A Longish (and Slightly Scatological) Cathartic Rant

The last few weeks have been rough.  I have twice been totally blocked regarding projects I hoped to launch during that time frame.  The first concerned a Women's Center the last volunteer found funding for, but was unable to bring to completion. My attempts to continue her work have been continually stymied due to dirty village politics and the dishonesty of a nepotistic minor government employee, who is attempting to use the project to leverage his own petty power trip.  He is corrupt, he lies to my face, he tries to turn villagers against each other-- and the worst part is, there is no way for me to hold him accountable. Go to the chief? His older brother. Go to the mayor? His uncle. The feudal politics of Mandama mean, much like irreponsible nobles in the 14th century, bureaucrats and grands like this man can follow their own code of conduct, at the expense of the peasant class-- in this case, the uneducated women of Mandama.

The second project was a compost project. Again, it had been initiated by the last volunteer, so it should not have been difficult for the agricultural collective involved to replicate. Remember what you did last time around? Do it again. Rinse and repeat.

But here I ran into a problem I am continually butting heads with: the extraordinary lack of initiative of a group of men weaned on a system of religion, foreign aid, and ineffective government development initiatives to expect everything to come from outside or above. The men initially sought me out, saying this had worked well last year and they wanted to do it again-- so the will, it would seem, was there. The pit had already been dug.  The men knew when they should have begun filling it: during the first week of my absence for my In-Service Training.  They knew what they needed to collect: millet stalks, cow poop, and a little sprinkling of ash.  They had sheets outlining in excruciating detail and with large splashy pictures exactly how to layer these items, and how much and how often to water the compost pit.

On my return from IST, none of this had been done. The group gave vague and unsatisfactory answers as to why, but to me it was clear: I was not there to hold their hands along the way.  I tried to re-initiate it (albeit a month late for the planting in June), but again, the men's dilatory attitude crippled the project. There was no water, they said. The well handle was broken.  I asked if they could all chip in money to fix it, a recourse often used in village; they could, but refused to. It was the job of the mayor's office to send a mechanic.  These men have a lifetime's worth of experience to tell them that government money almost never gets where it is needed or asked for, but they would rather risk the certainty of failure then try to work towards success.

Much like the women who come to the health center who know what a safe pregnancy requires, but who refuse to invest even the smallest amount of money to ensure a healthy birth, these men were paralyzed by Disincentivizing Development Disorder.  If it's the will of God-- or if the government will send the money-- or if the Red Cross or UNICEF or Peace Corps will recognize our plight and come do it for us-- but if not, naught but shrugs, folding of hands, and the rhetorical question, "On va faire comment?" "What can we do?"

Following on the heels of these dramatic episodes (and with the Daba, there is always drama; for a people who live without television, it is remarkable how much everyday life resembles a daytime soap), I came down with a sudden and violent case of bacterial dysentery.  It kept me laid up for a few days on my stick bed, hourly sprints to the latrine notwithstanding.  To make it worse, there were bats in my latrine (not actually threatening, but not encouraging when your pants are around your ankles and liquid's gurgling out of your... well, you get the picture), and the ambient temperature inside my concrete solar oven of a house was at least 104.  The second and worst night I awoke from a fever dream in which Hilary Clinton was telling me I had nothing to fear but fear itself (in a Winston Churchill 1940's radio voice), rolled over, vomited into an already partially filled bucket, and vowed that as soon as I could get to a computer without pooping my pants, I was buying a plane ticket to America and going home.

Luckily, things really were better in the morning.  My cooler self prevailed once day finally-- mercifully-- broke, and I got myself cleaned up. I moodily sucked down an oral rehydration solution (Gatorade's far less tasty, all-business-and-no-fun older brother) and took a serious look at my situation.

The fact of the matter is, I've hit a rut.  It wasn't just these projects; it wasn't just the dysentery (although that was pretty bad; I'm not ashamed that I actually wept at the thought of an air-conditioned room in my parent's house, with a fan on and a washing machine to clean soiled sheets and clothing and my nurse mother in attendance. Call me a baby. I'll take it.).

