First two weeks at post — HINA

First two weeks at post — HINA

December 21, 2008, 11:30 am
Filed under: Cameroon

Wow. So… I don’t even know where to start.

Merry Christmas everyone! As I did with site visit… lets start from the beginning. I have one hour of cyber-cafe time and really nothing to do today… lets see how much I can write.

I got to post on Friday, December 5th and RIGHT after I got dropped off I went to the market in Hina since I was starving and had no food in my house. I bought some onions, tomatoes, bread from Nigeria, some rice, some pimont (hot peppers), headed home and made some random amalgamation of the following and ate it in no time at all. I ate dinner that night at my homologue’s house (his name is Keri) as I would every night to follow.

Saturday I spent most of the day cleaning my house with my gardian, Djoulde, since it was not what I would call clean after Ryan the previous volunteer didn’t really stress cleanliness, especially in the kitchen. Saturday afternoon I spent out in front of my house throwing the disc or playing street soccer with basically all the adolescents, kids, and even some adults who live near me. They all love the disc and I have been talking with Adamou (my neighbor who has also already become my closest friend here and a really good friend even after just 2 weeks now) about teaching the game Ultimate Frisbee, however, we need to get a solid group of guys who know how to throw well before we transition… but it will come with time . I ate dinner chez Keri again and BTW…he has some REALLY cute little pipsqueek kids, and his youngest was really afraid of Ryan and even after 2 years she would cry if he tried to interact too much with her, yet, I friggin love her and play with her all the time already, I don’t know if he didn’t try to play with her or what… but she is SO cute.

Monday was the Fete du mouton I believe and basically this means that everyone in the village slaughters a mouton and eats a ridiculous amount of meat for sunday and the next like 3 days. I observed the slaughter and butchering of a couple sheep… which was interesting.

I started “work” on Tuesday and observed Keri’s work at the pharmacy along with doing a ton of protocol where I went around with Keri and talked with the gendarmerie, the mayor, the sous-prefet, and the Lamidou (traditional village chief). I drank around 5 liters of coke that day because every place I went they wanted to give me some sort of drink and I was not going to refuse their offer and definitely was not going to drink 5 beers at 10am… man… that was a lot of pop. Haha. When Keri and I went to introduce me to the Lamidou there was a special event that night and we got invited to the inner-inner circle of his compound and ate dinner with him and all of the most important people in village. Me, of course, being the stranger got given a huge chair to sit in right next to the Lamidou rather than sitting and eating on mats like all of the other, more deserving people in village, but that is just how things are done here.

Basically Keri is just an absolutely amazing person and I just can’t get over how sympathetic and thoughtful he is. I eat dinner with him every night and play with his kids and watch the awful CRTV, which is the only cameroonian “news” channel that is broadcast… and rarely plays news..

My first two weeks have just been really full of integrating into the village. I played football with the other youth pretty much every night that I was there… ate two breakfasts every day, one with Yussufa, where I supply the milk and makkola (bean-beignets) and he supplys the tea, one right after that at Adamou’s house with him and his older brother (Ich Man), and his friend (Sowheto Boy). Adamou and I climbed the mountain nearby at 5am and watched the sunrise, we also went on a bikeride almost to a nearby village… it was intense since his bike was single speed and we are going up and down huge hills. We switched bikes for a little bit and I almost fell over. He is much tougher than me…

Right now there is a huge vaccination campaign going on funded by the WHO, Unicef, the cameroonian government, and some other organizations where they are giving vaccinations to infants, vitamin A, preventative malarial drugs to pregnant women, tetanus shots to pregnant women, and mebandazole (anti-worm) drugs to all kids 1-5. The last week before coming here to Maroua and Mokolo for banking and buying stuff for my house I was busy with that campaign and riding along out into the bush on motos to give vaccinations.

Imagine this: Me, and the head nurse, flying down a dusty path… not even really a path… basically just rocks… on his ancient moto… me with a huge cooler of vaccinations in my right hand, my left trying to hold on to the one metal bar to my side to stabilize, behind me a huge box filled with needles and other essentials for giving the vaccinations, the moto only had one footrest on the right side, the left side I had to place my foot delicately on a tiny screw RIGHT next to the moving chain… so basically I just held my leg up = tiring. BUT, it was cool. We went out to Mayo-Nbana which is a small town around 17k from the nearest health center and MAN it was rough. I think I could do a lot of work there because they really have no contact with a health center. I think I am going to do a lot of work with malnutrition since it might be the easiest thing to educate and change with no money… just knowledge. The food is there, the ingredients to make high protein meals for youngsters and fruit and some green leafy vegetables are available, it is simply a lack of knowledge of the importance of a balanced diet, the importance of protein every day for a growing child…etc.

