As I Went Down To The River

One of the main geographic features that sets Mbang Mboum apart from my old post of Mandama, besides the pervasive red clay, is the presence of two rivers, whose confluence lies just east of the village. The rivers provide necessary irrigation; farmers with motorpumps and piping grow year-round vegetable gardens, producing a bumper crop of tomatoes and peppers even in the dry season.  Banana trees shade the riverbanks, and hiking beside the cool, burbling waters, I have even found pineapples, their red-stained fruits lurking spinily in a bristle of long, serrated leaves.

The river also serves a much more prosaic function: it provides a communal place for women to come together and spend a morning washing endless loads of laundry.

Accustomed to doing laundry in a bucket-- a task I despise-- I continued to do so my first few weeks in Mbang Mboum, resigned as always to the reality that my clothes would rarely really get clean, and that the latter half of what  I washed would inevitably dry stiff from the soap residue that never washes out in the absence of gallons of clean, moving water.

It was not until last week that I mentioned laundry to my postmate, Alizabeth, and promptly got invited to come along the next morning and wash my clothes in the river, a proposition that sounded so beguilingly O Brother Where Art Thou that I could not resist accepting.

Please believe that I do not exaggerate when I say this experience was a game-changer.

We left around midmorning, balancing our buckets of dirty clothes on our heads, out of practicality rather than affectation-- try it sometime and you'll understand.  The spinal column and core muscles are much better suited to the task of balance and load-bearing, it turns out, than spindly, easily-fatigued arms.

As we picked our way across one of the many stick-and-barbed wire bridges that skitter drunkenly over the span of the river, the sound of voices and laughter floated up from the far bank.  We rounded a bend on the shore and walked suddenly into what looked like a clump of giant, brightly-plumed mushrooms: bushes over which had been draped yards of newly-washed pagne to dry.

One of the more structurally sound river crossings

Washing is women's work, and this riverbank between dawn and noon was inarguably a women's place.  Muslim mothers of all ages and sizes stripped to the waist, baring sagging breasts long ago robbed of sexual allure by years of constant breastfeeding.  In the dappled shade of obligingly leafy trees, women alternately worked and reposed, lying back to nurse children.  In formal settings, women often seem constrained and uncomfortable, silently and unquestioningly yielding to men.  Here they were relaxed and garrulous, calling across to each other in Mboum and Dii, joking, gossiping, and opining in equal measure.  The oldest boys present were perhaps seven; they played a raucous game of chicken waist-deep in the water until, chastised by their mothers for splashing too much, they meekly returned to watching a blanketful of babies laid out on the grass.

Alizabeth and I chatted with a neighbor, Doudou, until a space opened up, then tied our long skirts to above the knees, waded into the water, and began.

Here are five simple steps for washing laundry in a river, in case you ever become Amish, or get stuck in in a Gauguin painting:

1. Find a spot where the riverbank is rock, but the riverbed is sand.  This provides you with a work surface while allowing you to sink your toes in for better balance and traction against the swiftly-moving water.  Avoid mud at all costs.

2. Pre-soak your clothes in a bucket of soapy water.

3. Taking an article at a time, rub briskly with a block of soap all over the cloth, beat it several times against the rock (reference importance of step 1), and begin to knead it, like bread dough.  If you have chosen your placement well, the porous stone will act as a washing board, and soap will foam up through the garment.

4. Turning, submerge your clothing in the cold, clear current.  Marvel at how the soapsuds and scum simply fly away!  Try not to think too much about downstream environmental impact.

5. Rinse and repeat.

I was amazed at the effectiveness of washing al fresco, even given my clumsy, unpracticed technique.  Cloth that hadn't been truly white in months suddenly came clean, as though I were in the rural African version of a Snuggle commercial.  Doing laundry is generally only tolerable because I put on a playlist of Radiolab and Planet Money podcasts.  This time the hours flew past, as I was alternately engaged in conversation and people-watching.  The sun beat down hot on my bare shoulders, while cold water flowed around my calves; the juxtaposition was an awakening.

Finally both Alizabeth and I were done washing our clothes and ourselves.  We scrambled up the riverbank, gathering our things and mounting our now much-heavier buckets, the tops of our heads padded with a protective layer of folded cloth.  My hands were red and my knuckles raw, as though I were a big-boned Irish washerwoman in a 1920s musical comedy.  I was sunburnt, but gloriously clean.  As we wound our way home through fields of manioc, I felt a sense of victory.  This was practical integration of the best kind.

Women's Liberation

I wrote this blog post in January, but it got lost in the shuffle of my move and parents' visit.  It seemed appropriate to post in honor of International Women's Day:

Upon arriving in Mandama in December 2011, I discovered that I had inherited an unfinished project from the last volunteer, an incomplete house that was to become a Women’s Center.  The Maison des Femmes soon became a bugbear, embroiling me in the worst sort of proprietary village politics.  Petty power struggles dominated any communal goodwill, and my ignorance of the details of the project (sources of funding, management) left me powerless to intervene appropriately.  I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow—it was frustrating and tedious to live through, and could only be more so anecdotally—but suffice it to say, I washed my hands of the project for a good six months, so stymied was I by local bigwigs’ transparent attempts to hijack the completion of the project for their own self-aggrandizement.

Eventually I got back around to it, as time passed and tempers cooled.  I urged the old volunteer, Megan, to pressure her professional counterpart, Boubakari, with whom I had an antagonistic relationship at best.  With a careful combination of wheedling, coaxing, flattery, and (only occasionally) outbursts of anger, all the involved parties were induced to work together enough to complete the construction.  It was finished over a year past the expected date of completion—but it was finished, and that was enough.

After holding successful open elections for the executive board, we chose a date for the opening ceremony, to be held in January after my return from Yaounde for mid-service training.  It was during midservice that it was decided Mandama would no longer be a Peace Corps post, and that I would be moved.  The opening, then, would also serve as a closing; it would be a celebration not only of the Women’s Center, but of the end of my time in my first post.  It would be my last hurrah.

