Almost 4 months… wow.

Almost 4 months… wow.

January 14, 2009, 8:50 am
Filed under: Cameroon

So in 3 days I will have been in Peace Corps for 4 months. Sheesh. Has gone so fast, yet slow, like everything in life. I have really been active in village since my last post and sorry that this post will be hurried because I am actually going to talk with an NGO ACMS (Cameroonian Association for Social Marketing) at 10am. I’ll get to this NGO in a bit… So, big news is that I finally changed off from taking Mefloquine for my anti-malarial and onto Doxycycline because basically it was making my brainz feel like I was a zombie around every other day. Basically it had been a big struggle since a month into service and I am just SO happy to feel NORMAL again. So, yay! However, nothing is without its trade-offs since Doxy is a broad-spectrum antibiotic, so… kills bacteria… even helpful ones. Also, taking a broad-spectrum antibiotic for 2 years = not the best idea when you have some sort of infection that you want an antibiotic to work… also you have to take it every day and it has a tendency to make your skin more sensitive to the sun which is not great news for me… mr-paley-mc-paler-skin. So many people have been amazing at sending letters and it just makes me SO happy. I hope people have been getting or start getting my letters soon! Also, people who have told me you are sending packages, that is just so nice of you and definitely not expected, so just… thanks… really.

I hope everyone had a merry christmas and a happy new year! I spent new years in village which was actually kind of a let down because no one really did anything… but it is not surprising since my village is almost all Muslim so they just finished their big fetes with Ramadan and the fete du mouton, so really they are kinda broke from killing a mouton for the fete du mouton and just kinda layed low for the new year holiday.

OK… what have I been up to?

Well, if I have not said it already there are NO condoms in Hina. None. So, I am really pushing that as one of my first project since it is relatively straightforward and easy. So ACMS is the Cameroonian association that works to promote selling condoms, female condoms, mosquito nets…etc. So I am going to talk with them and see if they can come to Hina and do some social marketing, if not, I will try to get them to sell the condoms to me and I can try to get the boutiques to start selling them. They really are quite a good deal, you get 25 francs benefit for every 100 franc condom pack you sell. So… 1/4 the cost is good for a benefit right? Anywho… so I will let you know how my condom promotions go. If nothing else my good friend Yussufa in village whom I eat breakfast with every day (fried bean curd = MMM… not so much… oil for breakfast?) is really excited to sell them.

I am working with the club sante (health club at highschool), have a meeting tomorrow morning actually to give them technical information on HIV/AIDS and show them the female/male condom to make sure they know how to do a condom demonstration and then they are going to go around and educate the whole highschool about aids/prevention/condom use/female condom…etc. Should be cool.

I have started working with a womens group that is lead by the wife of my homologue who I eat dinner with every day, and we have started talking  about nutrition for infants, I showed them how they can easily prepare oral-re-hydration-salts at their home when their kids have diarrhea which is like… all the time. I mean, if I have it a lot, yeah… I may not have a lot of resistance but… they are kids. Anywho, I made it with them and then had Kari’s (my homologue the pharmacist at the hospital) kids try it and they fought over it because they liked it that much. Which, if you have ever tasted the ORS solutions the hospitals give out is amazing since they taste AWFUL. Anywho, basically you use the salts, but also add a lot of sugar and lemon/lime, and bicarbonate if you have it and it is just as good but tastes good so the kids will actually drink it… kind of important?

The womens group planted trees together in the past but are interested in raising some animals to start to get some income as a group to use to do group activities and to have some independence from their husbands since wives here are basically what I would consider indentured servants to their husbands. So, I have been talking with Heifer and might try to get them to work with the women. Heifer is really awesome, if your group is selected they come out for a day or two and run an intensive educational course on whatever the group will be doing or whatever skills they lack and do it all in the local language in the village. really cool.

I have been following up on some forrage (water pump) projects and we got 2 forrages dug in villages nearby Hina, another in Hakoula is coming soon, and I was out visiting a surrounding village Ouro-Kourde, and they said they really need a forrage or two so I went and talked with P.A.R.F.A.R. and are going to try to get Ouro on the list too. Cool stuff to see because you can immediately see the difference it makes when, A) the women don’t have to walk 30 minutes to get 1 bucket of water, B) the people stop using the “easy” way out of river water.

