Sofia, Bulgaria

The train to Sofia began in Athens. It was a dumpy old train and I was in a 6 person cabin that allowed smoking. with a narrow area between the bunk beds, it seemed impossible that all the luggage was going to fit. Somehow the chubby man in his 70s that had a cigarette in his mouth for the majority of our 14 hour ride packed it all in. Getting out was not easy, but I made my way out to change and brush my teeth before a nice, smokey, sleep. The older gentleman opted for a more simpler option of changing right there in the room–bending over with his rear in my bunk bed. It was a pleasant start to my journey. Escaping to the washroom, I found a disgusting, urine smelling toilet and a sink that hadn’t drained in days. I quickly peed and decided to change in the next room of just a sink. After using a decent amount of hand sanitizer, I felt good enough to sleep. Thank god I had been up since mom left me that morning at 3 am; I was exhausted and fell asleep easily to the rocking and bumping of the train.

I woke up about 3 hours from Sofia to the smell and sound of farts coming from the guy above me. Although gross, I would have preferred it to the smoke that quickly filled our room half an hour later. I decided to get up and wash up. I was not very interested in returning to that lovely washroom I had seen the night before–knowing that it would be that much worse this morning. So, I wandered up to some of the other classes. Our cabin was the very last one on the train, so I had a long way to go before any of the rooms improved. But improve they did! Suddenly the ripped bunks and smokey halls ways turned into pristine white rooms with sturdier beds and enough room for luggage. I found the first toilet and it was much better. Still a little smelly and no paper towel or anything, it was just perfect.

When we arrived in Sofia, I booked my next reservation to Belgrade, Serbia. You couldn’t book all the way through to Zagreb, Croatia. But the woman assured me that making the 30 minute layover onto the next train would be no problem without a reservation. I spent the day wandering in Sofia, Bulgaria. I had read some tips and things to do in Sofia prior to arriving; however, mostly the travel sites said that Sofia was an ugly, dirty town that was in need of a massive renovation. There were however, some beautiful churches, mosques and banks to see. Unfortunately, the reviews were mostly right. Amid sex shops, abandoned buildings, cell phone stores, and random casinos you could find some beautiful, historic buildings. For the most part, Sofia was fairly ugly and seedy. Greasy and sketchy people wandered the streets leering at you as you aimlessly wander by. After about 4 hours of this I decided to find a cafe, have some food and water and catch up on a few emails.

The train from Sofia to Belgrade was much nicer. I shared it with just one other woman and it was non smoking. The customs control and passport control came to our room about five times. It was pretty unnecessary. One of them wanted to search my bag, but had trouble lifting in and I told him it was just clothes. He decided that was good enough and gave me a stern look before wandering down the hallway leaving our door open, yet again. The paper thin walls introduced us to some rowdy aussies that were heading to Zagreb at 5 am the next morning on the same train I intended to catch. After a decent sleep, we were waiting to get off the train and chatted about how we were getting to Zagreb and if we needed a reservation. We decided to head to the reservation desk in the station and check it out.

The woman at the desk informed us that we had to go to another station for the train, but the bus outside would take us. With 3 minutes until the departure time of our train, we got off the bus in the middle of nowhere and climbed the stairs to the track. Below the stairs was endless amounts of garbage and clothing. There were a couple homeless searching through the trash. The next train wasn’t till 10:30 and I did not want to spend 4 hours in this neighbourhood. We got to the top and found the train that goes to Munich…with a stop in Zagreb. Phew. And we were off. It has been a very long journey to Croatia and I cannot wait to finally get there, have a shower, and eat some food. The next two weeks should be filled with picturesque buildings, beautiful scenery, great hiking, and some history–I hope. We will see what happens.

A Weekend in Foumban

I’m sorry it has taken me so long to put this update up, but as my time with GHAPE is coming to a close, we are working really hard to get everything done. This week has been another exhausting and fulfilling week. But you’ll have to wait till the next post to hear about all that.

Last weekend, a bunch of us went to Foumban, a town about 3 hours from Bamenda in the Francophone West Province. As soon as we got to Bafoussam, a larger town near Foumban where we were staying, there were bakeries, croissants and baguettes everywhere. Even if they weren’t speaking French you would know you had crossed into a new province. I will not get into all the details about the difficulties I faced getting a bus, or the lovely new American friends we met who really seemed to be trying to make a difference here, as those negative stories detract from the excitement and interesting cultural festival we experienced in Foumban.

Here is a short history of Foumban and the surrounding area of Bamoun (stolen from Wikipedia)

History of Foumban and Bamoun:

During the 18th century, the kingdom faced the threat of invasion from the north by Fulani and Chamba warriors. By the end of the century, Bamum had perhaps 10,000-12,000 within its domain. The History and Customs of the Bamum list ten kings between the founder and Kuotu. The nine kings that followed Nchare are not remembered for anything special. They were not conquerors, and territorial expansion did not occur until the reign of the tenth Mbum in the early 19th century. Mbum Mbuembue. King Mbuembue was the first ruler to expand the Bamun Kingdom. He was also famous for repelling an attack by the Fulani in the early 19th century. Mfon Mbuembue also took steps to fortify the capital with the construction of a trench. He was the founder of the amblem of the Bamun people, characteristic of their capabilities to fight in two fronts and win both at the same time. He represented the Bamun people by a snake with two heads also known as “Ngnwe peh tu”.

German Colonization

The Bamun kingdom voluntarily became part of German Kamerun in 1884 during the reign of Mfon Nsangou. During his reign, Bamum fought a war with the Nso. By the end of the conflict, the king was killed, and his head was carried off by the Nso. Immediately after, one of the king’s wives, Njapdunke, took over the kingdom’s government with her lover Gbetnkom Ndo`mbue. We have to remember that this Gbetnkom above was not the Mfon as there was another Gbetnkom who was the son of Mfon Mbuembue the great conqueror. In fact after the death of Mfon Mbuembue, there was no male heir to inherit his trone; so Njapdunke took over for sometime, but fail to represent the king. She was then removed and it was thought that one of the king’s son Mbetnkom was at a village called “Massagham” for treatment. he was then brought back and became Mfon Mbetnkom. Mbetnkom was a short man, a dictator and use to order to shop off the legs of those who were taller than him. A practice that finally cost his life during a hunting training session. After his death, his little son, Mbienkuo succeded him yet was too young to rule. It became a habit for him to wanting to know who was his father amongst the people who were taking guards behind him. His court led by Ngouoh became doubful and thought the boy may eventually learn that they are the people who killed his father. Mfon Mbienkuo was carried away and killed in a place called nowadays “Mfe shut Mfon mbwere”. Now the trone remained vacant for sometime and Ngouoh, the leader of the court ultimately became Mfon, but unfortunately was not a decendant of king Mbuembue. He was a Bamileke slave. Ngouoh was not welcome by his subjects and decided to move the palace to his own location. Mfon Ngouoh was later chased away after a fierce fight between him and the followers of Mbuembue. Nsangou, a grand son of Mbuembue became king.

Njoya the Great

Eventually King Njoya, son of the slain king, came to power. He was one of Bamum’s most prolific rulers and ruled from approximately 1883 to 1931. He voluntarily put his kingdom under the protection of German colonial power and was responsible for modernizing certain elements of Mbum society. In 1897, Njoya and his court converted to Islam, a decision that would affect Bamun culture long after Njoyua’s death. He invented the Shumom script so that his people would be able to record Bamum’s history. In 1910, Njoya had a school constructed where the script was taught. Germans were allowed to set up the Basel Mission at the capital of and construction was undertaken to build a temple. A school was also built, staffed by missionaries whom taught in German and the native language. The Germans also introduced new housing construction techniques while settling among the kingdom’s inhabitants as farmers, traders and educators. King Njoya remained loyal to his German overlords who in turn respected his rights as king and consulted him on colonial business. Another important element in the kingdom’s history during the period under German protection was the introduction of sweet potatoes, macabo and other new foods, which helped the kingdom become more prosperous than ever. The Mbum were able to trade outside their traditional borders, and the income greatly improved the standard of living. King Njoya was greatly influenced by the missionaries who denounced idols, human sacrifice and polygamy. In response, Njoya cut back on royal excesses. Nobles were allowed to marry slaves and those of the non-landed servile class. The king, however, remained unconverted to Christianity. In fact, he merged some of the tenents of Christianity and Islam with traditional beliefs to create an altogether new religion more palatable to his subjects. In 1906, Germany sent an expeditionary force against the Nso backed up by King Njoya’s warriors. After the victory, the force was able to reclaim the head of Njoya’s father, which was crucial for legitimizing the king. From then on, the bond between Bamum and Germany was unbreakable. When Germany was besieged on all sides during the first World War, Bamun steadfastly supported them until the bitter end when they came under the more repressive rule of the French.

French Colonization

In 1918, Germany’s colonial possessions were divided up between France and Great Britain. The kingdom of Bamoun thus fell under repressive French rule. In 1923, Njoya was deposed, and his script was banned by the French

My blog continues here:

After arriving in Foumban, we were unsure where to go exactly, so we followed the crowds of hundreds of people walking up and down the main street. Along the side of the main road were small craft shops and meeting huts for different tribes and groups. Once we arrived at the top of the road, we saw the stadium was off to the right of us; there was a walkway blocked off—presumably for the sultan (which apparently is different from the Fon), and the parade of people to come through. We tried to make our way to the front on one side of the blocked off walkway. As we pushed further up we began to realize we weren’t going to get too far. People around us started telling us to go around and seemed to be pointing to the other side of the walkway. We decided to walk around, but when we went to cross the walkway, we were ushered through the blocked off area.

They must have thought we were important for some reason, because we were gradually ushered towards the front and finally reached the entrance into the stadium where guards and security blocked the gates and held people back. After a great deal of confusion, we realised the security was ushering us into the stadium to sit on the ground in front to watch the ceremony. There were five of us and we tried to casually and quietly sneak in while the sultan/fon was speaking without too much disturbance. As soon as we sat down, the group behind us started yelling at us in French and other languages. So we got up and began to move further into the stadium center, attempting again to sit in front of a group that this time was much further back. I am quite sure that we were not blocking their view; however, within seconds we were being chased by a tribal wacko that had a whip and a stick. He was whipping Kat and hitting me with his stick. At first I was scared and was on my feet rushing Heather and everyone away, but as soon as I realized what was going on, I couldn’t stop laughing. Kat and I were giggling so hard when we sat down in front of some German tourist looking group. They yelled at us too, but they didn’t have whips or sticks, so we decided to just stay low there.

