Thursday, May 27, 2010
Another face of grief--The death of Gazawa Andree
The old chief of our village, and the father of my best friend in village, and my old counterpart, died on Saturday evening. He was hit by a car, crossing the road, coming home from the field.
It was about 6:30, not dark, and I was doing work on my porch, getting ready for my trip home for two weeks. I heard women, near the center of town and it sounded like they were singing. I assumed it was a van full of church women, going to a conference or celebration, as often they sing songs as they pass in their car. But the location of the noise didn't move, and continued. I looked up to the road and saw people running a few at a time towards the carrefour. Surely an accident, and by the sounds of the women who I now realized were crying, it must be a very bad one, children? many people? I locked up the house quickly, threw on a pagne over my shorts, and walked hurriedly up the path through my neighborhood, joined by other villagers along the way. As we neared the carrefour, the keening increased, and a woman coming from down the road, from the sight of the accident announced "It's Andree, Gazawa." By the time I reached the main road, the highway that splits the village, 200 people were out and on either side of the road. There was a very nice new white compact car parked on the road, the driver having left the site for the moment, possibly hiding somewhere. From the point where he had hit Andree, he had been thrown over 50 yards. People didn't know what to do, and rightly so. Such a bad accident, no ambulances, no 911. They tried to hail some of the passing vans and cars, to take him to the hospital in Garoua, but no one would stop, as they were all full. And even if he had been transported, such an accident for such an older man, it seems to me there is little that cold be done. After about 20 minutes he was pronounced dead. By this point it was dark, and I searched all over for my best friend Rebecca, one of his daughters, but all the women were crying shadows, and every time I recognized some clothing of hers it was on a different body type. I finally found her back home, and spent the night with her an other women, in their courtyard, sitting in silence through the darkness, as she cried silently.
I was really angry. It was one of the big Angry moments of my time here. Because the cars race through the village at obscene speeds. To me, it is one of the pinnacles of selfishness, how these drivers (both private and those driving "taxis") will go through these settled areas at 50, 60, 70 miles an hour, just to get there a little faster, with no regard to the villagers who live there. They are willing to kill animals and People just to go at a high speed. There are numberless amounts of goats, sheep, dogs, donkeys killed in the village each year by cars passing, which is a major blow to household economics, and there is always the fear of children as well, crossing the road each morning and afternoon, going to school. As such, in January the village listed as one of their top three priorities for village development the installation of a couple of speed bumps. But here, now a 74 year old man, crossing the road, obviously slowly, not darting out in front of the car as children might, is hit by a car who would not slow nor veer and thrown 50 meters? That is insane. And to me absolutely unpardonable. I was so angry at this driver, at his selfishness and carelessness, I wanted to sit on his car and wait for him to come back out of hiding, and get in his car and say "we are driving to the Mayors and Sousprefets right now." Not that that would have been possible. But it was my sentiments. As it was, he stayed hidden for a while, and I returned home to be with my friend.
Andree had not been chief for about 3 or 4 years, perhaps, and he was around 74, certainly aging. He often came and visited me from time to time, to talk about his dreams (renovating a building to improve the village, and preparing to plant soy this season) and also to make sure that every thing was ok with me, in his village. in many ways, though old and no longer chief in name, he still played the role for many people, settling disputes, active in village meetings and affairs, always showing up to check on different neighborhoods and activities. . His natural death would have most likely arrived in the next few years, and for him to have fallen sick and died, while sad, would not have been surprising. But the manner of his death, how sudden, how brutal,how "unnatural", is what made this so tragic. And so shocking to the system.
I called the Mayor of the area, hoping to inform him of the death, and also bring up the conversation of speed bumps along the village, as its something that I have gone to talk to him about in the past, but which seems like a difficult thing to obtain, because the decision is at the level of the national department of transportation, and as he told me when I asked about it in January, "Cameroon does not want to slow down circulation between Ngoundere and Garoua." He did not answer the phone the times I tried to call before leaving town, so maybe when I return I can meet with him again, concerning this much needed installation in town.
