A little break

Ok I owe you guys an apology, it’s been an appallingly long time since my last posting and I really don’t have any good excuses. Granted I have been busy though. Since April I have managed to get a staph infection on my face, have my house robbed, and then get malaria. When things finally settled calmed down in June I skipped town for a wonderful and much needed break with the family. Of course while I was gone people tried to break in my house again…

 

 But the main reason that I haven’t written is that I’m finding it harder to find inspiration to write about my life here. I find that what was once exotic and fascinating is slipping into the quotidian. When another volunteer tells me that the public school in his village at had a witchcraft outbreak which necessitated a school-wide exorcism it’s not exactly blasé but I no longer wonder what planet I landed on.

 

 Strangely though, I enjoyed my time here the most during all this. I’m not going to say I loved having a big oozing sore on my face or the excruciating malarial headaches and accompanying nightmares, but there was a good 3 or 4 weeks in there in which I was blessed with good health and seriously began to make this place my home. It also helps that as we move towards the big wet season starting in late July and August the suffocating heat and humidity abate a little. In fact now one could even venture to say it’s sometimes “cool” outside. It’s quite a marvelous sensation to enjoy a few days where the profuse amount of perspiration dripping off me is not the foremost thought in my mind every hour of the day. So this time of year would actually be a great time for any visitors…I know Cameroon is at the top of everyone’s wish list! Ok so it’s not the tourist capital of Africa, and ok so Africa’s not the tourist capital of the world, but I guarantee you’ll get a much more authentic cultural experience here than with most any other vacation! Seriously though my door is wide….wide open to anyone who wants.

 

 The biggest source of frustration in my life here continues to be my work. I’ve talked very little about what I actually ‘do’ here as a Peace Corps volunteer, and nonetheless that is one of the first questions people, both Cameroonians and other westerners, ask me. This is the area where the cultural shock was the greatest and yet where I’ve had the least success in understanding and surmounting it. I’ve been hesitant to say much about it because it’s very easy for that to turn negative fast. At the end of a long and frustrating day in which I accomplished nothing, when I come home to find electricity and water off, it’s very easy to slip into the “why can’t Cameroonian’s ever do anything right” attitude that is both counterproductive and self-fulfilling.

 

 Anyways, in terms of work, right now what I am most optimistic about is a income generating activity for a youth group. The group organizes activities for local kids, everything from football games to cultural dances. Batouri is a rough town for youth. The town has kind of a ‘frontier’ feel to it, a lot of young people (20 and 30 year olds) move out here looking for work in the mines or the logging industry. It also lays along the main trucking route to bring goods in and out of the Congo and Central African Republic. Many families are split up without warning as family members move in and out chasing jobs, or just as often, rumors of jobs. Kids don’t stand still either, moving towns for schooling reasons (I haven’t quite figured this yet but kids change towns a lot. I’ve heard that if you fall a grade instead of repeating the year in the same school you just continue on to the next year by enrolling in a school further out in the bush). All in all, this environment is not conductive to building community spirit, the “we’re all in this together ” attitude that brings people to work collectively for the common good. Furthermore, the transient population and lack of role models for youth proves fertile soil for STI’s and HIV infections.

 

 One of the aims of the group I work with is to provide kids in the quartier with some degree of stability in this turbulent and unpredictable environment. However, they need funding and for that they usually turn to the nearest development worker and ask for donations. Outside aid, besides being an erratic and unpredictable source, causing discontinuity in the groups activities as they wait for funds (thus not really being the island of stability they aim to be), using aid money can be damaging to the groups sense of self-efficacy. It sends a message to the kids that they need the white peoples help (no matter how many times I correct people: American = white, although Obama has done WONDERS to correct this whitewashed image of the states). It destroys the very sense of self-empowerment that development work is supposed to construct.

 

 Thus the income generating activity. We (another PCV and I) held a competition to see who could design the best income generating activity project proposal, which we would then help find the initial funding for. However, we told them this would be the last time they would be receiving financial assistance from PC volunteers. The project, raising pondeuse (egg laying chickens, I don’t know if there’s a word for that in English- yes I am a city boy), and then selling the eggs (all eggs are currently imported) is designed to support itself and the youth group indefinitely

. Further the project will teach important skills such as project design and management, financial responsibility and transparency and long term goal setting. The more intangible goals helping them on the path to financial independence include cultivating a sense of pride and confidence in the group and the community.

 Well I think I’m bordering on loosing your interest- that is if you haven’t already wondered on to another webpage. Hopefully I will be more faithful in my blogging in the future, but seeing as how I wrote most of this in mid July and am just now finding internet time to post it I can’t promise much.

 

 I have to say I am going to miss being at all the family reunions this august. Although it’s significantly easier now than it was for Christmas, its still hardest to be here when I know everyone else is getting together. I hope all the reunions and picnics go well and I wish I was there!

 

 Oh, and I’m trying to add a french version of the blog- see the tabs at the top of the page. I’m not promising much, its mostly a way to get me to improve my written french.