La chaleur, le foot, les sports

The Heat

 

I remember February 28 like it was a month ago, because it was.  It was the day it first cracked 100° in the shade.  The temperature had been creeping up since the beginning of the month, and I consider the 100-degree barrier the beginning of the mythic Grand North hot season.  The heat is the worst in the North province due to geographical reasons, I've been told.  It's located in a valley between the Adamawa and Extreme North provinces, making Garoua the Sacramento to N'gaoundéré's San Francisco and Maroua's Lake Tahoe, except Maroua is just about as hot as Garoua.

 

The hot season brings about swift changes.  First, people immediately stop sporting parkas and ski caps.  (I'm not kidding.)  It also changes the basic greetings people make.  When it's cold, it goes like this:

 

"How's the cold?"

"Oh, it's not that bad."

"It's just like Europe."

"Yeah, I guess.  I wouldn't know.  I'm American."

"Oh."

 

Now, it's something like this:

 

"The heat."

"Yeah, the heat."

 

People also begin sleeping outside at night, which a lot of PCVs do as well.  I'm not going all-out outside, but I am sleeping on a mattress in the living room next to the side door, which I leave open, with the fan going all night.  Part of this is comfort, the mattress in the living room that former PCVs at my house used in lieu of a couch is ten times more comfortable than the bed frame and mattress in my bedroom, but also CARE's not paying my electricity bill this hot season, so no AC for me.

 

Another hot season consequence is that the peak hotness is at 11 AM and doesn't really go down until after 5 PM.  There's the sweat issue, too.  "Swamp ass" is always a problem, especially on a bush taxi, as well as the feeling of the back of your shirt being soaked, another effect exacerbated by a bush taxi when you're crammed in the leather backseat for 90-120 minutes with three other people.  When I'm at my house, whatever part of me is not being touched by the fan, there is sweat pouring out like Patrick Ewing at the free throw line.  I'm also drinking at least 4 liters of water a day (a gallon), and that's barely enough.  Napping has increased.  High school students skip any class past 10 AM or altogether stop showing up.

 

There are some silver linings though.  One is that the hot season this year isn't nearly as bad for me this year as it was in 2007.  Other volunteers from my stage and the one before mine think the same thing.  It sucks, but last year it was more physically demanding.

 

The hot season also means that the rainy season is fast approaching.  There have even been real clouds in the sky, usually in the early evening, instead of the haze of dust that was particularly bad in February.  Last year, the first time it rained was in early April, which means only a couple more weeks to go.  Rainy season means time to start planting, and people are beginning to head out now to get ready.

 

The Foot

 

Check out these stats.  4/5, two TDs.  I was Peyton Manning: white, the slowest guy on the field, and throwing bullets.

 

An education PCV in Ngong has done something kind of remarkable in the last couple months.  He has taught some interested students how to play American football.  He holds practice two evenings during the week and there is a game Saturday or Sunday morning.  He invited me to play last weekend, so how could I refuse?

 

He starts off the practices and the games with a mile run and 35 push-ups because he's a jerk and masochist.  On game morning, you have to be there by 6 AM – I tell you, he's a jerk – or you have to do one push-up for every minute late.  This morning, there were about 15 of us who showed up, and only Harvard (The PCV.  Guess where he's from?), myself, and two of his students were the only one's on time. 

 

We played on the soccer field/track at the lycée, which is like most Grand North high schools: sloping, dirt instead of grass, and the track lanes are designated by rocks.  Harvard and I played on different teams, and the parallel that followed to America was uncanny: So, you have a white guy who's kind of an authority figure on a team filled with non-white players.  The white player is slow.  Since there are no tight ends or linemen, where does the white guy automatically go?  That's right, quarterback.  It was a pretty good decision, I say as I brush the dirt of my shoulders (go, go ahead).  After a shaky first throw that was a can of corn, to use a baseball term, that luckily a guy on my team caught, I settled down and made some good throws and pretended to understand the French spoken in the huddle.  (I don't have a good sports vocabulary, but "quarterback" they called lanceur, "thrower.")

