Petites and Varying Philosophies on Peace Corps Service

Thursday, May 16, 2013

            I saw for the first time the other day what I had only seen the product of before.  A dozen little girls came into my yard, singing and chatting, swept up all the leaves, put them in bags, and left.  Usually I had just come home and all the leaves would be gone.  I talked with them a bit while they were there, but it just took a few minutes and they were done.  I don’t think they got paid for it; it looked like they were saving the leaves for something, maybe even stuffing the bags for something, I’m not really sure. 

Either way, you can use ‘petites’, as we call little kids, to do pretty much anything.  When we have parties we can send them off to get cases of beer, cigarettes, ingredients for food that we are missing, to do dishes, or whatever else you need.  When went to the Gorges de Kola last time – basically a deep, narrow, canyon – we had a petit lead us.  When you don’t have any work for them to do anymore, you just give them a few hundred CFA depending on what they did, and they are on their way.  Even when we go to the bar we can send petites off for sachets (little bags) of water or whatever else we want.  It is definitely a great perk of being in Cameroon. 

Over the past few days I have been working on my Volunteer Reporting Framework (VRF, at least I think that’s what VRF stands for), a report every PCV has to turn in three times a year to describe the work we are doing, our integration, problems we are having, etc.  That and discussions with other PCVs in country got me thinking about the different ways that people see what their Peace Corps service should be like. 

There are a lot of different opinions on what your life should be like in the Peace Corps.  Some think that real Peace Corps service means that you have to live in a small village, have dinner most nights with local families, and leave post as little as possible.  I wanted to go into the Peace Corps for 4 main reasons: 1) To help people; 2) To immerse myself in another culture; 3) To learn another language; and 4) To have an adventure.  I feel like I am accomplishing all of these goals living in a way kind of similar to how I lived in America. 

I have changed the way I act a lot – I say hi to almost everyone that pass in the street, I talk to my neighbors and other people a lot more often than I normally would, and I just go on walks around town everyday.  However, I don’t really want to have dinner with random people every night.  I want my house to be my private area; I don’t want to have a bunch of kids or other people in here.  I’ve always valued my personal space, and I don’t think that I need to change everything about myself because I’m living in another country.  I can still integrate and help people and live like myself. 

The biggest thing that I’ve realized is that you can’t come into this with a lot of expectations.  People either expect too much of themselves or expect too much out of what their service should be.  I don’t claim to be an expert on how everyone should approach Peace Corp Service, but I do know what has worked well for me.  I’ve of course had my down times since being here, but overall I’ve been happy.  I think it’s because the expectations I’ve had for myself and for my service have been limited to those four reasons I listed earlier for wanting to be here – those and to just do the best that I can. 

It probably doesn’t help that I’m a cynic, but I know I won’t change the world while I’m here.  I know that Cameroon or even just Guider won’t drastically change because of what I’m doing here.  That doesn’t mean that I won’t make some change, even if it is just in the worldview of some people.  The first goal of Peace Corps is to help the people of interested countries meet their need for trained people.  That is the main work we are doing here, but that is only the first goal. 

Goal 2 is what I do everyday by walking around talking to people and acting how I would at home – to share American culture with your host country.  If I completely changed the way I acted, then I wouldn’t be doing that. 

Goal 3 is this right here; sharing the culture of your host country with people back in America.  Hopefully, every time I post a blog, send an email, write a letter, or have a skype date, I am increasing the knowledge and interest of the people I talk to. 

The problem is, it’s a lot more difficult to accurately measure the progress of goals 2 and 3.  

Communication and a Map Project

Monday, May 16, 2013

            When I was younger, I used to tell myself the lie that I’m not the type of person to get nervous or anxious.  That was a lie.  In college it might be a big paper or test that did it.  When I started teaching it was standing in front of that new classroom or getting observed by my boss.  When I got to grad school it might be getting into a certificate program or another big paper or test.  When I first got to Cameroon it was passing out of French and living with my host family. 