It was about 6:30, not dark, and I was doing work on my porch, getting ready for my trip home for two weeks. I heard women, near the center of town and it sounded like they were singing. I assumed it was a van full of church women, going to a conference or celebration, as often they sing songs as they pass in their car. But the location of the noise didn't move, and continued. I looked up to the road and saw people running a few at a time towards the carrefour. Surely an accident, and by the sounds of the women who I now realized were crying, it must be a very bad one, children? many people? I locked up the house quickly, threw on a pagne over my shorts, and walked hurriedly up the path through my neighborhood, joined by other villagers along the way. As we neared the carrefour, the keening increased, and a woman coming from down the road, from the sight of the accident announced "It's Andree, Gazawa." By the time I reached the main road, the highway that splits the village, 200 people were out and on either side of the road. There was a very nice new white compact car parked on the road, the driver having left the site for the moment, possibly hiding somewhere. From the point where he had hit Andree, he had been thrown over 50 yards. People didn't know what to do, and rightly so. Such a bad accident, no ambulances, no 911. They tried to hail some of the passing vans and cars, to take him to the hospital in Garoua, but no one would stop, as they were all full. And even if he had been transported, such an accident for such an older man, it seems to me there is little that cold be done. After about 20 minutes he was pronounced dead. By this point it was dark, and I searched all over for my best friend Rebecca, one of his daughters, but all the women were crying shadows, and every time I recognized some clothing of hers it was on a different body type. I finally found her back home, and spent the night with her an other women, in their courtyard, sitting in silence through the darkness, as she cried silently.
I was really angry. It was one of the big Angry moments of my time here. Because the cars race through the village at obscene speeds. To me, it is one of the pinnacles of selfishness, how these drivers (both private and those driving "taxis") will go through these settled areas at 50, 60, 70 miles an hour, just to get there a little faster, with no regard to the villagers who live there. They are willing to kill animals and People just to go at a high speed. There are numberless amounts of goats, sheep, dogs, donkeys killed in the village each year by cars passing, which is a major blow to household economics, and there is always the fear of children as well, crossing the road each morning and afternoon, going to school. As such, in January the village listed as one of their top three priorities for village development the installation of a couple of speed bumps. But here, now a 74 year old man, crossing the road, obviously slowly, not darting out in front of the car as children might, is hit by a car who would not slow nor veer and thrown 50 meters? That is insane. And to me absolutely unpardonable. I was so angry at this driver, at his selfishness and carelessness, I wanted to sit on his car and wait for him to come back out of hiding, and get in his car and say "we are driving to the Mayors and Sousprefets right now." Not that that would have been possible. But it was my sentiments. As it was, he stayed hidden for a while, and I returned home to be with my friend.
Andree had not been chief for about 3 or 4 years, perhaps, and he was around 74, certainly aging. He often came and visited me from time to time, to talk about his dreams (renovating a building to improve the village, and preparing to plant soy this season) and also to make sure that every thing was ok with me, in his village. in many ways, though old and no longer chief in name, he still played the role for many people, settling disputes, active in village meetings and affairs, always showing up to check on different neighborhoods and activities. . His natural death would have most likely arrived in the next few years, and for him to have fallen sick and died, while sad, would not have been surprising. But the manner of his death, how sudden, how brutal,how "unnatural", is what made this so tragic. And so shocking to the system.
I called the Mayor of the area, hoping to inform him of the death, and also bring up the conversation of speed bumps along the village, as its something that I have gone to talk to him about in the past, but which seems like a difficult thing to obtain, because the decision is at the level of the national department of transportation, and as he told me when I asked about it in January, "Cameroon does not want to slow down circulation between Ngoundere and Garoua." He did not answer the phone the times I tried to call before leaving town, so maybe when I return I can meet with him again, concerning this much needed installation in town.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Schools here....
I said earlier that I would write a bit about schools here, or at least village schools like the one in my village. My village, being a small village, only has an elementary school and that has only been in existence about 3 years. It has 6 classrooms, two of which are in a cement building, and the other four are made of wood posts and grass woven mats covering the walls and the ceiling. There are 3 state-paid teachers, including the director of the school, and these three do not live in our village, but live in Ngong. The other three teachers are "Benevoles" a term also used in health centers for those that "volunteer." Their salary is technically supposed to come from the village parents group, but more often then not they pay late or not at all, as they have trouble raising funds.
