Six Months. Woo-saw.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Welp, my Close of Service (COS, basically leave) conference has been set at March 31^st, which is incredibly soon.  It turns out that I’ll have to COS by the end of August.  I was trying to keep it a secret from my parents, but since they are trying to plan a trip to East Africa with me, I wasn’t able to. 

A lot of you may be wondering, “Graham, shouldn’t you be leaving in December?  Isn’t Peace Corps 27 months?”  The answer to that is, usually.  First we lost a month during our original training.  We are always the guinea pig stage, or at least that’s what we like to complain about.  The best example of this is that our original training was two months instead of three.  So where did the other three months go?  The short story is my replacement will be coming in August, and they won’t let us overlap.  If you don’t want the long answer, skip the next paragraph. 

Here goes: there are five sectors in Peace Corps Cameroon – Youth Development (YD, mine), Education (ED), Community Economic Development (CED), Environment, and Health.  There are two different training groups each year.  CED and ED come in June, and the other three come in September.  This year, they are combining CED and Environment under the umbrella Sustainable Livelihoods.  They are also putting YD and ED under the name of Youth Empowerment, but nothing is really changing there, they will just be Formal/ED and Informal/YD Youth Empowerment.  To that end, they are going to switch ED and CED, so YD will be coming with ED in June and CED will be coming with Environment and Health in September.  That means my replacement will be going to post in August, and I have to leave 3 months earlier. 

Whew.  That was convoluted. 

We were originally told that we would be able to stay until our regular COS date as long as housing could be found for my replacement, so I was planning on staying until November anyways.  We were told a little over a month ago that now we had to leave in August unless we extend our service.   

There are only 13 of us affected, so they are just going to have us do our COS conference with the CED/ED stage before us.  There are definitely a few people from that stage that I like, including my post mate, but I don’t think they’re too happy that we’ll be there.  I would say out of the 13, about half are happy that we are leaving early, and most of the rest are fine with it.  I’m not that happy about it – I signed up for 27 months.  I was already leaving one month early, now I won’t even have two full years in Cameroon.  It’s frustrating. 

I don’t really know if I’m done here yet, so I’ve been thinking about extending.  I would like to get some more experience in international development and see another part of the country.  I’ve been asking about an extension with UNHCR – the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.  Because of the attacks by Boko Haram in Northeastern Nigeria, and the rebel attacks in Central African Republic, Cameroon currently has over 100,000 refugees and asylum seekers.  It would be really interesting to work with them with logistics – improving access to health facilities, water and sanitation, and education.  UNHCR also works with birth certificate campaigns, and income generating and livelihood activities, both of which could also be interesting.  I asked if I could work either in Yaoundé, the capital, or Bertoua, the regional capital of the East. So far they haven’t answered my emails, but I gave their contact information to my boss, so he said he would look into it.  I’ve asked about UNICEF and Plan International as well. 

However, if an opportunity to work in a larger city with a major organization doesn’t present itself, then I really need to start a career.  That means finishing my Significant Research Paper for my grad school program and finding a job.  Somehow I need to do both of those, my local and national work, and see the parts of the country and posts of friends that I haven’t gotten to yet.  All in six months.  I feel a little overwhelmed.  Luckily, I’ve gotten a lot of research done already; I just need to actually start writing my paper. 

It’s crazy how short six months really is. 

Fête after Fête, and Not the Fun Ones

Thursday, February 20, 2014

This morning was yet another holiday, this time Reunification Day.  All of these celebrations are really making it hard to get work done.  Leading up to each one, clubs are canceled and sometimes even classes to practice.  I’m not exactly sure why they need to practice again and again, they do the same thing for each one – march passed the crowed.  They might have a song or a little dance they do on the way, but that’s it.  Over the last month or so we have had Bilingual Day, Youth Day, and now Reunification Day.  In another two weeks will be Women’s Day.  It’s starting to get frustrating – I was supposed to teach a couple of times and go to a club this week and it was all canceled.

 

It was sooooo long, too.  I got there an hour after they told me to (of course it still hadn’t started), and was still there over three hours.  I didn’t have time to get my invitation from my counterpart, so I was just going to stand with the crowd.  I think it’s better anyways, I feel weird being one of the grands in the stands, but they rarely let us.  This time was no different, I was standing there and a police officer came up with a stick swinging it at the kids to get them out of the way; they all ran passed me.  I stood there staring at him and slowly moved to the side, but he came up and had me brought to the stands.  Of course they sat me with the Chinese guys. 

My other work has been going well.  The latrine project that my post mate and I are doing is almost done; I just gave the school director the money for the roof and doors.  My post mate has friends coming and they are going to sponsor a water project at the same school.  They are bringing about 300,000 cfa ($600), and we are going to branch off from a water pipe from across the street to get a standpipe for the school.  It feels great to have such a tangible project – by the time this is all done, a school with no water or sanitation facilities is going to have enough latrines and water for the whole school population.  Once those are done we are going to train the students on the importance of proper sanitation and hand washing – we’ll probably have a soccer tournament at the same time, just for fun. 

