It's been a while since I've posted anything, but I wanted to let everyone know some news:

As you all know, I'm coming up on the end of my two years in Cameroon. It's been a great experience thus far: The microfinance bank I work with has improved drastically, the school I work with has expanded and hired new staff, I've given classes and seminars to farmers in dirt floor buildings ten kilometers off the nearest paved road and to bank managers and their Peace Corps counterparts in beach resort hotel conference rooms. I've ridden in bush taxis and spent hours waiting on the side of the road, learned how to eat my cous-cous and sauce d'arachide with my hands and finally improved my French enough to understand Tony Parker's hip-hop attempts.

The news is: It's not over yet. I will be staying in Cameroon for a third year. Through a partnership with Peace Corps Cameroon and the United Nations Development Program Cameroon, I'll be staying in Cameroon as a regional office manager for the UNDP's Grassroots Poverty Reduction Program. I'll be in Bafoussam, just about an hour from Bangou, responsible for the West and North-West Provinces. The regional offices accept funding proposals to the Grassroots Poverty Reduction Program and conduct initial evaluations before sending proposals on to the main office in Yaoundé. They also monitor outstanding projects which have received UNDP funding. I'll be spending a lot of the time based in the Bafoussam office but will also get to spend about 20% of my time in the field, visiting projects.

I've just come back from a month's home leave in the States and am starting training with the UNDP tomorrow. From there I'll go up to Bafoussam to look for an apartment and be busy getting settled in there. By the end of this month I should be in the swing of things, as they say.

I'm also hoping to keep more regular posts up here, mainly thanks to the generosity of a good friend and the new (to me) laptop computer she gave to me.

So to sign off for now, I'm wishing you all well and hoping for some good luck on my move to Bafoussam.

Bizous,

Jessie

Thierry and Edith

Originally uploaded by Jessie M.. Some kids get to go to school here in Cameroon, but many do not. They don't go to school because their parents can't afford it, because they haven't passed the exams or because there's only enough money for a few children in the family and this is not their year.

I designed and ran a class for kids who are no longer in school in April and May. It ran for two months and we met twice a week in the Binum building, home to the the agricultural group I work with. My students were between 13 and 18 years old. Most could read a small amount but I had one boy couldn't write his own name and one girl could read most anything I could write. I recruited these kids by walking through the markets, talking to market mommies, heading out au cartier and chatting people up and going to group meetings with the cashier from my bank.

The class was a mix of toned-down business classes, sessions on HIV/AIDS and sessions from what's called the "Life Skills Manuel" -- making good decisions and thinking about one's future. They idea behind this class was pretty straightforward: All kids work here, and kids no longer in school especially so. They gather wood, they sell peanuts or beans in the market. The lucky ones find odd jobs with a mechanic or tailor. The class was aimed at teenagers, those right on the cusp of adulthood and families of their own. These kids aren't going to grow up and have steady jobs or any sort of benefits. They are going to need to support themselves making things, growing things, and selling them. The idea of the class was to get them thinking about their future and started on making it happen.

Our first class, I separated the boys and the girls into two groups and asked each group to make me two lists: First, a list of ten things they could do to earn money when they are grown, ranked in order by preference. Second, a list of five goals they have for their lives, not including work, ranked by importance.I had done this exercise myself that morning and had easily come up with my list of female and male income-generating activities that folks do in Bangou: Tailor, boutique owner, bar owner, pot mommie, farmer, raising animals, selling vegetables in the market, buying fabric in the city and selling it in the village, grilling food, grinding corn and flour, photographer, chauffeur, mototaxi driver, restaurateur. It took the kids 45 minutes to come up with their lists and required a lot of assistance on my part. They had never considered this before. No one had ever asked them "What do you want to be when you grow up?" They were all pretty adamant that they didn't want to be farmers -- too much work for very little money -- but they had no idea what they wanted for themselves instead.

During the business sessions we used examples they were familiar with: Mototaxi men, tailors and vendors. We relied on a lot of skits and games, as most of the kids couldn't read that well. We talked about how we could know if an idea could generate a profit, where to find the resources a person might need, how to do a budget and plan for those rainy days: Malaria, broken machines and family asking for money. We did a role play in which one fabric seller puts a small amount away each market day, saving to increase his stock while another takes all the surplus home. We watched the first increase his sales over time while the others stayed at the same level, laughing at the ferocious market bargaining of the actors and counting up their piles of play money at the end.

We spent a week talking about HIV/AIDS. We played a game about myths and facts, matching up true stories and false ones, discussing what we thought of each. With a male Peace Corps volunteer, we split off into boys and girls and practiced putting condoms on bananas. The girls side spent a lot of time talking about how to negotiate condom use: How do you get your boyfriend to wear one? How can you get them when everyone in town knows who you are? What if your boyfriend doesn't believe AIDS exists?

One day about six weeks into the class we took a small field trip to my bank. The kids had never been to a bank before and weren't familiar with what goes on there. The accountant explained how one opens an account and makes deposits and withdrawals. I gave them 600 CFA to deposit into my account. They clustered around the counter, elected Edith the form-filler-outer and walked the money over to the window. After our tour of the front office we went into the back to see my counterpart, the bank manager.

He welcomed them into the office and, after a little talk about the bank, started asking them questions about the class. They nervously looked down at the ground. Here was a college educated, notable, grey-haired man with one of the most important jobs in Bangou and he was speaking to them! A group of uneducated farmers' kids who walked in 40 minutes from the bush to get to the bank. But the manager persisted in asking them questions and they slowly warmed up. Yes, they liked the class. Yes, they were learning a lot. Yes, Mlle. Jessie is very nice.

Then he asked them what they wanted to do when they were grown. Edith looked up from the floor, looked directly into the bank manger's eyes and said "I want to make clothes." Eric came next, saying he will open a small boutique. Thierry looked up from his shoes and said he wants to be a mason and help build buildings. We all turned to look at Boris. He looked back at us, moving his eyes from face to face. Turns out Boris still needs some time to reflect.

1. You address women as “ma” and men as “mon père.”

2. You can shell peanuts one-handed.

3. When someone says good morning to you, you reply: “Thank you.”

4. Bamiléké women are impressed with your negotiating skills.

5. You know the best way to compliment a mother is to say her baby is the fattest you’ve seen and that he must eat bien.

6. You eat your couscous with your hands.

7. You understand that when people call you fat and say that you must eat bien it’s also a compliment.

8. You develop a taste for fresh beer and even sometimes prefer it to cold beer.

9. You think sharing the front seat of the taxi with someone is a lot more comfortable when you’ve got a petit chauffeur to lean against.

10. You understand that teeth sucking signifies slight displeasure, a hiss means come here, a lip-point indicates “That one,” “Won-der-ful” means unbelievable and a lip-point with a kiss sound means “Oh, petit! Quit your fooling around and bring me that!”

I live in Bangou Carrefour, across the street from the intersection that gives the neighborhood its’ name. Just a few steps up the path leading from my concession door is the garre, with taxis going to Banganté, Bafoussam, Bafang and even – if one is willing to wait half a day for the car to fill – Douala and Yaoundé. Lining the garre and the main street are bars, two omelet shacks, boutiques that sell powered milk, prepaid phone cards and other assorted necessities, pot mommies selling rice and sauce and meat. Women set up shop on the side of the garre, selling avocados, herbs and this weird chalky rock that can be ground up and used to thicken sauces. On market days and weekends women and children walk around selling all kinds of things from baskets and trays balanced on top of their heads. An old traditional dancer walks around, beaded leg coverings rattling, selling dances for a beer or a few hundred francs. Motorcycle taxi drivers wait in a line along the side of the main road and for a few hundred francs they’ll take you places regular taxis don’t go: The chefferie, Batchingou, Balembo.