Not all school age children attend school. Though it is a public school, there is a school fee, and there are other fees for exam years, to pay for taking the exam that will allow you to advance to the next grade level. There are no school uniforms in my village, although in bigger cities, and high schools there are. Because of these costs many families are not able to send all or some of their children to school. Boys are preferred and so in some cases when given the choice, they will be the ones sent to school if money is running out and a family has to make a choice. But, I believe those times are changing a bit, and more families are more equal about that. The times that I have taught the oldest class at the elementary school the numbers of boys and girls has been equal. I would say (though based off of ideas rather than hard evidence) that only 15% or less of village children continue on to middle school after elementary school. Perhaps this is because of money. Perhaps this is because it is a 99% farming community, and there is little need of higher education. Or perhaps it is because the quality of education they receive is so poor that they are not able to pass the tests in order to move on. All three play a role.
The "middle school" is located in the neighboring village Sanguere Ngal. After that, is high school, and high schools are only located in bigger cities. There is one in Ngong, and in Sanguere Paul, and perhaps in Djalingo as well. If children go on to high school, depending on the distance, they may walk or ride a bike for a long time to get there. Many others end up residing in the high school town, with families, or renting out rooms with lots of other high school students.
As farming season gets under way, and the rain falls, less and less children go to school as they are helping their families with the preparing and planting fields. The same thing in the fall. School officially starts at one date, but really it starts after that, as the majority of kids will still be helping with harvests and will trickle back to school a good bit later.
Children are generally very well behaved and very happy and excited to be at school, unlike our state-side sentiments. They have the utmost respect for their teachers, due to strong discipline. However, it is generally very difficult to get them to participate in lessons, as that is not the Cameroonian model of education. Being based on memorisation there is little emphasis on creative thinking, and very little individualism. In general even through high school, students are trained not to think for themselves or be creative, but just to generate the correct answeres, whether they understand them or not. This could follow a general societal trend through much of the continent of the larger society being more important than the individual, and people who rather be part of a group rather than stand out. If I am teaching a lesson and ask a question, there is not a flurry of hands raised in excitement for the chance to answer. If I call on students they are terrified of saying something incorrect, no matter how many times I say "There are no wrong answers." or "what do you think?" "What ideas do you have?" For those used to teaching in an American setting this can be very frustrating. However I still think it is valuable and prefer to plow on in this method rather than revert to writing on the board and chanting facts.
What are some of the major challenges of the school system, and in particular my elementary school? First there is the lack of buildings...and teachers. The grass mats shade a bit from the sun, but not of course the rain. They have to be replace year after year as they decompose. Lack of materials is another thing. There are no books for the children, only notebooks the purchase and copy lessons down in. There is a lack of visual aids, no posters, no stimulating colors and pictures on the walls. 90% of teaching is oral, and rote memorisation, the teacher reads lessons or writes sentences on the board and the children copy them down in their notebooks. This is why I had wanted to make those posters for my geography/ecology class, taking continent by continent and have pictures of people, landscape and animals for each region. I was able to do two classes (Africa and North/Central America) before school ended for the year, and they were a big hit! But one of the biggest challenges, and my personal frustration is the lack of school days. It seems like there is really only school held maybe 60-75% of school days. First of all there are many many holidays. Then whenever there are teacher meetings, with the director or other teachers in another town, there is no school. (there are no teacher meetings after school, its always during school hours). And on top of that there are so many times where the teachers just don't show up. And the children come to school! For example, I had a class I was going to teach a few weeks ago, and in the morning it rained. It rained hard for about 2 hours but then it turned into a drizzle. As it turned to drizzle, the students and I made our way to the school. And waited. And waited. The teachers never came. Because it was raining, slightly. No school. And the last time I went to school as well, to teach, a beautiful day, the teachers never came. So I taught, then shuffled the kids back outside for them to wait for their teachers, and locked the door. And so many times this happens, the kids go to school and wait and wait, and then return home, their teachers never coming. It kills me, because I think of how much better off they'd be, how much more advanced, how much more equipped to pass their tests if they actually got to attend class the number of days they're supposed to! The kids are being gypped.
Imagine, with all of these challenges, the frustrations that many Peace Corps education volunteers feel during their service. There are exceptiong, but I believe that education volunteers as a whole have a lower satisfaction rate of their service, and feel less content, useful and happy during their time, than other programs in Cameroon. And I think they might have the highest ET (early termination=leaving early) rate, although I don't know the numbers.
