all the statistics and administrative paperwork will be over and finished with. Shortly thereafter, I will be heading down to Yaoundé for mid-service (basically so the Peace Corps can verify that I am still breathing). Then I am going to go to Bafia, which is the town where I did my training last summer. I’ll be there for two weeks to help “train” the new Education volunteers who will get in country tomorrow. I’m going to help teach English classes for the model school (like we did last summer), observe the new kids teahing I model school, and lead some training sessions (namely about how to identify problems in each volunteer’s community and then how to incorporate those issues into lesson plans, since as teachers we have the largest built in and established audiences in our students). I’m looking forward to it- I’ll get to see my host family again, meet the new kids coming in, and keep busy during the “long vacation” (it’s technically not summer). Afterwards, I’m hoping to do a bit of traveling around Cameroon and to get back to Hina by August to work on organizing a girls’ summer camp with Cheryl, my postmate. Hopefully during these travels, I’ll have some internet access, but if not, I’ll update once I’m back and settled.
I love and miss everyone and really appreciate the support. Hope everything is swell at home!
