Last Post

First of all, I'd like to congratulate Guy Ritchie.  To quote Ron White, "I married into a rich family.  If you ever have the chance, go ahead."

Second, this is my last blog post as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I finished up my service and have been back in the good ol' Etats-Unis since Saturday evening.  I'm just getting over the jet lag and still haven't figured out I'm actually here yet.  Here's a short list of what I've been doing and observing these last few days:

•    Freezing – Mon dieu, it's cold

•    Lots of pickles – Way too many pickle choices at the grocery store

•    Trying to find bargaining angles – I have to remind myself I can't bargain for tomatoes anymore

•    The power of Google – Whenever a question pops in my head, I used to say, "Hey, I'm gonna [bleeping] Google that [bleep]."  Now, I actually can.

•    How fast YouTube videos load – It's really incredible, like Google

•    Catching up on T-Pain songs – Love the new hat

•    Not worrying about small change – Vendors always have change.  Amazing!

I won't be continuing the blog because the second I stepped on the plane in Yaoundé, I became less interesting.  Sure, I'll be talking a lot about Cameroon, but my day-to-day life in America doesn't make for good blogging, except for me describing how a part of me decays every time I walk into a box store.

I just want to thank everyone who has read the blog and/or has written to me these last two years, whether through the blog, Facebook, email, or snail mail.  It really meant a lot to me to hear from you while being away for such a long time.  If you still have a fix for Peace Corps blogs, check out Phil's or the link on the right side of the page for all the PC blogs you could ever want.

Merci beaucoup!  Sey yeeso.

Dockworkers, Joe Johnson, Shit Street

NOTE: This entry is what I wrote in Cameroon, but never finished.  "COS Week" is incomplete, but since this entry is my Special Edition Deluxe Bonus Tracks Exclusive, here 'tis.

Celebrating Department Stores and Dockworkers, Bitches

Yeah, you know what this is
It's a celebration, bitches
    - Kanye West

Career opportunity, the one that never knocks
Every job they offer you is to keep you off the docks
    - The Clash

We got department stores and toilet paper
Got Styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
    - Neil Young

The Clash, Kanye West, and Neil Young capture these next two weeks.  On one hand, I've left post for the final time and start my final two weeks in country, 28+ months of being in the Peace Corps, a proud achievement to be sure.  On the other mano, I have to go back to America and find a job.  Damn the Man, but let's have a few "33"s at the bar first.

I've spent this last week watching Season 2 of Entourage, celebrating Turkey Day in Ngong, enjoying Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman in Air Force One ("Get off my plane!"), and upending my house.  The packing is a little overwhelming because I have to figure out what to do with everything in my house since I'm not being replaced.  I have a preset amount of space in my traveling bags, so once that is taken care of, what to do with the rest?  Some of it I'm giving to the guards and Rose, my cleaning lady, things like buckets and towels and empty water bottles; other stuff is going to volunteers, even my fridge, which a PCV in Garoua picked up a few days ago in Lagdo with the help of an American Baptist missionary, and will be put in the Garoua office; but whatever's left, I don't know.

The itinerary for the week: Garoua, two nights in N'gaoundéré, Meiganga, two nights in Bertoua, Yaoundé for the duration.

Prediction Reflection

I was going through my old entries saved on my computer and came across my 2008 NBA playoffs and MLB season predictions, and I was about half right – kinda.

With the NBA, I said Boston would annihilate Atlanta in a "merciless sweep" and would beat the Lakers in the Final.  First, I guessed right that Atlanta would when the Someone Has To Take It spot in the NBA playoffs: the 8th seed in the Eastern Conference, easily the worst team that makes the playoffs.  The Celtics did beat Atlanta but in seven games, and Boston beat Kobe in six games I believe, so not too bad.

Baseball.  I got 3/4 of the NL playoff teams right (Phillies, Dodgers, Brewers), although the Phillies got the division and not the wild card, which the Brewers ended up getting.  In the AL, I got half of them right in the wrong positions (Red Sox, Angels).  Boston got the wild card, not the East, while the Angels got the West.  World Series?  Way off.  I had the Tigers beating the Brewers in six.

What's to be learned from all of this?  Kind of like Anchorman, I correctly predict these things half the time all the time.

COS Week

A familiar site during COS (and Mid-Service) week: groups of volunteers taking taxis darting around Yaoundé holding bags of their own poop.  We have to poop in a cup two or three times, and those chalices of shyte have to be transferred to a lab downtown for various tests.  In addition to that, we have a normal physical and a dental exam; exit interviews with our APCD and the Country Director; and a lot of paperwork.

The week has been sort of organized.  Before COS Conference in August, Peace Corps gave us a booklet with a bunch of forms to fill out that were due by the conference or during our last week in Yaoundé.  We turned in a bunch of them at the conference, and all those forms were promptly returned to us on our arrival in Yaoundé this week.  In the booklet, there's also a two-page checklist we have to get signed by various admin officials by Friday.  A large chunk of the checklist are the papers that were returned to us...

Girls Education Conference - Photo Gallery

Here is a photo gallery from the Lagdo retour of the Girls Conference. (I know, I keep using the soccer analogy.) The quality of the photos isn't that good, which I'll blame on lighting and not Harvard, but by my associating him with the quality of photos that aren't that good, I thereby implicate him.

Me opening this shindig up.

Close up

From left (front row): The Mayor, Sous-préfet, high school principal, and elementary school principal

Monsieur le Sous-préfet

Squeezed out in the earlier photo, the UNHCR rep in the pink

Family Photo at the mayor's house. Some of these folks weren't even invited.

Girls Education Conference – Ça va aller

Part I

A week after the soccer game (see previous post "Girls Conference This Sunday… Er, Next Sunday"), the "Caravane pour l'education de la jeune fille" went off pretty much without a hitch.

