Tribalism

Things are okay at post since I last posted.  No bribing or anything like that. I've had some mystery illness.  I would love to go into the gritty details with you (PCVs love giving details about their stomach ailments), but I'll just say that some days are worse than others.  Next time I have a bad day, I'll get it checked out.  And CARE, the NGO I'm assigned to, is driving me up the wall.  I'm not really sure how in detail I should go into here on the blog because the PC (and probably CARE, too) are Big Brother-ish about them. So I'm going to talk about something kinda boring and not emphasized enough by the Peace Corps: Tribes.

 

There are literally hundreds of tribes in Cameroon, and over 50 in Lagdo alone (when the dam was built, the government encouraged all these groups to migrate to Lagdo).  During training, one our language teachers said the two biggest problems impeding Cameroon's development are Corruption and Tribalism.  People are very proud of their tribes and family history, and it is one of the major sources of tension in Africa because of the arbitrary colonial boundaries.

 

Now I bring this up because I took an African history class second semester junior year at Wooster with Alphine Jefferson, a crazy-ass middle-aged black professor.  I think Alphine forgot what he was teaching (anyone who had him wouldn't be surprised that happened) and decided to just give us a general lesson in the effects of colonialism instead of actual history.  The class boiled down to this statement: First they bring the Bible, then they bring the guns.

 

When I wrote a paper on the novel Things Falls Apart, I wrote the word "tribe" a bunch of times, and Alphine circled the word over and over again, apparently disagreeing with the use of the word. This is a very well-educated man, has been to Africa, and he's disagreeing with the word tribe? Everyone here uses the word tribe, it's how people identify themselves.  I can see where it does have a negative connotation, but Christianity and Islam have created more wars than tribes in Africa, why isn't it politically incorrect to say those?

 

This is all I really have on this subject. I'm going to a Catholic Cameroonian wedding tomorrow morning, should be good times!

Wascally Wabbit

It's carrot season.  I found this out in Lagdo earlier in the week, and a lucky Cameroonian police officer found this out two days later because of yours truly.

 

I was on my way up to Maroua, the capital of the Extreme North province, for the weekend (I'm still there - here - now, as a matter of fact), and at the fork in the road (forchette dans la route? doesn't really translate) my bus got stopped by the the police checkpoint there.  Now much earlier in the day, I was hassled by a police officer at a bush taxi stop in Garoua trying to get some argent out of me, claiming that a bunch of tourists on Christmas Eve gave him some "motivation," and he wanted me to do the same.  I gleefully replied that I didn't understand French, which is sorta true I guess, but I exhausted his patience and he gave up.  The PC tells us to flat out refuse to pay any bribes for anything, whether it's the police, gendarmes, or the electric company, because it's annoying and feeds into the corruption problem (of course, you could argue that the presence of development workers feeds into the problem as well, but I digress...).

 

So fast forward a few hours on the bus (a real bus, different from the bush taxi), and we were stopped at the checkpoint.  While waiting, the bus driver buys a bunch of bags of carrots, and me sitting up front in shotty and being a whitey, he gave me one.  Right about then, the police officer is checking everyone's ID cards (cartes, en francais), and if you know me at all, you know I space out all the time.  This was one of those times.  I had the bag of carrots in my hand and the police officer had been pointing and saying very loudly at me, "Carte! Carte!" I looked at the bag of carrots in my hand (carote, en francais, see where this is going yet?), turned around, saw the man's finger in my face, then slowly offered him my bag of carrots.  Needless to say, he didn't take the bait, and I felt like the biggest jackass in the world.  I was then picked up by the collar and dragged out of the bus and thrown in jail. Just kidding. I showed him my carte de sejour and we all went on our merry way, except for the guy who didn't have his ID carte, he got kicked out of the bus. If only he had some carrots.

 

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#  Another random note, I was sitting in the bank last week, and this guy walks in wearing Credit du Sahel pagne (fabric) pants (think pajamas) and an Osama bin Laden t-shirt.  You have the essence of capitalism on the bottom, and the face of anti-Americanism on top.

 

#  Maroua is a really nice city.  I love me some Garoua (my provincial capital), but Maroua is about ten times less aggressive and I don't really feel like anyone's going to steal my shoes while I'm still walking.  There are a lot of trees, and it's amazing what some shade can do to a place.

 

#  Somehow Florida winning the BCS has to be Steve Spurrier's fault.

 

#  Happy belated birthday, Ian! Hope Stein Mart is kicking ass.