Cameroon: Notes From Quite Far

“What a nice young man.” 4 more reasons to get robbed in Cameroon

2010-07-14T12:29:00.000-07:00

I have come to the conclusion that Cameroon has a better class of thief than any other country I know. They’re considerate, they’re friendly, they cause a bare minimum of inconvenience, and they don’t make a mess. Yes, they steal your stuff and that’s wrong. But they really are quite nice about it.

Don’t believe me? Read the following four accounts and tell me there’s a better country in the world to get robbed in.

Last weekend I rather stupidly left my kitchen door unlocked and went out. I arrived home to find I’d been the victim of a burglary. Items missing: one packet of spaghetti and the last of my bread. Everything else was as I left it. What’s more I noticed that whoever stole my bread had put the plastic bag it came in into the bin. While I don’t approve of stealing, I think if you’re going to take someone’s stuff, then tidying up after yourself is quite a nice touch. To be honest if they’d done my washing up and given my fridge a wipe round they could have had my cooking oil too.

Another quite pleasant young criminal pickpocketed me at the market some months ago. I knew what he was up to, but rather than try to catch him in the act I let it happen. I did this because I’ve been warned that if passers by step in, robbers can receive quite a severe beating, and I didn’t want this on my conscience. Besides, I didn’t have any money in my pocket, just a scrap of paper with a phone number scribbled on it. So I walked on, seemingly oblivious. 30 seconds later, I heard the word “Madame” and felt a tap on my shoulder. Much to my surprise it was the pickpocket himself, giving me back my piece of paper. He was so polite I couldn’t help but say thank you.

If you have your wallet stolen in Maroua, it’s worth leaving it a couple of days before going to the police. Thieves tend to take the money out of it, then post it back through the police station window overnight with bank cards, ID cards, family photos etc. all present and correct. Indeed the police have a stock of passports that thieves have stolen by accident then put through the window. If you do visit the police station, they may well ask you to look through their passport collection and see if there’s anyone you recognise.

But the best proof that Cameroonian thieves are the nicest thieves of all is the story of a volunteer who actually managed to negotiate his own mugging. He had a perfectly nice chat with his assailants and persuaded them that they had no use for his credit card. Also it would have been a real hassle for him to get his ID card replaced, so they let him keep that too. Ironically they even agreed to let him keep a bit of change for taxi fare since it was late and they agreed that walking home alone would not be wise – you never know who you might run into.

4 more things Cameroonian men say when they’re chatting up a white woman

2010-07-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

I’m friends with lots of white people – I’m good friends with (name of white person), do you know him/her?
My brother married a French/Canadian/American etc woman. He lives there now. (NB “brother” can mean anything from “has the same mum and dad as I do” to “met a friend of mine once in a bar”)
I earn 10 million CFA a month (around 10K sterling)
What’s your number? I just want to keep in touch that’s all.

On Friday evening, at about 5:30, I got chatted up under the most unusual circumstances of my life so far. First, the guy in question used asking for condoms as a pretext for talking to me, which is an interesting angle. Second, he was under 4ft tall, so that was also a first. Third, he asked me a lot of awkwardly graphic questions about femidoms. Fourth, he was very drunk (ok not so unusual, but at 5pm in my office?). And fifth, he was quite possibly the most persistent man I’ve ever encountered. He spent over 30 minutes doing his spiel – I’ve been to France, my brother married a French girl, give me your number, I earn 60k a year (as above)… He was very pushy and in the end I insisted he leave. However, he refused point blank to go anywhere unless I promised to have a drink with him, and I ended up so exasperated that I left the office myself and started to lock him in. At this point he panicked slightly and relented and so I opened the door and let him go. (This was lucky since I was bluffing and had no clue what I was going to do next). His parting words to me were a very cheerful “Ok so I’ll see you here next week then”.

Perhaps I should have been a lot less polite from the beginning, I don’t know. I’ve been told many times by now that white women are extremely snooty and rude. They don’t say hello, they don’t answer your questions if you talk to them, etc. I invariably apologise on behalf of white women everywhere and promise to put it on the agenda at our next big meeting. However I’m becoming ever more the snooty white woman myself, because about nine out of ten conversations I engage in with men escalate within minutes from “what’s your name and where are you from?” to “I want to live in England and what’s your number?” (via “I’ve been to France, I’m friends with Americans, I have lots of money”). In order to avoid both the “give me your number” conversation and accusations of snootiness, I have begun to employ what I call “dialogue avoidance tactics”. Techniques include: talking to an imaginary person on the telephone; pretending I’ve suddenly remembered I’m late for something; pretending I can’t speak French; and (my favourite) pretending to be asleep. My record for pretending to be asleep was four hours, on a bus from Yagoua, which I think is quite impressive.
(Although to digress slightly, a friend of a friend pretended to be asleep on a train in the UK in order to avoid paying his fare. Unfortunately for him, the train guard wasn’t the least bit shy and started prodding him. He carried on pretending, the train guard prodded him ever harder, the whole thing went too far and the train guard ended up calling an ambulance. I think the “pretending to be asleep” prize has to go to him.)

I left at dusk - when the adolescent males would be busy praying. When it’s not prayer time, they tend to shout “darling” a lot, make kissing noises, and ask me if I want them to “accompany” me. I wonder whether that approach has ever worked for them. (“Oy white woman, sweetheart, do you want me to come with you?” “Oooh yes please that would be splendid.”) Going home during prayer was quieter, although while the men are away, the small boys will play. (Cat-calls from a 20-yr-old are one thing. Cat-calls from an 8-yr old are quite another.) They were just little, innocent boys parroting their older role models of course. But that in itself is quite sad really.

All of which serves to illustrate that there’s quite a lot of sexism here in the Far North.
I do love it here, but it doesn’t hurt to highlight a few problems now and then.
I should add for balance that the UK is not a paradise of equality and mutual respect either. But there comes a moment when you have to admit the problem is a bit more endemic over here. For me that moment came when I locked a tiny over-zealous man in my office and then a group of little boys made kissy noises at me and told me I was pretty.

Frankly I don’t know what the answer is. Other than teaching all the women to kick-box, I’m out of ideas.

I suppose one last thing to say is that sexism used to be a much bigger problem in the UK too, and a lot of women not so long ago had to battle extremely hard so that their daughters and granddaughters (me included) wouldn’t have to put up with it. And the more I understand what it feels like to be a woman in an oppressively sexist environment, the more I appreciate what those women did, and the more grateful I am to them.

Right, that's quite enough of that. I’m off to wax my legs and put my corset on.

Quiz Time. Here are the brand names, but what's the product?

2010-07-13T09:34:00.001-07:00

Here are the brand names. But what’s the product?

Adam
Frenzy
Lifestyles
Impulse

I’m becoming increasingly nocturnal. This is partly because the call to prayer it is very loud between 3 and 5, and partly because my roof leaks and it’s rained so much a ceiling panel has come loose - so now bats can get in. And while bats are very cute on nature programmes, they’re a bit scary in your living room.
Anyway, this blog is nothing to do with bats or irregular sleeping patterns. I just thought I’d share.

This one’s about condoms actually. And yes the list above is a list of condom brands. It’s enough to make a person cringe.

The only brand of condom you see in Cameroon is called “Prudence”. This is a good, honest name for a condom if you ask me. Back in the west, we have marketing people who earn way too much money making up names to flatter (“Trojan”? Please…) or to entice (“Pleasure Plus”? I ask you…). Sometimes I think we’ve all gone marketing mad. Deciding which condom to use is not a “lifestyle choice”. Your selected brand does not “say anything about you as a person”. (Is there any product in the UK not subject to this tosh? Do people go to the chemist for haemorrhoid cream and have to choose the one that best reflects their personality?)
I much prefer the Cameroonian approach, and I would like to see the UK take a leaf out of Cameroon’s book, get rid of these pretentious brand names and introduce a new condom called quite simply “Sensible”.

Anyway, I work for an association called RESAEC and we have free Prudences available at our office for anyone who is too skint or embarrassed to buy them from the shop. The problem is, people are also embarrassed to get them from anyone but my boss Boubakari (though sometimes they’ll approach me, because everyone knows us westerners love condoms, so I won’t judge or gossip.) Therefore, they tend to come in the evening after the other staff have left. Boubakari stays every night until around eight to accommodate these visits. I’ve taken to staying on in the evenings too, because it means I don’t have to turn up for work until 10am, and because if I’m not there Boubakari has to mess about locking and unlocking the doors when he goes out for evening prayers. Last week he was away however, so I was on my own for Prudence duty. Sometimes people would come in, ask for the boss, and when they found out he was away they’d look a bit sheepish and slink off.
It’s sad there’s so much shame surrounding condoms, but encouraging to see how many takers there are when people feel at ease asking for them.
We also give out femidoms, which are a bit of a new idea and tend to be popular with women whose husbands/boyfriends refuse to use protection. I did feel quite ambivalent about this initially. In my opinion a man so irresponsible deserves to be alone – and alone with a broken nose, ideally. Using a femidom feels too much like capitulation.
But then that’s easy for me to say isn’t it? I can choose to be with or not be with a man. Nobody can force me. I’m not constrained in the same way as women here by money or society.

The more I think about it the more the introduction of the femidom seems like a huge step in the right direction. Apart from anything else it gives women a choice. And choice is something women in Cameroon so very rarely have.

4 more steps a man should take before divorcing his wife

2010-07-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

Tell her what she’s done wrong
Give her another chance - explain to her how she should behave
If she does it again, hit her – but only with a leather strap, no sticks
If she does it a third time, then you can divorce her

I heard this at the Women’s Empowerment conference on Friday. It was an argument put forward in support of women (yes “support”), condemning men who divorce their wives over nothing and explaining the proper procedure.

I’m taking it out of context for effect, which is a bit unfair. But even in context I was somewhat taken aback. While the man in question was giving this explanation, I felt all eyes turn on me (the only non-Cameroonian in the room) as if all the participants were thinking as one : “What must she be making of all this?”

Domestic violence is not legal but it’s still common. Most men won’t talk to me honestly about it because they know that white people tend to find domestic abuse shocking. Of the men I know well enough to speak frankly with, some condemn violence towards women, but others see it as necessary in order to keep them in line.

The legal age for marriage here is 18 for men and 15 for women, although often girls are married off younger than this, and to men quite a lot older. There is a high incidence of medical complications that arise when girls have babies before their body has fully developed. And often women (and girls) have no medical assistance before, during, or after giving birth. This might be down to lack of money, but often it is because the woman is ashamed to see a male doctor, or indeed because her husband forbids her from doing so. And there aren’t an awful lot of women doctors to go around, since so many girls don’t even make it to the end of primary school, let alone university. (What’s the point in spending money educating your daughter? She’s only ever going to get married, have kids and keep house.) Even those girls that are in school are expected to do chores at home while boys do their homework and play out.

These were just a few of the issues that came up at Saturday’s seminar. Others included female circumcision, disproportionately high HIV rates among women (about twice as many women as men are infected), men who refuse to wear condoms, women who are prisoners in their homes, the inequality between the first wife and the other wives in polygamous marriages, inequality between husband and wife/wives in all marriages, inequality between boys and girls in the classroom, the misinterpretation of religion to justify sexual inequality, men-only mosques, rape (and whether raping your wife is really rape)… Frankly the list goes on.

I think it’s fair to say that Cameroonian women have it pretty tough.

So, were any solutions found to this vast array of problems? Well: awareness-raising, engaging local chiefs, persuading them to set an example in their own marriages, asking the imams to preach about fair treatment of women in the mosques. All good ideas. But my favourite suggestion came from a man who felt that women should “just stop victimising themselves”. Get out there, grow a pair (figuratively of course) and stop whining. Simple, eh? I wonder why they didn’t think of that before?

I’ve always been shy of the word “feminist”. It’s a loaded term. But on Friday I heard comments like “I’m not feminist or anything, but…” and “Well the problem comes when women get ideas and start behaving like feminists”. It’s the element of conflict and antagonism that people don’t like, and understandably so. But I wonder whether conflict isn’t sometimes necessary. I wonder whether progress is even possible without a bit of a fight. And I wonder whether the fact that we’re all so afraid of the f-word might be a problem in itself. So I think I’ll be a feminist when I get home. And it’s not really my place to say, but secretly, between you and me, I hope all the women here do start “getting ideas” and “behaving like feminists”.

And I hope it happens in my lifetime. Wherever I am I’ll have a drink in their honour. (I’ll pay for it myself, obviously…)

4 more three-part slogans I saw last weekend

2010-07-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

Paix. Travail. Patrie(Peace. Work. Fatherland. National motto of Cameroon. On a flipchart. Although it appears everywhere from letterheads to school buildings.)
Sagesse. Science. Excellence.(Wisdom. Science. Excellence. On my Women’s Day outfit.)
Abstinence. Fidélité. Préservatif.(Abstinence. Fidelity. Condom. On an AIDS awareness campaign poster)
Soumission. Foi. Perfection.(Submission. Faith. Perfection. On a sign next to my office.)

Actually that last one is a cheat. The sign is for an Islamic school and the three words are a rendering of Islam, Iman, Ihsan, which are the three levels of faith a person can attain according to the Qu’ran. So “slogan” is hardly the appropriate word. It’s a bit like saying that “Blessed are the meek” was one of Jesus’ “catchphrases”. Still, I saw it so I put it on my list.

I’ve been noticing a lot of slogans around lately - mostly on posters. We have a lot of them at my office. A favourite of mine is a plain blue poster displaying nothing but the phrase “Let’s put on a condom” - apparently à propos of nothing. I think this poster could have been thought through a bit better. It strikes me as the sort of spontaneous “Let’s do something” phrase you might come out with on a Sunday afternoon if you were a bit bored - as in “Let’s go to town” or “Let’s play Monopoly”. The message is important of course, but personally I think the suggestion “Let’s put on a condom” ought to be put into some sort of context. It’s not always the appropriate course of action.

The three-part slogan is a bit of a must-have for any self-respecting Cameroonian organisation or government department. Three-parters seem somehow weightier than your average slogan, and make me feel as if I’m living in “1984”. (The book not the year. Think “Big Brother is watching you” and not “Who would you give your last Rolo to?”). Similarly reminiscent of “1984” (the book) are the names of the ministries. Orwell gave us Minipax, Minitrue, Muniluv and Miniplenty. Cameroon gives us Minedub, Minefop, Minesec and Minesup, to name but a few.

And I think that’s all I have to say about Orwell and Cameroon.

On Friday I went to a seminar organised by the Ministry for the Empowerment of Women (Minproff). It was held at a “Technology Centre” with a marked lack of anything technological, other than a fan and a plug socket. The inevitable 3-part slogan for the day was “Equal rights. Equal Opportunities. Progress for all.” and the audience were all local residents and/or representatives from local organisations. They were mostly, but not exclusively women, and were invited to debate issues surrounding women’s empowerment (or indeed lack of it). It was a fascinating and complex discussion. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, (steps up onto soapbox) the general population in Cameroon is far more politically aware than that of the UK. Your average Joe (Or indeed Mohamadou) is better informed and more passionate. And yet back home we have more money, freedom, access to information, and the very real possibility of holding the government to account if even a quarter of the nation were genuinely interested. (steps back down again)

Ho hum.

(Actually, think I must have been feeling quite inspired by the women's conference last weekend: the next set of entries are all a bit soap-box-y. Brace yourselves...)

4 more signs that someone's got it in for you

2010-05-15T02:19:00.001-07:00

You find a live goat in your toilet
Your neighbour can't help smirking as she gives you back the hat she borrowed
You lose a limb
You never wear clothes

The hyena, it turns out, fell down a well. The monkey got her out. Then the hyena tried to eat the monkey, but luckily a lion came along and tricked the hyena back into the well. Both monkey and lion then went on their way, leaving the hyena to her fate.

Not entirely sure how I’ll use that one down the market.

Anyway, the theme of this post is magic. And I don’t mean that in a rubbish 80’s Paul Daniels “That’s Magic” sort of a way. I mean it in a weird, intriguing “oooohhh, magic is all around us” sort of a way.

Magic and witchcraft are incredibly common in Cameroon. As foreigners, we don’t necessarily hear much about witchcraft – particularly not at first. But it is a common practice, and people are very aware of it even if not directly involved. Slowly but surely, without quite realising, you gain people’s trust. They start to speak to you about magic, and it can be really quite fascinating.

So here are 5 anecdotes about magic and witchcraft I have heard recently.

1.
There is a crazy naked man in Maroua. He hasn’t worn clothes for at least a decade. He hangs out (quite literally) on the doorstep of a huge derelict building near my new office. Every afternoon he walks to the market and people let him take whatever he needs to eat, because if they refuse he urinates all over their stall.
Here is his story…
Once, the “Naked Man” was a fully-clothed, fully functioning member of Cameroonian society. Let’s call him Kevin. Now, Kevin had a steady job and a house and everything. But then one day he had an affair with his boss’s wife, we’ll call her Daisy. One day, Kevin’s boss (Nigel) walked in on Daisy and Kevin together, and was of course pretty pissed off about it. As Nigel watched Kevin hastily putting on his clothes, it occurred to him that Kevin’s suit allowed him to masquerade as an honourable member of society when in fact he was a scoundrel. Now, normally everyone involved might have settled this situation with a good old-fashioned punch-up (or alternatively, in the case of celebrities, sold their story to the Sun). But in Cameroon, there are other ways of settling disputes…
That night, Nigel went to see a Marabou (witch doctor), and the Marabou put a spell on Kevin, “so that he would never again be able to hide his shame” or so the story goes. And since that day, the Naked Man’s “shame” (yes, that’s what we call it nowadays) has been very much on display.

2.
There is a tribe in Southern Cameroon where women can go through many hours, even days of labour, give birth, and feel nothing. Meanwhile, the expectant fathers sit at a remote distance, in complete agony, bearing the woman’s pain. Independent observers have apparently testified to this.

3.
A good friend of mine forbade his wife to lend a headscarf to a friend. His reason: He and his wife were very happy together and trying for a baby. The friend may have been jealous. If so, she could easily have taken the headscarf to a Marabou and paid him to curse it – in which case, after taking it back, he and his wife would have had trouble conceiving. He therefore instructed his wife either to keep the headscarf or to give it away.

4.
I asked a friend why so many people in Cameroon have withered limbs. Expecting to hear about polio or accidents, I was surprised to hear that the majority of the limb-less descend from a cursed Nigerian bloodline.

5.
A Cameroonian volunteer in a rural village found an owl in her latrine (outdoor hole-in-the-ground style toilet). For the rest of the day she was unable to concentrate on her work, constantly having to nip out and take or make calls in order to establish who should kill the owl and how. (Apparently putting an animal in someone’s latrine is a way of cursing them. You have to kill it in a certain way in order to break the curse.)

There are loads of stories like this, but I won’t tell any more – partly because they’re completely crazy stories with no scientific, rational basis. And also partly because I don’t want to be too indiscrete – it might anger the spirits.

4 more helpful phrases in Fulfulde

2010-05-15T02:02:00.000-07:00

Ðum chaððum (It’s difficult)
Naañge wuli jamun (The sun is burning a lot)
Waddan-am bu’e ma seðða haa ðerewol ðo (Bring me some of your poo on this piece of paper)
Yeesu mayi dow gaafañgal (Jesus died on a cross)

I was sorting through a few things the last tenant left behind when I stumbled across a book on Fulfulde (the most widely-spoken traditional language). I’ve been wanting to learn Fulfulde since I arrived in Cameroon, but it’s been difficult to say the least, since my only regular teachers have been children, and they just speak constantly and incomprehensibly, with no notion that I might not understand. So naturally, I seized upon this book and have been making detailed notes on everything in it. It’s called “La langue des Foulbe” or “Language of the Fulbe” (Fulbe is the name of a very large Fulfulde-speaking, traditionally Muslim tribe). The book has 47 pages and was written in 2001 to help Evangelist missionaries to integrate into the community - and, one would expect, convert Muslims. It’s interesting on two fronts. First, as a language enthusiast (aka “geek”) I like to learn languages and analyse how they work. Second, it’s interesting to see what key themes and phrases have been identified as a priority for Evangelist missionaries.

The book is divided into five parts – “greetings”, “small-talk”, “in church”, “at the hospital” and “Fables”. The greetings I’m already used to. They include phrases such as “How are you/your family/your children”, “How are you finding the cold/heat/sun” “did you sleep well” and “I’m going” (Not to be confused with “I’m a fish”). The section on small-talk includes such phrases as “Yes”, “No”, “That’s true” and “Did you wash your hands?”

As a sceptic who is (thankfully) rarely ill, I don’t have much call for church or hospital phrases. I would, on the other hand, like to be able to speak to market vendors and moto drivers in Fulfulde. So while it is of course interesting to be able to say “Rachel was converted last Sunday, she believes in the Lord Jesus” and “Put these suppositories in the fridge for half an hour, then stick them up your bum”, it would in my case be more useful to know the Fulfulde for “Do you really know where Judando is or are you just going to drive around aimlessly?” and “If you insist, every time I come here, on charging me double for tomatoes, please stop giving me mushy ones”. With the right substitution of the right words, I could maybe tell the guy to stick his tomatoes up his bum, and while I would find that a very pleasing sentence in some ways, I don’t think it would help with my ultimate goal of getting a good deal on tomatoes. (If anything it would probably just make them more mushy…)

So yes, no real practical advances in Fulfulde just yet. Perhaps it will all become clear when I reach the fable of the hyena and the monkey. (Perhaps the monkey was not from there, so the hyena was overcharging him for fruit and veg?)
I’ll keep you posted.

4 more ways to leave your neighbour

2010-05-15T01:57:00.000-07:00

Slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
Drop off the key, Lee
Claim to be a fish

It may come as a surprise to some of you to hear that I’ve changed jobs and moved to Maroua. The school year is nearly over, so rather than hang around like a fifth wheel in Yagoua, I’ve transferred over to Maroua to work with a Cameroonian volunteering organisation. So far I’ve been, erm, hanging around like a fifth wheel, but slowly things have been picking up and there should be enough work to keep me off the streets for a few months before I go back home.

It was sad leaving Yagoua. More so for me than for my neighbours I think. Not that I’m a neighbour from hell or anything, but let’s face it, I’m not the first nassara they’ve seen come and go, and I won’t be the last. I went to say a final farewell to the huge family in the concession opposite my house. I took with me a few gifts in a plastic bag for the children – empty bottles, which they are forever asking me for, and a few little toys and balloons. About 15 of the local kids were there, and when they saw me they all came running towards me with arms outstretched. This was what I’d been hoping for – a really inexcusably soppy goodbye, hugs all round, perhaps a few tears. “Goodbye Saudel, goodbye Djenabou, goodnight John Boy, goodnight Mary-Ellen” Fond memories…
Of course, the open arms were intended not for me but for my bag of presents, which they prized out of my hand, all piled on and started fighting over without giving me a second glance. I stood watching them for a while, gave up all hope that they would pay me any attention and so turned to Adi (sister to some of the big kids and mum to some of the small ones). In my best Fulfulde I said “I’m going now then Adi”, which I mispronounced and so in fact said “I’m a fish now then Adi”, and then she gave me a puzzled expression and shook my outstretched hand. Then I went.
Fond memories indeed…

There were some genuinely difficult goodbyes, but I won’t go into those because they’re not especially interesting unless you’re me. And you’re not, so they aren’t.

And now I live in Maroua on a small dirt street called “Judando”, in the same concession as my landlord Bwakari. He’s a very houseproud man, constantly nipping in for a look around to make sure I haven’t broken anything or left the taps dripping. His son Oumarou is similarly domesticated, and when I’m washing and cleaning he’s always there, ready to offer helpful advice if I’ve missed a bit or I’m doing it wrong. Bwakari has even offered to do the place up – paint it, replace all the broken light bulbs, wire up a couple of broken plug sockets, nail in some ceiling panels that have come loose, etc. All I have to do is pay for materials and labour. It’s such a kind offer, but I’m holding back at the moment because I can’t help feeling there must be some sort of a catch.

A matter of life and birth

2010-03-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

Home after a month full of travel, tales of which I will save for another day. This entry is a bit different.

To those of you reading this blog who came to our fundraising party over the summer (and to others who contributed and didn’t even get a free hamburger out of it) I would like to extend a massive thank you, and to tell you where I have decided to put your money (£370 in total). I’m not going to tell you straight away though, I’m going to string it out a bit, so if you’re busy you might want to skip to the end.

I’ve been deliberating for months now over the best way to spend it all. Initially I thought of buying school resources and equipment for children to use in class. The problem with buying things, however, is that most things don’t last very long, and if they have any market value at all, there’s a good chance they’ll end up - well, on the market.

So what can one buy, that children need, that will stay in the right hands and last a long time? The rather cryptic answer will come after the following lengthy commentary on the education system in Cameroon.

In principle, state education is free in Cameroon. The government used to allow schools to charge a fee, but this is no longer allowed. Since it is very rare in the north for a school to have the full complement of state-paid teachers, school fees used to be spent on extra staff. And when I say “extra” I suppose what I really mean is “barely sufficient”. Then, several years ago, the World Bank threatened to stop debt relief unless Cameroon provided free education for all its children. And so the government banned school fees and announced publically and with great fanfare that parents would no longer have to pay a penny to send their children to school. This was brilliant, although it did leave many headteachers in a difficult situation, since they still did not have enough teachers, and they were now unable to generate an income to pay more. So a “voluntary” contribution was introduced to replace the previous compulsory fee. And ever since then, a lot of people have been doing what they call “awareness-raising” among the parents, and basically that means explaining to them that, yes, you can send your kids to school for nothing, but if you want to send them to a school with teachers in it you need to pay. The fee is around £2 per year, which is just about affordable for all but the very poorest families (the more kids the tougher it gets to send them all though, so often a family will stop sending the girls since they’re destined to give birth and keep house and clearly don’t need qualifications). Often, it’s not that parents can’t pay, more that they are suspicious, since they constantly hear on the radio that school is free. Therefore parents who would gladly have handed over their £2 a few years ago now refuse to do so. And those teachers whose salaries come from parent contributions live below the poverty line and sometimes are not paid for months on end. Furthermore, now that the parent fund is not officially recognised, there is more scope for money to go missing, and such things do occasionally happen.

