Home Sweet Home

I’m Back! I know it’s been awhile since I had a chance to update you on all things Cameroon, but you’ll just have to blame that on a combination of power failures and official In Service Training. Also I have to apologize because I don’t have anything super exciting to update you on this week.
I guess I’ll start with in-service training. Commonly referred to as I.S.T. this is where I have been for the past 8 days. Basically it’s a week long seminar were volunteers get a chance to talk about what they’re doing at post, hear from 2nd year volunteers, learn how to plan and carry out big projects, and learn how to get funding for said projects. All interesting and important things to know, but that’s not really why most people start counting down the days till I.S.T. two months ahead a time. The real reason people get pumped is because the whole stage gets back together, kind of like a reunion of sorts. I know it seems silly, and you might be thinking, but Kate it’s only been 4 months since you saw these people, which is very true, but when you go from spending all day everyday with a group of people and then go cold turkey with your American interaction at post, 4 months can start to seem like a long time. Not that I’m complaining about post, but it’s nice to speak English and not feel limited by a five year old's vocabulary, drink a cold beer without being bothered to by the guy sitting at the next table, and just let your guard down, laugh with your friends, which is exactly what I did from 5:30 (when classes ended) till the wee hours every night. It was great to see everyone and I definitely had a good time, but by the end of day 8 I was ready to be heading home, and actually a pretty cool thing happened as I was rolling back into town… I felt like I was home ☺ I passed my house and waved out the window and a chorus of “Kate, Kate Kate” erupted from the kids. It was a warm and fuzzy moment for the books.
With that being said I’m back in town and back to the grindstone, feeling energized and ready to start some bigger projects. I still have a lot to think about before I jump into anything, but I have some ideas mulling around in the back of my head so I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks flushing them out with Bernadette and picking one to focus on this summer.

One final random note that I don’t know how to cleverly work into this post, but that I definitely want to mention…hopscotch. Yesterday afternoon I played the most competitive game of hopscotch the world has ever seen. Seriously if it were an Olympic sport Haua (age 17), Awa (age 16), and Ladee (age 15) would all be gold medalists. I had no idea there were so many rules and that such an innocent game could be so intense. But after an hour of throwing stones and jumping around like a one legged chicken, I had been “schooled” and my mind had been changed for good!

Another Year Bites the Dust - April 1, 2010

Sorry for the lack of updates, but we are currently experiencing technical difficulties here in Bankim. By that I mean that for the past week and a half we’ve only had power between the hours of 1:00 am and 5:00 am. Not exactly the most convenient time frame for your average resident. On the bright side (although not very bright) I know exactly when the power comes back because my neighbor starts up his big coffee grinder and has his guys work through the night, thus waking me up and giving me a chance to plug in all my electronics for the next day.

So let’s see, what have I been up to? On the work front last week I started a community health and sanitation survey. I have an in-service training (IST) coming up so the goal is to use some of our findings in our report we have to give. Bernadette and I decided to divide the village up into sections and the plan is that over the next couple of days we’ll hopefully visit fifty families from a variety of different backgrounds and then compile the results into a report that can help us to plan effective activities in the future. It’s hard work, but already the results are proving to be helpful, so I’m feeling pretty pumped about that.

