African Geeks

Speaking of sci-fi and geekiness in general, it turns out Cameroon has a much larger geek population than I thought:

• Stargate SG-1 is a popular show here. Runs in French on one of the cable channels here.
• I have a student who grew up reading Marvel Comics, which can be found in French in Yaounde.
• The other night I was in a bar and had a long conversation with a guy who plays Baldur's Gate, Ceasar, and Sim City.
• Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings are popular here too.
• Plus there's apparently kids here who own lightsabers.

Interesting.

Spring Break 2007: Battlestar Galactica

For those of you who don't know me personally, I will be the first to admit I am a huge geek. So, you can imagine my excitement when I arrived in Buea and Bill told me a friend of his had sent him bootleg copies of the first eleven episodes of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. The last episode of season 2 (aired before I left) was a big cliffhanger so I was dying to find out what happened. I copied them all onto my portable hard drive so I could bring them back to post. It took a while to see them all since I could only watch when the generator was running but I managed to get caught up. Awesome. Glad to see the show hasn't jumped the shark in my absence. Of course, episode 11 was a cliffhanger too, so now I'll have to wait until Bill's friend sends another shipment and he can send me copies somehow. Damn you Ron Moore! Fellow BSG fans feel free to geek out and discuss the show in the comments for this post. (No spoilers if you've seen anything after episode 11 please.)

Peace Corps Journals

Another volunteer just pointed me to this site: http://www.peacecorpsjournals.com/

It's maintained by former volunteers and is designed to be a central location where you can locate volunteer sites around the world. Pick a country on the home page and it will list any blogs they have for that country. There are also resources about each country

Since the Peace Corps experience is different in every country, this is a great way to get a sense of what other volunteers are doing and what life is like in other parts of the world. Check it out.

Spring Break 2007: Mt. Cameroon Kicks My Ass

As I mentioned in my post on Buea, the town lies at the feet of Mt. Cameroon. Although it can be hard to see due to fog and cloud cover, the highest peak in west Africa looms over the town. There are trails to the summit and it's a popular destination for tourists who are into hiking and mountain climbing.

Every February there is a race that starts in Buea, waaaayyy down below the mountain, and goes all the way up to the summit. Hundreds of runners race up the side of the mountain and back to compete for a grand prize of 3 million Francs CFA (about $6,000 USD) and various smaller prizes for runners up. In town there is a big party and all sorts of festivities as people line up along the route to watch the runners start and then wait for the winners to return. Unfortunately I missed the race but got to hear all about it.

When we climbed the mountain we took the trail that's called "Racetrack" because it is used by the runners. Having followed in their footsteps up a trail that is often very steep, slippery, and treacherous I can only say I'm amazed anyone can run up the trail at all. But the astounding thing is that these people not only run all the way to the summit (at an altitude of over 4,000 meters) and then run all the way back down, but that the winners usually do it in four hours or less. And the runners all wear jelly shoes for the race. Anyone who can even complete the run at all is one of the world's greatest athletes in my book. Someone who can finish it in four hours is inhuman.

Being the foolish sort, I decided that since I was there I should climb the mountain. Given what a tough climb it is, going up the mountain should be preceded by lots of careful preparation. Needless to say, Bill and I were having none of that. So, we took an evening to pack and do some shopping and then drafted Bill's friend Simon (a kid from the neighborhood) to come with us.

We arrived at the Ecotourism offices at about 7:30 AM. They're a company that has a contract to maintain the trails on the mountain and sell permits. If you want to climb the mountain you have to buy a permit with them and either hire on of their guides or give them the name of your guide if you have your own. We signed Simon up as our guide.

The climb started at a belt of farmland just above Buea called "Upper Farm."

As you climb higher, the farms turn to forest and the trail starts to get a bit steeper. I almost immediately noticed my lugs were working hard from the altitude.

After a couple of hours you reach the first shelter on the mountain "Hut 1". We stopped and rested and had snacks and water there for a bit before continuing on.

After a while, the forest thins out and you enter into an area of rocks and grass which gets progressively steeper and more treacherous the higher you go.

On this leg of the climb, there is a second shelter, called "Savannah" where Simon and I stopped to rest for a bit. Bill apparently does not require oxygen in his bloodstream and was way ahead of us by the time we dragged ourselves to this point.

