People often ask me what a typical day looks like for
me. As most PCV’s will tell you,
there really is no typical day. As
volunteers, our schedule swings from immensely packed with meetings and
projects to completely empty for weeks on end. One challenge of being a PCV is dealing with this varied
work schedule. Although I can’t
pick out much of a pattern in the way I spend my days, I can try to give you a
taste of one day of my life in Danfili all the same.
Tuesday, November 12, 2014:
Around 8am I get up.
Everyone else in Danfili has already been up since the morning prayer (read:
2-3 hours earlier). After getting
ready, I open my door and my cat comes running in. Da has already left to work in her field and the girls have
left for school. I make myself
oatmeal and coffee (which my amazing parents have sent from the states). I do a short review of the presentation
I will be giving at the hospital later.
10am, I show up at the hospital. It’s a Tuesday, which means vaccination day. All of the mothers bring their babies
to be vaccinated on Tuesdays.
Because our health center doesn’t have a fridge, we are unable to store
them and the vaccinations must be done on the same day every week. Although everyone in town has been
awake for hours, there are only three women at the hospital when I arrive. I greet the hospital staff and sit with
them for a while. It becomes clear
that it will be a while before the women start showing up and I can start my
presentation.
Luckily, one of the nurses, Julio, asks me if I am going to
the meeting at the high school. I
am not aware of the meeting, but he explains that it’s a parent association
meeting and I decide to tag along.
Julio has a son and daughter at the high school and he is part of the
parent association. The school is
about ten minutes away and while we walk, we talk about American politics and
he tells me “Clinton was the best U.S. president.”
At the parent association meeting, the director of the
school explains what needs to be done in order for our high school to add the
last two grades and become a real high school. Right now, there are four grades, meaning that it is not a
complete high school, which should have six. The director is new to Danfili this year and has already
made enormous changes to the school.
All of the students now arrive on time and the parent association is
working on building latrines for students and faculty. Many people want the last two grades to
be added to the school because right now, students must move to Ngaoundal or
Tibati to finish their studies.
This means that many students stop after they receive their B.P.C. The parent association decides to ask
the mayor of Ngaoundal for help building the classrooms, but to also start to
raise money from everyone in Danfili.
At the meeting, I see many familiar faces. There is a group of about 20-30 people in Danfili who are
very motivated to develop their village.
I have gotten to know most of them because they tend to be involved in
every sector of development. Many
are in the parent association, involved in community health work, and also
involved in the effort to bring a microfinance bank to Danfili.
One of the people who I see there is my friend, Fadi. She is the only woman at the meeting,
but that is not unusual for her.
Although Danfili is her village, she spent a significant amount of time
in both Yaounde and Douala, speaks perfect French, and is not intimidated by
the group of men. She has one
daughter at the high school who she hopes will continue her studies until
University. We walk back to the
hospital together and talk about the problems that we are facing with the
microfinance project. Upon
arriving to the hospital, we see that finally the women have arrived. There are about twenty women sitting in
the main hall waiting to have their babies vaccinated. Benedicte, another nurse, sits in the
hall and calls the mothers one by one.
She hopes to finish quickly before her own baby wakes up and disturbs
her work.
I have my presentation ready, but calls to my translator
won’t go through. Luckily, Fadi is
there and agrees to be my translator for the morning. I grab my drawings of the Care Group model and head out to
the hall. I easily grab the
women’s attention by introducing myself in Fulfulde. It’s not every day they get to see the white lady struggle
through five sentences in Fulfulde!
Whether I’ve pronounced everything correctly or not is unclear, but they
laugh appreciatively when I tell them, “That is all of my Fulfulde! Now I will speak in French and Fadi
will translate.” We spend about
twenty minutes explaining the model to the mothers who seem to understand and
be receptive to the idea. I am
slightly disappointed that we don’t have any questions or volunteers on the
spot, but am overall happy with how the presentation went. I stay at the hospital a bit longer
with the chief of the center and the nurses. There is one mother who seems to speak some French, seems
quite confident, and has a big healthy baby! I try to befriend her to rope her into being a volunteer in
our Care Groups. I never quite get
around to pitching the idea, but end up holding her fat, happy baby while she
visits friends. Finally, they head
out and I observe the chief of the health center doing consultations. He is speaking with a man who suspects
that his wife tried to give herself an abortion. For me, the conversation highlights the need for men as
partners work here.
Today I am lucky to get a visit from the Peace Corps staff
in Ngaoundere as they pass through.
They stop at the health center to give me some documents and I meet one
of the staff members’ baby girl.
