Site visit!

Site visit!

November 8, 2008, 2:16 pm
Filed under: Cameroon

OK! I am back! I just went and got a hamburger, no joke, at a local restaurant in Maroua. Seriously these are hamburgers that would be good in the US, let alone here. Also, they even have ketchup! You all might not think that is an incredible feat, but it is… trust me. A single bottle here costs like 2,000 CFA.

What a week it has been. Lets see if I can even begin to do it justice. Lets start from the beginning…

I left to head to Garoua last Sunday from Pitoa around 6:30. I got dropped off at the Saint Hubert which is a nice hotel in downtown Garoua where the other Volunteers were staying as they had a big halloween party that we Trainees were not allowed to attend. It was ok though, we threw our own halloween bash at the local bar in Pitoa called the “Snack Bar”. We had them cook us food and tried to make it a costume party, although all of the lame agros refused to dress up. I had big plans to wear my aviators, a tight jean jacket, and short shorts and be either Maverick or Ice Man from Top Gun… anna however had different ideas when she forgot key ingredients for my costume at her house. Doh. I also couldn’t drink because I was still on medicine for Amoebas… which I ended up finding out was pointless as once tests were run I didn’t have Amoebas after all. Double doh.

Anywho, back to site visit. So… last week thursday we found out where we are going to be spending two years of our lives. We got up and went to the training session like any normal day but right when we got there at 7:30 we all got little slips of paper and opened them at the same time and took turns going up the board and giving hints at where we were posted. It was really just a surreal day to finally know where we will be. I am going to be in a small town called Hina which is pretty close to Nigeria actually, there are Nigerians who come screaming through the village on thier motos piled full with plastic shoes or other random imports. They come “the back way” so that the gendarmes don’t hassle them on the main roads. Paying 1,000 CFA each time you are stopped by a gendarm adds up quickly.

My town has around 5k people in it, no power, no cell phone reception, and no running water. We do, however, have a great water situation. We have around 8 forrages, which are closed pumps that you use your foot to pump and fill up 30-50 liter bidongs and then you carry/use a pus-pus to get those to your house. Forrages are better than wells because they are closed, inhibiting much of the contamination issues that wells deal with. We also have something like 6 or 7 wells. This is a great situation considering some villages only like 3-4k away have no forrages and many of them drink straight from the mayo (river).

After meeting up with Ryan (agroforestry volunteer who is in Hina now), we went over to the boulangerie in Garoua to get some yogurt and beignets for breakfast. MMM. We then headed over to LUX Voyages and waited around 30 minutes for our bush taxi to fill up with 13 other people. We had the luxury (haha.. get it.. lux voyage…) to have a really pushy lady (with a big behind) sitting next to us who insisted the entire ride that we were taking up too much space. The ride to Guider was 1,500 CFA and took around an hour and fifteen minutes by bush taxi. If anyone has never ridden in a bush taxi basically you scream down the roads in the opposite lane and then swerve back in your lane at the last second avoiding head-on collisions. They also seem to love to try their best to dodge pot holes in a very violent fashion swerving left and right with 15-17 people and tons of luggage on top while they still manage to hit a million pot holes. Hrm..

We got to Guider and ate at “restaurant Titanic”. Apparently they didn’t realize that the titanic really didn’t have the best ending. I mean, the steak and fries were a very welcome change from cous cous and mucousy-consistency-”gumbo” which is okra. We then walked around the market in Guider for a bit and bought some tomatoes because.. well.. the food situation in Hina is going to be interesting. We will get to that later. From Guider Ryan and I each got our on Moto to Hina for 3,000 CFA (Expensive!!). This is an hour and a half down a random dirt (or sometimes less than dirt) road in the bush. It is so beautiful though. I am in the mountains, nearby the Mandura (sp?) mountain range that runs near Nigeria. It is a very beautiful area with HUGE boulders littering the countryside and the mountains, with large flood-ish plains inbetween with greenery.

Ryan’s moto got a flat around 45 minutes into the trip, so my moto sped off and we napped in the bushes under a tree for around 30 minutes while he went to a local village to find someone to repair the flat. This guy who repaired the flat gets 200 CFA to do all the work, provide the materials…etc. The drivers driving us will make a good 2,000/2,200 CFA profit from their 1.5 hour trip. That shows the stark differences between the income around cities and en brousse (in the bush).

We rolled into Hina around 2pm and I got to see my house for the first time. I will post pictures eventually… I promise! But Ryan has 2 goats and 3 chickens (2 now because we ate one). I really want to get a dog to keep me company since he is giving the goats away as a wedding present when he leaves.

