Swamped

The last few weeks have been a bit overwhelming. At the moment I'm in the capital doing some banking (money ran out) and running numerous errands. I haven't posted in a while because I've just been too busy the last few weeks. Here's a quick run down on what' has been going on:

• My dean is trying to jam in most of the classes I teach this semester in order to finish them before the second semester. As a result I have been teaching two English classes and two computer classes simultaneously. On the schedule, this has meant I've had twenty-eight hours of classes for the last three weeks straight. 10 AM to 10 PM with an hour for lunch and two hours for dinner, four days a week. (I actually let the students in my night class go a bit early, so it's more like twenty-four hours., but still...) As you can imagine, I'm pretty exhausted and constantly busy. Quite the contrast to last year. The depressing thing is that even with all these hours I may not be able to finish on time. My poor students...
• Had a quiet Thanksgiving with friends. Turkeys exist in Cameroon happily, so I was even able to arrange a nice (if pricey) Turkey dinner.
• Just planned out my holiday vacation schedule. Going to spend Christmas with my host family from training in the town of Mblamayo, then going to visit Bill in Buea for New Year's, and then I'm meeting up with Volunteer Kirk in Yaoundé for a seventeen day trek to the north of Cameroon, which promises to be very different from my post. We are going to visit Waza National Park in hopes of seeing some giraffes or lions or other cool animals. Haven't seen too many yet outside the national zoo here in the capital. (And they were even sadder looking than most animals who live in zoos.)
• In preparation for the trip I've started studying Fulfuldé, the dominant language in the north. More widely spoken than French apparently. So far I've learned that "jam na" is how you greet people, "jam" is the proper response to this and just about every other greeting and most questions, and that "Nassara" means "honkey." (I hear that one in my village all the time. My friends from the north are very excited I'm trying to learn their language (well, was before I got overwhelmed with classes) and have started trying to speak to me in Fulfuldé a lot. I just smile and say "jam" a lot.
• I'm working with a former student from the university to put together a series of health education activities for Nanga's schools and hospital around February or March, so we sat down today and started working out a budget, plans, etc.
• While going to the bank today the motorcade of the President of Cameroon (Paul Biya) passed by while I was standing on the curb. A long black limo and an escort of police cars and motorcycles whipped past at high speed. Surprisingly, since their were police and security everywhere, the windows were open and I got a fleeting glimpse of the Big Man, and his wife Chantal, and her very very very Big Hair.

So that's where things stand at the moment. I'm taking the train back to post tomorrow night. I still have a lot of errands to run but if I have time I will try to write one or two more posts before leaving Yaoundé and diving back into the grind.

The XO

So I see that Nicholas Negroponte's XO project (the "One laptop per child" or $100 laptop as it was billed) has finally come to fruition.

In a comment to one of my previous posts, one of my friends asked what I thought. Having never touched one it's difficult to say. As a toy for affluent western geeks like me it's obviously cool. As a means of spreading information technology know-how around the world I'd say: it depends.

If the laptops are as rugged as they've been billed, and if they can survive the heat, dust, humidity, and unstable power that most poor countries present for a few years, they could be a valuable educational tool for some of the kids who get them. Technically it seem like a neat project.

Heck, given my power problems I wouldn't mind having one.

However, I see some potential problems:

• Many people won't have a clue how to even turn them on at first. You'd have to have people charged with distributing them and providing some minimal level of instruction for how to use them or they'll just sit and gather dust.
  
• Lack of technical people to maintain them if things go wrong. They'll be nice until they break down, or start having virus or driver problems (although not running Windows may save them from some of the virus problems.
  
• Who is in charge of distributing them? How are recipients selected? If a corrupt government (the kind they find in, oh, I don't know, some place like Cameroon) is in charge of handing them out, many or most will go to the children of government officials or their friends (or for that matter the officials themselves).
• What will they be used for? I can see people using them primarily for entertainment - movies, music, games - but that won't really change much in terms of international development. A poor village with no electricity, no running water, dirt roads, and a generally uneducated population may have trouble finding other uses for them.

For all of these reasons I have a suspicion that things may not work out quite the way they've been planned.

Another approach might be to donate or sell them cheap to adults or institutions in poorer countries. Just looking at my own village, there are hundreds of students just at my university who could use a low-power laptop like this to do work during the weeks when we don't have power. Students could bring their own to the lab and I could teach computer classes and not have to worry about power.

Aside from students, teachers and staff here could also use them to keep the school running when we lose power.

And everyone can use them for diversion at night - a rural African village at night with no power can get real boring.

So, for students, professionals, and other educated types who may have some level of technical knowledge, or at least interest, and who are in rural environments where cyber cafes and the like are not available something like this could actually be a great resource. This might bring a quicker return on the investment than only giving it to school children.

Maybe I'll write Negroponte a letter suggesting that he explore this possibility. If I had an XO I could even write it in the dark.

Well, that was amusing

As I mentioned in my last post, I went to Yaounde just to work on the computers there, print stuff, etc. I got about half my work done on Saturday and intended to finish on Sunday before taking the train back to Nanga in the evening.

Of course, I woke up Sunday morning and found that the power was out at the Peace Corps office and in the whole quartier. They have a generator but for some reason it was on the fritz. Tried finding a cyber cafe but all the ones I knew were also powerless. The only cyber I found that had power wanted 300 Francs a page for printing (normal rate is around 50) which I wasn't willing to pay, so my work went undone. Oh well. Oh the irony...

Bill happened to be in Yaoundé over the weekend as well by chance, and we got to meet some of the new agroforestry trainees on their way back to training from visiting their posts, so that was fun. Sunday it was just he and I sitting around the case de passage with no lights, no phones, no motor cars, not a single luxury. So, after a fruitless search for a cheap and open cyber cafe we grabbed pizza and beers at a nice little restaurant before I took the train back to post.

Fortunately, SONEL somehow got its ass in gear and fixed our power, so it came on the day before yesterday, then went out again all morning, and then came on again in the afternoon just in time for me to teach in the lab today. How's that for better luck?

Lights Out

Nanga Eboko at Night

OK, I disappeared for a while there. Power has been out in Nanga Eboko for the last two weeks. Lack of power has a tendency to reduce blog activity, hence the lack of posts recently. At the moment I am in Yaoundé taking advantage of the power and Internet access offered by Peace Corps to try to do some work.

