23/10/11
The field trip was awesome, but before I elaborate on that experience I have some random inputs. My grandma here is hood. I don't know if I’ve talked about her yet. Her name is BIC. I don't know how its spelled, but thats how its pronounced. I don’t know hold old she is either. Last week she was poppin Cortam, the malaria med you take after you think you have it. She didn’t finish the regimen because she's hood. BIC has glasses like popular rappers. You know the ones with thick rounded square frames that are usually black. I saw a video with Jumaine Dupree wearing them. She wears those. She put into action why I like concrete floors. After food time she's washes her mouth and spits on the floor. Then she utilizes a spent match to prick food out of her teeth. She stays here on the weekends. Maybe I’ll get a picture of this woman before I depart homestay. I need my french a little better, especially since she's hard of hearing. I wonder how she interprets white people.
I passed my language test last Thursday. The first LPI in PST. I got intermediate high which means I will not have to test out again to get placed anywhere in Cameroon. The tester was pretty generous with everyones level. A dude who just came in a month ago, with no french experience at all, only spanish, went from novice low to advanced mid. We met two PCVs who are leaving in december who tested out at advanced low. They tested out at advanced low after living here for 2 years. A trainee needs intermediate mid to get into anglophone and intermediate high to get into francophone. Cameroon is 4/5th francophone. That just means french speaking. Anglophone is english/pidgin. There are other languages spoken in the francophone areas, but the main language is french. You know how Texas has things in spanish everywhere? You would not find that here. Its hard for people born in Anglophone areas who want to go to universities or take care of personal business. Most of the state universities are located in francophone areas and most personal business is taken care of in Yaounde. We went over this in our last cross culture seminar. Oh, Biya was elected for a 4th term. 7 more years. That dude has been serving as president of this country since 1982! Imagine that for a minute. If he lives through this term that will be 36 years. Cameroon has only been independent since 1960. He has already been president for the majority of Cameroon’s independence. Our CC session was on the physical makeup of the ten regions of Cameroon and its history. Cameroon is very interesting due to its diversity environmentally, socially, and political past.
I found out I might be going to the east for my post. We had a second interview with our PM. He wanted to know if we had any additional input where we would like to get posted after being here for a month, or 2 months for the people who got to experience Ebowlowa. Most everyone put that they were completely open to where they get posted. Tiki wanted something more specific, but no one wanted to give that so they wouldn't get their hopes up. After asking me how I was doing and how the program was going he said, “How do you like the east? Rain forest, jungle, working with a catholic group starting tree nurseries. Its got the best house, best house. 3 rooms, a fence. I stayed there last week.” I said I was alright with wherever he wanted to put me. Well, originally I said I would like the west or littoral so I could have the opportunity to speak french and pidgin, but he said that wouldn't happen. He said it would be one or the other and I picked french. After my interview I went back and told him I’m very interested in the East to remove any doubts. The east is isolated from any other post. There are 2 post there, 1 already open and 1 would be opened. I hope I get the opportunity to open my own post. Post circulate around. After 5 volunteers a post closes so another community can get the opportunity to host a PC volunteer. The posts are in Batouri. That would be in the middle of the most rain forests in Africa. There is a problem of slash and burn cultivation in the rainforests. I’m going to give a presentation on that in like week 7 or 8. All Agro’s have to pick a tech topic to give a presentation on in french. We all find out for sure November 2nd where we are going. These next 3 weeks are going to go by fast. This whole training has gone by fast. We have another field trip this week from Thursday to Saturday. The week after we find out where we are going and then get ready to leave to post. 3 weeks from now is site visit. After site visit it will be week 8. I’m excited about this week because I’ll get my new panya. Another boubou ensemble with the PC 50 year panya, overalls, and a vest. That should be ready tuesday.
So the field trip was awesome. We left early Friday and Arrived in Feutap to check out a GIC called APADER. A GIC is a government community group. Kind of like a CO OP in the states, with the exception of receiving some support from the government. That all depends. Cameroonian’s love acronyms by the way. Google that and see if anything comes up, I don’t remember the name in its entirety. We walked around to check out their field, demo plots, demonstrations of: contour bunds, water catchments, alley cropping, intercropping, and their gas dryer. Agroforestry is kick ass. One of my favorite classes in college was Ecosystem Management. Learning how to work with nature to reach sustainable goals for utilization. This is exactly that. We walked through a jungle like environment to see their water catchment. A snake fell from a tree right on PCV Richard. I didn’t get to see but I heard the verbal commotion about it. OH there was this crazy lady with us the whole time. Not really crazy, more a mental disorder. She literally talked the whole time, 8 hours, we were there. She was nice and friendly. I think she was under the impression she was giving all the tours. I’m impressed with her skill. she went into the jungle with a kabba and sandals on and came out the cleanest of all of us. Word is she's the wife of someone high up in the community so she gets to do what she wants. After lunch we all practiced vegetative propagation. Grafting, marcotting, and cuttings. Then we loaded up and left to our hotel to drop off stuff and then get some dinz in town. A table of people got jacked that night. A dude came up and jacked the money on the table that was being piled to pay for everything. I was eating somewhere else. Where I was eating this young man kept coming up to our table with 50 CFA. He didn’t talk at all but I think he was trying to buy food from us, but we just had the bones from our fish left. He only had pants and look like he lived on the street. Like 15. The owner of the outdoor place kept shooing him off but he would come back. Its instinctual to have sympathy for a human like that, but its hard to have a “right” solution. No one was going to give their bones to him. What does that say about the white people in Cameroon. We give our scraps to the poor? For any new situation I sometimes go to what the natives do as guidance, but thats not the best thing either.