My house is quaint. Two rooms with a “shower” room.. no actual shower actually just a room to take a bucket bath in. But it is nice to have a room rather than to bucket bath outside. I have a bunch of trees, a papaya, guava, fig, and a kitchen/shed separate from the house. My homologue (which is basically my “contact” who is one person who I am working with and also is supposed to just generally be my friend/dad and help me out whenever I need it) lives like a 1 minute walk from me and has an amazingly nice wife and kids. His oldest boy has the nickname “Le Gros” (The Fat), not because he is actually fat but because since he actually eats well and is healthy he is so much bigger than other kids his age. Yeah, malnutrition is a big deal… which brings me back to the food situation… we will get there.

Since there is no power in Hina there is really nothing to do after the sun goes down but read with either a lantern or a headlamp/flashlight (want to send me one in the mail… or AAA batteries?). BTW, I think you could send a machete in the mail, and books are always welcome too since I will have a lot of down time to read/write and ponder. BTW, send letters. Email will be difficult unless I come to Maroua which will be at most once every 3 weeks and even then it is hard to write to everyone. The best thing and what makes me the most happy is getting letters that I can re-read and write and respond to slowly and in the comfort of my own home rather than a cyber cafe. I kinda want to write a book. I don’t really know what it would be about… maybe just an amalgamation of brad-type thoughts… we shall see. Anywho, off topic. So their are movie houses run on generators where they play awful kung-fu movies, old 80s movies, or even new movies and some good movies too! Keri (my homologue) has a generator and he fires it up almost every day after dinner to watch soccer or the news in french (the Cameroonian news however leaves much to be desired).

An actual quote from the Cameroonian news when covering Obama and the election all they talked about was this party that the US embassy in Cameroon was hosting and the guy said “they have buttons, signs, food, and all other things that are essential for a party”. Hehe.

Yussufa (sp?) is another great friend of Ryans who will definitely be one of my closest friends too. He has Polio and for that reason is always right inside his compound talking and hanging out with people. He sells gas and runs a movie club at night that costs 25 CFA entry. They play SUPER loud and really actually quite risque cameroonian/african music videos (they are hilarious) for like 30 minutes first that is free and then it costs 25 CFA to stay and watch the movie. I will be eating breakfast with Yussufa nearly every day. We go over there and would buy powdered milk and friend bean curds (sounds bad but is really actually quite good) and Yussufa provides the tea with TONS of sugar (the tea here is like drinking amphetamines with the amount of caffeine in it… not to mention the sugar too ). He is just an amazing guy with the greatest attitude ever. He also has a little munshkin kid who is amazingly cute kid whose name excapes me right now.

Basically what we did all week was walk around the entire town and I got introduced to literally probably like half the town. Everyone is SO nice. You have no idea how amazingly nice everyone is. We would go to introduce ourself to someone and they would insist on feeding us and talking and just the way they talk and smile it is just so genuine. Ryan has done a lot to help the village, even a library project to bring books to the local High school (they had none…). Basically the health situation in Hina and all the surrounding villages is beyond rough. Hina’s health center basically only has a couple nurses and a pharmacy. However, CAPPS (which is a european/world bank/cameroonian government program to distribute meds cheaply all around cameroon) is not working right now so basically NO hospitals in the extreme north are recieving any medication. No Coartem against malaria, no quinine, no nothing. People are dying simply due to lack of BASIC medication that would be cheap. There is just a problem somewhere in Yaounde or Maroua with the distribution of the meds and all the pharmacies en brousse have almost completely bare shelves since they have no money to buy reserves.

In Hina, nearly all women give birth at home without a single prenatal or postnatal consultation. This is something I really think I want to work hard on during my 2 years. We need to start prenatal/postnatal consultations in Hina. They even have a sign for the consultations but it is just sitting in the back under a pile of dirt. Basically women only go to the hospital if there is a serious problem during pregnancy or during birth, however, by that time it is likely too late for them to actually accomplish anything, especially when you see their resources.

Malnutrition is also a huge deal in Hina. The market is on Friday, and on that day you can buy a good amount of food, however, fruits and vegetables are always almost completely lacking. Onions are basically the only vegetable that you can certainly get year round. Any fruits and vegetables are heavily seasonal and might be available only 2 or 3 months a year. I will be coming to Mokolo to buy a lot of my food and stock up when I am here on beans and other sources of protein (powdered milk?), but it will even be a struggle for me to maintain a diet with fresh veggies, fruits, and protein. Meat is extremely expensive and definitely not available regularly for most families. The one saving grace is that they have a ton of peanuts and they do have access to soy. We really are going to try to start pushing soy because it basically grows anywhere, even in sand, has a ton of protein, and is great to put in Buille (rice/milk melange that people feed to kids) with arachides (peanuts) to provide protein for kids. Ryan has also been pushing people to start investing in planting fruit trees in their concessions since they are quite cheap (200-1000 CFA), which could be a medium amount of fruit in the market, and provide a TON more fruit in a couple short years.

