I suppose COS (our Close of Service conference) is sort of like prom for Peace Corps Volunteers. You’re not allowed to go until ‘graduation’ is imminent, it’s held at a fancy hotel, and most of the people who attend are hoping to get laid. The fact that we actually held an 80’s Themed Prom on the first night of the conference only corroborates my point. Although to be fair, unlike our COS conference, my actual prom didn’t include seminars on “Life After Peace Corps” and “Resume Writing”. Maybe I would have gotten more out of it if it had. Anyway, the point of my convoluted and completely inarticulate analogy is this: COS, after all the hype and anticipation, was over-rated. Likely explanations for this include:

• My general crankiness
• The inescapable presence of 35 Americans who are used to spitting fish bones on the ground trapped in one fancy hotel
• My UTI (TMI?)
• The distinct lack of cheese at the nightly buffets

I suppose what it really all comes down to is my tendency to be easily overwhelmed. This experience is almost over. The fact that I am mostly ready for it to be over doesn’t make that fact any less surprising, or any easier to handle. In a little over three months I’ll leave Cameroon. I will spend a month grazing my way across three European countries. And then I will go back to the America that I have missed/defended/criticized/failed completely to explain multiple times in any sort of realistic terms throughout the last 2 years. And I will have to get a job. But let’s not talk about that. COS wasn’t a total bust. The following made it mostly worthwhile:

• Pool!
• Buffets!
• Real mattress!
• Co-ed 80’s prom dress swim relay (Not officially sanctioned by the hotel folks, but perhaps one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed. The booze had nothing to do with the level of hilarity, I can assure you.)
• 80’s Prom Night (You would not believe the fashion gems you can find in the markets here. Of course the prom took place before the co-ed swim relay.)
• Final Cameroonian performance of ‘Bobby Glitter’, formerly ‘Bobby Trivia’, formerly ‘The Cane Rats’—stay tuned for news of the stateside reunion tour, 2013
• Perhaps the most exciting of all—finally getting my exit date. I have loved and hated and grown from and cherished this experience more than I can ever describe. But holy fucking hell. On December 18^th, 2009 it will be officially over! Ciao Cameroon. I’ll be that girl in Rome with the very wide eyes and the goat cheese on her face. That is, if you can see around the wine bottle.

But before that…

I want to finish a few things up around Fundong, and try to accomplish one last project. Recently the ABADU Children’s Library was able to move to a new building. I’ve been doing some work there over the last few months and it’s a lovely place. Kids are actually coming! But I want more of them to come. So I’m hoping to do the ‘World Map Project’. Have you heard of this? People all over the world organize community members to paint huge world maps, generally on the walls of schools. I want to do it here, both as a way of increasing public awareness of the library, and as a useful resource for students—and anyone else who wants to think about the world and their place in it. The project is relatively inexpensive—we can do it for about $250. That will buy the paint and brushes and the few other random supplies necessary. All the work will be done by local elementary and high school students, me, and one or two other Peace Corps Volunteers. We want to paint the week of Oct 26^th—30^th. Can you help?

If you’re willing, you can mail a check to fellow volunteer Jess’s mom in North Carolina by Oct 10^th. She’ll get the money to us. I’ll send out her address to the folks that I know read this blog. Anyone else who is willing to give a few bucks for the love of geography, please email me for the address! The folks at the library are really excited about this idea. And so am I. Thanks, y’all.

See you in four months!

I was expecting the weekend to be terrible. All the ingredients of a minor disaster where in there—a 72 hour long double date involving travel, a lake that ‘officially’ killed 1700 people in 1986, crashing a dinner party at the mayors house, a seemingly never ending quest for ‘bush mangos’, and the violent death of one unsuspecting snake. Maybe being in Cameroon for nearly two years has altered my definition of ‘a good time’. Or maybe the Irish have it right, and copious drinking really does make everything better. Whatever the reasons, Wum was great.

Andy and I were lucky enough to be invited on a weekend holiday with my counterpart, the ever-energetic Simon, and his slightly calmer wife Rose, by a man named Denis. He and I have been working on a water project, but didn’t really know each other that well, so it was pretty kind of him to invite us to his house.

Now, I’ve done a fair amount of traveling in this country, but always on a Peace Corps volunteer’s budget—which means public transportation, accommodations ranging from what could politely be called jungle chic to…what you can’t really politely call anything, and whatever food is to be found being grilled on the street. All of which is fine, and usually even fun, once you get beyond the sheer physical pain involved. But this weekend was different from the start. We were to be driven to Wum in a private car that did not appear to be held together by wire and sheer will, put up in some rich man’s temporarily empty mansion house, and fed to within an inch of our lives every 4 hours like clockwork. And if we weren’t eating, we were drinking. All for free. Peace Corps. It really is the toughest job you’ll ever love.

