This week was great, I’ve had legit work related stuff to do everyday and I’ve decided that working with kids is way way way easier then working with their parents. First off if you catch the kids when they’re in school they tend not to misbehave for fear that their teachers will whack them on the head with a stick. Another plus; as of this point no primary school child has asked me to “motivate” them to make them participate. And lastly I think I have a much stronger knack for talking to kids then talking to adults. All in all they’re a much easier crowd!
So to recap on the week, I spent Monday in Tchim, a village about an hour outside of mine, Tuesday in Dekie, about 45 minuets in the other direction, and Wednesday and Thursday in Bankim. In each place I met with class 5 and class 6 students in the primary schools (pretty much the equivalent to 5th and 6th graders) and gave assemblies on germs and diarrhea. The funny thing about the whole week was that in each of the 4 schools (Dekie has 2 schools) the entire day pretty much played out the exact same way. I’d walk in and go through all the protocol with the Principal, and then I would walk into each classroom to great the teachers until I made my way down to where I would be teaching. Upon entering each room all the children would very formally stand up, do a little bow/curtsy thing, and then in the most robot monotone voice you’ve ever heard they would say, “good-mor-ning-ma-dame.” I always responded with a cheerful “good morning!” back at them and then they would look at me like I was crazy.
Once I was actually in the classroom and everything was set up and introductions had been made I would start my lesson off by asking what is a germ, and every time without fail I would get nothing. It’s important to note that I wasn’t getting nothing because they didn’t know, it was more because I was asking them to participate in class. I mean I could have asked, what country do you live in and I still would have heard nothing but crickets chirping. After a bit of harassing finally one brave kid would raise his hand and spit out a textbook response. It’s the response that’s been drilled into their heads but upon further discovery I found that most of them don’t know what they’ve just said. So while yes, in fact, a germ is a tiny organism you can’t see with your naked eye, where germs come from, how they get in to our body, and what they do once they’re in, is something most of the students have never really thought about before, and that's kind of the crucial part of the equation.
So that was my goal for the lesson, and to answer those questions. We did some experiments, sang a song appropriately entitled “Comment es que le caca entre dans la bouche”, and played with puppets and green slime. I have to mention the puppet not only because he’s an homage to my creative genius ;) , but also because he was a big hit in the classroom. His name is Freddie the Fly, and Freddie has bit the dust not once, not twice, but three times this week and yet somehow he’s still managing to hang on. First Freddie was just made out of paper, which was fine until one kid decided Freddie needed to be washed with soap and water to get all the germs off him… I’m sure you can guess how that ended (but hey, at least he was paying attention). After I got back to Bankim I made a few alterations and Freddie got an upgrade to a tape laminated fly with a body of sewn together fabric scraps.
Day two he really held up well until I was on the way back to Bankim and Freddie the Fly literally flew out of my hand and off the motorcycle I was on.
Me: AHHHHHH STOP STOP STOP!
Driver: Hun? What? What happen, are you ok?
Me: Freddie!
Driver: Who? What?
Me: Wait you have to stop!
::moto stops, I jump off, run back down the road to retrieve the fly, and run back to the moto::
Driver: What is that?
Me: It’s my fly puppet
:: Driver looks at me like I am the craziest white man he’s ever met, and did I really just make him stop so I could go pick up a piece of paper?::
Thankfully apart from a bit of my personal dignity, the only thing lost was a few of Freddie’s legs ☺. When I got home I decided to use some pipe cleaner to replace all the legs to make them sturdier and bendy. When I was finished I steped back to take in my handy work and I was pretty satisfied. I figured this was gonna be the finished and final product… but no ☺
When I had finished it was getting late so I decided to hop in the bucket bath and then head to bed, but when I got out I saw that Freddy hat met his match as he was dangling from the jaws of my cute, cuddle, and destructive puppy. At that point I knew it was time to pull out the big guns, and by big guns I mean the Super, Super Plus Super glue (which is actually what was written on the container). It was one of those little bottles where you have to pierce the top with a pin to get it open. Now, I don’t have great lighting in my house so my face was up really close to the glue, and I was concentrating really hard to stick the safety pin in it. When I went to pull the pin out I wasn’t ready for the pressure release and I got superglued strait to the mouth. Unfortunately for me my mouth was open and the glue got all over my front teeth. After the initial panic that my lip was in fact stuck to the front of my teeth was painfully resolved, I got my toothbrush out and tried to get the glue off. I was brushing as hard has I possibly could but alas I couldn’t get the stuff off.
