Melt Pot, Melt!

Random oddities like the beautiful black and gold colors, a fleur de lys, Hurricane Katrina, hunting and fishing, and crawfish boils unite my state.  The red, white, and blue colors, hot dogs and potato salad, American football, Pearl Harbor, and the Kardashians bring together my country.  We don’t apologize if we’re audibly louder than the rest of all other patrons put together in a foreign country's bar, and we don’t mind putting our politics in centers of conversations.  We think we’re the best damn country in all of Little Earth -- and have at least a couple very sound reasons to back up our audacious declarations.   And, not to gloss over nativism or racism, which undoubtedly and sadly still exists, or to forget our sometimes very divided views on politics, our country - not just in name - is definitely a united one.  Whether it be from some shared notions of “Manifest Destiny” or the “American Dream", having the physical space for our country to more organically develop (after of course, moving peoples out of the way), or because our population is continuously being diversified, our very young pup of a nation has quite a sense of itself -- "The Great Melting Pot" as the history books preach (although "The Tasty Pot of Gumbo" would make more sense).  Being quite removed from any former motherland and as a thoroughbred Heinz-57 mutt, I had nothing to do with getting to be an American, but I am definitely not sad to have been born there.  Like most Americans, I am proud of it and proud to be a part.  Pride, or if you'd rather call it arrogance, can cause great separations, but it also can double as a great power and driving force.  

Too often am I in a little restaurant, boutique, or a store here and there is only bare minimum “customer service" -- making it an actual foreign concept.  I like to think myself a fairly laid-back, polite customer (you give me plantains instead of fried potatoes– fine with me, the gods probably thought it better for me), but somehow when I leave establishments here, I feel like a snotty, demanding, and simply awful person.  Obviously, after waiting for 15 minutes in an empty dining room, I was being the rude one by taking precious time out of that very busy owner’s day to order a coke, grilled fish, and sticks of fermented manioc.  I am really sorry.  This “hot chicken” is cold?  Stink-eye waitress, you scare me too much to ask for it to be reheated.  Another beer?  I know, I know, how dare I!  Recently at a Camtel store, a big national telecommunications provider and retailer, and after talking to several employees, I watched a friend have to threaten to go to the competition to buy her internet key before they even bothered to try to help her find a key that they sell and advertise.  (On the rarer occasions that I do find really good customer service, I grow almost instantly suspicious and momentarily think whether or not it’s in my best interest to sprint for the exit.)  I know it may not seem like a big deal, but a lack of pride expressed through its customer service is just one small example of a much larger and very problematic national shortage.

To be fair, Cameroonians do take pride in things – like being a peaceful and not completely starving nation, keeping the grounds around their homes clean and swept, their soccer team - The Indomitable Lions, and always having on clean shoes.  When one looks around at surrounding countries, those are things for to be proud, but it’s really not enough to fuse this country.  The geographical area that is now Cameroon has had some tough luck in its recent 200 year history that plagues it today as a non-ethnically unified nation – like the slave trade, Colonialism, AIDS, poverty, major corruption, an inept education system, and silly laws on rights pertaining to personal property (when a greedy government with foreigners sitting in its deep pockets mixes traditional, colonial, and modern laws together, the outcome is not pretty; if you don’t really own the land you’re working on, why really concern yourself with its longer term future?)  This country has the abundant natural resources and the potential to be a great state, but the major apathy and engrained low expectations are not going to allow for it.  It is exasperating.  Maybe it’s because I’m American -- I’m always wearing a watch and thinking time is money -- but I can’t help but see the giant clock in the sky quickly tickin’ away.  Cameroon, you are at a pivotal place in your history.  Things could fairly quickly improve – or they could just as easily go the other way.  Let some pride be the fuel for some forward motion.  Find your battle cry.  Like New Orleanians chanted after Katrina (however cheesy it may have sounded),“Rise Up” and demand better.