In other news I turned the big two three this past Monday. It was fun but low-key. I got to Skype chat with my family at home and received a surprise call from Miss Altice back in the states, so that was very exciting. Birthdays are most definitely not celebrated to the same extent here in Cameroon that they are in the states. For instance you shouldn’t tell a Cameroonian it’s your birthday unless you are ready to give THEM a gift or buy them a drink, kind of backwards from what we do but thankfully my neighbor warned me about this ahead of time so I was armed and ready. Party favors this year came in the form of fried plantains… lots and lots of fried plantains. I enlisted the help of Fadimatou, my 9 year neighbor, and the two of us spent the morning in the kitchen deep frying massive amounts of food, and then in the afternoon I made the rounds to pass them out. I hit up all the immediate neighbors and then my colleagues at the health center and finished up with my friends in the market. I don’t know how good the food actually was but everyone seemed excited that I made them myself.
The real birthday fun came later in the week in the form of a visit from the Mayo Darlé crew. Aislynn and her boyfriend Josh (who’s visiting Cameroon at the moment) came to spend a few days with me, and everyone knows the only thing better then one white person in Bankim is three ;) . I have to say I always love when Aislynn comes; one because I enjoy the company, two because I like speaking American English and not feeling restricted by a five year old’s vocabulary (which is about what I have in French right now), and three because she’s a great cook. In fact, that was her birthday present to me, she and josh made me a steak dinner with potatoes and greens (a real treat since I don’t frequently visit the meat market, which is a whole other story). We asked Haua if we could use her fire pit and did a bar-b-que in the backyard.
It was really funny to watch Haua watch us cook. First we used a big fire where as Cameroonians normally grill on coals, so she kept reaching in and literally pulling the wood out of the fire. Then josh cut the meat into small steaks instead of hacking it into little pieces, and she kept saying, “no no no you’re doing it wrong,” and finally pulled the meat off the grill, went at it with her knife, and chopped it into pieces. So that put an end to the nicely cut steak, but I had to laugh because I know she was trying to help and thought we were going to ruin the meal by cooking in this bizarre manner.
Other highlights from their visit included a hike to the top of our cell phone antenna tower, a visit to the big man bar for drinks, and oven baked pizza. All in all it was a wonderful visit and it was just what I needed give me a push to get through the next week and a half before I get to see all my friends from stage at IST. Speaking of IST I’m not bringing my computer, so this thing will more then likely be dormant for a while. Fear not though, I’ll give you the complete update when I get back into town ;)

Until Next Time,
Kate

IT'S A BOY

It’s official! The count has gone from 17 to 18 next door with the arrival of baby Ibrahim. My neighbor Ieassatou had her baby yesterday evening and both baby and mom are doing great. As I’m writing this I’ve actually just come from visiting and congratulating the family and there is a contagious sense of excitement in the air. Now seeing as how babies have never really been my forte and in the past I’ve lived by the general rule of thumb, "If you can’t hold your head up, I can’t hold you,” I had intended to make it a short and sweet visit, but I should have know better, because nothing in Cameroon is short and sweet.

I entered the compound, greeted the husband, and gave him some soap (the traditional baby gift in these parts). Then someone grabbed my hand, led me past an assortment of distant relatives, and next thing I know I’m sitting on the bed with the baby in my arms. Now I’m definitely not the baby whisperer, but I did manage not to drop him or make him start crying (and he didn’t suck out my soul) so I would say overall it was a good visit.

In other news I now have my garden up and running (by that I mean there’s dirt and there are seeds in the dirt). It’s just the beginning of rainy season so everyone is scrambling to get their farms ready and I thought, well it couldn’t hurt to try. Normally my thumb is more brown than green, but from what I hear things grow really well in this part of the country, so what the heck I went for it! I enlisted the help of Kerry and Hadison (my 6 and 9 year old neighbors) and in about an hour the three of us had dugout a little garden in the back yard. I planted tomatoes, carrots, and green bell peppers, so now all I have to do is water and wait. Keep your fingers crossed that something pops up.

Nothing else all that exciting has been going on. I’ve been working en brousse (in the bush) this week talking about why vaccinations are important, but the normal nurse I work with is out so I’m working with someone else and I’m not exactly his biggest fan. Needless to say it hasn’t been the high point of my week. Hope all is well back in the states.

Until next time.

Kate

P.S. Thanks Adele and Dave for the Christmas card and ornament. They just arrived and absolutely made my day J

Greetings all!

First off I’m sorry that this post is coming so late in the week but I had my official site visit Wednesday and subsequently spent the first half of the week stressing out and trying to get things ready/making sure people didn’t flake out on me. I find that you have to repeat things multiple times on multiple days if you want people to remember appointments or meetings. Thus why even after I had told him two weeks ago, again one week ago, again last Sunday, and on Monday, on Tuesday (the day before site visit) my supervisor said and I quote “Your supervisor is coming tomorrow?!” But even with the short-term memory loss issues my colleagues face, all the prep work paid off because Sylvie (a.k.a my boss) had a great visit!

So how it works is, the APCD (head person for each sector) every three or four months will drive through the country and visit all the volunteers for their particular program and do research on new posts. My APCD is named Sylvie and she came through the West and Western Adamaoua this past week. She got into town at about 10 and we went strait to the Sous Prefecture to do protocol with all the important government officials. Only problem was that when we got there, there was no protocol to be had because all the big wigs were out of the office (even though I had gone and talked to them and made appointments ahead of time). It wasn’t exactly how I had hoped to kick things off, but it really wasn’t that big of a deal either and Sylvie didn’t seem to care too much.