This had been in the works since I returned from my prolonged absence from post.  I'm integrated into Mandama well enough to identify the things about the cultrue that I will never be able to change (misogyny, corruption, greed, casual violence towards or neglect of children; all that nonsense about "they-have-so-little-but-they're-so-happy" is utter poppycock).  I find these things morally repugnant, and yet I have to accept them and work with them.  I know people well enough to know their flaws, some of them quite serious, and have no recourse.  There is no accountability, legal or cultural, for the behaviors that repel me the most.  An 8-month-pregnant woman comes into the health center with a fat lip and one eye swollen shut because her husband beats her? Well, so does the chief of the health center, if he's in a bad mood.

And so I began making less and less of an effort to integrate (what was the point? I don't want to be like them) and started distancing myself from village (when was the last time, before the dysentery, that I ate dinner with my neighbors, instead of preparing food I like and want to eat that doesn't have the consistency of warm snot?).

Taking a critical look at myself, I rememebered a conversation I had before leaving for my service.  I got coffee with my old headmaster and former Peace Corps Volunteer and admin, Dan Frank.  He had warned-- as, indeed, Peace Corps training materials had warned-- of this almost inevitable emotional and ideological low point. I dug out the graph (really, it can be plotted) and referenced the point at the base of the parabola, which aligned with the 6-month mark at post.  I could have been reading a psychiatrist's notes about me: [and here I quote] "characterized by irritation and hostility to the host culture; insignificant difficulties become major problems; exhibits withdrawal" -- on and on it went, with me guiltily checking each listed item.  I remembered, too, something Mr. Frank had advised: "You'll get to a point where you think you're at the end of your rope. You're not. It's a really long rope, and you can just keep going down as long as you want. It's up to you to choose to stop your descent and start the climb back up."

I'm not going to claim I'm magically cured of my blues, because that would be disingenuous.  But I'm not leaking explosively out the back end anymore; I'm letting go of the compost project; I'm putting myself out in the community more, even aimlessly, and have found a few promising contacts that way.  I did a successful tree-planting project with a local elementary school.  I started giving health talks to a women's group, and have already cleared up several misconceptions (eating green mangoes leads to premature birth, HIV comes from very small worms in the stomach, homosexuality is a contagious disease).

Call it physical training for the climb ahead.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

I returned to Mandama a week ago to find my village sweltering under the oppressive regime of high hot season.  Having been gone a full week and a half longer than I had originally planned, I spent my first two days back shuttling sweatily between my high-strung neighbors, reassuring them that I had not moved back to America and reigning in their penchant for hyperbole ("I was NOT gone for three months, Yusufa, that would mean I left in mid-December.")

Everyone appeased, I settled into the new rhythm of life in a 109 degree furnace.  I wake, dehydrated and unrested, before 6:00 A.M.  This is the last cool part of the day (cool being a relative term).  I often step onto my front porch to enjoy it as I guzzle a 2-liter bottle of water to try and coax my swollen throat and leather tongue back into some semblance of function.

Anything that's going to happen occurs now, in the early morning; by 10:30 A.M. everyone's back inside.  Having broken fast early, they lunch early, at 11:00 or 11:30.  The next three hours or so-- the dead heat of the midday sun-- are spent laid out on the ubiquitous woven plastic mats used to cover earth floors.  It's a strange sensation, walking around the village between noon and 1:00; the place is a ghost town, and glimpses through doorways of compounds reveal only bodies sprawled out, as though the village had ben stricken with a plague.  People conserve energy, dozing, talking quietly, or merely staring with a fatalistic patience, waiting for the heat to subside.  Animals have equally succumbed to the drought.  Goats hunker into the shade of trees, panting; cows are gaunt, ribs poking through skin like frame through canvas.

These seasonal restrictions in combination with severe supply chain ruptures to the health center have made working next to impossible, so I find myself once again with ponderous amounts of time on my hands.  I while away most afternoon siestas reading on my stick bed; I tried napping, but finding it singularly unpleasant to wake in a pool of sweat, I tend to eschew daytime sleep.  I broke out some oil paints one afternoon and began abstractly blending colors until I realized I was dizzily painting ocean breakers, over and over.

Certain rituals become intolerable in this kind of heat-- running, hot coffee.  I have begun taking hikes in the morning and the late afternoon, when the sun's glare is tempered.  I started doing so to stay active, as I am battling the very real fear that once I stop moving in this heat, I won't start again until the rains come.  I continued hiking, though, because there is beauty in the stark asceticism of bare piles of rock, colored only by rainbow-hued lizards who scuttle erratically from one sunning spot to another, pumping their biceps up and down like unfortunate recruits assigned pushups.  There's a certain satisfaction to reaching the top of a peak and gazing back over the dry fields spread out below like so much parchment, the far horizon obscured by dust that hangs heavily in the atmosphere.