I have been very careful about not using this blog as a soapbox, but this once I am going to indulge myself I am afraid. I’ll try not to overdo it though.
School fees make me angry. Watching children selling peanuts through bus windows when they could be in school makes me angry. I believe education is the right of every child without exception, and not a commodity to be bought and sold, and so I’m glad the World Bank wants free education for the children of Cameroon. Most Cameroonians want the same thing. But being told you’ve got something and actually having it are two different things. Anybody working in schools here will tell you things were better before. Parents paid their fees and if they couldn’t then normally an uncle or brother would step in, and everybody knew where they stood. Many people want compulsory school fees back. It’s a truth I find difficult to stomach.

At the end of primary school there is an exam, and if the children pass they are entitled to go on to secondary school (secondary schools are officially allowed to charge fees). The primary school exam certificate is the minimum required by most employers, including the state, so even those children who don’t go on to secondary school have many more doors open to them if they pass their primary school exams. In order to enter however, children need to provide their birth certificate. And this is where things become tricky.

Even in the UK I’ve known expectant couples who have put off decorating the nursery or choosing a name, for fear of tempting fate. It’s the same way here only more so. Infant mortality rates in the region are very high and many parents don’t name their babies for several months after birth. And it’s not just a question of tempting fate, it’s also about humility before God. “Insh’Allah” and “If it pleases God” are as much a part of the future tense as “will” and “am going to”. To omit these phrases is viewed by some as arrogant, complacent or presumptuous. So in a place where you can’t even say “see you next Tuesday” without a quick nod to the Almighty, it is easy to see how getting a birth certificate for a new born baby, in the full knowledge that it won’t be needed for at least another 11 years, is not really the done thing. Furthermore, from a very cold-hearted, but realistic point of view, why spend good money on a birth certificate for a child who might not live to have need of it? Better to leave it for now and cross that bridge when it comes.

The problem being that when the bridge finally does come, it’s tricky to cross. Not all families pay attention to birthdays, so the older the child gets, the more approximate his or her age. And even if the family does know the precise date and year of the child’s birth, they still have no way of proving it. So the first thing is to visit a doctor who does medical checks to determine the child’s age. Only after this is done can the parents go to the town hall to have the birth recorded and get that all-important birth certificate. With doctor’s fees and travel costs, getting a birth certificate can set a family back £10 or £15. This is clearly prohibitive, and even the kind uncle who’s been stumping up £2 a year for school fees these past 6 years shakes his head. £15 for a piece of paper? Not on your nelly.

Many children never get their birth certificate, never sit their exams, never have an identity recognised by the state, never get a regular job, never vote, never officially exist. Plenty of adults in Yagoua are in this situation, regardless of how bright and capable they are. They also need a birth certificate in order to get an ID card, and it’s a criminal offense not to carry an ID card. Without an ID card here you can’t travel on main roads because there are too many police checkpoints. Every time I travel the bus is stopped by police who check for ID, and if someone has none he or she is taken into a hut and made to pay a fine between 75p and £3, depending on various unknown factors. Other things you can’t do without an ID card include: Buy a mobile phone from the shop, catch a train, send and receive money, get a job with a salary, own property, rent property as an official tenant, report something stolen, press criminal charges against someone, vote, and plenty more besides. It’s not like at home when the only time you need ID is to buy booze from Tesco (hooray I look under 30) or to join Blockbuster Video (whose stringent requirements I have always found quite bizarre by the way).

Now you might be thinking that the Cameroonian government is really crippling its own economy by making it so expensive and difficult for its citizens to lift themselves out of poverty, preventing them from getting qualifications and jobs, and from contributing to society. It would be unwise for me to comment on this view that you hold.

The bit where I tell you where your money’s going!
And so we finally approach the point of the £370 from fundraising. What can I buy that children need, that won’t break or go missing, that can’t be resold, that will stay in the right hands, and that will last a lifetime?
And the answer is “an identity”.

There is an organisation, based near Maroua, which does a great deal of work to provide the area's most disadvantaged children with access to education. One of its many activities is to help families in the Extreme North with the financial and logistical support they need to get birth certificates so that their children can sit their primary school exams. I’m going to give the foundation (called the Bethlehem Foundation) £300, which is enough to pay for between 20 and 30 children to get their birth certificate, and so give them a chance in life they would not otherwise have had. This leaves £70, which I will account for soon. Some of it has gone on school fees for children, but that’s a story for another blog.

I’m going to go to the Bethlehem foundation next month when my salary comes through. I’d like to think there’ll be a chance to meet some of the children they’ve helped and post some photos on here. I feel I owe you that much at least. If there are no photo ops, you’ll have to make do with a scan of the receipt when I make the donation. Buying pens and schoolbooks would make better photos, but I feel that donating to the Bethlehem Foundation would be more meaningful. I hope you don’t mind.

And that’s it, really. A huge thank you once more from me. And I’d also like to say thank you on behalf of the kids who will be taking their exams in June because of your kindness, but then again it would be presumptuous of me to claim to speak for them. Let’s face it, I’m not Bono. But I feel sure that this is the sort of thing Bono would approve of. So maybe I should thank you on behalf of Bono.

To everyone who contributed to the summer fundraising for Cameroon, on behalf of Bono, pop singer and spokesperson for Africa, I’d like to say thank you. Thirty children, who might otherwise have left school without so much as a handshake, will have qualifications and be recognised by the state. As such they’ll have a chance to make a better life for themselves.

And as if that’s not good enough, some of you even got a free hamburger.

Getting the Picture

2010-01-27T15:40:00.000-08:00

We VSO types have quite a strange outlook on life at times. Once you get over the initial novelty of things looking so different, they all start to look the same, and daily life becomes mundane. Today I saw: a vast array of farm animals wandering freely around what I loosely label “streets”; a man taking a dump in a field; a handful of nude or semi-nude children playing with empty tin cans; a lizard running around my boss’s office; about 30 men hanging off the back of a pickup truck loaded with chickens and a lycee student drinking water from an empty bleach bottle. I mention all of this not because I found it particularly interesting. Quite the opposite in fact. These things happen every day and I no longer find them surprising or worthy of note. And sometimes this is what in fact surprises me most. I’ll pass a boy pushing a wheelbarrow full of heads, horns and skins from slaughtered animals, and maybe five minutes later I’ll think “Surely I should have found that more weird”.
Anyway, none of that is news. But here is something that happened for the first time ever this week, which somehow makes it more interesting than any of the other stuff. It started with a dead hornet. I had been cooking a meal and nipped into my house to grab a spoon. Inside the house said hornet (still alive at this point) was in a complete frenzy. So I sprayed it with Oro (bug killer). Normally if you do this for a while they get the hint and fly outside, but this one wasn’t going anywhere except round and round the living room via the light and occasionally my face. So I’m afraid I sprayed it until it died. Sorry but there it is. Come and live in Cameroon as a Zen Buddhist if you like, my own preference is to kill everything I don’t like the look of. (Incidentally, if you plan on using Oro at any point, according to the label “smooth and discontinued pulverisations are more effective.” Just a little tip for you there.) So, as a result of getting sidetracked with the hornet (dead at this point), I ended up leaving a wok full of oil on my gas stove, and in my absence the oil got too hot and caught fire. So I got back to the kitchen to discover my wok full of burning oil. It was quite a fierce fire with the flames rising perhaps up to a metre high. For the time being the fire was contained in the wok, and my kitchen is a concrete box, so it wasn’t too dangerous, but at the same time the cooker is fuelled by a canister full of gas, which is I suppose not the best scenario in which to have a fire. Anyway, I did what you’re supposed to do and threw a wet towel on the flames. I did um and ah for a while first, thinking the towel looked pretty measly compared with the massive fire it was supposed to put out. But it did the trick and (apart from writing off both towel and wok) no real damage was done. I decided against stir fry after that and made beef bourgignon out of a packet instead (Tesco’s finest - thanks mum and dad!)
When Grahame came round for tea, obviously the first thing I said to him was that I had had a fire and told the story in such a way that it sounded more dramatic than it really was. And immediately he asked a question that volunteers, and I suspect only volunteers, would find appropriate at this point. Before asking me if I was ok, how I tackled the blaze or if there was any damage done, Grahame asked me if I got a photo. After two years as full-time tourists, it seems we now view the world through tourist-tinted spectacles, seeing everything as a photo opportunity first and a real situation second. For my part, the moment he asked me that question I kicked myself. I had extinguished the fire that was raging in my kitchen without even the presence of mind to take a picture. What an idiot. We had our tea and Grahame gave me some photos of Grand Ka and the student co-operative day from my last blog. Here they are, along with a picture of my ruined wok (but minus a picture of my fire, for which I cannot apologise enough).

(3hours later...)

Forgive me if i just leave these as pile of random, distorted and unexplained pictures for now. I think if I continue trying to edit this post at the moment. I will lose the will to live.

This is the hornet that started it all.

Mr ruined wok

And from the student co-operative day: marching, dancing, and Grand Ka in action.

Spot the Idiot

2010-01-19T21:54:00.000-08:00

This time last year we had a big celebration at the ENIEG because the student clubs had elected their presidents. Many important guests came, all of whom made speeches. There was lots of marching and a free buffet.
Well, exactly the same thing happened on Friday, so as much as I love writing this blog, it might save us all a lot of time and bother if you just re-read last year's post and I can go back to watching NCIS.

Not really of course. Actually, this year was better than last for several reasons, which, predictably, I will now elaborate on...

For starters, the scrubland behind the college is now a football pitch, which everyone is very excited about. The "pitch" is of course a massive expanse of sand, so when the students played football we couldn’t see the game for dust, and I still have no idea what the score was or how the players managed to breathe. However, no-one seemed to mind and the new sports ground has been the rightful cause for much celebration.

Another difference between this year and last was the transformation of a certain Monsieur Kagalang. A kind, gentle and highly respected professor, Monsieur Kagalang was recently voted the best teacher in the college. He has a relaxed demeanour, an unblemished professional record, and he never, ever raises his voice.
So on Friday I was surprised to meet Mr Kagalang’s alter ego, “Grand Ka” (Big K) As you would expect from an alter ego, Big K is the opposite of Mr K. He is loud, lewd, and a comedy genius. Colleagues and students addressed him only as Big K for the entire day, and he didn’t once break character. He spent much of the day shouting random nonsense - most notably at visiting dignitaries, who didn't know quite how to respond to exclamations like “Oy! Her over there! She makes good boule!" and “Grand K is getting stronger! It’s a good system!” (By the end of the day, students had adopted the phrase “it’s a good system” as their own, and were shouting it to Big K and each other at every opportunity.)

The most interesting part of any Cameroonian celebration from my own point of view (even more interesting than a teacher going inexplicably mental) is the dancing. And on Friday the dancing was spectacular. Students separated into their three main tribal groups (Massa, Toupouri and Musgum) and took it in turns to dance their traditional dances. Two or three students would play drums, while the rest danced in a circle around them. All three tribes danced holding sticks, shuffling with very precise co-ordination of feet and bodies. The Musgum dance was more aggressive than the other two, the men occasionally jumping at each other and posturing as if ready to fight. (Pictures to follow I promise!)
It was wonderful to watch, and Grahame made the rather poignant observation that people here, without exception, celebrate their heritage with a pride and gusto that we westerners have lost. No sniggers from the back row and no teenagers complaining about how embarrassing it all is. What’s the British equivalent? I guess Morris dancing – which, let’s face it, is not cool any more. And much as I used to enjoy Wednesday nights with my mum at the folk club, where I watched many a grown man sing sea shanties with his finger stuck in his ear, you wouldn't catch me boasting about it to my mates in school on Thursday morning. (Strange that...)

Anyway, back to the ENIEG... Big K did not appear to belong to any particular tribe. He danced with every group, all day, stopping only to wave at the crowd before chasing after the Massa and Toupouri or running away from the Musgum men when they jumped at him with their sticks. And all the while he shouted nonsense at the important guests and dignitaries: “Hey, Délégué! Délégué! Watch, I’m a great dancer!” “Hey Your Eminence, Grand K is getting stronger. It’s a good system!” This latter claim invariably got him the biggest laugh of all. I have no idea why.

Having known Monsieur Kagalang for 15 months, I have to say that Grand Ka was something of a revelation. He was every bit the crazy drunk you would normally cross the street to avoid. But he was the perfect antidote to all the speeches, marches, pomp and ceremony, and as such he was a complete hit. At the end of the day he received the prize (1000 francs) for best dancer, and gave the following acceptance speech: “Prize for best teacher! Prize for best dancer! It’s a good system!” (big laugh)

And I remembered reading somewhere how at medieval carnivals, jesters would poke fun at all the important people and not allow anyone to take the proceedings, or themselves, too seriously. For one day (and one day only) the high-and-mighty had to take a ribbing while idiots were revered. In this way a lot of the tensions within a community could be dispelled through humour. It was, in the words of my French literature tutor, a “catharsis”. And it was also, in the words of Grand K, a “good system”. So I figured that Monsieur Kagalang had been selected (or perhaps simply decided) to fulfil a similar traditional role, to turn the normal order of things on its head - to play the fool, in every sense. I marvelled at quite how brilliantly he was able to do this, and what a good sport he was to throw himself so wholeheartedly into the part…
Erm...
Wrong again, Gurevitch. No, I am afraid the truth was far more obvious and (perhaps ironically) nowhere near as pretentious: The reason Monsieur Kagalang was able to play the drunken madman with such conviction was that he was - well, a drunken madman. Apparently he arrived at the ENIEG direct from a local bar where he had been drinking all morning, and he spent the entire afternoon out of his tree on bil bil. And so I learned, much to my disappointment, that the metamorphosis from Mr K to Big K stemmed not from the ancient spirit of the carnival, but from a bucket of fermented millet.
Still, he had a great day and he won 1000 francs at the end of it.

You have to admit, it’s a good system…

These Magic Moments

2010-01-13T06:44:00.000-08:00

It’s a good time to be back in Cameroon. The rains have been gone long enough that mosquitoes are scarce in Yagoua, and it’s the “cold season”, which means that for the next six weeks the heat will be bearable.
Grahame and Bronwyn are looking healthy and tanned after their beach Christmas and a 3-day trek up Mount Cameroon. Conversely, my Cameroonian friends all agree that I look much whiter and fatter than before. They say this approvingly, clenching both fists and bringing their arms up in front of their stomachs as if to demonstrate just how much fatter I have become. And I smile and say thank you, clenching my own fists, but for rather different reasons.
Various colleagues and neighbours have now seen some pictures I brought back of the winter snow (thanks Gareth for those). They were completely awestruck, and I have to admit that when you’re not trapsing through it the snowy landscape is absolutely beautiful. Like babies and camping, the British winter is a lot easier to appreciate when you don’t actually have to deal with it first-hand.
There’s not much to say about my return really. If I were arriving for the first time, I would describe the sand and the animals and the people and the houses and all the other things I’ve already described. As it is, I can only tell you that that’s all still here.
Things that have changed:

The director of the teacher training college has decided to get a move on with the IT programme and this has made me immensely happy.
My entire house and its contents are coated in a thick layer of dust and this has made me immensely sneezy.
One of my neighbours has bought me a padlock for my door, and I don’t know the names of any more dwarves, but it was very nice of him. He even put the padlock on for me while I was away. (And kept the only key. And went out for the night on Sunday. Which was when I got home. But that’s another story.)
Apart from that, everything is the same as ever, and I feel glad to be back. Glad to be where I am and doing what I'm doing. Glad that things seem to be working out. There was even a moment last night in the garden when I got a lump in my throat. I had been watching the fireflies on my porch. There seemed to be at least twenty of them and I watched their rhythmic flashes for a good fifteen minutes, thinking all the while about how lucky I am to be here, and to see such amazing things in my own back garden. I felt very contented, and very peaceful, but mostly I felt grateful, and I took a moment to commit the scene to memory.
And I promised myself that I will be more aware from now on of all these small and seemingly insignificant moments, that are actually quite momentous and beautiful when you take the time to enjoy them.
And I had further such profound and meaningful thoughts which I shan’t bore you with, but which made me feel quite overwhelmingly happy.
And then I realised that the “fireflies” were in fact just the light from the toilet reflecting in drops of water from my washing.
And I went back inside feeling a bit embarrassed.

4 more ideas for t-shirts (to be said into a dictaphone for maximum effect)

2010-01-08T04:59:00.000-08:00

“Où est mon cadeau” (Means “where is my present” and is what Cameroonians ask foreigners who have been away)
“On est ensemble” (Means “we are together” and is a message of solidarity normally said just before sodding off and leaving you to it)
“I stayed at the Radisson Hotel” (On the back of the t-shirt it would say “and now I have no money”)
Pocket cups (a joke for those who know)

This is Yaounde, capital of Cameroon. I landed last night. At 3000 feet, the temperature was 22 degrees. At ground level, at 9pm, the temperature was 30 degrees. Read it and weep, my UK friends. Enjoy the snow and ice. I promise to think of you every time I open the fridge.
The English snow meant there was a risk I wouldn’t make it to the airport on Thursday morning, so after a certain amount of deliberation, I booked in at Manchester Airport’s Radisson Hotel for a quite reasonable online rate. Highly organised and sensible you might think. I certainly thought so until, on Wednesday night, I handed my booking confirmation over to a confused receptionist, who pointed out that I had in fact made my booking for January 15th. So a bit less organised and sensible than I thought. We managed to iron it out and I got my night in the lap of luxury in the end.

Once more it’s been brilliant to stay in the UK. The holidays have been anything but dull, with not only friends and family to catch up with, but also two trips to casualty courtesy of my niece, who is now carting around her own weight in plaster of Paris. (Thanks for the added excitement missus. I hope you mend quickly and get a better cast on soon.)
As you would expect, coming back to the UK always makes me grateful for the comfort and convenience in which I have lived the vast part of my life so far. For the public services, proper sewage system, access to information, freedom of expression, equal rights. For that fact that roads exist separately from pavements, and you can take things back to the shop if they’re broken.
However, visiting home also makes me realise that I don’t come from Utopia either. When things don’t work in Cameroon (which is the entire time), it is tempting to say “Well of course in England, this would never happen.” Then you come home and it does. You wait for a train that doesn’t come, and the train company blames the bus company and vice versa, and so you queue up at the travel information centre for half an hour only to be “informed” that they don’t know anything either. I am obviously not trying to compare Cameroon’s non-existent infrastructure with Britain’s faulty one. I’m just saying that it does me good to remember that these things happen everywhere. Only in Cameroon there’s no such thing as an information desk, and people genuinely don’t seem all that bothered. Or maybe they are simply resigned to the fact there’s nothing they can do. Either way, travel over here is more gruelling, but also strangely more relaxing.

And speaking of travel, the next leg of my journey begins tonight with the overnight train, followed in the morning by a ten-hour bus ride. Heading to the station soon to battle the queues and buy my train ticket. Wish me luck!

Commercial Appeal

2009-12-16T03:56:00.000-08:00

The journey from Yagoua to Hull could in theory last 2-3 days. However, it is wise to add at least one extra day to allow for minor complications like train derailments or the bus breaking down. Therefore the journey lasts 4 days, including an overnight stay in Yaounde either on someone’s sofa or at a hotel. This time I stayed at a hotel. The hotel was next to the office of a businessman called Emmanuel. Emmanuel the businessman did not seem to have much to do yesterday, and spent the best part of his afternoon talking to me, and during this time he asked me for the following things:

To find him someone who would be willing to finance his business (which has something vaguely to do with agriculture)
To find someone who wants to make trading links with Cameroon in order to sell English products such as cosmetics, dairy products and food.
To find someone who wants to make trading links in order to buy Cameroonian products such as wood and cocoa.
To find someone who wants to build a factory in Cameroon with him in order to produce chocolate for sale in Africa.
To find someone who wants to build a small factory with him in Cameroon in order to produce various different types of soap for sale in Africa.
To become a partner, representative and translator/interpreter in his business (the precise nature of which escapes me)
To bring him back a Wayne Rooney shirt

Now. I am a teacher, specialising in arsy teenagers. As such I know very little about buying, selling or producing wood, cosmetics, groceries, dairy products, cocoa chocolate or soap.
However, so touched was I by his complete faith that I would find the solution to all his business-related problems, that I would like to make an appeal.
If any of you, readers of this blog, would like to buy, sell or make any of the items mentioned above, or enter into business partnership with a man called Emmanuel who works in agriculture (and perhaps in the first instance, give him some business advice), please, please contact me.

Failing that, do you maybe have a Rooney shirt?

Thank you.

"Oh, I can't wait to see those faces"

2009-12-16T03:41:00.000-08:00

A small cloud of gaseous vapour materialises before my eyes, or so it seems, and then dissipates almost as quickly as it appeared. “Strange” I think, and continue on my way. Not five seconds later, another cloud appears. I am momentarily confused. The cloud disappears, and realisation dawns. It’s my breath. Ah yes, I’d forgotten all about that. I exhale, and of course a new cloud appears. But this time… Is it my imagination, or is the vapour twisting and contorting to form a sentence? It certainly seems that way. And the sentence seems to read:
“It’s bloody freezing”.
Not only am I in a country where you can see your own breath hanging in front of you in the winter air, but now my own breath is actually taking the piss.

I am in Paris.
I am on my way home to surprise my mum for Christmas.
The temperature is minus four.

I got here at 6am, and with seven hours to kill before I continue on to Manchester, I marched up to the tourist information desk at Charles de Gaulle airport, demanding to be informed about tourism. How can I best profit from an entire morning in Paris? Where is the railway station? What exhibitions are on at the Louvre? Musée D’Orsay? Centre Pompidou? What’s going on at the Trocadéro? What’s the latest I should set off from Notre Dame to make it in time for my flight? Give me leaflets, give me timetables. I’m a tourist and I’m raring to go.
What I did not factor into my plans, however, was the fact that it’s bloody freezing. At 6:30, ten minutes into my Paris adventure, I found myself at the railway station, shivering uncontrollably and looking at my own breath.
And now my breath was saying “It’s only Paris. It’s very badly signposted and you can never find a toilet when you need one. Maybe best just head back indoors, eh?”
Poor tourist information man. I wonder how many hours of his day he wastes giving people advice they never end up taking.

It’s now 10:30, I am at my departure gate, where I have been since 7:30 and I intend to stay here until 12:45 when I board my plane. I have spent a day’s wages on a magazine and a coffee, and I have been the happy if somewhat bemused recipient of the following free items:

A booklet about a new film. (Looking at the glossy pictures, I get the impression the film is about Jean Claude Van Damme and some digitally animated pixies with machine guns.)

Two octagonal adverts made of cardboard inviting me to be “dazzled” by my “good fortune”. Apparently all I need to do is go to the duty-free shop. Frankly, the advert rather put me off going in there, as I fear there is a slim chance I might somehow fail to be dazzled by my good fortune, which would be disappointing to say the least. Incidentally, I received both leaflets from the same person at the same time, and have been wondering why ever since. Either:
a. she really, really wants me to go into the shop
b. she is subtly mocking me for having no friends
c. she wants to get rid of her leaflets so she can go back inside.
Two magazines published by Air France and one magazine published by Aeroports de Paris. Apart from a page giving the length, wingspan and number of seats on 17 different models of aeroplane, the brochures are fairly low on information. Unless of course the information you seek happens to be about what you can buy on planes and in airports. Anyway, here is just a selection of things you can buy on planes and in airports, in case you were wondering:
-The perfume Charlize Theron is wearing
-The perfume Kate Moss is wearing
-The jewellery Kate Moss is wearing
-The perfume a model dressed as Audrey Hepburn is wearing
-The perfume a male model dressed as a sailor is wearing
-A hermes bag with a dog in it. (You don’t actually get a dog. The dog is just for the purposes of advertising. I know because I asked.)
-The watch Leonardo DiCaprio is wearing. Although frankly, Leo is not looking particularly happy about his new watch. In fact he’s looking decidedly moody about it, whereas the other models were either smirking or sucking seductively on a lollipop (or indeed, enjoying themselves in other ways). So I have been wondering, too, about why Leonardo DiCaprio is sulking. Either:
a. he is gutted he just spent hundreds of pounds on a watch.
b. it’s one of those ones with a metal strap that catches your arm hairs in it. I hate that.
c. he just bought it at the airport in Paris, and is bloody freezing.
-A glass table lamp

A stick of chewing gum

Europe is weird.

One more perspective on Cameroon

2009-12-06T22:58:00.000-08:00

A quick blog to link you up with a slightly different take on things. Grahame's blog is brilliant. He's far more professional and journalistic than myself, and said recently that if a sentence has "I" in it, it's probably not a good sentence. The vast majority of my sentences are unashamedly about myself. And I do not intend to change. So perhaps a blog from someone less egotistical is in order. If you're curious about the fight between the tw0 teachers at the training day, Grahame's most recent post tells the story really well. I couldn't have put it better myself. Not without putting the words "me", "myself" and "I" into the story about ten times, anyway.
Grahame's blog:

http://anearlincameroon2008.blogspot.com/

4 more helpful translations

2009-12-03T09:51:00.000-08:00

“J’arrive.” Should mean “I’m on my way” Actually means: “Don’t hold your breath”
08h00. Should mean 08:00. Actually means: somewhere between 9 and 11. Possibly later. At any rate, before midday most probably.
“On va faire comment?”. Should mean: “What shall we do (about this situation)?” Actually means: “I will require money”.
“Ça ne va pas durer.” Should mean : “It won’t take long.” Actually means: “Don’t hold your breath.”

