Thanksgivings Galore and World AIDS Day

            For those of you that have been following along for the duration of this blog, many of the major events may begin to sound familiar. After all, we’ve officially entered our second year as PCVs and have the benefits that come along with having already played this game for one round. As such, I’ve been trying to think about ways that this past Thanksgiving differed from the preceding one, and hopefully I’ve found enough to keep this interesting.

            Some similarities first though: I was yet again impressed by the creativity and determination of fellow Volunteers to create a celebration that was reminiscent of home but that acknowledged the crazy lives we currently find ourselves living. And although my postmates (and Thanksgiving hosts 2013) Cynthia and Eric have since completed their services and left Cameroon, I celebrated Thanksgiving 2014 (at least part 1) in their former home, hosted by their successor, Lexi.

            This year I decided to attend a larger Peace Corps celebration in addition to the one at Lexi’s house. The town of Bafang in the West region is home to three Volunteers who live in adjacent houses, creating an ideal setup for a large gathering. Armed with a pumpkin pie (made from local squash and a crushed biscuit crust!), I set out early Saturday morning. Many PCVs are teachers at local schools, so “Bafangsgiving” was scheduled over the weekend to accommodate their schedules. There aren’t many meals that justify a six-hour trip (one way), but Bafangsgiving was certainly worth it. It was a great to reconnect with friends from stage, but it was equally fun to meet Volunteers from the newer stages that currently celebrating their first Thanksgiving in country. All in all, a great way to celebrate a holiday that could otherwise lend itself to homesickness.

`           My trip down to Bafangsgiving lined up perfectly with another obligation that I had in the West region last weekend: an HIV testing campaign on World AIDS Day in Dschang. Another Volunteer, Justin, put on the event and he asked for other Volunteers to come to the event and help out. HIV/AIDS is a serious problem here in Cameroon; somewhere between 1.5-2.5% of the population is currently infected. Several factors lead to the prevalence of HIV here: fidelity between partners is rather uncommon, condoms are subject to suspicion, and the power in relationships tends to be imbalanced. While passing out fliers before the event, I struck up a conversation with a moto boy who stopped to take one. He proudly told me that he had already been tested for HIV, so he already knew his status. But when I asked him if he had been sexually active since his last test, he looked at me in surprise. “But of course!” I encouraged him to come back when testing began.

            The main event of the campaign was free HIV testing, which included pre and post-test counseling. And although the testing was the main draw, PCVs and Cameroonian Volunteers capitalized on the captive audience to discuss related issues such as proper condom etiquette (both male and female!) and malaria/HIV co-infection. Justin received funding for this event, so there were hundreds (if not thousands) of condoms given away as well.

            Thankfully, the vast majority of HIV tests came back “unresponsive” (negative). As I tried to communicate to that moto boy at the beginning of the morning however, a negative result is hardly a free pass. Not only can someone’s status change with one sexual encounter, the tests we administered have a six-month window period before they can effectively detect the infection. So we weren’t really telling people if they had HIV at the moment, we were telling them if they had HIV as of six months ago. That’s a pretty scary thought, especially if the information is used as a justification for unsafe behavior.

            But at the end of the day, I felt like some good work had been done. I was proud of Justin for all of the hard work he had done, proud of the high turnout, and optimistic that many of the residents of Dschang were well aware of the existence of HIV, and hopefully steps they can take to avoid contracting it. But the most impressive part of the entire day in my opinion was the enthusiastic team of Cameroonians that Justin had found to help him put the event together. PCVs were outnumbered by Cameroonians by at least a factor of two, and they all seemed quite willing to spend a day in the service of their community. I’ve had a hard time finding motivated work counterparts over the course of the last year, and the sheer number of committed individuals that Justin brought together was truly impressive.

            And a final plug: on World AIDS Day I find it impossible not to think of a place that I’m continually astounded by and a collection of people that I aspire to be like. Camp AmeriKids has been serving the children of the HIV community in the New York region for the past 20 years now and has done some simply extraordinary things. It’s a place and community worth getting to know, and I would encourage you to check out their website at the very least. Maybe I’ll see some of you there in Summer 2016?

We Love it Because it's Ours...

           Every Peace Corps service is full of milestones. They come fast and loose at the beginning, when each completed month feels like a success in its own right. But now that my stagemates and I have been here a while, life comes at its own pace and has long since felt like business at usual. However, this past week marked an important milestone that felt significant for many reasons. A year ago this week my stagemates and I finished training, swore in as official Peace Corps Volunteers, and moved to our respective posts to commence our services.