I take a break from event prep the day of with the women of the executive board.

The day of the ceremony arrived.  As was widely expected, we had invited the mayor and sous-prefet to come from Mayo Oulo; this meant, however, that instead of being able to say my farewells to friends and colleagues in a relaxed environment, I would have to spend the day in the rigidly proscribed world of protocol, the unwritten rules that govern any interaction with traditional or elected leaders in Cameroon.  If I haven’t made this clear enough in previous posts, I despise protocol.  I find it archaic and elitist.  I would posit that it gives unmerited and disproportionate power to a few, while robbing many of dignity and autonomy.  Furthermore, it is entirely chauvinistic; traditionally, a young girl will greet visiting elites, escorting them to their seats and serving them water or refreshments, and older women will literally grovel before the dignitary, debasing themselves in a way that horrifies and offends me.

This was why I found myself in a heated battle, fifteen minutes before the ceremony was slated to start, over seating arrangements.  After a year of putting up with Northern Cameroonian culture, this was not just a question of where to put chairs.  This was a question of where we, as a community, put our values.  Emboldened by the fact of my imminent departure, I cared far less about causing offense than I did about taking a stand.

To set the scene: I had left the setup of chairs to Boubakari, Megan’s counterpart, who was the emcee for the event.  When I came to check on his progress, I noticed he had put nametags on the first three rows of chairs, reserving them for invited notables and grands and their entourages.  As I scanned the names, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.  The only two women in the entire first section of chairs were Howa, the female mayor of Mayo Oulo, and me.

I looked over at Boubakari, speaking calmly at first.  I knew this could only escalate, as I could feel a year’s worth of frustration boiling up.  Steady, I thought to myself, as I asked where the executive board was to sit.  I had envisioned, I added, that they would occupy the front row.

Boubakari waved a hand vaguely at the back rows of chairs, still unoccupied—rows of chairs jammed in between trees and market stalls, where the view would be terrible and the speeches barely audible.

I clenched my hands into fists, trying to breathe deeply.  “Surely we can put the women who were elected by their own community as leaders on an equal footing with the grands?” I had aimed for mild, but my voice was sharp.  I plastered on a tight smile, trying to keep things convivial, although I was ready for battle.  “I think some of the names in the first row could be put in the second.”

Boubakari sputtered protests.  “But you’ll upset the protocol!”

And that was when I let loose with a torrent of rapid and piqued French, my accent becoming more Parisian and my grammar worse the angrier I got.

“This is a day to honor and support the women of Mandama.  We tell them we will build a women’s center, we elect an all-female board of executives, we ask them to do the work to organize a fete, and when their day arrives, we put a bunch of men who are not from this community and who have done nothing to support this project up front and relegate the women to the back?  What message does that send?”  The boubou-clad grands around me began to grumble, and I held up a hand.  “This is non-negotiable.  The board is sitting in the front row with the sous-prefet and the mayor.” 

Boubakari angrily butted in.  “Here in Cameroon, we don’t do things like that!”  I smiled widely, disingenuously; I might go so far as to say venomously.  “Well, lucky you.  Peace Corps is here for cultural exchange, n’est-ce pas?  Today we do things à l’Americaine.”

There is value to being culturally sensitive, adaptable, and humble.  There is also value, however, in the Quaker tradition of speaking truth to power.  Every Peace Corps volunteer goes through periods of existential uncertainty—what are we doing here, if not some post-modern version of cultural colonialism?  We come stomping in and try to change the way people do things, but who are we to tell them our way is better?  It doesn’t necessarily seem to be working out so well for us; how can we look developing nations in the face and tell them to emulate our mistakes? 

These are valuable questions, and this kind of navel-gazing can be fruitful.  Too much of it, though, is paralyzing—because at some point one loses all sense of relativity.  It is true that some aspects of culture are merely different, and should not be assigned superior or inferior value.  Other things, though, are just wrong.  Oppressing women, although culturally acceptable in northern Cameroon, is wrong.  Limiting education for over half the population is wrong.  Relying on entrenched, classist systems of protocol to determine people’s worth is wrong. 

The grands of Mandama whole-heartedly supported the construction of the Maison des Femmes, because they saw its potential as limited.  It was a place for those women whose husbands gave them permission to learn to sew, dress hair, and maybe even embroider.  None of these professions cross entrenched gender lines.  None threaten the existing male hegemony, economy, or ego.  Constructing the women’s center allowed wealthy men, whose power in this society is both unlimited and unchallenged, to give lip service to progress and modernity, while in fact patronizingly corralling the women of Mandama into strictly defined and gendered boxes.

The battle over the seating arrangements ended in a compromise.  I could see how furious the invitees were when I began pulling nametags off seats, and while I can be fairly bullheaded at times, I try not to be unnecessarily stubborn.  Having made my point, I put the nametags back, and asked Boubakari to add another row of seven seats to one side, perpendicular to the front row.  In effect, we created a second front row, so that no one was evicted from their protocol-determined place, and the elected board was assigned seats of honor, set apart.

After we had settled the question of protocol, the event went smoothly.  The notables arrived several hours late, but so did the population of Mandama.  The speeches were fine, even my impromptu address on women's empowerment; despite having specifically told Boubakari I was not giving a speech, he called me up right after the mayor.  But I made it through, and while I don't think I said anything groundbreaking-- I tamed the fire, having truly spoken my mind before the event-- I got an affirming round of applause.  The reception afterwards was lovely, and the women outdid themselves on the food.  I took pictures with what felt like about every woman in Mandama.  It was a fine going-away party, and more importantly a successful opening for the center.