...Yet, where does their rallying flagpole lie?  How do you bring communion and pride to a broken nation who started in the same state?  This is a country that just had seven Olympic athletes 'abscond' into Foggy London-town during the Games and no one could really fault them.  If an individual or a body of people is going to have pride in anything, they must be able to find something to take hold of, love, and own.  Cameroon would not only need one of my imagined pride-bringing events to take shape -- a victory, a tragedy, a change in property laws or a shift in government, a Marian apparition, or a mixture of many tomorrow-land occurrences -- but it would also need to simultaneously spread the sentiments from bottom-up and top-down (from the "paysans" to the "grands" and vice versa) in order for it to be at all a success.  Something to connect.  

Stirring the pot and causing real change is not as simple as I would like to have it sound, but neither is it impossible (and to its credit, there is a minority who do strive for more).  My pointless tirades offer zero solutions*.  However, what I do know is that Cameroonians are always telling me on est ensemble -- we are together.  For Cameroon's sake, I want to see it.

  (Above: During Pre-Service Training, our Cameroonian language trainers, who come from different ethnic groups and parts of the country, show us their own "on est ensembe.")

*Last June, in the beginning of this little exercise of public journaling, I had naively thought that I would eventually be able write some unnecessarily wordy narratives or insights into the Cameroonian life that contained real substance – such as pinpointing reasons for hardships, explaining traditions through a culturally anthropological lens, giving solutions to the many problems, talking about the hope that’s just around the corner for Cameroonians, etc, but I realized I was being silly so my apologies and to your non-disappointments, those “enlightening” posts aren’t coming.  At least, I’m still being unnecessarily wordy – you’re welcome!

Today

Despite living twenty-one million and thirty-three miles away from home (Google Maps wouldn’t divulge the actual number so I might be off by a couple of scores), I don’t always feel like I’m that far from the folks and the motherland.  This isn’t 1962, 1992, or even 2002.  Peace Corps Volunteers are no longer dropped off in the middle of villages, given motorbikes, told essentially “good luck and see you in two years” by administrators, and hope that their letters reach home within a year’s time.  Times have a changed – at least in some aspects.   In the last few years and even in the year since I have been in country, the spread of the internet has been pretty astonishing – cyber cafes, wireless keys, undersea fiber-optic cables!  Widespread availability, opportunity, and speed aren't exactly there yet, but just give it a little more time.  (Some days, I feel like training people to use Google with its endless supply of solutions right there for the fingertips’ reaping should be a volunteer’s real priority).  I live in a small city so as long as there is power, I could pay for the internet everyday if I wanted.  And, I would wager to say at least sixty percent of volunteers in Cameroon have weekly access as well.  Sure, there are still plenty of volunteers who live daily without power, water, phone, or internet (or some fun combination of those) in Cameroon and in many other countries, but thanks to the technology nerds, there isn’t quite the same disconnect between work and home as there once was.  Nowadays, volunteers, like the rest of the world, get to better keep up with family and friends through the magic of email, Facebook, blogs, and all those other necessary social network tools (while also helping to add to that never-ending, keyboard-created poopy-pile of unneeded shared thoughts that ends up in the interweb's non-coverable burial grounds - wherever they may lie). 

As soon as I left the U.S., all of my family decided to hurry and have babies while I was gone.  I think they feared I might drop one.  I wouldn’t have. Well, I don’t think I would have.  My best friends from college decided to become adults and do things like buy homes, get married, and become doctors and deliver hundreds of babies.  One of my little sisters moved on to high school, and the dog got a new best friend.  Why didn’t anyone tell me that life back home wasn’t going to pause for me??  (Maybe they did and I forgot to listen.)  All to say, I know I am lucky to have use of the modern communication tools -- it helps with the homesickness.  It's the one who lets me know that I am missing out and then helps me deal with those consequential feelings of missing out (making for an unhealthy and twisted relationship). 

But for the moment, as I sit here listening to Raffi and finger squishing the cotton weevils that are living in my mattress, and on the day that Katrina hit New Orleans seven years ago and as Isaac takes his time evilly calculating and circulating over my family, I feel the disconnect -- antsy and useless.  And, like after a week at summer camp, I miss home.  I know that today, especially, I am the fortunate one to be out of a hurricane’s reach, but I can’t say that right now I wouldn't rather be sitting without electricity in a forced and stressful holiday among family and friends playing cards, drinking beer, porch watching the wind and rain, and soon cleaning up the damage.