            Every year, two separate groups of trainees come to country, one group in May, and one group in September. These groups are split by sector, meaning that they receive different trainings and are expected to perform different kinds of work. My sector, Agribusiness, arrives in Cameroon each September and swears-in by late November. And somehow, late November has come around again and we’ve officially been PCVs for an entire year.

            As exciting as it is to know that we’ve lasted a full year, this milestone isn’t marked by any actual events. Our Mid-Service Training won’t be until January to accommodate the plethora of Volunteers that schedule trips to see family this time of year, so we’re left celebrating this victory of sorts at our respective posts. Luckily, there are two other groups experiencing dramatic changes at the moment-the groups one year ahead and behind us. Our “sister stages”, if you will.

            The group of Volunteers that arrived a year before my group has all finished their Close-of Service (COS) procedures, and has headed off to whatever adventure  next awaits them. Some are traveling, some back home with family and friends, and others already in graduate school or gainfully employed. A few particularly impressive ones decided to continue this crazy adventure and stay for a third year-something my dad has repeatedly asked me not to even consider.  But whatever their post-PC plans are, I wish them all the best of luck-they’ll certainly be missed over here. 

            But as one group heads out, another one arrives, full of excitement, optimism, and a growing distaste for the local public transit system. A few current Volunteers and I met the new Northwest Volunteers this past Thursday on the exact one-year mark of our own swearing-in. Peace Corps Cameroon is nothing if not systematic. There are 15 new Volunteers in this region split between the Agribusiness and Health sectors, and they seem like a pretty solid bunch. Some of them will be replacing recently COSed Volunteers, while others will be opening new posts. They’ll be spending the next few weeks buying furniture, meeting their work counterparts, and establishing themselves as fixtures in their respective communities. It’s a lot to take on.

My new favorite "market mama"

            Those of you who know me (or have just been reading this blog long enough) won’t be surprised that I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to reflect on my own experience at this juncture. It was so easy to see myself and my stagemates reflected in the faces of this new group and think about both the experience of moving to post and amount of life that has passed since then. It’s truly been a year unlike I ever could have expected and (unsurprisingly) a year unlike any other thus far. Somewhere along the way I found myself familiar with and (relatively) comfortable in a country nearly as different from my own as I’m aware exists.  I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I’m thriving, but as the Cameroonian saying goes, “we are just managing”, and some days I do better than that. In the past year I’ve met some incredible Cameroonians, strengthened American friendships, travelled the country, received 11 stitches, and picked up a new hobby. I’ve seen both major beach towns, visited many of my friends’ posts, and gave my brother a limited tour of Cameroon. At some point in there I was able to establish some successful work partnerships and even manage a trip home. It’s been quite a year. 

My counterpart Max took me to visit the ranch that one
of his friends is currently building. It's quite an undertaking!

            But as proud of as I am of my individual accomplishments, I think my stage really shines when viewed for our collective efforts. In the past year we’ve lived all over the country and many members have been relocated due to the ongoing security situation here. Some say that Peace Corps is all about being flexible, and my friends have proved this again and again over the past year. Some projects work out, but many more flounder somewhere along the line. Counterparts skip meetings, the bureaucracy holds things up, and money mysteriously disappears. But despite the ongoing frustrations that accompany daily life here, many of my friends have accomplished some truly incredible things.

One built a mushroom training center in her village. Another organized and ran a local day camp and funded it entirely with local contributions. Yet another has effectively become a much-needed staff member at a small village health center. We’ve held dozens of training sessions, and probably logged hundreds of hours on the back of motorcycles. And I don’t even want to think about how many liters of palm oil or cubes of Maggi we’ve collectively consumed.   

A pushcart that only carry chocolate?
What's not to love?

            My friend Anna and I were talking today about some of our thoughts on Cameroon at this just-over halfway mark that we’re currently finding ourselves in. The conversation turned to some of the difficulties that come with living as a foreigner in a place such as Cameroon. She put it best: “we don’t always like it here, but we love it because it’s ours”. Our Peace Corps country, our home away from home.    

Two Years of Service, at Home or Overseas

My brother is set to graduate from college this year, and as such, he and all his friends are in the midst of preparing their plans for life after graduation. As a computer science major, my brother received an impressive offer relatively quickly and I’m beyond proud of him.  For those of us with a less obviously employable major, the post-college job search can be a little trickier. It wasn’t too long ago that my college friends and I found ourselves in a similar place; I remember the stress of that time well. One of the popular options for liberal arts graduates continues to be Teach For America (TFA), a program that matches enthusiastic and bright (but often uncertified) college grads with low-achieving schools in need of teachers.

