Blagpost

I haven’t had anything happen to me lately that I feel like merits writing down, but at the same time my day to day life is so different from what it was when I was in the states, and what I would imagine is the day to day life of everyone I know that maybe I should try to give some sort of a sense of it to anyone who bothers to read this blog. The days that I don't have any work to do are becoming fewer and far between, but since what I do as far as work is pretty random I will describe a Sunday when there is no work to be done anyways. Everyone here respects the Sabbath which is actually a pretty nice break every week.

Every morning I wake up at about four in the morning to a rooster crowing. At first this was really annoying but I have come to terms with it, and even though his favorite roosting point is only about 15 feet from my bedroom window I really only half wake up, and sleep until about six. I usually do a little weeding in my garden, or clean up around the house in the morning because it is impossible to sleep when the whole village is already awake. At eight every morning I go over to Auguste's house to have coffee and breakfast. This is really great because if there are any projects or plans to discuss it usually happens then because Auguste is sometimes busy until late in the evening with work at the mayor's office, or with the community forest.

Afterwords I am left to do whatever I want the whole day. When there is no power (which is about a quarter of the time) I read through about a book every Sunday, and I am left to play guitar and lounge in my hammock all day if I want. When there is power though, I spend the time on the internet trying to catch up on news in the states at 150 kb/s. I have running water technically, but when it goes out for a few days in a row, and I run out of reserves, I pay some children to carry water to my house. It is kind of a joke among volunteers, but whenever there is something that you don't want to do there are always children you can pay to do it. Lately though I have been taking long bike rides on Sundays out “en bruse” and just exploring the surroundings.

Every evening at eight I go to have dinner at Auguste's house as well. I have really come to love Cameroonian cuisine as cooked by his wife Florence. I feel like that might deserve its own post though. The meal is always taken with the whole random group of Auguste's large family who happens to be there that night which is great because there is always some one new to talk to, as well as the usual characters. Everyone is always very welcoming and it is nice to feel as though you are part of another family when you are so far from your own.

When I need to get supplies that I can't get in village Yaounde is just a four hour bus ride away. That is really not all that far for Cameroon, and since the office is there I can stay overnight for free on my monthly trips to the bank. There are always volunteers staying there for one reason or another so it is actually quite a treat and I can talk to other Americans, and go get pizza if I really want to. For the necessities of life like T.P., batteries, cigarettes, and candles, I can go to “lapoule rouge” which is the only boutique in my village. It is really just a small room added onto a house with a covered outdoor area that serves as the village's bar, but it gets the job done.

All in all I would have to say that the main difference between life here and in the States is the pace. I never leave my house without a book because I don't know when I am going to be waiting for an hour for the Chief to show up, or for a meeting to start. At first I was always worried about having to wait around for everything, and about how people where wasting my time. At some point I realized that if I wasn't out waiting for some one (which is necessary to do anything) I would just be at home sitting on a different chair reading the same book.

Anyways here are some random pictures I have taken while working, and exploring the area on my bike.  

My post mate calls this "pride rock" as in the Lion King.  I can see the resemblance

This was taken just outside of Lolodorf.

This is my living room.

I kind of have a thing for waterfalls

When I am bored I take random paths and see where they go, most of the time it is to a farm, but sometimes you see some cool stuff.

I wish this picture did justice to this place.  It is pretty far away, but I want to build a house there and stay for the rest of my life because it is just so peaceful and pretty.

This is where your chocolate comes from.  Cocoa farms are really pretty when it is time to harvest, and I think that Nestle buys a lot of it from Cameroon, so the next time you get a chocolate bar it might have come from this farm.

Bangem

Jules and I did some collaboration work with Joe in Bangem at the end of May. Of course we did the work we set out to do, but the trip involved a considerable amount more "recreational activities" than any business trip really should. I had wanted to go check out Joe's post at some point because he was always talking about how scenic it was (I was not disappointed), and I hadn't really done anything since IST aside from work, read, play guitar, and wish that the power would come back, so the trip seemed like a good idea. I stopped off in Yaounde to pick up some official Peace Corps literature to display and hand out, and then headed out to Bangem.

