3 camp moments I won’t forget:
Among my health sessions I did a couple on reproductive health/safe
sex/AIDS, during which I showed short film clip scenarios that have
been made for HIV education and were written by African youth and
filmed in Africa – they are a bit provocative but powerful and have
scenes about not being ashamed to buy condoms or school teachers who
trade sex for grades (extremely common, this one gets a hot reaction
from youth). I had a projector and was in the middle of leading a
great but intimate discussion about risky behaviors…when the female
director of the center we were holding the camp at, who is extremely
religious and conservative (yet who knows I did reproductive health
last year and said I could not do condom demos but did not bar the
topic entirely) walks in (she was very hands-off for the most part
during camp, so this timing was unreal) with another man, introducing
him as a visiting pastor and asking if they can sit in on a session so
he can see what the camp is all about – she did not know what the
session was. I pressed pause, we had been in the middle of a scene
where an African warrior had gone off to kill AIDS, but got
sidetracked trying to seduce a beautiful woman, and when I pressed
play again in front of our new additions, she pulled out a condom,
rolled it down seductively over his spear head, and said “don’t be a
fool - you want to kill AIDS, this is how you kill AIDS”.
My heart nearly beat out of my chest!! There was no trying to cover up
what we were discussing, nor did I think I should have to, but I was
aware there might be repercussions. Still, I forged ahead and asked
the students for their reactions and carried on talking about the
importance of making responsible decisions once you become sexually
active – I made sure to mention abstinence and fidelity in front of
them. This is a topic I see as so important and consequential here,
and this felt like such a test: if I can put my money where my mouth
is and be bold about its importance for these kids in front of this
overbearing, intimidating and highly reactive director, I can take on
other challenging audiences who would stand in the way of reproductive
health education and justice.
The same director, who was an enormous pain in the neck to work with
while planning, and dramatically told me no less than ten times “fine!
the camp is CANCELLED!” when I refused to make it as religious as she
wanted it to be or told her she could not invite all the kids of her
bosses within the church on my dime, came with us to the beach, as a condition of
us going. I understand it was a big liability especially as most of
the kids don’t know how to swim. Luckily we went to a small beach that
not a soul was at, the tide was low with baby playful waves, and the
slope of the sand was extremely gentle – perfect for beginners. Still,
when she got on the bus in the morning – after I had spent two months
planning and seeking financing for this excursion so that the kids
could experience and play in the ocean, she told everyone that “NO ONE
IS ALLOWED TO TOUCH THE OCEAN”, though I’d gone over safety measures
with her and she had never suggested this drastic measure. That’s her
wanting to flex her “don’t forget who’s in charge” muscle.
I was not yet in the bus, so luckily had the excuse of not hearing
that with my own ears - the kids were heart broken, but I took it as a
challenge to work on her. When we got to the beach, after a classic
flat tire breakdown, all the kids were really quiet and unsure, and a
group of them came up to me and asked “Tata Alicia, what are we going
to do now?” I told them to take off their shoes, we were going to go
feel the water! They timidly came down with me – the director surely
knew this was going to happen – and she did not flatly hold us back,
but was extreeeeemely nervous and did not want to children going
further than when the sand just barely squeezes out water when you
step on it. Bit by bit, we eased into it, and I stood by her talking
about how we were there to supervise them, and how this beach was
extremely gentle, no one was going in over their thighs, and it was
important for them to be comfortable and be allowed to get to know the
water. I don’t think she herself had ever been to the ocean – on two
separate occasions she evacuated the whole group in terror, once
because she said the barges that were visible on the horizon seemed to
be getting closer and were going to run over the children, another
time because she saw a minnow-sized fish in the shallows and thought
it would bite them.
Ironically, this group of kids is about to go spend their summer break
selling peanuts, fruit, sachets of water, and grilled corn to vehicles
on the highway, running up to moving, incautious cars as they stop at
police check points, dragging on the vehicles as they pull away to
make sure they get their money through the windows, and completely
unsupervised, from the age of five, running across streets with no
stop signs or safety system of any kind, in front of busses most of
whom have busted out rearview mirrors etc. In whatever town or village
you live in here, the traffic scene is outrageously dangerous, yet
parents have no issue letting five children get on a motorcycle
without helmets and having the oldest, who has no license or much
driving practice, take them to school. I guess they are so used to
that, and it’s the unknown – water – that is scary. Watching the kids
fall in love with jumping over or throwing themselves into the waves,
and squealing with delight as they played with our beach ball and
paddled around, was so magical and a dream come true! It was a
gorgeous blue sky day and the water was like a bath – what luck!
