Christmas

I went to Jessie's house in Sanguere Paul for Christmas this year, meeting three other volunteers there, Harley, Chris and Steve. It was low key but very nice, relaxing to be at someone elses house. We listened to music, some Christmas music (we actually didn't have very much!), watched movies, did crafts (lots and lots of clove oranges for all the volunteers in the north province) and cooked and ate good food. I had my puppy Papaya and her sister who I was babysitting and it was fun to have them there, although stressful as they chased neighbor chickens, looked for goat poop to eat and left their own in the house. Christmas day we went to church, a small church of maybe 30 people, where the service was incredibly short, maybe an hour, and completely in Fulfulde. In the evening on Christmas day we went for a walk at dusk to one of the hills, with wine glasses in hand, while the puppies raced around the fields, and during which various family members called us from the States. As the sun set we could see fires burning in the valleys, some Foulbe camps. Usually here, holidays don't cause too much homesickness because it doesn't "feel" like Christmas even. But in some ways it did feel a little tiny bit like it at Jessies house, whether because the of the cold sweatshirt necessary mornings or lazing around with no agenda at someone else's house. All was nice.

sleepy time christmas afternoon or evening

clove oranges

Christmas morning, some of Jessie's friends who came to visit

how remote am I??

One of my friends, Nate, from the States recently asked me how remote I was in my Peace Corps post. He was living in the "bush" in the states and comparing to the vision we have, perhaps of the typical Peace Corps life. isolated in a tiny village "en brousse". And the answer is probably not as remote as most would imagine, yet still a different life. I have an interesting post in that I have both worlds. Being on the major highway, I am only a 30 minute drive to the capital city of my province, where there is internet, hospitals, a lot of modernity and technology, although not necessarily fast! You can get basically anything you need here. Although definitions of "need" tend to change after living here for a while, which is a good thing. Yet my village is still small, poor, with very few amenities. While I couldn't call it "en brousse", a term we use to say out in the bush, really out there, as one might imagine a "typical" peace corps post, I could and do sometimes refer to it as "en brousse" socially or economically, in terms of the fact that it is certainly not the city. All inhabitants are farmers, French is not commonly spoken, electricity only came recently (in August?) and is only in a few houses in the village, there are only open wells used for water (the newly installed pump, also in August, just broke this week), income levels, living situations, and lifestyles are as much "en brousse" as any other post "way out there." So I think I have the best of both situations (although not a fan of living so near the main road). I am able, when I need, to get to the office, to use internet (if its not out for the day), to go to the doctor, etc, a lot more easily than some of my postmates who are more farther removed. However, I have the village Peace Corps experience that might be what one expects or envisions when I am in village. Sometimes finding a car to Garoua takes a while. You sit on the side of the road and hold out your arm until a car with space in it stops. Sometimes private cars pick you up (I've ridden with Catholic sisters from Ngong, and with Sodecoton workers in which I've had great work conversations!) But usually its in "taxis" which are regular beaten up cars that run the route Garoua Ngong all day long. Five passenger cars fit 7 or 8 people, 8 passenger vans fit 16. Sometimes I get out to the road and wait only 5 minutes. Other times I've waited an hour and a half (at which point I start to reconsider traveling at all!)
In terms of isolation, even posts much more removed have volunteers nearby. Peace Corps tends to place people in "clusters" so in villages that are pretty close to each other. And at the same time, if you stay in your village, even very near major cities, you can feel isolation (if you want) of never speaking your own language, of living in a foreign culture, etc. Each Peace Corps post is different, especially taking in consideration other countries. One of my stagemates has a friend doing Peace Corps in South Africa, where she has an "office" where she works every day with an ocean view and internet. I'm happy to be on this side of the spectrum...the more villag-y side. So I think that answers that question a bit, and hopefully helps those at home to maybe have a better picture of how remote I am.

Soy Group

Many of the farmers in my village plant soy. They were trained by IRAD, the Institute pour la Recherch Agriculture et Development, to plant it in efforts to fight the loss of soil fertility, perhaps to get farmers off the cotton cycle as well. The women were "trained" on how to make soy milk and tofu, although I'm not sure how well because they don't actually make it now. Maybe they didn't like it too well, or maybe it's too much work, or maybe they were only briefly trained and have forgotten. But they do add soy flour to regular flour to make "bouille" the traditional flour and water hot drink thats often drunk for breakfast. As it is, the farmers were trained to grow soy, were given improved seeds by IRAD and started to grow soy. But they didn't know what to do with it, because there wasn't a big market for it. Through other volunteers, I heard of a GIC (common interest group) in Mokolo in the Extreme North who works with farmers in various villages, trains them on growing soy, sells them the seeds, and then buys the harvest which they then transport to Douala and sell to CamLait, a Cameroonian company that makes soy drinks which are very delicious. I called the Mokolo people who came and met with my farmers. During this meeting 1) I was so proud of my villagers, because it was so evident they were good farmers, they already knew how to farm soy, already knew the distances for seeding, when to weed, when to harvest etc. and 2) I felt "this is the successful work of the volunteer." Matching a need in the village--lack of market--with a resource we know of. And now from now on, the villagers are connected to this GIC and can continue to sell to them, even after I am gone. After the meeting each farmer decided how much they wanted to farm for soy, in a group of perhaps 16-20 farmers. Some farmed a hectare, others a demi-quarter hectare. They ordered the seed from the GIC, I wired their money to Mokolo, seed was sent to Garoua, I went and picked it up with a farmer and they divided it up and planted.


January 15: They just recently finished the harvest in December and I am feeling very blessed, and praising God because the sale of the harvest went on without a glitch. Sometimes when working with new groups you never know what may happen, whether someone might run away with the money, whether the group might never come to buy the harvest after all, whether they might back down on the promised price. But all went well, they sent the advance of money ahead of time (before New Years so that the farmers could celebrate with the money), they picked up the soy last week to ship down south and paid the rest of the payment, and all my farmers were happy. Just one example of possible agroforestry work in Cameroon.

Yaounde again

I am in the country capital again, this time for Mid Service, which is made up mainly of medical exams complete with running to the lab across town with a paper bag concealing a cup of certain substances, as well as meeting with various administration members to talk about concerns, progress, etc one year into service. This trip I did not really want to come down here. I didn't want to leave post, and I didn't want to spend time in Yaounde. We finished up our duties on Wednesday and now I'm hoping to escape to Kribi for the weekend (if i can find other volunteers to go with me!) and come back on Monday for a Best Practices presentation, before heading back up north Monday night. I haven't yet decided where I will be spending Christmas, Ngoundere, Maroua and my village being the options. I hope you all are well and enjoying the cold weather. Ngoundere was COLD!