            Now it isn’t going to talk to an important person in my village that makes me anxious; it isn’t when I have to talk to my boss; it isn’t when I’m about to struggle in another language.  What makes me anxious is the prospect of talking to pretty much anyone in America.  I miss my family and friends so much – way more than I miss actually being back there (other than the food).  It’s not that I don’t want to talk to them, or that when I haven’t for a while I don’t wish I was.  It’s just so hard to really explain what it’s like to live here to people who haven’t. 

            A week or so ago when I was at the National Girls Forum (NGF) Committee meeting, we were reading the applications of PCVs who wanted to participate.  Whether they were amazing or mediocre, one thing that all of the applications had in common was that they used Franglais throughout it (think Spanglish but with French).  There are so many things that are basically impossible to relate without explaining a ton of words that we say everyday without a second thought.  It’s not that they necessarily have a direct translation either.  I’ve always heard people who can speak a different language say that, but I never thought I would be able to – if there is no direct translation to English then how could I ever learn it?  Turns out that I could learn something like that, and now I understand their frustration when trying to translate.  Just a few examples of words like this – derange, fête, sous-prêfét, war, case, and many others.  That’s not even including all of the Peace Corps acronyms – PCV, IST, PST, APCD, CD, NGF, etc. 

            It’s not just the vocabulary that makes it difficult for me to articulate what’s going on here.  Trying to relate an everyday story of a trip from Guider to Ngaounderé means explaining where both are, what it’s like to be on the buses, what the case is and what it’s like, along with a ton of other details that if I told the same story to a PCV here they would get automatically.  It means that a funny 2-minute anecdote turns into an unfunny 12-minute epic.  Since there are a lot of similarities throughout the developing world (a lot of differences too, of course), it’s even easier to tell the stories to PCVs, RPCVs, or development workers from other countries. 

            When people from America are going call, I get excited all day waiting for it.  I want to talk to them, to hear about what’s going on, tell them what I’m doing here.  Then all of a sudden the phone rings and the caller display says Numéro inconnu (it only says that when it’s a Skype call) and my mood changes completely.  I start feeling anxious and I don’t know what to say.  There are times when, I’m ashamed to admit, I either don’t answer or tell the person who calls that I’m busy and can’t talk even though I’m completely available and maybe even bored.  I don’t know which is worse: the anxiety before/during the call, or the guilt after if I don’t answer. 

            On a lighter note, we finally finished our World Map Project at the Lycée Technique.  We got help from some students, from people outside of our region, and from the entire cluster.  One of our cluster-mates who got displaced to the Grand South was awesome.  He bought a majority of the paint and brought the instructions.  It took a lot longer than I thought it would, over a week I think, but it turned out great at the end.  We want to do another at my youth center and then others at the two other high schools, but it’s almost rainy season so we might have to wait.  I have to go back down to the Adamaoua for another NGF meeting this weekend, but today is Unification Day, and I left home 8 months as of the day before yesterday, so Bonne Fête Y’all! 

This is day 2 of the World Map Project I think.  At this point we have finished the grid and are working on drawing the map.  Three from my cluster, a visitor, and our former cluster-member who paid for most of it.  

We thought we were mostly done at this point.  It's crazy how much longer it took - all of that detail.   

At the finish.  a compass rose in the bottom left corner, the Lycée Technique shield in the top left, and the Peace Corps symbol on the top right.  I think we should all sign it bottom right.  I really liked how it turned out, the colors look great.  

Meetings, Malaria, and The Sith

Saturday, May 11, 2013

My Peace Corps habit of traveling has continued.  I had to go down to the capital, Yaoundé, for Steering Committee and National Girls Forum (NGF) meetings.  I’ve said it before, but traveling to Yaoundé takes quite a long time.  It starts off with a bus from Guider to Garoua that takes minimum 2 hours – the ride itself can take 1.5-2 hours but you have to wait for the bus in the first place, which can be half an hour to a few hours.  Then I have to wait for another bus from Garoua to Ngaounderé where I have the same problem, only this one takes another 5-7 hours once you finally get on.  It is possible to get from Guider to Ngaounderé in time for the train that evening, but I usually try to go down a day early to make sure that I don’t miss it.  In Cameroon you usually want to overestimate how long it will take you to get places; a lot of times you end up right.  The train itself leaves around 6 PM and can get in anywhere from 9 AM to 2 PM.  Then I have to do the whole thing in reverse to go back up.

