Copies and House Repairs

Copies and House Repairs – Wednesday, January 15, 2013

 

The other day I went to the office in Garoua to make copies of the survey my post-mate and I are going to give out.  We figured it was cheaper to pay for a bus ticket there and back then going to a copier place to have it done.  We were both under the impression that we could make copies at our regional office – something I’m sure I was told in training, though I honestly can’t remember who told us that.  Apparently we were wrong.  You can only make ten copies of something.  Luckily our logistician up here is awesome.  He called Yaoundé three or for times for me until they agreed that I could make them based on the fact that they are for the Peace Corps.  I mean, it seems like all of the work we do here is, but whatever. 

 

I guess the reasoning behind the rule is they put some money in our monthly paychecks that is supposed to be used for copying.  It isn’t very much, but it’s there.  Either way, this survey is for a needs assessment that our program managers said we have to do, so it is Peace Corps work, which is why they let us make the copies.  We made the surveys so they are a half page each double-sided, so we don’t’ have to make as many. 

 

The good thing about going to Garoua without everyone there is that I had some better Internet.  I was able to talk on Skype to both my ex and my best friend, and torrent some stuff.  Plus I had fish for dinner two days in a row, a couple of smoothies, and got to hang out with people that I don’t get to very often.  Oh yeah, and I got some stuff a place we call Cheap Store where you can buy stuff that either you can’t get most other places (and definitely not in Guider) or it is cheaper – body wash, a big bag of soap/detergent, balsamic vinegar, a big can of Nescafe, and green tea.  I got back on Tuesday, and we started walking around giving them to people we knew, saying we could just pick them up later. 

 

Today after I taught English and gave out the survey to my class at the youth center, I went to the market to say hi to my Nigerian friend.  My post-mate happened to be there, so I bought the rest of the stuff I needed to make this delicious peanut-sauce he gave me the recipe for, talked for a while, then went home to make lunch.  Of course, I made too much, so tonight I’ll just have the rest of the noodles I made and an avocado salad for dinner – I can make the peanut-sauce tomorrow. 

 

After lunch I took a bit of a nap.  I was unpleasantly awoken by a banging sound.  I looked outside and saw that my neighbor was overseeing a group of petits (what you call anyone under 18) chop down the trees that separate her house and mine.  I told them to stop, but I was too late, 5 or 6 were already chopped down.  There goes a large portion of my privacy.  They told me they were taking the wood to sell, but I told them I wanted my privacy.  I guess that’s what happened to the other trees in front of my house.  I’m probably more upset then I should be, but I’m really unhappy about it.  If I can’t have my own concession (walled compound), I at least wanted the trees. 

 

The good thing about it is that when I called my landlord to complain, he finally sent a guy out to fix some other stuff.  My bathroom light now works and my toilet now flushes, before I had to pour-flush it.  The repairman should be coming back Friday or Saturday to fix the light in my bedroom, though I’ve heard that before.  Landlords are the same wherever you are; you have to stay on them to get anything done.  It’ll be nice to be able to take a shower at night where I can see, or be able to flush my toilet without filling a bucket up first. 

 

I really don’t have any place to complain though.  Even pour-flushing meant that I had a toilet instead of a latrine.  And the lights in my bathroom and bedroom not working meant that the lights in my living room, kitchen, and on my porch worked, and that I had electricity overall.  A lot of my friends have latrines and no electricity.  Just the fact that I have cell-phone service is awesome.  Half the people in my cluster don’t.  I’m definitely a lot luckier than a lot of other PCVs.    

More Protocol and a Protest

More Protocol and a Protest – Saturday, January 10, 2013

 

Yesterday was spent doing protocol, which basically means going around and talking to everyone important in the town every time you do a project.  We went to talk to delegates, the mayor’s office, the sous-préfet, and the préfet about a survey that we are going to do as part of our needs assessment.  The préfet is in charge of the district that Guider is in, basically like a county.  It includes all of the towns where the seven people in my cluster live.  They told us dozens of times during training how important it is to do protocol.  One of the PCV trainers told us about how one time she didn’t do protocol before she did a map project – where you and the community paint a world map on the exterior wall of a school.  Apparently, some officials were offended that they were not consulted before the project was done, and the map was painted over. 

 

Someone from the sous-préfet’s office here even got mad at my post-mate because he didn’t tell anyone that it was the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps.  Apparently they thought they should have sent a representative down.  The same guy was also mad that he didn’t tell them the ambassador was coming to Guider – something we didn’t know about until after he left.  In other words, you have to do this every time. 

