Spare Some Small Change?

My last project in the Littoral Region ended yesterday.  And by far, it was the most enjoyable work I did during all of my first year.  As a Regional Collaboration Project, four fellow volunteers and I hosted a 10-day overnight camp – “Camp Joie de Vivre” – at a nearby orphanage in a small village called Ntolo.  With 60 campers running about, by the end, I was exhausted.  I slept a good 13 hours when I got home.

In terms of being a camp, it was just that - nothing overly special - just a typical ole' summer camp.  However, that in itself is actually pretty spectacular in Cameroon.  It consisted of a little mélange of activities including geography, English, health, sanitation, and business lessons, soap making, tree planting, trash pick-up, sports, songs  (no, there was no Kumbyah), art activities and a cultural soirée with lots of sketches, singing, and dancing.  I even subjected myself to playing “World Cuppies” with the kids, who for this ranged from 10-19.  My teammate was an 11 year-old named Kalmax (at first, I thought he said Karl Marx and found that intriguing -- accents!), and…we never got eliminated.  Ha! I beat Cameroonians at soccer – that’s pretty incredible for a slow and chubby ole’ American!  (My brother Gabriel once told me that watching me play soccer was like watching soccer played under water -- that's probably true.)  On one of the last days, we gave them matching gold t-shirts -- which will be worn a flatteringly excessive but necessary amount, legally overstuffed them into a rented bus in the wee hours of the morning and took the kids south to the coastal town of Limbé for the day.  We visited a wildlife reserve center which houses many rescued orphaned primates and where Cameroonians are taught about conservation, threats of poaching, and the country’s many endangered species, and afterwards, we had a picnic on the volcanic-black-sanded beach.  It was many of the kids’ first time to see and get in the ocean.  They loved it!  I loved it.  The day was incredible.  Before I left, the kids gave me a good 10 minute song and testimonial filled send-off.   In addition to making me feel extremely awkward and uncomfortable as I stood front and center, my little heart got a bit wrenched. 

Many of the kids live at this center, with its overworked small staff and shoestring budget, year round.  Some of the luckier ones get to go stay with extended family during the vacation months, but for all of them, with very little chance of adoption, life is continuously harsh.  Despite what the staff offers, most will never have any form of lasting unconditional and innate familial love and support that most of us take for granted and which helps us get through life.  Understandably so, many have behavioral or emotional issues, but the amount of resiliency and vibrancy they show is astounding.  I couldn’t help think about my own once-orphanage-living siblings the whole time I was there.  Marcelle, Emmanuel, Don de Dieu, Sango, Rose, Ladifa, Cipee…any of them could have been my own Estefania, Juan, Victor, or Paula (who after being away for a year, I miss more than a tiny bit).  There was even a group of four siblings that I couldn’t get enough of (the younger two sadly already been passed down AIDS).  Although the orphanage that housed my brothers and sisters was probably a bit better funded and a little more accessible  (thus giving them a slightly increased chance at getting to a better-quality life), I couldn’t stop thinking of the few opportunities and unfair handicaps that most orphans have in all developing countries – the disadvantaged of the already disadvantaged.  

Sometimes, I have internal debates about my role as a foreign “development worker” and one of my job descriptions being “change agent” and what that means and what effects I have on my host country.  Usually, I end up concluding that because I have such little impact, my work, although maybe not hugely beneficial, can’t be really detrimental in the grand scheme of things.   However, for maybe the first time since I’ve been in country (remember, like with most things, I’m a little bit of a Johnny-Come-Lately), I felt absolutely ok about being a “change agent.”  If I was able to help show some kids the ocean for the first time ever, or if I was able to show the kids a crocodile and a mandrill, or help teach them about the continents and oceans – to help show them a few more of the beautiful things in our shared world, then that was ok .  Maybe even good.  Finally, even if it was just in this situation, it felt really nice to be completely comfortable in sparing some undoubtedly small but needed change.

(how stereotypical Peace Corps does this look??)

On the Road Again…

A great deal goes into creating a successful post on both the Peace Corps’ administrative and volunteer sides, including hard work, determination, patience, and a bit of necessary luck.  And like in many aspects of life, but especially in the quantifying ways of Peace Corps, success can be measured from a wide array of things (making it one of the many attractive attributes and kindnesses of volunteer-life).  Yet, on paper and in reality, the post that I opened just north of Douala was not a success.

Along with my anti-malarial, I took a daily dosing of defeat.  I knew that that was all too common and just plain normal when opening a new post, so I kept telling myself things were soon going to change -- keep trying different ways, something has to pan out.  Things, however, did not really seem to be changing and time was too quickly disappearing.  My remaining hope began to feel simply naïve, and I realized I did not want keep doing the same thing for another year.  My battle of trying to integrate and work with my community was lost.  I was embarrassingly beaten and had no desire to confess it.  Perhaps, it was due to the timing in which I was placed with my host organization, or it was because of the feeling of continuously being lumped in with an unloved nearby foreign company and the accompanying large helping of indifference that was served with it, or maybe it was a lack of that little bit of luck, or more feasibly and simply, it was me and my improvement-needing personality.  For whatever collection of reasons, I called it quits on my post and am moving on. 

Well, moving up.

Peace Corps Cameroon granted me a post transfer.  So in July, I’m headed some 35 hours from where I currently am to Maroua, the regional capital of the Extreme North (pop: 200,000 – big city livin’!) and close to both the Nigerian and Chadian borders.  I’m trading in my small tropical rolling hill town of 20,000 with its heat and humidity, amazing rainfall, fruit-producing dark soils, big spiders and mosquitos, and nearby beach for a Sahel border town of extremely hot and dry heat, scorpions, meat-a-plenty, leather and carved wood artisanal markets, and nearby mountain ranges that boast moon-like formations.  I’m getting the super special Cameroonian 2 for 1 deal.  This predominately Muslim region has been said to conjure up the same images from Star Wars’ Mos Eisley (the desert spaceport) with its red and brown streets and beige buildings yet bustling with a cast of colorful characters (that include the Fulani and Chadians).  Supposedly as a shoulder-and-knee covered female, I will get harassed less in the North, but only because in this more conservative area women aren’t worth as much time.  As a fellow vagina-bearing volunteer in the area put it, it’s more like “ah, look, isn’t that just too cute” complemented with a patronizing head pat.  Getting respect might be a little harder to come by – but everywhere has its challenges.

I’ll be working with a Community Initiative Group called L’Association Avenir des Femmes which works in a variety of areas to help improve the lives of women and children living with HIV/AIDS and also helps girls, who for whatever reason (often familial constraints/obligations or lack of money) were unable to finish school, learn some sort of trade.  Although I’m definitely going to miss some of the great perks of my current post – not to mention some friends who I wish I could just roll up and put in my fanny pack, I’m super excited for this little second year fresh start.  My first year was definitely not a waste, and I will surely be forever grateful for all the things I learned and experienced with Njombe, but it’s time to hit the road again.  So, stay tuned for Part 2 of my Cameroonian adventures…