The whole reason we wanted to go to Wum in the first place was to see Lake Nyos. In 1986 there was a fluke natural disaster, where toxic gases were released from underneath the lake that killed pretty much everything living in the valley below. Sort of a macabre place to visit, but your tourism options are limited here. Twenty years later, however, the lake is peaceful and beautiful, and equipped with a handy phone to be used in case of emergencies to warn the nearby populations. Said phone is conveniently located just a short canoe ride away in the middle of the lake.

The phone is located right by that little spurt of water in the middle.

On the way back we randomly pulled over to the side of the road. Andy and I assumed we were going on a short jaunt to look at viewpoint of another lake. We assumed this because this is what we were told. ‘It’s about 1 km that way’, they said. Alright, fair enough. Looks like rain to me, but then lately it always looks like rain. And a kilometer, that’s nothing! Sometimes my naiveté borders on willful stupidity. So off we set to explore the bush/peoples farms/this stinking hole that turned out to be our actual goal:

Stinky Hole. WOW.

We hiked for an hour in the rain, destroying people’s corn crops and stopping repeatedly to wait for our driver Justin to climb just one more tree and pick just a few more mangoes, all to look at this smelly puddle for about 4 minutes. The best part is that the Cameroonians all LOVED IT. Andy and I felt slightly differently. And all of this was before we got lost on the way back to the car.

1 Kilometer

I'm having exactly as much fun as it looks.

Harvesting Mangoes

Stinky Hole. Again. WOW.

The aftermath of 1 kilometer + our glorious ride

After the lake we headed back to Wum, ate a huge lunch, saw a rich man’s lovely German-built home, drank his beer, drank more beer at a bar, crashed a dinner party at the mayors house where we drank more beer and ate another huge meal, headed back to Denis’s house, drank wine, ate dinner AGAIN, and finally headed back to the compound we were staying. At this point Andy saw a snake on the ground in front of us. ‘Look’ he said, ‘a snake’. I took this as a pretty normal reaction. ‘Wow’ I said, ‘cool’. Simon said ‘Aieeeie!!’ Then he picked up a rock, threw it at the snake, and shouted ‘I shot that snake! I have proven my manhood!’ Then we all went to bed.

Dead Snake

The next morning we all ate more food, went to church, went and looked at a waterfall, ate more food, and then headed back to Fundong. The road on the way back seemed much worse than it did on the way there—most likely because I was sober. This has taught me a valuable lesson, which I will be sure to apply at every available opportunity.

Simon, Rose, Waterfall, Kim

Thus ended our trip to Wum. To think it could have all gone so terribly wrong.

Simon, Rose, Denis, Rose, Andy, Small Child

Oh! And Jess and I killed this chicken:

Sir Chicken

Ashyia, Sir

I think we left him in the hot water a little too long...

...cause his wee little head came off.

Singeing the feathers

Jessica--avert your eyes

And believe it or not, it tasted amazing. Thank you, Sir.

Me!

Y’all, it’s been forever. I apologize to all 7 of my loyal readers. Life has been a bit frenzied for the last couple months, but the truth is I’ve just been procrastinating. I don’t think a Peace Corps volunteer exists who doesn’t actually ‘have time’ to write a blog post. And if there is, I don’t want to meet them. I have enough to feel in adequate about already. But, before we get into the (oh so attractive and enticing) world of my insecurities, lets talk about vacations!
T-Bone was here! For a glorious three weeks in December we saw the sights, drank the booze, and went to bed really early. On her last night here we drew up a very comprehensive list of highlights, but she took it with her and all I can remember are pirates and yoga in our underwear—and while both are entertaining, there was so much more! We had a wonderful time. Sometimes when you look forward to something for too long, the reality of the situation can’t quite live up to the anticipation you built up. I looked forward to this visit for over a year. And somehow it was better than I thought it would be. Thanks for coming lady. It means so much to me. And we had a hell of a good time.

Moving right along…I moved! Work wasn’t happening in Ngoulemakong. I was getting depressed. I was napping. A LOT. And after talking to my boss it was decided that I should try someplace else. Enter Simon Mbeng—Cameroonian counterpart extraordinaire. He is the director of the NGO I now work for—the Better Family Foundation. I’ve been here a few weeks now, and I’ve had somewhere to go nearly everyday. I’ve been to the office for the Delegate for Women’s Empowerment, read through all the files in the BFF office, sat in on a marriage counseling session conducted entirely in Pidgin, and shaken hands with approximately 8476 people. I’ll be working with women’s groups (there are groups here! Of people! Who work together!) and schools and with an orphanage. There is also a library where I’m hoping to start a story hour for kids. In short, things are going on here, and I get to join in. So as hard as it was to leave Ngoulemakong, I know I’ve made the right choice.