All this action makes a lot of noise. Chauffeurs shout out their destinations: “Banganté, Bamena pressé la!” Music, especially after dark, blasts out of the bars. Côte d’Ivorian ‘couper-décaler’ dance music, Cameroonian bakutsi or makossa, popular African pop songs, Celine Dion, American hip-hop. Outside my door, the Muslims who run the omelet shack splash water while washing before their constant praying and men urinate against the building across the way. The women selling on the sides of the garre call out to people walking by: “Ton-ton, il y a les bons avocats ici!” People selling off the tops of their heads just call out their merchandise to nobody in particular in nasally voices: “Arachide, arachide.” Those rattling leg coverings. Car horns beeping and prerecorded voices on moto taxis repeating the fare: “Cent francs, cent francs.” If there is a soccer match going on, it’s possible to count the Lions’ score by the cheers that go up through the carrefour.

Personal space means nothing here. Life is lived up against others. Friends, male and female, young and old, walk together holding hands.* Likewise the idea that one person’s noise could disturb another person is completely foreign. I’ve never heard of someone making a noise complaint to the police, but I am sure that the gendarmes would laugh if someone tried. The gendarmes might even be at the party or bar keeping the neighbors up at night. Or, I should say, making all the racket, because there’s no amount of noise a Cameroonian can’t sleep through.

Cameroon conducted a census a few months back. Census workers went door to door, trying to collect information on everyone in the country. On the day the census worker showed up at my door, I was cleaning my house, hair tied up in a fular, Modest Mouse blasting from my stereo. Once she got over the initial shock of a white woman answering the door, the census woman came inside and got right down to business. Was I married or single? Did I rent my apartment or own it? Is there running water and if not how far do I have to walk to get water? What was my education level? Profession? Age? Nationality? Religion? She didn’t ask me to turn down the stereo and I didn’t offer. We leaned our heads close to each other to hear as she posed her questions and I answered them. After she finished, she asked for a glass of water and went on to the next house and my music kept right on blaring.

My contribution to the neighborhood noise is usually my stereo. I listen to music while I clean my house, cook, work and sit on my porch contemplating the progress of my peas and zucchini. Marcel likes dancing to the new live Wilco album (thanks Allie!) and when Taco (I swear that’s his name) comes over to play Uno he always asks to put a c.d. on. He really likes Tori Amos, and ‘whoo-whos’ along with her when she sings, “Whoo-who, the time is getting closer. Whoo-who, time to be a ghost.”

I recently bought a short-wave radio, hoping to be able to catch the English-language BBC news. I bought the radio in Bafang and while I was waiting for my taxi to fill I bought some batteries and started listening to it in the backseat of the car. Again, after getting over the initial shock of sharing the taxi with a white woman, the other passengers didn’t seem to notice the noise of the radio.

My radio doesn’t get reception in my house, so I have to rest it on the railing of my porch or hang it off the metal supports for my pea plants. If I’m not on the porch, I just turn up the volume loud so I can hear the news in my house. When the weather (or whatever affects reception) is good I can get the BBC World Update, which repeats the same six international news stories over and over. Sometimes I get the Voice of America. I heard an editorial promising easy immigration to the U.S. for any foreigner who helps return a POA/MIA American. Once I heard an English-language call-in on RFI, the French version of the BBC. For what it’s worth, my radio also gets Japanese, German, Cameroonian, French, Arabic (or possibly Northern Cameroonian) and music stations. When the weather (or whatever) is not good, the BBC fades in and out, mingling with these other stations.

So now the noises of Bangou include not just chauffeurs, bar music, prayer noises, people in the walkway, sellers selling things, rattling leg coverings, car horns and Lions’ scores but also British accents, fleeting Japanese and German, Muslim chanting and French rap laid over De la Soul tracks. Nobody’s noticed the radio.

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* The Cameroonian hand-hold requires its’ very own explanation: Hand holding is an expression of friendship here, not a romantic activity. So two male friends may hold hands and two female friends may hold hands. Occasionally a male and female friend may hold hands. Couples do not hold hands. The man-on-man hold goes like this: Two friends, who maybe haven’t seen each other in a day or two will hold hands, palms crossing each other. This is also the quick handhold to be done between two male friends while crossing the street. The man-on-man close friend or brother handhold requires interlocking fingers. Every so often, the woman-on-woman handhold is like the first man-on-man hold, but more often it has one woman grasping the index finger of the second women. Both women have a slight swing to their hands and arms as they walk. Sometimes, male and female friends will hold hands while talking, but this is usually just a handshake with a delayed release. Couples rarely, and in the village never, hold hands.

I have been waiting for rain. One of my most favorite things about life here is just how unbelievably beautiful it is: Rolling green hills with pineapple bushes and palm trees. Tomatoes and peanuts and corn and beans growing everywhere. Mount Batcha in the distance with clouds and mist drifting across the top. All of these things disappear during the dry season.

I know some of you are braving snow and heavy rain out there, but over here in Bangou we've been sweating through the dry season since the fall. It's horribly dusty: Dust covers the trees and the dead stalks of corn, dust filters in through the air vents of the cars as they barrel down dusty dirt roads, dust collects on dishes drying in the dish drainer. Dust is thick like bad L.A. smog and makes it so you hardly know Mount Batch is off in the distance.

I've been asking people when the rainy season will start up again and everyone says -- with unshakable confidence -- March 15. Each and every person answers the exact same way. With absolute precision, they say: "March 15th. The rain will come March 15th."

Time is elastic here. Nothing starts 'on time' because 'on time' is a totally foreign concept. I've started saying that things are on an "American hour" when I invite people over or have meetings. Even Bangou's language is flexible on the issue of time.

In a patois lesson, I asked my teacher to explain the difference between past, present and future tenses. This really had honestly not come up. "Well," she said, writing in my notebook, "here is how you would say you prepared food yesterday, here is how you would say you are preparing food now and here is how you would say you will prepare food tomorrow." The past and future sentences were almost exactly the same.

See, Bangou has tenses that roughly correspond to past and future tenses, but a more accurate translation would be that there are sentence structures that differentiate between now and not now. The word usually given as tomorrow is better translated as the not now after today and yesterday as the not now before today.

So I hope you can understand why I found the absolute precision of a March 15th start to the rainy season amusing. I had some serious doubts. I was pretty sure it would start sometime in March, or at least not before February or after April.

March 14th came just as dry, dusty and hot as all the days before. March 15th started off that way, too. But by early afternoon the wind was blowing and the sky looked like it was close to sunset. Soon big, fat raindrops began falling out of the sky. Then thunder claps followed by hailstones bigger than peas but smaller than gobstoppers. The hail and rain continued, and I filled up my buckets of water off the stream pouring down the roof. March 15th, I shouldn't be surprised by hailstones. The rainy season's here.

The boys killing chickens

Originally uploaded by Jessie M.. I was rereading Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible the other day and came across this fabulous generalization of the Congolese: There are two kinds of people, those who are tied to their mothers' backs and those who can walk on their own two feet. The same holds for Cameroun. Folks aren't in the business of raising children here, enfants. They are raising small adults, petites. Kids here are amazingly self-sufficient.

We had a barbecue at my house recently and I told some of my neighborhood boys -- we'll call them Ya Ya and crew -- to come over in the morning to help with preparation. Here's how I met Ya Ya:

It was about a week into my time in Bangou and people hadn't really figured out how to handle me yet. Children liked to follow me around in packs, saying "Give me a present, give me some money." My usual way to handle this was to joke back with them. "Where's my present? Why don't you give me some money?" So after one of these cute little exchanges, I was at home and my doorbell rang. There was Ya Ya, the leader of the pack of déranging kids, holding a bag of guavas. "Tata, here's your present."

So Ya Ya and crew have since become a regular feature of Bangou life. They hang out, playing Uno and eating whatever I've cooked no matter how strange it is to their taste buds. Ya Ya continues to bring me presents, mostly sugar cane and whatever fuit is in season. He comes over and wears my motorcycle helmet while sitting out on my porch.

