…it’s a street in a strange world…

We haven’t made a secret of the fact that our Peace Corps service has not been what we anticipated; we prepared, unintentionally and unwittingly, for one experience and have had quite a different one.  Still, we would join Peace Corps again.  We would even come to Cameroon again.

If you’re considering it, don’t join Peace Corps for the work.  It can be useful if you don’t have a lot of work experience, and (we’ve read) employers do recognize that they’re getting certain benefits, like the willingness to take risks, tackle challenges, and make due with limited/no resources or budget, when they hire RPCVs.  But don’t come only, or even primarily for “the hardest job you’ll ever love” – because if you’ve had a few years in the work force doing something you find at all rewarding or engaging, this won’t be it.  Working in Cameroon is hard, disheartening, discouraging, sometimes utterly defeating when you’re doing it right, and you have to be willing (able?) to squeeze every ounce of satisfaction out of the tiniest victories (Started only an hour late! Half the people expected showed up! Counterpart did what they said they would do!), or the very basic knowledge that at least you did everything you could when nothing works out.  The benefits are much more of the Goals 2 and 3 variety.  We have long been proponents of study abroad and international travel as an essential piece of any education.  We are in a global world now, and it just keeps getting smaller – resources we take for granted are not going to last forever, and the habitable landscape is dwindling – that means we have to figure out how to tolerate each other on just a basic level, let alone the enormous benefits of increased innovation, new perspectives, appreciation of beauty and depth of understanding to be gained by even a small experience of another culture.  If you missed out on study abroad in college, Peace Corps is much harder, dirtier and longer, but definitely a good path to pursuing your global education.

Our time in Cameroon has taught us a lot.  Both anthropology majors in school, we’d been warned against ethnocentrism and cultural relativism for years, but it’s been an education of a different sort to try to understand a fundamentally and completely different mindset.  Things we’ve taken for granted, like, “everyone wants their children to be better off than they were,” or “le’s all pitch in and work hard for a common goal,” just don’t at all translate.  But we’ve learned to just say, “okay” to both the mind-boggling and the merely confusing.  Sometimes understanding isn’t enough, and sometimes it isn’t possible, and things are still going to be exactly as they’re going to be in that moment.  And that’s…okay.  We’ve mentioned before the gained understanding of just how complex issues in the developing world (at least this corner of it) really are – it’s actually not a simple issue of lack of ideas, passionate individuals, cultural sensitivity, or resources.  It’s a million and one little things, alongside enormous social and political challenges that are not going to be solved in two years, or twenty, or maybe more.  And as we’ve said before, these things aren’t going to be answered from the outside in – the best and most sustainable answers, we believe, are going to come from the Cameroonian people when and how they are ready to do it.

On a personal level, we feel that we’ve grown, maybe matured a bit, certainly mellowed.  Once you can accept, “okay,” and stop fighting what doesn’t make sense, not much is really going to ruffle you very easily.  Cell phone companies, watch out!  Because forty-five minutes on hold has got nothing on anything in Peace Corps.  Beyond that, it’s been an incredible time to reflect on what matters, to gain some distance and perspective on issues from our “past lives,” and focus in on what we want in our future.  Running water is a must; hot, if possible; electricity we could mostly do without as long as we can charge stuff now and again.  Plus, we’ve made some amazing friends who will be part of our lives forever.

If you’re thinking about coming, think in terms of personal growth and international perspective, not work opportunities.  Be prepared for periods of symptoms strongly resembling clinical depressing for at least a few months out of the twenty-seven – no, there’s nothing wrong with your thyroid, you’re just sleeping for eleven hours because your brain needs a break. (Seriously, though, if you think you may be sick or really do struggle to get through the day, call the medical office.)  We think Cameroon is better suited as a post for people who are very extroverted and enjoy small talk over drinks with strangers.  Comfort with heavy alcohol consumption around you is a must, and “taking” beers is pretty important to socializing in this culture.  If you’re female, you will be sexually harassed, and it can get pretty intense pretty fast – fair warning.  You might get more out of the work here if you haven’t had a lot of work experience yet and are looking to build your resume – otherwise, be very comfortable setting boundaries around not being “whiteman window dressing.”  In fact, being very comfortable setting boundaries is important – here and in life.  Pick that skill up.  It’ll be easier here if you have a flexible definition of personal space (the music you play on your iPod… that’s all you get), possibly grew up on a farm/can tolerate roosters, and really can just go with the flow – by which we mean, you’re not someone who cares about having a plan, how long meetings run, waiting for vehicles to be pushed out of four feet of mud every five hundred yards, being asked for everything you own, or nobody calling you by your name after two years.  If you don’t think that’s you, consider saying no to a posting in Cameroon.  Chances are good your placement officer will be calling you again in a few weeks with another post to consider.

And that’s all for now!  Next up, find out when we’re coming home!

