I get on the plane tonight in just a couple hours, to leave Africa until…! Eep! I wrote this a few days ago:

It’s my last week at post, I leave little Dabola in five days. More so than the goodbyes, it’s the return to America that has me mildly intimidated. In the two times that I’ve been back to the States during these last three and a half years, it’s always just been a quick trip, and then back overseas. But this is it now: the American Big Time. Time to get a big-girl job with a real salary and wear some respectable clothing. And buy a hairbrush! (Yessss, I just use my fingers here.)

I’m nervous as to how people are going to react to me when I can’t stop starting every sentence with, “When I was in Africa…” or the funny looks people will give me when I insist on wearing my African moomoos in public, and am generally clueless about things currently American. And job hunting??! Enough said!

But I’m excited at the same time. Mostly to be close to the comforts of my family and friends, which is the number one reason I am coming home. :)

I’ve found myself extra sentimental these last few days. Little things Guineans say or do just really touch me and break my heart a little. (I know, that’s sappy.) But the idea that I get to go back to big shiny America, where things mostly work the way people say they are going to work, where rampant corruption and extreme poverty are not a daily way of life. So many people here have been kind to me, generous, thoughtful, and funny, even in the face of poverty and a world of inconveniences, and I sometimes wonder what I have done to deserve their kindness and good humor, or how I could thank them. And I’m at a loss. I just hope that one day, in my turn I can be as giving and hospitable to others as Guineans and Cameroonians have been to me.

One last image comes to mind. I was whizzing down the road on my bike earlier today. It’s a road I’ve been down many times, but I’m looking at everything a little harder now, trying to soak it all up and not forget anything. I passed a little boy who was walking from a nearby well, carrying a bucket of water on his head. He was small enough that his arms were completely extended upward to grasp the rim of the bucket. He caught me looking, smiling at him and shyly smiled back and hesitated a moment, making the water splash out of his bucket and all over him, which made us both smile even more. Little moments like that—how easy it can be to connect with someone here, and how incredibly much people appreciate the simplest gestures. I'm not sure I have the capacity to give such joy so easily in the States—that’s what I’ll miss. In fact, I’m already missing it, and I’m not even gone…

Or, ruins everywhere...

Just because I think this is fascinating, I wanted to share one other thing I’ve noticed about Guinea, unique little country that this is, from my travels. Ruins are everywhere, in ways I have not seen in any other country—French houses dating from before independence, depots, and train stations. Most impressive is the colonial-era railway, running like a backbone, the spine of this country’s skeleton that has not yet decayed. I mentioned Camara Laye in my last blog entry, and one of the most evocative descriptions in his book L’Enfant Noir is of taking the train from Kouroussa in Upper Guinea across the country to Conakry, on the coast.

Well, that train is certainly no more. The ties have been ripped up and sold for metal. The remains of the stations stand out because they are surrounded by old mango trees, planted by French colonialists who liked shade (I don’t blame ‘em!) It seems almost any time you spot tall, aged mango trees, you know the French were lurking there in the past. The decaying train station in Dabola, my town, is my favorite. A few photos, courtesy of my friend David.

On the platform.

“Busted flat in Dabola, waitin’ for a train, and I’m feeling just as faded as my gray pants…”

You just keeping waiting for that train to come, David.

Remaining colonial-era houses and depots surrounding the train station. You can even see the mangoes, like little green Christmas ornaments, hanging in the trees in this one.

Cartwheels on the platform, just cause :)

One big-ass tree, a silk cotton. (That’s me in the roots!)

Since the train station faces away from town and the main market, all you see is fields. It’s calm and quiet, and for a minute you’d think you are somewhere else—maybe rural France fifty years ago—as it seems so different from anything else I’ve seen in Guinea.

The station masters’ huge house, dripping with dilapidated colonialism and wrap-around porches, is a surreal past-meets-present mix, where people have set up shop and an impromptu café, moved in, and are cooking meals under the trees. I’m glad to see that at least it’s being used!

During our travels to another town, Dalaba, we saw the old French governor’s house. It was beautiful and spacious, situated on the edge of the mountains of the Fouta Jallon. I could imagine long-ago soirees, pre-electricity; the magnificent huge room lit up by candles, women swishing around in ball gowns, and men talking about the colonial government. Windows stretch to the ceiling and give a view of the mountains fading into the distance. Now, paint is peeling and there’s a table with souvenir bracelets laid out for tourists’ perusal, but the view is still stunning. I like the lack of maintenance, it feels more authentic. It seems in most places, when a new group comes to power, they quickly take as their own the fancy buildings and relics of others who have come before them. Maybe it’s a statement of how Guinea felt about the French (and I can’t blame them!) that the Guineans have almost completely turned their backs on buildings/infrastructure/anything French. (Likewise, the French and all their architects, engineers and technicians completely abandoned Guinea after it took its independence.) Throughout Dalaba I saw other buildings that seemed once grand, and were now just shells, ever-present reminders of Guinea’s one-of-kind history.

Or, hold on to your toes.

My time in Guinea is quickly coming to an end, so I decided to get out and see what all the fuss is about—because Guinea is supposedly a marvelously beautiful country. The fuss was right on—Guinea is pretty nice. Here’s a little summary, and a few photos.

Kankan

Is so hot. I do not know how people live there, actually, and am grateful that I do not. Wow. Guineans are tough! It’s the second or third largest city in Guinea and it has no electricity. Would that be like Los Angeles or Chicago with no lights? Any power comes from small privately-owned generators. And no electricity means no fans, means one does not fall asleep until about three in the morning!

I got to see a couple of fellow PCVs in Kankan, one of whom, Darline, does some amazing things with hibiscus. Did you know you can make a nice wine out of that? Darline did! You boil the hibiscus petals in water, throw the resulting juice in a bucket, add sugar and yeast, cover the bucket, and then serve all your friends who come to visit until they can barely walk straight. :) Navigating the city’s streets after a night of hibiscus wine with your equally intoxicated PCV friends and no lights to guide you—always a good time in Kankan! Bonus points for not landing in one of the ditches on the side of Kankan’s nice paved roads. My hat goes off to Darline!

Then, feeling inspired by weather that must have been under 95 degrees (woohoo!) a fellow PCV David and I decided to bike from Kankan to his village. Almost four hours of chit chat and biking later, we arrived chez lui, an awesome little village called Baro eight kilometers off the paved road, and hometown of our newly-elected president, Alpha Condé. (The town used to be on the national highway, but Condé’s nemesis, then-President Conté, did not like Condé so decided to say a big booyah by redirecting the national highway so that it no longer passed through Condé’s village. And that is what Guinea’s infrastructure dollars are used for, as opposed to say, electrifying Kankan.)

The biking.

Note that fancy paved road. It's a small part of the national highway, and about the only bit of road like it in the country. I am also aware that my 80-cent Guinean sunglasses make me look a little bug-eyed. Helpful for scaring off small children.

So anyway, David does a lot of work in agriculture, so I biked with him off to a neighboring village where he was demonstrating to some local ladies how to make natural insecticides. (For the curious, you mix the right combo of some certain ground-up leaves, water, peppers, and a little soap, which makes the whole mixture stick to the leaves of the crop that you are trying to protect.)

My friends are seemingly quite adept at preparing toxic brews.

Here, the ladies are grinding up the plants that are to be a part of the insecticide concoction.

At work in the garden.

One guy takes a momentary break in the wheelbarrow.

On the way home from David’s, I had to change bush taxis in Kouroussa. Kouroussa holds a bit of intrigue for me, being the hometown of Camara Laye, one of West Africa’s great authors. (If you want to read about pre-independence Guinea, read L’Enfant Noir!) As the car passed herds of cute small boys parading to school in their uniforms, I kept imagining little Camara Laye, that age, circa 1937. Kouroussa is not quite as thrilling as I hoped, largely cause I got stuck waiting eight hours for a car, and then took said car for a trip of 85 miles—only six hours on the semi-paved main national highway! (Our road-side stops included one flat tire, at which we all piled out of the car and sat on the shoulder in the moonlight waiting for it to be repaired, two engine checks, one fiddling with the headlights to make sure that those wires stay connected and our headlights keep shining—not necessarily a given among Guinean vehicles—a prayer break, a detour for some lady to drop off a package, and a pee break. Remember, this trip includes thirteen people packed in a station wagon designed for seven. I am grateful that my bush taxi days will soon be over is all I have to say, and again, hats off to the Guineans who endure this every time they leave their town!)

Fouta

Barely after getting back to Dabola, I bust off again, this time to the Fouta Jallon region, also known as Middle Guinea. The best thing about the Fouta is that it’s COLD!! Probably in the steady 80’s, which is a praise-Jesus beautiful temperature range if I ever saw one. The Fouta is thick with the Peuls—the cousins of Cameroon’s Fulbé. One thing I can say about both Upper Guinea (Kankan area) and Middle Guinea (the Fouta) is that I appreciated the clarity of knowing which language to speak. In Upper Guinea it’s always Malinké, and in Middle Guinea it’s always Pulaar (and boy, are the Peuls insistent about your speaking their language! Not knowing Pulaar is hardly an option—they’ll just keep firing away at you in Pulaar until you crumble or stare blankly enough at them that it becomes clear that you do not understand! And then they scoff at you.) But at least it’s none of this guessing that you’re required to do in Dabola, which sits right in the middle of the two regions, where you never know where one is from or what language they speak. Knowing which language to use just to greet someone is really a relief!

In addition to cool air and lots of Peuls, Middle Guinea is known for some beautiful hiking and waterfalls. My friend Christiana, the fellow expat of Dabola, and I were traveling together and we got to splash around in lots of waterfalls, and stand on the edge of many in ways that would never be allowed in America! (Protective barriers are not yet all the rage here.)

This is near the little village of Doucki. (And once upon a time, that shirt was white, back when I bought it in eighth grade.)

The hut where we stayed while hiking.

This is Christiana and our guide going down a waterfall. One thing I learned from this hike is that just because there seems to be no possible pathway, you can still climb on/up/over things and get into places you did not think people were supposed to go! Goats, yes, but humans? I think I achieved new levels of nimble.

We met some wildlife along the hike in the form of a hungry cow.

Then it was time to hike back up a waterfall! Eek. The crafty villagers in the area had constructed make-shift ladders from bunches of sticks tied together, to facilitate the ascent up the rocky waterfalls. About once a year, they replace the ladders.

Guess whose butt that is:

Here you can see three more of the ladders that make up part of the trail on the left and the waterfall on the right.

I think the coolest thing about this hike is that it would just never happen in America. Rules, regulations and lawsuits probably don’t mix well with home-made stick ladders.

That is a mid-hike, I-am-very-tired face.

Again, villagers taking care of each other—they leave that yellow half of a jug and purple plastic cup on the rocks at all times so it can collect waterfall water and any passers-by can drink it. I should note that while we tourists are paying lots of francs to troop around and get blisters and hike in the waterfalls, the local villagers use this path as a part of their daily life--reminds me how easy we have it in America--no stick ladders required to get to my grocery store!

Each night after hiking it was bucket baths under the stars, and local rice and sauce for supper. All very lovely although sometimes I do question just how clean I get with a bucket bath. Christiana, however, did not complain of any unpleasant odors. (Thanks, dear!)

Near Labé, we crawled down some more waterfalls, the Chutes de Sala. Unlike bucket baths, playing in waterfalls, akin to frolicking under a high-powered hose, will get you clean!

If you happen to notice my legs in this picture, it is true that I have now lived in Africa/the Tropics for three and a half years and have still not obtained a tan. Now that takes something special.

What the hell

I’ll finish this blog entry by mentioning that on this trip I had a couple of interesting and unexpected encounters. The first was while Christiana and I were hiking. Our guide had just pointed out a thick red line of ants crossing the pathway in front of is. I was admiring the ants when I heard a rustle in the bushes just off the path to the right. The rustle turned into a flapping, and the flapping turned into a very hard FWACK against my head! Stunned, I looked as the creature flew off. Christiana had been right behind me and seen it all. “Did that bat just fly into your head?” she asked in her proper British accent. “Was that a bat? Holy shit!” Not only was that a bat, it left a little bat cadeau too—a nice sticky trail down my arm. Mmmm, bat poop. Wow. I scared the shit out of a bat! What are they doing out in the middle of the day anyway??!! No lasting, vampire-esque damage done, however, and my ear stopped ringing from the impact about twenty minutes later.

The next up-close and personal encounter was while Christiana and I were waiting at the car park for a bush taxi out of Labé, heading homeward. She had wandered off in search of a bathroom while I was sitting on a curb in the shade, reading a book. I’d slipped off my sandals and just had my feet resting on top of them. I was enjoying my book when I felt a curious pulling at my big toe. I look up from my book, down at my feet, and see a crazy man bent over, releasing my toe, and smiling up at me as though pulling the white girl’s toe at the car park is just as natural as picking daisies in the spring time. He stands back up again, the transaction complete, and contentedly walks away. I just stare after him, so surprised, and thinking he’ll at least turn around, look at me, maybe thank me for a pleasant toe-pull, but he just moseys off! I can’t help but start laughing! I’m not even sure if anyone else noticed it!

As the hours wore on and we waited for a car, I saw the crazy guy wander around a few more times, and felt myself instinctively pull my feet up under me and my eyes follow him. What was he going to go after next? A bunion? My nose?! All told, we left Labé with no further harassment, but of all the parts of my body that have ever been admired, I believe this was a first for my big toe.

So, just a couple more entries is probably all you’ll here from me! The Grand Depart from Guinea is next week, with a brief detour in Europe before arriving on terra firma, aux Etats Unis on May 13!

My love to all! :)

A Chicken Head Dress.

So I asked the local tailor to make me a dress out of his leftover scraps. I’m quite satisfied with the results, below. Who doesn’t like chicken??

People do wear entire outfits out of Chicken Head fabric. I only got the scraps. :)

And in no particular order, here are more random excerpts from Guinea…

I was at a fancy restaurant in another town for a conference recently and ordered a salad. It came with fries in it! (I’d thought they were tomatoes at first cause it was dark and hard to see, and they were covered in dressing. Surprise!) Who knew how good that could be? (Very good.) Another African delight!

Also at this conference, my Guinean counterpart surprised me one night after dinner. We’d all eaten a lot, and he leaned back, rubbed his belly, and said, “ooohhhh, haari bébé!” Haari is Pulaar for “I’m full,” …my counterpart had an “I’m full baby.” I always say when I’ve eaten too much and feel like I’m going to pop that I have a food baby. Apparently Guinean men get food babies too!

Another interesting run-in I had was on a bicycle. The closest volunteer to me is 14 miles down the main road in a small town. I was riding over to pay her a visit and feeling just a little bad-ass for biking it instead of taking a bush taxi. I came upon a couple frail-looking old men on the road, also riding their bikes, and we exchanged greetings. They were very friendly and seemed to be enjoying themselves, chatting, in no great rush to get wherever they were going on their rickety old bikes. (Most bikes I’ve seen in Guinea and Cameroon are pretty low-tech—one speed, with foot brakes.) The men asked me where I was going, listing a couple of far-off town as options. I told them I was just headed to the next town, and inquired after them. “Kouroussa!” they said cheerily. That was humbling. Kouroussa is about 85 miles past where I was going. And I thought I was tough. Hats off to the happy old men!

On another unrelated note, I am apparently building a reputation for myself as a traditional healer, complete with bag of fetishes. In the part of Guinea called Haute Guinee, in the Northeast corners where the Malinké folks live along the Malian border, I’ve been told that the traditional healers carry their fetishes, charms, and goodies in a little black bag. Well, I have been carrying the same little blue bag (kind of a wallet on a string) since I found it in my apartment in France in 2003. Needless to say, it is getting a little ratty. OK, it is exceedingly ratty, and is held together with electrical tape and safety pins (which have also doubled to hold up my pants when the zipper on those bust in the middle of an Ethiopian museum.) So my little blue bag has long since given up its shade of blue, and is now resigned to a sad and dingy shade of black. And so, I’m a sorcerer! I was recently approached by some co-workers with inquiries as to what fetishes I carried in my bag, and what I could potentially do for them… Safety pins, anyone?

And lastly, work is going well. I’ve been hammering out the training modules for the members and staff of my microfinance organization, CAFODEC. It’s really enjoyable to collaborate with my Guinean colleagues because they have great insights and examples, and I just put it all on paper. Plus, Guineans are really entertaining to work with! I was with about five of them to review some drafts of the training modules, and between practically every module, someone had to stand up and “warm up the room” by telling a joke or some ridiculous story. Some of them were totally inappropriate for a work setting, by American standards, and so were that much more awkward/entertaining! I’ll translate my favorite one, but I’m sure I won’t do it justice. I should note that the days of the week in French, starting with Monday, are lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi and dimanche. (That’s important for the joke.) Soooo, a man takes a new wife. Satisfying this man’s sexual appetite is just wearing her out, so they talk about it and come up with a truce. They’ll have sex only on days that end in redi—mercredi and vendredi. (Wednesday and Friday.) However, on a Monday, lundi, the man comes home and is feeling particularly hot to trot. “Madammmmme!” he calls out, “Can we…?” She stops to calculate the say of the week. “It’s lundredi!” he cries out!

That’s all from Guinea for now! Gros bisous!

Hey amigos!

Here’s some random updates from Dabola—odd and entertaining things I’ve seen while wandering around town.

First, we all know that the baby on the back tradition is alive and well in Africa. It is the way to carry your child— from the age of an infant to about a two-year-old. Little kids often imitate their mothers doing this, tying little dolls or other random things onto their backs. But one kid, who looked about three, took the cake. The doll he had tied onto his back was SO big that from a distance I had know idea what it is—all I saw was a jumble of different-colored limbs. It was a white plastic doll that must have stood about 3 feet high, when not strapped onto an even smaller kid’s back. Its big white plastic arms were sticking up above the kid’s head at different angles and its plastic dolly legs were jutting out in front. Needless to say, it looked ridiculous and adorable at the same time, and I couldn’t help laughing out loud as I walked past the oblivious little boy (and kept laughing for about the next 100 meters too!)

Additionally on the subject of piggy-backing, I saw some young girls accomplish an impressive feat that in my childhood, I always wanted to attempt but never quite had the prowess to pull off—the double piggy back. They were standing only about twenty feet from where my colleagues and I were sitting at the village bank one day. Our heroine was about twelve years old and she already had a girl who looked about eight on her back. Then she managed to bend over, and a ten-year-old climbed on on top of that! The ten-year-old had long enough arms to be able to reach around the eight-year-old and they all proudly (and noisily) took off to show some grown women. I was massively impressed! I’ve never seen anyone else manage that! (Any volunteers want to try when I get back?) I made sure all my colleagues saw, but no one seemed quite as thrilled as I was. :) Oh well, there are perks to being easily entertained.

One thing that seems somewhat universal is high school girls being high school girls. I went to a soccer match—apparently a big deal of a soccer match—that featured the 11th grade vs. the 10th grade teams from the local high school. It was the final of some tournament and I and everyone in Dabola under the age of twenty were present. The field was pure dust, and everyone crowded the sidelines sucking on oranges and cheering. I found myself surrounded by high school and middle school-aged girls. They seemed to be all dressed in their best pagne—matching tops and wrap skirts, hair freshly braided, proud and ready to show off. I’d say about zero of them were actually paying any attention to the game, yet somehow, they all seemed to know at exactly which moments to scream and jump up and down, when their team would shoot a near-miss or perform an awesome save. It seems to be a high-school-girl sixth sense. It felt like Friday night football in America.

Two other cool things I got to do recently: hold babies and look at electric dams! (Random, I know!) But first I should explain that an ongoing form of entertainment for me is finding the smallest babies I can, silent sleeping bumps fastened to their mother’s backs. The mothers go about their daily business in the market and at home, seemingly not even remembering the baby back there, but I’m just fascinated—the tinier the little human, the more I have to try not to stare. And sometimes I’m too tempted and just have to pat the little baby butt. (Boy, I sound like my mother there.) Anyway, a colleague and I recently visited his sister, who’d just given birth. The baby wasn’t even a week old. I’d never seen such a tiny baby! (I should also note that typically, African village women eat less when they are pregnant, because a smaller baby is that much easier to birth.) So this one was miniscule! I even got to hold it. They asked me if I wanted to throw it on my back; I declined. Maybe it was because I’d asked at what age they start wearing babies on the back and they told me at about this age—one week. Wow! Floppy heads and everything. “Baby” didn’t even have a name yet—that happens at a baptism ceremony when it’s about eight days old. Until then it’s just “Baby.” Even better is the Pulaar word for baby, “Bobo.” (Drag out the first syllable and make it long.) I love that word and it is definitely coming back to America with me. :)

And lastly, not involving small children, or any children at all! I got to see where my town’s electricity comes from. The local hydroelectric facility was put in place by the Chinese in the 1974 and refurbished in the 90s. In America, you’d never be able to stroll into a major electrical plant. But here, I just did. A lone guy was sitting at a table in the middle of a huge room with high ceilings. He had his feet propped on the table and was gazing at a wall-full of flashing lights and buttons. He stood up and shook my hand when I came in, and then I got to look at all the flashing lights and buttons myself! Everything was labeled in Chinese! Most knobs and buttons and dials also had a French translation printed in small letters, but not all of them. … And now I see why things don’t get fixed when there’s a break down!

Hope everyone’s doing well and life is happy in America!

So I’m here at my post! Back to the world of trash fires, errant goats and cows, dusty roads, and enthusiastic toothless old men greeting me in languages I don’t know! I’ve taken these first few weeks to do a lot of exploring. Dabola is laid out along a main road, and loosely bordered by “mountains.” It’s got lots of trees! There are endless footpaths that make for great rambling and exploring. Somehow, I feel like I’m noticing things in different ways than I did in Cameroon.

For example, I am obsessing over the mango tree outside my window. If I remember right, mangoes were ready and waiting for my mass consumption by about February in Cameroon. Here, the rainy season is shifted later, and thus, I have to forlornly stare at my mango tree… and wait. Let me assure you, watching mangoes grow is only minimally more riveting than watching grass grow. But I never even noticed the itty-bitty baby mangoes in Cameroon! (Maybe it’s the five mango trees in my compound?) I never noticed when the trees flower, and then the tiny mango, already perfectly shaped, first comes out as small as the nail on your pinky finger. Fascinating. Even if slow-moving.

Another thing I’d failed to notice as closely in Cameroon was the moon. Maybe it’s because my old house had a tin-roofed overhang so I never really saw the moon and stars? And in Dabola, there’s that much less electricity, so when the moon is out, you notice. It is so bright you’d think you could read by its light. And when it is not there, wow, I can’t remember the last time I’d been in such darkness.

And speaking of electricity, I was spoiled in Cameroon. Here, we get electricity starting at about 2pm, in spurts. So I’m learning to adapt my work schedule and entertain myself otherwise!

One thing that’s great for entertainment is that Dabola is so much more open than my part of Cameroon, where everyone lived behind walls, in compounds. Here everyone’s huts are out in the open and it’s fascinating in that just walking around town I can see so much more of people at work and play—women pounding grain, kids running around, men watching TVs that are perched on a stool in the dirt. It also means it’s that much easier to enter into conversations with people, exchange greetings, and just be visible in the community. Oddly (or at least I’m still getting used to it!) so many of the footpaths run straight through people’s compounds—and in this sense, I mean just a family’s grouping of huts. So you troupe right past women cooking, naked children running from their bucket baths—it’s accessible in ways it never was in Cameroon. This morning I walked past a guy eating his morning serving of rice. I greeted him, and he shouted out, “Invitation!” Every one does that here! Any time you’re eating, you’re expected to at least offer to share it… even to strange white people wandering past! (And no, I did not have any, but I have taken other folks up on that when their sauce looks particularly tasty. :)

I live in one of few walled-in compounds (and really I don’t mind the minimal privacy that that affords. And not having to offer my food to every passer-by. :) But another big difference from Cameroon is that in Guinea, the volunteer’s host organization provides your housing. So you really do live like a Guinean, in ways some of us didn’t in Cameroon. There were so many safety regulations in Cameroon, (like you can’t have a thatch-roofed hut cause it’s easier to break into) that a lot a lot of us PCVs lived in the nicest house in the village, just to meet those regulations. (Again, I was spoiled and had a faaat house!) Not in Guinea! Bring on the thatch roofs. It’s pretty cool. I don’t have one, but my closest fellow volunteer does. Although it looks charming, she says that snakes have fallen from it, and it leaks during the rainy season—not fun. As for me, I live in the same compound as the office of my host institution, along with a few other co-workers. I have two small rooms in a row of little apartments—one for the bed and one for cooking and working and everything else. Privacy is not a big part of my life these days. People are always around—so at least on the flip side, it’s good for socializing and easy to hang out with Guineans. And lucky for me, my colleague who is right next door (and whose every word I can hear through the wall) is a really nice single young woman. (She’s my age and not married yet—quite rare by Guinean standards!) She has a TV too, so sometimes in the evenings I go over and watch the Guinean or Ivoirian news or the Latin American imported soap operas, which are just as revered here as they were in Cameroon.

I’ve been able to start my work, visiting village banks and preparing training modules to hopefully help them with some of their operations. The local village bank is open every Wednesday and Friday, is completely volunteer-run, and consists of a table under a veranda on the side of the road. All transactions are recorded manually in a variety of ledgers. When business is slow, there’s always a steady stream of high-schoolers walking by that I can watch. One of the “responsables” of the bank runs a local omelet and tea shack, and he brings us tea and coffee in plastic bags to sip on. (real coffee!! whoa! never saw that in Cameroon!) It’s really pleasant and the folks are very friendly.

And lastly, I’d forgotten to mention I’m named—fully! I took a week to pick a Guinean last name because I wanted to get a feel for the town and the different groups and not pick any name that would label me as the town crazy or reject or anything too offensive. But you’d think my not having a Guinean last name was catastrophic! Guineans I’d meet in town were always asking me about it, and my entire first week, it was a constant topic of discussion among my colleagues. Nabou, my Guinean first name, got turned back into the full Djénabou, yet another version of that name. That’s fine with me— Djénabou is a great name, not too common but everyone knows it, and easy to pronounce (jen-a-boo). So, that first week, it was a constant battle for who would bestow their last name upon me—everyone wants you to give you their name. Mr. Sow would call out, “Djénabou Sow!” And Mr. Coulibaly would say, “Djénabou Coulibaly!” I’d just smile and nod at anything. My counterpart, like everyone who works at my host organization, is a Diallo, so he was all for Djénabou Diallo. It’s a little too much alliteration though and I’d rather add a little diversity to the group instead. When Mr. Diallo saw that he wasn’t getting anywhere with the Djénabou Diallo suggestion, he also proposed the name Sock. He said Sock is a last name that’s from all over Guinea, and it could include people of any tribal group, which is important here! When I explained just what “sock” is in English, holding up my foot as I did so for emphasis, he burst into laughter and it was clear that Djénabou Sock had gone by the wayside. Additionally, I had to tactfully explain why I was not interested in being a Sow. So finally, there’s a name I like, which in Malinké means “take hold of your heritage.” It’s Keïta… pronounced Kate-uh. :) So I’ve gone from Kate to Fleurange in Cameroon to Djénabou in Guinea, now back to Kate…uh. :) And it’s doubly cool because Djénabou is a Pulaar first name, and since Keïta is a Malinké last name, that covers the two big tribal groups in town, so everyone is happy!

More updates from Dabola soon! My love to all!

I’ve just finished reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, in which he recalls his role in the decades-long fight against South Africa’s apartheid regime. He made so many points worth remembering (600+ pages worth!) but I'll just give you some of my favorite quotes. As my sister Barrett said, “Don’t you wish that man were your grandfather?!!”