One thing I noticed which kinda pissed me off was the amount of money given to the gendarmes (the bush-police) and how little is given to the hospital. Another example of how the government wants to be able to control the population but cares naught about the healthcare and education of the youth. P.S. the lycee (high school) is just in shambles. The kids are more out of class then in class because basically the government assigns where the professors work, so they could just get assigned to a village they don’t want to go to and then they just never show up or just show up whenever they want to. Also, since there really are not many professors in the first place many of the teachers are just graduates from the lycee who are really not qualified to teach… but are better than nothing. I had a conversation with a teacher who said it is ridiculous, however, he gets paid 25,000 CFA a month. By comparison, I get 160k a month from Peace corps. A mattress costs more than 25,000 CFA. That is 50 bucks a month. Not much. But a job here… which is really hard to find. Another problem, why get an education and waste 8 years or more of your time and money in highschool/college if you are going to come out poor and with no job to start anyways? Many a people who drive moto-taxis or work in boutiques have masters degrees… what a waste. The longer you are in Cameroon, the more you realize how much the government really does nothing for the people. Biya just recently set up a “Ministry to oversee elections”… yeah… everyone in the ministry is elected by Biya himself, based on “qualifications”. Hrm… too bad a lot of them are in Biya’s party too…

I started talking with my hospital about buying medicine from the private baptist hospital like an hour away since CAPPS, the cameroon government distribution system of medicine basically is broken and there are long periods where we have no good anti-malarial medication in hina. I was like, yo, lets buy it from the private hospital and put it on our market truck and sell it here when we run out, yeah, it will be more expensive but people will pay 1000 rather than 500 if they are gravely sick and need coartem or arteminisin based anti-malarial drugs. Yet, Kari, my homologue said that if the government came around for supervision and saw we were doing that they would make a note and somehow punish the hospital.. because… surprise… they want a monopoly on this ability to provide drugs… so it goes through the government. But, we might try to do it outside of the hospital… hell.. we could set up a little stand outside the hospital and give someone a job.

Oh, another thing about the forrages, people like to try to steal money. So, people came to the villages saying they were from PARFAR and that they needed 25,000 CFA to legalize the group of the village into a Community Group before they would get the forrage. This was totally not true and one village gave this thief the money and he left and, of course, was never seen again. Also, people have been coming around to the villages saying that I sent them to gather money. Doh.

I was talking with Kari the other day and he said that if I wanted the Lamidou (traditional chief) would give me land in Hina for free. But, only me, if anyone else wants to start a field of peanuts or whatever they lease the land from him for like 5000 CFA a year per hectare. Maybe I will do it and then employ some people to work the fields, then once I get a profit from it, use the $$ to empower the groups by providing the down payment on a sheep or cow or plant fruit trees in the city or something… we shall see.

Another thing I am working on with my Homologue is to start little pharmacies in the surrounding villages that don’t have health centers. There are villages more than 17k away that have no medicines and have to come all the way to Hina by moto, bike, or…walk? Which.. if you are gravely poor and sick or your kid is sick and you don’t have money or ability to get a moto, what do you do? Bering is especially far and has a big population, so we are going to try to train a local to run this small pharmacy either for free or for a tiny bit of profit. Bering will be our pilot place and if it works well we will try to do it in others…

Haha… in Maroua this week people have been passing this rumor that there are sorcerists here that if you touch them, shake their hand, they make your penis disappear. People are really afraid of this and it is getting pretty bad… to the point that this huge mob of people yesterday accused this kid of stealing someones penis and he was stripped naked and handcuffed and dragged off to the police station to be questioned. I mean, cmon, even some friends who I consider very smart people believe this is true. I challenge them heartily but they just say.. I dunno… it’s magic. One of my favorite quotes of the week was “I just don’t really get it because it is NOT possible”… coming from one of my friends who is scared of losing his penis.

Some updates around my house… been reading a TON of books so if you want to send a package or anything of books/magazines/newspapers… I want to be able to stay up on american news and BARACK and how awesome he does but I can’t even get BBC on the short wave in hina.. so… it is hard. But I am also in need of books that are more intellectual. I have been reading a lot of fiction but want some intellectual books too… so… think about it.

I bought another chicken so have a male and female right now and am buying 6 little chickens specifically bred to get HUGE, fast, from Nigeria and they should be there when I get back to post! Also, when I get back to post I am picking up my dog from his owner. He is HUGE… the biggest of the litter and will start boot camp to train him well ASAP. .

I also might get some sheep and goats to raise too… because… that is what people do and it is good to learn and I can give them as gifts! Or, if you buy a sheep when the price is low and sell it during the fete du mouton when the price is like 2-3x you can make a good amount of money.

Aight, I need to roll out to ACMS to talk condoms. Nice talking to you… white screen. I hope everyone is in wonderful health and just enjoying the wonders that living in America provides. I get irrationally excited about a warm bottle of Coke, or a huge loaf of “Bread Cake” from Nigeria… “Now with tasty glucose”… haha. They always put waaay too much sugar and salt in those things.. but man… I buy it and devour it plain. I miss bread.

For another day I need to describe food to you all, but it is definitely not something to write home about. Wait… well… I guess I can put it off then. haha.

Happy day.

Bradleeey

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