First Night With My Ngaoundéré Host Family

Thursday was spent being oriented to the next ten days in Ngaoundéré and learning about what the cultures of our host families would be like and how we should behave in these Muslim households. I felt somewhat better – I had slept well – but still had a fever, which worsened as the day wore on.

Before dropping us off at our host families’ houses, we headed about twenty minutes outside of Ngaoundéré to a traditional healer. It ended up being a school were people come to study traditional medicine. They explained that any person of any religion, race, or gender can come study, though we only saw Muslim men. They claimed to be able to cure kidney stones, stomach pains, impotency, irregular menstrual cramps, yeast infections, HIV/AIDS, charms, cancer, discharge (this was a fun one to try and have them explain), liver troubles, pregnancy issues, typhoid fever, hemorrhoids, and tuberculosis. They also were able to tell fortunes, which intrigued all of us.

After the presentation we walked around the property a bit, so that the men could show us the medicinal plants they grew. I imagined a garden with the plants clearly marked, but I should have remembered that just because this was alternative medicine, it wasn’t Amherst, it was still Cameroon. We rounded the corner of a house and what appeared to be a weed growing out of the foundation was said to cure kidney stones. We walked down a muddy path to a dirt clearing where children in shmutzik clothing were milling about. A few patches of green showed through the dirt and one of these was another plant with medicinal qualities.

The tour ended back at the pharmacy/consultation room. For 1000 CFA ($2) we could ask several questions about our futures that one of the healers would answer. I think nearly all of us decided to go for it. Enok, the SIT homestay coordinator in Ngaoundéré sat in the room with us to translate our questions into Fulfulde and to translate the healer’s Fulfulde into French. Some of our fortunes were a bit more generic than others, and yet some where fairly specific. MB was told that if he went into politics his name would be come known. DJ was told that she would become someone famous and her name would be on television. AM was told that she would work in the area of finance and would be successful in her job. I was told that I would work with canaux (canals – thankfully I knew this word in French because of our scintillating tour of the canals of Valence in 2009).

I expressed my surprise and attempted to ask a clarifying question, wondering if perhaps this may be canals in a metaphorical sense – flows of people or bridges between people, etc. Enok translated, that while I may not work on the technical side of canals, I would definitely work in either the administrative or financial side of canal building. And I would also probably spend a lot of time living outside of my country (at least there was one thing that was correct!).

I also asked about CPL, especially considering it was her birthday. I explained that she had been sick this fall – had had surgery – and asked what would happen to her in the future. He told me that I should stop worrying, she would not be sick anymore, and that she is very intelligent and was going to do great things one day and we would all be proud of her. I believe that this is true.

In terms of relationships – he told me that there was someone who loves me right now, and when I return to my country, he will ask me to marry him. AT was told that she has yet to meet “the one,” which she found reassuring. Lookman was told that a white girl in the States loves him. I guess sexual orientation is something the healer cannot see. We were all entertained by these responses, and decided that the $2 we spent was probably worth it.

I asked Bobo if they knew if the healer had said correct things to students in the past. He replied that in 2008 the healer had been very sure that Obama would not win. I guess that bodes well for the probability my working with canals in the future.

We were dropped off at our families around 4. I live very close to where we had been staying and to the Norwegian Center where we will have some of our classes. I have a Maman who is quite young – maybe mid-thirties – and who has a fifteen-year-old daughter. Both are stunningly beautiful. My Maman’s husband is a truck driver and returns to the house only occasionally. I learned this before arriving and was relived that the house would be quiet and peaceful. And yet I should have remembered that this is Cameroon. Of course the house wouldn’t be empty or quiet.

There are easily over 20 people living in this compound. (My Maman does not know the number so was unable to give me an answer). There is another woman who lives here who is 28 and who has four children, the oldest of whom is 12. I think that her husband lives here as well and his children from his first wife (who lives in Yaoundé) live here as well. On top of that there is a whole room of twenty-something year-old boys who live across from me. I was given my Maman’s house to live in while I am here. It is really lovely with a salon – empty except for one light bulb, but at least it’s carpeted – and a bedroom whose light does not work. The bed is big, though – which I guess doesn’t actually matter that much since I’m sleeping in my mosquito net. There is also a latrine with an eight-inch diameter hole in the floor. The latrine is somewhere around 60 feet deep. I cannot even explain how far down it is. Only that there is a significant amount of time between when one starts going to the bathroom and when one can hear anything hit the bottom of the latrine.

