BLOG 3- JANUARY 2011

JANUARY 2011

Surprisingly, Cameroon has evergreen trees, colored lights and Santa Claus at Christmas time.  Christmas is a very religious holiday here with most people participating in church services throughout the holiday.  Many people travel to be with family and will spend time in their villages of origin. My Christmas Eve was spent with volunteers enjoying a gorgeous barbeque and then off to the Catholic Cathedral for evening mass.  Christmas Day was a delightful day with a number of volunteers at an Anglican orphanage with over 100 children.  We brought our own Santa Claus, presents, and supplied food for a feast.  In return, the kids put on a traditional dance and sang for the 20 volunteers.  It was a very precious time together.

We survived the President’s visit to Bamenda and the Northwest celebrating 50 years of having a Cameroonian military force.  Many people felt like it was a great success and a sort of healing between the historic animosity between the President and this region.  There was no trouble, no demonstrations, nothing to alarm the President and his party.  On the other hand, groups were forbidden to gather, curfew was on, and thousands of military patrolled the streets everyday for weeks.  The big topic of conversation came when the Fons greeted the President and then shook hands with the First Lady.  Apparently Fons Do Not and Have Never shaken hands with a woman.  In the eyes of many this was seen as a betrayal of the culture and tradition; by others as a “roll-over”, or simply as a mistake made in the moment of enthusiasm and awe.  It was a kick to be with Cameroonians watching this on TV and hearing their surprise and shock at the event.   The grand finale was a very large and impressive fireworks display that just happened to take place up the road from my home with a perfect view from my upstairs balcony.

 

Pidgeon English is the primary language here with English and village specific languages also in the mix.  At times, it sounds completely foreign and I don’t understand a syllable.  And other times, there are familiar words thrown in and I can get the direction of the conversation. “ Whitemon” is the word for white person, which the children will use before it is trained out of them.  The other day as I was walking down the main road, a busload of pre-school kids rolled by.  I looked up to see dozens of children’s faces pressed against the windows screaming “Whitemon! Whitemon!” I have learned that I need to say “chop for pussy” if I want to find cat food, and children are called “Pikine”- a word that sounds a lot like our outdated and racist Southern expression for Black children.

 

We are deep in the dry season now which means loads of dust.  The winds pick up in the afternoons and the loose red soil begins swirling around covering everything inside and out.  Trees and bushes are dusted in red, my floors and table tops are dusted in red, and my clothes and body always seem to have a thin layer of dirt on them.  Besides the blowing dust filling the air, the farmers burn the fields this time of year so between the dust the smoke and the car exhaust the visibility reminds me of LA at its worst.  Little did I know when I arrived in September with those gorgeous clear views of the countryside, that this would disappear for some months.

 

December is the month when many festivals, ceremonies and remembrances take place.  After a family member has died, the family may decide to hold a memorial celebration for them a year, or many years later.  I attended one very large and extravagant memorial for a grandfather that had died 10 years previously.  I also just returned from the funeral of a colleague from my office who, at age 42, died of complications after 6 weeks in the hospital.  It was a shock and very sad for us all.  

 The traditional festivals are held in the villages and center around the Fon’s Palace.  People come dressed in their traditional wear and it is a gorgeous sight to behold. There is drumming, dancing and singing with everyone from the area participating for the 3 days. Big rifles are brought out and disorganized and chaotic shooting begins.  (A Cameroonian friend told me that one of his teachers was shot dead during one of these events.)  It is actually frightening to see how casually these rifles are handled and not especially carefully aimed.

