Phone Credit Low? Africans go for Beeping

Notes: Article forwarded by B.

For Dan:

Anyone who's ever dieted has heard the idea of removing themselves from temptation. "Don't keep sweets in the house", for example, is a common maxim. So is, "only go shopping when your willpower is high".

Those same dieters know how rough it can be to try to lose weight when you've got a friend who isn't quite taking you seriously: the girl or guy who brings over a pizza after you've been living on salad greens for a week, or who gives you a gift of chocolate-covered cherries right after you've made the big go-to-the-gym-every-day New Year's Resolution (9 times out of 10 your friend is insecure about their own weight, and 9 times out of 10 you were gonna bomb your diet anyway).

Everybody battles with willpower. So much so, in fact, that obesity has become one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States (and is quickly becoming so in the rest of the world as well). A hundred years ago, we were skinny, but dying of measles and pneumonia. Nowadays, we've got ways to control infectious disease, but are dying of diabetes and circulatory diseases instead.

Now, here's the question: have people become weaker-willed then they were a century ago?

(I hope nobody said yes...)

Everyone's clear that the problem is one of lifestyle: we've gotten sedentary, and we're really busy, and fast food and premade cr*p is super easy to get a hold of, plus it tastes really good. So how do we get out of the hole that we've dug for ourselves?

From a public health perspective, let's look at two broad approaches one might consider. One is called 'health education' and one is called 'environmental modification'.

One example of 'Health Education' would be when your general practitioner or whoever sits down with you for an hour during your yearly check-up, talks about how that spare tire you're carrying is really detrimental to your lifestyle, and suggests some strategies and maybe some resources to help you lose weight. Maybe your cholesterol has gotten high and he wants you to try a diet before he puts you on a medication that may have dangerous side-effects. Or maybe you're the parent of an obese kid and your pediatrician suggests more outdoor play.

I think everyone is more or less familiar with this approach. Frankly, it works for some people, and not for others, depending on lots of somewhat vague preconditions such as what 'stage of change' the patient, is in (do you want to lose weight? or do you really think it's not a problem?) or how well the health education message is culturally relevant to you, or maybe how much personal attention you recieve.

"Environmental Modification" is a second approach, often used in conjunction with the first. When I think of environmental change, what I think of is the snazzy modern architecture that's become faddish with, for example, Sprint (http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/diet.fitness/07/27/healthy.architecture/index.html). The concept is to make buildings, (or even communities) that promote good health. For example, a building that has a big, airy staircase right when you come in the front door, and pleasant, easily accessible stairwells that lead to other floors. The elevators, by contrast, might be stuck in the back of the building, a bit out of the way. Or there might not be many elevators, thereby increasing the wait time on anyone. (Not that there wouldn't be elevators when you really needed them - just that they wouldn't be quite so visible.)

The goal: make stairwalking easy, and attractive, so that people just do it by default. Then they get more activity without even realizing it, and become a little more healthy.

(If you think this is ridiculous, btw, one study showed that people who live on the fourth floor of apartment buildings actually have statistically significantly fewer heart attacks than their neighbors on the first floor. A few steps a day may not seem like much, but it builds up.)

Other environmental interventions: put the parking lot a little farther from the main building, but make sure there's a nice (maybe covered, if you live in a cold part of the world) walkway linking everything together.

Or: (here's one every school kid hates) No soda machines in schools. Then the little ones can't have Pepsi even if they want to, and are forced to stick to milk instead (sure, they might rebel by smoking crack, but that's another story...).

The question of 'how healthy is the environment in which you live?' is even increasingly becoming one of equity, because it's clear that the obesity epidemic isn't evenly distributed by class. Imagine you're a poor working mother living in a part of town that's not very safe: you've got no car, and the nearest grocery store selling fresh produce is two-bus-transfers away. But there's a McDonald's on every corner. You may find it more difficult to provide the healthy food to your family than the suburban Mom with access to a minivan and a hoity-toity Whole Foods just down the street.

Hence, there's been increasing talk of using legislation to regulate access to food. A 'fat tax' is one idea that gets thrown around: basically, charge your Burger King a tax if they only sell unhealthy food. Maybe allow them to avoid the tax if they offer a certain amount of healthier food as well. (http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/headline/2336).

(not surprisingly, a lot of people hate this idea, as you can read in the link)

Now, after all that (which I put in there because I personally find it so very fascinating) here's my personal take on the matter: if businesses want to start building better office complexes, and the government wants to tax restos for going heavy on the lard) that's probably a question for the policy makers who have to work out and weigh all the potential pros and cons of such a scenario.

But for me, on an individual level:I know that I'm a weak-willed person, and that, especially when it comes to food, I will generally take the path of least resistance. That's why I see trying to control my own environment as a primary goal. Controlling my own environment might include:

-renting an apartment that would force me to walk a little each day, for example, too or from the bus stop.

-attending the best school I can get into, because I know from experience that being surrouded by really studious classmates will encourage me to study more too.

-cancelling my cable subscription or throwing out the tv if I start to watch it more than an hour or so a day.

- other equally prosaic activities.

I think Dan made a point about how the potential downside of this type of approach is that, by avoiding the battle, you miss out on the reward that comes from facing a challenge, struggling to overcome it, and then finally learning something about yourself in the process. (hope I got this right, dan) My feeling is, that by avoiding temptation, you also start to build good habits, which is not exactly equivalent to willpower but will serve you in the future anyway. You can build willpower in other ways, anyway, so it's not like the two approaches are mutually exclusive.

Anyway, I think part of being a mature human being is being able to reasonably judge which challenges you can overcome, which you can't and are therefore better to avoid, and what things are even worth challenging yourself with. (Pick your battles carefully - I think it might be wrong to try and not deal with some deep personal or moral issue, for example, by avoidance.)

For example, I don't really think most people would say, "Someone who can't stop smoking is weak". Instead, we recognize that quitting smoking is really, really hard to do; and, if we don't want to deal with the hassle of quitting, maybe we don't start in the first place.

The other thing I would say is that this type of approach isn't really a departure from any other methods of dealing with a weakness that someone might use. If you have something you dislike about yourself, that you are struggling to overcome, it's only sensible to use all the tools at your disposal. Limiting yourself by sticking to only a couple of strategies also implies you are not really all that serious about fixing whatever the problem is.