For the barbecue, I told the boys to come over in the morning to help with preparations. They cleaned green beans, peeled potatoes, went to the market for sugar and flour. And then it was time to kill the chickens.

Another volunteer got the chicken killing started with chicken number one. That one down, he sent the boys to catch the other two chickens. If you are ever looking for a good activity for a group of 11 year old boys, send them running around after some chickens who know what's coming. They chased the chickens across my porch, behind the apartment, and finally up the stairs with Ya Ya in close pursuit. Ya Ya managed to catch both chickens at the same time, returning triumphantly down the stairs holding both chickens by the feet. After that the boys took over the chicken killing show.

They cut the chickens' throats, they stood on the chickens' feet until their bodies stopped moving, they dipped the dead birds in a pot of boiled water and they plucked the feathers off the birds. After we cut up the birds, I tried to give the parts that Americans don't throw on the grill to the boys to take home to their families. They hemmed and hawed until what they really wanted finally came out: To take the hearts and livers and feet and grill them themselves, right then. If they took the meat home, they might not get any of it and they certainly wouldn't get much.

So I gave the boys a box of matches, pointed them toward the firewood and went back inside. The boys lit the fire, balanced the grill on some rocks over the flames and put their chicken on the grill. Boris came in a few minutes later looking for salt and pepper. After twenty minutes or so, they finished cooking the chicken and sat around the porch eating. After they were finished, they cleaned up their plates and began sweeping up the feathers and rinsing off the chicken blood from the concession. After they'd cleaned up, they came back inside for another round of Uno. I have a hard time picturing a group of 11 year old American boys taking care of themselves and others like these boys do.

So I’m a Small Enterprise Development volunteer here. That means I am posted to a microenterprise institution, in my case the MC2 Bank Bangou, and given a whole lot of free reign to do whatever I want. Anything even half-way related to small enterprise development works: SED volunteers have given businesses classes, led women’s empowerment seminars, counseled businesses one-on-one, assisted NGOs working in economic development, whatever. And then all volunteers are also expected to work on “secondary projects,” meaning just about any kind of good work you can muster up. Not exactly a tight job description, which is fine by me.

I spend about half my time at the bank, and have done everything from help Napoleon learn how to turn on the computer to assist the bank manager write reports about our loan portfolio. I also spent the first month or two just talking to people in the community, telling them what the Peace Corps is about and what I am interested in doing.

So one day, after I’d been here for about a month, I was lying on my couch in my sweatpants, flipping the pages of a People Magazine from 2004 and cursing the grilled fish I’d bought off a mommy on the street the night before when my door bell rang. Yvette, the accountant from my bank, and someone Yvette introduced as her sister came in for a visit. Turns out that Valérie had recently opened a preschool and was having a hard time making ends meet. Was there any way that I could help?

Well, I explained, I don’t have any money. So if you’re looking for money to help pay the bills for the school, I can’t help you. But what we can do is look at the money you do have and how you’re spending it and see if there is any way to make it stretch further. So we made an appointment for me to come see the school.

A few of the reasons why I expected outrageously horrible things from this school:

Francophone Cameroon still operates under the schooling system the colonists instituted in the 1930s. This means memorization, memorization, and more memorization. I’m talking about kids who answer essay questions by copying, word-for-word, entire paragraphs from their textbooks. Of course that’s if they have textbooks, but seeing as how kids have to buy their own books – and these books can cost as much as 30,000 CFA each – most don’t have the books. Corporal punishment is a-ok here, not a problem at all. Teachers often don’t get paid. Schools don’t have toilets; many don’t even have a latrine (meaning enclosed hole in the ground, for those lucky enough to never have squatted above one). Kids have a ‘manual labor period’ where they clear the school grounds with machetes. (Therese once asked me what kids in America do for manual labor period – I wish I had a video of that conversation.) Forty students per class, three kids crammed onto a bench made for two. So this, but with forty preschoolers . . . You can imagine why I had low expectations.

Valérie’s school is in a one-room bamboo-ceilinged house just up the road from my bank. On the appointed day, I knocked on the bamboo door and peeked inside. Forty little bodies wearing forty little pink pinafores, sitting in forty little chairs around five little octagonal tables.

“Dit bonjour au Madame Jessie.”

Forty little voices: “Bonjour, madame!”

“Say good morning to Madame Jessie.”

Forty little voices: “Good morning, madame!”

Now this certainly isn’t a preschool like any you’ve seen before, unless you’ve seen a preschool in Central Africa before. There’s no electricity or running water. But they color, even if they have to share the crayons. They sing a French version of head shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes. They have naptime. It doesn’t matter if there’s only one bed, because Africans can sleep anywhere.

As cute as this all is, there’s one big piece here: These kids are learning French. See, we’re villageois here in Bangou, and that means that folks speak patois at home. Most kids don’t go to school, and those that do rarely go to preschool first. They show up for their first day of primary school, and many of them are thrust three-deep into those two-seater benches not understanding French. Three-deep in an awful learning situation and miles behind before the class even starts. But not Valérie’s kids. They are going to show up understanding French, speaking a little English, knowing the alphabet and able to write their names.

Valérie and I spent months meeting once a week after school. We started by adding up all the tuition the parents have paid and writing down all the money she has spent. This eventually led to a cash-flow analysis, which led to a break-even analysis. The break-even analysis eventually showed that, where she had charged 8,500 CFA tuition, she needs at least 11,500 to break even. Before her salary, of course. I thought this was all pretty clear, until Valérie said: “So, at the parents meeting, I’ll tell them the price next year will be 12,000 and I won’t take less than 10,000.”

“Valérie, you can’t take 10,000. You can’t take 11,000. You can’t take 10,499.” (I didn’t actually say 10,499 because I have no idea how to say that number in French.)

“But Jessie, 11,500 is a lot of money for people in Bangou.”

So I told Valérie this story of trying to buy an umbrella: I tried to buy an umbrella at the market my first week, long before I had any idea how bargaining works. The woman told me 2,000. I said 1,000. She said 1,500. I said 1,200. She said 1,500; look it’s a nice umbrella. I said 1,200 and it’s not even that big. She said 1,500 and I walked away. I walked away slowly, waiting for her to say “Donnez l’argent.”* But she never said “Donnez l’argent.”

“Valérie, how come she never said ‘Donnez l’argent?’”

“It wasn’t enough. And somebody else will pay 1,500.”

“Right, somebody else will pay 1,500. And 1,200 wasn’t enough. Why wasn’t 1,200 enough? How much do you think she paid for it?”

“How do I know what she paid for her umbrella?”

‘Well, she must have paid less than 1,500 for it, because she would sell it to me for 1,500. But she preferred not selling it at all to selling it for 1,200, so maybe she paid 1,200 for it.”

“Or maybe she paid 1,300 for it.”

“Right! Maybe she paid 1,300 for it. And if she sold it to me for 1,200 she would be giving me 100 CFA.”

So Valérie and I have done financial analysis, even though she might not know she knows how to do a break-even analysis. We’ve talked about marketing for next year. She’s formed a PTA and is planning an open house night. Lately we’ve been planning for next year’s expansion.

Preschool here is two years and each year has its own class. Her one-room school was sufficient for this year, her first, but next year her students will be in the second-year class and she’ll have a new first-year class coming in. That means that she’ll need another classroom and another teacher. And she’d like to hire on the two young women who currently walk the kids home as assistants. We’ve worked through a budget for next year. If all goes well, she’ll be getting a modest salary. Plus she’ll be creating three new jobs in Bangou – and seeing as how I probably have enough chairs in my living room to invite all of Bangou’s steady employers over for tea, that’s a big deal. The protestant church has an old school building they have agreed to rent at a good price. We’re applying for a grant to pay for new equipment, like tables and chairs, another chalkboard. I’d like to paint a world map on the wall of the new building.

