6886 Miles from the White House

Four years ago, I sat five blocks from the White House watch Wolf Blitzer excitedly rearrange his holographic electoral map as each state reported. Then as history was made, I joined by peers in running to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a very memorable going-away party.

This year, after my team “The 2%” (bonus points if you understand the team name) was eliminated from the corn hole tournament at our Election party, I sat 6886 miles from the White House. I was with a dwindling group of PCVs watching Brian Williams hypothesize the route to 270 votes (thank you MSNBC Live Streaming and Camtel Internet!) early on November 7th. There was no dash to the White House, instead there were embraces and small celebratory outbursts mixed in with yawns as the results were announced. It was 8am in Ngaoundéré , after all, and most of us were in bed before the President took the stage for we had heard what we needed to hear to get a good night’s (day’s?) sleep.

I awoke a few hours later to a handful of missed calls from people in my village. With each call returned, I received a “Felicitations!” on Obama’s victory (impressive considering Lokoti hasn’t had electricity since a few days before the election). The congratulations continue to this day as I walk through town (part of me wonders what people would shout at me if Romney was victorious). Most of these people could have preemptively congratulated me because anything other than a second term for Obama did not seem possible to them.

[It should be noted here that there are many Cameroonians (especially in larger towns) who follow polling data and watch France24 coverage of the election as much as your average GW student (replace France24 with CNN) and therefore they fully understand the ebb and flow of the months and days leading up to the election. However, the average Cameroonian is more akin to my friends in village, whose confidence in a second term for Obama was nice, but completely overstated.]

There same people were puzzled when I could not tell them with certainty which candidate would win. The response is quite understandable when taken in context. Cameroonians live in a theoretical democracy with presidential elections every seven years. However, even with a field of 15 or more candidates, the question is never who will win, rather by how much.

On November 6th, as Americans were lining up (in very long lines, I hear) to vote, Cameroon was celebrating Paul Biya Day – commemorating President Biya’s 30 years in power. Even though the night of November 6th into the day of November 7th was nailbiting for us, Paul Biya Day made me appreciate all the more that 8 years is not a given and that the 22nd Amendment was ratified and is followed.

Discussions about mandate limits and more confusing ones about the Electoral College were the least of the interesting conversations I got to have with Cameroonians during the run up to the election. Whether it was during the late, late night hours when we were waiting for the debates to come on TV or over a cup of chai mid-afternoon, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to discuss the campaign, explain U.S. government and listen to my friends’ insights. I’d put any of my Cameroonian friends up again a AP U.S. Government student!

There is nothing quite like being in the nation’s capital on election night, but there is something equally as memorable in spending an election season abroad – memorable in the sense that I’ll never take an Election Day for granted.

[The 2% refers to the percentage of Americans polled that thought Mitt Romney’s full name was Mittens. God Bless You, America.]

Two Thousand Twelve is the Year of the Girl

I am a Girl Scout through and through. It is because of Girl Scouting that I sought out service opportunities, joined a sorority (nothing quite like a support system of inspiring women), was voted “Most Likely to Start Everything with an Icebreaker” during Pre-Service Training and am here. Needless to say, I believe full-heartedly in Girl Scouts (minus the uniforms – I’m only lukewarm about them). This year Girl Scouts celebrated their 100th birthday and while I was thousands of miles away from the celebrations, I’ve been able to celebrate and honor their mission through opportunities here in Cameroon.

I rang in the summer with something characteristic of both the season and of Girl Scouts: a camp! With students out of school, my friend and fellow PCV, Charla (a Youth Development Volunteer) saw an opportunity to work with girls in my village and her town, Meiganga (30 minutes away from Lokoti). In both of these places, the gender disparity in high school is outstanding because many girls stop school after primary school. Knowing this, we focused our camp on girls in the last two years of primary school (ages 11-15). Our camp was called “Choisissez un futur!” (Choose a Future) and concentrated on transferring the life skills needed to make healthy life decisions. We spent a week in Lokoti and a week in Meiganga. Each day had a theme that blended nicely with the day before. The themes were: leadership, HIV/AIDS prevention, communication, decision making and goal setting.

One of the best days was the HIV/AIDS prevention themed day. This also happened to be the day I was most nervous about presenting, mainly because Lokoti is a fairly traditional village, therefore the topics of reproductive health, sex and HIV/AIDS are not discussed that openly (we did have parents sign permission slips acknowledging that we would be covering these topics). However, Charla and I did our best to create a safe environment where everyone would feel comfortable talking and asking questions. We knew we had succeeded when after doing a condom demonstration, the girls asked if they could open the packets and touch the condoms. This led to some silliness, like blowing them up to become balloons and stretching them over arms to test their strength. But however silly those things seem, having the girls become comfortable navigating condom usage was no small feat. I believe it was that same safe environment that has allowed the girls to become more outgoing overall. While in the beginning of the camp, girls were reluctant to speak in front of their peers, they are now (during club meetings) all clambering to be the first to speak up. Those leadership skills we talked about starting to be put into action.