Things have dried up a bit recently – both climate-wise and blog-wise. On the weather front, we’ve seen the last of the rain, and I’m unlikely to see the stuff again before I get back to the UK next summer. On the blog-front, I’ve been travelling around more than ever. To say it’s been a whirlwind is both a cliché and an exaggeration. However I like both clichés and exaggeration.
So yeah, it’s been a real whirlwind.
Some highlights:
There was a 5-hour bus journey to Maroua spent sitting next to a “fou” (definition: man with senile dementia; loony). He was completely fixated with me throughout the journey. Each time I fell asleep he would nudge me awake, press his hands together and put them to the side of his head in order to demonstrate to me that I had just been sleeping. When I handed him a stick of bread, he ate half and proceeded to tear the rest into pieces and share it with his fellow passengers – myself included. Nothing about this man suggested that he was overly concerned with personal hygiene, and so while the people around him accepted his kind offer, none of them actually ate it. Later we stopped at a roadblock where I bought a bag of peanuts through the bus window. Peanuts, I reasoned, come in shells. Therefore, if I give the guy a bag of peanuts and he gives me some back, they will still be edible. So this is what I did. And what he did was sit shelling them before giving them back to me. I tried unsuccessfully to hide them, for some reason believing that a man with no obvious grip on reality might get offended if I didn’t eat the food which I myself had offered to him. But I needn’t have worried. He was quite happy to spend the next hour shelling peanuts and putting them straight into my bag.
There was Tabaski, the sheep festival in which each family slaughters a sheep or a goat and has a feast. Having spent Tabaski last year on a bus, I was resolved to stay in Yagoua this year and visit my neighbours, as is the custom. However, having been called to a last-minute conference in Maroua I ended up spending the weekend either in meetings, at volunteers’ houses, or indeed, on a bus. Grahame and Bronwyn stayed in Yagoua. They visited several people, who all fed them goat.
There was a recent training day in Yagoua, which was disturbed intermittently by:
· children crowding round the door in order to shout “nassara” or “Eliza” or “Grahame” or “Hokkam nogass” (Give me 20p).
· another “fou” who walked into the classroom muttering to himself in a language no-one could understand;
· a deaf-mute man wondering if we’d like to buy something;
· a violent fight between two of the teachers. I kid you not.
There was a birthday party in a remote village called Manguirla. 20 of us travelled there for an hour over dirt roads on the back of a pick-up truck. It’s a beautiful village complete with hills, valleys, orange groves, and a sorcerer who will tell your fortune for 50p by dropping a handful of rocks and seeing where they fall.
Finally there was a training day in an even more remote village called Roua. Two and a half hours over rocky tracks this time, on the back of a motorbike. Roua, like Manguirla, is exceptionally pretty and has no electricity or running water. Both villages, being so remote, boast the most amazing night skies I have seen in my life. Nothing I could write here could do justice to the experience, so I’m not even going to try. Roua doesn’t have anything so interesting as orange groves or a sorcerer. It does, however, have thousands of mosquitoes who like to hang out by the outdoor hole-in-the-ground-style toilet, hoping for visitors.
I have come to the conclusion that I really have it quite cushy here in Yagoua.

4 more reminders of home

2009-10-20T12:53:00.000-07:00

• Mashed potato
• Ulrika Johnsson
• A dog that does tricks
• The internet (at long last)

Sorry yet again for my cyber-silence. The internet was broken throughout Cameroon for over a week. Apparently the three main networks depend on a single transformer in Kribi, and it broke. And now it is fixed and I have an extremely long blog to post.

There remain a few technical problems to iron out at the ENIEG as well. We’ve come a long way, but still, at the moment, the success of a lesson can be determined not by the quality of the teaching, the level of engagement or any of that Ofsted nonsense.

No.
Lessons can more usefully be marked out of 4 according to the following criteria:
1. Could you get into the room?
2. Were there computers in it?
3. Was the electricity working?
4. Did any students turn up?

The answer to these questions is sometimes no, but on the bright side, it is often yes, and lessons are well and truly underway. The difference compared with last year is staggering and it has been great to watch my students learning to use a computer, moving the mouse around for the first time, typing their name into Notepad, and giggling as it appears on the screen. Having grown up with computers, it is easy to take them for granted, but recently I find myself looking with fresh eyes at them, and marvelling along with my students at the things they can do. Some people, however, seem a little bit afraid of them. I’ll give an instruction like “Click on the picture” and they will sit there frozen, trying to remember what clicking is, how to do it and why. If I show them where to click by pointing to the screen using my finger, nine times out of ten they will themselves point to the same bit of the screen using their own finger, and then become confused when nothing happens. In fact, I have had to reflect a lot recently about what it must feel like to be a complete beginner, and I think (I hope) my teaching has improved because of it. If I’m honest, I am enjoying teaching these lessons so much that I run the risk of becoming possessive over them, which is of course the opposite of what needs to happen. But for the time being I’m not going to push for anyone to take over my role, because I like it too much.
There has still been plenty of time for meetings, of course. I am currently working with other volunteers on a series of 2-day training sessions for all the teachers VSO works with in the Extreme North. (This is quite a lot of teachers. So no pressure…) We will take this training to the three main centres Maroua, Mokolo and Maga, and teachers from surrounding villages will travel into the town. We will also be running a 2-day workshop with education managers from all over the Extreme North. And finally, my new timetable means I am free Thursdays and Fridays, so I will be working with national volunteers regularly on these days on training and mentoring sessions, jointly planning and team-teaching lessons.
All of this training will obviously be a good experience professionally, and with any luck the teachers will find it useful. But also, it means I get to travel to lots of different towns and villages, which is something of a bonus.
So all in all, work is going well.

On the social side of things, earlier this month I went out rather a lot in Maroua, ate nice Maroua foods like pizza and grilled fish, and stayed up into the early hours singing and playing the guitar. Then a couple of weekends ago I went to Kaele. In Sid’s absence I stayed with a Peace Corps volunteer called Steven, who has been there a few years now. He has a well-trained dog, a nice garden and cable TV, which are all things you don’t tend to get over here, so it made a nice change. For reasons I have yet to work out, a random Arabic channel was playing re-runs of the 90’s fitness game show Gladiators. So on Sunday morning, in the middle of an impoverished African village, I watched Ulrika Johnsson smile manically at me from 15 years ago. And then I watched Wolf and Shadow chase Patrick from Slough up a rubber wall. And Britain seemed like a very distant and utterly silly place.
After Kaele the interest-ometer dropped a notch or two, as I’ve been in Yagoua since then. The excitement here probably hit its zenith on Saturday when I discovered potatoes at the market, took them home and mashed them up with powdered milk and water. With retrospect I should have saved them for Sunday, since I feel I peaked too soon and, frankly, the rest of the weekend was something of an anti-climax.
Another, slightly more exotic food I tasted recently was given to me by my local shopkeeper Hamadou. He delights in giving me local foods to sample. Some of these I like, and some I have yet to develop a taste for, but I always eat what is put in front of me, because he is a nice man and it would be rude not to. Occasionally in the evening I’ll sit outside Hamadou’s shop and we’ll share a juice or a beer. We did this about a week ago. I had just given him a huge bag of sweetcorn from my yard, so I wasn't surprised when he tried to offer me something in return. I was, though, a little surprised by what that something turned out to be. He disappeared around the corner and came back two minutes later with the customary bottle of beer in one hand, and a plastic bag in the other. And he announced in a very matter-of-fact way “I’ve brought you a bag of crickets”. Now, this is not something that anyone has ever said to me before, and I didn’t know if I’d heard him correctly, since I wasn’t entirely sure what he thought I might want with a bag of crickets. So in order to make sure I hadn’t got the wrong end of the stick, I asked a number of intelligent questions, such as:
1. “Aren’t crickets insects?” (The answer to this question was yes.)
2. “Are the crickets in that bag?” (Again the answer was yes)
3. “Are the crickets dead?” (Again yes.)
I had a feeling I knew what the answer to the fourth question was going to be, but I asked it anyway just in case.
4. “Am I supposed to eat the crickets?”
I was right about this one too. The answer was yes.
5. “But aren’t crickets insects?”

The crickets were deep fried and seasoned with salt and chillies, and actually they tasted quite nice. At the bottom of the bag, once I’d emptied it, were bits of leg and wing that had broken off, and I did not eat these.
I felt absurdly proud of myself, and looked forward to telling my colleagues at the ENIEG, since they like me to do “Cameroonian” things. If I am wearing a locally-made skirt or top, for example, or eating beans or cake from the street, they beam at me and say “Liza, you are becoming a real African woman”. Hamadou, on the other hand, is a bit less impressed by stuff like that. All I had done from his perspective was put some food into my mouth. And I take his side on this one. I wouldn’t be impressed by a Chinese woman eating a Yorkshire pudding or a Kendall mint cake, even if she thought it was an act of pure heroism.
So I hid my smugness from Hamadou and took it to the ENIEG the following day instead, fully expecting a pat on the back.

I sat myself down on a bench with two professors called Max and George. They are from the south and relatively well-off. And much to my surprise, they looked horrified when I told them what I'd done.
“But Liza, crickets are insects!”

4 more things to do in an emergency

2009-10-07T14:59:00.000-07:00

Bandage wounds using your clothes
Splint broken bones using branches from trees
Call an ambulance - oh no, there isn't one
Hope against hope that someone else was paying attention in First Aid class.

It’s September 30th and I just came in soaking wet from the rain. It’s been oppressively hot this past week, and although rain means mozzies and power cuts, it also means fresh, cool winds and concrete that doesn’t melt the soles of your feet. So it’s swings and roundabouts really. The temperature is currently somewhere in the mid-20s and, touch wood, the electricity is back on too. So tonight is a good night.

Nothing interesting happened in first aid. I watched while they showed us how to bandage and splint arms and legs, had a go at putting a sling on someone, got it wrong and went to sit down. Then later there was a free buffet.
The real news of this month is that the new volunteers have arrived, and there are around 20 of them and they’re all great. I’ve spent a lot of time in Maroua having meetings with them all then going out for meals, and now I have no money. Luckily tomorrow is payday, so I’ll be in Maroua again spending my salary on chips and proper vegetables – the ones that come from the ground rather than a packet.

Term has actually started and I have a timetable. Unfortunately that timetable is somewhat unrealistic, as it allows one hour per class, teaching practical IT skills to anywhere between 75 and 150 students at a time using 8 computers. So we’re in the middle of rearranging everything to allow for small group work. And when I say we, I mean I’m doing it myself and asking if it’s alright. There is now another IT teacher though, and he’s helping me to understand the system, so this year has started much more smoothly than the last. And when I say IT teacher, I mean a man who dictates pages of notes about computers (which I gave him), and whom I need to teach to use one so he can take over my job next year. So I’m learning to use the system properly and make things happen, and he’s learning about IT (and maybe later about interactive teaching methods?). It’s a good swap in my opinion.

I have also done another training with a group of teachers in Meskine, a little village outside Maroua. Similar format to last time only this time it was with more experienced, trained teachers, who were glad of the ideas I gave them and found it much easier to think of ways to incorporate them into their own lessons. I did the training alongside a new volunteer responsible for that particular area, and she was absolutely brilliant, so it seems Meskine no longer has need of my services. I think I’ll keep going though, just so I can watch her in action and take notes.

And now I have to cut this entry short and pack my things because I need to be on the first bus to Maroua in the morning. There’s a big meeting tomorrow about something or other. And then on Friday there’s a small meeting about something else.
(As you’ve no doubt gathered, it’s all very intense.)

Here comes the pun…

2009-09-09T14:46:00.000-07:00

I have a game called Hunt the Mozzie, which I play just before dusk, wandering around the house with a can of Rad in one hand and a copy of “Teach Yourself Shorthand” in the other. I haven’t misspelled Raid. Rad is in fact a Chinese fly spray a lot like Raid, only possibly slightly more brutal. (Similarly Samsong is a Chinese company that makes phones and electrical equipment that tend to break.) Teach Yourself Shorthand is a book I brought with me from England, thinking I might have time to learn shorthand while I’m here, and that it would be quite a cool thing to learn. I tend to find that if I squirt a bit of Rad into a corner of a room, it disturbs any mosquitoes hiding there. Some die, but many retaliate by flying around a bit. The Rad has a very fast-acting, powerful spray, so is good for shooting down these renegade mozzies mid-flight. Some escape, however, and find a bit of wall or furniture to settle on. Now, true to type, I’ve brought all these self-improvement books with me but haven’t got around to reading them, preferring to spend my free time watching the Bourne trilogy several times in a row in the vain hope of fathoming the plot. This being the case, I can’t actually tell you what is written on the front of my beginners’ shorthand book. I do know that there are a lot of squiggles and a picture of a pencil. I also know that the book is a good size and weight for hitting insects. As such, for those mozzies that I spot, whatever is written on the front of my shorthand book can be accurately translated as “You’re dead”. After a few trips round the room, squirting with spray and swatting with shorthand, the only breathable air can be found at the window, which is where the remaining mozzies tend to congregate. Unfortunately for them, the window is covered with wire gauze. The primary purpose of this gauze is to keep them out, rather than in. However, it also means that those who find their way indoors are easily cornered and I can shower them en masse with Rad. The majority of mosquitoes in my house die this way. There are those, however, who manage to hide and breathe at the same time. They emerge after I turn out the lights, and I hear them humming around my net as I doze off. I have no idea how they make it through the poisoning and the Pitman 2000. But somehow they outsmart me. (…I can feel a pun coming…) These are the remaining few. The survivors. (…Get ready for it…) They live on (…here it comes…) to bite another day.

Aaaah, I feel better for that.

I’m in Maroua. Again. Last week I was here to do some last-minute teacher training. It was highly enjoyable, in retrospect.
The workshop was designed to provide ideas for games and activities that teachers can use in their classrooms. Some of the teachers saw it that way, while others just played the games and then went home, no doubt thinking “What was that about?”.
The training lasted two days and finished the Friday before term started. So at the end of the two days, I gave each teacher a few stickers that they could give out during the first week to any student who impressed them with hard work or good manners. An hour after training, I passed several teachers at the market. I didn’t recognise them at first, but realised who they were when I spotted that the words “fantastique”, “tres bien” and “excellent” were stuck to their t-shirts. So I think we can be quite confident that the majority of stickers did not reach the classroom. Still, the sight of a gang of middle-aged men proudly displaying their “good work” badges was really rather touching, so I shan’t complain.
I did briefly go back to Yagoua. I even went to work and everything. I said hello to my colleagues, drank a juice with the secretary, had a quick look in my office. I then sat on a chair in my office, although someone had taken my desk out over the holiday, so it was just me on a chair, which felt odd. So I wandered round for a bit and sat on a bench outside under a tree. I was joined by some other teacher trainers. We discussed the holidays, what we’d done and if we’d enjoyed it. The head of finance was there. He has a name, but I don’t know what it is. Everybody just calls him “Head of Finance”. Or Chef SAF. He is a very calm and contented man who smiles a lot. He is a pastor in the Evangelist church, which he finds infinitely more interesting than being Head of Finance. In the absence of the director and deputy director, he was the man in charge.
Me: I sort of noticed that there aren’t many students around.
Chef SAF: No, not yet. There are a few. They’ve come to clean up.
Me: Are the others at a meeting or something?
Chef SAF: No, no. Nothing like that. They’re just not here.
Me: Right… So, erm. What is it I’m supposed to do?
Chef SAF: There’s nothing in particular that you need to do today.
Me: Nothing today. OK. So I’ll go home then.
Chef SAF: No, no. You should stay. If students come, you can teach them.
(Three hours pass)
Me: Well, I think I might go home. Tomorrow will there be lessons?
Chef SAF: Perhaps. We’ll see tomorrow.
Tuesday was much the same as Monday except I turned up later and didn’t stay as long. Also the deputy director was there. He is the man who does the timetables. He hasn’t yet done the timetables.
Tuesday was also the day I learned for certain that I have a new boss. There had been rumours, but on Tuesday they were confirmed. My director has been moved to Mokolo in the west, while the Mokolo director has been transferred over here. I was getting rather used to the old director so it will be strange working with a new one. Still, most people seem to think moving the directors about like that is a good move by the Powers That Be, and who am I to argue? I’m sure the new one will be very nice.

I’m now in Maroua again for first-aid training. This time it’s me on the receiving end. If I were teaching the course, I would probably plan lots of activities with people practising on each other and the like. As a trainee, however, I hope for lots of sitting still, minimal interaction with other people, and minimal obligation to contribute anything at all to the course of the day. (I’m beginning to see where those teachers were coming from…)
Will blog again if anything interesting happens in first aid. In the meantime, feel free to post mosquito-related puns in the comments section.

4 more explanations I have heard for electricity cuts in Yagoua

2009-08-19T05:48:00.000-07:00

Stormy weather has damaged the main cables
Thieves have stolen the wire and fittings to sell in Nigeria
Vigilante consumers have sabotaged the network in protest over high charges
The fusebox is knackered

A good thing about having sporadic internet access is that it allows sufficient time for things to happen. I logged on just now, for example, to find that the blog fairies have been in and done all my work for me. It’s great when that happens. When I saw it, I got all excited and ran outside to check my washing. Sadly, that’s all still there, with a tiny little note saying “Don’t Push It”. Fairies, it would seem, prefer IT.
My electricity has been out for a few days, and this morning I learned that I have been cut off for not paying my bill. Over the course of the day, and after a number of discussions, the reason changed and it turned out that my fusebox needed replacing. Now I’m no electrician, but I like to think, given a screwdriver and some rudimentary training, I would be able to distinguish between an unpaid bill and a broken fusebox. As a non-expert, all I know for sure is that I parted with about £20 and the fridge came on.

One good thing about having no electricity is that you develop an appreciation of how handy it is. (Lights, for example, are really quite helpful. They allow you to do useful things, like seeing.) I have also grown quite reliant on my computer for filling up the hours, watching films, playing music, typing this blog, etc. I had to resort to using a pen to write this one. The power is now back however, so I am typing once more and my pen is back in its box gathering cobwebs.
Another good thing about having no electricity is that you have to be resourceful in finding ways to fill up your days. If it wasn’t for my broken fusebox/unpaid bill I would never have found the time to clean my cooker, make myself up like a goth, or build a sandcastle in my back garden, for example.
While waiting for the technician to come round, I gave out the last of the sweets that Kathryn left behind. Among them were 15 lollipops whose sticks are cut into little whistles. The children really like those whistles and sound them constantly, never seeming to tire of the shrill, whiny noise they make. In no way do I regret giving them all out at once.
Backtracking a bit, Kathryn has now gone home and is, I believe, recovering well from her various afflictions. After she got her plane, I stuck around in Yaounde and had a lovely time staying with Tom and Julie and looking after their daughter Mia for a day or two. We played at falling down and hiding under blankets, I taught her to say “bird” with a Hull accent, and I enjoyed looking after her immensely. She may not have felt the same way, however, perhaps preferring to spend her time with adults capable of putting a nappy on correctly.
I came up north on the train in a sleeper car. Having been unable to get a sleeper last time, this time I was unable to get anything else. (I think perhaps the protocol is to ask for whatever ticket you don’t want, so that when they tell you it’s unavailable, you can buy the ticket you secretly wanted all along.) It was a 4-person sleeper with a mum and four children and me. The mathematically-minded among you will realise that this makes six. I shared my food with the kids and my bed with some cockroaches, and we arrived in reasonably good time in the morning. Since getting the bus up to Yagoua, I’ve had an uneventful few days, made interesting, but also slightly boring, by a lack of electricity. Which brings us full circle to the beginning of this blog.

Goodnight.

Kribi

2009-08-13T16:31:00.000-07:00

Kribi was the first place we visited after Yaounde. The beach front was empty and we were able to swim, drink and eat with no one around.

Magga

2009-08-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

Magga lake is a man made lake to the North of Yagoua close to the Logone River and the Cameroon/Chad border. It is inhabited by fishermen, cattle herders and ............hippo's!!

A chance to see hippo's close up was not to be missed and we travelled up to Magga and stopped in a hotel close to the lake. A Pirogue hired though the hotel and was going to take us in search of these large creatures lurking somewhere in the water and weeds. Apparently there are three family groups of hippo's in differing parts of Magga and our guides in the boat were going to do their best to find then for us.

Recently the hippo's had killed a couple of fishermen who got too close but we were informed that the hippo's would be scared of the outboard motor that powered our pirogue, a point proved later in the morning when we went full pelt at the head of one hippo who was swimming in the water just infront of a gap in the weeds that we needed to slip through!

Alot of the lake is more akin to marsh land with quite fertile soil and grass growing. It was not uncommon to be speeding along one moment then suddenly stop in some weeds and have several cows about ten metres away chomping away on lunch.

The boatmen with us who had been quiet through much of hippo hunt informed us that one of the hippo's had caught them out and sunk teeth into the back of the boat only a week or so before. Sure enough once pointed out the 2 big marks down towards the engine where suddenly obvious as teeth marks and a little unnerving. However when we found a large group of around 30 hippo's they managed to keep close enought to get one or two good photographs with out getting into danger.

There are many people living on Magga lake all living side by side to these big animials. In one photo I took I had hippo's, cows, horses and people all in the frame.

This village we passed on our way back to the shore is one of the permenant settlements and is home to one of the fishermen Chiefs. Most of the fishermen live in tempory homes moving when the waters rise durning the wet season. The Chiefs home however is built on higher land and is habitable all year round.

Boboyo

2009-08-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

Boboyo is a little peak outside of Kaele. It rises from the flat land to around 700 metres up. Lizzy and I climbed it after being given permission from the village Chief and with the aid of a guide, the local PE teacher. We were also accompanied at various stages by some local youths.

Boboyo is very steep and the climbing, though generally safe for a novice like me has a couple of "interesting" parts. The view from the top is exceptional and it really shows the vast scale of the land you are in.

The village below Boboyo seems small from the top. We took time to sit and take in the view in a pleasant cool breeze. A cave created by several bolders also provieded a space to sit in the shade, cool off and have a chat. It was still only around nine o'clock, we started climbing at seven thirty and this, according to the villagers was late in the day!

Logone River

2009-08-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

During my stay we went down to the Logone River which is around 15 minutes away from Lizzy's on the back of a Moto Taxi. The Logone runs between Cameroon and Chad, its size varying depending upon whether it is the wet or dry season.

Here our boatman bails out as we take a quick walk on in Chad

Lizzy's Yard

2009-08-06T06:07:00.000-07:00

This is Lizzy's yard. While I was in residence in Yags I managed to hang my hammock where I could get both sun and shade at different parts of the day.

It is rather a dusty little space full of lizards and washing!

Bilbil & Church

2009-08-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

We went to Kaele to visit Sid, another VSO teacher. We stayed with Sid for a few days over Easter Weekend. During our visit we managed to climb Mount Boboyo, drink the local brew Bilbil and go to church. All were extremely exhausting things to do!!!

We rose early for Church as it was due to start around eight. We had beans and omelet at a roadside hut on the way there. We took water because we knew it would be getting hot later in the morning. We were not expecting to be sat in doors for nigh on five hours!!!

The church was a small breeze block building with a tin roof, inside rows of wooden benches were jammed in. On the walls signs stated the areas the benches where in. The Women's Choir, Men's Choir, Youth Group and so on. We sat somewhere in the middle on the right at the back of the youth section. The room filled quickly, the last people to arrive was the women's choir. Hearing a high pitched wail to start with followed by singing and clapping one by one the women entered the church in a row singing, dancing and clapping till all stood in their rows ready to be seated. Each of the women were dressed in colourful clothes of differing styles but the same cloth ( I think the cloth had a printed mural from women's day in Cameroon). From what I could make out and understand it was a mix of local singing and chanting with hymns. They sang at several times through out the service and it was definitely worth hearing and seeing.

The service lasted around five hours ( as I said earlier) and incorporated around a dozen baptisms, several confirmations and Communion. The congregation was made up mostly of women and young people. During the service people came and went as the mood (or heat) took them. Half way through I plucked up courage to nip outside and get some air as unfortunately the building acted more like a sauna than a church in the hot Kaele sun. There people sat in the shade had a drink of water then went back in for more. Organisation was varied with people being hurried up by the steward to get things done due to the fact things were dragging on!! Singing and songs seem to be picked by the congregation and accompanied by several home made instruments and an out of tune organ.

It was certainly different to Beaconthorpe Methodist church where I attend infrequently!

After Church we went to the nearby hotel for a cold drink then wandered back through town via the market to see what was available. Although open the market was very quiet (most people were probably still in Church!). When we arrived back at Sid's we found that Charles had been to his village and brought back some Bilbil. It is a local drink that is made within 48 hours and drank warm. It alcohol content is unknown and general accepted to be like rocket fuel!! After a quick shower it was bottoms up!! As a guest I got to drink the most (thanks people!). It has what can only be described as a burnt and bitter after taste. You certainly feel the quick pretty quickly. It made my interest in Scrabble that afternoon rather limited. Sleep was required!

You can see below the murky brown liquid that is Bilbil. The white bit at the bottom is sediment.

Computers & Cameroon

2009-08-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

Lizzy has blogged about lizards but I thought I would stick this picture of a couple of lively little ones in. They are everywhere in her yard, climbing the walls, hiding in the kitchen, in the outside toilet and the bravest entering the house and sitting on the doorstep. I just missed getting a photo of one sat on my premier piece of Cameroonian footwear. Flip Flops!!! Everyone has them!

At the time this was taken I hadn't mastered riding a moto while wearing flip flops, walking on them in the sands of Yagoua is hard enough (you can feel the heat of the sand burning on your soles). They where bought for approximately 2 pounds in a little corner shop in Limbe and were worn almost everyday until I packed my bags for the last time in Yaounde and got a taxi to the airport. I suspect they will have been recycled and are probably on the feet of another grateful wearer as we speak

Goats (and animals in general) are everywhere in Cameroon. They seem to have freedom to wander and do as they please. This can be a little off putting when on the back of a moto taxi and they are just wandering in the road. These little ones are up to no good in the yard of Yagoua's central bar climbing walls to eat trees. Good work!!

However the truth is these animals end up on a plate and the evidence of this is never far away. Only a day or so after this picture was taken Graham, Sam, Lizzy, and I were sat in the same yard with a beer watching Barcelona in the Champions League Quarter Final while eating goat, fish and bread. May be the same goat??

Perhaps a more accurate synopsis of the evening was that Graham and I were watching the footy along with all the Yags locals (due to the presence of Cameroonian footballer Samuel Eto).

Sam and Lizzy not so bothered!!