 

Here's how the game worked:  It was tackle, which Cameroonians have trouble doing.  It's their soccer background.  I love and respect soccer, but come on, it's soccer.  Two girls played, so if they had the ball, it was two-hand touch for them.  The teams were uneven, so a tiny kid was permanent center.  Without yard markers, the field was divided into quarters, so basically you had two sets of downs then the goal lines, which where soccer goals.  Extra points were punted from the first yard marker and counted if they made it above the crossbar and between the goal posts.  The QB got a 10 Mississippi count.  (Harvard actually taught the kids to say Mississippi, so that was amusing.)  There was a tie at the end, so we had a soccer-like extra point shootout.

 

The game itself went smoothly, although it featured a common Cameroonian thing: they had to discuss everything.  After every down, the huddle took forever.  There should have been a delay of game before every play.  A question of where the line of scrimmage was or if someone made a first down became long discussions.  I was lucky that I came into the game weeks into their foray into American sports so they all understood the rules, four downs, six points for a touchdown, etc.  We played until about 8 or 8:30, as it was already hot as balls by then.  A good time all around and a constant "Are we really playing American football?" in my head.   

 

Sports Predictions

 

Time for some ill informed sports predictions:

 

March Madness – I completely forgot about college basketball until my parents mentioned it last weekend.  I have no idea who's still in the tournament, so, um, go UConn!  Yeah, UConn is my team this year.  Why not?

 

Baseball – Sigh, the Braves.  They'll be 3^rd place in the NL East.  Here are my playoffs:

 

National League

East: Mets

Central: Brewers

West: Dodgers

Wild Card: Phillies

 

American League

 

East: Red Sox

Central: Tigers

West: Angels

Wild Card: Yankees

 

World Series

 

We'll go Midwest: Tigers over Brewers in 6.  This will be the third World Series in a row that I'll have missed, and the fourth in five years.  The only one I've seen is the 2005 snorefest of the White Sox vs. Houston.  Remember that 17 or 18 inning game the Braves played in the first round against the Astros that year?  Yeah, that sucked.

 

Basketball – I've actually followed basketball more closely this season than any of the other sports, mostly due to Bill Simmons' columns on ESPN.com, but I'm still pretty lost.  There are too many teams that make the playoffs (16, half the league) and I don't have the standings in front of me now (I write the blog at home before going to Garoua or Lagon Blue for the Internet.), so I'll just assume the Hawks will slip in with the 8^th spot in the Eastern Conference and face the Celtics.

 

First Round: Boston annihilates Atlanta in a merciless sweep.

 

Finals: Celtics over Lakers in 7.

 

Lebron:  How many years left does Bron Bron have on his contract?  Wonder who his Brooklyn real estate agent is?  Or do you think he'll live in Manhattan and commute?  Boston, Los Angeles, or Orlando maybe?

Lists!

(Part 2 of 2)

Time for lists!  Time-honored tradition when one has a blog and nothing much to say.  In case you're wondering, most of the lists feature my iPod rather than iTunes (how big of a tool am I for doing the correct capitalization for Apple products?) for two reasons: 1) There was a 14-month gap of me sans ordinateur while I have had my iPod here in Cameroon, and 2) My hard drive crashed Feb. 2006, so my iTunes play counts started over, while my iPod avoided any tragedy.  (When my hard drive crashed, I only lost one sole page of my Independent Study, thank Allah, so it wasn't that big of a tragedy except for the shattering of the whole "Macs don't crash like PCs" myth.)

Top 5 Most Played Songs on my iTunes

1.  "Fake Tales of San Francisco," Arctic Monkeys
2a.  "Good Life," Kanye West feat. T-Pain 
2b.  "One Man Guy," Rufus Wainwright
4a.  "Decent Days and Nights," The Futureheads
4b.  "Juicebox," The Strokes
4c.  "Chicago," Sufjan Stevens

Top 5 Most Played Outkast songs on my iPod

1.  "Ghetto Musick," Speakerboxxx
2.  "Church," Speakerboxxx
3.  "Hey Ya!" The Love Below
4.  "Bowtie," Speakerboxxx
5.  "Elevators (Me And You)," ATLiens

Top 5 Most Played Pearl Jam Songs on my iPod

1.  "Sonic Reducer,"  Live – Cleveland, OH
2.  "Can't Help Falling in Love Again," Live – 2000 Christmas Single
3.  "Alive," Live – Cleveland, OH
4.  "Man Of The Hour," Man Of The Hour EP
5.  "Corduroy," Vitalogy

Top 5 Most Played U2 Songs on my iPod

1.  "Vertigo," How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb*
2.  "The Fly," Achtung Baby
3.  "Yahweh," How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
4.  "Elevation (Tomb Raider Remix)," Tomb Raider Soundtrack
5.  "Miracle Drug," How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

* Bono's answer?  "Don't build a bomb."  Thanks for solving the problem, buddy.

