Looking At the Past Couple of Months

After the Peer Educators Formation finished in September the work continued. Suprisingly, I expected work with the high school students that were formed to be rather easy, but they proved to be too busy with school work to really be motivated to continue the work. However, the peer educators that were formed from the community were all about going out and doing sensibilitzations. Throughout the months of October and November we did 4 sensibilizations in the quartiers and with the motorcycle drivers. These sensibilizations revolve around the issues of: early pregnancy, induced home abortions, contraception, and proper condom use. Here are two of the peer educators presenting the complications of abortion. Though our sensibilizations have taken a halt for now, we still get together once a week to simply talk, and the conversations that we have have taught me a lot about what it means to be a youth growing up in a Cameroonian village.

Here's a shot of Papa Iza and I on one of our excursions out into the bush. After a year of working side by side with him Papa Iza and I have a very good commraderie and really understand how to work together. During down time at the vaccination table, he's also taught me so much about this culture and the Muslim religion. I like to refer to him as my "Big Muslim Teddy Bear" (not to his face, as that probably wouldn't translate well). But the days we go out into the bush his alter-ego changes to "Bill Nye the Science Guy" because he wears these really great googles (to avoid the dust) straight from 6th grade science lab! I like to think that my alter-ego on bush days is the "Red Power Ranger" due to my super snazzy Peace Corps helmet.

A look at what vaccinations in the bush look like. We take the moto on a 40 km ride to a village, but on the way there are lots of little settlements that people have set up to work their farms. These people know the rendez-vous for when Papa Iza and I will be back, and they wait on the side of the road for us the last Sunday of each month.

For Thanksgiving this year, Danielle invited all the Adamaoua volunteers to her house in Meiganga. She managed to cook up a meal that tasted so much like an American Thanksgiving (thanks to care packages from her Mama in the States). Danielle also invited her Cameroonian family and closest friends, so it was really neat, to see their reaction to our traditions and to our traditional foods.

December 1st was International World Aids Day. To raise awareness I worked with the peer educators and a couple of the high school teachers to put together a small ceremony at the high school. It included a couple of sketches, games, and interviews. Here are a couple of the high school students dressed up as opportunistic infections and being interviewed by a journalist.

Dry season is here again! Which means DIRTY DIRTY feet, lots of more trips to the water pump (and much more frugality with water), outrageous boogers, and brick building time! During dry season, the men and boys in village work to construct mud bricks. They mix mud with water and put it in a plaster to take on the brick shape, and then let them dry in the dry heat and sun. Towards the end of dry season, these men will start building houses/shacks/or outdoor kitchens with them.

A morning at one of the local water pumps. (There are two water pumps that are available to the whole village, which is truly toooo little for a population of 7,000 people). Trips to the water pump mean being ready to: a) have a killer workout b) be aggressive about when it is your turn to pump. (If you help other people pump their bidongs you get a lot more say in when its your turn to put your bidongs underneath the spicket).

Women and children washing clothes and dishes at one of the local streams.

There was a pretty severe Meningitis outbreak in the North of Cameroon a couple of years ago. To avoid that happening again, the Cameroonian government funded a national campaign in 4 out of its 10 regions to vaccinate all people 1-29! (That is 70% of the population!) Our hospital in Dir was responsible for vaccinating 10,000 people (that includes the population in the surrounding bush villages). The whole staff at the hospital was busy busy busy for 11 days as we tried all sorts of strategies to get to all the people our health area was responsible for.

This included days at the primary schools, markets, soccer games, excursions out into the bush, and even going into the bars! Here a member of my vaccination team and I are getting our vaccination cards organized before vaccinating a first grade classroom.

The first grade classroom that we vaccinated! One single teacher with her 97 Students!!!!! Can you imagine?? WOOF. (Definitely a problem within the Cameroonian education system....)

One of my favorite things about this country is all the goodies that come as donations from Western countries. This means that every week at market there are just piles and piles of T-Shirts, dresses, hats, whatever to go through that you can buy at incredibly cheap prices. This also means that you will see people wearing absolutley RIDICULOUS things. Like a young 16 year old guy wearing a "World's Best Grandma" T-shirt. No joke. One day in village I ran into this little boy wearing a Santa hat! (First one I've ever seen in this country). I was so excited and thought I would take the opportunity to wish y'all a Very Merry Christmas. Hope its wonderful and full of love. On my part, my Mami and Pops are coming to spend the holidays with me, which is the best present I can imagine = )

Fete du Mouton Pictures

The morning of the Fete all the men go to a field and pray together, afterwards, the feasting begins! Here they are mid prayer.

After the prayer, the spiritual leader in the community kills the sacrificial lamb. It is only after this lamb has been killed, that men can go home and kill the lamb for their families.

A young Fulbe girl, watching the traditional dancing outside the traditional chief's house. Even though she is only 8/9 years old, its normal for her to dress in her best clothes and do her make-up, because, soon men will start looking at her as a possible bride.

Part of the custom is that the traditional chief rides to the prayer field on horses. Our only horse in Dir is a little too weak to have people ride him. However, the day of the Fete, he gallops along the traditional chief's car on the way to prayer.