In 1964 Mandela and 12 of his colleagues were charged with acts of sabotage and planning an armed invasion of South Africa. The potential punishment for these crimes was death by hanging. Instead of testifying, Mandela made a four-hour statement from the dock, outlining the history of the African National Congress (ANC), their roles in the anti-apartheid struggle, and how they had gotten to the point where they were, causing them to make the decisions they made, for which they were indicted. Mandela’s intention was “to put the state on trial” for its apartheid policies and discriminatory treatment of black South Africans by the ruling white minority. Although Mandela did not deny the charges of sabotage, he did oppose the charge of planning an armed invasion, which the ANC was not yet considering. The accused and their lawyers had mentally prepared themselves and were expecting a death sentence. Bram Fishcher, Mandela’s lawyer, urged him not to read his closing paragraph, as follows:

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

This was mind-blowing to me, because people my age mostly only know the end of the story—that Mandela is a freedom fighter who brought about necessary changes. It’s stunning to realize that he was only one judgment away from death—and how different the course of history could have been.

Mandela’s thoughts on his lawyer Bram Fischer, also struck me:

As an Afrikaner whose conscience forced him to reject his own heritage and be ostracized by his own people, [Bram] showed a level of courage and sacrifice that was in a class by itself. I fought only against injustice, not my own people.

Bram was a purist, and after the Rivonia trial, he decided he could best serve the struggle by going underground and living the life of an outlaw… In many ways, Bram Fischer, the grandson of the Prime Minister of the Orange River Colony, had made the greatest sacrifice of all. No matter what I suffered in my pursuit of freedom, I always took strength from the fact that I was fighting with and for my own people. Bram was a free man who fought against his own people to ensure the freedom of others.

One thing I found notable about Mandela was his ability to know when to negotiate and when to stand his ground, and the fact that he rarely lost his cool. A prison guard on Robben Island once insulted his wife, and on that rare occasion Mandela lost it. He didn’t physically assault the guard, but gave him a good round of verbal abuse. Later, reflecting on that incident:

Even though I had silenced Prins, he had caused me to violate my self-control and I consider that a defeat at the hands of my opponent.

Regarding a film he saw while in prison on Robben Island, commenting on the leadership styles of those he admired:

I was particularly affected by a documentary we saw about the great naval battles of World War II, which showed newsreel footage of the sinking of the H.M.S. Prince of Wales by the Japanese. What moved me most was the brief image of Winston Churchill weeping when he heard of the news of the loss of the British vessel. The image stayed in my memory a long time, and demonstrated to me that there are times when a leader can show sorrow in public, and that it will not diminish him in the eyes of his people.

When I think I’m having a bad day…

Prison was a kind of crucible that tested a man’s character. Some men, under the pressure of incarceration, showed true mettle, while others revealed themselves as less than what they had appeared to be.

In their later years on Robben Island, the prisoners would put on plays, including Sophocles’ Antigone:

I only performed in a few dramas, but I had one memorable role, that of Creon, an elderly king fighting a civil war over the throne of his beloved city-state. At the outset of the play, Creon is sincere and patriotic, and there is wisdom in his early speeches when he suggests that experience is the foundation of leadership and that obligations to the people take precedence over loyalty to an individual.

Of course you cannot know a man completely,

His character, his principles, sense of judgment, not till he’s shown his colors, ruling the people, making laws. Experience, that’s the test.

But Creon deals with his enemies mercilessly… He has decreed that the body of Polynices, Antigone’s brother, who had rebelled against the city, does not deserve a proper burial. Antigone rebels, on the grounds that there is a higher law than that of the state. Creon will not listen to Antigone, nor does he listen to anyone but his inner demons. His inflexibility and blindness ill become a leader, for a leader must temper justice with mercy. It was Antigone who symbolized the struggle; she was, in her own way, a freedom fighter, for she defied the law on the grounds that it was unjust.

I’ve joked that I do a prison routine workout sometimes when it’s difficult to exercise outside. But in addition to being a great leader and activist, Nelson could have totally kicked my ass.

I have always believed that exercise is not only a key to physical health, but to peace of mind. Many times in the old days I unleashed my anger and frustration on a punching bag rather than a policeman. Exercise dissipates tension, and tension is the enemy of serenity. I found that I worked better and thought more clearly when I was in good physical condition, and so training became one of the inflexible disciplines of my life. In prison, having an outlet for one’s frustrations was absolutely essential.

…On Monday through Thursday, I would do stationary running in my cell in the morning for up to forty-five minutes. I would also perform one hundred fingertip push-ups, two hundred sit-ups, fifty deep knee-bends and various other calisthenics.

…I did manage to influence some of my more sedentary colleagues. Exercise was unusual for African men of my age and generation… I know that some of my younger comrades looked at me and said to themselves, “If that old man can do it, why can’t I?” They too began to exercise.

(He wrote that when he was 59!)

Regarding the negotiations process to dismantle the minority rule and apartheid government with then South African President F.W. de Klerk:

I was often asked how could I accept the [Nobel Peace Prize] jointly with Mr. De Klerk after I had criticized him so severely. Although I would not take back my criticisms, I could say that he had made a genuine and indispensable contribution to the peace process. I never sought to undermine Mr. de Klerk, for the practical reason that the weaker he was, the weaker the negotiations process. To make peace with an enemy one must work with that enemy, and that enemy becomes one’s partner.

On fear:

Time and again, I have seen men and women risk and give their lives for an idea. I have seen men stand up to attacks and torture without breaking, showing a strength and resiliency that defies imagination. I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. I felt fear myself more times than I can remember, but I hid it behind a mask of boldness. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

And finally,

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than the opposite. Even of the grimmest of times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going.

He is a good person to think about when I’m feeling frustrated or challenged. I admire the way he seems to approach his work with both a sense of opportunity and obligation. I found it interesting how extensively he talks about his family, and wonders if he should have been a better son, better father, better husband, been there to bury his mother when she died, or give away his daughter when she was married. He chose to put the needs of the entire nation before the needs of his immediate family, but not without some pain. At the same time, it was the moral support of his wife Winnie that gave him the strength to get through prison. He often said that his family suffered more than he did while he was in prison. His life was defined by the anti-apartheid struggle, and his family came second, even though they were essential.

And now, back to Guinea…

In other news from Conakry… we are going to our posts! I’m thrilled! I head out to Dabola for the first time tomorrow. Due to the political situation and the waiting, I’ll only be there for a total of three months instead of the intended six months, but I’m excited nonetheless to have an opportunity to enjoy the village life. I’m not sure what kind of internet access I’ll have in Dabola, so you might not hear too much from me… but it’s only three months! Til next time, amigos…

Happy holidays everyone! On Christmas Eve, I had a lovely night sitting on the beach with fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, toes in the sand, listening to some latin music, and watching the sun set and some hookers dance. It was lovely and a little surreal, especially knowing it’s the last time I intend to spend Christmas abroad in random surroundings for a while. I am already looking forward to celebrating Christmas next year… somewhere cold!! (Yes, Louisiana counts as cold!)

Election updates!

So here are the updates from Guinea. We had presidential elections! When the initial election results were announced, the losing candidate’s supporters protested. When the police came out to quell the protests, it often got violent. The government declared a nation-wide state of emergency and imposed a 6 pm curfew—any vehicles on the roads after that time were stopped by police. Some of the worst violence was directly in the neighborhood of the Peace Corps compound, so we stayed hunkered down in the Peace Corps house for a few days. I was allowed to venture out as far as crossing the street to get my bean sandwich for breakfast, but even that was after making sure no gunshots had been heard recently. Fortunately, that only lasted for a few days, but it did cause casualties. You can read more on that here.

Some interesting photos:

My host brother from when I lived in Dubreka somehow got his hands on this sample election ballot. I think it’s well designed in that it takes into account that only about 30% of the country is literate—making the photos and colors necessary for the average voter! (That statistic courtesy the CIA World Factbook.).

Here’s one of the typical campaign billboards. I find it interesting and telling that there is a woman as part of Alpha Condé’s “rainbow coalition.” (The other candidate, Cellou Dalein Diallo, had no women in his campaign posse.)

Alpha Conde, the winner, was inaugurated on Tuesday, December 21. Heads of state from 13 African nations attended! In his speech as Guinea’s outgoing leader, General Sekouba Konaté rebuked other African leaders who have performed poorly in implementing transparent and fair elections. I thought this was great—taking the opportunity to shed light on the abuses of power that are glossed over in so many of these countries. We, the developed nations, often turn a blind eye because we would rather keep a place like Guinea stable so we can extract its oil/iron/aluminum ore, ignoring the shady internal politics as long as the man in charge gives us what we want. It was, in fact, my Guinean colleagues who disagreed with me on the subject of Konaté’s speech, saying that the inauguration was not the time to reprimand other leaders for their non-democratic performances; that this was a time to celebrate. I tend to think that any time is a good time to call out a lack of transparency. Right on, Sekouba.

Some good articles on the inauguration and our new man in charge, Mr. Conde, are here, here, or here.

And lastly, I have to share a joke that one of my Guinean co-workers at CAFODEC told me the other day:

A Chinese, an American and a Guinean are sitting around talking about elections. “In my country,” the Chinese man boasts, “we are able to know the results of an election within 24 hours after voting.”

“That’s nothing!” says the American. “In my country, we can know the results that very night.” The Guinean leans back and smiles.

“Well in my country,” he says, “our systems are so advanced that we know the results of the elections before they even happen.”

Microfinance fun

A small tidbit of good news is that although we still haven’t been allowed to go to our posts, I was allowed out of Conakry long enough to attend a national microfinance conference. It was interesting to watch, as Guinea’s microfinance sector is in such an early stage of development. The leaders here are really looking to surrounding countries—Benin, Senegal, Mali—for inspiration and guidance. There is currently SO much demand that goes unmet mainly due the microfinance institutions’ lack of loan capital. At the conference, we heard from a few women beneficiaries of micro-loans. One woman joined one of Guinea’s first microfinance establishments almost twenty years ago, when it was still just a project of the US Agency for International Development. She’s taken progressively larger loans, which have allowed her to buy land to farm and to start her own small business dying cloth, which supports her family. When she first told her story, it was in Soussou, one of the local languages. I couldn’t understand a thing, but she was so confident and expressive in her speech that I was totally captivated. She asked the new government to pay attention to Guinea’s microfinance sector and to support it so that other women can have the same opportunities she did.

My friend…

In other, much less politically charged or professional news, I have a friend! Let’s just say I am diversifying my overall friendship repertoire. I was walking to work one morning, and a young woman sitting on a bench on the side of the road enthusiastically called out a greeting to me. I was in a good mood, and greeted her back. She motioned me over, informed me that her name is Aminata, and that we should be friends. Cool, I thought! By friends, I assumed she meant we’d occasionally drink tea together on her bench on the side of the road and talk about the neighborhood happenings. That seemed just fine by me. She told me she’d known many of the past Peace Corps volunteers so I figured she’d be like a comfortable old buddy. I am sure hard up for friends here in Conakry—being in the Peace Corps house under a state of emergency is not so conducive to making friends. So I was open to and grateful for the opportunity to meet some neighbors!

About a week later, I get a call from Aminata. She said that she was at the bar on the little stretch of beach right behind the Peace Corps compound with friends, and that I should join them. I wasn’t feeling up to it that day, and so told her maybe next time.

The next weekend, I headed to the beach bar with a few other PCVs. We were planning to meet up with an American friend we hadn’t seen in some time, and I was very much looking forward to catching up with him. We were having a pleasant conversation, when Aminata comes up, crying out “Naboooouuuu!!! (my Guinean name) I was going to call you! I was looking for phone credit to call you!” Before I have a chance to say anything, she pulls up a chair at our table and introduces herself to my fellow PCVs. She simultaneously rubs the back of my neck in an odd, over-friendly sort of greeting. Then she tells the other PCVs how close she and I are, that I am her favorite friend, that we are the best of friends, and holds up her fingers crossed tight, indicating the unshakable bonds of our friendship. I believe Aminata and I had greeted each other in the street about three times at this point.

I didn’t want to be impolite to Aminata, but I really just wanted to catch up with the friend we hadn't seen recently. At particularly inopportune moments of our friend’s stories, Aminata would enthusiastically jump in, ask me something irrelevant, and I’d miss the point of the story. I even explained to her that we hadn’t seen this guy in a while, so I wanted to hear his stories. But by this time, she’s signaled over two more of her friends to join our table. “We should speak in French!” she says, “or you can teach me English!” Not exactly what I had in mind for the afternoon…

As time wears on, my fellow volunteers are giving me looks that say, “Hmmm, your friend here is persistent, non?” At one point when Aminata got up to visit with some other friends, the waitress took her chair away, to use at another table. Undaunted, Aminata quickly came back and procured a new one. All of our social signals and clues that in America say, “We’d really just like to catch up with each other today!” have gone completely over her head, as they often do when two very different cultures try to communicate. Aminata goes on to tell us how close she was with certain volunteers who were previously in Guinea. One of my PCV friends in our group had also previously been in Guinea, and she knows the fellows with whom Aminata kept company. “Oh yes,” my PCV friend notes, “those were the boys who got kicked out. And they slept with prostitutes.” I look over at Aminata, chain smoking proudly, and it all starts to come together. Prostitutes, and only prostitutes, would ever smoke in a bar in Guinea. Wellllll.

My new friend/prostitute faithfully remains at our table for the rest of our time there, waiting… until we all make our pleasant good-byes and head home. Aminata is friendly and outgoing, characteristics I appreciate, and I can’t tell if she wants to be my friend to hang out with me… or my fellow PCV friends of the opposite gender…

The next day, I was talking with another fellow volunteer who had previously served in Guinea. “Oh yes,” he confirms, “Aminata? She’s definitely a prostitute. Actually, she’s the one in charge, the Madam.” So, my first friend in Guinea—quite the entrepreneur! Gotta start somewhere, right? It’s going to be a beautiful friendship.

Give a little, take a little.

I’ve been fortunate enough recently to get stuck in Conakry traffic with a great co-worker—I’ll call him Moussa. What started as an off-handed comment about women riding motorcycles turned into a full-on discussion about love, relationships, and gender roles. I swear, I don’t seek out these topics every day, yet they inevitably come up because I’m in a society with thoughts on these subjects that are so markedly different from my own.

The thing about Moussa’s story that was different was it was the first time I’d heard this particular side of the story—his side—and I must say that I have not heard his wife’s rebuttal. But for now, Moussa’s story goes something like this.

The conversation started off on the subject of financial independence. We agreed that if a parent is going to financially support a child, no matter what age, then the child is somewhat bound and constrained by the parent’s wishes. If the younger generation doesn’t follow the parents’ wishes, then the money gets cut off. The role between men and women here is similar. The men typically hold the money, and thus the power. It’s hard for a woman to break away and gain independence because first, she needs financial independence. Why it is difficult for a woman to obtain and hold a job that will earn her an income sufficient to support herself is a topic for another day. But in short, women hold all the responsibilities around the house, cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, etc. In a country without formal “daycare,” and an average of five children per woman, it can be hard for a woman to find a moment alone. Time spent in the fields is usually shared, a task for men and women, babies tied on the woman’s back while the hoe flies. The lack of domestic duties typically liberates a man to work outside of the house, while most women who work do so within the small radius of the family compound. They operate a one-room shop connected to the house, prepare food to sell from their front yard, use a room of the house for sewing and tailoring services, or simply sit by the roadside, with piles of leaves or sugar for sale.

Some women do work outside the home. But I would say they’re a minority. They live in larger cities like Conakry, located closer to a university where they’ve had the chance to obtain higher education without having to leave home.

Back to Moussa. In his home, like in most Guinean households, he is the breadwinner of his family, and his wife and children look to him to provide for all their needs: housing, food, clothing, medicine, a car, a cell phone. Moussa has a skilled job with Peace Corps and a regular salary.

But what happens when your wife makes three times what you do? Moussa’s wife is a doctor. She has one job in a local hospital, and another doing marketing for a major international firm. In her marketing job alone, she earns twice as much as Moussa. This is fabulous—she’s educated, using all those smarts, and I’m sure their two children will benefit from such interesting and well-rounded parents. But where does all her money go?

According to Guinean law, a woman is not required to help with the family finances. If Peace Corps pulls out of this country again, and Moussa loses his job and has no means to provide for his family, she doesn’t have to tell him where any of her salaries go. She is neither expected nor required under law to contribute financially to the family.

Coming from the American perspective of pooled resources among couples, I was surprised by this new insight.

Moussa was particularly upset one day during our meetings. He told me that he and his wife had been fighting about money. She wanted a new cell phone, and he was wondering where her money went, why she couldn’t purchase it with income from her two salaries. If a woman asks her husband for money to cover all her costs, it seems reasonable to me that the husband can likewise ask about the woman’s earnings. But by law, she owes no explanation to anyone as to where her money goes. When the government starts dictating how the family functions, we get into a sticky zone. Seemingly, Moussa is working to keep the family afloat, is purposefully limiting the number of children they have, and is being thoughtful about his future planning and savings. Yet does he have a wife who is happy to consume without contributing financially?

The objective of the law is to protect women from husbands who might be quick to drink away the family’s resources, or head to the brothel instead of paying a child’s school fees. And in theory, I believe this protection is useful. Moussa’s case is an anomaly. But a law can not and does not ultimately dictate behavior and morality. If women do want equal treatment and a sense of equality with men, then they need to be willing to compromise and sacrifice as well. I understand if a Guinean woman chooses to marry a man who earns a third of what she does. I’m thrilled to see a woman do so well. But then, encouraged by law, asking her husband to pay for everything seems to cross the delicate line beyond gender equality.

Equally, there are other roles and expectations here that Guineans I’ve spoken with are not looking to change. In the same way that I have typically stayed out of the kitchen to make my point, an African woman would be loathe to give up her cooking. Moussa told me about a time when his wife was sick. Moussa swept out the house, fed the kids and got them ready for school—all women’s work. His wife begged him not to. “Please, if anyone knew you did this I would be so ashamed. They would think I’m a terrible wife.” And so, women cling to there own designated roles to give them value. Likewise, Moussa, explained to me, if people knew a woman bought her own pagne with her own money, most husbands would feel shamed, emasculated. I don’t sense a pride of ownership among women who are able to purchase their own luxuries—only what seems to my Western eyes as a patient anticipation for men to provide.

I’m not advocating that Guinea drop its traditions. It makes most people feel comfortable. It gives them a sense of place and a sense of purpose. If that makes some people happy, that’s what I would hope for. But I can’t help but wonder if everybody’s happy. Or if this is a society that is limiting choices, and those who think and act and live around the fringes are still regarded with a questioning and judgmental eye by the majority of their peers.

In the majority of my time in Cameroon and Guinea, it’s been easy to look at life here and think that so many men could let go a little, give up their pride, give up a little of their power. I still think a lot of families would be better off if that were to happen and decisions were made in a more collaborative fashion. But seemingly, in a small number of cases, it isn’t only the men who could give something up for the benefit of the families.

Earlier this week a fellow volunteer, the gentleman who had served here as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the 60’s, asked if any of us wanted to go exploring and find an old bar he used to frequent back in the day. I was ready for a little adventure and happy to see a bit more of Conakry.

The bar, called La Paillotte, or The Grass Hut, was still there and as alive as ever. A few things had changed since the 60’s. (Namely, there used to be a pit of alligators right outside the dance floor. How combining drunken dancing people with large-toothed reptiles was a good idea, I have not yet deciphered. Alas, the alligators are no more; the pit is cemented over.) There are probably a few more plastic flowers strewn around the bar than in the 60s. I’m not sure if plastic flowers were as prolific in Guinea then as they are now, but fake flowers are the answer to every decorating question.

Equally interesting was that in the 60’s, Guinea was at the height of its communist days. East Germans diplomats and spies frequented the bar in a day when tourists weren’t even allowed into the country! (Why they let Peace Corps in, who knows, but my friend and his crew did get the boot only halfway through their service, escorted out of the country by the military in ’67, when Guinea decided it had had enough of foreigners.)

My volunteer friend told folks about his young heady days of the 60s, and they were thrilled that the older wiser man had come back to pay a visit. I just got to ride along on his coattails and get free beer. But I got a few other freebies that night, and it was my first encounter with the epic Guinean generosity I’ve heard so much about.

The original bar owner had passed away only recently, but his replacement sat us down to chat, and immediately asked what she could give us to drink, on the house. The new owner is a lovely woman, Mrs. Ganaba Sylla Touré. She’s well dressed and made-up, and speaks articulate French. I’m impressed that she’s at the head of this establishment. As we talked, I learn that she’s from Dabola, my future post! She was very excited to learn this, and immediately proceeded to write down the phone numbers of her entire family so I can call them once I arrive.

As our conversations continue, it comes up that I don’t yet have a Guinean name. “Well, you’ll take my name! Ganaba!” Hmmm, I ponder that. Several folks have offered me names already, and I usually waffle, not liking the sound of it. I’m picky! I want my new name to be just right, not too common or boring, but also not too far out. The name Ganaba, she tells me, is apparently somehow interchangeable with other variants: Zaïnab, Nabou—it’s all the same name. Ganaba seems a little heavy on my tongue, Zaïnab sounds so foreign, but Nabou, I like. Pronounced nah-BOO, it reminds me of one of my mother’s many nicknames for me, Boo. The familiarity feels comfortable. I render my verdict on Nabou, happily accepting my new name.

Content with my newfound identity, I lean back and sip my beer. “You know who else has our name?” Ganaba asks me. I stop to think.

“No, who?”

“The Prophet’s daughter!”

I almost spit out my beer. The original Zaïnab was certainly not sipping beer when she got baptized. I feel sacrilegious, and subconsciously hide my beer under the table, out of sight of Islam and out of respect for my honorable namesake. Woops!

As the evening wore on, Ganaba took off one of her many bracelets and just gave it to me—cadeau. As 8pm approached, my fellow volunteer and I had to head back to the Peace Corps house to beat our curfew, which is in place as long as we’re in Conakry waiting for election results. We prepared to call a cab, but Ganaba would have none of it. She summoned her personal driver and before we knew it, we were off in her shiny black sedan. In the space of a couple hours, I had acquired a new name, a bracelet, a free ride home, a pleasant buzz, and most memorably, a first insight into Guinean generosity. And all this from a woman I’d only just met! When it’s that easy to become homonymes and friends, I get excited and anxious to meet more Guineans, to get out of the bubble of the Peace Corps house, and to see this country. Now there’s just one thing left—deciding my Guinean last name!

Election update: As of late Monday night results are IN from the November 7 Presidential run-off!! As the results were announced, an unexpectedly late storm pounded Conakry, rain washing the streets clean. Symbolic? We can only hope. The Electoral Committee cleverly released the results on the eve of the Fête de Mouton, or Eid al-Adha, one of the largest Muslim holidays of the year, when people are expected to be visiting friends and family, eating sheep (in memory of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, before the sheep handily stepped in), and generally, not violently protesting. Most folks seemed to stay close to home yesterday, celebrating the Fête on a scaled-down level. Guinea’s Supreme Court now has eight days to confirm the election results. Once things are calm, we’ll head to our posts. It’s true that there has been unrest in Conakry, I can hear the gunshots, but I’m happily hunkered down in the Peace Corps house with plenty of reading material and a very large stash of yogurt (although no sheep). Hopefully, the supporters of the losing candidate, Diallo, who have been quoted as saying “Victory or Death!” will take another look at that stance… I’m encouraged to know that the roughly 2,000 election observers from the Carter Center, the European Union, and local groups did not find the “massive fraud at all levels” that Diallo has accused. I’m equally curious to see if Condé, the winning candidate, will make good on the pledge both candidates made prior to elections to include the other in a unity government, and if extending the olive branch would quiet the street riots. I’ll limit my public commentary on elections for now since it’s a sensitive, political subject likely to get me into trouble, and I’m here to serve all factions as an apolitical volunteer. You can read more here, or feel free to send me an e-mail or a comment on the blog if you’re curious to know more.

My homestay family was always trying to coerce me into the kitchen. “Ma will teach you how to prepare crabs this weekend!” or, “We’ll show you how to make the sauce with manioc leaves!” They seemed genuinely keen to impart their culinary knowledge on me. It’s equally typical that I’ll be sitting around a table with a variety of African colleagues, enjoying a good meal, when somebody drops the cooking bomb. “Oh, toi, tu peux preparer comme ça, non?” Oh you, you can cook like this, right? I can never tell if they’re just pulling my chain, egging me on, or if they’re truly curious. So I usually just smile and make a blanket statement of, “No, I don’t like to cook.” The Africans recoil in horror. “You don’t like to cook??” The kitchen is not only the woman’s domain, but her pride! I don’t know even one married African male who cooks—that is what wives here are for—it is part of how she contributes to the family.

I like to take the opportunity of these awkward dinner-time conversations to blow a few minds. So I launch into my spiel. It goes something along the lines of, “You know, I’m actually not a very good cook. I’m better at finance. That’s why I work in the bank. I have more to offer doing math stuff in the bank than I do in the kitchen. So I’ll keep putting my time and efforts into the bank job, and then use that salary to hire a cook. See? Bonus! Job created!” (Some Africans I’ve met actually reproach the relatively wealthy foreigners who do not hire household staff. If the wealthy have enough money to employ people, then, according to this line of thinking, they should be giving jobs to those who need them.)

These ideas surprise my African friends because it’s in our womanly genes to be in the kitchen, isn’t it? I think my reasoning is sometimes misunderstood here as scoffing at all the culinary efforts and talents of so many other woman, and I come off looking too big for my britches, too uppity to do the most basic and necessary of tasks—cook. But my point is simply to raise the question of where a woman has value. It could be in the kitchen, as is typically the case in Africa. But it could additionally be in a bank. Or a hospital. Or a courtroom, classroom, boardroom, etc. Dropping the “I don’t like to cook” bomb is one way of planting a little food for thought.

I just finished reading the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, which got me thinking. That is a man who likes to cook, likes to eat, and likes to think about where all of his food comes from! (I recommend it, but I think if I had actually read it while living in America and eating American-grown food I would have my undies in a bundle. There is enough in there to unsettle one’s stomach. Ignorance can be bliss. But, I recommend it anyway!)

In reading this book (in addition to getting alternatively disgusted and hungry) I’ve realized to what extent I distance myself from cooking in Africa so as to distance myself from my prescribed gender role here. In America, I’ve equally detached myself from a kitchen just to avoid any possible chance that some man would expect me to be stirring a pot every evening, or try to subjugate me, apron-clad, into a kitchen corner.

Earlier today, a fabulously interesting American lady co-worker invited me over for lunch. I happily stuffed myself with a variety of her delicious foods, and was feeling spoiled, satisfied, and appreciative. We were talking about the gender roles in the kitchen—in Africa, in America—and she exclaimed, “But I LIKE to cook! I’m happy to do it!” And it dawned on me that I kind of do, too. Chopping things is stress-relieving! And experimenting with weird ingredients is fun—wondering if my dishes will actually come out edible! I’ve just been too busy trying to prove a point to admit it. I’m not great at cooking, but I sure do like to eat, and it’s fun to make other people happy with the thought and effort that goes into making a tasty meal. In the same way women’s lib has become all about having the choice to stay at home with kids if that’s what a lady wants, I’m realizing that stretches into the kitchen as well. I don’t ever want a man who’s dependant on me for his next feeding, but I do want to know how to make a satisfying meal from time to time. Even better to make that sweet meal with a nice man. :) Plus, food fights are hot.

So, it’s not the deepest of revelations, but I appreciate what dawns on me with the clash of American literature and African culture. I think in my future African dinner conversations I’ll try to be a little more open to the possibility of sharing a cooking lesson. I’ll just have to work in my value-of-a-woman discussion somewhere between chopping and stirring.

PS—Election update. Things are smooth here! The Electoral Commission is announcing results gradually, as they come in, since last Sunday’s elections. Hopefully we’ll know the next Guinean president by this weekend! For the curious, a brief update here.

Here’s what I’ve been up to!

Weddings.

One of our language trainers, Tidiane, got married and we were all invited to the wedding! The ceremony took place in the family compound. Tidiane told us we’d probably rather skip out on the lengthy section of Koranic readings. We obliged. We showed up for the civil ceremony and… the food. :)

The inevitable flock of kids

As many people as we Americans photographed, the Guineans were practically lined up taking pictures of us! I guess it’s not everyday a flock of white people shows up at the village wedding.