I've managed to keep teaching my computer classes by giving theoretical lessons on the blackboard that require no electricity. I learned my lesson last year and this time around split my course material up so that I would have a bunch of lessons ready for days without power and so I could spend all my time doing practical lessons when I do have power. So the last two weeks I've been explaining terminology in more detail, talking about binary, explaining how disks store data, opening up computers and showing students the various parts, etc.

One of my English classes is scheduled in the evenings, so that has unfortunately been a wash since without light in the classroom I have to let the students go.

The private lessons I wanted to give to local teachers are obviously on hold as well.

Since the pumps are electric, the power cut also means I've had no water. Fortunately, I had a number of water cans and buckets filled up when the power went, so I've found that by being careful and cooking less I was able to make it last and even stay relatively clean for two weeks. just before I left they hooked up a portable generator to the school's water pump and got it going so people on campus would at least have water in their houses. I promptly refilled all my containers so now I'm set for another two weeks when I get back.

Sadly, the University's generator, out of commission since March, has still not been repaired, so I've been burning a lot of oil and candle wax the last two weeks. They are trying to fix it at the moment and have assured me it'll be working by the time I get back, but I've heard that before. They tried fixing it several times since it died in March without success, but this time they have some newly acquired spare parts so maybe it'll actually work.

The school has also ordered three portable generators they plan to use to run the offices and some classrooms. They are powerful enough that if one is hooked up to the computer lab I'll be able to run most of the machines and get back to teaching the course properly. They were supposed to have arrived yesterday (while I was en route to Yaoundé) so we'll see what happens when I get back. Even if I don't have power at home, at least I'd be able to teach, which will keep me busy and make it bearable. Forget about getting a cold beer in town though.

Whether they fix the big generator or put the smaller ones in place, they'd better pull off one or the other, or both, because SONEL (the Cameroonian power company) is telling us it will be two months before they can get the lights back on.

TWO MONTHS.

Assuming they actually do turn it back on around New Year's, that would be right around the time the regular dry season outages begin. So I can expect to be without power in my village all or most of the time until about March or April (if I'm lucky).

(WARNING: Offensive language to follow. Children and the easily offended should stop reading now. I never said this was a family friendly blog...)

Fuck. I mean, FUCK. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuckity fuck fuck. This blows.

Back to School

My classes finally started again last week. So far things are running a little smoother this year than last year. As with last year I've already had many students who are scheduled for other classes at the same time as mine. This occurs partly because the schedule runs from week to week in order to accommodate the large number of visiting professors who come to teach for a week or two at a time, partly because I have students from different years (normally they are all in the same classes based on their year), and partly because the Deans from the different departments don't seem to communicate very well when scheduling courses that include students from different majors (like mine).

So, things are confused as always, but on the bright side I was much better prepared this time around and was able to hit the ground running. Year two is always easier. You've already done the hard work of adapting to your school and community and had a year to prepare courses and figure out what works and what doesn't. In spite of ongoing confusion I'm finding that my new Dean this year is pretty easy to work with, and since he has a PhD in computer science he's generally pretty sympathetic.

I'm teaching two classes at the moment.

My first class is Informatique de Base (Basic Computing) which is a basic computer literacy class required of all new students. However, since the course ended up being scrubbed early last year, we're starting it all over again for the second year students. My job is easier this year since the new Dean and another computer professor they hired last year have split the course with me and are now sharing the load.

We divided the students by major. I am teaching the students from the Theology, Education, and Nursing programs. The two other professors are splitting the students from the Business and IT program (which is the largest group). In the end we'll all have about the same number of students. I may have slightly more at the end of the day.

The course covers basic operations (turning a PC on and off, using a keyboard and mouse), essential Windows (Menus, Desktop, Windows, Files and Folders, common functions), Office Applications (word processing and spreadsheets), and the Internet (search engines, Email, and security). We'll mostly be using Windows and MS Office but I may get insurrectionary and start showing the students OpenOffice once they've got the basics down. I'm using Firefox for the Internet section instead of Internet Exploder.

Since my courses could be cancelled early or I could end up stuck without power for days, I've learned my lesson from last year and am jamming all the crucial parts of my computer course into the beginning: Basic operations and essential Windows material, Word, and Internet. If that's all I get through, fine. If I have time I will into more detail in these areas and cover Excel and maybe PowerPoint.

I also have some material I can teach on a blackboard, so if we lose power I can still get some work done. I've got lessons on Windows, the Internet, hardware, and computer maintenance in reserve in case I get stuck. If need be I can also do some of the office lessons on the board (for example, I can explain concepts like rows, columns and cells for Excel on a blackboard).

I've also written a short manual for the course with chapters on each of the subjects above using lots of pictures and short, clear explanations of basic concepts and functions. Years of experience writing software manuals for my previous employer came in handy here. Well, except for the fact that I had to write the whole thing in French. Hopefully this will both help them study and serve as a resource they can keep after the class is over.

Since I can't print it and give out copies (school won't pay for it) I put it in pdf form and am going to stick it on all the machines in the lab. Students that have USB keys can take a copy of the manual and print it themselves at one of the office boutiques in town. Since most Cameroonians don't own computers, many towns have small shops (often just a guy with a PC and printer) where you can pay to have documents typed and printed.

My second class is General English. This is a much harder class for me to teach. For one thing, it's huge. I have over a hundred students jammed into a big sweaty mass in one room. For another, I didn't have a background in teaching English when I came here and wasn't well prepared for it. I did some ESL tutoring for Literacy Volunteers of America before I came here, but this is very different. Finally, the students are at different levels. Some speak English well. Others don't know a word. I'm trying to aim somewhere in the middle, but it's challenging.

I've designed the course as a basic grammar and vocabulary review. Since it's only a 45 hour course basic is about all I'll have time for. I taught the first class in both French and English (to try to ease the beginners into it), but switched to total English immersion by the third class. Since I had to go through the pain of immersion during my training, I've decided to inflict it on my students as well. Besides, it works.

So, that's what I'm up to at the moment.

Crisis Situation

The road to Nanga Eboko is bad. Even by Cameroonian standards. It's unpaved almost the whole 170 kilometers from Yaoundé to here. In the dry season it turns to dust and visibility is often nil - like driving in whiteout conditions in a blizzard. In the rainy season (which we're now in) it turns to a sea of mud. Logging trucks use the road through Nanga to carry the equatorial African rain forest to Yaoundé or Douala a few trunks at a time. In the rainy season mud, these huge, heavy trucks destroy the road. And of course, road repairs are not Cameroon's strong suit.

