One week. One week was what they gave us to stuff a few bags full of our chosen belongings, dispose of our household contents and leases, dissolve all utility and banking accounts, finish our projects--or not finish--and quietly say goodbye to our colleagues, friends, neighbors, pets, and the communities that we had come to call home, all before being required to position ourselves like sardines into a laughably brimming, shoddy passenger bus, ready to part after the first and very early morning Call to Prayer. This was our disappearing act.
The curfews, the armed guards, the continuous checking over my shoulder, and two waves of volunteers’ posts closings (more remote villages closer to the unclear and porous Nigerian and Chadian borders) created an incredible sense of insecurity, in and outside of work life. There was a slow but very present creeping feeling, but, deep down, I knew that my post would not be closed. I was safe. The remaining Extreme North volunteers were no longer being consolidated. Sporadic violence around the borders continued and our approved work territory was continually restricted, but we were still living and working “as normal." Weeks turned into months, and we all began functioning with a freshly developed, heightened internal alarm system. Our new standard of living.
I was shopping for new pagne (patterned and colorful fabric used in most traditional Cameroonian wear), when my program manager called my burner phone. There was news from the U.S. Embassy. Peace Corps in the Extreme North region was being indefinitely closed. They were pulling us out. I should have seen it coming, but I had finally allowed myself to believe everyone else was exaggerating and I would not be going anywhere. I had been getting back into a routine. Then, poof. Not just the rest of my service but fifty years of Peace Corps work, integration, trust, and relationship building in a high-need area was immediately terminated. Done. And all because of encroaching ignorance onto a peaceful, yet bleeding land. A waking nightmare. Hate and fear were on the move. So easily, a hungry and hopeless person can adopt the extreme perspectives of radicalism.
That funereal week was a wild blur with a few faint memories of frantically trying to find different owners (who may not want to eat) a batch of kittens, painting a big map of the world on the outside wall of my house for the neighborhood kids, and putting on a “yard sale” (which turned out to be strangely similar to any of our childhood garage sales where my Dad's terrible sales pitches and his “take-what-you-can-carry-and-give-me-a-peso-for-it" attitude reigned). Bureaucratic necessities were finalized, but little closure came from that week. On my last day, minutes after I had handed the keys back to my landlord and for the first time in many months, a dark sky spat out angry hail and rain. It was cold and eerie; a perfectly-timed surrogate weep.
With only two more months remaining in my service, it was decided that little fruition would come from placing me in a new post. I spent the remainder of my time as a vagabond volunteer visiting friends, helping with a few projects, and simply trying to embrace my little time left with Cameroon. It was wonderful and wearing. Then, after a handshake and a small souvenir pin, I was put onto a plane and flown home.
That was it. A quick, two-year flash. La fin.
It has now been nearly six months since I returned to envied American soil--when I, freshly-off the plane, thought how the town of Kenner, a very uninspiring concrete-sprawled suburb housing New Orleans’ airport, looked so beautiful, when I, with little grace, rolled out the bed of a pickup truck to surprise my uniformed sister on her twenty-fifth birthday, and when I met all four of my nieces and nephew for the first time ever. It took me only two and a half weeks to get back into flushing just-containing-urine toilets. I embraced my native land with a vengeance--all the hot water, all the food, all the new babies, all the magical sidewalks and superb conveniences. I even forwent my last assessment to becoming an officer in the State Department's Foreign Service, deciding that I wanted to be here, at least semi-stationary, for the next little bit. My younger brothers’ voices have changed, I have nieces and nephews that call me “Biff,” and after a hefty amount of bonding time, my family is surprisingly not completely ready for me to leave again. It is good to be home, in the land of plenty. Cameroon is, again, a hazy world away.
But, that is not true. Life in Cameroon continues--grave inequalities, hunger and disease, kidnappings, births, deaths, and celebrations. I am not able to block it, not able to forget.
Often, I have sat down to write my last “Elizabeth Goes to Cameroon” installment, but every time, I have been unable and left staring at blank paper (likely distracted and foiled by Netflix or happy hours). It seems only fair that I would attempt to write something as profound and eye-opening as my experience, something worthy of my gratitude for Cameroon and the Peace Corps. A great ode or ballad. But for the moment, I am resigned to leave it here. Perhaps when I hit seventy, I will be more eloquent. I didn't feel I had enough good-bye time when I left my Cameroonian home, but that wound slowly heals, as I realize I am not closing a simple, adventure chapter in my own life book. My Cameroonian experiences, education, and friendships will remain with me in some form throughout my life. I was allowed an intimate look into her own trials, sorrows, and triumphs, her own similarities and uniquities; things that will continually help build and construct me--a better me. One day, I hope to see that beautiful place with its beautiful people again.
