Race for Hope - Epic!

Photo credit: Bill Colwell Jr

At the end of February all the volunteers in the Southwest region gathered in the coastal city of Buea for the annual Race for Hope marathon that takes runners up Mount Cameroon, the second highest peak in Africa. Usually done as a three day trek, the fastest competitors make it up and back in around 4.5 hours! We were there to do HIV awareness outreach to all those gathered for the big event, as well as to cheer on Ashley, a current volunteer and my closest neighbor at post, who had the stamina to brave both the mountain and the bureaucratic process to enter as a foreigner!

After a full day of pouring rain on Friday, Saturday was stunning, and our American friends Bill and Julia got some unbelievable shots of the scene that they have said I can share with you, as neither my eye nor my camera could capture the experience the way they did. Thanks Bill and Jules!


Photo credit: Julia Bird

We worked with a local organization called Reach Out, and got sweet outfits made to stand out. My first attempt to get something made in my town was disastrous. They do take your measurements and listen to what you want, but they have their own ideas about what necklines can go with what sleeve lengths, what embellishments like ribbon waistbands you forgot to ask for, but definitely want, etc. So I came back to a shirt entirely the opposite of what I thought I'd paid for. "But Madame, the shirt you requested is unacceptable, it will not look good". "But I'm the customer, and that's what I wanted, and I'm the one wearing it, don't I get to decide?" Not a chance.

Photo credit: Julia Bird

Peace Corps celebrated 50 years that week, and PC in Cameroon will celebrate 50 next year. Over 3000 volunteers have served here during that time - I don't know how they managed before cell phones!

Photo credit: Julia Bird

Photo credit: Julia Bird



Photo credit: Julia Bird



Photo credit: Bill Colwell Jr

What a life for Jordan! The grounds of the Seventh Day Adventist hospital in Buea that is led by Bill and his wife Trixy who is the doctor. They generously open up their home to volunteers, and it's an unbeatable retreat!

Photo credit: Bill Colwell Jr

Photo credit: Bill Colwell Jr

Photo credit: Julia Bird



Photo credit: Bill Colwell Jr

Making signs and posters together the day before was the perfect rainy day activity



Photo credit: Bill Colwell Jr



Doing HIV awareness in the crowd and at the booth was an awesome mixed bag - people were fascinated by the new-to-Cameroon female condoms demos we did, had some great questions about prevention and transmission, and in some cases had no knowledge base for the virus at all. I talked to everyone from a mother of three who spoke no English (only Pidgin), could not read, and had never heard of HIV to a emboldened fire-and-brimstone Christian yelling at me about how HIV was a European invention meant to bring down Africa, and how the blood of Jesus would protect him from ever getting it. What a day!

HIV Jeopardy!

Photo credit: Julia Bird

Photo credit: Julia Bird



Photo credit: Julia Bird



Words of wisdom guiding my way

There are two quotes that friends shared with me as I was starting my Peace Corps adventure, each of which has had an enourmous impact on my daily life so far, to the point I want to share them with you.

The first one was passed along by a returned Volunteer who served in Belize. She was a tremendous support and source of motivation and excitement in my preparatory process, and continues to be an invaluable resource and friend as I chart my own path of challenges more trying and highs more gratifying than anything I could have concieved of -she was absolutely right about this being a roller coaster ride! While written by a Chinese Taoist philosopher, this quote captures beautifully the essense of what Peace Corps work is all about:

Go to the people
Live with them
Learn from them
Love them
Start with what they know
Built with what they have
But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished
The people will say
"We have done this ourselves"
~Lao Tzu

The second one was sent to me by a dear friend whose unending support can hardly be described - she radiates warmth and positivity and has kept me sane and smiling through years of trying to figure out both daily life and what the bigger picture is all about. She always has the right words, hers or borowed, for whatever life throws at you. Neither she or I could have imagined how much this quote would be what I needed, but it has really helped me start to build a deeper level of patience and stay calm when I get anxious
wanting a certain phase or difficulty or unknown to hurry up and resolve.

