14 December 2005

I'M A PCV!!!

see title.
and for those acronymically challenged, that's "Peace Corps Volunteer."full-fledged.and after being sworn in by the ambassador in my beautiful pagne (pictures to be posted later)... I have arrived.and now I'm leaving Bandjoun.

10 December 2005

Franglais

Petit disclaimer.
I'm bilingual.
I'm living in a country that is officially bilingual.
Some of you are bilingual.
Therefore, this blog will be too. Sorry for the slight inconveniences that may arise.

The following is an article I wrote for the PST journal, a few weeks ago.

"Une française au Cameroun"

À Philadelphie, quand on nous a demandé de choisir trois adjectifs pour nous décrire, mon premier mot c’était " française. " Moitié-française, moitié-amicaine, je me suis toujours fiée de plus au bleu, blanc, et rouge. Après avoir passe énumerables étés et un semestre en France, j’étais convaincue que mon bonheur m’attendait en Gaulle. Mon projet de vie, tant que je tiens à cela, consiste du moins de temps que possible aux Etats-Unis avant que je ne puisse rentrée à mon Paris chéri, diplôme en main.
J’ai ressenti ma culpabilité de " blanche " surtout il y a un an et demi. Dans un cours de danse africaine dont le prof était Malien, nous avons découvert que tout le monde parlaient français – mais les autres venaient du Mali, de la Somalie, de l’Ethiopie, du Ghana, et de l’Haïti. Les colonisés – et moi, la colonialiste, la française, celle qui parlait la langue " pure et non-diluée. " (Pour ceux qui m’écoutent en français, pourtant, cette française fait même beaucoup d’erreurs de grammaire, de vocabulaire, et d’accent). Comment, alors, réagirai-je au sein d’un pays francophone, une ancienne colonie de la France?
Après un mois ici – et même dès le début – j’aime beaucoup le Cameroun. Je suis contente de ma vie ici. Mais tous les jours, avec mon petit-déjeuner de baguette et de Nescafé, je ressens la honte pour mon pays natale. L’accent parisien duquel j’étais tellement fière en France – que finalement, finalement on me voyait comme une vraie française – me grince aux oreilles. Et tant que j’essaie de m’adapter aux rhythmes et aux sons du français camerounais, cela sera toujours un dialecte étrange pour moi.
Ma grand-mère française a toujours voulu gâter mes désirs. Elle était toujours trop contente de m’envoyer mes biscuits Belin, mes Mikado, mes Coquelines. À Yaoundé, à Score, j’ai retrouvé toute l’alimentation française de mon bonheur. Mais j’avais envie de les rejetter. La France n’a peu en commun avec l’Afrique, et le fait que je pourrais me faire une France en miniature me détourne. Je n’ai pas envie de ma France maintenant – j’ai envie de l’Afrique.
En modifiant mon français pour être compris, je parle plus lentement, avec des phrases moins lyriques, plus directes, et avec des mots plus saccadés. Mais ce n’est pas, ce n’est pas le français à version simple. C’est – et j’insiste sur ce point pour m’en souvenir autant que pour le bénéfice des autres – un autre français. Je serai toujours française et j’aimerais toujours mon pays. Pour une patriote avec tant d’amour du pays, il n’ya rien de meilleur que cela – que de voir le côté néfaste, colonialiste, violent, déstructif ; bref, le côté qui a tant exploité ce pays. Je ne renie pas les pêchés de la France envers l’Afrique. Je les fais face, tous les jours. Mais je ne cherche pas à redresser les mauvais faits d’un pays. Je suis au Cameroun pour apprendre et pour donner de moi-même, le plus des deux que possible. Et je suis vraiment ravie d’être là.

04 December 2005

[Dev] Useful Maps!

Check out this map of Cameroon. Yaounde is near the top; Mvangan, where Jenny will be working soon, is just below the center of the map.

13 November 2005

Mvangan

Tomorrow I leave for a week's visit at my post! And my post is… where I will be living for the next two years… (drumroll, please)

Mvangan, South province!

Which I know you've never heard of. Not yet having been there, I am convinced that it's the absolutely perfect post for me. (This is much how I decided that Boston was my favorite US city many years before I ever visited. But I wasn't wrong then, so why now?)

And next week I'm going house-hunting for the house where I will live for two years in a village in the rainforest.

I'm very lucky because the PCV whom I'm replacing, Heidi, has been there in Bandjoun this week helping out with training (so I've already been able to learn a lot from her). I'll describe the village before I get to what my actual (AMAZING) job is going to be, there. Mvangan is a village of about 2000 people, located 100 km from Gabon in the middle of the equatorial rainforest. It's 2-3 hours from Ebolowa, the provincial capital of the South, where I'll go for banking and whatnot. I'm lucky that one of my PCT friends has been posted to Ebolowa, so not so far from me. Another good friend is a few hours further, at the end of a dirt road near Equatorial Guinea, in a village of about 200 people. We're pretty sparse, PCV-wise, in the South.