After leaving Savannah, we came to the Magic Tree. I know it's magic because Simon told me so. Notice how there are no other trees around it? Obviously it only survives because of magic. So there.

This leg of the climb was the hardest. The slope was very steep and the trail was made up of hard volcanic rock that makes slips and slides painful. The rocks also tear up your shoes if you don't have a good pair. I wore a pair of Merrell hiking shoes that survived OK. There was also lots of loose rock and gravel around, so it was very easy to slide. Miraculously, I didn't fall and only slipped a bit once or twice.

Finally, around 1 PM we made it to Hut 2 (which is actually the third of four shelters along the trail) where we would spend the night.

Since the summit was still about 3 or 4 hours on, and hut 3 is apparently too cold to sleep in at night without heavy duty cold weather gear, we would not have made it up to the summit and back to hut 2 before dark, so Simon and I stopped and waited for Bill. He had charged on ahead and ended up making it to the summit and back before nightfall. As it started to get dark we chowed down on sausage, cheese, bread, and Kwacoco, then settled in for the night.

It turned out to be a long and sleepless night for me. It was cold, and I had not brought warm enough clothing, so by about 3 AM I was shivering quite a bit. We were sleeping on a wooden platform, which wasn't especially comfortable. Simon snored like a buzz saw. Finally, there were mice in the shelter who kept crawling around on the platform with us. The skittering of mice around my head also made it hard to sleep. All told I think I only had about 2 hours of sleep. Ugh. Sunrise was nice though.

The next morning I set out early with Simon. Bill was concerned that it might be too cold for me at the summit with the clothes I had on, so since he'd already been he offered to wait at hut 2 and give me his jacket. Before leaving I made the mistake of eating kwacoco a local dish Simon's mother had made us before leaving. Kwacoco is good, but very heavy. It's the kind of food that makes you feel like you've got a big rock in your stomach for hours afterward. Obviously, this is exactly what I should have been eating before hiking to the summit. I don't know if it was the kwacoco, the altitude, the lack of sleep, the fact that I'm out of shape, or a combination, but about 20 minutes up the trail from hut 2 I started to feel nauseous. I kept at it for a bit and stopped and rested a few times to see if I felt better, but I still felt sick and almost wretched a few times. Finally I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and turned back.

We made it back to hut 2 where I rested a while until the nausea passed, then the three of us started down. The return trip was even more physically demanding than the trip up. Going up is hard on the lungs, going down is harder on the legs and knees. Simon was great - even though I felt better by this point he stuck by me the whole way down to make sure I made it back in one piece. Nice kid. By the time we finally made it back to Buea in the early afternoon we were all exhausted, in pain, and looked like a bunch of homeless men from all the dirt and sweat we had accumulated on the mountain.

After the climb, we slunk back to Bill's house, cleaned up, changed, took naps, and then dragged our aching bodies out to dinner afterward. We had a lot of trouble going up and down stairs that night and the next day as well.

Bill and his friends Hans and Simon kept saying that the "next time" I climb the mountain with them they'll help me prepare better. Hah! Mount Cameroon thoroughly kicked my ass the first time. Not sure I need to go through it again. But on the other hand, it was disappointing that I did not reach the summit. And then that bastard Bill wouldn't give me copies of the pictures he took up there - saying I had to come back and take my own. So, you never know. If I was crazy enough to do it once ...

Spring Break 2007: Limbé

After checking out Buea, Bill took me to nearby Limbé, one of the two major beach resort towns on the coast of Cameroon. Kribi is the other popular beach town and I was there back in December for training. The town itself is smaller and cleaner than Kribi, and I thought it felt quieter and safer as well.

Bill and I met up with volunteer Jerry (posted in the nearby town of Tiko). On the way to the beach we also enjoyed a little Mutango (Palm Wine) at a shack near the beach in Batoké.

Palm wine (Mutango) is a popular drink in Cameroon, especially in rural areas. It's the sap from palm trees, usually going straight from the tree to your glass. No refining or processing is necessary, although sometimes classier joints will strain out the bugs that can get into it from the trees. The sap begins to ferment the instant it comes out of the tree and within as little as two hours can be up to 4% alcohol. It gets progressively stronger the longer it ferments and needs to be consumed soon after taking it out of the tree. After 48 hours it pretty much turns to vinegar, although refrigeration can extend its life.