Hello World! It’s been a while

We are in our last few months in Cameroon now, and it’s strange.  We’re trying to make notes of “The Last Time That…”  For example, the last time we’ll eat fufu and njama njama is yet to come, but sure to be nostalgic – or will we even realize that it is the last time?  (Not to worry, we have ideas for how to make it with an American twist when we get home, and we’ll post recipes once they’ve been suitable tested on our family.)  Our last visit to Azam Hotel for pizza has probably already happened.  The last time we traveled to Limbe has already come and gone, and this week we made reservations for our last trip to Kribi.

Everywhere we went on our Great Gaines and Losses Farewell Tour that launched this blog and our Peace Corps adventure, we were able to talk about, “when we get back.”  Even in our other travels to the Caribbean and Central American and even Europe, we’ve always thought in terms of “one day we’ll be back,” there’s always another visit on the horizon in our minds, another chance to experience our favorite things or get in those experiences we missed the first time through.  Yet somehow, coming to Africa it seems is psychologically a further trip to make, a greater distance that leads us to suspect, while we fully intend to see other parts of this great continent, we won’t be coming back to Cameroon.  So we’re trying to soak up every favorite part of this experience that we can, to make sure we visit our favorite chop houses and views and places “one last time,” and to make sure that there isn’t anything we’ll regret “if only we’d made time for…”  Our “six-ish more months” has now dwindled by half, so we’re doing our best with figuring out how to say goodbye to the place that’s been our home for two years.

Thankfully…

We love Thanksgiving, and that our country has the tradition of beginning the important mid-winter festivities with a time of drawing near to our dearest and giving thanks for the blessings of the year past before we start naming our wishes for the year ahead.  We greet the season with bittersweet feelings as we’re so far from the home we love, but though we left behind (and look forward to seeing in the future!) family and friends, we’re so blessed to be surrounded by dear friends made over the last year and a half.  We have many things we are thankful for this year, and good friends here in Cameroon are just the start!

We’re grateful for the thoughts and prayers, e-mails and IMs and texts, letters and packages and visitors we’ve had from home this year!*  We definitely have dealt with our share of what’s been termed “culture fatigue” (which we think is a more apt description of our experience than the more commonly used “culture shock” – no stunned surprise here, but we do get awfully tired of being foreigners sometimes!), and every little bit of home has made the other side of the world feel so much less far away for us.  We’re grateful for the people who have kept us close in spite of the distance, those who supported us as we began this journey even as they count down with us the days till we come back.

We’re grateful for technology!  Our cellphones and internet key have been invaluable to us for keeping in touch and up to date.  Movies, music and podcasts have all helped us pass time enjoyably and feel connected to our culture.

We’re grateful for the babies, newly born or on the way this year, who we can’t wait to meet!

We’re grateful for the little comforts we’re able to find here in Bamenda (lots of tea!) and the bounty supplied of things we mentioned missing (we have enough coffee to last us almost through the end of our service)!

We’re grateful for the time to discover great books as we wait for travel or meetings or officials, and for the opportunity(!) to be forced to slow down a bit.

We’re grateful for the colleagues we’ve met and worked with over the year, who’ve shared their visions of what they’d like their little corner of Cameroon to look like one day, and allowed us to help in our small ways to build it.

We’re grateful for the things that didn’t work, and the lessons learned there about giving all we can and letting go of the outcome - which is really out of our hands anyway!

We’re grateful for the time together that’s brought us closer than ever (eight years married now! - so much for the dire warnings of pending divorce we got last year).  We’ve been afforded such great freedom to enjoy each other’s company and pursue opportunities to work and serve alongside each other, and to share in the fun, victories, struggles and frustrations of each other’s work in a whole new way.

We’re grateful to have had the opportunity to see more of the country, especially our region this year, and to have revisited some favorite spots (we got to the beach four times this year)!  And we’re grateful for the safety we had through all the back and forth.

We’re grateful for the reelection of our president, and the direction, development and opportunity we believe that represents for our country, and to be citizens of a place where free and fair elections are assured even without international oversight committees and organizations.

We’re grateful that July’s accident was so relatively minor.  Every year volunteers worldwide die in vehicle and traffic accidents, and things could so easily have gone so much worse.

We’re grateful that we’re two-thirds through our service and are in the home stretch!  Maybe we can’t quite say yet that we’ve made it, but we’ve made it this far!

We’re grateful for this challenging, stretching, growing period that we couldn’t have found anywhere else, for the opportunity to explore our faith anew and lean into God’s sustaining and sufficient grace, and to remember the wonder again that even here, on the other side of the world, where everything is different, God is still God.

Happy Thanksgiving

 

*If anything has gone unanswered, please let us know!  Mail is reasonably reliable, but things have occasionally been misplaced for months until we knew to ask around for them.

On the Ring Road

So we’ve been traveling quite a bit this fall season, and it’s been the perfect time for it too!  Last year it just seemed strange to go through Halloween and Thanksgiving when it was clearly still June outside.  The Ring Road took us to new heights in the mountainous North-West Region, and with that came much cooler temperatures, which was just what our Northeastern blood called for!