A Muslim Holiday, A Peace Corps Lesson

         I've been meaning to tell this story for a while now but haven't found the way to work it into a blog entry. However, the "Fete du Mouton" (I have no idea what Muslims call that in English, as truly I was pretty ignorant about the Muslim faith before arriving to Dir) just passed this last Thursday. Its a holiday that takes place 70 days after Ramadan, and is a commemoration of the story in the Koran where God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Ishmael. Its the same story as in the Bible...when Abraham brings down his knife to egorge his only son's throat he realizez God has spared Ishamel's life and replace his son with a mouton/lamb. Thus! Voila, the Fete du Mouton, where people go around wishing each other a happy holiday and eating a lot of lamb.
        One thing absolutely I love about Cameroonian culture, is that a Fete is a Fete, and yes, even though the Fete du Mouton is a Muslim holiday, even the Christians join in on the celebration. There are also A LOT of Fetes here, and I think its mostly because when you live in a village whenever there is an opportunity to break up the rhythm of daily life with a celebration, people are ALL for it. There's the usual holidays that we also celebrate in the States (Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, etc...) but then there are also a lot of random holidays that I had never heard of until coming here (Woman's Day, Youth Day, Teacher's Day, Work Day, etc...) The Fete season is pretty heavy starting with Christmas up until May (which comically enough is reflected in the number of pregnant woman who start showing up with 5-6 month pregnancies in the summer months!) The Fete season is so heavy that there was a point where my jaw would drop and my eyes roll when someone told me ANOTHER Fete was coming up!
       So, it's no small change when I say that Ramadan has been favorite holiday here thus far (it might have had to do with the fact that Ramadan was in August and we hadn't feted since May) but it also had to do with the fact that it was a well earned holiday.
      The month of Ramadan is one of the 5 pillars of the Muslim faith. Its a month where all Muslims who are in health (old people, lactating women, and pregnant women are not supposed to participate but most of the time they still do) are supposed to purify themselves. They abstain from most everything during day time hours, including: food, water, tobacco, and sex. To obtain this the people wake up at 4:30 am (before the 5 am call to prayer) and then do not touch food or water again until 6:30 pm!! (After the fourth call to prayer). In the Extreme North and North Region of Cameroon, where the heat is extreme, people have actually been known to die from the fasting when Ramadan falls during dry season.
      Its amazing to me how they manage to be so diciplined, and maybe even more so that nobody seems to complain about it. And when you ask them about it, all they say is, "its only hard your first year, then you grow used to it". Which is hard to believe, but I think a reason that it is easier for them is because SO MUCH of the community participates. (Dir is about 1/2 Muslim). Even for the Christians who don't fast, you do eat a lot less during Ramadan. Food is harder to find during the day time and even when you do find snacks on the road, its hard to eat when you see all these hungry eyes watching you (There are some volunteers who participate in the fasting, my respects!).
     The fasting is such an example of solidarity here and one of my favorite moments of the whole month was around week 2 of Ramadan. I was coming back from Meiganga, a bigger town about 3 hours east of Dir, where there are restaurants, electricity, and COLD beer! Yahoooo! I had spent a night there visiting with other volunteers and then took the last bus back to Dir, which leaves Meiganga around 4:30 pm to arrive in Dir once its dark. This time the bus was full of almost completely Muslim men. The bus ride was pretty quiet, up until 6:30 pm, when one man looked at his watch and declared the fast was over. Even though we were all squeezed into our seats (there are no seat belts in this country, but with how tightly they mush you into cars, there's really no need for them) the scene changed from a bus ride to a banquet in almost 5 seconds. Every man reached into his hand bag and pulled out some sort of snack: bread, boiled eggs, dates, rice patties, meat on sticks, etc..and passed it around their row so every had a little something. It was beautiful.
     But there was also one moment towards the end of the holiday that hit me really hard, and I think encompassed perfectly the range and scope of what being a volunteer means and how we, as white people are percieved in our communities.
      The week before the actual Fete du Ramadan (and you don't know exactly what day the Fete is going to be because it all depends on when you see the full moon) is a week of preparation. The men make sure the food and clothes are bought for their families, and the women make themselves beautiful. One of the beauty rituals here is similar to Indian henna. The women buy a powder, that is made from ground herbs, and with it draw geometrical designs on their hands and feet. At the end of the process it almost looks as if you are wearing gloves or socks, its beautiful but INCREDIBLY time consuming, as to get the desired end effect you have to apply the henna at least twice. Each time leaving it on your feet for AT LEAST 4 hours. And then you have to apply a special powder, which charcoal from the hot fire, and apply that for AT LEAST another two hours. All this time, you sit and can't move so that you don't mess up the geometrical pattern.
      Monday, a couple of days before the Fete du Ramadan, a Fulbe woman stopped me on my way to the hospital to ask me for some medicine. I was semi in shock to be pulled into her concession and then her bedroom as most Fulbe (the ethnic group here that practices Muslim) are very reserved, and don't leave their concession much (except for market, hospital visits, and to go to the stream to wash clothes). The Fulbe women are usually those who have a very limited education, speak almost no French, marry at about 14 years of age, and start having babies almost immediately afterwards. I interact with Fulbe women often during work at the hospital, but rarely outside of that. So the next day, when I brought her the medicine and she invited me to come over on Friday so that she could do my henna for the Fete I immediately accepted the invitation.
     On Friday, when I showed up, I was invited into the reserved world of Fulbe women for 6 hours. While they worked on my hands and feet, we chatted, I showed them my photo album, we listened to traditional music, we NAPPED together with their babies on the same bed. And even though, the constant input of the local dialect was exhausting me, I felt so right in that moment. I truly felt as if THIS is what it is all about, what being a Peace Corps Volunteer should be. Becoming friends with people who live such a different life than you, spending an afternoon with them, learning who they are. Trust me, the afternoon could have gone LATE into the evening, but by 6 pm, the 6 hours of NOT moving had gotten to me and I told them we had to wrap up this beauty party because I needed to go home and cook dinner. And they finished washing my feet quickly and I was on my way out the door, thrilled by the ability to move again and by the new friends I had made, when one of them stopped me and told them I owed them 1,000 cfa for their work.
     My heart literally dropped in that instant and I had to fight hard to keep my eyes from dispelling the tears that had welled up inside of them. Not because I didn't have the means to pay that, but because their demand had just completely changed the context of the whole afternoon. What I thought was a genuine cultural exchange, wasn't, and these women were looking at me as a way to make money. A part of me couldn't blame them, as most Fulbe women have to ask their husband for money evey time they need even the smallest thing, but I was upset. I was upset that they didn't explain to me upfront, but most importantly as to how money can dirty such (what I thought) was a pure afternoon.

