COS Conference and Tanzania
It's been a busy last few weeks – "busy" being relative, but it included a week in Tanzania and lots of quality Yaoundé time with lots of volunteers. We'll "Tarantino it" and go backwards.
COS Conference
After Tanzania and a couple days to kill at the case, it was time for COS Conference, which is the unofficial beginning of the end of a PCV's career. PC kind of spared no expense by putting us up in the second nicest hotel in Yaoundé, the Mont Fébé (the nicest being the Hilton). The hotel is on the side of a hill looking over the city, which, from a bird's-eye perspective, actually looks kind of nice (don't be fooled). Also, it's located in a nice area of town near the American embassy, the quartier where all of Yaoundé's ex-pats live, the presidential palace, the national assembly, and a home for the tasteless Chantal Biya, the First Lady. The biggest plus about the accommodation side of the Fébé was the free wireless Internet, although the signal strength varied from room to room.
For the conference itself, it was basically an explanation of what we have to do before leaving post and being cleared to leave. We chose our dates to go home, filled out a bunch of paperwork, and talked about our posts and whether or not we wanted to be replaced. There was also a session in which we, the PCVs, gave constructive criticism on different aspects of PC Cameroon administration, which was an exercise in tact and restraint. (For example, how to nicely say that while we, the PCVs, who all the admin is working for essentially, are expected to be respectful and control our emotions with staff, the staff can fling attitude in our direction left and right, which sometimes they do.)
Three sessions stand out from the whole conference, two made by people at the embassy. The first embassy guy was, to put it politely, a huge prick. He works in the consular section of the embassy, so he is in charge of visa approvals. He was perhaps the most jaded and dry person we've encountered. To give him some credit, he gets to see the worst side of Cameroonians every day, mainly the desperate hustler side, but he didn't seem to care at all about the country he was in. He was also frustratingly vague about the requirements for visas, directing us to their embassy website but also saying that there aren't any set rules, only that there is an interview fee of $131, which means that an illiterate peanut farmer from Lagdo has as much of a theoretical chance as a guy top in his class at the University of Yaoundé to get a visa if they can fork over the fee, something that can't possibly be true.
Luckily, another, more jovial person from the embassy talked to us. This second guy was the head of Human Resources at the embassy, and he gave us a presentation about looking for a job upon our return. He made sure to tell us that he doing a condensed version of a $500 seminar that people usually signed up for, and it was really helpful. For instance, I had no idea what an informational interview was before he told us. He pulled no punches in telling us how little time we have to make an impression on potential employers. He worked off of a job search book which he gave us copies of, which will help only help to overwhelm me and make my head spin whenever I peruse it here at post. Overall, the session was instructive, very terrifying, and left a better taste in our collective mouths than Little Miss Sunshine from the consular section.
After the HR guy, the next session was the most interesting of the conference: a RPCV panel. (These three sessions happened to be on the last afternoon of the last day of the conference.) The panel consisted of six RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) who recounted their post-PC experiences and basically gave their post-PC biographies. Three of the six currently work for Peace Corps Cameroon, the country director and the Health and Small Enterprise Development APCDs (both APCDs were PCVs in Cameroon, with one girl from my stage posted at our Health APCD's old village – no pressure), one was a recent RPCV that a PCV from my training group replaced, another was a PCV in Ghana and now works for the CDC, and lastly, there was the second-in-command at the US embassy who was a PCV in Thailand back in the day. Granted, all six haven't had typical RPCV experiences because they've chosen to continue to live and work overseas ("to be bitten by the bug"), but they all talked about a common theme: readjustment will be hard. There seemed to be a lot of brooding, frantic job searches, and amazement at American supermarkets during their readjustment, and nearly all six spoke of the loneliness that they felt back in the States, leading all of us to laugh nervously hoping they weren't serious but knowing they were. The most interesting aspect of the panel was that while their lives wandered from here to there, they all had one thing in common: everything they're doing now is directly related to their PC service, a somewhat obvious revelation on my part, yes, but it has helped me to start wrapping my head around coming back to the States and putting Peace Corps in perspective and knowing things will work out, even if I'll be afraid of malls and the pet food aisle for a few months.
Tanzania
To give you an idea of how much more developed the tourist infrastructure in Tanzania is compared to Cameroon, here are two examples. First, the airports in Yaoundé and Dar es Salaam. While the Yaoundé airport is a big cement building with ample cavernous space that resembles the Bat Cave's storage warehouse, Dar's is breezy and lets in beaucoup sunlight. (It doesn't help my perception of Yaoundé since I've only been there, on arrival and departure, at night due to international flight schedules.) The second example is the difference in safaris. Upon our first ten minutes in Lake Manyara in Tanzania, our first day of safari ("safari" means destination in Swahili, by the way), we saw more animals than in whole daytrips to Cameroon's leading wildlife park, Waza. We instantly saw so many giraffes, elephants, zebras, warthogs, and a slew of other creatures that it was hard to know where to look first.
