Several weeks back in Cameroon after my magical
all-you-can-eat trip to France and somehow I’m settling back into bucket
showers and couscous just fine.
The week before I left, I was having a hard time being back at post and
was worried that coming back from the “developed” world would be even
tougher. Luckily, my trip seems to
be just what I needed. However, two
other factors have also made me significantly happier here lately: starting
work and rainy season.
I was actually dreading rainy season- mud everywhere, stuck wherever
you found yourself when it began to pour, mosquitoes. What I didn’t realize was the variety of food that comes
with rainy season. Although I love
Danfili, I had really been struggling with the fact that many weeks, the only
fresh foods I could find were onions and bananas. Turns out once the rain comes, so do avocados, mangos, and
tomatoes! And I’m not talking
about just on market day. I mean
everyday of the week. It is quite
literally raining avocados and mangos (when the rain comes, the wind blows so
hard that you hear them hitting the ground all around you). To give an idea of the magic of rainy
season and also prices in Cameroon, here is everything that I bought the other
day for a total of two dollars (US):
1 papaya 100
CFA
2 onions 50
CFA
3 eggs 300
CFA
4 bananas 100
CFA
6 mangos 50
CFA
6 avocados 300
CFA
6 tomatoes 100
CFA
Total: 1000
CFA or 2 USD
Not living solely off of couscous…
priceless.
As far as the other source of my contentment, I wouldn’t say
work is moving along, but it is finally getting started. I am in the planning phases of several
projects. The first, a fairly
simple one, is a sexual health/general health course that I will be giving at
the high school next school year.
I have found students from each class who have volunteered to spend some
time with me this summer to plan the course and then to do a large portion of
the teaching to their peers next school year. The previous volunteer gave a similar course, but was not
able to finish so the students suggested that we do the same thing this coming
school year. My second project is
much larger scale and much more intimidating. I am planning to use a model of community health called CARE
Groups. The model trains mothers
of young children in the community on certain health topics. Each mother is then assigned 10
households in her neighborhood who also have young children and is expected to
visit each household and teach them what she has learned. It has worked well in other places
because it is a low burden on each volunteer, covers the entire community, and
increases community capacity. The
start up work is expected to take around 6 months and involves surveying the
entire town to find households with the target population: pregnant women and
children under 5. Right now I am
in the phase of introducing the idea to the key players and the community as a
whole.
Outside of work, sometimes little things can easily make my
day. Some examples from the past
few weeks:
·
The little four-year-old girl who lives in my
compound, Hawa, only spoke Baya when she started living with us. She now speaks some Fulfulde after
spending time with our Fulbe neighbors.
I have been informed that Hawa and I speak about the same level of
Fulfulde. This makes me pretty
happy because if I can absorb language at the rate of a four year old, I should
have this down in no time!
·
The other day, returning from work, I passed a
group of four little boys (seven or eight years old, I would guess). As usual, each of them separately
greeted me with a “Bonjour” or “Sanoo”.
As I was walking away, one little stinker added, “Bonjour, debbo am!”…
Translation: “Hello, my wife!”
·
I’ve started regularly running again trying
to run again. One evening a bunch
of kids were over while I was getting ready to go. They all thought it would be hilarious to see me run and
decided to watch. About a minute
after I started running, I saw a kid running behind me. I thought, aww how cute he will run
with me for a minute. Little did I
know, he intended to stick it out for the whole thing. Soon after, I had picked up several
others and had a small pack of seven year olds following me all around the edge
of the village. I won’t embarrass
myself with the amount of time this run lasted, but let’s just say all of them
were able to keep up through the whole thing.
·
One day heading back into town towards the end
of my run, I passed some women heading out to their field. One of the women (who I do not know)
saw me running, started running towards me, and gave me a hug! After I caught my breathe from
laughing, it gave me the energy I needed to finish my run.
After
about a month back at post, I am now lucky enough to be attending a Peace Corps
conference on diversity, which happens to take place in Limbe, a beach
town. Life’s not so bad in
Cameroon.