Women folk cuttin up.

(This was a Muslim wedding in the strict Wahhabi tradition. At one point someone from the groom’s family attempted to put some music on, but that quickly got nixed!)

This one isn’t a fabulous picture, but I love how it captures the backdrop to the wedding scene. Tidiane is in the gray boubou, and his soon-to-be wife is in all white.

Everyone crowds around the table as the couple says their vows. The official government representative threw on the appropriate red, gold, and green Guinean sash. And baseball cap.

After the ceremony, we ate some delicious food, including a typical Peul dish called lacchiri e kosan. You serve yourself a big pile of corn flour. On top of that, scoop yourself a helping of sour milk (kind of like yogurt.) Add some sugar, mix it all up, and enjoy! Tidiane was so happy for us to be there, but I think we were really the ones who benefited—my first Guinean wedding!

Elections!

Sunday November 7—election day is today! If all goes well, then results will come in within about a week, they won’t be too heavily contested, and then all of us PCVs will go to our sites! In the meantime, I’m fortunate in that I’m getting to work in Conakry with my host organization CAFODEC, as well as several other microfinance organizations. It’s been really interesting to learn about the microfinance sector here as a whole, and to get to meet with the big dogs and ask them all my questions!

Your Mother.

Finally, here’s a really cool trick from Niger, courtesy one of my fellow Response volunteers who served his two years there. Apparently, the terrible insult you give somebody in Niger is… drumroll… The Shegiya. To Shegiya somebody, you thrust your five fingers towards them, palm out. You can make an angry face with that, too, if you’d like. It’s like flipping the bird in America, but cooler, becaaaaauuuse shegiya comes from the Hausa word shegintaka, meaning in English, bastard. The five angry fingers mean, “The night you were conceived, your mama slept with FIVE men and she doesn’t even know who your daddy is! Bastard.” It’s a low blow. My friend said folks in Niger will do this to each other in traffic, in an argument and he’s even seen mothers do it to their own kids! How odd!

That’s the scoop from Guinea!

Re-bonjour de Guinée!

Politics.

So, here’s a brief update on the situation. We are all hoping that “Our Malian Hero,” the recently appointed president of Guinea’s electoral commission will be able to make the promised presidential elections happen. They were scheduled for yesterday, Sunday October 24. Friday night we found out that elections will be postponed indefinitely. And so we continue to wait and hope.

The U.S. Embassy is sticking by their decision to keep all of us Peace Corps Volunteers in one location, a small town outside of the capital city of Conakry, for as long as it takes until elections happen. Some of us have already been waiting here for over six weeks, unable to go to our sites and begin the work that we came here to do. Embassy and Peace Corps staff have visited our sites and deemed them safe. However, the Embassy’s decision to hold us in consolidation, as stated to us, is not based on the safety or security of our sites. Instead, the Embassy wants us to be located in one place so that if an evacuation were to occur, requiring us to leave the country abruptly, a helicopter can swoop in and gather us up all at once. It makes Guinea sound more dangerous than it currently is. I understand that the Embassy is choosing to err on the side of caution, but it undermines the systems that Peace Corps has in place for just such a situation. The most frustrating part for us stuck here is trying to grasp why Peace Corps made the decision to bring us to Guinea when it was not certain that the Embassy would allow us to go to our sites. The Volunteers are caught in a tug-of-war between people more powerful than we are.

As for me, I’m currently in limbo. I’m eager to get to my post and begin the job I signed up to do, but given the uncertainty I’m examining all my options: wait indefinitely for the potential to do good work here in Guinea, transfer to another country where Peace Corps can offer me equally viable short-term work, start looking for a job elsewhere... For so long I’ve been looking forward to this opportunity in Guinea that it would be difficult to let it slip away. Mentally, I’m not quite ready to come back to America and settle in to the day to day routine that ultimately awaits me. Not that the settled American life is a bad thing, and I do look forward to it, eventually. I was just banking on my six more months of doing fulfilling work in Africa. I’ve found it’s hard to tear myself away from here.

The home life.

So in the interim, I’ll tell you a little about what I’m up to! I’m staying with a Guinean family. (That was a surprise when I got off the plane! Washington had told me that I’d be working at my site within about four days of my arrival, after a quick orientation in Conakry.) So, it’s taken a little adapting, but I appreciate the fam. My Ma feeds me well, and I love that she’s always laughing. Not in a creepy way, the way some people laugh at completely inappropriate moments, but in a way that puts everyone at ease because she’s just generally a happy and amused old woman. My brother’s name is Mohamed Sowpith Camara, but everyone calls him Ally. And he is a good ally indeed. He keeps me informed of all the current news, shares my dinners with me, and shows me around town. They’re part of a polygamous family. The father, now deceased, had three wives and nineteen children. There are so many kids running around my compound that there’s no way I can keep them all straight! My Ma speaks some French, and her children are well educated; several have been to college, which is rare and surprising here.

And since I KNOW my American Mom is going to ask, I’ll tell you what we eat here. :) Out of my deep-seated fear of tripe, liver, and other unidentifiable organs, I told Ma that I don’t like meat. So, lucky me, I eat loads of fish, which I love! It helps being right near the water. Not only that, but one day I was eating an omelet Ma made me for breakfast that I could have sworn had crab in it. Lo and behold. Crabs are everywhere here! Ma mixes them in a dish called “riz gras.” Fat rice. It’s Guinea’s answer to Louisiana’s dirty rice or jambalaya. And randomly, I eat a LOT of pumpkin! It is the chosen vegetable of my household, apparently. Fine by me!

Dubreka, the town where we’re all staying, is about 50 km outside Conakry. Dubreka has no water and no power on a regular basis. Indeed, my toilet is a hole in the ground. Cameroon sure spoiled me with those porcelain wonders. If you’re curious, that’s my toilet there. (Stand on the feet, lift up the cement plug, aim.)

And here’s my shower. Before starting, ensure there is enough water, and then cup by cup, wash yourself clean! (The hardest part to rinse is your forearms.) Don’t worry, I never have to shower alone. Plenty of arachnids just line up to keep me company!

The Peace Corps training facility has a generator, so they fire that up for a few hours of electricity a day. I’ve been entertaining myself with lots of reading on microfinance, runs, and bike rides through the jungle-y scenery. It’s at least as brutally humid here as in South Louisiana in the summer, so another of my preferred activities is fanning myself in the dark at night. At least the humidity brings forth lush, beautiful greenery in all directions, which I do appreciate! (Between the drops of sweat that roll down my eyes!)

I’ve had the chance to do and see some neat things here in Dubreka. First, some traditional tea. If I had better internet access, I’d upload the video that accompanies these photos. Abdoulaye, our 17-year-old tea maker extraordinaire, got his hands on another volunteer’s iPod. Apparently, the ubiquitous Cameroonian-man-falsetto singing voice extends throughout West Africa. I have never met an African man who sings in anything other that a squeaky high warble. Here, he’s belting out Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” distinguishable by high-pitched wailing interspersed with the occasional lyrical burst, “Umbrella, brella! Hey! Hey!” His tea is very good.

Concentration.

Really, he could do this with his eyes closed.

They pour it from one cup to another to cool it off, after it’s steeped on the hot coals.

The finished product is really sugary and very strong—like a shot of tea. Sometimes, interestingly, they add peanuts into the tea.

Then, we got in touch with a local organization that teaches kids drumming and dancing. The organization, funded in part by UNICEF, also teaches the kids to read, write, do some basic math, and provides a meal per day.

I saw so surprisingly little drumming and dancing in Cameroon (except when I asked for demonstrations in my own living room, see below) that I was thrilled to see this so soon into my stay in Guinea.

A traditional Mafa dance of Northern Cameroon, as portrayed in my living room.

And lastly, I’ll leave you with a classic concept: the Guinean clothes dryer!

So, please keep your fingers crossed, and if you’re the praying type, say some prayers for Guinea—that these elections will happen and that Guinea can move out of its limbo and forward into something new and good.

“Les élections les élections.”

Either it’s accompanied by a sadly shaking head, or an enthusiastic "Ils vont se passer dans de bonnes conditions!" They’ll happen just fine!

It’s Wednesday. The run-off of Guinea’s first-ever democratic presidential election is scheduled for this Sunday. It’s an exciting time to be in Guinea. It’s a nerve-wracking and uncertain time to be in Guinea.

Early July. Then September 19… October 10… now October 24. The date for the presidential run-off has been repeatedly postponed, thrusting Guinea, and me, into a precarious and potentially explosive waiting game. The day I got on the plane to leave for Guinea I learned that the elections which were to happen two days after my arrival were postponed. We still don’t know if Sunday’s elections will really take place. I have a whole new appreciation of certainty.

A brief review of why these elections are so important. On September 28, 1958, "On a voté non!" We voted no! Guinea was the only one of France’s West African colonies that chose to sever all ties with France. Better to be poor in independence than rich in slavery, proclaimed Sekou Touré, Guinea’s first leader. Guinea turned to the Soviet Union for help until Touré’s death in 1984. Then General Lansana Conté took over the presidency and proceeded to rig elections until his death in 2008.

Up until this point, you could note a few similarities between Cameroon’s and Guinea’s histories. Both countries have had only two authoritarian leaders, ever. When I arrived in Cameroon in 2008, Cameroonian President Paul Biya and Guinean President Conté had been in questionable power for roughly the same amount of time. Only Paul Biya hasn’t died yet…

But in 2008 Guinea took a sharp turn in another direction. President Conté died, and military Captain Dadis Camara took over in a bloodless coup. He promised to step down and allow free elections after two years. Guineans were thrilled. Dadis, as he was known, started to clean house, publicly prosecuting corrupt government officials from Conté’s administration, which was rife with nepotism. The legal proceedings were broadcast on national television. Every night, families gathered excitedly around their TV sets to watch “The Dadis Show,” as they called it, where justice seemingly was served.

The international community, however, was not so entertained. They put huge amounts of pressure on the Guinean government and people to hold free elections. Dadis balked at the pressure, at setting a date, and questioned why he personally could not run for president. He was Guinean, n’est ce pas, and he wanted his chance.

Then September 28, 2009. The fifty-first anniversary of independence. Demonstrators gathered at the stadium of the same name, the September 28th Stadium in the capital city of Conakry. They demonstrated peacefully, calling for the promised elections. Government officials later said that they did not have the right to be in the stadium that day, that they did not have permission. Whatever the case, nothing excuses the violence that ensued, yet still nothing has been done to prosecute those responsible. More information is here, but in sum, over 150 people lost their lives in the massacre, hundreds of women were raped, and hundreds more demonstrators were injured. It’s the reason Peace Corps got out of Guinea a year ago, and is only now venturing back in. Reactions among Guinean government officials have ranged from denial to feigned ignorance. As for Dadis himself, although he had given the order that no demonstrations should take place that day, he personally denied any direct involvement in the massacre.

As I’ve been told, what happened next is that Dadis personally went to seek out some of his high-ranking military officials, whom he believed to be responsible for the violence. They were hiding out in the islands off the coast of Conakry. During Dadis’ attempt to bring the accused in, he was shot in the head. He was flown out of the country for medical treatment and has been convalescing in Burkina Faso ever since.

Currently, we’re under an interim government, led by military General Sekouba Konaté. As promised, the first round of the long-awaited presidential elections was pushed through in June of this year. A field of dozens of candidates was narrowed to two. It’s these two that are currently battling it out til the end to be Guinea’s first freely-elected president.

And now, enter the sticky question of ethnicity. Candidate number 1, Mr. Diallo, captured 44% percent of the vote in June, the largest of any candidate, which is roughly indicative of his ethnic group’s predominance in Guinea. Despite being the largest ethnic group in Guinea, Diallo and his Peuls have never held the Presidency.

Candidate number 2 is Alpha Condé, a Malinké who captured about 18% of the first-round vote. In addition to the Malinké and the Peuls, the Sousous are another major ethnic group in Guinea. The Sousou and the Malinké seem to be teaming up to keep the Peuls and their boy Diallo out of office. As you can see, the election is incredibly ethnically charged. (And in case you’re wondering, yes, the town where I will eventually serve is evenly split between the two competing factions, Malinké and Peul. So every question, from what local name I would take to which local language I’ll learn, is ethnically charged.)

So why the interminable delays for the run-off election? Initially, ballots hadn’t arrived from South Africa on time, as they were supposed to. Next, the president of the electoral commission, which ultimately pronounces the election results, died. Then, Alpha Condé accused the first round of elections of being marked with irregularities and voting fraud. (Keep in mind, he was not the one who was winning.) Most recently the newly-appointed head of the electoral committee, replacing the guy who died, has been vehemently disputed, again along ethnic lines. Earlier this week, Diallo had said, “The head of the electoral committee must be replaced! Or we will boycott elections.” To which Alpha Condé responded, “Pshaw! The head of the electoral committee under no circumstances shall be replaced! Or we will boycott the elections.” Alas, gridlock.

But lo and behold! Last night, yet another new head of the electoral committee was announced. And he’s not even Guinean!! Thank you other lung of the Malian-Guinean body… he’s a Malian. So far both candidates seem to accept his nomination, even though his tribal affiliations are closer to those of Alpha Condé. But now it’s Thursday, the election is looming in only three days. Nothing has confirmed yet that it will actually happen. As for us Peace Corps Volunteers, we are safely holed up in a little town outside of Conakry, away from the potential hot mess. There has been street violence in Conakry, but life here au village is calm, and we, like the Guineans, will continue to wait. There’s a lot of hope and a lot of excitement in the air. I’ll keep you posted on what could be a huge moment in Guinean history.

Oh! It’s the Obama pants! This is the cute kid who lives in my compound. I wish those came in my size.

Mary and Hayden, should I keep my eyes peeled for a pair for Baby Frank? :)

Bonjour de Guinée! Today makes a week I’ve been in Guinea! So, a few initial observations for you.

It’s hard not to start every other sentence with “In Cameroon, bwa bwa bwa bwaaaaa…” But even when I do, fortunately for me, the other Peace Corps Response volunteers here are in the same boat. There are 17 of us total, and we’ve all previously served in Peace Corps Africa, in Niger, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Uganda, Kenya and Malawi. There’s another volunteer from Cameroon who finished well before I did, but served in just the next province down. One gentleman even served here in Guinea in the sixties, fresh off of independence! My favorite stories are the real bad-ass ones about desert living in Niger—hard core.

I love that being in Guinea keeps me from forgetting about Cameroon. Although I enjoyed every minute of my recent trip to the lactic wonderland that is America, it’s true that Cameroon seemed terribly, painfully far away, as though my time there was all another crazy mef* dream, and in simply waking up, I would lose it—the dream, the experience. Once I got back to America, Cameroon was worlds away—no family or certainty to connect me back there now.

(*Mef is mefloquine, our required malaria prophylaxis that has a sometimes entertaining, sometimes unsettling side effect of really wacked out dreams.)

So coming to Guinea has brought back Cameroon, in its similarities and its differences. But Guinea also brings a whole new edge: West Africa. Guinea is West African in ways that Cameroon never will be: in West Africa’s pervasive Islam, its dance, the French everywhere.

The Boobies.

First difference, boobs are EVERYwhere here! Although a Northern Cameroonian woman wouldn’t hesitate to whip out a breast to nurse her baby any time, anywhere, she’s otherwise modest, wearing a big pagne top, and usually more pagne draped around her body. Here, it’s the Peace Corps Volunteers who are the most modestly dressed. I’ve seen more boobs in a week in Guinea than in two years in Cameroon! Spaghetti strap tops are normal here—you’d never see that much skin in Northern Cameroon. Orrrrrr, you can opt to wear just your bra. When I left the house today, I noted one of the ladies in my compound wearing her pagne wrap skirt with only her bra. It was maroon with yellow embroidery saying “I LOVE YOU,” on each breast (just in case you missed it on one breast.) Another woman was nursing not one, but TWO babies at the same time, one on each boobie. Impressive. My homestay Ma is a kind woman in her fifties who’s raised six children. Her great boobs are always flapping around and flying out of the sleeves of her huge moomoo.

And one last comment on undergarments in my compound. I am jealous of the small boy who has Obama underwear! He’s about 5, and the underwear is bright yellow with a black, red, and white waistband that says OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA all around his waist. Obama’s popularity does not falter among the youth of Africa.

The lungs.

Another main difference between Cameroon and Guinea is Guinea’s connectedness with its West African neighbors. In Cameroon, everything was blamed on “Those Chadians!” or “Sex-stealing Nigerians!!” Seemingly, nothing good came from beyond our borders. The night I arrived in Guinea, however, while still driving from the airport, the driver told me, “Guinea and Mali are two lungs of the same body.” The two countries have much in common, and since Mali was the first Sub-Saharan African country I ever visited, I’ve got a soft spot for it. The countries’ people have many of the same names: Keita, Touré, Traoré, Diallo. The Malinké language I’ll learn (minimally!) of upper Guinea is very similar to the Bambara spoken in much of Mali. (And lucky me, yes, my new town is split neatly between two languages: the Pulaar similar to what I knew in Northern Cameroon, and Malinké.)

The names.

In both Mali and Guinea, there is a practice I love, non-existent in Cameroon. It’s the joking cousins. The closest parallel I can think of in the States is the example of people in South Louisiana making Aggie jokes—just finding someone different to make fun of. In Guinea, soooooo many people share last names. “Guinea is a family!” I’ve heard it explained. Indeed. You see the same 20 family names all the time. And so it’s customary that some families will always make fun of other families. The Syllas and Contés will always joke with the Camaras. The Diallos are always at it against the Bahs. And in my town of Dabola, it’s the Barrys after the Sows. They’ll say things to each other like, “Oh, you Diallos are thieves!” “Oh, well you Bahs eat cats. Hahahahaha!!!” (If this doesn’t seem very funny to you, that’s ok… African humor is a little different.) But the beautiful thing about this bit of African humor is that it works every time. The joke just never gets old. I think my favorite one is about the Coulibalys in Mali. Apparently, EVERYone gets to make fun of them! And their best line… “Oh, you Coulibalys eat beans! Hahahahaha!!!” (Implied fart joke.) I’ve heard this goes on in levels as high as the Ministers’ cabinets.

One story I’ve already heard a few times is about the Camaras and… the Chinese. Apparently, in some publicly made address, former Guinean President Lansana Conté jokingly told a group of Chinese contractors that they should not hire the Camaras for work on a massive state construction project here in Guinea. Since, as everybody knows, the Camaras are thieves! Weeeelllllllllll, the Chinese didn’t quite get the joke. Imagine that! A hard-working Camara, looking for a job, approaches the office of the Chinese contractors. The Chinese studiously examine the proud Mr. Camara’s application, shake their heads and say, “We are sorry, we can not hire you. You are a Camara.” Woops. It got so bad that enough of the Camaras complained to President Conté, who had to explain the joke to the Chinese.

Sooooo, how does all this affect me? My last name clearly is neither Camara nor Diallo nor Bah. Oh, but it could be!! Equally customary in Guinea is naming foreigners. Guineans LOVE to give you a name that they can pronounce, which shows at least some reflection of where you work in Guinea and with what group of people, since certain names clearly indicate certain tribal affiliations. The Peace Corps Volunteers who previously served in West Africa have already been named, and simply introduce themselves now as Aïcha or Mariama, (for a girl) or Idrissou or Ousmane (for a guy), complete with selected last name. My dear host family (the Camaras) have kindly already suggested that I become Mariatou Camara. I’ll be working with a lot of Diallos though, so that’s an idea too. Just this morning I went to buy some soap at a shop near my house. “What’s your name?” the shop keeper asked. “Fleurange,” I answered. “No, but what’s your name in Guinea?” “Ah, I don’t have one yet!” We will see and I’ll let you know the results of my new baptism. I have to choose carefully!

There’s tons more I could say about Guinea, but ça suffit for now from (for now) Fleurange! My love to all!!

I go to Guinea tomorrow!!

But before I do, here is a short list of things I straight-up forgot about cause I hadn’t seen them in more than two years:

• Handicapped bathrooms

• Microwaves

• To-go cups: available in any bar in South Louisiana

• How many white people there are in America

• How to write a check. (I had to ask Mom.)

• Everyone locking their doors all the time!

• Broken bones: does everyone in America break their foot for fun? (I only say this cause I’ve done it 3 times…) I’m seeing those walking casts everywhere! Do Cameroonians break as many bones as we do and just keep on walking or do we have particularly snap-happy bones?

• Saying “bless you” when some one sneezes. No one ever did that in my corner of Cameroon! I was walking in the streets of DC and someone said it to me from across the street!! That’s love.

• Seat belts: No car I rode in in Cameroon had them. Mom had to keep reminding me for about two weeks to buckle up.

• High school options: I went back to my old high school for the ten year reunion. Our mascot was the Mighty Lions. Painted on a huge wall of the school was a lion with a mask and gavel, a lion with a paintbrush, a lion with a football helmet, a lion with swim goggles, a lion with a clarinet. There was probably a lion with a French beret and some cheese, but I missed him. My kinda lion. The point is that I was overwhelmed by all those options. When I taught business classes at my local high school in Cameroon, one of the best schools in the region, we had no electricity. Three thousand students got to choose from about three clubs.

“What on earth is this?” category:

• GPS

• iPhones

Technology takes over America. I watch in awe. If I want to let on to just how clueless I am, I ask questions. I will learn when I return!

It’s been a fabulous time at home and I’m really grateful to all the people who made efforts to see me, put up with me, hosted me, and fed me! Thank you, I will miss you… but remember, not for long this time!

I’m HOME!

I’ve been in the States for a couple of weeks, soaking up cheese, showing skin, and enjoying American culture after 27 months away! I was in Tanzania before coming home. I met up with my friend Shawn there, and then what’s better than one person from Massachusetts… but three?? His parents joined us for a week as well and I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with all of them.

Some pitchas.

A viewpoint in the Usambara Mountains, Northeast Tanzania. I don’t know why my belly looks pregnant—it’s not. (Too much African beer, maybe?)

Tanzania’s version of a magnolia! (Louisiana state flower :)

Market scene in the Usambara mountains

Cute girls we ran into along the hike

More cute, this time in a field

Actually, kids not only looked cute, but they mad fun noises too. While we were hiking, I was telling Shawn a story, describing an incident in Cameroon that had really irritated me. I mad an appropriate noise of disgruntled angst to describe my frustration. Apparently, at exactly that moment, there were about 15 Tanzanian children lurking in nearby bushes. Apparently, they all thought my sound effects were entertaining and immediately imitated them. So we were bombarded with this ridiculous sound, repeatedly, coming from 15 directions, and choruses of giggles. I couldn’t stop laughing because apparently, I sound a lot like a goat. My goat noise, in Tanzanian surround sound. I’m currently aiming to eliminate that sound from my repertoire..

Post hike, a stop in Tanga on the East coast, overlooking the Indian Ocean.

On the island of Pemba, Shawn contemplates the water and a traditional boat.

From the lighthouse of Pemba. The lighthouse was over 100 years old, built in the colonial heyday. And as you can see from my semi-crazed expression, the elevation was a little intimidating!

Zanzibar, the beautiful island off the east coast of Tanzania, in the Indian Ocean. In Stone Town, the main city, they have a bustling night market where you can buy amazing seafood! (Octopus tentacles, anyone? Not bad! Just a little chewy. And you can see the little suction cups.) Here, a vendor prepares the classic “Zanzibar pizza.”

Zanzibar night market. It's outdoors, in a big open square surrounded by gardens, a royal palace, and the water. Not too shabby.

We went on a space tour: nutmeg straight off the tree.

Cinnamon: the part we eat is just bark scraped off the trunk. That lighter colored patch is where it was just scraped off.

A little less all-natural: Konyagi, my favorite Tanzanian liquor. My grandfather was a sugarcane farmer, what can I say, I like things... beverages... (alcohol) made from sugar!

View from an old sultan’s palace in Zanzibar.

The traditionally constructed doors in Zanzibar are made of carved wood. Me + Shawn, Mama Shawn, and Papa Shawn.

Hey monkey. In the Jozani reserve on Zanzibar.

On to the Serengeti, where we spent a couple days. The giraffe and I got into a staring contest.

Hyenas are ugly. Sorry, hyenas.

The elephant and I had a heart to heart.

More Serengeti friends

Warthogs! I’m the only one who thinks they are cute. In the background, flamingos.

Wildebeest, like hyena = not pretty. Lovable though!

Fat-bottom hippos.

One last animal shot, this one from the Olduvai gorge. Apparently, as we monkey/men evolve, it seems the position of our big toe turns inward. Alas, in the image on the far left the monkey toe sticks straight out to the side. In the middle, the more-evolved human toe turns in, aligned directly with the foot. And what is this third specimen? A new creature of a more evolved state, whose big toe turns yet further inwards, moving further from monkey-dom, and towards some supreme form of human intelligence?! Oh wait. That’s just my ugly crooked foot. I’ll console myself by imagining I’m more evolved. :)

Standing on the edge of Ngorongoro crater.

Alas, I’ve got a few more weeks in America now before I head to Guinea, where I will return to a healthy diet of leaf sauce and leave Ben, Jerry, and all their amazing ice cream behind. Til then, amigos, watch out for that little funny-dressed kid, either inappropriately trying to use modern technology (iPhone?!!), or standing baffled in a grocery store aisle near you!

Hi from the Maghreb! It’s my second time here, but this time, elhamdulelah, I’m a tourist. I came here from Cameroon. Next is Tanzania and then home sweet home on the 28th :)

I got to go for a run along the Atlantic the other day, in the port town of Essaouira. Man, it seems some things are universal. I love that running is something you can take almost anywhere. Feet slapping on wet Atlantic sand, it reminds you of any other time you’ve gone running in a weird new place, and makes you feel connected. I hadn’t even packed my running shoes on my short trip to the beach, so I strolled through the old city wearing my swimsuit, with an old T-shirt and my culturally-appropriate (read: ugly) long running shorts on top. I pulled off my flip flops at the beach and ran, holding them in my hand, until the crowds were far behind me.

At the beach in Morocco it’s interesting to see the huge variety of dress, as in Egypt. Some women literally swim in their FULL CLOTHES, head scarf and everything, the wet fabrics sticking to their necks or trailing out behind them in the ocean. I always wonder what they thing of me, pale calves blazing in the sunlight! Very few Moroccan women were out in a swimsuit. I feel scandalous.

Essaouira

I also love to play the game “Find the Moroccans!” It can be hard to tell who’s a tourist and who’s not! On the plane on my first trip here I was stunned (and flattered) when the flight attendant asked me if I was Moroccan. I’m pale. My hair was orange. Apparently, that is the same color as the queen’s hair, and a more common color among people from Fez. (I’m in Fez now… really??) I wonder if I kept my mouth shut, and wore a lot more clothes, as opposed to my what-the-heck African pagne dresses, if people would start thinking I’m local and asking me for directions. That would be sweet.

I got to stay a couple nights with a Peace Corps Volunteer here who is a friend of friends. I loved it! She speaks the language, knows the food, is appreciated in her town. Honestly, I felt much more at home there than with the bunch of backpackers at the hostel where I first arrived. Soon, even better, I’ll get to meet up with my old co-worker and dear friend from MCC, Cathy. Til then, I’ll be bumbling around the old medina of Fez, snacking on the occasional olive (there are LOTS to be had here!) and hanging out with naked old ladies in the public bath houses. Woopee!

Fez

The dye pits in the tannery of Fez

The secret ingredients used to treat the skins? Pigeon poop and cow piss. Mmmmmm.