Drink it relatively soon after it comes out of the tree and it is still pretty mild and sweet tasting. It has a unique flavor that varies depending on the type of palm tree, region, soil, etc. I've had two kinds in Cameroon so far: one in Ekekom that tasted a little like peanuts and the one in Batoké, which vaguely reminded me of the Martinelli's faux champagne apple cider that people who don't want alcohol drink on New Year's Eve. The peanutty stuff was OK, but the mutango we had in Batoké was delicious. Cheap too - a 1.5 liter bottle ran 150 Francs CFA (about $0.30 US). Bill has lots more detail here.

The lady who ran the mutango shack insisted we accept her gift of some local mystery fruit that none of us could identify. Not particularly good. A little bitter. Jerry threw it into the Limbé river after we tasted it.

We all spent a night at a hotel in Limbé located in a bird sanctuary along the Limbé river. Great view of the ocean too.

While having breakfast at the hotel Bill made a new friend.

We spent two days at a quiet little beach in the village of Batoké. On the way to the beach we passed lots of small children waving at us and excitedly shouting "White man! White man!" Little kids in Cameroon tend to get very excited when they see a white person. It was kind of cute actually.

The water was warm and calm and our time at the beach was nice and relaxing. I enjoyed floating on my back and looking back towards the mountains rising up beyond the shore.

Since the rocks pounded by the surf into sand were volcanic in origin, the sand on the beaches in the area is black, which I thought was pretty cool. Only problem is that when the sun is out it gets HOT. You have to run for the water to keep your feet from burning off.

Limbé is also the heart of Cameroon's oil industry and there is a big facility owned by SONARA (the Cameroonian national oil company) and some offshore drilling platforms in the area. I'm told that pollution from the oil industry can sometimes foul the beaches and makes Kribi a more popular destination. Fortunately there were no spills while we were there.

This is one of the little food carts that peddlers here wheel around and use to sell bread or snacks or whatever. None of us had any idea what the drawing on is supposed to be. If anyone out there knows what the hell it is, please email me.

Friday Lizard Blogging

You new it was coming. Today, one of the many geckos that inhabit my house. On the plus side they eat bugs (last week I found the mangled remnants of a cockroach one of them must have eaten). On the minus side I find little lizard turds all over the place.

End of a Busy Week

I came to Yaoundé this week on business. Some time ago a former volunteer donated a large number of old computers to Peace Corps with the understanding that they be parcelled out to volunteers who could use them in the field. Several other volunteers had already taken some of the machines when my APCD (Assistant Peace Corps Director, a.k.a "Boss") told me I could have some of them them. Volunteer Lauren, who teaches English at a lycée (high school) in the Adamoua province was to take five, and I would take the rest. Since she is not a computer geek like me, she needed help setting up the machines. So, I came on Monday and spent the week going through the old PCs, monitors, and other assorted hardware figuring out what works and what doesn't installing software, etc. I finally finished her machines and sent her off yesterday.

Today I boxed up my machines: I'll be going back to post on Monday with a total haul of 12 computers, 9 monitors, and several boxes full of processors, power supplies, cables, keyboards, mice, CD-ROM drives, hard drives, and various other junk. Most of the material is older - the machines are all Pentium IIs, but in our situation you have to take what you can get. We mostly use Windows 2000 and Office 2000 at the University so a PII with 128 MB RAM is good enough. Not all of the machines work, but we can either repair them or strip them for parts once I get them back to school.

I am also hoping this will help me get some teaching done as well. My dean agreed to let me take three or four of the new machines and set them up in our library in my own mini-computer lab. Since I was not able to finish my computer classes, I am going to offer to give the students independent lessons, either in small groups or in individual tutoring sessions. Most Peace Corps volunteers spend a lot of their time trying to make lemonade out of lemons given the limited resources we have to work with, so I'm hoping these machines will help me mix a bit of my own. Now, if only SONEL can keep the lights on for a few days here and there I'll be in business.