The Sultan was giving his speech on what he had done in the last two years and what people could expect to see in the next two. None of us were really listening or following, but we did catch the Obama reference as he shouted “Yes We Can!” haha. After his speech we were able to see some of the performances. I will try to get the videos up soon. Some of the tribes, like one with large baskets on their backs, just walked and sang solemnly through the crowd. Others were a bit more vibrant. One such tribe put on a short fight with machetes followed by guns. After seeing the small lead bullets they use for Cry Dies, I was somewhat worried being twenty feet away from all these shots going off. I started getting a little worried about the bullets coming down just as a man right in front of us fell to the ground and began rolling while still shooting his gun. I jumped, through my hands over my head and even closed my eyes I think. The video I was making at the time is quite funny, it really looks like a BBC correspondent film from some war zone—no, just a cultural celebration where some white girl freaked out. It was pretty funny though.

We spent the remainder of the day searching for deals on masks and other handicrafts. At one point we were in this handicraft center with all these small little shops. There was a boy standing in the center of the courtyard and whenever someone came out and couldn’t find the others we would just ask him “ou est les blanches?” and he would point to a shop where the whitemen were attempting to strike a deal. As Marcy and I were waiting for Kat and Heather, we started talking to a couple of the shop workers. One of them was willing to trade his sweet hat with random little beaded braids coming out of it for Marcy’s sunglasses—would have been a great trade in my eyes. Haha. For Marcy of course. Another guy was trying to buy my glasses off of me and using all the whitemen tactics to lower prices as I used all his phrases to keep them up—telling him I had to travel, myself, to the village to get these items. He thought it was pretty funny.

We came back to Bafoussam that night and had a cosy sleep with 4 of us in one bed (again, pictures and videos to come soon). Even though we were all exhausted, Marcy and I didn’t sleep too well. It may have had something to do with the fact that there was a nightclub across the street playing music till past 5 am. The trip back from Bafoussam was quite quick and we stopped at a waterfall on the way to take some photos.

Once we arrived back in Bamenda, Kat, Heather and I went to their place to hang out and eat some lunch. We went with their professor Lynn to visit the home of a woman whose mother had just suffered a stroke. Kat and Heather work as Occupational Therapists at the hospital in Bafut. After that, we went to a “Born House”—essentially a baby shower. The father was blind, as were many of the guests. We tried to leave early so we could meet Loveline, who was preparing achu for dinner for us. Unfortunately, the wife would not allow us to leave without eating. She literally shook her finger at us and gave us a guilt/death stare. So we asked if we could share a plate (which as expected was enough food for a family of 5). We attempted to eat as much as we could while drinking our orange fantas. After finishing eating and presenting our gift to the household (a weird little pack of plastic bottles and bib—Heather is to blame for that one…), we rushed to catch a bike to get to my house to meet Loveline.

We were late for dinner, but food was about the last thing I wanted. We three hopped on a bike, receiving more attention than usual. There were bikes lined up along the road at the junction, and we randomly chose one guy who seemed overly eager and ready to go. He cleaned his bike for us and we all hopped on with me on the back. After I was on, one of his friends decided he should clean my feet and legs for some reason as well. So, I had a nice brush down on my legs and we were off.

He was driving ridiculously fast and we were all doing the nervous giggle you do when you just aren’t sure what to say. So Kat started asking him to slow down, but since she was laughing at the time, I think he thought she was joking. Then she started asking him if he has any children, and how old they are. Turns out he has a six year old daughter. So Kat asked if he ever drives with her on the bike, the response was of course, yes. So she then asked while all of continued to laugh, if he drives this fast with her on the bike. “Of course”, he responded and sped up down my dirt road. I was hanging on for dear life on the metal grate at the back of the bike. We were all quite out of it when we got off the bike and ran down the path to my house.

Loveline was already waiting with her achu and yellow soup. Achu is made from pounded cocoyams (taro root), and other fun things like limestone and ash. The soup is made from oil, spices, and limestone. About half way through eating your mouth starts to go a bit numb and water from the limestone in it; it’s quite strange. Definitely not my favourite Cameroonian dish, but everyone here loves it.

After the three of us ate as much as we could without offending Loveline—we were all still so full, we chatted for a bit about the weekend and showed her some videos. After she left, Heather and I started talking about how ill we felt. I was sick all night and Monday, and they were both sick till Tuesday. Couldn’t bring myself to tell Loveline, I told her they had drank my water and gotten sick and pretended I was fine. The worst was she kept asking me how much we liked her achu and I had to keep telling her it was the best achu I had ever had. Ah well, made her happy to hear it.

Ok, will add photos and videos soon.

Wednesday saves the week

Wednesday morning was a blast. I had to get up at 5 and get ready to go into the field alone. It was my first time to go alone, but I had set up a meeting with some of the clients from one of the centers in town so I could do a few extra interviews. I had never been to the center, so when I reached the junction the center was at I had to start asking for directions. The first woman I asked was carrying a bucket of popoffs (fried dough balls) and was on her way to the market. She grabbed my hand (holding hands is very common here), and led me to the bottom of a hill. She spoke to a friend of hers who apparently agreed to show me up the next leg of the trip and placed my hand inside my new tour guide’s hand. We walked up the hill and reached the local water tap. Children were lined up with large buckets waiting to bring back water for their family to prepare for the day. There, I was given a new tour guide—a girl around 10 years old with what had to be 20 litres of water on her head. She didn’t spill a drop as we walked quickly to the center. In front of the center waited 10 eager and excited clients, all of whom rushed over to greet me.

After conducting my interviews, I came outside to find two of the members waiting for me. One was the center chief of this particular center. They were standing with the neighbours and called me over. The mama of the home was drying out her fried grasshoppers and when she saw me coming immediately yelled at one of the children to get a ‘big paper’ (plastic bag). She filled a fairly large bag with grasshoppers and I thanked her. We continued down the hill. We walked through some compounds (essentially like someone’s back yard), to get to the Emelda’s shop. On the way, one of the neighbours was cooking her grasshoppers still. She went to talk to Emelda and asked if I could watch them. Of course, I immediately pulled out my camera and started taking a video, letting a couple jump out. Abraham, the center chief, assured me that would have happened even if I was stirring them properly.

At Emelda’s shop, or ‘off license’ which is similar to a bar, she sells beer, wine, cold drinks, and some food items. She wanted me to ’snap her’ (take her photo there), but she had had to hide all of her drink items off the shelves yesterday when the tax collectors came by; she didn’t have enough to pay taxes this month and knew they wouldn’t be going to help her people anyway. So, she decided to hide her items and pretend she had been doing very poorly in business. Next we went to Abraham’s farm. Emelda helps Abraham on the farm as well. The farm was huge, he was growing cabbage, tomato, sugar cane, njama njama (leafy green vegetable), pepper (jalapenoish), fish (in a fish pond), you name it, he had it. They had created an irrigation system by digging ditches through their farm land starting at the top of the hill (the farm was all on a downward slope). The ditches crossed back and forth over the approximately 5 hectares of land, finally ending in the fish pond. It was pretty muddy and slippery, so it was suggested I leave my sandals at the top. As we were walking around, the sun was starting to get pretty hot; Emelda had an extra head scarf and tied it on my head to protect me. Abraham decided to cut down some sugar cane stalks so I could take them back to the office. He cut down about 6 or 7 huge sticks and tied them together with grasses. They were about 4 to 5 feet long; they came up to about my chin. We left the farm and made our way over to another friend of Abraham’s who also helped on the farm.

He explained to me that here in Cameroon, you should not try to do it on your own. Your business and life will fail. He says life is too hard here to try it alone, you need the support of others; even just to cover you when you have malaria or typhoid, you need support. That’s why he likes being with GHAPE, they all support each other. All of them work together to make their lives better. Not a bad way to approach a problem. This other friend had three large pigs that had all just recently had piglets. There were quite a few of them all trying to jump out as soon as I looked in. I think they thought I was bringing them food or that the camera was food, because after a couple minutes they all became fairly disinterested in me. We walked up to the road so I could catch an okada (local term for motorbike here) back to the office. I still wasn’t wearing shoes (I know, could have caught all kinds of worms and bugs through my feet) and was wearing Emelda’s head scarf still (she said she would get it from the office later—it was too dusty to take an okada without it. I was now also carrying 7 or so long stalks of sugar cane over my shoulder and snacking on grasshoppers out of a big garbage bag; needless to say, I felt very Cameroonian. As I hopped on the bike and held the sugar cane with one hand, I rested my grasshoppers in my lap and pulled out my cell phone with the other hand to send out a few messages. It was only about half way through the ride home that I thought, “what am I doing? Hold on to the bike, put your grasshoppers and your cell phone away! What are you thinking?” Everyone was really happy to see me come back to the office with gifts of grasshoppers and sugar cane. They all went outside and began chopping off pieces of about one foot for each person. I was lucky enough to get my own stalk!

I have run out of time here, and have to get ready for Foumban this weekend. Foumban is about 4 hours outside of Bamenda and apparently has a huge cultural festival every two years. I will add some more blogs when I get back from that. However, I will say that this week, I successfully created the first GHAPE website! It was a bit over my head, but with a lot of trial and error it is up and running! Check it out and keep in mind there are still a lot of little details I’m still fixing up. www.ghape.org . I also added new photos to jenmcq.smugmug.com

If only the Fon had nachos…

Sunday morning I left the house quite early to meet Heather and Kat so we could go to Pinyin. I was told by people in the office that it was at most a 20 minute drive away. On my way to meet them, I ran into Celestine on his bike. He gave me a ride to the roundabout we were meeting at and told me he’d take us to the motor park. If you want to go outside of Bamenda, you have to go to the appropriate “Motor Park” to find the right taxi. They are similar to bus stops, but usually only have run down yellow sedans. To get to Pinyin we had to go to the Bali motor park on the west side of town. The car was going to cost us 1200 CFA each one way (7200 CFA roundtrip for the three of us, which is around $14.50). Ok, not a huge amount, but in terms of costs here, it seemed really steep. So we called a driver who Heather and Kat had met and asked him how much to take us; we figured it would be about the same price but quicker and less crammed. I don’t think he would go below 10,000 or something, so we decided it would be too expensive for a half day trip. The night before the owner of the Royal Restaurant, Awah, had told me to check out Chomba, so I asked how much to there. He said 300 CFA one way (about 60 cents). So we decided to go check it out.

Awah told me to go to the Fon’s palace to ask them to provide us with a guide to show us where to find the cave and waterfall. An older man came out and agreed to show us, but warned us it was quite a hike. We called him Pa. He shook his head when he saw Kat and my flipflops—apparently we were not dressed appropriately for the hike. Heather immediately began cursing me and my physical activities that I always drag her into; ever since Station Mountain she won’t do anything that sounds physically challenging. This time I just lucked out; I had no idea we were going to get to go hiking.