The Friday and Saturday before the original date of the Girls Conference, I had run out of things to do; all I had to do was show up.  Now with the conference pushed back a week, I really had nothing to do for the whole week leading up to it.  I made and printed out new flyers to pass out and re-lined up the speakers, while Yotti helped to make and pass out invitations.  (In Lagdo, people are picky about community-wide meetings they attend and won't show up if not invited.)

On the day of the event, everything couldn't have gone smoother.  Yotes and I (I never say Yotti "Yotes" – like "note" – aloud, just in my head.) went by the mayor's house and found out he was actually going to speak, and then we went to the meeting hall expecting to have to bust some heads to get the room arranged in time, but when we got there, all the chairs were set up, the floor was swept, and the sound equipment was there and just needed to be plugged in.  Excellent!  So, I went home, made a few changes to the speech I would give to welcome everybody and killed some time.  (Harvard wrote the speech, I just changed "Ngong" to "Lagdo" wherever necessary.)

Part II

Since it's Cameroon, no one really showed up until between 30-60 minutes after the advertised time, but since it's Cameroon, there were two or three people who came right at 13h00 and sat there in silence for another 90 minutes.  The speakers were relatively punctual, so all I had to do was wait for an audience to arrive.

I was really nervous leading up to the program about attendance.  Sending out invitations and posting flyers and making announcements in churches in the morning possibly wasn't enough.  I stood outside watching the road to see who was pulling up or walking in, and a dozen or so invitees wandered in, but there were still weren't many.  Then I saw a group of high school-aged girls walking in our direction, and lo and behold, they came in.  Then a couple other groups of girls arrived and watched the program after the first, so we were really happy about that.  (In Ngong, most of the not officially invited people were kids and dudes wandering by the elementary school it was at.)  Yotti told me later that the girls live in his quartier, so he cajoled them into coming.  Way to go, Yotes!

So, all told, there were about 60 in the audience, half of them young women from the high school, not as many as I hoped but good for a rescheduled event on a Sunday afternoon.  (It would have been preferable to have it on Saturday, but that's market day.)

I called the mayor so he and the sous-préfet could head over to the meeting room (they don't arrive until everything is set up so they can arrive and immediately start), and the three speakers got up on the dais and Harvard and I greeted the officials, and we were off.

I made my eloquent, impassioned welcoming speech, bringing tears to the eyes of even the most hardened cotton farmers in attendance and sprinkling "yes, we cans" (Oui, nous pouvons.) at appropriate moments until the whole room got up and walked the streets in support of sending their girls to school.  You really had to be there.  After I finished, the mayor, who was on deck, was visibly shaking and sweating with fear.  How could he follow that up?  But he was courageous and emoted off of a handful of talking points, and then he passed the baton to the sous-préfet, who officially opened up our caravan in support of girls in school and Peace Corps.  Change we can believe in.

The high school principal gave a wandering speech, but he did link up a lack of education and prostitution, a really good point.  The second speech was the directrice of a local primary school.  When I approached her to speak, she was really excited to spout some wisdom on the subject of the benefits of an educated women in the context of the home, mainly that a women who is educated can make better decisions financially and for their children's health, as well as someone who's more likely to instill the value of education in their kids.  She was a good speaker, and I think she was the most looking forward to the caravan.

The final speaker was a woman who is an administrative assistant at the UNHCR office in Garoua.  (United Nations High Commission on Refugees – there is a Chadian refugee camp outside of Pitoa, 30k or so from Garoua.  Have I not mentioned that before?  Anyway…) The audience loved her speech.  It went over so well because she obviously killed while in school and matter-of-factly gave a history of her education and work history.  High school at the best high schools in the north (applause); graduated from university in Yaoundé (applause); two years working at a call box (where you sell cell phone credit), then a sweet job with the UN in Cameroon, traveling all the country (applause); all that while married to a supportive husband and raising four kids and putting them all through school (applause).  The audience loved it; they reacted the same way when she spoke in Ngong.  Despite all the problems with education in Cameroon, people really do appreciate a successful person who took school seriously and make something of themselves.  And she was from the North province to boot!  It really hit home.

After the three official speakers were finished, there was a discussion session for the audience, where they could ask a question or just add their two cents.  Some of the questions were a little awkward ("Mr. Principal, what can we do about school fees?  When we can't afford to send our kids to school?"  I think he evaded the question.); pretty good, like what concrete results we want from this event; but most questions were about Peace Corps' role in all of this.  I had to give a little spiel about Peace Corps' sustainable development goals, and explain to the primary school superintendent in the audience that, "No, Peace Corps can't do anything to improve elementary school test scores."  (I think these questions were just indirect demands for money.  Whenever someone who doesn't know what Peace Corps is asks what PC can do for such-and-such, that's what they really mean.  And now I can't take the superintendent seriously.)  But the main theme, from our (Peace Corps) view, of the discussion was that this event is only one thing in a long-range development goal of the UN, Peace Corps, international NGOs, and the Cameroonian government itself to increase girls' education participation.  There is only so much Westerners can do; we can't force you to enroll your child in school or make your school's test records look better to your boss.

However, the discussion showed to me that people are interested in the subject and that there are a lot of issues to tackle, mainly cultural I think.  The Ngong high school principal at the Ngong "aller" said that out of 1500 students at his school, only 200 are girls.  That kind of disparity is not just a financial thing. 

After the Lagdo event, people were still talking about it at the mayor's house (we had food there after it was over), with a big discussion with the mayor himself and a couple school officials on education funding in Lagdo, not a normal occurrence, highlighted by the mayor going line by line on different things the commune is funding. (Even though I think the mayor has stolen a lot of money, he is one charismatic and smart SOB and a good politician.  That's a nice way of saying he's a crook, n'est-ce pas?)

Overall, the Caravan went really well.  At both of the events, attendance was not what we hoped it would be, but it's pretty hard to get people to go to things, especially something that's basically a lecture series.  We had about 60 people in Lagdo and 100 in Ngong, so Ngong really benefited from holding the event outdoors and having it on Saturday and not Sunday.  Having high school girls there really made up for the lack of people in general in Lagdo, however.  The speakers did a better job than Harvard and I thought they would, especially the UNHCR lady.  I was really happy with the mayor's support in Lagdo, allowing us to use the meeting hall, supplying the sound system for free, and using his house for food afterwards; with him and the sous-préfet themselves being there, it really added a lot of weight to the event.

