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2009-07-07T21:55:00.004+01:00

Dear Readers,

Last week I finally completed my Peace Corps service after three years in Cameroon. I left the country Friday night and arrived back in the US late on Saturday night. Since then I’ve been resting up at my mother’s home, getting reacclimated and organized.

As some of you have noticed, I stopped updating this blog about six months ago. The last year has been very challenging. It’s a long story, but mostly I had just reached the burnout point and didn’t feel like writing about the difficulties I was having. At some point when I’ve had some more time to rest and reflect I’ll write more about the last few months and what was going on. For now I’ll just say that I have been ready to come home for a while and I’m glad to finally be back.

In spite of “burnout” and other difficulties I had by the end, I don’t regret joining the Peace Corps or the time I spent in Cameroon for a second. It was one of the most challenging experiences of my life, but also one of the best experiences and I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

Although living in such a radically different culture and doing the kind of difficult (and often thankless) job that Peace Corps volunteers do is a huge challenge, I feel I gained far more than I sacrificed through the close friendships I made, by learning another language, in experiencing another culture, and in the satisfaction that in my own small way I tried to serve my country and make the world a slightly better place. I feel I accomplished what I set out to do and I take pride in my service.

I also took some valuable lessons from Cameroon. I learned that it’s possible to live much more simply than we do and to have a good life without so many of the shiny toys and frivolous luxuries we waste so much precious time and money chasing. I also believe my time in Cameroon has made me a much stronger, wiser, and more independent person. That alone probably made it worth the trip.

Perhaps most importantly, I gained a renewed appreciation of my own country. It somehow feels appropriate that I returned home on the 4th of July. I think you have to leave America for a country like Cameroon for a while to really appreciate the greatest strengths of our country. It’s not the money or shiny electronics or McMansions that make America a great country. It’s the tremendous amount of freedom and opportunity we enjoy. We have our problems of course and should always be trying to improve ourselves, but living in Cameroon has repeatedly impressed on me just how much opportunity we Americans have to live our lives the way we want and just how much is possible here.

As for what comes next, I haven’t decided yet. In the short term, I plan to spend the rest of the summer in the US, visiting friends and family and getting used to being back in America. I’m used to daily life in Cameroon at this point, so I know it will take me some time before things here feel “normal” again.

I plan to do some traveling again this fall and then come back home to spend the holidays with my friends and family for the first time in three years. After that it will be time to start working again, although I haven’t figured out yet exactly what I’ll be doing. No matter what I do in the future though, I know I’ll always benefit from what I have seen and learned over the last three years.

I will try to start doing some more blog posts about Cameroon in the not too distant future so you can catch up on some of what I saw and did over there, even if it’s well after the fact. Better late then never right?

Thanks for reading.

Happy X-Mas from Cameroon

2008-12-24T14:08:00.002+01:00

We've got lots of Christmas lights and fake plastic trees up around Buea (seriously) and everyone is wishing everyone else a "Happy X-mas." Tonight should see lots of partying around town - usually Christmas Eve is when everyone goes out drinking with their friends. Tomorrow people will be spending the holiday with their families and friends. I've had several invitations so I'll be moving between several different places over the course of the day and night. I anticipate a long, steady, gorging process.

Hope everyone out there is enjoying the holidays! Best wishes from Cameroon.

Oh, Goody

2008-12-24T13:55:00.002+01:00

Just what Cameroon needs: rebels.

Busy today trying to wrap things up before Christmas but I'll try to post more on the tortured recent history of the Bakassi peninsula after the holiday.

Fortunately I don't think there's any danger to me or any other Peace Corps volunteers - we're nowhere near this area. Just to be on the safe side though Peace Corps has given us orders to stay away from the beach for the next few weeks. Hopefully nothing will come of this.

Back to the Lecture Hall

2008-12-02T13:57:00.006+01:00

VisiCalc: On the bleeding edge of technology

After my time at the university in Nanga, I thought I was probably done with the college scene here in Cameroon. Not quite. A member of my NGO's board of directors is an economics professor at the University of Buea (located here in ... Buea). A few weeks ago he invited Bill and I to give presentations on business and technology at a seminar for his students. So, last Wednesday we went before an audience of several hundred UB students (mostly economics, business, and accounting and finance majors) in a packed lecture hall.

Fortunately, we had technology on our side. The school had loaned us a projector, so we were able to set up a laptop and use PowerPoint for our presentations. I even got to include the cool VisiCalc screen shot above.

There were presentations by our host on the stock market (interesting) and by another Cameroonian professor on risk management (booooring). Bill gave a talk with lots of cool illustrations and animations and some video on how credit card transactions and online retail work (credit cards and online retail are not common here in Cameroon - the economy usually works on a strictly cash basis). I followed him with presentation introducing the use of information technology in corporate accounting and reporting. I gave a bit of history, then talked about spreadsheets as an essential accounting and reporting tool. After demonstrating how a spreadsheet works using Excel, I then moved on to a discussion of different types of accounting software packages from Quicken to SAP and some of the advantages and challenges of using them. I capped off the presentation with a demonstration of QuickBooks as an example of a simple accounting program.

The students seemed interested and we took some good questions at the end. All in all I thought it was a successful evening. It felt good to be back in the classroom.

The CAMTEL Customer Service Model

2008-11-27T10:30:00.005+01:00

Customer service is a bit of an oxymoron in Cameroon. For whatever reason, most Cameroonians don't get the idea of customer service. Generally service here is slow and surly.

Recently, however, an incident involving CAMTEL (the Cameroonian telephone company) brought lousy customer service to a new level. Thankfully, CAMTEL is modern enough to be able to provide DSL service in Buea and other select areas of the country. The organization where I work has a CAMTEL DSL line which we use to power our cyber cafe. It can be a bit slow at times but is generally pretty reliable. We also have a land line provided by CAMTEL. (Most Cameroonians now just have cell phones using service provided by MTN or Orange, the two big cell phone service providers. Land lines are actually rare.)

A couple of months ago, our land line stopped working. The boss called CAMTEL to have them send a technician to see what was wrong. The technician showed up and after playing with some wiring got the land line working again. However, in the process he inadvertently screwed up and cut the DSL wire, so we lost the internet. Since the cyber cafe is the component of the NGO that keeps us in business, not having an internet connection was, shall we say, a tad inconvenient.

After repeated calls, the boss got the technician to come back and basically told him to just undo whatever he had done. Which the technician did - shutting the phone back off but at least getting our internet working again. He then presented us with a hand written receipt for 20,000 francs CFA for the work he just did. In other words, he was billing us to fix the damage he himself had caused. Furthermore, the bill wasn't even a legitimate CAMTEL bill, it was just him freelancing trying to extort money from, allegedly because we made him come out on a Saturday. Boo hoo. To add insult to injury, our phone line still wasn't working.

Understandably upset, our boss refused to pay the bill. The technician left but came back several times in the following weeks to demand payment. He was politely turned away each time.

Then, about two weeks ago, our internet connection went down. Occasional service interruptions are not uncommon here, so at first we didn't think much of it. Just one of Cameroon's many little inconveniences. But as our down time stretched from minutes to hours and then into two days, we realized something was seriously wrong. After checking our network and all our wiring to verify that the problem was not on our end, we called CAMTEL for help.

A team of CAMTEL technicians (including the one who had demanded payment for fixing his own mistake) came and started looking for the problem. After climbing the telephone pole, they discovered that the line had been disconnected.

At that point, the technician who'd screwed up our connection the last time announced that he was the one who had disconnected the line on his own time because we didn't want to pay him. His colleagues were just as shocked as we were. This was a really really dumb move, even for Cameroon. When our boss threatened to take it to his supervisor at CAMTEL, the other technicians begged him not to, because telling his boss would get him immediately fired. Of course, when I heard this my response was, "That's the point isn't it? This bastard should be fired."

However, my boss is a much kinder and more forgiving person than I am, so he decided to let the guy go and just drop the whole matter. He did however keep a copy of the guy's illegal handwritten bill as evidence. If the guy ever tries it again he'll immediately take it to the technician's supervisor and have him fired.

Ah, Cameroon, where service technicians demand bribes to fix the mistakes they themselves make. What a country.

Scribbles From The Den

2008-11-27T10:21:00.004+01:00

Recently I came across Scribbles From the Den, the blog of a Cameroonian writer named Dibussi Tande. He posts both original material and also news articles and other blog posts about Cameroon and Africa. Lots of interesting stuff. He was nice enough to cross post my pre-election post on his blog, so I thought I'd return the favor by linking to his blog. Stop on by and check it out.

Deep Thought

2008-11-08T09:06:00.003+01:00

There's something surreal about sitting in a little shack in Africa eating an omelet while the TV on the wall is blaring syndicated reruns of the Care Bears.

Fortunately the Care Bears were able to use the Care Bear Stare to save the Forest of Feeling from Professor Coldheart's dastardly plot.

America Drops the O-Bomb

2008-11-08T08:45:00.002+01:00

Election day started on a comical note at the office. Two Cameroonian men came into our cyber cafe asking how they could vote for Obama over the internet. After a good laugh we gently explained to them that it doesn't exactly work that way.

Tuesday night turned out to be a big night here in Cameroon as well as America. I ended up staying up all night with some other Americans and Cameroonian friends to watch the election returns. We hung in there until the result (which came at about 5 AM here), then watched the candidates speeches and turned in for a nap around 7 AM. Rather, I would have liked to take a nap, but tons of Cameroonian friends immediately started calling and texting me with congratulations. Turns out none of them slept either. I was at Bill's house most of the night, but I heard lots of the bars around Cameroon stayed open all night and turned off the usual music videos and soccer matches in favor of CNN or the BBC.

Friends back home have emailed me about the spontaneous celebrations they saw in the streets of their towns. I wish I'd been able to see them. No parties in the street here as far as I know, but it was definitely an event.

