What The Heck is Going On Out East?

The better question here is why am I in Bertoua, the capital of the Lom and Djerem department of Cameroon? I arrived on Tuesday, November 12, and will leave on Friday, December 7 – not that I’m counting or anything.

I am here for my ISP – Independent Study Project – a feature of all SIT programs where students spend the final month of the program engaged in an independent research project. At the end of the month we will (hopefully) emerge with a 30-45-page paper and present it in the form of a half hour presentation in front of families, professors, students, and advisors during our last week in Cameroon.

As I am fascinated by refugees, but am not allowed to study them as a result of their being considered a vulnerable population, it is necessary to enter through the backdoor, so I am studying Cameroonians working with the 86,000 Central African refugees based in the East and in the Adamaoua regions of Cameroon. There are many humanitarian organizations here including the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (including the local branch of the Cameroonian Red Cross), UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, Premier Urgence – Aide Medicale Internationale (PU-AMI, a French organization, based in Neuilly-sur-Seine), Plan International, Care International, AHA (African Humanitarian Assistance), Catholic Relief Services, and IRD (International Relief and Development, an American organization based in Arlington, VA), to name a few.

I have, as of now, conducted 14 interviews and five different organizations, looking at the experiences of Cameroonians working in this sector and what motivated them to choose this work. I have been feeling somewhat lost in my research, but had an epiphany on Sunday night after working nonstop and not leaving the house for 36 hours, so hopefully I will have an outline by the end of the week.

Bertoua is an interesting place. It is supposedly a city of 100,000, but with only one main street, that’s challenging to believe. It is hot here. Mid-day temperatures must be somewhere in the nineties and unfortunately there are essentially no taxis, and as we’re prohibited from taking moto-taxis by SIT, I am forced to walk everywhere. I wouldn’t mind this if it weren’t for the fact that by the time I walk a half hour (or an hour, to get to Premier Urgence) for an interview, I am soaked in sweat and it takes me a good fifteen to twenty minutes for the sweat to stop dripping down my face. This gets quite embarrassing when I’m attempting to ask informants questions. One even went so far as to get out a tissue and hand it to me. I have now begun carrying a bandana with me which I use to mop my face whenever necessary.

I have learned a lot from the people I have spoken with, and continue to be increasingly impressed with their resiliency and determination in this difficult work. I only hope that I will be able to express that admiration when documenting their stories and experiences in French in my paper. 

Peace Corps Thanksgiving

At the end of the week, DJ came from Batouri – a city Southeast of Bertoua – to conduct some interviews. This coincided nicely with Thanksgiving. It was even sweeter considering the fact that she is staying with a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Batouri and so was able to score us invitations to the Peace Corps Thanksgiving celebration to be held on Friday night in Bertoua.

Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, was the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps’ presence in Cameroon. There is a competition between Cameroon and Ghana for which is the country in which the Peace Corps has been present for the longest without interruption. I think Ghana is ahead by a year or so, but regardless, it is quite an honor for Cameroon. The country has seen 3,000 volunteers within the past 50 years, and 250 are currently serving in the country, demonstrating the Peace Corps’ continued popularity.

To celebrate the 50^th anniversary, the Peace Corps held a huge ceremony at the Palais de Congrès – right by my house in Yaoundé – that was partly presided over by Chantal Biya, Cameroon’s first lady. The PCVs recounted to us on Friday night how they got to shake Chantal’s hand. One of them eagerly told us that Chantal had told her “tu es belle.”

The Easties, as the PCVs based in Eastern Cameroon call themselves, all headed back to Bertoua, the regional base, for a Thanksgiving celebration post-ceremony. Well that’s not true. Many of them spent Thursday in Yaoundé, housed at American Embassy families where they enjoyed huge Thanksgiving meals and a 5k turkey trot race. (Supposedly there were only 20 participants. I don’t think a turkey trot means much to Cameroonians).

DJ and I arrived at what they call the “caz,” or the regional base around 5 on Friday evening. We were warmly welcomed by the volunteers and even met one volunteer’s mother and aunt who are visiting for the month. Their presence at our somewhat college-y feeling Thanksgiving ended up being well worth it as they brought cans of pumpkin and cranberry sauce, as well as duty-free wine and paper plates and napkins with turkeys on them.

The volunteers based in Kentzou – on the border with the CAR – had found a turkey in the market a week prior and had discussed the price with its owner. They ended up paying 37,000 F CFA ($74) for it, including the added thrill of traveling seven hours on public transportation to get to Bertoua as well as needed to Google how to kill and prepare a turkey. The guys were quite proud of their work, however.