(I just need to mention that someone in the compound is playing Basshunter VERY LOUDLY right now. What a world.)

I went walking with one of the sons of the woman who lives in Yaoundé last night. We saw the Lamidat – the palace of the Lamido or traditional ruler of Ngaoundéré. His palace and mosque are beautiful. From there we headed to the sheep market.

(Just finished Camilla, and Boten Ana is starting.)

Today is a national holiday in Cameroon called the Fête du Mouton. School and work are cancelled and the tradition is to sacrifice a sheep. The holiday commemorates the story of Abraham agreeing to sacrifice Isaac on the mountaintop, and then God stopping him at the last moment and telling him to sacrifice a sheep instead. It is a Muslim holiday that the whole country celebrates. Before we left Yaoundé earlier this week, flocks of sheep had already begun entering the city waiting to be sold to people for the fête. The sheep were EVERYWHERE in Ngaoundéré yesterday. It was actually quite upsetting for me to watch all of these men hauling sheep home and to see the fear in the sheep’s eyes as they were torn from their flocks. I wanted to share with them that their lives were about to get a lot worse tomorrow.  I saw one escaped sheep tearing down the street, trailing its lead, and men chasing after it. (I was rooting for the sheep in this one.) A small sheep supposedly costs about 50,000 CFA ($100).

*Returning to finish up this post after having lunch.

Before I finish this once again lengthy post, I just want to share the similarities I am feeling between this holiday and a Jewish holiday that we would have celebrated at the Ks’ in West Hartford when we were younger. Everyone is dressed nicely today, the house is clean, and food is being cooked all day long. Neighbors, family, and friends have been dropping in since this morning and everyone is so happy, celebrating a holiday where the purpose is to spend time with your family and eat. Sounds like every holiday I’ve ever grown up with. The way that the mothers keep coming in and out, some with their kids, some without, some eating, some bringing food, reminds of a Jewish holiday when everyone goes out walking and stops at neighbors’ and friends’ to wish them a happy holiday and just to visit. The sense of community is really beautiful and I realize that is something that has been missing from my experiences in Dschang and Yaoundé.

Having friends at one’s house – especially for teenagers – is really not a thing in Cameroon, or at least not in the Central, Western and Southern regions. And yet I have probably seen well over ten different friends come through the house today. I have not yet shared with my family that I am Jewish and I don’t know if I will. I do know, however, that the similarities between religions – and especially religions that are so intricately intertwined with ethnicities and cultures – are numerous. Even if everything about this life here feels so different (including the latrine in my house in which I was accompanied by fifteen cockroaches when I used it last night), there are basic values inherent to a religious community that feel comforting and familiar.  

A Burning Forehead and A Burning Train

The majority of Tuesday was spent at the office, desperately trying to finish up transcriptions before we headed off to Ngaoundéré. I had packed my bags before leaving the house that morning, but had left them at home, so I headed back home around 2:30 to grab my things. I also stopped at the tailor to pick up a dress and a skirt that I had had made the previous week. I took a cab back to the office with my suitcase.

We were supposed to leave at 4, but of course it was closer to 4:30 by the time we left to head to the train station. We piled into four cars for the twenty-minute drive. Traffic was horrible, but the train didn’t leave until 6:10 so we had time. (Don’t worry D, we didn’t miss the train). We were instructed to keep a very close watch over our things at the station and to, above else, not lose our train tickets. (Train travel in Cameroon is sort of like the T in Charlie on the MTA. You cannot exit the arrival station without your ticket).

We boarded the train which was already there and were amongst the first people on so it was quite easy to find spots to place our suitcases overhead. We were in wagon 682 and our group of 13 students and two staff had two different sections of seats facing each other. My section of four and the group of four across the aisle was a really fun combination of people and we had a lot of fun together.

Christiane told us that the only two things in Cameroon that happen on time are church and the train and sure enough, we pulled out of the station at exactly 6:10. There were many Muslims on the train, as we were heading North, and before the train left, there must have been somewhere around fifty men praying on the platform. Just one of those things you would never see in Penn Station.

