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.

How to Create a Pleasant Cross Cultural Exchange

Hey Baby!  Are you married?  I like your looks!  Hey White!  I love you!  Marry me!  Whiteman!  I want to be your second wife!  You are beautiful!  Take me to your country!
If asked what country that might be, guesses will follow, usually starting with Sweden...  People also don’t seem to understand, or believe, that the US government doesn’t just hand out entry visas to traveling Americans to distribute to random strangers.
These and other such phrases are the greetings one may be met with on any given day while shopping for tomatoes, or a broom, or hunting down lightbulbs.  A favorite exchange was when Kiyomi replied, “No, you don’t,” to a profession of love from a random okada (motorcycle taxi driver), and without missing a beat the guy next to him called out, “I love your money!”  They don’t understand, or don’t believe, that Peace Corps Volunteers don’t make a lot.
So what to do about such harassment, you may wonder.  Well, the answer is, wear something weird.  You may think we stand out enough being white and American, but oh, no, my friend, the answer is to look stranger still.  We are indebted to Buff and Vibram Five-Fingers.  The Buffs, first of all, help enormously with the air pollution during dry season.  Secondly, importantly, though, with face half-covered and strange toe-shoes, suddenly we look a lot less marriageable.  Cameroonians tend to look at shoes as a sign of status – if you’re wearing flipflops, you’re probably not anything too special, and dress shoes indicate you’ve probably got money, and being white while wearing anything makes you fair game.  But wearing toe-shoes… what kind of strange person covers their face and wears such strange shoes, and what does it mean?  Is this someone worth paying respect to or not?  Some people just laugh.  Some stare in wonderment.  Others are brave enough to ask, “Are those your feet?”
In any event, no one professes love, or asks for marriage, or to be brought to our country. Instead of the above, we hear, “Hey, madam – my brother – I love your shoes!”
Mutually pleasant cross-cultural exchange accomplished.

Bush Taxi

The bush taxi seems to be a universal phenomenon, experienced by all Peace Corps Volunteers, but completely foreign to our home.  Our wild and completely unscientific guess is that there are around 2000 taxis in Bamenda alone, with the air quality that goes along with no emissions standards.  Public transportation is how we get around.  Peace Corps used to give volunteers cars (or at least, allowed us to drive them), but determined that was too life threatening.  Then, not long ago, they gave us motorcycles here in Cameroon, but then that, too, was deemed too risky.  Now we get helmets, with strict instructions to wear them or be sent home (and most volunteers usually do – we are among those who always do, no matter what, we’ve learned well from our family members who ride – hey, watch for motorcycles on the road!), and quickly learn from other volunteers how to use the public transit system – and the word “system” is used rather loosely here.

Many of the main roads in major cities are paved, but by no means all.  In the villages, the dirt roads often become impassable during the rainy season – that means no getting in and no getting out, even in an emergency.  People are often forced to take motos (motorcycle taxis) down slick mud roads in the rain because taxi drivers won’t risk their cars getting stuck.

Traveling between places is even more exciting, year-round.  This is not an exaggeration or a joke.

Imagine a car designed to hold five people (four comfortably) carrying nine, one of whom is a small toddler, bobbing along on its mother’s knees.  Someone is sitting on the gearshift and emergency break.  The driver leans out the window to make space for the front passengers, and drives from that position.  Exhaust billows into the cab of the vehicle.  The car barrels along, taking switchback turns on a mountain side between 60-70 miles (miles, not kilometers) an hour – you can see this if the speedometer is working at all, but the driver never glances at his dials.  When approaching blind turns, the driver doesn’t slow, but honks.  The car is old, thirty, maybe forty years old.  It’s running, but there’s no telling how well it’s been maintained, and the drivers run their vehicles hard.  If the breaks don’t engage, you will plummet off the side of the mountain.  The emergency break is hidden under a pillow, under a large woman squeezed shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, against the driver and two or three other people in the front of the car. No one is going to reach it in an emergency.  When speeding head-on toward another vehicle, or a person crossing the road, he doesn’t slow or swerve, but honks, engaging in a game of chicken – and it’s your life he’s put down on the line.  Frequent use is made of the “oh, shoot” handles (hey, this is a family blog), the back of the seat in front of our, or the arm of the person beside you.  At the last second someone swerves, slows, speeds up, and the vehicle passes the threat by.  The terror, wild speeds taken around curves, and constant billowing exhaust makes you nauseous, but clearly painted along the top of the windows are strict instructions; “No Smoking,” and “No Vomiting.”