 

The other thing annoying about protocol, other than the frequency that you have to do it, is how long it takes.  We left the house around 9 AM and didn’t get back until almost 4 PM, most of that time spent waiting around in lobbies.  However, everyone we met with was very friendly and supportive, telling us to come to them if we need anything.  They were also happy to hear that we will be telling them the results. 

 

Though we carried our moto-helmets everywhere that we went, we didn’t get a chance to use them once.  We found out why after we finished our meetings and headed to the market.  All of the moto-drivers were on strike.  One guy told us he left his moto at home, because if drivers were caught working, the other drivers would beat them.  We talked to a few people, but were still a bit confused by the reasons behind it.  Some people said it was about police corruption, others about new rules being put in place by the préfet.  One guy told us that there had been a checkpoint across the bridge to stop people who weren’t registered as moto-drivers.  Either way, we had been carrying around these heavy, bulky helmets everywhere and had to walk to all of the different offices, which are really spread out. 

 

At the market I got a carved bowl made from the husk of a melon and the stuff needed to make foleré wine.  We didn’t stick around too long though.  The protest was starting to get pretty heated.  There was a bunch of people running around with sticks, riding around on motos with sticks, and a lot of shouting.  It covered quite a big area too.  It probably took us more than five minutes to walk through it all. 

 

That evening I start making my foleré wine.  It’s pretty easy – just put 200 CFA worth of foleré flowers, 1.5 kilos of sugar, 7 liters of water, and a pinch of yeast in a bucket with a lid and a hose running out of it into a bottle of water.  It will be ready in 4 weeks! 

 

 

Today is the Broncos first playoff game against the Ravens.  I really wish I could watch it.  Between Peyton Manning on offense and Von Miller on defense, I definitely think we’re going to win.  Go Broncos! 

 

The Avalanche started practicing too, which is awesome.  The articles I have read said that my two favorite players, Gabriel Landeskog and Matt Duchene, are both out there and looking good.  This hockey season is supposed to be a really exciting one too.  Since it is only 48 games, the whole season will be played in conference, with a lot of games against rivals.  Hopefully that can bring back some of the fans the NHL lost during this stupid lockout.  Time to go see if the laundry is dry. 

Work and going en brousse

Work and going en brousse – Thursday, January 10, 2013

I’ve started to get some actual work done in my town, which feels really good.  Yesterday I went to the Youth Center that my counterpart runs to teach English.  I was under the impressions that I would just be going in to help someone who was normally there, but I was by myself the entire time.  Since I thought I would just be helping the teacher, I didn’t really have anything planned, so I followed my post-mate’s advice and just went over basic greetings.  Every single time you ask a Cameroonian how they are in English, they always answer (if they can), “I am fine.  How are you?”  I tried teaching other things, like ‘I am well,’ or ‘I am sick,’ or ‘I am happy.’  There are 17 students at the Youth Center, all of them between 13 and 23, and 15 of them girls.  It seems like it is pretty much a school where they get more real world training like in computers, English, micro-finance, and health. 

Afterwards I went to the Lycee Classique, one of the main secondary schools that is right by my house, and helped teach English there.  The teacher for the class had asked me to come by so the students can hear an American accent for things they have already covered.  Another PCV from my cluster who caught a ride into town with a couple of nuns came to do it with me.  We went over a list of country names, what the people from that country are called, and the official languages of the country.  Next we went over the names of the fingers.  The teacher asked us to finish up with a song – I had no ideas but my friend suggested “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” so we did that one.  It was actually pretty fun, the kids got really into it. 

 

My post-mate is an economic development volunteer.  Today I went with him to a village en brousse (in the bush), named Sipre Touré, to a meeting of a savings group.  It was only a little more than a 15-minute moto-ride from the main market in Guider down a little dirt and rock path.  It’s amazing how ‘broussey’ it felt out there and how different from Guider despite how close it was.  Some students even walk that path everyday to go to the Lycee Bilingue, another of the main secondary schools in Guider.  Hardly anyone even spoke French, just Fulfulde.  Our phones didn’t have any resseau (reception) either. 

 

The saving group was about 30 women of varying ages (including probably 5 babies), which makes sense, because honestly women seem to do most of the work out here.  Odds are probably even that the men were out in the field or sitting in the shade of a tree.  Of course this is a gross generalization, there are plenty of men who work very hard.  Even while we were going through the meeting, several of the women were shelling peanuts the entire time to make things to sell later. 

 

Right now the group has two funds that everyone contributes the same amount to at each meeting, which occurs once every two weeks during the dry season, and once a month during the wet season.  The first is a solidarity fund, which is used for emergencies.  If someone gets sick, or a family member dies or something, the money is used to help them.  The other is the cotease fund.  Coteasing is when everyone contributes to a fund for the same cause.  For this group, the cotease is used for agriculture.  Everyone in the group works together on some sort of agriculture – this season it was cotton – and uses the money for planting, supplies, and getting the product to market. 