Later in the summer, I was invited to attend the first annual National Girls Forum, organized by Peace Corps Cameroon’s Youth Development program. The objective of the forum was to bring together Peace Corps Volunteers and host country nationals (each volunteer brought two people from their village) who are working on girls empowerment issues with the ultimate goal of sharing best practices and creating a national network of advocates. I attended the conference with the Guidance Counselor from the local high school and a very motivated 18-year-old high school student named Hadidjatou. In many ways Hadidjatou could be the poster child for girls empowerment in Cameroon. Hailing from a large traditional Muslim family in a mid-sized village, she has persisted against the odds to continue with schooling. She is the third oldest, out of ten children and the first child to continue with her education way into high school (she currently has three more years left). Her older sister, only a few years older, married and with one child already, represented Hadidjatou’s expected future. However, being a very bright student, she wanted to continue with schooling and vowed to herself not to get married until she finished with school. She knew that she could make all the promises to herself that she could imagine, but that in reality, she was not the sole decider of her future. She pleaded her case to her parents and her parents agreed to let her continue with her studies, but stressed that they could not continue paying for it. As a result, Hadidjatou has found odd jobs, such as selling in the market and working in the fields to pay for her school supplies (thanks to her stellar performance in school, the teachers have agreed to pay her school fees). Needless to say, her participation in the conference brought a lot of perspective and life to the statistics that were read during presentations.

Upon returning from the conference, Hadidjatou and I have continued working with the girls who participated in the camp in Lokoti. The girls have so much potential, but so little opportunity to exercise it. To remedy this, they’ve formed a girls club called The Dynamic Girls of Lokoti (“Les filles dynamiques de Lokoti”). During meetings we talk about life skills (similar to what was covered during the camp), do teambuilding exercises, play games and of course, we start every meeting with an icebreaker. The girls have really started to take ownership of the club and be vocal about what they want to do as a group. One example is that the girls wanted to do more sport-type activities. As a result, we started “Sport Samedis” and we do a variety of sports every Saturday morning at 6am (chosen because there are not a lot of boys out at the field to interfere or bother them). Whether we are teaching ourselves how to play soccer, doing some sun salutations or partaking in some traditional dancing and singing, it is obvious that “Sport Samedis” and the club, in general, are wonderful outlets for these girls, many of whom are becoming leaders before my very eyes.

The “Two Thousand Twelve is the Year of the Girl” tagline has been used on a lot of 100th anniversary Girl Scout products, but it many ways it has also defined my year in Cameroon and if the Dynamic Girls of Lokoti have anything to do with it there’s nothing stopping at the end of 2012, Thousand Thirteen is looking pretty bright too!

Learning the Ingredients, Savoring the Meal

I’m sorry for not posting for such an extended amount of time! Your email notifications did not stop working; I did in fact take a three-month hiatus from blogging, but not necessarily on purpose. Cameroon is at the height of rainy season, which means advancement for the fields of cassava, but frequent interruptions for the electricity grids. In the states, rainy days would always be my most productive when I’d complete paper assignments and even start writing review outlines days in advance, but rainy days in Lokoti have just meant a lot of false starts with work done on the computer – a few ideas for a blog post here, a few lines of a grant proposal there – before the electricity cuts out for a day, a week or even 20 days (that’s the record).

Leaving the excuses behind, these past few months have been great and characterized by spending a lot of time with friends and family. The setting of a lot of this time was spent at my friend Hadija’s house – more specifically, in her kitchen*. When playing the word association game with kitchen, my name would not come up in the first thousand guesses. I have never been one to spend much time in a kitchen (and the cooks I’m sure were grateful since I can barely tell a teaspoon from a tablespoon), but in Cameroon, women spend hours upon hours in their kitchens. As a result, so have I – the kitchen has become one of my social spheres.

One of the most memorable moments in Hadija’s kitchen was on my birthday in June. I was having a party later in the afternoon for some people in my village at my house, but my meager two-burner gas stove was no match for the amount of food we were planning on preparing. In the morning, I went over to Hadija’s house to start preparing the spread – plantains and spaghetti (yep, that’s a thing), beans, beignets, biscuits, rice, meat, sauce, etc. Just as I was peeling what seemed like the hundredth plantain and wondering how we were ever going to get everything prepared in time, a couple of my friends showed up to help and less than an hour later the chief’s first wife followed suit. Once I got over the shock that I was peeling plantains with the first lady of Lokoti, I felt a sense of normalcy in that this is what happens the morning of a big party in the states when you have a group of great friends – everyone contributes a little time so that no one is carting the burden.

In July, Hadija had to share the kitchen not only with me, but also with my mom, aunt and sister who were in Lokoti visiting. All five of us found a seat and the four of us watched Hadija prepare (in a room that size, the phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen” hits home, so we let the expert do her work). Meanwhile we talked, played with Hadija’s baby and in the case of my sister, had our hair braided by Hadija’s daughters. The best part was enjoying the meal together – tasba (a leafy green sauce) and corn fufu. Before my eyes she made a pile of leaves and some corn flour become my favorite Cameroonian dish.