Other Peace Corps volunteers have told me since Tuesday they have been approached on the street by strangers who ask if they're Americans. When they say yes, they are then congratulated and told how Obama's election is proof that America is the greatest country in the world. As I speculated in my last post - I think we just got a do-over with the rest of the world.

On a side note, Nigerian t-shirt makers are thrilled - they are going to turn a huge business selling Obama t-shirts all over west Africa. I've already seen a few around Buea. Bill told me he saw one in rhinestones. Ugh.

Congratulations to President-elect Obama. I just hope and pray that with all the tremendous problems we are facing he can meet the high expectations everyone has of him. America needs a great President right now and I hope he makes us all proud.

No one knows where the future will take us, but for now, it feels like America's back. Hallelujah!

OBAMARAMA, or, the 2008 US Presidential Election Through Cameroonian Eyes

2008-11-03T12:26:00.004+01:00

I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. - Barack Obama

If you thought I was out of touch with US politics, rest assured that’s not the case. Even if I had no internet access and no desire to follow politics, I would still be hearing about the election from all my Cameroonian friends (and some passing acquaintances and occasionally even strangers). Cameroonians have plenty of access to international news on the TV and radio. Via satellite or cable many households even have CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, not to mention the BBC, Al Jazeera, French news programs, etc.

Much to my surprise when I got here, Cameroonians love American politics. If anything, Cameroonians sometimes seem to follow American politics more closely than politics in their own country. Many also seem to follow American politics more closely than a lot of Americans I’m sad to say. I’m not sure exactly why the fascination. Maybe because the US is still perceived as the world’s only superpower and the President as the world’s most powerful leader? Maybe because they know that when the US acts in the world it can affect them in one way or another? Maybe because the prevalence of American popular culture around the world makes people interested in what’s going on in the US? Maybe because there aren’t too many surprises in their own political system, so American politics are more suspenseful?

Whatever the reason, many people here love to talk about it and ask questions when they meet Americans. I’m usually happy to do so – gives me a chance to help fulfill Peace Corps’ goal of promoting understanding of Americans abroad. It also gives me a chance to occasionally clear up misconceptions – they follow American politics but sometimes don’t always understand the mechanics (such as the difference between a primary and general election, federalism, the electoral college, etc.)

They also love Barack Obama. Lots of Cameroonians are borderline obsessed with him and his candidacy. The head of the NGO I work for talks about the latest election news daily – every twist and turn and jump or dip in the polls is discussed. The owner of the bar where I eat lunch stops to talk to me about Obama on a regular basis. The carpenters I paid to make some book shelves for my apartment had me hanging out in their shop for half an hour after we’d finished our business so they could talk about Obama. A random teenager I met who’s a friend of a friend invited me out for drinks just so he could ask me about the election. I see people walking around wearing Obama t-shirts and hats. (No buttons though – in Cameroon a button with someone’s picture is a way of memorializing the dead – if you wore an Obama button people might think he had died.)

Part of it is obviously because Obama is black. Africans often forget that not all Americans are white, so to suddenly see a black man in a position to become President astounds some of them. Even more so for the fact that his father was African. Amusingly, many Cameroonians think Obama is Cameroonian because the name “Obama” is a common family name among the Ewondo (one of Cameroon’s 250 different tribes.)

However, I think it’s also about what Obama’s candidacy tells them about America. It tells them that son of an African student can rise to become leader of one of the largest and most powerful nations on earth. It reinforces the idea that somewhere in the world is a place where people can rise above the limitations imposed on them by others and make something of their lives. More than one Cameroonian has told me “This would never happen in Europe or Asia – the son of an African would never become President of France or Italy.” They see America as special and Obama’s candidacy only confirms that.

I’ve met two or three McCain fans, but that’s about it. Mostly they say they’d rather see McCain win because Obama’s too young, and in a society where age is respected that carries some weight. But in contrast to the Obama supporters they don’t seem too inspired by McCain.

In general most Cameroonians I talk to about America have a positive view of us. They generally see us as “the good guys” in the world and are impressed by our society’s dynamism, prosperity, and democracy. And whatever our faults and limitations in all these areas they can’t help but look at their own society and wish politics here were a bit more like politics in America.

Two weeks ago I was invited to a panel that discussed the elections at the University of Buea, and one panelist presented American elections, warts and all, as models African nations should strive to follow. So cheer up, my fellow Americans depressed by politics, it’s better than you think.

That said, in recent years America has tarnished its image around the world and that is felt here as well. But here it seems like people almost feel confused by the events of the Bush years. Over the last two years I have heard lots of comments like “America is such a great country, why are you doing these horrible things around the world right now?” or “How could such a great country with so many smart people pick someone like George Bush to lead them?” I usually don’t have a very satisfying answer for these questions, other than that Americans are human and just as flawed and likely to make mistakes as anyone else on the planet.

I think this sentiment among Cameroonians that America is a great nation that somehow lost its way may also help explain the appeal of Obama. Simply by the fact of who he is and how high he has risen, he is telling Cameroonians (if not the rest of the world as well) that the America they admired is on its way back. If Obama were to lose the election tomorrow I suspect lots of people outside America will despair and wonder if we’ve lost our way for good. In America we often tend to forget that the rest of the world exists during our elections, but as I’ve learned here in Cameroon, this isn’t just OUR election.

However, if he’s elected, I believe America will instantly get a “do over” from much of the world. Especially here in Africa, it will be as if the last eight years had never happened, for a little while at least. Eventually the honeymoon will end and then it’s up to us, of course. But I guess that’s supposed to be the point of democracy isn’t it?

And We're Back...

2008-10-24T13:16:00.002+01:00

Hello out there to any readers who haven't given up on me and still check the blog in spite of my long absence. As I noted in a previous post, I went back to the US for a monthlong break and returned to Cameroon late last month. Since then I haven't really felt in the swing of things as far as blogging goes, so I've been lazy and not posted anything. So, I decided it was finally time for an update.

Home leave was good. It was great to see friends and family again, to be back in the States, and to eat loads of unhealthy junk food. I gained a few pounds actually. I didn't have too many problms with reverse culture shock, except for bizarrely begin really uncomfortable being around white people for my first two days back. Odd... And of course I spent a lot of time telling people things that started with "In Cameroon..." over and over. All in all though, it was a badly needed change of scenery and I returned to Cameroon feeling recharged.

I've settled back into Buea easily. I've been putting in a fair amount of time working with my host institution, a local NGO called LINK-UP, that tries to help impoverished children and orphans in several communities in Cameroon's Southwest province. My work with LINK-UP has so far revolved around two main areas.

The first is a new micro-credit program they have recently started in collaboration with an outside group called Drombaya. This is a program to provide small loans to families the organization has been helping to start or expand their own small income generating activities. Generally, these are small scale projects like making and selling or reselling food items and small artisanal work. Before going back to the US I helped them craft some of their loan policies and design the paperwork and process. The program started up in my absence and seems to be off and running fairly smoothly. For the moment I'm not doing much in this area but I'll be revisiting it to see how the pogram is working once it's been operational for a few months.

My second project with LINK-UP is basically management consulting. The organization started small and has always been run by its founder and President. When it started he could do this out of his head and mostly by himself. However, as the organization has grown and been successful, they've passed the point where an ad hoc management style works effectively. So, I've been working with the President and the staff to develop and write down their internal rules and procedures in an effort to help them better manage their activities and make the organization more professional.

Outside LINK-UP, I've made contact with another local Cameroonian development organization called Nkong Hilltop, which mostly works in he agricultural domain, running micro-credit programs and building skills among farmers. I recently did a computer security workshop with some of their staff where I provided training in how to protect their computers against viruses (a huge problem in Cameroon) and use the internet safely. In the future we are planning more computer related training sessions in order to help them start trcking some of their projects and better manage their finances using computers.

Besides work, I've started taking a French class at the local Linguistic Center, a government sponsored language training center aimed at promoting bilingualism in Cameroon and offering French and English courses. Although my French is still pretty strong, now that I'm not using it daily any more I can feel it slipping a bit, so the five hour a week course is perfect practice to ensure I don't lose too much of it while I'm here.

Aside from that, I've just been hanging out with friends here in Buea and sneaking off for an occasional day trip to the beach.

So, that's what I'm up to these days.

A Video Tour of Buea

2008-08-13T10:32:00.004+01:00

I just recalled that a while ago Bill posted this Youtube video someone made giving viewers a video tour of Buea, my new post. It's pretty good. So, to keep you entertained while I'm airborne, have a look. Enjoy!

Home Leave!

2008-08-13T10:27:00.003+01:00

After two long years in Cameroon, I'm finally heading back to the good old US of A tonight for a badly needed month of home leave. I will do some posting while I'm home. See you on the other side of the Atlantic gang!

Secret Cults in Cameroonian Schools

2008-07-30T19:32:00.005+01:00

As I was saying, magic is real here. Don't mess with magic. From one of Buea's hometown newspapers, The Post (their office is not far from mine - many of their reporters post stories from the cyber cafe I use), comes this "can't make this stuff up" story:

Students tangle with the occult because most of them are always finding shortcuts to success.The ideals of hard work, discipline and selfless dedication to God as the path to profound success that pastors, priests and teachers profess, is often ignored by wayward students in search of material gains. Children of this calibre are easy prey for the devil.

Awesome.

"What was left was tiny"

2008-07-30T18:30:00.002+01:00

Saw this story a while ago and saved the link but forgot to post it until now.

Ah, Africa... where magic is no joke.