The first stop on our little walk was the shrine for the ancestors in Chomba. There was a long wall made from grasses weaved together with a small entry way in the center with dried grasses hanging over it. Only some of the distinguished elders in the community can enter the area behind the wall, where the ancestors live. When sacrifices are made to the ancestors, the animals (usually fowls and goats) are put on the other side of the wall for the ancestors to take. Apparently, the ancestors also spend a lot of time in one of the pools at the bottom of one of their waterfalls.

We walked for about an hour and a half or so before reaching the waterfalls. There were two large rivers that came together in the valley. It was really gorgeous. We stopped for a few photos—well, quite a few photos actually. I forgot to mention, when we started our walk we asked our driver, Gilbert, if he wanted to join us or stay in Chomba. He decided to join us and turned out to be a really nice and hilarious guy. So, in my photos on smugmug, that’s who the younger guy is in some of the photos. He was starting to get really tired and kept asking how much longer, haha, and joking around with Heather about being so tired and stuff. After the waterfalls, we kept walking to make our way to the caves.

The pathway into the cave was completely grown over; I’m not sure that many people have been to see the caves recently. The cave was pretty big and somewhat open. The river ran through the center of the cave. It was cool and peaceful in there; if there weren’t so many mosquitos in there, we probably would have stayed longer. On the walk back, we went by a ‘bridge’ made of a couple skinny branches lying across the river. We decided to check our balancing skills and walk across. Kat, Gilbert and I made it over pretty easily; it was a little futile, because we just had to go back over again once we reached the other side. I have little faith in my ability to cross that river with 20 litres of water on my head, a kid on my back and when the river and wind are roaring in the rainy season like many of the locals in this area do with ease.

On the walk down, Gilbert decided to teach Kat how to go down hills—run. Every time there was a downhill, we would run, while Pa yelled to Gilbert to be careful. He was holding Heather’s hand and telling her to go slow and carefully. We stopped at one point and Pa asked if we liked guava. He disappeared into the bushes and was all of a sudden standing on a flimsy branch at the top of a guava tree jumping and shaking the tree to make the fruit fall. Keep in mind this man is in his late 50s or so. It was pretty funny; he came back with his pockets and shirt bursting with guavas. We all grabbed a few and had a snack for the walk down. Kat and I began talking about all the food we wanted to have when we got down. Mainly, we focused on nachos with sour cream, salsa, and guacamole, with some cold beers. We decided we would go for beers once we got down and take Gilbert with us. Jokingly we said that the Fon of Chomba would probably be waiting at the bottom for us with cold beer and nachos. Cold beer is nearly impossible to find here; even in places that have fridges, they hardly ever have cold beer.

Once we were down, Pa took us to meet the Fon. He said we should have brought him a present of whiskey or something similar. I think he was expecting us to say we would go to town first and then come back, because after we said we had nothing he seemed to imply we would just meet the Fon next time then. A younger guy came out and told us it was fine if we had nothing, the Fon still wanted to meet us. We went into the Fon’s meeting area, there were two large chairs with elephant tusks and leopard skins in front of both. The Fon came in and sat in one of the chairs; when he entered we stood and bowed our heads. He asked us about where we were from and what kind of work we were doing. He was really interested in microfinance and GHAPE; he asked me about average loan sizes, interest payments and loan repayment schedules. Then, the younger man that had led us to the meeting room came in with a tray of cold beer. I couldn’t believe it. We were having cold beer with the Fon of Chomba.

In order to help people understand you here, you simplify your sentences so it sounds more like Pidgin. Things like “I am going to go into town for a bit now” are changed to “I go town now. Shortly.” Anyway, when we were talking to the Fon, Kat was using her simplified, you don’t understand me, English, haha. Heather started squeezing her arm to make her realize. The Fon was quite educated; he used to work for one of the ministries in the Northwest Province and was college educated. He was fluent in English. I don’t think he noticed really, but hard to say.

On the drive back to the city, Gilbert had driving lessons. Kat and Heather had never driven standard, so they practiced on Gilbert’s car on the drive back. It was pretty hilarious. We went to Alizane, a restaurant downtown, for beers and food. We paid for Gilbert to drink and have some lunch. On the drive back to Kat and Heather’s we tried to figure out how much we owed him. We figured with Chomba each way being 300, plus the drive to each of houses being around 200 to 300 each, it shouldn’t be more than 1200. We decided to offer 3000 CFA. He told us we were supposed to pay 1500 CFA per hour, and calculated that we had been together for 6 hours. Of course he included the hour we spent at the restaurant. The drive to Chomba took us about 40 to 45 min and was supposed to be 300 CFA, so, I’m not sure how he calculated 1500 per hour. Kat and Heather left it to me to argue with Gilbert, we finally agreed/gave up and decided on 8000 CFA ($16 USD). Not a huge amount, but more than it would have cost to go to Pinyin, and a lot more than 300 each way as we were told. Oh well. It was a pretty fabulous day regardless.

Saturday at the pool…

This past weekend was quite interesting. Nothing really went as planned, but, it turned out to be pretty great all in all. On Saturday morning, after running some errands and doing a bit of cleaning, I went to the Ayaba Hotel to meet up with one of my coworkers, Celestine. As I was waiting for Celestine, I decided to grab one of the wooden lawn chairs and start reading my book. There could not provide me with a towel, even after I offered to pay for it to be cleaned after; thankfully I had just purchased 6 yards of fabric in the market and had that to use as a towel. I am still reading “They Poured Fire on us from the Sky”, should be done soon though. It is a wonderful book; the stories from the three boys really engage you. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for a book about real things, presented in a not so academic manner. It started to get pretty warm while I was waiting, and I was the only person at the pool; so I figured I’d take my t-shirt off. Don’t worry, I was wearing my swim suit underneath. I was contemplating taking off my capris, but I felt exposed enough out there and figured I’d wait for Celestine.

Celestine showed up with a friend of his, Rene. Rene was wearing light sunglasses (Cote d’Ivoire rapper style), a polo shirt with the collar popped, and new jeans with embroidered pockets and bleached out in places. As he came over to introduce himself, he pushed his glasses down his nose a bit, looked at me from above his glasses, checking me out, then smacked his lips before saying “Mama mia, you are hot.” Unsure of what to say to that, and very glad I had left my capris on, I replied with a simple but unsure “thank you, it’s nice to meet you.” Rene told me that he was running an NGO in town that worked with youth; they mostly worked on issues of unemployment, HIV/AIDS and gender. Specifically, they were trying to focus on women’s empowerment. During the time we spent in the pool he continued to ask me if I would hold a workshop for him and his coworkers on women’s empowerment and issues surrounding it in African culture; while making these requests his eyes didn’t quite make it up to my face. Yes, I think he has a few things to learn on women’s empowerment before he begins holding workshops for youth on the issue. He did, however, invite me to a “cry die” in Awing. A ‘cry die’ is similar to a funeral, only it is held whenever the family is ready to mourn the death of the deceased or has enough money to do so. It can be one to three days and involves dancing from traditional dancers in masks, lots of eating foufou corn, koki, and njama njama, and of course drinking. The Fon of Awing (Chief type position for a very large community and represented in government) went missing a couple of years ago. His grandson or great grandson became the Fon and has been studying in North America this year. He is finally ready to mourn the past Fon this December. Rene is from Awing and invited me to go and stay with his family and what not; it will be a huge cry die. Depending on the timing of the event, I may try to make it.

I spent the majority of the time in the pool trying to teach Rene how to swim. Celestine would hold him and I would try to demonstrate. Two 14 year old ish boys showed up and started practicing and helping him as well. Then, the “swimmer of Bamenda” showed up. He was apparently practicing for national competitions and the best swimmer in Bamenda. Of course he was wearing a speedo, with a swim cap and goggles, all matching neon green. He dove in the pool and started doing laps. I immediately questioned his swimming ability when his dive made a huge splash and his breathing in his front crawl was all wrong. People started asking if the two of us could race, I tried to politely decline, saying he would beat me easily. When the swimmer started teasing me and saying I wouldn’t be able to make it one lap, my competitiveness kicked in. We were to swim two lengths of the pool, ending back in the deep end. I beat him by about three quarters of a length. He looked a little disappointed, but we all laughed it off. I taught them how to do handstands and summersaults in the water—well, I tried to teach them. The handstands were definitely difficult for them to get the hang of.

After the pool, I took a bike downtown to find some food. I attempted to find a tortilla chip substitute so I could make salsa and guacamole; I grabbed plantain chips, crackers and whole wheat bread—the closest substitutes I could find—and the ingredients for salsa and guac before heading up to Steve’s. The bread was definitely preferred to either of the other options. While we were having lunch, there was a cry die going on, we could hear the gunshots in the distance. As we were out on Steve’s back porch, the bullets started bouncing off his metal roof and landing on the ground around us. They were small little lead balls; we found a couple to keep as mementos. They claim that the guns are shot to release the spirits from the body; it’s a tradition in Cameroon. But I ask, how recent was it that this tradition was created as I find it hard to believe that every family had a gun in Cameroon more than a couple hundred years ago. Fairly certain they just find it fun to shoot guns in the air after having too many drinks—real safe.

This video is from a man in Mbengwi that was dancing with me for a bit while we waited for one of our coworkers so we could come back from one of the centers outside of town. Also on this little excursion our bike was almost impounded, the officer wanted some money from me and then my coworker offered it and it didn’t go over well to say the least. He let us go eventually though and we had a safe, but dusty ride home.

Saturday night I met up with Kat and Heather at the Royal Restaurant. They were supposed to have live music and great food, but shortly after I arrived the electricity went out and we were left to eat and chat in the dark. Not so bad really, the patio was great and the servers were really friendly. We met the owner that night, he immediately offered his services to help us plan weekend trips and hoped we would come back to Royal after our first time in the dark. Sunde had invited us there, but none of us had heard back from him that day, so we assumed he wasn’t coming. He showed up near the end of our meal; he was completely drunk and immediately began eating our food and drinking our wine. After our meal, the lights came back on and with it came live music. The music featured that night was a man with an organ singing Shania Twain covers and Celine Dion—truly magnificent. It was beautiful, people were singing along. We left soon after.