We have been working with an NGO called PICTRA-Cam (Promoting ICT in the Rural Area in Cameroon) on a series of regional teacher training seminars.  Jack, of course, has been teaching on computer basics and Kiyomi has been teaching time management.  The time management sessions have at times felt a bit ironic, since things still move on Cameroon time, and what with waiting for officials to show up and sanction and officially open the seminar, things don’t actually get rolling until two or three hours late – and then roll right into the importance of timeliness!  But, as they say here, c’est Cameroon!

We’ve now been to the furthest points accessible on the Ring Road by car, and that was an adventure!  Several times we were asked to get out and wait while our vehicles were pushed out of mud pits that pass for roads.  This was sometimes problematic because the bystanders aren’t just willing to help push a stranded vehicle and send you on your way – they are only to happy to watch and laugh until the right sum is offered in return for their assistance.  We were stuck behind another stuck vehicle for a while at one point because, people said, the driver was greedy and wouldn’t pay beyond a certain price.  We thought it was interesting that the driver was considered greedy, and not those extorting him…

Anyway, eventually we did get through all the muck and mire and made it to our various destinations.  The North-West is a gloriously beautiful place, and we got to see first hand why this area is called the Grassfields Region, with its rolling hills of grasses and wild flowers.  For the most part, each trip went something like this: get up early, travel on rough roads in beat up old vehicles all day, arrive in town and run here and there trying to track down the delegate – who must be officially greeted before anything else can happen – find a place to stay, argue with our NGO colleague that certain things, like running water, locks on the doors, really are necessary, find another place to stay, remind our counterpart about the necessity for dinner, find someplace to eat, fall onto a damp, thin mattress atop a pallet of thin wooden slats and hope for sleep. Get up early the next morning, rush through breakfast, rush to the hall, rush to get everything set up, sit for two-three hours while people file in and wait for the officials to show up – they’ve all been told we’re starting at eight, and it’s considered very gracious for them to show up by ten or ten-thirty, and then what with the singing of the anthem (always beautifully done, in full harmony) and the word of prayer, and the word from this one and that one, we’re lucky to get rolling before noon – which is, lunch time!  The teachers always protest that they only want a fifteen minute break, and always take an hour and a half.  Somehow we get through, and even manage to get somewhat back on schedule, until the guy presenting on the internet gets up, wastes most of his time talking theory (this is a practical seminar), and he always begs just five more minutes, and takes another hour.  Then we go for dinner, have another restless night, and get up early to do it all again.  You would think that the second day, since we don’t have to wait for officials, we would start on time, but no, inexplicably, this is not the case.  Then we pile back into our vehicle and get back to Bamenda very late, though our colleague always sees us as close to our door as possible.  Through all this are constant power struggles with the delegation over giving us food and providing the use of a hall, chairs, electricity – all to be loaned at exorbitant cost, to be assessed later.  Our group was able to eat, on our own, for between 3,000-4,000 francs CFA, while the delegations routinely charged, for the same food, between 50,000-60,000 francs CFA.  But just saying the food wasn’t desired wasn’t enough, instead our colleague put himself through all kinds of verbal gymnastics and avoidance strategies so as not to offend when he declined to be robbed.  If you ever forget that Cameroon is one of the most corrupt nations in the world, you will be quickly reminded.

Generally we found the teachers to be bored-to-moderately-engaged, usually with questions intended to try to trip up the presenters (which failed), or long soliloquies about why integrating ICT wouldn’t work or be useful to themselves (it’s a national requirement), and that they needed free laptops – at which point the entire hall would erupt in homecoming game victory cheering.

Our first stop together was Oku, which claims to be the highest occupied point in West Africa, and begs the question, what made people settle so high up before motor vehicles?  Oku was settled by people fleeing indigenous slave trading groups in the valleys, when they found a place so far up in the mountains, near the mouth of a spring, where they could be safe to live out their lives – and their descendants are still there.  Oku is also known in the region for having the best honey around, so of course we brought some back to Bamenda with us.  In Oku the delegate refused to have the teachers pay for registration, claiming he hadn’t received an official notice, though he’d repeatedly been in contact with our colleague.  It was finally settled that registration would be paid per school, rather than per teacher, which ended up not covering expenses.

Our next stop was Ndu.  Ndu was colder than Oku, though apparently not as high in elevation, and is supposed to be the coldest town in Cameroon.  It’s chilly temperature and frequent rainfall make for a good environment for growing tea and the tea fields along the way into town are a beautiful bright green.  In Ndu we found the teachers to be highly engaged and interested, with thoughtful questions and considered responses.  We also liked Ndu because we stayed in the nicest family owned hotel – the bed was comfortable, there was no mold or ancient filth on the walls, and while there wasn’t hot running water, the proprietress kindly heated water for us over a fire.  We were also able to get hot and caffeinated drinks at any time – a vast improvement to the more readily available beer or syrupy soda beverages.