Thank you, Cameroon. Thank you, Peace Corps. Thank you, Peace Corps Family. Thank you, U.S. Government*. On est ensemble. Grand merci. Useko djur.
Title: Mi wari, mi lari, mi dili (Fulfude, the most common local language of the Cameroonian North: I came, I saw, I left)
* Post Script: Because it would be unheard of me to write a blog without a grievance…the U.S. Peace Corps, a government institution, gives its Returned Peace Corps Volunteers--after they have done two years of diplomacy and development work in harsh conditions and usually had multiple run-ins with tropical diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever, dysentery, tuberculosis...--a cute, little re-adjustment allowance and one month of health care. One month of health care. That's unacceptable. Let's do better.)
A short two months prior, thirty Peace Corps Volunteers dispersed throughout Cameroon’s Extreme North Region heard devastating news. The news came slowly to the region through spotty mobile phone service and the local grapevine. A French family of seven, four being young children, had been kidnapped from the country’s principal tourist attraction, Waza National Park--just seventy-five miles from me--and taken on the backs of motorbikes into an unforgiving, dry-season Sahelian landscape (i.e., one-hundred twenty degree weather, bleak sand, and dried up riverbeds). In Cameroon?! This couldn't be right.
The father, a French gas company employee, and his family, all Cameroonian residents on vacation, were taken by Boko Haram, a radical Nigerian-based and al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organization. Boko Haram, which translates to “western education is sinful,” has been fighting for an independent Islamic state in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim-dominant north for the last decade. They are responsible for thousands of deaths in Nigeria--mostly civilians, Muslims and Christians alike.
Soon after, the surrounding Peace Corps Volunteers were consolidated into a safe house with armed guards within my own town, the region's most central and safest city. Headquarters issued a nightly curfew. I was given permission to stay in my own house, without armed guards, not far from the transit house. That concession was a honey-infused blessing, as it kept me from sleeping on communal sweat and dirt-soaked foam mattresses under pelt-happy (but beautiful) Neem trees, and from having to use intermittent plumbing and water with nearly twenty irregularly washed volunteers during hot season.
The father, a French gas company employee, and his family, all Cameroonian residents on vacation, were taken by Boko Haram, a radical Nigerian-based and al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organization. Boko Haram, which translates to “western education is sinful,” has been fighting for an independent Islamic state in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim-dominant north for the last decade. They are responsible for thousands of deaths in Nigeria--mostly civilians, Muslims and Christians alike.
Soon after, the surrounding Peace Corps Volunteers were consolidated into a safe house with armed guards within my own town, the region's most central and safest city. Headquarters issued a nightly curfew. I was given permission to stay in my own house, without armed guards, not far from the transit house. That concession was a honey-infused blessing, as it kept me from sleeping on communal sweat and dirt-soaked foam mattresses under pelt-happy (but beautiful) Neem trees, and from having to use intermittent plumbing and water with nearly twenty irregularly washed volunteers during hot season.
The curfews, the armed guards, the continuous checking over my shoulder, and two waves of volunteers’ posts closings (more remote villages closer to the unclear and porous Nigerian and Chadian borders) created an incredible sense of insecurity, in and outside of work life. There was a slow but very present creeping feeling, but, deep down, I knew that my post would not be closed. I was safe. The remaining Extreme North volunteers were no longer being consolidated. Sporadic violence around the borders continued and our approved work territory was continually restricted, but we were still living and working “as normal." Weeks turned into months, and we all began functioning with a freshly developed, heightened internal alarm system. Our new standard of living.
I was shopping for new pagne (patterned and colorful fabric used in most traditional Cameroonian wear), when my program manager called my burner phone. There was news from the U.S. Embassy. Peace Corps in the Extreme North region was being indefinitely closed. They were pulling us out. I should have seen it coming, but I had finally allowed myself to believe everyone else was exaggerating and I would not be going anywhere. I had been getting back into a routine. Then, poof. Not just the rest of my service but fifty years of Peace Corps work, integration, trust, and relationship building in a high-need area was immediately terminated. Done. And all because of encroaching ignorance onto a peaceful, yet bleeding land. A waking nightmare. Hate and fear were on the move. So easily, a hungry and hopeless person can adopt the extreme perspectives of radicalism.