So there I was standing in my living room, toothbrush in hand, contemplating whether or not getting Super, Super Plus Super Glue stuck to my pearly whites was in fact a medical emergency. On the one hand how toxic could it really be if they were selling it on the street, on the other hand the man who sold it to me did pull it off the very top shelf of his boutique and the bottle did have a distinct, bootleg, blackmarketness look to it and what if it ate away at the tooth enamel! Ultimately I decided I needed a second opinion so I call Amanda (volunteer in the south) and she convinced me to just go ahead and call the medical duty phone. I’m gonna go ahead and say that calling up the medical officer (who happens to be bran new and whom I have never actually met) at 10:00 at night to tell him I got super glue stuck on my teeth has by far been one of my more embarrassing moments in this country to date. After I explained what happened he assured me it was probably not a big deal and that the glue would come off after a few days, but that I should try not to swallow any of it when it did start to come off because super glue tends to be toxic when ingested :0 It’s been two days now and it’s pretty much all off, so I think I’m in the clear.
Lessons Learned:
1. Don’t hold super glue up close to your face with your mouth open.
2. Three supers is two to many for any kind of glue ☺
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
WHAT DAY IS IT ???...
...(no it's not gameday) It's Global Hand-washing Day WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Here are few pictures of some of the men's group I work with making table cards in French, English, and Arabic reminding people to wash their hands with soap before they eat. Now every restaurant in Bankim has a card and a bar of soap for people to use in honor of Global Hand-washing Day!
Here are few pictures of some of the men's group I work with making table cards in French, English, and Arabic reminding people to wash their hands with soap before they eat. Now every restaurant in Bankim has a card and a bar of soap for people to use in honor of Global Hand-washing Day!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Good, The Bad, and The X-Men
written on Oct 6
::Deep sigh:: Man it feels like it’s been forever since I’ve had a chance to update this thing because I’ve been so occupied these past two weeks. However I’m not complaining because being “busy” is a luxury for Americans living in Cameroon. The pace of life is so much slower here than back home so when that rare moment comes when I can truly claim to be busy I like to relish in it a little. Since I last wrote I’ve been en brousse teaching about cholera (yes the thing that killed little Sarah on the Oregon Trail) as per the request of the district hospital because they’re pushing a big campaign on cholera education. Thankfully we haven’t had any cases in Bankim but that could change very quickly so they’re trying to get everyone prepared. I think it’s a good call because prevention of cholera is pretty standard for all waterborne diseases, and because the look on someone’s face when you tell them you get cholera from eating poop never gets old, I mean never. gets. old. ☺
Things are moving forward really nicely with the mushroom project. I’ve actually just returned today from the west where I met up with a volunteer who showed me how to make the medium they grow in. It was messy but not too hard and I think I’ll be able to handle it on my own now☺ I also met up with The Mushroom Man in Bafoussam. Side note: every time I started to talk to him I couldn’t help but start humming “Do you know the muffin man” except I changed the words in my head to “do you know the mushroom man, the mushroom man, the mushroom , oh do you know the mushroom who lives in Bafoussam” In case you’re wondering, which let's be honest I’m sure you are, the answer is yes. Yes, it is incredibly difficult to appear attentive, professional, and 23 years old with that minorly altered nursery rhyme playing on repeat in your head. In the end I was able to pull myself together, and ended up with a lot of great information and two mayonnaise jars full of mushroom spores. I decided to start a small test run this week with one or two women and if it works go full steam ahead. I know this is an odd request but if everyone could say a special prayer that I have a good mushroom harvest that would be greatly appreciated ;) ( I never in my life would have foreseen myself uttering those words!)
So that was the good part of my Bafoussam visit, but silly me I decided to end the afternoon by eating a street salad. Oh I should have known that was a bad idea from the start but it tastes so good and I never get to eat lettuce so I decided to take a chance. I’ll spare you the details but let's just say it was not my lucky day and I spent the night getting very well acquainted with the bathroom floor… BLAH.
The car ride back home today was pretty uneventful except that I was the last one to buy my ticket so I was stuck in the back row with a family of 6 (three on the seat three on the laps and me, aka 7 people in a seat made for 4). I had the window seat so it really wasn’t that bad 'cause I could stick half myself out the window but about three hours in one of the kids got sick. Now, have you ever seen that episode of the office where Pam’s preggers and Dwight makes her vomit by eating a hard boiled egg in front of her and then there’s a chain reaction throughout the entire office… ya well it was kind of like that. The one girl started it and then the other two chain barffed and no lie, it took every ounce of self control in my body not to keep the wave going…it was gross. I only got a direct hit from one of the three but it was a doozy. Needless to say not one of my favorite memories of Cameroon, but noteworthy nonetheless.