(Don't you think the AA people probably have a lot of interesting things to say about this???)

So, I'm officially back in America (have been for a week) officially an RPCV (I've got my truck-stop pin and everything) and officially this blog is no longer about me running around Africa. Now it'll be... my innermost thoughts and yearnings, or something. I'll change the name too. As such, it'll probably be much less interesting than before.

America is great, but weird. I went to the Sprint store yesterday and I swear that it's just about the most hostile place on Earth. Everyone there was so mean! And brusque! Yet they insisted on calling you by your first name! I left feeling more uncomfortable than the Best Buy had made me (that was big, but at least impersonal.)

Plus the food here is so good. All the jelly rolls and pizza and chinese I've been dreaming about...

So the moral of my little story (I know morals are passe, but I love a chance to extemporize...) is: America is Awesome! But Cameroon is Awesome too! And I'm going to miss it...

I am now in Yaounde. I left my village a few days ago, and left Bamenda on Monday. It was much harder than I thought it'd be, but it still doesn't feel real.

It's hot and muggy, and the Peace Corps compound is something like a really, really dirty frat house - people everywhere, mice scuttering around (how many mice must there be if I'm seeing three or four a day???) and I'm running back and forth from the medical office trying to deliver blood samples, poop samples, etc. There's a giant hole in the backyard from where the water main is being repaired. One volunteer's tiny, wormy puppy fell into it- he got smashed by our heavy metal doors too, twice- he's cute and resilient....

I've packed and repacked my 2 giant metal trunks, trying to get all my stuff inside. I think I'm just barely gonna make it under the weight limit. We fly out Friday night and I'll hit Lexington late Saturday!

Whoo!!!

So, anyway, it's been a busy past coupe of weeks. After three weeks in Kribi and then Yaounde (by the last week I was pretty stir-crazy) I got back to post just in time to see the new Fon enthroned. This was pretty excited - we treked down to the old Mberowi palace for the festivities. Used a friend's GPS to measure the elevation: 450 meters difference between upper and lower mundum. (and 4.5 k, as the crow flies) So that's what I'm complaining about, guys, when I talk about how sick I am of walking up and down hills. The important people in the palace talked and talked all morning... then finally agreed on which of the old Fon's childred should be appointed. They named the man, and then everyone in the village was given a small stone to throw at him - this stoning is not symbolic, but supposedly allows the village to give power to the Fon, so that he cannot be hurt by juju... anyway, I started to get a little sick from the heat and my neighbor sent one of their kids back with me... we had an interesting talk because he was worried about the custom where, if an older brother dies, the younger should marry his wife... we talked about whether this was good or bad, and eventually decided that his brother should just marry a good woman, so that there wouldn't be any problems...

A few days later I went to Mambu, where a couple of things happened. The first was that one of the health PCVs was able to talk a doctor friend into letting me go on rounds with him at the local hospital. This was a lot to take in in one day, but really interesting. Apparently people in Cameroon suffer from a lot of hernias (unsuervised heavy lifting) but I also saw (this is not for the faint of heart or stomach) a woman who had mal-formed pelvic bones, so that her baby died during birth half in and half out and they had to do a c-section to get the body out and decapitate the head (the heath volunteer complained about the lack of a fetal monitor) and an man whose skin was falling off his legs because of some infection... a boarding school girl who wasn't sick at all but just missed her family and so faked a pain in her side (the doctors at first thought it might be a hernia), a 15 year old boy with TB (the doctor says that full-blown TB in such a young kid is almost guaranteed to be a sign of a suppressed immune system)... an aids patient who had come into the hospital weighting 32 kilos but is now receiving drugs and has gone up to 36... and about 70 other people, as the hospital was over-filled. I can't believe the doctor just let me follow him around like that, but I am really grateful to have had the chance.

Then in the afternoon we went to a grass-cutting festival at the bafut palace This is a ceremonial re-thatching of the house where the spirits of the dead fons are held, every part of the kingdom must bring grass. Actually it seemed to mostly involve a lot of eating and drinking, but we had to leave early as it was getting dark. One of the PCVs in Bafut had bought herself a traditional title and was given a Bafut name, Mabo (Mabeh? Mabuh? still not clear on how to say this.)

Anyway it's been a great and busy week and I am now running back to village in order to get my stuff together for school.

Stupid people annoy me. When I was younger, my attitude was just rude - to say what I thought of them. Now I find myself more mollifying. I don't particularly care about them, but, after all, we do have to share the same universe. And almost everyone is stupid about something.

My stupidity is definitely social. I am NOT one of those people who would ever rewind an evening in my head, thinking about what everyone did and said, because thinking back over all my stupid stuff that's come out of my mouth always makes me wince, even on the best of days...

I always have different games I play to help me fall asleep. The latest one is called 'Food Network'. I think of a meal I would like to cook or invent, and then I imagine going through the steps needed to prepare it. Last night's was chicken pot pie.

Bland enough for you? I wouldn't want to offend anybody today...

The COS conference has been nice. Today we are having French exams, which will be a bit of a joke for those of us in Anglophone. I can argue about a price in French, but not very well and that's about it. Therefore my exam will probably go something like this...

Examiner : Comment va la familie? (or whatever the correct french equivalent of this is)

Me - Cent franc! cent franc!

Examiner : Et comment va ta village?

Me - Diminuez la prix!

Stepped on the scale a few weeks ago and was surprised to see that somewhere in between now and January I've lost 5 pounds. Which brings my overall African-weight loss to... well, offically, 12 pounds, but probably more because I was in deep denial around the time i entered the country. More importantly, I'm now below 140, which has always been a sort of plateau I hit when dieting. I don't think I've weighed less than 140 since I was 16 years old.

This is also the first time in my life I've lost the weight while doing absolutely NOTHING to the effect of dieting. Actually, I eat Cameroonian food all day long. Cameroonian food is nothing but starch, dipped in palm oil. Veggies and meat are both on the scant side. (Watch a kid eat a piece of chicken some day and you'll see this - they suck ALL the meat off the bones, crack the bones, and suck out the marrow. A little chunk of nasty gristle sells for more than a whole plate of starch and oil.) I have a theory that not enough protein and vitamins creates what people call 'Africa Stomach' ie, always being hungry even after you've eaten a huge amount.