From there we went to Nkambe, which was still cold, but lower enough in elevation that hot beverages became unavailable.  Nkambe was possibly the worst hotel we have ever stayed in, and several times found ourselves laughing hysterically because what else could we do?  The room was tiny; there were hooks beside the bed that Jack put our coats on, and then found that he couldn’t turn around because there wasn’t enough room between the bed and the wall for his legs.  The walls were coated in some kind of brown spotty, drippy filth and the ceiling spotted with black mold.  Our first room had no lock, just a flimsy sliding latch put in with two small nails, and the door knob came off in our hands when we tried to leave.  The second room had a deadbolt we used to pull open the door, since the doorknob in that room was absent as well.  In some rooms there were panes of glass missing from the windows, sheets with visible body fluid stains, and none of the bathrooms had been washed in recent memory.  We asked to have our bathroom cleaned, which was done readily enough, but the managers felt it was sound business practice to turn off the water every day and only let it run for a few hours at night, so the entire hall constantly smelled like a latrine.  That night, our lightbulb fell out of the socket onto the bed.  We missed lunch that day and didn’t eat for about thirteen hours, and were followed by the local fou (village idiot really – not nearly as funny as depicted in the media), who repeatedly muttered incomprehensible things and threw his hat at the two of us, while largely ignoring the Cameroonians with us.  He followed us back to our hotel and stood leering from the darkness while we ate our meal, and Kiyomi yelled at him that he was being racist and to go away, which, after shaking the bush behind her chair, he did.  Our seminar got pushed from the hall that had been reserved for us through proper channels by ELECAM, the oversight organization charged with guaranteeing free and fair elections in Cameroon, who claimed that hall through other-than-proper channels, and said their needs were more important than educating 100+ teachers in computer usage, as is required of them by the national syllabus.  But we were able to secure another space and continue on with the seminar.  We got to spend a good part of our second day with a fellow volunteer, newishly arrived, and got to talk about home and commiserate about being expatriots.  We were followed again by the fou, who this time informed us that we were monkeys and should go back to our own country.  So, yeah, there was that.

Most lately we went to Wum, our last visit up on the Ring Road.  Wum is slightly lower in elevation that Bamenda, and, we thought, considerably warmer.  The delegate there denied being informed of our coming, knew nothing about any ICT seminar, but somehow the teachers knew when and where to come, and what registration would cost.  The room provided for the seminar had no electricity, so another hall had to be found.  By the time all was said and done, the seminar was starting so late that Kiyomi decided to forgo presenting on time management – the irony was too great, and she suggested it was perhaps better this time to simply practice better time management ourselves than to preach it.  Our colleague still suggested that if Kiyomi wasn’t going to present the topic, perhaps someone else could, but reason won the hour.  The hotel was nicer than Nkambe, though we still had to ask for the toilet to be cleaned, because it hadn’t.  Ever.  Wum gave us the thinnest mattress we’ve yet experienced in this country though.  On our way back to Bamenda we got to stop at the scenic overlook at Menchum falls, which follows the confluence of the Menchum and Mezam rivers.  We all jumped out of the bus and took pictures, and nobody in the vehicle with us minded the stop – many of them had never been to look at the waterfall before either and were glad of the opportunity.

So now we’re finished with the Ring Road.  The rest of the seminars will be close enough to Bamenda that we can go and return in a single day, and sleep in our own bed!  As with so much that we do here, the results of our effort may appear less than promising, but we’ve heard so many stories of past volunteers having an impact and being remembered by people today that we choose to believe our work will do the same.  If one teacher learned one thing and shares it with their students, that’s a win.  PICTRA-Cam’s long range goal is to set up solar powered computer labs around the region to give access to computers and the internet to teachers and students so, for our colleague, this is just the beginning.

Answers to Your Questions

So we’ve had some follow up questions to some of our posts and thought we’d take this time to try to answer them.

What happened in July?

Other than some cryptic references to a “traffic accident,” we apparently weren’t very clear. While crossing the street on a Sunday afternoon to go to the market before a friend came to visit, Kiyomi was hit by a motorcycle. Clearly she’s okay. Jack was just a step ahead. The oncoming car had slowed for us to cross, but - typical of motorcycle taxis here - the bike swerved around the car without looking to see why it might be stopping, and slammed into Kiyomi. She was thrown to the ground, literally stunned for a moment. The passenger on the bike found another bike, while the rider sat and muttered something about whiteman not knowing how to cross the street. Kiyomi informed him that since he’d just hit her, he really ought to apologize. An old pa, who’d seen the whole thing, yelled at the okada boy to “get off that bike and make sure she’s okay!” The guy then came and made many apologies and bought Kiyomi a bottle of water while she and Jack made sure everything still moved in the appropriate and expected way. We continued on with our shopping after a few more moments to catch our breath. By the time we got home, though, Kiyomi was limping and couldn’t make much use of her right arm, which had taken much of the force of the fall.