Tempers are short in hot season.  When I do hear my neighbors raise their voices to address their children, their tones are squabbly and discontented.  I think of Camus' The Stranger, the scene where the protagonist, driven to desperation by the blinding Algerian sun, shoots a man.  A college French lit professor read this as deep allegory and misplaced psychoemotional connection indicative of the character's place vis-a-vis society.  At the time, I was inclined to agree.  Now I think maybe this professor had just never been farther south than Toulouse.  There's nothing allegorical about it; I'd shoot a man in this heat.

Things smell worse these days.  Everyone sweats more and bathes and launders decidedly less, as water is a scarce commodity; two of the three wells in town have run dry.  As for my latrine-- well, you can imagine.  120 degree heat does no favors for an already-noxious pit of putrifying poo.

And on that mental image, I bow out.

Bony cattle being led past a dry river bed in search of water and food. Game over, boys. This is what global climate change and overgrazing inevitably lead to.

All the World's a Stage

My introduction to the East region of Cameroon was an aggressive one. A colleague, Jon, and I took a car to Mvan, the area in Yaounde where agence buses congregate, fill up, and take off-- a sort of rowdy watering hole for badly abused vans and overcrowded buses.

As soon as the car stopped, my door flew open. A man reached in, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me out; meanwhile, his friend had popped the taxi trunk and was hoisting my backpack with one hand while hefting Jon's suitcase with the other. Cameroon has taught me nothing if not how to fly into a towering rage at a moment's notice, and I let the two have it, screaming back as they yelled at me and manhandling my backpack off his shoulder and firmly onto my own.

Jon was not so lucky. Still caught up in trying to pay the driver, and burdened with more bags than I, he did not move quickly enough, and his suitcase vanished across the street without him.

We took off after it, yelling, only to find the culprit calmly putting the bag into the luggage space below a bus.  Far from being thieves, as I had first imagined, these were employees of the bus agency, their job to convince customers by force to choose them over the competition. It's a form of persuasion, I suppose.

Our decision made for us, we got on the nearly empty bus, where we proceeded to spend four hours in the stifling heat waiting for the bus to fill up and leave.  When it finally did, the departure was a garrulous one.  Passengers yelled at the driver and each other, almost coming to blows over whether or not to open the window, or if the crackly sound system should blast Bob Marley or Trance Top 40 (to my delight, Bob Marley won out).  I thought wistfully of the polite, quiet Fulbe in the North, who seemed almost orderly in comparison.

A bit of backstory, to give some context to this departure from my normal state of affairs: due to security concerns in the wake of Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram kidnappings of French nationals in the Extreme North, I ended up with  an extra week away from post while I await a final decision about my status. As I was already in the Grand South for a training, I fell in with friends whose posts have been closed and who are awaiting reassignment and spent several days at the beach in Kribi.  Our vacation finished, I headed out East to visit two friends at their posts and do a little proactive post-shopping.  The timing worked out for me to celebrate International Women's Day with my friend Laura at her post, Diang.

I had heard Women's Day hyped for the last few months at my post in the North, but was unsure what to expect in the East, given the vast differences in culture between the two regions.  In some ways, women in the Grand South are much more liberated than women in the North; they can wear jeans, leave their compounds, hold jobs-- in fact, the mayor of Diang is a woman, an unimaginable feat in Mandama.  In other ways, though, women in the East are still just as subject to social forces that actively suppress them.  While they may not be married off at fourteen like girls in the North, they often begin bearing children that young; in fact, my friend Laura explained, for a woman to land a good marriage before the age of twenty, she should have one or two children already (paternity irrelevant), as a sort of test run to prove her fertility.

All this information swirling in my head the day of the fete, I settled into a seat on the dias-- reserved for grands, an uncomfortable position, but one that I've had to accept-- to watch skits being performed before the parade.  The women who walked out to perform were diffident; once the show began, however, they transformed, throwing themselves into their roles with a determination that was hardly amateur.