Top 5 Most Played Kanye West Songs on my iPod

1.  "Gold Digger" feat. Jamie Foxx, Late Registration
2.  "School Spirit," The College Dropout
3.  "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" feat. Jay Z (Remix), Late Registration
4.  "Breath In Breathe Out" feat. Ludacris, The College Dropout
5.  "Heard 'Em Say" feat. Adam Levine, Late Registration

Sur mes genoux

(Part 1 of 2)

Ever since the comfortable but unsatisfying womb of CARE left Lagdo in June 2006, I've been following a strict work policy:  Do Whatever Falls in my Lap (DWFL). 

My DWFL policy could be described using other phrases like "Winging It" and "Sure, Why Not?", but I like to think of it as having a Flexible Attitude Towards Work.

Sorry to pile on the metaphor, but I fell into the DWFL policy out of what I believed to be necessity during the final months of CARE's reign.  CARE is a huge international NGO with an enormous budget, and in Lagdo, they flexed their monetary muscle for their projects.  I was having a difficult time within the malaria project, and I wanted to focus my work to outside CARE's zone, which limited my work options initially to Lagdo Centre and not in the two neighboring villages of Djippordé, a market town directly on the lake, and Gounougou, the first village on the other side of the dam.  (Lagdo Centre is where I live and where CARE had their office but didn't actually do any projects.)

While CARE was winding down in May and June, my work options were limited by the start of the rainy season (planting season) and the end of school, so I was just faire-ing le promenade around Lagdo, not really knowing what I was going to do.  Then one day, I randomly got a call from Yotti, a boutique owner who would eventually become my best friend in village, who said he was the president of a community development GIC (community group) for Lagdo Centre, and that eventually got me involved in the interminable school construction project whose saga is continuing as we speak.

During June and July, based on the suggestion of the PCV in Bamé ("Sure, why not?" I said.), a village 10 km from Lagdo, I started to do weekly animations at the health center there on vaccination days for the women who bring their newborns, which I still do now.  In August, the meetings for the school construction project were pretty frequent, and I did two weekends of Arts for Life.  Through the school construction project, I met some women who had their own GIC, so I started to work with them.  After August and into September, I waited for school to get back into its swing, and by October I was doing a multi-part nutrition and basic health class for the elementary school.  Also in October and November, a Cameroonian NGO with an office in Garoua (ACMS) decided to a sensibilisation in Lagdo about the health products that they distribute and sell (condoms, oral rehydration salts, mosquito nets, etc.), and they wanted me to tag along with them.  Sure, why not?  That kept me busy through December.

This year, the activities that fade are still being replaced, and those new activities are once again starting to fade themselves.  The school construction and ACMS projects are currently dormant, as well as the women's GIC, but those have been replaced with a "cross-sector collaboration" with Michele in Bamé a propos de water-borne diseases and well sanitation in the form of weekly animations at different wells in her village and a series of HIV/AIDS classes with my post mate's English classes at the Lagdo high school.  While the water sanitation animations will continue for the time being, the HIV/AIDS classes will be ending this coming week, leaving a glaring hole in my schedule.  Cameroonian "spring break" is also approaching, and after that, students are busy scrambling and studying for their exams, once again leaving working at the schools, elementary or high school, out of the running for work opportunities.  Despite the current heat, the rainy season is also fast approaching, which is traditionally the slowest time of the year for health PCVs, basically leaving me in the same position I was in a year ago: What am I going to do next?