So It Goes

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007

Spring Break 2007: Buea

For spring break this year I decided to escape the dust of Nanga Eboko and visit my friend and fellow volunteer Bill in Buea. The capital of the Southwest province, Buea is a small city built beneath the slopes of Mount Cameroon near the coast of Cameroon. Head uphill and you're climbing the highest mountain in west Africa, head downhill and you're in Limbé, one of the country's two main beach resort towns. So, as you can imagine, the area has a lot to offer and is quite popular with tourists.

(Note: I took lots of pictures but forgot to load the pictures of Buea Town - the "downtown" heart of Buea - onto my thumb drive. Next time I will bring them and post them here.)

The Southwest province is also one of the two anglophone provinces of Cameroon. Cameroon was a German colony before World War I. After the war the British and French divided it between them, with the French getting the majority and the British getting a chunk along the border with Nigeria. After independence, the British and French zones were unified again. For more details you can read up on the history of Cameroon here.

Buea is a nice town. Because of the altitude it's usually pretty cool and often gets a bit foggy. It has paved roads, running water and electricity (although they have frequent outages of both), a ton of cyber cafes, lots of good restaurants and lots of stores - including "White Man Stores" where you can get imported western goods, and book stores, which are a rarity in most of Cameroon. In Buea you can rent videos and buy candy bars (like Snickers and Mars bars), soft serve ice cream, books, major appliances, and wine in bottles. I have none of these luxury items at my post.

When the Germans moved in, Buea was the original colonial capital before Yaoundé was built, so there are lots of old German buildings in town.

As a legacy of the divided colonial administration, the Southwest and Northwest provinces of Cameroon are predominantly English speaking. Along with French, English is one of the two official languages of the country (Canada is the only other country in the world to have English and French as official languages). While walking through Buea we noticed another little remnant of the British stay here: a big red mailbox just like the ones in the UK with the letters "E-II-R" (Elizabeth II Regina) on it.

Of course, English in the Cameroonian context isn't quite the same as the English Americans speak. There are really two varieties of English in Cameroon: Pidgin English and Special English. Everyone I met spoke both.

Special English is what is taught in the schools and is used in most professional and public settings. Accents, some vocabulary, and idioms are different, but English speakers from the US, Canada, or the UK generally have no trouble understanding Special English. The main differences I noticed between American English and Special English:

• Special English is spoken very slowly and enunciated more than American English.
• Contractions are not used.
• Questions are usually inverted. (Example: instead of saying "Where are you going?" you'd say "You are going where?")
• They don't ask "How are you?" The question is "How is it?" or just "How?" The expected response is "Fine."
• The word "fine" is normally used in place of "good" or "well."

Pidgin is a mix of English and African languages and is what most anglophone Cameroonians speak day to day in casual settings. It is quite interesting to listen to. It's really a different language but it's loaded with English words so I can sometimes make out what people are saying. A few things I noticed in my short stay:

• For the present progressive tense, they use the auxiliary verbs "do" (pronounced "dee") and "go" together before the verb in the sentence. For example: whereas I would say "I am eating" in English, I would say "I dee go chop." in Pidgin ("Chop" means "to eat".)
• Vocabulary is simplified. There are far fewer words than in English.
• The word "small" is also used in place of "little" and "short". The word "big" is used in place of "large" and "long". Both are used to denote length of time as well as physical size (example: "Small time" or "big time"). For emphasis, the words "small" and "big" are often used twice. Example: "I speak small small Pidgin."
• As in special English they ask "How is it?" or just "How?" and the expected response is also "Fine." The word "fine" is also used in place of "good."

Schools in Cameroon generally try to discourage people from speaking Pidgin without much success. The campus of the University was littered with signs like these:

In addition to Special and Pidgin English, the vast majority of anglophones also speak French with varying levels of fluency. Since the majority of Cameroon is francophone, most business and official matters are conducted in French, and the schools all have mandatory French classes they all learn French. Maybe not perfect but they all speak enough to get by in the francophone areas. English is a required subject in the francophone areas as well, but the francophones don't pick it up as well because they don't need to use it day to day. Throughout Cameroon, in both anglophone and francophone provinces, most people also speak their particular ethnic languages as well.