It’s not exactly what I had in mind coming over here. But it’s fun. Valérie’s become one of my closest friends here. She’s helping me learn the patois and her house was one of my stops on my Christmas eating tour. She’s doing amazing work at her school, and I feel like I’m doing great work as well: Hopefully, what we’ve done means that her school will make it past its first few rough years. Bangou will have a few more jobs and some kids better prepared for school.

Plus, when I go for walks now, I don’t only get shouts of “La blanche! Jessie!” Sometimes I also hear: “Madame!”

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*“Give the money.” Always said under the breath, with a little roll if the eyes before they pick up something else to show you, saying, “Look, look, I have lots of nice things.”

Everyone here is very proud that Cameroun has two official languages. “Write that in English,” they say, “Le Cameroun est bilingue.” Cameroun’s bilingualism results from the uniting of a former French colony with parts of a former English colony. But it’s not really just bilingual: In addition to the official languages there are almost 300 local languages spoken. These languages developed long before the colonists ever arrived to impose European languages. Some languages spread over a large area and have a name because they are spoken by multiple chefferies. Some, like Bangou’s patois, may be quite similar to others but are really only spoken in one place. So when I got to post and asked people the name of Bangou’s patois, everyone gave me blank looks. Bangou, that’s the name of the language spoken in Bangou.

I’ve been trying to learn Bangou’s language. I have a Bangou tutor and know how to say some greetings and expressions. Basically, I can say enough in Bangou to make folks so excited that I speak their language that they then rattle off whole paragraphs that I don’t understand.

A few days ago I went to another volunteer’s post, Baham, to collect some materials I needed for another computer training at my bank. Baham speaks a language that is very similar to the language spoken in Bandjoun, where we did training, but quite different from Bangou. On our way back to Baffoussam in the bush taxi, I sat gazing out the widow while the other PCV I was with gazed as well and the two women next to us talked in patois. Soon, I began to recognize the rhythm and cadence of what they were saying. Then I recognized words. After a bit more eavesdropping, I recognized whole sentences.

“Hey, Andy. Either these women are speaking Bangou, or some other closely related language.”

“Well, say something to them, then.”

“Uh, mama. N’ge min de-ee?”

“Ah,” Confused looks at the white woman in the bush taxi.

“N’ge min de-ee, mama?”

“Ge fizzy!”

The women were from Bangou. They had been in Baham for a funeral but were returning back to Bangouville, where they farm. I was somewhere totally out of the area where Bangou’s patois is spoken, but I was able to recognize the language, say something to them in Bangou, and have them understand me and then reply back in Bangou. My French may be awful, but how many people can say they speak Bangou?

About seven this morning, I heard a banging on my concession door. I opened the door and Marcel, the toddler son of my landlord and his wife waddled down the step into the concession. Marcel hangs out down here a lot. His family lives in the apartment upstairs but the concession is like an extension of their home. The concession is a sort of walled-in patio. I’ve got a few planters out there and Marcel’s mother and I both do laundry in the concession. Marcel’s mom cooks over the open cook fire in the corner. The whole family uses the latrine in the concession. Sometimes my landlord’s father sleeps in a room off the concession as well. Marcel hangs out with me sometimes, coloring with crayons or playing with a wire toy truck in my living room.

Marcel’s a little unusual for a Cameroonian boy, as he really doesn’t like to be out of sight of his parents. Normal for an American toddler, but the kids here have usually developed their independence by now. It’s perfectly normal to see a group of kids playing in a field, and the eldest will be no more than five years old. The preschool kids walk home alone after school gets out. Marcel’s mom is a normal Cameroonian mother, meaning she doesn’t keep him by her side all the time. Since her house is upstairs but her kitchen is downstairs, she spends a lot of time going back and forth and just lets Marcel wander around. But his little legs don’t always keep, so when he gets upset that she’s gone, he’ll either come in and hang out with me or cry in the concession until I go pick him up.

When I got here, Marcel wasn’t talking in words yet, but he could understand things well, like “Pick up those peanut shells you dropped” or “Don’t color on my book.” So when he wobbled down the stair babbling today, I assumed he was just babbling. I turned to walk into my apartment when I realized he wasn’t just babbling, he was saying “Maman a parti. Maman, maman a parti.” Mama has left. Mama, mama has left.

Two things here: First, I have been in Bangou long enough that, somewhere along the line, Marcel has learned how to talk. Second, he didn’t call me tata, or aunt, like most of the kids do. He called me maman. This isn’t necessarily as heart wrenching as it sounds. Any Cameroonian kid will call any adult female in their household maman. Anybody a child lives with who is a reliable source of food and gets angry when the kids have done something wrong is maman.

So this morning, when he couldn’t find maman, Marcel showed up at my door. He ate some bread while I drank my coffee and followed me around munching on a banana while I got dressed for work. One my way to work I dropped him off at his parents’ apartment upstairs.

Three months ago, this little boy didn’t talk, he just hid behind his mother’s skirt, peeking around at the weird white woman who talks funny and has lot of shinny, interesting things in her apartment. But now I’m just the maman he goes to when he can’t find his other maman. And when he’s hungry I give him food, when he’s thirsty I give him water, and when he colors on the books get angry with him.

My bank has three old computers in various states of reliability. When I arrived, one computer was set up on the cashier’s desk, though never turned on, the CPU of another was behind her desk, and the various other parts of two and a half computers were stacked in a corner of the storage room. After an hour or so, I managed a combination that works.

Over the last few weeks, I have done a series of one-on-one lessons with each of the three employees on basic computer stuff and how to use Microsoft Word. The accountant and I worked together first, followed by the cashier. Both of these women knew the basics: How to turn on the computer, the ‘double-click,’ how to open a program. Working with them was just about showing them the frosting they could put on their letters, forms and signs for the front door.

Next came Napoleon. Napoleon is the guardian of the bank, but guardian should be understood very loosely. He sits in front of the bank, he walks around the carrefour, he smokes cigarettes outside. We don’t have much to guard, and what there is, he doesn’t guard much. Napoleon makes 9,000 cfa a month – about $16 – and still manages to send his children to school. Public school tuition, excluding books and uniforms, is 15,000 cfa a year.

Napoleon has been working the same job with the same salary for ten years. He is one of a very small and relatively lucky group of people who have a steady source of cash each month. Most people here are unemployed or underemployed. Even when people have jobs, they can often go for months without seeing their salary. Most families grow their own food, carry their own water from the river or the town well and walk for half a day to chop their own wood for cooking. With their most basic needs met, life is about the search for cash needed for things that can’t be grown: School fees, funerals, clothing, giving birth in the heath center instead of at home, concrete to put over the dirt floors, electricity or candles. Most kids aren’t in school; some because they didn’t pass level but most because their parents can’t afford the tuition. Lots of kids as young as eight work around the carrefour fetching water or wood or selling small things.

Many families that aren’t very educated only speak Bangou’s patois and lots of kids begin French when they begin primary school. For those that don’t go to school, and don’t speak French at home, they will probably grow up and inherit their families fields, as the forests are depleted the daughters will walk ever further than the mothers for wood, and the sons will grow up worrying about the search for small cash like their fathers do now.

Napoleon is bilingual (patois and French) and quite literate, so he must have completed a fair bit of school. After putting the lessons off for a few days due to electricity cuts, we finally sat down together at the computer. Not only had Napoleon never used a computer before, he had never used a typewriter. We started out looking at the computer. I described where the computer does its’ thinking, how we communicate with the computer and how the computer communicates with us. Napoleon watched me turn the computer on. He watched me turn it off. Then he turned it on. When it got time to turn it back off again, we ran into a big problem: The mouse.

I was expecting him to have difficulties with double-clicking the mouse but it hadn’t occurred to me that he’d have problems with the movement of the mouse. From his perspective – one that’s not been using computers for as long as they can remember – the movement of the mouse on the desk and on the screen don’t really mirror each other. See, when you want the mouse on the screen to move up, you move the mouse backwards. Down, you pull the mouse forwards. Doesn’t make sense.