I think this project reinforced to me what Peace Corps Volunteers can hope to achieve in their work: tight messages on a small group of people.  Given Peace Corps lack of funds and an unfocused overall vision, PCVs in the field succeed best when they work within a sector of their community and give clear and concise counsel and present new ideas in a careful way, so we can get support from within the community.  We're not going to change the mentality of certain people with one meeting, but we're laying the groundwork by encouraging those who understand to lead by example.

Girls Conference This Sunday... Er, Next Sunday

Here's An Idea

Why don't the Democrats and Republicans use some of the Bailout money to enroll middle and upper management at US car companies in business classes?  They can't run their companies for shit.  That'll save the government $24.98 billion (out of 25) that can be used to construct Obama's White House basketball court and take care of their new dog.  The dog, by the way, must be named Maverick or Joe the Plumber.

Girls Conference This Sunday… Er, Next Sunday

The ironic thing is that I ended up going to the game.

I was doing my last rounds of protocol the Thursday before the Girls Education Conference two weeks ago (November 13) when I found about the biggest soccer game in Cameroon since the African Cup of Nations in February.  This soccer game just happened to be held in Garoua and the opponent just happened to be an Egyptian team featuring most of the Egyptian national team, the country that was Cameroon's opponent in the final during ACN.  (Egypt opened a can of whoop-ass on Cameroon during the final.)  And this game was also taking place on the same day as the Lagdo leg of the Girls Conference.  I found all of this out when the mayor himself told me. Whoops.

My first reaction to this news was, "Merde!"  When I went to Yotti's a few minutes after, his reaction was, "Merde!  Merde, merde, merde."  All of our flyers were posted around town; the announcements for the churches were already handed out; the speakers were lined up; all that was left was the event itself.

The game was the "retour" leg of the Africa Champion's League final between Coton Sports of Garoua and Al Alhi du Caire, which means "Derka derka derka" in Arabic.  (Team America reference there, not a dislike of Arabs – that dislike is saved for Christian and Muslim Cameroonians, who have a less than high opinion of our Middle Eastern friends.)  The Champion's League is set up just like Europe's: the top club teams on the continent play a tournament over several months to see who's the best professional team and how much revenue sponsors can generate.  Somehow Coton Sports, owned by SODECOTON, made it all the way to the finals, and after getting drubbed 0-2 in Cairo in the "aller", had a slight chance to upset an Egyptian powerhouse.  On the day of the Girls Conference, no less.

From Thursday, when I found out about the game, to Saturday, the Ngong "aller" of the Conference, I kept telling myself that our event was still gonna happen.  When I talked to Amadou, the Garoua PC rep, in Ngong, he said definitively that the Lagdo "retour" had to be pushed back.  I agreed – I always knew it would be but had been delaying the inevitable – and made some calls to put the word out that it was being pushed to Monday.  When I got back to Lagdo that night, Yotti and I changed the church announcements and agreed to meet at my house at 8 the next morning to meet the sous-prefet and the mayor.

Yotti had the foresight to do a preliminary visit to the mayor before coming to see me, and the mayor told him definitively that the Girls Conference had to be moved to the next weekend.  What was up this time was an annual provincial "agro-pastoral" expo that happened to be happening in Lagdo last week, an event that's basically a farmer's tradeshow, which conjures up a funny image of Cameroonian fishermen and peanut farmers signing in at a welcome table to receive name tags in an air-conditioned room.  This tradeshow is a big deal, so there was no question the Girls Conference had to change again, this time for a more legit reason than a soccer game.

And the ironic thing about the soccer game is that I ended up going to the thing.  I was free Sunday and Monday morning now because of the delay, so I tagged along with some volunteers and nearly all the trainees in Garoua to see the biggest bandwagon joining I've ever seen.  Of course, I wasn't in the States to witness the 2007 Rockies and 2008 Devil Rays, but this is what it must have looked like.  I have never heard anyone talk about Coton Sport ever until the Thursday before the match.  I have never seen anyone wear anything with Coton Sport on it until the day of the match.  And when I left Lagdo Sunday morning, after Yotti and I went to every church to tell them not to read the announcement, everyone was wearing white and green and talking about Coton Sport like they were Dodgers fans in 1952 that listened to the game on the radio every night.  Pitiful. 

The game was being made into a huge deal, which I guess it was, with the Prime Minister himself attending the game and a continental TV audience, all in Garoua, an eyesore of a provincial capital it must be said.  (With the PM, they did the thing they do with grands at parades here: the PM is driven to the front of the stands where he'll be sitting so everyone has to stand up and see him as he goes to his seat.  The PM was being driven in the nicest Mercedes I've seen in two years.  That car could probably buy enough books for every student in Lagdo two times over.  And, who knows, that's probably what that money was originally for.  I won't miss this kind of thing about Cameroon.)  The stadium was packed, and unfortunately our seats were in the sun, but fortunately they were only 500 francs: $1.25 for a final game.  Also unfortunately is that there aren't actually seats, just row upon row of hot cement, so people came armed with things to sit on; I brought a GRE practice book while others brought the LSAT or French Grammar. 

Based on the goal aggregate system, the team with the most goals after the two matches wins (if the score is tied, the first tiebreaker is whomever has the most away goals), and Egypt started off the game with a 2-0 advantage.  For Cameroon to win, they would have to win by three goals.  The first half finished tied 1-1, with the Coton Sport goal coming right at halftime.  (Aggregate score: 3-1 Egypt, Egypt with one away goal.)  Coton scored a goal twenty minutes into the second half, and people went nuts, and I actually started to believe that maybe they could get 'er done.  (3-2 on aggregate.)  After a couple more shots on goal, Egypt started to get control of the ball again, and scored the final goal of the game on a penalty kick (4-2, two away goals), putting the nail in the coffin.  People started leaving the stadium shrugging their shoulders because no one really cared and the Egyptians celebrated, their small contingent of fans making a lot of noise, setting off flares, and someone inexplicably waving a Japanese flag.  I then started to re-plan my Girls Conference.