The first skit dealt with an abusive husband.  A young woman cross-dressed in a man's suit swaggered across the clay patch of a stage brimming with unmistakably masculine bravado.  It took a moment to register that her borrowed shoes were clownishly large. She treated the actress playing her wife cruelly, punishing her arbitrarily before stalking back across the stage to harass and catcall the other actresses with an accuracy that brought howls of laughter to the audience.  The wife's neighbors arrived and clothed her in International Women's Day pagne, helping her to her feet in a corny, but effective, show of solidarity.

The second skit was less cheesy, and if anything more bold, as it lampooned local officials.  In Cameroon power is often arbitrary and subject to a strict hierarchy; unelected officials demand and receive unquestioning allegiance, despite the fact that they may be corrupt, inefficient, and downright lazy.  Political appointees in Cameroon can divert enormous amounts of public funds for personal use and generally turn the law on their lathes without any fear of repercussion, or even loss of face. Given the cultural context of blind submission, these actresses were doing more than fishing for a cheap laugh; they were staging an audacious protest of the system as it exists.  Adopting immediately recognizable accents and patterns of behavior, they mercilessly mocked the mayor's harsh verbal abuse of her hapless assistant, Jean-- appearing in the sole male cameo as himself-- the police commissioner's alcoholism, the school board director's womanizing.  I glanced over at Laura, who knew and worked with all of these officials. Her face registered shock, but as she turned to me, her eyes were shining in delight.  "This is brilliant!" she whispered gleefully. "Although I think Jean might get an earful on Monday."  I glanced down the line of notables on the dias.  The mayor's face was a carefully composed mask; the commissioner looked thunderous.

The actresses wrapped up the skit by opening beers and toasting themselves, then scampered off, laughing, to roars of approval from the crowd.  The requisite parade began, village women tottering by in perilous formation, their would-be military precision hampered by Jersey Shore-worthy stilettos and Women's Day uniform pagne dresses.  Their eyes straight ahead, they swung their arms slightly out of unison as they sang an anthem to the country's Orwellian dictator: "Paul Biya, Paul Biya, notre president!"

So change comes slowly; but it does come, even if the Jeans of Cameroon have to be its scapegoats. 

The General's Last Stand

As a Peace Corps regional meeting required me to go out of town this weekend, and I am too shamefaced to ask a Cameroonian to petsit my rooster, I had determined that Wednesday—market day—would be The General’s Day of Execution.  The timing was perfect.  I would buy what vegetables I could fresh, prepare the bird, have a lovely cross-cultural eating experience with my neighbors, and leave town Thursday with a clean larder, yard, and (hopefully) conscience.

To this end, Monday I marched across the street to El Hadji Ibrahim’s compound and collared his youngest wife, HadjaKultchimi.   Kultchi is a beautiful woman with liquid eyes and a prominent gold tooth which, taken in combination with her headscarf, give her a roguish air, as though she were a pirate who got stranded in the desert.  I think she speaks a smattering of French, but she always addresses me in Fulfulde, and is one of my sternest critics if I don’t reply in kind, so I plunged right in, refusing to let my lack of vocabulary be a limiting factor.

“I prepare” (this in the present tense, as I don’t know any others) “chicken flesh, at house of me, tomorrow, no, tomorrow tomorrow” (although as I think back, I’m pretty sure I actually said “yesterday, no, yesterday yesterday”, which might account for what followed) “and—I, me, chicken flesh, house of you” (lacking any relevant verbs such as bring or share, I opted for no verb at all, always a sign of strong sentence construction and clear communication) “and I, you, the children, eat” (although I might have said “drink”), “yes?”

To which, miraculously, Kultchi laughed and nodded.  I took her nod to mean, “I have somehow made sense of the gibberish you are spouting, and would be delighted for you to feed an inexpertly-butchered chicken, which will probably be tainted with gore, to my children.”

In fact, what I now perceive it to have meant was, “Oh dear, the white girl’s trying to talk again.  Maybe if I treat her like a gentle lunatic, she’ll foam at the mouth a little and go away.”

Laboring under the delusion that we were on the same page, I roped the lamido’s son into helping me do the deed.  A 17-year-old who drops by my house most evenings that he’s not playing soccer, Yusufa was scheduled for English tutoring Wednesday afternoon.  “We’ll conjugate verbs while we clean the carcass,” I magnanimously promised.  I clearly have a future in education.