Language aside, the anglophone provinces have a very different feel culturally than the francophone provinces. People generally seem a bit more laid back and a bit less aggressive than in the francophone provinces. At times it felt almost like a different country. And indeed, there are occasional grumblings in the anglophone provinces that they might be better off as a separate country. There are some groups in the region with that goal in mind, but at the moment they don't seem to have much ability to actually do much about it. So while the secessionists may be weak, there is still resentment towards the francophones and the national government for generally riding roughshod over the anglophone provinces.

A recent example of this took place at the University of Buea, one of the seven state universities in Cameroon. A number of francophone students who had not done well on their exams were admitted in place of anglophone students who had scored better (probably because of bribery, political connections, or both). When word got out it blew up into a major scandal. Students at the university organized a series of protests which were suppressed with force by the authorities. For several weeks back in December the area around the campus was packed with police, soldiers, and roadblocks as the government moved to shut down the protests. There were a large number of arrests and several shootings as well. Things seem to have calmed down now. Ironically, when Bill was headed off to post Peace Corps told him "Don't worry - nothing ever happens in Buea." Indeed.

Bill works at the government TRC (Teacher Resource Center) in Buea, where he runs computer classes primarily for public school teachers and administrators from the province. So far he seems to be doing pretty well with it.

As a secondary project he works part time at a local NGO called Linkup. Its mission is to help orphans in the region. The organization runs a cyber cafe which they use to make money to keep the lights on, and then searches for donations and grants to finance their charity work. They track orphans in the region, keep copies of their records, assist local orphanages, buy school books and pay school fees for kids so they can get an education, and other things of that nature. I got to meet Roland, the founder of the organization and he seems like an extremely competent, driven person who's committed to making a difference. Bill has been helping them upgrade their website and develop an Access database they can use to track the orphans they help.

Bill has a nice little house in a neighborhood known as the "Sandpit" with an oil palm tree in front. (Apparently his neighbors will sometimes take the palm nuts for oil.) He has two bars, restaurants and a number of stores and little chophouses (restaurants) within spitting distance of his place. He's also made a number of good friends in the area who I got to spend time with during the visit. They were very warm and welcoming and we had a lot of fun.

Wandering around Buea, we found a bar with a sign written by someone who may not understand German as well as he thinks.

Near the campus of UB we found that Microsoft has apparently

opened a branch in Buea, where they do "hardsoftware repair."

Bill took me to his favorite book store, "Books and Things." They have a huge selection of used books - mostly paperbacks sent form the US. I'd say it's on a par with most used book stores I've been to in the US. But it's the "And Things" part that makes the place interesting. When I was there they were also selling athletic trophies, construction helmets, yo-yos, obsolete computer programs (anyone want a copy of OS/2 for 10,000 Francs CFA?) shoes, soap, shampoo, and cosmetic products. Sometimes they apparently carry chain saws and collectible Bruce Lee action figures as well.

All in all, I thought Buea was a great town. I told Bill I now have a bad case of "post envy." I like Nanga Eboko, but sorry, Buea is cooler. I guess I'll just have to visit again one day.

Cancelled

When I was getting ready to leave the US, my friends and family mostly worried about my health and safety - was I going to be hacked to pieces by guys with machetes, what poisonous foods would I eat and what horrible diseases would I contract, those sorts of things. No one ever asked about the possibility of job frustration.

When I came to Cameroon I was assigned to teach computers in Peace Corps' education program here. When I was posted to the university I was told my job would be to teach a class called Informatique de Base (Basic Computing), an introductory level class required of all students.

I was told it was a 60 hour course, so I created a program accordingly. The idea was to start off with the very basics (how to turn on/off a computer, how to use the keyboard and mouse, etc), give a very general overview of the hardware so the students know what a processor or a hard drive is, and then go through Windows and MS Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access) giving an overview of each with some projects so they could practice the basics in each. Finally there would be a section on the Internet, how to use search engines and other resources to do research, and how to set up and use an online email account. I spent a lot of time writing lessons and lectures for all of these topics (in French) and also had a lot of ideas for projects in the works that I could assign as homework (for example, when learning excel create an Excel spreadsheet that meets a certain list of criteria, etc so the students can actually apply what I was teaching them).

