Snippets of life lately

Meet Njiptcha Ngoko Romaric, a young man who it’s no exaggeration to say has already changed my life - this is our first picture attempt, and he's giddy and embarrassed at being told to smile!  18, without ID, homeless, jobless and an orphan, he’s been a street boy much of his life and spent “catastrophic, rude” years in the ghetto of Douala, the biggest city in Cameroon and an utterly rough and gritty place even if you are doing well. He doesn’t know of a single member of his family as he lost multiple siblings in addition to being “abandoned by my father without a care”. As he says, “I’m living like an isolated star in the sky”. I’ve been encouraging him to write his story and he’s bringing it to me page by page.

I’m working with the public administration of my town to get him under the wing of social services, a process that is moving forward mostly because of my status as an American. Romaric tells me “I’ve never had a soft moment in my life”, so I think the sudden support and affirmation that he's worth helping is a bit disorienting, though definitely making an impression.  Despite his loneliness, confusion about God's plan for him, and shame at being marginalized and stigmatized all his life, Romaric’s spirit is incredible – he loves talking in English with me on my veranda, adores music and everything American, and is really excited to turn his life around and have a positive future. When he tells me stories about violence, prostitution, crime and “jungle justice” (how criminals are dealt with by a crowd since law enforcement is rare/undependable) he shakes his head and says “Cameroon a les DENTS, eh” (Cameroon has TEETH). 

I'm proceeding with caution as I get involved in his life, but I feel compelled not to stand on the sidelines with this guy. If all goes well I'll be going with him to a social center this week that I really like, where they can feed and house him while we look for job training and a longer-term place to live. Fingers crossed he adjusts well - plenty of other tough, cool boys for him to befriend, anyway : )

After several somber pictures I was exclaiming that everyone needed to SMILE - success for all but me!  This is a group of women I love teaching - we've done reproductive health/HIV/AIDS together and I'm now teaching an English class for them at their professional training center. This was International Women's Day (the class does have a bunch of guys too), and they invited me to celebrate with them and prepared my favorite, grilled fish. The day was fun as a party, but a joke as a promotion of women's equality or empowerment: "big men" gave speeches as women's groups marched through town in high heels and matching dresses, looking tired and anything but in charge. A neighbor described the day as "women's one day to think they are equal" and the celebration disgruntles many men who say that women get too flippant and saucy, think of themselves as more than they are, and go out with friends instead of sitting in the house shelling seeds and crushing leaves for the evening meal. Clearly, progress to be made in how we can get everyone behind a positive image of male/female power sharing.

I took advantage of the holiday to snap a photo of my town- usually I feel self conscious and inappropriate about snapping photos especially of poverty or grittier scenes, and I've been advised not to photograph people I don't know, as beliefs about what you can do with someone's photo (sorcery spells toward them) are widespread and would cause fear and suspicion of me.                                                                                                                                                                                  
Notice all the motos - those are what I ride every day,  the billboard for the MSG flavoring cube that is used in every dish, the sparkly jewelry and hair extensions of the woman on the moto (this is where money goes, appearance), and the toddler squished between her and her driver. This is extremely typical transport -- babies a few hours old go home from the hospital like this. The guy with the tray on his head is selling baggies of precut
papaya, but I go to the stand behind the woman's head to get my papayas, mangoes, and pineapples.

Michelle comes by my house every day -- kids have very little to do and almost no structure or supervision in their free time, so there's a lot of wondering around. Sadly their environment and education system does not foster much creativity in imagining games and stories, and since books and other education tools are rare at best, they don't get much encouragement at letting their mind create. So when my vine started producing fruit (still not sure what), we started making up stories about who was who - mama, papa, teacher, students...and Michelle has totally run with it, coming over every day to tell me "who" she found and what they are doing - "Tata Alicia (I go by my middle name here), this is the big sister who is showing all the baby students how to walk to school along this branch."  Music to my ears! I always think kids and most people look well-dressed here, but the difference is that Michelle has been wearing this outfit all week.

My gift from the field next to my favorite orphanage, where the youth were cutting weeds with machetes. I've found my new favorite kind of baby, replacing baby donkeys: egg-sized baby pineapples.

And continuing with my fruit obsession, I made smoothies for some visiting volunteers this week, which were too good to believe. Cold fresh mango, pineapple, papaya, banana, yogurt...yum! Jess and Megan were coming from the Extreme North region, which is severe desert and sparse for fruit and veggies (but no pity, they get awesome tofu and yogurt, less oily traditional food and great beef!), so it was fun showing off the bounty of my region's fruit production and green scenery.