The Village of Waiting

2008-07-30T17:43:00.001+01:00

I just finished reading the Peace Corps memoir The Village of Waiting by journalist George Packer a few days ago. So far it's both the best book about the experience of being a Peace Corps volunteer I've read and an incredibly insightful look at West African culture. Packer is an excellent writer and the book is an engrossing read. He served in Togo, but most of what he wrote about Togo could just as easily apply to Cameroon. While reading this book I constantly found myself saying "Yep... been there, done that." In the future I'll probably find myself liberally quoting from this book when I want to explain either something about Africa or about what it feels like to be a (white) Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. If anyone out there has the inclination to, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

First Weeks in Buea

2008-07-30T17:39:00.003+01:00

The last few weeks have been pretty busy. Here's the rundown:

Trying to get your power or water turned on in Cameroon is an ordeal that might be described as both Sysiphean and Kafkaesque at the same time. Wait around all day at the office to be told there are no meters available, or that there are meters but no technicians to come install them today, or that you are missing some document or stamp or didn't dot an i on the application form, or that you didn't pay for the technician's "transport" (i.e. the bribe necessary to get underpaid utility company emplyees to come to your house and do the job they're supposed to be doing). Fortunately it only took me a week to get the lights turned on so I could move in after that. Unfortunately, I've had worse luck with water. It's been a whole month now and I still have no running water. I've been going to the water company several times a week but there's always a different story for why there are no meters available today. Trying to get my water hooked up has turned out to be almost a full time job by itself. The supervisor for my buidling has been carrying jugs of water for me periodically. My neighbors have also helped me out and let me fill some containers. So, I'm getting enough water to wash (albeit not as often as I'd like) and flush the toilet but that's about it. Sigh...
Since I switched my focus from teaching to working in a business development role, I spent a week in training with the newest group of volunteers in the village of Bangangté getting brought up to speed on some of the technical aspects of the Peace Corps' Small Enterprise Development program. I spent some quality time with Peace Corps trainers and volunteers getting oriented and had a good time getting to know the new kids on the block. Fun week, but the trips there and back were long and tiring.
Been hanging out with Bill and my new post-mate Jessamyn (another volunteer in town) a bit, meeting their friends and colleagues and getting to know Buea, which so far has mostly meant getting to know where the best stores, restaurants, and bars are located.
In between all that I've started doing some work with Linkup, my host institution in Buea. They are a rapidly growing NGO in the process of reorganizing. The first phase of this involved the physical overhaul of their office and their cybercafe.(They own a cyber cafe which provides the revenue to keep the lights on and fund their charitable activities.) Bill and I helped out for several days of manual labor, painting, running power and network cables, holding stuff, cleaning and repairing PCs, and finally helping to get all the machines back online so the place could reopen. I've started working on revamping the group's internal procedures and putting in place a better system of accounting and financial management. I'm also working with them and some would-be microfinance rainmakers to start a microcredit program the NGO can use to give loans to poor members of the community in order to help them start or expand income generating activities.

So, that's what I've been up to the last few weeks. Busy busy. Lack of water aside, all is well.

Happy Birthday America

2008-07-04T13:30:00.003+01:00

Hope everyone back home is having a good Independence Day. In between cheeseburgers try to remember what it's all about. Have a fun and safe holiday.

Moved

2008-07-02T09:47:00.004+01:00

Well, once again I've been delinquent in posting, partly because of a bad connection in Nanga, partly because I've been busy and mobile, and maybe due to a little blog fatigue. At any rate, I've finally left Nanga Eboko and moved to my new post, Buea, in the Southwest Province.

My last few weeks in Nanga were busy:

I continued tutoring students using the donated computers I got last year. I actually managed to get a fair amount of teaching done before leaving. Mission accomplished.
I finished up all of my grading, corrections, make up exams, and other paperwork for the semester. Tedious but necessary.
One of Peace Corps' technical trainers is a Cameroonian computer teacher. He's been writing a series of basic computer textbooks for use in Cameroonian high schools. Since the country is bilingual, he needed someone to provide an English translation of one of his books for use in schools in the English speaking part of the country. I'd been working on it off and on for months, but finally wrapped it up and gave it to him a few weeks ago.
I spent a lot of time with friends and saying goodbye to people. I was given a nice going away party by my colleagues at the University. Two women I know in town tried to convince me to take a porcupine with me as a gift for my father when I go back to the states. Uh, yeah. (An aside: porcupine is popular bush meat in southern Cameroon. It's actually pretty tasty - tastes kind of like pork but a bit stronger.)

While I was a little sad to leave my friends and students, I was also ready to leave Nanga and move on to something better. After spending a week in Yaoundé for medical examinations (they tell me I'm healthy) and a lot of paperwork, I finally moved to Buea a few days ago. I am gradually getting to know the town better and have already started to discuss my work for the next year with Roland, my new boss at the local NGO, Linkup, where I will be working.

I have a nice apartment already rented and am just waiting for the landlady to finish a bit of work and hook up the utilities before I move in. I'll post pictures after I've moved in. For the moment I'm staying with Bill and living out of suitcases. Next week I will go to the village of Bangangté (where the latest group of volunteers are in training) for a week of training in Peace Corps' Small Enterprise Development program.

So, for the moment, everything is in flux and I'm feeling a bit homeless: out of Nanga but not yet settled in Buea. But, I suppose that's normal. So far so good for year three.

Thank You!

2008-06-02T17:03:00.002+01:00

Back in February I posted an entry about a public health campaign I was helping out with here in Nanga Eboko started by my friend Jerome. In the entry and in private emails I requested help from friends, family, and any interested readers in raising the money for the project.

I'm happy to report that in the last few weeks we've successfully raised all of the money for the project. Last week on my trip to Yaoundé I picked up the check. We're now in the process of buying materials and organizing things.

Unfortunately it took a bit longer than we'd hoped, so that may delay the start of the project until the next school year since school is almost over. Since students are the main targets of the project, it won't really work to go into the schools when they're out of session. So, that part of the project may have to wait until the next school year starts in September or October. But, since I am staying in Cameroon for a third year I will be around to follow up and see it through to the end.

So, to all of you out there who contributed, THANK YOU! I and my friend Jerome thank all of you. We really appreciate it. I met with the principal of one of the schools involved today and he was very enthusiastic and grateful. In particular, I'd like to thank a few of my friends from college (you know who you are) who went so far as to organize a fund raising event for us. Thanks for all your hard work! For those who submitted their names I will be sure to send out thank you letters soon (a bit busy at the moment). For those who donated anonymously, this is my best shot at saying thank you.

I will post updates regarding this project as things develop. The school component may have to wait a while, but I am going to see if we can finish our work at the hospital and the prison before I leave Nanga this month. I will keep everyone up to date.

Thanks again!

COS Conference and Year Trois

2008-06-01T16:35:00.005+01:00

As a government agency, Peace Corps uses a lot of acronyms. One of which is COS: Close of Service. This is the acronym for when a volunteer is about to finish their service and all the paperwork, medical exams, etc that go with it. Once a volunteer has finshed this process, they are said to have "COS'ed" and become RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers).

COS is preceeded about two to three months before a volunteer's scheduled departure date with a "COS conference" held at a nice hotel in Yaoundé. All volunteers from the same training group, who came in together and will leave about the same time, gather at the hotel for three days of seminars, paperwork, language tests, interviews, and other sessions in order to prepare for COS.

COS conference is usually a pretty nostalgic event, and ours was no exception. It was good to be back together with everyone from my "stage" (training group), some of whom I don't think I'd seen since training two years ago. The formal sessions were predictably long and boring. A session on job hunting by someone from the US embassy's HR department was particularly painful. Fortunately we ended up with a fair amount of free time to hang out in the hotel bar, at the hotel pool, during meal and coffee breaks, and in each other's rooms in the evenings. After the conference a few of us took a trip to Limbé to enjoy the beach one last time before the end of our service.

It was interesting to take stock of how we made out during our service. Some didn't make it: out of 46 of us who stepped off the plane in June, 2006, 31 remained by April, 2008. Some people had an overwhelmingly positive experience, others less so. Most were glad they had done it and knew they would miss their friends, but were also ready to go home.

A few however, were not quite ready to go home. Peace Corps is normally a two year assignment, but in most countries they offer a limited number of third year extensions. COS conference is the time when volunteers apply for these positions. Several people from our group sought and received extensions to work on various projects. One guy is staying in his village a third year, the rest are moving to different jobs and towns in Cameroon.

Two years in Nanga-Eboko has been a good (although often frustrating) experience, but I'm ready to blow this town. However, after a lot of thought and a lot of talking to friends and family in the months before COS conference, I decided that while I was ready to leave Nanga, I was not ready to leave Cameroon yet and applied for a third year position. The last two years flew by and I still feel I have a lot to learn and see here.

During training last year one of Peace Corps' staffers approached me to suggest I consider extending my service for a third year in a different post. Up to that point a third year had not occurred to me, but his suggestion did get me thinking and decided that if I was having a good experience here why not stay a little longer? So, not long after I started talking to Peace Corps administration to see what kind of assignments might be possible if I were to stay.

I did decide, however, that I would not stay in Nanga. I've learned a lot here and made some great friends, but I feel two years here has been enough. If I was going to stay I wanted a different experience. So, after a lot of discussions Peace Corps offered me a great third year assignment in a new post and new job which I decided to accept.

For my third year I will be working as a small enterprise development volunteer in the town of Buea. I've written about Buea before. It's a great place: paved roads, decent utilities, nice people, good food, English-speaking (kind of - I'll have to learn some Pidgin), and only 30 minutes from the beach at Limbe. It also helps that Bill, one of my closest friends from Peace Corps who is posted in Buea is also sticking around, so we'll both be in the same town.

As an added bonus, internet service is good in Buea and there are lots of cyber cafes, so I may actually be able to email people and update this blog more often! I've accumulated a huge backlog of stories and pictures I've been wanting to post but haven't done so because of the difficulties of getting online regularly.

Work wise, in my new assignment I will be working with a couple of NGOs in Buea training their staffs in computer literacy, helping with strategic planning, and helping them organize various small business development activities like community business classes and micro finance projects. In contrast to working as a teacher, where volunteers are stuck with their institutions, as a SED volunteer I will be free to pursue whatever projects in the community I want. I think this will give me a lot more flexibility and room for creativity than I have in my current position.