At this point, I closed the folder for my lesson plan. There was no way we were going to get to ‘font size,’ ‘save as,’ ‘page up’ and ‘page down.’ Napoleon and I spent the next hour and a half moving the mouse, opening programs and closing programs. Once he got the concept, if not necessarily the feel, of the mouse I told him to open up Microsoft word. He opened the program and I explained the keyboard. “Now,” I said, “why don’t you write a letter and then we’ll learn how to save it.”

This is what Napoleon wrote:

Monsieur Directeur:

J’ai l’honneur vous demandez l’emploi.

Merci*

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*Mister Director:

I have the honor of asking you for employment.

Thank you

Erika, Leticia, Rosanna and I

Originally uploaded by Jessie M.. Just a quick note to let you folks know I posted some pictures of my favorite friends in village.

They are:

Alegy, who I have amazing conversations with about history and politics and god and who reminds me that even though I can't speak French, I am not actually an imbecile.

Brenda, who is anglophone, young and not married (nor particularly looking to be), bless her soul.

Leticia, Rosanna and Erika, the daughters of Sylvie and fabulous joys in my life. Leticia hates to wear shoes, Rosanna likes to braid my hair and go for walks, Erika is tall, gangly and full of attitude.

Sylvie. Sylvie is my first real Cameroonian friend. Not someone I just sit with, not someone I just talk with, not someone I just eat with but actually someone who I laugh with, joke with, complain with and sit in comfortable silence with.

Therese, my mama. Therese is in charge of my security and well being. I am not exactly sure how this happened, but somewhere along the way, she became my maman and she buys me cough medicine when I am sick, shines the flashlight for me when it is dark, invites me to all the coolest village parties and answers all the cultural questions I can throw at her.

These seven people make me leave my apartment when I can't face another word of French; they make me forget that I miss the subway, and tortilla chips and the Sunday newspaper. They distract me from considering any moment other than the one we are presently living. These folks define welcoming.

Cameroun has ten provinces with almost 300 different local languages spoken. There’s the Muslim North, the Christian South and the animist pockets. There are the Anglophone areas and the Francophone areas and the influence of Portuguese, German, British and French colonists. And there is one thing that really unites this country: The Lions.

The Lions are Cameroun’s national soccer team. Everyone follows the Lions. In even the most remote village, folks gather around a battery-powered radio on game day. Most of the star players on the team play club soccer in Europe and fly in for national games. One of the favorite players is named Eto’o; there is a popular song with the refrain “Eto’o, Eto’o!” which can be heard blaring out of bars all over Cameroun. There are cheap green soccer jerseys which are sold in all the markets – in any group of ten little boys, at least three will be wearing a green Lions jersey.

Last month there was a big game against Côte d’Ivoire. I went to Baffoussam to watch the game with another volunteer there. We sat in a bar with a television and radio – both going at once – in her neighborhood. The game started at 4:00; by 3:00 the bar was packed and the audience moved the tables outside to make room for more chairs. A group of boys, with no money to buy a soda and the right to sit inside, crowded in the doorway to watch the game. In the waiting time before the game started, a large man wearing a Cameroonian flag like a cape would stand up occasionally, sing the Cameroonian national anthem or the “Eto’o, Eto’o!” song and try to march around the bar. The room was so full, however, he usually ended up marching to the chair in front of him and then marching in place. When the players finally came out on the field, the entire bar was quiet.

It was a close match; the game was tied up until the end. The Lions ended up breaking the tie with a goal in the last ten minutes of the game. When the Lions scored, the entire bar jumped up, yelling and screaming. Chairs were pushed out of the way to the sides of the room. People spent the last ten minutes alternating between holding their breath when Côte d’Ivoire had control of the ball and dancing when Cameroun had control. When time finally ran out and the Lions had won, everyone jumped up and down, splashing beer in the air and over the others in the bar. Men hugged each other and danced. The large man who had been wearing the flag as a cape held the flag over his head, ran (a little drunkenly, by this point) around the bar and tied the flag to the bottom of the cage holding the television. He started singing the national anthem again and was joined by everyone in the bar.

All of Baffoussam was a great fête that night. Dancing people spilled out of bars and continued dancing down the street. Strangers sat down next to each other in restaurants, congratulating themselves. “Eto’o, Eto’o!” blared out of every building with electricity. Moto drivers raced around the city, Cameroonian flags flapping off the back of their motorcycles, beeping their horns.

The next big game – a World Cup qualifier – was October 9th against Egypt. I don’t know all the details, but teams in the World Cup are decided by points that are awarded each time a team wins. Going into this game, the Lions and Côte d’Ivoire were 21-22. If the Lions won, they would qualify for the World Cup. If they lost or tied, it would be Côte d’Ivoire.

I had to go to Yaoundé last week for a SED steering committee meeting, so I went down early to watch the game in Yaoundé’s national stadium. The game started at 4:00 again, by noon the neighborhood around the stadium was filled with people. A group of us, wearing our green Lions t-shirts, walked over to the stadium around 2:00. We were searched by gendarmes twice and joined the mass of bodies filling into the stadium. Once inside, we found seats, buying 50 CFA pieces of cardboard to place on the muddy concrete.

The stadium was already a full writhing, stomping, cheering green mass. There were a few matching bands scattered around the stadium. I don’t mean anything like the official Lions marching band doing some sort of pre-game show. I mean a group of ten or twelve guys from the same neighborhood who gathered together all the instruments they could find, bought a bunch of tickets and danced in the stands playing music. There was a man in our section who had taken off his shirt, painted an Eto’o jersey on himself and who ran up and down the aisles. People sold sodas, candy, boiled peanuts, roasted peanuts. Two young women walked through the crowd painting the Cameroonian flag on peoples faces. A French camera crew walked along the other side of the chain-link fence separating the stands from the field, filming the crowd.

The announcers began not with the stats of the teams, but with the stats of the countries: European colonizers, dates of independence, political leaders, major exports, and geographic and ethnic diversity. Then the teams came out onto the field for a quick introduction before the players began their warm-ups. First the Egyptian team ran out on the field. Polite clapping all around the stadium. I could see two lonely, tiny white flags unfurl in the sea of green across the way. Next the Cameroonian team: The entire stadium shook with cheers, screaming of “Eto’o, Eto’o,” the music of the marching bands, stomping feet.

The Lions scored a goal within the first fifteen minutes. The entire stadium jumped up, men standing on roofs across the way danced side to side, neighbors in the stands hugged each other, the gendarmes smiled. The team then proceeded to act like they were out on the field having a picnic instead of trying to qualify for the World Cup. The Lions rode on their 1-0 lead for the rest of the first half.

In the second half, Egypt made another attempt at a goal. The Lions’ goalie jumped and reached for the ball, but it bounced off his hands into the net. The stadium was silent; no one moved or made a sound. The two lonely white Egyptian flags waved. The score was tied 1-1; it felt like the entire stadium was holding its’ breath. When we came to just a few minutes left in the game with the score still tied, men started to filter out of the stadium, shaking their heads and muttering “C’est finit. Marde!”

But then the Lions were awarded a penalty kick. Hope spread across the stadium. If the Lions made this shot, they would lead 2-1. If they held onto that lead for the few minutes until the end of the match, they would go to the World Cup.

The Lions missed the penalty kick.

The game was over. People sunk to their seats, holding their heads in their hands. The Lions players fell to the ground and curled in the fetal position. The gendarmes looked for people to harass. Photographers snapped pictures of crying players and fans. The two lonely white flags disappeared quickly. People filled out of the stadium in a large, silent pack.

