The Grand Duchy of Mayo-Louti

Monday, November 25, 2013

My two post mates and I obviously like naming things.  We’ve been the Dukes of Guider basically since we got here, and we’ve named all the streets in our area.  We also love history and are nerdy, so of course that eventually led us to giving the other PCVs in the country titles.  When we got here we had all been reading Game of Thrones, so we had already thought of Cameroon is something from that or at least Medieval-esque.  When the Extreme North got shut down, that immediately made it beyond the wall, and us on the border.  Well, here is a short introduction to the Northern Realm. 

The Dukes of Guider include my two post mates and myself, and are known as the Grand Dukes of the Mayo-Louti in formal situations.  The Grand Duchy of Mayo-Louti was a part of the Kingdom of Cameroon, but has become largely autonomous due to lack of aid from the greater kingdom in the fight against Boko Haram, colorfully thought of as the Sith.  Helping the Dukes to hold the line in Douroum, Mandama, and Larbak are the Marquesses of Mayo-Louti.  For those who don’t know, a Marquess is like a Count, but the area they control borders another nation, and they are thus entrusted with more responsibility. 

Due to Sith incursions, the territories to the north of the Grand Duchy have been lost, as well as the areas in Mayo-Louti to the west of the Mayo-Oulo river.  Since the closures after the initial raid, the Mayo-Oula forms a natural border for the Grand Duchy on the North, West, and South where it wraps around.  To the North and the West are the Forbidden Lands.  To the East is Chad, which, along with the Kingdom of Cameroon to the South, the Grand Duchy maintains friendly relations. 

The Dukes have many allies within the region, including the Countesses of Garoua, the Baroness of Bibemi, the Lord and Lady of Ngong, and the Baroness of Poli.  Several new Squires have also recently been accepted, into the region in Badjouma Centre, Pitoa, Sanguéré Paule, Admouri, Djalengo, and Bamé.  They will have the chance to be knighted if they last the three months to IST, and are eligible inherit titles after a year.  The Mayo-Louti Grand Duchy and the Northern Realm of the Kingdom Cameroon are the only things holding back the onslaught of Boko Haram. 

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Today the Peace Corps car brought the Dukes to the frontier to survey the border towns Douroum, Mandama, and Larbak.  We made contact with the Marquesses and some people in their villages.  The purpose of the trip was to see where they live, so in case of trouble the Dukes can come find them.  Unfortunately, the only form of communication available is in-person, meaning going ourselves or sending a moto-driver with a note.  They don’t have phone service, and carrier pidgins have been extinct for a long time. 

The border towns, especially Mandama and Douroum, are located in a really pretty area in the mountains in the Northern end of the Grand Duchy.  It was definitely beautiful, but I sure love my amenities in the heart of Mayo-Louti.   I might have to start pay more frequent visits to the Wall to monitor the situation, hang out with the Marquesses, and go to the market to drink bil-bil. 

Newbies in the North

Consolidation is over and no one was closed!  It didn’t last too long, everybody got along, and I was able to keep working, so it really wasn’t bad at all.  The final result was just that whenever the girls ‘en brousse’ (in the rural areas) travel, they have to text not only the Movement Phone, but us too.  Movement was created after the first kidnapping for the people in the North.  We have to text it 48 hours before traveling to get permission, and then when we are traveling we have to text them when we leave and when we arrive.  We also have to go to Larbak, Douroum, and Mandama to see where they all live so we could find them if we ever needed to.  Luckily the logistician from Garoua is going to drive us, so it will be a lot quicker and save us money. 

Halloween in Guider

I’ve been teaching my youth center kids ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes’ and ‘the Hokey-Pokey’ to teach them some body parts vocabulary, help with pronunciation, show them some American culture, and have fun.  They love it, but the Hokey-Pokey is surprisingly hard to teach.  I guess I shouldn’t call them kids though; they are mostly between 14 and 22 (I think, there have been a lot of new additions since I asked them).  All but one of them are women, and a lot of them have kids.  There is usually a baby in the room.  It’s kind of weird to be teaching while one of your students is breast-feeding at her desk. 

Electricity in mud-brick, thatched-roof houses.

Our grant money came in for the latrine project.  We are doing it at a school called Cetic de Lamorde.  It doesn’t have any latrines, so we are building one structure that has four stalls.  So far we bought the cement and rebar, and the school got the sand.  The school is actually paying for about half of the project, either buying stuff like the sand or through the labor, which is awesome because it gives them a lot more buy-in.  The school principal is also a technician, so he is in charge of things.  I went over there yesterday and there is already some progress on the hole.  It’s pretty cool to see some actual physical evidence of my service (other than maps). 