I was fascinated to see the tannery and the dye pits in action in Fez; I’d heard tons about them through my work at MCC. I spent a long time gazing out at them from a balcony, despite the pervasive I-might-barf odor. Apparently, one strapping young lad mistook my general interest in the pigeon shit pits for a specific interest in him. He pulled out a little extra bicep flex for me (which I appreciated) and gave me the smile and wave. I reciprocate. He points to his ring finger and makes a come-on-down sign with a big grin. I take this to be a marriage proposal. I leap into the shit pits too and that’s the story of how I’m no longer a single lady. Just kidding. Standing in chemicals up to my knees withholding nausea is not in fact my dream wedding. Instead I waved good bye to Prince Charming and went to haggle over some sweet-smelling finished leather goods. Maybe next time…

It’s funny the things that can set me off these days. I think I’m growing up—less emotional than when I was younger. Just when I’m about to pat myself on the back for that, I get lots of liquid products confiscated at the airport in Paris before my flight down to Morocco. (I guess I should know better, but I haven’t flown on a rule-abiding airline in over two years… I forgot!) I feel myself get teary over losing my deodorant, sunscreen, and toothpaste. It was certainly high quality sunscreen, but really? Teary? I surprise myself. I didn’t even cry when I left Mokolo. I try to bargain for the return of my liquid cosmetics… but this is not Africa anymore and the lady just gives me a sorry smile. I shuffle away dejectedly. What is more worth crying about were the ten days when I smelled like… good ol’ me, with no added advantage of ANY deodorant! My apologies to all gentle travelers and hostel owners whose paths I crossed in those recent days. Maybe I just wasn’t looking in the right places, but deo is not easy to find in Morocco! My earthy odor was moreso something to cry about than my replaceable toiletries. At least my would-be husband in the tannery dye pits didn’t mind.

So you thought I was done in Africa? Heheeeeee. Nope.

The exact same day I left Mokolo for good I found the e-mail waiting for me: Peace Corps Response, Invitation to Serve. Peace Corps Response does short-term, more intense projects in sketchier countries than standard Peace Corps, for those who have completed their two years of Peace Corps service.

It was like a whirl that brought me back to when this all started over two years ago: the excitement of knowing the next steps, a new job description, getting to discover a different country. I’ll go to Guinea for six months—October to April— serving specifically as a Microfinance Training Consultant. The work involves developing and implementing training programs for both clients and employees of the Associations des Services Financiers (ASF), small Guinean microfinance organizations that are linked under an umbrella organization called CAFODEC. The trainings will be in response to what the CAFODEC management and I perceive as the weaknesses of the ASFs, to see how we can strengthen their management, and improve lending practices and reimbursement rates. The second part of my gig, independent of the ASFs, is to scope out the players in the microfinance sector in Guinea, see who’s healthy, who’s not, and who could potentially partner with Peace Corps in the future and how.

My parents’ generation is pulling out their hair at this news. But they know I love them too much to not come back. The way I see it, I’ve got the rest of my life to have a “real job” and settle down. This is a sweet opportunity to learn, grow, and do work I enjoy doing. And it’s only six months.

Here’s a few reasons I’m excited to discover Guinea.

-Same and yet new? I already know the name of my new town, Dabola. It’s practically EXACTLY the same latitude as Mokolo, just six countries over… From Mokolo, cross a little Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, and VOILA! Welcome to Guinea! In Dabola, they even speak mostly the same language, Fulfulde, except it’s called Pular in Guinea. So I’ll be able to hit the ground running jam jam jamming my way around in the local language. (“Jam” is the answer to everything in Fulfulde.)

-Wild west of banking? Guinea sounds more like Haiti than Cameroon and the other CEMAC countries in terms of banking regulations. CEMAC is the Central African Monetary Union: Cameroon, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Central African Republic. They all use a common currency and abide by the same banking regulations. Another group of eight more francophone West African countries does likewise. Guinea is like that kid that refuses to fit in. Way back in 1958 when France was negotiating with its territories for their complete independence or a form of close alliance, Guinea was the one to say “Done with that, suckaaas!” So ever since, Guinea has been completely on its own system. In Haiti, my old organization Fonkoze just had a letter written from some ministry allowing it to operate—that was it in terms of government oversight. I think the case in Guinea will be somewhere in between. It will be interesting to apply to the less structured environment of Guinea what I’ve learned in Cameroon of CEMAC’s stricter banking standards. The less regulations that exist in Guinea, the more work I have to do. And added bonus. One of the big guns in CAFODEC—my new host institution—just got appointed to run the new Ministry of Microfinance. So it should be an interesting and evolving work environment!

-Democracy… what’s that? Cameroon has had President Paul Biya for 28 years, and his wife Chantal’s ridiculous hair for 16 of those. (Don’t believe me? You decide.) That hair is just one symbol of all the excesses and wasted priorities of the Biya regime. No one my age can recall anything else, or has lived under any other political system; opposition has been violently squashed down. Guinea? They just held the first round of presidential elections last month—a whole different story! A run-off is in the works. Elections don’t solve everything, but it gets people talking and interested in their government again. I’m excited to see that new reality on the ground. As long as the new first lady steers clear of Chantal’s hairdresser. Fashion junta, please?

To answer people’s worries, “But it’s an unstable country!” True, there was violence there a year ago. That's why the Peace Corps initially pulled out, and why only a small group of Peace Corps Response Volunteers are going back in now. But that violence was an isolated incident limited to the capital city. Dabola is a small town with good transport links. It’s unlikely anything would happen there. If it did, I have options for where to go! Also, the people who got injured in last fall’s violence were political protesters in the streets. I will be sitting in a bank crunching numbers. Less glamorous. Less risky. Not as many bad-ass points but I will come home in one piece.

So, leaving Cameroon was bittersweet, certainly. Saying goodbye to people I care about and work that I’ve been invested in for two years was hard. But as I rode away from Mokolo for the last time, it was hard to be sad for long. I’ve got a lot of good things to look forward to. And if you didn’t make it to see me in Cameroon before, Guinea is now six countries closer… :) Conakry International Airport… I’ll pick you up in full ridiculous pagne, how can you say no to that?

I’ve written many things that I’ve never posted on this blog. The entry below was one of them. I didn’t want to sound so impatient, so inflexible, so soon. So I let it sit, so I could come back to it two years later and see if my predictions were true, or if I’d become a better, gentler, more patient and generally more angelic person. It’s dated from November 2008, when I had been at post not yet three months…

November 2008

Several Peace Corps Volunteers have described to me a skill that they have acquired over the course of their two years in Cameroon—an ability to zone out, blank their minds, for hours at a time.

When you first hear this, it seems somewhat shocking. I can’t help but calculate my former hourly wage and ask, really? $XX lost simply gazing into space?

It’s a survival strategy—for dealing with tediously long bus rides too crammed to read, conversations where one insists on telling you a litany of things you are already know (tune back in just in time to laugh or nod, as appropriate), or six hour staff meetings. As one volunteer said to me, “My Cameroonian co-workers have to sit through the staff meeting too, so why shouldn’t I? That’s exactly how you understand how people have to live here—you wait with them. You share their stories, and their frustrations.” And I ask myself, because I happen to come from a culture where time is money, to what extent do I want to use that as an excuse to skip out on the awful moments of waiting?

This morning was a classic example. A 9am rendez-vous with the mayor of Mokolo. He shows up at about 11:30am. I’m trying my dangdest to sit in small-talk solidarity with my Cameroonian colleagues, but by around 11am, my impatience wins over, I break down, find a place to sit, and whip out my book. Reading is one of many things I’d rather do than… just sit. Solidarity takes a hit. Not everybody has a book to read.

To me, that Peace Corps zone-out seems dangerous. One volunteer who is preparing to return to the U.S. laughingly said to me that he’s worried about just how good he’s become at tuning out. I don’t want to tune people out. I want to believe that what they have to say is worthwhile, or that I could at least steer a conversation toward useful and relevant information. People have told me that my patience will build with time, but there is a part of me that laughs and thinks, they just don’t know me. Another part of me says, and why should I allow my patience to grow? So that I can better excuse the status quo? Although I realize that some adapting to the Cameroonian pace and culture will help me, I also think that a complacent acceptance of the status quo is not what this country needs. Complacent people have never changed things. To bring about some level of change, I think strong emotion—be it fear, grief, hope for something better, or maybe even a healthy dose of impatience—is necessary. So for the moment, I’m not yet going to blank out, stifle my impatience, or believe that my time is not worthwhile. Check back with me on that subject in two years!

And so now, July 2010.

I can’t help but laugh because… I was right. Self-fulfilling prophesy? Maybe. I’m no more patient than I ever was. But I know how to better deal with situations now. I know the things to say or the jokes to make that can help me get what I want and put everyone at ease. Yet, whether I’ve got the cool and composure to say what I’m supposed to, when I’m supposed to, is still another question. It’s so gratifying when it works. I make a joke that helps me get the price I want while bargaining in a market, or a knowing comment that generally convinces everyone that the nassara is not that much of a cold-hearted foreigner.

But it’s true—I still can’t and won’t do six-hour meetings. I will sometimes steer conversations toward what I think is useful, after I’ve gone through the minimal and required greetings and pleasantries. And maybe I’m missing out on something there—that which other people think is important—that’s what I’m here to learn, right? I’ll never be as patient and kind as some other Peace Corps Volunteers. But I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate and spend time with those volunteers, and they’ve taught me invaluable lessons. I think the key is to channel the impatience, the desire for change and for not settling, and to seek something useful out of it, instead of a festering frustration at the systems that create these situations. Some people are capable of blanking out. For better or for worse, I am not.

Truly, my closest Cameroonian friends are those that can and do work on more “American time,” who are busy, who don't like to settle. They fuss at me if I show up late for a meeting. An interesting anecdote. My best friend in town is Jacques. Last year we were out having a drink when he let slip that his birthday had just passed. “Jacques!” I said, “Why didn’t you tell me?! Your birthday! We would have celebrated! What did you do?!”

“I cried,” he responded. “Because I set certain goals for myself to have attained in that year, and they didn’t happen.” Jacques is one of so very few Cameroonians I know who would ever say that.

So what to do? Support and encourage the Jacques who are out there? Plant seeds, just show a different way of doing things? And what about the situations where I just have so little control, the waiting for mayors and other people deemed more important than I? Those are the moments, with quiet resignation, that I am grateful to return to America. I don’t know what to tell Cameroonians to do, as important people determine their future while they… wait. I’ve felt the frustration, and at times I’ve run from it, deemed it not worth my time and effort, but only in feeling the frustrations have I learned and understood, if only for a moment, the struggles of other people. I wish I could say I struggled and waited in solidarity at all times; I didn’t. I’m grateful I had the opportunities I did to learn, and I’m humbled that so many people here are so very much more patient, persevering, and determined than I am. Cameroon demands it—both for survival, and to make the changes we hope to see.

I’m grateful to a friend who recently sent me this quote. It’s the type of thing I need to tape to my wall, stick in my wallet, and keep in my heart as a reminder of who I want to be, as I forge on into other future work such as this, in places such as Cameroon. I leave you with this, from Teddy Roosevelt’s 1910 speech, entitled The Man in the Arena:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

So Thea and I had a little going-away bash the other night. You really never know which way these things are going to go.

Mamoudou here, responsible father of seven and pillar of Mokolo's civil society, reported it was the first time he had drunk wine in ten years. I don’t know whether to be proud or concerned as I encourage my Cameroonian friends along the wayward path.

My parents did raise me to be classy.

I just like how happy our favorite moto driver, Sangenis, is here at the prospect of that boxed wine!

Somehow, the party evolved into a dance-off around a centerpiece of… a bowl of whiskey sachets. Interestingly, the accompanying music was provided by our friend Roger. He whipped out his guitar and played what he knew everyone could sing along to: Jesus music. And you don’t need to be Christian to know your Jesus music. I have some Muslim friends with great voices!

A little video of the sing-along:

Awkward white girl trying to dance. My partner here is Antoinette, Thea’s neighbor who never fails to boost my ego with her commentaries on my attire. When I showed up at Thea’s in a dress, she said, “Oh Fleurange, you’re pretty today!”

“Ah, Antoinette, I was ugly yesterday?”

“Yes, you were ugly yesterday.”

Keep trying!

Antoinette shows us how it’s done. Here, she has the entire bowl of whiskey sachets on her head.

I have so much to learn from her. :)

Illustrative: That is the whiskey sachet in action.

The after-after-party. Here, my postmate and dear friend of two years, Thea, shows us that unlike me, she has in fact learned to shake it.

Can I just add as a side note that a few nights later, at dinner at my house, I learned the traditional dances of the Mafa, Kapsiki, AND Toupouri peoples. Just wait til the next time you’ve got a drink in me. I might blow your mind with my all-new-yet-traditional African bush moves. :)

I leave Mokolo in only four days! Since my mama always taught me the value of pro and con lists, I couldn’t help but start noting all the little things I might (or might not!) miss when I leave Cameroon, for better and for worse…

I will miss:

• Random debates that break out among strangers in the middle of a shared taxi ride across town. And even when a consensus is reached, someone says, “Well now we’ve started arguing, we might as well keep arguing until we get to our destination!”

• Being able to lose my cool with somebody and then be best friends two seconds later.

• Wearing the same shirt a few days in a row. And wearing the same three ugly pairs of pants for two years straight.

• Wearing ridiculously loud pagne ensembles, with poofy sleeves, and being told I am beautiful, as opposed to, say, a freak.

• The freedom of my schedule: taking a nap, or a run… or a drink, on a weekday at 11am! Waking up with no alarm, working from home, and going in to an office specifically when I am needed, not just to punch time. Setting my own priorities.

• Gratuitous nose picking.

• 1$ beers. 20 cent whiskey sachets.

• Having time to read good books!

• Designing my own clothes, frumpy as they might be, and having them custom tailored by my tailors who tell me I need to turn black before I leave Africa. And that I am the perfect size. In general the ability to make commentary on anyone and everyone’s bodies that would be completely inappropriate in America.

• Being more than just a tourist in a foreign community.

• Having to wash my hair only once a week cause I live in a desert :)

• Pinching cute kids’ cheeks, spanking cute kids’ butts, patting cute kids’ heads. We’re not supposed to touch strangers’ children in America? That will be so weird!

• Dudes wearing complete ensembles of neon pink, or lime green, or banana yellow… Could be pajamas, could be fine formal wear!

• Finding satisfaction in limited options.

• Baby goats: as cute as they are ubiquitous!

• Random things that just wouldn’t happen in America, for example, getting a knock on my door from a stranger who tells me he is building an airplane, and could I call my friends in my country who own factories and tell them?

• The generosity of Cameroonians—knowing that whomever I’m sitting next to on a bus is going to share with me whatever little food he buys off the side of the road. Or that if I happen to visit a friend near meal-time I’m automatically invited to join them for whatever’s cooking.

• My Cameroonian friends of the last two years who’ve seen me rant, laugh, cry, teach, debate, and grow.

• Being a part of the Peace Corps community here, with an instant friend and open door in almost every city in this country. Being a Peace Corps Volunteer in general.

I won’t miss:

• Having to justify at every turn why I am not married, why I don’t want to marry, and specifically why I don’t want to marry you, your son, your brother, or your cousin.

• Having to poop in the backyard of my shared compound cause the water is out… again.

• Unidentifiable bug bites in places that shouldn’t be bitten.

• Having to answer whether I am Madame or Mademoiselle, and explain that I do not like being called Mademoiselle because I am a professional, not a twelve-year-old.

• Getting beeped—called and hung up on for any number of reasons (to say hello, to say yes, to say “I don’t have any phone credit, call me back!”)

• Washing anything that needs to get washed in this house: my dishes, my laundry, myself, while sitting on a stool in the bathroom using the one spigot in the house. Oh washing machines, I will just sit and spectate as you do your glorious work!

• Loooooong meetings where I don’t understand what’s going on in Mafa, Kapsiki or 95% of Fulfulde

• Not being able to sit cross-legged for fear of offending someone—it shows a lack of respect. The best equivalent I can think of in the States would be to rip out a big old burp in the middle of a meeting. Not so tasteful.

• Missing my friends and family in the U.S. and feeling disconnected in general, from phone calls, internet, news, and my culture.

As I’ve added to my lists, I’ve realized how many things that I either love or that drive me crazy about this country are really two sides to the same coin.

• I will miss my neighbor’s freshly prepared, delicious, cheap beans for breakfast every morning. Sitting under the trees on the side of our dirt road eating them together with my other neighbors. I have to cook my own beans in America?

• I won’t miss biting down on a rock in my neighbor’s freshly prepared, delicious, cheap beans.

• I’ll miss the ease of conversation. Asking “how’s your house, how’s your family, how’s your work?” in Fulfulde is enough to have the neighbors thinking I’m a social genius. Sweet.

• I won’t miss the boredom of so many conversations that never go beyond asking “how’s your house, how’s your family, how’s your work?” Deep.

• I’ll miss cheap transport!! 20 cents to take a motorcycle across town!

• I won’t miss fearing for my life almost every time I get on a motorcycle! I ride a motorcycle every day.

• I’ll miss African time: making it work for me when I can’t get my sleepy bum in gear to be punctual.

• I won’t miss African time: waiting indefinitely on others so that by the time a meeting finally starts I’m already exhausted.

• I’ll miss being invited to an event just because I’m the foreigner in town. Popularity made easy.

• I won’t miss the unwanted attention that comes from being different, the foreigner in town. I can’t wait to silently slip into anonymity as I walk down the streets, SURROUNDED by nassaras!!

• I’ll miss feeling connected to nature: the excitement that comes from the first rains of the year, or walking out my front door and within five minutes being surrounded with NOTHING but fields, green, the sun, and the breeze.

• I won’t miss too much nature: like when you’d really like a paved road or a little electricity.

• I’ll miss trippy-sweet mefloquine dreams! (Mefloquine is the Peace Corps-provided malaria prophylaxis with undetermined long-term mental side effects. While at the same time it kind of scares me, I kinda like the crazy dreams it gives us. Just a little imagination on steroids to keep you entertained in the African bush.)

• I won’t miss malaria. :) Did I mention I got it pretty bad?

• I’ll miss bargaining: the feeling of a personal connection created and the satisfaction when you’ve been going at it for ten minutes and you know you’ve finally gotten the best price. Especially when the Cameroonians ask you, “Where did you learn to bargain like that?!”

• I won’t miss bargaining: having to spend ten minutes to get a reasonable price when I am cranky and not in the mood, and just want to breeze in and out. Ha, the luxury!

• I’ll miss when running out in the bush, the adorable four-year old girl with a huge smile that follows me when I pass her hut. She makes fake athletic-y grunting noises in between giggles, until she collapses into laughter about fifty feet later… every time.

• I won’t miss when running out in the bush, fearing getting bitten by dogs that might be rabid. Cameroonians are mostly terrified of dogs. Here, I kind of am too!

Upon their return, I’ve heard several people say that living in Africa feels somehow more “real.” I think of the example of running out in the bush. Adorable little girls chase me, but so do might-be-rabid dogs. I go on a footpath out towards Nigeria. It’s peaceful and calm and sparsely populated, with occasional huts dotting the rocky landscape. When there are people, their reactions to me can be hilarious! (especially on market day, when they’re drunk on bilbil.) One old lady stood in the middle of the path, arms wide open and hugged me before I could pass, then did a little dance to celebrate! Another drunk old man was sitting on a rock with some friends. He had a big stick and made like he was going to whack me in the knees. I was truly scared and had no idea what he was up to! He leaned towards me brandishing his stick as I passed, but then drunkenly teetered off the rock and fell on the ground. His friends loved it, and I just sang out, “I’m too fast for youuuuuuuuu!” and ran past. In between the drunken elderly, so many people smile, wave, and give me a hearty “du courage,” like “good luck! take heart!” Nobody’s ever told me that in America. In contrast, when I think of running in the States, I think of concrete, cars, and the impersonal sliver of a curb of Johnston Street, Lafayette that I’ll be allotted as drivers wiz past. No dewy grasses and Cameroonians hoeing their fields with babies on their backs, stopping to wipe their brows and smile at me as I pass. No scary dogs but also no laughter and courage. Everything in Africa seems notched up, like increasing the brightness on a screen of emotions. America will be easy, convenient, and luxurious in so many ways. But the reality of emotions—from boredom and frustration, to excitement and solidarity—in Africa offer a whole different type of richness that I will miss.

A friend Kosby is a teacher at one of the local high schools. It’s exam season, so he shared with us a few of the stellar responses he’s recently seen on students’ tests.

Exam: What were the consequences for Africa from the Second World War?

Student’s response: There are bad grasses growing.

Exam: How do you save the environment?

Student’s response: You give it mouth to mouth.

I also recently told my Sis that I knew it was time to come home cause all my shoes are totally shot and my feet are hurting like an old lady’s. Her e-mailed response, which accurately depicts how I would go about finding and purchasing a new pair of shoes from your average vendor in Cameroon, made me laugh out loud:

For the love of all things good, next time you pass by a small boy with a shoe on his head, stop him and try on his wares.

That’s pretty accurate. The little boys have one sole shoe perched on their heads, almost as a marker, their equivalent of a neon Foot Locker sign, as they wander around town looking for clients. They carry a whole assortment more of sneakers in their arms. You bargain for your new shoes right there on the side of the road, while the small boy never takes that one sneaker off his head. So now I just have to go find the small boys... (that is not meant to sound creepy!) Even better are the underwear salesmen who approach you in the bars.

Decisions, decisions.

Another satisfied customer!

But that’s all a story for another day. (Note: the underwear vendors, however, do not market their wares by putting them on their heads.) And I won’t even get into the current decrepit state of my undies! I REALLY need to come home so I can replace those! So, never a dull moment here. Students prove their wisdom, and my worldly goods fall to pieces around me. America, I’ll be there soon, even if your shopping will be too easy and without flair!

A friend of many of us Peace Corps Volunteers, Alim, recently made a trip to America. It was his first time in the States, and he was going with a group of several other Africans, for an educational and work-related tour.

I loved hearing his reactions to the US! The two things that impressed him the most, he said, was the architecture, and … the toilets! He laughed as he told us, but just the idea that toilets were EVERYWHERE, and always so clean, was a shocker! The showers in the hotel were also pretty cool—he had a lot of pictures of them! When you recognize that I only know of about 5 flushy toilets in my town… that makes sense. (And actually, mine is not flushing these days!) Most volunteers and most Cameroonians are using the trusty hole in the ground.

If I ever need to smile, I will just recall an image of Alim from a story he told us. First, for your own mental imagery, I should explain that Alim is just cute. He’s small and friendly and has a big smile that just takes over his entire face. And apparently, number 3 on Alim’s Best-of-America list was Kentucky Fried Chicken. He said he ate there EVERY day (with the exception of when he was in New Orleans and had to substitute Popeyes.) On one of his daily stops, he noticed… the drive-through. Never having seen one of these before, he was pretty curious. Soooo, once there were no more cars in line, he heads toward the microphone, and in between giggles, in his charmingly accented English, orders his daily dose of chicken. He continues his stroll on to the window, pays, and walks on through… the drive-through. Cameroonian-American cultural exchange for the day: complete!! And a bucket o’ wings!

Lastly, I asked him what was his favorite part of the States. He went EVERYwhere!! DC, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, North Dakota (??!), New Orleans. When he pondered and then replied “New Orleans,” I think I squealed out loud.

“Alim, you’re just telling me that cause it’s my state!”

“Really?!”

“Yes!” I even pointed to where I had once drunkenly written my name in large letters in the Gulf of Mexico, with a big smiley face, and an arrow pointing to Lafayette, on the US map hanging in the Peace Corps house in Maroua.

So, New Orleans might have hurricanes and now a fresh coating of BP-flavored oil, but it’s still got culture. And Alim went to Jazz Fest! Oh, I would have paid to see those twelve giggly Africans navigating Jazz Fest. :)

Annnnnnnd, on that note, allow me to just throw in that New Orleans, Lafayette, and all of America, get ready! I just got my plane tickets and I am HOME on August 28th!!

But until then, how ‘bout …a little update on my pants :)

The brown pants are back! I will hold them up as a monument to resiliency… as well as bad fashion.

But more interestingly, I was talking to Thea’s neighbor Antoinette yesterday. Recently, it’s been so hot here that even my dear old friends the pants have had to go. I’m opting for the cooler breezy option of skirts and dresses these days, even if means I don’t get to ride my bike around. (Too hot for that anyway!) So Antoinette told me how nice I looked. (Note: I was wearing my ugly Women’s Day pagne top and a Macabi skirt. That is one of those frumpy I’m-an-outdoors-woman-and-therefore-don’t-have-to-be-fashionable skirts that even I know better that to wear in public in the states!) So by most definitions, I did not look “nice.”

“Antoinette,” I said, “You always tell me I look nice when I wear a skirt or a dress. You must not like my pants.”

“Well,” she ponders, “Sometimes you wear pants and they are ok, and sometimes you wear pants…” and she starts laughing.

So basically even a Cameroonian has now confirmed what the Americans have been crying out for months! Well.

When I told this story to Thea she had an even better one for me. Apparently, even the saggy-assed-ness of my pants does not camouflage certain God-given… features. So, how Cameroonians continue to confuse all of us white girls in town, I do not know. But apparently Antoinette was recently trying to explain to another of Thea’s neighbors which one of the white girls I am.

“Oooooooh!” the newly enlightened neighbor exclaimed, “C’est elle avec les fesses africaines?!”

“Ooooohhh! She’s that one with the African butt?!” Yes, that is me, with the African butt, thank you! I do what I can to integrate.

I knew I was looking forward to being back in Cameroon. One month of traveling in foreign countries where I hardly understand what’s going on is tiring! It felt even better to be back, though, than I’d expected. The plane ride from Addis Ababa to Douala said about everything you need to know.

There was a classically noisy, in-your-face Southern Cameroonian woman sitting across the aisle from me on the plane. Ahhh, her constant commentary—ranging from the airplane food, to the Chinese, to what makes people sick—was annoying and like music to my ears at the same time. The sounds of Cameroon! She couldn’t be bothered to sit in her assigned seat because, “we’re all going to get there anyway,” and she was responsible for engaging about half of the plane in conversation—from the row in front of us to two rows behind us! Nothing says Cameroon like an animated debate across four rows of public transportation. She promptly inquired into my marital status and proceeded into a confidant discourse about how I need to marry a Cameroonian man soon. She generously offered to help me arrange said marriage. I smile and nod. Through with me for the moment, she started showing another woman sitting behind us an entire carryon-full of THONGS she had brought to give as gifts. (Not flip-flips, the stringy underwear! Obviously this lady is not from the more conservative North of Cameroon.) Accordingly, the other Cameroonian woman asks for a shiny new thong of her own from the ample collection.

It felt good to make that same system work for me—the comforts of knowing what you can get away with. :) While standing in the aisle waiting to disembark the plane, a well-dressed Cameroonian gentleman behind me handed a bag of candy to the little boy, of no relation to him, who had been sitting in front of him. Such open generosity is typical of Cameroon. So I smiled at the man and asked, “Where is my part?” a very Cameroonian thing to say.

“Ah, but you are not a child,” he replies.

“Oh it’s too bad for me, isn’t it?” I say with a smile. He hesitates only a minute and gives me a bag of chocolates anyway. Score! At times like this I sure am happy to be back. And I bargained with a few of my chocolates to get a lower taxi fare on my ride from the airport.

So now I have only two months left in Makala! I’m excited and nervous at the same time, not exactly sure what’s next. My plan is to enjoy living in my little African town for the two short months that remain, and appreciate the connections I’ve made—it’ll never be quite like this again, even if I do return to Africa. I want to cleanly knot up a couple last projects, and then America, see you soon!

Disclaimer: Ethiopia is more full of history than I know what to do with. My apologies if I get carried away and get about as exciting as a text book. :)

My first exposure to Ethiopia was the roughly nine restaurants located on the same street in Washington DC, blocks from my old house. The food was good, which is of itself enough to convince me that I need to visit a place. But the food was representative of every other element of Ethiopian culture—it’s so unique. Ethiopia is Africa’s only country to have avoided colonization, and the language, religion, and traditions of the people have thrived in ways unlike in other African countries.

So when my friend and former co-worker from MCC, Stacy, told me she’d gotten her Peace Corps assignment there, I was quick to propose that I be her first visitor :) I debated leaving Cameroon for such a long vacation so near the end of my service. But while sitting comfortably boarded on the Ethiopian Airlines jet, leaving Cameroon for the first time in almost two years, a handsome Ethiopian flight attendant handed me my single-serving bottle of red wine with a warm smile, and I felt confident in my decision.