Next up was a visit to the hospital where we had a meeting with Bernadette (my counterpart) and Hamajida (my supervisor). We talked about the work I was doing at the health center and what kind of assessments we had made together over the past couple of months. Everything went well and Sylvie seemed to be satisfied with things.

It was around noon when we left the hospital so we decided to grab some of Bankim’s famous grilled fish and took a break for lunch. After lunch we went to a meeting I had setup with Abdulie (president of MBOSCUDA) to talk about what kind of things we had been doing together. We talked for about an hour and all parties involved seemed really pumped about the collaboration. It was definitely the high point of the visit. I think it helps that Abdulie is such a passionate advocate for his people. Once he gets going you just can’t help but want to work with him!

We ended the day with a visit to my Wednesday community group where I gave a quick presentation on water sources and did a community mapping activity. It was short and sweet, and nothing to get super excited about, but I got my point across and proved that I am in fact capable of doing my job, which was the objective. All in all the visit was a big success. The boss is happy so I’m happy J

Other points of interest on the work front this week included, seven year old vs. snake, and first time mommy vs. health center staff. Snake first; so I went in on Thursday just to say hello and thank everyone for helping me out with site visit the day before, but when I got there I found everyone huddled around the door to the last room at the end of the ward. I made my way down there and immediately saw what we were all staring at. It was seven-year-old boy who had been bitten by a snake in his concession. It happened 3 days ago, but instead of coming right into the hospital the family waited and used some traditional medicine on it which ended up getting it infected and caused it to spread like whoa! The good news is that they put the kid on meds and he’s coming in every day to get the bandage changed so he should be fine in a couple of weeks, but its frustrating to know that the worst of it could have been avoided had they come straight in.

The other run in was similarly frustrating. It was Friday and I was helping out with the CPN visits (prenatal consultations) when we got a first time mother that came in refusing to get vaccinated. My initial thought was, well maybe she doesn’t know what it’s for so we tried to explain that these vaccinations are important to have a strong healthy baby… nothing. Then we asked her why she was refusing and from what I gathered her husband had forbidden her from having a needle pierce her skin. I should back up for a second; a lot of people in the Grand North practice scarification as part of their cultural tradition and once you do that you’re not technically supposed to let anything else scar your skin. Now from how it was explained to me most people take this to mean that you can’t perform the actual scaring ceremony more then once, but some people take it to the extreme, thus why this new mother wouldn’t let the nurses get more then a foot away from her with a syringe in their hand. For me the right thing to do is easy to see, but at the end of the day you can’t force a patient to receive treatment so that was that.

Other Random Things To Report

My rain dance paid off because the rainy season started Sunday. This is great news because the temperature has cooled off and the dust is for the most part gone. The only draw back is that rain = termite swarms, and at night they come out in full force. Sadly I learned that lesson the hard way when I left my door open and had my kitchen invaded.

This week has also been marked by power outages up the wazoo. I’m not really sure what their cause is but the power has gone out just about every night this week and a couple of the days. I am by no means complaining, cause some other volunteers never have electricity, but it has been the talk of the town as of late.

Finally, I got a surprise phone call at the beginning off the week with news that my college roommate is engaged! I’m very excited for her, as are all of my neighbors. How do my neighbors know you ask? Well when the power is out at night it’s pretty quite and when I found out I may or may not have done a little excited high pitch squealing, and my neighbors might have thought I was in trouble and they may have all come over to make sure I wasn’t being attacked. Anyways, everyone in my neighborhood is very happy for you Krista!

International Women’s Day 2010: Thanksgiving Meets The Prom At An Outdoor Music Festival

First a little bit of a work update, Wednesday I met with my Bamoun women’s group and they kind of blew me off, which was really frustrating because I had spent a good amount of time prepping for it. I even went next door ahead of time and told Raschiatou (my neighbor/the president) that I needed at least 30 min. for my lesson and she told me no problem, but then when I got there they only gave me like 5 minutes and I didn’t end up getting anything done. At first I was super pissed off, but then I found out why they cut me off early and felt kind of bad. Apparently one of the women in the group’s child had died the night before. They asked me if I was going to the Duoiy (the wake) with them and I didn’t feel like I could say no, but I was not mentally prepared for it. When we got there the father came out and said something (I have no idea what was said because it was all in Bamoun but according to Raschiatou he was explaining what happened. Apparently the kid was sick for a long time and when he recently got malaria his body was too weak to fight it off). Then there was a round of prayer, they passed around a picture of him, and then 10 painfully long minutes of silence except for the mother who was crying. It was terrible and all I wanted to do was cry, but no one else was and I didn’t want to put any attention on myself. In my experiences Cameroonians have very different ways of expressing grief, there’s no sobbing, no condoling, it seems like everything is internalized, but I would imagine that it’s a way to cope with death, because it plays such a major role in life here. I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to it.