The train traveled fairly quickly when it was going, but we made frequent stops. It was warm on the train at first, so all of the windows were down. The windows also serve as everyone’s garbage can so it quickly became normal to watch cups, banana peels, napkins, and fish bones sail overhead and out the windows. Throwing orange peels didn’t bother me, but the man behind me throwing out his chip bag was a bit shocking and frustrating. We had brought food with us on the train, but it was very Hogwarts Express how vendors kept walking up and down the aisle selling everything from sandwiches to full plated meals to whole fish to batons de manioc to soda to yogurt to cookies to maps (yup, maps – MB and DJ both bought large maps of Cameroon for $3), to toothbrushes to toothpaste to medicine that was supposed to cure everything.

This last man – who sold toothbrushes, toothpaste, and cure-all medicine – was the best one. He was a walking infomercial and spent about five minutes explaining all of the benefits of the toothbrush he was selling. He quoted 600 CFA as the price, but said that if someone only had 500 CFA with them, they could just pay him the next time they were on the train. After we finally had heard enough about how great this man’s toothbrushes were, he left the car, only to come back again thirty seconds later toting his new product, toothpaste! We learned about the natural herbal healing properties of the toothpaste he was selling. MB ended up buying a toothbrush because his was up above in his backpack and was going to be too much of a hassle to get out.  We figured the man had finished, but oh no, he was gone an even shorter time before coming back holding a small glass bottle with a suspiciously bright red liquid inside. He announced to the car that it would cur everything. “Back pain, body pain, discomfort, stress, tooth aches, head aches, body aches, colds, tooth pain, foot pain, coughs, fevers, pneumonia, depression.” All this for only $2 and the list kept going!

As it got darker outside and people wrapped up their meals, our fellow passengers began to nod off. And yet the fluorescent lights blaring the length of the car and the 90s music playing over the speakers showed no signs of dimming or shutting off. We speculated that perhaps around ten or eleven the lights would go out. And in case the music wasn’t bad enough, there was a man in the seat behind MB and TB who had been standing the entire time since Yaoundé with large head phones on and his head out the window, singing. He had quite a repertoire, with his songs ranging from country to rap to Jesus music to pop with a great song in there whose only line the man seemed to know was “Let me see that sexy booty go boom-boom-boom.” It was hard to tell if anyone else in the car was as amused as we were.

We played several rounds of the game contact, then everyone started to drift off to sleep. I took a NyQuil to help me sleep and because I was getting sick and could feel myself getting sicker as the train rumbled along. It didn’t help that much on the bumpy bright ride, however, and I woke up around 11:30 when the train pulled into a stop. Each time the train stopped, vendors flocked to the windows, displaying their wares on their head. DJ bought a bag of ten mandarins for 100 CFA (20 cents) and MB bought seven green bananas for 100 CFA. We were tempted to buy a pineapple, but not quite sure how we’d eat it on the train.

At this 11:30 stop, as people got on and off the train, a teenager boy came up to AM, sitting across the aisle from me, and began talking to her. We had already seen some beggars come on the train, but typically the security guards quickly kicked them off. Unfortunately there was no security guard around at this point and so as AM politely smiled at the boy, he proceeded with his spiel which was mainly in pidgin. Our two-hour pidgin class in Dschang came in quite handy as he explained to her, “Aye di komot prison.” (I am coming from prison). This was actually the only line in pidgin I understood (he also said to her in English that he loved her brother, presumably referring to Lookman sitting beside her), but it was enough to set us off into convulsions of giggles. The singing man with his head out the window, the women outside the windows trying to sell us every fruit imaginable, the nonstop flow of garbage out the windows, the delirium of trying to sleep and not being able to, and the still-glaring fluorescent lights were just too much. AM kept ignoring him, except I think at this point the fact that she was cracking up kind of threw off the beggar. Finally a security guard came by and pushed the kid down the train car as the train began to move again.