A lot of PC girls here gain weight... very fat girls always lose a ton of weight. Almost all guys lose, and even find it impossible to keep up the weight they want. My theory about this is that it's because girls know how to cook and guys dont. Also, I suppose girls might eat more for comfort. And everybody here has to walk a lot, so I guess that's a decent amount of exercise.

Also, everybody gets ameobic dysentary pretty often. The best way to get ameobas is to drink rainwater. A close second is to eat soya (grilled beef or goat) from Makenene (your cameroonian equivalent of fast food.)

I've been thinking that, when I get back to the US, I might put this new-found knowledge to good use. With the help of a SED (Small-business) volunteer I am putting together a company (name not yet determined, but it will be snappy and in French) selling stagnant rainwater and flagacile. The rainwater will be guarenteed to give you ameobas (a few days of light wooziness, little appetite, and sticking close to the bathroom) while the flagacile will clear it up as soon as you are ready.

A little twisted, maybe, but I think that in that in the harsh, competative climate of America's beauty 'mythology' people will go for it.

We are also going to sell sand from Kribi as an exfolient. It works pretty well, although all those little black flecks mixed in are new since they finished the pipeline last year.

As for me, I know I'm going to gain weight once I get back to the states. There's no way around it, there are just too many wonderful things I want to eat. For a while, I thought of being really careful, faiting la regime, as they say, to keep my new semi-svelte figure in place back in the US of A, but now I've had a change of heart. I'm going to gain the weight back anyway... cold, hard, experience has taught me that. I might as well enjoy myself while I do it. Why feel guilty while I slurp my Mocha Frappachino from Starbucks? o way, I'm going to enjoy every minute...

Here in Yaounde, I've updated my weblink 9 times in the past 3 minutes, checking to see if my Dad is around online to answer my emails. But it seems not. Oh well, Dad, I love you and miss you and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Everything is good here. A super-long bus ride from Bamenda has left my brains feeling like regurgitated mush and I'm hardly able to hold an idea in my head from beginning to completion. I am looking forward to a good solid week of just doing nothing. Which, by the way, Cameroon seems to have gotten me very good at. For example, Today on the bus I did nothing but stare out the window for 7 straight hours. Like a zombie. It wasn't even that bad. Though I have never gotten stoned, I believe my mind has learned how to put itself into an aproximately similar state, whenever I step into a vehicle. Small Cameroonian chirdren yelled 'White Man, white man, white man, white man white man long nose!" At me from outside. I gave them the finger. (Cameroonians hardly ever know what this means). Then the gendarmes stopped the bus and we had to sit for 45 minutes while they bickered with the drivers over papers.

I'm melting, melting! Meeeellting!

-G

Damn I hate paperwork. Stupid pieces of paper demanding information I can't remember and have no interest in seem to control my life. Got the school apps out of the way, finally (thanks, Mom!). But now there is a new, even more demanding hurdle to overcome.... Financial aid! Loan forms! Ahhhhhh!!!!! (Ominous music plays in the background) Life in Africa is way better because life in Africa is REAL. By which I mean filled with real drama. For example, let's compare my life at 15 with the life of my neighbor's children.

Me: Wake up. Eat breakfast. Go to school. Fret about school related problems. Go home. Do homework. Watch TV. Eat. Go to Bed.

Obed Ndenecho: Wake up. Eat breakfast. Go to school. Engage in mortal combat over rights to sand-pit. Eat lunch. Significantly impact his family's financial situation with after school job (hauling sand). Protect little sister from crazy woman with an ax. Notice that other neighbor's house has been burned down.

In other words, much more genuine excitment! I think genuine excitment must, by definition, involve a certain amount of risk, either physical or otherwise. Not getting enough of that in the US makes us all a little neurotic, because we loose the ability to put things in perspective. Not that I mind... if I wasn't neurotic, I don't know what I'd be. My whole personality is built around it.

Ciao!

This is an advert I picked up in a bush taxi... all grammatical and spelling mistakes are as printed.

THE BLACK STONE

The black stone is a marvelous remedy against Animal bits, such as snakes, cats, dogs, abbess, weaklos, bees, pile, scorpion etc...

METHODS OF USAGE

If you are victim of any of the above mentioned infection, cut the area with a new blade, place the black stone in the affected area that will suck the blood and only comes out when the bad blood is all finished.

Do not touch the stone with your hands when it falls because it can affect you again. Look for a nylon paper or dry wood to pick up the stone and put it into hot water for 30 minutes at least take now and dry in the sun or fire. If the is no hot water then put it inside milk for 20 minutes rinse and dry.

The black powder comes from the black stone it treats internal wounds like! stomach dysentary heart attack and it is anti poison or wounds.

1. ANTI SNAKE: When you suspect snakes to be around where you stay spray the powder round the place and when the snake hears the smell they will run or die.

2. PILE: When surfing for pile, look for 1bo cocoa leaves then mix the powder with red oil and consume the greatest part and rub the rest in your anus for about 20 minutes. Prepare some pawpaw roots about 12litres (drink until the treatment is over that last for 1 month 2 weeks for complete healing.

3. STOMAC: As you know stomach problems are wounds or warms, consuming the black powder with red oil will dry off the wounds or kill the warms in your stomach. If the problem has lasted for more than 1 year you are to continuously consume this combination for 1 month or more for effective result.

1 to 5 years 3 to 5 packets to consume

5 to 12 years 7 to 25 packets to consume (for complete treatment)

This treatment can attack any other hidden sickness in your body (meet your salesman for more details)

WOUNDS: If you have any wound just clean the place and apply this powder for immediate healing and sealing of the wound.

ANTI POISON: In case of poison you should mix the black powder with honey or milk take a good quantity for immediate reaction.

Cheers All! Walka fine!

-G

Nothing much going on. I dey for Buea, for SW, to work on ed journal and then continue on to yaounde. School is slow - no classes the whole first week (that would be crazy, who has classes the first week?) no classes second week (feast of the ram on tues and staff meeting wed, teachers took mon, thurs and fri off) and no school this week (im in buea). All of which is leaving me very, very far behind with my level 3s. Oh, well, itll all work out somehow. Kind of funny that this seems to be the attitude of most people in Cameroon, a place where stuff DOESNT work out significantly more than it doesnt work out in the US.

I love being lazy.