    And yet, as much as that story took a turn for the worst, it is an everyday reality for Peace Corps Volunteers. People see a white person and they believe we have money to spare. Its a stereotype that we have to fight, and it can be incredibly disheartening to constantly explain to people that we are not here to give them money, but that we are here to help. Its a challenge, one that runs deep into the history of development and how agencies have gone about giving aide in the past (and present), and it poses a lot of questions that I'm continually trying to find the answers to. If you were to see how rarely I give out money, or the reasons that I do, you might think me cold and cheap, but I have to keep on telling myself that that is not what I am here for. I have to keep on believing that i have so much more to give than money to people in my life here.

A picture of the henna a woman has done on her feet for the Fete.

Back in Action

My camera had been broken since March, but thanks to Nurse Eric (who went to Yaounde this summer for an anesthetiology formation) my camera is back in my hands and working!

 Funny to think, that once it broke in March I was ready to get rid of it, and go out and buy a new one. But Cameroonians just laughed at me saying, "Amanda, we dont get rid of things here, we learn how to fix them. Just wait, we will fix your camera for you." Sure enough, it took five months but its back in action = )

Here is a shot of Dr. Gaya and Nurse Romeo during an operation in Dir. Dr. Gaya had his first job placement at a clinic up North where he worked underneath an American doctor who did surgeries. Dr. Gaya was his right hand man, and learned through observation. The first time he flew solo the American doctor was out of town, and a woman came in who needed an emergency Cesarean section. The nurses at the clinic told Dr. Gaya, "Listen, you need to operate. We know your worried about her dying on the table, but if you DON'T try to operate, her and her baby will DEFINITELY die." So, he went for it, and operated succesfully. That was 6 years ago and he's been continuing to learn ever since. In Dir, he mostly performs Cesarean sections, hernia repairs, and stomach mass removals (although the other day he did his first kidney removal!!). Its amazing to me to see how, even in a village without electricity, they maintain sterile procedure. (Since starting operation Dr. Gaya has never had a case return because of infection. I think that's partially due to the fact that there are not as many resistant bacteria here, and also that people have very strong immune systems). Unfortunately, Dr. Gaya just got promoted to a different hospital and left Dir this past week. Its a wonderful promotion for him, and after 7 years of excellent service, he was ready to move on, but things at the hospital are definitely going to change while we adjust to his absence.

 

 A picture of some of the women waiting to be seen at prenatal consultations (every Thursday) at the health center. On average, we see about 30 women a week for prenatal consultations! One of our biggest problems at the health center, is that women are very diligent about coming once a month for PNC but then they give birth at home in very unsanitary conditions. Only, to come into the hospital a couple of days later with post partum infections and neonatal infections. Its a message we're trying to drive home pretty hard, because in the past two months we have lost 4 women and 3 newborn babies to infection.

We are almost done with the soy harvest! We only have about one half cart of soy stalks left in the field (but we planted them two weeks after the rest of the seeds so we are waiting for them to fully ripen still). Right now we have about 75 kilos of soy! I had no idea that planting 3 1/2 kilos would give me that kind of yield, aikes a beeee! Now the difficult part is going to see how I can best use those 75 kilos to make a project that will have the most impact and also be sustainable. Here is a picture of the soy laying out to dry after we have removed it from the field. Its best to let it dry in the sun for 3-4 days. This was a comical process because the weather here is very volatile and you never know when a beautiful sunny day is going to turn into a powerful rainstorm (and it can happen in the timespan of 2 minutes, no exaggeration). Over the past three weeks I can't tell you how many times the weather would change and I would run out to the street calling any goober that was nearby, "COME QUICK, THE RAINS ARE COMING, WE HAVE TO BRING IN THE SOY!" haha as per usual, the village thinks I'm crazy.

After the soy has dried for a couple of days the next step in the process is beating it with a stick to get all the little beans out. (Later you remove the stalks and then sweep up the beans, and have to sift them to take out all the dirt and rocks). Here I am, in my concession, getting some serious tension out by BEATING dem soy beans. Notice how my neighbors are drying their clothes in the back ground! Also, its a bit hard to see in this picture, but my land lord is building a new house in the background. Its been neat to see the weekly progress of  how a house comes together with nothing but mud, water, and cement.

At night, or when the rains came, the soy rested in my living room. Looka that mountain of soy! It literally TOOK OVER my house for the three weeks that it took to dry all the soy! (This is the second tours of soy that we harvested, all together we did three tours).