We learned later that, had we gotten information about the driver, we could have made a complaint with the police and tried to have his license revoked. But drivers here are so reckless and dangerous, it never occurred to us that there might be some legal guidance around their behavior, let alone penalties.

Kiyomi could not use her arm for a month, and Peace Corps recommended physical therapy, but since Kiyomi’s dad was visiting at that time, she decided to delay until he left, and now she only has occasional twinges of discomfort in her elbow.

Two days later, in the hours before sunrise, we had clothes stolen off our front porch, where they’d been left to dry. We’d left clothes on our porch to dry overnight the entire preceding year and never had any issue, but now we only dry clothes outside if we’re home, and otherwise, our office has turned into a laundry room. We made complaints with the police and gendarmes with the help of our amazing regional office manager, and they each sent someone out to wander around the yard and nod. The police even had someone in custody at one time, but nothing more has ever been said of the matter, and we have to assume our things are gone for good.

Needless to say, it was an incredibly demotivating time, and we really wanted someone to talk us into staying. But even that realization was good for us, even though no one ever did talk us into it.

Do you regret “Peace Corpsing”?

No. We would do it again. We discuss sometimes whether, knowing what we do now, we would have been so quick to accept the assignment to Cameroon (Mexico is our most favorite place in the world, perhaps somewhere in Latin America would have been nice…), but we will never wonder what would have happened, and where we would be in life now, if we had stayed in Pittsburgh – and we always would have wondered, and regretted, if we hadn’t joined Peace Corps. We both believe strongly in the benefits of overseas travel and think no education is complete without it. Even less than ideal experiences are importantly shaping to a global mindset and an inclusive worldview – and whether you like it or not, we are part of a global community now, and if you’re a Christian, you don’t get the luxury of not liking it, you’re obliged to take an interest in the world. So we’re here, not liking this part of the world all the time, certainly, but we would do it again. Peace Corps gives you the opportunity not only to visit a place, but to live like a local and experience a different way of life. Part of our frustrations, we’ve speculated, may be due to an overly strong emphasis on the development part of our job – from our own American work ethic, to the subtle and not-so-subtle judgment, real and imagined, of other volunteers – whereas the reality is that the development work is only a part of why we’re here. Peace Corps has three goals, and sustainable training and capacity building is one of them – the others are: living here, experiencing the place, the food, the people, the shopping, the cooking, the handwashing, the life; and telling other Americans about it. Which isn’t to say that we’re not busy. Our part-time work with our host organizations has left time available for other work in the community, and we find ourselves running into scheduling issues and needing to tell people we can’t take up another work effort right now.

If you don’t like it, why do you stay?

We’re not sure. We do know that we didn’t want to be talked out of leaving, but into staying. We know that we could Early Terminate our service at any time. If we wanted an excuse, we could be sent home at the first indication of pregnancy. But we haven’t done those things, even though in moments of frustration we’ve both declared ourselves ready to call Yaounde and get on the next flight out. Usually at that time the other will recommend seeing how things stand the next day before making that call, and we always decide to stay. We also know that if for some reason we were to be administratively separated, we would fight it at every step. We want to come home, we miss our friends and family and way of life. But we don’t want to leave just yet. Call us romantics, call us idealists, call us fools – we are creatures of resurgent hope.

We remember having a dumpling feast with our ESL students in Pittsburgh, learning about Japan, Kazakhstan, and two different areas of China, the discovery that all three places have very similar ways of making and enjoying dumplings. Our world was expanded and improved by the friendship of those people, even though it was a relatively short time and relatively small things that we enjoyed together. So we hope for the small things here.

Have your opinions of Africa changed?

Yes and no. Everything we are taught in the States about “Africa” is wrong in Cameroon. We can’t speak to the rest of the continent – it could swallow the US three times over and still have room. We know that geopolitically the African continent has been sorely wronged by the Western world throughout history, and believe that all promised aid and debt relief should be provided in the most expedient way. But people can feed a family without difficulty on $2 a day here; and the kids running around in ratty clothing are doing so because they’re running around on red clay and their moms don’t want them to ruin their good clothes; and the babies with no pants are toilet training; and people are more likely to be sick with the effects of obesity, to suffer diabetes and heart disease, than to die of starvation. The problems here seem to stem, not from endemic poverty, but from an over abundance of free aid that’s undermined the agency, independence, creativity and mastery of an entire nation. So we think the best thing that could be done for Cameroon is to leave it alone. To back out and stop international funding, once amounts already promised have been met. Let Cameroon learn the value of its own people, identify its own solutions in context, develop its resources and set its own path to full modernization. Send people to provide training, but stop throwing money at the problems here, stop handing over fully developed projects deemed necessary by the international community, stop building infrastructure – instead, teach, and let Cameroon make those decisions about what is needed for Cameroon. Hand in hand with that is to also stop sending missionaries to live on American salaries. This reinforces the idea of “rich whiteman” who lives in a big house on a hill with no real connection to the daily lives of the people they’re supposed to serve. While well-meaning, the influx of funds and lack of haggling makes it much more difficult for those of us who are living on the local economy, and the wholesale funding of efforts and provision of material goods is both counter to good development standards and counter to Christian ideals.

