Peace Corps Partnership for Nanga-Eboko

In a previous post about Kenya, I wrote that I've seen enough here to worry about Cameroon one day experiencing the same kind of violence. As it happens, I have a good friend here named Jerome who often worries about the same thing. Jerome has started his own NGO (which he calls the Brotherhood Coast) which tries to use a variety of community and development projects to unite Cameroonians around common problems they all face.

Jerome is in the process of putting together a public health campaign in my village of Nanga-Eboko. Nanga is a poor village with big health problems: a high HIV infection rate; lack of access to clean water and, as a result, lots of waterborne disease; and lots of problems with malaria due to its location in mosquito central.

Jerome's plan is to conduct a series of events in the town's high schools, hospital, and prison that will try to teach students, patients, and prisoners how to protect themselves from these diseases.

In addition, the town has a recent history of ethnic conflict. In the mid-90s there was a lot of violence against Bamileké (one of the many ethnic groups in Cameroon) who had migrated to the town from the west province. In order to try to avoid a repeat, the training Jerome will be giving will also include conflict resolution and prevention strategies in the hopes that young people will be able to avoid violence in the future.

At the end of a week of these activities, a group of popular Cameroonian musicians that Jerome has worked with in the past will come to the town and hold a concert. They are the "hook" to get young people interested.

The point of all these activities is to try to show Cameroonian youth that despite their tribal differences, they share the same problems of health and poverty, and that they have a shared culture embodied in the music they will hear at the concert.

When he started planning all of this, Jerome asked if I or the Peace Corps could do anything to help. It's often hard to find people in Cameroon who are civic-minded and energetic enough to try something like this, so I felt I had to do something to help. If there was anything I could do to try to keep Cameroon OUT of the news I wanted to try to make a contribution.

Peace Corps has a program called Peace Corps Partnership, where volunteers in the field can post projects on Peace Corps' website. Interested donors can donate money to these projects online. When the funding goal for the project is reached, the money is sent to the volunteer for use on the project. For my project, I'm requesting $2,720 USD to help pay for the costs of this health and conflict resolution campaign. The money will go to pay for water filters and first aid kits in the high schools, mosquito nets for the hospital, various other supplies, and transportation. I will be working directly with Jerome on purchasing these materials, so I will be supervising the money and making sure it all goes where it needs to.

If any one reading this would like to help us out, you can find a short description of the project and make a donation here. I hope some of you will be able to help us. Thank you!

PS: We hope to pull this off in late March if possible, so if anyone plans to donate, sooner is better than later - ideally in the next two or three weeks. Merci Beaucoup!