Ok I don’t want to finish this entry on a bad/gross note so I’ll end with this one. Last Saturday while waiting for a meeting to start I was sitting with a bunch of women in someone’s living room watching The X-Men with French voice over. (Keep in mind most of these women live en brousse without electricity, so needless to say they don’t watch a lot of television). We turned it on right around the end of the movie when there’s that epic good-guy bad-guy battle in the Statue of Liberty. I told them that I had actually just seen the Statue of Liberty a few weeks before I came to Cameroon and that seemed to interest them a bit. I answered a few questions about it and then we all kept watching the movie. About five minutes later there’s this other scene where Magneto uses his super powers to fly up to the very top of the statue, turn everyone into mutants, and then take over the world. It was at that moment that the women sitting next to me turned and in all seriousness asked, “Can people in America Fly? Madame Kate CAN YOU FLY?” After I finished laughing for a solid 2 minutes I told her that no I unfortunately can not fly even through some days I wish I could (especially the days I have to do banking in Bafoussam)… I’m telling you, I can’t even make this stuff up ☺
::Deep sigh:: Man it feels like it’s been forever since I’ve had a chance to update this thing because I’ve been so occupied these past two weeks. However I’m not complaining because being “busy” is a luxury for Americans living in Cameroon. The pace of life is so much slower here than back home so when that rare moment comes when I can truly claim to be busy I like to relish in it a little. Since I last wrote I’ve been en brousse teaching about cholera (yes the thing that killed little Sarah on the Oregon Trail) as per the request of the district hospital because they’re pushing a big campaign on cholera education. Thankfully we haven’t had any cases in Bankim but that could change very quickly so they’re trying to get everyone prepared. I think it’s a good call because prevention of cholera is pretty standard for all waterborne diseases, and because the look on someone’s face when you tell them you get cholera from eating poop never gets old, I mean never. gets. old. ☺
Things are moving forward really nicely with the mushroom project. I’ve actually just returned today from the west where I met up with a volunteer who showed me how to make the medium they grow in. It was messy but not too hard and I think I’ll be able to handle it on my own now☺ I also met up with The Mushroom Man in Bafoussam. Side note: every time I started to talk to him I couldn’t help but start humming “Do you know the muffin man” except I changed the words in my head to “do you know the mushroom man, the mushroom man, the mushroom , oh do you know the mushroom who lives in Bafoussam” In case you’re wondering, which let's be honest I’m sure you are, the answer is yes. Yes, it is incredibly difficult to appear attentive, professional, and 23 years old with that minorly altered nursery rhyme playing on repeat in your head. In the end I was able to pull myself together, and ended up with a lot of great information and two mayonnaise jars full of mushroom spores. I decided to start a small test run this week with one or two women and if it works go full steam ahead. I know this is an odd request but if everyone could say a special prayer that I have a good mushroom harvest that would be greatly appreciated ;) ( I never in my life would have foreseen myself uttering those words!)
So that was the good part of my Bafoussam visit, but silly me I decided to end the afternoon by eating a street salad. Oh I should have known that was a bad idea from the start but it tastes so good and I never get to eat lettuce so I decided to take a chance. I’ll spare you the details but let's just say it was not my lucky day and I spent the night getting very well acquainted with the bathroom floor… BLAH.
The car ride back home today was pretty uneventful except that I was the last one to buy my ticket so I was stuck in the back row with a family of 6 (three on the seat three on the laps and me, aka 7 people in a seat made for 4). I had the window seat so it really wasn’t that bad 'cause I could stick half myself out the window but about three hours in one of the kids got sick. Now, have you ever seen that episode of the office where Pam’s preggers and Dwight makes her vomit by eating a hard boiled egg in front of her and then there’s a chain reaction throughout the entire office… ya well it was kind of like that. The one girl started it and then the other two chain barffed and no lie, it took every ounce of self control in my body not to keep the wave going…it was gross. I only got a direct hit from one of the three but it was a doozy. Needless to say not one of my favorite memories of Cameroon, but noteworthy nonetheless.
Ok I don’t want to finish this entry on a bad/gross note so I’ll end with this one. Last Saturday while waiting for a meeting to start I was sitting with a bunch of women in someone’s living room watching The X-Men with French voice over. (Keep in mind most of these women live en brousse without electricity, so needless to say they don’t watch a lot of television). We turned it on right around the end of the movie when there’s that epic good-guy bad-guy battle in the Statue of Liberty. I told them that I had actually just seen the Statue of Liberty a few weeks before I came to Cameroon and that seemed to interest them a bit. I answered a few questions about it and then we all kept watching the movie. About five minutes later there’s this other scene where Magneto uses his super powers to fly up to the very top of the statue, turn everyone into mutants, and then take over the world. It was at that moment that the women sitting next to me turned and in all seriousness asked, “Can people in America Fly? Madame Kate CAN YOU FLY?” After I finished laughing for a solid 2 minutes I told her that no I unfortunately can not fly even through some days I wish I could (especially the days I have to do banking in Bafoussam)… I’m telling you, I can’t even make this stuff up ☺
Friday, September 24, 2010
The Creepiest Crawly
This little guy crawled over my foot mid conversation sending me into a gerbil octave freak-out that involved lots of arm/foot flailing and 4 letter choice words. Come to find out afterward they don't bite and they're not poisonous, which means the scene I made was a little overkill.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Hodgepodge
I have a lot of random things floating around in my head right now, so instead of writing a well structured entry that would make my 3rd grade teacher happy, I’m just gonna throw it all out on the table. Here we go…
I love that thunder cracks here last an entire minute. It’s been raining in Bankim every night for the past week. It’s great because it brings the temperature down and because I then don’t have to pull water from the well in the morning.