Not all school age children attend school. Though it is a public school, there is a school fee, and there are other fees for exam years, to pay for taking the exam that will allow you to advance to the next grade level. There are no school uniforms in my village, although in bigger cities, and high schools there are. Because of these costs many families are not able to send all or some of their children to school. Boys are preferred and so in some cases when given the choice, they will be the ones sent to school if money is running out and a family has to make a choice. But, I believe those times are changing a bit, and more families are more equal about that. The times that I have taught the oldest class at the elementary school the numbers of boys and girls has been equal. I would say (though based off of ideas rather than hard evidence) that only 15% or less of village children continue on to middle school after elementary school. Perhaps this is because of money. Perhaps this is because it is a 99% farming community, and there is little need of higher education. Or perhaps it is because the quality of education they receive is so poor that they are not able to pass the tests in order to move on. All three play a role.
The "middle school" is located in the neighboring village Sanguere Ngal. After that, is high school, and high schools are only located in bigger cities. There is one in Ngong, and in Sanguere Paul, and perhaps in Djalingo as well. If children go on to high school, depending on the distance, they may walk or ride a bike for a long time to get there. Many others end up residing in the high school town, with families, or renting out rooms with lots of other high school students.
As farming season gets under way, and the rain falls, less and less children go to school as they are helping their families with the preparing and planting fields. The same thing in the fall. School officially starts at one date, but really it starts after that, as the majority of kids will still be helping with harvests and will trickle back to school a good bit later.
Children are generally very well behaved and very happy and excited to be at school, unlike our state-side sentiments. They have the utmost respect for their teachers, due to strong discipline. However, it is generally very difficult to get them to participate in lessons, as that is not the Cameroonian model of education. Being based on memorisation there is little emphasis on creative thinking, and very little individualism. In general even through high school, students are trained not to think for themselves or be creative, but just to generate the correct answeres, whether they understand them or not. This could follow a general societal trend through much of the continent of the larger society being more important than the individual, and people who rather be part of a group rather than stand out. If I am teaching a lesson and ask a question, there is not a flurry of hands raised in excitement for the chance to answer. If I call on students they are terrified of saying something incorrect, no matter how many times I say "There are no wrong answers." or "what do you think?" "What ideas do you have?" For those used to teaching in an American setting this can be very frustrating. However I still think it is valuable and prefer to plow on in this method rather than revert to writing on the board and chanting facts.
What are some of the major challenges of the school system, and in particular my elementary school? First there is the lack of buildings...and teachers. The grass mats shade a bit from the sun, but not of course the rain. They have to be replace year after year as they decompose. Lack of materials is another thing. There are no books for the children, only notebooks the purchase and copy lessons down in. There is a lack of visual aids, no posters, no stimulating colors and pictures on the walls. 90% of teaching is oral, and rote memorisation, the teacher reads lessons or writes sentences on the board and the children copy them down in their notebooks. This is why I had wanted to make those posters for my geography/ecology class, taking continent by continent and have pictures of people, landscape and animals for each region. I was able to do two classes (Africa and North/Central America) before school ended for the year, and they were a big hit! But one of the biggest challenges, and my personal frustration is the lack of school days. It seems like there is really only school held maybe 60-75% of school days. First of all there are many many holidays. Then whenever there are teacher meetings, with the director or other teachers in another town, there is no school. (there are no teacher meetings after school, its always during school hours). And on top of that there are so many times where the teachers just don't show up. And the children come to school! For example, I had a class I was going to teach a few weeks ago, and in the morning it rained. It rained hard for about 2 hours but then it turned into a drizzle. As it turned to drizzle, the students and I made our way to the school. And waited. And waited. The teachers never came. Because it was raining, slightly. No school. And the last time I went to school as well, to teach, a beautiful day, the teachers never came. So I taught, then shuffled the kids back outside for them to wait for their teachers, and locked the door. And so many times this happens, the kids go to school and wait and wait, and then return home, their teachers never coming. It kills me, because I think of how much better off they'd be, how much more advanced, how much more equipped to pass their tests if they actually got to attend class the number of days they're supposed to! The kids are being gypped.