The feast was immense and it really did have a Thanksgiving feel to it. It was just weird for me to be in a room of white people (that I didn’t know), listening to popular American music of all genres, gossiping, chatting, and playing Taboo. We also had M&Ms to snack on, courtesy of the PCV’s mom and aunt. The food was delicious and varied. There were incredible garlicky mashed potatoes, stuffing, salad, pasta salad, steamed green beans and carrots, as well as maybe the best pumpkin pie I have ever had. I don’t usually like pumpkin pie, but for some reason this was amazing. They had used these milk biscuits called Parle-G for the crust (mixed with a hearty amount of butter, of course). The PCVs confessed to us that there was over a kilo of butter used in the meal. Woah. But I think a majority of it was used on the turkey.

We all complained of stomachaches afterwards, but concluded that it must be as a result of eating real food – i.e. not oil-based items – for the first time in a long time. In a tryptophan trance, some amongst us attempted to get a group to go out to a club, but when it had still not happened by 10:30, we changed into pajamas and settled down to watch a movie.

Perhaps it is partly because I have been feeling homesick and ready to go home, perhaps because it was nice  to have my mind taken off of my ISP, or perhaps because I realized what a better position I am in as opposed to the volunteers who have 20 months left here in Cameroon (this is not to say I will never do the Peace Corps, but I am just ready to come home. I have also spent a total of 10 days in the States in the last 7 months), but it was one of the most memorable and most enjoyable Thanksgivings I have ever had. This may have had to do with the fact that there was no fighting between family members, a typical feature of our Thanksgiving celebrations. 

Heading East

Bertoua Family

Photo Shoot with the Kids

I have now been in Bertoua just under two weeks. There is a lot to report on, but I will start with an introduction to my host family. My Maman is named Jacquie Djoulde. She is somewhere between late forties and fifties – it’s so hard to tell in Cameroon. She has four grown children ranging in age from 23 to 29. They are all out of the house, but the son of the second daughter – who is currently pursuing her PhD – lives with Maman. He has lived here since a week after he was born. I guess the daughter – Cristal – had him while she was still an undergrad. Maman told me yesterday that when the little boy – who is exceptionally cute and smart and is named Sarkozy – arrived at the house, she was able to nurse him. Isn’t that incredible how women’s bodies are so attuned to mothering?

In addition to Sarko, who is four and a half but has already started kindergarten, there are two little girls who have been here since September. They are 5 and 6. Their names are Nabila and Hawa (Hawa being the Arabic version of Chava). They are the daughters of one of Maman’s little brothers. Their mother died in September so Maman took them in. African hospitality and the sense of familial responsibility is just incredible.

Maman’s family is huge. Her father had four or five wives, and Maman’s mother alone had ten children. And on her mother’s side it is even larger. Maman’s maternal grandmother was the Lamido (traditional leader) of Meiganga, a sizeable city in the Adamaoua region. He had over 200 children and a countless number of wives. Can you imagine what their family reunions are like? Maman’s actually heading there on Friday and Saturday for the burial of her uncle. I cannot imagine having 200 aunts and uncles (never mind their spouses). It makes counting Beilers look like a piece of cake!

The house is nice. It has some amenities that my house in Dschang did not, but I would say that those two are the most similar. The house has a good sized living room/dining room, three bedrooms, a kitchen (which is just used for storage as neither the sink nor the stove work), and a bathroom (a toilet that does not flush and a broken shower head so we just do bucket showers). But at least there is running water. The issue, however, is that because of the severity of the storms this rainy season, Maman’s roof was somewhat destroyed as were the ceilings in the house. Whenever it rains (which luckily is not often as we’re currently heading into the dry season) there is a nice shower in my room, but I have a bucket that lives in my entryway to catch the majority of the drips.

Maman told me that she is planning on fixing all of the problems in the house in January once the dry season is officially here because it will take approximately two or three days to redo the roof. She told me they are charging her 1,200,000 F CFA ($2400) for the work. That seems kind of expensive to me considering how much everything else costs in Cameroon. But strangely enough property and houses are expensive here. Yet one more contradiction.

Maman teaches at the elementary school where the kids go to school. They are all in the same class. It is hard for me to see the way children are raised here – the constant screaming, lack of dialogue, and threats thrown left and right. But the kids are so sweet so I find it hard to resist giving in to them.

Last night I was home alone with them and Hawa got angry at Nabila and Sarkozy and so would not eat dinner. Then the food was all gone and she told me she was hungry. I had my meal which I had not finished, but I eat different food than the kids do so I was not sure what to do. Finally I gave Hawa some of my meal, then of course the other kids wanted it too.