Tu es là? Oui, je suis là?

 (crater lake in Foumbot, West Region)

To only my father’s disappointment, I disappeared from posting since early June.  (Apologies, Papi.)  I’ve simply been nomad-ing, and like the earliest of Americans was having too many encounters with whitemen (PCVs) - desired and undesired.  Even now after being in Maroua for a couple of weeks, I have to give myself a daily reminder that I am here for good.  Oui, je suis là!*  That Cameroonian Limboland that I was living in is now just a not-so-distant memory.    

So much has happened -- so little has happened. And, I guess before I write another boring, opinionated, and judgy post on Cameroonian life and being caught in the middle of it (which there are a few brewing and coming soon to a blog near you), I’ll just give an ugly-formatted and equally dull update.

A few notable happenings as of late: a large used syringe was thrown at me through a bus window by a “crazy” – a leg stabbing with god knows what consequences evading me by mere centimeters (let me be dramatic!), was recalled to Yaounde for my training group’s Mid-Service Conference (our 1 year mark) and where we celebrated our own country’s Independence Day together in the most appropriate of ways – over a hot grill where greasy meat drippings coated the coals, a government official said “she’s Cameroonian” and begrudgingly gave me the fair price after I wore him down with my stubbornness in refusing to pay a “white man” price, was in a moto accident leaving the right side of my body with surface wounds and more sadly torn jeans – at least at the last moment, I remembered not to pay my at-fault driver, had the un-fun malaria, was given electro-shock tests on my arms during which the Cameroonian neurologist smiled a bit too much for my liking as my face flickered between normal and grimace, saw a freshly-caught five-footer river fish, helped train the new group of volunteers in the arts of such things as “Mountain Biking” and “Transitioning to Life at Post” (things I’m well-known for being an expert), took an overnight train where my top bunk-mates were 7.5 and 12 year-old sisters sharing a bed and traveling alone who strangely found me funny or more likely funny-looking, learned to use the train bathroom only while it was in motion unless I liked the idea of the onlookers, saw crater lakes and mountainous volcanic-plugs, met with a crab sorcerer who granted me one question and answer to help satisfy my cravings for the knowledge of my future self, saw Chad and walked to Nigeria, and celebrated my first End of Ramadan fete with Cameroonians.

First observances from my new home in the Extreme North Region: they have lots of donkeys! and horses, cow and goat husbandry is common so there’s way more beef for me to down and leather products to buy, there are way less greens and few fruits but fresh cheese and yogurt can be found - as well as tasty sesame seed delicacies, dates, and guinea fowl eggs, we’re currently in the three months of rainy season so I’m still inexperienced to the forewarned fear-bringing hot/ dry season, bus travel in the North is much more comfortable because Cameroonians are skinnier here – a mix of genetics and malnutrition, buses also stop during Muslim prayer time, there are about 50 ethnic groups in my region, the encompassing sand is cruelly deceiving as there is no water at any of its edges, most of my neighbors don’t speak French but rather Fulfulde, Muslims probably only account for maybe fifty percent of the population but their culture is dominant here, there are traditional chiefs called “Lamidos” who whenever traveling about have an entourage of men constantly announcing their arrival with long, loud horns, traditional stringed instruments are played to help move cattle, I have a growing obsession with the beautiful, shady and evergreen Neem Trees that grace Maroua and I want to do projects related to them, it’s a much calmer place, I feel uglier here because men are less frequently yelling “Ma Cherie” at me and asking if I want them to accompany me, even “La Blanche” or the local-tongue equivalent “Nassara” feels less nasty when yelled at me, and already, I am beginning to love my new home.

* « Tu es là? Oui, je suis là? »: a good n’ typical Cameroonian exchange/in-person greeting;  Are you here? Yes, (obviously) I’m here.