On a much much lighter note Saturday I had my usual weekly meeting with MBOSCUDA, the Mbororo women’s group. Can I just say that they are my hardest group to work with because of the language and cultural barriers but they’re also hands down my favorite group of people in Bankim, and this past weekend just proved that once again.

So some background; the president of the groups daughter Rahinatou (aka my translator) was sick in the hospital all week so I had been to visit her and I was just trying to make small talk so I asked her how the Mbororo women celebrate Women’s Day and she told me that they don’t and that most of the members don’t even know what it is. From there I decided that that was not good, so with the permission of the Presidents of the men and women’s group we had a small women’s day party during our meeting.

We started off by talking about women’s day and how it started and what it was for and then went into why women are important and all the important things that we do to help our families and communities. We ended by eating a chocolate cake I had made and had a dance party with my ipod. Now if you know me you know dancing is not really my strong suite, but because they needed a little encouragement to get the dance party hopping I took one for the team and jumped into the dance circle (“hands in the air like you just don’t care” style). After a few minutes of my uncoordinated flailing everyone was up and dancing and having a good time. The group even taught me one of their dances and when they asked me to teach them an American dance I opted for the cupid shuffle. You can’t go wrong when they give you step by step dance instructions as part of the song ;)

Sunday I had an equally successful meeting with the Men’s side of MBOSCUDA. We had pretty much the same discussion but without the dance party. I was so happy with them and I think they actually got my point, or at least I know some of them did.

I started off with an icebreaker where I split them into small groups and asked them to pick the one thing that their wives do that is most important, and then I had them act it out in a little sketch. Going into it I was thinking this activity was kind of a crapshoot. I didn’t know if they would be into it but come to find out men pretending to be women is cross culturally funny. Some of them got really into it and it got everyone loosened up and laughing which made it much easier to move into the more serious discussion. We talked about how women’s day started and what it celebrates and why it’s important, and then wrapped it up with a brainstrom about the different ways to celebrate. I encouraged them all to say thank you to their wives, daughters, mothers and grandmothers on Monday.

Now in a perfect world I would have asked them to let the women’s group participate in the parade or the sports day or any of the activities with the rest of the women in Bankim, but in light of my recent gender faux pas I was trying to take baby steps so I had decided right off the bat to save that for next year. But then at the end when I asked if their were any questions one of then men (one that’s usually very quite and stern looking) out of the blue asked me how their women could participate with all the other women’s organizations. I was so surprised at first I wasn’t sure I had heard him right so I told them about how to get they could do it and it looks like next year MBOSCUDA will be represented in the festivities.

I went home on such a high. I was feeling great! Some days my job is frustrating and hard and seems impossible, but when things go right it makes it all worth it. The icing on the cake was the next day at the official celebration I ran into one of the Mbororo wives who told me her husband came home after the meeting and told her he wanted her to come today J Ahhhh Life Is Good!

Last point of interest for this week and probably the most obvious thing to hit on was the actual 8^th of March International Women’s Day. It was kind of a two-part affair. The first half of the day was a parade at the sous prefecture and the second half was a food expo in the center of town. If I had to sum the experience up simply I would say it was thanksgiving meets the prom at an outdoor music festival. Except that instead of limos and prom dresses we had motos and less than flattering women’s day fabric (you know it’s bad when yellow is your safest bet). Even so, when the motos pulled up everyone got presented over the speakers and then everybody else took that chance to look at what you were wearing and give you the one over. Personally I think I could have been wearing a potato sack and if it were in the women’s day fabric they would have been ecstatic. Anyways, once everyone showed up (easily a few hundred women) all the big wigs made speeches and then there was a parade of all the women’s groups in the area.