I was told by the volunteer here before me that the road had gotten worse during his two years here, and it has continued to get worse during my time here. The last time I took a bus to Yaoundé we did a lot of slipping and sliding. It's become normal for people to get stuck in the mud on the road or trapped behind overturned tractor trailers for a night or two.

Fortunately, we are on the train line that goes from the north of Cameroon to Yaoundé, so for my last few trips I have been able to take the train (even though that means getting to the station at 3:30 AM).

However, the road has become so bad that most deliveries of goods from Yaoundé have stopped. The train only drops passengers in Nanga, so everything has to be trucked in over our crappy road. I first realized the implications of this when I went looking for eggs and was told that there were none to be had anywhere in town.

Then, on Friday I went to meet a friend in town for a beer and got the REAL bad news: there's no beer in town.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, I'm exaggerating. They still had some Guinness but were out of everything else. Bet the Guinness is gone by now too. Ashia!

Crap. Viruses.

In my previous post on the challenges of computer maintenance in Cameroon, I should have mentioned that viruses are a massive problem here. Most people here don't think about security much. Public computers in cyber cafes are usually riddled with viruses, and everyone here uses USB flash drives to store their data. As a result, viruses spread like wildfire. We periodically get contagions here where a new virus spreads to practically every machine on campus.

Since I arrived here I've tried to improve things here by installing Grisoft's AVG Free on just about every machine I can get my hands on, and that has helped a lot. It's a pretty good program, and if you plug in a virus ridden USB key it automatically spots and cleans most viruses.

I've also tried to end the practice of installing multiple anti-virus programs on machines. While many people here pay no attention to security at all, others go overboard and decide that if one anti-virus program will protect their machine, why not three or four? Of course, having three anti-virus programs scanning your system at the same time will probably make your PC as slow as any virus or spyware would, so this ends up being counterproductive. I think they're finally getting that, and so now we usually just have one per machine.

Anyway, yesterday a students came to me asking if I could give him some free software I'd mentioned to him in conversation. I put it on my USB key and plugged into his laptop to copy it over. Later, I plugged into one of the PCs here to do some blog posting and found that I'd picked up a virus from him. AVG was on the machine so it cleaned the infected files, but in the process deleted them all. I made sure to give the guy a copy of AVG free as well and told him to clean his machine. Hopefully he will.

Unfortunately, among the deleted files were a series of blog posts I'd written (I often write them ahead of time and post them later) and pictures I'd selected to go up. I was all set to post tons of pictures of my school and village, but, alas, now I'll have to go rewrite the posts and find the pictures again. Ashia!

Crap. Viruses...

Windows 3.1

Alive and well in Cameroon. Some student just brought me an ancient laptop running Windows 3.1 to ask for my help. The miraculous thing is that this old machine was running strong, in spite of what Cameroon normally does to computers. The embarrassing thing was that I had forgotten how to use 3.1 so it took me a few minutes to figure out what I was doing.

Eid

Friday was Eid, the festival that marks the end of Ramadan for Cameroon's Muslims. (Come to think of it, it marks the end of Ramadan for Muslims everywhere doesn't it?). Here they call it "aladji" which I think comes from "el hadji" - one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. So anyone here who has gone to Mecca is referred to as "aladji."

Since Cameroonians of all religions love to party, Christians look forward to Muslim holidays and vice-versa. If you have friends from another religion it's normal to invite them to celebrate with you. So, Muslims go to Christians' houses for Christmas dinner, Christians break the Ramadan fast with Muslims, etc. A party is a party after all. Free food! Usually the only difference between parties here thrown by Christians and parties thrown by Muslims is that at the Muslim parties you drink soda instead of beer.

So, Friday night I was invited along with my friends Souaibou, Issa, Adamou, and Mr. Ndaki (all Christians) to the home of a Muslim friend in town to celebrate. He and his wife welcomed us with an enormous spread of food. We spent about two hours stuffing ourselves before heading home, and a good time was had by all.

Religiously, Cameroon is a mixed country. The majority are Christian (Catholic and Protestant) but there is a large Muslim minority which is concentrated in the north of the country with Muslim communities scattered throughout the rest of the nation. So, the two faiths are mixed. Every decent sized town in the country has both Christians and Muslims living next to each other. This is complicated by the persistence of many traditional (non-Christian and non-Muslim) religions as well. Many traditional religious practices are also blended with those Christianity and Islam as well, so if you go to a Christian church, you may well encounter rituals or customs that were part of the area's traditional belief system that have been incorporated into modern practices. So, religious lines can get pretty blurry here.

(A side note: there is a Jewish synagogue in Yaoundé near the Peace Corps office. I had had no idea there was a Jewish community in Cameroon until one night I saw a bunch of Cameroonians come out of the building all wearing yarmulkes. Blew my mind.)

The government here is officially secular, no religion is favored by the state, and all Cameroonian citizens enjoy freedom of conscience. On TV the news shows Muslims going to pray on their holidays and Christians going to pray on theirs. Polygamy is legal here, not just to accommodate Muslims but also those who practice traditional religions that are (usually) polygamous.

In general, there doesn't seem to be too much sectarian tension in Cameroon. I've run into a few Christians who say disparaging things about Muslims in general, and though I don't know too many Muslims I imagine there are those who say the same kinds of things about Christians. But, by and large people here seem to have a live-and-let-live attitude towards matters of faith.

My friends here at the University (which is a religious school) are quite proud of that. When I asked them once if there was a lot of religiously motivated violence in Cameroon, they scoffed at the idea. "What, kill someone because he is of a different faith? That would be stupid."

Yes, yes it would.

Peace Corps Cameroon's Peer Support Network

A group photo from the recent Peer Support Network workshop I was involved in. Twenty-o ne volunteers from all over Cameroon, plus Richard (the older gentleman in the back) who came from DC to help us set things up, PCMO Chad (our staff advisor) and Amadou, who is in charge of Peace Corps's Garoua office in northern Cameroon. Photo thoughtfully shared by volunteer Amber. Thanks Amber.

