Moto Accident and Standfast

I’m back in Yaoundé, again.  Between YD Steering Committee, National Girls’ Forum Committee, and ICT (Information, Communication, Technology) Committee, I travel down here quite a bit.  Luckily, I like the more national work I’m doing, because at this point I’m not getting a whole lot of work done at post.  I have plans to teach a couple of classes a week now that school is back in, and my post-mate and I got funding approval for a latrine project at a high school, but those are still in motion and haven’t really started yet.  Currently, I’m down here to train the next stage (class) of YD trainees.  I had to come down early for a couple of reasons.  The first, is that the Technical Manual for YD that I’ve been editing and adapting was too big to email. 

Drinking is hard work

The second is that I am training next week, and we are going to be on standfast from tonight until Wednesday morning because of the first parliamentary elections in 6 years.  Peace Corps (PC) is worried about any violence, riots, protests, or whatever else that could happen during the elections, so they don’t want anyone traveling.  I realized after I got here that the session on Tuesday I thought I was a part of I’m not, so I don’t have to be in Bafia before standfast starts.  Now I’ll just head there after it ends. 

The most tame game of Lions vs. Elephants I've ever played

Which is a good thing, because now I’m on med hold.  On Monday night on the way back from a great barbeque in Beka, a small town about 5 km outside of Ngaounderé, another PCV and I got in a little moto accident.  It wasn’t anything too bad, we were just driving on this bad dirt road at night, the driver went too fast, hit a couple of holes or something, and he and I went flying off the moto.  The girl that was in between us somehow managed to stay on and the moto and went into a little ditch on the side of the road and the bushes there.  It stayed upright with the wheels still spinning, so the driver came and lifted her off.  Luckily she was fine. 

I went to the ground head and knee first.  Fortunately, I was wearing my helmet (like I always do, if any admin are reading).  My knee got banged up, but my ribs took the brunt of it.  I was carrying a cassier (a big, plastic case for beer) under my right arm and landed right on it.  I found out this morning that I’ve got a few cracked ribs, so I’ll be hanging out in Yaoundé until Wednesday.  As a friend of mine pointed out, I won, because the cassier had 5 broken beer bottles and I only had 3 cracked ribs. 

Little kids collect old water bottles.
Later they fill them with new (not filtered) water, yogurt, juice, or something else to sell.  

After that we got back on the moto and he drove on.  At this point we actually started to pay attention to his driving (he wasn’t very good), and the girl with me asked him if he wasn’t habituated with driving motos.  He of course blamed us and said we weren’t habituated with riding, with is ridiculous.  We were sitting straight and still, definitely his fault.  Either way, everyone is fine, and now I don’t have 4 unwanted extra days in Bafia because of standfast. 

A girl selling bottles of honey

Plus I have a lot of work to do here still.  I have to finish writing the justifications about why we changed the Global Core lessons like we did for YD, and I have to write my VRF – our report each of us do 3 times a year to tell Peace Corps what we are really doing and who we are helping.  I’m also taking the Foreign Service Officer’s Test next Sunday, so if I’m smart, I’ll take this time to study. 

‘Am I getting osteoporosis?’ – and other random musings

Thursday, September 19, 2013

I was walking through the market today, and got called about 5 different things in 20 minutes.  There are a myriad of names I get called everyday with just as many greetings, so I thought I would list some of them: Joe, Joseph, or Monsieur Joe (I go by Joe with Cameroonians, they can’t really say Graham), is the most common with people that know me.  A lot of people mix me up with my post-mate though, and call me by his name.  For those that don’t know me, the names get more diverse.  A few of them are: nassara (white guy in Fulfuldé); le blanc (white guy in French, more common in the Grand South); grand-frère, patron, boss, Américain, or even Corps de la Paix (Peace Corps in French).  My post-mates have been spreading around ‘géant’ (giant), but that is usually just used to describe me and aren’t said to my face.  These names could be by themselves, or after some sort of hello.  Bonjour or bonsoir are most common, salut (hey in French) and sanu (hey in Fulfuldé) also happen a lot.  Unfortunately, in Guider hee-haw is another big one. 

Miss this girl

Say what you will about Cameroonians, but they are nothing if not resourceful.  It doesn’t matter where you are – a huge city like Yaoundé, a regional capital like Garoua, or decent-sized towns like Guider – people have gardens everywhere.  If there is an empty lot, or a backyard, or a few feet between buildings, there will probably be corn or something else growing there.  I’ve been told by people more knowledgeable about agriculture than I am that Cameroonians don’t grow things with near the density that farmers in America do, but they still have their gardens everywhere. 

I realized the other day that I get almost no dairy in my diet.  They don’t really drink milk here, though you can usually get it in larger cities.  There isn’t any cheese either, just Laughing Cow – which I have been putting on sandwiches.  I’ve been making them either with pepperoni sent from my parents (thank you!) or tofu that I get in market. 

View from the train.  This is what a lot of villages look like in Cameroon.