It is now the Ramadan season meaning that Muslims in Lokoti do not eat or drink from sunup to sundown. As a result, Hadija doesn’t start preparing food until later in the day – around 1:00pm when she starts preparing for dinner (the leftovers of dinner being what is eaten early in the morning). In addition to preparing dinner, she also makes maasé, a type of rice/flour doughnut. A handful of children sell these doughnuts in the marketplace around 6:30pm when men are leaving the mosque after evening prayer and sunset (talk about knowing your consumer market). One of the many things that has been amazing for me is the fact that while cooking she cannot taste-test any of it. I’d be nervous that the sauce might not be flavorful enough or that I put too much salt in something else, but she just knows. I guess that comes with years and years of practice considering that she started learning how to cooking at 8-years-old.

In all of these cases, I cannot help but flinch and express my amazement when Hadija, bare-handedly, lifts a scalding pot from the fire and places it on the ground. She uses no pot-holder, oven mitt or simple rag. She responds in telling me that in two years when I leave Lokoti, I’ll be able to do the same thing. I’m not as confident that I will develop that same skill, but I see myself leaving here being able to do things I couldn’t have done before coming, many of which are from lessons I learned from Hadija while in her kitchen – like creating something from scratch without measuring cups or a recipe book (or in the case of work, excel spreadsheets or an assignment rubric). Her kitchen is at one time a classroom and a coffee shop where I am both student and friend.

* Some insight on the Cameroonian kitchen: The typical kitchen in my village consists of a small mud-brick room with a tin or grass roof. Inside is relatively dark, the door being the only source of light and the ceiling is covered with black soot from the smoke. Cooking is done over a fire with three mud bricks being used to support the cooking pot. Women normally squat while preparing and cooking or use low to the ground stools – there are no counters. The most common utensils and cookware are: sturdy pots, ladles, knives, a flat slab of stone and a rock (for grinding vegetables, spices, etc).

Le passe, le present et le futur

No one told me about the post-IST* funk. In many ways it felt like the post-holiday period where all your decorating and planning is dumped on your sidewalk like your Christmas tree and your left looking at your long list of New Years resolutions and the daunting schedule you’ll need to accomplish them. Here in Cameroon, I arrived back at post with a sunburn and a list of project ideas. Aloe helped with the sunburn, but making sense of how to implement work was a bit trickier. Three months seems like a long time to gain an understanding of the community, but its not. It certainly takes a while to figure out the nuances of working in an environment sans Microsoft Outlook among many other things. On top of being stuck professionally, I returned to my village at the start of rainy season meaning I had to quickly adapt to a lot more mud and a lot less electricity. With all of this, I found myself thinking about the more comfortable past – the first months in Cameroon when I was under the umbrella of a family, the first few months at post when my main job was just to get to know people and even the United States where family, friends and cheese run abundant. Just as I was at the height of all these feelings, I received an email from my friend, Kait, with a quote that seemed beyond fitting. It said,

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived and loved and where all your yesterdays are buried deep – leave it anyway except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it.”

       – Beryl Markham

While I still cannot help but look at photos or read old letters and think fondly of the past, this month I’ve tried to take my own collection of photos (more like mental snapshots) to remind me of the joy that’s found in the present and the potentialities of the future. Here are some of those snapshots:

• My friend was having work done on her tin roof, which is common around this time a year because tiny holes can cause a lot of problems with the heavy rain. An older man (I’m estimating his age to be around 70-years-old) was working very hard on the roof. Upon completing his work, he hopped down from the roof , tossed his hammer euphorically and squatted down to enjoy a bowl of “riz-sauté.” I constantly people toiling away daily, but it was wonderful to see the delight and repose that comes after a hard day’s work.
• With the start of the rains, come mangos. The trees are full of this ripe fruit and their peels litter the ground everywhere. After a few months of meager fruit and vegetable availability in our village, mangos are celebrated. Something I’ve loved watching these past few weeks is the children in Lokoti rejoicing the mango rains. Before school, after school (sometimes during school), you can spot children with long sticks pointed high trying to knock mangos off their branches. Or you’ll find children climbing the giant trees in search of fruit, but also adventure. It’s been fun to watch and delicious to enjoy the fruits of their endeavors (pun intended).
• My friend Hadija, the superstar best friend from the last post, had a beautiful and healthy baby boy named Mohamadou Awalou on March 9^th. In Fulbe tradition, the baby is named one week after the birth and the mother cannot leave the house for 40 days. Last Monday, Hadija left the house, beautifully clad in head to toe pagne with Mohamadou in his new tie-dye boubou (long shirt). New mothers who leave their house for the first time bake beignets (think Cameroon’s version of Dunkin Donut Munchkins) and then hand them out as they go house to house visiting their friends. Not only was I thrilled at that fact that my friend can again accompany to market and visit me at home (not to mention, the added bonus of receiving beignets!), it was truly a blessing to see a healthy mother and child – something that is less taken for granted here.
• If you were told that a nurse was taking notes on a presentation that a McLean child gave, you would probably automatically think of my very smart nursing student brother, Tyler. But last Saturday, that person was me. During Nutrition Day at the health center, I gave a presentation on healthy eating and the food groups to a group of about 35 women who came to have their babies weighed. During the presentation, I noticed the Chef de Centre (the head nurse at the health center) taking notes as I was presenting. After a month of feeling incompetent in the professional realm, that was exactly the boost I needed. It also illustrated the character of the nurses at our center – they are always willing to take the time and learn about how to approach the knowledge they already have from a different perspective to benefit the population that they serve.
• Something that will be hard to capture and take back with me in two years is the feeling gained when groups of children exclaim “SAMANTA! Bonne arrivee! Bonne journee!” Some days I find it hard to muster up the energy to leave my house, but I only need to walk less than 15 seconds outside of my house to be reminded that many people are invested in me being here and that this is where I truly belong in this moment. I am welcomed.