After a quick visit, they head to Tibati and I head home. On the way, I stop to check in on my
friend Sadjo. I have information
on bee-keeping from another PCV’s presentation to give her husband, who hopes
to get involved in apiculture. The
previous week, a pot with hot food fell on her two-year old’s foot and I also
check on how he is doing. They
have decided to use traditional methods to treat the foot, which means putting
mashed up seaweed of some kind on the burns every day.
Today is a quick visit because I’m starving and want to get
home to eat before heading out again.
When I get back, Missira and Charifa are back from school, but Grandma
is still out working. They haven’t
eaten since the morning so I make them some spaghetti and we sit together and
eat. They tell me how school went
and what they need to study tonight.
Missira sits quietly and eats, while energetic Charifa dances around,
accidently dropping pasta on the floor.
When we’ve finished, they start their chores and I head out to visit
friends.
On my way down our road, I pass a few of the men who hang
out there most days. We have a
routine. They always say hi and
ask where I am going (in Fulfulde).
Sometimes they add to the conversation just to make me practice
more. I run into one of our
neighbors, an Al Hadji, who likes to joke that I have three husbands. Today he asks how they are doing and if
I have problems with fighting amongst them. I laugh and tell him they are doing well before heading to
my friend’s house. My friend,
Aissatou, is the third wife of one of the wealthiest Al Hadji’s in
Danfili. She is from Douala,
speaks great French, and loves being able to access the Internet on her smart
phone. We sit and talk for about
an hour. I try to help her find
the previous volunteer, a good friend of hers, on Facebook, but unfortunately
the service isn’t great and we can’t connect. She knows a good deal more about smart phones than I do and
is hoping to get a tablet soon to connect to Facebook and What’sApp. After giving up, we sit and talk and
somehow the conversation leads to having children. I tell her that I’m not even positive that I want to give
birth to my own kids and have thought a lot about adoption. She cannot believe it and tries to
convince me that I have to give birth to at least one child. After all, she explains, God is the one
who decides. Then she gets a kick
out of imagining me deciding to have one child and giving birth to twins.
Around 4:30pm, I head back to my house to prepare for my
Fulfulde lesson at 5pm.
Unfortunately, my tutor has been called to do other work and at 5:30, the
lesson gets canceled. I head to
the market and run into another of the men who hangs out on my street on the
way. He speaks French and always
asks for something to read. Months
ago when he initially asked, I asked him what type of thing he wanted to
read. He said, “Anything! I just love reading and learning new
things!” We talk for a while and
he explains that he is actually not from Danfili. He is from the Extreme-North and part of the ethnic group
called the Toupouri. He tells me
that most people from his village join the military because they are tall and
strong. He wasn’t able to do the
same because of a politic situation at the time that he would have
enrolled.
At the market, I pick up my phone battery that has been
charging there and pay 100CFA (20 cents).
The man who runs the boutique is always incredibly friendly, but mostly
speaks Fulfulde. We chat a bit and
he tells me that now I understand Fulfulde. During the past year, he has been learning how to write so
that he can write customers’ names on their batteries. My name is pretty strange to people
here, so I go by “Eliza”. He has
written, “ELZA” on my battery. On
the way back, I see a man wearing a Packer’s jersey! I try to stealthily take a photo, but alas he is too far
away and I am too tired to try to explain why I need a picture of his shirt.
Before settling down at home for the night, I stop by my
friend and colleague, Asta’s, house.
She has been at home for the past two weeks because her eldest daughter
was very ill and passed away last week.
Their family has been coming to visit and pay their respects. She is exhausted from all of the work
and emotional stress. Because she
hasn’t been able to make it out to her field to harvest, she has also lost a
good amount of her peanut crop this year.
In spite of her exhaustion, she sits and talks with me for a while. She asks how our Care Group project is
going and how the presentation went this morning. We talk about our next steps. I don’t stay long and one of the little girls who lives with
them, Uani, walks me home. When we
arrive, Grandma says that since it’s already dark, Missira and Charifa need to
walk Uani home.
The girls do a bit more housework before bursting into my
house with their schoolbags. Every
weeknight, they have gotten in the habit of studying at my house for an hour or
so. Tonight, Missira reads over
her biology notes and Charifa practices French and math. They show me what they learned at
school and point out where they got 10 out of 10. Hawa rolls around on my floor playing with Peanut and
repeating random French phrases that she hears us say. After a little snacking and chatting, I
need some alone time and send them to bed in Da’s house. It’s 9pm. I close my door, watch an episode of 30 Rock, and check what
needs to be done tomorrow. After
heating up water, I take a quick bucket bath, pull down my mosquito net, and
finally go to sleep.