Unfortunately, égorging a chicken is neither quick nor clean.  Like the lamido and his senior wife had shown me when I asked for a tutorial last week, I put one foot on the General’s wings and the other on his legs, twisted his head all the way around, and opened the major artery in his neck.  This required significantly more sawing than I was entirely comfortable with.  He let out one deflated squawk before the blood began to run, and I relaxed, foolishly thinking the worst was over.  It wasn’t.  Horrifyingly, he started beating his wings and twitching after his eyes had fallen closed.  One wing escaped from under my foot and wrapped around my arm, so like a feathery hand grasping for pardon—or revenge—that for a terrible moment I irrationally expected him to whip his head around, eyes flying open accusatorily as he breathed “Et tu, Laure?” at my treason. 

But Yusufa held him down, and soon enough he went limp.  I had boiled a pot of water to scald the carcass and loosen the feathers, and we plucked him between the two of us, Yusufa tentatively forming simple sentences in English.

Then came the butchering.  I had watched this, too, when the lamido’s wife did it, but hesitated, unsure how to proceed.

Yusufa pointed to the breast.  “Cut him open here,” he indicated.  I poked with the blade and succeeded in puncturing the stomach, letting loose a stream of undigested soybeans. 

“Umm… not quite like that,” Yusufa murmured, trying to be polite.

Under his amused tutelage, I sawed, hacked, and pulled the General into Purdue-worthy condition, if Purdue started leaving in all sorts of bits the average American consumer wouldn’t recognize, let alone eat. The next several minutes consisted of a repetition of my bemused “Wait, you eat that?” followed by Yusufa’s puzzled “You don’t?” For the record, I drew the line at the feet.

Finally taking pity on me, Yusufa offered to skin and de-bone the meat (which struck him as an odd wish on my part—didn’t I know you could eat the skin? Why was I wasting it?) while I chopped onions and carrots.

Unsure of the finer techniques of barbecuing or deep-frying a bird, I fell back on what I know and prepared the chicken the way I would tofu, in a vegetable-heavy coconut curry.  Yusufa, who would not enter the kitchen while I was cooking in it—gender roles here are nothing if not strictly defined—desultorily flipped through my magazine collection and played with my camera, then, finally bored, melted home.  Evening had fallen by the time I lugged the heavy iron cauldron across the road, feeling victorious. 

Ibrahim’s senior wife, Hadja Manga, received me.  She has a face like a crumpled autumn leaf, often speaks only in Daba, and intimidates me to no end.  I bravely launched into my broken Fulfulde script—“I, me, chicken flesh, etc”—but withering under her gaze, beckoned an older daughter to translate. 

Hadja Manga stared suspiciously down into the pot, poking at it with the ladle I had brought and sniffing deeply.  “Who prepared this?” she demanded, via Habsi, or maybe Hafisou. “I did,” I cried, eager for her approval.  “No, no,” clarified the girl, “who égorged it?” She acted this out quite theatrically with a finger across her throat, shoulders shuddering.  “I did,” I repeated, thinking maybe it was disbelief on their part that I was capable of such. 

Hadja Manga, walnut-shell face a mask, clamped the lid firmly on the pot’s contents.  “We cannot eat this.  Chez nous—the Muslims—the chicken must be killed by a marabout.”

In my defense, it is not entirely clear to me that halal rules on this point are either codified or consistently followed here.  The lamido is as observant a Muslim as most in the village, and if his wife’s a marabout, I’ll eat the General’s feet.  Either way, I think the butcher needs to at least be Muslim—a.k.a. not me. 

And so I slunk home, tail between my legs and pot of curry hanging ponderously at my side.  Determined that the General’s sacrifice should not be treated lightly and that someone should enjoy him while the curry was still hot, I gorged myself that night, taking the leftovers to my friends the nuns the next day.

Dust to dust

The day started gently enough.  I slept in and skipped my morning run, instead making a Starbucks instant mocha from my slightly-delayed Christmas package (thanks, Ma! You’re the best!) and enjoying the cool morning air and the solitude.  Which lasted for all of a minute and a half, before three girls from the Mongol horde—excuse me, El Hadji clan—appeared, little noses pressed against my screen door in an attitude that I find alternately endearing and obnoxious, depending on my mood.

But this morning they were being sweet, and as there were three (and not twenty), I let them in and set them to coloring while I worked on Fulfulde, using them to check vocabulary now and again.

And then my translator, Baigovor, appeared, and things got a little hairy.