I thought I had it all thought out. Little did I know ...

The first problem was the number of students. In the past I'm told the course was pretty small - 40 or 50 students maybe. This year they had a big jump in enrollment, so all the first year students signed up, then they decided that all the students in the nursing program needed to take the class, plus a bunch of other students who hadn't taken it before decided to sign up. There was no limit to the number of students allowed to sign up, so by the time everyone registered (plus students who were showing up and signing the attendance sheets even though they weren't on my list) I counted about 175 students. Because this was far too many to teach at one time, given that the lab only has 18 computers (after we fixed them up - when I first started it only had 6 that worked) I was told to divide them up into 4 groups by majors. OK, fine. No problem. What this meant though, was that instead of being a 60 hour class it had become a 240 hour class for me, since I would have to teach it four times. Still, no problem. I'm here to teach, let me at 'em. If it takes a while to finish with everyone that's fine.

The second problem was that the University has an unusual system of scheduling classes. Because it is a small school that can't afford a large permanent faculty, they bring in visiting professors from other schools to teach many of their courses. The visitors come for a week or two and teach their courses intensively, often jamming a 60 hour course into a week or two. Because of this system, there is no fixed course schedule. Classes are scheduled on a week to week basis. The schedule for each week is posted the Friday beforehand, which means I rarely know if I'll be teaching, when, and for how long. I've had weeks where I've had no teaching hours assigned and end up with the week off. I've had other weeks where I was scheduled to teach for 28 hours. I normally used my down time to prepare lessons and materials and write documentation for the later parts of the course.

If this was the only problem it would have been manageable, but it was compounded by the fact that we only have one computer lab. Since the University offers Computer Science as a major, this means that Informatique de Base was constantly preempted for the visiting professors. This would have made it difficult to organize the course even if it had only had one group. In addition, because the lab was never available for students to use in their free time (since there were always classes going on) and because the class was too huge, I could not assign any of the homework or independent projects I had wanted to give them. So they had no opportunity to practice. When you go for weeks between lessons and the students can't practice or do homework assignments in between the students tend to forget everything. Because I had to teach 240 hours, not 60, this all meant I kept falling further and further behind as my classes were preempted for visitors. They told me it would have to continue into the second semester and I would finish then. Although I was disappointed I couldn't give them projects to actually use what I was teaching them, I decided to push on and just base their grades on a midterm and final instead. Still, no problem, fine. As long as I get to finish I can stretch it out, even if it's difficult and it's not ideally what I wanted. Tough, but somehow I'm managing, right? That's what I thought.

When I met with the new Dean to discuss the program for the rest of the semester, he informed me that because they had booked too many visiting professors who would need the lab, they were going to have to cancel Informatique de Base before it was finished. There were too many hours left in the course and not enough lab time available, so it was decided that my class was expendable. I would have about 20 hours split between all four groups to wrap up my lessons over the next two weeks, then I was to give them exams and call it a day. Because of all the problems I described above, I had only made it about a third of the way through the class.

I discussed this with the previous Dean who had programmed the class last semester (and who is also the University's business manager) and he told me that all they really want is for the students to learn word processing, basic windows functions, and keyboarding and that the class never actually runs 60 hours. Nice of them to tell me that at the beginning, even after I told them explicitly what I was going to cover and they were OK with it at the time.

So, basically I wasted my time all last semester prepping a course that wasn't what they really wanted and that was just going to be cancelled before it was even half finished. Grrrrrr.....

While I've tried to stay optimistic, this has been very discouraging. Between the constant problems with the power, my own lack of understanding of what they wanted, and the university administration's problems with planning and scheduling, I am now unable to do what I came here to do (at least for this year). My class turned out to be a joke and my students were cheated of what I promised them when they signed up in the beginning.

Not sure what I'm going to do at this point. I am hoping that I can put together a few machines from the old computers and parts Peace Corps is donating so that I can start holding individual or small group tutoring for students who are interested. Maybe that will allow me to recoup some of my losses. I'm also in discussions with them about what to do to avoid this situation next year. I may also try to look into doing projects in the community more instead of just teaching at the University. We'll see what develops.