While the DWFL policy has been working so far, it has its disadvantages.  The most glaring weakness to my plan is that as one thing fades and I'm not sure what will take it's place, I'm thrown into a constant state of despair based on total inactivity until the gap is filled.  There will be weeks at a time where I'll have no idea what I'll be doing a month or two from now.  This despondency is entirely my fault, though.  I made a conscious decision to forego having strong ties with the local hospital early on, and also given my avoidance of Gounougou and Djippordé's respective health centers because of CARE's presence, I was basically out of host organizations to partner with in the Lagdo Centre area, which has contributed immensely to my lack of long-term structure.  (Although I enjoy working in Bamé and at the health center there, it's a little too far out of the way to go there more than twice a week without completely ignoring Lagdo.  The closest thing I have to a work counterpart is Yotti, but that has its limits because he's first and foremost a merchant, and he's also the head of the main Grand North opposition party – the UNDP – to Paul Biya's RDPC, a fact he neglected to tell me until February.)  So, as the beginning of April approaches and my lack of new work is on the horizon, I eagerly await for something to FL.

Standing Fast: Is Anything Going On?

In case you missed it, a large chunk of Southern Cameroon descended into civil unrest last week.  It started ostensibly as a taxi driver strike in Yaoundé and Douala over rising fuel prices on Monday, February 23, but after a couple days, it evolved (or one could say devolved) into anger over President Paul Biya's desire to change the Cameroonian constitution to allow him to run for president again in 2011 and a general backlash against the vastly corrupt RDPC, Biya's party.

 

When the strikes were first announced, Peace Corps activated its "Emergency Action Plan" (EAP), a plan with code words and consolidation points when the merde hits the ventilateur, and we were on the first of three stages, "Alert."  The Alert stage is like Homeland Security's color-coded warning system: don't panic, whatever you do, do not panic, stay where you are, notify us if you see any Arabs with guns.  However, by Wednesday, February 28, the taxi strike was over, but then apparent general chaos ensued in certain cities.  There were looters, roadblocks, political protests, and police and gendarmes with itchy trigger fingers.  Yaoundé, Douala, Bamenda (things there sounded especially bad), Baffoussam, and Buea were the most affected cities.  For a couple days, the cities were entirely shut down.  Businesses were closed, and in addition to the sporadic violence, there was an eerie "ghost town phenomenon."  All told, at least 20 people were killed and hundreds arrested.

 

By this time, Wednesday the 25^th, Peace Corps put us on the second step of the EAP: Stand Fast, loosely translated as, "We really have no idea what is going to happen."  (We were also on stand fast during the weekend of municipal elections in July, but that seemed to be a "just in case" measure.)  While Alert is basically saying things could be a little dicey, Stand Fast means you can't leave wherever you are until further notice, and if you're at post, which I was (like a good PCV), you're supposed to pack an emergency bag and take inventory of all your crap, especially if Peace Corps Cameroon owns it.  Priorities.

 

(Now this is the part where I tell you how disconnected from the South the Grand North is.  According to the BBC World Service and Radio France International, "the entire country" was affected by these strikes/protests/riots.  They forgot to mention that Cameroon is more than Yaoundé, Douala, and the Anglophone provinces.  While there were whispers of potential strikes and protests happening up here, nothing materialized and life was going on as usual; weekly markets and transportation were running like normal.  If you didn't listen to the radio, you would have no idea that the South was shut down for a week.)

 

On the second or third night of the strikes (the 24^th or 25^th), Son Excellence Paul Biya made a speech urging calm and peace and said the demonstrations were being organized by "apprentice sorcerers."  Despite this spiel, Biya didn't really do much to quell dissent.  (Calling opposition party officials names doesn't usually help.)  Even though the taxi strikes were called off by syndicate leaders Wednesday, anti-government protests and looting continued, spreading past Yaoundé and Douala to the West and North-West provinces.  At some point over the weekend, all the PCVs in the NW were consolidated in Yaoundé (How?  I have no idea.  I decided it was due to white man sorcery.  No apprentices here, bitches.), and selected PCVs in the affected provinces went to their provincial consolidation points.  By Wednesday, March 5, however, things were normalized enough that PC downgraded us to Alert, and PCVs that were consolidated could start returning to post.