April has been a month of making sense of the past, present and future (it’s a lot harder than conquering the past, present and future tenses in French) – learning to live in the present and face the future boldly. Soon I know that this – language gymnastics, work frustrations and all, will be my safe and sunny past, a far cry from the cloud it looked like at the beginning of this month.

 

*IST: In-Service Training. A training for PCVs after their first three months at their post. After IST, PCVs are allowed to start projects, whereas the first three months are primarily for community assessment activities.

Empowering Rural Women? More like Inspiring Rural Women!

Throughout my entire life, I’ve been surrounded by women who have provided me with new perspectives, inspiration and wonderful examples of what it means to love your neighbors (literal and global). Woman, all around the world, continue to be leaders and agents of change in their communities. However, in some areas, debilitating gender norms stifle their potential. These areas are often times what we classify as “developing” and one of their barriers to being developed is the untapped resource of half their population. Slowly, governments are realizing that the key to their emergence lies in the mobilization and education of their entire population and to achieve this they must enlist women.

Governments and development organizations alike have re-focused their work on women for educating a woman means education a family. Cameroon is among these actors recognizing the importance of women (in theory). Every March 8^th, Cameroon celebrates International Women’s Day. Stores sell a special “8 Mars” pagne (fabric) for women to buy and wear on the day. This year’s pagne showed women farming, using computers and graduating college with a tagline about women being actors in the emergence of Cameroon. Paul Biya, the president of Cameroon, has a strategic plan for Cameroon culminating in 2035. The Women’s Day theme for Cameroon this year was, “Autonomiser les Femmes Rurales pour Eradiquer la Faim et la Pauvreté” (Empower Rural Women: Eradicate Hunger and Poverty.” While a huge Women’s Day parade (tractors and all) went on in Yaoundé under First Lady, Chantal Biya’s watch (and hair), rural women around the country were celebrating the day with mini-parades, dances and all-female soccer matches.

In honor of this year’s theme and Women’s Day, I want to write about the rural women in my community who have inspired me:

•  Hadija: Hadija is my best friend in village. I feel like Cady Heron, who cannot believe she’s hanging out at the cool table with Regina George, except replace Regina George with someone amazing like Elle Woods (chick flick movie references for a Women’s Day blog post). But in all seriousness, I am fortunate to have found a friend like her. She is patient with my language ability, explains cultural notes to me and is always up for a good conversation about everything from the petty, like clingy men in village to the meaningful, like how poverty is found “chez vous” (in the United States) as well. Hadija is the wife of a nurse at the health center (who also happens to be my landlord) and a mother to three adorable and well-mannered girls (Aissatou, Fadimatou and Mariamou) and most recently, a baby boy, Mamadou. One of the most touching moments I have had in country so far has been holding her baby within the first hour of his life while sitting next to her. I asked her about how she spent all of the 8^th of March (she gave birth on the 9^th) out with me without being too uncomfortable. She told me that at points she was uncomfortable, but that it was my first Women’s Day in a new town and that friends support friends. That night I began to think seriously about how I can better support my friends. 
• Marmi: Marmi, like Hadija, is a mother of four children, but she doesn’t live with the father of her children. Instead, she lives with her two sisters and their children – making it a very lively household, always filled with children and opportunities for good conversation. Every week, I cook dinner with Marmi and her family and every week, I am amazed by her energy. Her main source of income is through farming her cassava fields, which she does between maintaining a house, cooking for ~20 family members and being an active member of her church community. She is one of the strongest women I know – I’ve seen her lift and carry water basins on her head heavier than what most men can bench at the gym and while I have much to still learn about her, I have a feeling her strength is not bound to physical outward displays, but to something much deeper that holds her family together.
• Mariamou: Mariamou is my 12-year-old neighbor who helps me with my laundry, among many other things. During my first week at post she showed up at my doorstep with a bucket of water and a rag in hand insisting that I needed help cleaning my floors because they were entirely too dusty (she was right). At home, she lives with her grandparents and in many ways keeps the household in order, by helping her grandmother cook and clean and making sure her little sister is taken care of. I sometimes think that my friend, Marmi, was much like Mariamou when she was a girl and that Mariamou’s work ethic and maturity have been adopted at such an early age in preparation for her future as a mother. While her maturity is admirable, my favorite “Mariamou moments” are when I see her being her 12-year-old self – chatting with girlfriends, trying on different hair clips, coloring and smiling.
• Teachers at the Primary School: Behind the students in Lokoti, like Mariamou, is a group of teachers who have come from all around the country. In Cameroon, all government/public sector employees (teachers and health workers included) are affected to posts for a specific amount of years. This means that teachers who grew up and went to school in the West region of Cameroon could end up living in the Adamaoua region, for example. In addition to having to settle into a new environment, meet new friends and learn a new patois, female teachers are also faced with integrating into a predominately male workplace. In many ways, I feel a certain kinship with these women. I also love seeing these women around town with their children because I think it shows their female students (along with the rest of the town) how they can pursue a career without having to sacrifice having a family.
• Mothers at Nutrition Day: Every Saturday, women from the Lokoti Health Center’s health area (including 14 villages, the furthest one away being 35 kilometers) come with their babies to be weighed and measured at Nutrition Day. If a baby is malnourished the baby is entered into a monitoring program and given supplemental food provided by the World Food Programme and UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency). Nutrition Day corresponds with market day and for some of the women, it is the only day during the week that they are allowed to leave their concessions. Some of them are Fulbé, some are Gbaya, some are new mothers and some are bringing their 9^th child, some are older than me and some are younger, some are Cameroonian nationals and some are refugees from the Central African Republic, but they are all tirelessly committed to keeping their babies alive and doing whatever they can to feed them in less than ideal circumstances. I find myself wanting to take a snapshot of these women and their babies because it would remind me forever of what perseverance means.  