Black Vampire 2

While in Yaoundé at the end of last month, I ran into Volunteer Kelsey, who was on her way back to America. As it happens, she and her boyfriend Reese (also a volunteer who has since gone back home) were once randomly cast in a Cameroonian horror movie called Black Vampire. They were hanging out a hotel in Bamenda and the filmmakers were shooting the movie there. they were cast on the spot as tourists that get eaten by a bunch of Black Vampires.

I had heard stories of the legendary film, but had never had the chance to see it. When I saw her in Yaoundé I learned that the same director had made a sequel and cast the two of them again. She didn't have a copy of the original, but she did have a copy of Black Vampire 2. So, a bunch of us naturally gathered together at the Case de Passage to watch it.

Reese had a bigger part in the sequel, as an evil white man who was trying to get a magic book that would allow him to control the Black Vampires that were overrunning Cameroon and use them to take over the world (or something ... I guess). We didn't see much of Kelsey. There was a scene where she randomly helps the heroes attack the vampires and kicks one of them when he's down. Then another where she's found on the ground with bites in her neck and is rushed to the hospital. After that we are told only that "Sharon is responding to treatment."

We didn't make it through the whole movie, which was a shame because I could see it was quite possibly the best film ever made. I can only hope that one day it comes to America and we can all rent it on Netflix.

For the inside story on the making of Black Vampire, see Kelsey's pictures and story here.

Computer Maintenance in Cameroon

On Friday I finally finished getting the lab in order. Eighteen PCs fixed, loaded, and ready to go for my Informatique de Base class (Basic Computing), which is theoretically supposed to start this week.
Now trying to fix up PCs in our cyber cafe (now out of commission as a cyber cafe but I've turned it into a second mini-lab for teaching). Thanks to Bill, I was able to get four used PCs through an organization run by a former Peace Corps volunteer here in Cameroon who's now a high school computer teacher. He has his students fix up donated computers and then every couple of years brings a shipment here to donate to Cameroonian schools and other institutions. (Thanks to Michael and all his students at West Ottawa High!)

So recently, I've been fixing computers like a fiend. OK, not sure how exactly a fiend would fix a computer, but I bet they would do it my way...

Computer maintenance here is a slow and laborious process. The machines we have are all old, mostly built from parts that have been scrounged together from wherever we could find them. Usually when one machine dies we can swap its parts into another machine, and so by cannibalizing bad machines we can put together a working system or two. Of course, because of the mix of different processors, motherboards, types of RAM, etc, this doesn't always work.

Figuring out what's wrong, hunting down replacement parts, then installing and testing them (and hoping they're not bad as well) is always a big pain in the neck.

And our machines require a lot of maintenance, in part because of their age, but more so because of the harsh environment here. Cameroon kills computer. It has 1) lots of heat 2) lots of humidity (in the rainy season) and 3) lots of dust (in the dry season), all of which are bad for computers. Air conditioning is not usually an option outside of some offices in the bigger cities, and certainly not at most schools.

The worst hazard for PCs here is the power though. Electricity is constantly going out, and when it comes back up the resulting power surge can often fry machines that were left plugged in. Ideally, all PCs should be hooked up to a voltage regulator and/or a UPS power backup (I managed to snag a few for my mini-lab thankfully), but again, given the lack of resources these are often unavailable. In that case, when the power goes out during class I have all my students unplug the machines immediately. This doesn't guarantee that they won't be damaged by normal fluctuations in voltage (since it's unstable even when the power is on) but at least it reduces the risk of damaging the machine when it comes back on.

And of course, very often the power goes out when I'm in the middle of fixing a PC or installing software, or teaching class, so it's just plain annoying as well.

Thinking back to my days in corporate America, I realize now that I was working in paradise from a maintenance standpoint: power was stable and every machine had a backup; the office was climate controlled; computers were pretty new; and if something did break, hey just send someone to OfficeMax to buy a replacement on the company's dime. Here if a part blows I have to go all the way to the capital city of Yaoundé (four to eight hours away) to replace it, assuming the school has the money to replace it, which they often don't.

Yes, in terms of computer maintenance, America is truly the land of milk and honey, with streets paved with gold-filled integrated circuits.

On the bright side, all of this has been keeping me busy. And if you like a challenge it is satisfying to finally get a battered old Pentium 166 running again so your students can at least use it to practice their mouse and keyboard skills.

Such is the nature of service as a Peace Corps Volunteer: you do the best you can with what you've got. As they used to say in Great Depression era America: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

Explosions

For some reason, a lot of things have been blowing up when I plus them lately. Power supplies that had been accidentally set to 110 volts (not by me), monitors, fried RAM and motherboards, power cables that had a nick in them. Lots of sparks and little fires and popping sounds and always the acrid smell of burning electronic gear. Perhaps the gods of fire are angry with me and are taking it out on my computers for some reason. Ashia!

Knowing Just Enough to Be Dangerous

The University where I teach offers several different IT degrees. However, since many of the students have little or no prior computer experience before coming here, many of them are learning for the first time. Some do know more about computers, but since they're mostly self-taught or informally taught they may not have the best understanding of everything they're doing.

What this has meant, as I discover every time I do maintenance on PCs in the lab, is that there are a whole lot of students here who know just enough to wreak havoc but not enough to fix the damage they've caused.

And to make matters worse, last year all of them had the Administrator password. So much for security. Ugh. Hopefully we can keep a lid on the new password this year.

Busy Busy Busy

Working in the computer lab all day today (or until the power goes out) setting up computers for the start of classes next week. Marie Noelle (one of my coworkers) and I have eighteen machines to configure. Since many of them are screwed up in various ways we're just reformatting the disks and reinstalling everything clean. Yesterday power was out until 4 PM and then went out again at 8, so we only got in a few hours last night. Gonna be a long day. On the bright side while I wait for stuff to install maybe I can occasionally steal a minute to post ... like now.

Blog Love from Bill

I see Bill has posted a detailed review of my recent pratfall in a Buea gutter. Gee, thanks Bill ... I think ...

Update

Captain's Log. Stardate 10-8-2007.