 

(Now this is the part where I tell you how disconnected from the South the Grand North is – again.)  There are a couple disconcerting things about this whole situation.  Primarily, we really had no idea what was happening.  Peace Corps did a good a job as they could keeping us informed – I was impressed – but being in a rural village in the North province doesn't help you know what's going on.  I was mainly worried that we, the Grand North PCVs, might be evacuated for events that were taking place hundreds of miles away.  (Around Friday and Saturday, the 29^th and 1^st, the chances of civil action coming to North still seemed possible, another reason to be anxious.)

 

The second thing that is worrying is that whatever happened last week couldn't possibly be the end of it in my opinion, even if they won't be manifested in the same manner.  The issues that were being raised aren't even close to being resolved, and if anything, it only reinforced the complete disconnect between Paul Biya and his RDPC cronies and the populace.  Even with the state-run media underreporting the details of the protests and trying to undermine the opposition, one could tell that something serious was happening.  (CRTV, the government's radio/TV station, referred to the looters as "the manipulated" and "angry youths," which maybe they were, but it only ignores the real issues.)  Biya never mentioned once the constitutional amendment in his speech and only antagonized the opposition by claiming that Cameroon has fully functioning democratic systems in place (and by calling them names, of course).  However, Biya benefits from two things: one is that the general public is surprisingly docile and conciliatory when it comes to the government.  People always like to say that Cameroon has been very peaceful for an African country, and it's true, even though people here have more than enough reason to go apeshit if they wanted to.  Also, the RDPC apparatus is strongly entrenched; it's been in power for 25 years, so they're not going to roll over easily.  Biya's political strategy has been to neutralize any opposition, and it's been very effective.  (The only opposition with teeth is the Social Democratic Front centered in the Anglophone provinces.)

 

All of this upheaval – to choose a metaphor, it's like a burp of protests – is interesting, especially given that Cameroonians have been really complacent for a long time, and these demonstrations (or chaos, I'm still not really sure) might just be scratching the surface.  But then I think about it for a second longer: it might be interesting, yes, but I'm living here.  It's not like I'm reading this in the New York Times from my living room couch in Kennesaw.  I was just in Yaoundé, Douala, and Buea, the places where the burps happened, in December and January.  I'm just on my little foreign sojourn that by chance put me in Cameroon, but people here are dealing with real issues in the actual place they live.  These burps reinforce that I'm just a temporary resident and the issues that Cameroon has to deal with existed before I came and will still be here when I leave.

"Pourquoi les blanc..."

(Part 2 of 2)

 

My post mate, who is a Small Enterprise Development (SED) PCV assigned to the local Lagdo bank, teaches English six hours a week at the lycée at the cinquième and sixième (5eme and 6eme from now on) levels, which is the rough equivalent of 8^th grade and 7^th grade, respectively.  For both of the classes, I'd say the ages of the students range from 12-17, and I might be being nice with the 17.

 

Anyway, on her invitation, I've started a 4-part HIV/AIDS course for one hour a week for each of the classes.  It's not much, but what else do I have going on?  The first week of the lessons was this last Monday and Tuesday, and overall, I have to say they were some of the rowdiest group of vagrants I've been around.  In Cameroon, if you spare the rod, and if you're as tranquil as my post mate, the children are literally crawling in and out of the windows.  I think they see her teaching as more of an oddity and also a rest from the beatdowns regularly given out by Cameroonian teachers.  Beatdowns or not, the students will still fail English.

 

This week's lesson was going over the different myths floating around Cameroon, and Africa in general, and the realities of HIV/AIDS in an activity cleverly entitled "The Realities and Myths of HIV/AIDS."  (Despite it being an English class, I'm doing the lessons in French because the students wouldn't be able to understand otherwise.)  In the activity, Vanessa (my post mate) and I read out different statements about HIV/AIDS, and the students had to decide if they were true or false; after the students decided on all of them, I went through and discussed them and made any changes that were necessary.  Here are some examples of common myths about HIV/AIDS that some Africans believe (pay attention, crackers):

 

·        Traditional healers have cured AIDS.

·        You can cure AIDS if you have sex with a virgin.

·        (Pay attention, crackers)  AIDS was invented by white people.

·        (Pay attention, crackers)  AIDS was invented by white people to diminish the African population.

·        Only white people get AIDS.  (Logic doesn't have to be involved with these myths.)