I'm not leaving that soon, but it takes me a while to get stuff together here, so starting now I'm going to begin gathering things (gifts) to take home with me. However, those of you who have enjoyed my little Bath and Bodyworks giftbaskets and half-price CDs in the past know that I don't always have the best gift-sense in the world. So, please please please, if you have an idea of something you would like from Cameroon, email me and say what it is and I will try to get it for you. Don't be shy because

1 - I like to shop. I love to shop. Please give me an excuse to shop!

2 - Stuff is cheap here, so I can afford to shop, which I can't in the US

3 - Anyone bothering to read this blog has automatically entitled themselves to an awesome gift

And, as further incentive (I'm going for the carrot/stick approach here) anyone who DOES NOT tell me what they want is going to recieve... a kabbah! Yes, that's right, the kabbah, the African answer to the muumuu, a dress that makes you pregnant SIMPLY BY PUTTING IT ON. If any of you ladies out there imagine that sounds sexy, think again. Think neon tent and that line from R&J about the nurse sailing across the street.

Here are some things you can ask for:

1 - batik wall hangings and tablecloths

2 - wooden statues (stylized carvings of women carrying things on their heads, mainly)

3 - patchwork panya purses

4 - wrap skirts

5 - panya boxers

6 - raffia bags, brass candleholders with little lizards around the base, cow horn drinking cups (only for the men), crazy traditional hats, small leather boxes, etc.

Other news: Today I rode in a car (Toyota sedan) that had 8 other passengers and an entire cow, cut into pieces, shoved into the trunk. And a chicken between the driver's feet. And I'm sooo integrated that my first thought about the situation was, 'hey, maybe I can get that guy to sell me some beef!' In the end, he did one better - dashed me a whole half of the liver, which I carried around in my purse all day. Oh my god, I'm a freak, aren't I?

Earlier news: What happened last week, before Xmas, was sort of interesting. I went to the Bafut Fon's palace for a initiation/dance, which was a huge event and drew people from the whole Northwest. At least a thousand men in traditional robes, with old fashioned shotguns, and traditional cutlasses, the whole shebang. The Fon is the king of the Bafut region and interestingly his sister, the Mafor, also has her own palace and her own wives (actually the Fon's wives, but they work for her). She is quite powerful as well - I accidently almost sat in one of her chairs (it just looked like all the others) and got a real talking-too, as appartently it is for her use exclusively.

Anyway, events early in the day omened what would happen later on - I was there with my village 'elites' - a bunch of old guys dressed up and already getting smashed on palm wine - and they realized they hadn't enough gunpowder for their dance. So we had guys wandering in an out with sacks of gunpowder, pulling it out, looking it over, haggling over the price all moring. The stuff was flowing around the palace as freely as wine.

Later in the afternoon I ran into some other volunteers. As we waited for the dancing to begin, someone in my group offered to let me shoot off his gun, and I thought, yeah, great, absolutely!

But as we were waiting for out turn to go on, there was a big explosion from behind where the crowd was seated. People started running away, afraid that it would get larger... from the smoke staggered a man who was seriously burned, his traditional robes still on fire.

Immediately the chaos got worse - some people were running over to help him, others running away - and the people trying to help him were all doing and saying contradictory things. One volunteer with me jumped into the fray, at first telling the man to roll on the ground and then shouting for water - but no one could tell what she was saying. Soon the people had managed to take off the man's burning robe and stamp it into the ground, and as the man continued wandering around - he was stunned - they pulled off all his other clothing as well, (it was all smoking) until he was down to his boxers. Luckily there was a hospital literally across the street. The whole thing only took a few minutes.

Once the guy was led off, the dancing started back up again. At that point, we were pretty ready to go, but the dancing blocked things off for another half hour - right away the guys went back to shooting the guns everywhere, and other circumstances, the whole thing would have been really impressive. A form 2 kid from my school had his horse and was making it buck and rear! He fell off once, but slid down the horses back so easily that it was clear he had practically been born on the animal's back.

The story going around was that the man was either smoking with gunpowder in his pocket, or had a gun backfire on him while he was trying to shoot it. Either way I kept well clear of the firearms after that (and got laughed at by the Mundumers for it.)

The volunteer who was trying to help ended up with blood and skin on her arms and, because she had some scrapes there as well, peace corps sent her to Yaounde for hiv profelaxis.

This was enough excitement to set me up afterwards for a quiet christmas in the villlage. I went to church, did a lot of visiting, ate myself sick, but didn't make it down to the village party later in the evening.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

-G

Ive been a bad little blogger recently. Too busy... or nothing to say.

News: I am now 25 years old. Ancient... grandmotherly... wrinkled and gray and hobbling towards the grave. I dont feel so old, but that doesnt stop my age from changing anyway.

Went into town Wednesday for a meeting thursday with pc wash. It was fine, but long. after the meeting we got to eat dinner with the ambassador. This should have been interesting except that we were all really tired from the meeting before, and therefore not very good conversation. "Mr. Ambassador... uh... what is your favorite country?" "Mr. Ambassador, do you like being ambassador?" etc. It was also really nice to see some SW people that I havent met for months and months.

Spent Friday shopping and doing other random stuff. I like Bamenda, but I have like 4 things I do here - internet, shopping for food, fabric shopping, and eating out - and once Ive done those 4 its pretty much time to go.

IST is here next week. Im looking forward to seeing some more people Ive missed for a while and to meeting some of the newer ones as well.

Peace Out

-G

Spent some of my time today googling old high school classmates, trying to figure out what they might be up to. The internet is great for voyeurs, and for the casual snooper too. I didn't google old friends - just random people that I had an idea of - mostly kids in the marching band who'd been really good and who had gone off to school talking about becoming professional musicians. I thought that would be fairly easy to check - I mean, if you type in someone's name, followed by 'trumpet player' and the person genuinely is a trumpeter, something should come up, right?

Kind of disappointed not to find anything. Hope that all those kids I thought would be brilliant aren't washing cars in the KwickEMart parking lot or something.

Being here is the best decision I have ever made.

No, scratch that. It's the best thing that's ever happened to come along - since I don't really make decisions. Even if I never amount to anything in my whole life because of peace corps, it's still been worth it (I think?) - though I hope, whether I amount to anything in the standard sense or not, life keeps getting better. I'd hate for this to be the high point...

Well, what if it is? I've always had what I think Dorothy (L) Sayers called a 'summery mind' - looks promising early on but runs quickly to seed. Though I doubt I was ever promising to anyone but myself- that, I am sure, was a gift from my parents.