I slept on and off until around 2 or 2:30 when I woke up, realizing the lights had been turned off. “Finally!” I whispered to MB whom I noticed was awake as well. I drifted back to sleep, waking up sometime around 3 as the train came to an abrupt halt. People around us woke up, as we all wondered why we had stopped in the middle of the bush. Within thirty seconds of stopping security guards sprinted down the aisles with flashlights heading to the back of the train. People started to murmur a bit louder. Suddenly it sounded as though an avalanche had started as people the length of the train jumped out of their seats and reached for their belongings as the word “feu” (fire) was passed from passenger to passenger. I quickly reached for my Tevas and unzipped my backpack to find my headlamp. We all looked at each other in fright. I imagined a fireball careening down the aisles of the train, us trying to squeeze out the small windows, and being forced to sleep out in the bush in the middle of nowhere without a light to be seen for the night. Nathalie instructed us to stay seated as she went to the other end of the car to chat with Bobo about what we should do. By this point about half of the passengers in our car had evacuated.

Nathalie returned and told us to just stay in in our seats, as it was assumed that if we exited the car we would be attacked and our belongings stolen in the darkness. Rumors spread from person to person that it actually wasn’t a fire. Within about five minutes Christiane came from the end of the train where she had been in a sleeping car, trailed by her son, her nanny, and LS who had been in a sleeper car because she has been so sick. Christiane confirmed that there was in fact a fire. The luggage car had been the victim of an electrical fire and was engulfed in flames. They had managed to detach it from the rest of the train before the fire spread, however, and supposedly no one had been hurt. Yet there was no water to be found on the train, so the plan was just to let the car burn. We poked our heads out the windows and could see the flames leaping into the sky down the tracks.

At a loss of what to do and quite overcome with relief, we got the giggles for the second time that night. We were unsure as to how long we would be stuck there, but we all began to drift off to sleep, figuring there was not much to do. After the adrenaline rush of the fire had worn off, I realized I felt awful. MB felt my forehead and said I was burning up. I was very hot – I didn’t take my temperature but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere around 102 – and so CH gave me advil and everyone told me to go back to sleep. The train finally started moving again perhaps sometime around 4:30. I slept better the second half of the night, but was still exhausted and quite sick when we arrived in Ngaoundéré around 9:30 or 10.

We hopped in a bus to the College Protestant whose dorm we were staying in for the first night. Relived that we didn’t have anything planned until 4:30 that afternoon, I climbed into bed and slept for several hours, wearing two sweaters, pants, and covered in two blankets. This is the sickest I have been so far in Cameroon and it was the first time that I really wanted to just be at home, on the couch, with a fire going, sipping miso soup and cuddling with the dogs. Luckily the other students were really great and got me ibuprofen, took my temperature, urged me to drink, and cuddled with me. I was quite whiny, but tried to keep it in check.

We went out to dinner at a restaurant called the Coffee Shop which Bobo informed us was a very fancy restaurant. Its cement floor and walls may not have been the charming atmosphere we had imagined, but the food was delicious. I didn’t eat very much as my appetite had disappeared with the arrival of the fever, but everyone made sure I drank a lot. We headed back to the dorms after dinner. It was just past 6 at this point. We agreed that there is definitely something to be said for eating dinner early. We hung out, some people worked on homework, and later on a few of us attempted to bring back some semblance of normalcy and Americanness to balance out the events of the past twenty-four hours by watching Ten Things I Hate About You. 

Kribi

Weekend à Kribi

We’ve just returned from a quite relaxing day and a half spent on the coast at Cameroon’s beach resort city (if it can be called that), Kribi. Kribi is located in the far southwest corner of the country, quite close to Gabon. It is about a four to five hour drive from Yaoundé.

I need to just describe a bit our bus voyages so far in Cameroon. We have had the same bus driver for each of our long trips who comes all the way from Dschang to drive us. He drives a brand new bus – which is quite nice for us – but the downside is that he plays the same CD the entire ride. And we’re talking a 6 hour ride with an eight-song CD. Oy. But we are at the point where it is funny, and he actually spruced things up a bit on a trip to Kribi with a bit of Rihanna.

Because of our quite active mugens – affected by everything we eat and drink in this country – there are a lot of bathroom stops along the way. Although we are driving on Cameroon’s highways, this is not Mass Pike. These are two lane roads with very little to no shoulder. We pass another car perhaps every minute, if not less frequently. When someone needs to go to the bathroom, they yell up to the front of the bus where either Bobo or Nathalie – the two coordinators – sit and they will ask the driver to pull over. He stops on the side of the road, the person with the most riled up mugen steps out first and then we all follow as we traipse into the bush on the side of the road. We were modest about things at first, but our group is now close enough that nothing is hidden.