What are you working on now?

We have been busy recently! Kiyomi continues to work on staff development training with ACMS, and recently began work with another NGO, HEDECS, where she’ll be supporting development of several programs and coordinating a review of the strategic plan and restructuring of the board. Jack has got the computer lab at the Delegation up and running and has two colleagues trained to continue with it. He’s also been “freelancing” as an IT consultant to various organizations. Together we’ve started working with another NGO and the Delegation, and two other volunteers (the new married couple here) on a series of traveling teacher training seminars that take us around the North West Region. We’ve also begun collaborating with another volunteer and a local landowner on the development of an ecotourism business outside of Bamenda. That’s all kept us pretty engaged, but we hope to be able to also help with the development of a local library soon, and Kiyomi has had interest from some women’s groups in entrepreneurship and business classes. We expect that will see us at least to the end of the year, and after New Year we hope to do some more travel around the country as we head into our last six months here. Regrettably, we had to give up the literacy class for the time being. Over the summer while we were away from it, it transitioned into a reading practice class (certainly still an important effort) with only a few students, that did not warrant three volunteers, and other opportunities needed that time.

Visitors

So Kiyomi’s dad came to visit in August, and we all had a nice time. It is great to feel that we’re still connected to the lives we left back home, and that the world, for all its vastness, is not so big that we can’t get around it to have a bit of that life here. It did lead us to a bit of compare-and-contrast with when Kiyomi’s mom and partner visited. We hope our insights will be helpful.

Have visitors come after your one year mark at post. Mom and Curt came in April, and there were things we just didn’t know. People with access to private cars, for example; but also, how to hire a private car, or where to direct it once we had it. We toured a nearby monastery with Dad, an outing we just didn’t know how to arrange before. Also, we didn’t know where to go hiking until this summer.

Go to Kribi if you want to go to the beach. In fact, go to Hotel du Phar, walk to the fish market, stall number 6, eat your fill of delicious, fresh seafood prepared four feet from your table with a view of the water. Go to the marina and order lasagna or brick oven pizza. Frolic in the waves on the hotel’s private beach. Wrap up the evening with a beverage on the oceanside deck.

Don’t go to Limbe. The botanical gardens are nice for a stroll, and the Wildlife Centre, or “zoo,” is not comparable to any American zoo, though all the primates are rescued or born there. You can do both in a day. Downbeach, Limbe’s fish market, has fish, but no other seafood to speak of, and a view of what might be a pretty beach if every inch of it wasn’t covered in trash. You’ll be lucky to find hot water in a room unless you go to one of the resorts on the outskirts of town. Same for a swimmable beach. Getting there by taxi will cost you dearly, and so will eating all your meals at the resort.

If you do decide to go to Limbe, several volunteers have recommended Madison Park for a beach camping experience, but you’re well away from town, so bring food.

Go hiking! At least in the northwest, you can take a taxi, or walk out to the base of any of the foothills and spend your day hiking in some gorgeous scenery. Just go through the fields until you hit a cow path, and the mountains are yours.

Three weeks seems like a good amount of time to visit. Travel anywhere is going to take a full day, and two weeks (or less) is going to make for a rushed trip. Three weeks gives you time to get to post, travel a bit, and hang out for a bit.

Don’t try to do too much. We know some people really like to get up with the sun, go all day, and into the night, in order to “get their money’s worth,” but visiting family aren’t likely to be used to Cameroon travel, so go easy on them. Take a day to rest and reflect here and there. Let’s face it, most of our friends and relations had never heard of Cameroon before we came here – and guess what they came here to see? Let them get a taste of the normal pace of your day to day life. They won’t be bored, they’re in Africa!

Do take them up on the offer to be pack mules! It’s like getting a care package with a loved one inside. Hugs AND Hershey’s kisses!

Tell the truth. That’s what we try to do on this blog, but we know there’s a temptation to gloss over things in e-mails and calls home – or you’re just so happy to be talking to someone back home, that it makes you forget every struggle. But part of our “mission” here as Peace Corps Volunteers is to share our experience with our communities back in the States. Travel is a great thing, seeing how other people live is so important to making informed and intelligent decisions on things as wide ranging as what restaurant to have dinner at, to whether mahogany furniture is in fact such a good thing, to how you vote or urge your representatives. As Christians, we believe God gave us, as a species, stewardship over this savage garden we find ourselves in, and seeing and experiencing it is essential to knowing what that entails. But not everyone can travel, and certainly no one can travel everywhere, and visitors are only here a short time, so it’s important to be real and be honest about the good as well as the bad.