There is a quotation I came across two years ago while researching my thesis on 19^th-century French socialism.  When confronted with the radical behavior of Gustave Hervé, an extremist element in his party, Socialist delegate Jean Jaurès replied, “Every wave that makes it to shore must first break its foam upon the sand.”  I think that day, in a very small and undoubtedly petty fashion, I was that foam.  The women on the board followed my insistence that they take certain seats, but they were uncomfortable doing so; had I not been standing there glaring sternly at everyone, they certainly would have apologized to those who feathers were ruffled and returned to their original places in the back of the audience.  The men were certainly not converted by my passionate soapboxing, at least not to judge by their disgruntled muttering for the next twenty minutes—people often (conveniently) forget that I do have a fair amount of Fulfuldé at this point.  I was not bearing Mandama with me in a wave of feminism.

But perhaps, in breaking myself and the women of the board on the sand, I begin to herald the arrival of that wave.  These were small gestures, and seemingly unimportant battles upon which to spend so much time and energy—but the little things are the things within my capacity to change.  I can’t abolish the protocol system of Cameroon.  I can’t force men here to begin to respect women and value their education and empowerment.

But I could make sure that all of Mandama—because the entire village turned out for the event—saw the elected board sitting on equal footing with the sous-prefet.  It’s not much, but it’s symbolic, and symbols are important.

As it turned out, Howa (the first female mayor of Mayo Oulo, to my right) only brought awesome, strong, professional women in her entourage, so we were doubly represented.  Get it, sister.

The obligatory photo de famille after the event, posed in front of the Maison de Femmes.

All Creatures Great and Small

An unexpectedly good follow-up to my last post:

This past week I visited the Anglophone Northwest region of Cameroon, winding an intentionally tortuous route back up to the Adamaoua and my new post.  I met up with a friend from training, Michael, and traveled with him from the regional capital of Bamenda through the verdant mountains to his post of Mbengwi.

On the way, he mentioned that his cat, Dee, was very pregnant. "We might come home to a pile of kittens," he warned.

Instead, we walked into his house to find Dee prone on the couch in a puddle of kitty vaginal secretions. Michael bent over her, then straightened up quickly.  Something was very wrong. The tiny tail and one leg of a clearly dead kitten had been delivered, but the rest of the body remained lodged in her birth canal.  Dee was no longer having contractions-- in fact, she was no longer moving-- and from the almost-rotten stench, it seemed the stillborn kitten might have been there for hours.

Being a health volunteer in Cameroon, one inevitably encounters medical emergencies in less than ideal conditions, and learns to deal with them as efficiently as possible.  Within minutes, Michael and I had washed and gloved up and constructed an impromptu veterinary operating theater with a deep plastic tub, an old pair of pagne pants, and a Maglite weapon-grade flashlight.  As I balanced the light and held Dee down, Michael gently worked the body out of her birth canal, easing the second back leg around before pulling the upper body out in a gush of foul-smelling fluid.  We phoned Julie, a volunteer veterinarian, who recommended the correct dosage of antibiotics to combat possible septicemia; Michael fetched a syringe and gave Dee a subcutaneous injection of saline solution to ensure that she rehydrated as quickly as possible.  As I gently stroked the camel's hump of saline wobbling over Dee's shoulderblades, I felt sad for her trauma, but proud of us.  We had handled the situation.

There was, however, a mystery that remained: what had happened to the rest of the litter?  Michael was sure he had felt at least three kittens kicking in Dee's belly, but searching in and around the house turned up nothing.  We concluded that they must have also been stillborn, and that Dee had eaten them (this being, it seems, something that cats do).

The next day we spent with Caitlin and Emily, the other volunteers in the Mbengwi cluster.  We hiked up a mountain to get a view of the town spread out below us, buildings interspersed with lush palm and eucalyptus groves.  It was a lovely spot, and we spread out a picnic of fresh bread that Michael had baked the night before, buttery avocados, and bananas.  Hiking back down to a bar, we met up with some friends and colleagues of the three volunteers, and drank and danced into the evening.

Once back at the house, Michael and Emily found their way to bed, but Caitlin and I stayed up talking.  Suddenly we heard a clattering in the kitchen, followed by a chorus of piercing mews.  We turned to see Dee trotting into the salon, something gray and wriggling in her mouth.  Mouse! I thought at first, then, horrified, Dead kitten!

It was neither; Dee, it seemed, had successfully birthed at least one of the other kittens, and hidden it away somewhere in the brush behind Michael's house.  Once sufficiently recovered from her exhaustion, she had apparently remembered her kitten and fetched it again.

The kitten, eyes still shut tight, was mewling frantically, but seemed unable to nurse. We tried to guide it several times to one of Dee's six nipples, but each time it crawled blindly over her body, a little ball of writhing need.  Dee was no help, purring contentedly but seeming not to know what to do with her own offspring.

Caitlin and I, again thrown into the role of impromptu vets, mixed powdered milk and made a makeshift nipple out of a plastic bag.  We drippily fed the kitten until it quieted down, then tried again to guide it to Dee.  This time it found a nipple and clamped on, kneading Dee's stomach with its tiny pin-prick claws.

And once again, I was proud of us.

Is it bad that I want to name this guy Adolf?  Maybe we can compromise on Charlie.

When Childhood Dreams Come True

Growing up, I wanted badly to be a large animal vet.  This was entirely inspired by James Herriot books and a vaguely romantic idea about stomping around barnyards in Wellington boots and birthing cows— which could probably only seem romantic to someone who, like suburban pre-adolescent me, had never actually seen a cow up close. 

In time this was discarded, to be replaced by subsequent desires to be a novelist, a Broadway star, a singing waitress (let it never be said that I don’t adjust my expectations realistically), an Egyptologist, a socialist historian, a Peace Corps volunteer (arguably the ultimate way to put off knowing what you’re doing with your life) and now, in what will hopefully be my last pivot, an environmental conservationist.  (Or a writer for National Geographic.)

I bring this up because I finally got the chance to live the dream, so to speak, when my bush dog, Scipio, passed the six-month vaccination mark and simultaneously went into heat for the first time.  I had been half-heartedly planning to take her in to the nearest vet in Guider for her rabies shot for several weeks, but the thought of trying to transport an almost-fully grown dog on a moto for an hour was enough to encourage my procrastination.  That changed when she started getting lethargic and drippy, emanating a musky smell so strong even I noticed it—as did every male stray in Mandama, to judge from the rustling and whining around the back door each night.  After three straight nights of being woken around midnight to Scipio howling in the salon, and the successive check of windows and doors to assuage my paralyzing dread of Boko Haram, I decided it was time.  Skip and I both needed for her to be fixed.