With a new job, a new town, and with good friends and the beach close at hand, I think I will have a great third year and I'm excited to get started. I will be moving to Buea in June and will be in Cameroon most of the summer in order to do some retraining for the new job and get started with work. I'll be coming home for 30 days in August and September on leave, so I will see family and friends then.

I want to thank all of you for the support and encouragement you have given me the last two years. I couldn't have done it and I couldn't stay a third year without knowing my friends and family were behind me.

FYI : I Am Still Alive

2008-05-27T11:38:00.003+01:00

Well, that was a long break from posting huh? My apologies, dear readers. It's mostly been due to a lousy or often nonexistent internet connection. Not sure what the problem is. I've asked many times and been given various non-answers, most of which translate to "We don't know what the problem is." Every now and then I am able to get on long enough to check my email, maybe read some news from back home, and then the connection dies or slows down to the point where I can't load any pages, including this blog.

Today's the first time it's been good enough for me to post an update since the last entry. I'm a bit busy today so more details will have to wait, but I'm going to Yaoundé later this week and will post more in a few days.

Thursday Lizard Blogging

2008-03-13T17:31:00.004+01:00

Gotta run and catch the train back to post. Since Internet has been down in my town I don't know when I will get online again, so for the interim, here are some pictures of lizards. No special reason. It's just been too long.

Disorder in the House

2008-03-13T13:18:00.007+01:00

Not long ago I wrote about the post-election violence in Kenya, arguing that what the outside world often perceives as "stability" in Africa (the absence of immediate, ongoing violence basically) automatically means that the society is basically healthy and calm and people get along. Everyone was so shocked at the violence because everyone "knew" Kenya was "stable."

I went on to say that many of the same frustrations driving the violence in Kenya were simmering away here in Cameroon, and that at some point it wouldn't surprise me if Cameroon experienced a similar meltdown.

Well, as if on cue, Cameroon just had an ugly round of civil disorder some of you may have heard about. While it was not a prominent story in the US, I heard from people back home that it did make a few papers and websites.

The trouble started around the 23rd or 24th of February. Over that weekend taxi drivers in Douala, Cameroon's largest city and economic capital, went on strike to protest gas price increases. As oil and other commodity prices rise Cameroon is getting hit with the same inflation that seems to be affecting the rest of the world now to varying degrees. And of course, new jobs are not appearing and salaries are stagnant, so people here are suffering.

Aside from economic anxiety, people are becoming increasingly frustrated with a government that does not appear to do much about any of these problems, other than steal everything that isn't nailed down. I mean, you should at least be able to get a job or some cheap gas for your bribes right?

This frustration has grown in recent months after President Biya announced that Cameroon needed to amend the constitution so he could run for another term as President. Under the current rules his presidency will end in 2011. Now it appears he's going to lift the limit (which he can easily do since the national assembly more or less does his bidding) so he can stay in power til he dies. Common pattern in Africa unfortunately. I guess the 25 years he's already been President weren't enough.

So, what started as a strike quickly merged with political frustration and turned on the regime. The strikes spread rapidly from Douala to other towns and cities and almost immediately turned violent. In Yaoundé and Douala and other areas people were burning cars, looting, breaking windows, and torching government buildings. Most of the violence appeared to be committed by unemployed young men. The government responded with a heavy hand, flooding affected areas with police and soldiers to reimpose order. I'm told that the army adopted a shoot on sight policy for rioters: no arrest, just a bullet. An unknown number of people were shot in the bigger towns.

Fortunately, it doesn't sound like the violence was ethnically motivated. Nor was it organized - just mob mentality taking over and angry people going nuts in the streets.

This continued for several days with the worst of the violence occurring on Wednesday the 26th and Thursday the 27th. Things began calming down on Friday, the 29th. The weekend was quiet, but tense, with rumors the strikes would resume the following Monday.

My village remained quiet, but some volunteers had the bad luck to be in areas that saw a good deal of rioting. Volunteer Bill has written a bit about what he saw in Buea during the riots on his blog, here, here, and here.

Naturally, Peace Corps became very concerned about this and almost immediately put us on alert. As the violence escalated, we were put on what they call "Standfast", which means pack a bag and be ready to evacuate if the situation deteriorates further. Volunteers in the Northwest province (where some of the worst violence took place) and several other areas were brought to Yaoundé to stay at the Peace Corps compound as a precaution. So, with all of us a bit nervous, we waited out a long, tense weekend. My Cameroonian friends all assured me that the violence would not resume because "Cameroonians are peaceful." As they promised though, Monday came and nothing happened.

Since then things have been pretty quiet. The soldiers have returned to their barracks and life looks pretty much like it did before the riots. Of course, the riots didn't really change anything, so who knows how "stable" this situation is.

For the moment we appear to have dodged a bullet. Let's hope we don't have to duck again.

Jungle Life

2008-03-12T16:35:00.008+01:00

Jungle life
You're far away from nothing
It's all right
You won't miss home
Take a chance
Leave everything behind you
Come and join me
Won't be sorry
It's easy to survive

- Baltimora, "Tarzan Boy"

Sorry I've been out of teach for a while dear readers, but Internet has been effectively out of commission at post for the last few weeks. Oh, and the power has been out most of the time. Usual dry season power cuts and all. Fortunately the dry season is coming to a close -we've already had a couple of rains- so in a few weeks it should get a bit more stable.

So, for the last few weeks I've been cut off from most contact with the outside world, teaching classes at my little university in the beach, navigating by lamplight at night, drinking warm beer on weekends, and not bathing much (since water goes out when the power is out). Ah, jungle life...

Right now I'm back in Yaoundé on business so I will try to post a few updates before I go back to post tomorrow night. As some of you may have heard, we had a bit of a crisis here in Cameroon in recent weeks, so later on I'll write about what's been going on.

Peace Corps Partnership for Nanga-Eboko

2008-02-08T15:43:00.001+01:00

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!

Quick Hits

2008-02-08T15:12:00.000+01:00

A few quick updates:

Last night Cameroon defeated Ghana 1-0 in the Africa Cup of Nations. I and a few other volunteers watched it in a bar in Yaoundé. The post-victory celebrations were a sight to see. Men ran around tearing off the shirts, people waving Cameroonian flags, drinking and dancing, etc. Good times. They beat Cameroon in their first game, so I'm not sure if that hurts the Lions (intimidation factor) or helps them (desire for revenge). We'll see. Allez Les Lions!
Last weekend Cameroon's neighbor, Chad, blew up. Thousands of rebels advanced on the capital city of N'djamena in a bid to overthrow the President, Idriss Deby. The capital has been torn apart in heavy fighting. The US embassy was closed down and all personnel evacuated since it was inconveniently located between the Presidential palace and rebel positions. At last report the government had fought off the rebels and was trying to impose a nationwide curfew. Good luck enforcing that one guys. All in all, an ugly situation, with oil and Sudan in the mix of instability.
N'djamena is just across the border from the extreme north of Cameroon. The border is a river between N'djamena and the northern Cameroonian town of Kousseri. Kousseri is now flooded with refugees fleeing the fighting. I had an email yesterday asking if I was Ok - yes folks, I'm fine. The fighting is hundreds of miles away and has not spilled over into Cameroon. While there are some volunteers near the border with Chad, none are near N'djamena and no others have reported any problems, thankfully.
The Kenyans are talking again. Let's hope they manage to calm things down.

Cosendai Adventist University

2008-02-07T12:46:00.000+01:00

I've been meaning to do a post about the University where I teach for a while. If y'all ain't the readin' kind, y'all can just look at all the purdy pictures.

The Main Entrance

Cosendai Adventist University (Université Adventiste Cosendai in French) is a Seventh Day Adventist (link to wikipedia on 7th day adv) school. It started out as a seminary founded here in the 1920s. Many years later, a primary school was established here, then eventually a college (private high school) which shares the campus. Finally, they upgraded again and converted the seminary into a full-fledged University in 1996.

The University is one of only two private universities in Cameroon who's degrees are recognized by the government. (The other is Catholic university in Yaoundé.) Four majors are offered: Theology, Business and Computer Science (almost two separate programs with the same Dean), Education, and Nursing. Nursing degrees take two years to finish and the others take three.

Because the school is too small to support a large permanent faculty, the majority of courses are taught by visiting professors. Since they can usually only stay for a week or two at a time and since we have to take them when we can get them, the school schedule changes every week. On Fridays I find out what classes I'm teaching and when for the following week. Or maybe I find out I'm not teaching at all, which was a big problem last year. As you can imagine, this makes lesson planning and scheduling exams and homework a nightmare.

It also makes life hard on the students, since they frequently have to cram a 60 hour class into one or two weeks. Some weeks they have classes from 7 AM to 10 PM straight, every day, with only an hour break each for lunch and dinner. Giving homework is a problem both because they often have no time to do it with a course load like that and because the power is often out at night.

The school has about 370 students, mostly from Cameroon. The majority are from the country's two biggest cities, Yaoundé and Douala, but there are students from each of Cameroon's ten provinces. There is a large contingent of students from the Extreme North province, which is rare since that region of Cameroon is poorer than the south and tends to send fewer students to college. Most are here on church scholarships. Since it's hard to find pastors to serve in northern Cameroon, they finance the degrees of promising students who will later return north and serve the church there. As a result, after French and English the third most common language spoken on campus is Fulfuldé - the dominant language of the northern provinces.

The school also has an international contingent. We have students from all over west Africa. I have students from Chad, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Burkina Faso (my Dean's native country), Togo, the Central African Republic, and Cape Verde. The Dean of our Theology department and his wife are from Kenya (although they've lived in the US for over a decade before coming here and have applied for US citizenship). Most of the faculty and staff have traveled or studied in other countries in the region. We also get a fair number of foreign visitors associated with the church (missionaries, church administration, and professors from UAC's sister universities in Ghana and Nigeria).