Girls Education Conference

The Girl's Education Conference (Or is it Girls'?  I'm apostrophically confused.) is right around the corner:  this Sunday at 13h at the Salle Polyvalente de la Commune de Lagdo.  You should come if you're in the area.  Here's what has been up with the preparations:

 

Harvard and I changed the name of the darn thing, that's the first thing we did.  It used to be a "moto tour", but since there are actually no motos involved during any part of the traveling between Ngong and Lagdo, someone in Yaoundé changed it to a Girls Education "Caravan".  This, to me, conjures up images of crossing the desert or plowing through Indian jungles on elephants, but there will be no animals involved except for the stray pig or goat that walks by the building.

 

Besides innocuous details like the name, a lot of tedious protocol has been the ordre du jour the last couple of weeks.  Yotti and I have been presenting letters to the sous-prefet, mayor, high school principal, and local doctor to participate in the event.  What we want them to do is to have each give a speech on the importance of girls' education.  The first three are all d'accord, and I think the sous-prefet, being new and wanting to impress the white people, is especially looking forward to it, but the doctor for the whole arrondissement was down in Douala picking up a car he shipped from Europe, so I'll find out in the next two days if he or someone else at the hospital will speak.  (He was in Belgium for the last year working on some public health university program.)

 

With the high school principal, in addition to speaking, we've also asked him to help distribute and collect surveys meant for female students about their educational experiences.  Given that the proviseur doesn't have the best reputation, at least in my mind, I was surprised when he volunteered that he or someone on the staff would get the surveys done.  I don't want to jinx anything yet, so I won't be too happy about it until the completed surveys are in my hand.  The results of the surveys will be collated by me and presented at the event by Yotti.

 

There are a few more details to iron out.  Harvard and I have to make advertisements to print out and distribute; these ads will be flyers, and the Lagdo mayor said he would make copies and post them around town.  In addition to the mayor's help, I'll probably do the same myself if I don't see anything by Thursday.  Continuing with the mayor's aid, I have to confirm that the community contribution aspect of the project that M. le Maire agreed to a month ago is still good.  Thirdly, Harvard and I have to lockdown a female speaker, who attended university, hopefully one who has graduated, that can speak Saturday and Sunday.  (Saturday the same program is in Ngong with the grands of that village.)  Our original speaker that we wanted had to go and be in her third trimester, so Amadou at the Peace Corps Garoua office is exploring his Rolodex to help us out.  If that doesn't work, there is an elementary school principal I'm acquaintances with who can do it, even if she didn't really graduate.  Lastly, I have to order some food for the grands and invitees, a necessity at Cameroonian fetes, and really, fetes in general.

 

I guess there are a bunch of things to do this last week, which is to be expected.  You can't really plan too far in advance for events here in Cameroon, which to an American used to rigid schedules and details, details, details, gives me a case of anxiety for the days leading up to an event.  Everything falls into place, though, and I can rest assured that despite the 13h00 starting time, the mayor and sous-prefet won't show up until after the 13h30 prayer.  I hope to post pictures and a recap of the event in the next 10 days or so, so hang tight and enjoy the fact that Obama is your president until then.  (Barry, I'm available December 13^th, so give me a call then.)

Favorite Songs of the Last Year

I know some of these were released in 2007, but I didn't really get that much new music from September 2006 onwards until this year.  To put that in perspective, the last major album that was out before I left was FutureSex/LoveSounds by Justin Timberlake, one of the worst album titles of all time.

 

·         "The Good Life" – Kanye West feat. T-Pain

·         "Paper Planes" – M.I.A.

·         "Lollipop" (remix) – Lil' Wayne feat. Kanye West

·         "International Players Anthem" – UGK feat. Outkast

·         "Viva La Vida" – Coldplay

·         "The Modern Leper" – Frightened Rabbit

·         "Australia" – The Shins

·         "Maxine" – John Legend

·         "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do What You're Told)" – The White Stripes

·         "Roc Boys (And The Winner Is…)" – Jay-Z

 

Honorables…

 

§  The rest of Graduation (Kanye West) except tracks #4 and 8.

§  "Whip It" & "Mr. Carter" – Lil' Wayne (Jay-Z featured on the latter)

§  "Time To Pretend" - MGMT

§  "The Way I Are" – Timbaland feat. Keri Wilson & D.O.E.

§  "Bodysnatchers" – Radiohead

§  "Rag and Bone" – The White Stripes

§  "Hello Brooklyn (2.0)" – Jay-Z feat. Lil' Wayne

§  "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb" - Spoon

4:59 AM, Circle Closing, Hawks, Brain Fart

4:59 AM

 

A few minutes before five in the morning, I heard Wolf Blitzer project Virginia for Barack Obama.  I was drifting in and out of sleep on the floor of the living room with my back towards the TV.  Obama had over 200 electoral votes before the Virginia projection, and another volunteer in the room sat up and said aloud he won the state, making sure I was paying attention.  I looked at the screen, saw he had over 220 votes before the California polls closed, with its 50-plus votes, so that's when I knew Obama was president, a minute before five in the morning Cameroon time.

 

John McCain gave his best speech of the campaign – his concession speech – and then an hour or so later, Barack walked onto the stage in Chicago with his family, Jessi Jackson was crying, and Obama proceeded to own the place.  At some point when we all fell back asleep, I received a text from Yotti that said, in English, "I Love America."  Obama winning is a BFD beyond belief.