*     *     *

So now it’s been closer to two months. Projects are starting to take shape, and I’ve started taking lessons in Kom (the local language) and Pidgin. Kom is INCREDIBLY hard for me, as it includes so many sounds and tones I’m not used to hearing, let alone forming myself. A typical lesson involves about 2 hours of Leo (my ever so patient teacher) saying a word, and then me trying to approximate it, but really just sort of gurgling something like ‘ghueauuew?’  It always ends in a question mark because I know halfway through my pronunciation that my sounds have completely lost any resemblance to the word Leo had spoken 7 seconds before. He just shakes his head and repeats the word, and the process starts over again. Pidgin is going slightly better, and is, I have to say, much more fun for me. I go talk that Pidgin FINE, small time.

I’ve also been getting to know my neighbor kids. I found a DVD in Bamenda with lots of Disney movies on it, so one of their favorite things to do is come watch a cartoon in the afternoon. What they really wanted was a DVD full of Jackie Chan movies, but I just couldn’t bring myself to buy it. Maybe next time. They also enjoy drawing and coloring, and the walls in my spare room are now covered with art.

This month I’ll be working at the orphanage in town. The kids and I are going to plant a garden together, and then while it’s growing we can talk about good nutrition–why its important and how to achieve it. I wanted to find a way to let the kids take a bit of responsibility for their own health, any anyway playing in the dirt seems like more fun to me than going to a lecture every week. That said, I’m going to do my best to make my ‘health talks’ more entertaining than not (involving lots of games and moving around), and these kids do so much work throughout the course of their day that they may just end up hating me for adding to their lists of chores. Hopefully the whole plan doesn’t backfire and end up with me being run out of town by a bunch of angry adolescents wielding half grown carrots and ears of corn. Live and learn right? And anyway, I’ve been jogging of late, and doing yoga (thanks T-Bone!) so I’m pretty sure I could outrun them if I had too.

* This one goes out to my number 1 fan…Miss Jessica “Haricot Vert” Tharrington.

(Also, what follows will be schizophrenic. I apologize. But its this or nothing.)

Many, many things have happened in the last couple of weeks. I dressed up like a California Raisin.

I spent a week looking at things like this:

I had my fortune told by a man and his crab:

I watched Obama win:

I saw my new house, and it has a hot water heater. Hot water! Water that has been heated! Whenever I want it! People, I was just hoping for a toilet.

I went for a site visit to my new post. (It’s official! I’m moving from The Kong to The Dong in January!) I met my new co-workers, saw my new house, ate jama jama 87.4 times, and generally reveled in the fact that I was speaking English. (Jama jama is this leafy green veggie business you eat with fufu corn…I’m not sure that makes in any clearer…I’ll make T-Bone photograph it and tell you about it. It’s delicious.) I’ll be working with an NGO (rather than a government run health center) who’s mission is to improve the lives of families in the area. They do everything from marriage counseling to HIV trainings au village, but really the point is that they DO WORK. They are all incredibly motivated and made me feel very very welcome.

After site visit I said good-bye to Fundong until January and headed down to PCV Seth’s village (Mr. Sech to his villagers) for his Cultural Festival. I wish I could convey to you how hard this kid worked, and what an amazing event he pulled off. Actually, I can’t really. So here’s a bunch of photos…

Me with the Fon (a very high-up traditional leader in the NW province):

I drank palm wine at a death celebration with Andy and Megan:

I danced with my homies, right after a goat was slaughtered:

The whole idea of the festival was to exchange our cultures. The Americans generally made asses of themselves, while the Cameroonians looked on in…awe?

I have to run out and teach a group of American Boy Scouts about nutrition at my country directors house. I’m not sure why, exactly, but we’ve been promised rewards, so I’m all in.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

My first Cameroonian birthday has come and gone. I celebrated by giving a startlingly detailed presentation on the wonders of breastfeeding. Hello 28! Colostrum is very good for babies! Then I probably went home and napped. I say probably because I don’t actually remember, but a brief statistical analysis of the last 15 days leads me to assume—with some degree of certainty—that that is what happened. Not a bad day, all in all.

And now, September is approaching—FINALLY. Since May I feel like I’ve just been puttering around here (except ‘puttering’ sounds sort of fun, like there was a small, themed golf course involved, and let me assure you, that has not been the case), what with my plans for a Girls Group crashing to the ground in a staggering display of me not doing anything right, and then everyone I know leaving town for the summer. So I’ve been doing lots of planning, and since most of the work I tend to be interested in involves kids, most of my planning has revolved around September, and children actually being here.

