It's high time I give a much-deserved shout-out and thank you to a woman who has been taking great care of me since high school, the mother of my dear friend Sam, Mrs. Corey! I have been blessed to get love and pick-me-ups throughout my 19 months in Cameroon, but no one has been more committed and generous in indulging my need for chocolate, my requests for brown rice, lentils and curry powder, and my love of stickers, face-wipes, nuts, tea, Crystal Light packets, and ZipLock bags!
I am blown away at Mrs. Corey's tireless efforts at boosting my mental health and spicing up my diet with treats and necessities from home, - she has my wish list in her purse and picks up items when she sees them - I am humbled at her dedication and want her to know how far her work goes to make me and others feel loved. It's hard to imagine how nice it is to get packages here - I can only compare it to Christmas when you are a kid - but she must know how much her care packages mean to me, the effect can not be exaggerated.
The culture of gift-giving is extremely important here, and its always nice to have little tokens of appreciation and support for those great people in your lives. Mrs. Corey's boxes of fun surprises are perfect to share with my Cameroonian friends, students and work partners - giving someone a chocolate or sticker that they can't get here makes their day, and are perfect for prizes during my sessions. I recently gave one of the fun pairs of earrings she sent to a neighbor hospitalized after having her appendix out - weak as she was, she had us all help her sit up so she could put them on then and there, suddenly beaming. Having little gifts for moments like these is so nice and is a whole other level of the gift I'm getting myself. Plus, having Reeses Pieces and coffee to share with fellow volunteers definitely wins me brownie points!
Huge, heartfelt thanks for your support Mrs. Corey - I am extremely lucky to have you looking out for me!
Our first meeting ice-breaker was learning to flip pancakes : )
I've started working with four awesome young women from my town who were selected to receive scholarships by an small US-based organization started by a former Peace Corps Cameroon volunteer and her friend - A2Empowerment. They work with volunteers like me who are in country - I ran a local campaign to seek out deserving young ladies who are ambitious and financially struggling to stay in school. I had more than 30 girls get in all the application materials on time - I picked the ten strongest, and Anne and Anne in the US selected four here, and sixty overall for Cameroon. Telling the families their daughters had been selected from such a big pool was a thrill - seeing parents so proud of their daughters, and girls so proud of their own accomplishment, was humbling and really special to be part of. Definitely made the hours of organizing application papers and the painfully slow and disrupted scanning/uploading/sending process worth it!
It's a $60 scholarship, which is making the difference for their families, and sending one of the girls back to school several years and twin babies later. There was definitely some hesitation in believing that the scholarship will actually come through - most things seem not to work out here for one reason or another. And since this was the first time I've done a financial aid type project it felt a little funny after all the expectation that that's what we SHOULD be doing here as "whites" - but since I get to work with the girls and their families and be involved in the process, it feels less like charity that's just promoting a stereotype and more like a cool way to build relationships.
The best part is I get to do a whole program with them to talk about being a strong student, goals for the future, the importance of giving back, staying on track, managing money, and fun stuff like cooking, learning English, and doing art. Three of the girls were willing to talk a bit about themselves...
"My name is Kolacke Ngole Christelle, I am a young Cameroonian, age 20, who wants to tell you about her life. Until I was 12 I lived as a happy girl with my aunt and uncle in Douala. My aunt worked at a metal sponge factory, and I knew her like my maternal mother because my real mother had me at the age of 14, and my father disappeared, I never saw him. My aunt loved me - she said I brought her luck because as soon as she adopted me, she managed to conceive her own child after seven years of trying! But her husband my uncle did not, he said his money was going all towards me and not toward his own children. I knew that a real father could never treat his child this way, and this is when he started being very severe to me. He hit me at each mistake, deprived me of meals for at least two months - it was his lastborn who loved me and would save me part of her meal, which I ate hidden by the toilet. I spent days and nights crying. He told me to leave the house, so I left for a week, and it was my aunt who found me and brought me to my mother. That's when I finally met me father at age 13, and when I went to live with my grandparents in Nkongsamba, where I live now, he sent me to school for 2 years before he died. After, it was my grandmother who helped pay my schooling, but right now I'm not in school. Now I am the mother of twin girls, Carole and Clarence."
"I am Dolgeline, I'm in Premiere D (second to last year of secondary school). I come from a family of seven kids, I'm the third. My dad has been sick for many years, today he suffers very seriously, and it's my mother who takes care of us and pays our school fees. She does small commerce - selling baton de manioc (sticks of boiled cassava tied in leaves and sold as a snack or compliment). When I get back from school I have to help her to make the batons, and then I go and sell them to have a bit of money to buy food. I really like school, I like science and math, and also English, but I have lots of trouble with this last one! I would love to be a very great nurse tomorrow, that is my most dear dream."
