Hokie Hi

My house doesn’t have running water, more often then not there’s no electricity, and the family of 50+ bats that live in the ceiling always keep life interesting, but fear not, I’ve got all the REAL necessities covered. I’ve got my Virginia Tech flag, my ode to the Hokies picture collage, and VT oven mitts and hot pads. I’ve got my orange effect t-shirt and several different African fabrics in my favorite colors (orange and maroon of course), a Hokie Christmas tree that I leave out all year round and as a bit of icing on the cake, a dog named after the one and only Frank Beamer. Now, some may call this overkill or even an unhealthy obsession, but for me it’s just being a Hokie. I like to think I’m bringing a part of the Hokie Nation to Cameroon. You know, just doing my part to make the world a better place ☺

When people come to visit me at my house I always welcome them in and sit them down in the living room. Occasionally someone will see the Cameroonian flag hanging on the wall and then they ask me if the VT flag hanging next to it is the flag of my country… I always say no but that it sure would be funny if it was (nobody ever gets the joke but I keep telling it because it always makes me laugh… can you even imagine the look on the faces of the Wahoos if the nation was flying maroon and orange!). Then their eyes wander to the chalk words above the two flags and they’ll ask me, “Who is Live for 32?” (There’s a bit of a language gap and they always end up asking like it’s the name of a person). I smile and I tell them all the same thing. I say “ those are the 32 people who helped me get to Cameroon and I put that on the wall to help me remember to say thank you.”

This weekend people will be flocking to Blacksburg for the anniversary, and here I am in Bankim. I’m smack-dab in the middle of a country that’s in the middle of Africa on the other side of the world, but… I still remember. I remember the sadness, the pain, and the realization that the world is a messy place, but I also remember hearing the names, hearing the stories, and being inspired to really live my life. For that I say thank you ☺

Little Mama Got My Back

When I first got to my village last year I was getting "harassed" non stop by the men in Bankim. Catcalls, pleas for visas, and marriage proposals made walking through the market less then a pleasurable experience. ***SIDENOTE: my top two marriage proposals are the guy who came to my back door with a pineapple and asked to take my hand(I mean come on I think I’m worth at least 2 pineapples) and the guy who asked me as he was peeing off the side of an 18 wheeler driving down the road.*** At a certain point about 3 or 4 weeks into my service I couldn’t handle it anymore. Anything that had made this new (to me at least) phenomenon endearing and cute was gone and in its place stress taking over in a big way. Finally I decided if I was going to retain my sanity over the next two years I had to devise a game plan. With the knowledge that this might give me bad ju-ju down the road I decided to tell people I had a boyfriend back in the states. After the initial little white lie left my lips I thought to myself “what the hell go big or go home” and so after about 5 minutes this imaginary guy had become big, strong, very jealous with anger issues and liable to come to Cameroon and take on anybody who bothered me.

This seemed to do the trick and people generally backed off, except for this one guy (the pineapple guy to be exact) who seemed to take this news of my made up significant other as a challenge. I can’t be sure, and I don’t know how he could tell but I think he must have known I was lying. He kept pushing me, trying to get me to crack until one day (the day he came to my back porch with the pineapple) he called my bluff outright and asked me if he could see a picture of said boyfriend. This was a pretty big pickle I was in, and I only had seconds to act before my whole cover (not to mention any shred of dignity I had left… it’s all gone now in case you were wondering) would be blown. So I pointed to this picture on the wall of me and some of my friends from college, and gestured towards one of my guy friends acknowledging him as the BF. Thankfully he bought it lock stock and barrel… although ironically enough, it didn’t stop him from telling his mother/entire village that we were going to marry, but that’s a whole other story. After the guy had left my house, I hoped on my computer and sent a email to my guy friend in the picture telling him what had happened and asking him (and his serious girlfriend who I am friends with) to be my fake boyfriend for the duration of my 27 months of service. He happily accepted the responsibility of being my phony sweetheart and that pretty much brings us to yesterday.

Yesterday Hawoua, the 17-year-old wife next-door, was in my house inspecting my packages that had just arrived from Yaoundé. After we had gone through a couple rounds of the game I like to call “let me pick up everything, ask what it is, and ask if I can have it” her attention fell on this small picture magnet. It just happened to be a “save the date” wedding magnet from… you guessed it Fake Boyfriend and his now fiancé. I would just like to add that I am so so so happy for the couple and I can’t wait to see them both this summer… ok back to the story. So as she had taken an interest and had inspected the tiny figures in the picture, Hawoua then asked who the two people in the picture were. Of course I explained that they were two of my good friends from college and that they’re getting married this summer. Then in all my infinite wisdom I was like, “Oh wait, I have a better picture of him over here”, and I pointed to this picture I have on the wall. What I didn't realize was that this was the same picture I had used last year to fend off the marriage proposals... whoops... and she remembered…cover officially blown.