Cameroon can be a hard place to take photographs in crowds. This is mainly due to mistrust of Westerners like myself and how we use the photographs we take. However here I managed to pull my camera out and get a quick pic of the organised chaos that is travelling by bus Cameroon Style!! Our bus stands moderately loaded with gear (there always seems to be space for another bag and another person) awaiting the announcement of tickets and boarding. Over the next ten hours the bus took us from Ngoundare to Yagoua via Garoua and Kaele.

At Garoua you can see Hippo's from the bridge as you enter town (they look like big rocks in the river) and you can get off for half an hour or so to get some food, if you havent bought any already as when ever the bus slows through villages or towns the windows pop open and people try to sell you water, hot meat, fruit, medicine, and local crafts. It seems that the people of Cameroon feel the need to snack and shop at almost every opportunity when travelling by bus, train, taxi or on foot. No journey is complete without a little retail therapy, bartering, a drop of water and some little kebabs. No such fun is available on the Trans Pennine Express!

Kaele is mentioned as it is the last main stop before Yagoua, which when you are on the bus comes as a great relief. There is still however another hour and a half (ish, possibly more) to go after that. Mentally the bus from the station in Ngoundare to Yagoua is a bit draining.

Imagine the thought of getting a bus from where you live to somewhere you know is far away. You then travel for what seems like forever. You get off now and again for a stretch, you take in the scenery, you laugh at the children who are sat in front of you causing their father trouble because the funny faces you are pulling makes them keep turning round, you fall asleep, someone falls asleep on you, people in the back argue about the windows and you have a read of a book. You really feel that the next bend will bring the end of the journey.

No. It doesnt. It brings Kaele.

A further hour and a half on the bus in the dark, something the UK Foreign Office advises against when travelling in Northern Cameroon is still to come. Its like travelling to the edge of the world and being told there is another couple of hours to go. Perhaps for you reading its a bit like my description in that it feels like it will never end. It does though.

Computers arriving !!! I took two bags and some hand luggage to Cameroon. In my bags I took a couple of shirts, some shorts, sandals, toothbrush, hammock and my Grimsby Town football shirt. On my travels with work I have always found my football shirts to be handy when striking up conversation with local people and this was the case here in Cameroon. When we climbed Boboyo just outside Kaele we spent at least 45 minutes sat at the top talking African footballers with our guide. Though my french isn't good enough to talk to in depth we managed to go through just about every African player in the Premier league and Grimsby's John Louis Akpa Akpro who is from the Ivory Coast.

I digress from my main point.

Most of my luggage consisted of computers to take North for Lizzy and the VSO. Like Kathryn Im glad I wasnt stopped though I did have a letter from VSO Cameroon explaining the presence of computers in my bag where they where going and what I was doing. On arrival I managed to be the very last person off the plane. The queuing technique and information signs of Yaounde Nismalen airport leave a little to be desired and I did end up in the wrong line for passport control but being last it didn't really matter. I had arrived and after spending eight and a half hours on a plane instead of six due to a cock up at Paris Charles de Gaul airport courtease of Air France. Thank you Air France. Your food is excellent you customer service is appalling to non existant. I cannot think of an other airline who would keep you sat on a plane with no information of what is going on for 2 hours and then be surprised when irritated people started to ask questions.

Guest Entry !!!!!!

2009-08-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

Hello!!

My name is Gareth and I am Lizzy's friend.

I visited Cameroon from March 28th to April 20th 2009. We spent 23 days travelling round the country taking in Kribi, Limbe, Yaounde, Kaele, Yagoua, and Magga. I have been meaning to put some pictures and thoughts on Lizzy's blog since I got back from visiting her and have been rather lax in doing so. Recent prompting has forced me into action.

First a little bit about me! I live in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, England. For those not so familiar Grimsby is on the South bank of the River Humber (Hull is on the North bank) and on the East coast of England, about half way up.

I'm a Merchant Seafarer and have been working at sea for the past 10 years. In that time I have travelled around the world and been lucky enough to visit countries in the Far East, Middle East, South America, Caribbean and West Africa. I have worked for companies that have spent time in ports and thus meant I have been able to explore a fair bit in the places I have visited.

Before my trip to Cameroon I had already experienced West Africa through my short visits to Nigeria and Ghana. I spent four days in Lagos, Nigeria and also spent four days in Tema, Ghana in which time I visited Accra the Ghanaian capital.

My experiences of Africa before Cameroon where mixed. Lagos is a large city where crime and poverty is very rife. It is hard for a traveller to be safe in Lagos and due to this my experience of the city was limited. I could not help but come away from Lagos and Nigeria feeling (fairly or unfairly) it was not a pleasant place.

On the contrary my visit to Ghana was great. Although not far down the coast from Nigeria (only Togo and Benin between them) the atmosphere was completely different and I was able to explore freely in a very pleasant atmosphere. Local people were very proud of their country and particularly their football team for making it to the World Cup that summer (2006) and were out in force selling Ghanaian shirts, flags, bracelets everywhere.

Cameroon, I was told was more Ghana than Nigeria. With that in mind tickets were bought and a visa sorted. After five months working in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean time for a trip somewhere warmer!!!

Guest Entry!

2009-08-04T13:20:00.001-07:00

Well, I am one of the honoured people who are allowed to make a guest entry on this blog (beat you to it Gareth! Your deadline has passed- better request an extension.)

Unlike Lizzy, I have had no complaints about lists, and thus will begin my first blog with one!

4 Things to do before you fly to Cameroon

Get hold of a map of Charles De Gaulle Airport- as the staff are unlikely to direct you willingly
Unblock your phone- new piece of learning for me, I didn’t even realised that phones were blocked- I thought that was just toilets and downpipes
Weigh your bags carefully, extra weight carries a hefty charge (managed to get a pun in there too)- carrying 5 lap tops doesn’t make your bags any lighter either
Learn to speak French- this one would have been especially useful to me

Well, I have finally arrived in Yagoua and the reality of Lizzy’s blog is almost surreal.

The journey here was long and arduous for an English ‘townie’ and someone with a tendency towards worry!

After leaving Manchester, I arrived at Paris (Charles De Gaulle) airport after just over an hour- with, quite frankly, not enough time to catch my second flight. The queues were long (several of them) and the Parisians were typically unhelpful. Fortunately, nobody else was in a rush and the flight took off half an hour late anyway.

The second fight was over 6 hours, but good food and entertainment was offered and I managed to take in 3 films and eat well- so the time passed quite quickly.

I arrived at Yaounde (NSI) Airport to find paparazzi lining the way (I found out later that the new Cameroon Football Coach had just arrived), but the excitement soon wore off when our lines were halted to make way for a long line of pretty girls dressed in long frocks, soldiers and men in suits.

Not speaking French, I just waved various documents at people sitting in booths and was nodded past, and, when I made it out with my luggage, breathed a long sigh of relief that nobody had asked about the 5 laptops wrapped in bubble wrap and clothes.

As I exited the baggage collection, there were several offers to help me with my bags (mm… my sister warned me about men like you) and I was pleased to see Lizzy standing at the end of the line waiting for me.

We spend the first night in Yaounde with Tom and Julie (who are also VSO workers) and their wonderful, 2 year old daughter, Mia (who very much enjoyed the balloons and bubbles I had brought in may case and who is coming through the babbling stage with noticeable words in French, English and Dutch!). Thank you Tom and Julie for your hospitality- it was a lovely welcome.

List Number 2!

4 things you find in the first class coaches on Cameroonian trains:

People selling things from inside the train (include potions and lotions with amazing healing qualities, and copies of the new government restructure- more about this later)
People selling things from outside the train (not literally on the train, I agree, but we don’t need to be pedantic here)
Cockroaches- yes, indeed- cockroaches clearly have no understanding of the notion of first class and much of the night was spent playing ‘was that a cockroach I just saw’)
Completely unusable toilets

Need to get the train? No time to do your shopping?- No worries. You can buy pineapples, bananas, plantain, biscuits, healing lotions, magazines etc. etc. and, interestingly, you can buy (yes buy) a copy of the new government restructure. Imagine, a hawker in England offering you a copy of Gordon Brown’s latest list of empty suits for 50p!

The train journey takes 16 hours, so these little sales interludes come as a welcome relief, especially those selling their wares from the platforms- you never seem to get bored of saying, ‘How do they manage to balance all that stuff on their heads?’

By the way, when I say first class please don’t bring to mind a picture of candlelit dining carriages with curtains and carpets. However, if you have ever travelled on the Virgin train from Doncaster to Cleethorpes, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what first class Cameroonian style entails.

List Number 3!

4 Things to note about Cameroonian buses:

They go, not at any scheduled time, but when they are full (and full is a Cameroonian term meaning: if somebody doesn’t fall asleep on your shoulder or pass you a child/baby while they open a window it’s not full enough)
Your name is called out when it’s time to put your baggage (goods, chattels, chickens and the like) on the top of the bus- imagine getting the 56 down Holderness Road (or similar local bus) and your name being called when it’s time to get on!
People don’t seem to like having the windows open, and shout at you to close them. Personally, given the choice between making it a ‘bad hair day’ (that sort of wind tousled, through a hedge backwards look) or melting in the greenhouse heat- well I know what I prefer
They stop so that more people can sell things through the windows

The 16 hour train journey was followed by a 10 hour bus journey and a feeling that I was becoming chair shaped. However, outside it was pleasant and interesting to look at: lush, green fields and trees, small settlements of mud huts and dusty brick outhouses, stray goats, women in bright dress carrying large bowls and plates on their heads and suddenly you realise- you really are somewhere different.

It was nightfall by the time we reached Yagoua, Saidou (Lizzy’s moto driver) was there to meet us and we took the short walk to Lizzy’s house. Street fires were cooking a range of foods, more people sell their wares from bowls and plates and the call of ‘La Blanche’ (heard in Yaounde) is replaced by the Fulfulde, ‘Nassara’. I would hear a great deal of this word over the coming 2 weeks.

List number 4

4 fond memories of Yagoua:

People sitting, talking loudly, laughing and arguing and watching the world go by
Sitting outside Hamadou’s shop listening to him talk to Lizzy in French and catching the gist of the conversation
Hearing the words ‘Bonjour/Bonsoir Nassara’
Little children running up to shake hands (mimicking what they see local adults do), giggling and saying ‘Nassara, Bonjour. Ca Va?’ This event is generally closely followed by the use of bacterial hand gel- as I don’t seem to have the same level of immunity as the locals!

Yagoua is bustling, but not thriving. People generally live in huts and shacks- which makes me wonder 2 main things: How do they manage to look so clean and well-presented? Where do they charge their mobile phones (everyone has a mobile phone)?

Lizzy’s house is basic from a western perspective, but luxurious in the eyes of most locals- she has running water and electricity. However, it’s just a concrete box, with an old fridge with a difficult door, very little furniture, and no real décor to speak of.

Washing is done in two large bowls outside (no need for a tumble drier though), all running water is cold (although sometimes that’s welcome) and she manages with a limited number of old cooking pots and crockery and I feel a growing admiration for my sister who faces each day with such a limited lifestyle with good humour.

List number 5

Ailments in Cameroon so far:

Eye infection
Tongue ulcers and mouth sores
Head cold/allergy
Travellers’ Diarrhoea

Well, it would seem that my body has gone into shock! Every part of me seems to be struggling to adapt and I am surrounded by various potions and lotions including Savlon, surgical spirit, bacterial handwipes, hand gel, Deet spray and tissues- what I wouldn’t do for a bottle of TCP right now.

I declined an offer, from Lizzy’s friend, of fruit from the tree above his shop (eaten at night by the bats) which he claimed would make me well. This may possibly be the case, but the previous day he had told me that an animal should be killed to welcome me to Yagoua (an offer again which I declined) so I erred on the cautious side.

List number 6

You know you have been in Africa a week when:

You stop trying to get the grit and sand out of your shoes
You have given up trying to keep your feet clean
You have lost about half a stone through illness (which has its plus side)
You just accept that flies will land on you and give up the fight

Places to visit/stay in the Extreme North of Cameroon

In the absence of a tourist industry, here is my short guide to days out in the Extreme North of Cameroon (the literal translation is ‘Far North’ but Extreme sounds so much better).

Maroua- STAY- at the Faith Mission and splash out on an air-conditioned room (still basic but luxury in comparison to most places). DRINK- at the Porte Mayo where you can sit in the shade of a parasol and buy gifts from the 4 or 5 artisans there. EAT- a the Baoubab restaurant and have the buffet- an odd mix of rice, spaghetti, Cameroonian vegetables and meat, hot sauce and of course ‘Maggi’ (monosodium glutamate in a cube or liquid form). SHOP- at the market on the main street, be sure to barter, A. because it’s expected and B because things are a lot cheaper if you do.
Kaele- STAY- Les Palmiers Hotel; EAT- by this point eating was pretty much out of the question for me. VISIT- The crocodile lake at Boboyo. A tranquil, serene place surrounded by an expanse of green on one side and small hills on the other. And, of course, watch the crocodiles swimming across the lake (and, insanely, people washing themselves and their clothes in it!)
Yagoua- STAY- at Lizzy’s house (no hotels locally!). EAT- at the Super Restaurant- I risked some rice. VISIT- The Logone (river) and hire a boatman to take you across to, believe it or not, Chad- no passport required. Remember to take food- enough to share with the boatman as this is expected.

It is now late Tuesday night, 4th August. We returned from Kaele today. Tomorrow is for packing and organising, sleeping and reading, gift-giving and saying goodbye- and collecting my suit (I bought some material in Maroua and a local tailor is making me a trouser suit from it).

Thursday sees the beginning of the long journey home with the early morning bus, the evening train, a further night at Tom and Julie’s and two flights spanning around 8 hours in all (plus all the various waiting at stations and airports) and, by mid-morning on Sunday, I will be home in Chorley.

List number 7

You know you are an English headteacher in Africa when:
You see a child playing with a piece of string attached to a sardine tin and think about how that would make an excellent assembly
You buy some beautiful African materials and think, ‘These would look good for displays, or for dressing up in the EYFS.’
You take out sweets and balloons for the local children but don’t give them out until you have done some counting and greetings in English and French with them (no lesson plan or objective by the way)
You visit the local school and wonder how on earth your teachers would teach around 100 children per class in a concrete box and no resources

So, what have I learned?

I have learned that there is a lot of poverty in Africa- yes, we all know that but now I feel I have learned it- first hand. In Kaele we met Charles, a moto driver and friend of Lizzy’s. He had recently come off his bike and had to stitch up his own lip as he didn’t have the money for a doctor. In Yagoua, now that the wet season has arrived, malaria is beginning to strike and there were funerals on a number of days. Lizzy’s friend and local shopkeeper has a young baby and we bought a mosquito net for her (for about £5)- something he could not afford- despite the fact that he insisted on giving us free biscuits and cakes to welcome us to Yagoua. These are but two examples of many.

I have also learned that my sister is truly a special person. She has given up a luxurious lifestyle, lives in a language that is not her own, risks her health and works in the tiring heat to try and make a difference in a place where someone has to- I know I couldn’t do it.

And finally, I have learned that African flies are faster than English flies!

Back to Blog (or Listless in Yagoua)

2009-08-04T13:20:00.000-07:00

“What? No list?” At the behest of one or two readers of this blog (you know who you are) I am going to limit the number of lists that begin my entries. Instead, on occasion, there will be a (hopefully even more predictable and annoying) pun of some description. This will come as good (or possibly bad) news to those who care about such things.

Well, here I am again. And after almost a year, I suppose it’s starting to feel a bit like home. Where everything once seemed strange and new, it now feels quite ordinary and familiar. The goats are still here, eating incessantly and bleating in a way that sounds almost rude. The children are exactly where I left them, milling about the place and still knocking on my gate in the hope of an empty bottle or a balloon. It makes me wonder whether they stopped knocking at all while I was away. There’s the familiar distant drone of the call to prayer. And here’s the equally familiar but all-too-nearby drone of a mosquito, infuriatingly difficult to spot even as it hums inches from my face. A little girl rides past on a donkey laden with sacks of grain, shouting “Nassara!” at me as she goes; an even littler boy tries to sell me beans from the bucket he is balancing expertly on his head; I sidestep left to avoid the motorbike heading straight towards me on the sand, and in so doing nearly fall over a pig.
Yup. I’m back in Yagoua, and everything is normal.

One thing has changed however. The long-awaited rainy season has arrived. The extreme north is greener, and in my opinion prettier. On the outskirts of town, sandy scrubland has given way to dense grass and millet plantations, and on market stalls, carrots and lettuce have been replaced with sweetcorn and avocado. The climate is a lot cooler, although it’s still hot by British standards. And of course, the mozzies are breeding like, well, flies. There aren’t swarms of them, but there are enough. Malaria seems prevalent so those of us affluent enough to have bug spray, fans and/or mozzie nets are making good use of them.

Also enjoying the rain, humidity and bites is my sister and travelling companion for the fortnight Kathryn. It’s good to have her around and hear her take on the place and the people. The pace has been pleasantly relaxed. We’re taking it easy, not dashing around trying to fit places in. This is partly because there isn’t enough time to travel widely, partly because the rain has rendered many roads impassable, and partly because Kathryn has managed to pick up a frankly impressive number of ailments (nothing too serious, I should add – for those inclined to worry.)

After staying one night in Yaounde with two extremely kind volunteers and their little girl, we caught the overnight train up north. The first time I did that journey I watched bemused from my seat every stop, as people did their shopping through the train windows. These days I’m there too, standing on someone’s seat and trying to get a good deal on pineapples. I’m still ever so slightly less graceful than the average Cameroonian, however – I bought bananas off one girl only to drop them on her head.

The following morning we caught the bus back up to Yagoua, sleeping much of the way.
Since then it’s been business as usual from my point of view – a night in Maroua, a little shopping at the market there, and a trip to Kaele and nearby Boboyo, where I finally saw not just one but three crocodiles. Not just a speck in the distance either –they were unmistakeably crocs. We could see them through the water down to the paddling of their feet, and there were baby ones that swam up to the surface occasionally then dived straight back down again, like tadpoles do in the garden pond. It’s always nice to go to the lake at Boboyo. It’s remote and tranquil, and hardly any of the insects will bite you. On the downside, it was sort of sad to be in Kaele now that Sid has gone. All those people who used to congregate at his house seem to have gone their separate ways, and I felt at a loss for somewhere to go and somewhere to be. It just doesn’t feel the same. (Still. Three crocodiles...)

At any rate, Kathryn plans to write her own blog entry, so I will leave further details of this past fortnight to her.

I do, however, have a couple of things to add before I go. Firstly, massive thanks are due once more to the Rotary Club of Holderness, and to the kindness of friends. We now have 8 more computers (5 of them newly refurbished and paid for by the Rotary Club) for teaching IT in the college and local schools, and a budget for badly-needed school equipment like chalk and pencils. More on that when term time starts again, but for now a huge thank you to all concerned!

And finally, I have a new neighbour, Bronwyn. She’s a volunteer from Canada so there are now 3 white people in town. The children insist on calling both her and Kathryn “Liza”. Not sure whether it’s because they can’t distinguish between the three of us, or because “Bronwyn” and “Kathryn” are that bit more difficult to pronounce, or because “Liza” has become synonymous with “white female”. At any rate, it’s quite surreal to stand back and watch a crowd of kids flock around someone else while shouting my name. Far less hassle than actually being mobbed myself, however. Now I know why celebrities hire lookalikes.

I will sign off for now, and leave you with the promise of more regular blogging from hereon in.

2 more pics of a bizarre looking insect

2009-05-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

It's not every day a praying mantis comes calling. I found one in my kitchen yesterday.

Worth a quick blog I thought.

4 more things you don’t expect to hear on a bus

2009-05-07T04:28:00.000-07:00

1. "Would it be ok if I put my chicken under your seat?"
2. "Excuse me, I think you might be sitting on my gun"
3. "Is that rain on the window? Or just sheep piss?"
4. "Driver! Stop! My millet’s fallen off the roof"

Yet again, my apologies. It’s been a while I know. I’d like to say I’ve been too busy living life to waste time in front of a computer screen. It’s true that I’ve been busy, but have in fact very much missed sitting in front of a computer screen, and have found living life to be somewhat overrated. It probably works out 10% interesting stuff, 40% waiting for the interesting stuff, 20% going to and from places, and 30% washing. It’s only when I’ve managed to condense my week into a paragraph that I realise it was actually good. (Can one live vicariously through one’s own blog?)
The long-awaited rain has arrived, and it’s brought with it a welcome freshness after an oppressively hot couple of months.
It’s also brought mosquitoes, stormy weather, and some prolonged interruptions to electricity and water supplies. These go some way towards explaining my lack of news these past few weeks. A combination of patchy electricity, holidays spent travelling the country, and actually doing some work, have stood between me and my blog.
The electricity powers the water pumps, so when that goes the water goes too. In towns like Kaele, where there is never running water, life goes on as normal. But in towns like Yagoua, there are huge queues at all the wells, bottled water is sold out, and nobody talks about anything else. Interestingly, according to my local shopkeeper, the electricity used to be cheaper and more reliable a few years back, and maintenance staff were better qualified and better paid, but since it was taken over by an American company, the service has got a lot worse. (This is an apolitical blog. I’m just saying what he said.)
The holidays were good. My travelling companion was Gareth, who came to spend a couple of weeks, and who intends to write a blog "guest" entry and post some of the cracking pictures he took. I’ll therefore not write too much about all that, except to say I met a number of policemen, swam in the sea, travelled in a chocolate-coated taxi, and saw some truly beautiful scenery. And if it wasn’t for the myriad reasons why Cameroon can be a tricky place to spend your holidays, it could be a real tourist hotspot. Gareth’s parting gift to me was a modem that connects me to the internet via the mobile phone network. This means I don’t have to travel 4 hours to Maroua to get online, and I am in fact posting this blog to you from my house in Yagoua. Top gift. Thanks Gareth.
As for work, well, first and foremost I have a massive thank you to extend to the Rotary Club of Yorkshire and Holderness, who have donated 5 very smart reconditioned laptops to the ENIEG. What was once a classroom for first year students is now functioning as an IT room, with 4 newly-installed plug sockets and 8 computers. Everyone is delighted with this, of course. Many of our students, and even some staff, had never used a computer before this year. The director is drafting a schedule for me to train up the ENIEG professors in IT basics this month, while the students are away doing exams.
Still on the subject of work, on Monday I was awarded the rather lofty title of President of the English Oral Examination Committee for the teacher training college. I have no idea what this means, or how it came about, only that it was announced at a meeting and a couple of people have since congratulated me. We had to examine the oral English skills of about 120 students in the space of 2 days. There were 4 of us working as 2 pairs. Students would come in, talk to us in English, and when they left we gave them a mark out of 10. Beats all that GCSE moderation nonsense I used to have to do in England. (Grading criteria? What are they?)
There was also a ceremony in honour of the director, in which people make speeches praising him, chip in for a present, then line up to shake his hand and say something nice. If I ever get to be a headteacher I think I’ll introduce this idea in my school. Any headteachers reading this might also like to give it a go. I'm sure it would go down well with Ofsted.
In addition to my work at the ENIEG, I recently did some training on lesson planning for experienced teachers in Maga – almost all of them far more experienced than myself in fact. Obviously my own training and notions of teaching are different from theirs in many ways, and I’ve never had to face the same challenges they do, on the low pay they earn. Frankly I was expecting it to be difficult. But they were extremely friendly, motivated, and open to ideas from myself and each other. It would probably be more difficult doing the same training back in England! At any rate, I really enjoyed it and I’m hoping to do some similar training next year.
Otherwise, not much to relate that I can think of. The school year is winding down. There should be a ceremony soon to open the new IT room, and another one to mark the end of exams. Then I'll be home to spend a month or two enjoying what I hope will be mild weather, and drinking fresh milk. Looking forward to seeing you all!