A similar thing happened today. I wanted to work in the house today – there is no such thing as a café here where one can work, and of course libraries don’t exist (the librarians stole all of the books so the library was forced to close) so I am forced to work in the house – and unfortunately the kids didn’t have school, because there was a seminar for the teachers, which Maman went to. They were wild. They have so much imagination, but no one ever talks to them in moderation – asking what they are doing, encouraging their playful banter – so when they have the house to themselves, it becomes mayhem. Hawa fell off of the armchair and hit her head on the concrete floor. Thank god she didn’t crack her skull open. There was an egg-sized bump on her forehead, but what was I supposed to do in a house without a refrigerator? I couldn’t even find a rag, so finally I grabbed a pair of underwear hanging in the shower and put some water on it – figuring it was the coldest thing I was going to find – and put it on her head. Today was somewhat like babysitting.

There is a 19 year-old boy who lives/works in the house – I think I’m actually in his bedroom so he’s living elsewhere for the time being. He helps out with the cooking and cleaning and usually prepares the kids something to eat. At 12:30 the kids complained that they were hungry, but I had nothing to give them and, it being Cameroon, there isn’t just food in the kitchen. Finally around 1 I called Maman at her seminar to ask what I should do. Somewhat frustrating, but I feel so bad getting angry at the kids – it’s not their fault.

Tonight when I returned from my interview and daily sweatbath that is Bertoua, there was of course more crying and destroying of things in the house. I helped them to fix some things, but really need to let them do it on their own as I retreat to my room and to my endless transcribing.

My Friend the Pastor

Okay – I need to write quickly before I forget all of this. Just had a chat with the Pastor who lives in our house. It began by my going outside to chat with Maman, and her telling the pastor about this incredible machine that you can hold in your hand and which can hold twelve books in it – namely the Kindle which I thoroughly explained to her last night while trying ot make conversation.

So I showed it to the pastor and he really couldn’t believe it. He asked if it were true that he could put many different versions of the Bible (not kidding) on one Kindle and then when he wanted the King James he could just choose that one, and then when he wanted the Old Testament, he could find that. He even asked me to explain how to skip chapters and started giving all these references of different Bible chapters he could skip between. He also talked about how Christians are amazing and will never stop inventing new marvels.

The conversation progressed from there. He asked me how I can manage to work all the time – tried to explain to him that I have three weeks left to finish a 30-45 page paper, do 15-20 interviews in French, then transcribe all of said interviews, and then write this paper in French. I also explained that I’m relatively free of work here, considering that at university I not only take four classes, but also work, volunteer, play on sports teams, have an internship, and babysit – I left out the part about running the grant for little girls to learn how to fix bicycles. I was worried that he’d say that was a sin against God or something.

The pastor progressed from there, asking me about other things. I finally explained that I am just tired. I said it’s hard to live with host families and to not be able to act as you would at your own house. He said he agreed with that – as he is also a guest in this house – and I added that there are also many cultural differneces that it is necessary to get used to. He laughed at that. I alternated from being embarrassed to being angry with him. He has never elft Cameroon. How does he know??

I spoke about how people approach food here. How I can’t just go into the kitchen and grab what I want toeat. I must wait for people to serve it to me and to bring me my food. I hate that. He laughed again. I decided to take a different tactic. I told him how different the ways of acting towards children are here than in the US. I am not used to parents hitting their children all of the time or of parents continually screaming at their kids, I explained to him. This, at last, he got. He told me he believes that the Bible tells us we should whip our children. Of course. I described to him something we have often talked about over the semester, how growing up in the US, it was a far greater punishment for our parents to tell us they were disappointed in us and to show that emotion than for them to hit us or yell at us. The quieter and more upset a parent got, the bigger an impact it had.

He asked, but isn’t it necessary to educate a child? I used all of the anthropological authority I could muster and explained that the very definition of “educating a child” is wholly different in the US than it is in Cameroon or in Africa. He asked me what it meant in the US. I talked about instilling a sense of respect and responsibility in children and of encouraging them to learn, to understand the world their own way, to make their own decisions. But, he pointed out, isn’t it awful for children to go out on the streets with their friends? They’ll get into drugs and start drinking right away! I laughed out loud. As I wrote in the post about the club, this is something I have noticed often in Cameroon. I explained to the pastor what my host father in Yaoundé says about hanging out with friends.

I described how much time I spent with friends in high school and how my parents so loved having my friends at the house. Finally I figured out how to explain it. I told him that in high school, when there were parties, and I knew there would be drinking, I would carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of going. Was it better to risk being driven home by someone who may be drunk, or better to risk being a social outcast because I hadn’t been at the party with all of the cool kids tat weekend? Educating a child in the US, I told him, is ensuring that that child has the capacity to make wise, rational, and careful decisions.

He laughed again. Let me ask you another question, he implored. Why do you have so many piercings? I know he’s an odd guy, but this was clearly getting ot be too much. We were sitting outside, it was already 8:30, I had conducted three interviews that day, walked for 2 hours, and was more than ready to head to bed. I gave a base explanation and purposely yawned.