The driver I had asked to meet me and take me home was already there. Sunde lives just past my house so he was planning on hopping on my bike with me. As he was seeing Kat and Heather off, I went to speak to my driver, Joseph. He was pulling whiskey packets out of his coat for his friends as I approached. He seemed drunk, but I wasn’t sure at first. As he went to climb on his bike he lost his balance a bit and just about fell. Sunde was walking over and I told him my concern. Sunde said that we didn’t know and should just go anyway. So, I asked Joseph, “Have you had any alcohol to drink tonight?” he gave a half smile and said yes. I said, well, I won’t come on your bike then if you’ve been drinking. I don’t want to put myself in that kind of danger. Sunde started talking to the driver in pidgin asking if he was drunk and telling me that he wasn’t ‘drunk’. I said I didn’t care, he had obviously had too much to drive. Then Sunde explained to the driver that I would not come on his bike unless he said he hadn’t had anything to drink and it was a misunderstanding. Sure enough two minutes later the driver came up with this story about how he doesn’t understand English well and had misunderstood my question; he thought I had asked if he could drink. Anyway, I was quite frustrated with Sunde at this point and there were no taxis or other bikes around; he had told all the people around that I had called this guy and made him wait and now wasn’t getting on his bike. There was a car of young guys that had pulled in and offered me a ride with Sunde, but Sunde knew they wouldn’t drive him all the way to his place—he’d have to take a bike from my stop, so he said no. Finally, I climbed on the bike and told the driver to go slow and drive carefully; I also told him I knew he was drunk and I would not be calling him again. Sunde climbed on and I got home safe. Needless to say, Sunde is not invited to any more of our dinner and drinks gatherings.

I will write about Sunday’s events later on today. I’m late to go into the field, so I better get moving.

Microfinance in Action

This week has been completely exhausting, but one of the best weeks I’ve had here. I’ve been out in the field every morning this week—I still have tomorrow morning as well. Some of the centers have been quite far away, requiring me to leave at around 5:45 or so in the morning and catching a bike while it’s still dark. I like the longer rides though, I get to see more of Cameroon and get out of Bamenda. One of the rides to a center, Beatrice and I shared a bike. The driver told us he knew a short cut, and we went zooming through a foot path. The grass had grown over and was now hanging into the road standing at about 6 or 7 feet tall. It was smacking the driver and us in the face as we weaved around the ditch that had formed in the center of the path from the past rainy season. The whole time, Beatrice and I were just laughing at what was going on; the driver kept telling me he had taken us there on purpose—to show me the real Cameroon. It was a gorgeous view from that path; we could see the hilly countryside scattered with palm trees and crops as the sun was rising. I wasn’t able to take a picture—I was a bit more focused on holding on as we bounced down the path.

In two of the meetings now I have been given lunch after by some of the clients. At one of the meetings, all of the clients stayed behind after to have a lunch of achu (ground plantains and taro root) with a spicy, pepper and fish soup. Then at another meeting we were given koki (made by grinding koki beans and corn flour together and then frying with tomatoes and onions) and njama njama (huckleberry, a leafy green vegetable, fried with tomatoes, onions, and spices). The koki was really good. One of the clients sells groundnut koki (koki beans ground and fried with ground peanuts) on the main street in Bamenda and promised to get me some for Friday. I may try to get down there tomorrow.

In Wednesday’s center, two piglets were given out. GHAPE gives female piglets to female members; when you receive a piglet you have to raise it and breed it and come back to the center with two female piglets to give to other members. It is definitely an interesting and neat way of giving back to the center. All in all, the people are what make the early mornings and long dusty bike rides worth it though. These people are so unbelievable. They have hurdle after hurdle and even with a number of disappointments, they remain positive, optimistic and grateful. There is never any anger or negativity when you talk to them about their failures, just optimism about the future. I have never met anyone that works as hard as a lot of the GHAPE clients; they all have about four different jobs requiring varied skills. It truly is inspirational to hear what they are able to do with such small amounts of money; moreover, how what they do can change their lives. Just consider what this woman was able to do with her loan of $1,200 US.

 

Bih Allan, or Mangye as she is called by those that know she has had twins, is a woman with a lot on the go. Despite her busy schedule, she is relaxed and spends the entirety of the interview giggling. She not only has the daunting task of raising 6 children, but must generate enough income to pay for their school fees and daily needs. Although her husband contributes, she comes from a polygamous home and so her husband must divide his income between his other wife as well. Thanks to GHAPE and Kiva, she has been able to ensure that her family situation has not affected her children’s education and future.

 
 

Mangye grows cassava, yam, corn and beans on her farm. Much of her farmed vegetables are eaten; however, some are used to sell and some are used to make cooked food which she sells. She only sells her yams when she needs money, say to make her GHAPE payments or when school fees are due; she can sell them for 5000 CFA ($10 USD)per pound. To make garri and waterfou, two staple carbohydrate dishes produced from cassava, the cassava must be ground. This is a tedious and tiring process involving a lot of manual labour. She takes her cassava to be ground by a neighbour who has a cassava mill. For 4 pockets of cassava, it will cost her 3500 CFA ($7 USD) to grind it; she can then sell these four pockets for 9000 CFA ($18 USD).

 
 

Twice per week, Mangye sells waterfou (made from cassava), rice, stew, corn chafe (corn and beans cooked with spices), and eru (a leafy green vegetable fried in spices). She sells these items on the roadside to school children and passerbys. She can make around 6000 CFA ($12 USD) per day. She also rears pigs. She purchased two pigs for 17,000 CFA ($34 USD) and 13,000 CFA ($26 USD) and just recently sold them for 60,000 CFA ($120 USD) and 45,000 CFA($90 USD) respectively. It cost her 3380 CFA ($6.75 USD) per bag, and during the time she was raising them, she used 6 bags. She also purchased medicine and vitamins for her pigs, costing a total of 1600 CFA ($32 USD). She spent a total of 21,880 CFA ($43.75 USD) to rear them and was able to make a profit of 53,120 CFA ($106.25 USD).

 
 

She is currently raising ten fowls. She keeps her fowls for about 3 months and feeds them one bag of feed costing 13,500 CFA ($27 USD). The fowls cost 1300 CFA ($2.60 USD) each when she purchases them. She recently sold her last batch of 15 fowls for 52,000 CFA ($104 USD), or 3500 CFA ($7 USD) each. This last sale resulted in a profit of 20,500 CFA ($41 USD).

 
 

Mangye is also the proud owner of a motorbike now thanks to her GHAPE/Kiva loans. She purchased the bike for 530,000 CFA ($1060 USD) including all the documents and forms. She has contracted out the work to a driver who pays her 3000 CFA ($6 USD) per day and drives six days per week, resulting in an income of 72,000 CFA ($144 USD) per month. The bike can pay for itself in seven and a half months.

 
 

Mangye is proud that she can now rear pigs and fowls herself, sell products herself, make her profits herself and manage her life herself. She is happy to see her children’s school fees being paid easily and her family eating well and healthy. She thanks all those that contributed to her loan and says that these loans really have changed her life.

 

Every morning I have gone to a center and have had a different, but equally inspiring experience at each. Wednesday’s center prayer was quite interesting. Each center has a prayer at the beginning of the meeting led by one of the clients. When people here say a prayer, it is not your typical rehearsed or memorized prayer. This one referred to god as Papi God and Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth; Jesus being Jesus of Nazareth wouldn’t be so strange if they didn’t say his name every two or three words. There were some references to thanking papi for having this whiteman with them for the meeting, and pleading that papi would chair the meeting for them so it could function well. There was a prayer for the whitemen countries as well, “We also pray, Jesus of Nazareth, for the whiteman countries in the world and pray that you Papi God and Jesus of Nazareth look over them and keep them safe Papi God and Jesus of Nazareth.” In case anyone was worried before about the future, there are thousands of people in Cameroon praying for the whiteman—I am told about 60 plus times a day that I am being prayed for. I never know how to respond to that, I usually say thank you, but it seems like a response offer my prayer for them would be more appropriate.

 

I have yet to meet a client who has been disappointed with their involvement in GHAPE. I am looking, but I don’t think there are any. There are people who have had failed businesses and what not, but they all manage to make their payments and take out another loan for another venture. The results I am seeing here are far beyond what I imagined even after studying microfinance and the empowerment of women. The women I meet here who have been in the program for a while are independent, powerful women. Some own businesses where they employ their husband and pay him a salary. In a society where women have been treated as property even within society and the legal framework in the past, it is truly amazing to see these women providing for their families and being treated as equals in the household.

 

Waterfalls, children, and plantains, oh my!

Well, week five was mostly just work, work, work. There were so many issues with the new system and GHAPE’s files, it was one of the more frustrating weeks of work. We worked all day on the computers; I spent every night trying to fix things. I think the most frustrating part was that even while working around 16 hours a day for GHAPE, Loveline would spend her day yelling at me. I would yell back, and then she would walk out. She felt like I was accusing GHAPE of having bad practices because I was making them recheck all their files and address the issues. In the end, we found 5 Kiva clients whose profiles had been uploaded twice, and therefore fundraised twice and had to be refunded. Then there were another 27 whose payments hadn’t been made in September; Kiva had ended all 27 as delinquent. I frantically emailed Kiva requesting they charge us for the remainder of the 27 loans so they could finish properly. We didn’t receive a response to all our issues from Kiva until Thursday and Friday; the majority of the week was spent counting the days until November payments were due: Friday. Thankfully our payments were put on hold, meaning that our loans would not all become delinquent. In all, the week was extremely frustrating and tense; however, we fixed a lot of mistakes and were able to move towards a more organized GHAPE. I also set up appointments on Thursday and Friday with two organizations in the Bamenda area; I found out about them through the VSO volunteer connection. One is a Youth Outreach Program—we’re (well…I’m) hoping to create a partnership between YOP and GHAPE so that they can create centers specifically for unemployed youth in Bamenda. The job market here is impossible for educated youth; it would be a really interesting partnership to see form. YOP has an extensive background in providing training courses all over Cameroon, so in exchange for taking their youth into the GHAPE program, GHAPE would receive free training from YOP. NGOs are somewhat hesitant here to work together—they are always suspecting one another of trying to take the other’s funds and what not. I suppose in a place where capital is so hard to come by there is reason to be somewhat weary; however, it is very frustrating from an outsider’s point of view where it just doesn’t make sense not to work together. The other organization was IDF who is creating a home based care program for HIV/AIDS patients. GHAPE already has a number of HIV positive clients; however, by admitting these ones into the program through IDF, we are hoping IDF will provide HIV and health training for all GHAPE members. Enough about work…

This weekend was pretty stupendous. Friday night was another uneventful, but much needed visit to Dreamland. The website is unbelievably deceiving. I suppose when all the restaurants only carry chicken, fried plantains and njama njama it doesn’t make much difference anyway. On Saturday morning, I met up with Steve and Charmaine for breakfast at Alizane. It was…alright…it took me an hour to get my coffee. When they finally did bring it (after being reminded a number of times), it was a pot off of another table who had just left. Mmmm, used coffee…yes, I drank it. After breakfast (lunch by the time we had our food), Steve and I walked around looking for pork for dinner. We walked to the Nkwen market, outside of Bamenda. It was much smaller than the food market in Bamenda, but just as busy and overwhelming.