Surprisingly for me its actually a lot harder for me to communicate in the Anglophobe regions. Unless you hear it everyday the English they speak there is almost incomprehensible because the accent and word order is really strange, and those are the people who speak “grammar.” A lot of people speak pidgin which is for the most part a separate language loosely based on English which is for me is completely incomprehensible. I think its also odd for me because the only people that I ever speak English to are people I know, other PCV's, and Admin, and the few random people who like to practice speaking English with me. It usually takes me a few days after getting to the Anglophone regions to start speaking and responding in English to random people that I meet, and because their English is so weird sometimes I just stick to French anyways. I'm sure that the French I have learned here would sound as odd to anyone from France as the English sounds to me, but it gets me by. One thing that I always get from Cameroonians when I can't understand their English is them telling me dismissively, “I speak the British English, and you, you speak the American English, that why you not understand.” Well sir, with all due respect I can understand British English just fine, and had you been speaking it I could have understood you.  At least I got to feel useful at the show when the few Francophones came through and I could speak French with them.

The Mbororo, a mostly nomadic tribe from the North has settled near Bangem, they are known for their horses and cows apparently.  

Setting up the booth.  Joe presented some organic pesticide, and we all talked about what the Peace Corps does here.

There was an odd rasta man who sold handicrafts made out of plantain leaves.

After the show we took a day long walk up an extinct volcano called Mt. Manenguba to see some crater lakes. It took a couple of hours walking uphill on slick muddy roads to get there, and we gained a ridiculous amount of elevation, but the lakes where as promised beautiful. The scenery looks like absolutely nothing else I have seen in Cameroon, and there is enough elevation that I had to wear the hoodie I brought which was nice.  These two lakes are right next to one another and the pictures where taken from the same spot.  I tried to stitch them all together but it didn't look right, so I just made two separate panorama's According to Joe the Female lake has one of the highest depth to surface area's of any lake in the world, which I am just going to go ahead and say is probably true.  He did not however know why they are called the female and male lakes.
 

Mt. Manenguba Male Lake

Mt. Manenguba Female Lake

Pépinière

Getting a tree nursery (pépinière) off the ground has been more than a little bit difficult, but it was supposed to be my number one priority according to some of the work I did with my community host (Florence) during stage in Bafia. After a few trips to Yaounde to find the needed supplies, Florence and I started mixing the substrate to fill the polypots (aka mixing cow shit with sand, compost, and dirt then putting it in plastic bags).

My natural state here seems to be disgustingly sweaty

The first big difficulty was trying to find seeds, I had decided we would start with a small batch of 300 cacao because everyone in Bibondi already grows it, and it would be easy to sell. After a few months of waiting for some one who claimed would provide me with the seeds I ended up having to go all the way to Ebolowa myself, a 16 hour round trip with an overnight stop in Yaounde to literally pick the cabooses myself. It ended up being worth it though because I met a guy doing doctoral research on cacao at the IRAD (government agricultural research) station that speaks perfect English, and he told me I could call him any time I have any technical questions. Once I got the seeds back to Bibondi they where washed and allowed to germinate before being put into the polypots.  I did all this with a woman's group that Florence is the head of called CAAFBI. 

Washing

The seeds take about a week to germinate, and cannot be allowed to dry out, or be exposed to the sun.

The next big hurtle was getting some one to put up the shade. Many tree's, especially cacao, don't do well in direct sunlight at first, so you need to construct a shade for them. Unfortunately all the seedlings that had been placed in polypots where now sitting in either direct sunlight or total shade (50% shade is best). I finally gave up on waiting for some one else to do it (If I do the work myself it isn't really sustainable development), and started putting up the posts, luckily once some one saw that I was motivated I got plenty of help, and the shade went up in a few days. Afterward we placed the polypots in the pépinière, treated them with fungicide, and we are now in the process of watering and waiting.

Just a small portion of the frame is shaded because there are only 300 plants right now, but there is plenty of room to expand

Placing the polypots

The pépinière will be managed by CAAFBI, and used by EFA (the girls agricultural school) to teach about various cash crops, composting, and nursery management. It will also provide a local resource for cacao, oil palm, and other tree's that are expensive to buy and transport long distances. Right now we are also working on a lot of composting to have enough substrate for 2000 cacao, and 1500 oil palm in December. I know that was a bit boring, but I feel like I needed to post something about the actual work I am doing. 

Fêtetastic

I will just post one update for both the Fête du travaille and the Vingt Mai. All of the national holidays are celebrated in pretty much the same manner. The teachers, or young people, or workers, or women, or whoever the day is honoring march in the town center, then everyone goes to the bar. All of the government officials in the town show up for the marching, and I have learned from experience it is better to greet them at the beginning and then duck out as soon as the parade is over. This after ending up a little too drunk for the middle of the afternoon after the Fête du travaille. The problem is that as a sub-divisional capital Lolodorf has quite a few government officials, all of whom like to buy you a drink or two, and in Cameroon it is considered extremely rude to refuse a drink when some one offers to buy.