4 more things I did in March

2009-05-07T04:20:00.000-07:00

1. Went to a wedding
2. Marched in a parade
3. Climbed a mountain
4. Wrote this blog I never posted.

March 25th and I can’t help feeling I’ve let you down somewhat, blog-wise. If I could only do one interesting thing every week or two I’d have a steady feed of things to write.
Still, some things have happened this past month. The weather has changed for starters. Luckily Yagoua has its fair share of trees so even the hottest days are a just bearable 45 degrees. That’s hot enough though. The sun is so strong it bakes everything it touches, so it’s difficult to get cool. The walls and floors are hot to the touch, even inside. The fan blows warm air, like one of those dryers you get in public toilets at home. Everything is hot: cups on the shelf feel like pots fresh out of the dishwasher; clothes on their hangers feel like they’ve been on the radiator; the mattress absorbs heat all day so at night the floor is the only option. On the up side, the water is still cool. My day is one long shower interspersed with work and food. It’s also quite nice to sit next to the fridge with the door open. The freezer compartment is just big enough for a 5 litre water bag I got from Milletts, and over the course of the day it turns into a huge bag of ice which I hug when I get in from work then sleep with at night. Like a boyfriend only less complicated.
The day spent at Mount Boboyo then the crocodile lake turned out to be 3 hours climbing mount Boboyo, 5 minutes at the crocodile lake, just to confirm there were no crocodiles, then an hour at the Les Palmiers bar trying to cool down with ice cold pop. In 2007, climbed a mountain in St Martin, but there was a path and steps, and it got a bit slippery so I gave up and went back down. Boboyo was a bit different. Instead of steps there were huge boulders, and we had a guide, so giving up would have been too embarrassing. The climb was divided into 3 parts. The way up was unpleasant and very hard work, but with the promise of an exhilarating sense of achievement when I reached the summit. The summit was cool and breezy and had a great view, though was lacking in exhilaration. Finally the way down was, frankly, terrifying. Gripping on for dear life to anything is bad, and generally to be avoided. But gripping on for dear life to scorching hot rocks is a lot worse. Still, you have to do these things, otherwise how would you know that you definitely don’t like them, or indeed want to do them ever again?
My opposite neighbour Hajja got married this month. It was interesting to be at a wedding with the women and children instead of men this time. Much the same though – lots of sitting around on mats, only women don’t tend to speak French so I was a bit quieter than last time. Counting to 100 in Fulfulde doesn’t come in particularly handy at weddings. My adopted grandma was there. She’s great. Sat me down and showed me all the presents and told me in Fulfulde who they were for. The presents are put in a suitcase, which is itself also a present. She showed me one of the cases, and said "Dada Hajja", which I took to mean Hajja’s dad. I looked inside - high heels, tights, knickers, bras and perfume. Either dada means mum in Fulfulde or the people here are more liberal-minded than I have given them credit for. At any rate, I did my impressed face (I’ve been practising since last I wrote) and was sent off to be briefed on my duties. I was to be one of the entourage who took the present and flowers, alongside 5 other women. We all wore very pink matching outfits. I still can’t work out how to wear the skirts, which are a rectangle of cloth, tied in a particular way. I had to have mine tied for me by Hajja’s best friend. It turned out my waist was too big, and they had to extend the material with a piece of ribbon. In front of the entire family. Who found it hilarious. We took motos to the groom’s house, and due to the tightness of my skirt I had to ride sidesaddle – another terrifying experience. No pictures until I can find a scanner, unfortunately, and even then just a few very posed photos of us. Smiling in photos is not the done thing here. Anyway, the wedding went well and Hajja is now living with her husband up the road. Another neighbour got married this weekend, but I don’t know this one so well, so just walked awkwardly past, not knowing who was getting married to whom and so not saying anything to anyone in case I got it wrong. Good old British fear of embarrassment. I can’t seem to shake it, in spite of no-one here caring less what I say or do as long as I wear sleeves and stay sober.
Finally there was International Women’s Day. It was a day to celebrate femaleness in all its glory. It was a day to wear the official Women’s day outfit (complete with pictures of women driving taxis and building roads). And, of course, somewhat inevitably, it was a day to march. And march I did. (It was only a matter of time before I got in on the act.) I marched past the stand with the Lycée girls, then I ran round the back and marched again with the ENIEG staff. Marching is not as easy as it looks. I did it wrong at first, but then later I started doing it right. Not sure what the difference was between the two, but apparently I nailed it in the end. Not much more to say except it was my first day spent outdoors, and I got sunstroke.
And that’s pretty much it. Perhaps if other topics really dry up I’ll write a blog about my job one time – the main part of my life and the reason I’m here. But that would be a last resort. Luckily it’s the Easter holidays coming up, so there should be some interesting things to say. My friend Gareth is coming to stay and we’re going to do some tourism – that is, if we survive the 9-hour crowded bus ride through the hottest part of Cameroon. Will keep you posted.
Bye for now.

(Insert snappy, amusing heading here)

2009-02-28T03:21:00.006-08:00

This weekend, I went hippo-spotting in the town of Maga, on Lake Maga, a lake famous for its hippos, with 2 experienced hippo guides, both expert in tracking and spotting hippos.

And did I see any hippos?

Yes I did!!

Just for a change, I actually saw the animal I set out to see, and which people told me I would see.

I had an amazing weekend all round actually. Had to start late on Friday afternoon, because we had yet another big ceremonial assembly on Friday morning. Students start their teaching placements next week, so Friday was a pre-placement meeting much like the last pre-placement meeting, except I took a book this time.

On Friday afternoon we went in search of a driver to take us to Maga. Since it was Friday, afternoon prayer lasted a long time but eventually we met up with Abatcha, a driver who is friends with a shopkeeper we know at the market. Lucky for us he was available, since the other option would have been a bush taxi – i.e. as many people as physically possible crammed into/onto anything that hasn’t yet fallen completely apart. We passed 2 broken down bush taxis during the Maga trip. One had lost an entire axel and its passengers were all long gone. (Which is to say they had long since found a different means of transport, not that they had died.) Abatcha took 3 of us – myself, Grahame and Sid from Kaele - in a spacious jeep along pot-holed dirt track roads. The scenery and wildlife we saw was great, but probably the best bit was passing the villages. People living on the main tarmac roads are used to seeing cars, but along the dirt road, children would come running out to wave. When they saw that we were not only in a car but also white, some of them went positively giddy.

(Is that…? But how…? Why…? The answers to those three questions are probably best answered by email.)

I felt closer to a being a tourist this weekend than I have since I arrived. There isn’t really a tourist industry as such here in Cameroon, but there are people who visit for work or other reasons, and so there is tourism of sorts. Abatcha has something of a sideline going as a tour guide, and he takes his foreigners (“mes étrangers” as he likes to call us) to certain scenic spots where we could, if we wanted, buy things to eat and drink from people he appears to know quite well. There were quite a few carefully selected refreshment stops on the way to Maga. The only place we definitely wanted to visit, however, was a village called Pouss, where a volunteer named Odette lives and works. It’s always interesting to see how other volunteers live. Odette has taken village life in her stride. It’s a small place and she’s very outgoing, so everyone knows her, and she seems to know everyone by name and knows the latest goings on in their life and that of their family. She keeps 4 ducks and 3 chickens, so she has fresh eggs every morning, but she vows never to eat the birds because she has given them names. She also has a cat called Niwi. (Niwi is Muscum for cat, and Muscum is the local dialect of Pouss.) She doesn’t let people wander in and out of her house as Sid does, but she does let children into the garden if it’s for something useful like looking after the animals. If you met Odette for the first time, you would think she was a teacher. And if you saw her with the local children, you’d know she was a great teacher. It was nice to see her and interesting to see the village. It has high mud walls enclosing every concession, with the result that you can only see sand, and sand-coloured walls, most places you go. Our driver Abatcha knows people everywhere, so it wasn’t surprising when, after evening prayer, he disappeared for 2 hours before turning up with one of his pals, looking rather sheepish. Luckily Pouss is practically next door to Maga so we were able to finish the journey before it got too late.

While Abatcha was AWOL, we happened to see a wedding procession. Up front is the “bride price” – a goat – and behind, all the wedding gifts carried on the heads of friends and family.

We arrived, deeply apologetic, at Tom’s about 2 hours after our expected arrival time. Tom is the Maga volunteer and works with the local government there. He said that in fact things had worked out quite conveniently since he owns only 4 plates. So dinner had to be divided into two sittings anyway. It was a lovely meal cooked on a single ring in a big pot, using the few fresh ingredients that were available that day. Maga doesn’t have the same variety of food that Yagoua or even Kaele has. But the meal was wonderful, and it was nice talking over dinner and learning about the region from Abatcha before going back to our hotel.

And what a hotel! This was our room, outside and in.

And this is one of the gazelles who live on the grounds

There are also all manner of wild birds there, and some camels. The camels are not native to Maga of course, but the hotel owners imported them as a novelty attraction.

This is the bar, and just behind it – yes – the pool!! I’m going back to Maga. Soon...

So, then what? Well, a long shower (because the road to Maga is long, hot and dusty) and then to bed (because on the first night the bar was closed).

And the next day was the hippo tour. I went expecting to see no hippos. And for the first hour or so I wasn’t disappointed. We were taken around in a motorised pirogue, through marsh grass a bit like the everglades. I incorrectly identified a wide range of things as a hippo, from goats, to floating plastic bags, to a pair of shoes. (“Lizzy? How big do you think hippos are?”) Just when I was giving up hope, we turned a corner and our guide started shouting in Muscum, pointing to a distant object sticking out of the water. Not a plastic bag, and certainly no goat, and apparently a hippo. That moment reminded me of the day at crocodile lake – distant unidentifiable blotches that don’t come out well in photos. Only as we got closer, this blotch didn’t move. We eventually got close enough to see in detail a hippo’s head.
It was an amazing sight and, eloquent people that we volunteers are, we managed to encapsulate all our awe and wonder in a few choice sentences:

“Wow, isn’t it big?”

“Yeah, it really is. It really is big”

“I mean, I always knew hippos were big. But this one really is big.”

“I know what you mean. You think you know how big they are, but then you see one and you realise that they really are bigger than you thought”

“I wonder how big the rest of it is?”

“Dunno, but I bet it’s big”

And so on. Anyone listening in would be left in no doubt as to the bigness of hippos. And then the hippo yawned. I’ve seen that on telly so many times, and I never stopped for a second to think why they do it. I just assumed they were tired. Turns out it’s a sign you should probably get out of their way. So we left, happy to have seen a real life hippopotamus.

But then, about 15 minutes later…

You may not realise this just from the photos, but hippos are really very big.

We were incredibly lucky to have seen them all together like that. Tom’s been three times now and says this time was by far the best. It was also a good day for birdwatchers. I’m not one of them, but I was nonetheless able to appreciate the variety of the bird life we saw. I was so appreciative in fact, that I didn’t take a single picture of birds. Sorry.

So. What better way to celebrate a successful day on a boat than by having a swim and eating in a pricey hotel restaurant? And by pricey I mean 70 whole pence for a half pint, and six whole pounds for a 3-course meal. In the restaurant, we met the first tourists we’ve seen in Cameroon since October. They’re hunters from Lyon, so not conventional tourists, but still here on holiday so they count. They shot the bird we ate for supper. Just brought a load of perdrix (partridge?) to the hotel one day as a present, so were being treated like royalty as a result. The rest of the birds they gave to villagers. I don’t really see the fun in hunting, but there’ll be quite a lot of people around Maga eating well this week because of them, and they came to Cameroon instead of Canada for precisely that reason. I suppose if you’re going to shoot things for fun, you could be a lot less nice about it than the hunters we met in Maga.

Next day, we checked out and headed home. Sid was replaced by Karlynne in the car, so we went to Pouss again so she could see Odette’s chickens.

But first, Abatcha took us to visit the Sultan of Pouss. He is a traditional rather than administrative leader, and a powerful man. Visit him if you dare. There are rules… Leaving our shoes outside came naturally to us. It makes sense with all the sand. However when you visit the Sultan, you leave your shoes as far away from the door as possible. It means you collect sand in your feet then trample it over his rugs, but it shows respect, and that’s what’s important. Other rules are: never look the chief in the eye; sit wherever you are told to sit, and don’t cross your legs in his presence. We were told to sit on a three-person sofa, in the middle of a line of chairs, against the far wall of the room. We did so, not knowing where to look, so looking only at each other and the floor as we passed about a dozen men sitting on a mat around the Sultan’s wooden throne. Once we were on our sofa, there was a prolonged silence. Was someone waiting for us to say something? Would it be rude if we said something? It would have been helpful to look around and gauge the situation, but what if we accidentally looked the Sultan in the eye? So we sat silently, and after a while he started to ask us questions in turn. Only we weren’t allowed to look at him so didn’t know whose turn it was, and kept interrupting each other and stopping and starting. Have you tried to have a conversation with someone without looking at them? Try it, it’s impossible. Anyway, after he was satisfied, frustrated or bored with us, I’m not sure which, he told Abatcha that he would allow us to “film” (take pictures) outside his palace. As far as I know we hadn’t asked to do so, and I’m sure I would have remembered something like that. But permission had now been granted, so, film we did.

Then we stood about, wondering whether that was that, or whether we were supposed to go inside again. We stood about a bit longer then went inside again. Grahame sat in a different place on the sofa, which confused me completely since I have no sense for these things, and I nearly sat in a different chair altogether. Which I’m pretty sure would have been the wrong thing to do. But I didn’t sit there, so that’s okay. After a couple of minutes’ silence, the Sultan said to us that, if we had any questions, he would be happy to answer them. Damn. I didn’t have a question. I just smiled and said thank you and hoped that Karlynne or Grahame had a question. Silence. They didn’t have a question either. A very uncomfortable minute or so passed, my mind a complete blank. The Sultan said again that he was entirely ready to answer any questions we had for him, and now would be a good time to ask. The Countdown clock was ticking away. What do you ask a Sultan? Not a personal question surely, brothers, sisters, wives, all too prying. Ask about the nature of his job? “So, what’s it like being a Sultan?” “What do you do all day?” Probably demonstrate a bit too much ignorance and might also be too prying. Erm… Do you like yams? A bit trivial. Have you ever heard of the Beatles? How do you get the sand out of your rug? What’s your favourite type of boule? Nothing seemed right. Grahame and Karlynne were obviously having a similar struggle, and now our driver was getting stressed, understandably. His reputation with the Sultan was potentially on the line here. He said, firmly “It would be good to use this moment to profit from your time here in the presence of the Sultan. Nobody else exists who has the level of knowledge he does about all that you have experienced here today. He is the only man who can tell you with absolute authority anything you want to know.” We all nodded appreciatively, acknowledging the Sultan’s unparalleled expertise on all the things we were just on the brink of asking about. But this was getting very awkward. Karlynne whispered to me “I think we should ask a question”. I didn’t whisper back, and I think that was wise. In the end, I asked the Sultan how old his palace was. Only I asked using “Quel âge”, which you only really use for people and maybe pets. It was a bit like asking how long the palace had been alive, or when it was born. It sounded silly. So Karlynne corrected me and the Sultan gave me an answer. I have no idea what that answer was. I was just extremely relieved at having asked a question, and that was enough for me. No answer necessary, thank you very much. Then after he stopped answering I tried to do an impressed face, and we sat in silence a bit longer. I had an overwhelming desire to giggle out of sheer embarrassment. I didn’t, but my memory of what it’s like to be 12 has been very much refreshed today. Abatcha asked a follow-up question, listened to the answer, did a more genuine impressed face, and then said that unless we had any more questions ourselves (we didn’t) maybe we should go. And we went. We emerged relieved and unharmed into the light of day. When visiting a Sultan, always prepare a list of questions in advance. It’s obvious when you think about it.

We visited Odette again and I played with Niwi the cat, then we went to look at the closest thing I’ve seen to a museum.

This is it.

Those domed buildings are traditional houses and the whole enclosure is a traditional concession. What I’ve been calling traditional houses or huts up to now are in fact just called houses here, while these domes are the genuine traditional houses. No-one lives in these any more. They built these ones just to educate tourists. And blog readers. Prepare to be educated.

The houses are built over 6 months out of a mixture of grass, sand and cow dung, and they are built in stages, each stage taking 4 days – half a day to build and the rest of the time to dry out.

There is an enormous clay pot in the middle of the concession, for storing grain. In the first wife’s house is a smaller grain pot (grénier), a fire for cooking, a bit of floor sectioned off for animals to sleep, and another bit for the wife to sleep in. The second wife doesn’t have it so good. Just a room and a pot for her. There was no space in the museum for a third wife, fourth wife, etc. But their houses would be the same as the second wife’s. The children would sleep in the same hut as their mother, normally, but probably if there was a close bond between the wives it wouldn’t matter which child slept where. The father’s hut had an area for all the big animals to sleep in and an area for him to sleep next to them. People slept either on grass mats on the floor, or on traditional beds made of some sort of cane. Annexed onto the father’s house was a chamber where the whole family would hide if there was an attack. The father would cover the doorway with a specially made shield woven so thickly and tightly out of grass that not even an arrow could break it. The house entrances all had antelope horns, sticking out above the arch, onto which the doors were hung – the doors being a bit like curtains made of thin sticks tied together.

In spite of the baking hot sun, the houses were all very cool inside, probably down to their height and lack of windows. An ancient and highly effective air conditioning system. Being in a traditional house was like being in a cave. There were even bats hanging from the roof and swooping down if we made too much noise.

The doorways, incidentally, are shaped like this:

The houses are designed to be climbed,

like this:

Uncovered, the roof looks like this:

and it leaves a circle of light on the wall so you can pretend to be in a religious painting, like this:

If you ignore the tea stain on my t-shirt, I think you’ll find I make a rather convincing saint.

So, that’s that. I have been working, honest, it’s just that it’s more fun to write about the other stuff. It’s been a great few weeks, and my run of bad luck on the animal front seems to have come to an end. Which is why after posting this blog I’m going off to Kaele to stay with Sid and try again on the crocs. Maybe we’ll even venture into the hills and look for a monkey.

Wish me luck…

4 more images evoked by the word “restaurant”

2009-02-28T03:09:00.004-08:00

1. Elegant décor

2. Maybe the odd candle

3. Smart waiters bustling about

4. Food. From a menu.

Today we went to the Cockatier, and if you're as childish as me you'll find that funny. Normally the place makes its money as a bar (selling, like all bars, 2 types of beer, 4 types of pop, and possibly whiskey in sachets) but it occasionally ventures into doing food, given 2 days’ warning. Tables are outside on the sand under straw shelters. And our smart waiter? He was about 14, wearing a ripped shell suit, and at no point, by any stretch of the imagination, did he bustle. Two types of meal had been prepared - goat offal soup and cow offal soup - and the dishes were distributed completely at random, so we didn’t choose so much as guess what we were eating. I got cow. Hoof, and other non-identifiable body parts. Sludgy, fatty, white nondescript globules of who-knows-what, full of sand, in a runny brown liquid with a dishwater aftertaste. (This is not just food…)

Frankly, I can say with absolute confidence that today’s meal was the least pleasant thing I’ve ever eaten on purpose.

But there are people starving in Africa. And if that fact is enough to guilt-trip you into eating soggy mash back in England, imagine what it’s like when you’re actually in Africa. Plus, according to Mamoudou in Yaounde, a meal is like a gift. If you don’t want to insult anyone, you have to eat it. (The meal that is. I don’t want you thinking Cameroonians go around eating gifts.) Luckily my parents, and the dinner ladies at Lambwath Primary, taught me to eat things even if I didn’t like the idea (or indeed, the taste) of them. Where I’ve written “teaching”, some people may prefer to substitute the identical word “forcing”. It’s your call. At any rate, I learned a trick at Lambwath for situations like this: Pretend you’re eating pizza. Pretend it’s the nicest pizza ever, and don’t look up until your plate is clean. Works every time. You may feel a little ill afterwards but that’s okay, it’s a small price to pay to get the dinner ladies off your back. (Or in this more recent grown-up case, not offend anyone.) So, back to the restaurant, and having forced down my cow offal pizza, followed by an awful lot of grapefruit pop, I allowed myself to look up.

And what did I see? Satisfied smiles? Full bellies? Er… Try 23 disgruntled Cameroonians, grimacing and pushing offal round a plate. Comments were flying around such as “What are you trying to do, poison us?” “I’d swear she fished this stuff out of the bin” and “My dog wouldn’t eat this crap”. Further criticisms pertained to the woman’s marital status. In Cameroon, a man is entitled to send his wife back if she can’t cook. He forfeits whatever “bride price” he paid for her, but at least he doesn’t have to eat her food. It’s pretty much the biggest insult you can pay a woman and reduces her social standing. So lots of the comments implied that this should, would, or already did happen to the cook in question. Basically, the general and quite forcefully expressed consensus was that this was a rubbish meal. And then I heard my name at the start of a sentence. And that sentence went like this: “Elizabeth, you have already eaten your food.” It was Mme Fongang, studying, in turn, me and my empty plate, and she did not look impressed.

I replied “Yes I have”, feeling a bit embarrassed.

Mme Fongang: But it’s horrible! Did you like it? (said with an incredulous and disdainful look)

I didn’t know how to respond to this. To say I liked the food would definitely go against the grain, and make me look odd. It would also be a lie. But to say I didn’t like it would make me look like someone who goes around eating food they don’t like, and therefore odd. It’s catch 22. Should I explain about the pizza trick? The starving Africans? My fear of dinner ladies?

I settled on “I’ve never eaten hoof before and I thought it would be different” Not exactly a lie so far as I’m aware, and it conveniently sidesteps the question of whether I think the food is horrible.

Mme Fongang: But don’t you think the food is horrible?

Damn.

Me: Yes

What happened to a meal being like a gift? (Mamoudou you have a lot to answer for.)

Had it been a restaurant back home the waiter would have turned up to ask if we were enjoying our meal, and we would have replied in unison that it was lovely. However, it wasn’t a restaurant back home, and the waiter wasn’t remotely interested in our dining experience. To be fair, neither are most English waiters, but at least they have the decency to fake it. His lack of feigned concern didn’t stop him getting a tirade of abuse from everyone present, however, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, despite his churlish refusal to bustle.

Here we all are, looking decidedly chirpy. Little did we know…

But today wasn’t really about restaurants. Or offal. Today we were at the sport stadium. Today was National Youth Day. The day the whole of Cameroon has had another 3 days off school for. A day to celebrate the nation’s young people in general, and their ability to march in particular. It started, as most things do, with the raising of the flag and the singing of the national anthem. There followed a recorded speech by Cameroon’s leader Paul Biya. It was an optimistic message explaining all the developments taking place in Cameroon right now, particularly the new facilities in all the schools. (We are looking forward to seeing those.) After that there were dance competitions, then wrestling competitions, between the schools, and then every school and club in the entire Yagoua district marched past the stands. They looked dazzling in their bright, clean uniforms, and they had clearly been practising marching. A lot. The spectators would applaud if a school was particularly good at marching, and remained politely silent if it wasn’t. I’m proud to say the ENIEG got an impressive 5 rounds of applause. Grahame took a picture of some majorettes who were wearing outfits with Paul Biya’s face printed onto them. In the background you can make out a local school.

More pictures of Youth Day.

The ENIEG marched brilliantly. They won a marching prize.

(Reservoir Dogs, the musical…)

This school was quite good at marching

The students are good, patriotic students who have made their school and their families proud.

These children were really rubbish at marching.

Their eyes have been obscured to protect their identity.

As an ENIEG teacher, I got to sit in the stands, on a chair with my name on it. I didn’t realise this til after the ceremonies were over, however, and instead sat at the back squeezed up on a bench. Looking at the seating labels later, I saw that I would have been in front of a man who used to rank highly in the army, and who has since gone insane. He still gets invited to things, due to his high rank, but people do their best to ignore him when he’s there, due to his insanity. It’s a system that seems to work.

Other people in the stands were ENIEG bosses, local politicians and people wandering round wearing “protocol” badges, telling people where to sit and wiping their seats clean with tissues. (I used the word “seats” instead of “chairs” due to the ambiguity inherent in the word “seats”. Can’t seem to make a proper joke out of it, though. What a waste.)

And that’s it for National Youth Day. If I was better at writing, and this was a book, I’d remember that from your perspective it’s probably more interesting to read about a national day full of festivities than about a crap meal in a restaurant. But I’m not and it’s not, and I’ve been to so many ceremonies I don’t want to write about them any more. On the other hand, the last time I had hoof in a restaurant was - well, probably McDonalds at Christmas. But you get my point.

4 more reasons why I have sunburn

2009-02-28T00:47:00.000-08:00

Because Kaele’s population is predominantly Christian and so has a permissive attitude towards vest tops.
Because I went to Kaele and wore a vest top.
Because when you expose pasty white skin to the sun for extended periods of time and don’t use suncream, it tends to burn.
Because I’m an idiot.

On balance, I blame the entire Christian population of Kaele for my current predicament.

Kaele was lovely by the way, but I’ll tell you about that later. We’ve got Bilingualism Day to get through first. Shouldn’t take long since I missed it.

The first mistake I made was turning up on time when everyone knows “Start at 8” means “Set your alarm for 9-ish”. With me being so early (i.e. on time), I was put in the staffroom. Not like an English staffroom, with biscuits and Kenco. This was a concrete box with chairs in it and a sink in the corner. Luckily I’d suspected there might be time to kill and brought a book to read. Right outside the staffroom door, the stage was being set up ready for the big event, so the assistant director shut the door to let me get on with my reading undisturbed. That was my second mistake, letting him shut me in, because once the door was closed, he forgot I was there. At some point, suddenly and without warning, the first speech began, and then all manner of speeches, songs, dances and sketches were being performed on stage right outside the staffroom door. For 5 hours. Had I emerged at any point I would at best have disrupted the performance and at worst hit a dancing child with a solid steel door. I opted to stay where I was until someone remembered I was there and came to fetch me at a quiet moment. No-one remembered. No-one fetched. Most of the shutters were locked too, but there was one open window, through which children were staring at me like some kind of circus sideshow. I asked a number of them to fetch an adult. No-one fetched an adult. They did fetch bottles though. A steady stream of bottles. And they banged them on the wall until I filled them with water from the tap. For five hours. I escaped at 2pm in a bit of a bad mood.

Now, all this talk of sitting in rooms and handing out water might sound very exciting, but trust me, life here isn’t always such a roller coaster. Only the edited highlights of my week find their way onto this blog.

There was a cultural evening, but I boycotted it in a huff. VSO were in Yagoua for meetings so I figured I’d skip the culture and get a lift to Kaele in their big air-conditioned jeep.

And Kaele, like I say, was lovely. There are 2 VSO volunteers there and 2 Peace Corps volunteers as well, and they all took me for a night on the town. Well, a night on the village at any rate. Arriving on Friday was interesting. It was market day, so the whole place was very animated. Which is a polite way of saying that people were drunk. Drinking in Kaele is more widespread and less of a secret than in Yagoua. There is a local drink called bil-bil, made with fermented millet, that tastes like beer mixed with vinegar and warmed up in a pan. I didn’t take to it at all. Luckily, people drink bil-bil from a single calabash, which is passed around the group. This meant so long as I put the calabash to my lips and looked appreciative, I was seen to be drinking and no further questions were asked. I suspect that others in our group had the same idea, however, since the bil-bil seemed to last an unusually long time. After the bar we went back to Sid and Karlynne’s concession, where they live in houses directly opposite each other. The arrangement works well – Sid cooks for the entire neighbourhood, Karlynne washes up, and the neighbours do odd jobs. Sid grew up in a large family and is happy living in close proximity with others. His front door is rarely closed. While I admire this in him, I am also glad that I was placed in Yagoua where I have a wall, lockable gate and earplugs. On the second day, I spent the morning with neighbours. I played with their dog for ages while they all stared as if it was the strangest thing they’d ever seen. Later, more volunteers trickled in – 12 of us in total, and Sid cooked soup on the basis that, if more people showed up, he could just keep adding salt water to it. More people did show up. Two children parked themselves on a mat and he put some soup in cups for them, then a couple of neighbours dropped by on the off chance. (I fed my neighbours pasta once. They haven’t been back since.)

It was great to socialise with the other volunteers somewhere that wasn’t Maroua. In Maroua we eat fish and try to think of things to say, but at Sid’s we played word games and charades, and I had my guitar so we had a sing-song. I was pleased when my ode to Michael Winner went down well, in spite of nobody knowing who he is.