 

Closing Circles & Running Water

 

Election week was also site visit week for the trainees that are replacing my group.  (It's been that long: the circle is closing.)  I've met a good many of them over the last month or so in Pitoa and Garoua, and I hung out with a few of them this week because they were tagging along with Michele.  I actually had a spur of the moment site visit, as well, even though I'm not being replaced.  There have been security problems in Yagoua, so the SED (Small Enterprise Development) PCV there, Laura, might have to move posts, and since Lagdo is on the SED post list, she might move here.  (Yagoua is a big town in the Extreme North a few kilometers from the Chadian border; I went there in June for the weekend.)  She's choosing between Lagdo and a couple Anglophone posts – or admin is choosing for her – or maybe not – or maybe she's just going to stay in Yagoua.  So no one really knows what's going on with her living situation, but in the mean time, here's something that could convince her move to Lagdo: the water came back on! 

 

We were about to walk down to the lake late Friday afternoon to check out Djippordé and its environs.  I was in the bathroom getting some sunscreen minding my own business, and I hear the familiar sound of water filling up in the toilet.  Not believing it, the water has been out since June 2007, but getting really excited because I believed it, I looked in the tank – the tank cover has been broken since the Truman administration – and, lo and behold, l'eau!  I turned on the sink faucet, and it burped out built up gas until water sprayed out.  I walked through the house and told Laura as I passed her that the water was on and went outside the front door where a faucet and cement basin stood attached to the wall to turn it on: this would be the final evidence of running water.  It did, although there was a lot of built up dirt in it, and I rejoiced and called over the guard, who rejoiced as well, and Laura and I went to the lake.

 

Hawks Prediction

 

I've forgotten to make my completely uneducated sports prediction for the Atlanta Hawks.  I want to say I was pretty close to right last year, so you can bank on this: 37-45, first round loss to the Celtics – this time in six games.

 

Brain Fart

 

I just realized that I posted an incomplete thought in my last entry, and I realize I just left myself wide open for "your entire blog is an incomplete thought" jokes.  Under the "I will not be able to…" section on the comments for not tipping, I meant to write that

Extreme North Voyage - The Sequel

Extreme North Voyage – The Sequel

 

It was time again for another extended weekend trip to the Extreme North, all on the up-and-up with Peace Corps admin, of course.  As a PCV nearing COS, I have to set an example for the newbies, especially since I've been running into trainees in Garoua that are currently having stage in Pitoa, because PC really likes it when PCTs meet PCVs not approved for training.  But, hey, admin, I did attend the Extreme North VAC meeting, even though I was reading a People from June the whole time, so that's kinda good, right?  (Funniest thing from that issue: High school yearbook photos of various celebrities, including Zac Efron from High School Musical.  Um, it's like he's only aged a couple years at the most.)

 

My itinerary: Nights in Mokolo, Tourou, Koza, and then Maroua.  I definitely lean more to the western side of the EN when it comes to traveling.  Mrs. Marcel, your son is a prominent part of this post.

 

Mokolo and Tourou

 

I had the best of luck with buses on this trip.  I got to the only bus company that runs between Garoua-Mokolo just missing the first bus, which was loading up at the time.  I bought my ticket, sat down, and was perfectly content to wait another two hours before le deuxième left.  Then a guy came hustling out from behind the counter, called me over, and handed me a ticket to get on the first bus.  Last person on.  Out of Garoua by 8:30, in Mokolo by noon-thirty, a far cry from my last voyage in April, where it took seven hours.

 

I spent the night in Mokolo at Brooke's house.  Marcel was there, and we headed up to Tourou, Brad and Leah's post, late the next morning with huge hangovers.  The three of us (Marcel, Brooke, and I) had met up with Brooke's new post mate and a couple vacationing southern PCVs at the Hotel Flamboyant, a white man hotel, for dinner, but not without a couple beers beforehand.  A lot of wine was consumed, a lot of Spaniards at the table next to us were giving us looks, and a final beer at a bar called Disneyland, which used to have "Gestapo" painted on the wall inexplicably (something tells me they weren't referring to Walt Disney's anti-Semitism), was had that was completely unnecessary.

 

Brooke had work to do the next morning, silly goose, so Marcel and I ranged over to an Internet café dehydrated and killing time before going up the mountain to Brad and Leah's.  When the connection was finally up, we started reading up on the third debate, which happened in the middle of the night before, and going over how well Obama is doing in the polls, especially in battleground states.  The best article I read likened McCain to Bob Dole in 1996: they're both just trying to hang on to Republican states and not be embarrassed.

 

We got back to Brooke's, packed up the things we would need, left most of our stuff there (we would be back in two days), and got the moto's Marcel arranged to get up to Tourou.  (Marcel is good at doing things like this – he'll do the bitch jobs no one else wants to do.)

 

Tourou is one of those posts you expect your Peace Corps village to be like.  It's on the top of a mountain along the Nigerian border isolated by an unpaved road lined with millet fields that makes the 35 km from Mokolo seem longer and has no electricity, running water, or cell phone reception.  During our training two years ago, we made a field trip up to Tourou to see the PCV up there's well project (Brad replaced this guy, and Leah opened up the health post.) because the old country director, the guy who went on to criticize Peace Corps in the New York Times and Foreign Affairs, possibly had a man-crush on the PCV.  (History repeating itself: when we did the field trip, we were all viciously hungover after dinner and drinks at the Hotel Flamboyant.  I can't decide if that's just a coincidence, we're idiots, or if we're just really that predictable.)

 

Probably because of its isolation, Tourou has nonetheless seen a lot of development work and has more tourism than one would expect for being in the middle of nowhere.  It's known for the women who wear gourds on their heads and, when the time is right, dance topless.  (Fortunately, no topless old ladies were present during my stay, but some of the women do wear the gourds when going about their day.)  Adding to Tourou's isolation is its history.  The people there are almost all Hidé, who at some point were chased into that part of the mountain by the Mafa or the Fulbé, possibly les deux.  Fulfuldé isn't spoken there, and given it's proximity to Nigeria (literally kilometers away), Nigerian money can be used in the market.