After a lot of effort and being sent in every direction, we found the pork man. It looked pretty clean, well, compared to what I’ve seen here I guess. The head was sitting on the counter, the eyes were still somewhat opened…I just prefer cleaned pre cut meat into individual portions with no reminder of the animal it came from I guess. Ah well, it wasn’t so bad. Click here to see photos from the weekend and the butcher… We went back to Steve’s place after the market and his neighbours were playing outside his back door. There were about 6 young kids who were very interested in the whitemen. After yelling it for a while, they started to come closer to check us out. One of the neighbours had brought me a plate of grasshoppers, remembering that I had said I liked them. I really must watch what I say here. We ended up taking too many photos and laughing all afternoon at these little models in the making.

Sunday we took a day trip to Menchum falls. The waterfall itself was pretty spectacular, but we weren’t able to get too close or really do anything other than just snap a photo. We tried to drive further down the road to find a lake my travel book talked about, but after 20 minutes or so on a less than optimal road, we were informed that it was still another hour. We stopped at a junction to grab some food before the drive back. Heather and Steve had the oh-so-popular ’spaghetti omelette’. Essentially, it is eggs mixed with onion, tomato and spaghetti noodles, cooked in a pan. I opted for some chicken and bread. On the drive back, we spotted a calm open area of water in one of the rivers. I was pretty dirty and have wanted to go swimming for a few weekends now, so we went down to check things out. It was pretty quiet other than a few kids fishing. Steve and I hopped in and did some floating in the murky river water. There wasn’t a whole lot of improvement on the cleanliness issue; however, it was pretty refreshing. While we were swimming a bunch of kids spotted us and began running towards the water, stripping off their clothes as they were sprinting. By the time they reached the water, I think some fear had set in, because they weren’t jumping in towards us anymore. They swam and played beside us, keeping a close watch on us. Steve decided to start swimming towards them and making a raawrr noise. It was too funny. All the kids were screaming and splashing away, wondering what this crazy whiteman was doing. Pretty priceless.

le weekend

This weekend was pretty good. I went to the Kingdom of Bafut on Saturday morning. We saw the “Fon’s Palace” and received a tour through the museum. The palace was fairly large, with one main grass roofed building in the center. The grass building, called the ‘Achum’ is apparently the temple for the spirits, the door is left open so they can come and go as they please. Only the Fon and the ‘Secret Society’ (or the ‘Kwifor’) can go into the ‘Achum’. The Fon of Bafut is the “supreme fon” of the region, who presides over neighbouring fons. He is presently the head of the North West Fons’ Union .

Until 1914, Bafut was an independent Kingdom and the Fon had ultimate power in Bafut Kingdom. He controlled external relations and made laws internally. He was the court and had power of life and death over his subjects; all justice was done in his name. If one was caught breaking one of the laws set by the Fon, such as committing adultery or other sins, that individual would face the punishment of death. Death sentences, however, were carried out in a much different fashion than might be expected. The individual charged was tied to a rock in the center of the Kingdom and small parts of his or her body would be cut off. As each part was removed from the individual’s body, the individual was forced to eat his or her own flesh. This continued until the person died from blood loss. As chief priest he offered sacrifices to his ancestors for the welfare of the people; these sacrifices were human sacrifices–usually two virgins, one female and one male. Some of their traditions are quite interesting, such as that for when a new Fon takes over; it is called the ‘Stoning Ceremony’. When the new Fon is presented to the Bafut community, they can choose to either throw small pebbles to show support or large stones to hurt him. This ceremony is somewhat decreased in importance in recent years; however, it was seen as a form of democratic election or approval from the community. They also believe the Fon is able to transform into any one of the 5 great animals: lion, elephant, leopard, python, and buffalo. It was strange, the man who ‘discovered’ had his portrait hanging in the museum as we would a famous scientist; only his portrait was a carving of his face that was much more artistic than representative of his actual appearance. I also found it somewhat humorous to see all the Fon’s hats–he wears them for important ceremonies and festivals. Most of them look like jester hats, with little bells all over them, bright colours, and small fabric triangles popping out all over. In all photographs of the Fon shaking hands with important politicians and other Fons, he’s always wearing these strange jester hats.

Bafut was in constant war with the Germans until finally losing to them in 1907. In the museum, there were a pair of wool boots, looked similar to moccasins. They belonged to the first German who arrived in Bafut; apparently the Fon could not be without shoes if someone else in the Kingdom had shoes. So, the Germans shoes were confiscated and the Fon had a woman fix them to fit his feet properly. There were also small German clay canisters in the museum; they had been painted with pictures of people dancing and the countryside. For one of these small canisters, the Germans could purchase between 20 and 30 slaves for trade. Most of the slaves traded were not from Bafut, but neighbouring Kingdoms. These slaves were often the ones used in the sacrificial ceremonies as well. After World War I, Cameroon became a British Protectorate and a local government was formed by the British. In July 1917, the ‘Instructional Court’ in Bamenda was inaugerated, with the Fon of Bafut as President and 27 chiefs being represented in the court. In Post-Colonial times, the Fon of Bafut has continued his strong administrative force. Bafut is now one of only two regions in Cameroon where traditional power structures are still in place.

After the tour, the guide asked Loveline and I out for some palm wine. It was only about 11:15 or so, but all the palm wine bars were sold out. We finally found one that had some left; it was pretty busy. We squeezed in between some locals and some of the notables from the ’secret society’. When our bottle came, there was some foam on top. If there is anyone of higher status than you in the room, the foam must be given to him or her. So, we poured the foam into the notable’s glass, then had our palm wine. It is really sweet in the morning and contains less carbonation. We finished our palm wine and grabbed a taxi to the other side of Bafut to see the Saboga Botanical Gardens. It was nice I suppose, but I think it had been talked up a little too much for me. We are somewhat spoiled in BC in terms of gardens and what not. Saboga had a few flowers and some palm trees, but not a whole lot else. Loveline wanted me to take photos of her in front of all the flowers, so we kept switching spots to take photos in front of every flower. My head was cut out or not in focus in almost every one. Not a huge loss.

We went downtown after to meet up with Kat and Heather. They were going to be a bit, so we went to check out Loveline’s favourite clothing store. I ended up buying a pair of jeans–I didn’t bring any and always feel like a slob when we go out. They are pretty nice for the total cost of $10. While we were waiting outside the market, we saw one of the GHAPE clients and decided to sit with her at her fruit stand on the street. She sells grapefruit, papaya and fried grasshoppers; that’s pretty much a winning combination here. As she handed me a bag full of fried, spicy grasshoppers, she told me she had made them herself and wanted to know what I thought. I couldn’t really say no. So, following her lead, I pulled off the wings and back legs before popping it into my mouth. When you first bite into it, the body kind pops open and its pretty juicy, then you chew through the crunchy shell. I wasn’t too convinced on the first little guy, but after a few, I got over the fact that they were grasshoppers and had decided that this was my new at work snack. I think I just like them because they are spicy, but according to Loveline they are very nutritious too, and fat free. (Even though they are fried in vegetable oil–amazing how that happens here, fried can still be fat free).

Once Kat and Heather got there, we all went to the trade fair. It was pretty dead during the day compared to the weekend before. We did find the supplier of whiskey packets; Kat and I both bought a bag of around 20 to 25 packets for less than $2.50–I think there’s about 3 or so ounces in each, tough to say. I guess everyone knows what they are getting for Christmas now. On the way home I stopped at the food market to buy some groceries. The bags here are really cheap, and all my bags kept ripping open as I was walking home. It was somewhat frustrating. By the time I got home I was pretty exhausted and opted out of Steve’s housewarming party–even though I had whiskey and grasshoppers to offer as gifts.

Sunday morning I woke up to get ready to go to Pinyin with Kat and Heather, but my left eye was burning and so sensitive I couldn’t open it. It was watering like crazy and starting to worry me, so I sent Steve a message. He gave me the number for a doctor at the Mezam Poly Clinique. Even though it was 7:30, Dr. Achu picked up and told me to meet him at the hospital at 9. Kat came over to help me get there–still couldn’t open my eye and what not. Dr. Achu arrived at ten to 9; people arriving early is unheard of here. After looking in my eye and noticing it was red, and asking a few vague questions like “is it paining you?” “yes” “ahh, and its watering?” “yes”, he responded with the brilliant prescription of “ok, hm. Yes. You need some drops. I am coming…” (People say ‘I am coming ‘ when they leave a room but plan on returning–essentially they are just missing the word back at the end of the sentence). He could only find antibiotic drops in the hospital so Kat and I piled in his SUV–first time I’ve been in one here–and went to the pharmacy. We found some that would work for my red, paining eyes and I thanked him again. He was great, definitely a good number to have.

I took some cakes and treats up to Steve’s house to say thanks for helping me; they weren’t in stellar shape from the night before, so Kat and I ended up eating most of the treats while Steve made us coffee. Steve and I ended up just roaming around for the day, going to the food market, meeting some people for lunch, and finally ending back at my place with all the groceries for a Mexican fiesta. Buying beef was somewhat interesting; there were maybe 10 men with about a half a cow on their outdoor wooden tables waiting for prospective buyers. Steve wouldn’t come over with me, so I decided the first guy in the row of meat men looked good. We agreed on a price of 2000 CFA ($4) for a kilo of beef–a huge bag full. It wasn’t as gross as I thought, although there was the fur and skin from the head of the cow sitting on the edge of his table, I think someone must have requested some of the meat from the head. We had a delicious meal of steak, beans, rice, salsa, and guacamole; while eating, we watched Hudson Hawk. I definitely recommend this one…awful show with show tunes, robbers, world domination, the Vatican, nuns, and Bruce Willis.

Week Four

Monday I woke up at 5:00 am to meet Doris at Mbengwi motor park to go to center 1 and 2 for a meeting. I got ready fairly quickly, but didn’t have time for breakfast–so I grabbed one of my precious meal replacement bars. I have been trying to save them up for when I really need them, ha ha. I was on a bike by 5:40 am, bouncing my way to the motor park. When we arrived at the center, there were a few people sitting in the room drinking palm wine–getting ready for the days events I suppose, ha ha. One of the men, probably in his late 60s, was very excited to have a whiteman there. He jumped up and started shaking my hand, then decided to hold my hand while we talked and I tried to get organized. Quite awkward really, trying to get my book out of my bag and having this older man squeezing my hand. I went with it though, he was just so happy, or drunk, hard to say. He then decided that he should teach me how to dance, because “America does not dance”. I tried to decline politely, explaining I had to get ready for the meet, but that wasn’t going to get me off the hook with this guy. The dance starts facing the ‘audience’ (clients in this case), with one arm around the other persons back and the other arm outstretched. He began to sing, and we bounced from one leg to the other to the his beat, flapping our outside arms up and down. Then, we kicked our feet out, from left to right, flapping our arms, and bending our knees getting closer to the ground. Then after about 8 kicks, we turned outwards, spinning to face the other direction, and repeated the whole dance. After about 4 times on each side, everyone started clapping and I was allowed to sit down again. Ha ha. “You very good for America.” ha ha, thanks?

