International Youth Day

International Youth Day – Tuesday, February 10, 2013

I think it’s probably a good thing that my travel plans were changed, I have been sick for the past few days.  I had a fever and stomach problems for one day, but the rest of the time it was mostly just a headache, couch, and a stuffed-up nose.  Today I realized that I probably have a sinus infection, so I called the Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO) and she told me to go to the local pharmacy and pick up some medicine for it.  It’s kind of crazy, you don’t need a prescription for anything here.  

Either way, the traveling that I have ahead of me is going to be draining enough, much less sick.  I’m glad that I have a bit more time to recover; I’ll just have to get to the places that I missed after inter-service training (IST) instead of before.  Right now the plan is to greet the Country Director (CD) in Guider and have dinner with her and most of my cluster on Wednesday night.  Thursday I will leave for Ngounderé where I will stay the night and see the town a bit.  We catch the train on Friday, which will run overnight and will get to Yaoundé on Saturday.  That way we’ll get to check out Yaoundé for a bit before heading to training in Mbalmayo on Monday.  

I haven’t gotten a chance yet to check out Ngounderé before, we just spent a few hours there on our way up to the North in the first place, so that should be fun.  I do remember that they have good spaghetti-omelet sandwiches right by the case.  I’m really looking forward to getting the food in Yaoundé too.  I mean, there will be shwarma, pizza, smoothies, I can’t wait!  I’m hoping we can find a good Chinese place too, I here there is one somewhere in Yaoundé.  

Yesterday was International Youth Day, which is a nationally celebrated holiday.  The morning started off with a bit of a parade next to the soccer stadium where all of the schools from the town, which took a couple of hours.  There were 8 schools for little kids, 32 for primary/middle school, and 8 high schools.  I had no idea that there were so many schools in Guider.  I mean, there are maybe 20 quarters in the town, and I have been to less than half of them.  After them was a parade of different local groups.  

All of the schools and other groups marched by singing.  The little kids schools were really cute, most of them not really having any idea why they were there, just walking in a line like they do everyday.  There was one disturbing part – a group of clowns walked by, and at least half, if not all of them, were handicapped.  This has been the only evidence that I’ve seen of handicapped people being treated poorly.  I mean, there isn’t really anything helping them that I’ve seen, either in community groups or government programs, but at least I haven’t seen people ridicule them or anything.  

I also didn’t know how many community and government groups were in Guider that are focused on the youth.  I got my hands on a program, so now I’ve got a much larger listof potential partner schools and organizations than I had before.  I should probably mention that people are considered youth in Cameroon until they are 35 or they get married.  The thing is, the majority of people do not get move out of their parents’ house until they get married.  Plus a lot of people are in high school until around 23, which keeps them more in the youth category.  

After the parade, I went home and read for a while before heading back to watch the Lycée Bilingue take on the Lycée Technique in a soccer game.  Unfortunately, Technique lost so I had to buy a beer for my post-mate.  Afterwards, we were walking back and the chief of district health drove up and offered to buy us some beers, so we joined him for a while before heading back to my post-mates house to have dinner and watch Django Unchained.  If you haven’t seen it, you should, both the movie and the soundtrack are awesome.  

Today I went to that same chief’s office to get a the annual district health report from him, which will help me a lot with my community needs assessment.  I was able to get my preliminary post report done and mailed in, but I still have more work to do on the overall assessment.  I got my National Girls’ Forum application done as well, so it has been a productive couple of days.  

Also, I just finished The Girl That Played With Fire.  I really enjoyed it, I’m going to start on the next one pretty soon, but I might wait until after I get back from IST.  I finished the seventh season of Dexter too – definitely not my favorite show, but it was pretty fun.  

Bilingual Day and Food in the North

Bilingual Day and Food in the North – Sunday, February 10, 2013

Tomorrow is International Children’s Day.  I’ll be going to a festival next to the stadium, the same places where the cultural day was in December.  It should be similar to Bilingualism Day that happened a couple of weeks ago over at the Lycée Classique.  There were a lot of ‘Grands,’ or important people there, along with the teachers and students of all three Lycées – Classique, Technique, and Bilingue, along with the primary schools and the teacher’s college.  The students put on songs, dances (some of which were awkwardly provocative), and skits about why bilingualism is so important and how it will open up the world to you.  Some of the little kids were really cute, just yelling all of their lines.  They actually talked about Canada several times – apparently Canada and Cameroon are considered sister countries, they are the only two that have English and French as their official languages. 

Youth Day is pretty important in this country, along the lines of Women’s Day and Teacher’s Day.  I’m assuming there will be more skits, songs, dances, and a lot of protocol between the Grands.  It should be interesting.  I hope to take part in planning it next year.  My counterpart wants me to be there at 9 AM when it starts. 

My travel plans have changed.  Instead of leaving Tuesday, the day after Youth Day, with my post-mate and some other people, I will have to leave Thursday or Friday.  The Country Director (CD) is coming to visit the area and will be coming to Guider on Thursday.  My post-mate is leaving and one of us needs to be here to greet her, so I have to stay a bit later than planned.  I’m hoping that she gets here early so I can head to Ngounderé on Thursday.  It’s the capital of the Adamaoua, the region directly south of mine, and the place where we catch the train south to Yaoundé.  Odds are I will probably not be able to leave until Friday, the day I catch the train.  It’s a shame because I have friends that will be in Ngounderé on Thursday that I want to hang out with, but I will be able to take the train with two of them on Friday. 