As a result of this international character I have been learning a lot about life in other parts of Africa. Most Americans tend to lump all of these nations together as "Africa" - one big undifferentiated mass of people. (Who are either starving or dying of Ebola or getting hacked to death with machetes.) While there are cultural characteristics that are common to these countries, lumping together Cameroon and say, Niger is like assuming that there is no difference between France and Germany because they are both European. So being posted here has been a good opportunity to learn more about the complexities of Africa.

The facilities here are not very good. There aren't enough classrooms and those we do have are run down and often crowded, as in most Cameroonian schools.

Power and water go out often. We have a generator that can power the campus during blackouts, but it broke down back in March and still hasn't been repaired, despite repeated efforts.

The library is small and many of the books are outdated American textbooks donated years ago. The Peace Corps volunteer I replaced did a lot of work in the library. Now there's some organization and he got them on the Dewey decimal system. Before books were just laying around in piles.

We have a lab with 18 computers. That's both for classes and for the extracurricular use of 370 students who are all itching to get in there to write papers and use the internet. Fortunately they are almost done building a second small lab, which will help considerably.

Since land lines are impractical, we have a satellite internet connection.

The University is a religious school, but it is open to students from other denominations. About half the student body are Adventists. The rest are a mix of Catholics and members of other protestant denominations, with a scattering of atheists and now and then a few Muslims as well. Students are not expected to become Adventists, but they do have to live by the rules of the church.

This means that all classes start with prayers and often singing, and that students are obliged to go to chapel twice a week and mass on Fridays and Saturdays. Too many absences can result in disciplinary action.

All students do manual labor on Thursday and Sunday mornings. They are organized into groups and spend two hours cleaning floors, cutting grass with machetes, picking up trash, digging ditches, whatever. Basically they're free labor for the school to use in maintaining the campus.

The school has strict moral codes. Drinking alcohol, smoking, or using drugs are grounds for dismissal, on or off campus. As a result of all these rules, there's not much night life around the campus aside from choir practice. Makes it easier to sleep I suppose. Fortunately I'm not bound by these rules. :)

Of course, lots of students drink and smoke, but they do it in town in the backs of bars or in their homes, hidden from the eyes of the administration. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to report them, but on the odd occasion when I go out for a beer and run into them, I don't say anything. Their lives are hard enough without me acting as the morals police. Besides, since I'm usually having a beer when I see them it's not like I can say "don't drink that" with a straight face.

The school also regularly hassles female students about dressing modestly so as to avoid tempting the men.

With a church that serves both the University and the local community, on campus baptisms, weddings and other events are a regular part of life here.

One nice thing about living here is the music. There are a number of choral groups on campus that regularly sing in church, have concerts, and rehearse in the evenings. I can often sit in my house and hear singing all over campus. Since these groups are all pretty good, it's nice.

Food options are, sadly, a bit limited. There is a cafeteria which make serviceable meals but gets a bit boring after a while since they rotate through a pretty small repertoire. It is however reasonably priced and conveniently located, even if lunch is never ready on time.

At the edge of campus is a long hut where a group of women (who I refer to as "the fish mommies") come to sell food to the students. My typical breakfast is a bean sandwich purchased from one of the ladies who works there. When I don't feel like cooking at night I can get beans and rice or grilled fish from them as well.

Students live both on campus and off campus. Some students live in small, two person "cells" that are scattered around campus. Tiny concrete huts divided into two rooms, each with just enough space for a bunk bed and a tiny desk and chair. Others live in larger dorms. From what some students have told me, it sounds like life in the larger dorms is close to prison life. They live four, five, or six to a room and have a strict curfew after which the doors are locked.

There are also a limited number of apartments and houses for students with families and for professors. Some of these are decent (depending on how big the family is) but there aren't enough to go around.

Because there is not enough housing on campus (and because they want some freedom) many students live off campus. There is a small quartier (neighborhood) that surrounds the campus. Some students are able to rent rooms there, which is at least convenient for classes.

The rest have to find housing wherever they can in town. Often this means being several kilometers from campus. So, either they have a long walk to school, or, they have to pay for a motorcycle taxi ride - which starts to bite given that most of the students aren't exactly rolling in cash.

In general I like most of my students and the rest of the faculty and staff and have made a lot of good friends here. In spite of the school's organizational headaches and the area's problems with power and water, this is a great assignment for a Peace Corps volunteer. I've had many frustrating moments here, but the longer I've been here the more I've come to appreciate all I've learned here.

Out of Africa

2008-02-05T19:05:00.001+01:00

We just got word yesterday that Peace Corps is pulling out of Kenya. Some volunteers had already been sent home due to the ongoing violence, but now they're suspending the program entirely and are in the process of evacuating all the volunteers this week. Oy.

Over at Peace Corps Journals, I checked out some of the Kenya blogs and read some posts from volunteers. Here are some thoughts on coming home this way from Diana, Nicholas, and Rachel.

Victory!

2008-02-05T18:48:00.000+01:00

So, Cameroon beat Sudan last week and last night went on to beat Tunisia 3-2 in overtime in the Africa Cup of Nations. Watched the game in a bar here in Yaoundé. It wan pendemonium after every goal. When Cameroon won at the end the locals all started shaking their beer bottles and spraying the ceiling, walls, and each other with beer. Wish I'd had a video camera. Truly a sight to behold. Then I fled before they started lighting things on fire.

Throughout the game there was one drunk patron who kept shouting that the Tunisians were terrorists. Apparently the Cameroon-Tunisia match was a major battle in the War on Terrorism® and he kept screaming things like "We must beat the terrorists!" and "Terrorism must be punished!"

The Lions are playing Ghana on Thursday. Woot woot woot!

The Road to Hell is Unpaved

2008-02-03T12:24:00.000+01:00

Another volunteer pointed me to this article from the Economist about the hellish state of Cameroonian roads and their impact on the country's economy. One of the roads he writes about happens to be the road to my village, and I can personally vouch for everything he writes: the mud, the rain barriers, the gendarmes, etc.

An excerpt:

The plan was to carry 1,600 crates of Guinness and other drinks from the factory in Douala where they were brewed to Bertoua, a small town in Cameroon's south-eastern rainforest. As the crow flies, this is less than 500km (313 miles)—about as far as from New York to Pittsburgh, or London to Edinburgh. According to a rather optimistic schedule, it should have taken 20 hours, including an overnight rest. It took four days. When the truck arrived, it was carrying only two-thirds of its original load.
The scenery was staggering: thickly forested hills, stretching into the distance like an undulating green ocean, with red and yellow blossoms floating on the waves. Beside the road were piles of cocoa beans, laid out to dry in the sun, and hawkers selling engine oil, tangerines, and succulent four-metre pythons for the pot. We were able to soak up these sights at our leisure: we were stopped at road-blocks 47 times.
These usually consisted of a pile of tyres or a couple of oil drums in the middle of the road, plus a plank with upturned nails sticking out, which could be pulled aside when the policemen on duty were satisfied that the truck had broken no laws and should be allowed to pass.
Sometimes, they merely gawped into the cab or glanced at the driver's papers for a few seconds before waving him on. But the more aggressive ones detained us somewhat longer. Some asked for beer. Some complained that they were hungry, often patting their huge stomachs to emphasise the point. One asked for pills, lamenting that he had indigestion. But most wanted hard cash, and figured that the best way to get it was to harass motorists until bribed to lay off.
.......
Even without the unwelcome attentions of the robber-cops, the journey would have been a slog. Most Cameroonian roads are unpaved: long stretches of rutty red laterite soil with sheer ditches on either side. Dirt roads are fine so long as it does not rain, but Cameroon is largely rainforest, where it rains often and hard.
Our road was rendered impassable by rain three times, causing delays of up to four hours. The Cameroonian government has tried to grapple with the problem of rain eroding roads by erecting a series of barriers, with small gaps in the middle, that allow light vehicles to pass but stop heavy trucks from passing while it is pouring. This is fair. Big trucks tend to mangle wet roads.
The barriers, which are locked to prevent truckers from lifting them when no one is looking, are supposed to be unlocked when the road has had a chance to dry. Unfortunately, the officials whose job it is to unlock them are not wholly reliable. Early on the second evening, not long after our stand-off with the police in Mbandjok, we met a rain barrier in the middle of the forest. It was dark, and the man with the key was not there. Asking around nearby villages yielded no clue as to his whereabouts. We curled up in the hot, mosquito-filled cab and waited for him to return, which he did shortly before midnight.
The hold-up was irritating, but in the end made no difference. Early the next morning, a driver coming in the opposite direction told us that the bridge ahead had collapsed, so we had to turn back.

Bigger Than The Superbowl

2008-01-29T12:13:00.001+01:00

Cameroon is a football (soccer) country. Forget the Superbowl, the World Series, or March Madness. You haven't seen sports fanaticism until you've been to Cameroon. Not only do people follow the sport religiously on TV, there are informal teams and matches in every quarter and village in the country. The poverty of the country makes it difficult to build stadiums, but if you were to drive around the country, you'd see makeshift football fields everywhere (easy to spot because of the improvised goals - often just sticks or tree branches jammed into the ground). I hear the rest of Africa is not too different.

Right now we are in the middle of the Africa Cup of Nations, which surpasses even the World Cup in importance here. The 2006 World Cup was being held during my training in 2006, so I got a taste of soccer culture then.

On days when the Indomitable Lions (the Cameroonian national team) play, everything shuts down during the game. At the University, evening classes were cancelled during the last match. Taxi drivers stop driving, stores and restaurants close, and everyone heads for the nearest TV. Bars with TVs are usually packed. When a goal is scored you can hear half the town screaming. When the Lions are playing, the day of the game is always an unofficial national holiday.

As I mentioned in my last post, Cameroon is a country with plenty of divisions, but the Lions are one thing that unites them all. When the national team is playing, everyone is Cameroonian, no matter what their tribe, religion, language, or politics. It's actually a little touching.