After the parade was over everyone migrated to the center of town where each of the groups set up and sell food native to their village or culture group. It was delicious! I ate way too much and I couldn’t really tell you what most of it was, but you can’t say no when some old mama puts a plate of food in front of you. My own contribution to the event was a small booth on how to cook with soy. It went ok, but I think next year I need to get someone to actually cook with it and have food to try because they don’t seem to be quite sold on it yet. I understand that it’s hard to change when you’ve been cooking the same way for hundreds of years, but it such an economically and nutritiously strong source of protein (that God knows most of these kids need badly) that they’re aren’t many down sides to using it except not knowing how.

Anyways, it’s now Tuesday and the party is over, and tomorrow it will be back to work, but overall I would say for my first 8^th of March celebration here in Cameroon I couldn’t have asked for a better experience!

first annual Mbororo women's day party

women's day skits with the mens group

This girl made my day!!!

Me and Bernadette at the parade

Hell Freezes Over!

Yesterday I sat down to write this but I really didn’t have anything to exciting to say, so I opted to wait a few days and I’m glad I did because I have I got a story for you, but first some background: Monday March 8^th is International Women’s day, but in true Cameroonian fashion you can’t just party for one day, you need a whole week of celebrating to lead up to the big day. Thus Women’s Day is actually Women’s Week, and the official festivities started today with Sports Day (kind of like a field day). Also in true Cameroonian fashion the planning process for women’s week didn’t start till today either. Now I’m not complaining, I’m all for a week long throw-down ;) but it does make it hard figure out what exactly is going on. So difficult in fact that one might find herself signed up to run in a foot race through the center of town…

Yes that’s right, unbeknownst to me one of my community groups, Femme Pour Christ, volunteered me to represent them in the “cross country” race (they call it cross country here, but It wasn’t as long as a American cross country race. However, it was still far for me; the non-running, walk-loving, Kate Millman. If you know me at all you know exactly what I’m talking about). Anyways after breakfast Beamer and I walk down to the Sous Prefecture (kind of like the equivalent to fair grounds) to watch the festivities. I was planning on doing the March with Beamer and Bernadette so I had my “fair de sport” clothes on, but when I got there to sign up much to my surprise I was given a runners ticket. My initial reaction was there’s no way in hell I’m running in a race in front of everyone in Bankim so they can see me red faced and wheezing, but then I figured if 40 year old mamas can do it so can I (and at least I wouldn’t finish last) Only problem was that I was in the youth bracket so i didn’t end up running with the mamas, I was with the very physically fit (because they work at the farm all day) twenty-somethings. By the time I realized this it was to late to back out, so I reasoned everyone would already be staring at me so what the hell… let’s do this.

The course itself was probably about a mile long and it went down main street, through the market and then back to the Sous Prefecture. Not super hard except that because everything runs on African time it didn’t get started till almost noon, so it was HOT HOT HOT!!! About half way through the race I had to run past a bush taxi passing through and they had opened all the windows and slowed down to a crawl to get a look at me. At first no one was saying anything, just staring, and it was kind of awkward because I was running at the same pace as the car, but then i heard a familiar voice. I looked in and it was Haua hootin and hollering for me (she’s on her way to Banyo for her sister-in-law’s wedding). Finally I was reaching the light at the end of the tunnel and I heard yet another familiar voice, only this one was on a microphone. Bernadette was the M.C. for the event and right as the finishing line was coming into sight I heard her on the loud speaker cheering me on. It was cute and it gave me a little extra push for the finish.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the race itself was actually kind of fun. Granted my performance was nothing to get excited about, to quote an old coach, “I looked like a fright train going in slow-motion”, but I did run the whole thing, and I didn’t finish last (or second to last ... or third to last for that matter J ) and I enjoyed seeing and hearing my friends in the market cheering me on by name. When I walked home later on every person I saw on they way said I “made sport quite well” and that they were happy to see me in the race… total lie about the running, but go for the ego none the less ;)

Other events for sports day included a speed walking race, sack races, basket ball (quite literally so, the object was to toss a ball into an actual basket) football, handball, and my personal favorite a beer chugging. The icing on the cake for that one was that the contestants for the chugging event were these two old beignet mamas.

So there you have it, it’s officially women’s week …let the festivities being!!! Not a bad way to celebrate being a member of the fairer sex if I do say so myself ;)

Hope everyone had a good week! Lots to report on my end and I’m feeling a bit lazy so please excuse the randomness of this entry. Ok here we go…

I.