It's almost unfair to compare the tourism industries in Tanzania and Cameroon. First, Tanzania, specifically the northern part of the country, is unique geographically. It's the start of the Great Rift Valley, has Mount Kilimanjaro, is in the middle of a huge animal migration area, and has a pleasant climate (at least when we went). It has also historically caught the imagination of Westerners for all the reasons listed above. Second, Cameroon is just shabby compared to the investments and upkeep that Tanzania has done. Although I'm sure Tanzania has its host of problems, Cameroon's are more obvious after being able to see the flip side of African tourism. You can tell Tanzania has taken a long-range view of its resources. It's cultivated a large animal population, invested heavily in its infrastructure (roads, Western luxuries like running water), and seems to have a good, beneficial relationship between the government, NGOs, and private tour agencies; everyone seems to realize that if they all collaborate, the money will start pouring in, and it has.
Cameroon has taken a short-term view, if you want to even give them the benefit of the doubt that they've taken any look at all. With some exceptions, I'm thinking Mount Cameroon, places are just left to their own devices. For example, the Lagon Blue that's here in Lagdo, a hotel that's designed for tourists on the lake. The road leading to the hotel is unpaved and gets worse and worse every year. I've been there a couple times with visiting PCVs since the rains started this year, and the moto ride is becoming painful because of all the bumps. Part of the road goes through Djippordé, the market village on the lake, so you'd think it'd be in everyone's best interest that the road is somewhat maintained, at least smoothed once a year. Of course it hasn't happened. Once you get to the Lagon Blue, it's in dire need of a paint job, and there's a gazebo a hundred meters or so out in the lake. You can walk out there by a footbridge – well, you could, but it's been broken for over a year and not yet fixed. (The difference between what it is acceptable for a hotel or a resort in Tanzania or Cameroon is remarkable. If the Lagon Blue were in Tanzania, it would be forced to keep everything top-notch because a neighboring hotel would pop up next door and knock it out of business, but since that doesn't happen here, you either take what you can get and be happy with it or try to find someplace else less sketchy.)
Our vacation was really nice, but as you can tell by this entry, a conversational theme amongst the four of us was a can't-help-but-shit-on-Cameroon attitude. We didn't want to, but the differences were frustratingly (from a Cameroon point of view) stark. I forget where I was sometimes in Tanzania, and I had to pinch myself, especially in Zanzibar, to remember we were still on the same continent.
COS Conference
After Tanzania and a couple days to kill at the case, it was time for COS Conference, which is the unofficial beginning of the end of a PCV's career. PC kind of spared no expense by putting us up in the second nicest hotel in Yaoundé, the Mont Fébé (the nicest being the Hilton). The hotel is on the side of a hill looking over the city, which, from a bird's-eye perspective, actually looks kind of nice (don't be fooled). Also, it's located in a nice area of town near the American embassy, the quartier where all of Yaoundé's ex-pats live, the presidential palace, the national assembly, and a home for the tasteless Chantal Biya, the First Lady. The biggest plus about the accommodation side of the Fébé was the free wireless Internet, although the signal strength varied from room to room.
For the conference itself, it was basically an explanation of what we have to do before leaving post and being cleared to leave. We chose our dates to go home, filled out a bunch of paperwork, and talked about our posts and whether or not we wanted to be replaced. There was also a session in which we, the PCVs, gave constructive criticism on different aspects of PC Cameroon administration, which was an exercise in tact and restraint. (For example, how to nicely say that while we, the PCVs, who all the admin is working for essentially, are expected to be respectful and control our emotions with staff, the staff can fling attitude in our direction left and right, which sometimes they do.)
Three sessions stand out from the whole conference, two made by people at the embassy. The first embassy guy was, to put it politely, a huge prick. He works in the consular section of the embassy, so he is in charge of visa approvals. He was perhaps the most jaded and dry person we've encountered. To give him some credit, he gets to see the worst side of Cameroonians every day, mainly the desperate hustler side, but he didn't seem to care at all about the country he was in. He was also frustratingly vague about the requirements for visas, directing us to their embassy website but also saying that there aren't any set rules, only that there is an interview fee of $131, which means that an illiterate peanut farmer from Lagdo has as much of a theoretical chance as a guy top in his class at the University of Yaoundé to get a visa if they can fork over the fee, something that can't possibly be true.
Luckily, another, more jovial person from the embassy talked to us. This second guy was the head of Human Resources at the embassy, and he gave us a presentation about looking for a job upon our return. He made sure to tell us that he doing a condensed version of a $500 seminar that people usually signed up for, and it was really helpful. For instance, I had no idea what an informational interview was before he told us. He pulled no punches in telling us how little time we have to make an impression on potential employers. He worked off of a job search book which he gave us copies of, which will help only help to overwhelm me and make my head spin whenever I peruse it here at post. Overall, the session was instructive, very terrifying, and left a better taste in our collective mouths than Little Miss Sunshine from the consular section.
