Zen by Yaounde

 
We live in Cameroon. And it sucks. But it’s good.
I’m on an interminable bus ride, trying to meditate. Make productive use of the time, I figure. Turn a frustration, or at the very least a waste of time, into something useful, beneficial even. I try to take in the verdant landscape, the subtle grace and strength of the mama we zip past with a huge sack on her back, the simple elegance of the mud brick homes. I will achieve zen by Yaoundé. I outline the entire article I will write about this, turning a bus ride, a necessary evil, into a meditation that will make all more peaceful and productive.
We stop and are surrounded in seconds. It’s the third or fourth stop of the day. “Sheeps! Sheeps!” a woman screams through the windows, previously closed against dust, now shoved open, arms and sometimes half-bodies pressing in on us, dangling bags of plantain chips, peanuts, cut fruit, things I can’t name. I breathe, undisturbed. Shake my head, “Non, merci.”
A sway-backed girl is watching through the window, her mouth undulating vigorously around a sucker, obviously one of many from the shape of her teeth and the pinky-orange scum clinging to their surface. She waves her wares and we shake our heads no. Still she stays. Then, like a hit and run, her hand is through the window, swiping down my husband’s arm, and gone again. She stands, staring at us, giggling. I am indignant at the rudeness.
Deranging is my favorite frenglish word. It captures so exactly what it means: harassment stemming from a basic lack of regard and respect for another person. The shouting and lip smacking and hissing I generally can ignore, but breaching the barrier of physical touch still gets my Irish up, and I don’t mean potatoes.
I give her a dirty look, grumble, “How rude,” and breathe. I will be unmoved. The bus sits. We’ll be going soon though, I’m certain. The sway-backed girl giggles and drags her friend over, pointing as though we are the first volunteers ever to appear on a bus through this town. As though our fair skin somehow makes us a spectacle.
Landscape. Subtle grace. Elegance. Breathe.
Giggling, she weaves her hand through the window and swipes her fingers down his arm again, quickly as though snatching away something precious, something she knows she shouldn’t take.
“Notice: Our volunteers may be cute, but they will bite! Please do not put hands inside the enclosure.”
I can feel my temper flood up in me like water in a glass. “Touche pas!” I shout.
She and her friend giggle hysterically, and still the bus sits.
“It’s not rudeness,” I can hear David saying in PST, “they just want to know you.” No, it is rudeness. We’re not zoo animals.
Determined not to be bothered anymore, I glower at the back of the seat in front of me.
A boy walks up to see what the commotion is, waves his wares at us, then looks me in the eye and addresses my husband. “I’ll trade you, this one for yours,” he gestures at the sway-backed girl. Deux, deux cents.
I try to murder him with only my gaze and my mind. He doesn’t even shift his weight back from the window.
The sway-backed girl somehow extends her bust and hips even further from her waist. Still, the bus sits.
“It’s a bad trade,” my husband says.
The girls giggle maniacally.
“No, it’s good,” the boy says, “I like her.”
“Bad for me,” my husband clarifies.
“No, one for one,” the boy explains the math. “It’s good.” The sway-backed girl twirls her sucker, like there’s only the details to work out now, like there’s some possibility of me getting off the bus and she taking my place.
Finally, the bus inches forward.
“No, she’s too good for you,” my husband calls as we pull away. In what sounds to me like flawless French.
The woman seated in front of us laughs and nods.
He is relaxed, laughing, unperturbed, and throws an arm easily across my hunched shoulders. “That was fun,” he says, giving me a squeeze. There are so many reasons why I love him.
“I hate this place,” I mutter, beginning to consider the possibility as the little town fades into the horizon and memory, that I might have over-reacted.
At this rate, I will not reach enlightenment on a bus.
He smiles and everything shifts a little toward its proper place. “Nah,” he assures me, “it’s good.”
I breathe and somehow, it is.

Our hearts are in the work…

Wait, that was our last job!  But, here’s a bit of the work of Peace Corps in Cameroon.  At least our part of it.

Our literary class, kicked off earlier this month, has been great!  We have about ten students who are very motivated and enthusiastic about the opportunity to improve their reading and writing skills.  And we are very motivated and enthusiastic about this opportunity to really invest something of value in the lives of these women and men.  We had at first thought to limit our class to women, since girls are usually the ones forced to leave school after basic education if parents can no longer afford fees for all of their children, or if extra help is needed at home.  Women, we felt, had less opportunity to gain literacy, and as primary child care providers, also provided a point of entry to introduce the value of reading and writing to families.  If kids see Mom leaving twice a week to learn to read and write, that makes it pretty important.  And if Mom comes home and reads to her kids later, even better!  But then we had two young men come into our classroom, and couldn’t think of turning them away from our “women’s literacy class.”  So, then and there, we became an Adult Literacy Class.  Having the chance twice a week to share something we love with people who just drink up everything we offer – and stay even after our time is officially over – keeps us really energized when our office jobs are not so busy.

Currently that isn’t a problem.  Jack is continuing to teach computer literary at the Delegation for Basic Education, training inspectors for the primary school, and acting in the role of inspector himself as well.  He’s also been working on updating operating systems and looking into the One Laptop Per Child program, which has some pilot programs already here in the Northwest, but not currently in Bamenda.  Jack is also on the ICT (information communication technology) Committee and is working to increase the use of ICT in other Peace Corps sectors here.

Kiyomi’s sector has recently changed from Small Enterprise Development (SED – “sed”) to Community Economic Development (CED – “sed”), and she’ll be working on the CED Steering Committee to develop the new project plan for Cameroon.  She finished an organizational assessment with her NGO in the fall and is working on a series of staff-led workshops to address the areas of weakness identified by the staff in the assessment.

Today was National Youth Day.  Youth Day is the modernization of Empire Day, from back when Anglophone Cameroon was part of the British Cameroons.  Somewhere around 1962, Cameroon decided that the youth of the country represented the future of the country, and what better replacement for Empire Day than a celebration of the youth of the newly formed nation?  Technically “youth” is defined here as people ages 14-25, but presidential “youth” initiatives have included people up to age 40 or 45, and Youth Day celebrates all individuals in school, from nursery school up to technical training college.  We got to sit in the grandstand with the governor (who was on time today) and watched a parade of all the schools in the area.  The nursery schools were by far our favorite – knee-high children in school uniforms marching with their full souls in it, as only toddlers can do, knees up to their bellybuttons and arms swinging over their heads.  The theme for this year is, “Youth and participation in the major accomplishments policy for an emerging Cameroon.”  We don’t know what it means either.  A generation full of so much energy and joy and adorableness as those nursery kids though, we figure, has to have good things in the years ahead of them.