Imagine, with all of these challenges, the frustrations that many Peace Corps education volunteers feel during their service. There are exceptiong, but I believe that education volunteers as a whole have a lower satisfaction rate of their service, and feel less content, useful and happy during their time, than other programs in Cameroon. And I think they might have the highest ET (early termination=leaving early) rate, although I don't know the numbers.
My week in Highlights and Pictures
Here's my schedule and some photos from the past week!
Saturday--Fete de Travail, and one of the days I have done the most "work"
6 am Morning meeting at my house with the committee members of the "community woodlot" planted at the school last year: planning which species to replace, how many, choosing a date to start digging holes, all logistics.
two pastors stop by, have tea, and ask if i can speak later in the day to a group of women having a conference on development, on the importance of women in development, environmentally
My best friend in village, Rebecca goes to the hospital and has her 7th baby, I run after her, but after the 12 minute walk, by the time I get there, she's already delivered, a baby girl. Sad, really sad I missed it! Amazed she didn't have it on the road.
After staying with her an hour, and outlining my talk, run back to the church and speak to the 60 women there, a delightful hour.
Rush back home to get ready to go to Garoua, to visit a site for one of the Embassy self help funded projects (a schoolroom for an Mbororo school) with two representatives of the Embassy and the host NGO CELDIE who submitted the project. This little trip was really fun, especially to see "my terrain" through the eyes of two Embassy workers who live in Yaounde, one of whom had never been north.
Return back to village at dusk.
Sunday--
Hanging out at the house, cleaning house
working in my pepiniere, filling pots, preparing and planting seeds
Mbororo girls come over to "accept their papaya trees" that I told them to come by and get
Monday
Market day in Ngong
ordered tanned hides, to sew into a costume
met up with my Mbororo pepinieriestes and chief, to choose a day for the big nursery celebration
Tuesday
morning 6 am (aka 7:30 am) meeting to choose committee for apiculture group that is hoping to get started in Mafa Kilda
can't remember what i did in the afternoon...which probably means hanging out at the house, preparing classes, working on my pepiniere
Wednesday
sunrise walk between the mountains to visit Israel, look at their pepiniere: it's doing remarkably well! enjoyed the scenery of the morning, and this stage of landscape life, on the brink between dry season and wet season, tottering into greenness
dry river bed with "Dr Seuss" trees around it; they look like that because the cow herders climb them and cut them for forage for their cows at the bottom.
A young Mbororo boy, cutting a Shea Butter tree for his cows.
Visit with the family of one of the nursery men in Israel, who had a baby when my sister visited in February (baby Adamou with older sisters Raihanna and Hawa)
Thursday
Rain, beautiful rain, for 4 hours, until 10:30!
(here come the rain clouds approx 6:15)
(the newly formed lake in my concession, approx. 8:30 am)
Went to the school to try to teach the first geography/ecology course to the elementary school kids, but the teachers didn't come because of the rain (more on that later!)
Went to the health center, and started painting for a mural that shows women in various stages of planting harvesting and using moringa, to show the benefit of the plant. Don't have photos of that yet, but will soon!
1 hour personal landscape painting session at Bokle on the way to Garoua
Friday
morning out to Langui refugee camp: taught Trees for the Future Agroforestry class on Live Fencing today (last week was windbreaks and next week is alley cropping). Checked up on the refugee tree nursery which looks great. They will start outplanting the 4000 moringa plants (4 at each household) this week.
(a few nursery workers and Jean Paul Yaoule (head nursery man) in front of their rows of moringa plants at Langui refugee camp)
(a few nursery workers and Jean Paul Yaoule (head nursery man) in front of their rows of moringa plants at Langui refugee camp)
Refugee camp today...
men waiting for the class to start, a Trees for the Future basic agroforestry class I teach once a week
the whole class, usually about 50-60 people, meeting in the church in the camp
Jean Paul Youale, a local Cameroonian who helps me teach the course and is working on the nursery
Youale, Onne Kissandou and Damon Ouangkreo, three nursery workers, in front of the Moringa beds
Onne on the other side of the pepiniere. The approaching water (this from one morning's rain) worries me...
I was really impressed with this little boys clay creations of cars and a moto!
PS Happy Birthday to my cousin Jessie!
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