In a little over a week I have to head south to train the latest stage on a scholarship program and work zones/cross-sector collaboration for their Inter-Service Training (IST).  It’s in Bamenda, an Anglophone city in the Northwest.  I’m planning on seeing a couple of friends while I am out there too, so that should be fun.  We call Bamenda, Bamerica because it is so nice; it will be a great trip. 

National Girls’ Forum is coming up quick too; it will be here in less than a month and a half.  Planning is going really smoothly right now – we actually don’t have much that we can do until the applications for both the committee and the Forum itself come in on March 14^th.  It’ll be in Limbé on April 9^th – black sand beaches!  I can’t wait! 

I’ve also got to finish updating the Peace Corps Cameroon website, I’ve still got a lot of work to do on it.  I guess the website has a due date of March 31^st.  I’ll have to hang out in the case and try to get it done some time; my Internet at post has been so slow. 

Even before that I’ll have to go to Steering Committee to plan for the next Pre-Service Training (PST), which starts in June.  I’ve also been trying to do some job searching and research for my paper.  I’ve actually been thinking about extending my service another year, but it all depends on the options I get for my extension.  I really don’t know what I’ll do.  Either way, it feels good to be so busy.  There are even people who have been visiting/will visit Guider, so we’ve had a lot of company.  This weekend will be the first time I’ll be alone in a while.  I’m looking forward to relaxing and getting some work done. 

A Break From Peace Corps

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted a blog, and the longer I leave it the more overwhelming it gets, so here goes.  I’ve got several that I started and stopped, including a very detailed one about my flights to America, but they aren’t really relevant to post so late, so this will just be a general bog about the past few months. 

Outside the Embassy for Kazakstan.  This statue is just aw

First of all, my trip home was great.  The flight out of Cameroon gave me the perfect image to remember – a long delay on the tarmac, kids just running up and down the aisles, Cameroonians laying across entire rows and every single person who went to the bathroom had their pants unbuttoned and unzipped before getting there.  The flight attendants just looked shocked.  The rest of the flights were uneventful except for the last one where I was delayed almost 11 hours. 

Unlike the White House, which I found underwhelming, the Capital Building was just as grand in person.

My trip home was amazing.  I spent a lot of time with family and friends, both from Colorado and from out of town.  I had amazing food, great beer, and a lot of fun on the holidays.   A couple of friends even took me out to dinner and an Avalanche game while I was home.  I made a trip to Washington, DC while I was there and saw a lot of friends from grad school and even a bunch of people I know from Cameroon.  I saw a lot of the city and went on some tours, but there is definitely a lot more to see.  It’s a pretty cool city; I might have to live there one day.  

Great group of RPCVs from Cameroon (and me).  I'll definitely have to go to DC more often.

I was sad to leave home, but it wasn’t too hard.  Luckily, I really like my post, my friends, and my Peace Corps experience, so I didn’t have that struggle that a lot of PCVs have with returning after a visit home.  It also helped that I was going to Ukraine on a quick trip on the way back to Cameroon. 

Not only did I get to see my sister in Denver, we hung out in DC too!

Ukraine was incredible.  First of all, I didn’t really see all the protests that were/are going on.  I didn’t stay in Kiev, the capital; I was in Kharkiv, the second-largest city.  Kharkiv is right along the border with Russia, so the majority of the people there are more sympathetic to Russia than the West.  The police immediately broke up the only protest that I saw. 

Lenin!

The friends that I was visiting were great too.  They brought me to the different churches, to great meals, and even to a bathhouse, which was an amazing time.  We rented a private room that had a table and chairs where we ate a bunch of food we brought and drank some beer, a couple of showers, a cool pool about the size of a hot tub, and a sauna.  We just kept going to the sauna for ten minutes to the pool for a quick dip, then eat and drink for a bit before the sauna again. 

Friends and counterparts.

I also went and saw where my friends work – they are in the Peace Corps there.  At one office they had a lunch for us.  My favorite thing was salo, which is basically just salted pig fat.  It’s really good.  We also kept making formal toasts, which I guess is a big thing in Ukraine.  The third toast always has to be to the women, and all the men have to stand up.  Every toast we would take a shot of vodka – I think we had 5 over a lunch in a government office.  What a great country. 

A church in Kharkiv

I definitely want to visit Ukraine again; I had an amazing time with my friends and all of the Ukrainians I met were very welcoming and nice.  The only problem was a slight security incident.  My friend was helping me buy something at the store and we were speaking in English.  When we walked away, a couple cops stopped us and asked for our passports.  I didn’t have mine on me – apparently if you are foreign they can ask you for them at any time.  They had warned me the night before, but I forgot.  When I didn’t have it, they led us a couple of blocks down the street and then down an alley, where they started rifling through my wallet.  I didn’t have any Ukrainian money, mostly just Cameroonian.  Luckily, my friend was able to get ahold of the Peace Corps Security Officer there who talked to the police and got them to let us go.  The only fine was that they took some of my Cameroonian coins, presumably for a souvenir. 

Our lunch with many toasts

On the way back to Cameroon I had a night in Vienna – not enough to really see anything, but I had a nice meal and stayed in a hostel.  Since being back in Cameroon I’ve actually had a lot of work, so that’s been nice, I’ll have to talk about that on my next post.