Have been delinquent in updating the blog recently due to laziness combined with normal power and connectivity problems. In the last three weeks I:

• Gave a few computer lessons to a pair of teachers at the college (private high school) that shares the campus with the university. Basic mouse and keyboard stuff.
• Used some of the new spare parts I got from Bill to fix up another machine and upgrade a second in my little improvised computer lab. Still have three or four dead machines to fix.
• Spent a week in Yaoundé for two things. First, Peace Corps Cameroon has set up a peer support network for volunteers and I was asked to join. Basically the idea is to have a list of volunteers around the country people can call if they need someone to talk to. (Being stuck alone at post while suffering through days of explosive diarrhea can get depressing.) Someone from Peace Corps Washington came out and gave us two days of counseling tips and helped us set up ground rules for organization, confidentiality, responsibilities, etc. Second, at my last province meeting I was elected the representative for the Center province volunteers to the Voluntary Advisory Committee (VAC). This is a committee composed of a volunteer from each province, the country director, and various other staff members that makes policies and addresses volunteer concerns. So, basically I'm the congressman for the volunteers in my province. While there I had hoped to do some posting, but the office was filled with other volunteers, meaning that the computers were occupied constantly.

Right now I'm working on some new (used) computers the university bought for the lab, getting them ready for the start of classes. The students are back today and my classes are supposed to start (in theory) next Monday.

It's been raining a lot lately. Water and mud everywhere. Power goes on and off .

That's about it for now. Eventually I will post some pictures and stories about what I did over the break, I swear.

End log entry.

Arrrr Mateys!

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day ye scurvy dogs!

There and Back Again

I arrived safely back in Nanga on the train from Yaoundé at about midnight last night. It was a busy but productive trip that netted me four used computers for the second lab I've been putting together. Some highlights of the trip:

• On Friday I had a province meeting in the village of Makak pronounced ("muh-cahk") with other volunteers in the center province. Makak is really big. Feels bigger in the dark too. No one was really ready for Makak and none of us could stop talking about it. I had a lot of fun with Makak. (Yes, yes, I am very immature.)
• Saturday I made it to the Southwest by way of Douala. Since I would have arrived in Buea too late to do much work, Bill and I decided to meet for dinner in the nearby beach town of Limbé, stay at a hotel and hit the beach for a few hours the next morning before heading back up to Buea to prep the computers. We found a place that made great cheeseburgers and had a good view of the water for dinner.
  
• After dinner Saturday we walked around Limbé eventually settling at a nice bar frequented by foreign expats and tourists and the Cameroonian prostitutes that service them. Two of these prostitutes followed us out of the place when we left. The ensuing dialogue went something like this:

Bill: (as we see them coming) Uh-oh.
Brian: (under my breath) Walk faster.
Prostitute 1: Hell-ooh! Hell-ooh!
Prostitute 2: Hell-ooh! Where are you going? Can we talk to you?
Bill: Umm ... sorry, we have to meet our uh, wives.
Brian: Uh, yes, we're meeting our wives.
Prostitute 1: No, don't go! (Grabs my hand)
Brian: Don't touch me.

• After breakfast we spent Sunday morning at the beach. It's normally rainy there now but it cleared for us and we got a couple of hours of sun. We also got to eat coconuts fresh off the tree.
• Spent Monday and part of Sunday testing and packing the computers and arranging transport for Tuesday.
• Monday night while walking around Buea I fell into a three foot deep rain gutter in the dark. Lost my glasses in the garbage at the bottom for a few minutes. Scraped my arm and leg but otherwise unhurt. Bill gave my fall a perfect "10". I think it was me yelling "MOTHER****ER I JUST FELL INTO A GUTTER!" that put me over the top.
• Bill's friend Hans invited me to come back for New Year's to participate in a sacred Bakweri ritual that will give me protection from witchcraft. He was pretty insistent, and since I live in perpetual fear of witchcraft anyway, I think I have to go.
• Tuesday morning Hans helped me haul my four PCs to the bus company, where after haggling with the porters and probably being overcharged, they were loaded on top for the trip to Yaoundé. After an extremely uncomfortable five hour ride (how long after you lose circulation in your legs does it start to do permanent damage?) I made it to the capital, where the pickup truck owned by the University came to get me. Because they were taking other passengers back we had to lock the machines up in storage until their next trip. I took the train back to Nanga, which turned out to get there in about the same time and in far more comfort than the people who rode in the University pickup.

Good times.

Go (South) West Young Man!

Tomorrow I'm travelling to a province meeting in Makak (pronounced "muh-kahk", and no, we never stop making jokes about it) and then heading to Buea in the southwest province again. Volunteer Bill was recently able to get hold of a load of donated computers for the Teacher's Resource Center in Buea where he works. By a stroke of luck, he was able to score a couple of extra computers for me, so I am going to collect them this weekend.

As some of you will recall, I visited Buea and the Southwest back in February for vacation and had a great time, so I'm looking forward to heading back. Buea has a lot of good cyber cafes so if I can I will try to post some more from there. In the meantime here are some pictures I took at the time that didn't make it into my original post. Enjoy!

Some shots of Buea Town, the downtown heart of Buea. Or maybe I should say uptown heart of Buea, since the city is built on a mountainside and Buea Town is located above most of the other neighborhoods.


An old German colonial administration building still in use. When the Germans (the original colonialists here) arrived in the 1880s Buea was their first colonial capital. An old British style mailbox from the days when the Southwest was a British colony. Hard to make out here but the "EIIR" insignia, which means Elizabeth II Regina, is still on the box.Books and Things. One of the many used book stores / junk shops found in Buea. Depending on the day of the week "And Things" can include old computer games, wedding dresses, bowling trophies, soap, chainsaws, hardhats, and collectible Bruce Lee action figures.Bill on the campus of the University of Buea.
Taxi cabs in Anglophone Cameroon are all filled with entertaining stickers for some reason.
Someone doesn't speak German as well as they think. One of the many very weird things I've seen since arriving in Cameroon.

Lights On, Lights Off, Lights On, Lights Off

Power has been sketchy this week, hence the lack of posts. The electricity has cut out on a daily basis since I returned to post, sometimes for 20 minutes at a time, sometimes for a day or two.

When the lights have been on, I have been giving private lessons to two students and testing some spare parts I picked up from Bill last time I was in Yaoundé.

Have also been suffering some kind of stomach bug. Can't seem to eat more than a few bites of anything without feeling sick. Think I've lost a few pounds in the past week. Feeling better today so hopefully that means my stomach is coming around.

Deodorant and Baby Powder

Water has been a problem for me the last few weeks.