I wrote in my last post about the Chad-Cameroonian pipeline which brings oil from Chad through Cameroon to ships waiting off the coast. The pipeline ends in Kribi and the ship was visible just off of the beach. There are also oil rigs dotting the horizon. We were a bit apprehensive to spend too much time in the water, but it felt so great that we couldn’t help it.

Upon arriving in Kribi, we stopped first at the SDO’s – Senior District Officer – office so that he could welcome us. He asked which hotel we were staying at – this ended up being because he intended to send soldiers with huge guns to protect us that night. The hotel was quite nice – going by Cameroonian standards – and after dropping our things off in our rooms, we all headed down to the beach.

Perhaps it is as a result of growing up in Nova Scotia, or just because I still have so much little kid left in me, but I am completely unable to control my energy when I get on the beach, and so I quickly took often, sprinting down the beach, running through waves and soaking my skirt in the process. We headed afterwards to a presentation from an NGO called FAGAPE which works with the Pygmy/Baka/Bagyeli people, primarily through advocacy and educational pograms.

The Baka are indigenous to Cameroon and are traditionally hunters and gatherers. As a result, when the colonial powers came into Cameroon, it was much easier for the Bantou – the non-indigenous people of Cameroon – to build a relationship with them as they had already developed farming practices. The Baka were furthered marginalized when both the colonial and post-colonial governments did not bother to include them as citizens. It is only now that the Baka are being encouraged to apply for ID cards which will then enable them to vote and participate fully as Cameroonian citizens.

On Saturday we headed into the bush to visit two different Baka encampments. The first – where we spent the majority of the time – was significantly more traditional than the second. We arrived and amidst the barking dogs and clamoring children, were asked to sit down on low benches. There were not enough places, so exceedingly small plastic chairs were brought out which MB and LM, the two boys, and Nathalie sat in.

The chief of the Pygmy encampment we went to.

The chief shook each of our hands and prepared his people to perform a welcome dance for us. The Baka were all sitting on the opposite side of the open area, under a structure. A long thick bamboo pole was soon brought out, upon which the women began drumming with sticks. More women joined in and soon they were all singing. Within five minutes, a little boy came out from behind one of the houses, enrobed in leaves and plants, presumably to represent a spirit of the forest. He had small baskets tied to his ankles which had some type of noise-making item inside of them.

The visit was quite overwhelming between the abject poverty and the foreign welcome rituals. Sitting there I took a deep breath and realized that these are the kinds of experiences that we read about in our Anthropology textbooks, and here I was, living one of them. The mood was lightened somewhat when one of the dogs began barking at the little boy dancing, not recognizing him in his leaves.

We relaxed Saturday afternoon at the beach, playing frisbee, jumping waves, swimming, and just running around. MB, AT, JG, and I played a great game of cricket – the frisbee kind – as the sun was beginning to go down. I felt so refreshed taking a shower that evening knowing I had spent nearly the entire day outside, running around. I had almost the same feeling as I do during spring break – deliriously and deliciously tired, but excited to party and have a good time that evening.

We had a great dinner of fried plantains, fish, shrimp (everyone was excited about this one), rice, salad, pasta, our favorite red sauce, and fruit. We headed back to the hotel where we spent the night drinking, dancing, talking, and laughing. The bond we have in our group has contributed so much to the adventures we have been having – and I know that these adventures are what has made and what continues to make our bond stronger. It was a great weekend was just so refreshing to be able to spend the majority of it outside.

The focus of our Thematic Seminar (the development and social pluralism course that this SIT program is named after) this past week has been on development organizations and their styles of operation. We visited a number of organizations and have all grown and learned a huge amount from the process. Our first visit, however, with an Israeli named Ofir, set the tone for the rest of the week.

Ofir founded LAGA, The Last Great Ape, an organization that he sees as part of the generation of “new NGOs.” His story is an impressive one. Before the army he spent time in Africa traveling, and was so influenced and changed by what his experiences that post-army he decided to forgo university and return to Africa where he spent two months living in the bush, partly with the Maasai people and also trekking with camels. Needless to say he is a one of a kind person. Ofir spent two years or so traveling around Africa and realizing he needed to earn money, he started traveling to conflict areas as a photojournalist, and he also wrote as well.