The third and final day was Sunday, and we all doubled up on motos and travelled 20 minutes down the road to Boboyo to see a reservoir where crocodiles have made a home for themselves, and where people swim and do their washing regardless. This is what it’s all about. Africa. The great outdoors. Massive animals with big teeth. We were there for 2 hours, and during that time I saw the following 3 things:

A ripple in the middle of the lake that could have been caused by a crocodile;
A tiny blotch in the distance that was apparently crocodile eyes;
Something resembling a small rock, which might well have been part of a crocodile.

Nature programmes have a lot to answer for. I’m going to make a real-life nature programme in which nothing at all happens ‘cos it’s a bit windy, or sunny, or cloudy, or there are leaves on the line. Then I’m going to go to the zoo and take pictures of animals.

Anyway, I left Kaele having had a brilliant time, crocs or no crocs, and feeling very grateful indeed that Yagoua has running water. In Kaele they have drains but the water tower is still under construction. This means you can have a shower in the bathroom but you have to pour water on yourself from a cup. You can flush the toilet but only by filling the cistern with water from the well. Rumours are spreading that Kaele will have water by this time next month. I hope it’s true, because it will make a huge difference during the hot season. It’s already around 40 down there, even at night, and will heat up to 50-55 soon enough.

And on that ominous note, I leave you with some pics of Kaele. Here’s Sid’s open door policy in action.

On the floor, very tired and hot volunteers on a mat after the lake, and at the table, a Peace Corps volunteer, 2 of Sid’s neighbours, and one random man who came round because he’d heard there was a guitar in town. The neighbour whose face you can see is Alexi. He has since proposed to me via Sid. Apparently he “likes my instrument”.

The very picturesque lake at Boboyo, and some crocodiles swimming in it somewhere apparently.

Maga next week then. Maybe a blurred picture of a hippo’s ear coming your way soon.

Bye til then.

4 more ways to spot a tourist in the Extreme North

2009-01-31T07:15:00.000-08:00

1. The incessant photo-taking
2. The lack of haggling skills
3. The fact that we go places for no apparent reason
4. We’re white, obviously

It’s been fun having other volunteers here. Sid and Karly came from Kaele with a friend of theirs, Charles. Sid had decided to treat Charles to his first ever journey out of Kaele. And there was a third volunteer, Heide, who was visiting from a town called Mouda not far from Kaele. Mostly we did the same stuff as usual – watched a film on the computer, went out for barbecue chicken – only it was nice to have more nassaras around, and to show off the town a little bit. We are spoiled here. None of the other three have running water, even in the garden. On Saturday, we had a more touristy day, and took three motos a few miles up the road to the Cameroon-Chad border. The border is formed by the Logone River. In the rainy season it’s vast, but at the moment it’s relatively narrow. You can hire a pirogue - a long boat a bit like a punt or gondola - and go for a boat ride. Most people taking a pirogue will be on their way somewhere but it’s not completely unknown for people to hire one for fun. We spent an hour or so on the water. It’s a really beautiful and tranquil place, full of animals – wading birds and frogs mostly – and people fishing or working the land. It’s the Africa you see on TV. There are even hippos there (although I didn’t see any. I never do). Half way through the boat ride, we crossed over and spent some time on the Chad side. So technically, I have now been to Chad. Most people would say stepping onto the river bank for 5 minutes before the border police arrive doesn’t count. But I’ve been to Chad and I’m sticking with that story. Box ticked. Unfortunately, there was no “Welcome to Chad” sign to prove it. So we made one.

It’s a bit like a group of Russians getting a train to Paragon station, writing Hull on the ground with crisp packets, and taking a load of photos of it before climbing back on the train and leaving again. It’s distinctly odd when you think about it.
When not with volunteers this weekend I’ve been practising my four Fulfulde greetings on people at the market (Jam na – Hello. Jam bandu – how’s it going. Jam sare – how’s your house. And nai pe wal – how are you finding the cold. The answer to all three of these questions is "jam koodume"). I’ve also been to visit my “grandma” to give her a jumper from England. She’s an amazing woman by all accounts. It was nice to be able to give her something. And, strange as it seems to me, people really do feel the cold here. So it was a good present.
And now it’s business as usual. I dare say nothing overly exciting will happen this week, so I’ll sign off here and post this blog in Maroua on Friday. I’ll leave you with a few more pictures of Chad. Byeee.
(P.S. I was right. Nothing of interest has happened since Sunday.)

4 more things you can do during a speech

2009-01-31T05:48:00.000-08:00

1. Count the number of words in the speech
2. Make up a song about speeches
3. Over the course of the speech, slowly edge your chair towards the exit
4. Make regular mental notes of the position of the sun and calculate the number of speeches left before nightfall

It’s been a big week for the ENIEG. The various student clubs have (…drumroll please…) elected their presidents. For reasons I haven’t yet entirely fathomed, this is a huge deal, and warranted a grand ceremony complete with inspectors and political bigwigs. Possibly because it coincided with Obama's inauguration. Classes were cancelled on Tuesday so that the ENIEG’s 500-odd students could spend the day cleaning the grounds and classrooms.
We’ve had a number of meetings, presentations and ceremonies since I arrived in October. They’re something of a mainstay of ENIEG life, yet I haven’t really spoken about them. So here’s a rundown of Wednesday. It’s the same format as most meeting days (speeches, seating plans, protocol), but with added fun stuff and VIPs.
At 10am, the preparations began – clubs got together to rehearse, the local radio station set up a sound system, students set out chairs according to a strict seating plan, and one of the teachers, Madame Binguela, went home to start cooking.
At 1pm, people began to take their places. We arrived in order from least important to most important. The least important were ENIEG staff, myself included, students and local headteachers. Then there were “guests”, whose roles are a bit of a mystery to me. After the guests came the Inspector for Yagoua and surrounding villages, then the ENIEG director arrived, and then a government delegate for the Yagoua area. Last to arrive was the Sous-Prefet for the Yagoua area. I’ve not yet got a handle on the various political titles, what they mean and what they roughly equate to in English, but basically the Sous-Prefet is a big deal. He got a red carpet (which had been taken up especially from the floor of the director’s office) and an armchair. It had cushions and everything. In order to avoid the embarrassment of having him arrive before we were ready, the ENIEG had arranged for him to wait around the corner out of view. Once we were all standing in awed silence, the necessary calls were made and the Sous-Prefet was delivered to his red carpet on the back of a motorbike.
There followed a number of speeches. A radio station employee acted as MC and gave a pretty detailed running commentary on the proceedings (“The Director has taken his place at the microphone and is about to give his speech… The music club have finished singing and are sitting back down…”).
After the speeches was a mini-parade of the different clubs. It was possibly the best part of the day. Each club had to come up with a way of demonstrating visually who they are and what they do.
The Music club sang

The Health and Hygiene club demonstrated their primary activity – cleaning the ENIEG.

The culture club played traditional music, chants and dance.

The sports club wore their strip

The UNESCO and Human Rights clubs on the other hand, were more difficult to mime. They carried signs instead.

The IT club used a sign too. A shame. If they’d been to see me before the parade, I would have lent them some equipment and shown them how to mime getting increasingly annoyed with it before eventually turning it off and on again.

After the parade there were football and handball matches, and at 5pm everyone went back to the ENIEG for traditional food courtesy of Madame Binguela. The most important people ate first, obviously. However, I was fairly high on the list on account of being female. Gender inequality has its advantages.

Later on, students and staff met up at a nightclub. There are two nightclubs here in Yagoua and as a rule they’re not the safest places to find yourself, so it was nice to make my clubbing debut in the company of 100+ locals. Of course, the students had created a seating plan at the nightclub. Grahame and I had been promoted to “slightly important” for the night, and sat at a table with the director and his visitors, trying to think of things to say. After a while the director took my arm and gestured towards the empty dance floor. Now, people in Cameroon, quite rightly, pride themselves on their heritage of dance and their genuine sense of rhythm. I, on the other hand, dance like an auntie at a wedding. But I could hardly say no. So, I arrived on the empty dance floor to cheers and laughter from my students. Then under close scrutiny and with a growing sense of unease, I did my best to copy what the director was doing. I occasionally have dreams about embarrassing or socially awkward situations exactly like last night, and wake up relieved that none of it was real. This was like that, but without the waking up bit. After a very long 10 minutes the director shook my hand and we went to sit down. But it wasn’t over. He gave me five minutes, then shouted across the table “Elizabeth, the delegué wants to dance, go and dance with him.” It soon became clear I would be spending the majority of my night on the dance floor, occasionally for a traditional Massa dance I couldn’t follow at all. In the end I decided I might as well enjoy it, and taught some of my students Agadoo. (I get tribal dance, they get Black Lace. It’s the magic of cultural exchange.)
By 2am the director had nodded off in his chair, the important people had gone, and they were playing slow music for those students brave enough to have coupled off for the night. Grahame and I left them to it.
Today was, of course, a write-off. By midday the few staff and students that made it in to work had decided to pack up early and go home. I didn’t hear anything about this decision because I once said no when a class asked to go home early, so my students now just clear off without telling me. Fortunately there are other, wiser professors who normally keep me in the loop. Only today they weren’t there either.
Strangely, today, word has spread that I can in fact dance. People have been asking me where I got my African sense of rhythm from, and if I have had lessons. This I find odd to say the least. Last time anyone commented on my dancing was to compare me unfavourably with their gran. Do my colleagues have a cruel sarcastic streak? Do grans have an African sense of rhythm? Is Agadoo in fact good?
So anyway, Friday tomorrow and we have volunteers visiting from Kaele, which is between Yagoua and Maroua, and other volunteers from other places too possibly.
In the maentime, here are some more pictures of Wednesday.

The Student President makes a speech.

Another student makes another speech

An important guest makes a speech

The Sous-Prefet makes a speech

The ENIEG director makes a speech

You get the general idea?

And here are a few final pics of the culture club. (Boy George is hiding behind a tree I think.)

4 more computers

2009-01-18T04:35:00.000-08:00

Happy new year. It’s been a while I know. It's getting late and I need to catch my bus back to Yagoua. Am therefore going to try and summarise the past month in under 500 words. Here goes…
The Christmas hols started with a 5-day stay in Yaounde with Mamoudou and Rougueya. They were unbelievably generous and welcoming, and (apart from a night spent watching traditional dance) I saw the capital city in a non-touristy way, taxi-sharing and sitting around outside shops. Taxis take up to 5 passengers – 2 on the front passenger seat and 3 in the back. You can flag one down anywhere, say where you’re going and how much money you want to pay, and if the taxi driver likes the look of you, you can squeeze in next to the people already inside. If not, he drives off again and you’re left looking like a muppet.
It was good to spend time with different people in the capital, to see various sides of the place. I ate one night in a regal mansion belonging to the deputy chief of Yaounde (to the tune of “Jingle Bells”, played by a slightly out-of place musical Christmas tree, I should add) and the next night I drank tea on the floor of a rather more basic student “room” by the university. Minimum furniture, not enough room to turn around, no running water. Yet people are incredibly generous with what little they have. I was sent home with lots of little presents for friends and family – African traditional jewellery, shoes and cloth. It was really quite touching.

And then of course I went home for christmas. Stepping of the plane was like walking into a fridge. It was great to be back, good to see lots of people, sad not to see more people, and sad not to have a bit more time. It all passed very quickly and I didn’t even get to finish my jigsaw. Stayed in the posh bit of the Radisson Zurich on the way back here and I have to admit that leaving all that luxury behind me was quite a wrench.
I came back with 3 old laptops to add to my own for use in class, and the students are delighted. It makes learning IT a little less silly when you have actual equipment. And the even better news is that people back in Hull are very generous, so we may be able to add more computers soon. More details next time. Suffice to say I’m very excited. Over here we’ll need to get a room kitted out with good locks and an electricity supply, ready to put equipment into. I’ve been put in charge of the new IT club, so hopefully I’ll be able to work together with them on all that.
Came over here as an MFL teacher and find myself as some sort of IT resource centre builder.
Still, learn by doing…
Have to run. Back in two weeks.

4 more things to do on your day off

2008-12-10T02:08:00.000-08:00

1. Mark 423 tests

2. Travel 10 minutes for a 6-hour meeting

3. Travel 6 hours for a 10-minute meeting

4. Give out 500 free condoms

Bonus blog!

In theory I have Wednesdays off, although generally there is always something on. Today is no exception. It’s AIDS day, and Grahame has arranged for co-ordinated activities in 6 local schools, for children and staff, with games, quizzes, visits from health professionals, the works. My role in all of this? Erm… I’ve come to Maroua. Couldn’t really be helped – the other options were miss classes or hitch hike to Yaounde on Saturday. But really I should be at a school somewhere right now, handing out prizes or rolling a condom onto a suitably phallic vegetable.

Still, there’s always next year.

I didn’t get the chance at the weekend to write about Tabaski, also called le fête de mouton, and better known as Eid in England. It happened on Monday. I think I know a fair bit about Eid, but I’m loathe to write anything much on the subject, since the chances are I’m completely wrong. I can say, however, that Tabaski marks the end of Ramadan, and involves sacrificing a sheep and celebrating ‘til the wee hours. The rest you either already know or can find on Wikipedia. Unfortunately I spent most of Monday travelling (on eerily deserted roads), so my experience of the festivities is limited to the before and the after. In the days before, the markets were heaving, and every bus had at least 3 sheep and/or goats on top of it. (Incidentally, if you travel by bus here in the run up to Tabaski, it’s a good idea to keep the windows closed. That gentle pitter patter against the glass is not rain…) And since the celebrations ended, I have been the grateful recipient of rather a lot of leftover goat. A shame I wasn’t around much on Monday. Would have been good to have something more to report. Again, there’s always next year.

At the ENIEG, I finally had what I would describe as a good lesson. The class played typing games in groups (using drawings of a keyboard, of course), and eventually forgot I was there. This made me feel very smug. Not too smug, however, since the idea wasn’t my own. (Thanks Kathryn.)

And at home, I’m still rather a hit with local children. My name has been further abbreviated, from Eliza to just Liza, and in one case, Jeejah. (Or more accurately, “JEEEEEJAAAAHHHH!!!”) The children like to stroke my hair, pull the hairs on my arms, touch the bridge of my nose, basically point and prod and, well, attack me I suppose. On the up side they know when I’ve had enough, and some are very enthusiastic teachers. There’s a boy of around 4 who takes rather seriously the job of educating me in his mother tongue. Empty water bottles, milk tins, sardine cans, plastic bags. He goes hunting for them, brings them back, puts them in my hand and has me repeat their name several times before searching for something else. Very impressive use of realia. (What’s Fulfulde for antibacterial hand gel?)

And now Yaounde is only 2 days away. It’s all very exciting. Before catching my plane home, I’ll be spending a few days there with Mohamadou, whose wedding I went to a few weeks back. I hope to meet his wife properly this time. Know her as Barkindo and not just The Bride. (Anyone seen Kill Bill?)

4 more ways of explaining where I’m from

2008-12-07T06:30:00.000-08:00

1. Hull. It’s east of Manchester
2. Hull. It’s south of Newcastle
3. Hull. It’s quite a long way from London
4. Hull. Rock City.

November 30th

Since Hull City have been doing so well in the premiere league I have been telling everyone here to look out for us on telly. After two weeks of insisting I’m not a liar and we really are in the premiere league, I described the Tigers kit to my neighbour. A sudden look of recognition: “Aaaah! Rock City!” If anyone knows why the whole football-watching population of Cameroon thinks Hull is called Rock City, please send your answers on a postcard.
Today is Sunday, and it’s the first time I’ve spent a day in Yagoua with nothing to do. It was extremely pleasant. I started the day outside my gate, sitting on the sand and playing with the children, who taught me to count to 100 in Fulfulde. Then a neighbour, Gipson, came around and gave me a cookery lesson. We made a sort of fish stew with hibiscus leaves. (Hibiscus flowers, incidentally, are used to make one of the nicest juices I’ve ever tasted). Gipson showed me how to gut a fish, found that he rather enjoyed his new teaching role, and so proceeded to turn everything else he did into a lesson, including how to pour rice into a pan and how to wash up afterwards. The food was lovely, although it seems the secret to Cameroonian cooking is a seasoning cube called Maggi. It’s pure monosodium glutamate. So not entirely the natural, old-school cuisine you see on Tribal Wives. Still, I discovered where to go to buy herbs, spring onions and peppers. After Gipson left, my driver Saidou (aka Fred) came to visit and tell me everything he knows about English football. (Know your audience, Saidou.) He desperately wants to go and live in England.
Me: “But how do you know you’ll like it?”
Saidou: “Because everything is good there.”
Me: “Like what?”
Saidou: “Just everything. There’s nothing bad. I could have a job there”
Me: “But you have a job here.”
Saidou: “No, driving is just something I do to earn money. In England I could have a job.”
Me: “Like what?”
Saidou: “Driving”.

4 more uses for a kettle

2008-12-07T05:47:00.000-08:00

1. Pour water on floor and wash floor
2. Wash hands and feet before praying
3. Pour water on lettuce and rinse lettuce
4. Boil water and make tea (Yeah, right)
At the moment I have about 50 ants on my bedroom floor, dying in a cup. Up to now they haven’t bothered me, but today I was stupid enough to leave a carton of juice out for an hour. I then poured myself a cupful only to discover it had turned into half-juice-half-ants, and almost immediately my arm was crawling with them. My reaction was more than a little overblown. I won’t go into detail. Suffice to say the cup is now broken, and I’m seeking refuge on the bed and doing my blog entry while I wait for the last of them to die of ant powder.
I went to the burial today. The departure was scheduled for 7am, from the ENIEG. I arrived to find a crowd of people standing around a dead spitting cobra. The caretaker had caught and killed it, so was something of a hero for the day. I haven’t come across any snakes myself, but the grounds of the ENIEG are wilder and less populated than my own neighbourhood. It makes me rather glad my placement is in Yagoua and not one of the smaller villages. Magnificent is not a word I like or use a lot, but it is exactly the right word to describe the cobra. It was large and, well, magnificent. And it was in perfect condition (apart from being dead), with grey-green shiny scales and tiny black eyes. People stared at it with awe and caution, as if it might come back to life at any moment. Naturally everybody had a gruesome tale to tell about cobra attacks they had witnessed or heard about, and there was a general feeling that cobras never travel alone and its mate was sure to be watching. This may be true, but I have noticed a slight love of scaremongering among some of my colleagues and neighbours. (A few weeks back, an orphanage worker called Josue took great delight in telling me the story of the first white man to come to Yagoua. Long story short, he was a vicar and the locals cut his throat. Thanks, Josue.) So at 9am we set off for Boscoye. Three Danay Express buses had been booked for ENIEG and school staff, and specially selected students; while a pick-up truck transported the rest. I was honoured to have been offered a place on the bus, but frankly the truck looked a lot more fun. Some people sat in the trailer, some perched on the sides, and some sat on the roof of the cab. It was impressive to watch. The journey took about an hour over rough, stomach-churning and very dusty dirt tracks through the brush, and we passed many villages on the way. Each village had a gourd – an enormous clay pot used for cleansing water ready for drinking – and a grénier, which means attic in French but over here it is the place where they store the grain to keep it safe from animals and rain. It’s like a hut roof sitting on the ground, with a door opening onto the yard, or compound. We passed all manner of plantations – cotton, millet, maize and many other things I don’t know the word for. The most eye-opening aspect of the journey was realising that just about everybody on the bus had grown up in one of the villages we passed, or in another one very like it. These educated professionals in their suits and uniforms had seemed to me to be different entirely from the Fulbe and Massa villagers waving excitedly as we passed. But of course very few at the ENIEG were actually born and bred here in Yagoua. They learned their fluent French and their numerous other subjects in the village schools, some of which are nothing more than concrete shelters. I was aware that people had their “village” where they were brought up, and which they visit from time to time, but it became much more real today. The staff and students here live between two worlds.
In Boscoye the ceremony took place outside on borrowed school benches under a traditional shelter built from tree branches and woven grass. It was similar in some ways to funerals at home. A pastor gave a sermon and there were numerous speeches and thank yous, delivered mostly in Massa, and translated into French by a member of the ENIEG management. The students sang hymns almost continuously in the background. At the same time, family members burned offerings and chanted in a more traditional fashion, and professional mourners wailed a mourning cry that reminded me of TV documentaries I have seen. I never knew the director, so couldn’t exactly share in their grief, but nonetheless people seemed extremely glad that Grahame and I were there. They pointed us out to small children, some of whom were delighted while others ran off to hide, and they were keen for us to see everything. They offered front row seats and we were put first in line for the buffet of grilled meat and sweet potato. The director’s mother came to greet us afterwards. She had a small disc inserted above her top lip, which I noticed none of the younger women did. Given that we speak not a word of Massa and she not a word of French, we just looked at each other for a while then shook hands.
The journey back started noisily. Not sure I understood completely, but it seems a former student of the director had wanted to pay his respects and so had gone to the burial on a truck, and found that when he got there he knew next to no-one. Too shy to get on the same truck to go back to Yagoua, he let it leave without him, and was left stranded in Boscoye, I dare say regretting his decision somewhat. Not knowing what else to do, he tried to hide on top of our bus under some tarpaulin. Of course he was spotted and kicked off amid angry shouting. As the bus set off without him, the boy shouted through stifled tears for one of us to find his uncle in Yagoua and tell him what had happened. One of the nicer students took pity on him at that point and begged the staff to let him travel back with us. He was forced to stand by the door and teased mercilessly for the first 15 minutes of the journey. After that, the students left him alone and instead started a heated debate about life after death and the nature of God. Then there was a prayer stop, followed by a long communal sleep. Boscoye is the sort of place where you might see a hippopotamus, but we didn’t.

4 more things that happen daily between 4 and 5am in Sabongerie

2008-12-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

1. The call to prayer starts
2. Next door’s cockerel goes a bit mental
3. The neighbourhood dogs join in
4. I give up on sleep

The teaching practice was cut short this week because sadly there was a death. The director of one of the practice schools passed away last week, and today was his funeral, so ENIEG students and staff attended, including myself. There were hundreds of people. It wasn’t like funerals at home, so I couldn’t help but find it interesting in an entirely inappropriate touristy way. We are going to the burial tomorrow, which is taking place in the director’s village where he grew up, and several people have recommended I take my camera and use the day as an opportunity for sightseeing. They don’t seem to think this would be in bad taste at all. On the contrary, my colleagues are quite excited about being my tour guides for the day, and the precedent has already been set: the entire ceremony today was filmed by an enterprising hospital official as a memento for the family.
I came to Cameroon fully expecting to meet different customs and values, but some things I imagined to be universally not-a-good-idea, such as spitting in someone’s face, going shopping wearing only flip flops and a crash helmet and, yes, taking photos at a funeral.
Still. You live and learn.

4 more facts about cockerels

2008-12-07T04:37:00.000-08:00

1. They crow in the morning
2. They also crow at all hours of day and night
3. They crow very loudly
4. I live next door to one

Since my arrival 5 out of 7 volunteers in Yagoua have left. I hope there is no causal link there. Today saw Véronique’s departure for Maroua, then the south and then Canada. She’s a lot of fun, and life here in Yagoua will be more boring now she’s gone home.
The cold season is still upon us, and therefore occasionally there is a slight breeze. This slight breeze serves partly to refresh, but mostly to whip up the surface dust from the ground, so that at certain times of day visibility is restricted by a sort of grimy fog. And when you blow your nose it’s got sand in. It is also very dry, so that the sand and dust are getting gradually looser, which compounds the effect of the wind. Soon, I am told the Harmattan will arrive, after which time I might as well not bother sweeping anything. (Gutted.) At this time of year, coughs and sinusitis are common, and moto-taxis often lose their grip on the sand. There are two strategies moto-drivers use to combat this. One is to drive extremely quickly so as not to fall, and the other is to drive extremely slowly so as not to die if you do. I am a fan of this latter option, and luckily so is my driver Saidou. I have secretly nicknamed him Fred, since he spends much of his time walking his motorbike Flintstone-style over loose patches of sand.
I’m looking forward to going home for Christmas, but am glad to be missing the whole crazy preamble. No mince pies in the supermarkets 3 months early, no interminable adverts for the latest children’s toy, no lines of stressed and impoverished parents waiting to pay for their children to sit on Santa’s knee, no “Now That’s What I Call Christmas” CD on repeat in Princes Quay for the past 3 weeks, no fighting for parking spaces at Asda. People over here seem to think Christmas is a celebration of primarily religious significance taking place at the end of December.
I’ll be back in the UK from Dec 20th until Jan 3rd, and already have a long To Do list, including: drink straight from the tap, go outside without being noticed, and wrap up warm. I’m not even going to begin on the food and drink I’m looking forward to. I can’t really complain about diet though. The menu is slowly expanding. There’s scrambled egg, hard boiled egg, soft boiled egg, egg mayonnaise, and in theory fried egg or omelette (although I have no frying pan and I never could cook them anyway). Salad is possible, but disinfecting lettuce is a delicate art. You have to use just enough bleach that you don’t die of germs, but not so much that you die of bleach. Then rinse it a lot just in case.
The last week of teaching practice has been good so far. Admittedly teaching methods here are different and would be questioned in the West, but many teachers handle their classes and develop their lessons with a finesse I can only admire. Corporal punishment is no longer officially allowed in Cameroon. There are some complaints about this, but there are also many teachers who are delighted and never believed in it anyway. High points of the teaching practice were watching a couple of truly gifted teachers managing to engage around 80 children for hours with no resources, and demonstrating an English lesson myself, with UK-stylee physical activities and games that went quite well in spite of people finding them a bit odd. Low point was “team-teaching” a French reading lesson to the youngest class and gradually being abandoned by my “team”. (The words ship, sinking and rats spring to mind.) It started badly, with rowdy children over-excited at the mere thought of a nassara teaching them, and who understood very little French and so just repeated my every word and action for what seemed like an eternity. (What letter is this? What letter is this? No, it’s a question. No, it’s a question. Don’t repeat. Don’t repeat. Listen. Listen. Erm… Erm…) I tried to capitalise on this at least, by sitting quietly with my arms crossed while trying to work out what to do. It was quiet for all of 3 seconds, then slowly the children lost interest and I lost the will to live. Ended with chaos: fighting, screaming and very many tears. (Should I resist the temptation to end with “And that was just me”? Probably.)