Saturday was packed with activities! We visited COFTRAKOL in Bangante. This a women’s cooperative that produces shea butter. We got a complete breakdown of its history, dynamics, and how everything is made. That was really interesting. I bought some of their shea butter. I don’t use moisturizer, but I got it for my feet since I wear Chacos chaque jour. Almost chaque jour. These women are hard workers. It is quite a process when all done by hand with the help of some machines. They also made some home made insect repellent. A 250 ml jar was 1500 CFA. Like $3.50. It’s hours to get from seed to jar. They work with people in small villages to educate the importance of non-timber forest products to curb deforestation. Also to show how they can generate income for themselves rather than just use the bark of the tree for medicinal purposes.
Next we went to Bandrefam to visit a GIC that works with soy and has a bakery. They make soy milk, tofu, and soap. Getting women to sell tofu is a hard thing to do from what I observed. We got to meet one lady who has been there since the beginning. The milk was fantastic. She makes tofu and sells it on skewers like every other kind of meat. The tofu was mixed with Magi (boulion cube), pimont, and fried like most things and had pieces of onion in between the cube. They call it viende de soja to market it. That means cut of soy. Por example viende de beouf is cut of beef. They just say viande so people assume its meat. After the frying and minor changes it taste like chicken. Inside the home of this lady there were 6 guinne pigs running around. guinea pigs are commonly eaten here. Apres la we went to another GIC where they did pig and rabbit raising. They also raised snails, but we didn’t get to see that for some reason. The use the feces of pigs for the soil and the urine and feces from rabbits as an insecticide for their okra. They get quite a bit of money from both animals. They had the healthiest corn in village that we saw. Rain started coming down heavy so we had to go to the PCVs house for lunch and to chill. It calmed a bit so we went to visit a farmer who has been working with the PC for 8 years. He did pig farming, live fencing, fruit trees, and bee keeping. Thats another thing that was for sale. Some fantastic honey. A wine bottle full for 2500 CFA. just under 5 dollars. Straight from the hive. This guy was very friendly and informative. Live fencing planting fast growing trees to outline your property so no one tries to gank it. We went through things quick there because it was raining off and on and we wanted to be able to get home, which didn’t go as planned in the end. We had 2 cars, the PC Land cruizer and an Amigo van. Amigo vans are what people take to travel around Cameroon. We work on unpaved roads most of the time and things get pretty sloppy after a rain. We couldn't make it up one hill, took another route and ended up almost tipping the van. We got caught in a ditch that stopped us at 45 degrees. Cameroonians are skilled with situations like that. We had people run up the road to us to help out. We had a dozen people pushing the roof back up while the driver moved the can forward and the van got out of the ditch on the first try. Another cool thing about the back road we took was we ended up in a chieferie village. There was this huge wooden hut with wooden carvings where the chief stayed. I didn’t get pictures because thats not good or welcomed. Our tech trainer had no problem going out and getting photos. People told her they would disappear from her camera magically because she took them of the chief’s hut. We got home and did the same thing again. But this time when we came back we had a piece of cake with icing for a girl whose b day is tuesday. That cake was fowel. cake mix from the dollar store tasted better than that. The icing was like straight butter. It was an interesting cake. I’m not complaining about it, I’m just describing how terrible the taste was. It was only 50 cents for a piece. I’m always down for new experiences. We woke up the next morning and shared our feelings about the field trip. Gave feedback on everything and left. When I got back in Bafia I did laundry and went with other trainees to hang out with the YD trainees who stayed here all weekend. I did my homework, grubbed, and now I’m here. Electricity is out again. I enjoy that. Things are quite and dark. Start are new language classes tomorrow. I’ve only got one other human in the class, so learning should be swell by golly! Oh 2 girls from Bokito got malaira over the past 2 weeks. Bokito is where the health volunteers stay. They’re fine now, but had a couple poopy days. I make sleep now. I need to be up at 5 to finish my clothes before I go to school. Have I mentioned everyone in my family is up by 5:30 every day? HEY any human who are “bored” in America. Write a letter or even a simple post card! Mail is gold here and I need pictures or photos for my barren walls. I know things are so “busy” in America but come on. Get in touch with you 1920’s self. It literally makes my week on top of life already being great here. How about if you ever catch yourself fb creeping, just go write a letter.
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