First I stayed in Bangangté, the village Peace Corps used for training this year. it was a nice place but the water was out about three days out of every four while I was there. Then, on my vacation to the Northwest province, I spent a few nights in the village of Bafut, where the water was also out the whole time. Then, when I finally made it back to post the water line for my house had been "broken." Don't ask me how.

A few lessons learned:
- You don't REALLY need to bathe every day. Especially if you're in the cool mountains like I was and not sweating a lot.
- If you had to lug around big cans of water instead of just turning a tap you wouldn't bathe every day either.
- Bucket baths are really refreshing when you haven't washed in three days.
- Putting on deodorant and patting down your body with baby powder will give you an almost-shower-fresh feeling and smell. For a little while anyway. Something to remember next time you go camping.
- Running water is a good thing.

Back at Post

Well, I made it back to post in one piece. When I got home the inside of my house was covered in cobwebs and lizard turds and the water line going into the house had been broken so I had no water. Fortunately the house is now clean and the water has been turned back on (after four days) so I can now bathe again. Internet is up and power has been pretty good (knock on wood) so everything is OK.

Well, almost everything. Before I left the knob on my gas tank broke so it could no longer be closed. My colleague Souaibou got it out of my house so in the event there was a leak my house wouldn't fill with gas and explode, and he swapped a spare empty tank with me when I got back.
My first full day back I took the gas tank into town to the Total station where I was told they're out of gas and haven't had any shipments in three weeks. So, I can't cook anything or boil water. I've been eating at restaurants in town, at friends' houses, and buying bottled water to drink.

When I arrived I was asked if I would teach English and Computer classes this year to the students at the college (in French "college" means a private high school) that shares the campus with the University. Partly because I was afraid it would conflict with University classes once they start in October, partly because I wanted to use my free weeks when I have no University classes to work on computer classes for teachers and local members of the community, partly because the computer classes would be without computers and I'd just be teaching on a blackboard, and partly because I'm just not real jazzed about teaching at the high school level, I politely declined. They were disappointed but I think my time will be better spent working with adults.

I also had some sad news when I arrived. The eldest daughter of my next door neighbor died of a fever (not sure which disease) while I was away, leaving a six year old daughter behind. I had met her several times and she was a very nice woman, so I was saddened by her death. Then, the day after I returned, one of my colleagues lost his twelve-year old daughter to malaria. I stopped by yesterday to pay respects and he and his wife are both clearly devastated. I wish I could do something for them but unfortunately there's not much.

So, everyone here is in mourning. We're going to put some sort of memorial service together for them later this week.

Sad news aside, its been nice to finally be back in village and see all my friends and colleagues after more than a month's absence. Feels like I'm ... dare I say it? ... home.

Back to Post Today

After a short stop in Yaoundé after my trip to the Northwest province, I am headed back to post today. If I have Internet access when I return I will start posting entries and pictures again in a few days. until then, take care, dear readers.

Traveling

Just a quick note to let everyone know I'm still alive and haven't given up on blogging. I've been staying in the village Peace Corps used for training for the last few weeks and between being busy with work and the fact that the nearest cyber cafe was a bit of a walk, I haven't had much time to update the blog.

We finished with training yesterday. Thirty-six new volunteers were sworn in and are now off to their posts. Before going back to Nanga I decided to take a few days of vacation and visit the city of Bamenda since it's fairly close to the training village. Bamenda is in a valley surrounded by mountains and cliffs with waterfalls. Nice climate as well. It's a beautiful area.

Since I'm traveling my internet access will continue to be limited for a few more days. When I am back at post and have a chance to get all my pictures of my camera I will start posting pictures and stories from the last two months.

Friday Lizard Blogging

Back to giving my readers lizardy goodness. It's been way too long.

A Clean Bill of Health

I'm now finished with all my medical exams and have officially received a clean bill of health from the PCMOs. No parasites or tropical fevers or exotic diseases. Zip. La santé va bien!

A Trip to the Dentist

Went to the dentist this morning for a checkup and cleaning. It was pretty much the same as a visit to the dentist in the states.

One thing was amusing: all the dentists and hygienists were wearing smocks with Looney Tunes characters and the slogan "What's Up Doc?" on the breast. Random crap like that is what I love about Cameroon.

I'm lucky to have the Peace Corps to find me a good dentist and pay for it. One of the first things I noticed after arriving here was how many locals are missing teeth. Most Cameroonians either live in areas where there is no dentist, or, they don't have the money to pay for one. For them, there's usually only one option:
Just another reminder of the harsh effects of poverty in people's daily lives here.

The Peace Corps Weight Loss Program

I had my physical with one of the PCMOs (Peace Corps Medical Officers) today and according to him I'm in good health. After that I swung by a lab here in Yaoundé for blood work and to drop off some "specimens" (if you get my drift) so they can see if I've picked up any parasites.

When the doc weighed me we found that I've lost ten pounds since coming here. This surprised me actually - I didn't feel any thinner and my pants still fit. Nothing compared to many other volunteers though. Between a new diet, all sorts of yummy gastro-intestinal disorders, and stress related changes in appetite, weight fluctuations are almost universal for Peace Corps volunteers. I know plenty of folks who have lost twenty or thirty pounds since arriving. One guy (who was pretty big when he arrived) has lost almost sixty pounds. People in the north of the country (where it is generally about as hot as the inside of a pizza oven) usually lose more because they are constantly sweating it off.

I have been mercifully free of any major stomach illnesses like amoebic dysentery, so I attribute the weight loss mainly to the change in diet. Although the palm oil they cook with is loaded with fat and cholesterol, meat is leaner, they eat lots of fish, and the other foods you find here have less fat than the processed foods we tend to eat in the US. Almost nothing besides candy has sugar in it either, so my sugar consumption is virtually nil unless I feel like treating myself to the occasional packet of cookies or a candy bar.

Forget Jenny Craig. If you want to drop twenty pounds join the Peace Corps and come to Africa. Maybe you'll even be able to do it without explosive diarrhea.

Election Day

Today was election day in Cameroon. All over the country elections for parliamentary seats and mayoral offices were held.

Since elections here have occasionally gotten ugly in the past, Peace Corps had us under strict orders to stay at our posts and sit tight for the weekend. Since I had to come to Yaoundé for mid-service medical, I came early and have been hanging out at the Case de Passage next to the Peace corps office in the capital.