Eat everything. Well, mostly. Don’t eat bushmeat. It’s not sustainable, it exposes humans to all kind of viruses we have no defense against, it leads to habitat degradation, we could go on. But do drag your guests out to sample as much sustainable local fare as you can. Bring them to eat your favorite dishes, and bring them to try the stuff you’ve had the opportunity to discover you don’t like as well. The more educated and varied your palate, the more nutrition you get, the more options you have to answer the question, “what is food?”

Have guests. We know it won’t be possible for everyone, but do encourage your friends and family to visit if they can. Having someone from your past life see where you are now is the best way to recharge your batteries, open your eyes again to the place surrounding you, and not feel like such an alien. They won’t understand - how could they? – but they’ll have a better idea than any amount of e-mail, phone calls or letters home can convey, and just as we as volunteers are stretched and challenged, our guests will be too.

A year later

One year ago we were about to launch what has been an interesting journey to the other side of the world.  It’s hard to believe, the time has gone so fast.  We’ve picked up some French, learned how to get around and get things done Cameroon-style, and, we hope, started to have an impact with the skills and knowledge we’ve shared with our host organizations.  It seems like it really does take a year to find your stride in a place so different from home.  We’ve just recently started exploring Ntarinkon market, rather than going to Bamenda Main Market, and found a really good place for soya just a short walk from our house, and started hiking the surrounding foothills.  There’s some sense of regret that we missed out on these things while we were figuring out how to buy furniture and bed sheets, and arguing with our landlord, and trying to sort out just what exactly it is we’re supposed to be doing here!  But at the same time, we know we’ve just reached a different stage in our cross-cultural adjustment.

We really wanted a nice classy restaurant to celebrate our anniversary, we found we are both still pretty healthy at our mid-service check-ups, we hosted site visit for one of the incoming trainees, Kiyomi was hit and moderately (not quite so bad as “seriously,” right?) injured in a traffic accident, and our laundry was stolen. It’s been an eventful few months. But a year in also seems like the right time to do the whole reflective retrospective bit.

Some themes that have emerged:

While we like some things in Cameroon and some people in Cameroon, we don’t really like living in Cameroon. After growing up as military children, we figured we had this living in new places for two years thing down. But military family members aren’t sent to the third world. We’ve learned, we’ve adapted, we’ve found our stride (and lost it again… and found it again! And…darn thing is slippery and small and hides…), but we really don’t like living in the third world. Maybe that seems obvious – developing nations are developing exactly because nobody wants to live in an undeveloped nation – but it was a revelation. We have found things and places and people we like, we have been moderately happy (or at least maintained no more than, as Freud is wonderfully misquoted, an ordinary level of unhappiness). But the idea that we can be really happy anywhere, because we’re flexible and open-minded and adventurous, and also, by the way, we’re trying to do the deeply rewarding work of making our world a better place…yeah, not so much.

One of the reasons we don’t like living in Cameroon is that it’s hard to work here. The process goes something like this: While chatting with a colleague a Great Idea emerges, you are really excited about it and so is your colleague, you begin planning to Implement the Great Idea, and find at your next meeting that your colleague (who shows up late) has not done any of his/her share of the work, excuses ensue or it is strongly implied that actually you were the one who was supposed to take care of X things. You agree to split the remaining duties, calls to your colleague confirm that (in slightly annoyed tones), yes, everything is taken care of, and at your next meeting you discover that, in fact, nothing has been done. Your colleague helpfully suggests ways you can continue to do the work on your own. The Day of the Great Idea arrives and anything still left to your colleague has not been done, no one actually shows up, or those in attendance complain that they’ve come to take part in the Great Idea (the one you’ve busted your hump to Implement to bring Benefit and Improvement to their community), and you haven’t even provided them with food and beer and “gadgets” (pens, notepads, T-shirts, key-chains; what we would call “chachkies” or “give-aways”) and laptops or money, so why are you wasting their time?

We’ve discovered that it’s a real challenge to provide all the motivation not only for yourself, but for everyone involved, by yourself. And it’s even more challenging after being hit/seeing your spouse hit by a motorcycle, and then having laundry stolen off your front porch, to stay motivated.

Not all poverty is created equal. Cameroon is a country rich in natural resources, a population filled with apathy, and a government sitting on considerable wealth. People are hungry because there are no roads to get abundant food from one part of the country to another. People are poorly educated because teachers are government employees and can go months, or even years, without collecting a paycheck. We know people who are forced to ask family to support them, or subsidize themselves by selling market goods or doing other side work in order to feed themselves while they wait for their actual paychecks to eventually arrive – with no promise of when that might actually be. It puts into perspective the continual problem of teachers not showing up for classes. But in general, people here (at least where we have traveled) are not hungry, and are poor only when compared to the West, where cost of living is also considerably higher. There’s a great priority placed on accumulation of material goods as well. Like in America, people may have a new car and large television and host elaborate parties at the expense of being able to pay their bills, but the level of consumerism here hasn’t yet experienced the backlash and resurgence of simple living going on the States.