·        The reason why white people tell Africans to wear condoms is because white people put AIDS in the condoms.  Also, the condoms with AIDS were shipped to Douala, Cameroon's main port.  Just an fyi.

 

In addition to these examples, there were more myths, and in general, the kids seemed to know which of the different phrases were true and which were false… except the part about white people inventing AIDS.

 

Nearly all the questions the students asked, even after we discussed them and moved them to the correct side of the board, were about white people and the invention of AIDS.  Cameroonians really think we're devious, people.  When the question "Porquoi les blancs inventent le SIDA?" was asked, and I would respond, "If white people invented AIDS, why do white people have AIDS?" the next question would invariably be, "Who invented AIDS?"  After saying, "I'm not sure that it was invented.  God?"  (Leave the mysteries, or my ignorance really, to Jesus.), the kids would still ask about white people and inventing AIDS.  Of course, by the time the Q & A period began, there was so much noise in the classroom that the students couldn't hear each other or weren't paying attention anymore, so the same questions were repeated.  But it was uncanny that nearly every one of them started, "Porquoi les blancs…"

That'll Be Three Cows, Please.

 (Part 1 of 2)

 

One of the questions I'm surprised I haven't gotten in your emails, etc., is this: How much does it cost to marry a 14-year-old Toupouri girl?  Here's your answer: 100,000 cfa and three cows.

 

I found this out a couple weeks ago.  One of the guards in the compound recently started coming on a bike, and he explained to me how he got the bike even though I didn't ask him, which in turn led to a mini life history.

 

Antoine, the guard, has had three wives and at least eight children, four girls and four boys.  Before he was a guard, he worked at the pharmacy at the hospital, and for whatever reason, he stopped working there.  (Whenever leaving a job at the hospital here, the story is always a little hazy.)  Since he didn't have a job, two wives left him, and somewhere along the line he picked up the third one, or maybe the third one was always there.  Either way, right now he has the guard job, one wife, and at least eight children.

 

Some guy who goes to university in N'gaoundéré but is from a village near Lagdo apparently saw Antoine's 14-year-old daughter at last year's Independence Day (May 20) parade in Lagdo, making her most likely 13 at the time.  This guy, a college student who is at least 22 or 23 (conservative estimate), was apparently so smitten by this girl that he finally asked Antoine if he could marry his daughter.  Antoine says that his daughter, not really him, readily agreed to the marriage and to voluntarily quit school.  Antoine got 100,000 cfa (approximately $200) and three cows from the university student.  He gave the 100 mil to his daughter to buy whatever she needs to start life as a housewife, while he went and sold one of the cows at the Ngong market for 200 mil.  He used the 200 mil to buy a horse that he'll use for his plow and to buy a bicycle.  He still has the two other cows and seven children in the house, while his daughter is at her husband's village in Bessoum on the other side of the dam waiting for the husband while he's at school.

 

Stories like this don't really surprise me anymore, but they're still shocking if only because they sharply contrast just about anything that would pass as sociably acceptable in the Western world.  Just the age of the girl raises two issues in an American setting: First, this situation is technically rape; second, it's illegal in the States for her to quit school.  Here in Cameroon, a lot more common in Northern Cameroon and rural areas than the Grand South, girls are constantly married off as teenagers and very rarely aren't forced to quit school if they're attending.

 

Another issue that this raises is that as PCVs in the North/rural villages, we're surrounded by wife beaters, statutory rapists, and polygamists – some men are the trifecta – and what can we really do?  Who am I to start preaching?  (Missionaries have been ignoring that rhetorical question since the late 1400s.)  It seems that a PCV's role is more subtlety than soapbox.  For example, PCVs do projects that encourage girls' participation and empowerment and family planning, even if the message goes in one ear and out the other with some audiences (boys, men, males, dudes, etc.), but we don't actually say, "Stop what you're doing, asshole."  That's something communities have to work out for themselves, in addition to being prodded by Westerners of course. 

 

 

(Note:  Polygamy is more common in the Northern part of the country, not limited to Muslims, and almost unheard of in some parts of Cameroon.  It seems that the more educated the population is, the more polygamy is looked down upon.  The Grand North is also the area of the country where women are the least educated, possibly another example of the correlation between the perceived modernity and economic level of a place – oil-producing countries the exception – and the educational level of girls.)