So Peace Corps has taught me how to be mediocre... no, I mean, how to be content with being mediocre. Is this a good thing? My mediocre mind says yes. I'm not cut out for success - I'm too lazy, and too neurotic (or not quite neurotic enough.) Nowadays spending a quiet little life somewhere doesn't sound like such a terrible thing. I supposing this 'giving up', if you want to call it that, is some form of maturity? But goodness, that can't be right.... as I intend to stay far from mature.

-G

Spent some of my time today googling old high school classmates, trying to figure out what they might be up to. The internet is great for voyeurs, and for the casual snooper too. I didn't google old friends - just random people that I had an idea of - mostly kids in the marching band who'd been really good and who had gone off to school talking about becoming professional musicians. I thought that would be fairly easy to check - I mean, if you type in someone's name, followed by 'trumpet player' and the person genuinely is a trumpeter, something should come up, right?

Kind of disappointed not to find anything. Hope that all those kids I thought would be brilliant aren't washing cars in the KwickEMart parking lot or something.

Being here is the best decision I have ever made.

No, scratch that. It's the best thing that's ever happened to come along - since I don't really make decisions. Even if I never amount to anything in my whole life because of peace corps, it's still been worth it (I think?) - though I hope, whether I amount to anything in the standard sense or not, life keeps getting better. I'd hate for this to be the high point...

Well, what if it is? I've always had what I think Dorothy (L) Sayers called a 'summery mind' - looks promising early on but runs quickly to seed. Though I doubt I was ever promising to anyone but myself- that, I am sure, was a gift from my parents.

So Peace Corps has taught me how to be mediocre... no, I mean, how to be content with being mediocre. Is this a good thing? My mediocre mind says yes. I'm not cut out for success - I'm too lazy, and too neurotic (or not quite neurotic enough.) Nowadays spending a quiet little life somewhere doesn't sound like such a terrible thing. I supposing this 'giving up', if you want to call it that, is some form of maturity? But goodness, that can't be right.... as I intend to stay far from mature.

-G

Said the tailor, as he changed my waist measurement from 34 to 35 1/2...

This week I learned all about subsistance agriculture. It was really fun! My neighbors decided that it was time for me to have a farm - after all, I'm a woman, I've lived there for a year... so a couple of them got together at my house with their hoes, (I got a little mini-sized child hoe) and we planted a row of beans and vegetables (jama-jama, which is something like kale) and a bunch of american veggies that I got off of a girl in Yaounde -- basically we sort of traded, a piece of panya for peanut butter and cantalope seeds -- it is a really really small farm (really more of a second garden) but my arms were sore the next day! Though I did almost nothing of the real work. Farming in Mundum seems to work like this:

chat for a while - work for 10 minutes - have a drink of water - chat while some others work - explain to white girl how, actually, it is only african WOMEN who are suffering and not men, because they don't have to farm - work again - discover a guava tree and eat some guavas - greet the neighbors - worry about when the rain will come - work a bit - comment on the approaching thunder - teach the white girl the mundum word for 'farm' - laugh at the white girl trying to hoe - stop for rain - eat ramen and laugh about how it looks like worms and poke at it a lot - finish the second half of the work quickly when the rain lets up for a moment.

All the women get together in groups and take turns working on each other's farms. I have been adopted by the presbyterian women's farming group, though this may lead to unpleasantness later on, because eventually I will have to decide how I want to spend my thanksgiving weekend - trek to Njikwa to watch the presbyterian women's zonal traditional dancing competition (this sounds fun, but keep in mind it involves 2 full days of hiking and 2 nights of sleeping on a cold church floor, just so that I can watch traditional dancing, of which I've seen a lot, be a mascot for the group, and listen to prayers in pidgin.) OR do the white man woman thing visit other PCVs and eat turkey and complain about US politics. (I can have nice food, talk in English, and, if I'm really lucky, even a bed!) My only hope is that the way thanksgiving falls this year will allow me to do both, but, more likely, I'll be blowing the women's group off. I feel sort of bad about this (I'm soooo not adequately integrated) but on the other hand... I do my best, darn in! I shouldn't have to feel bad about blowing off some thing I never agreed to go to in the first place! (It was something unanimously determined in my absence.)

I am spending more time in bamenda than I would like at the moment because of these stupid school applications, which I hope will go smoothly but which looks doubtful. I hate applying to schools - though it would be ok if I could just do it by myself. What makes it unbearable is the other people I have to drag into it too, letter-writers and parents and emailers and etc. etc. etc. so that I feel that, if I don't get accepted, I have wasted everyone's time and made myself look foolish. What will I do if I don't get accepted somewhere? Go to work - perhaps that would be good for me - get away from the continuous cycle, that peace corps has only prolonged, of hopping from one institution to the next. Or maybe what I really need is a different kind of institution all together - ie, a psychiatric one. Surely by the end of the month, the way things are going...

same old, same old. kids are making me a chicken house. I never realized before the amount of WORK that goes into chickens.

My original idea - have I already told this story? Can't remember, if so, just skip it - was to have a chicken that would lay eggs, that I could eat. This struck me as wonderfully Little house on the prairie (a game I played as a kid, apparently I'm not over it yet.)

Soon problems begin to emerge. Actually, not all chickens lay eggs. Village chickens only lay occasionally, about 5 or 6 over a few days, a few times a year, that they then hatch and raise. No good. No, for eggs I need crazy genetic freak agric chickens.

Now it emerges that there are several types of agric chickens - those made ridiculously big and fleshy, good for meat, and those that lay a horrendous amount of eggs. The second type is expensive and you can only buy them as day-old chicks, the egg farmers raise them themselves. But chicks are weak and die easily and require lots of extra care - sawdust and heat and special feed and all sorts of things I can't possibly provide. I want someone to raise the chick for me.

AND now it seems (this is obvious, though I never even considered it) that they need special feed as well. Special feed filled with bits of dried-up shell and other things, or they won't lay. This feed is expensive and obviously I have to transfer it from bamenda.

Yet I'm plowing forward. A guy in Bamenda is looking for layers for me. In the meanwhile, I'll get some of the fat tasty ones. I bought nails and plastic with which the kids can finish my house.

Maybe next month I'll get a goat.