I would have never have been able to harvest all the soy without the help of Ibrahim, (the boy in the middle), a young highschool boy who I hired to help with harvest. He's an orphan and an incredibly hard worker (he is also the guardian of one of our two water pumps in Dir), and throughout the three weeks we really built a friendship as he would come every day to help me collect the soy from the field, bring out/bring in the soy for drying, beat the soy, and sift it. He was literally a God send (and so were my little boy neighbors who are always willing to help me with any little chores I have around the house).

Two of my little neighbor girls, Bebe and Adiza (both ten years old) laying on my porch as they take turns unbraiding each other's hair. Most of a woman's Sunday is devoted to unbraiding and braiding each other's hair. It doesn't cease to amaze me how much time women devote to their time here, or how much patience little girls have to just sit and stay put as they get their hair braided (which can take upwards of 3 hours!) p.s. notice more soy drying in the background.

Last week, we succesfully put on Dir's first "Peer Educator Formation". Here we are taking a "family picture" after the opening ceremony! (You can see the traditional chief behind me) Working with the Youth Delegate, Nurse Romeo, and some of the highschool teachers we were able to take 10 students from the highschool and 8 youth from the community to teach them about the obstacles and issues that face a teenager (with a strong focus on how to choose a positive life and sexual health). The youth we chose were incredible, and really participated in the sessions and have already presented a session about HIV/AIDS to their peers at the high school! Our goal now is that we will continue to see each other once a week (just me and the youth) to continue learning about the subjects they have questions on, and also empowering them to learn how to teach these subjects to their peers. Our major goal is to have a big say in the activities surrounding International HIV/AIDS day, December 1st, 2012.

In order to keep the youth engaged throughout the day, we broke up the sessions with activities such as putting on sketches, games, and animations. Here the youth are taking a (much needed) mid-morning break by playing a game of musical chairs!

I believe I have mentioned before how theatrical of a people Cameroonians are. Its amazing to see how quickly Cameroonians can put together an organized song, sketch, or dance. Here we are practicing a song that they ended up performing for the closing ceremony. They also presented a dance emphasizing the importance of wearing condomns, and put on a sketch about a young girl who disobeyed her older sister's advice and gets infected with HIV.

As the doctor always says at the end of his surgeries, "That's all folks!" (The Doc used to watch Bugs Bunny as a young goober).

One Year Ago....

Just a few shots to share with y'all moments in these past couple of months = )

During the formation with the youth this summer, a couple of the sessions I held involved dance lessons. Here we are teaching a pretty simple salsa routine. People here have a very natural rythym though, so salsa comes very quickly to them.

Vaccination days continue to be some of my favorite days here. Here I am vaccinating some babies in Waah, a village in the deep bush about 40 km outside of Dir. Its my favorite village as its mostly Fulbe women and you have to speak the local dialect to do work. You have to take a motorcycle to get there on a dirt road, (twice the motorcycle has broken down and my fellow nurse and I have had to walk upwards of an hour until we can find repair! But something I love about Cameroonians is how patient they are with those type of problems and both times the nurse and I have only laughed at the situation).

I found a very cheap way to make banana bread and spent most of the month of July teaching women in village how to make it! Here I am in Norbert's kitchen making cake for his kid's birthdays. Birthdays are not really celebrated here in Cameroon, but since two of Norbert's kids have birthdays within a day of each other we decided to throw them a small party. It was pretty simple, with banana bread, popcorn, juice, and about 20 little kids. However, the two little girls were THRILLED to be celebrating their birthday and we spent that Sunday dancing to somebody's radio = )

Sadly enough, Pistache died about two weeks ago. She got pregnant in late June and had a complicated birth (the babies ended up dying inside her belly, and a couple of days later she went septic and died herself). It really shook me, as not only was Pistache my pet, but truly my best companion in Dir (here is a picture of us on one of our many walks around village). As much as her death hit me (the villagers couldn't believe that I would be such a mess over an animal) it has also with time been put into perspective for me. I've had a lot of thoughts in the past two weeks about the difference here, and in the United States about people's relationships with their animals. Even though I loved her dearly, and I'm forever grateful for the companion that she was to me (especially in my first couple of months at post) I realize that she is an animal, and when I'm feeling sad about it, I need to remember that people lose PEOPLE here on such a daily basis.

This is a more encompassing view of the soyfield, when it was still in the process of ripening. Now that the soy is ready for harvest the field looks mostly yellow. We started harvesting last week and it has been A LOT of work. Mostly takes a lot of patience, and constant availability as you pray for sun, and make sure you're ready to bring in your harvest at any moment (because the rains can come so sporadically). And truly it is very labor intensive as you try to get the beans out of their pods. (I will never once again take for granted how easy it is to go to the grocery store in the United States) But we have done about 25% of it thus far and have about 25 kilos of soy already! So if all goes well we should be able to have a TON of soy in about a months time!

On another random note, tommorow commemorates the one year anniversary of this whole crazy adventure starting. It blows my mind that it has already been a year. A part of me feels like I only arrived in this country 10 days ago, and yet the context of this past year has seemed like 10 years of life squeezed into one. I am super grateful for everything that this past year has taught me. About what it means to believe in your capability as a human being, in how human beings are so capable of adapting to different situations. I'm grateful for how much I'm continuing to learn about different ways of living life, about how beautiful life can be when you simplify it, about how I'm constantly challenged at the hospital and in how to deal with how present death is here every day. I feel as if I learn more and more every day what it means to love your neighbor, and a little bit more every day I'm learning what it means to be a friend to yourself. It has been a year that I would relive again in a heartbeat, and I truly look forward to the lessons, adventures, and moments that I know will continue to come.

