Home Sweet Baham

While I am well into my fifth month in Cameroon, I feel as if I am still getting settled into my village. I’ve thought a great deal back and forth about how much I want to share on this blog, that is partially why it has taken me so long to write this message and also partially because I am lazy haha. Well, I have decided that my experience will be more legitimate with the more than I share. So here comes the good and the bad.

My official Peace Corps post is a village (but I would really call it a town since it has a population of 50,000ish) named Baham. A few quick facts about Baham: 1) As an independent Bimileke kingdom, Baham is traditionally ruled by the Chef Superieur (superior king) and a group of advisers known as the “notables”; 3) Eight secret societies conserve the validity of the royal succession through tasks such as protecting the forbidden forest where all kings are buried in a secret cemetery. If someone was to dig up Sa Mejeste Poukam Max II’s ancestor’s skull, they could rightfully take control of the thrown; 4) Most people have accepted an intertwined faith of Christianity and the traditional ancestral practices; 5) A typical family has equal chances of being monogamous or polygamous. About 56% of Cameroonian men are in a polygamous marriage; 6) The Baham calendar has eight days per week that really only affects traditional ceremonies and the big market day that occurs every eight days. Businesses and schools follow a seven day calendar; 7) Absolutely everyone has some form of farm whether it is on their property or out in the bush; 8) Since Baham is the equivalent to the capital of our county we have a Mayor as an elected leader, a national military leader known as the Prefecture with the Sous-Prefecture under him, and the local law enforcement headquarters. AKA there are a lot of people in charge (tragedy of the commons anyone?).

Hmm. I don’t even know where to start telling you about what exactly I have been doing. I’ll try to start at the beginning as they say, but “the beginning” is kind of a vague point in time hahaha. I think that I first arrived in village Dec 14th (Time passes oddly here. Days are long, but weeks are short. Just the other day I woke up and my cell phone, computer, and calendar all said different dates. I had to call my friend Riley and quickly ask her what day of the week it was before my phone credit ran out.) My plan was to settling into my house, visit the people the PCV before me had worked with, and relax a little after Training finally ended until Christmas. Let me tell you how awkward it is to meet people for the first time and make a good impression when your inability to speak their language isn’t helping your natural tendency toward bad first impressions. Anyhow this is where the story starts to get juicier…in Bafut.

Seven of my friends from stage and I decided to meet up and spend Christmas together in this cute village in the Anglophone region called Bafut. Mind you that when I say Anglophone, that is a loose term because it is actually Pidgin English, not American English. For example American English would say, “Do you want to use a water catchment or a watering can for those roots?” and Pidgin English would say something like “You want go use da place wey wata di commut fo gron or da wata can for dem foot fo stick?” Other fun translations are “I’m full”= “my belly don flop”, “I am going to spend my money”=”I go chop ma money”, “Have a nice day”=”Walk a’ fine”. I’m not even joking. This is a serious language that real people speak. If you have ever seen Blood Diamond then you can remember Leonardo Decaprio talking with the arms dealer at the sketchy airport in Pidgin English.

We were lucky enough to arrive in village just in time to see the traditional naming ceremony of two of my fellow PCV friends. It was amazing. There were maybe 20 people receiving names at this annual ceremony that occurs on the last day of a two week cultural festival in Bafut. Each person was decked out in the tribe’s unique pagne and brought to the king by a member of the royal family. My two friends were represented by one of the king’s wives; I believe he has eight wives right now. You can see my pictures on Facebook. After that ceremony we piled out of the king’s courtyard into a large stadium to watch the reenactment of the war with Germany. I think these pictures are on Facebook too. Not going to lie though, the reenactment was boring and I left early with my friends to celebrate our reunion at a local boutique hahaha. Our night ended there pretty early since I was being harassed way too much as “la blanche” to have a good time. We went back to my friend’s house, locked the doors, and went to sleep. Looking back we should have dead bolted the doors that night too.

The two week festival attracted a lot more visitors than just us and I guess some of them were bandits from out in the bush. Since there were more people than beds, four of us slept out in the living when sometime between 2am-3am three armed bandits decided the house full of “les blanches” would be a great target for fast cash. They picked the locked doors and attempted to quietly make their way around the living room rummaging through bags and clothes with flashlights for valuables. One of the girls sleeping on the floor asked what the hell someone was doing and told them to go back to bed. We didn’t even know we were being robbed until that someone answered her in an angry man’s voice. Thankfully, the bandits left all the identity cards outside. Ugh, the most stressful part of this scenario has most definitely been the aftermath of it all. If charges are to be pressed are you prepared to 100% accurately identify the bandits? Are you prepared to then have it on our conscience the punishment for theft in the third world? If you don’t press charges are you inevitably enabling someone else to be the next victim? And what if next time the bandits decide to be more confrontational with their guns?

Well anyhow, a combination of dealing between my organization and local officials and then having a bunch of meetings and doctor’s appointments left me at the Peace Corps headquarters in Yaoundé for an excruciating three weeks. Not that I don’t like Yaoundé. I was just excited to settle into my Baham village after only being there 2 weeks before Christmas.

Btw. I’m sorry this is so long already. I’m not sure if I should split this into 2 blog posts…hmmm…Ok, I’m just going to keep going since I’m on a role writing this and I am only half done with the glass of wine hahahaa. I will try to be short with the rest. Sorry.

Back to Baham I finally went on January 13th. I felt like I was really behind. I should have been in village for a month already, but instead I had only been there for a distant 2 weeks of which I mostly stayed at home organizing my things and settling in. With a feeling of unaccomplishment, I jumped right into things when I arrived back in Baham.