Last Tuesday night Cameroon lost its first match to Egypt, 4-2. I watched the game at a friend's house, so I probably missed the full effect. Needless to say, the mood the next day was almost funereal. On the bright side, one of my English students was watching it with us, so it gave me the chance to explain what an "kicking ass" was.

On Saturday night, Cameroon played Zambia. They somehow got their groove back and won 5-1.

This time I watched it with a friend in a local bar, and the patrons and employees all went wild with joy with every goal. I was able to explain the expression "kicking ass" again, but in a more positive light this time.

Cameroon is playing Sudan tomorrow night. It's probably a good sign for Cameroon that Sudan was beaten by Zambia. If Cameroon wins, they will move on to the second round. I can't imagine the celebration that would follow if they were to somehow win the cup (probably unlikely after the drubbing they got from Egypt). Ah well, onward! To victory!

As a side benefit, the government and SONEL (the power company) are working overtime to make sure the televisions stay on during the cup. So, power has been remarkably stable the last couple of weeks. Makes you wonder why they can't manage to keep the power on the rest of the time, but, c'est l'afrique.

Kenya, Cameroon, and the Ilusion of Stability

2008-01-21T11:54:00.000+01:00

For those of you who follow the news, Kenya exploded into violence in recent weeks after a disputed election. For those who would like some background, you can read a brief rundown on the country and it's history at wikipedia, a news round up at allAfrica.com, a timeline from Reuters, and a commentary by sociologist-historian Immanuel Wallerstein.

Today the news got even grimmer. The New York Times is reporting increasing signs that the violence in Kenya, which has left hundreds dead and tens of thousands displaced, was planned and premeditated by various political-ethnic factions.

A constant thread I have noticed in all the news coverage is surprise. No one saw it coming. Kenya was so "stable" they all say. The first paragraph in the Times article I linked to above says Kenya was "a country that was celebrated as one of Africa’s most stable."

Personally, I'm not that surprised. Violence like this doesn't come from nowhere. There are plenty of historical precedents in modern Africa. Côte d'Ivoire is probably the best example: for years it was touted as stable and prosperous - until it blew up in civil war a few years ago.

What's happening in Kenya is depressingly familiar in Africa: a toxic mix of poverty, corruption, undemocratic rule, and ethnic rivalry boiling over into violence.

I think it all goes back to the colonial era. Most countries in Africa never would have existed had they not been created by the European colonial empires. When the British, French, Germans, and Portuguese drew their borders, they were drawn for the convenience of the colonizers, not the inhabitants. As a result, diverse and often hostile ethnic and sectarian groups were lumped together under colonial rule, and then found themselves still lumped together in an uncomfortable marriage of inconvenience at independence.

Before independence, the colonial regimes often used a "divide and conquer" strategy of favoring one tribe over another in order to win their support and rule their otherwise unruly colonies. Lacking a strong national identity, this divisive kind of politics has continued and most Africans still identify more closely with their own ethnic group than with the artificial nations within whose borders they live. As a result, most politicians and generals tend to rule by leaning heavily on supporters of their own tribes, sects, or regions. These supporters are rewarded with a bigger share of economic opportunities and government spending than the others. Naturally, this leads to a lot of pent up grievances over time, especially in poor countries where the pie being divided up is pretty small to begin with.

The problem is compounded by the fact that Africa has suffered under a long line of one-party governments, military rule, and various other forms of personal or party dictatorship. Although Kenya has avoided military rule, it has been under one-party rule for its entire history, and its leaders in that party have continued the old game of favoring their own ethnic groups at the expense of others, stealing from the public treasury for their own personal enrichment, and stifling any effort to change the situation.

What foreign observers often call "stability" in countries like Kenya is really just a situation where the current ruling powers have managed to freeze the political situation in place so that no one can remove them. The problem with this is that the rulers of a one-party system have no incentive to actually address mounting economic or social problems or to try to defuse the ethnic tensions bubbling under the surface. These tensions are there even if they are hidden, and the longer they go unresolved the more the frustration of the people builds and builds until finally, some event triggers an explosion. I am friends with a married couple at my school who are originally from Kenya, and they have told me many stories about the mounting frustrations in Kenya at the absence of any real change.

I can't imagine what volunteers in Kenya are going through right now. Volunteers live and work in communities and form close relationships with their neighbors and coworkers. Now they are watching these same communities many of them have no doubt grown to love tear themselves apart. It must be heartbreaking. According to the Peace Corps, all volunteers in Kenya are safe and accounted for. Some are still at their posts working, while others have been temporarily consolidated at safe locations in hopes things calm down. (In case any PCVs in Kenya happen to read this, you are all in our thoughts here in Cameroon. Stay safe.)

The scary thing is, I think Cameroon is a lot like Kenya. An artificial nation made up of many different tribes that often have very little in common and ruled over by an insatiably corrupt one-party government. And foreigners like to praise the country for its "stability."

As an outsider, it's hard for me to tell where things are going, but I hear things.

I hear volunteers in the north of the country tell me their friends are saying if the next President of Cameroon is not a northerner they will go to war. I hear volunteers in the Anglophone provinces tell me friends openly wish they could form their own country. I hear Francophone Cameroonians saying that if the Anglopohones ever revolt they'll be crushed. I hear stories about how the Bamileké (one ethnic group in Cameroon) were chased out of my village by machete-wielding mobs in the 90s. I hear seething anger at wealthy politicians making fortunes by stealing from the people. I hear a good friend telling me "I have nightmares. We're going to be like Côte d'Ivoire or Rwanda."

Yet through it all, I constantly hear Cameroonians telling me "We're peaceful! we have no wars here! No wars!" but often with a hint of quiet desperation in their eyes - hoping that if they wish it and proclaim it loudly enough they can ward it off.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope Cameroon never knows the kind of violence that has torn apart Kenya or Rwanda or Côte d'Ivoire. But if it does I will not be surprised. It will be a hard day if it does come. I have lived with Cameroonians, worked with Cameroonians, taught Cameroonians, been friends with Cameroonians. They are not abstractions to me. They are not statistics on the news like they are to other Americans. They are friends and colleagues and the thought of them turning on each other is unbearable. If it happens, most Americans won't even notice. Those that do will say something banal like "isn't that terrible" and then forget about it.

For my part, I will weep for Cameroon and for my friends. Sometimes that's all you can do.

Seka Seka

2008-01-20T15:08:00.000+01:00

This is one of the biggest popular hits right now in Cameroon. By the Congolese musician Mareshal, "Seka Seka" can be heard blasting from half the bars in the country on any given day. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, you can blast it in your house too. So crank up the volume and enjoy some top notch African pop music, preferably with a cold beer in hand.

Vacation

2008-01-20T14:35:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know it's been a while dear readers, and I humbly apologize for being such a slug about posting, but, well, you get busy, or you lose power or your connection, or you're traveling through villages with no cyber cafes. You know how it is...

Right now I'm sitting in the Peace Corps office in Yaoundé catching up on emails, news, and (I hope) this blog. I just returned from two weeks of travelling in northern Cameroon with another volunteer. It was a great trip and I enjoyed seeing the north, which is like a different country in many ways. I will write up the details of my trip, pictures, and my observations about the north at a later time. I will also post some pictures from Christmas - I spent the holiday with my Cameroonian host family (volunteers live with host families during training), so I will write a bit about that as well.

Stay tuned!

Swamped

2007-11-27T02:41:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-15T18:52:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-15T18:28:00.001+01:00

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

2007-11-10T18:46:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-26T17:57:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-26T17:54:00.000+01:00

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.

2007-10-19T13:08:00.001+01:00

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

2007-10-17T14:35:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-15T12:12:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-14T16:01:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-14T15:39:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-14T14:32:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-14T14:19:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-10T10:42:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-10T10:11:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-08T12:40:00.000+01:00

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

Update

2007-10-08T12:13:00.000+01:00

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!

2007-09-19T16:29:00.000+01:00

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day ye scurvy dogs!

There and Back Again

2007-09-19T16:07:00.000+01:00

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!

2007-09-12T14:11:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-12T13:46:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-03T18:20:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-03T17:54:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-30T09:46:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-23T20:14:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-27T22:43:00.000+01:00

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

A Clean Bill of Health

2007-07-27T22:39:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-25T11:34:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-24T14:34:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-22T20:18:00.001+01:00

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

2007-07-22T20:09:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-12T21:37:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-12T21:34:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-12T21:22:00.000+01:00

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!?

2007-06-20T13:18:00.000+01:00

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?

2007-06-19T09:49:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-17T17:10:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-17T16:01:00.001+01:00

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

2007-06-13T16:39:00.000+01:00

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?

2007-06-13T16:15:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-13T15:49:00.000+01:00

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

2007-05-25T08:24:00.000+01:00

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.

The Troubles of African Universities

2007-05-20T09:21:00.000+01:00

Spotted a good article in the NY Times today about the problems facing African universities. Although the article focuses on Senegal, most of the same problems apply in Cameroonian universities. I see some of them in microcosm at the University where I teach as well.

Africa’s Storied Colleges, Jammed and Crumbling:

Africa’s best universities, the grand institutions that educated a revolutionary generation of nation builders and statesmen, doctors and engineers, writers and intellectuals, are collapsing. It is partly a self-inflicted crisis of mismanagement and neglect, but it is also a result of international development policies that for decades have favored basic education over higher learning even as a population explosion propels more young people than ever toward the already strained institutions.

The decrepitude is forcing the best and brightest from countries across Africa to seek their education and fortunes abroad and depriving dozens of nations of the homegrown expertise that could lift millions out of poverty.
. . .
The disarray of Africa’s universities did not happen by chance. In the 1960s, universities were seen as the incubator of the vanguard that would drive development in the young nations of newly liberated Africa, and postcolonial governments spent lavishly on campuses, research facilities, scholarships and salaries for academics.
But corruption and mismanagement led to the economic collapses that swept much of Africa in the 1970s, and universities were among the first institutions to suffer. As idealistic postcolonial governments gave way to more cynical and authoritarian ones, universities, with their academic freedoms, democratic tendencies and elitist airs, became a nuisance.