Religious holidays are about the same with church instead of marching before the bar. On Easter everyone was kind of confused by my questioning this, “so everyone gets drunk and dances all night... because its Easter?” I guess it makes about as much sense as chocolate bunnies and Easter egg hunts though.

The Fête du travaille is pretty much labor day, except all of the large employers, and businesses in Lolodorf made their employee's march. This was a lot more interesting than the other marches I have seen, some community forest drove logging equipment, another marched while loudly revving chainsaws, a cacao organization did a little demonstration of applying chemicals to a cacao seedling, and Butran (the bus agency here) drove some of their buses. Then of course there was the rolling sound system which I ended up marching with. Earlier in the morning Auguste asked me if I would be marching, I assumed that he meant with the community forest (which did not march for some reason) so I of course said yes. I was told to show up in Lolodorf and they would give me a shirt. When I did show up it turned out I was marching with the local bar, Ampoule Rouge. Apparently Ampoule Rouge has a side business, renting out large sound systems, so I marched along main street in Lolodorf next to an old Toyota with four huge speakers strapped to the roof, and a generator in the trunk blaring “Lady Ponce.”

Notice the use of safety goggles.

I wish I could say they did not get drunk and drive these through town way too fast afterwards

  

At least they took off the dangerous part.

I loaned my camera to some one who got a lot of good pictures, but unfortunately not of me.

Sometimes when shit gets really weird its best to just roll with it

Le Vingt Mai (May 20th) is National Unification Day. It commemorates the unification of the Anglophone provinces with the Francophone provinces in 1961. Pretty much anyone in a uniform marches, but unfortunately there are only a couple of policemen, and a couple boy scouts in mismatched, incomplete uniforms who came from God knows where. I can only assume it is because of this that all of the schools in the surrounding area had to march.  There where also several political parties, and associations who marched, but it was all topped off with a demonstration from the Karate school (you can't make this crap up).  

Fierce.

The Vingt Mai is considered the end of  Fête season, so it is looking to be a long paradeless summer. I will throw up some pictures of the tree nursery I have been working on tomorrow, and then my trip to Bangem at some point after that. 

The Pygmies

I had expressed some interest in seeing the Pygmies (or more technically “Pygmoids” because the average height of the Gyele people is slightly above 150 cm) to Florence. I was really hoping to be able to go out into the forest and view an intact hunter gatherer society. This had more to do with my own curiosity as an amateur anthropologist than with anything related to my Peace Corps work. I was given a date that we would go to Florence's “village natal” in order to make this happen. There is a band of Pygmies that lives close to said village, and Florence knows how to speak the padtwa so I was pretty excited about the whole thing even though the date ended up falling on my return from a rather strenuous trip. I got back to village in the early afternoon and took a long nap before the hour long moto ride. The nap turned out to be quite a good idea.

After the ride out to Ngonvoyan I realized the whole “Pygmy experience” would not be exactly what I had anticipated. It happened that the reason that everyone was gathering together was for a funeral. As I have mentioned before funerals in Cameroon are several years after the burial (deuil), and are more of a celebration than a mourning. This was the funeral for Florence's father, who had been quite close with the Pygmy bands that live near the village (the reason Florence knows the padtwa I suppose), and because of that the Chief of the Pygmies , and many others came to the celebration in order to do a traditional dance. This all lead to the rather awkward scene of Auguste introducing me to several Chiefs and Notables, all of them dressed in their finest, and me fitted out for a hike out en bruse. Even if I was horribly under dressed I of course enjoyed the food, palm wine, and merrymaking that is a Cameroonian funeral.  Unfortunately the Chief took one look at me and started demanding that I pay money before they would dance.  After Florence explained that I wasn't a tourist, and I was working and living in a village close by he decided I didn't have to pay, although I think that Florence might have given him a little money.  

Far too late in the evening for my liking (1 or 2 in the morning) the Pygmies started singing. Eight women lined up on a long piece of wood they used as a drum and played some sort or crazy rhythm that I couldn't quite ever understand, all the while singing songs with weird dissonant sounding harmonies. While they played the men danced, and as the night went on the women and the dancers became more and more inebriated the and signing and dancing became increasingly boisterous. At some point the singing and dancing stopped, and after a few minutes a single dancer appeared costumed in leaves that covered his face and hands, and the singing and dancing continued, louder and more uninhibited than ever. At some point not long before dawn I decided it was time to sleep. I got one or two hours or sleep listening to the raucous singing and drumming that continued after dawn and well into the morning. After a breakfast of papaya I rode back to the village in the morning and slept most of the day, and while it was not at all what I expected I was glad I went, and I am hoping to actually make it out to their village at some point soon.