I’ve been eating a lot of tofu since I moved to the North – more than I ever did in America.  For some reason Guider is the tofu capital of the North.  Maybe some old PCV brought it to here years ago.  Even my friend who lives in Garoua, the regional capital and only 1.5 hours from Guider, asked me to bring her tofu when I come into town.  Tofu is called soja here, while street meat is soya.  Sometimes it can be hard to remember, and I end up asking people where the wrong thing is. 

The other thing I’ve been eating on my sandwiches is Jammin’ Jalapeño hot sauce from BW3’s.  It’s incredible.  An amazing friend brought it back with her from America after going there for vacay. 

The other source I’ve started going to for dairy is the yogurt guy in market.  He’s got all of this homemade yogurt that he keeps in little Tupperware containers in a fridge, it’s delicious.  Sometimes I’ll eat it straight, others I’ll get it with rice.  It’s only 200 cfa ($0.40) for a standard sized thing of yogurt, 250 with rice.  Definitely a refreshing change of pace from everything else that is always either fried or soaked in oil. 

The only bad thing is that he is in the meat market, which is my least favorite part of the market.  With all of the meat just sitting out in the heat with flies all over it, it’s disgusting.  And the smell, I can’t help but grimace when it enters my nostrils. 

Picture from the A2Empowerment Conference in front of the Hotel de Ville in Guider.
Best post there is.  

At least he is far enough away from the nearest meat guy that you can’t really smell it when you’re sitting there.  He is in the eye of the storm; you go through hell to get there, but then you have some reprieve.

Alright, I just needed a break from working on this tech manual.  I’m editing and adding to the Youth Development Technical Manual that trainees get for their YD training.  So far it is double the size, hopefully it will be that much more useful too.  The stage before mine is leaving some big shoes to fill. 

The Good and the Bad of Cameroon: Why I Love It, and Why It Eats My Soul

Over the last few weeks, especially since coming back up North, I’ve been reminded of both why I love Cameroon, and why it eats my soul.  Let’s just go one-for-one, shall we?

Good: My post-mate’s mom just came to visit, and of course the day that she got to Guider two different families brought dinner over for her.  His compound family even killed a chicken for her. 

Bad: I went out for fish with my other post-mate.  While we were eating, three different teenage boys stood their staring at us, the closest one, probably five feet away.  They were waiting for us to finish so they could take our plates back to the fish mama.  My post-mate and I ate every peace of meat on those fish, including the head and everything on the side.  All that was left were two piles of bones and the liquid from the piemont, sauce, and mayo.  As soon as we said we could take it they started fighting over the bones like stray dogs, shoving everything in their mouths.  Usually they at least wait until they take it away, but not this time.  We shouted at them that they were acting like animals and that they were villageois (rural peasants), but it didn’t stop them. 

View of the Adamaoua around Ngaounderé.

Good: When I got back up North, I was with a bunch of people who had been in the Extreme North and even one who had been in my cluster.  They all had been closed because of the Sith (Boko Haram), and forced to move further south.  As soon as we stopped in Guider, they all started talking about how much they missed the North.  I like the culture so much more than I do the South.  Everyone is so much nicer and calmer up here.  My friends bought some onions and the bag broke as they were walking.  Immediately everyone around them started helping to pick them up, and a nearby vendor even gave them a new bag.  That’s a small example, but I feel like it’s just representative of the culture. 

Bad: At least half a dozen of my close friends have been robbed, and most PCVs have either seen one or been the victim of one.  Sometimes this can be small, maybe a pickpocket, like when my phone got stolen at the Guider Cultural Fête.  The medium sized ones are what happened a few times to friends in Ngaounderé, when someone on a moto grabs a purse or bag as they go by, usually dragging the person off their feet.  Bigger ones have happened several times, usually in Yaoundé or Bamenda, when someone actually gets a knife or machete drawn on them.  Luckily no one has been permanently injured, and most times people don’t even get hurt, but it is still a traumatic experience.  Some of the new people even got a machete pulled on them about two weeks after getting to post. 

The lake by Ngaounderé that I talked about in my other post.
You can see the restaurant/club on the hill.

Good: My entire time in Guider, I’ve been meeting new people.  Sometimes in professional settings, sometimes at fêtes, sometimes at bars.  Almost every person I’ve met has invited me to their home, or offered to take me places around Guider, or at least greeted me.  Granted, it can be a double-edged sword, but it is such a nice culture. 

Bad: Two of my really good friends from my region have recently ET’d (early terminated – permanently left).  One of them went home for a visit and stayed.  The other one I at least got to say bye to, she came down to Yaoundé when I was there.  I got to spend some time with her, but of course everyone wanted to, so not as much as I would have liked.  Hopefully they will come to Colorado when I am there this winter.    I know this isn’t really Cameroon’s fault, but it is at least partly to blame. 

Good: The Cameroonians that came to Guider for the A2Empowerment Conference all seemed really motivated to continue the project.  They seemed like they were all going to work hard to ensure the success of the program.  Not all of them had the right skillset, and here might have been some prejudice going on, but I feel good about the future of the program. 