            The critiques of TFA are fairly simple and well-established: how can we justify the placement of teachers that are theoretically the least qualified in areas of the country that need our best teachers the most? How can we make the case that enthusiasm and knowledge of a particular subject area are all that is necessary to be a competent teacher?

            I’m not yet sure where I come down in terms of efficacy of TFA. But what I’ve realized in the past few weeks is that many of the critiques of TFA apply equally to the Peace Corps, if not more so. TFA teachers receive five weeks of training before they begin their school years; PCVs receive 10 and must cover many more layers of information. Most of us find ourselves working in unfamiliar languages and all of us must tackle many layers of cultural barriers that constantly threaten our effectiveness. Very few PCVs come to country fully qualified for the jobs that they will perform, and it is effectively impossible to prepare for one’s service in advance. This is intentional; the most effective Volunteers take their cues from existing community needs and by working with established community leaders.

            I would be doing Peace Corps and TFA a disservice if I didn’t point out that both these organizations are motivated by good intentions. Most TFA teachers and Peace Corps Volunteers join their respective organizations out of a genuine desire to influence positive change and serve their new communities. But it does seem necessary to acknowledge the inherent sense of privilege woven into the fabric of these and similar organizations. That we’re somehow able to bypass the typical professional qualifications of those in our positions by merit of our college degrees and lofty ambitions.

            When I first arrived in Cameroon, I remember being shocked to learn that the Peace Corps had already been operating here for over 50 years. In the last year this has come to surprise me less and less. Development is a slow and frustrating process, and the work of American volunteers in two-year stints will never be enough to bring about substantial change. But one of the main strengths that the Peace Corps has over TFA is that in most cases, a PCV is an extra resource in a community, not a substitute for a more qualified one. 

My Peace Corps Day

When my friend Anna was in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago as winner of the “Blog it Home” contest, she met a fellow PCV who explained her idea of a “Peace Corps Day”: a day in which things go smoothly, your host country is endearing, and your projects run smoothly. I immediately disregarded it as a myth. How could all of those things possibly happen on a single day? As a disclaimer, many of my fellow stage-mates and I are in the midst of our mid-service crisis windows; we’ve been here a year, and have just over a year remaining to our 27 month commitments. 

But the more I actively think about it, the more often I find myself having days that can potentially pass as these allured PC Days. Some of the best advice we got during stage was to try to laugh off the frustrations that come along with daily life here. Some days this is easier than most, but I think most of my self-described Peace Corps Days have required this. But beyond an easygoing nature, I’ve put some thought into what goes into a given Peace Corps Day. And I think I finally realized it today. Although to be fair, I’ve take a bit of liberty with the definition. 

But first, a little backstory is necessary. Before I came to Cameroon, I was woefully ignorant about the differences between my hair and that of most black women. It actually took me several weeks here to realize that most Cameroonian women don’t show their hair at all-they instead get fake hair woven into their natural hair, and are able to change styles drastically. Believe me when I say that it makes remembering Cameroonian women quite difficult at first. As soon as I began to recognize them, their hairstyle drastically changes. This is all a long way of explaining that the hair maintenance needs of Cameroonian women are quite different from my own needs in this department. As such, I have struggled to identify a Cameroonian stylist able and willing to cut my hair. The motto “Being a PCV is all about being flexible” often comes into play-for the past year I’ve either had untrained (but bold) PCVs cut it, or simply let it do its thing. It’s been a year of exploration on that front.

That all changed today. I finally got around to exploring what looked (from the outside) like a legitimate hair salon. Over a year here has taught me to keep my expectations relatively low, which hopefully explain the amount of time it took me to finally investigate. But as soon as I walked in, I was immediately impressed. There was a waiting room, a row of sinks for washing hair, and even a separate room for massages, complete with a clean set of towels and other supplies. It was like I was back in Westchester. I quickly realized that the time had come for me to get a haircut, and the entire experience went better than I ever could have imagined. I should admit that I felt it necessary to ask the hairstylist if she felt comfortable cutting hair like mine, but to her credit she didn’t seem to be overly offended. She was more than competent, and I left the salon 4,000 CFA ($8) lighter but infinitely more optimistic about the day’s prospects.  