We were slated to go up into the hills to some of the more isolated villages in my health district to do interviews and consultations.  He had insisted that we borrow a moto so that he could drive, rather than going with my friend Moussa, who is my primary means of transportation. I had assumed he was taking care of those arrangements.  He thought I understood that he wanted me to.  As such, neither of us had, necessitating a last-minute scramble, which finally turned up the least encouraging machine I’ve seen.  If it had been furniture, it would have been described as “antiqued”.  The seat was tied on with a red-and-white checked keffiyeh.  This might have been bearable, but that the road, which wound steeply up into the hills, had been torn apart by Sodecoton trucks barreling through to collect the cotton harvest.  After the second time the moto tipped over, I declined to remount, walking the rest of the way and meeting Baigovor at the top. 

Towards the end of my interviews in Ndouzeng, I was shown to the village’s main midwife.  We spoke for half an hour or so about birthing, malnutrition, and traditional healing.  As I stood to leave, she called me back into her compound, where she gifted me a rooster. He made a terrifying journey back down the mountain clamped firmly under my arm, thrice being almost thrown into the bush as I was forced to leap off the moto, or risk falling off. He is now hobbled under a tree behind my house.  I have named him The General. 

As we were pulling into the final stretch home, Baigovor abruptly confirmed that I wanted to see the cadaver, right?  Communication not being one of his natural talents, I probed further to figure out what on earth he was talking about.  Turns out, the lamido’s father-in-law died, and we were in the three-day period during which the body was displayed before burial.  Wanting to get the distressed and panting General back home, I reluctantly agreed, assuming this would be a villageoise version of an open casket, minus the formaldehyde and plus a baking African midday sun. 

Boy, was I wrong.

Imagine, if you will, a rag doll of enormous proportions, twice the height of a man and infinitely broader, arms and legs like couches, swathed in every kind of fabric—a sort of tribal fetish Michelin Man, the part representing the head bristling with porcupine quills, the lap littered with woven bowls, calabash gourds, and iron-handled knives.  This, propped up against the compound wall, was what greeted me as I walked up, having left Baigovor and the moto a respectful distance away, the General hanging by his feet from the handlebars.  I thought maybe the figure was a sort of giant gri-gri, a larger-than-life homunculus made to represent the dead man’s spirit, or something.  I looked at it curiously, then assuming the body was laid out inside the concession, I turned to enter.

The deceased’s daughter was standing in the doorway.  “Would you like a closer look at the body?” she asked, gesturing at the monstrous doll.

That was when I realized: this didn’t represent the dead man. This was the dead man. Somewhere deep inside the layers and layers of fabric—onto which a child was now clambering, reinforcing my couch metaphor from earlier—there was an actual cadaver, wrapped into oblivion, into an almost grotesque parody of a chief or warrior. 

It was a strange moment of cultural navel-gazing.  I was almost repulsed, but found myself immediately probing why: is it less grotesque to want to view an actual corpse, albeit powdered and made nice and surrounded by lilies?  It bears no more resemblance to the living counterpart than this fetish did to the man within; at my grandmother’s funeral, I remember thinking she looked like a wax model made by someone who had had her described to him but had never seen her in person.  They’re only different ways of obscuring death.  What lies wrapped in that rag doll is no longer the chief’s father-in-law, any more than the chemically altered, lipsticked form in my grandmother’s coffin was, in any significant sense, her.

That night that tamtams rolled for this man.  I could hear the drums and the shrilling cries of the dancers all the way from my house, late into the night. 

Ashes to ashes.

Allez, allez, allez!

Having spent a week and a half away from post for Christmas and New Year's (I intended to go home between the two, but withdrawing my salary from the bank took days more than was expected, and then my friend Shane invited me to a fete in his village for the coronation of a new chief, and then two friends were playing truant as well, so between one thing and another I consigned my compost to getting moldy in my absence and moved into the Garoua Peace Corps case somewhat indefinitely), I'm not sure quite how to approach blogging about it. A blow-by-blow seems boring, and a little overwhelming from my end; so instead I think it might be best to highlight things that stood out over the next few posts.

For the first subject: transportation in Cameroon. Having spent considerable time in transit from one volunteer's post to the next, I had some time to reflect on the subject over the last few weeks. 