We stayed that night in the Peace Corps compound, which has a sort of hostel for traveling volunteers. The Peace Corps site in is the Omnisport neighborhood on a small street a few hundred yards up from the intersection in front of the stadium. We bought street food and sat in an Omnisport bar, eating our diner and listening to the room discussing the game. The city was loud outside the bar, but not with the celebration-sounds of the last game against Côte d’Ivoire. Teenage boys looked for reasons to get in fights, stopping to dispute things that normally wouldn’t cause them to slow down. The gendarmes marched up and down the street, semi-automatics strapped across their backs, directing traffic and guarding the 33 Export and Guinness delivery trucks. Mommies sat behind their grilled fish and boiled peanuts, eying the crowded streets. When kids started throwing rocks and bricks at passing buses that were thought to contain the departing Lions, the bartender closed the gates and locked the iron bars over the door. We laughed at being locked inside a bar for our safety.

Later that night the rumors started circulating: Crowds had burned down the house of the player who missed the penalty shot, or maybe of the player’s father. Jacques Chirac placed a telephone call and picked the player to take the penalty shot, causing the Lions to lose. The Lions team had to wear gendarme uniforms and march out of the stadium to escape the angry mobs waiting for their bus.

In many places here in Africa, it’s not religion but football that is the opiate of the masses. The Lions good showing in the 1990 World Cup is credited by some as relieving pressure on President Paul Biya for allowing multi-party elections. So, the way I see it there are two potential good things to come out of this. First, maybe without the World Cup to focus on, energies and attentions can be freed up for other concerns here in Cameroun. And the second is that Côte d’Ivoire, which has been teetering on the brink of civil war for a while now, might benefit from a little opiate, if only enough to channel the building tensions into something more constructive. But whatever happens on the political front, the football front is pretty easy to predict: We’ll be lamenting Cameroun’s missed chance for the World Cup and discussing that penalty kick for at least the next six months. But come 2006 and the beginning of the World Cup, we’ll forget about that long enough to cheer on the Africans.

I haven’t been writing here much lately mainly because nothing that big has been happening. Life has started settling into a rhythm for me, and it is a rhythm that I think doesn’t really translate into interesting material. A typical day goes something like this:

6:30: Wake up. Start water boiling for coffee. I recently learned how to make real coffee without a machine and my life has improved dramatically. Get dressed. Find something to eat.

7:00 - 8:00: Drink coffee, eat breakfast and read. Just finished Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Not exactly shining analysis, but funny and stomachable at this early hour. Also just got the latest Harry Potter from the Canadian anthropologist in Baganté.

8:00: Leave my house for the bank. Say hello to the peanut mommies in the garre.

8:10 - 8:45: Wait for the bank employees to show up.

8:45 - 12:00: Sit in the bank. Learn how to do paperwork.

12:00 - 1:00: Reheat leftovers. Eat lunch. Read more.

1:00 - 3:30: Sit in the bank. Try to keep up with the conversations of the employees, which move back and forth between French and Bangou’s own language.

3:30: Go home, exchange greetings with the women who cook in my concession. Often involves using the infrequently-studied 15th French tense: The present obvious. Ex., Me: Hello. The women in the concession: You have returned. Me: I am there.

4:00 - 5:30: Go exploring. Maybe down though the valley to Batchingou, or toward Bana and the forest. Pass though fields where women cultivate beans and peanuts. Have learned that pineapples grow on things that look like bushes, not at all on tall trees like I always imagined.

5:30: Look around the carrefour for vegetables for dinner. Am always hopeful for potatoes, squash or green peppers but usually end up with tomatoes and basil. Go home and write for a while, or maybe sketch or read again.

6:15: Head back up to the carrefour, and over to Therese’s boutique. By boutique, I mean bamboo-walled, dirt-floored, tin-roofed, ten-foot by fifteen-foot shack. But there’s an overhang out front with a few benches. Sometimes Therese will give me a beer, sometimes I’ll give her one, sometimes I’ll buy a beer for Odette, my favorite mommie next door.

7:00: Head home and make dinner.

7:30 - 9:00: Eat and read again. Good thing I brought a lot of books.

9:00: Bathe with water heated up on the stove and poured into a big bucket.

9:30: Read again before going to sleep.

Excitement means going into Baffousam to go to the tailor, or market day here in Bangou and the eternal search for different vegetables. Or maybe going to Baganté to check the post office box. People give me things a lot, and they are the most simple, touching things. By this I mean that people give me whatever it is they have to give: Odette gives me grilled corn and manioc. Sylvie gives me mushrooms. Therese gives me peanuts and beer. The butcher gives me meat. Sometimes I stop by a restaurant here and talk with the man who owns it about opposition politics, Cameroun before colonization, Roots, the first Bangou chef to have a car. I do a lot of explaining myself, a lot of waving because it’s the only response to all the staring, a lot of learning new names and then promptly forgetting them, a lot of clasping my hands together and saying "Oh, mama" to women who speak to me in Bangou’s patois. I stand on the road and look at the mountains. I try to not slip in the mud. I wait for things a lot: People, phone calls, cars to fill or be fixed, letters.

I’ll try to make it more interesting next time, but can’t promise that it will translate. If all goes well at the internet café today, I'll post pictures from my walks, so check the photo site again.

À la prochain.

The post below was written early last week, but I haven't had a good enough Internet connection to post it until now. I have been in Bangou one week today and am settling in nicely. I have a gigantic apartment (not at all the mud hut in the jungle) that has (spotty) electricity but no running water. My apartment is right in the intersection that sort of acts as the 'downtown' of Bangou, though 'downtown' is extremely misleading. Really, it's where the paved road and the dirt road meet. I'll try to get some pictures up of Bangou in the coming weeks, it's even more beautiful than Bandjoun.

We’ve got this saying going around stage: “Sometimes Africa wins, and sometimes you do.”

Today I wake up, eat breakfast and walk toward Bandjoun Central, where the taxis wait for passengers. As I walk, the sun is just beginning to get strong and the mist is beginning to rise over the Bandjoun hills. I see a taxi on my road; the driver slows as he passes me and I shout out my destination: “Mbo!” “Yes, yes. Get in. We will let others off first but you will get there. It will be like tourism for you.” So I get in the front seat and we drive off to Bandjoun Central, turning right on Avenue Paul Biya instead of the usual left. Past the Presbyterian church, we stop to let out the other front-seat passenger and I get the seat to myself for the next ten minutes as we finish the long way to the training site. The taxi lets me off in front of the training site as my friend Kathryn walks up. We chat on the way down the hill and get seats just as training starts.

During lunch, I set off back to Bandjoun Central because I have to run some errands. I’ve got to stop by the tailors to pick up a dress I am having fitted and head to the garre (taxi park) to find a driver to take me and all my stuff to post on Thursday. I get out of the taxi across the street from the seamstress’ shop. I chat with Mary the tailor for a few minutes before grabbing my dress and walking downtown. Waving to the Ibrahim of Chez Ibrahim, I walk down from Avenue Paul Biya to the garre.

I tell the charger (the guy calling out destinations and matching passengers with drivers) that I am looking for a ride to Bangou on Thursday. He takes me off to another charger and goes back to looking for today’s paying customers. I tell the next guy that I am looking for a ride to Bangou on Thursday and he starts leading the way to a guy standing in front of a taxi. I tell him again: “I do not want to go to Bangou today, I want to go Thursday.” “I understand you. I am finding you a driver now.” We walk up to a few different drivers and finally find one who is interested in talking about Thursday’s business. I tell the driver I want a car to Bangou for two passengers, one fridge, one bike and three big bags. He and the charger discuss the route for a while and after hearing “Bangouville” I correct them that I want to go to Bangou Carrefour. The driver decides he will do it and I ask him how much. “Cinq mill.” Five thousand CFA, or about ten dollars. That’s a good price, so I agree. “Ok,” he says, “I charge here everyday, so come find me Thursday and we will go to Bangou.” “No, no, no. You will meet me here at ten a.m., we will drive to my neighborhood, pick up my stuff and go to Bangou. I want your phone number in case you aren’t here. And it’s 5 mill for everything, including the two passengers.” “Ok, ok. Ten o’clock. Five mill. And I don’t have a phone but my friend does so you can call him.” “Good. Deal.”