Thousands of Muslims dressed in their finest gathered at the Grand Mosque in Maroua to celebrate the end of Ramadan and the breaking of the fast, Eid-ul-Fitr

 Traditional Crab Sorcerer of Rhumsiki (Extreme North)

Friday the Thirteenth

My non-superstitious brain was being traitorous.  Somewhere around twenty-five hours north of the capitol city and staring out the bush-taxi window, I started noticing all the paranormal-seeming parallels between arriving at my first and second posts with their strangely similar stormy and cold evenings and their lack of any Cameroonian counterpart to welcome me to their alien homelands.  Plus, it was Friday the 13^th.  Not good.  A dark lightness was appearing, and in an instant, Brainhurt* was spreading throughout my egg-shaped extremity and starting to ring in my ears.  I had been kidding myself.  It wasn’t the last post that was the failure.  It was me.  Changing posts wasn’t going to make it better.  This was no good - forever to be known, at least in my own unread herstory book, as The Great Njombe-Maroua Repeat.

“Oui, à la maison rose.” 

My luckily-short nineteen point two seconds of Brainhurt vanished when a welcomed disturbance came via my friend’s voice.  With the motivation given by an unreasonably hostile and open sky, pelting its unforgiving wet daggers down upon us, and with my two Peace Corps friends darting out of the car like well-tipped porters carrying my unnecessary amount of luggage past the gate to my new home, the unloading went quickly. 

I had arrived, and I arrived to a better place.

*Brainhurt: a lifelong annoying condition arising when my underdeveloped brain becomes (over)worked with having to hold and/or process thought; a chubby kid forced to play basketball in P.E. is an external embodiment of this malady; side-effects are unflattering.

 A view of Maroua, my new home, from Mt. Maroua - a short hike outside of the town

 Rhumsiki - Rainy Season - volcanic plugs - about 3 hours west of Maroua

Kapsiki Peak and donkey at Rhumsiki - Rainy Season

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…

Bonne Fête des Mères

Happy Mother's Day to all the Mamas.

Flatlined

Once upon a time in a far away land, I had a heart.  I wanted and thought it possible to be a Jesus, Mother Theresa, Gandhi, or JoAnne Crone – my town’s own local saint.  I wanted to help the poor and care for the sick.  I wanted to go off to some tropical island and nurse disease-ridden babies back to health.  Seinfeld seemed mean to me, and I would tear up at emotion-demanding commercials. I'd put a dollar in the plastic cup of the guy at the intersection if I had it – not important if it was for booze or not.  And, if a person cut me off in traffic, I would think up scenarios about that driver’s awfully bad day or his rushing home to a sick child so that I could refrain from shooting him the bird.  Treat others how you would want to be treated…

but I was never very good at actually doing that.

I realized, behind everyone else, that my personality aligned more with Grungetta's.  Plus, new lessons were learned and I started seeing a whole assortment of things in a new light.  That regular unwashed homeless man transformed through clearer lens into a rude, lazy, lying bum who I was sick and tired of him hitting me up daily for money when I was barely getting by myself – trying to figure out how to pay rent or keep the electricity on that month – and knowing he probably made more than me that day by begging.  I started to understand an individual’s and humanity’s need to keep the family fed and to have the basics (and also realizing that the definition for that was different for everyone).  Their motivation and the necessity of their actions became clearer to me - even if the way to get to those things maybe wasn't  the best for the “common good."  Things like the death penalty, abortion, war, big corporations and pharmaceutical companies became messy in my mind.  Nothing wanted to remain clean cut for me, and empathy stretched me too thin.  Life outside of the pre-college, parental haven of happiness introduced me to a much grayer world.  And with that, for better or worse, many of my kinder sensitivities found themselves dulled and left me with an irregular, muffled beat.

A few days ago, I noticed that I had added another silencing layer to what was left of my good-natured organ.