The day has been quiet. All the stores were closed and the streets were empty. I went with a visiting former volunteer to visit friends and we passed a number of polling places, most of which were empty. Most people don't seem to be bothering to vote, presumably because the winners have probably already been decided.

Chatting with some Cameroonians, I learned that they don't vote for individual candidates but instead the vote for political parties, who then select the candidates after they have one. Cameroon has a multi-party system, but the ruling party of President H. Paul Biya, combined with smaller, allied parties, always seems to win a majority, presumably because they are doing such a bang-up job of running the country.

Most of us volunteers just stayed inside today. I spent the morning watching Three's Company DVDs and the afternoon hanging out with the afore-mentioned volunteer and her Cameroonian friends. Had some pretty good grilled fish for lunch. Mmmm ... grilled fish ...

Stage and Mid-Service

Currently in Yaoundé getting ready for my mid-service medical exams. All volunteers receive a physical, a check up at the dentist, and tests for all the various tropical diseases and intestinal disorders we tend to catch here. Mid-service lasts about a week, so I will be here for the next few days.

I came to Youndé from the village of Banganté, in the West province. I will write more about this in the future and will eventually post pictures, but I am helping out with "Stage" (training) for the new batch of Education volunteers. Last week this mostly involved teaching a lot of computer lessons to Cameroonian high school students while the stagaires (trainees) observed and took notes.

Although the water seems to be out all the time and the power is about as sketchy as Nanga's, I liked Banganté and what I've seen so far of the west province. It's hilly country filled with farms and is quite pretty. I also got to visit Bafoussam, one of Cameroon's larger cities. A little grungy and intimidating but I had a good time.

Stay tuned for more ...

Beatles Fans

In my General English class this semester I may have inadvertently created a bunch of Beatles fans. As an exercise, I brought in my mp3 player and speakers and played "In My Life" for them. I chose that particular song because it's slow, the lyrics are clear and easy to understand, it's not too long, and it's a nice song. Perfect for low and intermediate level students.

So, I played the song, wrote out the lyrics on the board, explained and discussed them with the students so they would understand it, and then played the full song again.

They loved it. Kept asking me to play it over and over again. One girl came up and used her cell phone to record the song and others approached me after and asked if I could get them copies of the CD. One had heard "Let It Be" somewhere before and when I told him I had that one too he begged me to play it, so he and some others stayed after class and I played that one for them as well.

So, as an American sent to Africa partly to introduce Cameroonians to American culture I have now successfully introduced them to a legendary ... British band.

After the Beatles experiment I tried a little Norah Jones so they could hear a female voice with a different accent. I played "Don't Know Why" for them - also slow and relatively easy to understand. They liked it, but it didn't go over quite as well as the Beatles for whatever reason.

I think next year I'm going to get ambitious and try Motörhead.

The Little Dry Season

Well, not long after I wrote a post on the coming of the rainy season here in southern Cameroon, it suddenly stopped raining.

As it turns out, there are actually two rainy seasons and two dry seasons in this part of the country. There is the Big Dry Season, which lasts from November til about March, which I described here (link). It's followed by the Little Rainy Season, which I described in the aforementioned post.

The Little Rainy Season is then followed by the Little Dry Season, which we are in now, and which lasts from June until about September. The Little Dry Season is not as dry as the Big Dry Season. We've gotten a tiny bit of rain (drizzles mostly) and it is usually very cloudy. It always looks like it's getting ready to rain but never does. Kind of a weird feeling.

I'm told that after the Little Dry Season ends around September, we will enter the Big Rainy Season, which will be a lot like the Little Rainy Season, except ... bigger, and which will last until the Big Dry Season starts in November.

End of the Semester

I haven't posted anything for a while since we just wrapped up the semester at school. The last few weeks have been very hectic. Here's a summary:

• I'm currently in Yaoundé en route to "Stage" (training for new volunteers) in Cameroon's West province. I'll be there over the weekend and will start teaching next Monday in a "Model School" for Cameroonian high school students. The trainees will sit in and watch for the first week, then we'll switch roles and I'll observe and assist after that.
• I taught General English, a required course for all first year students. More on this in future posts, but with over a hundred students and lots of assignments to grade it ended up sucking up most of my time.
• After discussions with my Dean, we decided to do my Informatique de Base (Basic Computing) class again next year for all the students who were supposed to take it this year. Since we'll also have to give the same course to the new students, I'll probably end up teaching it twice. This time, since I know what to expect and the limitations of time and energy, I think it will go a bit smoother. I will also be tag-team teaching the course with another professor and the Dean (who are also techies) in order to handle the number of students.
• For the third year students who were in Informatique de Base and need the credits to graduate this year, I ended up teaching a mini-course for about two hours a day covering basic Windows functions and word processing with MS Word. At the end I gave each of them a short practical exam where I had them demonstrate basic Word and Windows functions for me.
• When I wasn't teaching English or the third year students in Informatique de Base, I was giving private lessons to a local high school student and a pair of teachers at the college (private high school) which shares the campus with the University.

The computers donated to the University by Peace Corps back in April have been a godsend. It took me a while but after a lot of scrounging for parts I now have three Pentium IIs set up in the University's cyber cafe (which has been closed to the public since I arrived and which I am now using as my own classroom). They're old and slow, but they work. Without them I could not have given the mini-course to the third year students or my private lessons.

My Babies

Can I get an Ashia!?

Ashia! is a popular Cameroonian interjection used to express frustration, disappointment, or sympathy with someone experiencing said frustration or disappointment.

For example: the other day I saw a girl walking down the road with a big bushel of oil palm nuts balanced on her head. She slipped and dropped them. I reflexively said "Ashia!" in sympathy.

Yesterday I got an Ashia-worthy text message on my cell phone from my fellow tech volunteer Bill. Warning: this post will induce pain among techies reading this but may be incomprehensible to non-technical readers. The message (as typed):

Shit man this is painful. I'm helping an inspector who's a nice guy but doesn't know how to double click with a new 3.5Ghz Pentium dual core multimedia pc with a 20" flat screen & APC he just got from the World Bank. This thing kicks the ass of my system at home several times over & he doesn't know what he's got or how to even begin using it. Meanwhile i'm piecing together old crap to keep my p2s alive. Can i get an "ashia"?

Yes Bill, yes, you can: ASHIA!

Who Needs a Toothbrush?

Apparently many Africans don't

I don't see too many Cameroonians chewing sticks, but people here do walk around chewing on toothpicks a lot.