The Good & The Bad

I know it's been far too long since I've written (my apologies) and I also know that no single blog entry will do the past 3 months justice, so I thought I would instead share some of the major highlights and lowlights of the past couple of months.

Starting with the good sthuff = )

--In June I had my first visitor! Dave was able to take some time off work and came for a little under three weeks. It was surreal to be riding to the airport to pick him up and realize that I've been in this country long enough to be hosting someone. It was wonderful having him here. Cameroon is not neccesarily the easiest or the most relaxing country to take a vacation in (at least by the standard that most Peace Corps Volunteers live) and you really have to have a lot of patience and understanding to make the most out of your time here. But if you approach your time here with those qualities it becomes an amazing place. With Dave, we spent 8 days doing village life. The people of Dir loved having a white man in town (not only because he brought gifts but they really are honored to have guests from the United States) and the people totally came through showing Dave the Cameroonian sense of hospitality that I have written about before. During his time here we got gifted beer, a chicken, meals, beer, clothes and more beer = ) After village life we spent a week traveling to the Southwest and Littoral regions, where we visited other volunteers, hiked and went to the beach. It was good to see more of this country and really made me appreciate how diverse the landscapes, people, and food are throughout Cameroon. The more I see the more I understand why people take pride in calling Cameroon "Africa in miniature" (not that I've seen the rest of Africa, but you know.)

--In July I helped run a summer camp at the mayor's office. Cameroonians have a traditino that most school aged children go spend their summer vacations in other cities or villages. For example, those who are in cities usually do village life for the summer and visa versa. (People joke that it helps the village children from becoming too "Villageois"...which translated to "villager" and is actually quite an insult in Dir!) So the faces of the youth in Dir completely changed over the past couple of months. With that, the mayor's office recruited 16 motivated youth (ranging from ages 12 - 20 ) to spend a month doing a summer camp. Norbert works at the mayor's office so it was easy peasy to get a couple of days to work with the youth. All in all I did 8 lessons with the youth. 3 days were spent learning about HIV, condoms, and STIs. 3 days were spent doing sport and learning a couple of salsa routines, (it was my first time teaching since Fuego and I can't tell you how happy it made me, although the lessons were far more simplified than Fuego routines!) and 1 lesson was devoted to talking about the differences between American and Cameroonian culture. It was definitely rough getting back into the swing of village after having the company of Dave and being reminded of how much I miss home, but the summer camp was really rejuvenating and gave me a lot of purpose throughout hte month of July. I'm also working with the youth delegate to get Peace Corps funding and put on a similar formatin at the high school in October. So it that works out this summer camp would have been good practice!

--In August, I had a fourteen year old girl named Nina come and live with me for two weeks. She lives in a nearby town, Meiganga, where she is next door neighbors to another volunteer. So I had met her a couple of times when I visit Meiganga and when once in passing she told me she would like to come see Dir I told her she would be welcome. So as part of her summer vacation she came! It was super interesting to spend two weeks sharing a living space with a Cameroonian again, and honestly taught me even more about the culture and why Cameroonians do things the way they do. One of my biggest struggles with the culture here is that Cameroonians share EVERYTHING, but having her live with me made me so much more open to sharing my time, food, and living space with my neighbors.

Now onto the bad. I'm not trying to be pessimistic by sharing the bad stuff, but I think it's equally as important, as its very telling of daily life and the experience here.

--Besides helping out with vaccination and prenatal consultatins I've also started helping out with night shifts at the hospital. One of the nurses suggested I start coming once a week because much happens in the evenings and it is a good place to learn. As a sidenote, nursing care here is a whole different ballgame than it is in the States. Due to a MAJOR lack of doctors, nurses pretty much assume the role of doctor. So they are the ones who consult, prescribe, and treat the patient. (Which you need an advanced degree to do in the States.) That, on top of the fact that the hospital mostly deals with diseases that don't exist in the Sttes really puts me back to Day 1 of nursing school in comparison with the other nurses here. But the nurses are super willing to help me learn and I'm loving how much night shift is teaching me. Although, the first time I showed up I didnt' piece together the fact that Dir has not electricity and just had to laugh when we were doing treatment via kerosene lamp (brings a whole new meaning to the image of Florence Nightingale with her lamp) One of Dave's gifts though was a couple of headlamps, which the nurses went crazy over!

One of the nights that I was helping out we got woken up by a knock at 2 am. Two parents had brought their 5 year old boy from a village 40 km away (deep in the bush). Their child had been feeling crummy for a few days and they had waited it out hoping it would go away (VERY COMMON) but that evening he had become incredibly weak and by the time they got to the hospital (their motorcycle broke down 15 km away form Dir, so they had to walk the last 2 hours!) the boy was severely anemic and convulsing. Instantly, the nurses knew that it was a BAD case of malaria (although you can't do malaria tests @ night because to read the blood smear on the microscope, you need light) and decided to treat him for it. But before starting a perfusion of Quinine, the priority was making sure this little goober got some blood in him. Unfortunately, both the mom and the dad were not acceptable donors (the way blood transfusions work here is you test for blood type, then if that is compatible, you check for HIV and Syphillis. After, you draw the blood directly into an IV bag and transfuse it into the person in need. SUCH a different system than in the States, where hospitals have blood banks, but nontheless, it works.) So since the mom and dad were both incompatible, the problem was how to find a donor at 3 in the morning? The parents knocked on three people's door within one hour, and ultimately a teenage girl was found and able to donate. During that hour, it was a very crazy experience to see this little boy convulsing on the bed and being unable to help him and being unsure if we would be able to. Unfortunately, the little boy died later on that day. Not because the treatment wasn't working, but because the parents decided to take the little boy out of the hospital come morning. That happens far too often here and I'm still trying to figure it out. Some of the nurses say that people expect instant results when they come to the hospital, and when they don't get it they prefer to go to what they know..the traditional healers in the quartiers. Some other say it is due to lack of money to continue treatment.