These are the women that played and sang.  There are also some other bigger drums that some of the men played when they where not dancing.

It was really hard to get a picture of this guy because the shutter speed was so low that all the pictures I took ended up being just a blur.  This was one of the few moments he was actually standing still.

After IST

When I returned from IST the amount of work to be done unfortunately dropped off precipitously. Most of the farmers had already planted, already burned their fields, already done everything the way they have been doing it for centuries, and here I was back in village after almost a month gone and more than a little bit late to say anything, let alone convince anyone to change. At this point there was no longer introductory meetings to take up my time; I had already met everyone, and the work was supposed to commence yet somehow it didn't. Even if there was little else to do I had my experimental plot to work on, really just a little garden behind my house. It had become completely overgrown with weeds and still needed to be planted, so as I solitarily lamented taking too long to get back to village at least I had something to keep my hands busy.

I did however have hope that I would be able to get some soy in the ground before it was too late. I had talked to my Program Manager during IST (3 weeks prior to getting back) about getting soy seeds to my village as soon as possible because the rain had already started. While it took almost a week after I had been back in village, he finally came through. It wasn’t too big a deal actually, because in the South you can plant soy through mid April, but it was a little frustrating waiting to be able to start what small amount of work I did have. I got a lot of soy planted myself, and got a lot of seed to people who wanted it in time to be planted. I hope to do some demonstrations on cooking with soy come the time to harvest, and I already have some one lined up that will come help with presenting to the woman’s group that planted a lot of the soy. I guess I can count that as a small victory, but I do have to admit that the health volunteer Amanda, who has been here for a year already, has done so much soy sensitization that convincing people to grow it was relatively easy.

Planting some Soy

At some point in the week or so after I got back there was a celebration at Auguste's place. A first communion for a kid on Easter Sunday. Of course the reception was at Auguste's, being the nicest house in the immediate vicinity it hosts more than its fair share of parties. Because it was at Auguste's I was invited to attend. It was nice to see some people I knew from around the community, and feel like I was doing an alright job integrating, even if I wasn't getting too much Agro work done.

The party was because the little girl in white had her first communion.  August took this picture, and he is not a fan of holding the camera still.

In the first week or two after IST I was having a rather rough time of it to be completely honest. I was missing home, missing all my friends, and feeling the awful absence of anticipation for a summer that I knew in Michigan was just about to slowly come to life. For me summer had never ended. I was as close as makes no difference to the equator, and still wishing for one night I might have to cover up with a blanket instead of sweating and suffering the incessant heat and humidity. All the while I knew everyone back home was able to if not appreciate, at least experience the start to starkly different and optimistically new season after season. Maybe that is why so many people have described Africa as “timeless,” time just doesn’t ever seem to pass here. The rain comes and goes, and people don't work one day in seven, but you never have the feeling that anything really changes.

All that melancholy had no doubt a lot to do with the fact that I found myself a dog. It wasn’t too hard, I just decided one morning to ask about getting a puppy (chiot en Fraçais), and while I sat there drinking coffee on Auguste's porch one was delivered to me. I named her “Peanut,” a name that made a lot of sense to me given my brother's use of it as a nick name for any cute little kid, and the fact that they grow a lot of peanuts in Bibondi, although the call them “arachides”, or “ground nuts” here. I have never been too much of a dog person, but I have to say Peanut is growing on me. This is probably in no small part because I have easily cleaned concrete floors in my house, but at least taking care of a puppy gives me something else to fill the hours.

Peanut likes to hide under my coffee table when she isn't busy peeing on my floor.

Next time will be a more exciting post I think, Pygmies, the pépinière, and Le Fête du Travaille.

IST

IST (In Service Training) was scheduled at about the worst time possible for me, but there are only a few Agro volunteers in the South, and if they had put it off it would have been much more inconvenient for the volunteers who are posted in the Grand North. That being said, I had to leave Bibondi the day after the rain started, which is when everyone does planting, and there was no shortage of work to be doing. In any case I was determined to enjoy myself, and looking forward to seeing all the other 48 some odd volunteers I hadn't seen since the first of December.

My poor unplanted experimental plot before I left.