Some days it feels like I live in a fish bowl with people constantly watching me. Normally it’s not a big deal, I can ignore it, or make a joke about it. Aislynn and I commonly refer to this social phenomenon as “nassara (white man) watching,” kind of like bird watching for Cameroonians. This past week I bit the dust going for a run. Tripped over my own two feet and face planted in the dirt (they should have named me Grace). I’m fine, minus the scraped knees and palms, but no one in village seems to want to let it lie. I’m pretty sure only a few people actually saw, but EVERYONE has felt the need to comment, some out of concern, some think it’s funny, and others just can fight the urge to let me walk past them without saying something. It’s annoying.
Not to say I don’t love my job but, is it sad that the highlight of my workweek was making a poster on how to prevent cholera and deciding I feel accomplished because I’ve somewhat mastered the art of drawing people pooping in the river or on the side of the road? The best part about is that right after I had this thought Rose came in the house to confirm my suspicions. She said, “Kate, you know how to draw so well. Really, that is a good man pooping right there” ☺ Good thing I have that political science/ history degree.
While eating lunch with the wives next door the three year old, Adela, announced to everyone that I was his wife. I couldn’t help but laugh.
I miss football… well actually I miss Blacksburg and tail gating and lane stadium and Tech Triumph and all my friends. I said this to one of my friends once and I stand by it today. I think it’s harder to miss college football season then Christmas and Thanksgiving. At least for those I can commiserate with other volunteers, but there’s no one near me who really appreciates what I mean when I say I miss football. Slightly unhealthy obsession?… perhaps ;)
I told my mom I want to grow mushrooms with my women’s group to generate income and her immediate response was, “They’re not hallucinogenic mushrooms right?” Oh mother…
I found a CD in the market with over 100 of the “best” songs to hit the states last year. I think Ke$ha might be my new guilty pleasure… I’m so ashamed of myself . On a similar note I recently heard Justin Bieber blaring from a set of speakers in town. What is the world coming to?
My hubby Adela :)
I love that thunder cracks here last an entire minute. It’s been raining in Bankim every night for the past week. It’s great because it brings the temperature down and because I then don’t have to pull water from the well in the morning.
Some days it feels like I live in a fish bowl with people constantly watching me. Normally it’s not a big deal, I can ignore it, or make a joke about it. Aislynn and I commonly refer to this social phenomenon as “nassara (white man) watching,” kind of like bird watching for Cameroonians. This past week I bit the dust going for a run. Tripped over my own two feet and face planted in the dirt (they should have named me Grace). I’m fine, minus the scraped knees and palms, but no one in village seems to want to let it lie. I’m pretty sure only a few people actually saw, but EVERYONE has felt the need to comment, some out of concern, some think it’s funny, and others just can fight the urge to let me walk past them without saying something. It’s annoying.
Not to say I don’t love my job but, is it sad that the highlight of my workweek was making a poster on how to prevent cholera and deciding I feel accomplished because I’ve somewhat mastered the art of drawing people pooping in the river or on the side of the road? The best part about is that right after I had this thought Rose came in the house to confirm my suspicions. She said, “Kate, you know how to draw so well. Really, that is a good man pooping right there” ☺ Good thing I have that political science/ history degree.
While eating lunch with the wives next door the three year old, Adela, announced to everyone that I was his wife. I couldn’t help but laugh.
I miss football… well actually I miss Blacksburg and tail gating and lane stadium and Tech Triumph and all my friends. I said this to one of my friends once and I stand by it today. I think it’s harder to miss college football season then Christmas and Thanksgiving. At least for those I can commiserate with other volunteers, but there’s no one near me who really appreciates what I mean when I say I miss football. Slightly unhealthy obsession?… perhaps ;)
I told my mom I want to grow mushrooms with my women’s group to generate income and her immediate response was, “They’re not hallucinogenic mushrooms right?” Oh mother…
I found a CD in the market with over 100 of the “best” songs to hit the states last year. I think Ke$ha might be my new guilty pleasure… I’m so ashamed of myself . On a similar note I recently heard Justin Bieber blaring from a set of speakers in town. What is the world coming to?
My hubby Adela :)
Monday, September 13, 2010
Greetings to all my Stateside Friends,
Well summer vacation is officially over and with that the masses have returned to Bankim and school is almost in full swing. I’ve been told that even though there is an official first day of school (which was last Monday) no one really shows up until the second or third week, and then kids continue to trickle in for the rest of the month. I don’t know about that, all I can say is that if I had 5 or 10 or 18 children running around my house all summer I’d be counting down the days till I could ship them off to school ☺
Life on the home front is going well. Rose and her kids came back last week and she actually brought an additional son with her from village. His name is Louis and he looks about 13 or 14 years old. Apparently the school in Bankim is better then the one in their home village so right now Rose is in the process of transferring him here. I sort of feel bad for him because while all his paper work is being processed (the right people have be “motivated”) he’s stuck at home by himself, and he’s new so he doesn’t have any friends yet. Needless to say he’s been hanging out with Beamer and me a lot this week. The other apartment has been pretty quiet all month. Hawaou left for Banyo to be with her family for the end of her pregnancy right around the same time I left for Germany. Her “lovely” husband has been away the last couple weeks as well for what I understand to be work/play. The neighborhood rumor mill is all abuzz saying that he’s “looking” for a second wife, but I haven’t seen anything… I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Oh I almost forgot the most exciting news to the compound is that Hawaou had her Baby this past Wednesday! Now my phone French isn’t great so all I really got was that it’s a baby boy and that I’m in charge of spreading the word (which really wasn’t hard, I told one person and within a half an hour everyone knew). I can’t wait for her to come back so I can see the little guy.