When I came to Cameroon, it was hard to see past the poverty.   I saw flies, filth, concrete and wooden houses unfit for living, few toilets, unaccompanied naked toddlers with running noses wobbling around places where no one should be walking shoeless, and lots of hungry people.  The need was overwhelming.  Poverty can be scary and bring feelings of uneasiness and make things uncomfortable - at least for me.  But slowly, I got past that.  A lot of what I thought before as unacceptable, bizarre, or simply new started becoming normal to me.  Not a bad thing, not a good thing – reserving a spot in that gray place.  I saw beautiful people, some particularly good food and neat traditions, and that life wasn’t so bad for a lot of people here.  And, I started thinking about all the not-so-great and wasteful habits of Americans and some of the possible personal changes I could make upon my return.  But, I also got used to some of the other more obnoxious constants - to the men at all the bars/places to buy alcohol (which greatly outnumber the Starbucks in Seattle) asking me to buy their beers or whiskey sachets, to the men I'd meet for two minutes in a car and want my contact for work collaborations but really only so they could later ask me to marry them, to the random passersbys asking me what I’m going to do for them, to people asking me if I can bring them to America or Europe, to the crazies and poorer Cameroonians asking for money or telling me they were hungry, to the culturally common but to me, annoying question of “what have you brought me?”  I created my automated responses – nope, nothing, or some simple (or a less-than-simple) fabrication.  Maybe a necessary numbing -- as there’s a certain fine-tuned Peace Corps Volunteer balancing act that must come into play when deciding where and with whom one can (and wants) to put their limited time and energy into doing our own self-assigned development work.  As a PCV, I can try and help teach something to serious knowledge-desiring individuals or groups and maybe help find resources, but otherwise this white lady’s got those annoying false pockets.  I’m not Jesus.  I don’t have all the answers (I have very few in fact - even if I like to pretend differently), there’s only a little that I can do to actually help, and there's a big possibility that I won't have a second coming -- disappointments and frustrations for both parties.

I just can’t help everyone.

The other morning as I was sitting on the stoops of a church reading Franny and Zooey and waiting for my class to start at the next-door school, a lady who was cleanly dressed and toting a small carry-on type bag came up to me and started mumbling something about a bigger town three hours north of us.  Not even because she was speaking French, I was having a difficult time understanding her.  She was talking about something medical and something about going to that town.  She never asked me for money but clearly she was in need of something.  Too absorbed in my book, knowing I only had about ten minutes before class started, and not wanting to give her my 2,500 CFA (around 5 USD and about a week’s worth of food) for travel money, I brushed her off and told her she should go and talk to the priest.  She headed that way and I soon left - making sure I was gone before she could return.  That night and several miles away from the church, I was walking back from my post-mate’s house where I had been eating some delicious homemade stomach-filling stew and drinking tasty(ish) boxed-wine.  On the steps of a closed office building, I spotted the same lady.   Her back was to me and she was sitting with her bag in her lap and her head was resting upon it - obviously with nowhere to go.  And… decidedly, I quietly tip-toed by so that she wouldn't hear or bother me.  A success.

But and rightfully so, I felt like a real nasty heartless p.o.s. after that.  Cameroonians don’t have the many accessible soup kitchens, shelters, unemployment, or disability that most Americans can at least rely on when times are really tough.  They must rely on family and friends when they need help – what happens if that doesn’t exist or it’s been exhausted?  I went back later to see if she was still around – for a meal or money for a ride.  She wasn’t. 

I had forgotten that not everyone’s out to take advantage of me.  I didn’t know her situation and it really shouldn't have mattered.  I can and should let my thick metal-plated guard down on occasion.  Sometimes people really could just use a break.  I've received plenty of them.  And, I need to try to keep that in mind a little more often.

I can’t help everyone, but I guess I could have helped that someone.

Bonne Fêtes de Pâques

Happy Easter from Njombe!

Yesterday, my day was spent at a nearby orphanage planning a summer camp with a few other Peace Corps Volunteers posted in the Littoral Region.  And, some of the older girls were painting Easter eggs in preparation for today -- made me smile as it's not really a thing Cameroonians do.

Missing crawfish boils, springtime, heavenly hash and family today.  

XOXO to all my sweet peeps.