 

So, Marcel and I arrived in Tourou on market day after a pleasant moto ride climbing up the mountains and looking down into valleys and at some point possibly crossing through Nigeria for a few hundred meters.  Brad and Leah's house is a minute away from the market, so we dropped our bags off, and the four of us took a little tour of the village.  Our first stop was lunch, which was, completely out of left field, the best beef I've had in Cameroon, rivaling Brochette Lady in front of Metropole in Garoua.  The ones in Tourou were very thinly cut coated with dried peanut butter.  I think I ate about ten of them.  After food, we saw the health center where Leah works at and the library they helped set up, then it was back to the house for the rest of day, where we dawdled, sat on the roof, played with little kids, waited for Katy to show up, had dinner, and went to bed really early for our big day tomorrow.

 

Tourou-Koza Hike

 

The last thing Marcel said to me as I left the Peace Corps compound in Yaoundé to catch the train up to N'gaoundéré after our COS Conference in August was if I wanted to hike from Tourou to Koza.  Brad was standing there next to Marcel as I looked back into the concession and scoffed and said no.

 

Two months later I spent two nights in Garoua because a lot of people from the Extreme North were down for the weekend, including Marcel, Brad, and Leah.  (It's been rare for me to spend more than a day in Garoua this year, there just isn't much reason for me to be there than to check my email and buy white man food.)  They said they were actually doing the hike in a couple weeks, and after I asked some questions coolly but really thinking "Are you f***ing nuts?", I hatched my long-weekend plans.  I've always been good at planning I-need-to-get-away-from-here trips, whether by Pontiac or bush taxi & foot.

 

We rolled out of bed in Tourou a little after five, not difficult since there're no lights and nothing to do after dark but go to sleep, and after fetching Brad's counterpart, Abdou (spelling questionable), we were on the road at 6:15 walking past small villages and kids going to school. 

 

It was a really pleasant walk at first.  The road hugged the side of small mountains and looked down into valleys as the sun was rising on fields of millet and was nearly all uninhabited after an hour or so.  We were lucky that Tourou sits on top of the mountain, so it was mainly downhill.  In fact, the toughest part of the hike was climbing down the last major hill because at that point, the trail was mainly rocks or going through someone's field.  (People farm on the side of the mountains up there.)

 

Our first stop was the last real village we would encounter until we said, screw it, we're taking motos.  Brad, the biggest agro-forestry nerd in Peace Corps, skipped off with Abdou to go see a well, for no reason other than confirming that yep, there's a well here, while the rest of us sat against a church and ate.  Brad and Abdou came back after ten minutes and took the rest of us to a second well in the middle of foléré, sesame, and more millet fields that Marcel noted was not in the direction of Koza.  We stood in the sun as Brad did his thing because Katy decided to go pee next to the only tree in the vicinity before one of the villagers led our fellowship up and over another hill to get back to the road.

 

Maroua

 

We arrived in Koza six hours after our hike began, but we stopped walking ten kilometers out after we realized we took a longer road than expected and the road itself turned from nice shaded hills to wide and flat with no protection from the sun except for Marcel, who inexplicably ordered a leather hat that would make Indiana Jones jealous.  We found motos at a village that consisted of half very nice catholic missionary compounds and half mud houses, and with relief were sitting in front of Katy's fan at her house in Koza thirty minutes later.  Brad and Leah continued on to Maroua, Abdou went to wherever he was going, and Marcel and I spent the night in Koza.  After a night of realizing how dehydrated we were, watching an hour of the third debate Marcel downloaded followed by Office Space, Marcel and I headed to Maroua.

 

Spending the night in Maroua is nice now with a case de passage for PCVs, a dorm-like place like they have in Yaoundé and other provincial capitals for us.  It was really packed for the provincial meeting, though, so I ended up sleeping on a couch in the wide-open living room while watching High School Musical 2 with Brad and Leah, which changed my life.  Bet on it!

 

Anyway, Maroua was nice, as usual.  There's a new restaurant that specializes in hamburgers, the afternoon was spent at a shaded pool, and dinner was street food at a bar, where Matt was in fine form with awkward comments and at some point calling Muhammad Ali's Parkinson's retardation.  It was good times all around, and I caught a bus back to Garoua the next morning after an enjoyable final Extreme North trip.

In America, I Will Not Be Able To...

With only a handful of weeks left, I have to enjoy certain things I can do in Cameroon that I can't in America.

 

In America, I will not be able to…

 

… Litter indiscriminately.

 

Cameroon is your trashcan.  Toss your wrapper anywhere you want because there will not be trashcans wherever you're going.  Along the same lines:

 

… Pee just about anywhere I want.

 

Cameroon is your urinal.  You can't pee anywhere of course, for instance on the front left tire of the mayor's new ride, but on the side of the road, no problem.  I do keep it classy in Lagdo, but usually the bus on longer trips just stops at a random village along the road where that tree will have to do.

 

… Walk around livestock on a daily basis.

 

Sometimes being au village feels like living in a petting zoo.  I don't blink twice walking around goats, pigs, sheep, and herds of cattle as I go about my business in Lagdo.  You're always honking at, swerving around, or being delayed by animals in the road.  One time I saw someone herding cows through Garoua, the provincial capital.

 

… Take advantage of being white and having it be completely acceptable.

 

… Order random peoples' kids to do things for me without pay.

 

This might be the best thing about Cameroon.  Anyone you see that looks kind of young is your bitch.  I could be sitting at the bar and feel the urge for

 

… Not tip.

Tipping waiters, taxi drivers, etc., just isn't done here in Cameroon.  Actually, I'm pro-not tipping.  I've just never understood it: why can't the restaurant just charge an extra dollar or two per meal to pay the waiters more?  The customer is going to pay no matter what.  Tipping just creates confusion, especially in situations where it's not completely expected, which an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm lampooned.  Either way, I'm going to have to do it.  Dommage. 

 

… Be one of 16 people in a van made for seven.