I finished up with the en brusse vacs on Thursday and it was by far my favorite day. I think the main reason it was fun was because it was the first time I’d been to these particular places and they were way way way off the beaten path. We took a moto and I think it goes without saying it was a bumpy ride (almost fell once and we had to get off and walk the bike a couple of times because the path was impassable). The first place we stopped at was a sort of seasonal village called Ngah. Basically people who have homes in Bankim Central (where I live) who have farms in the bush move their families out to Ngah and set up camp for the harvest. Some people do stay there all year around so as a result they live fairly secluded lives, in fact some of the kids have never seen white people before and when they saw me that day they burst out crying. Sometimes this makes me feel a little bad, but the good news is the adults tend to think it’s hilarious and so it ends up being a good way to break the ice. Ngah probably has a total population of 20-25 people according to Mbokas (including kids) and everything is mudbrick and thatched roofed. However, the real draw for me is the landscape. I’m sure it helped that we had a beautiful day for traveling but it was gorgeous. It’s right at the bottom of this huge mountain range and the backdrop is absolutely breathtaking. It was one of those moments when I was reminded just how beautiful a country Cameroon really is. But anyways back to the story… we got to Ngah and it was a ghost town because everyone was out in the farms so we went out and rounded up as many people as we could find and had them all gather together so I could give me schpeel. By day three of this Mbokas and I were like a well oiled machine and my talk on Peace Corps approach to development with Mbokas’ translation went great, so that was a nice confidence booster.

Next stop was in Klong and we did the same thing again, but under a tree this time. I felt very Peace Corps cliché giving an animation under a tree in the center of town but it was really fun and apparently well received because afterwards I got to meet the traditional chief of the village and he really liked what I had to say and was pumped about me coming out every month to work with his village. I have to say it’s very encouraging when I go somewhere or when I’m in Bankim and the people in charge are really invested in the well being of their community. It’s not always the case, but when it is it makes my job a whole hell of a lot easier. Side note about the chief of Klong; he was sporting a billabong taxi cab hat. I had no idea that surf brands were so dignified, but when I told him that my friends back in America wore Billabong stuff too it seemed to make him happy.

The final two stops were tiny Mbororo homesteads with one or two families each, complete with an army of kids. When we got to the first one I heard someone calling my name “Madame Kate, Madame Kate!” and I turned around to see one of the men I work with from MBOSCUDA coming out to greet me. Even though he doesn’t speak any French and I don’t’ speak any Fulfulde he was still really excited to see me and He showed me around his compound and introduced me to his family. It was encouraging to see how far we’ve come with this particular group. When I first got there I was really nervous and I suspect they were too because Ralph told me I would be the first women to work with them on a regular basis and they practice very rigid gender roles as part of their culture. I know we still have a long way to go (especially after our last meeting, I’ll get there in a little bit), but I think we’ve started to build a little trust which is a very good thing.

Random comment about this trip; I saw my first seriously malnourished kids. There are a lot of kids near where I live who are thin and you can see their ribs and there are also a lot of chubby kids with big bellies, but not any that I’ve seen have been textbook malnutrition (Merasmus and Kwashiorkor sp???). This trip though I came across twin boys who had definite cases of Merasmus (shout out to Stephanie for teaching me to be able to identify it J ). So this is what happened, Mbokas was giving vaccinations and I was weighing kids when I saw this woman holding twins sort of towards the back of the crowd. She had one on her hip and one on her back and they were really tiny so I just assumed that they were under 1 years old (we only weigh kids under a year old) and went to ask the mother if I could weigh them for her. She said no because they were too old which I thought was odd so explained we can weigh up to 12 months and she said no that they were 2 and a half. I was shocked… they couldn’t even walk and if I had to guess by looking I would have said they were 5 or 6 months at the most. I told Mbokas about it and he talked to her about it and encouraged her to feed them more and bring them into the Health Center to get checked out but I’m afraid she won’t do it. Looking at those kids and looking at the mother who was stick thin as well made me so sad. I don’t think that she’s a bad mother and I think if she had food to give she would or if she had money to go to the hospital I’m sure she would do that too, but the reality is that she probably doesn’t. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to watch your kids starving to death. Now I should say that this scenario is certainly not true of everyone in the area and I do in fact know people with big families where the kids are healthy, it’s just that this situation is a reminder of exactly why family planning is so important to talk about.