After the HR guy, the next session was the most interesting of the conference: a RPCV panel. (These three sessions happened to be on the last afternoon of the last day of the conference.) The panel consisted of six RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) who recounted their post-PC experiences and basically gave their post-PC biographies. Three of the six currently work for Peace Corps Cameroon, the country director and the Health and Small Enterprise Development APCDs (both APCDs were PCVs in Cameroon, with one girl from my stage posted at our Health APCD's old village – no pressure), one was a recent RPCV that a PCV from my training group replaced, another was a PCV in Ghana and now works for the CDC, and lastly, there was the second-in-command at the US embassy who was a PCV in Thailand back in the day. Granted, all six haven't had typical RPCV experiences because they've chosen to continue to live and work overseas ("to be bitten by the bug"), but they all talked about a common theme: readjustment will be hard. There seemed to be a lot of brooding, frantic job searches, and amazement at American supermarkets during their readjustment, and nearly all six spoke of the loneliness that they felt back in the States, leading all of us to laugh nervously hoping they weren't serious but knowing they were. The most interesting aspect of the panel was that while their lives wandered from here to there, they all had one thing in common: everything they're doing now is directly related to their PC service, a somewhat obvious revelation on my part, yes, but it has helped me to start wrapping my head around coming back to the States and putting Peace Corps in perspective and knowing things will work out, even if I'll be afraid of malls and the pet food aisle for a few months.
Tanzania
To give you an idea of how much more developed the tourist infrastructure in Tanzania is compared to Cameroon, here are two examples. First, the airports in Yaoundé and Dar es Salaam. While the Yaoundé airport is a big cement building with ample cavernous space that resembles the Bat Cave's storage warehouse, Dar's is breezy and lets in beaucoup sunlight. (It doesn't help my perception of Yaoundé since I've only been there, on arrival and departure, at night due to international flight schedules.) The second example is the difference in safaris. Upon our first ten minutes in Lake Manyara in Tanzania, our first day of safari ("safari" means destination in Swahili, by the way), we saw more animals than in whole daytrips to Cameroon's leading wildlife park, Waza. We instantly saw so many giraffes, elephants, zebras, warthogs, and a slew of other creatures that it was hard to know where to look first.
It's almost unfair to compare the tourism industries in Tanzania and Cameroon. First, Tanzania, specifically the northern part of the country, is unique geographically. It's the start of the Great Rift Valley, has Mount Kilimanjaro, is in the middle of a huge animal migration area, and has a pleasant climate (at least when we went). It has also historically caught the imagination of Westerners for all the reasons listed above. Second, Cameroon is just shabby compared to the investments and upkeep that Tanzania has done. Although I'm sure Tanzania has its host of problems, Cameroon's are more obvious after being able to see the flip side of African tourism. You can tell Tanzania has taken a long-range view of its resources. It's cultivated a large animal population, invested heavily in its infrastructure (roads, Western luxuries like running water), and seems to have a good, beneficial relationship between the government, NGOs, and private tour agencies; everyone seems to realize that if they all collaborate, the money will start pouring in, and it has.
Cameroon has taken a short-term view, if you want to even give them the benefit of the doubt that they've taken any look at all. With some exceptions, I'm thinking Mount Cameroon, places are just left to their own devices. For example, the Lagon Blue that's here in Lagdo, a hotel that's designed for tourists on the lake. The road leading to the hotel is unpaved and gets worse and worse every year. I've been there a couple times with visiting PCVs since the rains started this year, and the moto ride is becoming painful because of all the bumps. Part of the road goes through Djippordé, the market village on the lake, so you'd think it'd be in everyone's best interest that the road is somewhat maintained, at least smoothed once a year. Of course it hasn't happened. Once you get to the Lagon Blue, it's in dire need of a paint job, and there's a gazebo a hundred meters or so out in the lake. You can walk out there by a footbridge – well, you could, but it's been broken for over a year and not yet fixed. (The difference between what it is acceptable for a hotel or a resort in Tanzania or Cameroon is remarkable. If the Lagon Blue were in Tanzania, it would be forced to keep everything top-notch because a neighboring hotel would pop up next door and knock it out of business, but since that doesn't happen here, you either take what you can get and be happy with it or try to find someplace else less sketchy.)
Our vacation was really nice, but as you can tell by this entry, a conversational theme amongst the four of us was a can't-help-but-shit-on-Cameroon attitude. We didn't want to, but the differences were frustratingly (from a Cameroon point of view) stark. I forget where I was sometimes in Tanzania, and I had to pinch myself, especially in Zanzibar, to remember we were still on the same continent.
posted by James Clarence @ 4:16 AM
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