That accomplished, I head off searching for some lunch. Kathryn is supposed to be meeting me in Bandjoun but she hasn’t shown up yet so I go across the street to get some soya. The soya is grilled beef on kabob sticks, with onions grilled along side and peanuts crushed on top, all brushed with spicy piedmont-pepper oil. After finishing the soya off while sitting on the steps of the bakery, I head back across the street to see if I can find any pineapple. I walk by the fruit mommies, who tell me that there’s no pineapple today. “Whoa-oh. You are looking for pineapple,” a big market mommy calls to me. She tells me to wait there, disappears into a shack behind the row of fruit mommies and comes out with four pineapples. I tell her I only want one, but I want to eat it now. So she sits down, gets out her knife and starts peeling my pineapple for me, slicing it into quarters length-wise with the stem for handles. I pay her CFA 200 ($0.35) and walk back up to the road to catch a taxi, having given up that Kathryn will make it in time.

As a taxi is just pulling over, Kathryn walks over. I wave the taxi on and we head across the street to the porc bar. (Nobody knows if the porc bar has an official name. But it’s a bar and there is a guy who sells grilled porc and plantains outside.) I say “M’gak-ka” to the owner and the woman who works there. “Ah-lueta,” they say back to me, laughing and shaking my hand. People here love it when we greet them in their patois, or their local language. Kayt and I have a beer and eat some pineapple. We grab a taxi back to the training site for the rest of the sessions today, which is the last day of training.

Our taxi stops a few hundred meters before the police check point. There are police or gendarme checkpoints along most roads – or sometimes just checkpoint by locals who get together and make blue-coat uniforms – and cars are stopped with a board with nails sticking out pulled across the road with a rope. They look for ‘infractions,’ which are usually solved with CFA 500. This particular checkpoint has become much worse in the past few weeks, since the government announced that, for public safety, all taxis should have only one passenger in the front seat and no more than four in the back. But of course, gas prices (and checkpoint fees) are too high for chauffeurs to make a living this way. Thus, taxis often stop before the checkpoint, one or two people get out of the car and walk across the checkpoint, then the taxi waits for them on the other side. So when our taxi stops, a young man gets out of the backseat, Kayt gets out of the front (where she has been sitting with me) and into the back. Then the young man starts running toward the checkpoint. The whole cabs laughs at him. (Camerounians don’t run much; there aren’t many things to rush for around here.) “Why is he running?,” I ask the chauffer. “I think he must be in a big hurry to get to Baffousam.” He runs all the way to the other side of the checkpoint; this is the only time I’ve not waited at least five minutes to pick up our passenger.

After training is over, my taxi home is stopped by the gendarmes. I am in the backseat this time, with one young mom with a baby on her lap and one older mom with a child of maybe seven on her lap. We have only one person in the front seat. All of the passengers can hear the chauffeur discussing with the gendarme outside. The gendarme claims that we have five people in the backseat; the chauffeur claims the children don’t count. All of the passengers, including me, start sucking their teeth and complaining about the gendarmes. “The children don’t count!” “They are small and on their mothers’ laps!” “He is just looking for money.” “We are only three here!” “They dérange.*” Nous sommes ensembles.** Our chauffer finally comes back, maybe having paid and maybe not, and we head back out on the road again. The taxi drops me off at the Carrefour de Lycee, and I head home for dinner with my family: Pork in peanut sauce over rice.

Today could have gone like this: I could have woken up to find that their was no gas in the bottle for the stove, and had water and bread for breakfast but no coffee. Then, I could have slipped in the mud walking up through the corn fields, and not found a taxi on my road. Maybe, I would get to downtown Bandjoun and had to wait for a taxi there. By then, I would have been late for training. During lunch, my dress would not have been ready at the tailors’ yet, even though she told me it would be ready today, and I would not have been able to find the French words I needed to hire a taxi to go to post. The chauffeur could have given me a high price, or I could have forgotten to say it was 5 mill for everything. The mommies could have told me the pineapple was finished and offered me plantains instead. I could have forgotten “M’gak-ka.” Letting someone out to cross the checkpoint could have been upsetting and demoralizing, instead of hilarious. I may have been late again, had the young man not sprinted across the checkpoint. We could have not been ensembles in the taxi, and the other passengers could have looked at me like I was crazy complaining with them. Or they could have sucked their teeth at me. The chauffeur could have refused to go to my intersection. We could have had plantains for supper. It could not be the last day of training. All of these things have happened. But not today. Sometimes Africa wins, and sometimes you do.

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*To disturb or bother. Used to describe strict mothers, little brothers, dogs, crazy people, gendarmes, police and little children who follow me yelling “Le blanc, le blanc! Doc!”

** We are together, a popular Cameroonian saying.

I've uploaded some photos to share.

Most of the Bangou photos were taken on a PC trip to the chefferie. Here, the chefs are the traditional rulers and are sort of like crosses between kings and mayors. They are definitely 'nobles' and are given the respect as such. But it seems to me to be a lot more practical that what the American idea of a king might be. Before colonization, they were the system for keeping law and order. Now, there are traditional rulers and legal rulers.

Click here for more photos: Pictures! (That's http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessieincameroon)

The thing about these French-speaking countries is everyone speaks French. And basically, nine weeks ago I didn’t speak French. Peace Corps uses these modified language guidelines for judging proficiency. It’s a ten level system, ranging from Novice Low to Superior. Nine weeks ago I tested in at Novice-Low:

“Speakers at the Novice-Low level have no real functional ability and, because of their pronunciation, they may be unintelligible.”

My first night with my host family in a nutshell. My host mom and sister came to pick me up in Bandjoun and pretty quickly established that I couldn’t understand a word they said. My host sister just gave up after a while, but my host mom kept going and I trailed after her with my French dictionary. That first night was a whole bunch of her questions and my responses of “Je ne comprends pas.” Finally, my host mother – and mind you this is a woman who speaks pretty good English but taught two other American PCVs French before I came to town and she knows the drill – looked at me, pointed her finger and said “Tu vas comprendre!” (“You are going to understand!”)

In order to go to post in an Anglophone province (Cameroon has two provinces that were colonized by the British and where English is the main common language) a PCV must test to Intermediate-Mid and to Intermediate-High French for a Francophone province. Bangou is in the West province, a Francophone area. Now I think this is great, and am looking forward to learning French (and also to the confused looks that will come in Europe when people try to figure out why this white lady has an African accent) but I was really stressed out by the language exam.

See, the thing is that I am ready to go to post. I get along great with my host family and like Bandjoun. I’m making friends with the other stagiaires and definitely having a good time, but it’s time to go. I want to be in my own apartment with my own things, which I can clean or not whichever way I choose.* I want to start working and getting to know my town. I want to read and hike and cook and talk to people. I do not want to stay here in training. But, if you don’t pass your French test, you get two more weeks of French classes tacked on after everyone else goes to post.

Now I am not concerned about being able to talk to people. I can get my point across in the market, in the taxis and around the neighborhood. The week of site visit I traveled around with no problem. When I came back from site visit I was telling my host brother a story about my trip and after a while, he started laughing before I got to the funny part. I asked him what was so amusing and he said, “It’s funny to watch you look for the word you want.” I told him to be quiet, because a few weeks ago he couldn’t understand anything I said.

But I passed my French test. I am now at Intermediate-High. I’ve given my final presentations (two half hour presentations in French, thank you), filled out the mountains of paperwork, received my bike and motorcycle helmets and am now just waiting for the days to pass before getting to post. Today is the 20th, by noon on the 24th I’ll be a Peace Corps Volunteer instead of a trainee and by the evening of the 25th I’ll be unpacking in Bangou.

I’ll have another P.O. box once I get to post. It’ll be in Banganté, the closest town of a decent size. Stuff sent to Yaoundé will still reach me. The address:

B.P. 31

Banganté

Cameroun

À la prochain.