Which brings me to the larger point that I promise I’ve been building to: sometimes that’s all it takes. On the whole, today was a fairly average day, maybe not even so. The one work-related meeting I was hoping to have was rescheduled until tomorrow, and the rest of my day consisted of an impromptu lunch with a friend from stage and my first French lesson with my new teacher (which is a story for another day). But I found a place in Bamenda that makes getting a haircut both possible and pleasant, and they offer massages to boot. That certainly wasn’t included when I pictured my life here in Cameroon, nor was it what I considered an important aspect of development. But I’ve come to think of it as an important, if not essential part of the development process: a business staffed by highly educated, skilled, hard-working Cameroonians. And it’s certainly a business I’m more than happy to support.

Good thing I'm not in America these days:
just taking this one selfie was stressful enough...

So back to this idea of Peace Corps Days and how they come to be. I’ve come to believe that they don’t necessarily require any major work breakthroughs, cultural realizations, or care packages from home (although those are always appreciated!). The components of today’s PC Day: haircut breakthrough, finished my book, and set up two meetings for tomorrow. And for today, those are enough.   

Pigs and Tomatoes

It’s rare that I have a hard time coming up with material for my blog posts. For the most part, life here is filled with experiences that force me to actively think, critique, and offer my take on, which is where this blog comes in. But aside from a few chuckle-worthy moments, the past week or so has been just…typical. One of these moments came just earlier this evening, when I was making my frequent trek up the hill to my bean/beignet mama (see a much earlier post where we teamed up for an evening). Our transaction is well polished at this point; I ask for 100 francs of beans and 50 francs of beignets, and she “dashes” me an extra beignet, a small gift. I smiled, thanked her, and started back down the hill towards home when I became aware of a neighbor that I had never seen before: a full size pig. Of course, she wasn’t alone; a man who I presumed to be her owner accompanied her. But there was no leash or other restraint to be seen, and the pair was just walking past the beignet hut on their way to some unknown destination. The boys that hang out around the beignet hut didn’t even try to restrain their amusement over my surprise; I guess it isn’t every day that you see a giant pig startle the neighborhood American.

           

My daily commute: casual training for the Race of Hope.

Aside from my occasional run-ins with the local fauna (today’s pig encounter wasn’t even the first case this week!), life is solidly back to normal in my part of the world. Lacking any major cultural or social activities to report on (teaser: the Peace Corps social event of the season is coming up this weekend!) I’m going to do something I never do. I’m going to write about work. Other than Ebola, the main inquiries I received about my time in the Peace Corps while back home focused on the professional aspect of Peace Corps service, the supposed reason why we’re all here. And honestly, it wasn’t a question I really wanted to answer. I can’t speak for my fellow PCVs, but my work situation here has always been confusing at best, frustrating at worst. As I’ve come to learn, a PCV’s work projects tend to be primarily self-directed, with exceptions of course. I’ve met some incredible people in the Bamenda region over the past year, but I can admit to struggling when it comes to finding motivated and active work counterparts. Only now am I finally at a point in my service where I feel like I’ve identified people with whom I feel I can have a successful work relationship.

            Augustin approached me a few months ago at one of the Unity Farming meetings at which we were two of the only attendees. He told me he wanted to start commercial-scale tomato production, and asked if I would be able to offer any assistance. Over the next few weeks he told me a little more about his plans, and we met with two agricultural technicians together to discuss logistics. Throughout these meetings I realized how I felt my service could be productive in a city as developed and bustling as Bamenda: by connecting people to resources that are already existing but they were previously aware of. In Augustin’s case, that meant accompanying him to a seed distribution store, going through the seed catalog together, and discussing the merits of hybrid seeds. Honestly, I’ll never be the local expert on seed selection in the humid highland climate of Bamenda, but I can certainly be the link between a farmer and someone who is.

1,500 tomatoes look like many more in the field than they
did in the nursery!

            A week or so later, Augustin invited me to come up to his farm and see his tomato nursery. When I got up to his farm (a beautiful 10 minute motorcycle ride from my house) I was unimpressed. He had two raised trays of baby seedlings, and I doubted that he could possibly have the 1,500+ plants that he was aiming for. But last week I made a return visit, about five weeks after my original one, and was blown away. Two trays of seedlings had turned into a field and a half of closely spaced plants, and they were all meticulously staked and tended to. Augustin invited me to his vegetable group meeting a few days later, and I was impressed yet again. The group (Hidden Treasures Vegetable Farming Group) seems serious so far, and all the members are currently growing tomatoes and other crops. We discussed the necessity of a 2.5 million franc loan (about $5,000), and as far as I understood, the group decided that the timing wasn’t quite right. Next on the agenda is a practical demonstration of natural insecticides, and I’m optimistic that our partnership is headed in the right direction.