Hosting volunteers has become a regular part of many weeks, which since there aren't lots of social distractions to be found (movie theaters, parks, cafes, bookstores, museums, we miss you!), is a nice way to spice things up. And the two things volunteers find to do together, and do quite well, are eat and drink. Without pre-made meals or take-out, and with lots of time on our hands, we make elaborate meals (many volunteers, thank goodness, are awesome cooks), chopping endless garlic, onions and tomatoes and experimenting with sauces for pizza and lasagna, or here, french toast with fruit, locally made honey and sweetened toasted shaved coconut - pretty great replacements for maple syrup. My standard "welcome" snack is a bowl of fresh guacamole and homemade tortillas, and banana pancakes are another classic, thanks to my dad, the head chef of Easter Pancake Breakfast must be 20 years running.

Regional meeting was held at my house a few weekends ago - 6 of the seven of us from the Littoral - what a good crew : ) We discuss lots of security issues like how to contact each other in case of emergency and if the phone network goes down - namely sending notes to each other through motorcycle drivers in lieu of carrier pigeons. This time we talked about the summer camp we want to do as a regional project - more news about that coming soon.

Typical scene in my house - cockroach gets stuck by its own inability to right itself when it falls on its back, ants swarm in from all the cracks in the walls and consume it alive or cart it away with incredible synchonized tugging. This is the lip up to my front door, they were trying to get it out a little hole in the corner; within a few hours its completely devoured. The heat has driven cockroaches into my house in unfortunate hoards -- I've become MUCH less squeamish about quickly whacking them with shoes, better than letting them flail and spasm for three days when I spray insecticide. The alternative is letting them crawl around me as I sleep, and YES, they do crawl into bed with me sometimes! But the hands-off method of letting the ants deal with them is by far the most natural and diverting.

Ants are my tiniest daily reminder of how incredible nature is, these falls are my favorite grander reminder. This is back at my favorite falls, 45 minutes from my house, though not very easy to get to. The last time I was here, exactly where this photo is looking, I saw an absolutely shocking sight: a "Goliath frog" which at the time I had no idea even existed but are apparently extremely rare and valued; some varieties exist only in Cameroon. The frog was MASSIVE - bigger than my motorcycle helmet, the size of a big bucket really. I was thigh deep in the water for the first time ever here, when my friend Phil started shouting, which got me screaming from fear as I didn't know what had provoked him and felt extremely vulnerable. I had disturbed the sitting spot of the frog, who was now hopping with massive leaps and splashes  through the very same pool. I was gasping from surprise and adrenaline even once I figured out what animal it was. We were  lucky to have spotted one of these frogs, other volunteers are quite jealous...  Every Cameroonian I told I'd seen one asked with dismay "But, why didn't you catch it?!" "With what?!" "With your hands, of course, so we could eat it!"
Next time.

Baby, I'm Back! Scenes from the last leg of my return trip from the US

How embarrassing that I was trying to convince anyone that airplane
food had “definitely gone gourmet”! The cushy seat to myself, hot water in the
bathroom and friendly drink service on the flights back to Cameroon were
noticeably less thrilling, and I mostly had to laugh at how even the
Cameroonian 1% wanted to defy order  – not buckling in children,
letting their mini dogs run around the airplane floor, and giving the
stewardess all kinds of sass when reprimanded.

It’s hard to get over that an advanced airline brought me to this
place that is so far from what we left. As the NYC flight was arriving
in Brussels, they showed a whole video about the Brussels Airport –
how to navigate all the services, how to appreciate the fine shopping
and dining, all your transport options to get around once you left. I
really wish they had shown one as we were approaching Douala Airport
too that just said “HA, good luck pal, you're on your own now!” Their
polite advice in their in-flight magazine on the Douala page was that
“passengers are urged to arrange for a pick-up in advance”.

This was the first time it was light and non-cloudy enough for me to
see the landscape from above – and see that it took us 13 minutes to
cross from the capital Yaounde to Douala, a trip that takes four hours
in a bus! No blocked off patterns of fields, roads, or residential
areas – just windy red dirt roads weaving between thick green vegetation and
the tin roofs of houses, polka-dotted with rocks to hold them down in the wind.

The wall of heat and humidity was actually rather welcome after the
airplane air – but I definitely should have used the plane bathroom
one more time. Since western airports have mega bathrooms every fifty
meters, I was so eager to know if Cameroon's main airport had even one – when I
asked a guard, he scoffed and said “We don’t even have any water!” The
feel was immediately so different – an airport worker trying to get
some rusty, unruly luggage carts through the crowded carrousel area
kept ramming into people’s luggage and yelling at them to get out of
the way. Softness and gentle manners, see you in ten months! Instead of a line at the customs desk, it was a mob of pushing and shoving, no smiles, no "welcome", not a single sign.