I thought I would talk about the food available in the North when you want to eat out.  First of all, every breakfast consists of beans and beignets along with a tea that has a lot of sugar and ginger in it.  The beignets aren’t covered in sugar or anything, though we can get those in the bakery in Garoua.  Basically they are just fried dough, but they go great with the beans. 

Usually we go to a place called Super Restaurant in Garoua, which is the exact same as Titanic in Guider.  Usually we get beef, it’s kind of strips cooked with onions and a sauce, or fried chicken, but the chicken is more expensive.  As a side, we can get fried plantains, fried potatoes (kind of like French fries), macaroni, or salad.  The salad is a bit sketchy though – a friend found a bug in hers once, and we usually wash our vegetables that we eat raw in bleach water, which I’m sure they don’t do.  Of course, everything is served with Magi, a thing kind of like soy sauce, and a hot pepper sauce called piemont on the side.  The best part about Super that Titanic doesn’t have is that you can get smoothies!  Usually pineapple and banana, sometimes they have papaya, guava, and mango as well, though not every time.  As with everything here, it depends on the season.  Titanic is usually called Magic Door by PCVs because of a door frame in the back that is really small and makes everyone who stands next to it look gigantic. 

There is also street meat, called soya, pretty much everywhere you go, and we have started to find the places we like best.  This is always beef, fried, served with a piemont powder and sometimes bread.  The bread here is basically baguettes.  There is one place that we can go to in Garoua and get pork sandwiches though.  They are pieces of pork fried, served with piemont and onions on bread.  The guy knows a lot of the PCVs, and tries to give us as little fat and skin as possible. 

All throughout the country there are fish mamas too.  These are women who served fried whole fish wish pieces of onions and tomatoes, mayo, and piemont sauce.  We usually get baton de manioc as well.  These are manioc (or cassava), a root vegetable that has somehow been turned into a gelatinous type thing that is in the shape of a rod and wrapped in a leaf.  When I first got to Cameroon I wasn’t a huge fan, but I like it now.  Especially with the mayo and piemont sauce.  You always eat fish with your hands, a lot of time from the same plate.  I definitely don’t eat as hygienically here as I do in The States.  

Needs Assessment and (even more) Protocol

Needs Assessment and (even more) Protocol – Sunday, February 3, 2013

 

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been mostly focusing on my needs assessment.  The biggest part of that has been distributing, collecting, and entering the data from the surveys that we created.  My post-mate and I have mostly done this at the different high schools with teachers, administrators, and students, people we know in the market, the post office, youth center, credit center, etc.  We’ve got more than 50 collected so far, and we want to get at least another 50.  My report is due in a week, but I will probably continue the needs assessment even after our IST (inter-service training), so that I will be able to use the data I get for the paper that I need to write for grad school. 

 

Surveys aren’t the only part of the study we are doing though.  We are getting demographic data for the administrators at the schools, health information from the district health delegate, and other information about Guider from local officials.  We are also interviewing people to find out about their seasonal and weekly calendars, how they map their communities, and their general feelings about Guider – its problems, needs, and assets.  The calendars are to see when the best time to schedule our projects will be, and the maps are to find out what are important to them and what they leave out.  All of these different tools will help us find out what sort of projects to do, and the different needs of different groups (age, occupation, gender, etc.). 

 

Of course, this hasn’t been without its difficulties.  It’s been hard to reach people who do not speak or read French.  We will have to do more work over the next couple of months to make sure that we connect to everyone.  Luckily we have people we work wit here that have helped us give the surveys out.  Also, despite how straightforward we tried to make the survey, including help from several Cameroonians, we have also been having some comprehension issues.  Luckily, the vast majority of the surveys have been completed fully and correctly. 

 

While most officials have been very welcoming and helpful, we have also encountered some resistance.  My counterpart and I were told to come to the office of one to go over our survey with him.  What resulted was more than two of the most uncomfortable hours I’ve experienced.  He asked us each question on our survey, including things like how would you rate the education in Guider, or the quality of the hospitals.  Even after we said we couldn’t really answer questions like that because we were never educated in Guider or hadn’t used the hospital, he said he would wait for our answers, and then stared at us until we did.  Once we answered, he would argue with us and make us feel like we were personally insulting him by saying the quality of something was bad.  The entire time he kept pausing and would just stare at us.  He asked me several times if I was scared of him, and seemed to be taking pleasure in our discomfort. 

 

As I said, he has been the exception of officials we met with, rather than the rule, but it is frustrating to know that people like him exist, and that we will have to deal with him for the next two years.  At least the majority of the others have been so friendly and helpful. 

 

A friend of mine is going to try and get his post moved to Guider.  He is also an MI student (Master’s International), but he is in health.  His interest is in health systems and testing for certain diseases, like malaria and shisto.  Unfortunately, his current post isn’t even 400 people and doesn’t have the facilities he needs for his research.  Guider though, would be perfect for him, so hopefully they will let him move here.  He is doing his best on the needs assessment first; to make sure he puts in his due diligence.  It would be great to have a health volunteer in Guider too, and would open up a lot of collaboration opportunities. 

 

I’m missing the Super Bowl today.  I don’t really care who wins, but I really miss the atmosphere of it.  The food – wings, brisket, chips and dip, pizza – the good beer, the people, the commercials.  Trying to stream it here wouldn’t work, and even if it did, it doesn’t come on until 2 AM or something ridiculous.  I’ve been keeping up on the NHL too.  The Avalanche are doing decently, 4-4, but Steve Downie tore his ACL and was knocked out for the season, and now Landeskog is out with a head injury.  At least Duchene and Paterneau have been doing great.  Too bad I can’t actually watch it.