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.
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