School is good. The other teachers colluded while I was out to mess up my schedule, but I got it all worked out even better than before. My applications to grad school next year are falling into place (though applying for public health schools, I'm not really sure how realistic my chances are, but oh well.) The whole process leaves me in a state of perpetual mild stress, so I'll try to plow through it quickly - is it possible? Re-checked my miserable GRE scores and thought, gee, I should take'em over, but oh well. Parents are helping me out a lot.

Have been writing a great deal, none of it any good but I find it very theraputic. I think I'm getting better at just writing without getting hung up over every little thing that's not quite how I'd like it to be. Obviously, I'm a better critic than writer.

Life drifts along...

And can you guess what bad old time that is? It doesn't have anything to do with inept gendarmes or policemen... no problems at school (!)... it's not even one of my periodic, 'Oh My God What's Wrong With this Country!' Outbreaks.

No, this time the problem is all-American.

It's time to start thinking about what I want to do once I finish peace corps.

Damn.

Even if I knew exactly what I wanted to do, it still wouldn't be good, because everything I want to do involves school - and getting into school requires writing applications.

And writing applications is the one thing I hate more than anything else in the world.

I've done it before, of course... back when I still thought I wanted to do chemistry. It was a fairly straightforward process - after all, I had 24-7 internet, was on campus (very easy to get transcripts and so forth sent around, very easy to go begging for letters of recommendation.) But even then, it was awful. I managed 5 apps over a 3 month period - by stretching the amount of time I spent actually working on them very, very thinly. 5 minutes at a time, max. More than that puts me into a terrible mood. Who can figure out what my entrance and exit dates to college were. Who knows what my GPA was? Sure, I can estimate, but it has to be exact.

Now, the situation is worse - much, much worse - because, not only am I in Africa, which makes the online applications unwieldly and unmanageable with the slow speed of connections, and who knows what will happen to anything I try to send by hand - worse, still - I don't even know what program I want to apply in.

I thought I had it figured out - public health -until about 2 hours ago. Then I started to get side-tracked again. They have that messy experience requirement that's sure to get my paper tossed out of the pile. Why not just do straight international affairs? I could always get that economics in before fall - (ok, assuming that I can get PC to let me COS at the earliest possible date, so as not to miss the beginning of summer classes).

And I have 48 hours to figure it all out, more or less. Minus the time I spend sitting at the police station trying to get my lost identity card sorted out.

Oh, that was an adventure! I had to take a bus to Yaounde to get the new card, BUT without any ID I was worried about getting hassled by gendarmes. And, sure enough, one gets on a bus and demands EVERYONE's card.

Being shiny white me, I always get bothered about these things, so this time I decide to try a new tactic - I have this white cotton shawl thing that I was keeping on my head to deflect the sun, so I pull it down real low and slouch way forward. And, luckily, (probably the gendarme just got bored, but I'm going to pretend like he didn't see me) he gives up just about 3 rows in front of mine and gets off the bus.

Hooray! I kept the 500 francs I had tucked in my front pocket, just in case. Though, if any cameroonian officals are reading, I would just like to clarify that, had the gendarme caught me without my card, I would have given him the money of my own free will - not as a bribe, but as a token of my appreciation for all the fine work he was doing, out there patrolling the roads.

Those gendarmes are pretty awesome.

I was just reading my brother's blog and I realized... gosh, everybody's so introspective!

It's interesting, because, while I've always considered myself to be fairly inward-looking (on a scale of 1 to 10, let's say a 7) I have definitely gotten a lot LESS so since I've been here.

And yet, I feel like I'm growing more then any other time in my life - at least since I was a little kid.

Perhaps it's like being on a bicycle flying downhill on a bumpy road (and yeah, I've done that in Cameroon, and yeah, it's ended badly) - something to think about, sure, but NOT while you're actually doing it.

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but I'm starting to wonder about two things. First: who leads a truly unexamined life? Second: couldn't you also say that the unlived life is not worth examining? I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with that reversal. How many others, since Socrates' day, do you think have said the same thing? I bet less than a million, but more than a thousand.

I was talking to old Richard last night, and he said that living in Africa has taught him how to be HAPPY. And I thought, great, that's the lesson I want to learn to. I'm actually better at being introspective when I'm happy than when I'm depressed - because, when I'm happy, facing up to the things that are wrong with myself isn't so hard.

The new principal seems pretty nice - he's a bit more on the ball then the old guy, which i can already see the effects of in that our deliquent PTA English teacher didn't get re-hired and the new school building seems to be going up a lot faster than expected. All the construction is working out well for me, as the builders have a lot of digging to do... whenever the kids are bad, I can send them to the discipline master now without fear that they will be beaten. Instead, they'll get handed shovels.

This raises a lot of moral/social issues (why is it, exactly, that I feel forcing kids to work for the school is sort of ok, while hitting them is not?) but funnily enough the kids, I think, would prefer to be beaten. Digging, it seems, gets their clothing WAY to dirty.

This reminds me (for no particular reason) of what was supposed to be this week's funny story.

SO, I went to this meeting at our country director's house, during which almost everything possible went wrong. First, we were all sitting around talking when a gunshot rang out in the backyard. We ran back to see what was happening. BATS were swarming all over the place (a million of them, which the PC said was only a small part of the group)and someone has shot at them - to scare them away, I think. We went back to the meeting. I could see the shadows of the bats swooping and diving just above the house. A tree fell down.

The PCD went outside to see what was going on. Apparently his neighbors had hired someone to trim the trees (to prevent damage during storms?) but the guys didn't know what in the world they were doing and were taking down electric lines and all kinds of other things as they hacked down the trees with machettes and then pulled on them with ropes. The poor PCD began to look apoplexic but then achieved somehow put himself into a zen-like trance in which even the perpetually crashing trees failed to pull him out of. He made a lot of calls to his neighbors.

We went and ate lunch, which was creamed spinach with shrimp and brownies and all kinds of other unspeakably wonderful things. It was the best meal I have had since - well, since Ireland.

I lost my Cameroonian identity card. Rats. Now I have to go to Yaounde to get a new one. Hopefully I can put it off for a little while, because I was just in Yaounde and am not quite ready to be back there again.

Now I am going to eat dinner at Arounas. Arouna's has great grilled chicken and jama-jama.

Bye.