Work is starting to pick up a bit, which makes me very happy. For the first time since I’ve been here someone, actually two different someones, approached me with their own ideas and asked for help (normally getting anything going is all on my end). The first person was a guy from the district hospital who asked me to organize some health animations on cholera with the nurses at my health center. Right now there’s a cholera epidemic in the “Grand North” and apparently (I haven’t been able to verify this so it could just be talk) it has recently spread to the capital of our region. There haven’t been any reported cases of it in Bankim but I think they just figure with all the travelers from Ramadan and the start of school it’s better to play it safe. Personally I think it’s a great idea, because the things you should do to prevent cholera also prevent typhoid and dysentery, which are huge problems here. The other person to approach me was my friend Mirabelle. She’s a schoolteacher at the bilingual primary school and she asked me if I could come in and teach some health education to her students this year. Of course I said yes! The other thing I worked on this week was putting out feelers on mushroom cultivation as an income-generating project for my women’s group. I had a fairly productive meeting with our government delegate of agriculture and he seems pretty on board with the idea. Over all work just seems to be picking up and I’m hoping that I can get a lot done this fall.
Let’s see what’s next OH! Ramadan ended on Friday, and there was fêting all weekend for it. The festivities started Friday morning around 4:30. I know this because I was awakened to the sounds of all the kids and wives next door clanking pots, cooking food and generally just yelling at each other as they were getting things ready. I tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use so I got up to go check out what was going on. When I got there all the boys were dressed in the best cloths and were assembling outside the house to walk down to the special prayer grounds on the outskirts of the village. I had to go to work at the health center but when the first big morning prayer was over I walked down to the road with B and some of the other nurses to watch everyone parade back through town… it was pretty cool to watch everyone singing and dancing, decked out in their brightly colored robes.
Later on that day I went over to my friend Dzoulaika’s house to celebrate. She’s the second wife to a man I work with and their whole family is super nice. I did have to laugh though because I got there and was quickly informed that before we could start to make the rounds to visit everyone we had to “get ready”. I was happy to find that “getting ready” to go out is just as much a ritual among women here as it is in the states. I felt like I was back in college with all my girlfriends on a Saturday night…there was music playing makeup being put on and jewelry being swapped back and forth. It was nice to see all the women and girls with their guards down smiling and giggling.
Day two of the party was spent at Little Abdulie’s house. I had a great time, but it was a totally different atmosphere because I was in the “big house” with all the men. We did a lot of eating and it kind of reminded me of Thanksgiving in the Millman/Richards house. Meaning all the men gorged themselves and they laid around the rest of the afternoon, picking at leftovers…the only thing missing was football on TV ☺
My two final thoughts on weekend:
One was an awkward conversation with the man I was sitting next to at one point at Abdulie’s. He told me he had been listening to the radio and wanted to know why Americans hated Muslims. My jaw dropped, there I was in the middle of nowhere in Cameroon, no newspapers, no internet, and yet some how these people knew what was going on back home. I basically tried to tell him that it wasn’t true, that not all American dislike Muslims, and that in fact there are a lot of Muslim Americans. I also tried to explain that in our country our law says that people are free to think and say whatever they want even if it’s not nice, and even if most people don’t agree with them. I don’t know if he got it but I did my best.
Two, on Sunday afternoon I was visiting with my neighbors to conclude the festivities and a bunch of big-wigs from the mosque came in while I was there. One of them asked me if I was Muslim, I said no that I was Christian, to which he looked at me with a big smile and said, “Ca va, c’est le même Allah, n’est pas?” (Well that’s fine, its all the same Allah, isn’t it?” Couldn’t have asked for a better ending to a great weekend ☺
Well summer vacation is officially over and with that the masses have returned to Bankim and school is almost in full swing. I’ve been told that even though there is an official first day of school (which was last Monday) no one really shows up until the second or third week, and then kids continue to trickle in for the rest of the month. I don’t know about that, all I can say is that if I had 5 or 10 or 18 children running around my house all summer I’d be counting down the days till I could ship them off to school ☺
Life on the home front is going well. Rose and her kids came back last week and she actually brought an additional son with her from village. His name is Louis and he looks about 13 or 14 years old. Apparently the school in Bankim is better then the one in their home village so right now Rose is in the process of transferring him here. I sort of feel bad for him because while all his paper work is being processed (the right people have be “motivated”) he’s stuck at home by himself, and he’s new so he doesn’t have any friends yet. Needless to say he’s been hanging out with Beamer and me a lot this week. The other apartment has been pretty quiet all month. Hawaou left for Banyo to be with her family for the end of her pregnancy right around the same time I left for Germany. Her “lovely” husband has been away the last couple weeks as well for what I understand to be work/play. The neighborhood rumor mill is all abuzz saying that he’s “looking” for a second wife, but I haven’t seen anything… I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Oh I almost forgot the most exciting news to the compound is that Hawaou had her Baby this past Wednesday! Now my phone French isn’t great so all I really got was that it’s a baby boy and that I’m in charge of spreading the word (which really wasn’t hard, I told one person and within a half an hour everyone knew). I can’t wait for her to come back so I can see the little guy.