Believe it or not, Hina has it good. During my week we went out en brousse further to local villages, Mayo-Kabba, Zivoul, Gamda-goum, and man… that was rough. I visited all of their health centers (Centre’s de Sante) and really, they are nothing more than a building. Hina has a doctor that theoretically comes by once every week (erratically), yet these towns have 1 or 2 nurses there on any given day if you are lucky and basically no pharmacy. In addition, many of these towns rely completely on well water which leads to many intestinal maladies and the death of many young children. Basically, there is an infinite number of things to do regarding health extension work, the hard thing will be knowing where to start.

It is going to be a tough two years, that is for sure. If you are so inclined, please send packages of love with food (omg I want an Oreo right now), things to keep me occupied, news, books, or things that would make life easier en brousse with no electicity. Or even things like shampoo or other random things that we all take for granted :0. However, packages are expensive so send letters. If you send me a letter I promise I will respond and it will just all be a super happy fun time. . As I said I will be raising chickens, maybe a goat or two, and hopefully am going to try to get a dog to keep me company.

Thanks to everyone who has continued sending me emails, messages, etc., even though I don’t reply I promise I DO read them and they make me smile. It is really just nearly impossible to respond well to emails individually when I only have an hour or so on a slow as mollasses connection.

After Hina Ryan and I headed out to Gamda-goum riding with Hamidou on his market truck. By market truck I mean a 10 year old truck piled a story high with random goods, with 30-40 people sitting on the stuff on the back and all three of us in the cab. It was around an hour and a half trip up and down mountainous rocky roads… but definitely an experience. We hung around the market at Gamda-goum for awhile waiting to catch another market truck up to Mokolo where there is another trainee, Thea, and her volunteer she is replacing (Brooke). We caught another market truck on a 2 hour ride to Mokolo which cost us 1,000 CFA each. Hamidou knows us and doesn’t make us pay to ride with him which is awesome because traveling by moto to Mokolo would be around 4,000 CFA for each person.

In Mokolo we walked around and bought street meet and salad (might be a bad idea but he rinsed it??). We bought baguettes and I made a “sandwich” with street meet and salad and it was glorious. We then got a beer and waited around for Thea and Brooke to come back from being en brousse. We all went out to the nicest restaurant in Mokolo that evening where the food took 1.5 hours to make, but we ate 2 whole chickens and a lot of potatoes. Yeah, vegetarianism really would be impossible for me here.. give me a break. At least I know my chickens had a good life and were not in a feedlot pumped full of hormones. It is the natural circle of life here…

The next day Ryan and I headed over here to Maroua and checked out the city. There is a cause here in Maroua which is basically a peace corps house where we can all stay for free when we are in Maroua doing banking or buying food…etc. There were around 20 of us at the house last night since most of the other extreme northerners came here too at the end of their site visit. We (the guys) made stir fry for dinner consisting of onions, garlic, green/red peppers, hot peppers, ginger, basil, parsley, zuchinni, tomatoes… MMM. It was bomb.

Tomorrow we are all heading back to garoua and might go swim in the local pool to celebrate Caitlin’s birthday (belated) and also to catch up with those trainees who went far down south into the Adamaoua province for site visit. It kinda sucks because all the extreme north people can get together easily in Maroua or Mokolo but those in the Adamamoua or North provinces are quite isolated.

I am off, I am going to go back to the Cause and relax a bit since this week has been quite intense. Thanks again for all the text messages (Kate, you are applying for the Peace corps? AWESOME. Is it a fall back or are you for sure going to try to do it? Where are you putting your geographical preference for?) and emails and letters. I love you all.

Also, for those who might me trying to come visit me at some point, there is a travel agent here in Maroua who is amazingly nice and speaks english and will be a great contact for you to arrange your visit here. Here is his contact information: Alim Ousmanou / alimcamtour@yahoo.fr / 00 237 971 73 40 / 00 237 536 43 02 / www.tsanagatour.org

Send him an email or send me more of the information regarding travel and I can go talk with him too next time I am in Maroua in a month or so. He can organise private cars to pick you up, hotels, admission to parks…etc… all the other peace corps volunteers use him when their family/friends come to visit so he is legit.

That is all for now,

Bunches of Amour,

Bradley

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