Things are way better back home than we knew. Being on hold for forty minutes with the cable company is small potatoes – once you get that appointment for someone to come out between 8AM and 7PM, you’re pretty well guaranteed someone will be showing up that day. If you take a taxi, you get that whole taxi to yourself; in other means of public transportation, you always get your own seat, and for long trips, usually with a seatbelt! If you have to wait in line somewhere, at least there is a line to wait in, and not an oppressive crush of humanity on every side of you, pressing toward the front with no order or civility. In a restaurant you’re guaranteed (except in very rare cases) that everything on the menu is available for your order. You won’t wait thirty minutes for someone to take your order, you won’t wait an hour or more for it to come out, you won’t find your waitress asleep when you want the bill. And if she’s surly at any point, you may be able to get something comped if you call the manager, instead of that being standard demeanor. Plus, there’s pizza, and ice cream, and Mexican food, and turkey sandwiches, and sausage, and…

A smile and kind word (without a marriage proposal or request to be brought to “your country,” without even knowing what country that is) can change the tenor of an entire day. It’s sad but true to say that sometimes whether our morning taxi driver is in a friendly mood sets the tone for our whole day. On the other hand, after about six incidents of “hell-lo-ooo,” “whitemanwhiteman,” or “hey, baby,” paired with lots of hissing and lip smacking, that also sets a certain tone for the day, and we dream about walking down the street and being invisible again. But it does remind us to try to smile and say hello to the non-derangey people, and maybe make their day better too.

On expectations, we really didn’t think we had any. But, of course, it’s impossible not to. We expected:

To learn about an awesome and very different culture

To make great host country national (HCN) friends who would share their rich heritage and traditions with us while being interested in learning about ours

To bike to work on a sparsely populated dirt road every day

To work with organizations that had some idea of what they wanted collaboration on work-wise

To glimpse large African fauna now and again and debate how close they were and relative risks of an encounter

To be too busy attending cultural events and learning to make indigenous dishes to possibly have time for movies or computer games from home

To actually speak French

To have a favorite coffee/tea/local hot beverage place to hang out with our HCN friends

To live in a family compound with people who would become like a second family to us

To live in something strongly resembling a mud brick house

Things we didn’t expect:

Trash everywhere, also human waste everywhere with people routinely dropping off on the side of the road even in a city to urinate and/or defecate

People constantly asking us for money, our belongings, marriage, free passage to anywhere but here, etc. while being dressed better than we are

Strange assertions about the US, such as: there is no poverty, our president is from Africa, Rhianna and Jessica Simpson are sisters, there are no black people, everyone has servants, there are no trees – everything is paved, anyone can bring anyone they want to into the country – the only reason we won’t take someone to our country is obviously due to some grave personality flaw, etc.

Level of general drunkenness

General lack of motivation to do any work – another volunteer was decried as a horrible task master for insisting on at least four hour workdays

Napping in the workplace and surliness if interrupted

So many volunteers close by

So much traffic and pollution

Being told with surprising regularity what women don’t know about or can’t do (often things Kiyomi is well informed about and does)

The Big Man culture that prioritizes so much that we detest in our own culture: toady-ism, favoritism, consumerism, chauvinism, insert most any other unpleasant “-ism” here

Constant verbal harassment when walking down the street

“Corruption at every level” really is just that

Pretty consistent water and electricity with constant drips and power surges

Access to cheese and peanut butter but at extraordinary cost

Obsession with all things “Western,” while also adhering to “our culture” (a phrase most often brought out around topics such as women’s equality, girls’ education, homosexuality, and why these things are bad)

The number of men unwittingly wearing women’s clothing

A level of “Christian-speak” sans Christian activity that makes American Christian hypocrisy look like a small problem

To be fair, it isn’t everyone or all the time that we find frustrating or discouraging. We frequently meet kind and generous people who are eager to help us on our way and want us to have a good experience of their country. We’ll never forget the older gentleman who, seeing us looking a bit lost after coming into Yaounde a bit late and through a different agence than usual, said, “My children, where are you going?” We told him, and he told us exactly what to say to the francophone taxi drivers, and how much we should pay. He had us repeat it back to him to be sure we wouldn’t send ourselves to some different part of town than we intended. Then there were the farmers who saw us across a ravine, well off the path we meant to hike, who yelled to the herdsmen grazing their cattle nearby, who came and found us and took us to the trail we wanted, and walked it with us until we were past all the forks that might lead us astray. Recently nearly everyone has been apologetic on behalf of the motorcycle taxi that hit Kiyomi, almost as though it was a reflection on them personally that this happened, and very forgiving of her very rude use of the left hand! One mami gave Kiyomi a package of cookies along with her well-wishes when we passed by her boutique.

So, is there a wrap-up thought?  We don’t really know at this point – we have another year though to figure it out.  For now we’re just looking forward to an impending family visit and, really, when you live in the developing world, family is a very good thing indeed!