Work is starting to pick up a bit, which makes me very happy. For the first time since I’ve been here someone, actually two different someones, approached me with their own ideas and asked for help (normally getting anything going is all on my end). The first person was a guy from the district hospital who asked me to organize some health animations on cholera with the nurses at my health center. Right now there’s a cholera epidemic in the “Grand North” and apparently (I haven’t been able to verify this so it could just be talk) it has recently spread to the capital of our region. There haven’t been any reported cases of it in Bankim but I think they just figure with all the travelers from Ramadan and the start of school it’s better to play it safe. Personally I think it’s a great idea, because the things you should do to prevent cholera also prevent typhoid and dysentery, which are huge problems here. The other person to approach me was my friend Mirabelle. She’s a schoolteacher at the bilingual primary school and she asked me if I could come in and teach some health education to her students this year. Of course I said yes! The other thing I worked on this week was putting out feelers on mushroom cultivation as an income-generating project for my women’s group. I had a fairly productive meeting with our government delegate of agriculture and he seems pretty on board with the idea. Over all work just seems to be picking up and I’m hoping that I can get a lot done this fall.
Let’s see what’s next OH! Ramadan ended on Friday, and there was fêting all weekend for it. The festivities started Friday morning around 4:30. I know this because I was awakened to the sounds of all the kids and wives next door clanking pots, cooking food and generally just yelling at each other as they were getting things ready. I tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use so I got up to go check out what was going on. When I got there all the boys were dressed in the best cloths and were assembling outside the house to walk down to the special prayer grounds on the outskirts of the village. I had to go to work at the health center but when the first big morning prayer was over I walked down to the road with B and some of the other nurses to watch everyone parade back through town… it was pretty cool to watch everyone singing and dancing, decked out in their brightly colored robes.
Later on that day I went over to my friend Dzoulaika’s house to celebrate. She’s the second wife to a man I work with and their whole family is super nice. I did have to laugh though because I got there and was quickly informed that before we could start to make the rounds to visit everyone we had to “get ready”. I was happy to find that “getting ready” to go out is just as much a ritual among women here as it is in the states. I felt like I was back in college with all my girlfriends on a Saturday night…there was music playing makeup being put on and jewelry being swapped back and forth. It was nice to see all the women and girls with their guards down smiling and giggling.
Day two of the party was spent at Little Abdulie’s house. I had a great time, but it was a totally different atmosphere because I was in the “big house” with all the men. We did a lot of eating and it kind of reminded me of Thanksgiving in the Millman/Richards house. Meaning all the men gorged themselves and they laid around the rest of the afternoon, picking at leftovers…the only thing missing was football on TV ☺
My two final thoughts on weekend:
One was an awkward conversation with the man I was sitting next to at one point at Abdulie’s. He told me he had been listening to the radio and wanted to know why Americans hated Muslims. My jaw dropped, there I was in the middle of nowhere in Cameroon, no newspapers, no internet, and yet some how these people knew what was going on back home. I basically tried to tell him that it wasn’t true, that not all American dislike Muslims, and that in fact there are a lot of Muslim Americans. I also tried to explain that in our country our law says that people are free to think and say whatever they want even if it’s not nice, and even if most people don’t agree with them. I don’t know if he got it but I did my best.
Two, on Sunday afternoon I was visiting with my neighbors to conclude the festivities and a bunch of big-wigs from the mosque came in while I was there. One of them asked me if I was Muslim, I said no that I was Christian, to which he looked at me with a big smile and said, “Ca va, c’est le même Allah, n’est pas?” (Well that’s fine, its all the same Allah, isn’t it?” Couldn’t have asked for a better ending to a great weekend ☺
Thursday, August 26, 2010
I’m Back!
So I know that it’s been a long, long, long time since I updated this thing, but a combination of work, vacation, and a week long power outage have all be contributing factors in my absence from the interwebs. But the good news is that I’m back and ready to spill what I’ve been up to this last month.
The last week in July I was spending my days with about 20 little kids for a summer camp from a village en brousse called Ribao. Aislynn’s big projects this summer were weeklong kids camps and so I volunteered to help her out with the last one. It was great! The community was so excited to have us, and the kids, though initially painfully shy, eventually opened up and got to have a few days where their biggest worry was who won the football game and when’s lunch.
