I apologize that it’s been a few weeks since my last update, but I’ve been pretty busy as of late, and it seems like every time I get myself motivated to write inevitably the power goes out, or I get a visitor knocking at the door, or some other thing happens that takes me away from my task. But alas, I’m forcing myself to sit down, stay focused for a few minutes, and pump out an update (mostly to make my mother stop pestering me :p )
The Work Front:
Work is going well, as I am typing this I have just walked in the door from visiting one of the schools I teach at. I did two assemblies for classes 6,5,4, and 3 (the equivalent of elementary schoolers), and in honor of the upcoming World AIDS Day we talked about HIV/AIDS. I really like the school I was at today. The teachers are so nice and comparatively the children are pretty well behaved, no one got hit on the head or rapped on the knuckles with a stick today so I consider that a pretty good session (don’t worry I’m not the one doling out the corporal punishment;) ). Random comment about the school children; since working in the schools when ever I walk through Bankim or one of the other villages instead of hearing a chorus of kids yelling “Nassara Nassara (Whiteman, Whiteman)” now I’m greeted with “Madame Kate, Madame Kate!!!” which I makes me smile ☺
The mushrooms are growing nicely, they still have a few more weeks before they’re supposed to start sprouting the part you can eat, but from my novice mushroom growing experience they look like they’re on the right track.
I’m still working with the same Mbororo groups and things are still going well with them. The men’s group is organizing a Red Ribbon Campaign in the market for World AIDS Day that I’m pretty excited about. We’re supposed to be drafting an agreement at our next meeting that will say something to the tune of “ I promise to support and help care for people living with HIV/AIDS, remember those who have died, and do my part to protect myself and family from the spread of HIV/AIDS.” The plan is to walk through the market and talk to boutique owners for a few minutes and ask them if they want to sign the agreement, then if they do they get a red ribbon to wear or hang in the store as an outward sign that they are doing their part. It seems like a small thing but my community’s biggest hurdle they need to jump over is just admitting that there’s a problem. If we can just get people to open up and talk about it, even just for one day in December I’ll feel good about what we’ve done. Little Abdulie has really jumped on board with this and with him at the helm I think/ I hope this will really work ☺
NEWBIES!!!
Switching topics for a second, I have to talk about the new trainees that are being sent up here to the West Adamaoua. They had their site visit last week and three of them came and spent a couple of days with me and Beamer in Bankim. Well, mostly they were hanging out with me, because Beamer was suffering from a pretty severe case of Whiteman Overload (he just gets so excited because all the white people he knows aren’t afraid of him and get close enough to actually pet and love on him. Unfortunately four of us were just a little too much for this puppy to handle, so he spent a lot of time outside). So my new neighbors: Hunter is a recent UCLA graduate who’s being posted about 45 minuets away in Nyamboya, Jackie is from Oklahoma and she’s in Songklong about 1 ½ hours away, and then finally Shannon is replacing the volunteer up in Banyo and she’s about 4 hours away. All of them are great! I’m so looking forward to getting to know them better, but so far I think Aislynn and I really lucked out by getting some awesome new neighbors (thanks Sylvie!)
Aislynn and I talked about it before hand and we came to the conclusion that if these guys were gonna survive their first time on the Banyo Road that we all live on and still agree to come back at the end of training we would have to sweeten the deal with some home cooked American meals and a well deserved break from the homestay situation. For my part I made pizzas with… brace yourselves… cheese (fake cheese, but cheese none the less), banana pancakes, and chocolate cake, and then we went up to Mayo Darlé and had a Mexican fiesta on Halloween (fresh salsa, guacamole, rice, taco beans, and tortillas). I’m sure it must seem strange to some of you, but getting together to eat good food is sometimes the only thing that gets me through a difficult week or a trip on our roads ☺
When they were all in Bankim I took them to see how I work with one of my women’s groups. The women were great. I had made visits to most of their homes the week before to ask them if it was ok to bring some visitors next week and some of them seemed a bit skeptical especially since one of the visitors was going to be a man. So needless to say I was a little bit nervous that I wouldn’t have a good turn out, but to my pleasant surprise I had more women then I’ve ever had at a meeting before, they were all dressed to the T, and they participated (enthusiastically even) throughout the entire lesson. In short they were wonderful! I don’t think any of them will ever read this, but I just want to put it out there… YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!