4 more facts about the "cold season"

2008-11-21T03:55:00.000-08:00

1. It's happening now, apparently
2. People walk around in massive coats and scarves
3. People complain bitterly about how cold they are
4. It's currently 35 degrees in the shade

Well, here I am once more in Maroua and the ducklings are already too big to fit under the fence at the mission. I found a bright green chameleon to look at instead for a bit, but I don’t know if you’re meant to go near them, so left it alone in the end. There are lots of things here I’m a bit scared of. There are massive black hornets and huge flies with yellow on their tails. The flies don’t sting but they look and sound so much like giant bees that I run away if they come near me. You should never ever wear perfume here, because all the hornets, wasps, bees and giant flies seek you out if you do. I speak from experience. Although no-one here is much bothered by the insects. Back home bee+classroom = nightmare. Here children hardly even notice wasps buzzing round their face. There’s even a nest at the back of one of the classrooms, hanging from the ceiling with hornets crawling all over it, and no-one seems to find this at all weird or problematic. I happened to look up, caught a glimpse of it and almost fell off my chair. I’ve always been a complete wimp where stinging insects are concerned, but am going to have to toughen up now I’m here.
Other recent sights include a double mattress being carried on a moto taxi sandwiched between two people, and a rooster dangling from the roof of the bus I was on, with his face pressed against the bus window staring in. But possibly my favourite image was a little girl standing in line to have her book marked and attempting to hide a massive locust up her sleeve. She’d found it and decided to keep it, so she spent all day with it in her hand, its legs flailing all over, attempting to hide it behind her back and under her desk, but there was no hiding place that worked, so in the end she just sat with it on her desk and point blank refused to hand it over to anyone. (It’s mine, I found it.)
The school curriculum in Cameroon is different in many ways. Very few, if any children grow up with French as their first language, and sometimes they turn up for their first day of school speaking only the local dialect. This is why primary schools have an hour or so a day for a lesson called simply “chant”. Children learn the most important basic French by chanting and then taking it in turns to act out the chant as a dialogue. This week’s chant in year 1 (translated) went “I’m thirsty. Can I drink this water?” “Yes, it won’t make you sick” “Okay I’ll drink it then”. A nifty way of practising French while reminding children only to drink water which is safe. I was impressed. Looked more closely, and the bottle they were using to act out the dialogue was a bleach bottle.
I didn’t stay in the classroom long anyway. My presence there caused something of a distraction. Half the class had their back to the teacher and were just staring at me instead. So I moved to the front; that way at least they would be facing forward. Bad move. There were constant shouts of “nassara! nassara!”. I tried ignoring, scowling, scolding, looking engrossed in the lesson. Nothing worked. Very young children like that aren’t really my domain. I don’t know what you’re meant to do with them. So I left, wondering how best to feed back on a lesson I had completely destroyed. Thought saying sorry might be a start.
And now Maroua again. There’s a meeting later today, then some people are going to Rhumsiki. Not sure if there are spare places. It’s apparently an area of breathtaking beauty and there is a sorcerer there who can predict the future by watching and interpreting what a crab does with a piece of wood. (How much can a crab do with a piece of wood? I count three things - pick it up, put it down, and wiggle it about a bit.) Occasionally a lucky visitor will see a marriage ceremony too. It’s said they are spectacular, but I don’t know any more than this. Anyway, if I do go I’ll take photos and add them tomorrow night. However, it’s also possible I won’t go to Rhumsiki this weekend, because it’s a very long way, there might not be room, and nobody is staying overnight. So who knows? Certainly not me. Possibly the crab sorcerer, but he’s all the way in Rhumsiki so I wouldn’t be able to ask him unless I went.
Anyway, here is a picture of an African hornet. They are very big.

and finally

2008-11-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

This is my house on the day I arrived, after unpacking and before cleaning. First up is the kitchen, then bedroom, living room, and spare room.

Here is the wall of the shower, which is taking a long time to clean. To keep myself amused I'm cleaning alternate tiles, like a chess board. (I need to get out more.)

loads more pictures

2008-11-15T12:58:00.000-08:00

It's now over a week since the wedding and am once more in Maroua. Am slowly getting the house sorted but haven't had much time. Now people know me, they come round a lot. It's very nice, but hard to get things done. Anyway, I have flu and as such am far more interested in the colour and quantity of my snot than in anything you might want to read about. For this reason I've opted to stick some photos up rather than try and think of anything to say.
First, the wedding.

Lots of sitting down on mats.

The bride sends her gifts

Women and children come out of hiding. Not sure the reason for the knife and the sinister expression. Nothing untoward happened that I know of...

4 more signs you're settling in in Cameroon

2008-11-14T21:29:00.000-08:00

1. You can fall asleep on a bus without feeling like you're missing something

2. You can get off a moto without finding nail marks on your palms

3. You haggle just for the sake of it

4. You sometimes think westerners look a bit odd

A lot has happened in the last week or so. I now live alone, at last, in a neighbourhood in Yagoua called Sabongerie. It’s a mix of modern houses, slums and the odd traditional hut, and there are goats, donkeys, chickens and dogs who hang around outside. Moving into the house has been interesting. There’s a different approach to housing over here. For example, a recent conversation with the head of finance went as follows:

HoF: How’s the house?

Me: Well, mostly fine, although there is only one plug socket in the entire house that works.

HoF: Where is it?

Me: In my bedroom.

HoF: Great! That’s the best place to plug things in!

Glass half full, glass half empty.

Then there was the bathroom tap. I turned it off with too much force and it came apart in my hand, whereupon a fountain of water exploded in rather spectacular fashion, pounding the ceiling and completely flooding the bathroom. Suddenly possessed by the spirit of Frank Spencer, I was compelled to cover the leak with my hand, which predictably made matters worse. I then ran around frantically looking for a way to stop the deluge, pausing only occasionally to slip on the wet floor. Eventually found the mains outside and closed it off, but turns out I also blocked my neighbours’ water for a night and a day. Graceful. Dignified. Practically-minded. Terms I use to describe other people.

Fortunately any difficulties have been completely eclipsed by the sheer friendliness of people in the area. From the day I moved in people have made me feel welcome. Take the jam women. They sit out under a tree in the daytime selling fruit and pastry. They don’t speak French, but when I pass, they greet me in Fulfulde. You know if it’s a greeting because it has the word “jam” in it, and you have to reply “jam”. Jam means good, and basically people ask you if things are good and you reply “good”. Are you good? Good. Is your family good? Good. Is your husband good? Good. And so on. So they say “jam bla bla bla” and I say “jam”, and this carries on for a while until they say something not containing the word jam and I shrug and they laugh and shake my hand. It’s a bit like Simon Says. Sometimes I have unnerving recollections of Wayne’s World. (A sphincter says jam.) One day soon I’ll know what they’re saying, though, and surprise them with an actual answer.

Then there was a wedding about 20 yards from my door on Thursday, to which I was invited. The groom, Mohamadou, and his equivalent of a best man, Amadu, took me out for barbecued fish the night before. Eating with locals is different in two ways. First, you all eat from the same plate as a sign of friendship and solidarity, and second, you eat everything – head, eyes, bones. Nothing goes to waste. Tried to eat the bones and ended up getting one stuck, but the head and eyes I ate. Then we drank “juice” (Fanta) and discussed politics. People here are extremely well informed about international affairs, and have been rooting for Obama in the US elections. We then came back to Sabongerie, and when they saw me to my house, they clocked my guitar and had me sing them a song. Those in the know will not be surprised to hear that I played Blackbird.

Next day after work, I rocked up at the designated time, fully expecting to stand at the back in my trousers and t-shirt looking slightly awkward. Turned out I was Mohamadou’s guest of honour. Amadu gave me full traditional dress to wear at the ceremony, so I ended up dressed for the part, and right in the middle of the action, looking slightly awkward.

It was a Muslim wedding, and very different from those I’ve been to at home. The ceremony lasts for two days, and the men and women are separated throughout. As Mohamadou’s guest, and a French speaker only (i.e. no Fulfulde), I was put with the men, but occasionally a woman would come and get me so I could watch if something special was happening. The first night, we spent a number of hours sitting and chatting on large mats. Before sitting on a mat you are meant to take your shoes off. Did I realise this glaringly obvious fact? No. Walked straight past the piles of shoes, oblivious. Blundering westerner. Never mind. It was soon pointed out. Occasionally, a guest would offer blessings. To do this he would murmur quietly while the rest of the men sat with their hands cupped, palms up, wishing good things for the groom. Mohamadou explained all of this to me and invited me to join in. Which I duly did.

It is traditional for the bride to begin the ceremony at her home. She sends the groom a bunch of flowers and a present as a token of her love, and the women she is closest to deliver the present, then the groom pays them for doing so. How much Mohamadou was going to pay the women for delivering his gifts, however, was open to negotiation, and he and his friends spent much of the afternoon agreeing a price. In a curious mix of old and new, a lot of the negotiation was done via mobile phone. Once a price was agreed, the bride’s envoys arrived to deliver their gifts, squirting the groom and guests with perfume as they went. Then there was more sitting and more chatting, interspersed with more blessings and daily prayers. During the prayer at dusk, the bride arrived in a 4-by-4 and was “sneaked” into the adjoining yard, where the women were based, covered by a sheet so as not to be seen. Traditionally, after the prayer the groom sends a guest or two to “fetch” the bride and her entourage from her home, only to find that she isn’t there. They then return with the other women, but no bride, and later “discover” that the bride has been hiding behind the scenes all along. The wedding party had managed to get hold of a minibus for the fetching ceremony. So after the prayer, off I went in the front passenger seat of the Danay Express, and picked up a busful of women who chanted and sang all the way back to Sabongerie. Then more sitting and a chance to meet and congratulate the bride. She seemed really nice.

When I left, Mohamadou and Amadu walked me all 20 yards to my house, and had me sing them another song. Having already played Blackbird the night before, I was a bit stumped. Had to settle for something a little less practised.

It was after they left that my plumbing disaster began.

Which brings us to today.

The students of the ENIEG begin their teaching practice next week, so this morning there was a 4-hour assembly with the student teachers, staff of the local schools and staff of the ENIEG. Water or no water, I was required to attend. The meeting was held at a local primary school. The school consists of empty concrete shells with no windows or doors. Overnight, people come and go, and make all sorts of mess in the buildings, which have to be cleaned out each morning before the children arrive. The whole thing was built in 1949 and is in much worse condition now than it was back then. Simple iron bars and something resembling doors would at least keep the place secure at night, but there isn’t really the budget for it. The teachers care enough to arrive early each day to ensure their classrooms are in a clean enough state before the day starts.

During the assembly, the director gave a talk on the teaching practice, explained the practicalities, expectations and such. And then there was a presentation by a headteacher and an ENIEG tutor, introducing a bit of a revolution going on in Cameroon at the moment. It’s called formative assessment and it’s causing quite a stir. There is also talk of children moving class at the start of each new school year, regardless of their performance in end of year tests. The lecture was followed by much debate.

After the meeting I waited around for someone to help me fix my tap, and was sent on my way with the promise of a plumber later on. Not sure quite what happened to him, but luckily the owner of the property (Mohamadou’s brother) was about when I came home, so he fixed it himself for free.

Then there was instalment two of the wedding. More sitting and more chatting outside with the men before I was invited to see the “baptism” of the bride. When I went to join the women, I recognised some of them from the main street. The jam women. So we had a bit of fun playing spot-the-sentence-without-jam-in-it, and then I sat down. The women sat around in a horseshoe and the oldest woman led the ceremony, burning incense and chanting. The bride was led out covered in a veil and with shouts of “bla bla bla nassara bla bla bla”, those guiding her were instructed to sit her down opposite me. A cloth was placed in front of her and coins were passed along to place upon it. More chanting and then her new married name was announced and the veil was lifted. Then they did what the men had done yesterday, palms held up and blessings bestowed. I too opened my palms, feeling very pleased with my new cultural knowledge, and certain they would be impressed. After a communal fit of laughter they composed themselves before carrying on, but there were many more giggles before it was all over. Later one of the jam women, using a younger girl as translator, introduced herself as my new adoptive grandmother, then told me off for not having been to visit her yet.

Then back outside for more sitting and chatting. And finally a special meal was given to me as guest of honour. The polite thing is to eat lots. I ate sheep intestines for the first time.

And that brings us pretty much up to date. I couldn’t feel more welcome here right now. Bring on next week, I say. The teaching practice lasts 3 weeks and the director of the school I’ll be attached to has a good rapport with his staff and a dry wit. So I’m looking forward to it all. Have photos. Will add them.

4 more home-cooked meals I’ve been enjoying here in Yagoua

2008-11-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

1. Rice in a tomato, onion and garlic sauce
2. Tomato rice, with garlic and onions
3. Onion paella, with tomato and garlic
4. Garlic risotto with onions and tomato

Luckily, I’m a huge fan of the aforementioned ingredients, and can also enjoy barbecued fish out on the street here too. My house has been ready since Monday, apparently. Now I’m waiting on the key. So far as I can gather, the plan is to enlist a pile of students to go round and wash and clean everything first (science field trip?), so it’s nice when I move in. Which is very kind. And in the meantime, Veronique is still letting me kip on her living room floor. Which is also very kind. And that is all I have to say about that.

So what’s new? Not an awful lot. Motos and sand are proving to be an interesting combination, but have found a couple of good drivers who don’t scare me too much, and will be sticking with them from now on.
More dung beetles, stick insects, and various huge flying and crawling things I have no name for. There are clay huts dotted about, which I pass on the way to and from work. Have had it well and truly ripped out of me by colleagues for finding insects, goats, stars and traditional villages remotely interesting. (Quick, Eliza, a lizard. Go get your camera. Big laugh.) Oh, and my new name seems to be Eliza.
This is pretty much the “proper Africa” that people bang on about, although I’m hardly Bruce Parry. Volunteers have fridge, fan, running water (much of the time), moto-taxis, brick house, locks on the doors and money to buy things with. By local standards, we’re very rich indeed, even just on our VSO allowance. This brings its own problems, since I sometimes have to break big notes (equivalent £2, £5 and £10), and there’s nowhere I can go to do it. Certainly not the market. Imagine going to a jumble sale and buying a biscuit with a £50 note. It would be a bit like that. A shame because I’d like to shop more at the market than I do. There’s a woman there with a huge table full of herbs and spices. I have no idea what they all are, and she doesn’t speak French, so at some point I plan to buy a bag of everything using the universal language of pointing, and cross my fingers that it all goes with tomatoes. There are food shops here too, selling things in packets, tins and bottles. I use the word shops loosely, since they are basically little sheds with someone sitting outside. You point to what you want and they put it in a bag. One or two have a fridge with chilled drinks and even yoghurt if you’re lucky. Then there are people with tables out on the streets selling basics like bread and whatever fruits are available. At the moment it’s guava, guava and more guava. Fortunately, I like guava.

As for work, well, it’s started. As a computer expert (i.e. one of the few people in Yagoua who has actually used one) I am now teaching IT. The school has no computers, so I’m using my own and I plan my lessons such that groups of 5 use it in rotation. Please note the use of the word plan. In reality, there is no separate room where they can work, so the entire class humours me for a bit, then tends to gravitate towards the computer group to gawp at Microsoft Word.
I will also be teaching “general pedagogy” as of next week. I think it’s pretty much up to me to decide what that means. My classes seem to be friendly and fun, and I think as I get to know them I’ll enjoy the job a real lot. Not sure quite how I’ll get used to a room full of students standing whenever I enter, especially as some of them are twice my age. May come back with ideas above my station.
When my students do their teaching practice, I’ll be joining them in the classroom at times, and for this reason I went to a couple of local primary schools this week, to be introduced to the kids. They were all very good and quiet, and listened when I gave a little spiel about myself, then dissolved into uproar as soon as I was out the door. Some of them have since spotted me in the street: “Good morning, Elizabeth” at 6pm. It’s nice when they do that. I like to be called by my name, or something resembling my name, from time to time. Nassara is a bit generic and might or might not be polite, depending on who you listen to.

4 more photos of the mission

2008-10-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

This is a photo packed evening! There is a reason for this: I only just managed to get my photos transferred from my camera via Veronique's computer. So, here are a few pictures I took in my first week in Maroua, at the mission. The first is the church, which fills up on Sundays.

Then there are some chillies on a board. You'll always find herbs and spices out drying in the sun here at the mission.

Then there are some ducklings.
They are small enough to fit through the gap under the fence behind them. In the absence of their mum, they walk single file following the biggest duckling. It's very sweet.

And finally there's the cricket that has made a home for itself in the women's shower. (Pervert)

4 more lizard pics

2008-10-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

They eat flies. They keep me amused. They deserve their own blog entry. Here are my top 4 lizard pictures. The last one is a lizard bang in a the middle of catching an insect. A very lucky shot, although it does look a bit creepy.

4 more pictures for my blog

2008-10-25T11:06:00.001-07:00

This is Veronique's house, where I have pretty much taken over the living room. She doesn't seem to mind so far..
Then we have the view from Veronique's garden down the street that leads to the market.

And below is a school boy on his way from the primary school, which is the building behind him.

Finally, here are some randomly wandering cows obscured slightly by the smoke from a fire. You get a lot of cows, pigs, goats (of course) and fires here in Yagoua.

And there you have it. I wasn't lying about the sand, was I?

4 more stupid questions (and their rather obvious answers)

2008-10-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

1. What are the roads made from here? (Sand)
2. No, I mean what do you drive on? (Sand)
2. And what’s underneath all this sand? (More sand)
3. Wow. Why is there so much sand? (Because this is the Sahara)

It’s sunk in. I’m not in the UK any more. I’m living at the edge of the desert, and everything either grows in sand, lives in sand, travels on sand, accumulates sand or is made of sand. If it’s sand you’re after, you’ve come to the right place.
Yes, whatever else may come or go, you will always find sand, mozzies and boule here in Yagoua. (Boule is made of ground rice and has a consistency and a taste somewhere between tapioca and dumplings.) You may find many combinations of the above three things, such as mozzies in sand, sand in boule, mozzies in boule. But mostly you will find sand.
Today, I went to my new workplace, the ENIEG, and met my colleagues, whose names I instantly forgot (must try harder), and met with the Directeur, who speaks quickly with a strong accent. I understood very little of what he said, especially since I was distracted by three lizards running round his office. I tried to blag it, smiling and nodding wisely at his words, but he soon clocked me and asked me if I spoke any French at all. Oh well. At least the atmosphere was friendly for most of the day. There was one meeting which was a bit like a job interview, culminating in a little test to see whether or not I knew what the word pedagogy meant. Luckily, that question had come up not so long ago on Blockbusters, so I nailed it.
The ENIEG has desks and benches, chalk boards and chalk, which is more than can be said for some of the primary schools. However, by British standards it’s practically empty. IT is the subject they’re most keen to give me. After all my meetings, I sat outside in the sun, considering how the hell I’m meant to teach Information Technology without access to technology. Then a student from the neighbouring lycée came to say hello and practise his English. It’s his favourite subject and he’d like to study it at university, although he doesn’t have any books, or access to books. Even if he could afford to travel to Maroua, he wouldn’t be able to afford what books he managed to find there. I wondered how much sympathy he’d have if I told him I miss having broadband. I decided not to mention it. After a while, our conversation drew to a close, and we sat in comfortable silence as a dung beetle passed, walking backwards on its front legs and using its back legs to push along a ball of crap about twice its own size.
There’s always someone worse off than yourself.

4 more first impressions of Yagoua

2008-10-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

1. There’s a lot of sand
2. There are no roads
3. Wow, there really is a lot of sand
4. Hang on a minute, are those frogs?

And now, here we are. Yagoua. It was dark when I arrived. They dropped luggage down from the bus roof for passengers to catch, then we paid a boy to push our stuff from the station to Veronique’s house in a cart. The first thing I noticed (apart from the sand and the frogs) was the noise from the crickets. And the second thing was the stars. I’ve never seen a night sky like it. There are so many stars – more than I knew existed - as far as the horizon. The very clearest of English nights is murky by comparison. And they seem somehow closer. I know about physics and astronomy and all that, but still, I feel sure if I could find a decent-sized ladder, I could climb up and grab one. Without light pollution, clouds or cluttered skylines, the stars are clearer, of course. But it’s more than that. They’re imposing somehow. I mentioned this to some locals, and of course they thought I was mental.
It’s quite common in the hottest season, as of March, to sleep outside. I plan to get a frame up in the garden for my mozzie net when I move to my new house. I’m assured that this will be in three days, although there is currently no roof or electricity, so it might just possibly take slightly longer.

4 more things you can put on a moto taxi in Cameroon

2008-10-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

1. A table and four chairs
2. A goat in a bucket
3. 50-odd live chickens attached by their feet
4. All my luggage

This entire region should be rebranded as a huge open air acrobatics display. Is there nothing that can’t be transported on heads, bicycles and moto-taxis? It’s not unknown to put a cow on the top of a bus either.

My luggage consisted of guitar, suitcase, rucksack, holdall, bucket full of clothes, and a very large fan. Veronique had two massive bags. The moto-taxi driver-cum-circus performer managed to take all that, and us, in two trips. And then we were at the station. Veronique looked after me, buying my ticket and explaining how the system works. Basically, you turn up, pay, and as soon as they’ve sold a bus full, you leave. It can take 5 minutes or it can take all day. But there’s always plenty to keep you amused while you wait. Street vendors sell anything from torches to boiled eggs, strangers chat freely, and children are always fun to watch. Although watching children can be more exhausting than you might think. It turned out that two of them were also watching me. Rather intently. And when our eyes met, they beamed at me and shouted “Nasarwa!” and waved. And so it began. The smiling and the waving. It went on for rather a long time. If I looked away for too long (say 10 seconds), they would shout a quick reminder “Nasarwa!” Wave again. After an hour and a half they tired of this game, and instead played “Who is brave enough to go up to the nasarwa and say something”, pushing each other and bursting into fits of giggles. Veronique bought a mandarin, which she shared with them, and I don’t think they quite knew whether to eat it or frame it. In the end they ate it. Another, shyer boy, never said anything nor smiled. Instead he applied himself repeatedly and with great care to the task of sitting down and standing up again while holding a bucket, and checked constantly to see if we were watching.

We waited about 2 hours for our bus, the Danay Express, to fill up. Then they piled everybody’s gear on top of it (and when I say piled, we’re talking somewhere between precarious and physically impossible), spread a sheet of tarpaulin on top, and we were on our way. The two braver children tried to secure themselves seats next to us whities (the boy climbed onto my knee at one point), but they ended up being lifted into the seats behind by their mum. This didn’t stop them from playing Nasarwa for the first half hour of the journey, until the motion and the hum of the engine lulled them to sleep. The bus had been designed to accommodate 18 people in rows of three, with an aisle in the middle. Extra seats had been added where the aisle once was, to create benches wide enough for four people. Onto each of these benches, five people were crammed, and extra seats were added wherever possible. Children spent the journey on the knees of relatives (and indeed, complete strangers). There have been times before now when my backside has felt numb from sitting for too long, but being literally jammed into position by the backsides of others for three hours on the trot is in a different league altogether. To be fair, there was some respite when people got out to pray, or later on when a few passengers alighted at their villages. However, the answer to the question “how many people can you fit in a minibus?” has most certainly been answered on the Danay Express.

4 more reasons to put pictures on this blog

2008-10-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

1. It makes the blog more interesting
2. It helps people to picture what I'm talking about
3. People keep asking me to
4. Random strangers leave nice comments (this blog isn't a dating agency by the way)

These pics are entirely down to Lucie. My camera was hiding underneath mountains of stuff.

Here on the left is part of Yaounde, the greenest and hilliest capital city I've ever seen.
And here below is the bus station just outside the train station at Ngaoundere. Note the porters stowing the luggage with great care.

If you look really closely here, you may spot a baboon. If so, please tell me where it is!

And finally, here are some traditional African villages with actual huts where people actually live. The villagers sell fruit, veg and drinks to travellers

4 things I was surprised to learn about my new mosquito incense burners

2008-10-17T04:39:00.000-07:00

1. They "will make your room full of fragrance"
2. They are "characterized by obvious effects and innoxious function"
3. They are made "specially for old man and children"
4. They are "of invariable virtue"

I'm sitting outside, and am therefore being attacked by flies. However, I've been sitting still for so long that there are about 7 lizards within a metre of me, sizing up whether it's safe to come and eat them. They run up dead close, grab one and run off again.

My day started at 6am today, with a shower and then my washing. Unless you want to subject the staff to the delights of your used underwear, washing at the mission is done by hand in the shower room. This morning’s effort was a salutary lesson in separating my darks from my whites. Luckily the only casualties were a flannel and a bra, so I got away with it. And yes, you heard me right. In spite of having no pressing engagements, I got myself out of bed at 6am and have been actually doing stuff ever since. It gets hot later on, so early mornings are the best time to get things done. (Wow, I never thought I’d hear myself saying anything like that.)

The last few days have been slightly uncomfortable, with too many bites and a skin infection on my eyelid of all places. It was sore, and swollen and red, and left me looking like I’d been in a fight. In the absence of Dettol or TCP, I bought some alcohol of the non-drinking variety, and it worked a treat, so I’m back to normal, ish. The other eye has also suffered, however. In a rather slapstick lapse of common sense, I squirted Raid directly into it while checking to see whether the nozzle was working. And since I’m in an honest mood, I should also tell you I recently discovered I was wrong about the buckets in our rooms. They’re just meant for rubbish. (Before you ask, no I didn’t. Luckily.)

There have been some pleasant things these last few days, however. For one thing, I discovered it’s possible to get a pizza delivered. You just make a call, wait two to three hours, and hey presto. The pizza is made with plain flour and tastes like pie. Really nice pie, with all sorts of interesting stuff on it. But definitely pie.