If Cameroon keeps their promise in investing in their women, women like these, then in 2035 this country will indeed by a better place. 

A February Fete

My apologies for the lack of activity on this blog the month of February! In a way, I was keeping in true Cameroonian fashion by postponing regular commitments in place of preparing for and celebrating the 11th of February (“l’onze février”), also known as World Youth Day. For all of you sitting at your computers, in your respective corners of the world, thinking “World Youth Day? How have I never heard of this global holiday?” – you are not alone.

So what is Youth Day?
In short, it is a holiday that happens once a year in Cameroon that “celebrates the youth” of the country. There is a big event on the 11th where each class in the school is presented to the town. As each class is announced, the students march and sing. Afterwards, the classes perform dances and songs.

Throughout the week, I could not help, but equating Youth Day and all of its preparations, to that of prom in the United States. To begin with, the Student Council spends months upon months preparing for prom – what will the theme be, who will cater, etc? For Youth Day, the entire school (teachers, administrators and students alike) prepare for weeks on end for Youth Day celebrations. Courses on literature and the sciences are exchanged for practicing dance routines and perfecting the marching routine. The only thing that graces the chalkboards are the lyrics to the songs the children will sing.

In addition to preparing routines and songs, tailors are busy preparing special Youth Day uniforms for the all the school children. While the bright yellow and green pinafores that the children wore are a world away from the gowns and tuxes of high school seniors (similar only in that they are both only worn once), there is a mutual feeling among the parents of these students who most definitely think about the other more necessary items that could have been purchased with the funds that went towards the clothing for the special day.

As for the big celebration – it takes places on a dirt soccer field in town. There is a humongous crowd of proud parents and people selling refreshments. All of the children are lined up, ready to perform and march. The lamido (the traditional chief/town authority) arrives with an entourage of moto taxis (like that big shot who splurged on the ostentatious white stretch Hummer limo at prom). After the Cameroonian national anthem is sung (in both English and French) and the lamido is seated under his umbrella, the festivities begin! After each class is announced, they march and then perform a song and dance routine. It is customary in Cameroon, to put money on the head of a dancer, to show that you are enjoying a performance. As the mothers approach the stage area to give their children money, they also engage in dancing and singing. Unlike teens who might utter a “Mom you’re embarrassing me!” after she takes the billionth photo of you awkwardly pinning a corsage on your prom date, I sense no embarrassment from the Cameroonian students. Dancing here is no blushing matter; it’s just a fun part of life.

After the formal celebration, the older students attend “post-parties” and continue the fete. As with some prom post-parties, attendees face situations in which they have to make decisions and confront peer pressure. This is the same here in Cameroon. Adrenaline from the exciting day, the exertion of independence and the presence of alcohol set the scene. It is common knowledge that the rate of teen pregnancy experiences a boost right after Youth Day. This is a sad reality, but I am certain that it can be ameliorated with providing students with the information they need to be safe, no matter what decision they make at the end of the day.

Whether one can say all of the activities surrounding Youth Day (the neglect of school work for preparation, the purchasing of mandatory, yet unnecessary clothing, the post-party celebrations, etc.) truly “celebrate the youth” of Cameroon is debatable. After all, wouldn’t increased academic support and funding to fuel all their potential be the best way to celebrate the youth? (This is a discussion for another day) However, something that I cannot argue with is the opportunity Youth Day gives for children to just be children. Children look forward to the 11th of February like some children look forward to the 25th of December (or like high school seniors look forward to prom). This anticipation is rightfully so because on Youth Day, they’re rid of all their daily workload (taking care of a baby sibling, making mud bricks, collecting firewood, running errands, washing clothing/the floors/the dishes, the list can go on). Cameroonian children so rarely have more than an hour a day to act silly and play. In fact, a fellow PCV friend of mine says often that she can tell exactly what a Cameroonian child is going to look like when they grow up because their faces already look so old after being burdened with more responsibility and hardship than any child should shoulder. So if for nothing else, I have to appreciate Youth Day for giving children the chance to act their age by dancing, singing, laughing and eating Halloween-amounts of candy.

