Beginning in Pitoa

Beginning in Pitoa

October 12, 2008, 10:35 am
Filed under: Cameroon

Zomg hello everyone!

Currently I am down a random dirt/trash/rock road that passes to the right of a huge Catholic church in Garoua, Cameroon. The normal place where I use the internet (and my normal I mean the one I used last week) was not working so I followed a random person’s lead to where I am now.

How do I even begin to start summarizing the last 2 weeks. We left Yaounde as a group of 30 and took the 14 hour train from Yaounde to Ngaoundere. The train ride itself was amazing as the windows are all open and you see much of the entire countryside of Cameroon and the differing climates traveling from Yaounde which is pretty southern up north. All the children would wave and yell to you as you passed by just trying to get a glimpse of the new and interesting people passing through. All through the night the train stopped (and by stopped I mean jolted to a stop, throwing you out of your seat) along the way and TONS of boys and girls ran to the train to sell bananas, fufu, mandarines, water…etc. All while yelling in high piched voices “S-il vous plait”.

After another 6 hours by bus we arrived in Pitoa and all met our families in a very awkward fashion of them calling the name of the family, they stood up, and then called the name of the trainee, and then everyone cheered. I am living in the family of Sabtai Elizabeth. My mother is a nurse who works in family planning at the local hospital. I live in a nice compound with my big sister Beatrice who is 28, my brother Altiner who is 26, and my little brother Vivianne who is 15. They are all amazingly nice and loving and it is such an amazing experience to live with them, talk philosophy with them, joke around with them…etc. They REALLY love watching soap operas though, which is funny to watch in french.

I have begun to master squatting in the latrine after a week or two of struggling along. Taking bucket baths has become a normality to me and I absolutly love taking them in the cool evening rain. My room is a concrete square with one tiny window, so it definitely does not get much ventilation which is hard when during the day it is 100-110 degrees out. It is a GREAT night when the thermometer on my alarm clock dips below 85 degrees in my room.

The dinners that my family makes are tasty and consist of yams, rice, potatoes, pomme-frites (fried potatoes), or fufu (solid maize sort of white stuff that they call cous cous but is definitely nothing like the cous cous we know in America) as a base. The sauces range from tomato, peanut, Ndolle which is a sort of local greenery, fullery which is another local greenery, beef sauce, fish sauces…etc. However, even though they all sound very different, they are all made using Maggi cubes which is basically just salt and MSG (although they will all insist that it is not salt it is “spices”), and a large amount of cotton oil. I have not done much research yet on cotton oil but what I have gathered from other PCTs is that it is really one of the worst oils for your health.

Yesterday we went on a tour of the local Pitoa hospital and let me tell you that was an interesting experience. The hospital has one doctor and 40 nurses. The Chef doctor runs all the smaller clinics in the areas around Pitoa, is the ONLY doctor for the 40k people that live in Pitoa, and the only person who is knowledgable in anesthesiology or surgery and lives on site at the hospital. He also is in charge of all the health statisics, reporting, and deals with all of the finances.

We had a tour of all of the smaller “wards” of the hospital from maternity, surgery, family planning, general practice, lab…etc. Let me tell you, the surgery ward left much to be desired and some to be…un-desired. It was NOT clean at all. All of the wards had no screens on the windows and no doors and NO mosquito nets on any of the beds. So, if someone comes in suffering from malaria… they still sleep completely exposed to the mosquitos. hrm…

HOWEVER, some things were amazing to hear. First of all my mom is in charge of the family planning center and let me tell you, she is a formidable woman. Cameroonian women are VERY subjucated by men in general and she is the perfect person heading up the family planning center. The pill at this center costs 100 CFA for 1 month. 100 CFA = around 30 cents. CHEAP! BOOYA. That was amazing to hear. THey also have the patch, injection, and of course, condoms.

Writing this is hard. I really need to talk with you all in person to describe everything. EVERY experience is important for you to know. How do I choose?

If you don’t already know I brought 16 frisbees along and we have been playing 30-60 person frisbee in the street by my house often. Anytime you bring out a disc anywhere in Pitoa with another trainee you will have 40 or so kids watching within 5 minutes. Once you show them how to throw it and that it is ok for them to play MAN it gets crazy. Imagine 50 kids screaming every time the disc goes in the air and trying to catch it because our rule is that whoever catches it gets to throw it, no stealing or no one gets to play.

Last night also there were 60+ cattle coming straight at me as I turned to bike down my road. Haha… here cattle are kept on leashes if possibe… and if not possible sometime they just run wild. Needless to say I quickly dismounted my bike and let the cattle win the rights to the road.

last night the married couple jessie and brian had their pet goat outside their room screaming all night so they hardly got to sleep.

Every thursday all the trainees get together and play soccer/ultimate which is a great stress reliever of training and just the difficulty of dealing with the culture shock but it is fun trying to teach the younger africans how to play ultimate and disc.

So, I was writing all of this yesterday but the internet died in all of Garoua. Which is funny because Garoua is probably around 200-300k people… not a small city by any means. Today I got to Garoua for only 200 CFA in a bush taxi with another 15ish people. I met a really nice man waiting for a car who escorts people to and from Chad. He was a really nice guy, although intimidating since he was holding an Ak-47.

I also found out that there is a Chadian refugee camp only 7k from Pitoa and that when I went for a bike ride the other week we almost biked all the way there by accident. The refugee camp is having a music concert to raise money and awareness that I might go to tonight if I can get back from Garoua in time.

Each group of tainees is working with a community group and I am working with a group of young people who all have either graduated from lycee or dropped out but there are no jobs at all really and so they band together and try to think of income generating activities. They are also playing soccer today by the primary school so I might try to go and do that. Other people are waiting to use the computer here at the Peace Corps office so I am going to head out but next time I will try to write the entry at home on my computer and just come and paste it in!

With love!,

Bradley!

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