A(t) Post… finally (written Dec 10)

Here I am—a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV)—almost two weeks old and with more than a week at post under my belt. Before I relay all that’s new and exciting about the Grand North, I think I owe it to any of you wonderful people who bother to check this, a brief summary of all that’s happened between September and now… or the three months we fondly refer to as “Stage”.

By the end of three months of showing up to “school” everyday, having essentially all my meals prepared for me, and living under the law that is Peace Corps admin (especially their 7pm curfew) I felt like I was leaving a weird version of some kind of summer camp (but probably with a lot more time spent at the bar than your average camper). As I mentioned in the last post (long ago) we had a routine schedule of language and technical training, with a few cultural and medical sessions thrown into the mix. Since I (fortunately and kind of surprisingly) came in with a level of French just below our swearing-in requirements, I had a month of French to “polish up” and learn rules, vocabulary, and whatever else I needed in order to reach level. These classes, along with the constant French immersion with my homestay family, drastically improved my language skills. After reaching the required level, I was able to begin studying Fulfude, the (non-official) language spoken throughout northern Cameroon, as well as much of West Africa.

            Tech training covered a range of topics including an overview of Cameroon’s climate zones, traditional farming techniques, agroforestry (A/F) techniques, environmental education, and a variety of other tools that might be useful as an agroforestry/environment “extension agent”. The more hands on part of the training included a group demo plot (which turned out to be very successful—the green beans we ate on Thanksgiving were our very own!), a tree nursery that each trainee kept outside the home of their village homestay family, and Dendro (tree ID) books. Admittedly, these last two weren’t as successful as the first, but I will note that my dendro book totally makes up for what my tree nursery (or lack thereof) was lacking. Lastly, it may be because we’re lucky, but probably because we’re just that cool, the “Agros” (as we came to call our camp as opposed to the Health or Santes) a couple of field trips: the first to the West region of Cameroon and the second to the Northwest region of Cameroon. [*I should note: “region” is like the equivalent of “state” in the U.S.—Cameroon has a total of 10 regions] Both trips served as a chance to see more of Cameroon, visit some PCVs, see A/F techniques put to use, and of course, some wonderful group bonding (while totally crammed into a questionable van and traversing the worst roads in Cameroon).

            Besides all the training, Stage was a wonderful time to get to know a lot of really great people. Outside of the classroom we could usually be found making friends with one of the local bartenders, buying some pagne (traditional fabric used to make clothes), or just kicking it with my homestay families. Homestay came with its own trials and tribulations: setting personal record time for how long I could hold my breath in the latrine, eating whatever was served to me regardless of the amount of palm oil it might be swimming in, or just restless nights (due to anything from loud rain to a mouse in my backpack), but all-in-all it I had a great experience with both homestays and truly left both with not only a feeling of family, but with a great deal of knowledge.

             I realized that in general, I through around lots of terns that are common to us, but foreign to anyone who’s not in country, so here’s some rough geography/general info that might help immensely: Cameroon is generally divided into the Grand North—containing the Extreme North, North, and Adamawa regions—where both French and Fulfulde are spoken, and the Grand South—Northwest, Southwest, West, Littoral, South, and East. Although the whole country is officially bilingual, the Northwest and Southwest are the two Anglophone regions where Pigdin (you might recognize some thanks to Shakira… “waka, waka, eh eh...it’s time for Africa”) is spoken.

            So now I’m finally at post. Things have slowed down and my time is mostly occupied with getting to know my surroundings, meeting new people, putting together my very own house (!), and in general, lots of time to myself. In terms of setting, some things are the same… there are still mamas on every corner selling beignets, the power still goes out sometimes, I still get my water from a forage (deep water well), and everyone from young girls to old men are covered head to toe in either brightly colored or simple, traditional pagne (probably even more so here than in the South). Some differences are that now along with French, everyone speaks Fulfulde; I am no longer in the tropics so it’s a much drier climate (and sometimes surprisingly chilly), and I am surrounded by a beautiful ring of hills which makes for an endlessly interesting landscape on a daily basis.

For your viewing pleasure:

 <--- marcotting = probably one of the coolest things i learned in stage. in short, some bark is shaved off a tree branch, pack the area with mulch, seal it with a plastic bag, wait for roots to grow (in the bag), cut under the area marcotted, place in polypot (plastic baggie filled with soil) and keep in a tree nursery or just plant! AWESOME.

 fellow PCV (then PCT) teaching a high school class about the water cycle, water pollution, pertinent general environmental education -->

 <--learning how to stir couscous de mais (corn flour + water) with my host grandma in the village

<--Agro stage class, right before site visit!