At the end of a very busy 11th of February, as the sun was setting, a group of neighborhood children and I walked back towards our houses, stopping one last time for a photo shoot on my porch. We were exhausted and sweaty, but happy, as if we were prom goers snapping one last photo of the memorable night, heels off and corsage wilted, but happy. And with that, this year’s Youth Day fete came to an end. But don’t worry folks, the party continues in Cameroon in less than a week! The 8th of March (le huit mars/Journée Internationale de la Femme), International Women’s Day is fast approaching. Having this opportunity and job, along with a supportive group of family and friends (not to mention the Velveeta cheese sitting in my pantry right now), I rarely need to search for a reason to celebrate this life, but Cameroon has definitely given me many more occasions to “fete” in my community!

[Newly updated photos: www.flickr.com/photos/SamanthaMMcL]

Of Meetings and Men

The Peace Corps has three primary goals:

1. To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans.

Unlike in other work atmospheres that I have experienced, I do not have an immediate supervisor reviewing the work I do daily. There’s no one to call me into their office and say, “Samantha, I don’t think you promoted a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served today. Let’s try harder tomorrow.” In many ways, the month of January has been my first true month at work and I’ve been learning a lot, not only about being a volunteer, but about being my own internal supervisor as well. At the beginning of the month, I opened my planner and stared at the blank squares that made up my calendar. After three months of training and a few weeks of orientating myself to my village, I thought about how it all came down to that moment when I was supposed to start doing – doing community assessments, integration, introductions, protocol with officials, baseline surveys and everything else we were told in training.

Well I didn’t quite know how to schedule “integration” or “community assessment,” but I did know how to schedule a meeting (thank you Phi Sigma Sigma and GW Alternative Breaks), so I used that as a jumping off point. I scheduled meetings with the staff of the health center, community health volunteers and the staff of the high school. I tagged along with friends to community group meetings and a church service. I even had the opportunity to join UNICEF and UNHCR in a two-day meeting/survey of primary schools in the area. In all of these meetings, I introduced myself, my role and the Peace Corps. By the third meeting, I had my spiel down pat and normally ended with a version of, “While I do not have money or things to give out, I do have information and a lot of time to share. I look forward to working with you all. Does anyone have any questions or suggestions for me?”

Some meetings went smoother than others. At the church and with one community group, someone had to translate my French into Gbaya (the patois of the Gbaya people) and Fulfuldé (the patois of the Fulbé people). In both of these languages there is not a word for “volunteer,” so some time was spent clearing up confusion after I heard the word “dofta” (doctor) being used to describe my role. Despite this, I should be pleased with the fact that the word has spread from my introductions at meetings: more people are saying “Bonjour Sam-an-ta!” instead of “Bonjour Nassara (white person)!” when I walk down the street.

I received some great questions and suggestions, but on more than one occasion it seemed that people were more preoccupied with the fact that I was a woman who was living away from home for two years than with my reason for being in Lokoti. Most of the meetings I attended were dominated by, if not were consisting entirely of males. After a really great meeting with the high school staff, I opened the floor to questions and received one: “Are you married?” At other meetings, people asked me if I lived with a husband or father. One community health volunteer even offered to have his 7-year-old daughter come live with me because the idea of me living alone was so strange.

In being faced with a ton of questions regarding my marital status, I thought about maybe making my life a little easier by making up a “go-to” response: “Oh, yes. I am already married. My husband is a top White House aide and couldn’t take leave to come to Cameroon with me” (can you tell I’ve been watching too much West Wing?) or “Oh, no. I am not married because my parents would never permit that right now.” But in the end, I have been answering with the truth: “Oh, no. I am not married. Why not? Because I am too young, because I have way too much to learn about myself and because my focus in life is on exploring what the world around me has to offer, and not on finding a husband.” In answering with the truth, I have realized that I’m turning questions that I originally found trivial and irrelevant, into an opportunity to promote a better understanding of American culture (sounds a lot like Goal 2 to me!).

I have found a lot of success in the meetings that I have had this month, but I have also found it in the many men that have been at those meetings. In talking with them and answering their questions, they now know that a woman can be single, live alone far away from family, pursue a meaningful job and even paint their house (this, believe it or not, was shock to some people when I told them I was painting a room in my house)! And maybe those men will even go home and tell their daughters about what they’ve learned.

After all of the meetings (and the men), I think the biggest lesson I learned, as a new volunteer (and supervisor), is that you cannot plan everything. When looking at a row of blank calendar squares, you just need to have faith that something will come to fruition. Perhaps the greatest example of this was a meeting of all the principals of the local primary schools in the district I was invited to attend by the inspector of the school district after we ended up sitting a table apart at a restaurant the week before, just by chance.

While I’ve highlighted some of the eventful moments of the month, there are days that are more lackluster, where meetings fall through, or where there are no meetings at all because you are at a loss as to where to go next or because you need to muster up the strength to put yourself out there and fumble over a language you have yet to master. During those days, the internal supervisor in me assures myself that I have been working slowly, but surely on the goals I committed to when I became a volunteer – for in preparing to work on Goal 1 of the Peace Corps, I have inadvertently addressed Goal 2 and through this blog, conversations and photographs, I’ve started embarking on Goal 3.

