Work Stuff
This week I had my usual schedule at the health center (baby vacs and prenatal consultations). Nothing out of the ordinary to report on that front, except that I did get to be in the room with a woman when she found out (two weeks before her due date) she was having twins. Twins in her village are thought to be good luck so she was pretty excited. I’m glad it was a good surprise this time ☺
I also had my normal meetings with the MBOSCUDA groups this week. We did a community mapping activity where I met with each group and asked them to draw a map of their community, and I could not have asked for it to work more perfectly, it was textbook! When asked to draw their community the men drew the town of Bankim with all the government buildings, a detailed marché, the bus station, their shops, and the road in and out of town. When I had the women do the same thing they drew their quartier (neighborhood) with specific households, water sources and the schools their children go to. The maps were totally different, but both had important places on them that could be used to define the community.
I had to split the activity in to two parts and the mens group is a week ahead so when I met with them this week we looked at both maps together and talked about the differences and decided that both maps were good on their own but each was missing something, and that if we put them together we would have a complete map of the Mbordoro community. The activity also helped them to visualize how people living in the same place can still see things differently thus giving some validity to the point I’ve been harping on about making sure we listen to what everyone has to say regardless of age or gender. I’m planning on doing part two with the women’s group this week (the discussion and analysis) and if it goes anything like this week I’ll be thrilled. With the men’s group it was interesting to see them working all this out in the heads, you could see everyone connecting the dots on their own. I think they’re really staring to get it, and for a group of very conservative Muslims to enthusiastically validate the work and opinions of their wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters even if it’s in a very small way is huge! This exercise has also been good for me and my perspective. Prior to coming here I had some pretty heavy preconceived notions about how gender equality would fit into the culture and expected a lot of resistance to new ideas, but I’m finding that if you move slowly and use logic and are sensitive to cultural difference people are open to change (especially the people who make most of the decisions i.e. the men) ☺ I know there are lots of ups and downs that go along with this job but this week was definitely an up!
Final work update is that I gave a small expo on Peace Corps work with a new community group this week. They’re called Ngoo Nde, and they’re a group of Bamiliké from the western province who get together once a week to talk about their problems, speak in their local dialect, and pool some of their money together in a tantine (a kind of savings system). The whole thing kind of fell together by chance when I struck up a random conversation with this man who was sitting at my table at lunch one day. We did the usual introductions and then he told me that he had seen me all over town, but didn’t know what I was doing here or what my work was. I gave him the shpeal and that seemed to suffice his inquire. The rest of lunch we just chatted about this and that, he told me about his work and his family and of course we talked about the weather (the heat has come up in every single conversation I’ve had in the past two weeks. It’s all people seem to be able to think about and understandably so it so freakin HOT!) Before he left he asked me if I wanted to come talk to a group he is a member of and I jumped on the chance, and that’s how I ended up at their meeting last Thursday.
Ok so I lied the final final work thing I did this week was attend a district meeting at the Central hospital. It was all the head nurses of all the small Health Centers in the district (there are 11) who get together at the beginning of every year to create an action plan. In reality it’s all the head nurses who get together to read the action plan from the previous year and vote to continue it into the current year without any discussion at all. One could sum up the meeting in three words long, boring, and unproductive. As for why I was there, I went to hand out a short survey to get a feel for what I could possible talk about when I go en brusse to visit their communities. So that was work for the week.
Youth Week
Youth week started this past Thursday. In training they told us that it was just one day for Cameroonians to celebrate school children, but turns out all the activities are stretched into a week long party (Cameroonians know how to get their party on). Each day a different school puts on a culture show at the Mayor’s office and all the big wigs come out to watch. I myself have somehow wound up in the VIP seating at all the events I’ve gone to thus far (Does that make me a bigwig? Oh God, I hope not!). They also have regional handball and soccer tournaments all week and each school has a couple teams that compete to be in the championship match on Friday. The winners of Bankim district will go to play in Banyo, and if they win there to Tibati, and if they win there up to N’goundre (The Capital of the Adamoua). My neighbor Rose who lives in the compound with me is the coach for the handball team at her school and apparently her team is undefeated. They have a game later today so I told her I would try to go watch. I think there are some definite opportunities for collaboration with the handball girls and their coaches and me. The 11th is the actual Youth Day and from what I gather there’s going to be a parade and singing and dancing, eating, and drinking all day at the center of town. Most of my neighbors will be there so I think I’ll go watch the happenings with them.