So, now that my clothes have dripped dry in the sun, I can go out. And then? Well, today holds all sorts of treats. There’s a shop I’ve discovered that sells imported clothes. Maybe I’ll find a couple of suitable things that fit, to last me until I move to Yagoua and find a tailor. There’s also a phone shop advertising the internet, so I already looked into that. It’s a £250 installation charge then £40 monthly. Not only is it very expensive, it’s impossible to get it installed discreetly, and the last thing I want to be when I get to Yagoua is flash. Cybercafes and the odd stay at the mission will have to do. Then there’s a bank account to open (still), and my salary to collect. Equivalent £190 per month. And it’s now the weekend again, so a number of volunteers from surrounding areas will be arriving tonight to live it up, Maroua style. What that means I have no idea, but will let you know.

When volunteers arrive at the mission, they share. A volunteer, Ahrum, knocked on my door yesterday, introduced herself, chose her bed, and we are now “roomies”. It’s all very sociable. There will be two more joining us tonight. However, there’s a VSO wedding going on later, and I’m too new to have wangled an invite so I expect I’ll just sit alone in an empty room, reading my book while violins play solemnly in the background.

At least it’s a good book.

4 more reasons not to open a bank account

2008-10-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

I haven’t got 3 passport photos
I haven’t got a photocopy of my residence permit
I don’t know my own phone number
Sod it, I’ll do it tomorrow

Hmm. I have 2 fans on the go, my computer and phone charging and the internet constantly on, with no heed for the consequences. I might just be in need of that cash machine soon.

Lucie has just been picked up and taken to Moutourwa. So now only me and Andrianne remain. If I’m being unwittingly broadcast on Big Brother Cameroon, I’d just like to say I’m not here to make friends, and if I win I’ll spend the money on cute toys for orphaned puppies.

Even things like passport photos, photocopying and laminating take place out on the street, and you are supposed to haggle. Frankly, I couldn’t be bothered and have therefore spent the equivalent of four quid. By the time I had my documents all ready, the bank was closed ‘til three o’clock. The paperwork for a bank account takes quite a long time here, and I want to wash my clothes before nightfall. I have a choice between stressing and not stressing. I choose the latter.
So, off to fill a bucket for my clothes. Have armed myself with Raid since the toilet is to mosquitoes what the Leeds Corn Exchange is to goths.
If you have msn please add me, since anything verging on a normal English conversation would be very welcome right now! elizabethgurevitch@hotmail.com

Update:

It’s now six pm and already dark. Have washed clothes, and have just received a text saying my house will be ready at the weekend. I'd put money on next Wednesday.

4 more facts about riding a moto taxi

2008-10-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

1. The local women ride side saddle
2. It’s supposed to cost 10p, not 15p. (This is a burning issue right now.)
3. Only volunteers wear crash helmets
4. The exhaust pipe burns your leg

Well, my hunch was correct, and the moving in on Monday thing is now scheduled for Wednesday. Well, I say scheduled. Basically I’m at the mission until further notice. I’ve now moved from the house into one of the more basic rooms. It’s got 6 beds and a bucket. Give you two guesses what the bucket is for. There is a hole-in-the-ground style outdoor toilet, however, and even something vaguely resembling a normal one for the faint-hearted. But this is a bit more like what I was expecting.
For the first time since arriving, I plan to cook for myself. I have managed to get hold of tinned veg, pasta and curry powder. Not sure what I’m going to do with it all...
The supermarket I’ve just been to is a bit more like your average corner shop than most places. There’s a big area in there full of books, paper, pencils, rulers and teaching equipment, and the prices compare favourably with prices back home. Also, soaps, toothpaste, your standard stuff really. So no need for parcels!
I am now the proud owner of a very powerful fan. It cost me the equivalent of £13, and was a purchase I won’t regret. It can be refreshing to sit outside when there’s a bit of a breeze, but there’s an unofficial rubbish dump quite nearby, so you tend to find yourself under attack from flies. I’ve seen people on tv with flies crawling over them before, and failed to understand how they could bear it. But if you don’t have the luxury of going indoors, you just have to get used to it. There’s no point even trying to get rid. (Mum & Dad: Remember La Quinta?)
Lizards, on the other hand, eat flies, and are therefore my friends. We’re fairly spoilt for lizards here. I’ve watched them doing all sorts of stuff, catching insects, dancing and jumping to intimidate other lizards, fighting with their lizard foes. But mostly chilling out on rocks. And we have huge bats here too at night.
The walk back from the supermarket was pretty sobering. Until now I’ve been ferried all over and spent my time rushing about behind other people. Today I stopped and took a good look around. The city’s sick and homeless are difficult to miss, sitting or often lying on the roadside with their begging bowls. Painfully thin men and women of all ages, filthy rags for clothes, skeletal faces, open sores covered with flies. Some of them are clearly are dying, and there’s not a lot they can do about it. I didn’t put my hand in my pocket. It was too overwhelming. I just looked around me and felt very sad and very guilty and very helpless for a while. Then went about my day, fan under one arm and handbag under the other. The wealthy white foreigner. Some good old British self-justification was in order. “But what can you do?” “Where do you begin?” “They’ll only spend the money on drugs…”
Hopefully I can at least do something vaguely useful when I start work. At some point. Eventually.
Anyway. On a lighter note, I finally plucked up the courage to speak some German this evening. The conversation (translated) went:
Me: I understand that you’re from Germany
Her: Yes I am
Me: What part?
Her: (Insert part of Germany I never heard of)
Me: Ah that’s interesting
Both: (Awkward silence)
End of conversation
So that's it for now. Off to open a bank account tomorrow, and something tells me it won't be easy...

4 more methods of waste disposal in Cameroon

2008-10-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

1. Burn it
2. Leave it by the roadside
3. Erm
4. That’s it

October 12th
Hurrah! I finally have a phone! So that’s one of my plans that worked out. The fabled cash machine is proving slightly elusive, however. Maybe next week…

Sundays are busy here at the mission. The church is full, with people spilling out the doors to the benches and steps outside, and there are sermons and gospel singing all day. It’s teatime now and I can hear a different and slightly eerie sort of chanting outside. It sounds like town criers having a get-together. Not sure what that’s all about. Bring back the goats, I say. You know where you are with goats.
In theory I move to Yagoua tomorrow, although I’m not sure when I’ll go, how I’ll get there, how I’ll transport my things, where my house is. Minor details like that. I’m sure it’s all in hand though. My garden is enclosed apparently. No-one can see in, so I might even have the chance to do a bit of sunbathing now and then. Bonus.
The mozzies here are so clever it’s frightening. They seem to know where you’re looking and manage to keep themselves out of view. I’ve literally just been bitten on my hand while I was typing. How does that happen? It’s not as if I can even touchtype.
Speaking of mozzies, my net is outside drying and I suppose I should get my act together and check on it, then start to pack up my things fairly soon. But it’s soooo warm. I definitely caught the sun today for the first time. Maybe a shower is in order. A cold one (there is no other kind).

4 more phrases, and their real meanings

2008-10-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

To do something on Monday = Start to think about doing it on Monday
Running water = A tap in your garden
A shower = A tank and a colander
A very friendly town = Physically evicting strangers from your home

October 11th
Had my last bit of training today. Finally my time is my own. Well, for a day anyway. After that they’re shipping me off to Yagoua (assuming my house is ready by then). So tomorrow, I plan to go to the women’s market in the morning and buy some fabric that I can take with me and have made into clothes. Would be nice to have more than two outfits. You don’t buy clothes here unless you’re a child or stick thin. You have them made. For the price I would have paid for baggage, I can fill my entire wardrobe twice over with tailor-made outfits. Deal with that information, Air France! Then maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to get myself on the phone at last. Imagine that. Speaking on the phone. Whatever will they think of next? They even have a cash machine here in Maroua too. Haven’t tried it yet. Wish me luck!
To be honest, there’s not a huge amount to tell. It’s just been training for 3 days solid. Useful training, but training nonetheless. And training here is like training at home. There were flipcharts, objectives and success criteria, a projector that nobody could get to work, a person who contributed an awful lot, and evaluation forms at the end. There were some differences from North East Lincs, however. There was a goat wandering around outside eating leaves from the hedge for example, and two boys who kept poking their heads in to look at us and shout nasarwa! (Fulfulde for white people), and it was bilingual. But I suppose the most striking difference was that there were no biscuits.
We also had an interesting briefing yesterday about local etiquette. Shaking hands in a formal situation? Always shake with the right hand, and use the left hand to hold your right wrist, as a sign of respect. Entering the house of the village chief? Always take your shoes off at the door. (I assume he’s had a new carpet fitted.) Shaking hands with a Marabu (devout Muslim man)? Not if you’re a woman, you’re not. You’d contaminate him, silly!
Went for yet another meal with yet more volunteers tonight. VSO paid for the meal plus “juice”. (Juice means water or fizzy pop, I have discovered.) Got myself on the list to go to the Waza nature reserve in three weeks, to point at animals.
Am getting a bit used to things. 20 odd cows grazing freely in the park no longer seem quite so odd. Plenty of lizards about, so am getting used to them, too.
And that’s it really. Playing my guitar. Taking my vitamins. Being sociable. Plodding. I suppose you can’t be flabbergasted the whole time or it would get boring. (You see what I did there?) So tomorrow, in a desperate bid to bring the excitement back, I’m going to treat my mosquito net with insecticide. Rock and roll!
xx

4 more reactions to white people by local children

2008-10-10T10:27:00.001-07:00

1. Stop

2. Stare

3. Become expressionless

4. Try to sell something

People really aren’t used to seeing white skin. Even in the city, grown-ups can’t stop themselves from staring and refer to me in the third person, in my presence, as “la blanche” (the white woman). Women pass by and say to their children “Look. Look at the white woman”. People on the train: “Look, the white woman is asleep” (I wasn’t) “Look, she’s reading… Look at her hair…” Children are best, because they don’t check their impulses at all. They’re sometimes completely gobsmacked. We stopped at Moutourwa yesterday on the journey to Maroua, and I bent down to say hello to a toddler. It was the first time he’d seen anyone white, and he was definitely not happy about it.

People feel free to point out how strange I look to them (No smart comments. You know who you are) without worrying for a second that I’ll take offense. A far cry from the politically correct tendency to become tongue-tied at the mere suggestion that people come in different colours. (Do they really? I hadn’t even noticed.)

On the other hand, we went to the market today and I was definitely charged some sort of unofficial “stupid white foreigner tax” on my purchases. I bought the bare minimum and will equip my new house properly once I’ve settled in a bit and mentally prepared myself for haggling. You don’t really get much practice at Asda.

Speaking of the new house, it’s still being built so I’m staying put at the mission for now, but I’ll have electricity, running water, some sort of shower, and a fridge. I have a filter now too, so I’ll be able to drink water from the tap. The woman in charge is German I think, so I’m going to have a go at talking to her. Das ist gut, ja?

We went out for fish this evening. I met with a few volunteers and their Cameroonian boyfriends. It seems to be the trend here to get a local boyfriend. I took my first moto taxi. It was far more safe than I expected and cost 100fcf (10p!) You hiss at the drivers to get them to stop. In fact hissing is the way people get each other’s attention. One of the volunteers is called Veronique and she’s already working in the same place they’re sending me. She’s extremely friendly and plays guitar and sings, and she’s been here a while so she knows what’s going on. So I arrive at this restaurant, which is really a bar. We sit outside a while and then Veronique takes me to place my order. There’s this woman sitting just outside the bar with a huge barbecue and fish cooking on it. Veronique asks the woman what she’s got for a thousand francs and the woman rummages in a big bucket full of fish and pulls one out. We agree, and sit back down in our places while she grills it. This is the closest you get to McDonalds in Maroua. I’ll have to learn how to cook some of the dishes and make some of the sauces they have here. The food is fantastic.

Oh, and we had a lesson in Fulfulde, which I really enjoyed. Maybe more about that when I’ve had a bit of practice. I’m pretty sure enough effort in Fulfulde would reduce the cost of my shopping by quite a lot!

4 more things to do on the road in Africa

2008-10-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

Stop somewhere isolated and pee
Stop at a roadblock and pay
Stop at a designated roadside area and pray
Try not to hit the donkey

So, once we arrived in Ngaoundere, haggled with porters, forced our way through crowds of people, lost each other, found each other, lost the porters, found the car, we set off on a 9-hour journey from Ngaoundere to Maroua.

The French for “This is Africa” is “C’est l‘Afrique”. Our driver Abdul said it a lot on the journey, and I didn’t know how to respond because I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be self-denigrating, frustrated, humorous or what. The old banger in front of you churns out pitch black exhaust fumes so you can barely see: “C’est l’Afrique”. Another car has ten people inside and 5 more hanging out of the doors and sitting on the roof: “C’est l’Afrique”. No need for risk assessment forms here. Equally memorable is when you go slow to pass a couple of baboons playing by the road. Or the constant streams of people walking along the roadside carrying huge bowls of firewood, food and water balanced on their heads, and guiding donkeys with their saddlebags laden. It really does happen, they weren’t making it up for the telly! Men lead cattle along the roadside, and you have to watch out for antelope too. Eventually you lose count of the settlements where people live in clay huts with thatched rooves, and keep yards where livestock wander around. The first one is a novelty, but then you get used to it and what really stands out is the odd town hall or school, built of bricks and painted. Waving at enthralled children becomes second nature. You can stop at roadside stalls and buy mandarins and peanuts that taste like nothing you’ve ever bought from the supermarket. In 25 hours, we’ve been from city to settlement, lowland to mountains, rainforest to savannah to scrubland to almost desert.

C’est l’Afrique!

Of course, there are serious issues, or VSO wouldn’t even be here. For starters, I’ve seen so many kids recently hawking and begging and carrying at all hours, I’m not sure who it is I’m supposed to be helping to educate.

It`s all very complicated. How do people go forwards in one way without going backwards in another?

Ooooh, get me. Being all rhetorical and that.

4 more things you can buy from a salesman on the Yaounde-Ngaoundere train at 3am

2008-10-10T10:14:00.000-07:00

Shots of whiskey in little plastic pouches (only for the men though)
A balm that cures everything and anything
A medicine to stop you getting old
A bath mitt

It’s been an amazing couple of days. VSO tried to get us sleeper cars on the train (16 hour journey), but you can’t really go by the book if you want to do that, so they booked us into first class instead. Our programme officers Ibrahim and Celestina prepared us for the worst. Keep your bags in your sight, stop drinking and eating by 3pm to avoid using the toilet too much, etc. I had visions of squeezing up on a makeshift bench for 16 hours, while goats and chickens roamed free, and all around me other passengers kept a greedy eye on my belongings ready to pounce when I couldn’t keep awake any longer.

It wasn’t really like that at all. It was like a Virgin train only a bit worn, and with more leg room. The toilets did get pretty cruddy towards the end, but imagine if Virgin journeys lasted 16 hours. It’s definitely comparable.

There are definitely some differences though. Some amazing differences.

First there’s the madness of getting onto the train. There are sooo many people, many of them carrying so much stuff their whole lives must be in those bags. As soon as you arrive, children crowd around to beg or sell stuff, and porters appear and will carry your luggage at around 500 francs (50p) per piece. The official porters carry ID cards, which they give to you and then collect again once your bags are safely on the train. They are invariably wiry and incredibly strong, carrying the heaviest of cases three at a time – two on the head and one in one hand, with the other hand free for balance. (Health and Safety, anyone?)

Then there was the hawker, who went up and down the train selling all sorts of impossible wonder drugs and medicines, shouting his sales patter along every carriage until the early hours. And then there was the gendarme standing in uniform right next to us with his rifle at the ready and bullets in his belt. Later, he perched on the arm of someone’s seat and fell asleep still holding his gun. I was hoping some incompetent burglars would arrive to make the scene complete. Preferably the chuckle brothers. A wasted opportunity.

Another amazing thing on the Yaounde-Ngaoundere train is that it passes, and stops at, exactly the kind of African villages we’ve all seen on the telly. As you approach the stop, you see the huts with their thatched rooves, and goats, cows and chickens roaming about. Then you hear the chants of “mandarins, mandarins” “l’eau l’eau l’eau” “batons, batons”. The first stop I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Loads of passengers started piling up at the windows. I was wondering what they were looking at and why. And suddenly there were the people from the village, carrying huge bowls on their heads full of all sorts of fruit, vegetables, snacks and drinks, and selling them through the train window. Total chaos. This happened roughly every hour all the way there. To buy something you stick your head out of the train and keep shouting the name of whatever you want until someone arrives to sell it to you. (If you’re thinking anything along the lines of what happens if you start shouting “X-Box 360”? I’ll slap your wrist.) Villagers with nothing to sell waved and yodelled at the train and the passengers waved back. Towards Ngaoundere, there were boys shouting for empty bottles which they could then refill for passengers on the return journey.

You can stand in the middle of a railway track anywhere and at any time in Cameroon by the way. In fact it would be churlish not to.

In second class, there are no seats, but you find in both classes that people make themselves comfortable in any way they can. You can stand, sit, kneel, even spread a sheet on the floor and have a lie down if there’s room.

Security is really important to VSO. They had us all sitting together and we kept it like that, although this did mean that I refused my seat to a little girl who wanted to sit next to her mum. I did explain that I wasn’t allowed to sit apart from the others, and the mum was very good about it, and talked to me about my plans in Africa and her family in Chad, but I felt like a prize bitch to be honest. Still, I was duly punished since the mother bought a massive amount of batons (manioc prepared and wrapped up in leaves) at every stop. They took up so much room that a few hours before the end of the journey I gave up fighting for space and sat on the floor. I also talked at length to a couple of staff sent by the government to work in remote villages, to promote recognition, equality and advancement of women. They had a lot to say about the issues Cameroon, and Africa in general, is facing right now. You don’t get that on Virgin Trains, do you?

The only thing I didn’t enjoy so much was the insects. In the sleeper cars, they have gauze on the windows but like I say, you have to be a bit naughty to get those.

I’m currently staying in a Baptist mission in Maroua, by the way. Maroua has painted buildings, restaurants and modern things such as the internet and busier roads, like a town. But it also has the rural feel of a village, with lots of grassy (well, dusty) areas where goats roam around, and I think huts around the outskirts. The mission is well equipped and beautifully clean, with air con, gauze on the windows and nets over the beds, so a pleasant environment and no bites. You pay for what you use though, and I’ve gone a bit mad on the air con. The woman in charge runs a very tight ship, League of Gentlemen style. Email worthy.

Next instalment is about the road from Ngaoundere to Maroua.

In the meantime, please picture some goats.

4 more things to do with a shemagh

2008-10-06T09:17:00.000-07:00

1. Put it on the bed and sleep on it, so you have something resembling clean sheets.
2. Wipe up spills
3. Stuff it in the massive gap under my door to block out creepy crawlies
4. Wash it cos it’s filthy

Some git suggested I bring a shemagh. I forget who. Turning out to be very useful though, so credit where it's due.
So. It's 24 hours since I arrived as I type this, and the words headlights and rabbit spring to mind. It turns out my French isn’t so great, because I understand very little of what the Cameroonian locals and the Canadian volunteers are saying. They speak quickly, and with very different accents, and while I’m busy working out what they just said, then working out what I’m going to say in response they’ve already changed the subject 3 times, so I’m constantly 5 minutes behind in the conversation whenever anyone asks me a question. Still, they’re very understanding and life is far more interesting when you haven’t got a clue what’s going on.
Nor do I understand all the English that’s spoken. I gave away 3 dollars because I thought the programme officer was telling me to give the porter “3 bucks”, when in fact he was double checking that I had “3 bags”. He then told me off for giving away so much money. Still. Early days.
So. Traffic.
Roads in Yaounde are marked into 2 lanes, but they have an unofficial third lane which is in the middle, and that’s where you drive if you want to go fast. Sometimes, someone going in the opposite direction will want to use the middle lane for going fast too. If this happens, you should just keep going until the person driving towards you chickens out. If you feel a crash is imminent you may, as a last resort, force your way back into your own lane, and if no-one seems to be letting you in, ease off the accelerator slightly just in case you do crash. There are no pavements either, and people walk 3 abreast on the road, forcing drivers to use the middle lane even if they don’t want to go fast. If the driver in front of you in the middle lane is going too slowly, you might wish to overtake him in the “wrong” lane. You may do this if there is no oncoming traffic, or if your car is quite big and/or you think you can make it. There are some larger intersections and roundabouts where lanes cease to exist. Hundreds of cars try to weave around each other in all conceivable directions. There is invariably at least one abandoned car with its door open and its driver outside having an altercation. Ibrahim forced his way through one of these free-for-all junctions last night, and emerged on the next road, a car driving straight towards him in the wrong lane with nowhere to go but backwards. The other driver reversed about half a mile before finding somewhere to pull in. The Arc de Triomphe has nothing on Yaounde.
I brought my driving licence. It’s in my bag. It’s staying there.
Goodnight all.
More to follow.
In the meantime, for technical reasons, here is absolutely no picture at all.
xx

4 more reasons why I’m a bit stupid

2008-10-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

1. I think that every bit of fluff or mark on the wall is an insect and squirt it with Raid.
2. I forgot to seal all my bottles and tubes with gaffer tape. Guess what happened…
3. I couldn’t work out how to plug my phone and laptop into my solar powered charger. (Just take the batteries out, Gurevitch.)
4. Earlier, I tried to brush my teeth with Savlon.

Aaaaaaahhhhhh.
It was a long time coming, but I can finally relax. I’m here. I have a bed and four walls and a door that locks. I’ve eaten, wiped whatever the hell spilled in my suitcase off everything it was remotely near, and am now tucked up in a rather dirty but quite comfortable bed at the Hotel Diplomat. I got a “suite” because the room they had ready for me was filthy and my programme officers (who are lovely) insisted they change it. You have to be a very different kind of consumer over here. My instinct as a true Brit was “not to make a fuss”. But I kept my mouth shut and let them sort it out for me. So now I have a huge bedroom, en-suite bathroom, living room and 2nd bathroom. It’s not as great as it sounds, but nice to have the space nonetheless. The 2nd bathroom is interesting. Someone clearly installed the sink with the door open and no tape measure, because the door now closes onto it.

And now, let’s get my love affair with Air France out of the way. You can skip this bit if you want. I just feel the need to get it off my chest. They had one check-in desk open for standard fare passengers. One. They were putting out the final call for boarding by the time I made it through check in and upstairs. Then it was a mad dash along corridors, walkways, corners and up and down stairs before arriving at a queue for a bus which eventually arrived and took us to the plane. Of course the plane was delayed because of the number of people queuing to check in when it was about to take off. Arrived in Paris just in time for a second game of Run Around Manically, and wound up in a security queue while they were putting out the final call for Yaounde. Once through the queue, ran down more stairs, caught another bus and of course my second plane was delayed, so it was all alright in the end. Now, it pains me to say it, but Air France flights themselves are actually quite pleasant and all their staff are nice beyond belief. I was shattered so apart from airport dashes, my day was full of little sleeps interspersed with free food and drink. Not a bad way to spend a day, all things considered. But I still think Air France have no soul.

I want to write about the traffic in Yaounde (quite something), but I also want to have a sleep, so it will have to wait for next time. Instead, here are a few things I’m glad I bought:
Raid: Not only does it kill mozzies before they see you coming, it’s also fun. Like shooting them.
Smelly oils with burner: I bought these to deter mozzies. They don’t work but they smell lovely so I’m glad to have them.
Mini mosquito net (thanks mum&dad). It covers up all the little exposed bits of skin so I don’t have to worry about the mozzies. And if I hear that horrible buzzing, I can throw it over my head so I don’t have to wake up.
Mozzie repellent (are you noticing a common thread here??)
Actually there are no more mozzies here at the mo than in some of the other, more western places I’ve been. And a lot fewer than in Finland.
Loofah gloves. In no way insect related, just add a touch of luxury to shower time. (Yes, I have an actual shower herev in Yaounde!) I’ve also enjoyed using them dry. It’s refreshing somehow. (Is that weird?)
Nailbrush and hand gel.
The Subtle Knife. (It’s the name of a book. Not an actual knife which is in some way subtle.) Turning out to be a great read. Thanks Tash.

So now I leave you all and will update this here blog again soon. In the meantime, here is a picture of a mosquito.

On second thoughts, the computer won't let me. Ah well, you know what they look like.
xx

p.s. Has anyone tried to call? My phone’s only half working. My texts seem to come with half the writing missing. (Kathryn, I promise I won’t write anything here which is too p.)

4 more hours

2008-10-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

Hello! To those of you who know me, thank you for taking time to see what I'm up to. For those that don't, what kind of bizarre google search entry brought you here? (Seriously, what was it? I've tried everything...)

4 more hours (well, 3 really) before i check in at the airport to start the "next chapter in my life". I feel like I should be thinking profound thoughts. In fact I'm wondering how long the queue will be, and trying to remember where I put my phone.

This blog is partly dedicated to the generosity of Air France. I contacted them to explain that my trip is for 2 years, for charity, and I have to take a motorcycle helmet. Would they consider maybe possibly allowing me to take the helmet on board along with my flight bag? Maybe I could even take a suitcase of goodies over for local schools if they would waive the excess? Their response - not a cat in hell's chance. At first I thought they were mean, tight-fisted, and had me over a barrel. But it turns out they've got this scheme set up, where rich people with air miles can actually donate those air miles to charity and Air France will let them! Yay! How bad do I feel now? If volunteers were allowed to take bagfuls of pens and toys to Africa whenever they felt like it, then where would we be? Rich people would have to keep their own air miles, obviously, lest the whole system fall apart. (Sorry AF, I was a fool).

The other part of this blog is dedicated to my sister, who now has the majority of my luggage in her loft. Thanks Kathryn. Sorry Kathryn.

Anyway, I'll be spending next week in a hostel in Yaounde, capital of Cameroon, being trained in Local Ways. So next entry should be a bit more "Heart of Darkness" and a bit less "Disgruntled of Kettering".

In the meantime, here's a picture of my sister's loft.

Bye for now, byeeee.

4 more days

2008-09-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

4 more days (well, 3 really) of bedwetting and general panic-related behaviour before my flight.
This is just a test to see how the blog works.
I will write things here.

In the meantime, please enjoy this picture of a toucan.