So into Guider we went, Skip squashed onto my lap on the moto, head resting on the driver’s shoulder—a more intimate but equally windy version of the head-out-the-window.  I took her to the Délégation d’Elevage, the Ministry of Animal Husbandry, an officious name for a peripatetic large-animal vet, or Guider’s very own James Herriot.  The walls were plastered with posters advertising various bovine prophylaxes, vaccinations, and vitamin supplements; all featured glossy photos of glowering cattle and smiling herders.  Beside the office door, a notice warned against avian flu.  “THE SALE OF DEAD BIRDS IS HIGHLY ILLEGAL”, it blustered unnecessarily (really, who would buy an already dead but not cooked chicken in 105-degree heat?  This isn’t the Safeway freezer case we’re talking about).

The vet, a kindly man with small glasses and an unexpectedly professional air, had to rummage through his cabinet to come up with the rabies vaccine.  He didn’t get many dogs, he explained—sometimes cats, but mostly his clients were goats and bulls.  I asked about getting Scipio fixed, and his face fell.  Ah, yes—well, there was no surgical theatre on the premises, and that was a fairly intrusive procedure.  If this were a male dog, no problem, he could do it right here in his office (this accompanied by a snip-snip motion of the fingers), but no, he could not help Scipio.  Was there such a thing as canine birth control? I asked.  Some shot, or pill?  At this he laughed heartily.  “If you need family planning,” he chuckled, “go to the hospital.”

And so I did.  I tied Skip to a tree outside, hoping that none of the moto drivers lounging around waiting for clients would harass her, and walked up to the font desk in the triage area.  “I’d like to buy Depro,” I announced, knowing from my own health center that the three-month contraceptive shot would be widely available.  The nurse immediately shushed me, leaning in to whisper, “If you need family planning counseling, go down the hall to the second office on the right and ask for Dr. Abdoulaye.”  It hadn’t occurred to me that I would be the assumed recipient, and while I was glad to see the staff treating a topic so taboo in Muslim culture with sensitivity, I felt a need to correct her misapprehension.  “It’s not for me,” I told her, realizing as I did so that this was about as plausible as “I got this black eye walking into a door”.  She nodded, and smiled knowingly.  “Right.  For a friend?”  Sensing that this might not be the time to introduce my menstruating dog into the conversation, I agreed, and went in search of Dr. Abdoulaye.

The doctor, head of family planning services in Guider, ushered me into his office and closed the door tactfully behind me.  Feeling a little embarrassed by the thoughtful yet unwarranted level of discretion being shown, I introduced myself, then launched in: “I want Depro, but not for me, I already have an IUD.  C’est pour mon chien,” my dog.  Dr. Abdoulaye frowned, confused.  “Pour ton… chef?”, your boss?  “No, no,” I corrected him, “mon chien.”  He looked startled, glancing under my chair as if he thought I might have smuggled a dog into the office beneath his notice.  “She’s outside,” I explained, hooking my thumb towards the entrance.  “Should I bring her in?”  The doctor considered this, then shook his head uncertainly.  “Umm… tell you what, I’m just going to sell you the medicine and a syringe.  You work at a health center, you know what to do.”  In fact, I didn’t, having expressly avoided being trained in administering shots; I’m not certified to give clinical care, and had felt uncomfortable being asked to do so.  I didn’t press the point with Dr. Abdoulaye, however, relieved that he had not ordered me out of his office in anger. 

I paid for the needle and small vial of birth control, and was about to turn and leave when he hesitated, seeming torn by some internal struggle.  Finally his highly trained bureaucratic instincts won—Cameroonian doctors are above all civil servants—and he flipped open his register.  “What is your dog’s nom de famille and prénom?” he asked formally, and thus Mlle Scipio Skove officially joined the Guider Regional Hospital Family Planning Services Depro program, with a return visit scheduled for April. 

I got back to Mandama and immediately sought out Benjamin, our emotionally volatile nurse.  We are good enough friends that I figured I could bully him into doing me this favor, although I was sure he would mock me for days about it.  Unfortunately, he had left for Mayo Oulo.  The chief of the health center was already at the millet beer cabaret, deep into a calabash of bilbil.  Wishing I had agreed to take shot training after all, I read the tiny print on the bottle, uncapped the needle and vial, and loaded the syringe with milky medicine.  I was surprised how much resistance the vacuum created by the empty syringe and sealed vial gave, and nervously faltered, letting bubbles into the syringe.  Cursing, I finished drawing the liquid up out of the vial and pulled the needle out, pushing the plunger gently down to force the excess air out.  When a white drop of Depro appeared on the tip of the needle, I shook it off and took a deep breath.  It was as ready as it was going to be.  Glad this was an intramuscular administration rather than an intravenous one, I pinched up the skin on Skip’s left haunch like I had seen the vet do with the rabies shot, slid the needle in, and began to push the plunger.

Beads of white liquid appeared on Scipio’s side, sliding down her long hairs.  I had slid the needle into fur, but failed to pierce the skin.  Thinking how much easier this seemed in theory, I readjusted the needle.  This time Scipio yipped, and I knew I had hit my mark.  She began to squirm, and I used my left elbow to pin her down while I finished giving the shot at a steady pace. 

This presumably won’t solve the problem of Scipio going into heat, but at least I can feel less like a father with a teenage daughter, hovering around the porch yelling at the strays to bring her straight home, and no fooling around in the car.  I don’t think I realized how much maternal instinct having a dog was going to bring out in me; every time she trots off to chase guinea fowl in the bush, or disappears to hunt out fallen cow horns, I worry about her.  There are so many things that could go wrong!  Angry cattle!  Angrier herders with machetes!  Roving bands of feral dogs!  Honestly, how do people ever survive having children?