The trees in Guider make it look like an American suburb.
If you only look straight ahead.

The other day I was walking down the street and this random guy stopped me to talk, which happens most days.  He told me that we should start jogging together; that we can run to the bridge (6 km away) and back, then stop at the bil-bil market and drink all day.  Bil-bil is that weak, kind of sour beer that they make locally.  The guy reeked of it. 

The view from Mount Ngaoundere

Yesterday the new Northies got up here!  We had a party for them and one of our friends whose service is up.  There is a place in Garoua that has shwarma, so we got a bunch of those and beer.  It was a pretty fun party, hopefully a good welcome for them.  Our region is still small, about 20 people, but at least it’s getting bigger instead of smaller.  Between the newbies and a couple of people from my stage who moved North, over the passed month we gotten ten new people. 

The Gorges de Kola: now with water! 

The next couple of weeks before I go south will be really busy.  We are having a bunch of people in Guider for Thanksgiving and a food security conference this week, and then another friend up here is leaving so she is having her going away party in Garoua.  I have to take the train on December 10^th to do my mid-service medical tests before my flight home, and I’m going to come to Garoua a day or two early to help my friend move into her new house (hopefully she has her house by then).  I’m getting really excited for my trip home.  Especially to see my dog. 

Friday prayer

Undercover buddy cops for halloween

Kidnapping and Consolidation

A few days ago a French priest was kidnapped in the border town of Koza in the Extreme-North region.  This was carried out by the terrorist group Boko Haram; here we call them The Sith because we don’t really want to be heard talking about Boko Haram all the time.  Reports say that 15 gunmen stormed the seminary demanding money.  The priest was in his private room and was able to contact the French embassy before he was taken away barefoot.  He had been warned about the danger in the area, and chose to stay anyways. 

This is the first activity by Boko Haram in Cameroon since the kidnapping of a French family in Waza National Park in the Extreme-North in February.  They were later released after the French government paid approximately $27 million in ransom, money that is now helping to fund further terrorist activities.  While I have not heard about demands being made for this kidnapping, the reasons are probably the same.  Meanwhile, a Nigerian military attack on Boko Haram led to the release of another French citizen that had been held captive for a year, and four more were released in Niger after a ransom had been paid following three years of activity.  Again, that ransom was at least $27 million, though the French government says no public funds were used.  Reportedly, seven other French citizens are still being held throughout the region. 

To give some perspective, the town Koza where the priest was kidnapped is about 10 miles (18 km) from the Nigerian border.  It is also 74 miles (123 km) from my town, Guider, with a direct road (through Mokolo).  It is even closer to Douroum, Mandama, and Larbak, where my cluster mates live.  The result of this proximity is that the Guider cluster has been put on consolidation.  That means that my three cluster mates outside of Guider have had to come in to stay with us and are not allowed to return home.  The reason for this is that they don’t have phone reception, and Peace Corps Administration wanted to be able to maintain communication. 

Luckily there are three of us in Guider, so we each now have someone staying with us, and we get to stay in our own homes.  So far, this is a much better situation than the consolidation in Maroua.  Unfortunately, now the threat of closure is back.  For months after the first kidnapping we watched posts around us get closed, including four in our cluster, and the threat that the same would happen to us loomed over our heads.  Over the past few months we have stopped worrying as much about it, and thought we might make it through our service without having to move.  Now we are worried again. 

Today the Country Director is meeting at the embassy with the Regional Security Officer (RSO), so hopefully we will find out our fate soon.  Many posts in the Extreme-North had to wait a while to hear what would happen to them, I don’t want to be in that limbo.  Let me be clear: I have no worries for my safety.  I don’t think that the Sith will come to Guider.  I just want to know if I’ll get to stay here, especially with an intact cluster.  All of us love the North, and I don’t think there are really any options for us to stay up here if we did get closed.  We’d probably have to move to the Grand South. 

The Northwest Comes North (Part II)

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

The best part about my friends coming to visit (other than seeing them in general) was seeing the North through their eyes.  The first time I came up it was so overwhelming; finding out where I was going to live for the next two years, trying to buy essential stuff for my place, and seeing the culture for the first time made everything go by in a blur.  Them being here reminded me what a different place it is, even from the rest of the country. 

After those more general things, the best part was the day we went swimming in the Gorges de Kola.  I had been there a few times before, but this was the first time when there was water in it.  The water wasn’t near as high as it must have been at its peak, but it ranged from knee to mid-thigh high, definitely enough to swim in.  We basically kept walking up part of the gorges and then sitting down in the warm water and letting it carry us back down.  A couple of times we got a bit close to the waterfall.  Luckily no one went down. 