After Bankim we went up to Mayo Darlé to watch Aislynn teach a workshop on how to make soap. It just magically worked out that the night we were up there was also Halloween, and you know we couldn’t just let that pass us by, so we threw a small fete in Aisylnn’s house. We had pumpkins, candy apples, costumes, and dancing. Aislynn invited some of her friends from the village and they came for a little bit because the word fete was being thrown about, but I’m pretty sure they were thinking, “these are the crazy Americans I’ve ever seen!”, and I’m sure the fact that we were dressed up didn’t help their opinions ;)
After The Darlé we sent them off to their new villages. I met up with them a few days later, took them to Bafoussam, helped them open bank accounts, and then sent them back to the training site. I can’t speak for them, but I had a great time on Site Visit 2010 ☺
Random Little Antecdote
This was a story that as it was happening, I just kept thinking, “only in Africa, only in Africa”. Here’s the back-story first. So normally the rainy season ends at the end of September or the first few weeks of October (it might rain from time to time but for the most part the dry season has started to set in), but here we are into November and it’s still raining almost every day. As a result of this nonstop precipitation the roads are in TERRIBLE shape. It’s gotten so bad that if it rains during the night cars will refuse to even set out, and sometimes motorcycles won’t even give it a shot. Huge pot holes and ravines of water crisscross the route all the way up into the foot of the mountains and the trip to Mayo Darlé that normally takes 2 hours at max in the dry season took me 6 ½ hours a few weeks ago. People who live on this route including people in Bankim don’t seem to be capable of going 10 minutes without either commenting on the continued rain or the state of the roads (I’m totally guilty of this too). Now if you get in a car or hop onto the back of a moto it’s just commonplace to say something about the roads, and if you don’t people tend to think there is something wrong with you.
Ok now, back to my original story; after site visit I was coming back home in an agencé vehicle (a 16 passenger van with 25+ people in it) and found myself stopped on the road at a place Aislynn and I commonly refer to as “The Swimming Pools.” It’s right outside of Nyamboya (where Hunter is going) and it got the nick name because there are two holes in the road that are each roughly the equivalent in size to an in ground swimming pool. Just to help paint this picture, in the dry season I stood inside one of the “swimming pools” with my hands in the air and you still couldn’t see me from the road. Were talking massive massive potholes filled with water and mud that eat big 18 wheelers for breakfast. So, on this particular day everyone was stopped because one of these big trucks had jackknifed and tipped over on to its side completely blocking the road except for a small passable part that was playing host to a bush taxi that was sunk in the mud up to the drivers window (so on second thought not very passable). Predicting that we’d be there a while because there were at least a dozen trucks and a handful of agancé vehicles and bush taxis waiting to pass in each direction I got out to walk around and pass the time.
Whenever the road gets blocked like this people from Nyamboya trek out to sell oranges, bananas, peanuts, ect. to people stuck there and the place that a few hours before was nothing but a bend in the road is suddenly transformed into a busy market place with food stuffs from the tipped trucks strewn across the road and mommies and kids hawking their bowls full of this and that. Even though things are pretty lively after about 15 minutes you’ve seen it all and then the boring task of waiting for your car to be pushed/pulled out of the mud begins. Our car took about 2 hours to make it through, but I didn’t really have to much to complain about because I spent the time sitting on a prayer mat in the shade under one of the big trucks with two new friends. (side note: in my opinion the ability to make friends on the fly is one of the most useful skills a peace corps volunteer can have in their back pocket… thanks Dad for passing that one down to me ☺ ) One of them was a driver and the other was an Allahjihi (a Cameroonian VIP) from Banyo. They saw me walking around and when I greeted them in my very very very limited Fulfuldé, I guess they were impressed, because then they asked me to come sit in the shade with them to wait for the car. It was a so surreal and at the same time no big deal… there I was sitting on a mat, an Allahjihi to my left and a huge truck wheel to my right, drinking fresh milk out of a gourd and shooting the breeze with two people I’d just met 10 minutes before like we’d been friends for years. Only in Africa ☺
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