The underlying purpose of the trip was for our group of 50 volunteers (those of us who arrived together in September) to attend a conference on work-related issues that can only properly be explored once you've settled into your post. Everyone from the south of the country met in the capital to take the overnight train to Ngoundere for the seminar, and the ride was unforgettable. We were all together in the same car, and had a great time watching the city fall away behind us out the window and then cramming into our little cabins and catching up on four months of solo adventures.
Throughout the night the train would stop and children all along the tracks from 5 to 15 years old with plates of fruit and prepared food on their head would call out. In a half-asleep trance on my bunk, hearing their voices softly calling "Mangos....bananas...honey...batons de maniok...arachides" was both soothing and eerie, especially knowing that such small children were working in the middle of the night selling to strangers. A few times we went to see them and buy fruit - the whole thing was very informal, you could just step off the train, barefoot like them, and interact. When girls started wearing scarves I knew we had reached the Muslim part of the country, and when it became light out, I could not believe my eyes at where our ride had taken us - out of one world and into another.
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Leaving the capital on the train we saw the urban version of the same problems we face in our villages, including a lack of methods for trash disposal. In my town there is actually NOWHERE to put garbage and trash cans do not exist anywhere, so people end up leaving their garbage anywhere, throwing wrappers and containers out the windows of cars and busses, and piling trash behind their houses and along roads. They know no option but littering, it's strange and pretty upsetting.
One of our fellow volunteers lives outside the city where we had our conference, and we had a barbeque at his house on the last night - we all took a beautiful motorcycle ride out to his village (things turn rural incredibly fast here), played soccer with the neighbors, ate well, met the chief, and lamented that we will not all be together again until we are going home. |
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After the conference I got to travel to the posts of several other volunteers - each mini trip was a fun (sometimes harrowing) and beautiful travel adventure, and wonderful for my mental health to get to relax and recharge together.
It was fascinating to see how different our circumstances and living situations are even though we're in the same country and all started out in the same spot. There is absolutely no common base experience for volunteers here or anywhere, which is why generalizing about what life is like is impossible. We do share many of the same emotions, frustrations and joys as voluteers working in a foreign culture, but some have other volunteers nearbye, some are replacing a long line of volunteers in the town, some have running water, electricity, phone service, a stable organization to work with, a language they already know...and some have none of those things, or any combination. Being flexible and going with the flow is absolutely crucial and if you don't already know how to do that (I didn't, as it turns out) then baby, you'll learn : )
 This was an awesome ride back to the North’s regional capital from an early morning visit to Bibemi, one of the prettiest places I’ve seen in Cameroon – gorgeous groves of Eucalyptus trees and mango forests, noticeably cooler and lusher than the surrounding desert, thanks apparently to some Catholic missionaries from several decades ago who did the planting. Ironically, Eucalyptus trees are apparently horribly damaging to the soil.
I can’t get over how resilient, capable and inspiring my fellow volunteers are (they have taught me a lot about the power of a good attitude). Take Sam here (in the orange t-shirt from above) - one of the most upbeat, friendly and motivated people I know. She ran cross country at Virginia Tech and has completed marathons and triathlons - when we were in the hospital together on Thanksgiving Eve we snuck our IV polls into the same room and watched Love Actually as our transfusions ran, and when the nurse had to do some extremely painful needle jabbing Sam kept me distracted telling me passionate stories of her most thrilling races and wins. Sam is the sunshine of our group, which is why I loved her “Solar method of water purification” Halloween costume.
This is the type of village we were passing all along that moto ride...it was honestly hard to digest that these are the lives of actual people, living their whole lives out here in the desert in these thatched roof huts with very little exposure to anything else. It's easy to gawk quickly and detachedly as you zoom by, but remembering that they were here just like this yesterday and last year, and will be here tomorrow and next year long after you are gone, is really powerful and a bit overwhelming.
The dozens of dry river beds we crossed will probably be my most vivid and lasting impression of the north. Not a drop of rain had fallen since the beginning of December. Just seeing bare river beds - a couple of them had full soccer matches taking place in the bottom of them - was quite disorienting and other worldly.