"My name is Iongi Kammogne Kevine, I was born in 1995. I'm in 2nd (third to final year of secondary school), and my parents are from the Bayangome tribe. My father is a motorcycle taxi driver, and my mother is a cleaner. I have an older sister who is in her final year of school - she takes Spanish - and two younger sisters. During vacations my mother sells beignets or bread, and we often help her selling peanuts too. I still have my two grandmothers, who are very sick, and my big sister has a lot of skin and heart problems that always have her at the hospital. So my parents usually don't have money to pay for school when the beginning of the year comes. At school I like Earth and Life Science, but math is a menace!"
One of the activities we did, called the Bridge Model, where you start on the left with all the influences of your current life , look toward the right side where all of the things you want in your future life are waiting, and then build a bridge of everything you need to get from one side to the other without falling into the sea of risks and problems that derail your progress like prostitution, tribalism, AIDS, and ignorance. One of the girls suggested honesty as a link on the bridge, and another girl argued passionately that honesty was the LAST value you should prioritize if you want to advance in life. Sounds crazy, but it was such a good insight into the society they live in - since there is usually no functional system of getting things done in an official, honorable way, lying, manipulating and cheating your way forward are widely accepted as the way it must be done. As Cameroon is one of the top most corrupt countries in the world, a phenomenon that is intimately woven into their daily lives, the girls said that if you are honest, you will be the only one, and will get nowhere.
It's true what everyone says...teaching English is way harder than you imagine! Once we got past "head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes", it's been a good challenge trying to keep the group (they are the ones who requested the class) motivated as they ( and I!) see how complex and tedious language is.
Cameroon is a bi-lingual country with French and English, but few citizens speak both, which makes for an administrative nightmare with issues like work transfers, police check-points on the road, and trying to do things like get a passport in the French speaking main cities. Even Francophone and Anglophone school systems (among other systems) are totally different, so the country feels pretty crippled for its being divvied up that way by a post WWI treaty. Being here you can see why the Anglophone regions feel marginalized and exploited and why many of them want to secede and join Nigeria, their idolized, beloved, much more developed Anglophone neighbor.
Reading a list of encouraging words to practice pronunciation: "If at first you don't succeed, tree, tree, tree again!"
All the art in the back was put together as a small art show by the Peace Corps volunteer I replace - made by both volunteers and Cameroonians.
Some girls at the social center where we will be hosting the camp - they got into the egg-decorating spirit after I made some cut-out examples.What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Nice work ladies! These eggs were all hard-boiled and would be eaten that night.
Easter morning sunrise service was a tradition growing up - I did my own version this year with a lovely morning walk up a trail overlooking the German-build Catholic church/school complex in my town where I went for services later that morning.
"Rise and shine and give God your glory, glory"
Big day for these girls! First communion. My area of Cameroon is heavily Christian, and also takes formality and ceremony and dressing up very seriously!
Another white-dress occasion - Cala, the daugher of one of my closest Cameroonian colleagues, was baptized on Easter along with her 3-month old brother. I spent most of the after-party at his house playing with her and all her cousins...I love kids! They all wanted to know if I knew Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, and Rihanna personally...and when I could not whip out a Miley Cyrus song, they did, not knowing what he words were saying but with incredible conviction on the tune.
Two great guys (Marcelle on the left and Sime on the right) who will be part of our camp, walking me back from the social center after a day-long camp-planning session with a few other volunteers and staff.
Peak into my town - walking around is no breezy affair! This is why when I got to Manhatten in February and could just stroll down huge, uncongested sidewalks, it felt so invigorating.
When we want a delicious splurge, we head to Marie Poulet for the freshest chicken I've ever tasted. A large chicken killed, cleaned, roasted to perfection, and served with plantains and rice - a big dinner for four - for $14. See the little foot on the platter, waving to you? Katie, on the left, is my closest volunteer (we get mistaken in town a LOT), and Emily was visiting for the weekend.
More good eatin' (with my friend Liz from Louisiana) - corn chop, one of my favorite dishes in Cameroon. The corn kernals have all been taken out of their skin - tedious work, so naturally we pay kids to do it. "Bon appetit", as everyone says here even when you are just eating handful of peanuts on the street- one of the many incidences of formality in an informal setting.
Easter night, after chocolate-banana pancakes and mango-papaya smoothies, plates of Cameroonian food at the baptism party, and a Mexican dinner feast, this about sums it up. Definitely don't worry about me starving over here, southern Cameroon is blessed with fertile land and robust and plentiful food staples, and I'm in the right zone for enjoying the best of it.
Can't beat summer camp for giving kids that joie de vivre : ) This was some of our awesome crew last year, with my volunteer co-leader Ashley.