You reach your destination exhausted, trembling and nauseated by the adrenaline and toxic fumes.  You pray from the moment you get in the car until you get out of it again.  Then you pray again, thanking God that you survived.  Then you pray again, that you make it back home.  The Cameroonians with you are entirely placid the entire trip.  Maybe they don’t know what danger their lives are in, or have just been desensitized to it by traveling this way since they were the size of the little child bouncing along on someone’s lap, or maybe they do recognize the danger and fall into a state of intentional unawareness.  There are no air bags.  There are no seatbelts, except for the driver’s seat, and it’s anything but comforting when he occasionally reached back and straps it on.  That’s just an average trip in the dry season.

Recently, the car finally slowed when coming into town.  The driver stopped to let a woman out, and got out to help her get her bags from the back.  Ordinarily the driver would now crawl along for a time, honking at bystanders until he found another passenger.  This time, the break gave out.  The car began to roll forward.  The driver jumped back into the car and immediately sped off like we were being pursued.  The hatch was still open, and we shouted to him, but he kept going.  We reached behind us to hold onto our backpacks.  Predictably a suitcase fell out onto the road.  We shouted to the driver again.  He kept going.  In fact, no one responded at all for several minutes, and then, slowly, a woman in the front seat seemed to wake out of a stupor, looked back, then began shouting at the driver to stop.  He continued on, stopped moments (moments!) later and let her out, and then drove away.  She started walking back toward her bag.  Then, inexplicably, the driver stopped, and then started barreling back up the road in reverse.  We passed the woman who lost her bag.  Just as we were coming up on the fallen suitcase, it was hit by a motorcycle and belongings scattered over the road.  The woman screamed and began to sob.  The driver stopped and got out, tossed a bottle of something that’s landed near the back tire into the car.  The woman began to gather her things off the road with the help of bystanders and the driver.  The first woman who was let out, back before the break gave way, pulled up on the back of a moto and claimed the rest of her bags, that the driver had taken off with.  We pulled out packs up into our laps.  The suitcase was returned to the back of the car.  The hatch closed.  The woman returned to her seat, but the driver yelled at her to sit in the back.  This was her own fault, he said, because she touched the break.  She screamed back that she didn’t touch anything.  They yelled back and forth for the rest of the trip.  We continued like that to our destination.

Embassy staff recently asked some volunteers how we get around.  Public transport?  Oh.  They aren’t allowed to use public transport.  It’s too dangerous. 

And a Happy New Year!

Happy 2012!  We had a much needed quiet few days at home to close our recent travels, we rang in the New Year with Harry Potter and hot chocolate and texted our parents before heading to bed.  We’re happy to be back in Bamenda, which has taken on some of the comfort and familiarity of “home,” though as we’ve said before, holidays, birthdays, the events of life, always do make us feel the absence of our loved ones more.  We’ve now been in country for seven months, and it’s gone by quickly – we’ll be going to our mid-service conference in just seven more months, and be half way through our service!  Thanks for the prayers and packages, messages and letters that have made our settling in here so much easier.  We thank our God for his constant provision, for our home, filled with so many reminders of the lives and love waiting at the other end of the world for us at the end of service, for our friends, new and old, for health and safety - not always guaranteed.
”This is what we signed up for,” a friend said recently.  There’s risk inherent in every worthy endeavor.  We go out, we do our best to provide training and education, information, to share a bit of our culture as we learn to live in another, to show that the world has not forgotten those who struggle, that God has not forgotten, to laugh and cry, and discover the reserves of the spirit, to wonder if we can make any difference, and, we hope, to leave something of value behind when we go.  “The hardest job you’ll ever love” is a terrible cliché.  We don’t do this for love, but because something deeper inside won’t let us look and turn away.
So we push forward. In a year we’ll be looking toward home.  For now, we look to our efforts here.  January looks to be a month of preparation for us, and next month we launch our literacy classes!  And maybe take a little vacation back to the beach for Kiyomi’s birthday…