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| In Bibemi we wandered down into one of the dry river beds, where people had dug a well hole. These women had lugged their clothes and dishes to the source and were lowering down buckets to get a bit of water to wash them. They spoke no French or English so I asked with gestures if I could photograph them, which sent them into nervous giggles - a request they surely were not accustomed to. The best part was how excited they were to see themselves on the screen afterward - the phenomenon of digital images did seem pretty wild in that moment, and I think it may have been the first time they saw themselves top to bottom at once. Most people only have small broken mirrors from an old car's rearview mirror or the like. |
It wasn't all remote bush-exploring : ) In the cities of the three northern regional capitals the Peace Corps has awesome (though certainly not luxurious) transit houses that are like hostels for local and traveling volunteers. Volunteers in my region are too spread out to have one so these were an exciting novelty to me. As most of my group took vacation after our conference to explore the north and visit each other, the transit houses were packed and highly entertaining. We slept outside on mats on the porch where it was a few degrees cooler, made American food and had dance parties to American music, I even found a bunch of books to borrow and take back to post. It was a little slice of heaven.
Here we are having a send-off ceremony for a volunteer who had to head back to the states - recounting absurd stories like when he tried to farm bees as a project and ended up breeding some kind of "killer" bee that mencaed his village and wrecked serious havoc! Or when his dog was hit on the road, then cooked by his neighbors and served to him on a plate...oh the priceless memories we will all go home with! Even with almost no resources volunteers are awesome at organizing absurd parties, holiday celebrations, funny competitions, morale-boosting newsletters etc (I am truly in awe of the group here) - we make our time together count!
Somehow, miraculously, mangos were ripe and delicious even up in the northern desert! What luck that the most amazing fruit is the one that grows everywhere here - you better believe I took full advantage. Three days into my trip I talked to my sister who asked if the food was different up north. I could not even answer as my whole diet had been revolving around mangos - case in point.
While in this picture I am all relaxed smiles, the second time I visited this juice joint a week later I was sucking down my smoothie much more anxiously trying to pass the hours. I was waiting with limited optimism for my backpack to find its way back to me. It had never gotten put on the top of my morning bus, and when I called the bus station frantically and they found it in the dust and promised to put it on the next bus, it instead got put on a bus headed five hours in the wrong direction. Ahh!!!!
I ended up having to spend the night alone in an un-airconditioned, fanless and rather funky hostel room in the hottest city in the country at the hottest time of year - I did not sleep, largely out of fear that I would shrivel up and perish in the night. Miraculously I got my bag back (how it managed to come back to me I'll never understand consideing how chaotic and informal the bus systems are here) and got back on track traveling the next day, helped by some very generous souls. Thank you guardian angel! Now when I hand my luggage to a guy who says "No problem, quick get in, get in the bus!" I wait and WATCH the luggage go up on top. Wondering if it will be smooshed against the peeing goat, the leaking bag of freshly slaughtered cow, or the branch of smooshed bananas is as much of a gamble as I want.
The best decision I made the whole trip was taking off from the Extreme North's capital Maroua for a solo adventure to Rhumsicki, a bit like the Grand Canyon of Cameroon. Having been to Utah's southern national parks I can't claim this was actually the most stunning geography I've ever seen, but seeing these formations in the background as you ride a motorcycle up a thin, winding rocky pass while men in traditional long Muslim bubus move herds of cattle alongside the road, women in vibrant long dresses and headscarves carry buckets of water on their heads to their huts and you have to stop frequenty to let a mother donkey and her new babies cross the road, my awe was bouncing around in my helmet like set-off ping pong balls. It felt like we were at the end of the earth our here, like it would not have been strange for dinosaurs to saunter our from behind the hills...
I got gracisouly received when my moto pulled into the little mountain town of Rhumsicki, and was immediately shown to an adorable little inn where I could have my own room and pay half if I they didn't turn on the AC - done, it was actually nice and cool up there.
