23.11.2011
It is hard to believe Thanksgiving is tomorrow. I will not experience many things “cold” over the next two years, especially with the weather. All of the trainees are getting together this weekend for a pot luck Thanksgiving in Bokito. A host mom here is killing, cleaning, and preparing 3 chickens for us at 500 CFA a head. Everyone is bringing a dish, side, or drink on top of that. There is only 2 weeks of training left. Not even that, but I don’t know the exact day count.
This week all trainees had their IEP presentations. You had to pick a cultural topic and present it in french in front of the other trainees and a panel of language trainers. Mine was on bush meat and the impact on the sustainability of the jungle here. Some other interesting topics were: marriage in Cameroon, breast ironing, and sorcery. Everyone has to do an “animation” 2 days before swearing in, which is a longer presentation. Something that you would probably share with a community group at post. Actually, its only Agro that has to do it. Youth Development doesn’t have to and Health has been doing group Animations with different community groups during training already.
Originally I was going to write all about my site visit once I returned, but that obviously didn’t happen. That was two weeks ago. I’ll give a synopsis and not get too much into detail because once I get to post thats where I will be having my experiences. The East is awesome though. Super duper awesome. I’m in Batouri, which is a pretty large city, but its surrounded by jungle. Cameroon, Congo, Guinea, and the DRC have the most rainforest in the whole continent of Africa. Cameroon has most of it. There are people in my neighborhood with pet monkey. My post house is nice because it was owned by catholic missionaries before PC started renting it out for volunteers. There are 3 other volunteers at my post, a YD (Youth Development), an ED (Education), and a SED (Small Enterprise Development). The SED volunteer is getting married to a Cameroonian in December. I won’t be able to go to the wedding because I will have just arrived at post at the beginning of the month. There is tons of possible work and I appreciate that I have other volunteers to do collaboration projects with. But it will really all depend on what the needs of the community end up being. Or what they are motivated to do. The best honey comes from the East, and thats great because I like apiculture. I didn’t get to visit the community of my host country hommie because that was another 3 hours from my post. I didn’t have enough time just over site visit, but I’ll be going out within the first week of getting to post. The only thing I know about his village is its en brousse and is about 7000 people. The guy has two GICs (Community Groups) One for the men and one for the women. Another thing I like about Batouri is there is a large Muslim population so I’ll get a fair sense of the Islamic culture over the next two years. There was actually a big festival the first Sunday I was on site visit where a goat gets sacrificed and eaten. People go from house to house and just eat.
I got my outfit made for swearing in. I’m addicted to panya. Panya is the cultural fabric here that is amazingly beautiful and original. I’ve talked about it multiple times before, but I’m reiterating. Its like this Ed Hardy parrot design, but no where near as crappy, with green trimmings. I’m actually going to centre ville tomorrow to get some more panya for 1 more outfit before I leave and 6 yards for my sisters and mom here. Matching panya.
I hope I get the opportunity to teach at a PST after I get to post. PST is the training all of us are going through before we swear in as volunteers. Its seems like a very unique experience. To get to see all the ambitious trainees going through training, getting to see where they get posted, watching them struggle with the language like most of us do. It will also be cool to reconnect with other people from my stage and see whats changed. Or whats gone down at their post. One thing I forgot to say about site visit is there are more jaded volunteers than I thought. I didn’t come across any personally, but after talking to other trainees I found that out. Volunteers who are really just over their service. Over trying to continue any kind of development effort. I know things will be very difficult at times, but thats what you signed up for. This experience is what you make of it. It was disheartening to hear people are using the rest of their time to travel and see Africa or remain here since America doesn’t have any more opportunities since they left. You know Cameroon has the lowest ET rate of any country in Africa that PC is in? ET is early termination, when people leave for personal reasons. I don’t know the exact statistics behind that fact. On site visit I also got to talk to quite a few ED volunteers here. If you think you’re a good teacher, try teaching in Africa. These are some of the most difficult environment and situations I could imagine. Class sizes from 75-180 kids. In the North and Extreme North the classroom is always over 100 degrees. Some school systems just have 1 test for the quarter that determines if a person continues or repeats. You could have 25 year olds in your 8th grade class. The age varies so much with each class.
Just today the Agros were at the “middle school” here in Bafia to give a presentation to the environmental education club and I swear I saw a dude who was low 20’s. But I’m not good at guessing African’s ages because they usually look much younger than they are. There are discipline masters at the schools whose job is self explanatory. When we entered the school today that guy just had a leather whip attached to a wooden stick. Another way to punish kids is to have them crawl across the floor on their knees. Why? Because when the go home and their parents see their outfits are dirty they will know why and then get disciplined at home. There are different education systems for the Anglophone and Francophone regions. There is much much more on the education system on Cameroon, but thats enough for now.
Volleyball has gotten popular at the training house. We have a very small makeshift court, but its been a lot of fun. The teachers and guards play with us now. One girl’s IEP was about volleyball so they got to play during their presentation. Mary, the volunteer who welcomed the big group of new trainees in Yaounde, is now a trainer for us this week. She's teaching mostly about the theory of teaching, the education system, and Agros 3rd goal of Environmental Education. She teaches in the Extreme North. Very solid human being. It was here and a dude named Carlos who welcomed us. Carlos is also in the North.
Last weekend we got to go to Bokito for the afternoon and spend time with the Health volunteers. They have a nice set up in that town. They school house is in a compound with another family. The most ripped old man I’ve ever seen lives there. They were showing him how to slack line. He's ripped because he's been working in a farm all his life. We had some drinks and then danced beaucoup. After 10 minutes of dancing word got out in village and the next thing I knew there were a dozen little kids dancing with us. There was one kid who stood out. This kid must have had access to a TV and music videos. He was trying to do pop and locking and gave very skeptical looks when someone tried to challenge his dance skills. Later that night I went with a couple people to the local “club” here in Bafia called Hotel New Palace. Its a hotel with a club next door. Beaucoup du mirrors. I finally got to witness the phenomenon of mirror dancing. Locals are very serious when they dance with themselves in the mirror. Or freak dance with a lady in the mirror. People here love Rihanna. Those were the only songs I recognized. All the other jams were local and are just a continues rapid beat. Oh, theres a song called “Chop my money” which is about spreading your seed. There is also a song here called “I want you my wifey”. Both of which are VERY popular here. The club was weird in some ways. The only sold liquor by the shot or bottle. Its also hood liquor, like the stuff in sachets. No one touched that. I don’t know if I talked about liquor sachets, but simply, they will make you crazy. Crazy because there is nothing like an FDA here to verify was goes into that product. Its not distilled liquor. There is also the belief by some mothers that giving your child a sachet of liquor does the job that vaccines would normally do. Guys at the club derange too much. Another wierd fact here, its not common to hold hands or kiss in public, but being upfront with how you want to insert your penis in someone is very common. Oral sex isn’t common either. People just get to the point here. Theres also no such thing as “returns” with purchased items. Maybe in big name stores in the largest cities, but I don’t think I will ever experience a “return” situation here. Then again, I’m wont be buying many items.
Another quinky dink. My future post mate, the SED volunteer, had the same host family as me. Its really random that 2 volunteers from different programs in different stages would get sent to the same region and city. Its even more rare since very few volunteers get sent to the east. Maybe like 5% of all volunteers are in the East.
It’s time for sleep. I saw a terrible movie this week called 13. You can watch it to find out for yourself, but 50 cent is in it and the dude from the transporter. Just a terrible movie because of the plot. Bonne Nuit mes amie.