Method the first: the moto. Motos are rapidly becoming my favorite way to get around.  Ensconced behind the driver, letting your thoughts expand to meet the horizon, enjoying the rush of wind in your face and the warmth of the sun on your arms: it's a much more enjoyable way to experience the savannah than being packed into a bush taxi like clowns in training.  In a city like Garoua, they're the only way to get around, and as it costs more to ride solo, you quickly become accustomed to sliding two or even three behind the driver, settling everyone's weight and adjusting helmets before signaling to the driver with a grunted "C'est bon" that he can pull into traffic.

As with most things in life, however, there are occasional downsides.  The taller and more heavily-laden the passengers, the greater the chance that someone will end up perched behind the seat on a metal luggage rack, which can be a harrowing and painful experience.  My friend Grant and I split a moto to the town of Ngong the day before New Year's, where we were to spend the night with another PCV, Bryant, before all heading to nearby Lagdo for the festivities.  Grant and I had spent the previous several days in Garoua and Gaschiga, and had been sharing motos with no problem, generally having space to comfortably turn and carry on a conversation while navigating the packed streets around the Grand Marche.  Now, however, we were burdened with backpacks and bulky market bags.  As we were coming in from the regional capital, it was contingent upon us to bring anything deemed necessary for a successful New Year's party but unavailable in village (namely, guacamole fixings and champagne).  Grant settled behind me and the driver took off-- but this time, all was not bon, and the three of us spent the next hour taking it in turns to squirm and shift our weight, trying to ease forward enough to give Grant some relief. The driver and I edged closer and closer to the handlebars, but apparently not enough, for after we flew over a particularly large hump in the road and landed hard, Grant leaned forward and announced that he thought he might have just joined the club.  “Joining the club” is Peace Corps slang for losing control of one’s bowels, an act that would be disgusting, humiliating, and ostracizing at home, but which is fairly common—even a perverse source of pride—in a country where typhoid, dysentery, amoebas, and worms are as common as a runny nose on a playground.  Still, it’s not something you want to hear from someone with whom you are in full body contact, so it was perhaps lucky for me that between the wind and the combined layers of helmet padding, I had no idea what Grant was shouting.  Assuming he was commenting on the landscape, or perhaps pointing out the magnificent sunset that had begun to bleed across the sky before us, I responded to the news that my friend might be sitting in his own filth with a thumbs up and a bellowed, “Great!”

(Spoiler alert: as it turned out, Grant had not joined the club, so we were both spared the sure-to-be-awkward clean up and recovery… for now.)

Method the second: cars. Whether you’re taking a bus or a bush taxi, you can be certain that one seat is intended for at least 1.65 bottoms.   This sounds horribly uncomfortable, but while I won’t say I relish the prospect, it ain’t so bad.  The body, it turns out, is pretty malleable, and once everyone has been slotted into place and sat on the appropriate laps, you find yourself relaxing into the framework of  human Tetrus. 

The one downside is luggage.

Amazing amounts of furniture, personal belongings, agricultural produce, and live animals can be strapped onto the top of a vehicle; where development has not proceeded sufficiently to bring overpasses, the sky (and not physics or the center of gravity) really is the limit.  However, leery of being the lone whitey on the bus, I tend to be overly cautious and keep my bags out of the car-top Jenga tower and on my lap.

Which is not a problem. Until I spend a week and a half being lured down the road to financial ruin by the glitz and glamour of my regional capital (apples! Oats! Chew toys for my neighbor’s teething baby! Fabric of all prints and patterns, including totally incomprehensible ones! These things must be mine!).  Overloaded market bag between my feet, backpack on my lap, moto helmet on my backpack, shoulder bag on my helmet: it was all I could do to hold a book aloft at an angle above my head, as though I were tendering the back row a view, or invoking the blessing of the Eucharist on my David Sedaris short stories.

The kid beside me, onto whose lap my water bottle kept rolling, tried to strike up a conversation.  This was the penultimate leg of my journey around the North, most nights of which had involved cramming three Volunteers to a bed.  I was exhausted, and really didn’t feel like explaining myself, my life story, and the U.S. government, yet again.  I kept my answers to a laconic minimum.  Yes, I lived in Cameroon.  No, I was not a teacher.  I worked in a health center.

He frowned at the book, Me Talk Pretty One Day.  “So… that’s a book for doctors?”

I should explain that leisure reading as a concept does not exist here. I thought about trying to explain the book, a collection of essays about the author’s life in New York and France—you don’t learn anything, see, but it’s fun—and gave up before I started.  “Yep,” I lied. “For doctors.”