Reliable water and electricity are issues in Cameroon and particularly in my neighborhood. The only hot water in the house is in my upstairs bathroom where it takes a good hour to heat the water with the electric tank.  Often there is not enough water pressure to send the water upstairs. And then if there is water at 7am when I turn on the heater, there isn’t enough pressure at 8am when I am ready to take the shower.  I have learned to grab a bath whenever I find the water pressure and electricity on at the same time, as I never know when this confluence may occur again.  But given that most Cameroonians don’t have indoor plumbing let alone hot water heaters, I will not complain loudly.   What I do like to complain about though is the motorbike traffic.  Every time I walk the 5 minutes on the main road to work, I feel like I am taking my life in my hands. There is no sacred space for pedestrians – we are low man on the totem pole for rights on the streets.  There are no sidewalks or designated areas in which to walk and there is no place that a motorbike can’t go.  At best, they will beep as they come zipping up behind me and I cringe as I feel them whiz by me within centimeters.  Pedestrians are always running for their lives as they cross the streets and motorbike related accidents are as common as cockroaches. When I walk, it is with my eyes glued to the ground, hugging the side of the road as much as possible, and keeping my arms tucked into my sides.  Whew!   I made it another day!

CAMEROON- MONTH TWO



CAMEROON – MONTH TWO                                  

I am happily settled into my new house in Bamenda, just a ten minute walk from my CRAT office.  My new family member consists of Cammy the Kitty.  I have a huge home that could easily sleep about 300 Peace Corps volunteers.  I have front and back verandas, the back one with a view of the hillside and waterfall.  Papaya trees are dripping papayas all around my yard, and naturally, there is a local rooster that crows the morning wake-up.  I had a house-warming party mostly for my staff members.  They did all the shopping and cooking, which was nearly an all-day affair. We were rich in local cuisine with plenty of left-overs to go home with the cooks.

Since my arrival I have had some interesting work-related and leisure-related outings.  A training in Kenya was in an exceptionally beautiful location with giraffes, monkeys and waterbucks wondering all around the grounds.  Most recently, I spent ten days in Yaounde with a CVT staff and CRAT employees doing much planning for the upcoming year.  Just outside of Yaounde is a primate reserve, Mefou, which was a delightful shift from the congested and busy city.  The reserve houses a variety of primates to include gorillas, chimps, drills, baboons, and several others.  They all found there way there because they had been orphaned or donated from a zoo.  Although these animals are legally protected, poaching is a big problem in Cameroon and the animals are often killed for bush-meat.  The focus of the reserve is to rehabilitate the animals so they can return to a safe place in the wild.  They are kept behind electric fences but are not shy about coming up to the fence for interaction.  I was able to play a little bit with a few of the chimps who wanted to pass things back and forth to me through the fence wires.  I could have spent the whole day there with them.

Cameroon has a history of Chiefdoms, or Fondoms, as they are called here.  The chiefs/fons still carry weight within their villages and territories.  In fact there are still land and property issues that have resulted in intertribal warfare, with one village attacking another. (These villages are part of the target populations that CRAT has chosen to work with.)  The Fon history has been recorded back to the 1300’s, and there continues to be many of the traditions that existed centuries ago.  The Fons may have multiple wives and some have been known to have over 100.  They still have Secret Societies and many sacred and secret rituals.  When the Germans were here in the early 1900’s, the human sacrifice was outlawed, but animal sacrifice still continues.  The Fons also dispensed there own justice systems with hands and heads being chopped off for a variety of crimes. Vigilante justice is still known to occur in Cameroon.

In the past month I have visited two communities with Fon Palaces and legendary traditional festivities.  I visited Bafut, just an hour from Bamenda,  and was given a tour of the Fon’s Palace by one of the queens.  It has been given World Heritage Site status and it is truly a lovely and photogenic place.  More recently, I had a quick look-see at a traditional festival in the Foumban area with the indigenous Bamun people.  Originally all of these fondoms were animist, but Foumban has an interesting story originating from their 17^th King in the late 1890’s.  He was forced to invite a Nigerian tribe to save him from being conquered by another tribe.  He inquired as to how they found their power and they reported that they believed in Allah, so the King converted to Islam to have a stronger fighting force.  Later he saw that the Germans were stronger than some of the tribes so he asked the Germans.  They replied that they followed Jesus Christ.  So the King converted to Christianity.  But then when he was to be baptized, the priest told him that he could not have more than one wife, so he returned to Islam.  Then the Muslims told him that he couldn’t drink wine and alcohol.  At that point, he created his own religion, taking teachings from both the Bible and the Koran and wrote his own bible.  Eventually, in the 1970’s, he converted to Islam while promoting free-choice  between Christianity and Islam for his people.  Today, the population of the Bamoun Kingdom (700,000) are 80% Moslem and live in harmony with the Christians.   This is just one of many unique stories and history that each  Fondom carries to include a history of slave trading with their tribal neighbors.

