My Work for the Foreseeable Future

My Work for the Foreseeable Future – Thursday, March 21, 2013

 

Out of IST (Inter-Service Training) came some good work and a lot of fun.  My counterpart was there, the chief of my youth center, for the first few days, and we worked on and action plan based on the Community Needs Assessment that I did.  At this point, I will be working with the youth center in a few different ways.  I will continue with the English classes that I’ve been doing and am going to start a health/life skills class.  My post-mate is already working with them on a business/micro-finance class that I hope to work with him on, and together we will start a Village Savings and Loan Association (VLSA) with the students. 

 

For the first six months or so, this will involve mostly saving with the kids bringing in a small amount of money every couple of weeks to put in a general fund that can be withdrawn from later.  The class that my post-mate teaches will also help them learn about bookkeeping and budgeting.  Eventually, the VLSA will start giving out small loans to its members, with them paying them back in small increments over time.  We will also begin teaching them Income Generating Activities (IGAs) – basically small business ideas.  We have a few that we plan on doing eventually, including making a woven bag (called prison bags because they are normally made by female prisoners), maybe some simple jewelry, either way, we need to find people from other areas to come in to do trainings. 

 

However, our first idea and the one that we are the most excited about is… drumroll… onion rings!  They already have beignet batter that they fry up everyday and onions are ridiculously cheap in this area.  All you have to do is dip the onion ring in the batter and fry it up.  We are also planning fried okra, maybe green beans, I don’t know, whatever is cheap, in-season, and good fried.  We might even be able to spread this to the rest of the country if it works well.  Just wait, Cameroon is about to become the onion ring capital of West-Central Africa!  I even have a sauce idea that I want to try out – mayo, piemont (the hot pepper), magi (a seasoning sauce, looks like soy sauce but much weaker), and elena (a tomato paste).  We’ll see how it works out. 

 

Once things get off the ground at the youth center, I’m going to start expanding as well.  I’d like to do health/life skills classes at all three Lycées and maybe the women’s empowerment club.  I’m already doing an English club that I want to continue at the Lycée Classique.  I also would like to expand and create more VSLAs that we can do IGAs with (I know, Peace Corps has a lot of acronyms). 

 

My Program Manager (PM) put me on the Youth Development (YD) Steering Committee.  It’s the committee that is in charge of the direction that YD goes.  I will mostly be working on redesigning training for the incoming stage.  We found out that YD and Education are going to be combined into one program, so training will have to be changed dramatically for next year, something that we’re getting started on now. 

 

I was selected to be on the National Girls Forum (NGF) Committee.  This will be the second year for the NGF, bringing together 30 PCVs, their counterparts, and 30 girls from their towns, along with NGOs and government organizations to share best practices and trainings on developing girls and women.  I will be helping to decide what organizations to invite and what sort of trainings to do. 

 

A few days ago, I was also invited to be a participant in the WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) Committee.  It is a few days in Ebolowa, the capital of the South region, at the end of April.  After this I will be the ‘school sanitation expert for the region, providing advice to PCVs and School Administrators.’ 

 

Regardless, all of these meetings will be held in either Ngaounderé or Yaoundé, so I will be doing a lot of traveling over the next few months.  It will be a pain, but it will also be good to get away from post every once in a while, see some friends that I normally wouldn’t be able to, and all of this will be great professional experience. 

 

Stay tuned, next post will be about the fun part of IST and my travels after. 

Winter Has Come

Winter Has Come – Friday, March 14, 2013

Well it has been over a month since my last blog post, but with good reason.  The last month has been full of travel, training, collaboration, a lot of fun, and some surprises.  Once again, so much has happened that I’ll have to break it up into a couple of posts. 

The first thing is that winter has come, personified in this case, by Boko Haram.  If you are not into Game of Thrones, then that may mean nothing to you.  Suffice to say, Boko Haram is not a good thing.  Their name means Western Education is Sacrilege, and they are one of the most active and dangerous terrorists groups in the world today.  They are fighting the French in Mali, and several volunteers were evacuated from Mali to Cameroon about six months ago.   They also control large parts of northern Nigeria and are active in many countries around Central and West Africa. 

Many of the posts in Cameroon in the North and Extreme North regions are very close to the border with Nigeria.  For those who have not heard, a group of seven foreign workers were abducted and later executed in northern Nigeria.  Around the same time, a French family was abducted close to Waza Park in the Extreme North of Cameroon, and then taken back to Nigeria.  I have also heard that there was an attack on a northern Nigerian police station very close to Cameroon, resulting in ten deaths.  As far as I know, all of these attacks have been attributed to Boko Haram and their affiliates, but my access to news out here is limited. 

Peace Corps reacted fairly quickly.  The consolidated everyone in the Extreme North into the regional capital, Maroua, where there is a case (compound) that they can all stay in safely.  They were there for a few weeks, and have since been changed to stand fast, which means that travel is restricted and you must stay at your post.  This is what the North region has been under for the duration.  When we travel anywhere in the North or Extreme North, we have to get permission from Peace Corps and let them know when we leave and when we arrive. 

Unfortunately, there have also been posts closed.  There are around 20 now in the Extreme North and North, including a lot of my friends, and we are hearing of more daily.  Others are moving because they feel unsafe.  My cluster lost 2 out of 7, and another one or two may leave as well.  They are only about 25 km from my post, which is about 40 km from the border, but since Guider is a larger city with Gendarmes it is still open.  If the attacks continue, my guess is that it will be closed within a few months, but I am told there are no plans to close it. 

Either way, I am losing some good friends from my cluster and my region.  I already know at least a couple of people that will be moving to the Grand South, and I’m sure that they will place many more down there.  Most people whose posts are closed will stay in country, though there will be some going home. 

The good news is that many people whose posts have been closed want to stay in the Grand North.  They will probably be opening more posts, though I doubt many will be close to me considering my proximity to both Nigeria and Chad.  I know at least one of my good friends will be going to Garoua, the regional capital, so I am really excited for that – it is only about an hour and a half from me. 

I’m not really worried for my safety at this point; I think any more attacks, if they happen, would be further north than where I am.  I am worried that my post will be eventually closed, and if that happens I would rather it be sooner than later.  I really don’t want to get started on the projects I have planned (which are awesome by the way, read a later post to hear more about them), and then have to move when I start getting some real work done.  Either way, the situation is really bad for a lot of people, and I hope that everyone who moves because their posts are closed or they feel unsafe gets a new post that they really like.  I also hope that we get some good new people in the North from the Extreme North, there are some real gems we could get.