Although IST is supposed to be really “serious business” the whole thing quickly turned into a shit show. Upon arriving in Yaoundé a few days early I met up with a bunch of other volunteers from the Grand South who also arrived early and where waiting for the train. The partying started then, and didn't stop for another few weeks. The train ride up was a lot of fun, the train doesn’t leave until the evening, and it travels through the night. The Peace Corps sprung for all of the volunteers to stay in sleepers, and everyone was in the same car, so of course we where all up talking and drinking through the night, and late into the morning.

Once we got to Ngaoundére tired, bleary eyed, and hung over IST started. I quickly realized how much like PST (Pre-Service Training) the whole thing was going to be. A week of long boring sessions all day followed by nights out. Sure this time we where not stuck in Bafia (not one of the greatest places in Cameroon to say the least), or staying with a Cameroonian family, and we had a lot more freedom, but the atmosphere was definitely familiar. Unfortunately with this greater degree of freedom, more than a few volunteers went a bit overboard (myself included on a few occasions). I actually had to excuse myself on quite of few of the adventurous nights out. I don't know what it is, maybe its just that I don't like being out in a group of 30 Americans being loud and drawing too much attention, maybe I was just tired, maybe I am actually getting over the whole party phase of my life, or most likely I was just a bit shell shocked to be around so much Americaness after spending three and a half months pretty much alone in a small African village.

A few guys that climbed up Mt. Ngaoundere

Ngaoundere from the mountain

After a week in Ngaoundére IST was officially over, and the vacation started. The first stop was lake Lagdo, which is absolutely beautiful. It is a huge reservoir created in the middle of the Sahel that is surrounded by mountains of piled up boulders. There are hippos in the lake which is kind of scary, but the swimming is nice anyways, the water is warm, and its a good way to cool off when the temperature is over a hundred degrees. The creation of the reservoir left a small island in the middle that we chartered a boat to get out to. There is a small village of extremely conservative Muslims on the island, and when Joe and I walked through to check the place out more than a few women and children screamed at the sight of us and ran to the safety of their houses and compounds. As we passed the village and scrambled up the rock pile on the other side to get a better view of the island we realized two small boys with sling shots had apparently been dispatched to follow us and make sure we didn't go do some weird sorcery or anything. I can say this wasn't completely unwarranted as Joe looked a bit odd carrying a 10 foot fishing pole, and wearing a cowboy hat.

Watching out for hippos at Lagdo

After Lagdo we headed to Maroua which is a really nice city as far as Cameroon goes. The whole place is lined with huge Neem tree's planted to provide shade, the streets are clean, and the whole city has the look of something that was planned, whereas most everything here looks haphazardly thrown together. We spent a few days there and helped send off Steven Finney, a volunteer who was being medically separated against his will, and really wanted to stay. He was a great guy and it was sad to see him leave. After a few days bumming around the city doing nothing in particular a group of people decided it was a good idea to head out to Roumsiki.

Roumsiki was definitely worth seeing, and that is saying a lot because the way out involved more than a few near death experiences. We arrived in Mokolo on a bus late in the afternoon, and decided to try to get out to Roumsiki the same day. The idea was that we would make it before dark if we left right away, but that's not exactly how it worked out. Jules and I shared a moto, that is three people including the driver, an odd site perhaps in the United States, but its standard practice here. The reason we had to make it before dark was that the road out to Roumsiki is more of the idea of a road than something most people would recognize as passable by motorcycle, or car. Of course it got dark long before we arrived, and lucky Jules and me, we had possibly the worst moto driver in Cameroon. His headlight was pointed at a 45 degree angle into the sky instead of towards the road, he could never start the moto on the first try after repeatedly stalling out, and seemed drawn to every pothole and rut like a magnet. I stopped counting the number of times I was convinced we would crash at ten, but that was before it even got dark. We did arrive in one piece though, well after dark, and happy to be alive. The next day we hiked down into the valley with a guide, the pictures I took don't do it justice, and I don't think my attempt at explaining it would be any better, but it really was gorgeous. After the hike we went into the village of Roumsiki, and a few people in the group went to the crab sorcerer to have their fortunes told for 1000 CFA. I abstained, a decision that was equal parts thinking fortune telling is silly, and me just being cheap. We returned to Maroua after that, thankfully in a Land Rover instead of on motos for the first leg of the journey.

It was a bit hazy, and none of my photos turned out too well.

After a few more days in the city everyone gradually broke up and started their voyages back to post. Mine was pretty par for the course for travel in Cameroon. Long, hot, and cramped bus rides, longer delays, and a few days in Ngaoundére waiting to get a train ticket. When I finally made it back to post it was a huge relief, and I was pretty happy to be back in Bibondi.