Upon arriving, I almost immediately noticed what seemed a striking similarity with Haiti—the patriotism and pride of being a one-of-a-kind country, with its own language, and a history of the underdog winning, battling off the colonial powers. Cameroon of course has its history, but it, like about 15 other West African countries, uses French as an official language. Yet as exciting as Ethiopia’s singularity makes it, I realized in talking to Ethiopia PCVs just what a struggle the language barrier is. The main language is Amharic. That’s like what Jesus spoke. I can hardly imagine. The script has over 200 characters, in an array of attractive squiggles and loops that sometimes remind me of dancing people. Attractive squiggles aside, you basically arrive in country and are immediately and totally reduced to illiteracy. In the case of Ethiopia, that pride and patriotism in being a one-of-a-kind country comes at the price of very difficult communications.

And so the tour begins! (For your viewing enjoyment )

My three weeks in Ethiopia began at Lake Tana. It’s the source of the Blue Nile River, and home to several centuries-old monasteries, dotting its shores and islands. Almost half of Ethiopians practice Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity. Ethiopia was the second nation in the world, after only Armenia, to declare Christianity as its official state religion. The Ethiopians I observed were incredibly devout, kissing crosses or church walls they passed. They celebrate a slew of Saints, even more than the Catholics, I think, and adhere strictly to several dietary rules and periods of fasting. One 15th-century Ethiopian king, Zara Yacob, actually required his subjects to tattoo “I renounce the accursed, I am the slave of Mary, mother of the Creator of the universe,” on their left arms, “I deny the devil,” on their right arms, and a crucifix onto their foreheads. That was the 15th century, but I still saw some crucifix forehead tattoos during my trip!

It took almost three hours to reach the monastery of Narga Selassie, on an island in the middle of Lake Tana. Several of the most remote monasteries are “too holy” for women to even enter. This also includes female animals. Keep the hens, pigs, and girl goats away!

Orthodox churches are often round. In the center of each church is “the holy of holies,” a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, built to house the Ten Commandments God gave to Moses. The Orthodox church believes that the original Ark is in the historic city of Axum. I believe Indiana Jones thinks otherwise.

I was on a puttery motorboat on Lake Tana, but the locals typically use canoes made out of papyrus reeds. (That’s the same stuff Egyptians used to use to make paper!) The canoes are so strong they sometimes carry oxen from one village to another. In many ways, life there seems to have remained unchanged throughout centuries of planting and harvesting.

From Lake Tana I traipsed further north to Gonder, a city oozing history, but also comfort and charm. I also drank so many macchiatos in Gonder as to ooze caffeine from my every pore. No wonder I liked that city so much.

The history quickie:

Several Ethiopian Emperors lived in Gonder, starting with King Fasilades in the 1600s. While Gonder served as Ethiopia’s capital, the Emperors built several castles, influenced by a mix of Indian, Portuguese and Moorish styles. The castles sustained heavy damages when the British bombed the Italians who had taken up residence there in the 1930’s, but are still fascinating and largely well-preserved. History complete.

Fasilades’ castle

Gonder is known as “Africa’s Camelot!”

Also in Gonder, I visited the church of Debre Birhan Selassie, built by one of the Emperors in the late 1600’s. Ethiopians LOVE St. George. He is killing his dragon in every church in that country.

You can also find St. George here, with dead dragon:

But back to Debre Birhan Selassie. The artwork covers every possible inch of space, depicting scenes from the old and new testaments, along with other legends of the Ethiopian Orthodox church. I don’t know this legend, but in case you were thinking of misbehaving, think again:

From the ceiling, hundreds of little angels peer down.

The typical cross that adorns the exterior of Ethiopian churches

And now, a modern charm?

My favorite restaurant in Gonder. Satisfaction guaranteed every time.

And randomly, I caught a political parade in Gonder! Presidential elections are later this month. I could hardly cross the street for an hour.

From Gonder, it was northwest into the Simien Mountains. I teamed up with a lovely German girl to split the costs of the hike. We were joined by the noble Mohamed, our rifle-toting scout (park’s requirement!) who guided and protected us. He did a fabulous job, especially given that during our three challenging days and nights together we had but three words in a common language to rely on. He looked at least 60 years old and had legs about as skinny as my arms. In the mountains at night it was so brutally cold. I wore a sweatshirt and jacket borrowed from another PCV, the only sweater I own in Cameroon, a blanket draped around me, and my scarf tied around my head like a babushka. Wearing all the aforementioned clothes, I slept in a ball at the bottom of my sleeping bag, about as close to the German girl as you can get away with for having just met someone earlier that week. After cooking the last night Mohamed could tell how cold I was and took my hands to warm them up in a kind, grandfatherly gesture. (It was not creepy, there were 18 other people around!)

The mountains:

Does Mohamed know he is my favorite mountain man model?

The Gelada Baboons are indigenous to Ethiopia. When Mohamed would see them, he’d cry out excitedly “Baboosh! Baboosh!!” and point in their direction. Incidentally, this is also the French word for flip-flops.

My favorite view, like a dramatic curtain of rock.

Last looks at the mountains. I’m really motivated to see the Grand Canyon now and see how it compares!

I climbed to a new personal height, 13,350 feet! You feel so far removed at such heights, and I’m always surprised to see any one else there, although usually only small herder boys. You really feel like you’re on the top edge of the earth—the only direction you can see is down. You’re above the tree-line too so you see vast, bare space. The ride just to get out to the Simiens had been so long I’d already felt like I was at the end of the earth…

From the remote Simiens north to Axum, an even more remote, dusty town in the far north of the country. It once served as a major crossroads for traders on their way to the Red Sea and farther yet to the Arabian Peninsula. It was one of the most powerful cities of the region in the 4th century, and its kingdom stretched into what is now Saudi Arabia. The location that once made the town great now seems a plague. The border with Eritrea to the north—and access to the Red Sea—has been closed for ten years due to these countries’ conflict. Arriving in Axum now, you’re at the end of the road, discovering what feels like a lost secret.

Before the arrival of Christianity in the 4th century, rulers of Axum were buried with huge granite stele as grave markers. No one really knows how they were erected—the largest one still standing is 78 feet high! Many are carved to look like multi-story houses, complete with little doors. (As demonstrated by my guide!)

The largest stele, at almost 110 feet, is believed to have fallen while being erected. It’s been left for some 1500 years, lying undisturbed where it crashed into pieces.

The Italians swiped one of Axum’s biggest stele in the 1930’s, to erect it in a main piazza in Rome. It was restored to Ethiopia in 2005 but this sign was a consolation prize while Ethiopia was still waiting to get the stele back…

I liked the bright artwork of this church near the stele field.

And then Christianity arrived in Axum. No more stele, but the here comes the Ark of the Covenant! Legend says that it was King Menelik, the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, who brought the Ark to Ethiopia. The Ark is legendarily an oracle, helps the Ethiopians to win battles, and causes anyone who sees it to burst into flame. It’s kept here, in the chapel of St. Maryum of Zion, in Axum. The chapel is a major site of pilgrimage for the Ethiopian Orthodox.

If you’re not churched out, one site outdid them all: the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela. What the heck is rock-hewn? Instead of building churches from the ground up, the Ethiopians of the 12th and 13th centuries decided to dig the churches out of rock, and starting from the top down, they carved into solid stone.

I could feel through my socks the cool uneven rock floors of the sanctuaries. I asked our guide why all the walls and ceilings were so perfectly smooth but the floors were so bumpy. The guide answered erosion. I could only imagine the centuries of priests and pilgrims, solemnly shuffling through there before me, as we each leave a little mark for the others’ feet to feel.

Because the churches are carved into the ground, they are surrounded by deep trenches, allowing only a little sunlight in, and making them feel that much further removed from reality. Our guide took my camera into one room where we were not allowed as women, where larger-than-life-sized saints were carved into the rock walls—cool! Me, Stacy, and Saint.

And we meet our friend St. George (or Giyorgis) again!

The view from the top of St. George’s church…

the side…

and below… all one enormous piece of stone.

And there are eleven such churches in Lalibela!

The priests also seemed as though from another time, displaying the centuries-old processional crosses. The colorful umbrellas? A more modern touch.

The priest of St. Georges’ church rests. To the right, George is on his horse.

After seeing more churches in a week than I’ve seen in two years of Peace Corps, I headed south towards the Rift Valley lakes, where a ton of PCVs planned to compete in a 7k run. It was great fun to be surrounded and supported by so many others and to compete—I forgot how much I love and hate competition at the same time! (Mostly hating how terrible I felt during the last mile of the run...) There was actually an “elite” category for the Ethiopians, maybe to help us foreigners maintain a morsel of our dignity. Watching them run was beautiful. They were all a least a head shorter than me, tiny in every aspect, and they make running look so easy. I felt like I was watching an Olympic event.

So running alone that day would have been enough to do me in. Drinking the amount of tej I choose to drink that day would also have made for a rough day-after. Alas, being the champion that I am, I did both. Tej is the local honey wine. In a moment that felt entirely Peace Corps, about ten of us PCVs went to the local tej shack to fill up our empty water bottles. An eight year old filled our waiting bottles with the thick golden colored elixir, as old Ethiopian men drank and looked on curiously. Two liters of wine cost less than a dollar. I got my money’s worth. Nothing like boozing with the locals to make you feel integrated!

A few other Ethiopian observations/highlights:

Pukemobiles.

I don’t know if it is a national trait, but holy geez I have never seen so many people lose their lunch in one day as I saw in Ethiopia. It wasn’t just lunch: add breakfast and dinner. Stacy and I counted 6 pukers for a total of 18 pukes in about 10 hours. (Now I know you want to come to Ethiopia!! That is one puke every 33 minutes of traveling bliss.) I have many theories: the injera, or fermented pancake that is the national staple, might not sit so easily on the belly. The strong, rank odor of goat meat also doesn’t inspire digestion. Add to those the windy mountain roads leading south towards Addis Ababa. Seriously, the busses even keep little plastic baggies so you can puke in those, tie it up and give it to a friend! We hadn’t been driving for fifteen minutes, in the pre-dawn haze I could hardly see what was going on, when the guy sitting directly next to me just unabashedly lost it all over. Then he wiped his mouth on the bus’s window curtain. Ewww. I got really cozy close to Stacy on that ride! I will praise Cameroon’s straight northern roads until I leave this country!!

My pants.

This is a highlight of my time in Ethiopia because I’m sure that many of my friends and relatives would celebrate the passing of my famous brown pants. I was in the Ethiopian Ethnological museum with a fellow PCV I’d only recently met, and was reading about the Ethiopian Jews and Muslims and whatnot. My pants zipper has been faulty for some time, in that it self-descends… so I just calmly and hopefully subtly regularly zip it back up. As I was reading about the Ethiopian Jews, I become convinced that if I just give a firm enough tug, maybe my zipper will stay hoisted once and for all. Umph! And I am left holding my zipper in my hand... far from its home on my pants. That wouldn’t be a problem, except my pants will fall down cause this zipper does not stay zipped. Fortunately for me, I have been in Africa for nearly two years now and nearly everything I own is falling apart, so I borrow some safety pins from my also zipper-busted wallet, and secure my pants. Crises averted. At the end of our museum tour, my new friend announces he’ll swing by the restroom on our way out. Great idea! Oh wait. I can’t. I am a captive in my pants. Once I take those pins out and undo the zipper, there’s no refastening to be had. That zipper can’t go back up. (And it is a long zipper, that would show much scandal if left to flap open in the breeze like a proud Ethiopian flag.) We had a long and busy day planned for ourselves and so I wait… and wait… and wait, til I can gently retire my brown pants at the hotel, taking them off once and for all. (Actually, although I know you would all prefer to hear that Brown Pants will be resting in Peace, it is not so. They are at the tailor’s now, awaiting a new zipper, and a new lease on life!) Morale: always have an escape plan… from your pants.

Rastafarians:

Another highlight was seeing where the Jamaicans who find their way to Ethiopia to practice Rastafarianism go. I stopped at one of their churches with my new PCV friend from the Pants Incident, so we could ask a few questions. We tried one old Jamaican, but he was so stoned that absolutely no communication was passable. I think our man could have been a poster boy for 60 straight years of smoking pot: here’s what you get! In my quest to communicate, first I slowed my English down, given that we have different accents. Then I eliminated all non-essential articles and adjectives. Then I really break it down, “You… arrive… Ethiopia… when?” “Jamaaaaican…” he answers. This is going nowhere fast. Another more coherent Rastafarian comes along is more capable of answering our questions. In case you are wondering, they smoke pot because it better helps them commune with God. They wear dreadlocks because scissors are unnatural and back in the day, no one had scissors. I was required to wear a curtain on my head (a recurring theme in foreign churches?) for propriety’s sake. And Haile Selassie, former emperor of Ethiopia is God. Not a representation, but he is God, and the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy that says kings will come out of Africa. A tenant of the faith is that African descendants come home to Africa, namely Ethiopia, the birthplace of humanity.

The Rastafarian hub is a town called Shashemene. Oddly, although Haile Selassie is considered God, he practiced not the Rastafarianism that gave him his deity, but Ethiopian Orthodoxy (quelle surprise!) Selassie did, however, grant the Rastafarians 500 hectares of land so they could cultivate and live in peace in Shashemane. The modern day relations between the Rastafarians, and Ethiopian Orthodox don’t seem fantastic. Namely, why did the Rastafarians receive all this land when no Ethiopian is allowed to own land? (All property is government-owned.) It was all quite interesting for me, and now I’d love to head to Jamaica and see some of these ideas in practice. Also interestingly, I heard Bob Marley converted to Ethiopian Orthodoxy at the end of his life.

Crackdown on free speech:

I apologize for the long silence while I was there! At first I thought the internet connections were so terribly slow that I couldn’t open my blog. It wasn’t until later that the other PCVs informed me that the government has completely blocked access to blogspot. It was an eye-opening reminder that we don’t all get the same freedoms of the press. Ethiopia has presidential elections this month, and the PCVs expect that all phone services will be completely cut by the one government-run cellular provider, in an effort to control and keep people in the dark—yipes!!

A National Icon

Although free speech gets the crack down, Condom Man is on the loose. He is every where! Cafes, handbags, T-shirts, and hanging out in our hotel room here in Addis Ababa!

Sweet people

At a fancy bar in Addis, I spent my last night with a great group. Here are friends old and new, Stacy, Barack, and Haley. They made visiting Ethiopia awesome!!

So to wrap up, I’ve actually never been to a country where I knew so little of the language, or was completely on my own! (Stacy and I only met up 12 days in!) At the same time it was intimidating, I’m glad I did it—it was a little push outside my comfort zone that did a body good. Now it’s making me think of all the other places I’d like to go and maybe just hadn’t dared to venture into all alone (sorry Mom and Dad! :) Seeing Stacy was wonderfully refreshing to be able to talk about our former DC life, catch up on office gossip, and share tidbits and understand the current Peace Corps life, albeit in countries across the continent.

Alors, back to Cameroon!

My friend Ehab was an amazing host and did whatever he could to help me feel like an Egyptian :)

So we started with a lesson in how to smoke the water pipe at El Fishawy, one of the oldest coffee houses in Cairo, located in the main bazaar. The tobacco is flavored. I think I tried cantaloupe, mango, guava, grape, apple, coconut, and fruit cocktail. Yeah I smoked my fruit intake for the week.

Ehab is decidedly better at this than I.

Shops in the main bazaar, Khan al Halili, were so colorful.

A stand selling water pipes. Ehab’s family was determined to send me home with one, but my bags will already be so overloaded I managed to protest my way out it! (I can just imagine sitting in a lawn chair smoking that on a sidewalk of Lafayette…!)

At a sidewalk café. Ehab knew all the good foods to order. I must have gained five pounds in a week! That day we had koshari, a mix of pasta, lentils, tomatoes, rice, and tons of garlic sauce (in my case). Enough to make me want to pop cost about a dollar. Another of my favorites was fatir. It’s like a crepe meets pizza.

Props to that kid—I have certainly never carried that much bread on my head.

Inevitable tourism :) The pyramids at Giza, built sometime before 2400 BC!

(I need to leave those pants in Cameroon. I know.)

These things are massive, the largest at roughly 450 feet high.

We even got a special treat at the pyramids that day. Apparently, a crazy dude climbed up to the top of the main pyramid! It is of course strictly forbidden to use the pyramids as your personal jungle gym and so cops were yelling and tried to chase him but he was too fast! The blocks of the pyramids are big, so in addition to being crazy he must have been a stellar athlete! Once he got to the top the only way to reach him was by helicopter—direct ride to prison. Bummer, but it was cool while it lasted.

These pyramids, at Saqqara, are smaller and lesser known, but pre-date the larger pyramids at Giza. The way my guide told it, the first pyramid was built by accident. The pyramids served as tombs and their construction began during the lifetime of the person to be buried there. Since the guy in question for this particular tomb still wasn’t dead yet, and the architect had a lot of extra bricks, he piddled around adding more layers on top of the original building. He decided he wanted the tomb to be tall enough to be seen over the surrounding enclosure… until voila: step pyramid! The guide showed me another pyramid that was somewhere between these step pyramids and the smooth perfectly triangular pyramids at Giza. It was a kinda bungled lopsided triangle, where the classic form had not yet fully evolved!

The mosque of Mohamed Aly, built in the Citadel that overlooks the city. The Citadel dates to the 12th century and the mosque was built about 200 years ago.

Inner courtyard of the mosque, where I get to sport my SuperTouristWoman cape. (I was showing a little too much neck for the mosque.) At least at this mosque, the attendant did not insist on dressing me personally in the cape, complete with hood. When they made me put the hood on, I looked about like Gumby. I’m with Ehab’s Uncle Osman, who really took care of us!

Cute kid looking caught at the Citadel

I had a really hard time deciding between my two favorites of the testicles and the forelimbs.

I felt the need to capture this telling glimpse into Egyptian culture. I mourned the excessive use of hair gel by most every Egyptian male. There are some good looking guys over there, I just don’t think the average American girl goes for that slick Guido look!

I spent some quality time in the Egyptian museum to see the mummies. It was arresting to see the actual skin, bones, and faces of those who lived over 3000 years ago. Here are some highlights from that exhibit:

• When the first round of mummies were brought by boat from their original tombs in the south up to Cairo, customs officials had no label for dead kings. So the mummies were classified in the category of salted fish.

• The mummies brains were removed through their left nostril, dried for 40 days, oiled, and wrapped for 30 more days with the objective of successful travel to the afterlife.

• Like me, many of the mummies have very long skinny toes.

• King Ramses V, who died in about 1145 BC, gets to live on in infamy with this caption, “He also had an enlarged scrotum, suggesting he had a hernia.” He may not have made it to the afterlife, but at least we all know about his scrotum.

• One queen had her baby pet baboon mummied up into a little baboon-like ball and buried with her—it was next to her in the display case.

• Another mummy’s caption: “The face of Henettawy, wife of Pinudjem I, was packed with soda and fat to give it the appearance of life. However, overzealous use of the mixture caused her cheeks to burst open; they have been restored here at the Egyptian Museum.” And yes, you could see where her cheeks exploded. Please just bury me with no captions, friends.

Ehab and I also overloaded ourselves on religious museums. The Coptic Christians lived in Egypt before the islamisization of the country in the 7th century. According to the Coptic museum, Coptic Christians were largely responsible for the advent of monasteries and monastic living. Who knew? I’d never associated Egypt and Christianity. Old Cairo was a fascinating mix of churches: the Coptic Christian churches, a synagogue, ancient huge mosques. I’ve never seen all three of these religions sitting side by side, so peacefully. And in the Coptic churches, the imagery was so similar to that of the Catholicism I grew up in, it was eerie and cool at the same time.

We also headed toward the coast, to the second largest city of Alexandria. We went to the library there, which has been around since the 3rd century BC. In a museum in the library is the military suit Anwar el-Sadat was wearing when he was assassinated in ‘81, after the signing of the Camp David Accords. We’d driven past the spot of his assassination several times, but seeing the blood-spattered suit was sobering.

We were further spoiled in Alexandria by more of Ehab’s cousins. I want Ehab to come back to Louisiana with me so he can tell everyone our Peace Corps war stories. He presents them so much better than I do, and they inevitably leave his family in awe, and overwhelmed with the need to pamper and spoil us, as recompense for our “suffering.” :) Sure, I’ll have some more tahini.

Alexandria by night. We stumbled into a park at the foot of a mosque. I loved watching the old guys in the back relaxing and smoking their water pipe.

What you get before entering a museum in Alexandria

A last look at Alexandria. I think crossing an Egyptian street is classifiable as a national sport. It is terrifying!!!! The Mediterranean is in the background. (A far cry from that bustling metropolis that is Alexandria, Louisiana, home of some of my esteemed ancestors.)

On a more personal level, getting to hang out with Ehab’s family was so enjoyable. I attended his cousin Reem’s wedding, and her bachelorette party! It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. When Ehab and I arrived at the apartment for the bachelorette party, the door was opened only a crack and Ehab was shooed away; I was to be retrieved several hours later. As the other invitees trickled in, I noticed that they arrived in full cover, long sleeves and head wraps. They ducked into a back room and emerged transformed: short, tight skirts, sexy heels, hair loose and flowing. They were stunning! The music pounded for hours and although I couldn’t understand anything, it was hard not to get caught up in the enthusiasm, rhythm, and dancing. Someone gave me a pair of traditional finger cymbals, which kept me entertained for longer than I should admit. Reem and her cousins were lovely and hospitable, and made sure several times I felt included in the fun. As the night wore down, some men came to the apartment to pick up the rented sound equipment. “Girls, in the back!” an adult cried and all us girls went scuttling into a back room, out of sight and safe from wandering male eyes. Before each girl left for the night, she ducked back into the back room, to reemerge cloaked and covered in black, ready to head outdoors and into the public eye. It was eye-opening for me and I felt fortunate that I’d seen these very personal and familial glimpses into private Egyptian life. As for the gender relations, I laughed as I thought how sloppy I would look if I were showing up for a girls-only night in the States. With no one to impress you can bet I’d be in my frumpy brown pants with messy hair. I would probably only make serious efforts to look appealing if I were going out around members of the opposite sex.

Friends and cousins at the wedding. (Although she’s not pictured here, I should note the dear Heba, who took it upon herself personally to make sure I had a wonderful time. We pre-gamed at McDonalds, then she took me to get my hair done, and carted me to her grandmother’s house to do my makeup!! If not for her, I would have looked scrubby indeed and I loved just getting to hang out with her!)

Having some interesting talks with Ehab’s cousins and friends about boys, girls, sex, etc. made me wonder if there’s some happy middle ground between our customs in the States and what by American standards is the conservatism of Egypt. Sex is still mostly taboo and referred to with giggles as a “mistake” if the context is anything but within marriage. But the friendships between guys and girls there seem genuine and unambiguous, less clouded with sexual tension, as they can be in the States. Another remarkable trait about the Egyptians was their sense of humor. Almost every night Ehab and I went out with his cousins and friends to smoke water pipe and drink mango juice. (And no, I did not bring out my whiskey sachets as usual.) I loved the relaxed atmosphere of going out and just chatting, no alcohol required. Where it seems like Americans would more often be drinking, the Egyptians were content and having a great time. Again it made me wonder, where is a happy middle ground in the States? I have never gone out with a big group of friends just for juice or a Coke—too bad!

I’m hugely grateful to Ehab and his family for such a one-of-a-kind vacation! Next stop: Ethiopia.

...even if I'm pale!

Hello from Cairo!

I’ve been here soaking in tahini and shwarma through my pores for the last week, thanks to the generous hospitality of my friend Ehab and his lovely family. I can’t believe how much we’ve done in eight days: toured every place in this town that will take my money (and there are a lot of them!) wandered the streets, smoked the classic water pipe late at night in sidewalk cafes, cruised the Nile, and a real highlight for me: attending a family wedding AND even the bachelorette party! Ehab’s family has been so much fun—I think spending time with them has been my favorite part of Cairo!

There are of course, too many pictures, (yes, I even have one of the Pyramids exactly as a camel walked past!) so I’ll post them at a later date. Cairo has been full of surprises—the level of development is astounding—shopping malls bigger than anything in my hometown, and beautifully landscaped medians and public spaces. And I’ve seen so many wonders, such as broccoli, delivery pizza, strawberries, McDonalds, and even STARBUCKS that have been completely absent in my last two years in Cameroon! (I always try to read the Arabic script as we pass in the streets, or are stuck in Cairo traffic. Imagine my surprise as I slowly sound out “staaar boooooks” for the first time, only to look over a few feet and see the English version written there, in trademark green flourescent lights!) Well, all that makes me feel like I’m back in America! Yet at the same time I’m reminded that I’m in a foreign place by the vast majority of women sporting the hejab, or veil, and the magnificent omnipresent mosques and the calls to prayer which reverberate throughout the city. Oh yes, and every time I open my mouth to attempt my poor, I’m-a-tourist-and-really-can't-make-those-required-gutteral-sounds Arabic!

Ehab’s family reminds me that I need to come back to see more, and let me tell you, it is not a hard sell! But for now, I’m wrapping up, and preparing to hop on a plane to continue on to Ethiopia tonight, where I’ll meet up with another friend and bop around for three more weeks. Hopefully, insha allah, more to come from me soon! Love to you all!

March 9, 2010

My wedding

Today the most powerful traditional authority in our department, the Lamido, proposed to me. That was after I’d spent an hour telling him about how different womens’ roles are in the United States, and how thoroughly he’d offended me when I first met him a year ago. (Angry five-sachet blog entry on that!) The Lamido hadn’t remembered our single previous encounter. He also could not seem to remember my name, even after the proposal, and his earnest entreaties that we “develop a friendship…”

Some days I feel miserable when I think about how slowly women’s conditions here change. Other days, I am hopeful. March 8 was International Women’s Day, and it gives me an opportunity to step back and realize how I see things differently from this time a year ago.

To his credit the Lamido, my wanna-be husband, does believe in educating his daughters. I didn’t have a chance to ask him if he equally supports the results of such an education—the freedom to have a job, and perform it effectively, without outside intervention from a husband. For example, in the past year, the Minister for the Promotion of Women and the Family was supposed to travel overseas to represent Cameroon in an international conference. Her husband said no; he didn’t approve. She didn’t go. And this is who represents the women of this country.

There is currently a law in the Cameroonian Penal Code that says if a husband deems that his wife’s work outside the home is interfering with her domestic responsibilities, he can force her to stop the outside work. A neighbor of Thea’s recently had his wife arrested for “abandoning the home.” She can’t exactly be useful around the house while sitting in prison either, but he didn’t seem to take that into consideration.

March 8: International Women’s Day Round Table Discussions, where I want to flip the table over.

For the recent March 8 festivities, Thea and I were asked to participate in a round table discussion at the city hall. This year’s theme was “Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities.” At the discussion, a local government official went on record saying that the Cameroonian laws are ideal regarding women, and even a model for other African nations. Ideal from the man’s perspective? Ideal from the women’s perspective?

Among the things I find the most frustrating is that it often seems to be women who are our own worst enemies in terms of advancement. A Cameroonian woman’s power comes from playing by the rules, dutifully fulfilling her traditional domestic duties, being “a good woman.” If she steps outside the system, she loses this credibility and risks getting financially cut off by her husband, on whom she is dependant. Recently, I’ve heard more progressive ideas from men. Although they do have something to lose in terms of their positions of power in the family, the men will still eat—nobody will withhold money from them for having a different idea. I’ve met so many Cameroonian women who are very proud of the fact that they do all the cooking and child-care before heading to work—they find a way to combine the old responsibilities with the new. Yet, they refuse to believe that I would refuse even this option. They don’t want to allow it. I’ve noticed an attitude among many older women that seems to say, “if I had to suffer, so do you. It’s tradition. Or maybe I’m just more capable than you are…?”