Politics is an interesting and dicey adventure here in Cameroon.  The current president, Biya, has been in office for 28 years.  The region in which I live, the Northwest, is the only place in the country that has an opposing party to the president’s ruling party.  Elections are coming in 2011 and the country is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the military, so he is making his first visit to this area in over 20 years.  I hear that over 30,000 military and police have been deployed to this area.  Curfew has been on for weeks (don’t go out after 8pm), construction for the grandstand is taking up the major commercial area, business schedules are compromised so that everyone has time to clean their street area, and the presence of police and military are everywhere.  Just prior to his visit, there was a tragic helicopter accident involving his security minister and one of his generals.  So his trip here was delayed and now it is a little mysterious when he actually will arrive. But meanwhile businesses are on hold, markets will be shut-down, and everything in Bamenda will come to a standstill for the two days he is here.  Stories of  Cameroonian politics remind me to count my blessings for the protections we have in the US.

There are often delightful and unexpected events around and when I stick my head out of my home I can find them.  Recently, I was on my back veranda enjoying a good book, when I heard drumming and singing.  After awhile I had to follow the sound to see what I was missing.  I discovered that my neighbors were having a burial celebration which involved dancing and drumming and singing and traditional  masks.  As soon as they saw me approach, one woman danced over to me and brought me into the circle where I joined-in, giving my best imitation of an African shuffle.  On another Sunday, I took a walk and stumbled into a huge Catholic dance procession down one of the nearby streets.  There must have been 1000 people in procession with drums, xylephones (the wooden type), bells and a great deal of “getting down”.  Disguising myself as a Catholic, I joined in the celebration of Corpus Christi Day.

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CAMEROON-MONTH ONE

Having been hired by Center for Victims of Torture to be embedded into a Cameroonian organization called Center for Rehabilitation and Abolition of Trauma, I happily landed into my country of residence (at least for the next 11 months). I visited the CRAT Yaounde office, touched base with the American Embassy, visited the Peace Corps office and touched bases with a couple of other NGOs. Within 5 days, I was on the journey to Bamenda, my new city of residence. Bamenda is in the Anglophone Northwest Region (although it really is central west, neighboring Nigeria). It is gorgeous, tropical, hilly-almost-mountainous, and colorful with all the women and men in brightly colored African cloth.

The city of Bamenda (maybe 200,000) is a wild array of dirt and tar roads, with potholes worthy of being called wells or ditches. The Central Market is a vast expanse of tiny stalls of vendors selling anything and everything an African could want. Bargaining is the norm, especially as a White person, where the prices might be doubled or tripled for the initial start point. It really helps to have a Cameroonian along for the shopping as they can both report on what is a normal price and then also help with the negotiations. Fish is one of the staples here and I have been enjoying fish dinners on a regular basis. Huckleberry plant is the green vegetable that is in season now, and chopped with a little pepper and onions, it is delicious. Fu-fu is the staple made from corn meal that has little flavor but is a good vehicle for gravy or soups.

After a week of house-hunting, I found a large place, ridiculously big for a single woman and also ridiculously cheap by American standards. I have Papaya trees and pineapple plants in my yard. I even have a view off my back veranda of one of the waterfalls that surrounds Bamenda. There is alot of room for gardening and growing vegetables if I can get myself motivated. There is the perpetual African problem of intermittent water and electricity. So I am learning to fill up the water barrels and trying to remember to pack a flashlite around the house in the evenings.