"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart,
and to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or
books written in a foreign language. Don't search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to
live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
Perhaps then someday far in the future you will gradually, without
ever noticing it, live your way into the answers."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, German Poet

Around Town



These are the moments I forget that I’m dripping sweat by 10AM and the town has no water and I’m still getting WHITEMAN! yelled at me as I walk around town. The first day I visited this school and reached out an arm to wave, they bolted away shrieking like I was trying to eat them – now they chant Auntie TASSE! Auntie TASSE!! and run out of their classrooms on to the field to greet me.  The quick transformations you can help induce as the first white person kids have met are so gratifying!




March 8^th is International Women’s Day, widely celebrated here with parades and dancing. I got to speak to the area leaders and various women’s groups about the role of gender equality in development and women’s right to maternal health. With a beginner’s mix of boldness and sensitivity I urged each listener to get an HIV test and know his or her status, and to consider the financial, physical and developmental benefits of family planning.

And yep, LOVED that this year’s fabric for the day was designed in my favorite color scheme : )




Appearance is extremely important in Cameroonian culture, and women go to great lengths and costs to look nice, even if many other aspects of their lives (ex. hygiene in their homes, health necessities for their children) are lacking. No denying they look fantastic, often MUCH more dressed up than I am. Should have brought those cute flats after all!




I have loved working at the local tiny health center with pregnant women and new mothers, especially when I come in the morning and am greeted by four newborns! It is the family that must provide bedding, food, and most other supplies like toilet paper and soap for anyone staying at these centers or at hospitals. When I had amoebas during training my host grandmother would bring me hot meals cooked over a fire twice a day, in a pot she carried across town on the back of a motorcycle - serious dedication!




Health education with three year olds can be quite a stretch! "When do we need to wash our hands?" With water! "But when?" To kill the germs! "Yes, good, but WHEN?" In the bucket!





The nightly scene on my porch : ) Despite crying babies, clanging pots and chickens and goats keeping you from any hope of peace and quiet, living in a compound is the way to go. I walk out onto my porch holding a deck of cards and a coconut, and before I can count to three the kids are running, someone is grabbing a machete to hack open the fruit, and in three minutes you have a boistrous game going and are drinking coconut water out of the shell as you hold someone's baby cousin so they can have a break from babysitting and be a six-year-old.

 


With my remote post down an uninviting dirt road of potholes, hosting my first fellow volunteers was a big occasion.  I made beans by myself for the first time (it's a process!) and my neighbor and supervisor Grace gave them her approval, only bemoaning that I had not added Maggi - the MSG flavour cubes that are their own food group in the local diet. Notice the popcorn on the shelf above (the best dinner option ever - no water required) and that I have found oatmeal - hooray!
I need to write to Zip Lock and suggest they do a commercial here - way more than upside-down shaking, these bags hold up against African ants, who do NOT mess around. One kind actually has fangs - the other day I stepped on one and came away with two blood droplets on my foot. Even the little guys are astoundingly industrious. Cockroaches often come through cracks in the walls and fall on my floor, landing on their backs such that they can't right themselves (how has evolution even allowed this?)  In a matter of hours, an army of ants will stream in out of nowhere and take care of the whole mess while the bug as big as two fingers is still alive. No clean-up on my part even required - when I get home, it's as if nothing ever happened, gone.




My house is really starting to feel like home! I had this light put in to add some ambiance, and now all your cards are surrounding me with positive thoughts and reminders of everything I love - thank you!



Youth Day 2011!

What better time than Valentine’s Day to gush about something I truly love: being around kids. Last Friday marked the 50^th anniversary of the formerly two separate Cameroons, one colonized by the French and one by the British, becoming one nation, and to my great delight they mark the occasion with Youth Day, the most adorable celebration of children I’ve ever seen.  

All week school  kids were getting ready – practicing marching and singing, making sure uniforms were spotless and frilly socks were bleached white, and getting new do’s.

One of my main projects so far has been to help build a Health Club at the local middle/high school. We decided we would march in the Youth Day parade carrying signs with health messages for the community, especially around prevention of HIV, cholera and malaria. Here we are working out wording and spelling, on the ripped up boxes that my packages from the US have come in! 