Patching the Apocalypse

2007-05-18T18:39:00.000+01:00

Today we wrapped up our training design workshop. We now have a program in place for the new group of trainees who will be arriving in Cameroon on June 9th.

Before coming to Cameroon, each invitee is asked to email Peace corps a resume and an aspiration statement describing what they hope to achieve in Peace Corps and how they will deal with the challenges volunteer life can present. This is so the staff on the ground in Cameroon can familiarize themselves with the new recruits and take their backgrounds into consideration while designing training and consider possible posts.

While helping to design the training program, several of us were able to read the aspiration statements and resumes of some of the new kids. I have to say it was a bit odd. I'm curious to go back and read my own statement and see how much my goals have changed in the past year. I'm probably a bit more jaded than I was at the time - as may be apparent from some of my recent posts on difficulties I've been having lately. On the other hand, I think I've learned and seen far more than I expected to a year ago in many ways. I definitely believe I am a stronger person than when I arrived.

The previous country director told us during training that Peace Corps service is like being on a roller coaster - enormous highs and terrible lows coming hard and fast on top of each other. I'd say that's been true of my own experience. For all its frustrations I've had a great time and have gained a lot from my experiences here. It's definitely not for everyone, but I'd also say it was the right choice for me. I have not regretted my decision at all.

Thinking back on it all brings up the obvious question that I haven't yet answered on this blog: Why did I join the Peace Corps?

When I first told friends and family the reactions were mixed, although supportive overall. My mother thought it was a great idea and felt it fit my personality and values well. My father was a little upset at first but came around. My sister and most of my other relatives didn't say too much one way or the other. Some of my friends were excited for me, while others shared the sentiments of my friend Adam, who said something like: "The Peace Corps? Is he nuts?" My coworkers were sad to see me leave, but when I explained what I was doing and why they basically said they couldn't be angry about it.

Although everyone back home has been very supportive, most from time to time say things like "What you're doing is great but I could never do it." My students and most Cameroonians I meet in general don't understand why I would want to leave a good job and relatively comfortable life in the US to come live in a dusty little town in the African bush for two years. Many of them are eager to find a way to get OUT of Cameroon and can't figure out why I would want to go the other direction.

So, what do I tell them? Why am I here? Why am I dealing with mosquitoes and mud and dust and heat and unreliable utilities when I have plenty of other options back home? There were many reasons. After giving it a lot of thought, I decided Peace Corps was something that might help me fulfill many of my goals all at once.

First, I was bored. I'd been working at the same job and living in the same town for over six years and needed a change - and just a move to another cubicle.

Second, I wanted to live abroad and experience another culture in ways that come from living there as opposed to being a tourist. I enjoy learning about other countries and studying other languages, and the cultural immersion you get from Peace Corps service is certainly fulfilling this goal.

Third, I wanted to help others. A simple idea really. I thought this would be a way I could do that.

Fourth, I wanted to serve my country. I've always believed that all Americans should give something back to their country and decided that I should put my money where my mouth was. One reason I chose Peace Corps instead of an NGO was because it's an explicitly American agency. In helping others I also wanted to do something that would hopefully reflect well on my own country. America has enough enemies in the world. From what I've seen I'd say Peace Corps actually does a pretty good job of making us some new friends now and then.

Fifth, Peace Corps provides benefits that volunteering for an NGO rarely does. Very often, if you want to volunteer overseas you have to pay to do so. Peace Corps provides you with a free plane ticket, a living allowance in country, and a readjustment allowance at the end of your service. They provide intensive language, cultural, and technical training (also free). They also provide health coverage and have medics on staff who take care of us if we get sick or injured. They find you housing and a job. After service, if you're interested in working for the Federal government you receive preferential treatment in applying for many government jobs. they also have deals with a number of Universities that provide educational opportunities for returning volunteers. All of this amounts to a level of institutional support not available to those who come to volunteer on their own.

Finally, I guess I hoped to make some small contribution towards making a better world. Some people have ribbed me about naively wanting to "save the world." Hardly.

For better or worse I have pessimistic streak in me and I don't have a particularly optimistic view of human nature. The world has always been a screwed up place and for all the good that many individuals do, as a species we seem to be unable to get our collective act together and move beyond slaughtering and robbing each other because we live under the wrong flag or pray to the wrong god. Thus it has always been and thus it shall always be with us humans I suppose. So far we've been lucky I suppose, but in the back of my mind I often wonder how long it will be before we either blow ourselves to bits, or, so ravage the environment that the earth will no longer be able to support human life. No, I doubt very much that the world can be "saved."

But, sometimes you have to do things not because you are going to succeed, but because they are the right thing to do. As screwed up as we all are, there is some good rattling around in the human soul. Even if I can't do anything to solve the world's problems, at least I can try to make some small improvement in some small corner of the planet somewhere worse off than where I came from. I can't control what others do - only what I do. So, I might as well do something positive, even if it is a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship.

In his (alternately scary and hilarious) travel guide The World's Most dangerous Places, Robert Young Pelton calls the work done by groups like Peace Corps "patching the apocalypse."

"Patching the apocalypse." I like the sound of that. Yeah, I'd say that about covers what I'm doing. What the hell? Somebody's got to do it.

So that's why I'm here.

TDW / TOT

2007-05-16T13:39:00.000+01:00

Like most government agencies, Peace Corps has an affinity for acronyms. So, I am in Yaounde this week for "TDW" (Training Design Workshop) and "TOT" (Training Of Trainers) next week.

I've been reunited with many of the volunteers I trained with last year, which has been fun. Along with Peace Corps staff we are preparing for the next group of Trainees (known as "Stagaires") who will arrive in country next month. After school ends I will probably be spending some time in the village of Bangante in the West province helping out with their training. Should be a good time.

For now though, we're spending hours locked together in conference rooms arguing incessantly over semantics. ("Should we say 'help acquire' or 'facilitate the acquisition of' in this section?) Later this afternoon we have to reconcile all of our competing scheduling demands and create a master schedule for training. Hopefully we can keep it clean: no scratching, biting, or hitting below the belt.

As you can imagine, this is all very very exciting. Stay tuned for some hopefully more interesting posts over the next few days.

A Quick Update

2007-05-09T15:44:00.000+01:00

Things have been coming along slowly since I got back from Yaoundé three weeks ago. Here's the rundown on what I've been up to (or not up to) since then:

Power has continued to be unstable although it's a little better than it was. SONEL has stopped shutting the lights off for weeks at a time at least. Now the power only goes out when it rains. And since we are now in the rainy season that's about every day. Generally it rains sometime between late afternoon and early morning, so often the power goes sometime in the evening or is out when we get up in the morning. They usually get it back on within 24 hours or less at this point, so some days we actually get to do some work if they get the lights on by the afternoon.
We resolved our problems with our internet service provider, so we're back online for now. When we have power. And when I can find an open computer.
After getting back from Yaoundé I found that my Dean had left the country without programming any classes for me. So, in his absence I've had no classes to teach. Since the power is out so often, this means I end up spending a lot of time sitting around. I've been working on the English class I'm supposed to start teaching before the end of the year - writing all my notes, assignments, etc by hand so I can work without power if need be. The rest of the time I've mostly been reading, doing crossword puzzles, taking long walks around campus in the late afternoon when it's cool, and visiting friends. I taught a few students and locals how to play chess so that's also passed a few afternoons.
On May 1st I marched in an International Labor Day parade here in town. In Cameroon each company or institution (like the university) makes its employees wear matching shirts and march in a big parade after listening to lots of boring speeches by local politicians. First time I've ever been in a parade. Pictures and description of festivities will be presented in a future post.
When we have had power, I've been trying to get the computers donated by Peace Corps I mentioned in a previous post up and running. Working with my colleague Souaibou, we've managed to fix several and have set them up in the offices for staff that did not have working machines, so they can now enter student data on their machines and then be unable to retrieve it when the power goes out.
I have also been trying to help rid the PCs in the office of computer viruses, which are rampant here. Somebody picks one up on their USB thum drive in a cyber cafe or someplace, then spreads it to all the machines at school. Been using AVG Free to clean up. That usually gets the job done.
Right now I'm trying to get two or three machines working using various parts laying around and cannibalizing non-working machines. When I get them running I am going to set them up in the library and start teaching my own independent classes. Not sure if it will be individual tutoring, small group classes, or some mix of both. I plan to offer time to interested students since they got cheated out of my Informatique (french for comp sci) class. I also plan to offer evening and weekend classes to people in the community and to other teachers here. I finally decided that since the University has not been giving me classes, I needed to grab the bull by the horns and try to do some work on my own. Onward and upward ... against all odds ... no retreat, no surrender ... sticking it to the man ... you get the idea.
Next week I'm going back to Yaoundé to help Peace Corps prepare for the next incoming group oif volunteers, who will be arriving next month. I and several other volunteers will help design classes, prepare training materials, and prepare training sessions that we will give to the newbies over the summer ... I mean, over the course of the rainy season.

One last thing. After my previous posts explaining that many of my problems were due to the fact that we only have one computer lab here, several people wrote offering to look for used machines or parts to ship here and even offering to start some kind of hardware charity drive. The sentiment is greatly appreciated. The problem though, is that shipping anything to Cameroon from the USA is extremely expensive. The cost of shipping a computer here would probably be more than the cost of the computer itself.

Of course, if someone wants to spend the money and has the parts laying around, we'd be happy to take them, and you can email me if you are interested - maybe sending small things like RAM or video cards wouldn't be so bad. However, I am in the process of developing a grant proposal to upgrade our computer lab that people back home can donate to through the Peace Corps. If and when the proposal is approved I will post a notice on this blog for how to contribute. I suggest that if you want to help, take the money you would have spent on postage and donate it through Peace Corps and I will buy the materials with it locally. Much more cost effective that way. Anyway, I will keep everyone posted if the proposal is approved.