One day after camp was over Aislynn, Amanda, Emmanuel (camp counselor that we brought with us from Mayo Darlé) and I got invited to play in a football match. Apparently the team that was scheduled to play never showed up (word on the street was it was because they were scared) and so the Ribao team held a community match. Let me just say that my football skills probably rival my ability to run a marathon or gracefully dive into a swimming pool, which is to say they leave much to be desired. Even so, we all threw on or cloths to “fair le sport” and hit the field. As kickoff, or tip off, or what ever it’s called in soccer was about to commence all that could be heard was a chorus of locals calling out “Nassara” (white man) and one Kate Millman who could be heard quietly saying a prayer that the ball didn’t come her way. Now maybe your thinking oh Kate, you’re being dramatic… it’s just a game, but no these men play rough and if you get in their way they will run you over. I managed to almost make it through the whole game without having to do too much until it happened. It was a clear shot, the ball was coming right to me, but unfortunately there was also a very large African man running right after it. My team mates were yelling something at me in Fulfulde that I can only assume was something to the tune of “kick the ball white man, kick it!” So I braced for impact, stuck out my foot, and by the grace of god kicked the ball in the general direction I was supposed to. You would have thought I’d scored a goal from the hubbub that erupted from the sideline, but then again I guess it’s not everyday that they see a white women wearing shorts and playing football with a bunch of men.
The last thing I want to say about Ribao is that it is hands down one of the most beautiful place I have ever spent time in. With no electricity, no phone signal, no stores to buy food at, and more cows then people it’s like something out of a different time. The village backs right up to the Nigerian boarder and a towering mountain range that becomes the backdrop to some of the most breathtaking sunsets I’ve ever seen. AMAZING! Blacksburg in the Fall, you’re still number one in my heart for most beautiful places around, but Ribao is officially coming in at a close second.
After the camps I quickly changed directions and flew out to Germany to spend a week with my family. The whole gang was there, Sean, Andy, Mom, Dad, and even Grandma crossed the pond to get their “Katie fix”. It was a pretty typical Millman family vacation, meaning we did some sightseeing, ate some good food (side note I ate an obscene amount of bacon and cheese… no regrets ☺), had some heated discussion about the way the world works, and got lost more times then I can count. It was weird to have things like ice and flushing toilets and water that didn’t need to be filtered and wouldn’t give you dysentery, but somehow I pushed through it ;) I took a hot shower everyday (sometimes twice a day). All in all, I had a wonderful time and my only complaint was that it went by too fast.
Now I’m back in Bankim and trying to get back in the grove, all be it with a few obstacles. First thing is that we are currently in the middle of Ramadan. Everybody fasts from 4:30 am till 6:30 pm and so no one really has much energy to do anything else. With that being said my community groups aren’t meeting, and basically there are no patients at the health center. After quickly realizing that things kind of shut down for this I decided, well if you can’t beat ’em join ‘em, so that’s what I did (or at least attempted to do) I fasted last week but it was more of a 6 to 6 fast because that’s about as much of a “morning person” as I can pull off and still be able to function. It was a lot harder then I thought it was going to be. At 5:00 everyday I would just stand in the kitchen with my stomach growling counting down the minuets till I would hear the little boys next-door at the mosque calling the end of the fast. I don’t know how they do it for a whole month.
The other roadblock is that when I got back people were supposed to have turn in a commitment form for participating in the nutrition project, but unfortunately no one did. When I asked B about it she informed me that the people who came to the meeting were demanding travel per diem and re-imbursement for coming (even though its walking distance and the meeting was only an hour). Where things stand now I highly suspect that the village reps never relayed the information I gave them to their communities, and B wants to give up and try a new project (but with the same people). I haven’t made up my mind yet as to what I’m going to do. On the one hand the root problem of people wanting to work with me because they think I have money and then getting pissed when they find out I don’t isn’t going to go away just by changing projects, but on the other hand I don’t want to can all the prep work B and I did and have to start from scratch. Also I can’t help but think that it’s not fair to the mothers and kids who really need this for me to throw in the towel just because their higher-ups can get over themselves. What to do, what to do?
But alas it’s not all bad news. I did get a chance to talk with Little Abdulie (president of MBOSCUDA) and when Ramadan is over the men’s group I’ve been working with for the past 8 months are going to do some HIV/AIDS peer education with near by Mbororo communities. They seem really excited about getting the opportunity to share what they’ve learned and that makes me feel like I’m actually doing something (which I sometimes forget in light of all the other crap that happens) ☺
P.S. my neighbor Hawaou (8 months pregnant) had malaria (for the second time) when I was gone and was in the hospital for a week. She’s on the mend now, but her baby is way under weight so please if you’re the praying type, say a prayer for her.