* * *

Oh!! Sorry, I interrupt myself to bring you this completely ridiculous bulletin, which is neither all that timely, or—in all likelihood—that interesting to you, but get this!!! They destroyed my town! That’s right—destroyed! I woke up one Saturday morning a couple weeks ago to the sound of hammering, which is not all that strange, but then when I headed out on to the road to go the market, I realized they were using those hammers to destroy every single building on the main road in town! Which, quite frankly, is strange. I asked what was going on, and here is the answer…wait, are you ready for this mind-boggling feat of mental prowess? I don’t think you are…I was told that the people who paid for the road decided that there have been too many accidents lately (Ngoulemakong is situated right on the main highway between two big cities) so the only thing to do is to tear down every building and then re-construct them all about 1km down the road, near where the weekend market is held. So now all the buildings are off the road a little bit—and of course everyone has to walk an extra kilometer in order to buy ANYTHING. The best part is that now that there is no pesky town in the way, cars are flying by even faster. And the best part of that is that of course there are still tons of people walking along this road with the cars driving mush faster, because they all have to use it to go to their now annoyingly far away market. Now here is my question: why not just put in some speed bumps?

Meh. I suppose it’s a sign of how Cameroonian I’ve become that after about 2.7 minutes of being really upset at the injustice/stupidity/ridiculousness of it all, I heaved a sigh, mumbled “On va faire comment?” and kept walking. But crazy, no? My town is gone! Or, more accurately, my town is now annoyingly far away from my house.

* * *

Ok, back to September. I plan on teaching basic health lessons at the Ecole Maternel (which is basically a pre-school—3 yr olds! In smocks! Oh the nauseating cuteness of it all!), as well as possibly doing some sort of environmental education classes at the Elementary School. And, heaven help me, I’m going to try again with the Girls Group, and at the same time attempt to create a Peer Educators Group. (Ha! Even now, before I start all of this I’m laughing at my own bravado! Ha! Ha.) Legs and I are still working on various soy projects—and a couple new ones should be starting up with the next rainy season. We harvested our last crop! And then had a meeting where we made a meal using the very soy we grew to prepare a traditional Cameroonian meal! And it was good! So many exclamation points, but really—when success happens here, I am very excited about it.

I’m also finally starting on the project that I went to that workshop in Yaoundé for last month—it’s called FARN/G, which is some terribly complicated acronym in French (or really, it’s not so complicated, but I am terribly lazy, and really, does anyone out there care what the letters stand for? If so, let me know and I’ll look them up—I know the ‘F’ is for the word ‘Foyer’) but the basic idea is that once a month we take our pre-natal consultations to the village. Remember that project I described last time I wrote involving the training of mid-wives? Well, I’m sure that is a spectacular project as well. However—I will not be attempting it. Instead…FARN/G! We (we meaning me, and a couple of nurses from the hospital, as well as some community members from the village) will form a group of pregnant and nursing mothers, including one mother who has used ‘good’ health practices in the past (i.e. went to pre-natal consultations, spaced her births, breastfed, vaccinated her children, etc) to be a positive example. The ‘community health agent’ (fancy bureaucratic word for someone who actually lives in the village that we will train briefly in Maternal and Child Health) will give some sort of health message, and then we will all cook and eat a nutritionally balanced meal using food available in village. (When I say in village, in this case I actually mean village—about 6km off the road from Ngoulemakong in any direction pretty much leads you into the bush, and we’ve chosen to start the project in 2 villages each about 10km away.) The idea is that each woman pays only about 300 CFA (about 75 cents) for ingredients and to cover our transportation out there, rather than over 1000 CFA to pay for her own transport to and from the hospital. We can also involve the rest of the community, and the women get about 2 hours just to sit down, which here is quite a treat.

Whew, that was a very long story, but I’m really excited about the concept of doing work—especially work that might actually be sustainable. Everyone says that 1^st time volunteers (meaning people who don’t replace anyone, but open up their posts, like me) often don’t feel like their really doing anything until about a year in. Which, when you say that to a former administrative assistant from America, sounds freaking ludicrous. A year! What the hell are those people doing for a year before they get to work! Now that I have gone through that year, I can honestly say I have no idea what it is that I did, beyond the fact that I really was trying, and that I read a lot of books. But, here’s to being busy—which I vaguely remember to be a satisfying feeling.

Also, once it’s September, guess what will be only 3 months away? December!! Which means that I will see T-Bone in just over 3 months, and then Grandmaster Flash 2 months after that, and then The Lovely Miss Q and Beezzz 2 months after that! I don’t know if I can handle type of sustained bliss. But I’m damn well ready to try.