The End of a Chapter

Tuesday, January 14.  The inevitable finally happened, in a poorly ventilated office in Yaoundé.  In a security meeting about the Guider satellite posts, the country director of Peace Corps Cameroon pronounced four calm words that would shape my service and those of the closest volunteers to me, Becca and Debbie: “Your posts are closed.”  Mandama is no longer to be my home.  My half-completed work here is now, by dictate, done. 

In a way, we brought this on ourselves.  In response to the release of Père Vandenbeusch, the kidnapped French priest, Becca and I requested a meeting with the embassy RSO—regional security officer—and associated Peace Corps staff to discuss what this meant for our safety in bush villages abutting the Nigerian border, and to express our growing unease about our isolation and the impossibility of communication.  Jack, the economic development volunteer in Guider, called me the day before the meeting.  “You realize that just by asking for this meeting, by drawing their attention to your position, you’re increasing the probability that they’ll close you,” he cautioned.  I paused, then voiced for the first time what had been brewing at some semiconscious level since the priest was kidnapped.  “Yeah, I know.  I think that’s the point.”

Since being released from consolidation, my apprehension has become markedly worse.  During the day, I’m fine; I have work, I have friends, and Mandama drenched in sunlight looks like the sleepy village it’s always been.  It’s hardly a dangerous place, and I don’t feel I am at risk.  But nights… well, nights are hard.   As soon as I come back from my neighbor’s compound, I lock all my doors, and endure until the morning comes and brings with it some relief.  I don’t sleep well.  I’ve taken to keeping my dog in the house (or sometimes even in the bed) with me, because it’s a small comfort to wrap my arms around her every time I hear a moto speed by my house coming from the direction of Nigeria.  I’ve had a few stressful false alarms; there was the time I walked out after the last call to prayer to buy eggs for Scipio’s dinner, and heard a group of strange men in the carrefour speaking Hausa.  I panicked, almost running back to my house, where I armed myself uselessly with the biggest knife in my kitchen and sat on the floor of the salon, waiting to be kidnapped.  It turned out they were innocent Nigerian cake-bread deliverymen, who had intended to come in the afternoon but were held up by a flat tire. 

Or worse: tired of being alone in my house, I spent an evening with Dieudonne, an Anglophone friend who teaches at the bilingual school.  Around 9:00 I reluctantly decided I should go home, and he offered to walk me there.  We were ambling down the road when a moto roared up from the other direction, slowing and turning into his compound.   Dieudonne paused, looking back.  “They are looking for me?” he mused rhetorically.  “Who could that be at this time of night?”  Evidently seeing the locked door, the driver turned the moto, and as the headlight swung around I could clearly see that the passenger was armed.  Boko! I thought, throat constricting with fear.  They came by my house first and someone told them where I was!  I didn’t speak—I couldn’t—but Dieudonne must have sensed my terror, as he motioned me off the road, trying to shield my body from view with his as the moto leapt towards us.  Just as I was tensing my legs to sprint into the bush (turns out I’m a flight kind of girl), the passenger waved his semi-automatic rifle and started shouting in Pidgin English.  Dieudonne visibly relaxed, laughing and shouting insults back.  This was a friend of Dieudonne’s from Bamenda who had recently been sent to Mayo Oulo as a BIR, a member of Cameroon’s elite military force.  He had a night off, had gotten tipsy in a bar, and decided to come visit his brother in the bush.  They escorted us the rest of the way to my house, my presumed assailant becoming my very own armed guard. 

These fears are provoked by my overactive imagination—in no cases have I had any hint that there was real danger—but still, these are not entirely unfounded.  Boko Haram’s presence in Cameroon is growing.

I’m not much of a poker player, but the game provides a handy metaphor: you’ve got to know when to fold.  Being in Mandama is a losing hand, no matter how the rest of the game plays out; the question is how long I’m willing to keep upping the ante.  In the worst-case scenario, the game ends with me or Becca kidnapped.  The RSO felt that this was not likely—Boko Haram is involved in not only an ideological but a financial gambit, and the American government is known not to negotiate with terrorists—but neither is it unthinkable.  A second scenario: in a month, or three or six, someone else would be kidnapped, in which case Becca, Debbie and I would be shut down immediately; three strikes, the RSO told us, and we’d be out.  We’d be evacuated and only allowed back with a military escort to gather our things.  At that point, we’d have mere months in a new post, or the similarly unappealing proposition of heading home on interrupted service unexpectedly early, with no time to line anything up for when we got there. 

This third way, then, seemed the best.  Because the impetus was coming from us, and not from the RSO, we were not being forcibly evacuated.  In fact, we were able to negotiate the terms of our departure: a month to close out projects, explain to friends and neighbors what was going on, find counterparts to carry out unfinished work in our absence, and transition to the next stage of our Peace Corps services.  In an ideal world, it’s not what I would have wanted, but it’s more than most volunteers whose posts have been closed have gotten, and for that I’m grateful.

As the meeting came to a close, I realized I needed to figure out my next steps, and fast.  I took the train north that night, plotting in my rickety bunked cot as the train swayed back and forth alarmingly, and spent the next two days site prospecting in the Adamaoua.  I quickly settled on Mbang Mboum—yes, pronounced BANG! BOOM!, like the written sound effects in a Batman comic—a small village an hour north of Ngaoundéré.  It is slightly smaller than Mandama, and has a similar lack of amenities; I’ll be holding on to the satellite phone, as cell phone service is minimal at best, and selling my hastily (foolishly?) purchased refrigerator and fan.  Electricity, you were a cruel three-month tease. 

I’ll have an actual postmate, this time around; although I always referred to Becca as my postie, she was in a separate village 10 kilometers away.  Alizabeth, an agriculture volunteer from the most recent training group, will be my next-door neighbor.  A thoughtful, slender blonde from Spokane with artfully messy hair and a penchant for mismatched skirts and blouses, Alizabeth made us a candlelit dinner of lentils and white wine, and we spent hours talking about environmental impact studies and the dam slated to be built just above Mbang Mboum in 2018.  I have the feeling we’ll get along swimmingly. 