The last week in July I was spending my days with about 20 little kids for a summer camp from a village en brousse called Ribao. Aislynn’s big projects this summer were weeklong kids camps and so I volunteered to help her out with the last one. It was great! The community was so excited to have us, and the kids, though initially painfully shy, eventually opened up and got to have a few days where their biggest worry was who won the football game and when’s lunch.
One day after camp was over Aislynn, Amanda, Emmanuel (camp counselor that we brought with us from Mayo Darlé) and I got invited to play in a football match. Apparently the team that was scheduled to play never showed up (word on the street was it was because they were scared) and so the Ribao team held a community match. Let me just say that my football skills probably rival my ability to run a marathon or gracefully dive into a swimming pool, which is to say they leave much to be desired. Even so, we all threw on or cloths to “fair le sport” and hit the field. As kickoff, or tip off, or what ever it’s called in soccer was about to commence all that could be heard was a chorus of locals calling out “Nassara” (white man) and one Kate Millman who could be heard quietly saying a prayer that the ball didn’t come her way. Now maybe your thinking oh Kate, you’re being dramatic… it’s just a game, but no these men play rough and if you get in their way they will run you over. I managed to almost make it through the whole game without having to do too much until it happened. It was a clear shot, the ball was coming right to me, but unfortunately there was also a very large African man running right after it. My team mates were yelling something at me in Fulfulde that I can only assume was something to the tune of “kick the ball white man, kick it!” So I braced for impact, stuck out my foot, and by the grace of god kicked the ball in the general direction I was supposed to. You would have thought I’d scored a goal from the hubbub that erupted from the sideline, but then again I guess it’s not everyday that they see a white women wearing shorts and playing football with a bunch of men.
The last thing I want to say about Ribao is that it is hands down one of the most beautiful place I have ever spent time in. With no electricity, no phone signal, no stores to buy food at, and more cows then people it’s like something out of a different time. The village backs right up to the Nigerian boarder and a towering mountain range that becomes the backdrop to some of the most breathtaking sunsets I’ve ever seen. AMAZING! Blacksburg in the Fall, you’re still number one in my heart for most beautiful places around, but Ribao is officially coming in at a close second.
After the camps I quickly changed directions and flew out to Germany to spend a week with my family. The whole gang was there, Sean, Andy, Mom, Dad, and even Grandma crossed the pond to get their “Katie fix”. It was a pretty typical Millman family vacation, meaning we did some sightseeing, ate some good food (side note I ate an obscene amount of bacon and cheese… no regrets ☺), had some heated discussion about the way the world works, and got lost more times then I can count. It was weird to have things like ice and flushing toilets and water that didn’t need to be filtered and wouldn’t give you dysentery, but somehow I pushed through it ;) I took a hot shower everyday (sometimes twice a day). All in all, I had a wonderful time and my only complaint was that it went by too fast.
Now I’m back in Bankim and trying to get back in the grove, all be it with a few obstacles. First thing is that we are currently in the middle of Ramadan. Everybody fasts from 4:30 am till 6:30 pm and so no one really has much energy to do anything else. With that being said my community groups aren’t meeting, and basically there are no patients at the health center. After quickly realizing that things kind of shut down for this I decided, well if you can’t beat ’em join ‘em, so that’s what I did (or at least attempted to do) I fasted last week but it was more of a 6 to 6 fast because that’s about as much of a “morning person” as I can pull off and still be able to function. It was a lot harder then I thought it was going to be. At 5:00 everyday I would just stand in the kitchen with my stomach growling counting down the minuets till I would hear the little boys next-door at the mosque calling the end of the fast. I don’t know how they do it for a whole month.
The other roadblock is that when I got back people were supposed to have turn in a commitment form for participating in the nutrition project, but unfortunately no one did. When I asked B about it she informed me that the people who came to the meeting were demanding travel per diem and re-imbursement for coming (even though its walking distance and the meeting was only an hour). Where things stand now I highly suspect that the village reps never relayed the information I gave them to their communities, and B wants to give up and try a new project (but with the same people). I haven’t made up my mind yet as to what I’m going to do. On the one hand the root problem of people wanting to work with me because they think I have money and then getting pissed when they find out I don’t isn’t going to go away just by changing projects, but on the other hand I don’t want to can all the prep work B and I did and have to start from scratch. Also I can’t help but think that it’s not fair to the mothers and kids who really need this for me to throw in the towel just because their higher-ups can get over themselves. What to do, what to do?
But alas it’s not all bad news. I did get a chance to talk with Little Abdulie (president of MBOSCUDA) and when Ramadan is over the men’s group I’ve been working with for the past 8 months are going to do some HIV/AIDS peer education with near by Mbororo communities. They seem really excited about getting the opportunity to share what they’ve learned and that makes me feel like I’m actually doing something (which I sometimes forget in light of all the other crap that happens) ☺
P.S. my neighbor Hawaou (8 months pregnant) had malaria (for the second time) when I was gone and was in the hospital for a week. She’s on the mend now, but her baby is way under weight so please if you’re the praying type, say a prayer for her.
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