Soeur Africaine

A pretty rare thing happened last night: I met the volunteer in Lagdo before Danielle who was here from 2003-2005 while in country during the middle of my service.  She was in Maroua helping another RPCV (returned peace corps volunteer) set up an NGO/leading a group of University of Maryland undergrad students for a class they were taking, or something like that.  The fact is she was a 3-hour bus ride away, so I had to go and meet her. And since she'll probably read this, it was an amazingly wonderful time.

 

Seriously, though, it was nice to put the name/legacy to the real person, especially since she was in Lagdo for the beginning of the CARE project, and I'm at the end (this coming week is the last one! Adieu! Unnecessary exclamation points!!).

 

Other news, PC Washington guy - the Peace Corps director for the whole world - came up to Garoua/Lagdo earlier in the week.  It was nice to meet him, and since he was appointed by GWB, I spent the whole time wondering how he knows the president (mountain bike friend is my theory).

 

Linkage

A good friend from Wooster, Phil, is going to be a PCV in Kazakhstan, home of Borat and Phil in a couple months.  Here's the link to his blog: Cliquez-moi.

 

Also, here's a link to a collection of different blogs from Cameroon accumulated by Big Brother/Peace Corps Journals: Click me, please.

 

Groinage

Chipper and Smoltz are going through a little tiff, according to espn.com.  They must be realizing their windows are closing and their limbs will fall off my the all-star break next year.

 

Heatage

I got a thermometer in the mail, and I've hung it up on my porch, which is completely shaded at all times.  This is the rainy season, and when it rains, it cools down considerably, and every once in a while, it's so cool, I have to wear normal pajama pants (it's amazing what constitutes a big deal sometimes).  Guess who cold it is? 80 Degrees.

 

The leopard print couch broke after three days.  I'm pissed.

Cardboard Boxes

We stumbled into a Cameroonian national team soccer match yesterday. The Indomitable Lions played the Rwanda national team in Garoua of all places as part of an African Nations Cup qualifier.  I first heard about it Thursday afternoon in Lagdo when the club sante responsable came over to my house to have a meeting about making a meeting and mentioned it to me because I told him I had to be in Garoua Saturday morning for an Arts for Life meeting.  I had a passing thought that if there really was a big soccer match, hotel rooms might be hard to find...

 

We bought tickets at Super Restaurant - they were also sold at the supermarche, the Asian supermarche, and who knows where else (no Ticketmaster booths in Garoua) - and then we found space for the ten of us at the fourth hotel we looked at, Club Fantasia, which wasn't as sketchy as it sounded.

 

The game started at 3:30, and when we, quite the spectacle because we were nine white people, got to the game at 2:15, the stadium was already packed. We found some space in our 2,000 cfa section fourth row up in front of the corners.  The seats were just cement rows like a high school football stadium, and after about one minute, I realized cement is really hot after being exposed to the sun for hours.  It's so hot that people actually sell pieces or cardboard boxes and newspapers around the stadium just so you can sit on them to make it more comfortable.

 

The game itself was a foregone conclusion before it even started, even if Cameroonian god Samuel Eto'o wasn't playing (he was playing a match for his club team, Barcelona, who actually won their game but ended up losing the Spanish league to Real Madrid).  I mean, it's Rwanda.  It was 1-0 at the half, and after Cameroon scored the second goal within the first five minutes of the second half, Cameroon just killed time, even after Rwanda got a goal.  The final score was 2-1 Cameroon.

 

The atmosphere wasn't as crazy as I thought it would be, but it was still raucous, which might have something to do both with the importance of the game (not very) and the opponent.  There was more energy in the 1,000 cfa seats on the other side of the stadium, and people without tickets were climbing up the stadium wall and jumping in.  There were a lot of gendarmes and police people around the stadium and on the field, and the field itself was surrounded by a fence with barbed wire.  The halftime entertainment sucked; the Cameroonian team's main sponsor, the cell phone company Orange, got a group of high school kids decked out in Orange gear with white pom poms to shake the said poms poms while another kid juggled a soccer ball for five minutes.  Where are my acrobats and light show?

 

In other news, the Peace Corps director, the Peace Corps director in Washington, is going to be coming through Lagdo tomorrow to visit an old volunteer in the village on the other side of the dam ("old" meaning over 50; there's a new initiative by this PC director to recruit older volunteers.  Apparently, having experience has become something PC Washington is looking for in recruits), and myself and the other PCVs near Lagdo get to have lunch with him, the PC director of Africa, and the PC director of Cameroon at the white man hotel (the whole entourage is in Garoua tonight having dinner with other PCVs from the Grand North).  My streak of eating at the Lagon Bleu for free continues.

 

     

 

 

 

 

Camelot

I got five packages the day before my birthday, mailed all the way back from February to April, then I got another one ON my birthday. This definitely makes up for the most depressing Christmas a middle class white American with no complaints can't have.  I was, and still am, so overwhelmed by the amount of stuff. Books, food, 8-month old newspaper articles, etc.  I was sent and just finished The Dark Side of Camelot and am starting The Best and the Brightest.  Wow, the Kennedy's. Shaaaaaaaaaaaady.  Pulled a GWB before GWB and stole the 1960 election.

 

Books aside, I'm just plodding along here, waiting for CARE to leave in a couple weeks.  In addition to all the potential work I wrote about earlier, I just happened onto a community development group that formed late 2005/early 2006 in Lagdo.  This group and the Lagdo mayor brought in a Cameroonian government agency to do a needs-assessment, which the agency did, and the report has been collecting dust ever since.  From the couple of meetings with the guy in charge of the community group, here's what I've gathered so far: His organization was formed in conjunction with the needs-assessment report.  After the report was done early 2006, him and some community members went to every quartier (at least 8 in Lagdo Centre - a quartier is just a neighborhood) and village chief stating the problems found in the report... and then nothing happened.  Part of the problem is that the different actors - the mayor, the community group, the quartiers - all have different priorities.  The quartiers say the biggest problem is water, whether it's lack of running water, a lack of a well, or broken wells.  No surprise there.  The mayor, on the other hand, would like to extend the running water pipeline, but wants the road fixed first.  The community group (CCDL) is just a piece of paper, despite the president's claim that it isn't.  The intentions for the CCDL are good, though, so there's hope.  What's the problem, though?

 

My first thought lies with the CCDL.  They have this excellent needs-assessment already completed (Note: Needs-assessment is what health PCVs are trained to do). They went to every quartier and got shut down.  Here's my theory why: All they did was present the problems and didn't offer any solutions.  Simple as that.  I tried to explain this to the president, Yotti, and I think he maybe understood what I was saying, but I'm not sure.  If I had a broken well in my backyard, and some guy named Yotti comes and tells me I have a broken well in my backyard, I'd stare at him and say, "No shit, Sherlock.  What are you gonna do about it?"  And that's what people in Lagdo basically said to the CCDL. The presentation was all wrong.  Now I'm just starting the process on how to go about making it better.  This process has the potential to be a long one: a slog through Lagdo politics, maybe another needs-assessment to see what's changed in the 18 months since the last one, planting season (It's rainy season now.  Rainy season means planting season.  Planting season coupled with school being out means Lagdo is quite the deserted place compared to a few months ago because everyone is back in their village or aux champs and not really available to talk about wells.).  As usual, on va voir ce que passer, or some snooty French phrase like that.

 

Is Andruw traded yet?  I also ordered a couch and didn't specify to the carpenter what kind of cushions I wanted.  Can you say Leopard Print?