There is no cell phone reception in the area and there is one fixed phone line in the village that works sometimes. I should be getting a satellite phone (Heidi's is currently broken) but we'll see how that goes. One way to get messages to me is to send them by taxi from Ebolowa. I will have electricity in my house, but no running water – though I haven't had running water for a very long time and it really isn't an issue. There is a hospital in town and a high school – I don't know much else yet. The two main economic activities in the area are bushmeat hunting and cocoa farming. (Yes, I'm going to figure out how to make my own chocolate. At least that's the plan.)

So why Mvangan? Heidi just set up a volunteer counseling and testing center (VCT) at the hospital (for HIV). She's been training HIV counselors from community members, doctors, and nurses, and I will be taking over that project, as well as expanding the center and starting (I hope) some support groups for people living with HIV/AIDS (PVVS in French). Another part of my job will be doing community outreach in surrounding villages, on health topics including HIV but also water sanitation, malaria, etc. There is a apparently a chief who's really excited to work with me. I really want to work on water projects, too, improved water sources and the like for potable water in the communities.

Also: I will be working on the Johns Hopkins Cameroon project, which is a research study examining the crossover of viruses from non-human primates to humans. This is the current theory of how HIV came into the human population. Many new viruses have emerged and are emerging in this way. Why Cameroon and why where I am? There is a high level of contact between humans and non-human primates (chimps, gorillas, etc.) with bushmeat hunting, butchering, eating, and keeping monkeys as pets. There are many research sites, all over Cameroon, and I am ecstatic to be a part of this project. Three of us PCTs (well, later PCVs) will be working on this. I don't know exactly in what capacity, yet, but I can't wait to find out more. The Hopkins site near me is 60km away on a moto. (Ah, there she comes in the PC-prescribed moto helmet! It makes me look like a Power Ranger.)

Essentially, my job has many components, all of which I can choose to emphasize as much as I want, has me traveling throughout the community, doing education, building things, doing research, and… whatever else happens over the next two years. Yes, it's exactly perfect. And I can't wait to get there.

After this week, which I will spend with Heidi, meeting all the important people, getting to know the community and the area a little bit, and getting some idea of my job, I come back to Bandjoun for another 3 weeks of training. Swearing-in is December 15th, after which I can officially call myself a PCV, and it'll be off to Mvangan for two, I foresee, glorious years. More (with pictures, I hope) after I've actually been there. It's all starting to be real now.

And I don't want to be anyplace else on Earth.

01 November 2005

Un week-end à Bamenda

[As far as I can tell, "stagiare" seems to be the French equivalent of "trainee". If you don't know French, try BabelFish. -- Dev]

Pour que cet article soit à la portée de tout le monde, j’ai decide d’écrire en anglais et en français. Nous parlons d’une visite dans une province Anglophone, après tout. Alors tout ce qui se passé à Bamenda sera en anglais. And if you can no longer read English after a heady week of immersion, come find me and I’ll translate gladly.

Le voyage a été facile, 2 heures en bus, coincés les uns contre les autres comme on a bien l’habitude. Après seulement un pneu creusé en route (et un arrêt qui a bien servi de pause-toilettes) on est arrives à la gare routière de Bamenda, toute en haut de la ville.

And there our adventure in English began – and then the other stagiaires began to understand the trials and tribulations of your editors in Cameroonian French. Taxis sped us partway down the mountain to Mondial Hotel, and then onto the rest of our trip.

On through Bamenda! Anglophone style is very different: more subdued, less aggressive, but at least on this trip, more willing to gouge prices for us. Among the highlights: a medicine man selling cure-alls with pictures of STIs to rival Dr. Laura’s in Yaoundé. The trip also yielded a few artists’ studios, including a triumphantly-argued purchase for a friend. It’s really nice, and it really shows off the “coc du Cameroun”.

Onto the waterfalls! Or, chutes de Bamenda! Or, where we ended up, White House! Taking three taxis that started off our short excursion by crashing into each other, we pulled up in front of a very nice, very large, yellow house overlooking the city.

“What…?”
“It’s White House!”

Or… house of the whites? After more arguing, we did get to the head of the trail to the waterfalls. It was a slippery climb down, with only a few casualties, and the trip back up was precarious only for the two who stumbled into some sort of merde. The view and the journey through “African jungle brush” were spectacular. Go see it yourself - and you might get to see the White House too, if you’re lucky.

Later, a valiant seven, including PCV Kelly, set out in search of a night club and ended up at Dallas, Bamenda’s premiere sing-along bar. Karaoke? Yes, but without the prompters. When we entered, it was a mix of African tunes and Céline Dion, but after their shout-out to “our white friends in the back,” we were summoned to sing Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World.” Did we know the words or the tune? I didn’t, but after several rounds I managed to catch the chorus. The fearless Health president led the bar in clapping along – and – well – I have to say we improved everyone’s evening entertainment. For an encore? “La Bamba”, oddly enough, followed by us dancing - somehow - to everything sung for the rest of the night. We stayed out past midnight (so late for stagiaires!) but half the evening was yet to happen.