I’m finally headed back to post today after way too long in Yaounde, armed with lots of new work ideas and a free knitting pattern I printed off the internet for a small stuffed hippo. If that’s not a recipe for success, I don’t know what is. Leaving Yaounde means saying good-bye to hot showers and readily available cheese, but also to soul sucking traffic and my need to spend money on any thing that will hold still long enough for me to negotiate a price. So, all and all, it’s good to be headed back to village.

I’m realizing that summer is a weird time in village–just because so many people are gone. Ngoulemakong is a medium-sized town (about 4000 people in the village proper) but it’s located on a paved road between to big cities, so it is a curious mix of urban and rural. This means that in the summer people apparently leave both to go au village and to look for work in the bigger cities, pretty much leaving me, my neighbors cat, and the 7 drunk men who call me ‘ma cherie’  as the total remaining population. And that means…lots of time for planning! Or it probably should. I’m hoping to begin being incredibly successful (both as a volunteer and as a human) sometime in the next 4 1/2 months, so I should probably start planning for that now.

I also have a birthday coming up–which I was excited about, because Cameroonians can drink beer like nobody’s business–but did you know that here, it’s the Birthday Girl’s job to buy beers for everyone else? Quoi? What the coconut kind of rule is that? So August 5th will probably find me holed up in my house, hugging beer bottles to my chest and mumbling incoherently–only not in a depressing sort of way.

Ok–apparently 16 college students from Ohio are coming to the office in 30 min to hear our wise words on the Peace Corps, and how it can change your life, or at least your bathing habits. And then, its au revoir, big city, and bon soir Kim’s porch. (It’s been nearly ten months, and I’m still both unsure of how to say ‘porch’ in French, and too lazy to look it up–operation Successful Human, look out!)

I thought I should do a follow up to that last post, since it was written in May, posted in June, and now it’s July. Really, the fact that it took me a day to conceive of that post, and then a month and a half to get the internet to work remains a fairly good metaphor for my life here, but for some reason I find that less stressful now than I did a couple weeks ago.

So, I’ll start with work: first, I’ve given up on girls. I’m sure they’ll figure everything out on their own, and really, I haven’t been a ‘girl’ since 1993, so what the hell do I know about it at this point anyway? What am I going to tell them—that if their body suits perfectly match their scrunchies they might have a chance with Joey McIntyre?  Hardly the type of advice they need. So, I’ll leave the young girls of Ngoulemakong to their own devices—at least until September, when I’ll probably try again, because I’m just that naive. Or maybe just that stupid. Or, maybe just that bored. It’s hard to know at this point.

Second, I’ve replaced the hole left in my heart by adolescent females with soy. (That’s a really strange sentence. And yet, I totally mean it.) I’ve been working with another volunteer who lives about 45 kilometers from me, near our provincial capital of Ebolowa. Have I talked about her before? Maybe only in letters…anyway, I call her Legs, because it’s similar to her last name and because I like the idea of calling someone ‘Legs’. It makes me feel like I’m one of the cast members of Mash, although admittedly it doesn’t have quite the same ring as Hot Lips Houlihan.

Legs and I have been giving formations (you Anglophones out there would call them ‘presentations’ but that is so much less pretentious than ‘formation’) on the magic of soy to various groups, and then planting it wherever the people are willing. Mostly they are willing, because the truth is that soy is pretty magical. Anyone who comes to visit me will get to hear why. Ohh!! Talk about incentives! After we harvest (towards the end of this month) we will give another formation on how to incorporate soy into some typical Cameroonian meals. Then, because we live in a tropical paradise chock full of not one but two growing seasons, we’ll repeat the whole process in September. Hopefully we will have gained all sorts of soy ‘fans’ after they witness what is sure to be our glowing success with the first crop.

I will also be attending a workshop in Yaounde with one of the nurses at my hospital next month. (This will be just one in a string a multi-day meetings I will have the pleasure of taking part in, because even if the Peace Corps is run by hippies, they are the kind of hippies who work for the United States government, and therefore live and die by committee.) Elisabet (the nurse) and I will be going to a workshop to discuss ways to improve Maternal and Child Healthcare. Most women in my village don’t come to the hospital to give birth, for a variety of reasons. (The hospital is under staffed, the moto-ride can be expensive—can we just collectively take a second to ponder the idea of taking a moto to the hospital to give birth to another human?—patients are required to provide all their own meals and linens during their stay, and the birth itself is expensive for most women.) I haven’t been to the workshop yet, but as far as I know, it’s based on a program that already exists in Guinea, and the idea is to give training to the traditional midwives who live and work in village, as well as a place at the hospital where they can practice. This way the mothers are assured that there will be someone at the hospital, and that it will be someone they can trust. The program also includes price incentives for the mothers—each pre-natal consultation they come to gives them a certain amount of money off of the price of the birth. I’m pretty interested in the whole thing and I think it could be very beneficial in my village. I go the pre-natal consultations every Tuesday (where I do more formations on nutrition and AIDS testing, etc) and even though there are usually at least 15 women there every week (which means something like 60 women coming in every month) less then 10 women actually give birth at the hospital every month. Hopefully we can improve those numbers.