Anywho, so we arrived in the village where there was a HUGE crowd of people encircling three chairs. We sat there and gave vaccinations/medications for around 4 hours with me doing the recording stuff and giving out mbendazole/vit A to people and trying to help the nurse from making errors or forgetting to give things to people.

Lets see… what else?

I am getting a dog. After asking around for the first week and a half Adamou said he thought a guy who leaved nearby had a large black dog and we could maybe ask to see if it had given pups anytime soon or would. By our chance the momma had given birth 3 days before! So, I am going to go back in a couple of weeks and see if I can’t get a female too to eventually give pups that I could give away to other PCVs or neighbors…

Anywho, basically things are great. I have made a ton of friends and feel totally at home in Hina already, and it has only been 2 weeks. I have had some amazing conversations with Adamou (my neighbor who is around my age and just finishing up with the Lycee here) while playing card games with him, his brother, and his brothers friend. I really though have been having a hard time with conversations regarding money. For example, Yaya, another really cool friend from village does not have the 5,000 CFA to pay for the next semester of highschool. He does not know where to get it and I think I might just pay for him… I mean… that is like 5 USD. Also, university here, for enrollment, costs 50,000 CFA. That is 100 dollars. For 100 USD you could pay for a kids university fees. Now, to be fair, that does not include housing, food, transport, but at most that would be another 100 USD a year… which means that for 200 USD you could really fund a kid to go to university here for a year.

Think of this, setting up a foundation using USD and sending 20-30 kids from Hina each year to college on the interest from the investment. You could give the money in the form of scholarships to applicants from the top of the highschool class in Hina. There is already something of the sort that the government does… sending the top couple kids in each class to university… but I don’t think it is a very large number.

Anywho… I am just trying to find my niche and really don’t know what I will do for work here yet, but I have time and really am just excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. Like, for example, learn how to play soccer well… I wonder how long that will take??? .

There is so much… I don’t even know what else to write. I have been eating a ton of papaya/giving a lot away since I have two HUGE papaya trees. Climbing them to get the fruit is an exciting endeavor. My male chicken that was given to me as a gift from the Lamidou of Zivoul died a couple days after I got to post… I think a cat killed him… which is one reason why I need a dog to protect my poulets! Also, I am going to start to put them in the coop at night and close it with a cinder block… especially once… or if (i hope) the eggs that my hen are sitting on hatch into cute little chicks!

Watched a SUPER OLD chuck norris film on the fete du mouton. It was awesome. In the french version (i don’t know about the english version) he is called John McQuaid… and a guy who was watching the movie at Keri’s house looked over at me and was like… dude… I the first time I heard that John McCain was running for president, I thought it was this guy. Haha. CHick norris for president!

OK… I am going to go get some street food and then maybe check out the culture festival that is going on here in Maroua this weekend. I’ll be back online maybe christmas… or earlier… depending if I go back to hina tomorrow or just stay here in Maroua for the whole week.

Thanks so much for those who have sent letters, I responded to them all (I think) and just can’t wait for the next batch. I found out that letters sent to my B.P.24 in Hina only take around 3 weeks to get there! That is awesome since the Peace Corps mail takes like 2+ months… so the turn around time should improve dramatically now.

I also am just trying to think more and more what I want to do with my life… with possibly grad school when I return… etc. After observing more and more I think becoming a doctor and working here in Africa is high on my list. In Hina, a center of health that is actually “big” for outside of the big cities, there is a doctor there once or twice a week for maybe 3 hours. The other day as I was observing vaccinations and just hanging around the hospital, a man rolled up on his bycicle and approached the doctor (who was around Hina for the vaccination campain) and asked him if he could talk to him about his knee, which was bothering him immensely and making it almost impossible for him to walk (keep in mind this man just biked to the center from who knows how far away). The doctor replied, no, I am busy here with the vaccination campaign, come back in 4 days (on friday) when I have my regular consultation hours. Now, this may have been an acceptable response, yet, the doctor was doing nothing. He was just sitting around literally doing nothing. We had just finished a conversation regarding the problems of the cameroonian health system and all the vaccinations were done for the day at our center. The man continued and asked again if he could just talk with the doctor for 5 minutes and once again the doctor rudely said “Oh really, you want me to abandon 15,000 infants to look at one knee… please you selfish old man”. Like, seriously… after the man left.. on his bike… the doctor sat back down and spent the next hour doing nothing… just chatting and relaxing.

Hrm.

Well… we shall see…

This week I really have started missing home and friends, family, framiliar faces. This is my first christmas in a foreign country not with family and it definitely is different. Just know, eveyone, that I think of you all so often and just hope that we don’t lose contact over the next two years. I am ready to make an effort to stay in contact so I hope you are too!

I love you all,

B

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