HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope that everyone back at home had a great time welcoming in 2010. I spent the holiday visiting Aislynn in Mayo Darlé and I had a great time. It definitely wasn’t a conventional new years eve bash but it was fun. I mostly say that because there’s only power in The Darlé from 6 to 10pm each night and while we contemplated staying up till midnight to do a count down, ultimately we decided against sitting in the dark for two hours and went to bed. The next day was a lot like my Christmas experience; lots of eating and visiting with people. There was only one major exception to this and it was that there was no drinking. There’s apparently only 1 bar in Mayo Darlé and not a lot boozing, mostly because it’s a heavily Muslim community and none of them drink alcohol. Needless to say Bankim’s rowdiness factor is unmatched by Mayo Darlé (a thing good and bad thing I would say).

As far as work goes, this week was pretty slow. I had one meeting and I also attempted my first very small intervention at the health center. Neither one went exactly as planned but both left me feeling like I did at least a little something. The mini project at the health center came about because I had been noticing that not a lot of the babies coming in are actually getting the Measles and yellow fever vaccinations because of a blip in the system. Here’s how it unfolds, kids come in at 9 months for the last two vaccines (measles and yellow fever) but in order to open the vials you’re required to have at least 10 of them there, so you don’t waste the vaccine. What normally ends of happening is that there are almost always less then 10 and no one tells the mothers that they’re not giving the vacs until the very end of the day. So then you have a handful of mothers that just wasted 4 hours of their day waiting for nothing, and now their being told to come back next week. You can see why mothers aren’t very likely to return the next week and risk the chance of a repeat. If they don’t come back then the problem just keeps repeating week after week and no one ever gets the shots. I had been talking about maybe consolidating all the 9 month olds by only giving those two specific vaccinations once a month, which would hopefully increase the likelihood that there would be enough babies to open the vials. The nurses I talked to seemed pretty receptive, so I set up a meeting with the chief nurse to see if we could implement it. We decided to consolidate the particular vacs to two Wednesdays a month, which wasn’t what I was hoping for but it was better then nothing. I’m hoping this will help at least a little bit.

The other work related thing I had this week was a meeting with a women’s MBOSCUDA group that is the sister organization to the mens group I’ve been meeting with. When I got to the meeting place I met the president and said hello and she said hello back but that was about as far as the conversation went because she doesn’t speak French and I don’t speak Fulfulde; our encounter should have been a warning about what was to come. While I did have a translator I couldn’t get her to speak above a whisper and she had her hand in front of her mouth when she talked to me which is a sign of respect which I appreciated, but subsequently made it very difficult for me to understand her ( I couldn’t be mad because she is sweet girl who is doing me a huge favor by translating and I know it’s a part of her culture). On top of the language barrier I was trying to explain the Peace Corps approach to development, which is some pretty heavy development theory, but I feel really important to go over at the beginning. I had worked to simplify it a lot and it seemed to go over ok with the men, but the women were giving me blank stares.

A very odd feeling came over me about an hour in to the meeting. I was frustrated but not mad, and I can’t say I’ve ever experienced one without the other before. The meeting was hard and I wouldn’t call it a success but I was happy and not too discouraged when I got the end. I think it was mostly because the women who came are so excited to be there and they seem like genuinely motivated people. Even though I don’t think they really got anything I was saying and even though I couldn’t answer most of their questions because I couldn’t hear/understand what my translator was saying I still felt pretty good when I left. I know that next week will be better (even if only a little) and I know that this group of women see their potential and are very determined to succeed, which gives me a lot of motivation. Someone said the following to me when I first got in country and it fits perfectly for how I’m feeling right now

“They say in Cameroon nothing works right, but everything works out alright.”

The rest of the week was pretty much just a bunch of down time and I spent most of it hanging out with the neighbors. I think I’ve finally got them all figured out: There are 4 families that are my immediate neighbors. Two are in my actual walled in compound; a husband and wife with a 1 year old and then a single mother with a little girl and boy who are both at the primary school. Then outside my wall there are two more families. One has a father (the school inspector), 2 wives, and 12 kids ranging in ages from high school to infant. The other family is a father with 3 wives and a total of 16 kids with the same range. The father of this family runs a training mosque where people send their boys to learn about the Koran and how to call prayer. Needless to say there are kids all over the place all the time. Surprisingly though they’re growing on me and I actually think I might like kids… I know it’s shocking. (Side note: the baby staring thing is kind of a moot point now, because being that I’m the only white person in the district it kind of means that everyone stares, so I’ve gotten over that one) I’ve taught the kids some games and they really seem to like “duck duck goose” (except that I changed it to “goat goat sheep” because it’s easier to say in French) and red light green light. Originally “duck duck goose” was a bit problematic because they kept picking me as the goose and I was getting tired of running around, but after a couple go arounds they got it and I got a break from being chased in a circle.

So that’s about all that’s new with me here. Hope all is well in the states!

Peace,

Kate

p.s. I think I’ve got a lead on a P.O. Box for letters and padded envelopes that’s closer to me but I’m still working out the kinks so keep your fingers crossed!