Although not far from the North geographically, the Adamaoua does have appreciable differences in terrain, tillage, and vegetation.  Instead of sand, Mbang Mboum is built on red clay, which in dry season becomes a thick, pervasive dust.  After an afternoon of walking around town, a layer of red earth had settled into every crevice of my boots.  If Guider feels like the Wild West of the gold rush, Mbang Mboum feels like the Kentucky of Daniel Boone.  The Adamaoua, while far from lush, is more fertile than the North; I couldn’t help exclaiming every time we passed a banana tree, and was thrilled to hear I’ll be arriving in high avocado season. 

Alizabeth and I walked out of the village to the south just before sunset the night I spent in Mbang Mboum.  The view was breathtaking, and unexpected; we passed the last mud-brick huts on the main street to see the land fall away to either side.  Before us spread gently rolling fields sloping down to the distant confluence of two rivers, the spot of the proposed dam.  We couldn’t see the rivers themselves, but their presence was betrayed by ribbons of emerald green snaking through dry fields of cornstalks and thorny acacia trees.  It looked like perfect territory to go for a run, a bike ride, or a long thoughtful walk. 

I met the chief of the health center, Engelbert (like Humperdinck, and if anyone gets that reference I’ll give you ten bucks).  He came highly recommended from the last health volunteer, also a displaced Fulfuldé speaker, although from the Extreme North, and also named Laura.  Confusion among the general population expected.  Engelbert was eager to show me around, answering my questions transparently and proudly showing me his records, which were neatly filed in clearly labeled cubbies.  I felt like I could cry.  After fourteen months of dealing with Tilirou, the health center chief of Mandama—he of the unwarranted aggression and inexplicable secrecy, he of the fictionalized, never-submitted supply reports, he of the grimy storeroom stuffed with dusty knee-deep drifts of records and unorganized sheaves of papers—this was like making it to the Promised Land. 

I also met my landlord and concession head, Jodah, who was bursting with excitement and pride to get another volunteer, tripping over himself to show me around, answer my questions, and buy me a heaping platter of beans for my breakfast.  “He’s super nice, and very helpful,” Alizabeth whispered, “but you have to rein him in sometimes.”  I took a cautiously optimistic liking to Jodah, but am wary that this might be the biggest adjustment I’ll have to make.  I currently live in a lovely, light-filled house with a large back yard and garden, and while I sometimes complain about the innumerable children who seem to permanently inhabit my concession, in truth I have a fair amount of privacy.  In Mbang Mboum, I will be living directly in Jodah’s compound, in a much smaller and darker house mere feet from the other houses in the concession.  When Jodah’s wife starts banging dishes at 5:00 in the morning, I’ll hear it.  When I have diarrhea, they’ll probably hear it; my latrine is inside my house this time around, a choice that seems odd to me (who would want that in their bedroom? Won’t it smell?  The hole’s also about a third of the size of my current one, so I’ll need to really up my aim).  The goats and ducks I spotted will doubtless become an intimate—or at least immediate—part of my life.  I asked Jodah about bringing a dog, and he said it was fine, but I’m anticipating that Scipio could cause strife.  I don’t want to make too many assumptions yet, as I’ve only seen the place once, but this is the aspect of Mbang Mboum that I am the most hesitant about. 

On the other hand, this will force my integration into Mbang Mboum, or at least into one family, quickly.  The blessing and curse is that I only have ten months there; if given the choice to hide out in a house withdrawn from public view, I might be tempted to default to introversion and end up making little headway in the community.  As it is, I’ll have children to play with, always; a potential friend in Jodah’s wife; a garrulous Cameroonian Pops in Jodah himself.  And if it’s frustrating?  Well, it is only ten months.

It’s been rough to close out Mandama; although most of my projects were at a place that allowed them to be wrapped up or passed on easily, I hate the look that comes into people’s faces when I tell them I’m abandoning them.  The hardest was the first people I told, my neighbors.  I spent almost an hour surrounded by wives and children, dandling baby Oumaiatou on my lap and chatting casually, before I worked up the courage to break the news.  Djoulaya, the youngest wife, continued stoically kneading a great ball of peanut butter to ease out the oil.  The children, who hadn’t really understood the implications of what I was saying, kept playing, grabbing my limp hands for another clapping game.  But the two oldest wives, Howa and Mairamou, silently turned away from me, pulling their pagne capes over their heads.  Anguish stabbed my heart.  Were they angry with me?  How could they blame me for this?  I wanted to keep explaining, to lay all the responsibility at the embassy’s feet, but then I realized they hadn’t turned away in anger; they were crying.  Fulbé culture values a sort of Spartan strength—women give birth silently, something I thought impossible before seeing it happen—and so my friends had covered their faces to hide their tears from me.  I handed Oumaia to her sister and pulled Howa into a hug, my own face wet with tears.

But as I tell more and more people, I get used to explaining it, and it seems a reality to be accepted rather than raged against.  By the time I told Tilirou the health center chief—who, far from crying, smiled broadly and then leered at me, asking mockingly, “Are you afraid?”—I was able to baldly state my departure as a fact.  My pragmatic side has taken over, organizing my parent’s impending visit to Cameroon and Mandama, the move to the Adamaoua, and the grand opening of Mandama’s Women’s Center, which will also act as my blowout goodbye party. 

And then, at long last, the next chapter of my service will begin.

Bonne Annee

New Year’s Eve day found me and four fellow PCVs setting out from Garoua to track a pod of hippos in the Benoue with Le Maitre d’Hippopotome—the Hippo Master—a self-appointed hippo conservationist and wrangler, and one of Garoua’s resident characters.  We met him Tuesday morning at the bridge that spans the Benoue River south of Garoua.  The area beside the foot of the bridge was already bustling; children hawked palm hearts and kola nuts from trays on their heads, while women poured frothy millet beer, or bilbil, into voluptuously shaped clay pots.  The tangy odor of fish hung over everything, punctuated with whiffs of noxious river mud.