A friend of ours who is a moto-driver, Iliasu, took two of us there and his brother took the other two.  If I ever need to go anywhere that is further away, like the Gorges or a village in the bush, I call him; he is a really nice and reliable guy.  They both came swimming with us.  One of my buddies had a waterproof camera and they must have taken a hundred pictures with it. 

That night we made peanut sauce for dinner, a dish we make pretty often up here.  It’s easy and cheap; we can buy real peanut butter every day on the street.  Just add tomato paste, ginger, cinnamon, salt, magi, garlic, onion, tomato and other vegetables and serve over pasta or rice.  I’m going to have to find a good way to make that when I’m in America. 

The next stop was Garoueen!  It’s the Halloween party that PCVs in the North host every year.  Without the Extreme Northerners it wasn’t as crazy as I’ve been told it was in the past, but it was still a lot of fun.  A friend and I went as undercover buddy cops.  If your question is ‘Button, was that just a cop-out costume?’ the answer is yes.  As my friends pointed out, they had seen me wear that exact outfit in the past, but at least I was matching with someone! 

Unfortunately one of the people who came up to visit had to leave before the party, but I think he had a pretty good trip and we had a night in Garoua before he left.  We went to Yelwa, my favorite part of Garoua, and had pork sandwiches.  They are so good.  We always go t a bar there that has a brothel in the back passed the bathrooms. It was kind of funny watching guys go in and out of there.  The other two left the morning after Garoueen.  I’m sure that was a fun bus ride back down, they probably left the hotel at 5:30 in the morning. 

While my friends were here I found out that both my post mate and I passed the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT), the first step on a long process to become a Foreign Service Officer with the State Department.  The next step is that by the end of this week we have to submit six-1300 character essays on why we want to be in the track we chose (mine is Political), and info on our experiences with communication, management, leadership, and intellectual and interpersonal problems.  It’s pretty hard to write them with such little space, it is just a couple of paragraphs each.  I’ve written and rewritten each, and they still don’t sound very good to me.  Unfortunately, my Internet hasn’t been working either, so I haven’t been able to send the updated ones to the people helping me.  Sorry guys! 

The Northwest Comes North (Part I)

I just read a blog post from a friend doing the Peace Corps in Ukraine (http://engagementchicken.wordpress.com/ check it out), and realized I hadn’t written one in a little while, so here we go.  Her post sounds really cool, I’m looking forward to seeing it this January. 

Speaking of which, my trip is coming up so quick.  In just over a month I’ll have to head down to Yaoundé to do the medical portion of my mid-service.  Usually you do it with your sector, but all three of the sectors from my stage are doing theirs sometime when I will be traveling, so I have to do it by my lonesome before I go.  That means I’ll take the train on December 12^th, still flying out at 1 AM on December 17^th. 

Three friends from the Northwest just came up to visit for a little while.  I came up with them from ICT (technology) Committee.  My new job with that is updating the peacecorps.cameroon.gov website.  Basically that means contacting the heads of all of the different sectors, committees, programs, etc. to get updated information for them.  Right now, the website doesn’t even have Youth Development on there, and this is the sector’s third year.  So far I have gotten very few responses, so I’m just going to have to be persistent. 

We all traveled up to Ngaounderé together and stayed there for a few days, doing the touristy stuff like climbing the Hill Mount Ngaounderé and going to the market.  I got more of my souvenir shopping done there.  It’s kind of frustrating writing this and not being able to talk about what I got, but I’m the one who wants it to be a surprise. 

It was really fun to have people from the Grand South in my stage, especially Anglophone (which is what the Northwest is), come up and visit.  One of the things that make us Grand Northerners lucky is that we get to see the Grand South fairly often.  Every time we go down for a training or meeting or something we see the Grand South.  There is never a good reason for Grand Southerners to come up here so they don’t get it paid for, and the expense of taking the train up (not the cheapest option, but the most convenient and comfortable) makes it difficult. 

There were so many things that for me are regular day of life, but that my friends were so surprised by.  When we were on the bus to Garoua we kept seeing villages with nothing but small, mud-brick buildings with thatched roofs.  Apparently they had never seen that – any buildings like that where they are have cement structures all around.  The call-to-prayer was another novelty that at first they were disappointed about (the one by the case in Ngaounderé isn’t too loud), but were satisfied about by the end.  As we all thought would happen, my complaining about the cold when I visited them was made up for by their complaining about the heat.  I told them to come back for hot season, and they all laughed at me. 

My new internet key might be slower than my last, so I wont be uploading any pictures, but I’ll try to catch up with those when I go into Garoua to great the newbies.  Coming up next post: Swimming at the Gorges de Kola!  Garoueen!  Peanut Sauce!  And that’s probably it much more!