In the meantime I am going to focus on my English class, which starts soon. At least that will give me some work to keep me busy and take my mind off the frustrations of my computer classes. Of course, there is another nice thing about teaching English: no electricity required.

More Powerlessness

For the last three months we have continued to have constant power problems in Nanga Eboko. I'd say between January and early April the lights have been out about 60% of the the time. Some of this was due to forest fires taking down lines in between here and Yaoundé, but more recently we had no power because SONEL (the Cameroonian electric company) shut power off for the town. Because the water levels in the rivers are low near the end of the dry season the dams don't generate enough power for the whole country. So, to keep the lights on in the bigger towns, SONEL will cut the power to the smaller (and poorer) towns like Nanga. We just had our first rains in the last few weeks, so as we move into the rainy season hopefully the situation will improve. Then it will just be the thunderstorms and torrential downpours that knock out the power instead.

I'm told corruption may have also played a part. I have no independent confirmation, so it may just be a rumor, but I have heard that individuals working for SONEL claimed they were buying new turbines for the dams, but in fact pocketed the money and left the old turbines in place. When an American company took over SONEL they were suddenly confronted with old turbines breaking down and recently decided to replace them with new ones. While this makes sense, it also means that power is offline while the new turbines are being installed.

In the past, when the power went out we could at least use the University's generator for a few hours a day. About two months ago though, the generator began to go on the fritz. You could hear it cough and wheeze as you walked by and it didn't kick out enough juice to run things at the school, so when we were on the generator you could walk around campus at night and see lights going on and off all over campus. I took to keeping an oil lamp lit after dark with the flame turned down low since the lights might cut out at any given moment.

Sometimes the generator produced enough power for me to run my computer, so I could work for an hour or two here and there. Other times the voltage was too weak and I had to shut everything down. Since I was writing all my lectures, exams, course materials, etc on my computer, you can imagine what this has done to my productivity. I've been doing a lot of reading lately.

These problems hosed my computer classes more than once. I was often in the middle of walking my students through how to do something on their machines, when suddenly the power cut out and some or all of the machines in the lab went down. At night it was even worse since everyone had their lights on. During one night class I gave not only could we not keep the computers running, but after I had the students shut down all the machines hoping I could at least give them some of the material on the board, the lights wouldn't even stay on. After a few minutes trying to teach with the lights blinking on and off constantly I finally gave up and sent them home.

Eventually, after dealing with this for weeks, they finally called a technician. He arrived and removed the bad component - which shut the generator down entirely. We're still waiting for him to come back with a replacement part, leaving us with only SONEL electricity. Which is out most of the time.

Since the pumps that send us water are powered by (you guessed it) electricity, that means that when we have no power, we also lose water. Again, the generator allowed us to power our own water pump so at least the campus had water, but now that's not an option either. Bucket baths are now in style at my house. But not every day - that would take too much water. Just need to wear extra deodorant.

This situation also aggravates our maintenance problems. Constant fluctuations in voltage are not the best things in the world for computers. In just one day of these problems I watched one machine in the lab start blue screening and another blow its power supply. This is the main reason why computers here die all the time. They desperately need a big voltage regulator for the lab that will protect the machines.

A few weeks ago I found that I'm not the only one irritated by the power situation though. the townspeople got sick of having their electricity cut all the time, so they staged a little rebellion and barricaded the road through town (which is a major trucking route from the eastern part of the country) until SONEL agreed to turn the lights back on. The local gendarmes wisely decided to leave the townspeople alone. Given that they live here too, they probably sympathised. I was just hanging out on campus while all this was happening and missed all the excitement until after it was over.

The stunt may have worked - after a day or two SONEL turned the power back on. We had power for a few days, then it went out again. This time, the townspeople were set to cut the road again and also hold a general strike to shut down the town. However, SONEL turned the lights back on just before the strike was supposed to start and the Governor of the province came out to try to soothe tempers in the town. Since then things have calmed down, even though the power has remained irregular. Maybe people just threw up their hands and gave up. Folks do that a lot here in Cameroon.

Back Online This Week

In Yaounde this week to put together some old computers Peace Corps is donating to volunteers. I am going to help another volunteer get some machines ready to take to her post, then will prep the remaining machines to take back with me to the university. Will be posting a bunch this week. Stay tuned ...