I remember the time in France when I left for a solo weekend in Rennes, got my own hotel room and just explored freely and calmly - it was so liberating and empowering to be traveling alone for a couple days. I fell right back into that happy independent calm traveing out here, stopping in a city called Mokolo along the way and wondering around the streets. Though I made two separate small children burst into tears at the very sight of me, I loved the Arab/Muslim influence on the architecture, dress, and quiet respectful manners. The people up north are much more tranquil and serene - the feel is more "hot and passive" compared to the "hot and bothered" tone of the south, which is widely known for being the much more animated, loud, and aggressive side of the country (ie with verbal harrassment toward women). One theory is that alcohol consumption in the south, and the lack thereof in the north, has a good bit to do with this, but the tribes and history are also quite different and must have an influence.
I took a beautiful hike through these desert mountains with a Cameroonian guide (both pictures above are from that hike), right to the border of Nigeria. I hear that once you mount the hill that separates the countries, the difference in levels of development is striking - the houses are immediately of higher durability and the roads drastically more passable. Down in my Anglophone region, people are constantly talking about how much better things are in Nigeria, since both Nigeria and Anglophone Cameroon were colonized by Britain. It's like the African promised land in their eyes - better universities, more jobs, stronger business, a booming film industry (all the African TV shows and movies they watch near me come out of Nigeria, and even I gawk at the organized streets and nicer houses on the screen).
No denying it - every once in a while it's really nice to get to be a tourist : )
I met up with a few other volunteers in the area and had a blissful afternoon of hanging by the pool enjoying the view and then having dinner at a gem of a place discovered by volunteers past - table under the stars with fresh bread, beef kabobs and fruit - divine. Cameroon has very little tourism, and missed business opportunities are abundent , but this place had it's act together. I'm almost painfully aware of how lucky I am to be able to experience the beauty of the world and be stable and comfortable enough in life to actually enjoy it. What I would consider a "million dollar view" doesn't mean much to villagers who can't afford to send their kids to school and struggle to find water on a daily basis.
Cameroon can't boast the wildlife of East Africa or the tourism industry to have high-level game parks, but in our own little park the giraffes were as stunning and graceful as I could have hoped for, and we got to see hippos, antelope, a warthog running at top speed across the savanna and loads of cool birds at watering holes. I can't lie though, I am jealous of what people see in Kenya...lions and elephants and rhinos, oh my. Maybe someday.
Actual hair cutting scissors! This is as glam as it gets, and trust me this felt luxxxurious. I've stopped showing my pictures with family and friends to Cameroonians, as I'm tired of hearing "But Auntie Tess, you were looking so beautiful and nice in the US...what happened?" The most sensitive comment I've gotten is "In Tombel you are looking...you are not looking like that", whereas generally bluntness is extremely common (I guess that's to be expected from a culture that addresses me openly as "white man").
People don't hesitate to tell me I've gained weight (thanks, platefuls of doughy cassava fufu fed to me at each house, drenched in palm oil, I appreciate it!), how my skin is a mess (thanks, dust, dirty water, and absurd humidity, so kind of you) and how I should have brought my pretty dresses to Cameroon (trying to dress humbly in a culture that highly values dress and appearance is harder than I thought). I told my mom that when I come home before my brother's wedding I will need to be "dunked in something" transformative right off the plane...
It's traffic as usual in the beautiful city of Maroua in the Extreme North. I LOVE how absurdity is a completely routine part of life here - you gotta do what you gotta do!
It's great to travel, and great to come home again. Tombel finally feels like home - no small development - and I am loving being back to my life here. Off to paint my kitchen (I've painted my hallway and bathroom so far, and I think at least 50% of the spider species found in Cameroon are now fossilized inside) and help my Health Club make a skit for the end of the year - then I'm going to teach my French tutor to make pancakes like we made on Easter.
The sweetest sound to my ears these days is water dripping into a bucket from my outside tap at night - I close my eyes and smile every time it starts: )
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