The PCV before me made a connection with a wonderful organization that is donating a few hundred books to Baham’s first public library that I will be creating in conjunction with the mayor. Baham is the regional headquarters for over 10 governmental ministries including Ministry of Education, Ministry of Animal Husbandry, Ministry of Development, and Ministry of Agriculture. We also have numerous high schools, a Farming College, and Teacher Training Center. Last I spoke with the mayor he envisioned the library being one aspect of a community resource center that along with promoting literacy, will most importantly creating an opportunity for everyone to have access to information that can help them help themselves. A long term goal of the space will also be to also have a computer training room with internet access and additional spaces where community/interest groups can meet or give formations. I am so excited for this project. I hope that if I approach this from the right angle that this can be a form of effective sustainable development that can easily live beyond my short 2 years here. My action steps for now are to:

1. See through the construction of the community resource center space. As of right now the building is incomplete and must be finished 2 weeks prior to book arrival as requested by the organization donating the books;

2. Identifying genuinely interested people to act as librarians and hold a training course for the librarians;

3. Identify a qualified and enthusiastic library committee and together create library guidelines that both fit local culture and allow for effective management of the library.

The previous volunteer to Baham also made a connection with the orphanage in village that I hope to work closely with. AHPPV is home to 18 orphans, a saint-like married couple that act as directors, 2 German volunteers, and a women’s group from a displaced tribe. Although the orphanage does not decline any child, it is unique in that many of the children have physical, mental, or physical and mental handicaps. AHPPV is non-profit and relies on donations for the community and an optional fee from the children’s families if they are still in contact or can contribute to the costs of housing, feeding, clothing, educating, and caring for these children. The orphanage has a stress on teaching the children life skills so they become self sufficient members of the community. Boys learn to make furniture from bamboo (If you saw the Facebook video of my house, then you can see that the boys made the bench outside, the book shelves, and the bedroom bureaus). Girls learn trades such as sewing and bead work with the women’s group. The directrice, who has a nursing degree, also acts as physical therapist and maintains a medicinal plant garden.

The tragic part of this otherwise wonderful organization is that the orphanage has been asked to leave their residency. The land was infertile when AHPPV first arrived at the property and began their work over 10 years ago. Because their efforts to improve the land through the medicinal garden were so successful, the land owner has demanded that they leave so the land can be used for farming profits. Luckily, the Mayor has agreed to donate a large property with permanent ownership to the orphanage under the condition that they begin construction within 3 years. Six months has past with an amount too small to count in the fundraising. The priority at this point is only to construct a dormitory and a cook house so at least when they are forced to leave the children will have a place to sleep and eat, especially in the rainy season where it will rain constantly for 7 months straight. This is what I have in mind so far in reference to working with the orphanage:

1. Begin by volunteering every Thursday to see get to know everyone and see where my skills are most needed. Everyone that is involved right now is already doing a beautiful job and I don’t want my work to be repetitive;

2. Possibly help out with the medical garden, especially in the planning stages of the new plot after the move. Potentially teach the kids gardening skills in agroforesty;

3. The director asked me to help grant applications and acquire finances for the construction of the new orphanage center. I want to look into all possible options. Then we can apply for these options together, potentially with another staff member, so they are comfortable in how to research and apply for these opportunities in case they need more financing assistance after I’ve left.

Oh, I’m not sure if I mentioned this before but the PCV timeline is to first go through a 3 month language/technical training (done), go to post for 3 months and complete needs assessment as well as make community contacts (this is where I am now), attend PC seminar with village supervisor to create action plans for the next 18 months in village, spend last 3 months wrapping up, and after that you are done with service. I am obviously still in those first 3 months at post and I’m trying to make contacts with farming groups that may be interested in me presenting agroforesty technique formations. It is a thousand times frustrating though attempting to make these contacts as a young white woman. First of all, everyone assumes you are a billionaire and only wants cash from you. Second of all, a large portion of men are only interested in knowing your marital status or if you want to become their 2nd or 3rd wife or if not maybe you would marry one of their sons and the most astounding things is that they aren’t joking. Thirdly, well it is 11:16pm right now and I’m too tired to go into detail but you can take from this that I am becoming more and more interested in aiming my focuses to women’s groups and women farmers.

Like most volunteers I have also be coerced into teaching language. It really isn’t that bad though. I have a few girls that come over on Tuesday nights for English and on Thursday nights for Spanish. One of my neighbors wants to learn English too so she can teach her kids. I am will begin working with the environmental club at the high school in my quartier (neighborhood) next week hopefully. I refuse to work in one of the schools though. I just don’t think I would be any good at it. You all know that I have fear of children and have an aversion to violence. Considering that a typical Baham classroom has 80-120 little students terrorizing you and if you send them to the discipline master the child will be beaten, I can’t see how I would ever be good at it. Yeah I don’t particularly like children, but that doesn’t mean that I want them beaten up. This has been really tough for me. These kids have learned that the only form of punishment is to be hit. There is no other way here. I’ve decided to instead start a subculture of rewarding things well done. So far, so good but I’ll see how that works. Especially with these tons of kids that hang out in my yard ALL the time and periodically steal my stuff.

What else can I say? Oh, that’s right. Getting back to the mayor. The man, who is an integral part of completing the library project and securing the land for the orphanage, is the same man that was murdered outside his house Tuesday night. I’ve heard mixed conspiracy theories around village as to who committed the murder and as to who ordered the killing. We’ll see what the gendarmes come up with.

p.s. I welcome visitors at any time for however long! I struggle to spend my equivalent to $400/month and I chop ma money all day every day, you can see how cheap life is here. When and why else would you come to Cameroon or Africa?

Love you all, Muah! <3