But Wait! The story get’s better… Hawoua then, ready to defend my honor asked me how I could let this other women take "my man"... the claws were out, she was speaking in rapid French then switched to high pitched even more rapid Fulfulde (which I couldn’t understand but can only imagine was something to the effect of “why I ought a…!!!”). I got to tell you I've never seen her so worked up before (except for the time Beamer ate all her maggie cubes). If I didn't think it would have made her even more upset I would have started laughing right then and there. Ultimately I decided laughing at the seething Cameroonian women probably wasn’t a good call and eventually I got her to calm down. I did my best to explain the decoy and why I had lied about my relationship status but in the end I don't think she got it. We’ll just say the concept didn’t really translate well ;)

By the next day all the ladies in my neighborhood had heard the news of my falsified fella. But on the upside I have to say its nice to know all these African mommies got my back... even if it is over a fake significant other ;)

Under Attack!

It was two o’clock in the morning when I was suddenly roused from my sleep by Beamer’s “there’s-a-stranger-in-the-compound” barking. After the initial “you’ve just woke up from a deep sleep and now your heart is beating a million miles a minute” phase wore off I laid in my bed straining to hear whatever it was that had startled him. Nothing. And then all of a sudden right outside of my window I heard sticks and buckets being knocked over, then some pots and pans crashing off the back porch.

Now not to scare anybody but every once in a while our local neighborhood foo (crazy person) jumps the fence and makes off with cloths left on the line or buckets, or whatever he can get his hands on. For the most part he’s pretty harmless and luckily for me deathly afraid of Beamer. Normally all it takes is some one in the compound yelling out the window for him to go away or threatening to let the dog lose on him, and he’ll high-tail it out of there.

I waited a few minutes, and even yelled out the window myself but the banging around just kept on, and the more that I listened, the more it began to sound like there was more then one person out there. In fact I sounded like there was a whole gang of them out there. This started to make me nervous so I slid out from under my mosquito net, grabbed my Mag-light and crept into the kitchen with Beamer at my heals.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was gonna do, but I figured when I turned on my back light and whoever was out there saw me, the dog, and the back end of my Mag-light raised over my head ready to bludgeon someone it would scare them away. I assumed the position, flipped on the light, and much to my surprise instead of a gang of burglars in the backyard stood 4 fat pigs all staring at me like I was the crazy foo. Nothing like a few four legged friends to keep life exciting!

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Here are some of the highlights from International Women’s Day 2011:

I was on the panel for the round table discussion where we talked about equality for women. It wasn’t as much a round table as it was a “I like to hear myself talk into a microphone hour (more like 4 hours) but I was in charge of publicity and we had a great turnout so I was pleased ☺

At the food expose one group made "real" American pizza... and it was actually good! Not so good was this traditional dish from the west called “quie” that I politely tried and failed to eat. It wasn’t so much the taste that was hard to get past it was more the fact that it was the same consistency as slime... and I like a good snot-sauce (a.k.a anything with okra in it a.k.a. everything you eat in the Adamaoua) as much as the next person but this was on a whole new level ;) I felt like was trying to eat Flubber… every time I thought I had a hold on it, it would split into five different pieces and slip though my fingers. My friend who was trying to coach with a few tips made it look so easy. She was swinging it around and bouncing it in her palm like a yoyo, but my attempt was just a big, sticky, mess. As much fun as it was for everyone to watch me attempt to take on the quie, I don’t think I’ll be trying that again anytime soon ;)

This years sports day included not only your standard football, handball, and cross country race, but also tug of war, a speed walking competition, and an arm wrestling tournament, which my very conservative Muslim neighbor won... GO Hadjira! You should have seen her, cover from head to toe she sauntered up to the table, rolled up her sleeve, and assumed the position. All I can say is that I’m glad it wasn’t me going up against her and her right bicep… she was doing some serious damage on the other contenders ;)

Lastly and by my terms most importantly, yours truly came in 4th in the cross-country race through town (and in the young women's bracket for that matter). Now this might not seem like a big deal but last year I came in second to last and for approximately one year on a pretty much weekly basis I had to endure listening to people recount the time "Kate came in second to last at women's day." BUT NO LONGER MY FRIENDS... NO LONGER!!! Nothing has made me happier this past month then moving through town and hearing people recount the time "Kate almost came in 3rd place". I'm movin' up in the world people :)



Me and Mama Josephine, who came in first place in the cross country race in which she ran barefoot!