One of my first weeks in Cameroon, I came across this excerpt from a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer’s memoir.

“Why,” he said at last, “why did you come alone?” 

“I thought it was for your sake that I come alone, so obviously alone, so vulnerable that I could in myself pose no threat, change no balance. Alone, I cannot change your world, but I can be changed by it. Alone, I must listen, as well as speak. Alone, the relationship I finally make, if I make one, is not impersonal, not political. It is individual. Not We and They, but I and Thou.”

Ursula Le Guin (from The Left Hand of Darkness)

In preparing for and traveling to post, I thought back to the excerpt many times. However, I must admit that in my reflection, I was paying most attention to the word “alone.” I think this was because one of the largest differentiating factors between Pre-Service Training and the rest of a volunteer’s service, is isolation from other Americans. During training, hours upon hours are spent with other Americans. With your homestay family you are exposed to an array of cultural differences, but during the day you are surrounded by other trainees who are just as eager to read a month old Newsweek with you or to commiserate alongside of you when all you want for lunch is a piece of pizza, instead of beans.

After having spent two weeks at post, I now understand how mistaken my preoccupation with that word was. Instead, I have found myself not alone in, but together with my community, Lokoti. From eating meals with neighbors, to making paper chains with children, to not having a breath to myself while walking into town due to how many times I am greeted, I am not alone.

Almost everyday, an older man stops by my house to greet me and see how I am doing. After going through the normal greetings, “How are you? How did you sleep? How is the house? How is the cold?” [Sidenote: It is chilly in the mornings and nights here in the Adamaoua region. While I welcome this sweater weather, this “cold” bothers Cameroonians to the point of winter jackets and knit hats. So, it is only expected that the cold find its way into daily greetings.] He leaves me with his three words of wisdom, “Nous sommes ensembles” (“We are together”).

My landlord’s wife, Hadija, was the first person to show me that these words really ring true here in Lokoti. On my first night in village, she fed me and gave me a jerry can of water. Since that first night, she has only continued to make me feel at home, by helping me navigate my new waters. She has accompanied me to Saturday market, introduced me to my new favorite Nigerian soap opera and helped me properly tie up and cover my hair, among many other things. She has been a tremendous help, and a true friend.

The help does not stop there. What if I need to fetch water or haul a stove and gas tank to my house? I’m not alone in those tasks either. All I need to do is walk to the center of town and ask someone to help me find a wagon.  Within five minutes, I gain at least five new friends (the wagon always comes with an abundance of children willing to help). I can also count on children to always keep me company when I am on my front porch. If I am reading or writing, they will just sit with me. If I am washing dishes, they will wash with me. Most recently, when I was making Christmas decorations (paper chains and snowflakes), they diligently cut and glued away.

There is definitely a comforting feeling in knowing that no matter what you are tasked with, you will be able to accomplish it with the help of your neighbors. Another example of this was the day that my electricity was installed. We started with the electrician, my landlord and me and ended up with a group of 15 men helping hold wires, block traffic and shine their cell phone flashlights when the sun went down. What would have been an almost impossible task for the three of us became a 40-minute job together.

Moving here so close to Christmas and the New Year also helped to foster the feeling of community. For the week leading up to Christmas, I could count on meeting a lot of women at the tailor’s shop also putting in their orders for Christmas outfits. The day of Christmas and the days that followed brought many exclamations of “Bonne fete!” from people on the street. While I live in a village where only half of the population celebrates Christmas, the holiday spirit was widespread as this time of year means a celebration of the year that has past and the New Year to come for Christians and Muslims alike, all together.

In addition to all of these things, if at the end of the day I still need to be reminded that I am not completely alone, that I am surrounded by a very vibrant population, I can count on the Koranic school children whose chanting of their lessons provide me with constant background music at all hours of the day and night.

Granted, the alone part does feel very real at some points. I felt it my first night in my house and I feel it in moments of frustration with communication. However, I know that these moments of feeling alone are dwarfed by the “I and Thou” relationships I am having the opportunity to make every day, the very relationships that remind me that I am not alone, but together.

As my friend reminds me daily, “Nous sommes ensembles,” so, no matter where in the world we all are – as 2011 ends, and we all prepare to ring in the New Year, I want to wish you all a “Bonne Fete!” and all the best in 2012!

A Train Trip and a Transition

Last Thursday, we stood before the U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon, the Peace Corps Cameroon Country Director and various Cameroonian officials and took the oath of office.

 I, Samantha McLean, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

As I lowered my right hand, I could not help, but feel so elated at what had just happened: I officially became a Peace Corps Volunteer. After many years of saying, “I want to be…” I can finally say, “I am…” However, as many PCVs I’m sure will tell you, becoming a volunteer may start with being sworn-in, but it certainly does not end with it, for becoming a volunteer is much more of a transition.