Two Weeks Later…

Ok, so it turns out the Maternal and Child Health thing was nothing like I described, mostly because I’m dumb. I described some other program, that, while marvelous, I will not be attempting. But, I will be attempting something, don’t you worry. Alas, I think I’m allergic to Yaounde (the moment I got here I caught a cold, which I am not allowed to complain about in a country where thousands of children are dying of malaria—although, can I just ask, who gets a cold in the tropics?) so I’m not going to describe the other program to you. A great loss to the blogoshpere, I know. 

Someday I will go back to my village and reading on my porch, but for now it’s all Sex and City marathons and meals composed entirely of cheese here in the The Roon. Sniff Sniff.

Well people world, I actually wrote this over a month ago, but various trips to the ‘cyber cafe’ all left me post-less and with a burning desire to stab something with a fork. So, even though there are updates I could share with you since I orginally wrote this, I have neither the will nor the patience to write them. But, here you go! This is what my life was like…in May!

Baby Steps <!– @page { size: 21cm 29.7cm; margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } –>

Baby Steps

WARNING: I would like to apologize in advance for my excessive use of CAPS LOCK, italics, underlining, and bold—AND OFTEN IN TANDEM—throughout the following narrative. It seems I am a little worked up—worked up enough that I feel its only fair to warn you that if I could make all your computers SHOUT THESE WORDS AT YOU I would. Thank you. Those of you who still want to may proceed…

* * *

It’s difficult to describe just how difficult I sometimes find the simplest things to be here. I’ve mentioned, for example, how excited I was to start a girls group. I pictured us sitting around together in my living room, chatting and sharing and generally being cozy, and also solving in an efficient but caring manner the gender crisis that is responsible for so much heartache on this vast continent. Alas, the group isn’t going as planned. It turns out my living room isn’t nearly cozy enough.

My plan was to set up meetings at the three ‘high schools’ in my village so I could explain my idea for the group and then hand out applications—that way I could be sure to have motivated members. Should be simple enough—I would just go to the schools and ask the principles to set up meetings for me. Anyone could handle that, right? Oh the naïveté of the volunteer who’s only been at post three and half months. Now that I’ve been here five whole months I know better. Turns out asking to have meetings arranged is, well, too much to ask. In spite of the fact that I went to each school and picked out dates with the principles to have the meetings, and then went and reminded all of them one week and then again two days before the ALREADY SCHEDULED meetings, they all pretty much managed to flake on me.

At the lycée the woman I was working with was just, you know, GIVING FINAL EXAMS when I showed up. Sweet. When she spotted me lurking casually outside the door of her classroom she came out and explained to me that she was busy. I can only assume that it was one of those surprise final exams the kids are so fond of today. She pointed to a large group of teenagers and said ‘They’re free right now. You can go talk to them’. Now, I have to ask you, dear reader—is there anything more terrifying than a large group of teenagers? The answer is no. Unless it is a large group of teenagers with machetes.

So I walked up to the large group of (machete wielding) teenagers and smiled my best smile and said ‘Hello! I’m here to discuss the idea of creating a girls group here in Ngoulemakong. We would work together to win the war against gender discrimination using a variety of entertaining games and activities designed to encourage critical thinking! Is anybody interested?’ Although in actuality I probably said something closer to ‘Hi! Me I call myself Kim! I work you! Girls strong! If one plays a game well poverty is bad and we will be together!’ I think I got my message across.

At the CETIC (still a high school, but more like a pre-vocational school, for the kid who wants to learn mechanics rather than German) they were apparently confused because I was silly enough to try to present a mind-boggling TWO projects during my initial conversation with the principle. Therefore when I showed up for the SCHEDULED meeting, there were about 11 kids in the room—three of whom were girls—all there to, apparently, hear me present my other project, the writing contest. The writing contest which I had just presented two days before, after which I reminded the principle I would be back in two days TO ANNOUNCE THE CREATION OF A GIRLS GROUP.

At the final school, a private Catholic school, there was just no one there. Let me be clear—there was not one person present on the entire campus at 9:30 on a Thursday morning. Which makes sense because I had just confirmed the date with the principle two days before—had in fact readjusted the time of the meeting because ‘more girls will be available if you come at 9:30’. Apparently by ‘more girls’ I was supposed to infer that the entire school would actually be shut down in preparation for the next weeks Independence Day fete and I should just not bother coming at all.