Last year I gushed to you all about the summer camp my fellow volunteer Ashley (above) and I put on at a local orphanage. It remains the favorite and most satisfying week of my service so far, and several of the kids quietly told us afterward that it had been the best week of their life. Living together for a week and doing games and activities totally focused on them made a huge impact - they so rarely get that much positive attention and planned extracurricular excitement. The memories still make me giddy at how special it was for all involved. Here's the blog post (with lots of photos) I wrote about it – http://tessincameroon.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html.
So naturally I can't wait to make the camp happen again. Since I'm surrounded by newer PC volunteers and am the only one who took part last year, I'll be leading the effort, in collaboration with an awesome Cameroonian woman and good friend of mine who works at the center, Natalie. We want to increase the number of kids (imagining up to 50), make the camp ten days long, and add some fun new activities like a field trip and painting a huge world map mural. The camp will be full of classic activities like group games, art, creating skits, music, and a talent show. But we will also focus on what we call "Life Skills" activities - learning to create and work toward goals, managing money, boosting self-confidence, building healthy gender relations, public speaking, debates, staying away from drugs and peer pressure... I'll sneak health topics in there like how to brush your teeth properly and some basic sex-ed, and we might do tree planting and environmental education, American cooking (do s'mores count?), learning to tell time, trivia contests...
More than for just about anything else I'm doing, I wish you could be here to see the magic of these kids playing Red Rover and laughing hysterically, singing the songs I learned at summer camp like Rise and Shine, or us roasting corn picked from out back as the rain pounds down on the tin roof of the firepit hut. You are all invited, but I'd also appreciate your help from afar. There is LOTS we can and will at nearly no cost, and luckily the space already provides us with essentials such as beds and cookware as well as an amazing retreat-like setting. But there is much that outside support will make possible and which will give the kids a really awesome and memorable vacation.
We are working on getting most of the food donated, already have use of a bus donated for a field trip, and are going to have some stellar Cameroonians volunteer with us as inspiring speakers/demonstrators. But we are trying to raise funds/gather material donations to create the map mural (a worldwide Peace Corps initiative), for field trip activities (I'm hoping to take them to the ocean for the day, which many of them will never see otherwise, or to a primate wildlife center with rescued Cameroonian chimps), and for t-shirts, arts and crafts supplies, transportation for guests, some payment for the orphanage staff, and sports equipment like new soccer balls and pinnies. It's also extremely helpful to have some extra funds to cover things that come up like a kid's one pair of flip flops breaking on day one, someone getting sick, running out of soap, or needing to buy firewood because the woods are too wet from rain.
If you are interested in being involved, you can contribute by sending a box of supplies to
Tess Marstaller
Peace Corps Volunteer
BP 15
Nkongsamba, Cameroon
(100% of my packages have made it here so far, and they usually take 3-4 weeks). The camp will be at the beginning of June, so anything sent by the beginning of May should make it fine.
We would be grateful to receive any of the following:
balls of any kind (including little plastic or bouncy balls, deflated beach balls, soccer/volleyball/tennis balls - we can pump them up here), construction paper, coloring books, name tags, markers, pens/pencils, erasers, scissors, small school notebooks, stickers, paintbrushes, crayons and the like, makings for s'mores, tie-dye kits, balloons, large beads for necklace-making, regular playing cards and card games like Uno or other small games, simple puzzles, prizes like toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap or shower scrubbies, picture-based children's books, and any other makings for simple, healthy fun. Also, elementary-level educational posters for topics like English, science, geography (MAPS! world or African) or the natural world would be fantastic! Nothing with too much writing should be included as the kids speak French and very little English.
Two notes on sending:
1) Take items out of bulky packaging, and don't feel the need to add lots of extra padding. The boxes actually don't get too beat up, so no need to pay for a bigger box than the bare contents require.
2) Get flat rate boxes - USPS has a small, medium and large size, around $10, $45 and $58 I believe. Ask for these and avoid paying too much.
And if you would rather make a financial contribution and skip shipping costs, you can email me at tmarstaller@gmail.com and I'll tell you where to write a check: we've worked out a transfer system that will let us receive 100% of the donation. You can choose where you'd like your part to go, and anyone who donates in any way will receive a thank you letter from the kids and lots of photos of what your gift made possible. Even $25 goes a LONG way here - at 5 pineapples for $1 that would cover a lot of snacks.
Some of the kids who live year-round at the orphanage. As my aunt who had her middle school students write them cards noticed, boys far outnumber girls. That's due to more boys getting into "delinquant" behavior like skipping school and getting in fights, and because extended families trust social centers to care for boys, whereas girls are seen as more vulnerable when they are sent away. The camp will reach out to both.
Summer camp memories are some of the best of my childhood, and knowing it can and will be the same for these kids is thrilling and humbling. I'm doing what I love and I feel so lucky.
Thanks for your help, and feel free to forward this to anyone else who may like to join the project.