Our taxi driver on the way back to the hotel was kind enough to wait patiently while more prices were argued for fairness. Finally on the slow, steep climb back, he discovered he had a car full of Americans willing and ready to sing Bob Marley and Céline Dion with him. He was so excited by us that he stopped – at least twice – offering to take us back to his house so we could all drink palm wing together and sing. We and the taximan serenaded Mondial Hotel as we waited for the gates to open.

Et le matin, c’était tôt l’heure de partir, mais non sans du café et du pain avec le beurre reel et la confiture. Le voyage de retour a été sans incident, grâce aussi à la cassette géniale achétée par Kelly à la gare. Épuisés, déjà de retour à Bafoussam à 10h30, le week-end s’est terminé, mais bien achévé.

03 October 2005

Greetings from Yaounde!

[This is from a quick update email Jenny sent us from Yaounde. Hence, the bullet points. -- Dev]

This is going to be a mass and multi-purpose email, for now.

  • We arrived last night. It is amazing and completely overwhelming!
  • We are in Yaounde until Thursday morning when we leave for Bandjoun, about 3 hours away in the western province. We will live with host families there during training (till dec 15).
  • For those of you who saw my luggage, I'm missing the big big bag. Of the 29 of us, 14 are missing bags; we'll see tomorrow if they come in on Aire France. I guess I'll be getting new fabrics and having clothes made a lot more quickly, then.
  • Being my (ridiculous) self this means I am missing most things but have the essentials - all of my books, my wrap-around non-pants, a radio, a towel and toiletries, and all the carry-on stuff.
  • The shots - we only got 3 in Philly (no bad reactions) and the rest over the next few weeks.
  • Just took a driving tour of Yaounde. Beautiful, beautiful vistas. Our hotel is near the national soccer stadium, as is the internet cafe where I am now.
  • Tonight is dinner at the CD's house (Country Director, for future reference). The us ambassador might be there - he is a former PCV!!!
  • I'm in Africa.
  • Peace Corps is awesome. My group is really amazing.

Bisous! A bientot.

20 September 2005

Jenny goes to Africa, Part 1

I meet up with my Peace Corps group in Philadelphia on September 28 for two days of exciting seminars with titles like "Nuts and Bolts", "Your Personal Definition of Success", etc. Then the morning of the 30th, my lucky group of 30-60 and I go to the clinic bright and early for our 10ish shots. We are then packed onto a bus for New York, from where we start the approximately 18 hours of traveling, straight. I've heard that the connecting flight from Paris to Cameroon is breathtaking, as it crosses the Sahara and you can see the vast expanses.

We arrive in Yaoundé, the capital, on October 1, do intensive training in language/culture/job for two months (somewhere in the country) and then move to our assigned posts for the next two years. Officially, I will finish on December 2, 2007 (the day before my 25th birthday, if you're counting). In Cameroon, I will be a community health volunteer, which means little more than the title to me right now. More specific jobs and posts are assigned during training.

Cameroon hasn't been in the news lately, which I suppose is a positive sign, politically. It has one of the most stable governments and economies in West Africa. It also has some of the highest disease rates, including the second-highest rate of HIV in West Africa (first is Côte d'Ivoire). Called both a microcosm of Africa and the breadbasket of Africa, it boasts every type of climate/landscape that can be seen in Africa (apparently) – desert, savanna, rainforest, volcanoes, beach, mountains, etc. It also produces the most food of West African nations – including but not limited to lots of coffee and cocoa beans. The official languages are French and English, but most people, if they speak one of those, speak French. We will also be instructed in local languages.

And after that… I don't know. I know I'll be living with a host family during training and after that… somewhere else. I don't know how many people are going or where we'll be. And I don't know what I'll be doing. Part of the Peace Corps experience seems to be the "adventure" (or so-called) of traveling into the relative unknown, putting yourself into the hands of the government which has made all the arrangements. The Peace Corps has been in Cameroon since 1962, its second year of operation, so this should be the continuation of a good, longstanding tradition.

I don't know until I arrive what the nature of internet access will be or how often it will be available. I'm not bringing my computer, though many people in my group apparently are (I'm still adjusting to that, and to the idea that cell phones are quite common, have widespread service, and that I'll probably have one). I will try to communicate by email when I can. I have had a very generous and genuine offer from a friend to put a blog together for me, so that is in the works. Hopefully there will be a possibility for transmission of pictures.

I hope this finds you well. Best of everything.

19 September 2005

[Dev] What this is about

My friend Jenny was leaving for Cameroon to spend the next two years in the Peace Corps. Shortly before she left, I suggested that she keep up a blog about her experiences there. She agreed, and I volunteered to post whatever things she sent to me.

And so here we are. Except for some occasional administrativia from me, this blog is all about Jenny, and her experiences in the Peace Corps. She will usually be sending me posts via email, but given the nature of her internet access probably won't be posting herself for a while. If you'd like me to pass a message to her, just drop me a note.

Thanks, and enjoy!