Good Grief

Written March 3, 2011

Death tends to hit us like a ton of bricks, or at least it hits me that way. Since I’ve been here it’s been a constant part of my routine (which I suspect is because for the people in my village death plays such an important role in life) but until yesterday I’ve always been able to push it to the back of my mind. I mean almost everyday someone comes to tell me that someone in their family died or that so and so lost a child or that they would be gone for the weekend to travel back to their village for a funeral… and I’m not exaggerating pretty much everyday this comes up in conversations at the hospital or with friends in the market or neighbors in the quarter (any peace corps volunteer in Cameroon should be able to vouch for me on this account). But in spite of all this I’ve always felt a bit removed from it all. Even when people die at the health center and I’m there it’s sad and I feel for the nurses who were involved and the family, but I’ve never let myself dwell on it for too long. Maybe it’s a coping strategy, or maybe I just don’t want to think about it because that’s too sad, but whatever the reason for the past 18 months I haven’t let myself dive too deep into on the issue.

All of that changed yesterday. I should back track a bit… last week I was making the rounds in the market, and when I went to visit Little Abdoulie at his shop I found it all closed up. I thought this was a bit odd considering he keeps pretty strict hours everyday of the week so I hopped on the back of a moto and went to visit him at his house. When I got there I learned that he was in bed sick with malaria. I ended up saying a quick hello, tried to encourage him to go to the hospital for treatment, and wished him a bon garrison. On my way back home I decided to stop and say hello to Abdoulie’s neighbors Alahji Yaya and his first wife Dija, both of whom are good friends of my and regular members a community group I meet with weekly. The meetings form the last weekend had been cancelled and so it had been a while since I had been able to see either of them. When I got to the house no one was home except for a few kids who told me everyone was at the hospital. For reasons mostly revolving around the fact that the little kids don’t speak French and I don’t really speak Fulfulde I wasn’t able to figure out exactly what was going on, but I wasn’t really worried yet because like I said before, people are always visiting one another in the hospital. I just figured if it was someone they knew, it was probably someone I knew, and I didn’t have anything else on my plate so why not just pop down there to see what was going on.

Upon my arrival I immediately ran into to B and after a few moments of greetings she told me what room “my friend” was in. It turned out it was a friend (a friend named Dzoulika whose 3 year old son was admitted with Tyfoid) but it wasn’t the friend I was looking for. So I kept walking down the general patients ward and then made my way to the maternity ward (forgot to mention Dija was pregnant but still had about a month and a half or so to go). Sure enough I found her there in the second room. She had been admitted that morning with malaria and then diagnosed with a Burili ulcer (flesh eating skin disease that’s pretty prevalent in my part of Cameroon), and was hooked up to an IV drip.
Now, despite the fact that I’m a community health worker partnered with a health center, I still don’t particularly enjoy visiting sick people who are in the hospital. That’s not to say I don’t visit them, I do, but I just always feel a bit awkward, and out of place, and like people are looking at me to do something when there’s honestly not much I can do (I have no doubt that by the end of my service I will have spent an entire two years trying to convince people that I’m not a doctor or a nurse). This was no exception, and after about 10 minutes of sitting on a chair watching this poor women with her huge belly sitting on the bed looking absolutely miserable, and again feeling like everyone in the room was waiting for me to do something, I was ready to head out. So I told her and her husband to please call me if there was anything I could do to help and quickly left.

This was on Thursday afternoon, and by Friday morning I had received a phone call telling me Dija had gone into early labor during the night and was stable now but her baby had not made it. This was sad, but it wasn’t the first time a friend had lost a child and I knew that I was expected to go to the hospital and pay my respects to the family. So I got dressed and went down. When I got there what I saw just broke my heart. I found Dija lying on the bed looking like she had lost the will to live surrounded by half a dozen other women all looking somber. I stayed in the room for about a half an hour, reiterated my offer to help with anything and then headed home thinking about how it must feel to lose a child.

The next day Little Abdoulie told me that Dija had been sent to a bigger hospital about 4 hours up the road, and that things weren’t looking good. The day after that I got the phone call that she had started bleeding again, and they couldn’t stop it so she bled out. I got this phone call while I was eating lunch in my friend’s restaurant in town and I was shocked… i just couldn’t help but start crying. Now, anybody who knows me knows that crying is my go to emotion… infuriation, sadness, happiness… it all comes with me and a side of weeping blubbering mess. However, that is NOT how Cameroonians do things and I’ve found in my experience here that when I do have one of my cries it’s best to do it from the comfort of my home and not in public.

When I got the news about Dija I had no warning and nowhere to go and more importantly no sunglasses to hide the tears that were welling up, so in other words I was a little S.O.L. I can remember sitting at the table staring at my plate of fou-fou and njama-njama in shock. My friend Ibrahim came over to ask me what had happened and as soon as the words left my mouth I started to cry and when I looked up at him all he could say was, “I’m so sorry, but now you have to stop crying. Stop crying before you go outside. You can’t let anyone see you crying. Don’t cry.” Not exactly the soothing words I was hoping for but I don’t think he knew what else to say or do.