Wonders of Nature

I just watched a lizard devour a huge spider on the floor about three feet away from me. Sadly, I left my camera in the house. Now THAT would have been a good lizard blogging picture.

The Rainy Season

A while back I posted on what the dry season was like here in Nanga. Right now we're in the rainy season. Generally, it's cloudy in the morning and occasionally rains and then gets sunny in the afternoon. Some days it stays pretty cloudy for most of the day.

There are two types of cloudy here. There's hazy-whitish-gray-cloudy, which usually means it's probably not going to rain, or if it does rain, it will be pretty light. These are the clouds that are usually present in the morning.

Then there's menacing-angry-black-cloudy, which usually show up in the late afternoon and means the skies are about to open. This can happen fast. It can go from a sunny day with clear blue skies to menacing-angry-black-cloudy in an hour. When you see them gathering, you get in doors quick. Usually big storms like this are accompanied by plenty of thunder and lightening so it's hard to miss them coming. (Big storms also hit in the middle of the night a lot.)

When menacing-angry-black-cloudy does turn to rain, it rains HARD. Heavy, pounding, driving rain. Since my house (and most other houses here) have tin roofs, this make storms here LOUD. Throw in the thunder and there are times I wake up in the middle of the night.

When it rains like this, everything shuts down. It's funny. Before I came here my mother (who was presumably worried I'd get wet and cath cold) convinced me to buy a "rain suit" - waterprooof jacket and pants. I also brought a pair of umbrellas. I have yet to wear the rain suit, or, even just the jacket. I've used the umbrellas a few times when I had to go out, but normally they gather dust. Nobody here has much rain gear. Groundskeepers who have to work in the mud have boots but that's about it. Lots of women have umbrellas but they use them on sunny days to keep the sun off of them.

No, when it rains hard here people just stay indoors. Students and teachers don't go to class. Offices and stores open late or close early. If people are too far from home to get back they'll stay at work or find a bar to sit in until the storms pass. And they usually do pass fairly quickly. I've adopted this habit. If I see it's going to rain I just go home and wait until the storm passes. Since I live on campus this is easy. If I happen to have class, well, I still have the umbrellas and a pair of totes my mom sent me.

Since there aren't many paved roads around here, this means lots and lots of mud. The rainy season's corollary to the dry season's omnipresent dust is lots and lots of mud. Most people here do not wear shoes indoors to avoid tracking in mud or dust (depending on the season). The mud can be annoying, but I think it's far better to just have to clean a bit of mud off the floor or your shoes than to have to try to clean off the layers of dust that settle on everything during the dry season.

The foliage has also become very lush. In spots where there was bare earth a few months ago in the dry season, there are now four or five feet of vegetation. Combined with the absence of dust I think it makes the countryside much prettier.

As I mentioned previously, power is better overall during the rainy season since a lot of Cameroon's power is hydroelectric. During the dry season the water levels in the rivers drop and SONEL (the power company) starts cutting power since there's not enough to go around. This is less of a problem during the rainy season. The power does get knocked out a lot during big storms, but it's usually restored fairly quickly (knock on wood). During the dry season we were going for days or even weeks at a time without power. Now we usually only lose power for a few hours or maybe a day.

The biggest downside I've seen so far is that all the extra water means lots of extra mosquitoes. Lots and lots. Lots of other bugs too. These days I usually smell like a strange mix of deet and hydrocortisone cream.

Mango Flies

I see that Volunteer Jessica (who I trained with last year) has run afoul of one of the many little hazards of life in Cameroon:

Mango Flies.

Fear not, dear readers - I iron my clothes thoroughly so no worms bursting out of my skin yet.

Hey, You Got Something To Eat?

A goat asks: Hey, You Got Something To Eat?

Goats are everywhere in Cameroon, roaming free and wide. My mom sent me some seeds for a garden in a care package. Unfortunately I have no fence or place to put one. Without some kind of enclosure the goats would hoover up anything I put in the ground.

Of course, since they are eventually going to be slaughtered and eaten by humans (including me) I guess we're getting the easy end of the deal.

Finally Teaching Again

Huzzah!

I finally started teaching again last week after a two and a half month hiatus. I have two PCs set up in a room that I can use when I want to. The university shares the campus with a college (which in Cameroon is a private high school - not what Americans think of as a college) that is also run by the church. I have started giving basic computer lessons to several of the teachers there. It felt good to finally get some work done.

This week I got another student - a local high school student who is taking a paying course I am doing for the university. Others are interested as well. Hopefully we can use the proceeds to buy some parts so I can fix up more computers and take even more students.

This week I also started teaching my general English class for all the first years students. So far so good. Power has been cooperative in Nanga lately. Internet has even been semi-regular lately. To cap it all off last night I made the best spaghetti sauce I've ever had (if I do say so myself). It's all too good to be true.

But, Peace Corps life comes in peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. Which means something must be out there ... waiting ... waiting ... (cue Jaws music)

Two Weeks in Yaoundé

We finally wrapped TDW (Training Design Workshop) on Wednesday. After going through training once on the other side, it was interesting to see all the work that goes into preparing for it. Volunteers and Peace Corps staff all worked very hard to get the training program ready. In July and August I will be spending about five weeks helping with training in the village of Bangante, in the West province. This should be interesting since I have not spent much time in the West and the climate, geography, and culture there are all very different from my village. It will also be interesting to meet the new volunteers. We spent most of our days in conference rooms hashing out schedules, working out problems, and preparing and practicing the training sessions we will present.

In the evenings however, we had about fifteen volunteers all staying in the Case de Passage (Transit House) - sort of like a hostel for volunteers attached to the Peace Corps office. I hadn't seen many of the people who came since our own training last year, so it was good to catch up. The best part of having so many volunteers together at once was that we were able to pool our resources and throw several huge dinner parties, all of which were a blast and a nice change from the regular Cameroonian fare we're now accustomed to eating. Here are a few highlights:

Mexican Night

Soul Food Night

Calzone Night

Birthday Night

Of course, where Peace Corps volunteers congregate in Cameroon, there will usually be beer:

Which, naturally, leads to some very silly behavior:

As much fun as all of this was, it will be good to get back to Nanga. After almost two weeks cooped up with each other in Yaoundé we're all suffering from a bit of cabin fever at this point. I should be going back today or tomorrow.