He said he could see I was tired, but he said that he wanted me to ask him a question. I told him I didn’t have any. He said that was very hard to believe. I said to him, you’ve got to understand. All day long I sit and ask people questions (and what I didn’t add, but wanted to, is I pretend to be really interested in their responses, even when they have nothing to do with the question I ask or the research I’m conducting) and it was also at the time of night where my French begins to break down. He said he found it hard to believe that I didn’t have any. He added that he was going to be leaving in several days and it was necessary that I asked him at least one question before I left. Giving in, I thought for a few minutes.

I wanted to ask him a challenging question, but one that would also allow me to understand his uninhibited adoration of and belief in God. Without trying to make the question too much about the fact that I believe he is wasting his time all day speaking in tongues to God (this morning all I heard coming from his bedroom was guttural cries and “shabalaba barababa shabalababala shabala,” etc) and not doing things to help his country, I asked, in Cameroon, we see many problems – corruption, the fact that the average lifespan is 52 years – I understand that you believe it is very important to pray to God and to lead people in prayer, but what is the most important action one can take to begin to solve the problems of this country and to improve the quality of life here?

I hadn’t wanted to ask him a question in the first place, precisely because I knew he would give me some unbelievably farflung and indirect answer. And of course that’s precisely what he did. He began by analyzing my question, telling me why he thought I had asked that question (first he berates me to ask a question then proceeds to analyze why I chose that question!??? Just answer it!!!), then continued by telling me how he thought he should answer it, but how he was going to actually answer. “Vas-y,” I finally said, let’s go.

Rather than relaying the entirety of his long-winded response here, I will instead tell you the base point of his ten minute discourse. Belief in God is the utmost important thing. It is because people have given up believing in God and revering God that we have corruption, short life spans, and poverty. Really? I wanted to say incredulously, really?? But I let him keep going. He said that there are many people who believe in God, but it is necessary for them to have God speak to them, to listen to what God has to say.

I started to lose it. I wanted practical reasons. Lack of a belief in God is not a reason why a president has been in power for thirty years, why the average lifespan of that population has gone down in those thirty years, why unemployment continues to increase, as does the poverty level. I was smiling to myself, imagining how I would be able to portray this conversation to people afterwards, as he continued to theorize about the importance of credo and faith.

Finally he turned to me. When I found out you are Jewish, he said, and that you don’t believe in God, I knew you were just joking that you don’t believe in God. Of course you do. Look up (we lifted our eyes to the cloudy sky in which the moon was just partly peaking through). How can you not believe there’s a God? Start speaking! There’s someone up there who is listening to you. (I stayed quiet, as I really wanted to go to bed – well actually I really wanted to go write all of this down, and so I let him continue, squeezing my lips tightly to prevent my smile from peeking out).  I told you already, he added, you have too many things up here; he touched his head with both of his hands. It’s time for you to listen to your heart, let it speak, don’t listen to what’s up here, he reiterated, touching his head again.

Finally he concluded. Do you know what my greatest desire for you is? I could very well imagine what this greatest desire was, and I told him so. (I was imagining he just wanted me to believe in God). He said yes, my greatest for desire for you is that you discover how wonderful Jesus Christ is. I nearly lost my composure right there. Instead I nodded sagely and continued to look pensive. He told me, one day, you’re going to be walking down a path and you’re going to call me, and you’re going to say yes, now I know. Christ is marvelous.

I miss that feeling of unbridled joy, ticklish amusement at everything around us, the ability to lose complete control and laugh until it hurts. If I had been at home, this would have been one of those moments. But at last I turned to look at him, nodded seriously, stood up, and said, on verra, we’ll see. There are many mysteries. He liked that response, and sat there repeating how many mysteries there are in the world as I carried my stool (the one I was sitting on) back into the living room and said good night to my maman, observing the three little kids, playing with puzzles on the floor, untroubled by overly-zealous made-up religious leaders who try to convert them. I only hoped that in continuing with their love for learning and the delight they take in donning their uniforms each day and departing for school, they would learn the skills and the analytical powers that will be necessary in order to find what actually are the best solutions for improving the quality of life in Cameroon. A belief in God is reassuring to a certain extent, but if one is only projected to live until 52, it is going to be necessary to fit a lot of experiences, goals, and hopes into a short half a century. And perhaps some would argue that believing in God and spending time communicating with God is important, but if one never takes action or never rebels against the all-too-common universal apathy, the lifespan will continue to grow shorter, poverty will become even more widespread, half of Cameroon’s treasury will be wiped out in the next corruption scandal, and the next president will be in power for forty years.