That funereal week was a wild blur with a few faint memories of frantically trying to find different owners (who may not want to eat) a batch of kittens, painting a big map of the world on the outside wall of my house for the neighborhood kids, and putting on a “yard sale” (which turned out to be strangely similar to any of our childhood garage sales where my Dad's terrible sales pitches and his “take-what-you-can-carry-and-give-me-a-peso-for-it" attitude reigned). Bureaucratic necessities were finalized, but little closure came from that week. On my last day, minutes after I had handed the keys back to my landlord and for the first time in many months, a dark sky spat out angry hail and rain. It was cold and eerie; a perfectly-timed surrogate weep.
With only two more months remaining in my service, it was decided that little fruition would come from placing me in a new post. I spent the remainder of my time as a vagabond volunteer visiting friends, helping with a few projects, and simply trying to embrace my little time left with Cameroon. It was wonderful and wearing. Then, after a handshake and a small souvenir pin, I was put onto a plane and flown home.
That was it. A quick, two-year flash. La fin.
It has now been nearly six months since I returned to envied American soil--when I, freshly-off the plane, thought how the town of Kenner, a very uninspiring concrete-sprawled suburb housing New Orleans’ airport, looked so beautiful, when I, with little grace, rolled out the bed of a pickup truck to surprise my uniformed sister on her twenty-fifth birthday, and when I met all four of my nieces and nephew for the first time ever. It took me only two and a half weeks to get back into flushing just-containing-urine toilets. I embraced my native land with a vengeance--all the hot water, all the food, all the new babies, all the magical sidewalks and superb conveniences. I even forwent my last assessment to becoming an officer in the State Department's Foreign Service, deciding that I wanted to be here, at least semi-stationary, for the next little bit. My younger brothers’ voices have changed, I have nieces and nephews that call me “Biff,” and after a hefty amount of bonding time, my family is surprisingly not completely ready for me to leave again. It is good to be home, in the land of plenty. Cameroon is, again, a hazy world away.
But, that is not true. Life in Cameroon continues--grave inequalities, hunger and disease, kidnappings, births, deaths, and celebrations. I am not able to block it, not able to forget.
Often, I have sat down to write my last “Elizabeth Goes to Cameroon” installment, but every time, I have been unable and left staring at blank paper (likely distracted and foiled by Netflix or happy hours). It seems only fair that I would attempt to write something as profound and eye-opening as my experience, something worthy of my gratitude for Cameroon and the Peace Corps. A great ode or ballad. But for the moment, I am resigned to leave it here. Perhaps when I hit seventy, I will be more eloquent. I didn't feel I had enough good-bye time when I left my Cameroonian home, but that wound slowly heals, as I realize I am not closing a simple, adventure chapter in my own life book. My Cameroonian experiences, education, and friendships will remain with me in some form throughout my life. I was allowed an intimate look into her own trials, sorrows, and triumphs, her own similarities and uniquities; things that will continually help build and construct me--a better me. One day, I hope to see that beautiful place with its beautiful people again.
Thank you, Cameroon. Thank you, Peace Corps. Thank you, Peace Corps Family. Thank you, U.S. Government*. On est ensemble. Grand merci. Useko djur.
Title: Mi wari, mi lari, mi dili (Fulfude, the most common local language of the Cameroonian North: I came, I saw, I left)
* Post Script: Because it would be unheard of me to write a blog without a grievance…the U.S. Peace Corps, a government institution, gives its Returned Peace Corps Volunteers--after they have done two years of diplomacy and development work in harsh conditions and usually had multiple run-ins with tropical diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever, dysentery, tuberculosis...--a cute, little re-adjustment allowance and one month of health care. One month of health care. That's unacceptable. Let's do better.)
Here's to wild and wonderful adventures in 2014!
Some of my neighborhood rascals; I graffiti-ed the front of my house right before peace-ing out. (Maroua)
My next door neighbor, Grand-mere, and her goats. The matriarch of the neighborhood; don't cross her, kids. (Maroua)
The Extreme North Exodus: Collection & Removal (Kaele)
Extremers for Life: John Jack, Earl, and I in our matching pagne at our training group's closing dinner (photo compliments: Jack Gaines)