To travel to my post, I took the overnight train to the north from Yaoundé. Something I’ve always loved about train travel is the ability to watch the train tracks recede into the past as you move forward, marking where you’ve been. As the train moved forward, we watched the chaotic streets of Yaoundé fade away in exchange for beautiful landscape. Inside the train, it was calm as men in boubous chatted quietly in Fulfuldé and settled in their cabins for the night. The relaxed demeanor of the people from the north is a welcome change from the often overwhelmingly loud interactions in the south. This calm was only interrupted when the train stopped and loads of vendors would crowd the windows to sell us everything from bags of rice to mandarins. Perhaps even greater than the change in landscape and people, is the change in temperature that we experienced on the train. Moving north means moving to a hotter and dryer climate, however, right now in the Adamaoua, it is cold in the morning and at night, so cold that I put on socks, leggings under my long skirt and a sweatshirt (it’s starting to feel a lot like Christmas!)!

In many ways, these physical transitions parallel the transition between trainee and volunteer. We left a busy and strict training schedule behind, in exchange for days when the only thing on our schedule might be to walk around town and introduce ourselves to our neighbors. As volunteers in our villages, we are certain to feel the calm, however, every once in a while hustle and bustle will be sure to find us when we travel to bigger cities and get absorbed in pockets of American culture (this is happening as I write this and listen to the Eagles/Dolphins football game via live stream from the states on my friend’s iTouch), just as it found us at every stop on the train as people crowded the windows.

This transition is far from complete, for I have yet to reach my post. I’ve been in the regional capital of the Adamaoua region, Ngaoundéré for a couple of days fathering house essentials like jerry cans for water and buckets for bathing. Later today I will be loading all my belongings on top of a bus to head to Lokoti, the final destination in this trip from trainee to volunteer.

[Postscript: I was finally able to upload photos! You can view them at: www.flickr.com/photos/SamanthaMMcL The best way to view them is through the albums on the right hand side of the page.]

Thankful for Pumpkin Pie

While I’m sure America has already traded in all things turkey and Thanksgiving for Christmas window displays and 2012 New Years’ party hats, I am still basking in the spirit of my first Thanksgiving in Cameroon. Every November in elementary school, I remember having to write a few sentences about something that I was thankful for. Well, if I was given the same task today, I would write: I am thankful for pumpkin pie.

Besides being one of the most delicious desserts ever made, I am thankful for pumpkin pie because of what it represented this Thanksgiving for me.

It represented:

– Newly acquired skills:
Some of you may be very shocked to find out that I successfully made three pumpkin pies for our Thanksgiving dinner here. After many failed culinary endeavors, I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to learn to love take out, Easy Mac and frozen dinners (that or marry a chef). However, things are looking like they might be turning around for me. I started out by making the crust (no Pillsbury pre-made crusts here), mixed up and added the filling and then baked the pies (bowls were used in absence of pie pans) in an oven that had to have seen Cameroon’s first days of independence. I am so thankful for the new skills that I have been learning, not only in pie-making in an untraditional setting, but in all that we have learned throughout these past few weeks (health technical info, mountain bike maintenance, French, Fulfuldé, how to eat fermented manioc without having to hold my nose and more).

– Support and love from home:
Pumpkins do exist here, but taste more like squash. Libby’s (pumpkin in a can) does not. Fortunately, I have a mother who fully comprehends my love for and the necessity of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving and sent the can to me. My pumpkin pies would not have been possible without her. In many ways, everything that I am doing here would not be possible without the support and love that I receive from home. I am not only referring to my immediate family in New Jersey, but to all of those who have shown be unwavering support throughout my pre-departure preparation and during these first few months. Through comments here on this blog to long email updates to snail mail from all corners of the world, I have felt incredibly blessed to have such a support system. I am truly thankful for you all.

– New Friends:
My friend, Kate, helped me make the pies. She was definitely a more experienced baker and provided me with much needed direction. She also reassured me that even though Libby said on her can that it would take 40-50 minutes of baking, that it was okay that it took close to 2 hours for it to bake in our oven. I am thankful to have met friends like her, who have become and will continue to be my in-country support system.

– The opportunity to share:
After baking the pies, I was able to share them with 54 other Americans and then my Cameroonian family. I received multiple hugs and many good reviews from the fellow trainees (my favorites: “It didn’t feel like Thanksgiving until I tasted this pie” and “This tastes like America!”). Later that night, I brought home some of the pie to my family. I promised to do so after the failed attempt earlier in the day, of trying to explain Thanksgiving to them (I threw in the Mayflower, Pilgrims, Native Americans, winter/snow/cold, turkeys and pumpkin pie all at once and realized I bit off more than I could chew in French and with an audience that had never heard of Native Americans). Their review was more mixed than the American accolades I received. I think they were still stuck on the fact that a vegetable came out of a can and then was put in a dessert. Regardless, it was a wonderful opportunity to share something that was important to me. Before we feasted on a Thanksgiving dinner of chicken (no turkey in Cameroon, but the chicken was freshly killed, cleaned and cooked that day), stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, and more, one of the trainees led us in a Thanksgiving blessing during which he relayed a common sentiment – an overwhelming sense that we, as trainees, are blessed to have been given this opportunity to travel to and live in a foreign country where we have the chance everyday to not only share knowledge, stories and experiences, but to receive them as well.

And that is why I am thankful for pumpkin pie in Cameroon.