Christmas in Cameroon

So here we our, our first Christmas in Africa.  It’s strange to think that we’ve been here almost seven months – just over a year and a half to go!  We alternate between hoping that’s enough time for our work here, and looking forward to being back in the States!  IST provided a valuable jumping off point for discussions with our host institutions in January for where our vision for our time here and theirs intersect and what the body of our time in Bamenda will consist of.
Back in early December we visited a stagemate in Njinikom just north of us, and climbed Mt. Bouyo.  The process revealed just how much dry season’s dust, which serves to also hold the car exhaust and smoke from burning trash in the valley Bamenda is set into, has taken it’s toll on Kiyomi.  The day hike left her frequently struggling to catch her breath.  Between that and Jack’s recent illness, we decided not to climb Mt. Cameroon for Christmas, though a week at the coast made marked improvement on Kiyomi’s respiration.  Instead we, and about half our training group, visited two stagemates posted in Bangangte, in the West Region.  We had Christmas music on someone’s computer, a fire in the fireplace, soft tacos and chocolate chip cookies with about twenty-five of our closest friends.  Then we spent a couple days just relaxing with books and movies before heading in Yaounde.  We had to get our last vaccination boosters during IST, but since Jack was ill, he wasn’t able to, and our nurse had advised Kiyomi to talk with our medical officer about her reaction to the air quality in Bamenda as well, to have it officially on record.
The Yaounde tranist house is something like a hostel, but without any quiet hours or adherence to the generally assumed rule of “if you didn’t buy it, don’t eat it.”  But it was mostly just our friends stopping over before catching the train back to posts in the north.  We squeezed into the top bunk in a room of six bunk beds – snug, but luckily we like each other.  We got to indulge in delivery pizza, hot (or at least warm) showers, pistachio ice cream, and shopped in an actual grocery store (Earl Grey and English Breakfast teas, and artichoke hearts came home with us).  The travel was not bad, and our French, while not conversational, is at least passable for traveling.  We both applied to be on a few committees at IST, which will meet in Yaounde from time to time, so we felt like it was good practice for getting around there if nothing else.  After two nights of drinking games and “chairssketball” (basketball played from a chair) outside our bedroom window, we were ready to head back home though. 

Six months in and IST

We got to keep our tradition of decorating for Christmas in the first weekend of December.  We spent an evening with some friends, stringing popcorn, listening to Christmas music, sipping hot chocolate, and decorating a little tree.  We even got an ornament – a little bronze elephant head modeled after wood carving we see all over Bamenda.
We had In Service Training in early December, the first of Peace Corps’ official “checking in” on us,  We traveled to Limbe in the South West, and between training sessions spent time with friends we hadn’t seen since swearing in, playing in the waves, and walking on the black sand beach.  Midway through Jack came down with a fever and all the symptoms of malaria and started treatment for it, but test results say we’re still malaria free!  And he was back in good health once the malaria treatment was finished – the side effects of the medicine were about as awful as his initial sickness.
Kiyomi lost her diving mask to the waves while snorkeling in the surf, and we combed the beach for it, but it never washed up.  We did find some wonderful tide pools full of tiny oysters and snails and hermit crabs though.  We also visited the Limbe Wildlife Centre, formerly Victoria Zoo, which rescues and rehabilitates primates who’ve been orphaned by the bushmeat trade or kept as pets.  They have healthy, thriving, breeding populations of chimps, gorillas, drills and mandrills in surprisingly roomy habitats.  It was very nice to see.  While there, we had milkshakes and frosted coffee drinks that rivaled Starbucks at the Centre’s restaurant!  We were going to spend our last nigh in Limbe camping on the beach, but Jack was still sick at the time, so instead we accepted the hospitality of one of our stagemates, who is posted nearby in Buea, for Jack to rest until he was well enough to travel again, and we got to experience a Cameroonian take on fajitas.  Think sort of an unsweetened crepe/pancake filled with beef stew, minus the broth.  Really tasty, but we are looking forward to when we’re able to get authentic Mexican food again!