--As part of the great migration that is summer vacation we had a family come and stay in our concession. We had 8 little kids under the age of 6! Which was equal parts mayhem, equal parts incredible entertainment. They definitely kept out concession BUMPING. One morning as I was walking home from night shift (wanting nothing more than a cup of coffee at my table) I tried to open my door and it wasn't working (my key wasn't fitting into the lock). Turns out that one of the 3 year old boys played with my door hwile I was gone and put a stick of wood in the lock! Fortunately, it was market day so the "door man" was coming from the next biggest town over, Ngaoundal, and arriving at about 9 am. Once I knew that, it was sort of comical that my door was broken. All in all, the ordeal involved waiting 4 hours and ultimately taking my door off its hinges and getting a new lock. I was able to laugh it off by the end of the morning with just a gentle reminder to the little kids to NOT play with my door. TOOO gentle of a reminder, because two days later it happened again! OOOF you should have seen me. There's been plenty of time when I've been annoyed here, or lost my patience, but this was the first time since arriving that I was genuinely PISSED! I was blowing steam off like a locomotive. It felt a little ridiculous to be so mad at a 3 year old and his possee but I couldn't help it. Fortunately, we were able to fix the door without the "door man" coming but I had to stomp through village to find someone to fix it. I was NOT so gentle with my reminder the second time around and the goobers were a little scared of me for a few days. Yikes! But by the end of summer vacation the delinquents and I made peace and spent a lot of evenings playing on my porch, so all's well = )

To leave things on a good note here are two exciting pieces of news: Pistache is preggers! (Should be popping out here babies in a couple of weeks!) And here is a picture of the soy field (this was taken a couple of months ago). Its growing beautifully and harvest should be mid-September, afterwards we'll start doing culinary demonstrations with the women in village!

Un, Deux, Trois

1) As Peace Corps Volunteers two of our three goals involve cultural exchange. We are meant to learn about the life of people in other countries and hopefully share that knowledge with Americans back home throughout our service and beyond. We are also meant to share American culture with host country nationals. At times we are the only American people have ever/will ever come into contact with, and thus its a rare opportunity to share what Americans are truly like. This can be a frustrating and amusing task in a place where stereotypes and misconceptions of the United States are sometimes outlandish. People believe that my best friends must be Beyonce, Rihanna, and President Obama, that all Americans have servants, that when cars break down in America we just leave them in the middle of the street because we have enough money to buy new ones, etc...

**Sidenote: Even though sometimes I laugh at the craziness of the stereotypes people hold, I try to remind myself to take a step back and remember how many stereotypes I had of Africa before coming here. How misconcieved I was to group all of Africa's countries into one culture, when truly one country is as different from its neighbor as the Mid West of the United States is different than New England. How scared I was to arrive here and how I had no idea what to expect, and if someone would have told me that I would be wearing a loin cloth and a bone in my head for two years....I would have believed them. But what I've discovered is that I didn't come to a different planet, I didn't come to a different world...I came to a different country, and there are more similarities than differences.**

The most frustrating stereotypes to try to break are truly those related to money. If you are American you must have LOADS of it, point blank, discussion closed. People are constantly telling me how people must be so much happier in America because they have so many more things. Its difficult to explain to people that materialism doesn't equate to happiness, and that there is so much beauty in the simple life that they live here. Its difficult to explain to people that even in the United States people have problems, that people suffer, and that (and this is difficult for them to get their heads around) there is also poverty in the United States. 

One of the most shocking concepts for people to understand is the phenomena of homelessness in the United States. I mentioned in my last blog post, that African hospitality is truly exceptional, and that no matter how many mouths there are to feed, or how many people are already sharing one bed at night, there is ALWAYS room for one more. So when I explain to people that there are people who are suffering in the United States, without a place to rest their head at night, or not having means to find their next meal, people simply do not understand it. They spout back questions like, "What do you MEAN they sleep on the streets? Where are their families? Why don't their neighbors feed them? How can the rich people in your country not give these people something?"

My senior year of college I worked my community nursing clinical at a homeless shelter, and those couple of months taught me that the answers to those questions and the reasons why people fall into homelessness are incredibly complex. However, I think that the simple logic of African hospitality could help answer those questions: someone is hungry, they are human, they are your brother, you give them to eat. End of story.