He travelled around wherever there were stories. He was based in Nigeria (I think) for a time while writing about illegal poaching and the bush meat trade. He headed to Eastern Cameroon to where the poaching is the worst. He described how after getting off the bus, he sat in a café and within minutes people approached him offering to sell bush meat and detailing exactly what was available at the time in the back markets of the town. They told him that they had a chimp orphan – a common consequence of the bush meat trade – and asked if he wanted to see it. Ofir figured it would serve as good information for his article and so he headed to a small house to see this year-old orphan. It was chained to the floor, he explained, and the men in the house had been treating it like a rat, teasing it and antagonizing it. Ofir explained that chimps are like humans – they need respect, love, and understanding in order to grow and flourish.

Ofir realized he had to do something for this chimp. The men were willing to sell him the orphan for $100, but Ofir had no intention of perpetuating this trade and so he headed to the environmental police. It quickly became clear that this was going to be no easy feat. The police were corrupt and they, too, wanted $100 from Ofir. And yet Ofir had read the laws and he knew that anyone caught participating in the bush meat trade would receive a prison sentence – the law had been in place for several years at that point and not a single person had been sentenced, likely as a result of Cameroon’s extremely corrupt police. Ofir realized he had to think quickly and so he created an NGO in his mind, and explained to the police what would happen. Ofir’s staff were on their way the next day and they knew the laws very well and they would also be bringing police from Yaoundé who would punish the police in this town for their negligence. As Ofir spun his lie, he saw the police suddenly become afraid and he realized this would work. He departed for his hotel, where he spent that night turning the lie into a reality.

Ofir realized it was necessary to form what he considered to be a “new generation” of NGOs – organizations that would fight against corruption and operate differently than the current NGOs who are riddled with corruption and whose employees are housed in mansions with drivers and guards. Suffice it to say, Ofir is a bit of a genius and he headed back to the police station the next day full of false bravado intending to save the baby chimp. After much negotiating – but no bribes – he left Eastern Cameroon with the chimp. He arrived in Yaoundé at night, called a friend to help him out, and together they managed to sneak the baby into a hotel room. Ofir called many sanctuaries the next day but all said they were unable to take the baby as they were full.

Ofir ended up taking care of the orphan – whom he named Future – for seven months. Ofir became Future’s mother and the chimp wouldn’t separate from him. Ofir regaled us with stories of how Future hated water, but at the same time didn’t ever want to leave Ofir so when he showered, Future cried the whole time, but still wouldn’t let go of him. Ofir explained how similar chimps are to humans; he caught Future sticking his hand in an outlet one day and yelled at him. Future was so upset at being yelled at that he had an hour-long tantrum on the floor until Ofir went over and consoled him.

Fun stories aside, however, Ofir’s organization soon began doing the work he had dreamed of doing, gathering information and interested parties and hunting down corruption related to poaching and bushmeat throughout Cameroon. Ofir’s conviction and his interest in being the polar opposite of so many NGOs today inspired us and really made us think. These thoughts and newfound opinions made us quite critical of the organizations we visited later on in the week.

Our second visit was to a microcredit institution. It is for profit, however, so the intentions were somewhat different than we had seen with Ofir, but we nonetheless maintained Ofir’s critical perspective when evaluating organizations.

The following day we headed to an organization run by a man who has guest lectured several times for us already. None of us really likes him as he delights in making inflammatory unfounded claims, and then contradicts and somewhat mocks us when we try to rebuke what he says. He taught for a year at Savannah State University in Georgia and believes that this gives him the utmost authority and the license to think that he always knows more than us. None of us has the heart to point out the differences between Savannah State University and Middlebury, Michigan, or Macalester. His organization was like his lectures – replete with contradictions and disorganized. He told us he does not ask for money, then handed us a fundraising sheet (and on and on and on). His organization is called ANICHRA which stands for African Network of against Illiteracy, Conflicts and Human Rights Abuse. Except they also have given money for eye surgery for an older man with cataracts and have adopted a water purifying project. We weren’t sure how those fit into their mission statement, but the professor’s responses, when we asked, where anything but clarifying.