Yeah, it was awesome... I spent like 500 dollars, went all over the place, and got to see a whole new and different part of the country. We started out in NGaoundere, after an 18 hour overnight train ride. People were sprawled in the aisles, under the seats, on mattresses that miraculously appeared outside the door to the bathroom. Every time the train stopped the first class compartment became filled with the smell of ammonia. The little hole on the bathroom floor next to the toilet just confused people, I think - half way through the night I went in to find a small turd wedged neatly into its tiny diameter. I had trouble sleeping and didn't drift off until 2 or 3. Then, very early in the morning, I woke to the sound of a fat mommy being slammed into a door. Back in steerage class she'd apparently gotten into a fight with another woman. A gendarme lead a man in handcuffs down the aisle and suddenly I became aware that the cabin was full of moths, as delicate and brightly-coloured as butterflies, attracted by the blindingly bright lights which stayed on all night. All the better to prevent theft, of course.

Nan took pictures with her digital camera at our occasional stops, where children with huge trays of baton de manioc and tangerines ran up to sell, hoisting their food high above their heads. Some man became angry and demanded she stop - Nan, in the thrill of the moment and, after all, sitting high above the sellers, ignored him. Soon a rock whizzed through the window. Later on the man beside me (on his way to Chad) removed his digital camera and started discretely snapping our white group. I guess we're as exotic to the locals as they are to us! Nan caught the man aiming at her and screamed at him to stop... for the rest of the trip, she kept her photography to a much more polite level.

From Ngaoundere we passed on to Maroua, another 7 hour bus ride - the bus was very prompt and smooth, however - the nicest I've taken in country. And the Northerns are so skinny! Compared to the huge people we get down south, everyone was almost universally trim and small-boned, good looking (until they opened their mouths, teeth were very bad), the woman dressed in the most gorgeous colours and the men in ankle-length bou-bous with elaborate embroidery.

Once in Maroua we did a few things... first spent a night in Roumsiki, a small town set between massive stone monoliths that rise startlingly from the ground, The village was touristy - small children followed us everywhere we went, amd the failure to retain one of these as a guide made harrassment the goal of the group. Then we saw the village's crab sorceror, a local fortune teller who promised me success in anything I do. He did this with the help of an interpreter - the entire process pretty much went like this: I use bad french to explain my questions to the interpreter (the young guy we finally caved in and hired as a guide), The interpreter used a variety of gestures and shouting to convey my questions to the sorcerer (a very old dude who pulled his crab from a ceramic pot that sat beside him, he was becoming deaf). The sorceror spat on the crab and placed it inside another pot, one that contained sand and pot shards stuck up in the sand at odd angles. The crab ran around, knocking over the shards. Then the sorceror read the shards to discover the message of the crabs. It was all very impressive. Before the got to see the sorceror an Irish film crew interviewed him for about an hour. So, if you happen to be in that part of the world, he should be on tv in a couple on months! We chatted with the people in the crew, who were doing some sort of a 'New Face of Ireland' series and visiting some of the countries from which new immigrants in Erin are arriving. All they saw of Cameroon was Douala, Yaounde and Roumsiki! As a self-declared 'villageoise' I felt they weren't seeing much, then, but oh well.

To get back from Roumsiki we took a 2 hour moto ride on dirt roads... it was scary at first but the scenery was beautiful, and, just that ride alone made the trip worthwhile. Then we spent a night in Mokoko, doing not much, and afterwards went on to Waza Game Preserve. We hired a Land Rover and a driver to get us out to the park on a day-trip, and got to see many animals- elephants, giraffes, ostriches, warthogs, a jackel, many antelopes, gazelles, and other things. Even though it was the rainy season (and hence the grasses were long, making it hard to spot animals) we saw a lot and got to see lots of babies as well, which was wonderful. Then we spent another day in Maroua itself, exploring the artisan market where I spent at least 100 of my 500 total - I bought leather, batiks, sandals, silver, etc etc etc. A shopper's paradise because, having checked out the same items in Yaounde, they were so much cheaper 'at the source' that everything felt like a huge bargain. Hopfully a lot of it will be nice stuff to decorate my house that I can give away as gifts later.

Finally on Sunday we were all set to come back - we bought our tickets and loaded back onto the train only to hear an announcement that there was a derailment near Yaounde, and that our trip was canceled until tomorrow. That night we stayed with another volunteer and went people-watching during and after the Cameroon-Ivory Coast soccer match, which Cameroon won 3-2. Rioting in the streets just after the game was amazing and I was happy to be indoors, well out of it.

We finally made it back to Yaounde Monday morning and I launched into my midservice, which is going well - I am ridiculously healthy, which, though good, doesn't bode well for my chances of a all-expenses paid trip to South Africa anytime in the next 9 months. Back to post and into the new school year monday morning. I have a new principal and am anxious to see what kind of changes the new administration will bring.

My top two - the one that worked, and the one that didn't.

The one that worked was when something went wrong with the transmission in the middle of nowhere and the driver/mechanic didn't have any tools and fixed the problem using a rock and a stick - it was pretty impressive, really, he knocked the bolts off the thingy attached to the gear-shifter-thingy with the rock and then replaced the gear shift which was broken with the stick, and it worked well enough for us to get to town, eventually.

The one that didn't was this past week. I decided I wanted to buy a chicken. But they weren't selling chickens in my village, so I went to a neighboring village. It was about an hour and a half's walk mostly downhill and I enjoyed it because it was a bright sunny morning. I bought a big fat cock at Ajua market and some pineapples and other things as well. Then I decided to get a car back to my village.

I waited around for a car to come for about 4 hours. Then, just when me and the other two woman from my village were about to give up and trek, a car came. It was already totally full but the driver was greedy and for 400 francs he agreed to take us. A full car here means a minimum of 7 passangers, but this one already had people on the hood, roof, etc etc so by the time we all piled in there were 20.

We got about 20 feet outside the village when a tire blew. Luckily, the driver had just lent his jack to another guy. But all the passengers were in a good mood (cause we'd finally gotten a vehicle) and so someone went along and got a huge fat pole and a stump and we used the pole to lever the car and someone wedged the stump underneath and the wheel was changed. My cock, which had been in the trunk, was going into shock or something, so the women took it out and tossed it into the car again to wake it up. We all piled in again.