III.

My MBOSCUDA meetings were interesting this week. The women decided to cancel the meeting an hour before because too many of them were sick including Rahinatou , my translator, but they didn’t tell me and I was all ready to go when I found out the meeting was a no go. It was kind of annoying, but it was very Cameroonian. C’est la vie!

I had a lot of time to kill now and I was in the neighborhood so I decided to drop in and say hello to Abdulie (the President of MBOSCUDA) to see how he was feeling (he had a double hernia operation about three weeks ago). Turns out he’s doing really well and was excited to tell me that he was going to try and make it out to the meeting the next day. (side note Abdulie speaks English and normally translates for me, needless to say I was excited for him to be there too… communication has been a major challenge without him) He asked me to catch him up with what he’d missed so I went over the needs assessment stuff we had done in the men’s group and then what the women’s group was up to too. He seemed pretty happy with everything and I was happy he was happy, but just as I was packing up and about to walk out the door he dropped the bomb on me. Sometimes I find that Cameroonians have a hard time coming right out with it. They’ll beat around the bush for a long time before they get to saying what’s really on their mind, and this was definitely the case here. I have no doubt he knew what he wanted to say from the beginning, but instead of saying we made polite small talk and recaps for an hour before he said anything.

Apparently the problem is that some of the men are refusing to allow the women to go to the meetings because we’ve changed the meeting place from someone’s house to the youth center. Before I got to post apparently the guy I replaced suggested that they could meet there and got permission and a room from the catholic mission, and left me all the contacts to go ahead with the move, so I just assumed that he had talked to everyone and it was ok. Apparently though that wasn’t really the case and now some of the men have concerns.

So I sat back down in my chair and Abdulie and I talked about it end came to the conclusion that we needed to bring it up at the next men’s meeting and see what the majority of people were thinking and then go from there. As far as he was concerned the is no reason why the women can't meet at the youth center, but sadly I found out the next day, he is one of very few people who feel that way, and it looks like we’re going to have to nix the plan. Which makes me sad because the facility could have been really helpful (you know, blackboards desks and tables tend to be helpful when you’re trying to learn a new language)

It was surreal to be sitting in this meeting listening to men talk about whether or not their wives should be allowed to leave the house for one hour once a week. Finally after about 45 minutes I said as delicately as I could that almost everyone in this room told me the first week during introductions that their goals were to educate their wives and children and that this was one way to get there. I was trying to remind them that you can’t really move forward if there’s no room for even a little change. I don’t know if I got through to them and at some points it got pretty heated. I was worried that maybe this was gonna cause the dynamics between the group and me to backslide a little, but now that a couple of days have passed and people are still being friendly to me and greeting me at the market I think we’ll be ok. It’s kind of like how moms have that magic ability to be yelling at you one min and then pick up the phone and be absolutely delightful with whoever is on the other end.

V.

Beamer is adjusting well to Bankim. My neighbors are starting to come around to him and everyone comments on our daily afternoon walks. I’ve been taking him for a walk every afternoon when the temperature cools off to give him a chance to get out of the compound and release some energy and people thinks really funny. Normally people only keep dogs to guard their house so it’s a bit strange to see one walking through town on a leash. I had to laugh the other day because just as we were coming back from our walk the kids next door came running out with their goats all leashed up. They were laughing and carrying on say look the goats are like Beamer. It was too cute!

The only problem I’m having is that he’s chewing on everything, myself included. I’ve made him a couple of chew toys and given him some bones, but for some reason gnawing on my tennis shoes and table legs seems to be more fun for him.

In other news, he has fleas again and I myself have found a bunch of suspicious bites on me which I suspect are fleas as well. It seems inevitable that the dogs going to have fleas, but I need to figure out what to do with myself on this front.

VII.

We had the first rain of the season yesterday. It was a torrential downpour that came out of nowhere and lasted about 20 min. Afterwards I went outside and the ground had soaked up everything in a matter of minutes. If I hadn’t see it raining with my own eyes I wouldn’t have even believed it. Even so the rain was exciting and its been the talk of the town for the past 24 hours. I have to confess that I’m ready for the heat to die down a little. The mud and noisy tin roof I could live without but it’ll be nice to be able to catch rain water instead of pulling it from the well outside for a change.