Bad: My backpack got covered in honey when it was on top of the bus taking us from Garoua to Ngaounderé.  Of course, it got covered in fermented smoothie from a 2:30 AM explosion that was caused by an American.  So this one is kind of a wash.  

Inside that beautiful forest by the town I forget the name of next to Mbuda, in the West.

Good: The food

Bad: The food

Good: How energetic the kids are with sports and dancing.

Bad: When the kids yell ‘HEE-HAW!’ at me because they think I’m Chinese. 

Good: How helpful everyone can be. 

Bad:  How often people ask me for food or money. 

Ok, now I’m just getting into ranting.  That’s probably enough for now.  I hope everyone in Colorado is staying safe from the floods!  Go Broncos!

TDW and A2E – Enough Acronyms to Fill a Book

Well it’s been over a month since I last posted, and I’ve got a lot to catch up on.  The problem is that the longer I go without writing the more I have to cover and the more daunting the task.  I think I’ll just split it into two posts.

I was chosen for the Training Design Workshop and Training of Trainers (TDW/TOT) for the new stage that got here yesterday.  It’s incredible how many acronyms Peace Corps has; I swear I must know at least 50.  I think next time we play a drinking game I’ll make that categories. 

Outside my door in the rain.  When it rains, it monsoons.

For TDW/TOT I spent a couple of weeks in Yaoundé.  On the way down I went up to visit a few towns in the Northwest and the West – Bamenda, Mbuda, and Dschang.  Every time I go down I marvel at how different it is compared to the North.  Even now, with the North in rainy season, it is nowhere near as lush.  I think the biggest difference is the dirt.  Up north it is basically sand and pea gravel.  You can leave your clothes to dry on the ground, like most people do, and they won’t get dirty.  Down south, even as close as the Adamaoua, anything that touches the ground gets covered in dark, red dirt.  It was a lot tougher to keep my clothes and myself clean. 

It was great to see my friends down there; it seems like they are all doing well.  I even met some of the new people that came in June and got to post about a month ago.  A couple of my friends down south in Wum and Widikum got some great new post mates, I’m a bit jealous.  Of course, nothing compares to the Dukes of Guider. 

TDW was really productive.  I feel good about the changes that we’ve made, and I think that the training for this new stage is going to be a lot better than ours.  This will only be the third Youth Development (YD) stage in Cameroon.  The Dazzling Dozen, the stage before us, did a lot of work to improve the training, and I hope that we made as much of a difference as they did.  Our stage doesn’t have a fancy name like that, we’re too cool for school; I’ve just been calling us the Second Stage. 

A good friend of mine who lives outside of Ngaounderé arranged for us to visit this waterfall and a lake.
Apparently the bottom of the lake has never been found.  The Adamaoua is a beautiful region.

There are basically four kinds of training that Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) go through when they first get to country.  Medical, Cross-Cultural, Language, and Technical – the one for whichever sector they are in.  The training design team was only allowed to work on technical sessions, but I think we made a big difference.  We were able to take out a lot of the more useless sessions sent from Washington, and combine or adapt the ones that we thought were important or weren’t allowed to get rid of.  We made the homework more meaningful and easier to grade, and we’re putting all of the handouts and other materials into the Tech Training Manual so they don’t just get things every day that they end up throwing away, like I did.  I’m the YD Chair for Training Redesign, so I’ve been compiling everyone’s lesson plans, offering suggesting if I have any, and editing the Tech Training Manual.  It’s a lot of fairly tedious work. 

TOT was definitely less useful; it was just a lot of time spent watching other people give their lessons.  Everyone who was training had to give at least one lesson, and we had to watch one from each sector, and then one from everyone in YD.  I wish we had more time to work on the actual lessons then.  Instead I’ve had to do them at home, where my Internet is far from stellar.  I also had a few medical problems while I was there, but I’m fine now. 

My friend lives outside of Mbuda, in the West region.  There is a beautiful eucalptyus forest right outside her door.
I guess it played hell with the water table, but it is gorgeous.  
...I forgot the name of the town, which is bad since a good friend lives there and another did before her.

We had to rush up after the training to get back to Guider, where a friend of mine was putting on a conference for the A2Empowerment scholarship program.  The conference was for the host-country nationals that will be working with A2E in the Extreme North.  Since there are no PCVs up there anymore, they are trying to continue the program with just Cameroonians running it and sending the info in to us.  Guider was chosen because it is the farthest North post in the country, and closest to the Extreme North.  It went pretty well, but there are definitely some changes to be made for next time, and my session didn’t go nearly as well as I would have liked.  It was a learning experience. 

Since getting back I’ve been spending most of my time working on training stuff.  I have to head back in a week and a half or so to do the two weeks of training.  I’m focusing on Needs Assessments, Monitoring and Evaluation, Designing and Facilitating Training, and Work Zones and Cross-Sector Collaboration.  They sound like boring subjects, and… well… they are, but they are something I’m interested in and have experience with.  I just hope I can make them interesting enough that the PCTs will pay attention.  It will be Weeks 3 and 4, so hopefully they will still be gun hoe enough that it gets through.  Either way they will have the materials to look through later.