 

The plan is that next meeting my post-mate will help them start savings funds as well.  Eventually, maybe next year, the money saved will be the start of small loans given out to members of the group.  These groups work primarily on trust.  Since all of the women live so close to each other and are around each other all the time, they know that they will repay the money.  In groups without that trust there, people may not repay the loans and everyone else has to eat the cost. 

 

When we got back to Guider we tried to meet with people about our survey that we created for our needs assessment.  Protocol is really important in Cameroon – in order to get anything done you have to make sure you run it by every important person in the town, so they can edit it or at least make them feel respected.  We still have a lot more people to meet with before we can give this survey out.  It really slows things down, but it does help to get the perspective of local leaders.  I’m going to try to make all of these things more a part of my regular schedule. 

I'm Going Back, Back to Lagdo, Lagdo-- Jan. 5, 2013

New Years brought me back to Lagdo, where I was for xmas.  A PCV who is in her last year invited all of the people from my Stage in the North to her house.  Most people in the Grand North went up to Maroua for a huge party, but since we’re in our first three months we aren’t allowed to travel outside of our region.  I didn’t realize before how different the rules are in all of the Peace Corps countries – my friends in Morocco and the Philippines just aren’t allowed to travel out of the country, but can go anywhere within it.  On the other hand, Cameroon is one of the only places PCVs are allowed to ride motos.  Both of those people are also living or lived with host-families for their first few months at post, while we don’t have to (get to?) here.  I’m sure I wouldn’t want to, but it would definitely help with language skills. 

As I said in my last post, Lagdo is a nice little lakeside town.  Fairly small, so not a lot of options at the market, but it has a couple of good bars and a little place to eat.  Plus, like parts of Guider, there are these little mountains of made up by huge boulders.  They look like a giant just made piles of rocks everywhere.  Those will come into play later. 

New Years was fun.  We all got into town at different times, but I was able to travel all the way from and back to Guider with people from my stage.  Each of us came with different ingredients for a big dinner together.  My job was to get the ground beef, which meant I had to go to the meat section of the market in Garoua. 

I really hate the meat section of the markets – just hunks of beef sitting in the sun all day covered in thousands of flies.  It looks gross and smells worse.  I even brought a George Foreman grill all the way here with plans of cooking meat fairly often.  I know that I’m eating the same meat when I go to a restaurant, but I just don’t want to see how the sausage is made, if you know what I mean.  I have still only bought meat the one time and don’t plan on buying it too often in the future, maybe for group dinners with people I guess.  Whenever I get a craving I can just go by some from a stand. 

Our hostess and a few other people made a very tasty meal while I started to drink with some of my stage-mates.  Talking, listening to music, drinking, and general merriment was to be had by all. 

Around 4 AM, a group of us decided that it would be a good idea to climb one of those small mountains I mentioned earlier that was close to the house we were partying at.  Although it was fairly dark, we made it all the way to the top, scrambling up rocks, going through bushes, and at one point I even held the ankles of one guy so he could pull up another person.  One of the people we went with wasn’t even wearing shoes (I found out later that she thought we were just going to the lake), but still made it the whole way.  I was pretty proud that we made it to the top – I even led the way! 

Afterwards we all tried to find places to sleep – I ended up on the couch of another PCV posted in Lagdo, but who is in America right now.  Speaking of which, I have been talking with friends and family and I might be heading back for a quick visit in June.  We’ll see how things work out. 

I was planning on staying in Garoua for a couple of days afterwards, but there were a lot of people there.  One of the really frustrating things about the Case in Garoua is that there are only 3 beds, even though there are 23 people in the North and others often stay there on their way between Maroua and Ngoundere.  That happened to occur the night I was there, so there were 10 people from my stage, plus another five passing through, so my friend and I decided to hop on a bus back to Guider.  While on the bus, we watched these bats go by.  There were literally hundreds of thousands of them if not millions; the whole sky was full of them.  They just kept coming and coming like a never-ending wave until it was so dark out we couldn’t see them. 

Now it’s time to start getting some actual work done.  Schools will be back open now, so I will start heading to them and the youth center on Monday.  I’m going to try and start going to language lessons too.  I’ve already started on the Needs Assessment that I have to have for both IST (inter-service training) and my paper for grad school, but I need to start interviewing people involved with kids to get their perspectives.  My counterpart should be good for information, as well as school administrators.  That leaves tomorrow to get ready for this sudden flurry of work, meaning laundry and cleaning.