After lively negotiation with a clutter of moto drivers, three PCVs piled on to one moto, leaving me and a youth development volunteer, Santina, to get on behind Le Maitre.  We sped over the bridge and a few kilometers down the paved road before turning off onto a dirt path that led into the bush. 

This was when Santina and I started to realize that Le Maitre, albeit a man with numerous abilities and undeniable hippo charisma, is not a very practiced moto driver.  I had gone out with him once before, almost exactly a year ago, and he had ridden as a passenger behind a licensed moto driver; why he decided this time around to conduct the motorcycle himself is unclear to me, but quickly became a matter of no small concern.  There is a particular set of skills necessary to steering a moto in the bush, among them knowing how to deal with sand traps.  Most moto drivers will slow, stick both flip-flopped feet into the deep drifts of sand, and waddle the moto through the patch until the path becomes firm again.  Le Maitre, on the other hand, tried to gun his way through the sweeping sand, a method guaranteed to fail.

About twenty minutes—and several alarming wobbles through sand—into our trip, we hit the longest patch of deep sand we had yet encountered.  Le Maitre approached it, like the others, with unwarranted gumption.  The moto immediately started fishtailing wildly from side to side; his response was to throw himself forward.  Predictably, the moto flew out to the side, throwing me off and trapping Santina and Le Maitre beneath it. 

Sliding in the sand had slowed us considerably, so neither of the riders tangled in the moto were hurt beyond scrapes and bruises.  I, however, had thrown my arm out to break my fall, and managed to impale my elbow on a rock.   I felt nothing, only the impact of the fall, but as we picked ourselves up and dusted off, I noticed blood running freely down my forearm.  Our friends, seeing that we had wiped out, stopped the lead moto and ran back to check on us.  My friend Brian drew in his breath with a sharp hiss.  I turned my arm; there was a deep inch-long puncture right below my elbow.  Santina helped me pour water over it, nudging out as much sand as possible.  Rachel, an agroforestry volunteer posted in Garoua, offered a thin scarf as a makeshift bandage, and Brian helped me tie it into a tourniquet.  It was just shy of uncomfortably tight, but provided enough pressure to stop the bleeding.

We arrived without any further mishaps in a small fishing village on the banks of the Benoue.  There Le Maitre stored the motos; he and the other moto driver, now wearing the hat of Canoe Paddler In Chief, made their way to the water’s edge with the five of us in tow.  We piled into long, shallow wooden pirogues and glided out into the middle of the river, where we let the current carry us downstream.

Soon enough we spotted the first massive hippo head, eyes and nostrils just breaking the surface of the water, a Mesozoic monster watching us watch it.  Further downriver we could see the rest of the pod, mostly submerged but betraying their unseen bulk with occasional glimpses of a vast arched back.  We eased to the starboard shore and got out for a closer look.

The striking thing about hippos is their size.  Pictures cannot convey the length of their teeth, the enormity of their yawns, or the sheer underwater mass of these creatures, leftover megafauna from a bygone era.  The five of us stayed on land, watching and taking pictures, marveling over their deeply reverberating grunts and seemingly unhingeable jaws gawping and closing like a real-life version of the children’s game Hungry Hungry Hippo.  Le Maitre, on the other hand, waded promptly into the water towards the pod, calling to them in Fulfulde.

“You know, I read about a guy in Garoua who had trained a hippo and rode it in the river,” Rachel mused, as we watched Le Maitre with trepidation.  “Then it killed someone, so they had to put it down.”  She paused.  “I’m pretty sure that was this guy.”  We nodded thoughtfully, digesting this information.  It might have been better to know this before we put our safety in Le Maitre’s hands.  Then again, now that we were this far into it, it might have been better not to know at all—or at least not until we were safely back in Garoua. 

But we were not fated to watch a hippo mauling, at least not that day; Le Maitre finally, grudgingly responded to our beseeching calls and left the water.  We got back in our boats and headed for Garoua, where I had to deal with the hole in my arm.

The worst part wasn’t cleaning the wound.  The worst part wasn’t the lack of anesthetic.  The worst part wasn’t the first stitch, hooked into my skin with a curved needle like a tool for fixing tapestries, nor the subsequent stitching, obscured by blood so that the nurse had to hook the skin several times before pulling it closed.  No, the worst part was the two-ounce shot of penicillin and lidocaine administered straight into my left glute through a terrifyingly, comically, unnecessarily large syringe.  The shot just kept happening, far beyond the point at which I expected the needle to be withdrawn, my muscle aching the more liquid was forced into it.  I limped back to the Garoua transit house and curled up for a stiff, pained nap.

But I woke up from the nap ready to welcome 2014, and even made it out to go dancing at midnight.  Happy New Year from Cameroon; by definition, it’s gotta start on a better foot than 2013 left on. 

2013: A Year In Review

As December draws to a close I’ll wrap up my first full calendar year, albeit my 16^th month (but who’s counting?), in Cameroon.  It’s cause for reflection; not only am I past the halfway mark of my 27-month service, but once 2014 rolls around, my COS date will be in sight.  It’s a matter of perspective rather than numeric reality—a mere week’s difference—but saying “this year” instead of “next year” makes the end far more tangible, alarming and tantalizing in equal measure.

2013, in some ways, has seemed like the Year That Wasn’t.  As recently as last week I was dating supplemental distribution records 2012.  I have often felt so disconnected from life as I knew it pre-Peace Corps that it’s as though I were living in an alternate reality while all else stood still, waiting for my return.  In the absence of most of what I subconsciously use to mark the passing of months and seasons—federal holidays, changing seasonal weather, new drinks at Starbucks, clothing styles—it’s sometimes jarring to check email, Facebook, or the news in a cyber café and be yanked suddenly to the present.  Friends are engaged, or married, or having kids.  Family members post pictures of themselves brandishing an ice cream at the beach, or romping in autumn leaves, or getting in snowball fights with roommates; it’s surreal to understand that these things are going on concurrently while I slowly melt in merciless heat and watch ragged street children through the cyber café’s doorway.  Politicians change, or do things, or, more problematically this past year, refuse to do things—I missed the government shutdown by several days, and didn’t believe the fellow volunteer who told me about it (“You must have misunderstood, Geoff, it can’t have shut down.  That’s what governments in places like Cameroon do.”)