I asked a couple of Cameroonian women how to pronounce the name of the
market where my acquaintance had texted me to meet her, and they were
shocked that I was going to try and take a taxi by myself (not that its
unsafe before dark, just a rough experience). I told them that’s why I wanted to
know what I was saying, that I’ve been here before and I “know about
Cameroon” – this reassured them, though they still told me I should
find a police escort.

Instead I left the building wearing a face that tried to say “I just
broke out of prison after serving 10, and yeah, I’ve messed up a few
guys in my time”. Even so, a skinny teenage boy immediately yanked my 50
pound rolling duffle from me and flung it up on his head, as I tried
to wrestle it down and tell him I had no change to give him for
carrying it.

He led me to the taxi area, where I pulled out all the
stops describing my (faux) Cameroonian husband, how I needed to go to church
to meet him for Ash Wednesday services, responding to their agressive quizzing by giving details about where he
was from (a totally remote but somehow known village), showing that I
knew the greeting in that local dialect, and reporting that he was
from the tribe that many people in Douala are from, thinking that
would make me at least one friend, as tribal ties rule. After much
back and forth I found a sympathizer and a ride for $8 instead of $30.

When we got to the huge Catholic church where I was to meet my host,
it was so crowded the taxi had to let me off several hundred meters
off. I dragged my duffle through the dirt, backpack on frontwards, to the
church grounds, where hundreds of onlookers who could not fit inside
were hanging around outside. I thought she was going to come right
out, but the service had just started and I waited an hour and a half
for her! I felt and looked like HELL, was beyond exhausted and so
hungry I broke into my stored goldfish (not discreetly enough, the
beggars noticed)....and I really had to pee!!

Finally the daughter came out, and as she watched my belongings a
church lady in white and purple robes led/paraded me through the
middle of the PACKED church and out the side door, where I was
horrified to see another seating area had been set up, and I was led
down the middle of hundreds more Cameroonians, all in their Sunday
best. Everyone was staring at me, surely thinking “What’s going on?!
Is this white lady a special part of the service? Is she here to give us
gifts? Why does she look so awful? Shameful!” I tried to keep my head
down. Eventually I was presented an outhouse in the pitch dark…

Skip to Thursday morning’s bus ride home, which included getting into
the most impossibly gutted and run down vehicle I have seen to date
(the motor was so hot under the floor that it melted part of my
backpack through the metal), and a pit-stop stop early on into a thatched shack
on the side of the road to get foamy, milky colored cups of strong,
acidic palm wine...the driver downed a whole liter bottle.

An hour in, a bunch of the luggage goes flying off the roof (luckily
not mine), and the driver jumps out – neglecting to mechanically
detach the broken door with the wrench so that anyone else can exit as well.
Everyone is yelling that their goods are probably destroyed, and
jumping out of the windows to go see the damage – I climb up and exit
the driver’s door to do the same.

When we got to the intersection where I used to take a motorcycle to
my first village, we stop to let off passengers. Out of the corner of my eye
I see my violet duffle being thrown off the roof, some unknown person
catching it, and him whisking it off out of sight.

I jump out of the car
(I know that this is my driver transferring me to another bus cuz he
was never actually planning on going as far as he told me he was), and meanwhile all the extremely
aggressive motorcycle drivers who still recognize me and thought I was
going back to Tombel start yanking at me and yelling “Tess, you know me! I
took you last time!” “I know where you live!” “ I know your favorite
moto driver Gideon, he told me I should take you today!” as they try
to wrestle my bag away from wherever its being taken, and lunge for the
backpack I'm wearing so that I’ll have to go with them.

As this intersection also
serves as a massive papaya market, women are simultaneously bombarding me with
wheelbarrows and buckets of the fruit, yelling "200 francs! (40 cents
for a whole bucket) - take them!! TAKE THEM, WHITE!"

I thrash my way out of the ring of chaos and follow my duffle,
watching vigilantly as it’s tied to the bus roof, right on top of a
coffin. Seeing me eye it, the driver told me it was empty, but then
for half the next ride the driver was in an all out yelling match with a bunch
of family member passengers over what had/needed to be paid for the
transport of the corpse. I finally did some yelling of my own and told him to let me off if he would not turn around and look at the narrow road he was barrelling down.

When I finally arrived at my overgrown front door and dust-coated
house, two volunteers were there to welcome me, with a bottle of wine,
chocolate cake, and a welcome back card!!! It’s nice to be home : )