Another example: in a planning meeting for the March 8 events, women were debating potential locations for the annual excursion, a day trip. One proposed option, the town of Lagdo, is a five-hour drive from here. The wife of the Préfet, the highest-ranking departmental official, spoke to us from her position of power on the stage in front of us. She said that to make the trip we’d have to leave at 3am. Since she has to have her husband’s breakfast ready for 7am, she just didn’t see how it would be possible. And if she made the breakfast before we left, then it would get cold by breakfast-time. Alternatively, we could leave later, and spend the night in Lagdo. But that would require us to “abandon our households for two days instead of one. That would be too much.” Having someone else cook your husband’s meal was not considered as an option. If this is the voice coming from a woman of such influence, dictating the behavior of a “good wife,” it’s hard for your average village woman to break out of that mold.

But back to the round table discussion. I was specifically asked by a member of the audience what I thought this year’s theme, “Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities,” meant. I responded that I thought it meant that we should all have the same choices. This was revolutionary. On one side, if a man wants to stay at home to watch his children, he should have that option, free from the mockery of society. On the flip side, if a woman wants to travel outside her home for work, without being forced to receive her husband’s permission, she should have that option. I gave the example of my sister Camille and her husband. Camille’s a doctor. Her husband is an IT wiz. Given that Camille has the greater salary potential and has invested in more years of study, they made the decision together that he would decrease his work hours to watch over children. At this, the Cameroonian crowd laughed out loud. My sister was accused of being uppity. I had to clarify that I was not advocating unilateral action by my sister—that would be equally unfair to her husband. They made a decision, together. As equals, as partners. What I advocated is a compromise where both parties give a little, as necessary to get the best common end result, and that both parties are open to sharing responsibilities.

At the round table, I questioned the firmly held Cameroonian belief of the man’s role as the chef de la famille, the head of the family. This seems to be one of the most widely held and universally accepted notions in Cameroon. I said that as long as the man is considered the head of the family, there will never be equal opportunity for women, because he will always have the option to crush her. As we’ve sadly seen, even Madame the Minister for the Promotion of Women and the Family, the most powerful advocate for Women’s Rights in Cameroon, is not immune to the decisions of her husband—chef de la famille.

A few Cameroonian women made contributions that encouraged me. My friend Rosine gave a great example about how some cherished traditions are changing, and that’s not a bad thing. She spoke of inheritances—where previously women were largely excluded and left destitute, helpless when their husbands died. Since husbands are typically a good 10+ years older than their wives, and they are considered the owner of EVERYthing—land, house, tools, children, so every old widower is ****ed. Now, Rosine mentioned, we’ve questioned that tradition, and old widows are better off for it. Another woman in the crowd supported the idea that men are capable of learning to look after their children. She noted that women aren’t necessarily born with that ability; we’ve learned it, too.

I was feeling hopeful after these contributions, when the mike was passed back to the President of the round table committee. This woman had proofread and enthusiastically agreed with my presentation for the round table discussion. She’s a vice-principal at the local high school where I teach, and someone I’d consider forward-thinking, an ally. She went on to take the mike and clarify, “We need to understand that women will NEVER be equal to men. Their place is next to their husband, submitting to their husband.” This was the closing argument, the final word of this year’s round table discussion. I felt completely blind-sided.

I looked up in disbelief across the table to Thea, to see if I’d heard correctly. We’d spent the past two hours battling for women’s equal opportunities, and I’d though this woman, the president of the committee, was on our team. We gently approached her after the round table discussion to ask about her comment. I told her I didn’t understand—what she said in the last minute of the discussion seemed to undo all the work we’d done over the previous two hours, undermining ourselves, negating everything, and this coming from the President of the round table committee. She told me I’d misunderstood, “we’ll never be men, is what I meant…” I checked with a few Cameroonians afterwards… they had all understood as I had. It makes me second-guess whether these women really believe in what we’re advocating or if they’re just going through the motions because someone told them to. I was so miserable afterwards, I couldn’t even drag myself out of the house to go play in the soccer games organized as part of the fête.

Back to the Lamido

So if you’re still wondering what I told the Lamido in response to his marriage proposal, it was specifically, “That will never happen. I’m not interested and I’m not available. I don’t want you to waste your time. I just want you to treat me like man, someone with whom you collaborate for work.” The only other time I’ve been in the Lamido’s palace was a year ago. I’d sat quietly as he repeatedly reminded Thea and me of our inferiority. I was new to town and had resisted the urge to let him know what I thought, for the sake of not getting myself kicked out of Makala. Now, however, with five months left of my service I have much less to lose. While a part of me dreaded accepting the Lamido’s invitation to visit him today, the other part of me has seethed enough that it was time to have an honest discussion. We spoke for over an hour, as I gently outlined some of the differences in gender roles in America, and why I could never submit to a man, solely based on his gender.

The Lamido sees it as a service that men here take their wives into their households, away from her family and loved ones, as opposed to creating a new household together. The woman is then indebted to her husband. The man I marry will not ask me to do or give anything that he’s not equally willing to give. I won’t need the man I marry’s money. I have my own. And the Lamido would never never cook a meal for one of his wives. (And did I mention I would have been lucky wife number 3?)

Later today at the MC2, I told the story to my co-workers, who immediately cut me off to ask, in all seriousness, “Well did you accept!?” My co-worker Hamidou suggested that I give the Lamido conditions, along the lines of, “I’ll marry you if… you leave your palace, you come to the U.S. with me, you cook for me as much as I cook for you, and you help me take care of the kids.” Of course the Lamido would never hear of that. Hamidou, however, immediately offered to fill these conditions. Then, upon really considering it, he said, “No, that’s too much work. I don’t want some woman telling me what to do. No, I’ll just stay single. It’s better that way. White women are a lot of work.”

My co-worker Catherine truly doesn’t understand why I’m not interested in marrying a Cameroonian. I’d explained it to the Lamido the same way I explained to Catherine, “Where I’m from, we’re brought up and told that we can do whatever we want as a career, nothing or no one should constrain us. And then I come here and I’m told that no, you can’t do what you’d like, if it doesn’t please your husband. So I feel like a prisoner. I’m suddenly stripped of my rights, and my options to make my own decisions. But what is my crime? What am I guilty of, for me to lose the ability to make these choices?” Catherine tells me, “You’ll adapt!! You’ll get used to it!” Her telling me that makes me more angry than I anything else I’ve experienced in Cameroon. Again I explain, “Who’s the head of my household now? It’s me. I pay my bills—water and electricity—my rent; I buy my food; I pay my medical expenses. If I were to marry, do I suddenly become more stupid? Do I suddenly become less capable of completing these tasks?”

(As a side note, Catherine was going to be the employee in charge of the pilot program I’m trying to start at our MC2, a daily savings collection program, where she’d go from stall to stall in the market to collect participants’ savings. Her husband decided it’s not appropriate for her to walk around in the market for work, so the program has been stuck in limbo. He, incidentally, was in a moto accident a couple of years ago after a night of drinking. He hasn’t worked since, and Catherine is the sole supporter of the family. Yet he still has the ability to dictate and incapacitate her work.) It seems that many men give lip-service to women’s rights… as long as they the men are still in control, and can decide just how much she gets to advance. They can always yank back the leash.

To end on a positive note, I observed some new things yesterday. After the parade for March 8, Fleur and I were having a juice with members of a women’s group she works with. I was surprised to hear how many of the woman wanted to cap the size of their families at 3 or 4 children, relatively small by local standards. They spoke of being better able to invest in the education of their children, and the advantages of being less tired all the time, with fewer children. Then later that night, one of the women invited us to dinner at her house. Her husband was in town that weekend. (Husbands sometimes work in different cities and only see the wives and children occasionally.) This husband was clearly the typical 10-20 years older than his wife. He came and spoke with us, his wife’s friends, and played with the children. I was surprised and impressed by both of these unusual gestures. He seemed loving and respectful. In that brief glimpse of family life, I could see how it would be hard for a Cameroonian woman to bite such a gentle hand that feeds her.

The greatest frustrations I’ve ever felt as a Peace Corps Volunteer come from the heavy cloud of oppression that constantly hangs over women, and the women’s overwhelming willingness to accept it. I’ve truly been thinking recently of looking for work when I return to the U.S. that deals with women’s advancement and economic development. I don’t want to leave here bitter and angry on this subject. If I could channel some of those frustrations into fueling a career that advances the cause of these women, then it might not all be for naught.

And turns out, I’m not the only one on the Lamido’s proposal list. I was teaching my friend Rosine to ride a bike this afternoon and telling her the story. Turns out she got her marriage proposal about a year ago when she first arrived in town. Too bad, we could have been lucky co-wives numbers 3 and 4!

Et finalement, voici quelques photos from Women’s Day, 2010!

Women lining up to parade :

This years official pagne (fabric) for March 8 was UGLY!! I’ll only wear it around you in the states if I really want to embarrass you. You can see it to the right in all three glorious options: pastel yellow, pink, and seafoam!

We ran into Catherine while out after the parade and the “Group of Women whose husbands are from Gouzda” So the Gouzda’s men’s wives served us lots of unidentified meat that I was so grateful Fleur ate all the meat (?), while I took care of the sauce and bread! The woman to the left of Catherine’s has baby on the lap, beer in the hand!

Catherine and me. I didn’t wear ugly pagne during the parade in protest since so many neighborhood women have said that they didn’t think they could participate in the March 8 events if they couldn’t afford the pagne. So the fête effectively turns into a fête for the haves, and not the have-nots.

At the bar, these women chased away the men who came to celebrate with us! If women are fighting for inclusion and equal treatment, then it doesn’t make sense to me to exclude men! I think the struggle for women’s rights is much more effective when we’re all implicated together.

So I did finally don my official Ugly Pagne that evening. The woman on my shirt is holding up the world. I am holding up a whiskey sachet.

And lastly, “the club,” hoppin with whiskey sachets and Ugly Pagne. :)

Bonjour from the big city of Ngaoundéré! I came here to help my friend Michelle put on a training seminar for representatives of the Village Savings and Loan Associations she works with. The women were really dynamic, leaders of their respective associations.

I like this quick little video cause it captures a very typical meeting dynamic here. The women were debating the ideal monthly interest rate and it quickly evolved into a classic everyone-shout-over-everyone bruhaha!

At the end of the seminar they burst into spontaneous song to thank Michelle for all the work she's done for them! I loved it that one of the women who'd been half-asleep for most of the seminar was breaking it down the most!

Recently a few willing friends and I took off on our bicycles for five days of dirt roads, chafing, and sunshine, visiting the posts of a few other PCV friends here in the Extreme North province. We usually rode about two and a half hours a day, as there are so many of us volunteers packed into this distant but densely-populated nook of the country. It was great fun to see other volunteers’ posts, and I’m reminded of how vastly different each of our experiences is. We also got spoiled like crazy—everywhere we arrived, our hosts pulled out the stops! Chocolate cakes, tuna salads, fish (not easy to find in our semi-desert!) And let me tell you I can eat half a chocolate cake after two and a half hours of biking. (Hell, I could eat one right now.)

So, here are some scenes de l’Extrême Nord.

It was market day in one of the villages we rode through, so the roads were unusually crowded.

Crossing a dried river bed, riding into the market.

In the village of Kolofata, Brianna had arranged a great collaboration project for us, which I will use to justify the entire bike tour :) Cara and Brianna, health volunteers, showed a local women’s group how to make mango juice, and talked about vitamins! Cara shows off her mango skills (hidden in the pot.)

The women built a traditional fire on which to boil the juice. The pot balances on the three rocks, logs go underneath. Cara is the Task-master!

Then I did my song and dance routine. Actually, I just talked about calculating profits on an activity such as this: how much did the mangoes cost, and for how much can you sell the juice? Then they can decide if it’s worth it—a lot of times folks here don’t calculate costs of all their inputs and hardly realize they’re not even making a profit. So we went inside to do a little math on the chalkboard. The women were so receptive and had lots of great ideas—so much fun to work with!

Note: the below picture is reprinted with the permission of Cara. We’d just arrived at our friend Ehab’s house in Mora, after biking from Kolofata. Not only is Cara displaying her lost liter of liquid, but if you look at Matt’s jersey, to the left of the little red stripe by his shoulder, is a parallel stripe-o-sweat, that kinda crusty lookin thing. Matt didn’t wash his jersey during our entire five-day tour. He was hoping to have it stand up all by itself at the end. Mmmm. (He got pretty close! And the only reason there’s not a disgusting picture of me here is that I was the one with the camera. Better luck next time, suckers!!)

Beans and beignets for breakfast in Mora with Ehab.

Everyone just looks like such a badass here that I couldn’t help but include this picture: Matt, Cara, and Annee, in Meri. Yes, I’m still learning the different color settings of my camera. I can’t tell if I was getting those looks cause I wouldn’t stop taking pictures, or if it was cause we’d all just been offered tea that no one really wanted but that politeness dictated we couldn’t refuse. (We strategically poured most of it onto a pile of rocks when our generous local host wasn’t looking.)

This little guy also helped us out with the tea drinking.

Scenery in Meri. I swear, I did not photo-shop myself into this picture, I think it’s just the way my camera focused. And yes, I have been making that same ballerina pose since I was 3. Tiny in the background behind me to the left, is a woman sitting outside her hut preparing dinner.

The last leg of our ride, from Meri down to Maroua.

That’s all for now! Hope everyone’s doing well aux Etats-Unis!

My business class students at the local high school.

I realized that most people have no idea what I do in Cameroon, besides hosting visitors, downing whiskey sachets, and unsuccessfully dodging motos. When my sister visited, we weren’t even out of the taxi from the airport when she asked me, “So you know, I don’t even really have any idea what you do…”

So, allow me to enlighten you. :) (If you are not my immediate family, feel free to stop reading now for fear of boredom. Job descriptions: woopee.)

Yesterday was the most alarmingly productive day I’ve had in ages, so I can use it as a bit of an example… a day in the life!

I was out the door by 7:45 to stop at my favorite roadside mama for my breakfast beans, mmm.

From there I headed to a meeting with a women’s group. They’ve asked me to come so I can present to them the idea of a Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA). It’s a great project for those who aren’t quite ready for formal financial services—a place to safely save their money, and then they take loans from their pooled savings. Astonishingly, all the women were there when I arrived. (This is rare, and it is probably because I’d threatened not to have the meeting if they did not have at least 10 participants. Any less than that and it’s too difficult to mobilize sufficient amounts of savings from which to take loans.) Even better, the women decided to go ahead with the proposed VSLA project, so we “fixed” the dates for the required five training sessions. After downing the tea and beignets they offered me, I was on my way.

I stopped next at the Delegate of the Ministry for Small and Medium Enterprises, with whom my Peace Corps Program works most closely. I chatted briefly with the delegate—the government is always a little curious as to what we nassaras are doing wandering around their country! Another success: he relinquished to me his sole copy of a book recently published by his Ministry—a how-to guide for setting up businesses in Cameroon—fun!

I stopped by Thea’s, incredulous at how much I had already accomplished in one day. It was hardly 10am! From there to the MC2, my microfinance institution. I found my counterpart Bouba surprisingly available; he rarely has free time for me, which is my main frustration in working there. (Ahhh, but he wanted something from me.) We reviewed a presentation I had previously written and set a schedule to give the presentation to several women’s groups who are looking to take loans from the MC2. The presentation is basic: why you have to repay loans, what interest is, how to use an income statement, and specifically, using it to estimate and decide which projects will be the most profitable.

Still at the MC2, Bouba gave me the go-ahead to move forward with a pilot program we’re hoping to launch in Makala. I’d made a trip to the Northwest province last June to study some profitable programs they have in an MC2 there. One program is the Daily Savings Collection, in which an MC2 employee makes a tour of the main market everyday to collect people’s savings. The minimum one can contribute, if he’s going to contribute on a given day, is 200 F (or about 40 cents—enough for a hearty breakfast of beans and beignets.) It allows the MC2 to better get out of the office and into the community. (What microfinance is supposed to be all about, right?) It’s also great marketing and a way to reach clients who are otherwise too intimidated to come to the bank. My fingers are crossed that this project will go somewhere! I printed up some materials I’d created to make the booklets that each participant will use to note his savings. It’s all a little homemade-ghetto-fab for now, but we have to start somewhere!

As I walked home at about 1pm, I realized just how much my work affects my mood—it’s astronomically correlated. I was so happy from having gotten so much done already in one day! Why? Well, the project with the VSLA is something I have been pushing around town since October (4 months ago). Next, getting a document from a government employee on the first try is nearly unheard of. The project at the MC2, as I mentioned, is something I have been trying to instigate since summer of last year (7 months). That afternoon, I still had to head to Lycee Bilangue, one of the government high schools to teach the 7th in a series of 12 business classes. I began organizing those classes in September of last year (5 months ago). So you can see that Cameroon is not a land of instant gratification, but rather the perfect training/punishment for the twitchy and the impatient! I so often feel I have terribly little control of my work here… because I don’t. If it were up to me, I’d like to think I could have implemented the Daily Savings Collection program within no more than 2 weeks—tops—once the original research was done. We are going on 7 months. Maybe it will happen before I leave. I hate the idea of minimizing my expectations, but I feel it’s what I have to do to stay sane here, and I’ve learned to take pride in and be grateful for small steps. I’ve also learned some stuff about myself. I’d never considered myself that “Type A” personality, (that’s for some other members of my family, ahem! :) but just to counter the seeming chaos that I find around me here, I think I’ve drifted in that direction. I realize how much I hate not being in control. I think one of my favorite projects is my business classes because for once I do feel in control—they start on time, they end on time, and basically, I’m the boss. :)

So in sum: here’s what I do:

1. Work at the MC2—helping the staff learn how to use Excel to facilitate their reports, meeting with clients to ask questions about their loans and offering my observations to the committee that grants loans, putting together analysis of our defaulted loans and clients, or generally attempting to be useful and facilitate the employees’ work without taking over their role or responsibilities.

2. Teach Business classes! I started with a couple rounds at a local church, and am currently on a second round at the high school, and hope to do one or two more rounds through the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises before I leave. A friend was visiting me and caught this fun picture.

3. Start-up the VSLA programs. This is just starting to take off, but it’s very gratifying and something that I hope can be sustainable after I leave. I like how the women debate and set their own rules and really take ownership of the project—I’m only there to train and facilitate.

4. Offer independent advising to small businesses or GICs (Common Interest Groups). This usually consists of helping them create budgets, understand whether they are making a profit or not, and set up basic accounting systems. I like the one-on-one contact because you can really follow up on your work. I’m really enjoying working with the Union of soy-producing GICs of the Extreme North to set up their accounting systems. They’re a main supplier of soy to one of the biggest producers, Camlait. But they are farmers, not accountants. I’m learning as much from them as I hope they might gain from me. Just you wait—I’ll soon be conversant on all things soyyyyy! This will really woo the guys.

So it’s not all peaches. Like I said, I’ve realized how wildly my mood is connected to my work. Why? Because I came to Africa, yes, for the cultural experience, but also to work. In an American office, you can know what to expect, and work is less of a huge question mark. Just from village to village, our work as Peace Corps Volunteers varies drastically. It most often comes down to just a few local individuals—if you can find those individuals in your town who are connected and have initiative, they can make things happen for you. If those people don’t exist or are hard to find, it’s a whole other story, and your initiative will be tested in entirely new ways.

As for those moods, I was at business class yesterday afternoon, talking about customer service and marketing. Of course I was annoyed when one of my favorite students said that good customer service was “pretty girls.” I did wait a bit… before throwing my chalk at him. Sadly, he was entirely serious. I had been going for a response more along the lines of, “welcoming, polite, prompt service, knowledgeable about products sold…” Then we went on to talk about how good customer service is always treating the customer right, even when they annoy you, and knowing how to apologize when necessary… woops! So I don’t always practice what I preach! Still working on some of those finer points… maybe I’ll have it down by the time I go in five months. :)

You never know what you’re going to hear around town… what people say to you, about you, or for you keeps life entertaining.

So, here are some of my recent favorites:

1. A Cameroonian told a friend of mine, who in turn told me, “Those Americans must be Secret Agents! Have you ever seen their calves? You can tell they’re Secret Agents by their calves—they’re so developed! They must receive special training from the government.” (…orrrrr just have access to more protein than the average Cameroonian!)

2. I’d tossed several old magazines out in my garbage. Without fail, they resurfaced throughout the neighborhood. “Fleurange!” my neighbor Aïssatou calls me over excitedly, “I saw a picture of your mother! Come see!” (I’m pretty sure I hadn’t tossed any pictures of Mom recently.) Sitting on her porch, Aïssatou opens a copy of one of my old Economists and points to a picture of Hilary Clinton. “Look, it’s your mom! Look at her hair!”

3. I get a knock on my door one night after getting home from teaching business class. I’m tired and not up for random visitors. So I tell the eager young man on my porch that maybe we can make an appointment later to talk about his project, but I ask, what is the basic idea of it? “I’m building an airplane,” he tells me, “Maybe you could call your friends who have factories in your country and tell them!”

4. A Cameroonian commented, “Barack Obama must be the richest man in America! How else could he have won the elections?” Ouch—but a telling commentary on how to win elections in Cameroon.

5. When my sister Barrett was here, she’d scolded me for making a little slurping sound when drinking my hot tea. “Sorry! I hadn’t even realized I was doing it!” Then I went to a meeting out in the bush recently. I sat around a table with about six men before the meeting started, sipping hot tea. I felt overwhelmed by a surround-sound of constant, enthusiastic slurps. Ahhhh, I realized, some things are cultural. I was the only one blowing on my tea or slowly swirling it around to try to cool it off. I attempted a few hearty slurps for the sake of camaraderie, but they mostly sounded puny and unconvincing.

6. People always comment on my marital status, but here’s a new one. After we left that same meeting, Koda, my collaborator, told me that the men had told him I was not tall enough to be married. This is curious. I am 5 foot 9 and a half inches. I have met about two Cameroonian women who are taller than me. This could at least serve as a useful excuse in avoiding future marriage proposals, “I’m sorry to decline your kind offer, I’m afraid I’m just not tall enough!”

7. Finally, there was a death in the neighborhood, a neighbor I don’t know. The first night was filled with the most wretched wailing sounds I’ve ever heard. Women’s shrieking cries are a part of the mourning process. Then, out came the drums. For five straight nights there was constant pounding and vibrations, from about 6pm to 3am, about 50 feet from my living room. Aïssatou invited me to see the drumming, but I had been busy. Eventually, I got curious enough to investigate on my own. One night after dark, I threw a scarf over my head (I didn’t want my white skin to give me away) and turned the corner near my house to mount a pitch-black, rocky slope to the clearing where the drumming was. I crouched off the path and just watched and listened. No one ever saw me. I could barely see the outlines of figures dancing in the night, making singing noises and turning in circles. The drums pounded constantly. It was a beautiful night under the stars, that perfectly captured my feelings—at ease with the surroundings but still at times only a spectator, the comfortable outsider.

Look at me, I'm getting hi-tech!

Here is the Extreme North of Cameroon's answer to a shopping mall. I'm in Maroua, and today happens to be a market day so I took this video on the way in. You can see piles of oranges at the end of the video.

Feeling inspired, I whipped out the camera again on our main form of transportation (as you might recall from the last post...) the moto! No collisions today, but a bit more of Maroua. You can see the riverbed below the green bridge is almost completely dried out. On the right, you can see a gas station (Oil Libya) but also the more standard places people by gas--out of plastic bottles from a table on the side of the road. Also is a row of boubous (man dress!) for sale at the end of the video.

Woops, don't think that worked... will try next time!

If you're not bored yet, here is an area outside another of Maroua's main markets. I like the guy carrying a table on his head on the moto, on the wrong side of the road, at the beginning of the video. Also interesting, the huge stacks of mattresses on the left, near the end of the video. You get a good view of some of the traditional clothing.

And lastly, I thought this one was interesting. My friend Fleur filmed these traditional musicians at a recent festival in Makala. Hope you enjoy!

PS--It's February 14th. When I checked the temperature at 5pm, it was 100 degrees. Happy Valentines Day!

Sometimes I’m reminded of just how fragile and precarious our lives are. Only earlier this month, we were all reminded of that in Haiti. Today my example is more local. I’m not particularly morbid, but sometimes when I’m riding my bike around Makala or taking a bush taxi, I think of how easily it could all be over so quickly, with a wrong twitch of the steering wheel or a careless driver just not seeing me. And we hear so many stories of motorcycle, car, and bus accidents here, that you can’t be oblivious to the realities of the road—it’s dangerous.

I got really lucky today. Let me just say I’m not seriously hurt, but I had my first moto accident and it’s left me more shaken and angry than anything else. I was leaving the MC2 on my bike, and coming down one of the major central roads in Makala. It’s Wednesday, market day, so even more people were out than usual. In spite of being a central road, this road is terrible—unpaved, sandy and rocky—and in effect it’s only a narrow path, a small portion of it, that’s passable. For those who’ve been here, it’s right in front of several bars, including my favorite, chez Jérémie. (NB: I was coming from work, not the bar.)

A moto was approaching me on the narrow path, and it was obvious there wasn’t enough room for both of us, so I moved to the right edge of the path and stopped, waiting for him to pick his route around me. I had no way of knowing which way he’d go around me—sticking to the right side of the road means nothing here. Apparently, his path of choice was right over me. I couldn’t believe it. I saw him coming closer and closer, certain he would change course or STOP, and somehow—I have no idea how—he didn’t. It happened fast enough that I couldn’t move in any direction, which wouldn’t have helped anyway, since I didn’t know which way he’d go. But it happened just slowly enough for me to realize, “I am about to get run over, he is gonna cut my body in two.” As soon as he hit me, I just started screaming. While he somehow didn’t see me, he heard me, and thankfully was able to stop shortly.

He knocked my bike over and me with it. My shoulder is twisted and hurting, but otherwise I’m ok. There are too many ways it could have been worse—if he’d been going any faster, if I would have fallen on a nearby rock… When I did get up I just couldn’t believe it. As soon as I was up, I could feel my shoulder and another twinge of anger, as it flashed through my mind that Dad had his shoulder messed up in an accident years ago, and it still bothers him sometimes today. The driver got off his moto. He must have been 15 years old. I think I shouted once, “How did you not see me?!” and then somehow I kept my calm. That’s rare for me here. But the crowd was increasing and I didn’t want to turn into any more of a spectacle. I was so mad and shaken that my right hand was trembling ridiculously, like my Grandpa’s used to, back and forth by what must have been two inches—I couldn’t stop it, just stared at it, watched it go. My left arm hurt too much to raise. More and more people were gathering around, picking up my bike, asking if I was ok. When I kept asking the driver, “How did you not see me?” he refused to answer, just looked away. What made me the angriest was his refusal to answer me. You can’t just run over people with your moto and walk away. (Or can you…) My voice was calm, but I asked him, literally, did he have his eyes closed? Even, “Mon frère, I know my skin is the same color as the sand, but how did you not see me?” People around me urged, “Pardonnez-lui,” Forgive him.

“No,” I replied, “He was wrong. He could have hurt someone.” I pointed to one of the small wide-eyed children looking on, “If it had been one of them, a child, you would have killed him.” Such accidents happen too often.

Finally, when I realized that my bike and I were mostly ok, and that there was nothing else I could do—including getting an explanation—I got out of there, fighting back tears of frustration behind my sunglasses. I got hit by a car once while riding my bike in DC and was hurt worse then, but I was angrier today. There is no penalty or punishment for someone who’s reckless. The boy didn’t have a license, which could have been revoked. As Thea reminded me afterwards, if I would have gone to the police, they wouldn’t have done anything. I’ve seen what looks like 12-year-olds driving motos. As much as I’ve hated tickets in the past, it makes me grateful that the U.S. has a system to protect us from such carelessness. (I got a ticket once for riding my bicycle on a sidewalk! Pedestrians of DC, rest easy.) It bothers me that many seemed to shrug their shoulders, accept this as normal, and do nothing. It’s true that there are bigger things to worry about here—getting food on the table, keeping your family out of the hospital, paying for school. My inconvenience is limited to a sore shoulder, but it becomes clearer to me all the time why the average life expectancy here is 52 years old. I’m reminded that every day in good health is a day to appreciate—that nothing should be taken for granted. A few extra miles per hour, and it could have been much worse.