The Injury Report
Last week I was waiting for a meeting to start at the hospital and one of my friends came in with her baby who’s been sick for about a week with a fever. Eventually the husband decided they should take the baby to the hospital and the nurse ended up diagnosing her with Malaria. She’s on some medicine and on the mend but she had to stay over night at the health center for a couple of days, which adds up financially. I think she’s back home now but she’s still not at 100% so keep her in your prayers this week.
Next up my friend Joseph was in a moto accident. Thankfully he was wearing a helmet and is fine except for a fractured collarbone. I was visiting Bernadette’s house when we got the news so a big group of us decided to go and visit him at his house (giving someone space to recoup is in no way a part of the Cameroonian culture, it’s more of a rubber-necker mentality). But with that being said, I’m really glad we went because while I was there I got to meet Bankim’s traditional healer and I got a chance to see him do his thing. It was quite the ordeal and all I’m going to say is it included a chicken, some herbal oils, 30 min. of resetting the bone, and then wrapping with a bamboo splint. The actual act itself was interesting, but what really impressed me was that Joseph didn’t make a peep the entire time (no pain killers mind you). Were talking 30 minutes of resetting a bone and he didn’t so much as flinch. All I can say is Cameroonians must have an incredibly high tolerance for pain. Even women don’t make any noise during child birth. Aislynn was telling me that she was sitting in on a meeting at her health center in Mayo Darlé while someone was teaching the nurses how to time contractions and they were saying because most women don’t make any noise you have to read their faces for pain and flinching. But it gets better… some women (Fulbé especially) don’t even do that so you have to actually put your hands on them the whole time they're in labor and feel for the actual muscle itself contracting. God I’m glad I’m not a Cameroonian woman! Yikes!
The last injury to comment on is my very large mysterious thumb blister. It’s no mystery to me, I know exactly where it came from, but no one else does. The wives have been asking me about it all week, but I haven’t told anyone what actually happened because it’s kind of embarrassing. Of course not telling them just makes them want to know more, but I know if spill the beans for two years I will never ever hear the end of it (I still hear stories about funny things past volunteers did years ago from these women… they never forget). No, this one is not getting leaked out in Bankim, but because it is a pretty funny story I’ll fill you in.
Early last week I was visiting the compound next door and all the kids were playing football out in the common area. I had been there for maybe and hour when one of the wives told the girls they had to stop playing and do their chores. One little girl named Fadimatou (who’s probably about 9 or 10 years old) disappointedly plopped down next to me on the stairs with a big bucket of dried corn and started to pop the kernels off the cob so that they could take them to the mill to be ground into flour. I felt bad for her because kids don’t really have much time to just be kids and it’s even truer for the little girls, so I asked her to teach me to it too. At first she was a little hesitant but after a some coaxing and me acting silly and attempting to teach myself she came around and showed me the perfect technique to get the most kernels off at a time. After she felt my kernelling skills were up to snuff I asked her if she wanted to race and we made a little game of it. I really only planned on doing maybe a dozen or so before heading back home, but when the other kids saw us laughing having fun they all wanted to get in on the action too, and of course they didn’t want to race each other they wanted to race me. One hour and what felt like 100 ears of corn later I finally got back home and soaked my blistered thumb in some hot water. Even though my right thumb has become a small point of interest, and eating fou-fou with my hands is a challenge for the time being, I would do it again in a heartbeat to hear the kids laughing and having fun ☺
So I'm dying to know what you said to those kids in the last picture to make them laugh like that. They are just TOO CUTE!
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