My Walk Home

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Well apparently I’m being a bit more verbose lately.  This is the third blog post I’m starting without being able to post one of them.  I apologize in advance for the deluge, but I want to write while I have the inspiration and the words, rather than just forgetting about it by waiting until later.  The reason I can’t post them is because I broke my Internet key.  I had a bit of an explosion of body wash in my backpack, which unfortunately broke both my key and my hair clippers; I don’t know how I’ll be able to keep this beard from getting out of control.  The key was especially troublesome.  I spent quite a bit of money on it.  I’ll be buying a lower-grade key from a friend of mine this week, so I should be able to start posting more regularly again, but it’s still a disappointment. 

Everyone leaving the grand prayer after Fete du Mouton, also called Tabaski.

It’s about 8:30 in the evening and I just walked back from my post-mate’s house.  For some reason, tonight the walked seemed particularly enlightening.  As soon as I stepped out of his compound – he lives with a relatively very wealthy family – there were a few kids sitting outside of his gate.  This was not the first time I’ve seen this and probably not the first time I’ve written about it either, but the reason the kids were there was to use the light outside of the gate to do their homework.  It wasn’t even the only time I saw it on that under-ten-minute walk home; there were several kids I saw sitting on the ground at the side of the road to use a light from a compound that has electricity to do their homework.  Whether or not I live in a town that has electricity and running water, that does not mean that all or even the majority of the people here have those things. 

The road from Guider to Garoua, one of the best-maintained roads in the Grand North.
I always know I'm getting close when I see the mesas on the right side.  It sure won't stay this green for long

It was really a reminder of the difference between circumstances here and in America.  To get the students that I taught in America to do homework was a struggle to say the least.  Even once I moved to a school with a much stronger discipline system, it was still difficult.  I always had to think about the excuse that they couldn’t look things up with the Internet at home so they couldn’t do their homework.  Here that excuse is meaningless.  No one has a computer, much less the Internet.  The excuse, if students were to use one, would be that they didn’t have electricity to do it by light.  They could also use the other excuses that so many of them have; they had to cook dinner/do dishes for their families; they had to get water; they had to do laundry.  Small chores for us are big chores here due to a lack of technology, and chores that usually fall on the shoulders of the youth and women. 

More huts.

The other thing that I noticed on my walk was all of the noises.  Most people go to bed so early here; they are up super early, and this is coming from a guy that is usually up by 6 every day.  Because they are up so early, they also go to bed really early.  You would think that the result would be a really quiet night, every night, but that is not the case at all.  Other than the people who do still stay up late, especially the corner right by my house where a lot of nights they play music, it is still noisy. 

My post-mate killing his first chicken

All of that noise comes from the animals.  The majority of sounds come from crickets, frogs, and especially bats.  The rest comes from the livestock that you can find throughout Guider, and the Grand North in general.  There are the random brays of donkeys, baahs of sheep, and bleats of goats.  There are even the seemingly random crows of the roosters.  Of course there was also the barks and howls of dogs (which I hate in this country, people treat them like shit so I feel like they are always a hair’s breath away from attacking.  Honestly, I feel like it’s just as noisy but a different genre as when I lived in NYC. 

Fou

Saturday, October 19, 2103

We’ve had friends visiting for a few days.  One of them had lived in Larbak, a nearby village, for a couple of years before extending to Maroua.  When Maroua was closed she moved to Ngaounderé, where she was just approved to extend for a 4^th year.  My post-mate is actually talking about extending for a few months so he would COS (close of service) with my stage.  He is going to be replaced by someone that comes with the September stage, so he figures he might as well hang out with us until then. 

The other one is leaving very shortly.  He was in our cluster for a few months.  He had been evacuated from Mali with a bunch of other people and moved to Mayo Oulo with my post-mate’s stage.  Unfortunately, Mayo Oulo was also closed, so he was moved south to Nkongsamba, in the Littoral.  He will be COSing in just over two weeks, so he wanted to see it again before he left. 

The other day we were at the market, when my post-mate grabbed a little baggy out of a kid’s hand.  It was full of ‘solution’.  Solution is toxic glue that they breathe in to get high.  They can just pick the baggy up off of the ground somewhere, and a bottle of solution only costs 200 cfa, or about $0.40.  This kid had been walking around for who knows how long huffing this glue.  We could barely understand him when he talked. 

It’s like we were seeing pre-fou.  Fou means crazy in French, and in Cameroon, a fou is someone who is crazy.  They walk around in rags all day bothering people, asking for money, and just being crazy.  In America picture a homeless person with severe mental problems.  I think most of them here actually sleep in a compound, there families taking care of them at least a bit, but I’m not sure about that.  We even have a street in Guider we named Fou St., because the main fou that bothers us is always there.  I feel like these kids who are huffing glue are just working their way up to being full-blown fous.

I started teaching on Thursday at the CMPJ, my youth center.  I’ll be doing life skills with them mostly, but I promised I would throw some English in there too.  It went really well.  I taught about the bridge model – basically showing them what skills that they need to build a bridge and avoid the ravine of drugs, HIV/AIDS, malaria, other illnesses, alcohol, and unwanted pregnancy – stuff like that.  Then the different lessons will cover those skills.  I’ll be teaching there every Tuesday and Thursday.  The lesson went really well.  The students were well behaved, and since there is only about 20 of them, it wasn’t too tough involve everyone and keep their interests.  I had a few problems with French, a couple of words I didn’t know, but overall my language skills were fine. 

I’m planning on going to one of the high schools on Monday to talk to the principal.  I want to work with the health club when they meet on Wednesdays on the same life skills stuff.  I would like to be able to work with clubs from all three schools, but throughout Cameroon clubs only meet on Wednesdays, so I can really only work with one unless I switch off each week, which I don’t think will be effective enough. 

I started a writing club with friends around the world – some working, some PCVs, a bunch in America too.  Basically we write to different prompts, whatever they inspire.  The only rule is that it is a 500-word minimum.  Everyone sends me their submissions and I post them on the blog I started for it – ScribblersGuild.blogspot.com – under a pen name.  It’s really fun reading all of the different submissions and being the only one who knows who everyone is.  If you want to join, let me know, otherwise, check out the blog!  There has been some great writing so far.