Can I get an Ashia!?

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

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

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

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

Yes Bill, yes, you can: ASHIA!

Who Needs a Toothbrush?

Apparently many Africans don't

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

Wonders of Nature

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

The Rainy Season

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mango Flies

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

Mango Flies.

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

Hey, You Got Something To Eat?

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

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

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

Finally Teaching Again

Huzzah!

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

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

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

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

Two Weeks in Yaoundé

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

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

Mexican Night

Soul Food Night

Calzone Night

Birthday Night

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

Which, naturally, leads to some very silly behavior:

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

The Troubles of African Universities

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

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.