Perhaps you can sense my frustration. No…wait. CAN YOU SENSE IT NOW? I AM FRUSTRATED. A little. I think I’ve actually handed out 25 applications. I printed 125. We’ll see how many I actually get back.

But worry not, dear friends. It’s not all CAPS LOCK and italics here in The Kong. Because weeks ago, at the beginning of this whole mess process, I happened to be talking to my neighbors about my idea for starting a girls club. I was explaining, in my eloquent and—lets be honest—spectacularly sophisticated French, that I was going to go to the high schools to recruit interested girls and that I would have an application process and blah blah blah when suddenly my neighbor said ‘Great! What time should the girls come on Saturday?’ Excusez-moi? Ok then.

So the next Saturday afternoon eight eight year olds came to my house. I figured I could use them as sort of a practice group, until I could find some real girls.

I’m kidding.

Sort of.

We’ve had three meetings so far. I’m using a book (a fantastic, fantastic book) called Choose Your Future that is full of exercises designed to get girls thinking about themselves and each other and their lives in general. At the first meeting—which was total chaos, by the way—we each made nametags, which in addition to our names were supposed to have drawings symbolizing our good qualities. I made an example, where I drew books because I am smart, two people talking because I’m a good listener, and a pack of cigarettes because I can blow excellent smoke rings. I thought I had explained fairly well what I was after, but sadly my communication bubble was burst when the first girl got up and presented her tag. She had drawn a skirt. Because she likes skirts. Ok. Only the first meeting—surely things will get better.

At the second meeting I wimped out and had them draw maps of Ngoulemakong. Aside from the fact that I learned there are probably no budding cartographers in the group, it was a fairly uneventful afternoon.

Alas, at the 3^rd meeting I decided it was time to get back on the gender empowerment horse. What’s ironic is that, throughout the entire session, until the very end, I thought things were going pretty well—a remarkable improvement over the skirt incident anyway. I had them all imagine it was 15 years in the future (making them all about 23 years old), and then tell me what kinds of things they want to have accomplished in that time, and what they want their good memories to be. We made lists and talked about which of the things on the list were more likely to happen than the others, and what they could be doing now to help prepare for their futures. Like I said, I thought things were going well. Until the end of the session when, like any good facilitator, I asked them to tell me what they had learned.

Girl #1: “Science.”

Me: “Science?”

Girl #1: “Yes, like plants and animals and stuff.”

Me: “OK.” Pause. “Anyone else? ”

Girl #2: “I learned that no matter what you do you can’t change the world.”

So as you can see, difficult or not, I am single-handedly changing the world, one eight year old at a time. Stay tuned for meeting number four, where I will be letting them in on the amazing fact that if you jump up and down really fast after sex you can’t get pregnant.

This place is weird. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m the weirdo. Who knows? Regardless, the following are some scenes from my life here. In the context of America they are ridiculous. Here, it’s called Tuesday.

* * *

Dining Out.
The other morning I went to an omelet shack with Kate, another volunteer who lives just outside of Ebolowa, our provincial capital. She’s from Wisconsin, by the way. This becomes obvious immediately after talking to her, even when she’s not wearing her giant cheese-head hat. Anyway, omelet shacks. Kate and I went to Jackson’s (full name: Chez Jackson’s International Club—ha! Jealous?) because he makes the best spaghetti omelets in town. We each placed our order—une oeuf spaghetti, si vous plait—but Jackson’s new omelet intern told us he was out of spaghetti. Now in America, this would have been crushing news. Or actually, in America this probably wouldn’t have happened, because in America they worry about pesky little things like ‘customer service’ and generally order enough supplies to see themselves through the day. But whatever. I am not bitter, because I may not be in America, but Cameroon is not without its culinary advantages. Certainly in America you are not allowed to say ‘Mais la femme là-bas a le spaghetti. Il faut lui demander’. And certainly in America the omelet intern would not then go over to the lady next door and, USING HIS HANDS, take some of her spaghetti for us. Mmm, spaghetti omelets. You people don’t even know the value. (Grandmaster Flash, that was for you. Hi!)