Thirty years from now, I'll be having coffee in my breakfast nook looking over Central Park reading the Wall Street Journal.  I'll read a story about investment in West Africa, put the paper down, stare out the window, remember being squished in cars where the ignition was broken and had to be hot-wired to start, and think:  Thank Allah I'll never have to ride in bush taxis again.

… Be called "white" by complete strangers as a proper greeting. 

This is most frustrating by people who know better.  For instance, the mayor of Ngong, Harvard's village, in meeting Harvard for the first time greeted him as follows: "How are you, nasaara?" like it was the most natural thing.  This is the second most powerful man in an arrondissement of over fifty thousand people.

 

… Seriously call a black guy or another white person "my brother" (or "sister") in everyday conversation.

… Be racially insensitive.

This final thing I won't be able to do is all relative.  In America, you can't communicate with strangers by stating how they look.  Cameroonians don't get this.  They just don't understand how annoying it is for an American to be stared at or called "nasaara" every day.  This attitude rubs off on volunteers, so if we throw it right back at people here, they don't blink twice. 

It's not just your physical appearance that people call you.  There aren't really words in Fulfuldé for "sir", "madam", etc., so you just call someone you don't know as Woman or Man.  For instance, I would walk into a Starbucks and tell the girl at the counter, "Hey, Woman, make me a mocha."  (I refuse to say the word "barista," so "girl at the counter" is what a female Starbucks employee is called.  Isn't it enough that we're forced and have accepted to call mediums large?)

Baseball Predictions

 Since I've seen zero baseball games this year, I think this entitles me to make playoff predictions.  And since I've only found out the official match-ups right now after some games have been played, I'm going to take that into consideration.  So, go Devil Rays!  (They're not going to win.)

 

American League

 

Division: Rays over Cubs, Angels over Boston

 

Championship: Rays over Angels

 

National League

 

Division: Dodgers over Cubs; Phillies over Milwaukee (These two are the easiest to pick.)

 

Championship: Dodgers over Milwaukee

 

World Series

 

Dodgers over Rays

When Is Ramadan Again?

The end of Ramadan was this last Tuesday – at least in Cameroon.  It started September 1 – in Cameroon – and marked the beginning of the Muslim fast, where Muslims old enough don't eat or drink from sunup to sundown for a lunar month.  The keyword here is lunar.

 

I broke the fast a few times with Yotti.  The meal consists of bouille, which is kind of like porridge but sweet and good, beignets and kosé (white bean beignets, one of my favorite foods), and the usual couscous with a sauce. 

 

I didn't actually do Ramadan, although some volunteers do it for solidarity with their Muslim friends and just because it's something different.  My main qualm with Ramadan is the getting up early.  As you're still allowed to eat and drink while it's dark, Muslims wake up by 5 AM to fill up before the day breaks.  No way, José.  Another negative is that by the third week, Muslims start getting a little grumpy and tired.  I do take advantage of Ramadan because it's the only time when kosé is available in Lagdo during the evening.  For whatever reason, the women that make it in town decide that they'll only sell it in the morning when it's not Ramadan.

 

I was really confused at the end of the fete.  People were telling me it was Tuesday, one calendar I have said it was Wednesday, but another calendar I have said it Thursday.  The only explanation I can think of, because it's a lunar-based month, it's cloudy or the moon cycle is different depending on where you are on the globe.  (I'm thinking it's the latter…) 

 

The fete is also one of the most low-key parties imaginable.  I remember the last two years when I'd wander around in the late morning, the fete was pretty much over and people were just sitting around.  Muslims sure know how to party.

 

The coolest thing about this year is that the morning of the fete, which is called Id al-Fitr in Arabic, there is a huge public prayer.  I knew of these big community prayers from Fete du Mouton, which is two months after Ramadan.  (Sheep; it celebrates when Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, and you traditionally sacrifice a sheep for the fete.  Nowadays, there are a lot of sheep meandering around Lagdo munching on grass.  Little do they know…) Last year, I happened to be traveling from Buea to Yaoundé on the fete du mouton, and when we passed through Douala, there were hundreds upon hundreds of men in various open spaces in the city praying.  In Lagdo for Ramadan, it was a much smaller affair, but it was still cool to see all the Muslim men (there were some women in a line in the back, but not many) in their nice boubous in rows in a field.  Although I think sometimes the orthodoxy of Islam is a little too much, there is something powerful about their mass prayers.

Miss Congeniality

Yaaawwwwn.  I stayed up way too late last night/early this morning listening to the first debate live on the BBC.  I was itching to actually hear the candidates for the first time this entire election cycle - I've only heard soundbites up until last night. (I'm really looking forward to Joe Biden thrashing Sarah Palin next week.)  Luckily for you, though, I wrote a lot of blogs in the last ten days, so enjoy!

Favorite and Lease Favorite Books These Last Two Years

One of the usual ideas people have about PCV life is the opportunity to read a lot of books.  That has really been the case for me.  I've read a lot of stuff, and given the amount of free time I have, I've read a lot books I normally wouldn't have read.  I even recorded everything I read, increasing my nerdiness factor by at least 15% and helping me make my favorite and least favorite book lists by 100%.  The books aren't listed in any particular order.  Allons-y.

 

Favorite Fiction

 

+ One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

+ Catch-22 and Picture This, Joseph Heller

+ The Beach, Alex Garland

+ A Passage to India, E.M. Forster

+ White Teeth, Zadie Smith

+ Underworld and Libra, Don DeLillo

+ Atonement, Ian McEwan

+ The Plot Against America, Philip Roth

 

+ Honorables: Carl Hiaasen; Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis; Straight Man, Richard Russo

 

As you can see, I had to do some catching up on high school and college reading lists with the Marquez and Catch-22.  The latter, and Picture This, were hilarious.  Not included are books I've already read, so the Harry Potters I went through a second time aren't here (I've read the seventh one.).