PS— Now one week later from when I wrote the above…

…and so I don’t get frantic e-mails from the parental generation of America. The parental generation here in Cameroon has been taking good care of me. My co-worker Adèle, the cashier at our bank, took me to the hospital, and although they’d run out of ibuprofen, they gave me some other anti-inflammatory for 20 american cents. Not bad. In addition to that, Adèle has proclaimed that she has a talent for massage. She does! And she uses it on me! So we bought some weird Chinese menthol balm product off a kid on the street, and she now regularly massages my shoulder, while I’m sitting behind the counter at the bank. Makes for some funny stares from the clients… but I’m used to that!

My co-workers had some thoughts about how the accident probably happened. A lot of the young moto-taxi drivers here are often drunk, or sniffing glues and drugs. It was market day, and so the bil-bil, or local millet wine, was out in force, making for a lot of drunk people wandering around. It doesn’t make me feel any better about riding with the motos, I’ve been pretty skittish since last week. But it makes sense… why the driver didn’t see me, didn’t stop, just seemed unperturbed. I’ll get in some good walking in the coming months…

An Empirically Tested Approach

Note: Below content is inappropriate for the prudish. I am showing my Peace Corps best here. For as long as I can remember, my older sister Barrett has specialized in my embarrassment. Starting as children, she would careen through stop signs while steering the neighbors’ tandem bicycle, leaving me not only mortified as cars braked and honked, but also in fear of my life. As we’ve grown, she’s perfected the art of my embarrassment, and I must say, she can do it like no other. In December, it was time to import this unique talent to the African continent, and so I compiled a brief list of ways to embarrass your younger sister. Rest assured, all of these have been tested and proven effective: Decide and proclaim to everyone within earshot that you’re going to marry the exuberant young European man you’ve just met on the beach who frolicks around wearing nothing but a speedo.Join the singer of the evening at your hotel and throw in a little dance for good measure. Go for a walk in the capital city. When you get harassed by horny young men and I attempt to tell them off, do not start laughing so hard that you are unable to walk, therefore only worsening the harassment. This only erodes my credibility, and encourages more horny harassment.Break into loud song while riding in an overcrowded bush taxi. If your driver has already made you fear for your life multiple times “Keep Two Eyes on the Road," by the Rolling Stones, is an appropriate selection. Ask the other passengers in the vehicle, “Are you with me?!”Engage in conversation with strangers in the fabric shop. Encourage the stranger-woman that it would be a terrific idea for me to marry her son, while stranger-woman approvingly sizes me up and down, grabs my butt a few times in casual conversation, and gives me her phone number so we can set up a time for me to meet her son.Don your borrowed bike helmet, (for use in the absence of a full-fledged motorcycle helmet), before you leave the house. Exit the house, walk a block down the street, all the while wearing your helmet, and proceed to flag down a moto-taxi. Let there be no doubt to any passers-by that you are in fact seeking a moto and believe in protecting oneself against the imminent threat of head injuries and brain damage. But I guess we truly haven’t evolved that much past ages 7 and 10, because the greatest sources of both embarrassment and humor on Barrett’s trip came from age-old bathroom humor. I hope potential future employers are not reading this. If you would like to one day give me a job, maybe you should just stop reading this now. My favorite is the bus story. Now for any of you who have traveled aboard a Cameroonian vehicle, you know the rule. Open windows allow for the passage of air, deadly diseases, and all other sorts of misfortunes. So those windows get locked up tight, much to the distress of the sweating and awkward foreigners who happen to be in any such vehicle. When Shawn was visiting, a woman, traveling with her baby, literally asked us if she could trade places with us when her window was stuck in an open position. Her plea, “I don’t want to lose my baby.” Because gentle breezes from open windows are known as the number one baby-killer in Africa. So Barrett and I had been traveling literally non-stop for a day. The overnight train had arrived late, from the train we’d jumped directly on a bus, and a solid 24 hours after beginning this trek, we are still some hours away from our destination of Maroua. So Sis, at that point, if you need to find a little humor at my expense, could I really deny you?? And as you can imagine, the windows to our bus, as it careens over pot-holed roads through the darkness, are sealed tight. Well, Cameroon brings out the best my gastro-intestinal system has to offer the world. For the sake of my fellow travelers, I’d tried to keep my gastric distress to myself for the previous 24 hours. But sometimes enough is enough. We’re sitting quietly in the back row of the bus, when unwittingly, I come to realize I’ve violated the public air space with some terrible form of pollution. My sister catches a whiff of this violation and immediately looks at me, “You didn’t..?!!” “Sorry!!” Barrett starts chortling, in between trying to find some readily available object to use as a gas mask. Now my sister’s French is not bad and unfortunately for me in this instance, continually improving, but thank goodness she didn’t know the word for fart. (She learned.) So she decides to announce to all our friends on the bus, “Ma soeur! Ma soeur a passé le gaz! Pooooweeeeeee!!!!” I am hitting her to try to make her be quiet, but she takes much glee in persisting in this noisy announcement/exercise of her limited French vocabulary. A slight murmur spreads through the bus. Even though the night is pitch black, I wish I had somewhere to hide. Apparently, my contribution to the atmosphere does not go unnoticed by our Cameroonian compatriots, and someone obligingly pulls out a bottle of perfume to give a spray, for the sake of humanity. The perfume, however, is so potent, that I feel ready to choke. Increased murmuring spreads throughout the bus, while I continue to try to silence Barrett’s gleeful exclamations. And then lo and behold, a miracle occurs. Someone opens a window! Hallelujah! We are liberated. So that my friends, you can add to your list of coping strategies for those pained cross-country voyages. Albeit at some cost in the form of personal humiliation. I could regal you further with stories of my sister’s own contributions to the Cameroonian ozone… but let’s just say that some things must run in the family, and eventually, she had a some defining moments herself. I’d like to think I handled it with slightly more grace than she did, but hey, I get plenty of chances to practice my French vocabulary in that realm. Of course, :) for your viewing enjoyment, here’s a bit of photo-documentary from her time here. Climbing on rocks when we went to the beach at Kribi. I am the Little Mermaid.

We had a really good visit with my old homestay family from training. Ma was so happy to see us, and as always, prepared amazing food.

Whatever is going on in this picture, I have no idea, but it so perfectly expresses the personalities of everyone in my homestay family. Throw in my random whitey sister just for good measure.

Playing in the elephant tracks at Waza National Park.

Sis looking poetic, with very small giraffes in the background.

We went out for bilbil, the local millet beer, with my co-workers from the MC2. Here’s Catherine:

Bava, our accountant, told me there was some tradition about drinking from the same calabash.

Scaring small children: always fun.

And some traditions will never die :) Like with Mom, I was so grateful that she took the time and effort to come see me, and share a bit of Africa… even at the expense of a bit of my dignity. :) Love you, Sis!

Haiti collapsed again yesterday. Ravished, it seems. This time not by the Duvaliers, the Americans, the French, or their own street gangs, but by something even greater and more indiscriminate than all these. Nature. The same nature that ravished New Orleans in Katrina, Sri Linka in the tsunami, and the Philippines in recent monsoons again reared her ugly head to remind us that no one is immune. I couldn’t sleep well last night after I got the news. Too many images invaded my head and wouldn’t let go. Images of the broken presidential palace, just blocks from my old house. Images of poverty and decrepitude, but that was there long before this earthquake hit. We think it is a terrible shame when these things happen, and it unites humanity in such an odd way. Maybe it’s because we genuinely feel it could have been one of us, and that no one is fully immune from such forces of nature, as wealthy as we might be. It frustrates me because I know there will be an overwhelming outpouring of aid. People will come forward now to give money, but what about every other day of the year when Haitians are starving? This year, 24,000 more people will die of hunger throughout the world. Are we saddened and shaken by these sudden deaths in Haiti that hit too close to home, as though the dice of chance just missed me this time, but not my Haitian neighbors Gustav, Izetta, Catelyn and Lovelyn? Are we less saddened by the 24,000 deaths from hunger this year because they are expected? What angers me most is realizing that just as no one chose to live ten miles from the epicenter of an earthquake, no one chose the country, America or Haiti, the race and color, white middle-class or black poverty-stricken, or the educational and work opportunities available in the country where you are born. It’s as much to chance that Gustav is Haitian that I am American, and that he will have to fight twice as hard for everything he has in his meager life than I’ve ever fought. I was born into so much, don’t I owe something to those who did not have such good fortune? We are sadly not all born equal, but we could start by making more efforts to recognize this reality, how relatively wealthy we are compared to the rest of the world. Ideally it shouldn’t have to take tsunamis, hurricanes, and now earthquakes to highlight the poverty and inequality that is becoming increasing accepted throughout the world. I should take a moment to add, before I offend half my friends and family, that my anger is not as much directed at working-class America. It’s the ultra-rich upper crusts of society that infuriate me most. The insidious Kardashians, Hiltons, Enron executives or the other obliviously wealthy who don’t seem to have questioned how they got so rich, or what effect their consumerism has on those who are toiling away to make all that they buy, or those poor who have to live on the land exploited for the natural resources used to make such extravagant lifestyles possible. And I’m not worried about offending those people—they’re not reading my blog anyway. I’m quietly stepping down from my soap box now. Thanks for letting me vent.

At my request, and after healing from all the joys Africa had to offer, Mom graciously wrote a bit for my blog. :) So, la voilà and Thanks, Mom! ************* I went to Africa for two reasons: to see my daughter, Fleurange, whom I had not seen since June 4, 2008, and to get a better idea of the challenges that she faces every day as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). Both goals were met, and then some! I had a great visit with Fleurange, but such travel is not for the faint-hearted! Life in her world, as far is creature comforts go, is a bit like what we Louisianians would call ‘hurricane mode’ (few creature comforts as the storm passes and in the aftermath when services are out). The people were very welcoming. Being ‘the Mama who has come from the United States’ made me an instant celebrity! Of course, I know that was in large part because people there—her neighbors, her local professional associates, her bosses, her fellow PVCs—like and respect her. Now there is no bias here, of course, but I am very proud of Fleurange, and indeed, the six or seven other PVCs that I met and had occasion to visit with about their duties. They give up a lot, and put up with a lot, and I am sure, grow a lot in their jobs. We were invited into numerous homes and dined with several families. It was obvious to me that they were intent on honoring us, and it was a humbling experience for me. The climate in Cameroon is varied, and I am told that Cameroon is considered to be Africa in miniature, with the dry grasslands semi-desert in the north, high country in the middle, and the tropical area in the south. In the north, where Fleurange lives, it is dry most of the year, except for a several-months’-long rainy season. Dust is everywhere. And regardless of what people say about ‘dry heat’ being less uncomfortable, when it is 95 degrees, and you are walking in the sun, it is hot! The Cameroonians did not seem to be as bothered by heat as the white people I saw; perhaps they are more acclimated, much as we Southerners in the US can handle the heat better than folks from MN or NH. And the heat was not as much of a problem for me as a few other things…. The principal crops in the north are peanuts, soy, cotton, and millet. Many families have small patches of millet at the back door. Transportation is one of the areas that shocks the average American. I grew up in the country on a gravel road in the late 50’s and early 60’s, before we got blacktop. I remember the dust. Most of the roads, in Makala, and even many in the bigger towns, are not gravel, but dirt and rocks or stones or boulders!! One has a jarring experience on most bus rides, and the moto (motorcycles for hire) drivers have my greatest respect for the way they avoid so many big rocks and potholes, while keeping passengers from landing on the street! You have not lived until you have survived a one-hour-plus ride on the back of a moto, to view the sights at the western border near Nigeria! I figured that if I had osteoporosis, the crumbling of my spinal column would have begun on this trip. I also got used to the crowded unairconditioned buses which are standard when traveling from one town to another. When one is lucky, a fellow passenger gets off early and one can spread out a bit. Fleurange and I have a great story to tell about the perils of trying to spend money and take the rich American route cross-country, via domestic airline, instead of the usual 3-day train-and-bus trip, but it is too long for here. Suffice it to say that money does not fix all problems, and bureaucracy and corruption in government are alive and well in Cameroon. Sanitation (or lack thereof) was a significant area of concern for me. It is true that I grew up in the country in the days before AC, microwaves, internet, and cell phones, and if we lost power, we were also without water because the pump for the well was electric. But in Cameroon, indoor plumbing was somewhat rare, and I came to cherish those ceramic wonders in the places that had them. I did worry about what critters I might be ingesting in the food and drink offered to me by our many gracious hosts/hostesses, and I wondered how the whole eating process could possibly be safe when we shook many hands, and then washed hands in a communal washing bowl, before dining. When I was uncertain about the food, I ate little. When I felt more secure, I pigged out. I cannot say at this point whether I brought home any little friends with me, but found myself praying, ‘Lord, if I have an immune system, let it go into overdrive now!!’ There was also the matter of ‘street food’ some of which was very tasty, but again, the health department in any city or town in the US would have shut these folks down long ago. But what is one to do? The food was interesting. A principal dish is the couscous, different from the Americanized version one buys here in a box. It is sort of like a firm mush (thick grits for Southerners), which can be made from rice, corn, or millet. This is served with flavorful sauces made from peanut oil, leaves, various seasonings. The procedure is to use your fingers, grab a chunk of couscous, dip in the sauce, and eat. Another popular dish is beans and beignets (street food), tasty, but then again, look at all the (clean?) hands that prepared it. The beignets (fried bread, sometimes yeast-raised) were somewhat familiar to me, reminiscent of the sweet beignet that is popular in New Orleans, and the beans were somewhat like our local red-beans-and-rice. This was food in the north of Cameroon. In the south, there appears to be more variety, with fried plantains, bananas, pineapples, citrus fruits, papaya. On the street, one could also find grilled (whole) fish; omelets made from eggs, spaghetti, and onions; roasted plantains. There is much more I could tell, but we would be here all day. The sights, sounds, smells were of a different world. To be there was an amazing experience! (Yet I do not plan a repeat trip unless the Peace Corps calls me and says ‘Get over here; your daughter is in trouble’, in which case I would be on a plane within 24 hours!) For one considering such a trip to Africa as I had, one should think of it as a UN fact-finding trip, or something like that—not 100% as vacation or recreational travel! Cameroon—not for the faint-hearted! ************* So, that’s it from my Mama… and a few last observations and pictures of my own… Age wins: I can’t wait to have my birthday next month!! Why? Cause it is COOL to be OLD in Africa! As she mentioned, Mom was treated with such reverence and respect (yeah little nassara me doesn’t get all that!) The hospitality was monumental. I was certain I fattened up thanks to all the delicious sauces we were served by my friends, neighbors, and colleagues. In addition to the Age = Mucho Respect Phenomenon, I think people really appreciated seeing where I came from (literally.) As perceived by our communities, I think we PCVs seem to exist in a bubble—a little piece of whitey dropped from the sky—no family, no connections, just floating through Africa. For my friends to meet my Mom seems to somehow give me more credibility—I really do have a family and a history. Mom makes an entrance: I can’t help but crack a smile every time I think of Mom’s first contact with Makala. We had survived the entire look trip North to my post unscathed (although not without snafus a plenty!!) We were taking motos to my house from the bus station, with all our luggage. Finally, in the instant it’s time to dismount the moto, I’m deciding between which to do first: pay my moto driver, pay Mom’s moto driver, greet the mass of my neighbors who are running up to greet us, pull luggage off the moto, or help Mom undo her moto helmet. Mom makes the decision easy for me as slowly she goes Ploppppp! descending not so gracefully onto her bottom on the dirt road next to her moto. We’d come so far! It was only the dismount that was left!! Balancing on two legs can be tricky! I don’t think my neighbors knew how to react—the reverence for Mama Fleurange! might have been cancelled out by seeing her sprawled on the dirt road! Mom’s a great sport, brushed herself off (with some help from her daughter to take off that moto helmet) and got up to promptly greet everyone. The neighbors loved her instantly! Nursing home preview: As Mom likes to say, this is what it’ll be like when I’m old and infirm! It’s always a fun role reversal when you get to take care of your parents. I was constantly talking, translating French/English, generally instructing, clarifying… I think my favorite image is of “How to ride a moto 101.” (Obviously, not enough time was spent on the sub-lesson, “How to dismount a moto!”) The first time we got on motorcycles, I had to remember this is not a standard and all-encompassing form of transportation in the US, as it is here. I had to put Mom’s feet on the right pedals, show her where to hold on, and yes, lovingly attach her helmet on her head. I ended up attaching Mom’s helmet every time we took motos. Maybe it’s a small recompense for all those dirty diapers she changed. Afro-Caribbean connections: A favorite last memory is Mom’s ever-keen observations as she soaks up all of Africa’s cultural wonders: the arts, the music, the people.... We’re out at a sidewalk bar one of her last nights here, sharing a local beer. (I never even liked beer before I came to Africa, and Mom also says that she thinks she has added one more to her short list of times she likes beer—after haggling in an African artisan market.) So the music is, as always, loud on the bar’s loudspeakers. Philosophically, Mom comments on what seems to be the local music, “Now those drums are reminiscent of the Caribbean.” “Mom. That’s Bob Marley.” “Oh.” (I told Mom she was allowed to make as much fun of me as she wanted in her write-up of Cameroon! Obviously, her tact and diplomacy are something I am still working on… :) “Not nice,” as she would say, or, referring to raising me, “I tried. I REALLY tried!!” Lovely Yaoundé, capital of Cameroon, below us.

A cool roadside shot Mom got from the bus.

I’m telling my co-workers at the MC2 that when Americans take pictures, we smile, and could they please pleaaaase smile? (This is apparently funny.)

I’d asked Mom to bring over marshmallows—cultural exchange at its finest. I’m demonstrating how to roast the marshmallow that is speared on my spoon, while Bouba examines the marshmallow bag.

Mom practices being a grandmother with Bouba’s baby girl, Aïcha. N.B. It’s over 80 degrees at the time of that photo. Wrap that baby up tight!!

Chez my neighbors, American propaganda fest? Ouuiiiiiiiii, pourquoi pas?!

With Aissatou, my favorite neighbor, who fed us a lovely meal.

Mom was always good at making friends! (And yes, every one is wearing Mardi Gras beads that Mom brought over. What a hit. The neighbors are still wearing them!)

Friend Yves has us over for dinner and I plan to steal a baby :) His wives made us delicious chicken.

More food: here’s tasty couscous and sauce! Break it, dip it, love it! This couscous is made from red millet, with a sesame seed sauce. (Dad, just wait til I make you some of that!! Mmmmm :)

Mom communes with/is in awe of nature when I make her go hiking in Rumsiki. (She is seriously a good sport!!)

While in Rumsiki, we visited the Crab Sorcerer to learn about the future. He translates our questions to his crab, who then responds by moving little shards of clay in a pot to indicate certain answers. We learned that Paul Biya is going to “win” another Cameroonian presidential election in 2011 (quel surprise!) and that Cameroon will fight valiantly, but will not win the World Cup. I will also make three babies.

Here’s the omniscient Crabby himself. Photographable for 500 F. Clever boogar.

(Before tourists came, the Crab Sorcerer and his crab predicted the annual harvest, a tradition passed on from his father, and grandfather before him.)

Crab Sorcerer takes a liking to my Mother. Mom is sufficiently reverent.

I agree with the Crab Sorcerer that it sure was wonderful to have her here. I’ll attach her helmet any day. Hopefully this Mama-fix will last me until I get back to the states next August!

Occasionally, someone passes through our lives in a way that we hope not only we will never forget, but that we will one day be able to duplicate. Such is the case of my Great Aunt Lois, a woman of singular character and fortitude. She married into my family at a time when my great-grandfather told a story of some pitiable neighbor, “A man who had no children… poor Mr. Gerstrom, no children. Only five daughters,” and yet she stayed. She lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights movement and desegregation in the Deep South, and near the end… I was lucky enough to be one of her “practice grand-children.”

When I went to Haiti, not only did she seek out to read the classic Mountains Beyond Mountains, she told my mother she should read it, too. (and Mom listened!) When I came to Africa, Lois picked up the biggest book on the subject, and slogged through Fate of Africa with me. We compared notes via e-mail, she with the unique perspective of still thinking of the Democratic Republic of Congo as “Zaire.” She amazed me with her curiosity and her drive to always continue learning. She was in her eighties, but learned to become more computer savvy than many, even maintaining her own “virtual bookshelf” and keeping up with all the adventures of myself and my cousins.

She was deeply religious, as are many in my family. When she sent out an e-mail to say God was calling her back, I nearly lost it in the local cyber café, reduced to a snotty and teary ball. Such emotion is a concept hard for the average Cameroonian to grasp. Here, life comes and goes. Another in the ground, another in the womb, and we plod on. Cameroonians don’t seem to understand our grief and outrage at a loss that is only so natural.

But as I trudged into town, trying to hide my tears, I thought about the message Lois had sent us, and the impact it had on me. One woman had changed my perception, given me e-mails to look forward to, and made me feel understood and appreciated. She motivated me to always continue learning, to never say die on developing as an individual, until it’s that time that God calls you back, and then you go gracefully and thankfully for the good life you’ve led.

In the day to day here, I often get caught up in my own ego, wondering who is right in some senseless misunderstanding based on cultural differences, and too much of my own pride. When I read the note Lois left us, I felt a strong tug of desire that I, too, would be able to say such things, express such gratitude of the life and opportunities I have been given, on my way out. Her life leaves me with the desire to let go a little more. Let go of trying to control or have things my way, and instead to appreciate, to serve. If I could make a few small impacts, show kindness, and invest in others in the way she has so profoundly loved me, I will be happy.

For Lois, I think the words of Emerson say it best:

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

My MOTHER is arriving on the African continent TOMORROW!! I am more than excited.

Our grand ambitions include looking at rocks (some cool formations near me), eating tasty millet and leaf sauce with our fingers, playing with some wildlife, and mostly just hanging out around my town, meeting friends and co-workers, getting a taste of life au village. That's about it! I've told everyone she's coming and she doesn't even know yet I've already had matching outfits tailored for us... :)

In other fine news I'd just like to report that I have found one of my most successful Halloween costumes EVER. The African market bag. Although originally designed to transport produce around town, it doubles as a roomy and comfortable costume (although of questionable aesthetic appeal...) I don't think I've ever danced so much in my life--no one can see what a bad dancer you are if it's all under an enormous SACK! Yeahhhh :)

And of course, here is a real African market mama in action. Don't stop her now.

(Not quite sure what the Cameroonians at this party had to make of all this... They don't exactly celebrate Halloween...)

Lots of love to everyone back home, and stay tuned for some more adventures with my favorite veille blanche!

My postmate Thea told me a story recently that really cracked me up. I’ll try to retell it as best I can. Keep in mind that Thea is a much nicer, calmer, and generally more patient person than I am, thus my amusement. Alas… Thea: Seriously, the other day I think I did a “Fleurange.”

(side note: that's what people call me here, my middle name...)

Me: Oh no, what’s that mean?!! I didn’t realize I’d turned into an verb!! I’m scared. Thea: I was riding Makala Express (one of the local bus companies) the other day to Maroua. You know I hate those trips cause they always drive so fast. I was sitting all the way in the back of the van. We were flying!! Every time we would go around those curves, everyone would grab onto the seat in front of us and we’d all be leaning and swerving. Even the old Cameroonian men. And the car was so loaded down with stuff on top that we were really top-heavy, I mean, really unstable!! We were just bombing along the road. And you know there’s always little kids just playing right alongside of the road. We’re going so fast, that there’s a group of goats crossing the road. And the driver can’t stop fast enough. So bam, we knock out about three goats. And they just go rolling away under the car. The driver doesn’t even stop or anything to see if they’re alright. After a little while longer, I asked the old man next to me if it was bothering him—the speed. And he said, 'Yes, they are going fast!' So I said, 'Could you say something? You’re a man. They’ll listen to you. You’re Cameroonian.' And he said 'Say something?' Agggghhhhhh!! So of course the Cameroonians won’t say anything. I really wished you’d been there so you could have said something.My interjection: Yeah, I've gotten a bit of a reputation here for telling people what I think when they make me cranky, or especially if they’re full of bullshit. (Which parent did I get that from? ;) The following must be doing a Fleurange. But I’d say Thea did pretty damn well herself. Back to Thea’s narration: Thea: So finally I say, “Chauffeur! We’re going really fast, aren’t we? Can you slow down?” And he makes some bullshit response like, “We have to get to Maroua, non?” So by this time I’m so mad, I’m practically standing, and I’m yelling at him from the back of the van, “CHAUFFEUR, this isn’t safe!! We already hit the goats, what’s next, children?! Us?!” And the Chauffeur says, “Time is money!” I just screamed, “WHAT?!!!! SINCE WHEN ARE CAMEROONIANS IN A HURRY?!!” At this point I, Fleurange, was dying laughing, picturing all this going down in the dilapidated and overcrowded van, flying and swerving down the road. Shouldn’t have been funny, but it’s just so outrageous, and I’ve never seen Thea lose her cool, (that role is usually reserved for me!) What a great—and unexpected—line from that chauffeur. Seriously, you can wait here ALL day for anything and NOBODY cares, and there's no consequences, but then you can’t slow down 5 MPH for the safety of human lives? Or even adopt a bit of customer-service?! It’s in the interest of your business not to kill your customers! Back to Thea: So not only did the chauffeur not slow down, I think we went faster. I’ve never gotten to Maroua so fast. My knuckles were white the entire time. I’m going to bring a complaint to the local delegate of transport. End of story. Thank you for taking your valuable time to read it.

On the morning of the fête de Ramadan, the air was so cool that still lying in my bed, I had to clutch my sheet up around my neck. It felt like Christmas morning, that latent anticipation for a big day you’re on the verge of beginning. Last year the excitement was not knowing what to expect, in a new and foreign tradition. This year, I was excited for the fête itself that marks the end of Ramadan. I couldn’t help but realize that I have no idea when, if ever again, I’ll be celebrating the fête de Ramadan, an idea that gave me pause and made me appreciate the day that much more. But I was pulled from my warm bed before 7am, as the first of my neighbors came by bearing croquettes, and enthusiastic wishes of Barka Desala!! Barka Desala!! Happy End of Ramadan! I stood on my doorstep exuberantly shaking hands in my pajamas and poofy bed-hair.

The main event of the day is the gathering of all the faithful to pray. They assemble in droves in a huge field while nassaras and non-believers hang out and watch. I arrived early at the field, and perched myself on a rock under some trees, from which I watched the passers-by. Dark clouds were sweeping across Makala. Falling through the trees, small drops of rain slowly darkened my green pagne, and made me wonder why I’d bothered to slather myself in sunscreen. Floating in from somewhere far across the field, a hypnotic voice chanted Alllahhhhh al-ahkbarrrr, Alllahhhhh al ahkbarrrr, Godddd is greeeaaat, God is greeeaaat, soothingly and rhythmically.

Before the prayers, people roam the streets, greet friends, take pictures with the local nassaras… Thanks to Thea and Fleur, who took many of the pictures below! These are my neighbors: Garga, Issoufa, and some little piece of bubble gum I don’t know who jumped in the picture.

A Cameroonian boy band, or the inverse of a harem? You decide. I’d never even met them before!

No Ramadan fête is complete without a pair of designer sunglasses.

I think little guy on the right might be jealous of little boy on the left’s turban!

Hey Sisters, remember when Mom used to dress us up in those little matching red dresses?!