I recently read an essay by Barbara Kingsolver that struck a chord with me, and this passage explains what I want to say better than I ever could:

"Whatever else "home" might be called, it must surely be a fundamental human license. In every culture on earth, the right to live in a home is probably the first condition of citizenship and humanity. Homelessness is an aberration. It may happen anywhere from time to time, of course, but when I look hard at the world, I see very few places where there resides an entire, permanent class of people labeled "homeless". Not in the poorest places I've ever lived, not even in an African village where everyne I knew owned only one shirt (at best) and most had never touched an automobile. Because even there, as long as the social structure remains intact, people withut resources are taken in by their families. Even if someone should fall completely apart and have to go to the hospital, which means a trek on foot over dozens of miles or more, the whole family goes along to make sure the sick one is taken care of. "Home", in this case, becomes portable. I know this because I lived as a child in an African village that housed the region's small, concrete-block hospital. Whever I walked past the hospital's lively grounds never failed to impress me. It was just a bare-dirt plaza, maybe stretching among all its corners to the size of a city block, but it was always a busy place, where dozens of families camped out around their cooking fires while waiting for some relative to have an operation, have a baby, or die. Meanwhile they passed the time by singing, mourning, washing dishes, arguing, daydreaming, or fussing at toddlers who ran around wearing nothing but strings of beads around their bellies. In the rest of my life I have never witnessed another scene so solidly founded on both poverty and security. I don't wish to glorify the impoverished half of this equation; these children had swollen bellies from kwashikor, and they had parasites. But they also had families they could not forget under any circumstances, or ever abandon, or be abandoned by, however they might fall on madness or illness or hard times. I don't believe that the word homeless as it's used in our language could be translated there."
                                                                                                         
                                                                               -"Household Words" Small Wonder

2) On the topic of African hospitality, a couple of weeks ago I had one of my most powerful moments yet to date in country. Papa Iza and I had gone out en brusse to vaccinate DEM BABIES! We are now at the debut of rainy season (in Cameroon there are only two seasons: rainy and dry) and the expression, "When it rains it pours" has never made more sense to me. The rains here are truly impressive, and they arrive very quickly, with almost no warning. After a day of vaccinations, Papa Iza and I are on our way back to Dir and noticing that the skies are changing. Still 25 km away, there is no way we are going to make it back to Dir before the rains arrive. Fortunately, we came across a settlement of farmers living in straw huts within a few minutes, and pulled over. No questions asked, we walked into the community, we were welcomed, and we took shelter from the pouring rain for close to an hour and a half. Sitting on the floor of this hut, making conversation with this family of 5 cooking their dinner, I was overwhelmed with emotion at the beauty of how fluidly we had been accepted into their home and into their afternoon. We needed shelter, and we were given it, no questions asked.

3) Some of the advice that more senior volunteers have given me is to not rush into any projects, because what you decide to get involved in will be your life for the next two years. I'm taking that advice to heart on most projects, slowly deciding when to say yes and when I need to say no. However, because we are at the debut of rainy season, farming season is at its peak. The land needs to be tilled before the rains start, and seeds need to be planted a couple weeks after.  Norbert (my counterpart) and I had to make a quick decision as to whether we wanted to start a soy project. Soy is something that I have been thinking about for a while, and with its insane protein value, something that I really do think can make a difference in Dir. So! We have started a community soy field!

Norbert has a background in agriculture and he couldn't be happier to be helping me learn how to farm. His neighbor gifted us a terrain of land across from the hospital and over the past couple of weeks we have worked the land and its ready to be planted! 

We've had two community efforts at the soy field, both on Saturday mornings. These were my first attempts at trying to organize and motivate people in the community, and there were a lot of lessons learned from them. I had talked to maybe fifteen people who had given me a definite, "Yes! I will be there Saturday morning". Yet, come Saturday morning only about four of those people showed up. At first, I was pretty down by the outcomes and overwhelmed as to how we were going to convert this field into a farm, but slowly and surely it happened. Although the people I asked to come did not show up, people I have never met who were simply walking by came to help for twenty/thirty minutes and continued on their day. Once the kids got out of school (there is a halfday of school each Wednesday, so thus...school on Saturday mornings) they came and did so much good work! We drank honey wine, and were gifted some rice from neighbors, and when the morning of work was finished we sat around and shared a meal. The second community effort was entirely different, with mostly teenage boys and I working the field together. So I learned that I need to keep my expectations flexible, that simply because something doesn't go as I planned, it doesn't mean that it isn't working. And that when I decide to focus in on what ISN'T happening, I fail to notice the good that is.

A couple of mornings over these past couple of weeks, I have gone to the field by myself to get some work done. These mornings have been exhausting, my body and hands hurt afterwards, and there have been mornings where my body wakes up feeling 40 years older than it actually is. Yet, there is something incredibly rewarding about working the Earth, and realizing how much WORK goes into producing a crop of food. More than anything, these mornings have made me realize how hard people must work here to survive. People work the fields year in and year out in order to put food on the table. With the combination of physical labor and heavy sunshine I am starting to understand why the older generation here looks so much older than they actually are.

Wrapping this up now, with love = )

Glances Of Life

      Last week was our six month anniversary of arriving into country! As part of the Peace Corps timeline, last week, my fellow volunteers from my training class and I met up in Bamenda (the regional capitol of the Northwest region) for a seminar put on by the Peace Corps. During this seminar we were meant to reflect/present on the observations that we have made during our first three months at post. We also recieved much information on project planning and funding opportunities so we can have more direction on where we want our work to go over these next couple of years. I have a thousand ideas running through my head as to where I will want my work to go, but as my program manager told me "unless you focus in on one or two projects that you feel passionate about, your work will not be sustainable". So now the challenge will be returning to post and starting the conversations and work that will help me hone in on those projects and start them rolling. With that said, I can't believe how quickly the past three months in Dir have flown by, and I wanted to share some glances of them with you.