Only about 20 people showed up to the meeting; none of these were people I needed to interview. So, I ended up just helping count the deposits and payments. Nothing too exciting happened at the meeting, one man couldn’t make his payment and so had to plead with those in the center to help him make his payment. No one seemed to be too interested in helping this man; the women said that he was not a good worker, always drinking and that his account should be closed. They also argued that it is his group’s responsibility to cover his losses first, before asking the center; these women would not have chosen this man to be in their group knowing he was a risky client. He was forced to stand until the group came to a consensus; as no one wanted to help him, everyone sat in silence while he stood, looking at his feet. Many scholars have argued that microcredit can result in social embarrassment and what not from the pressures of a client’s group or center to not default. This is most definitely true; however, I’m not sure that it is a bad thing. If a client is unable to make a payment due to an emergency with health or otherwise, they must simply contact either GHAPE or their group the day before the meeting to explain the situation; either GHAPE or the group will provide the client with money from the Emergency Fund. There is no interest on the emergency fund, and they can make their payment with the money from that rotating fund. If the client also must pay for hospital fees or some other expense, they can borrow from this fund for a month without interest. In other words, those that do not make their payments are those that have invested poorly or have not been working their business to the extent that is needed. Of course, the hospital bills and what not can add up, resulting in serious client financial difficulty; however, most of the clients who struggle are just hoping their group will cover their losses and allow them to continue to take out loans. When the groups reapply, those clients are rarely reaccepted by their group.

Life here is difficult for people; I speak to many of the female clients about their various income generating activities. It is seldom that I meet a woman who works in less than four different sectors and less than 13 hours a day. Men, on the other hand, I am surprised when they do more than 2. I guess things aren’t so different from North America, ha ha, kidding. Many of the women will have a small street-side shop where they sell items purchased from the market and re-sell in their area, make food items such as doughnuts, fish rolls, and roasted vegetables and fish to sell, sell second hand clothing to customers, sell credit for sim cards, work on their farm outside of town, dry maize and beans from their farm to sell, and often raise fowls and pigs. The list goes on and on. I try to get as much information as I can in my interviews, but I know if I kept asking questions, these women would be able to talk about all their activities for hours. It really is amazing these women are still responsible for raising families of around 6 children and all their grandchildren. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to complain about being tired after a regular 9 to 5 work day again. For entertainment, my mama next door will watch wrestling (WWF) late at night before going to bed; she usually only has time for about 20 minutes once a week. It is so strange how much she loves it though; everyone here loves WWF.

Once we arrived back at the office, I helped Loveline post some business profiles. The new loans from GHAPE should be up by next week. Click here to see if any are available now. The process was…slow. The internet constantly cuts in and out, or just slows down so that practically nothing will load. We decided to hold off till Tuesday, hoping the connection would improve. We also had a few questions for Kiva, some of the website options for repayments are not exactly made to represent the kind of loans that GHAPE gives properly. For example, for the first three months of returning clients, they only need to pay the interest on their loans, no payments on the principle. One interest payment is made the day they receive the loan; some of their policies seem quite strange, and apparently Kiva, as no other NGO requires any payment on the day of disbursal. Why not just deduct that amount from the loan you are giving them? There are a lot of little things here that if changed could make the organization much more efficient; however, it’s difficult to convince anyone here that there could be a better way to do things. The response is always ‘well, we do it this way though’; I realize that, but it takes you 4 times as long. Loveline can be quite loud and unwilling to hear the opinion of anyone else, but I have found that with persistence and raising my voice a little when she tries to interrupt me, I am getting through. Good thing I lived with Pieter so long, ha ha, I have learned to deal with those kinds of interruptions (kidding–I love you). After convincing her to change a couple of things, mostly during the staff meetings, because others will agree with me, she has seen a difference in certain activities. So, it is getting easier to break through her stubbornness and make GHAPE more efficient and productive.

Steve and I went out for dinner on Monday night to the International Hotel to catch up and have some steak. It wasn’t exactly steak, but it was beef and delicious, ha ha. We talked a lot about inefficiencies in the organizations here; to a degree, it seems there is just a lack of common sense involved in a lot of the business plans and workings here. The main national phone company on Commercial Avenue has no sign outside or indication of its where abouts; it relies on word of mouth for products and phones, and I will not even begin on their customer service. Both Steve and I experienced awful service, yelling, arguing, and waiting at the Camtel office. Surprisingly, we had very similar experiences. I was somewhat concerned last week when Loveline put me in charge of making the website, marketing for GHAPE, writing proposal letters, and creating project plans. I have never done any of these things before, but neither has anyone in the office. Loveline asked me to write letters requesting money from NGOs in America. I informed her that we could not just ask for money; we had to tell them what it would be used for, let them know how much we want, give them something in return (such as updates), include information about projections and targets, and provide other information of interest, such as annual reports and background. I don’t think it really mattered to her though, she just nodded and said something to the effect of ‘good that you are here to do this, you know how to do it then, let me know if you want me to read it after.’ Not exactly the response I was looking for. I have been following up, asking how much money they need and what their plans would be, but I don’t think she knows, so, these proposals may take some time to finish up.

Tuesday was somewhat uneventful; just worked on uploading profiles with Loveline. I started to feel quite ill in the afternoon; I had a fever and I was nauseous and sweating. Loveline scared me a bit, saying I probably had gotten malaria from my hike up Lefo (my legs are now covered in mosquito and other insect bites). After work, I decided to do my pilates dvd to see if that made me feel any better; I felt a lot better after that and having dinner. I’m assuming that I’m just somewhat over-worked and tired considering I get about 5 to 6 hours of sleep on a good night. I have beans almost every night for dinner now at home; I cooked them with tomatoes, onions, garlic, maggi, palm oil, peanut paste, salt and curry powder this time. I am getting a little bored of black beans, but the new flavouring was….different. Ha ha.

Every day that goes by, Loveline and I reassess how much time I should be spending at Belo, the new branch about an hour and a bit outside of Bamenda. It went from three weeks in the beginning to now around 3 or 4 days. I would have like to spend more time there, but, I would be sleeping in the office and there are no Kiva clients there yet. Originally we were hoping to upload some for December, but that is not really an option at this point. It doesn’t really make sense to have any Kiva clients out there; there are only two staff for 10 centers and they don’t have internet access. I would have to train both of them and they would need to spend their evenings working at cafes on Kiva stuff. It just makes more sense to keep the Kiva clients with the main branch for now; again the efficiency thing that just doesn’t really get through. Still working on the Belo thing with Loveline.

All of Thursday was spent problem solving issues with Pa2 and trying to make a CSV file of all of GHAPE’s clients on Kiva. It is taking us so long, we only made it through about a quarter of the centers. We need each client’s Kiva number, and the total amount they have paid back on the principle. After adding each clients payments up four times, finding duplicate clients in the system, and finding out that the CSV files load in all different currencies, we concluded that Thursday was a bad day. Ha ha. I was going out for dinner with Kat and Sunde after work, but decided to invite Loveline and Bridget along too.

After the regular 10 and a half hour work day in the office, we tried to forget about work and go for a nice meal. On the menu was pepper soup, goat cooked in a spicy carrot, bean, and jalapeno broth. It was served with cooked plantains, and a tomato meat sauce. It was pretty delicious and spicy. The goat was cooked with the skin on–which threw me off at first. Goat skin was not bad though, a little chewy, a little fatty, and the outside had a bit of a peach skin texture. Sounds delicious hey? Ha ha. All in all, the soup was pretty good; the meal was hilarious though. They first came around, as is customary in many African countries, with a big bowl and jug of water so that everyone can rinse their hands before eating. Kat had never seen this before and looked a little confused, ha ha, she laughed and tried to follow my lead without making it seem strange. During the meal, we ordered a litre of wine for the 5 of us to share; of course, they had to rexplain the concept of drinking alcohol and how if you drink too much you can get drunk, ha ha. Apparently if you are going to ’shake skin’ (dance in pidgin), wine is the liquor to drink though. We then practiced learning Pidgin, and how to respond to people that yell ‘whiteman’, ha ha. When kids yell whiteman at one of the VSO volunteers, he responds with ‘black child’ ha ha. A lot of the kids sing a song when they see white people; its mostly just ‘whiteman, whiteman, with a long nose….’ (it goes on to mention some other stuff, but I can’t remember the other lines, ha ha). Anyway, dinner was great, we all had a blast; it was nice also that the hotel was able to pick us up and drop us off at our homes–have to talk to Steve about Dreamland.

Friday was hell; Loveline and I tried to finish up our CSV file and organizing all the numbers. We kept running into serious errors in the records though. One case was a woman who had received her loan, but the photo on Kiva was different. Not only this but the woman had apparently given the wrong name on her application form; although one of the credit assistants had noticed it, he forgot to double check before the profile went up. So, this woman’s photo and name were different; but she had received the money raised by Kiva. In general, in a situation like this, we email all those who lent to the borrower and Kiva about the mix up; transparency is really important when working through the internet and whatnot. However, Loveline’s response was simply to refund the loan, giving all the money back to the lenders for the mix up. Of course, this is what an MFI ’should’ do in case of a mix up; but I would rather apologize and keep the capital. GHAPE is extremely low on capital right now; they are maxed out for loans and although desperately want to expand, there is just no way. So, needless to say, I would rather apologize and see if Kiva would let us keep the loan and send out a quick email to lenders about the mix up; this happens quite frequently on the site. We refunded the loan, and a couple others instead. After becoming quite frustrated with all the mistakes and amount of money we were having to give back to Kiva because of mistakes, I started talking to Loveline about really double checking your work before sending it in to Kiva and before distributing loans. Loveline tried to argue with me about how they don’t need to and there will always be human error etc; but, the situations I am seeing are preventable. Yes, human error occurs, but we could cut down the errors a huge amount with a bit of effort. After being yelled at for a while, I finally got into the Cameroon, more specifically Loveline way of doing things and started yelling back. I explained that human error was bound to happen, but if she wasn’t willing to put in a bit of effort to cut it back and save GHAPE up to $2000 per month, which is $24,000 a year, what was the point in me spending all this time creating proposals and what not. I told her until I saw the same kind of commitment on her end towards cleaning up their work practices I wouldn’t be doing these extra marketing and fundraising activities for GHAPE; I am not required nor am I technically supposed to be working on their marketing and fundraising. But it is what’s needed most, so I decided to help out after work and at lunch to try to make something happen there. She asked if we could change the subject and continue our work. At the end of the day I asked her if we could agree on some things, she said sure. I said “There is no harm in double checking our work” and without prompting, she just repeated my words in an almost defeated tone. Then we repeated that “We will start double checking all of our work”, and she agreed that what I had said was very true and we would work together to implement a new check list for practices with Kiva loans and loan distributions to avoid losing so much money. All in all, it was a successful day considering how much we lost.