That evening I ended up going to visit Aislynn and after some American comfort food and a nice hot bucket bath I was feeling much better. The next day I went back home to Bankim and trekked out to visit Dija’s family. I was expecting to visit with the other co-wives and maybe a sister or neighbor, but when I got there I was shocked to see well over 50 women (which might not seem like a lot, but considering women don’t really ever leave their homes, it was quite a site to behold). There were some that I knew, some that had clearly traveled in from the bush, young girls, and old mamas, and everyone was there to mourn the loss of our friend. I sat down next to a friend and looked around taking in the gathering of women and began to cry again, but this time there was no one telling me to stop, no one looking at me as if I was acting strange, I just felt a simple hand reach out and touch me on the back. We were grieving together. Some days we’re worlds apart, but in that moment we were together… and even amongst all the sadness of the events that had pasted, it felt good.



Dija
?- March 2011

Things That Makes Me Laugh

adolescent cows tied up outside my house who's voices crack mid moo :)

9 out of 10 Dentists Agree

February 6th

I know it’s been a few weeks, but I’m officially back from my blogging hiatus. I do apologize for the lack of updates, but fear not, I have endured punishment enough in the form of a nagging mother via phone, text, and Facebook (love you mom, pestering from the other side of the world?… a whole wheel of cheese?... I’m not even mad… I’m impressed ;)

All jokes aside I guess the real reason I haven’t posted is because I’ve been in a bit of a funk for the past couple of weeks. After New Year’s I went to Yaoundé for my mid-service medical checkup (I’m good to go, in case you were wondering), and then made a quick trip to Ngoundare with a group of friends. Minus the fact that in order to get medically cleared I had to trek across the capital city in a taxi cab with 6 other people in rush hour traffic in the heat of the day with….. wait for it… wait for it… a fresh stool sample (not a particularly high point in my Peace Corps career), I did have a lot of fun getting to spend time with a bunch of my American friends. The only drawback to so much “quality whiteman time” is that at the end of it all, when your back in village and you’re by yourself again it’s like you’ve got to push yourself through the mental readjustments all over again. It’s kind of hard to explain and I don’t know how this is coming across. I’m not lonely or depressed or anything, I’m just struggling to get back into my groove. Here’s to hoping me and the groove get together real soon ☺

However, in spite of my case of the Bankim blues I have been able to get a little bit of work done and I have a great story to tell you, so get pumped! I have this women’s group that I meet with on Saturday afternoons, and for awhile now they’ve been expressing interest in doing some kind of small income generating project. Thanks to the awesome work of some volunteers in the west I got a copy of this book full of great income generating ideas (woot woot Christina shout-out). After perusing the pages I made the executive call that we should probably start small and work our way up to some of the bigger things. With that being said we decided to go with toothpaste. This worked out great, the plan was to make the toothpaste, divide it up, and then end with a quick health lesson highlighting the importance of brushing your teeth and getting your kids to do the same. Here’s how it went down…

Step one: follow the instructions and mix a little baking powder, a little salt, a little water, and a little of this and that together in a big bowl.

Step two: Not getting the right consistency, opt to let the ladies incorporate what I though might be some local knowledge on toothpaste making and so we add more baking powder.

Step three: still not quite right , before I can stop it even more Baking powder is added.

Step 4: “Just a smidge more Baking powder should do the trick… ooops, that was way more than a smidge.”

Step 5: “Well ladies, I think this is as good as it’s gonna get. Let’s divide it up.”

Step 6: Disregard that part where it specifically says store paste in a plastic container and divide it up in small plastic bags.

After everything was doled out and the baggies tied shut we closed in on the final phase. My lesson was going great, I had just finished demonstrating the proper tooth brushing technique, which was basically me trying to convince them that in fact simply chewing on your toothbrush for a hour while walking around the house doing other chores will not actually do anything at all. Then like a little kid with a roll of bubble wrap: POP POP POP POPPOPOPOPOP… all of the plastic bags suddenly exploded splattering everything in their vicinity with a nice layer of toothpaste. Ooops. ☺

Moral of the story; 9 out of 10 dentists agree following the directions is kind of clutch.


P.S. In the time between writing this and posting it online I’ve been pretty busy and I can say that for the time being the groove and I are like this (I’m crossing my pointer and middle finger fyi). All it took was a good old fashioned Cameroonian fete, a nice solid week of work, and a West Adamaoua cluster meeting to get me back in the swing of things ☺