The prayers, solemn and timeless, mark the official end of a month of fasting during daylight hours. That fast includes not drinking any beverages, even water. I found my Muslim co-workers loved to ask me “How’s the fast going?” when I’d pull out my water bottle to take a few glugs in front of them. So finally, in attempted solidarity, I tried to fast a few times. On about the third day, I finally got it right (I still drink water though. I figure, Allah, Mohammed, and all those other guys can cut me a bit of slack as I’m new to all this.) This means you get up at about 4:30 to have breakfast before dawn. I got up and pulled out my cooking pans to heat up some leftovers. Through the dark, it was comforting to hear the clangs of my neighbors doing the same thing, as a reminder that I am not, in fact, crazy. Fleur however, smart girl that she is, had bouie (the typical breakfast beverage) in a thermos and a couple of beignets on her bedside table. At 4:30am, she sat up in bed, swallowed it down, and plopped back down to sleep. Why didn’t I think of that?! When I asked my counterpart Bouba fasting, he told me that it’s done for three main reasons: 1) To feel hunger, and know what hunger feels like for those who are too poor to eat their fill. 2) It’s good for the body to fast, to clean it out from time to time. 3) To practice discipline and think of Allah.

And so, after a month of fasting, they gather to pray.

I always think of Easter dresses when I see the men’s beautiful flowing boubous! I wish American men could show up at Easter morning service in a boubou :)

This fête de Ramadan, however, reminded me, the non-believer, of Mardi Gras. (Is that irreverent?!) The excesses of food and the fasting, the parade of vehicles across town to visit the traditional chiefs, hoards of sociable people ambling in the streets.

Once the prayers were done the road through town was packed!

You can go on a truck,

On a moto, (there’s room for at least two more on there!)

Or if that’s how you like to roll, on a horse.

The excitement was palpable. A caravan formed to cross town, to visit a traditional chief. It must have included every van in Makala! Fleur, Thea and I ended up running across a field to try and catch up with it, chasing the cars as though running after floats in a parade, frantically looking for beads! (We just wanted pictures.) Here, instead of wearing tacky plastic beads you think are cool, you dress up in full pagne (I think it’s flattering, but I’ve been gone from the States for a while… you judge!) and you paint your hands funny colors!

The men are decked out in their best boubous, complete with the gondora, a huge sail of fabric they loop over their shoulders on top of the boubou. Thea and I found our friend Ibrahim. I was marveling at the sheer quantity of fabric that Ibrahim was wearing and I think our conversation went something like this:

Me: Hey Ibrahim, can I do bat wings with your boubou??!! Come onnnn, it’ll be fun! Ibrahim: Hmmm, Not so sure about that, weird little American girl.

Ibrahim: Alrighhhhht. Me: See, this is so cool!! You look like a big blue bat!! Ibrahim: Yeahhh, I am pretty cool.

Me: Told you! Ibrahim: OK, give me back my boubou now, that’s enough. OK, give me back my boubou!!

Then we ran into Bouba, my counterpart at the MC2. He was a little more willing to indulge my Batman fetish.

In between terrorizing my friends in boubous, I’m fond of contemplating my hands. The henna is supposed to render them black, but I’m too impatient and didn’t want to walk around with henna and plastic bags on my hands for hours while it dried, so I came out with a semi-ridiculous carrot look. Woops :) What’s a couple months of orange fingers?!

We proceeded to shuffle all over town, eating loads and greeting people. Instead of the excesses of King Cake, I happily dined on endless croquettes, sweet fried dough balls that I like far too much. The visits are my favorite part of Ramadan, what I look forward to the most. I honestly can’t think of an American equivalent. If we attempted the same thing, would it just lead to traffic jams, and twitchy kids sitting in cars trying to behave? Here, we walk, eat, walk, eat, amble about some more. No one is really rushed, and it seems that somehow no one really has an agenda, but they always seem to know when to find their friends at home.

I stopped by my neighbor Aïssatou’s house. She’s my accomplice in the henna hands, which many of the neighborhood women did in preparation for the fête. Since Cameroonians refuse to smile for a posed photo, it was so hard to get this picture! I had to beg Aïssatou and her husband for one photo, American style, with a smile. At least the begging apparently amused them, which led to the desired result!

In an interesting turn of events, all the Protestants were likewise having a huge celebration, a joint service of all the different denominations at the local stadium marking the beginning of the school year. On top of that, the Catholic bishop was in town, performing Confirmations. Only the Atheists weren’t celebrating. (They/we just ran around crashing everybody else’s parties.) I couldn’t help but notice the stark contrasts between the faiths as Thea, Fleur, and I paused at the Protestant gathering. Whereas the Muslim prayers require strict male-female segregation, the Protestants mingled freely. The Muslim prayer was neat, orderly, efficient, with something reverent and sacred about it. The Christians sang and clapped in excitement, rambling on in informal and uncalculated prayers. Half-naked children romped through the Christian crowd. While the Muslims were dressed in their best pastel-colored boubous on men, and full pagne on women, the Christians were comfortably clad in t-shirts, pants, occasional sprinklings of pagne. The Muslim prayer reminded me of what old-school Catholicism must have resembled—steeped in unquestionable tradition and inaccessibility, yet beautiful, a bit magical, and surreal.

I think celebrating another’s most sacred holiday has helped me better appreciate the celebrations chez moi. It’s true I’ve remarked at times past that I’ve thought the U.S. has no culture—what do we do that’s original, or unique? When recently thinking about the importance of the fête de Ramadan here, I thought the best equivalent aux Etats-Unis is Christmas. And the first image of Christmas that popped into my mind was from a David Sedaris book I recently read, where he described working as one of “Santa’s elves” at Macy’s, shuffling children and families through the lines in “Santa-land,” that led to taking a photo on Santa’s knee, surrounded in décor of red and green pinwheels. And I think that my observation of times past is untrue. We do have a culture in the United States. Yes, it is largely influenced by consumerism and profit. At the fête de Ramadan, I’m sure those who sell flour and eggs make a buck off of all the croquettes I eat. But otherwise, the fête is based around people and traditions, and no commerce stands to win or lose. People may kill the goats they’ve raised in their yards but that doesn’t create a surge in commerce, or profits for anyone (particularly the goat!) So celebrations in America are more multi-layered and complex, colored with the distractions of consumerism. Yet I can still take back the appreciation for the layers I do like in American holidays—the camaraderie of my family, and creating the time and space to visit each other, even if we do it efficient-American style, all in one place. I am looking forward to celebrating holidays in the States in less than a year. :)

Alas, my fête de Ramadan finally ended as I headed to my house to rest and digest. Here’s a view of Makala late in the afternoon, in all its festive glory. (My house is in a neighborhood to the left side of the photo; the mountains are my view from the kitchen window.)

Overall, a satisfying fête de Ramadan, just the way I like them. :) Til, next time amigos, say your prayers, and until I’m back in the States to fête with you personally, know that I am thinking of you!

As I write this, the rain is pounding so thunderously on my tin roof that it drowns out all other sound, with the sole exception of a deep grumbly thunder. Life is stopped, and I imagine in town now, people are packed under inadequate tin overhangs, watching the water course through the by now well-formed rivulets in the dirt roads.

Welcome to rainy season, amigos! And yes, when it rains, it pours.

After nine months in Makala of the most blissful dryness, the rains have come and brought a gripping humidity that reminds me so dearly (and sweating-ly) of every other place I’ve ever lived. Normally the Sahel climate of the Extreme North province will dry our newly-washed clothes within an hour, or produce sun-dried tomatoes in an afternoon! So now, we see the other extreme of what this province has to offer.

The most basic premise of life here is that when the rains begin, every other activity comes to a grinding, debilitating halt. And you wait. I’ve waited, marooned under inadequate overhangs, pressed against thirty other dripping people who, like me, weren’t fast enough to reach shelter in time. You wait in stores, in bars, hair salons, or stranded in awkward conversation in the offices of government officials. (In the case of the latter, I advise just getting wet. My personal preference for shelter, you might readily guess, is a well-stocked bar.) You wait because when folks go home here, there is no hot shower to jump into, microwaved cup of hot chocolate to snuggle up with, or efficient dryer to throw those drenched clothes into. In the case of fleeing those government offices, it took my dripping-wet pants seven hours to dry! (Fortunately, however, I next arrived at my preferred, aforementioned shelter…) But generally, you find yourself waiting, sharing shelter with a random slice of humanity with whom you have one thing in common—you do not want to get wet!

I was in town last Wednesday for market day. As I made my way towards my favorite Bean Mama for lunch, the skies, which had been growing increasingly dark, opened with a crackle and treated us to a pelting rain, of that stinging, put-you-hand-over-your-eyes type. Instantly, folks flipped into the highest speeds possible on this continent, and scattered in every direction. I almost knocked over a dear old man in my rush to reach Bean Mama’s stand.

I hunker down on one of Bean Mama’s benches. Above me is a make-shift tarp of stitched-together grain sacks. Although effective at providing shade, grain sacks are not, I tell you, waterproof! Being much more aware of this fact than I was, Bean Mama dispatches one of her children to run over and give me an umbrella, which I gratefully accept. Also sharing the benches with me, seated across a low table, are two young women. They have a piece of clear plastic, which they drape over them, and one woman whips out a breast to start nursing her infant, so small I hadn’t even noticed it. Crouched across from me is a young boy, about 8. He has no plastic or umbrella, but sits obediently and patiently under our drippy pseudo-tarp, declining my offer to share the umbrella. When I realize he has a thermos of hot tea, I buy myself a cup to sip while we wait this out. But the ferocity of the rains only increases. The winds lift the tarp, rain shoots in from all sides, and Plop goes my umbrella, collapsing in on my face. Mmm, wet, clammy, nylon. I peel my way out from under the umbrella, and give my little tea-boy friend a wide-eyed smile. His smile is shy but, in spite of himself, wide. He’s not supposed to be amused at debbo nassara’s misfortunes, but we still snicker under the leaky grain-sack tarp, knowing at times like this there is nothing you can do but surrender to forces greater than you. On est ensemble, as the Cameroonians say, the rains bring together those that might hardly notice each other in the daily passing of life. Cool winds whip through, and the overwhelming sound of the rain beating on every available surface makes conversation impossible, and unnecessary. Tea-boy and I both have goosebumps on our arms, and for me, it’s the first time in months I’ve felt a shiver. I see the tingle of excitement and cool air reflected in his wide eyes, and it takes me back to my childhood, to pre-hurricane moments in a South Louisiana September, when all the neighborhood kids gathered with excitement in the street, the winds picked up speed, the sky took on a ghoulish green tint, and we wondered what Mother Nature had in store for us. Our parents sipped Hurricanes and chatted in the cul-de-sac. We were giddy with excitement, having no idea what to expect, and hoping school would be cancelled! Here in Cameroon, everyone knows that when the rains start, all previous plans are cancelled… and we really don’t know when life will get taken back off of hold.

As I grow increasingly soaked under Bean Mama’s “tarp,” I realize I’d never even noticed when it rains in the States. Do we even have rainy seasons? Rain seemed random and unpredictable aux Etats-Unis. I never made plans with weather patterns in mind. Here, there are certain places where you just cannot travel during the rainy season. Rivers spring up where before there were none, blocking roads. Other roads morph into impassable swamps. Just arriving at the Peace Corps house in Maroua is an affair that involves a lot of screeching, rolling of pants legs, and hiking of skirts, to traverse the nasty-soup puddle that is halfway to our knees: Lake Schisto*. Unlike in the agriculture-based society of Cameroon, rain in the U.S. doesn’t directly influence the livelihood and well-being of the vast majority of citizens for an entire year. Here, there’s probably not a child who couldn’t tell you the basic calendar of climatic patterns. The next time we talked on the phone, I actually had to ask Mom, “So when does it rain in Louisiana?”

I made it out from Bean Mama’s eventually that day, but not after darting under a few other overhangs on the way home, and becoming thoroughly, hopelessly soaked. I think when I go back to the states I’ll have a whole new appreciation for weather.com, dryers, and rain in general, namely of the non-debilitating, happy sprinkles sort. Til then, ndiam DON!! *Literally translated: water IS!! Or, in American English, It’s ****ing POURING! **Schisto = schistosomiasis: fun disease borne in stagnant water, where a parasite breeds in snails, is just itching to jump into your waiting open wounds, and then involves some type of exploding of the brain. Reference Tropical Disease Bingo.

Tourou is one of my favorite Cameroonian towns, like a little Swiss mountain spa resort (but minus the running water, electricity, cell phone network…) It’s peaceful and beautifully tucked in the mountains, and one of the closest towns to me. The two PCVs posted there are also, fortunately for me, really cool. Matthieu works in Agroforestry and Cara in Community Health. (That’s a link to Cara’s blog over there on the right, “The Cameroonian Caper.”) I really enjoy collaborating with both of them. I went to Tourou earlier this week supposedly to work with some women’s business groups, but also to watch a meteor shower, and eat sushi. :)

(That’s millet, the grain of choice here, growing around the huts.) The road up to Tourou snakes along the Nigerian border. In case you weren’t sure which country you’re in: I also got this text (in English!!) from MTN, the major cell phone provider, “MTN wishes you a safe and productive stay in Nigeria.” I love illicit international border crossings! :) Kids, as always, are plentiful and cute. Upon arriving, I was first greeted by these little guys, Matt’s neighbors.

The kiddie on the right is sporting the jersey of Cameroon’s national soccer team, the Indomitable Lions. He is an adorable little bugar that loves to dance and sing more so than play soccer.

Being in Tourou reminded me of visiting my grandparents’ houses in the country. There is lots of space for frolicking, and Matt was working in his garden. He’s getting hard-core with some kind of grain press here, crushing soybeans to feed the livestock.

Cara supervises. (She’s good at that.)

Animals (and animal’s noise) abound. Matt keeps bunnies. It's very manly.

And Cara keeps goats. She named them Bean and Beignet.

Since Tourou is the country/America circa 1884, we decided to make our own guava juice. The process is actually really simple. First, Cara picks guavas from the tree in her back yard. Then, we slice them up, throw them in water and boil them for half an hour. Finally, we mush it through a strainer to gets out the really crunchy seeds. Cara au travail:

Add water and sugar and tadaaaaaaa! Your finished product:

Tip: guava juice: good with whiskey sachets! It was so tasty I want to try this with other fruits.

In case you weren’t sure you are in the country, here’s a little reminder/reality check. The first time I ever went to Cara’s latrine, I couldn’t find it. The whole in the ground that serves as your Tourou toilet is covered with that pot lid. At least the lid keeps you from falling in. You also get the added bonus of having Cara’s pervy goats stare you down as you try to do your business. Thanks, goats. Hope you liked that.

Just in case you were wondering, this is my toilet. I ♥ ceramic!

(I’m one of the slim minority of volunteers in the Extreme North who has running water in my house, so it’s like my birthday, every day!) Cara’s mom is notorious (in a good way… as long as Cara shares) for sending overwhelming care packages. I can’t complain, cause living not far from Cara, I often get to reap a few benefits. This time around, her mom had shipped the makings for sushi and tempura. It was FABULOUS. But since we’re only so skilled at performing the Japanese culinary arts by candlelight, the sushi rolls turned out more like burritos. Sushitos, we christened them. Here’s our gang enjoying the Japacan/Mexanese feast. (And that’s my postmate Thea, making her trademark I-lived-in-Japan peace sign!)

The next day was Thursday, Tourou’s market day. Tourou is unique in that it’s remained cut-off enough that some folks still practice local animist ways. For years, the road to Tourou was so bad that a moto up from Makala (my town) took almost 3 hours. The population is equally cut-off linguistically. The language in Tourou is Hdi, spoken by only about 40,000 people along the Cameroonian-Nigerian border. In all of Tourou, there are about three women who speak French, and a few more guys who speak it—mainly the elite of businessmen, teachers, and government employees. The road to Tourou is smoother now, only about an hour on a moto from Makala, and a truck makes the trip up once a week, on market day. But traditional ways remain intact. For the women, this means that your little calabash hat (not proper anthropological term) indicates your marital status. A metal spike through your lip or nose indicates which number wife you are in a polygamous family. On market day, the calabash ladies are out in force, sporting their shiny red helmets. If you look closely at the photo below, you can see the metal spike through this lady's nose.

Everyone here is gathered around a calabash of milk. Milk is new to the Tourou market.

Over to the left of the photo below, you can see the lady dressed in yellow and pink fabric. She’s go the baby on the back, calabash on head, and a package on top of the calabash!

One clever woman we’ve worked with isn’t animist, but she knows how to make a profit selling these calabashes to the trickle of tourists that comes through Tourou. She shines them up with oil so they gleam in the sun, ensnaring the innocent tourist.

Yes, Cara, that’s a good look for you.

You too, Abdu. (Matt’s counterpart.)

Once upon a time, I used to wear this outfit to work in DC. (Neck down. minus the chacos.)

Elsewhere in the market, you’ll find piles of millet.

Piles of beans.

And more cute/dirty kids.

Cara negotiates for her favorite leaves. She makes a mean leaf sauce, which I am always happy to eat.

Thea thought this was neat—you get to pick your haircut like you’d pick your dish in a Korean restaurant. To the untrained eye, I recognize that these styles all look, well, wildly similar. Don’t you worry though, that is exactly why Peace Corps gave us three months of training.

Thea has a degree in Fine Arts and also likes to photograph chickens.

So, can you tell I just replaced my old dead camera and got a little snap-happy? Hope you’ve enjoyed this little tour of another of the Extreme North’s finest! Remember, for your next spa resort vacation… And thanks to Matt and Cara, my generous hosts and Leaf Sauce Delight chefs!

I was taking the train back from Yaoundé the other night when I learned about some new usages for VapoRub, popular American remedy for chest colds. But in Cameroon, it’s oh so much more! I was taking the train all by myself, and so was particularly susceptible to the distraction of the wandering salesmen who peddle their wares up and down the aisles. I was also exhausted and desperately trying to sleep. Side note: in Cameroon, for the most part, any individual who has anything to do with medicine is referred to as “Docteur.” (This includes PCVs who work in health, and Cameroonian counterparts don’t understand why being called “Doctor” makes us incredibly uncomfortable!) Well the particular Doctor/Salesman wandering the aisle of train car 683 while I was trying to sleep was selling VapoRub. He parked himself almost right in front of me as he started to give his spiel for the benefit of all in the train car who were willing to listen. “I have a product here,” he proclaims, “that will help you work in your fields. Grandmothers rub this on themselves, and they are able to walk tens of kilometers in just a couple hours! Your feet hurt? Rub them with VapoRub! Your back aches from being in the field? Rub it with VapoRub!” I don’t think the actual usage of VapoRub, was in fact, once sited. Ah well, sorry, Vicks. At this point I was no longer trying to sleep, but eyes open and eagerly awaiting to learn what else I could do with a dollar’s worth of VapoRub! The salesman made a point to note that the product comes from America, and can be attributed as a cause for some of the successes of the great American people. VapoRub = efficiency! (apparently.) Doctor/Salesman continued, “Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, uses VapoRub. It’s me who massages the great Barack Obama (with VapoRub.) It’s me who massages lions. It’s me who massages Americans.” (Lions? Americans? I’ve always thought the two were like peas in a pod.) But it was at this point that I started to laugh out loud. Poor guy, I don’t that that helped his sales. Fortunately, I’d say my fellow passengers didn’t seem to be falling for the Vapo-Magic spiel. I figure if you’ve got enough money to be taking the train, you’re probably well- informed enough to know that VapoRub will not turn you into Barack Obama (sadly.) I think the Docteur had better luck with the herbal tea he began selling next; his voice singing its virtues lulled me to sleep. Just another night on the Trans-Cameroon Pharmaceutical Express.

And other illnesses, maladies, and afflictions that befall a Cameroon PCV.

This little game was made by one of my fellow volunteers Thryn, to help wile away those long lonely nights. I think she’s a computer/design genius!! And yes, if you are creative enough, you figure out how to play bingo all by yourself!

As far as a Bingo player, I am a loser. I’ve only had three! I’ll let you guess which ones. :) On the health spectrum though, I’m one pretty lucky volunteer, relatively. I think the winning volunteer has had SEVENTEEN of these. Wow. You can have that gold medal, friend.

Thryn's Disclaimer: Your medical information is confidential! Share it if you wish, but the designer of this card holds no responsibility for any consequences from your individual decision to share information about your medical history. Remember, BINGO is all fun and games, but tropical diseases are no laughing matter.

The mid-service resolution.

My mid-service conference felt a little like New Years—time to get philosophical and take a look at what I want out of Peace Corps. Am I getting it? And what should I do differently in the second half of my time here? (note: “philosophical” means this is going to be an exciting blog entry. Promise. :)

Returned PCVs had said to me, yeah you don’t even really hit your stride until after your first year. I’ve been busy in year one (except whenever the power goes out) with a nearly constant hodge-podge of activities. On the work front, I like the way things are going. One thing that I would like to do differently, though, is completely outside of work, on a personal level. Here, I think the voice of that RPCV rings true—you hit your stride one year in.

Dealing with people here sometimes really tires me. Your typical example: my friend Michelle and I got out the train the other night to walk around when we were stuck, broke down in some lost part of the jungle in the middle of the night. Three different guys came up to us in 10 minutes, each equally intent on having a conversation with us. Why? Only cause we’re different. Sometimes I just don’t want to deal with it. I want to talk to Michelle, not some rando. Finding a way to nicely get out of it every time requires creativity and patience (which I don’t always have enough of, especially in the middle of the night.)

In general here, I like to operate on my time, my schedule, and am not Miss Spontaneous or loving of surprises.

Yet, somewhere in June’s travels all around the country, and through talking with other PCVs at my mid-service conference, I was reminded of something I said before I ever set foot in Cameroon. If I can have a couple of close Cameroonian friendships, I would feel successful. I did come here to learn about Cameroonian people.

But being friendly, up to the African standard, requires DAILY Conscious Effort, and I normally even consider myself a pretty nice, sociable person. It’s the endless amount of shaking hands with strangers and friends alike, and the string of greetings you’re supposed to say everytime you see someone. (I have to ask “Noy saaré,” “How is your house?” again?? We haven’t had any hurricanes to knock it down since I asked you at this time yesterday!!) If an unsuspecting Cameroonian landed in New York City, he would be floored by our relative unfriendliness. The American pace, our lack of greetings and idle chit-chat, or our lack of that African generosity—it’s all so different. (The generosity thing: like sharing one’s food with anyone in the vicinity, strangers included! I’ve eaten a lot of random people’s food here, when offered on those long bus rides! If only the New York subway worked like that…) I don’t think even friendly South Louisiana could keep up the Cameroonian standard of greeting the **** out of everyone!

I’ve got my handful of good Cameroonian friends, but it’s true that the conversations we have sometimes are so wildly different from my American-friend conversations, that it can require some patience on my part. For example, one day I’d spent nearly the entire day stewing about and researching grad schools. That night, I was out with some Cameroonian friends. We spent hours over drinks, just shooting the shit. I mentioned at one point that I was considering continuing my studies. “It’s good to continue your studies. It’s good to go to school,” one girl responded. That was all, end of discussion. Next topic. I could have talked about that for HOURS! So no, I don’t get to talk about everything I want to here, but I did come to Africa for something different, didn’t I?

So my mid-service resolution is to ratchet it up a notch. Be nicer. Greet people more. Be more available, and not need to have everything on my terms. I was speaking with a volunteer who told me he couldn’t go to the market in his village in less than an hour. Not because of distance, but because he has to greet everyone. But as he said, “I like to put myself in the place of opportunity.” Being constantly friendly and available is exhausting, but it’s those volunteers who learn the most while they are here. I only have one year left. And I get to sleep as much as I want to in this country. So I might as well get what I came for and exhaust myself.

Today was an example of what I’m looking for. When I arrived home at my compound, my neighbor is standing outside under a tree. Instead of getting off my bike and hauling it in for the day, I take a minute to park the bike and greet him. As we’re chatting, (he’s telling me how many kids I should have) one of his wives, Aïssatou, calls to me from inside her house that she needs me. She sits me down, feeds me a cup of bouie, a soupy beverage made out of millet, and goes back to pounding something. Being the twitchy, ADD 27-yr. old that I am, I leave my assigned seat to wander over and see what she’s up to.

She’s pounding away with a pestle that is up to her shoulders, into a mortar the size of which could hold a small child. I tell her I want to pound the leaves. I am not nearly as good as she is, although her arms have about half the muscle on them as mine. She takes back the pestle to show me how it’s done while I lean back against the wall of the narrow entryway where we are. She gets her rhythm going, as I watch. It’s entrancing. Then she starts a combination of click noises coming from somewhere in her throat, accompanying the rhythm of her pounding. In between pounds and clicks she tosses the pestle, claps her hands, keeps pounding, never missing a beat. She keeps the rhythm, adding additional taps to the side of the mortar into the routine. It’s downright musical. Click, tap, POUND, clap, click, POUND. A green dust rises up from the crushed leaves, giving a swirly surreal effect to the whole scene. “C’est comme ça que les Fulbé le font,” she tells me with a smile. This is how the Fulbé do it. I try to make the click noises and she only laughs at me—the one grown woman making mouth noises laughs at the other grown woman unsuccessfully trying to make mouth noises. The neighbor kids are watching too. Honestly, it’s for silly little moments like this that I joined the Peace Corps—all of which happen when I take the extra minute to be nicer.

Yes, friends, it’s true. But first… Updates on the Penis Snatcher Well, they are still snatching away up here in the Extreme North Province. Be glad, all you folks who are sittin pretty in the US of A, your treasures intact. Locals have still been getting stopped, detained, and beaten for these accusations. The scary development, especially for me, is that vagina snatching is now a reality! I do not make this stuff up. I’m not that creative. “Young-woman” parts are stolen away, then apparently re-sold for some 10,000 Nigerian naira! Yep, my hoohaw is worth $67. 71. And the young woman is supposedly given the parts of an old lady instead!!!!! On to a less exciting (and less disgusting) subject: my work Recently I started teaching business classes, and my final class of the session is tomorrow. (Note: I wrote this entry way back in June, just now getting to posting it.) My star student is actually a pastor at the local church, named Something-African-I-can’t-Pronounce Fidèle Castro. He said he tried to go to the United States once. They wouldn’t let him in. Teaching has been fun and challenging. We talk about planning, marketing, costumer service, some basic book-keeping …gripping stuff like that. The educational system in Cameroon is so different, that I have to recognize that or I think I would be floored by all the blank stares I get sometimes. Both books and teachers are in short supply here. My PCV friends who are teachers here have told me it’s not uncommon for five or more kids to gather around the desk of the one kid who can afford the textbook. A typical classroom can have 50 – 120 students in it. Teachers write on the board, students copy it into their notebooks, (which constitutes the closest thing they’ll have to a textbook), and then they memorize it. With such large class sizes, there is no further discussion, no analysis. Just the back-and-forth process of regurgitating memorized information. So my arm-waving, question-asking, participatory style of teaching is pretty different to them, and earns me some funny looks (or blank stares). At least it keeps them awake... for the most part. The class recently gave presentations, a re-cap of some of the subjects we’d covered. Some of the students, although in their thirties and forties, said it was the first time they’d ever made a presentation in front of a group in their life. It’s been fun to have such personal contact with folks. Some of them are really endearing, especially the old men. One is a real character who seems to forget his glasses every time, then has to run home to get them! So I have to check at the beginning of every class, “Vous avez les lunettes cette fois?” I do hate prepping for the classes, though; it’s quite time-consuming. I think I have a new-found respect for teachers. You’re always asking yourself, “Is this useful? Is this relevant in this context and is anyone actually going to apply what I am suggesting?” All my examples are geared to small-scale entrepreneurs, which make up the bulk of the economy here. Some guys in the class are interested in opening a second internet café in town, others a fertilizer store. Another woman sells koki (a food made with bean paste and spices) from a bucket on her head, while she walks around town. Talking with her about how much profit she makes is interesting because she’s never before even calculated her expenses. Star-student Pastor Fidèle says he’s taking the class because he wants to learn “to better manage the enterprise of my Father.” So round one has been promising, and I hope to do some more teaching in future months. In other news: I’ve been in Cameroon for over a year!! If success can be measured by the holey-ness of your underwear, or the depth of your farmer’s tan, then I am bound for glory. Til next time folks, take care, and try not to miss me too much! ;)