But whether I’m ready to believe it or not, a whole year has passed since I rang in the last New Year climbing Mount Lagdo (by night, not the wisest decision we’ve made) with three other volunteers from the region.  It was a year of extremes and contradictions; much happened, while at the same time I spent more days with nothing to do than I have, ever.  I learned how to carry on full conversations with minimal mutual language abilities, and learned to speak Fulfuldé.  I decided I loved Mandama.  I decided I hated Mandama.  I experienced some of the most exhilarating highs, and some of the most debilitating lows, of my life.  I’ve made some of the closest friends I’ve had, and watched friends leave, not knowing when, if ever, we’ll meet again.

I spent hours despairing of ever finding work, and hours doing work of all stripes.  I weighed hundreds of babies.  I made gallons of soymilk and pounds of tofu.  I planted dozens of moringa trees, and gave presentations on the nutritional and agricultural benefits so many times I can now do them from memory.  I did door-to-door screenings for malnutrition and malaria.  I learned how to turn off my brain completely when that second or third hour of sitting in the heat at the health center rolled around with no sign of our bibulous chief nurse and, fatally, no book in my bag. Once, upon going to the high school and finding the English teacher hadn’t showed up that day, I improvised an off-the-cuff hour-long class on letter-writing and the difference between the restrictive that and the nonrestrictive which (and for grammar Nazis out there, I felt the irregular restrictive which was only going to confuse, so it was, as usual, ignored).  I raised chickens.  I learned how to farm soy, how to make insecticide soap from natural ingredients, and how most effectively to hiss at goats (it’s the combination of a sibilant ts and the right pitch that really makes ‘em take off running).

Will Saitta and I lead a tofu demonstration as part of a two-day long food security conference.

I learned how to be a good neighbor in this culture, and found that there are many things about my neighbors and about this culture that I just don’t like.  I attended more funerals than I have in the rest of my life to date.  I held newborns.  In my neighbors’ family alone, I watched as two children were born, a child learned to walk, and another child began to talk.  I ate new foods, including viper, boiled grubs (imagine a rubber balloon filled with grits; exactly the horrifying texture I always imagined from watching Pumbaa in The Lion King), and slugs in peanut butter (not quite as vile as it sounds).  I forced Cameroonians to try new foods, like spaghetti sauce and hummus, thus disproving the old axiom about Children In Africa Who Would Love To Eat Those Leftovers.  Children—and adults—in Africa like to eat the limited menu of things they have always eaten and will always eat, and approach new and foreign foods with the antipathy of an American teen being served any of the African dishes I listed above (so take that, Granny!)  I met people I despised—the venal men whose corruption and greed means the system will never function, the wheedling women whose transparent lies enrage me, the children who follow me jeering ethnic slurs—and people whose kindness and willingness to work humbled me.

A stack of sheep legs after the slaughter during the first day of the Feast of the Ram.

I read 54 books, which works out nicely to a book a week.  Among these were several Charles Dickens novels, Moby Dick, and Simon Sebag Montefiore’s 900-page history of Jerusalem.  Like I said, I had a lot of time on my hands.  I watched episodes of 12 different TV shows, despite my resolve not to do so.  I gained 15 pounds.  I ran 232 miles.  I determined that I was definitely, absolutely quitting Peace Corps and blowing this popsicle stand approximately 365 times, and then revised that decision about 350 times—I didn’t have access to a way to leave village the other 15, so here I sit today.  I pooped myself, twice (dysentery’s a hell of a disease).  I saw the desert, watched a troop of baboons in the arid savannah, hiked an equatorial rainforest, and dived into a waterfall on the Gulf of Guinea. 

Eddie Rosenbaum fords a stream on our way to a pygmy encampment in the Congo River Basin.

I could continue in this fashion almost indefinitely, but there’s more to reviewing a year than endlessly declaring what I did.  This is the time to prepare for the next 11 months.  In many ways, they’ll be easier.  I’m established; I know the villagers of Mandama, both friends and foes; I have my work cut out for me.  In other ways they’ll be harder.  I’ll need to devote more and more time and mental energy to preparing what comes next, which will emotionally (and physically, as my Internet needs increase) remove me from my work here, undoubtedly making it harder to be fully present.  I’m habituated to things that once chafed; I no longer yearn for a shower the way I once did, or even a flush toilet.  Still, I’m never totally integrated here.  War correspondent Tim Butcher writes in Blood River, his account of traveling through the Congo, “I longed for convenience so much it hurt.”  I’m not sure if it’s convenience I long for as much as it is accessibility—of information, of communication, of medical supplies, of produce.  I have no doubt their absence will continue to rankle, perhaps even more so the closer I get to attaining them, but I’ve learned to get by without the immediacy of these things.  I’m never sure if I’ve struck the right balance between community integration and personal sanity—I feel alternately irritated and guilty almost always—but I’ve gotten better at it, and I hope I’ll continue to do so.  I’ll be moving several projects into their next phases, and am glad that I know how things work here well enough to start getting long-term goals set into motion. 

Henna'ed hands for the Feast of Ramadan.

Mostly, I hope to keep expanding my horizons.  I’ve seen and experienced an unbelievable amount this past year, despite the days when it feels like all I see are the four walls of my house (now beautified with jazz murals).  I’ve been humbled, and frustrated, and educated, and awestruck, and I hope 2014 brings more of the same.

The view towards Malabo, Equitorial Guinea, from the coast at Limbe.

So here’s to a New Year.  Cheers and a midnight kiss from Cameroon.

Termites with a dry spicy piment rub.