That night was another Dreamland night, the VSO had a buffet to go to, so Kat, Sunde and I ate while we waited for them to come back. It was somewhat awkward when Sunde asked Kat and I to help pay for him to go to University. I haven’t been approached by people begging at all here; but people wanting help to get to America or go to University is very common. Thankfully I don’t have to lie when I say I don’t have any money to pay for those costs.

Halloween Weekend

On Friday afternoon the electricity went out once again. I didn’t have any work to do without electricity and everyone at the office was just hanging out and chatting, so I asked Heather and Kat if they wanted to run downtown for a mini-tour of Bamenda. Heather and Kat are two students from Toronto working in Bafut at the hospital. Steve introduced us, well, over email; this was the first time we actually met. I took them to the main market and to check out Commercial Avenue, showed them where all the important things in the city are: main market, whole wheat bread shop, white man supermarket, food market, and Dreamland. After it started to rain, we decided to go to Dreamland early for our “Halloween Party”. Kat and Heather want to do a lot of the same stuff that I want to do, and also have only the weekends to do them; hopefully we’ll be able to get organized so we can see as much as possible. It will definitely be nice to have some other people with me on those weekend trips.

The power was still out when we got to Dreamland, so their menu was somewhat condensed…they did have chicken though; everyone always has chicken. Only a few of us remembered to do the hats (or chose to), three of them had on these stupid toques that all the bike drivers here wear. They always have bunny ears on them or tails and stuff, very bizarre. It was definitely funny to see though, ha ha. Sunde, one of my coworkers, joined us there to hang out; it was pretty cool of him. After Dreamland, we walked over to this place called the Denver Complex. It could have almost been mistaken for a bar from home; well, think run down wood, country bar. Closest I’ve seen though, ha ha. We were meeting up with some of the German volunteers there to have a beer. After the beer at Denver, I was pretty tired, so I opted out of the dance club.

I caught a bike home, Sunde flagged him down for me; in fact, he decided to follow me home on a bike he caught right after, because he was worried as soon as I left. The driver was wearing a huge white fur toque with massive rabbit ears on top. Usually the ears hang down to keep your ears warm, but these rabbit ears were a fashion statement. Ha ha. As we started going down my street, Longla, I realized he had no headlight, and there are no street lights in Bamenda. So, there we were, bouncing from pot hole to pot hole, with his huge bunny ears flapping in the wind. At first I was pretty scared, the first few times we had a foot or two of air I was wondering what I was going to do when we crashed. But then, watching his stupid ears, and being pretty scared, I just started nervously laughing, out loud. He must have thought I was drunk or something; wondering why the white girl was laughing when we are going over such a huge jump, ha ha.

I woke up on Saturday morning pretty early; while I waited for Kat and Heather to go up Station Mountain, I decided to do a little cleaning. I did all the floors and windows, then sat down to do some reading. All in all a pretty relaxing morning. Loveline came in to chat with me for a bit. The conversation began with the simple how was your night, did you have fun etc, but quickly turned into a much more awkward topic–Cameroonian boyfriends. I have told the staff at work that I’m engaged; it started as married, but then I slipped up and mentioned something about my boyfriend. I had to re-establish the relationship as ‘just about married–soon’. I know it sounds ridiculous, but everyone here wants to move to Western nations and the best way to do that is to marry a foreigner. Even with this, Loveline begins asking me if I have found a Cameroonian boyfriend yet and if I’m looking. I was a little taken aback, and just replied with “No. I’m not looking. I’m getting married. I cannot date anyone else, I already have someone.” This didn’t end the conversation unfortunately. She responded so matter-of-factly with “Well, you are allowed to have a boyfriend in Cameroon and a boyfriend in America you know.” Oh really? Says…..Cameroon officials? Where is this coming from? Haha. I tried to explain that no, in fact I wasn’t, “In Canada you are only allowed one spouse, and cheating on your spouse is not allowed. Many people will divorce if they catch their husband or wife cheating.” Still, she responded “Well, I think it will be ok with your fiance to do this. You can just ask him? He will say yes, it is a long time.” At this point, I just burst out laughing. No, I don’t think that will be ok, ha ha. After finally understanding that I was not interested in getting myself a Cameroonian boyfriend she says “So you think you can go for the rest of the time without a special friend? It will be long.” “Yea, should be fine thanks.” Just to finish up the conversation on a positive note, she says “Well, your boyfriend will be very happy to not get illed by you in case you have illness from a boyfriend here. There are many illness from sex, so now you will be sure to be safe from that.” Yea, one of the many bonuses of not sleeping around with random locals in Cameroon. So random.

Heather and Kat showed up around 10 am and we left for our hike to Station Mountain. One of the guys at work, Celestine, gave me directions through the local villages and back roads to get there. I was a little concerned considering there are no street signs or anything, its all 2 roads after the church, before the school, by the shop, not the road that goes up–more to the right a bit, I think…haha. I am starting to get a sense of this place though, even in the villages outside of town after all the time I have spent in the field. I easily found the church, the school, and the shop, and we were off to start our hike. It took us a total of 3 and a half hours to get back to my place. The hike itself was pretty steep, but much nicer than taking the dirty and polluted road up. It was super hot; we were all sweating and feeling a bit dizzy. Once we reached the top, the view of Bamenda was pretty spectacular. This city is huge–I will be adding my panoramic photos sometime this week of it on jenmcq.smugmug.com. On the way down, Heather’s leg had been bugging her, so we took the road back to the original back road. We stopped in at the handicraft shop. There was a ton of stuff, I think they provide for the other 2 craft shops in town (yes only two). So, if anyone has any special requests, let me know soon.

We went back to my place, rinsed off a bit and tried to cool down before heading into town. Our original plan was to go to the trade fair; but we were all getting the shakes from not eating and our hot hike. We stopped at a restaurant called Kidex, a somewhat cute place with a large covered balcony. The balcony had strings of bright plastic flowers along the overhang and brightly coloured plastic chairs. Extremely tacky, but better than dirty and disgusting. When we finally got a copy of the menu, we were informed that they were sold out of almost everything except njama njama (cooked bitter green leafs with tomatoes and onions), rice, and I believe they had some fou fou left (corn flour and water mixed together to create a mushy paste). None of those meals sounded exactly what we wanted at this point, considering our exhaustion, heat, and level of hunger. We opted for cokes, very nutritious meal. I could have really gone for a booster juice, the berry tornado flavour, with an energy booster…in fact, I’ve been craving a fruit smoothy type drink for the past couple weeks. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Emily pointed out to me that I talk about food 60% of the time on this thing…as I’m write this I think she may be right.

While we were at Kidex, we met some peace corps guys. They seemed pretty nice, regular guys. We talked about Bamenda and how they plan to survive for 2 years here, ha ha. We all exchanged numbers before leaving; we plan to go to Batibo’s cultural celebration that one of the guys is helping plan for the 22nd. Should be a pretty exciting one. Sunde met us at Kidex and the girls left to go home. Sunde and I went to the market to buy some groceries and stuff. He used to work in one of the stalls on Commercial Ave selling used backpacks, so he knows all the people in the street market. They all kept asking if I was his ‘new woman’, I have a feeling Sunde has a few women; everywhere we went he was making up excuses and putting new numbers in of women, ha ha. As we were walking home, I told Sunde about the sex talk I had had with Loveline. His response was somewhat different than expected. He laughed about Loveline talking to me about it and what not; however, he then said that if I’m not going to have sex with Cameroonians, I could marry one to bring to Canada–it is the nice thing to do. “It can really help someone Jennifer.” Ah, so if I’m not willing to sleep with the guy, at least marry him. Ha ha.

[If your name is Dawn or Pieter Baljet, Brian or Deb McQuhae, please skip this next little story. If you decide to read it, know that I am still staying till December 16...]

We were supposed to meet that night at 8 pm in front of the main gates; however, I received a text from Heather that she no longer wanted to go and Kat was afraid to make the trip alone. I decided to go and pick up Kat at her place and go to the main stadium after. I knew that she lived near Nkwen, a district about 15 minutes by bike away, but I had never been to her home. We spoke briefly on my crappy cell phone with awful service and all I heard Ntassem. So, I went out to catch a bike to meet her. We drove through Nkwen, past the town and turned onto this long, somewhat paved road. The further along we went, the less houses and shops there were. I kept asking if he was sure this was the way. He kept reassuring me, but asking me if I was sure she lived in Ntassem. I started calling Kat to double check on her street name. My phone does this odd thing where it randomly turns on and off for no reason; it seems to only really happen when I desperately want to use my phone. As I am trying to call Kat, we stop at a road block. There are police roadblocks all over Cameroon, but this one was different. There were 4 fairly large guys in jeans and dirty t-shirts holding machetes; they were probably about 25 or so years old. I tried to remain calm as the shone their flashlights in our eyes and demanded to see our ids and papers. I passed over my photocopy of my passport page and visa for Cameroon. They looked at it for some time, just staring and flipping it over and back again; so, I said, “It’s a photocopy of my passport.” “I know what it is!” the biggest guy barked at me. He then asked me what we were doing on this road. I told him I had come to pick up a friend of mine. When I said that, he decided to let us go. As soon as we got through the block, I started to ask my driver what was going on. He explained that the guy had just told his friends to let us go, because our way back they would have two whites to look forward to. He tells me that these guys often take bikes from drivers and do what they want with the passengers; simply being robbed would be a good option for us at this point. He says that we have to find another road out once we get to my friend’s house, but he doesn’t know the area at all. Just as he is explaining this to me, Kat calls.