The meetings went well.  For Steering I am going to be the chair in charge of redesigning training for Youth Development.  We actually got some really good news – a lot of our complaints during training were on the repetitiveness of the Global Core lessons sent from Washington.  At the meeting we were told that we can cut at least half of those lessons now, which will give us a much freer hand to make a more meaningful training for the next stage which comes this fall, and one more tailored to what people will be dealing with in Cameroon.  The NFG meeting went well too; I actually have to head back down to Ngaounderé for another meeting tomorrow.  It’s a three-day forum with the theme of Keeping Girls in School that we will be having in Kribi near the end of June.  Kribi is that great beach town.  I’m really excited, it should be fun and give us a great chance to share best practices. 

After that I had to head back up to the Grand North for a security meeting.  We found out that all of the Extreme-North is now closed because of Boko Haram security issues.  That means that the 14 people that had either survived the first couple of rounds of closures or had moved posts to Maroua have to all move.  By the way, from now on Boko Haram will be referred to as ‘The Sith.’  We thought that it might be a good idea to change the name when we talk about them – Boko Haram is a pretty recognizable name.  Recent Sith moves (meaning the past week or so) have included an attack in Northeastern Nigeria that killed dozens of soldiers, cops, and civilians and resulted in 105 Sith prisoners escaping.  Later in the North-Central province of Nigeria another attack another attack killed a couple dozen more soldiers.  Chad on our other side is still engaging with the Sith in Mali, which they aren’t too happy about.  While nothing else has happened in Cameroon yet, a lot of these problems are very close to the border, and my cluster is very close to both Chad and Nigeria.  Oh yeah, the French family that was kidnapped was freed a month or so ago, but only after a $3 million ransom being paid for them.  Really a good reason to stop kidnapping…

Guider Cluster is now the furthest north cluster in the country – therefore, it is probably the most likely to be closed next.  My heart goes out to all of the Extreme- Northerners, some of whom have been closed multiple times.  Of course being closed is terrible, but now all of us here are just waiting for the other shoe to drop.  At a Cinco de Mayo party my two post-mates and I had a Strength and Honor solidarity circle.  None of us think that we will make it through our whole service in Guider, but in a way it’s almost liberating.  Whenever I start getting annoyed at something here or angry about post (which isn’t very often considering I have been traveling so much and Guider is great), I just think ‘soak it in, you probably won’t have long left here to enjoy it.’  Don’t worry, I’m not really concerned about my safety, Peace Corps seems like they are taking most of the necessary precautions.  It’s only that if things continue or if the Sith make any more moves in Cameroon, we will probably be closed.  Now anyone in the North has to have permission 48 hours in advance to travel at all, then you have to text when you’re leaving and when you arrive.  If you are outside of the North you can’t travel up there without written permission from the Country Director a week in advance, and you have to have a pretty good reason.  People can’t really just come visit anymore. 

Anyways, after less than a week in Ngaounderé, I went back down south for a conference on water, sanitation, and hygiene in Ebolowa, the capital of the South Region.  Unfortunately, I only made it as far as Yaoundé.  I stayed a night there and started to feel terrible.  The next morning I went to see the PCMO (medical officer).  After pooping in one cup, peeing in another, and going to the lab for blood tests, it was determined that I had malaria and amoebas.  I’ve been told that this is fairly common – when your body is weakened by malaria it is more likely to get amoebas.  For those of you who don’t know, amoebas basically mean dysentery.  I now have a much better understanding of what my settlers on Oregon Trail kept dying from.  Malaria is kind of like the flu; it’s got a rolling fever, aches, vomiting, diarrhea (multiplied by the amoebas), and headache.  Really your body’s greatest hits. 

It was Saturday night when I started feeling bad and by mid-week I was alright again.  I got taken off of med-hold (meaning I could now leave Yaoundé) on Thursday afternoon, so I took the train back up on Friday with some friends.  I stayed for a birthday dinner in Ngaounderé, then a night in Garoua for a Cinco de Mayo party, and then went back to post.  Over the past few days we have been working on a World Map Project at the Lycée Technique, which I will explain more in my next post.