* * *

Working Relationships.
After a pleasant brunch, Kate and I headed out to Mefoup, one of the villages outside of Ebolowa. (I like to think of them as suburbs because it’s hilarious but probably only to me because I live here but trust me—comic GOLD) We were supposed to give a presentation to a group of farmers on the magical properties of soy. Kate talks about the advantages for the soil and I talk about the nutritional benefits. For example, did you know that one kilo of soy has the same amount of protein as three kilo’s of beef? C’est incroyable, n’est pas? And let me tell you, harvesting soy is a lot less messy than butchering a cow. Although I’m sorry, I personally can’t get behind soymilk. Drinking beans freaks me out. I try not to judge others though. Where I come from that will get you kicked right out of the coffee house. Oh dear, it’s seems I have digressed. I’ll be honest—I can be a bit of a digresser as a rule. I apologize. Soy! Farmers! So we went, at 14:00, because that’s when Kate had set up the meeting for. Only when we got there, there was just one old woman on the porch. Because for some reason all the farmers thought we were going to be there in the morning, not in the afternoon. So they had all left hours ago. A disappointment, but truthfully—not an entirely unexpected one here in the Dirty South. Meetings rarely go as planned. But that is not the point of this rambling, practically incoherent story. The point of the story is this—we left that house with a live chicken in a bag! The woman had planned on preparing the chicken for the meeting, but since we so rudely showed up four hours late, she just kept it and gave it to us. Fan-fricking-tastic. I never received live poultry after meetings at my old job. One time I got this cute little notebook and pen set, but that was a total fluke.

* * *

Getting Rides. (Side note to all parents, and other people who are generally inclined towards worry—none of what follows is considered weird here, or dangerous. It is not hitchhiking, which I would never do because I’ve seen those movies and I know what happens to girls to hitchhike, the hussies. It is simply a system of transportation that involves flagging down random vehicles in order to convey oneself from one location to another. OK?)
We took a cab out to Mefoup (and by cab I mean one of the seemingly endless supply of Toyotas held together with wire and hope) so we needed to flag down another cab to get us back. Only there didn’t seem to be a lot of cabs going by, so we started walking in the direction of Ebolowa. Only it was the middle of the afternoon so it was REALLY FREAKING HOT. No worries. We’ll just walk up to a complete strangers house and ask to sit on their (mercifully shaded) porch for a bit. AND THIS WILL BE CONSIDERED PERFECTLY NORMAL. It will also be considered perfectly normal for two old women to come out of the house and stare at us. And I mean STARE. Hello! We are just a couple of zany American girls trying to stay out of the sun! Thank you for letting us sit on your porch, and no, we don’t mind at all if you stare at us in a what might be considered a maniacal manner without blinking for five minutes straight! Would you like to look at the live chicken we’ve got in this bag? At first, whenever we would hear a car approaching Hans (Kate’s co-worker—he often comes with us to translate our presentations into Bulu) would run out to the road and try to flag it down. Four cars passed him without stopping. So I tried. Four more cars passed! Of all the nerve! I mean honestly, sometimes when I’m just walking down the road cars will pull up alongside me randomly and try to convince me to get in. (Because in addition to being white, I also apparently appear both easy and stupid.) But now, in our moment of need, I can’t get a car to save my life. Clearly, this was a job for a blond. Sure enough, Kate was able to get a car to stop—although I was gratified that two passed her before one finally pulled over. The chicken in the bag went into the trunk (and by ‘trunk’ I mean the space under the hatchback door that didn’t latch) and we climbed into the car. Which at this point already held four other people. We drove about 50 feet, and then pulled over to pick up an old man and his 3 large bags of plantains. So now there were eight people, three bags of plantains, and one bag of (live) chicken in the car. Perhaps I’ve misled you into thinking we were in a station wagon with my mention of the hatchback. No, we were in something that resembled a Geo. Four people in the back, four people in the front. In Cameroon, not even the driver gets his own seat. And all the cars at stick-shifts. Ha-zing! I probably don’t need to mention that perceptions of personal space are a little different here. Mostly because the concept of personal space doesn’t exist. Bon voyage!

* * *

Lying.
I lie to people constantly, and for a variety of reasons. Sometimes its because a strange man is hitting on me and I think it prudent to mention that I already have two husbands, and that my father requires at least 15 goats for my dowry. Sometimes its because I don’t know how to say whatever it is that I actually want to say, so I just say something else. Something completely different and also maybe completely untrue but also more easily expressed in French. For instance, I might say that in America men do all the laundry and cooking. Technically, perhaps, this is not true. But it’s easier than explaining that in the States gender roles are quite blurred due to the dramatic social changes that took place in the 70s and 80s and as a result domestic chores are distributed based on a complex and continuous process of discussion and experimentation throughout the lifetime of any relationship. Also it blows their minds when I say it, and that is kind of fun. And finally, sometimes I end up lying completely by accident, because of my habit of just saying ‘oui’ whenever I don’t understand what is being said to me. I’m pretty sure I’ve told a number of people that they could come to my house for dinner, and not once did I actually mean it. It’s possible I’ve also accepted a number of marriage proposals, but even with the abundance of rock-hard abs in this country, I don’t actually plan on walking down the aisle with anyone. At least not at this point in time.

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