Kat and Heather were a little nervous going out and what not; I don’t mention anything that’s happening at this point, just ask her where her house is. She pauses to think and says Ntambessi. Ntambessi is right in the center Nkwen; we had passed it about 15 or so minutes ago. We are now driving on a dirt road that is so bumpy and mangled it looks like it was made this way on purpose. When I tell the driver this he starts swearing. I’m sure it was directed at me, but he told me we were going to be ok, and not to worry. He says that we have to turn around and go back through the road block, its too dangerous to drive any further on this road now that it’s dark. So, we turn around; I immediately felt nauseous and light headed. I tried to take deep breaths, but the situation was now out of my hands. I just had to wait. As we drove up, the four guys were hassling another bike looking at their papers and questioning them. They hadn’t turned to stop us until we were quite close; this is when they realized who we were. My driver starts yelling that he’s sorry, we went down the wrong road, it was a mistake. As he’s yelling this and we are getting closer and closer, the men start waving their machetes and spreading out in the road attempting to slash whatever they might get a shot at. My driver swerved betwen two of them and sped around the corner, just missing one of the machetes on his left. I thought for sure it was going to hit us, or at least the front tire of the bike.

For the next 15 or so minutes, I don’t think I said anything except “thank you, thank you, you are amazing, thank you” to my driver. He could have easily made a deal with those guys just to hand over the whiteman and he wouldn’t have been in any danger. Instead, he decided to put his life on the line for me. He introduced himself to me, his name is Elvis. Once we hit Ntambessi, we had a few minutes before Kat got there to catch our breaths and reflect on what had just happened. He explained to me that “This is Africa Jennifer, we cannot go where we want. Thieves and bad men are everywhere in Cameroon; it is very dangerous, even for Cameroonians. You have to be very careful here, it’s never safe.” I think for the first time, I really realized how dangerous it can be here.

We picked up Kat and finally made our way to the Trade Fair to meet Sunde. The fair was being held in the main Stadium in Bamenda; it is huge–check it out. There were people everywhere, and stands selling everything you can imagine. From crafts and art to cakes and roasted fish to canola and palm oil to beer and palm wine to cell phones and internet plans, they had everything at this fair. They also had games at the fair; we didn’t play any but they were a little different. They were mostly dice and gambling related games; however, all the prizes were either pots, pans, tupperware, or dishes–not your average stuffed animals or blow up hammers here. We walked around a bit at first; we saw a dance off on one of the smaller stages. Then we found the main stage, we saw a girl who had an awful voice singing along to a popular Cameroonian song. Hundreds of people were there watching, I don’t think it was for the music though. She was wearing tight white pants and a tight white shirt shaking everything humanly possible to shake. A lot of pretty inappropriate sexual moves considering there were small children in the audience. Ha ha. Kat and I were a little stunned; well, that is, until we decided we should take some dance classes here, ha ha. The next performer was called DJ Bebe. The kid could not have been more than 13; he was about 4 feet tall with a white baseball hit and white plastic rimmed sunglasses. He turned on some music that reminded me of that hamster dance song, and spent a good hour dancing and jumping around. Everyone started screaming and cheering when he did the robot; really, it was quite strange. Kat and I were moving in and out of people trying to get the best view of the kid while laughing hysterically at what we could see.

While we were standing on the side of the stadium watching the show, a man approached us. Sunde had gone to grab a friend from the main gates, so we were alone for a bit. He kept asking me to come with him and sleep with him and trying to put his hand on my waist. After the nights events, I was getting a little frustrated by people hassling me in general. I kept smacking his hand away and telling him to get lost, but nothing. He had been drinking quite heavily. A woman came over to Kat and I to ask us if we would support her (look at what she’s selling and buy some). She was selling packages that looked like larger soya sauce plastic packets. Inside though, was not soya sauce, but whiskey or gin. She told us we could buy it wholesale if we wanted to sell some, or buy it as a single packet. The packet had about 4 to 5 ounces in it and was 100 CFA (about $2 US). We were buying ourselves two when Sunde finally came back. I was hoping he would get rid of the guy for me. We all bought a whiskey packet, then the guy who wouldn’t leave me alone asked if we would buy him one. I responded with the obvious ‘no, get out of here you creep’, Sunde however, just handed over his whiskey packet and told the guy that we had to leave but to enjoy the whiskey. It worked. Suppose sometimes being forceful and pushy isn’t the best approach to those situations–think I’d continue to be forceful in those situations though. I already look like an easy target, don’t need to accentuate that any more.

We then went to one of the many bars in the fair to hang out. There were five of us, and Sunde and his friend decided to pay for all the drinks. In Cameroon, if you invite someone out for a meal or a drink, you are responsible for paying. Not sure what happens when its a mutual decision to meet for a meal or drink….ha ha. Kat and I were lucky enough to have Sunde who showed us where the lovely latrines were. You had to pay to use them, otherwise you used the bush. Not sure why we had to pay, there is no way they had ever been cleaned. Ha ha. When we came back from the bathroom, we were both ready to go and began asking Sunde to call Donald, another one of our co-workers. Donald was supposed to give us a ride home, but he wasn’t picking up his phone. So, Sunde and his friend kept buying more drinks and trying to convince us to stay longer. Finally, Kat and I decided we could call my new man, Elvis to drive us home. Sunde wanted to escort both of us home and didn’t think we could fit four on his bike; however, we convinced him we could squeeze on so he could get back to his friends sooner. To fit all of us on Elvis’s bike, Elvis pretty much had to sit on Kat’s lap; it was definitely a tight fit. We all made it home safe, though it was quite late considering we had to meet at 7 am to catch a bus the next morning to Santa.

On my walk to the motor park at 6:45 or so, I saw about 5 different jogging groups. The young people in Cameroon are quite concerned with appearances, weight, and fashion. Every morning during the week, all my neighbours listen and watch this exercise show on the radio or tv, depending on whether they have a tv. Its mostly just walking and marching in one spot, while this strange guy counts and claps–not really too much of a workout. But it is interesting that so many people here are concerned with that; not something I’ve seen in other developing nations. I waited for Kat at the park, and we caught a car to Santa where we were meeting Eric, one of the VSO volunteers. Eric picked us up in Santa in his friend, Vincent’s truck and seven of us left for Awing. Awing was about an hour drive on bumpy dirt roads outside of Santa. We drove to the base of Mount Lefo to begin our hike.

The hike started on a nice path, not marked, but well used. After about an hour and a half of hiking, the path started to become a little harder to follow, and soon we were following the paths made by water coming down the mountain during the recent rainy season. It was still fairly easy to walk and hike, until we came to a somewhat wooded area. It was mostly shrubs, skinny trees, and weeds; however, it was not so easy to manoeuvre in there. Trying to step over branches while weeds and prickles wrap around your legs. After two and a half hours, we reached the top! It was a pretty difficult hike, we were all fairly tired by the time we got up there. We stopped for a snack–Kat and I shared some yoghurt and an orange–and to take some photos and catch our breath. Before heading down, Eric and I began considering the option of taking a route to go around the forested area and then cut back to the trail. After a quick look and general assessment, we all thought it seemed alright and started down our new path.

The beginning of our new trail seemed great; however, things quickly started to change. There was a large cliff separating us from the original path and our new route began to get quite a bit steeper. Soon the dried up water paths we were following were overgrown with vegetation. The grass was above my head at many points. As we walked further, it only got worse. The paths would randomly drop down anywhere between 2 to 5 feet without a warning. We started to hold on to the tall grasses on either side of us in case of these drops, so you could fall back instead of forward onto your face. I could feel bruises forming all over my back, legs and arms. As we kept going, our legs began to get much more tired; we would sit and hop along with our legs under us, sliding down the grassy path. Tom was in front, clearing the way by sliding down. Sitting and hopping made the drops hurt a lot less and gave your legs a break, but soon I could feel it in my arms, and would need to try walking again. It was a painfully long 4 hours down. We just had to keep going; everyone was tired, exhausted, and cut up; but we kept on moving. When we finally reached this path at the bottom to someone’s farm, there was a waterfall there. I had been out of water for a few hours now, so I was happy to see some fresh water. No one hesitated drinking it, just jumped under to cool down and drink. As nice as it was to see that waterfall, we still had no idea where we were and how to get back to where we started. Luckily, Vincent had grown tired after about 30 minutes and turned back to where we had parked the car. He had been waiting for us ever since. Unfortunately, everyone was attending a “Cry Die”, the funeral ceremony in Cameroon. We could hear the guns shots going off the whole time we were climbing the mountain; shots are fired throughout the cry die to release the spirits from the body. All of the houses in the same village outside of Awing we walked by were empty. Facing total exhaustion, we all just kept walking, trying to laugh about the situation we had gotten ourselves into. We finally stumbled upon a couple of young kids who, when asked about the high school we had parked at, looked at us like we were nuts; apparently the school was not within walking distance. So, we kept walking, hoping to hit a road that a car might be able to make it up. We reached another home with a few women home and asked what quarter of Awing we were in and where the closest main road was. Although there wasn’t a main road close, cars could access a road to the left if we kept walking. We called Vincent and let him know the quarter we were in and he set out to find us. We kept walking, the last bit was hill after hill; every time we came to the top of one hill I would almost not want to look ahead, knowing it was probably another hill. Sure enough, it would be, ha ha. We finally hit a junction and had no idea which way to turn. With no one around we started to wonder what our next move should be when we heard a car. Everyone started to get excited, hoping for Vincent. Sure enough, Vincent’s big pick up truck came bellowing around the corner, bouncing up and down over the pot holes and cracks in the dirt. I have never been so happy to get into a small space with so many smelly people, ha ha. Sitting felt so good, although my legs and arms were burning and itching from all the cuts and scratches I had gotten from the bush whacking we had done. It didn’t matter, we were back, and heading home.

Our hike lasted 6 and a half hours, and was one of the most exhausting experiences physically and mentally, that I’ve faced in a while. Kat and I were finally back in Bamenda by 7:30, a short 12 and a half hour day out. We parted our separate ways at City Chemist Roundabout; I helped her catch a bike home, then caught myself a ride. The driver going home told me he would not drop me at the Rendez-Vous Junction; my home and GHAPE are right beside the shops at the junction. I said it was right before the junction and asked why he would not drop me there. He explained that that junction always has ‘bad men’ and ‘drunks’ who are up to no good, all the time. Now that it was dark, it wasn’t safe for me to be seen getting off a bike near there; he said it was far too dangerous there for a woman, let alone a whiteman who was a woman. He let me off just before my place and I went around the back of GHAPE to my apartment, constantly checking over my shoulder.

All in all the weekend was…good…I suppose. I now have some girlfriends who want to get out and see Cameroon with me. I was also able to meet some wonderful people; Elvis’s actions almost make up for the machetes and road block. There are thieves, hooligans, and murderers everywhere; however, when life is not valued, dangerous situations become much more prevalent. There is no safety with police or security, as they are all wiling to take a few francs instead of protecting the rights of citizens or enforcing the law. It is unfortunate, but a fact of life here. It is just something I will have to accept and learn to work around; taking as many safety precautions as possible.