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*One could say that, like most things, the concept of cleanliness is a cultural concept or one could say that Cameroonians have a weird idea of what’s clean. As far as I can tell, Cameroonian cleanliness revolves around le combat de boue, or the battle with the mud. Every evening, Cameroonians wash their shoes and every morning they walk to work or the market though the mud; when they return home, they wash their shoes again and on it goes. But in the kitchen, behind the stove, there may be sixteen years of accumulated dirt, grime and oil splashings all over the wall. What I mean is, if I don’t want to, I won’t clean my shoes at night but I will wipe my kitchen down with some bleach-water. Of course, then I will be known around town as la blanche with the dirty shoes.

We got an unexpected break from training today, so we headed out to a fancy hotel we'd heard sells burgers and fries. May sound normal to you folks back home, but to someone who has had plantains boiled, fried, mashed and covered in fish sauce, someone who regularly engages in conversations about rice and beans at Chez Ibrahim, Chez Roger or Gaston's for lunch and someone who saw an entire pig head in a pot last night (along with plantains, of course), a burger and fries sounds heavenly.

But first, there's this thing that happens in Cameroonian restaurants. Things get finished. Over there, in the land of Wallmarts and Ralph's and Longs, when things are finished, you buy more. Better yet, you buy more before things are finished and then things never actually finish. Not so here. Example: A group of us are in Dschang the weekend of site visit and decide to splurge for a nice meal. We think we've spotted a decent restaurant - meaning it serves either chicken, beef or fish with either fries or plantains - and stop to speak with the woman there.

"Do you have everything on the menu today?"

"Yes, everything."

"Ok, good."

We sit and look at the menu. Personally, I've been craving me some fried chicken and french fries, so I start off:

"I'll have the quarter chicken and french fries."

"Potatoes are finished."

We all snort a little 'humph' through our noses and another PCT asks:

"Is anything else finished?"

"No."

"Nothing else at all? You have everything here except for the potatoes?"

"Yes."

Not bad.

"Ok, I'll have the chicken and plantains."

"Chicken is finished."

"What is there today?"

"Fish and plantains."

So we left and went back to the bar we'd been to the previous day, a cold beer place - as opposed to a fresh beer place. I have absolutely no idea why beer that's not cold is fresh but that is the way things go. If you order a beer, they'll ask if you want cold beer. If you ask for cold beer and it's finished, they say there's only fresh in a way that's sort of like, "Cheer up, the chicken may be gone and you may hate plantains by now and the beer may be warm, but at least it's fresh." I've not seen anybody turn down a fresh beer yet.

I should have known better than to expect the hotel to actually have the burgers, but I didn't. Those were also finished. The other PCTs went back toward Bandjoun for rice and beans at either Chez Ibrahim, Chez Roger or Gaston's but I just couldn't take yet another plate of rice and beans. So I wandered off looking for a restaurant I tried a few weeks ago. I found it: My soda was fresh, but my fried chicken and fries were excellent. Patience won, even though the mayo was finished.

We found out our posts a week or so ago. I will be in Bangou, a small town in the West Province. Bangou used to be up on top of a mountain, and the surrounding territory stretched down the mountain and across the valley floor below to the base of the next mountain over. There is a road that runs from the top of the mountain down to the base, and this road connects at a T-intersection with the main road on the valley floor. In the 1980s, the main road on the valley floor was paved, while the road up top was left to have rain run gullys through it during the rainy season and have dust cover everything during the dry season. Since the main road was paved, Bangou has slowly shifted from the top of the mountain to the base. The original Bangou is now called Bangouville and the base is called Bangou Carrefour, or Bangou intersection. There is a bank in Bangou Carrefour that is part of a big network of Cameroonian microbanks, and a one-person satellite of the bank in Bangouville. I'll also be working with another microbank in Bamena, a few minutes away. (In case you are noticing the plethora of Ba-something towns, that is because the prefix Ba means 'people of,' so Bangou means 'people of Ngou,' Bandjoun means 'people of Ndjoun,' and so on.)

Bangou is a small, small place. It has a market every eight days (the traditional calendar is an eight-day calendar) that sells your basics: Pineapple, tomatoes, avocados, peanuts, potatoes and plastic flip-flops. The taxis in Bangou are either the worst automobiles on the face of the planet or feats of engineering and ingenuity. The cars are mainly tiny little Toyota or Datsun four-doors and have spent the last twenty-five years bouncing up and down the road from Bangou Carrefour to Bangoville with eight passengers inside and a bushel of plantains or two and a goat strapped to the top. It can be really hard to find rides up and down the mountain, because there's not very many cars, not very many people who want to make the trip and each car wants seven paying passengers in order to justify the trip. (In case you are wondering where the eight people fit, that's four in the backseat, two in the front passenger seat and the driver plus a 'petite chauffeur' in the drivers seat.)

I've spent the last few days traveling around the West province and visiting Bangou. The PCV I will be replacing and I went up to Bangouville to meet some farmers he has worked with and another volunteer who is posted up there. We headed up in the morning, after waiting for 45 minutes for the car to fill, and spent the rest of the morning up there before eating lunch with the farmer and his wife. We headed back to the spot where cars pick up passengers and proceeded to wait for two hours for a ride. During our wait, two cattle herders came though town with about a dozen cattle. Here in Cameroon, nobody ships their cattle to market in a lorry, they walk them to market. These cows were skinny and had obviously been walking for awhile. The herders stopped the cows in Bangouville's main intersection, where many of the cows proceeded to lay down for a nap. As the cows rested, one herder smoked a cigarette while the other talked with some Bangouville men. Some money changed hands, and one herder cut off four cows from the rest of the group while the other started the remaining cows down the mountain. Two of the cows left behind stayed sleeping quietly in the street, but two weren't happy about being separated from their friends and tried to make a dash for the rest of the heard. The local children and I proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes watching the biggest news in Bangou, and the herder chased down side-streets after the wayward cows, only to get them back to the intersection and have them run for it again.

After the excitement finally died down and still no cars had shown up, we decided to walk down the mountain, about a two and a half hour walk. While the steep hills and rainy-season gullys made for a difficult walk, the views were absolutely amazing. I am still working on adequate descriptions for the landscape here, but think that it may have to wait for pictures to be posted. The mountains are green, with low-lying vegetation and steep ravines, and with clouds covering their tops. The valley is more of the vegetation green and mud red. It's just beautiful.

We walked about two-thirds of the way, passing people on their way back up, when a car with two empty places passed us going down. We got in and continued down the mountain for a minute or two, only to slow down waiting for the heard of cows to make room for us on the road. The car let us out at the intersection without charging a fare, and we went off to make dinner.

So before heading to the internet cafe in Baffosam, I typed what I considered an eloquent update on my time thus far in Bandjoun. I even had a couple pictures to share. But African heat and humidity doing what they do to disks, I get to start all over again. I'm going to keep it short and say that things are mostly wonderful and what's not wonderful is still exciting. Bandjoun is beautiful. The dirt here is red, redder than Amador County red, and with the rain everything is turned to red mud. Corn grows everywhere - Imagine where we put lawns in Southern California and you'll have a little idea of where the corn is grown here.

Peace Corps is taking care of us, keeping us in walk around money, medical information sessions and technical homework. Learning French is hard. We joke that some days are ET days - early terminate, aka quitting the peace corps. But other days I understand what the vendors in the market say and am able to have great conversations with my host mother. In another week or two I'll find out my site. More later, quality depending on if the internet cafe eats my disk.

Well, it's almost here. Next week, I head to Philadelphia for staging and then to Cameroon on June 17. Once in country, I'll be in training until the end of August and then it's on to my site where I will spend the next two years working in the small enterprise development program.

We can use this site to keep in contact over the next 27 months. I'll post periodically -- or just whenever I have somewhat reliable access -- and you folks out there can check in when you like. Old fashioned letters appreciated, my p.o. box is to the right.

More to come once I have more to tell.