After another twenty feet, we get a second flat. This time, the rubber part of the tire has somehow come loose from the metal part. We ran back to get the same log and stump we'd just abandoned and jacked up the car again. The driver took off the wheel and used a hammer to try and pound the metal part back around the rubber part. His auto boy used water to detect all the little holes.

My cock, which had been put on the ground with a wrench between its tied legs to keep it from getting loose, somehow managed to dislodge the wrench and run into the bush. A buch of kids helped me catch him.

The driver and the auto boy are looking around for something to fix the holes, because they are too cheap to try and go get a new tire in the village we are still only 40 feet away from. One of the passangers is transporting water fufu (dense fermented cassava foodstuff) from the markret, so they get that out and smear it all over the wheel casing - oh, after we've jacked up the car a third time to switch that wheel, which was on the back, with a better one on the front.

We get the wheels back onto the car and pike in, all 18 of us (one has given up and started walking) The auto boy and the guys sitting on the hood hop off to roll the car backwards (otherwise it won't start) and, after the wheel has turned 3 times exactly, all the air is gone. It turns out that water fufu is not as gluey and gummy as I thought! At least, not enough to withstand a ton of weight. Big surprise!

We all give up and start to walk. I put my pineapples on my back adn my chicken under my arm, and he, somehow sensing a novice, squawks and flaps and scratches practically the whole time trying to escape. We walk all the way up Mbaranesera (mundum for 'the biggest g*d*mn hill in the universe') and it rains half the time. Just as we reach my house, the stupid car goes flying by. You guessed it - in the same 2 hours it took us to walk back to the village, the driver was able to go back, borrow a tire, and finish his run. If only he'd done it in the first place!

All in all, I got a good day of hiking, and a chicken, out of the whole adventure, and all it cost me was 4 bucks for the chicken and 80 cents for the taxi I didn't ride.

This former vegetarian ate the stupid bird the next afternoon. He was delicious.

Joyce is on hold because I got a shipment of books from home. Hurray!

There is so much rain now! All day, all night, so that you can hardly leave the house before it begins to pour. I went hiking up to the top of my favorite hill and the clouds rolled in, all around me. Couldn't see 5 feet in front of me and the rain was condensing from the air all around me... when I walked down I met the Mbororo chief, who was walking down the main road. I asked him about his daughter.

'Oh, ee done put to birth' He said.

What?? Salamatu is only 14. I didn't even realize she was married, much less pregnant (she'd been in Bafut for the last several months) Those Fulanis start young...

'I went walking on your hill,' I told him.

'Oh, I wondered why your feet were so dirty.' (People always notice feet! I think my white skin is actually a disadvantage because it makes the mud easier to see)

A friend was on an airplane going back to cameroon after a vacation when a conversation started between some passengers who were trying to scam candy off another traveler...

'Gee,' she said, 'I thought I'd at least have to go back to africa before people would start stealing my stuff...'

Naturally, that brought the conversation to an abrupt halt. Ah, Cameroon, Land de nos ancetres, turning more young liberals into racists and conservatives... Will I ever feel guilt again when those bloated-belly little kids show up on television? They all have those bellies, but they aren't starving, they're malnourished. Something in the diet (not enough greens? not enough protein?) Recently, I am always hungry. For example, yesterday, I ate: 3 pieces of burned corn, 1 plate of corn chaff, 1 pineapple, 4 cassava fritters, rice with tomato sauce and huckleberry leaves, and 2 soft drinks, which I estimate to come in at about 3000 calories. Still I was hungry hungry hungry! I found a scale at an american-import store and checked myself this morning... 200 pounds! I almost cried, until my friend A. came and tried it and was also 200 lbs. Then B. was 200 again. Since A is short and petit and B rail-thin, I was able to relax a little. This morning for breakfast I had rice and beans dripping in palm oil. Yummm, palm oil, my favorite.

Pa Henlock died, they brought the body on Saturday. They dug a grave 6 feet deep and when the truck with the coffin drove up everyone started crying, wailing, throwing themselves around, even the people who just came to the funeral for the food and didn't even know him. Gideon, who worked for Pa, curled up in a ball beside the grave and wept from the time the coffin went into the ground until they'd finished packing the earth. They put in a layer if earth and then 2 men went barefoot into the hole and danced until the dirt was packed. then they added more. Pa Henlock was a driver and all the drivers danced on his grave until you couldn't even see where he was buried. They don't use headstones in mundum.

the next morning gideon smiled and thanked me for coming. he put pa's picture in his winshield.

Pa's car said, 'Pa no Worry' on the back.

His wife is also sick. All the neighbors are gossiping darkly.

I went to town to get money from the bank and so the government decided to declare a public holiday. Only some of the store are open. Luckily internet is open.

I have been reading 'Ulysses' for 2 and a half weeks. By presenting myself with a minimun number of alternatives to 'Ulysses' I have also finished a book about using frontier orbital theory to predict organic chemical reactions and an introductory economics textbook in the same period. Now all that is left is Joyce and Faulkner- which will I finish first? I am guessing the Faulkner because it happens to be shorter.

I have a lazy boy recliner and I curl up a night with my cat and my kerosene lamp and I read and listen to the radio. It is very soothing, especially when the rain is pounding down on the zinc roof and making a nice sound.

-G

Dear Anyone (and Everyone);

For anyone actually reading this journal, I just want to mention that I have made (and may be making some more) changes to this journal. You see, a few weeks ago (while I was in Ireland) 3 volunteers were kicked out of the country for clandoing (travelling without permission). It happens that the proof of their clandoing came from evidence posted on their weblogs.

We had an interesting meeting with our country director after this occured and he discussed the fact that, totally aside from the clandoing, some of the information on the logs was of a questionable nature - one of the volunteers had written a jokey kind of entry about inciting students to start a revolution, which, if it had been read by a member of the government here, might have caused trouble.

Now, I don't think there is anything too controversial on my log, but I have certainly talked at times about the government here, when, as a Peace Corps volunteer, it is really not my place to do so. Therefore, just to be on the safe side, I have made all the past entries of my journal for-friends only. If, for whatever reason, you want to read backdated entries of my log, form a livejournal account and tell me your username so that I can add you to my friends list.

I haven't decided what I will do with new entries, but I may make them for friends only also. I hope this doesn't cause trouble for anyone, but I don't really want to self-censor my writing (I'm too disorganized for that) so making things a little less accessible to the casual reader is just an easy preventative measure.

-G