 

Favorite Non-Fiction

 

* The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam

* Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

* King Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hochschild

* My Life, Bill Clinton

* The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson

* Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder

* DisneyWar, James B. Stewart

* Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik

 

* Honorables: Collapse, Jared Diamond; Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell; Cod, Mark Kurlansky

 

There are a lot of quality non-fiction books out there.  My favorite was The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam.  If you're interested in post-World War II U.S. history, this will illuminate the Vietnam/Kennedy era immensely.  The parallels to Iraq and modern politics are easy to make, not in the kind of war fought, but in the way supposed political experts ("the best and the brightest") severely misjudged the situation and refused to rectify it.  Bill Clinton's autobiography is really interesting, King Leopold's Ghost is a history of the Belgian Congo, and DisneyWar follows the drama of the Disney boardroom under Michael Eisner.  If you read any of these four books, get ready for an appalling amount of hubris.

 

Three Cups of Tea and Mountains Beyond Mountains are books about development work that aren't depressing and actually inspiring.  Paris to the Moon is about a modern ex-pat in Paris, and The Devil in the White City is about a serial killer and the construction of the Columbia Exposition in Chicago, very interesting.

 

"Honorables" mention: the author of Cod, which is a history of the fish, Mark Kurlansky also wrote a history of salt (guess what the title was?).  I only mention this because there was a point when the White House tried to have us believe that George W. Bush reads for fun, and he was reading Salt.  Another book he was reading was The Stranger by Albert Camus, which is about a guy who emotionlessly kills Arabs.  You couldn't make that up if you tried.

 

Didn't Like, Not Impressed

 

- I Am Charlotte Simmons and A Man In Full, Tom Wolfe

- Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs

- The Talisman, Stephen King and Peter Straub

- Dick Francis

- The Motorcycle Diaries, Ernesto "Che" Guevara

- Surfacing, Margaret Atwood

 

If I learned anything in Peace Corps, it's that Tom Wolfe is kind of a douchebag.  I'm not saying he's a bad writer; just the opposite, he's talented and has become an American highbrow icon.  He just doesn't let you forget how good he is.  Okay, Tom, I get it, you've done a crazy amount of research and can paint a detailed picture of a time and place.  But in the two books of his I read, they were just boring.  I've read Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test before PC, and I've heard good things about Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff, so maybe he peaked in 1987.

 

Running With Scissors was a vulgar David Sedaris rip-off, probably should have read another Stephen King book (it was my first), and Dick Francis was just stale.  I liked the movie version of The Motorcycle Diaries better than the book because I couldn't get a sense of what and where Che was talking about written down.  Surfacing was just strange; if you want to read a Margaret Atwood book, try The Blind Assassin.

Price Rises

One of the most important things to happen this year is the incredible rise in food prices.  It's been noted that if affects the poorest the most, mainly because the little income that people make is used almost exclusively for food.  I thought you might be curious to see how this has increased food prices and other products in Lagdo.

 

Corn

 

A sack of corn, 100 kilograms (200 pounds), in the summer of 2007 was 14.000 cfa.  The price is at its highest because it's the planting season, so food stocks have reached their lowest.  After the harvest, in the winter (these are temperate climate seasons I'm using) the price dropped to 8.000 cfa.  Now this year, during the planting season, a sack of corn is 22.000 cfa, an increase of 57% from last year at the same time, if my calculations are correct.

 

Diamor Cooking Oil

 

The major cooking oil people in the Grand North of Cameroon use is cottonseed oil produced by SODECOTON, the Cameroonian cotton company, called Diamor.  When I got to Cameroon in late 2006, two years ago exactly, Diamor, sold in one-liter bottles, cost about 700 cfa.  Two years later, the price in Lagdo is now sold for 1400 a bottle.  The price has gone up so much that all of the boutique owners in Lagdo have switched to a couple brands of cooking oil from Douala, palm and vegetable oils.  Still, those new brands cost 1.300 for a liter.

 

I don't really miss Diamor.  I despised it, actually.  It's pretty gross, a really thick concoction that claims to be "cholesterol free" on the bottle.  Furthermore, it's produced by Sodecoton, a disliked entity in Cameroonian life.  If there's something you don't want to be when you grow up, it's a small-time cotton farmer.  You're going to get fucked no matter what you do.

 

Fertilizer

 

I'm not sure how much fertilizer cost last year, but this year it's just too much.  A big sack of fertilizer in Lagdo cost 22.000 cfa, about the same price as corn; and given that you need a steady supply of fertilizer throughout the growing season, you'd have to sell several sacks of corn to break even.  Cotton growers working with Sodecoton receive some fertilizer for free (I'm assuming it's free), but given how rare and in demand fertilizer is around here, you can find the cotton farmers selling it at the market, not exactly helping an already weak crop. 

 

The importance of fertilizer can't be understated.  In addition to selling it out of his boutique, Yotti started using it in his cornfields, and the stalks shot up like a rocket since the picture I took in an earlier post in July or August.

 

Cement

 

According to the September 13 Jeune Afrique, a really good Francophone Africa news magazine, the price of cement in Cameroon is a little complicated.  On one hand, prices need to rise because of the increased demand in Cameroon and neighboring countries and the increase in the cost of primary materials and oil, but on the other, the government is keeping the price artificially low, which is hindering the leading cement producer, Cimencam, from increasing production to meet said demand.  JA says that the government is keeping the price low because it wants to keep construction prices down, but they also don't want people to take to the streets like they did in February.  (I believe the government is also subsidizing gas prices, which sparked the riots to begin with, because the price hasn't changed at all in the last seven months.)

 

As for concrete prices (sorry for the pun… but I'm really not) in Lagdo, it's gone up about 15-20% the last year.  For a 50 kg sack nowadays, you have to dole out 7500 cfa.

 

(Factoids: Cinencam is actually owned by a French company and has factories throughout the country.  There's one in the North province in Figuil, a town about 90 minutes/two hours north of Garoua on the highway.  Also, a Korean company is going to open a new cement factory in Limbé, which is probably causing the Cimencam folks to wonder when they're going to catch a break: while the government is screwing them, they're letting a competitor in on a growing market so they can rake in the foreign investment.)