Ok, I hear thunder outside. That means the power could go at any moment. Until the lights come back on dear readers ...

African Geeks

2007-04-15T13:27:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-15T13:23:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-15T13:15:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-15T12:38:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-13T18:53:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-13T18:25:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-13T18:03:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-12T20:51:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-10T23:15:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-09T21:00:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-09T19:51:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-09T19:40:00.000+01:00

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 ...

Back to Nanga Today - Some Blog Love for Bill Before I Go

2007-03-05T11:12:00.000+01:00

After my week in and around Buea and a weekend in Mbalmayo with my host family, I am heading back to Nanga today, where I may or may not have internet access or power when I arrive.

I will post pictures and observations from my vacation when I can get back online. For now, here is a post on Bill's blog about our climb up Mount Cameroon (with pictures).

Also, here's an interesting post he wrote about the the challenges of cultural integration that come with living in another society, and another about the human face of the work we do. Since I plan to write some posts on these topics in the future, I thought I would present Bill's thoughts first to get the ball rolling. Comment away.

Friday Lizard Blogging

2007-03-02T20:57:00.000+01:00

A Farm That Has Never Been Ploughed

2007-03-02T20:54:00.000+01:00

From the Cameroon Tribune this week:

Spare the Innocent Damsels

Another entry from the "You can't make this up" files.

Spring Break 2007

2007-03-02T20:35:00.000+01:00

This past week was Spring Break 2007 at the university (or maybe that should be Dry Season Break 2007?), so I took my first real vacation since arriving in Cameroon. I visited my friend and fellow volunteer Bill in Buea, the beach resort town of Limbe, and hiked up Mount Cameroon. All in all it was a good trip and a badly needed mental health break from the dust and power outages of Nanga Eboko. When I get back to post I will pull my pictures off my camera and post them and observations the next time I can get online. This weekend I am headed back to Mbalmayo to visit my host family. Should be interesting. Stay tuned ...

Friday Lizard Blogging

2007-02-23T06:39:00.000+01:00

Off to Buea. Here's a lizard before I go.

Dry Season Browns

2007-02-22T22:28:00.000+01:00

The dry season is in full effect in Cameroon. In my part of the country this means that it hasn't rained a drop since the beginning of November.

Here's a picture of part of the campus during the rainy season:
And here's a picture of the same area (from another angle) in the dry season:
So banish any images you may have had of me living in a steaming jungle from your mind. It's really really dry right now. And dusty.

Nanga Eboko is located on a heavily traveled road. A heavily traveled DIRT road. In the dry season this means dust. Lots and lots of dust. It would be dusty with the dirt road anyway, but with herds of cattle and big logging trucks passing by daily, we get tons of dust from the road. When you come back from a trip into town your clothes have all turned brown. There's spots on the road where it's like walking in a few inches of snow - but dust instead. The foliage along the road is covered with dust so thick it looks like autumn back home - all the leaves are dark brown.

And the dust doesn't stop at the road. The wind blows it in from the main road over the campus, so even in your house you start noticing dust everywhere and a thin brown film forms over your windows.

Traveling is also much dirtier in the dry season. It's dirty in the rainy season too, but the dry season has introduced me to new levels of filth. It mixes real nice with the sweat produced by a 6 hour bush taxi ride under the hot sun.

With all the dust in the air, everyone here comes down with colds. I have developed a mild cough that comes and goes and have a bit of a sniffle most of the time from the dust.

Power outages are also more common in the dry season. I had expected the opposite, figuring that without heavy rains and lightning there would be fewer outages. Wrong. Because it is so dry, and because the locals practice slash and burn agriculture and burn their garbage, there are lots of forest fires in the bush between Nanga and Yaounde. The fires take out power lines all the time. Apparently, the dry season also lowers electrical output in Cameroon because most of the power here is hydroelectric. So, when the water levels in the rivers drop during the dry season, the dams have trouble keeping up production.

The dust is also a maintenance nightmare for the school's computers. There's no air conditioning in the computer lab, so you have to keep the windows open during daytime classes or it gets too hot inside (for both the people and the computers). But keeping the windows open lets the dust in, which of course permeates the machines and can damage their innards. Two months ago we had 18 working computers in the lab. Now we're down to 11. not sure how much of that is the dust (as opposed to power problems, heat, or students messing things up) but I'm sure it's a big part. I'm going to start doing some research with Peace Corps into funding sources to buy an air conditioner for the lab so we can seal it to keep the dust out as much as to keep it cool. When there's electricity of course.

As an added irritant, several weeks ago the University was doing maintenance on the water system and somehow dumped a large quantity of debris into the water system. This produced a roving blockage that periodically cut off water for several days on parts of the campus while the crud was gradually pushed out of the system. Now the water runs again (usually) but it's full of silt or sand, or dust, or some other kind of crud. I've taken to putting a sock over the faucet to strain it out.

The dry season has also seen some interesting temperature shifts. At the beginning of January it got cold. Cold. Yes, in equatorial Africa. When I left the house for my 7 AM classes I could see my breath. After months of sleeping with just a sheet, I suddenly needed a blanket at night. I switched to washing in the early evening because I have no hot water and it was too cold in the morning. And if I was cold, my Cameroonian students and colleagues all looked like they were about to die of hypothermia. The cold lasted about two weeks, then suddenly we had one perfect day where the weather was mild and comfortable from sunrise to sunset. Followed the next day by scorching heat. Since then it's generally been pretty hot in the day, with the heat gradually rising. I'm told February and March are generally the hottest months of the year here. Still cooler and much less humid than August in New Jersey. On the other hand I had air conditioning in New Jersey. During the day I usually just stay in the shade if I don't have class, so it doesn't bother me too much. My house doesn't get a lot of sunlight in the afternoon and has a lot of shady trees around it, so it stays pretty cool.

Before the dry season, when it was raining heavily every night and the ground was often a sea of mud every day, I was looking forward to not having to walk around in the mud all the time, but now I can't wait for the rains to start again.

I was going to call this post "Dry Season Blues" but in the dry season here everything just sort of turns brown, so I guess you could say I've got the "dry season browns" instead.

Rooster

2007-02-22T22:14:00.000+01:00

Oh Rooster,
Oh devil-spawned villain,
Oh bane of my existence,
It is said that Roosters crow with the coming of the dawn,
Yet thy infernal cries always commence at three hours past midnight,
When the world yet sleeps,
Cock-a-doodle-doo!!! Cock-a-doodle-doo!!!
What daemonic force drives thee to crow thus?
I do not understand,
Wherefore Rooster?
Wherefore?
Wherefore this torture?
What have I done to merit this punishment?
Wherefore dost thou torment me nightly with thy insane shrieking?
Wherefore willst thou not let me have even one sole night of repose?
Oh Rooster,
Oh foulest of fowl,
I see you and your hens everywhere,
Yet there is nary a one of you to eat,
Wherefore must my neighbors keep chickens anyway?
Oh evil bird of Satan,
Oh object of my darkest hatreds,
If cry you must each night,
Wherefore perch below my window when you do so?
Cock-a-doodle-doo!!! Cock-a-doodle-doo!!!
Is there no release from this neverending noisesome nocturnal hell?

The Caca Song

2007-02-22T22:01:00.000+01:00

Diarrhea is not funny. OK, I'll wait a minute now until you stop laughing ... Done? Good.

Seriously though, in the US diarrhea is usually an uncomfortable nuisance, not a fatal disease. In Africa, with bad water supplies, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical facilities, diarrhea is a major killer, mostly for children.

Peace Corps Cameroon has a number of health volunteers who work on health education, disease prevention, and clean water projects. Since children are the ones most in danger, health volunteers often work with youth and new mothers in their communities teaching them how to avoid catching these illnesses and how to cope if they do get them (i.e. how to make oral rehydration solution).

Since diarrheal illnesses are usually spread by the oh-so-appetizingly named "fecal-oral route" some of our health volunteers try to teach small children how to avoid going down said fecal-oral route.

We volunteers have many weapons in our educational arsenal, but for children and young mothers, some of our health volunteers decided a good way to get the word out would be with a song.

So, without further ado, I now give you, my dear readers, The Caca Song:

“La chanson du caca” pour la prévention de la diarrhée:

Comment est-ce que le caca entre dans la bouche ?
Comment est-ce que le caca entre dans la bouche ?

Le caca touche les mains
Le caca touche les mouches
Le caca touche la terre
Le caca touche le liquide

Comment est-ce que le caca entre dans la bouche ?
Comment est-ce que le caca entre dans la bouche ?

Les mains touchent la nourriture
Les mouches touchent la nourriture
La terre touche la nourriture
Le liquide touche la nourriture

Comment est-ce que le caca entre dans la bouche ?
Comment est-ce que le caca entre dans la bouche ?

Les mains touchent la bouche
La nourriture touche la bouche !
Le liquide touche la bouche
La nourriture touche la bouche

Comment est-ce que le caca entre dans la bouche ?
Comment est-ce que le caca entre dans la bouche ?
Donc, indirectement, le caca touche la bouche . . BEURCK !

English Translation:

The Caca Song for the prevention of diarrhea

How does caca get in your mouth?
How does caca get in your mouth?

Caca touches your hands
Caca touches flies
Caca touches the ground
Caca touches liquid

How does caca get in your mouth?
How does caca get in your mouth?

Hands touch food
Flies touch food
The ground touches food
Liquid touches food

How does caca get in your mouth?
How does caca get in your mouth?

Hands touch your mouth
Food touches your mouth
Liquid touches your mouth
Food touches your mouth

How does caca get in your mouth?
How does caca get in your mouth?
So, indirectly, caca touches your mouth . . BLECCH!

So remember this song. One day your life and your bowels may depend on it.