 The Adamoua Region is nicknamed the "Land of Milk and Honey", which is incredibly accurate as you can find cows and honey all over the place (even on the side of the street!). Cows are a huge part of the cutlure here, particularly  for the Mborro people, whose men inherit cows as part of their birthright (unfortunately, since most young boys have a herd of cattle to tend to they do not attend school---and when the Mborro boys do not attend school neither do girls).

      

Traveling in this country has taught me a lot, mostly how to find humor in the situation and learning how to be patient. The coasters here will take you almost anywhere, but they do not run on a schedule, so you simply have to wait for the car to fill up before the driver leaves. I have had some voyages go incredibly smoothly, where you arrive exactly at your destination time. And then, I have had some voyages that are extended six hours because the tire popped and we need to wait for the next coaster to show up to fix it! Something I do absolutely love about this country though is that whenever you voyage you really do become a community with the people on the coaster with you (and you kind of have to because you are practically sitting on top of each other--its crazy how many people the driver will load into the car!) 

       

   

A shot of the medical center in Dir! Behind the health center, there are fields that the doctor owns and that I am hopefully going to start a small soy farm on. With that I hope to integrate nutrition counseling for HIV + patients.

 

     

My house-- Cameroonians have about three or four colors that they use for painting here so voila, my house is painted pink! Most people in Dir live in mud brick houses, with straw roofs so I feel incredibly lucky to be living in such a modern/beautiful home (as another plus cemented houses are supposed to keep out scorpions!) 

       

My friend, Olivia, working the fields. This is a shot of the field, after it has been cleared of herbs and burned. Now she is starting to work the earth to prepare it for seeds. Agriculture is a huge part of the culture in Cameroon, and close to 70% of people work the fields/make a living off of the earth. Olivia is one of my true friends in village, and she is always teaching me things that she calls the "True African Experience" = ) You might not be able to see in this picture but note, how she is working barefoot and in a dress!

My neighbors sitting around a eating lunch. In Dir, the main food group is cassava (called manioc), and people eat it (in the form of cous cous) about three times a day! (Unfortunately, it is one of the only Cameroonian dishes I do not like = P ) Food is served on big plates and everyone gathers around to eat the manioc with their hands and dip it in traditional sauces. The diet here is a huge source of malnutrition in the community, as manioc has a lot of calories (and leaves people feeling full) but has almost no nutritional value. One of my favorite things about the culture here, is how generous people are with their food. No matter what, if someone shows up during eating time (and it could be a brother, or it could be a complete stranger) they are offered food as a means of welcoming them and helping them feel at home.

Nurse Eric and I working the vaccination table on market day. I am learning so much from Eric about health care in this country and vaccination days are some of my favorites. The Cameroonian government provides free vaccination for all infants 0-11 months and there is never a lack of women with their infants. Here you can see some of the traditional outfits women wear, and you can also see how comfortable women are with breastfeeding in public here (it is seen as natural so there is no shame in it).  Within the past months, I have started accompanying Eric and Papa Iza (the other nurse at the health center who works with vaccinations) into the bush to help with vaccinations. These days have really opened my eyes to the extreme conditions of poverty that these Cameroonian families are living in.

For Christmas this year, a fellow volunteer found me a kitten! If you would have told me seven months ago that I would be in love with a cat I would have told you "No way! I'm a dog person". But life here is full of suprises and sure enough I am head over heels for Pistache. She was tiny when I first got her so I carried her around with me almost everywhere and so now the people of Dir know her very well, and a normal salutation for me is "Amanda, ca va?" "Comment va Pistache?"  She is about 3 1/2 months old now, and here is a picture of her with her namesake (pumpkin seeds, which are used here to make sauces).

  

    

 

For Women's day (March 8th) I partook in a traditional dance, from the East region, with a couple of other village girls. Here we are interpreting a dance about fishing at the river. Sylvie (the girl in front) is wearing the traditional outfit (Fortunately she did not have two of them, as even though I'm feeling comfortable in Dir, I'm  not quite ready to wear coconut shells in front of the community!)

  

Interpreting another traditional dance!

  

Here I am with a group of women, getting ready to march in front of the community for Women's Day. Women's Day is a big event here, and the celebration started 4 days before March 8th. The women participated in sporting events (cross country races, soccer matches against a nearby village, and handball matches), prepared a culinary feast at a local bar, cleaned all the important building in Dir, and presented dances and sketches in front of the community. In the tradition of wearing a "uniform" the Cameroonian government issues a Women's Day tissue every year so that women can look "ensemble" for the big day!

     

Also, for Women's Day, there was a big dinner and dance party in the evening at the Mayor's house. Here I am with the nurses at the hospital taking a break from dancing = ) (I have grown to absolutely love Cameroonian music and dance moves!)

       

A picture with Norbert, my community host, his wife Djanabo, and their 4 month old daughter Angeline. Norbert was such a help during my first three months in Dir and he really watches out for me, often calling me his (ELEVENTH!) child. As part of the seminar that the Peace Corps had last week, they have asked us to identify a member of the community, that we feel we will be able to work with succesfully during the next two years. Norbert is the general secretary to the mayor of Dir and has a real sense of what development is. He also has a lot of experience in agriculture and working with HIV + populations, so I was more than happy to make him my counterpart and have him travel with me to Bamenda.