On Wednesday night, just as I was feeling like we had a good rhythm
going with our days, I was called outside from playing after dinner
cards, where we found the local authorities, come to tell us there was
a major security risk of us “whites” being there, and that we were not
going to be able to stay the night anymore, but would have to go stay
at their military barracks down the street. The director had already
retired and was likely in bed, but they got her up, and convinced her
that we had to be carted off. They said we had not gone through the
proper protocol, that we were at risk, and that we should have
informed them of our presence. Turns out a mentally abnormal neighbor
who claims to be the king of the village had threatened us, saying we
had come without his royal permission, and now they had to get
involved. We had SO much work to do preparing for the next day, our
last day before our Limbe trip, and moving at 9PM in the middle of the
week was disruptive on so many levels – the next morning when all the
campers woke up and found us gone they thought camp was over!
Finally we convinced them to let us go back to my house for the night,
and the sous-prefet agreed to bring us after first demanding that the
centre spend our own gas for the unnecessary outting. He told us to go
and collect our luggage, he would wait for us down at the dormitories.
Our staff quarters were less than a quarter mile up the windy dirt
road, but it was PITCH black, and if his concern was that we were
going to have a nighttime attack, pretty absurd that he sent us up
there with no escort. The bottom line was that this was clearly
political and about power and relationships, and he was looking for
bribes as well.
The next day I had to suffer through a meeting with him and a military
commandant, who said we were in danger and needed to go home every
night, including that night, even though we were leaving for the beach
at 5AM the next day. Despite the undescribed, suspiciously
non-existent danger we were in, they said there was NO ONE they could
send to keep watch of us – not a spare hand in the whole region. They
said the prefet had been notified and was also concerned, but none of
the military personnel based in Nkongsamba were available to come out.
Really? I told him with a straight face that I lived next to a base of
3000 soldiers who did nothing but drink and harass women all day in
their uniforms, and that I had the number of the bar lady across the
street from my house where no less than 30 of them were surely sitting
around with beers and guns right now, bored to tears and about to
impregnate another of my neighbor girls…could not one of these men be
spared, if this was indeed such a security crisis?
I was NOT going to ruin a camp program that had been months in the
making and that I was in charge of, for a situation they refused to
give any details of, when I felt in complete safety. Did they know
that we all live in Cameroon for two years without anyone protecting
us? ! No way was I folding to a couple of jokester village authorities
who cannot be taken seriously and were definitely playing their own
game, as all the staff of the center knew well – none of them thought
it was about our safety, and I’m very glad we did not leave every
night – I can’t even imagine how much that would have thrown
everything off.
Finally I wrote a letter on the back of a child’s drawing, and signed
it to say we were willingly staying here despite their concern of
insecurity. They accepted my informal removal of their liability, but
then demanded that we go photocopy our passports – gahhh! Dealing with
this upsetting and stressful threat to our camp’s completion the day
before our big outing, running on so little sleep and having hardly
eaten, while also arranging all of the travel details, lists and
documents, getting the kids ready for the trip, working on getting
t-shirts picked up and printed, and facilitating the arrival of our
other supervisors, bringing our rented busses to pick up donated gas
from the military base, buying and preparing picnic lunch materials,
and still teaching two afternoon sessions and answering tons of
questions, plus finalizing the painfully-deliberated-on list of which
45 kids could come, and facing major pushback from the rest,
distributing t-shirts which was chaotic as they really messed up our
sizes and we ended up having so many kids…it was one of the most
intense work days of my life!
When in fact late that night they DID send a guard to come check on
us, instead of standing outside protecting us, he came into our
unfurnished staff room, demanded a nicer chair to sit in, admonished
me for not serving him anything (we had no kitchen, no running water,
no utensils...), and then scoffed when I finally rounded up a mug of
tea that there was no sugar, suggesting that I go down to the cooking
area (down that dark, abandoned road...glad this is about my safety),
to search for some. As he could see I was in the middle of packing and
organizing for our trip, but he had no qualms in demanding I go out ofmy way to be subservient...later he dramatically dropped his wet tea
bag on the floor as I watched....he also asked where "his part" of the
toys/books/art supplies were, why HIS kids could not benefit. Oh,
brother, if only this was not absolutely the norm here.
What a week!