Later on we gathered at my house to make bigger signs – I was so impressed with their motivation and hard work, and also excited to add a little art to their curriculum. My marker collection was a big hit – thanks again to your packages.

This sign urging people to get tested for HIV was painted on a piece of plywood left over from when I got my leaky ceiling repaired. The carpenter wanted to take it, but I reminded him I’d paid for it, so I held on to it. So glad – after weeks of the kids in my compound using it as a lean-to fort on my porch, it got put to even better use.

The ceremony started in a perfectly typical fashion with the hoisting of the flag and the singing of the National Anthem.

Every area school got to showcase their marching to local government officials. These guys were a real show-stopper…

…While these gentlemen were a tad less coordinated, but still won first prize in my book for their killer pink shirts and bow ties!

I was literally crying I was smiling so hard as all the little nursery schools marched past – was this holiday not made as an indulgence for my weak spot for cuteness?



Singing about youth and unification followed. Prizes were plastic buckets for the schools – great idea as plastic is expensive here but buckets are in constant demand for carrying water



Definitely impressed with their focus, and loving the uniform fashion show





Then came traditional dancing and skits – I really don’t know if it’s genes or practice, but these kids can move. In a ritual we use very differently, it’s customary for the audience to throw money at the dancers if they are doing well, or even run up and stuff it in their clothes – the money goes to the school!

My health club members were very proud of their own showcase in the day. The wording for the “If you must do it, use a condom!” sign came after a good amount of delicate discussion about where the schools falls on the abstinence vs. comprehensive sex-education question…

The day ended with a soccer match in the pouring rain – awesome!

Water, water, nowhere

Life clearly wants to keep me on my toes. Right after I told you the difference it makes to my day when my outside tap flows at night, all flowing came to a screeching halt. Everything sure is relative – when I’m getting a bucket full of water, I fantasize about running water to do dishes with; when it’s only half a bucket, all I want is a whole one; when my tap dries up I would do anything for that half bucket; and when the tap down the street dries up too, suddenly that tedious trip seems like nothing.

I now plan my day around the recess schedule of the school across from me - it’s the most important part of my day, when kids will come over to help me carry water, and I will leave meetings early to be there. It’s also the absolute cutest thing in the world – about 20 little girls come to my door and yell “Auntie Tasse! Auntie Tasse!”, scramble to carry more containers than the next girl, and then  scurry off with their school uniform dresses tucked up into their underwear so they can run fast and keep cool. Just the joy they give me does a lot to keep my mind off how dusty, sweaty and itchy from bug bites I am.

But with local taps now dry, their 30 minute break isn’t enough to get to water and come back, so with another two months of the dry season ahead, I’m going to have to start paying moto drivers to carry jugs for me from afar. The frustrating part is, as you walk around town, it looks like there are little natural springs everywhere - that is where the old pipes that should be getting water to houses are leaking and gushing water into the ground instead.

Alas, I’m torn about urging people to wash their hands each time they eat or go to the bathroom– a great idea, in theory!  I can’t imagine having to use up precious clean water that many times a day, and if I didn’t have hand sanitizer, which none of them can get here, I don’t know what I’d be doing myself. And the modern toilets that are preferable to pit latrines for sanitation reasons have one glaring weakness – they need a whole bucket of water to flush them, so even recommending those is not without complication. But with a deadly cholera outbreak making its way across the country, improved hygiene practices are worth stressing all the same.

Despite the fact that I need to choose whether it is my hair or my dishes that will be washed in the next 36 hours, I’m glad I’m seeing first-hand what it’s like to be constricted by this problem, and I’m satisfied my neighbors see that I too am walking the streets in the morning, pail in hand, looking for a flowing tap. I hope I can gain credibility that helps people respect me when I try to work with them on how to make staying healthy feasible.

Given this context, I never cease to be amazed by what people are coping with stoically and patiently. Even without running water or anything close, my next-door neighbor, who had a baby the weekend I moved in, is on her stoop every morning, often with baby strapped to her back, hand-washing the cloth diapers the baby will need again that day. And I thought caring for a baby in the US was fussy - oh, the ease of our throwaway Pampers! I’ll raise the last glass worth of water in my filter to her.