The next day, on an absolutely sweltering day in Yaoundé, we visited two organizations. The first was RENATA which is a support network for young women – between the ages of 12 and 19 – who have babies whether by choice or as a result of rape. They also deal with the issue of breast ironing which is an old and more traditional practice. Supposedly many people believe that if a girl’s breasts grow too big too early it is a sign that she will be promiscuous and will attract men. Girls’ breasts are then “treated” so as to disfigure and stunt them, making them unattractive.

RENATA is the first organization of its kind in Cameroon and receives the majority of its funding from GIZ, the German version of USAID. Unfortunately the GIZ funding will be up in 2013 so RENATA is currently looking at alternatives; if they do not find funding, they will not be able to continue their work.

The RENATA presentation was Cameroonian, to say the least. Nothing was set up when we arrived, as though they were not expecting us (never mind the fact that we a good half hour late), and they slowly and unapologetically put out chairs for us to sit in. No one welcomed us to the organization and instead the presenter started in, asking us what we wanted to know about the organization. Obvious questions of what, why, who, when, where didn’t seen to appear too important to her, but the SIT director asked her to present a bit on the organization. She may be devoted to her work and an effective counselor, but she presented the organization in a monotone whisper looking down at her lap. We were forced to close the windows in order to hear her, which had the direct effect of heating the room even more and causing many of us to sweat profusely and feel like we were about to pass out.

There is a different sense of organization and of what is appropriate in Cameroon. Whereas we would present an organization by talking about its history, mission statement, stated project areas, etc (thanks B’nai Tzedek and Hazon), her presentation was all over the place, with no apparent structural plan of the organization.

The next organization of the day really brought this contrast to light. We headed to the top of the hill, across the street from Ahidjo stadium and around the corner from UNHCR, to the Peace Corps building. The air conditioning in the board room definitely helped, but the presenter was also engaging, funny, endearing, and attempted to get to know us before beginning.

The Peace Corps first began in Ghana in 1961, and the first volunteers were sent to Cameroon in 1963. Cameroon is one of the few countries were volunteers have been able to serve continuously since the beginning of the Peace Corps’ involvement in that country. There have been 3200 volunteers in Cameroon since 1963 (60,000 in Africa as a whole since 1961). There are currently 229 PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) serving in Cameroon, with 49 in training. The volunteers are 60% female and 40% male (somehow not surprising) and the average age is 27.

We got to meet several PCVs who were hanging around the office while we were there. The five we met all were working in the health sector, but volunteers can also work in education, youth development, environment, or community economic development. Of course one of the volunteers lives and works in Kenzou, in the East, where the organization that I interned for last semester does a lot of work. I know that we had been working with the PCVs there, and so I approached him afterwards and he mentioned that he speaks with the director – my boss, and fellow Macalester/SIT alum – quite often.

The last two organizations we visited were CED and RELUFA (Réseau de Lutte contre la Famine). CED is the Center for Environmental Development and these two organizations work hand in hand on environmental issues impacting Cameroonians. Their primary work is through advocacy as they struggle to improve policies and practices in the forestry sector. RELUFA’s director is an SIT: Cameroon alum who returned to the country to work. He has now been here for five years.

We spoke extensively with CED and RELUFA about the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project in Cameroon. Foreign direct investment, a popular form of international aid, does not always have the proposed effects. In this case, the pipeline – which travels more than 170 km through virgin forests – and much farther through forests and savanna, was a project organized by the World Bank, Exxon, and Chevron. It was supposed to bring development to Chad and Cameroon, but all of the profits of the pipeline have returned directly to the rich countries rather than benefiting the people whom the pipeline was supposed to help – and whom it inconveniences. Oil now sells for somewhere around $100 a barrel (not sure the exact current price) and for each barrel that is exported from Cameroon, the country receives 44¢. It is essentially criminal.

Our week of organization visits culminated in a debate regarding the pros and cons of development aid. I argued for the con side, which was not hard to do considering the understanding we now have of the negative effects of international development aid in Cameroon. It is hard to counter what would be better, however, but we are all somewhat in agreement with the arguments that Dambisa Moyo wrote about in her book Dead Aid, which is that by creating free trade zones and donating skills instead of products or money, the developed world has the potential to help the developing world without simultaneously

After a long week, however, with two eight-page papers due in addition to everything else, we were all ready for our trip to the beach this weekend.