blak man no de di doty

"Blak man no de di doty" is Pidgin (most common language in the Southwest and Northwest regions of Cameroon) and it literally translates to "black man doesn't die of dirt".  It is on some level a type of metaphor or saying here that loosley means, African are very resistant to things here that foreigners will usually get sick from. The examples I was given were water and dust: the water and dust here doesnt make them (black men) sick - but when a white man comes he will get diarrhea from the water and respetory/breathing problems from the dust. 

Found this while cleaning up the SDI office.
"We make a living by what we get. But we make a life by what we give."

Although I have only been here for 26 days, I feel like it has been months and I am already dreaming about extending my stay. Cameroon is such a diverse country with so many places I want to visit and learn about. Cameroonians are genuinely hospitable and truly amazing and caring people. I feel so blessed to be spending my time here. I still have 120 days until my 'planned departure date' but since I have not bought my ticket yet...I am temped to stay. On verra (we'll see)

My favorite meal has come to be grilled fish with 'condiment vert', pepe and bobolo. Condiment vert is the sauce seen in the white bowl. It is a combination of ginger, garlic, oil and other spices. I have not yet learned how to prepare it, but I will post the recipe soon. Pepe is a combination of several spices that are ground together and put with everything to give it a little kick! Bobolo is not in the picture but is is a dish made by fermenting cassava leaves and shaping them in thing long loaf that is then wrapped and twisted to keep shut until serving. I prefer it hot but is often served cold. When Cameroonians living abroad come back to visit (or locals are going to visit family abroad) they often bring a suitcase full of bobolo!

House in Maumu Village, Beau, Southwest Region, Cameroon, West Africa.

My first day in Maumu only yielded 6 out of 20 teens who showed up. We arrived at 3pm and walked around the village for over an hour trying to round up young teens who had dropped out of school, were pregnant or already have a child. Everyone was very shy, and some girls even ran and hid from us as we walked around. I was accompanied by good friend and colleague Max (aka Delegate) and a local social worker from Maumu named Henry. By 5pm (it started at 4pm) we had about 6 girls so we talked about future activists and chose and official time and date for weekly workshops. As we left on the moto bike I crossed our fingers for a higher turn out the following week and began mentally planning for next week' s program.

The first official workshop is pictured here: to the right is Max (aka Delegate) and on the left is Henry.

For the second week in a row we had a very low turn out. I was disappointed because I spent the entire last week preparing and planning. I had a delegate from the Regional Delegation of Women's Empowerment open the workshop with words of empowerment and encouragement. Her speech was followed by a representative from Buea Mutual Health. He elaborated the importance of good health and how it leads to productivity. He explained the benefits of Mutual Health (which is a form of health insurance that SDI provides for each participant). The girls were hardly interested and kept turning their attention to the outside world not paying attention. At the end, I explained to them that this program was for their benefit not mine. I stressed the importance of their participation and need for their general interest and want to participate. We took photos of each girl and her child to begin the application process for the health insurance.

House in Maumu.

Before my arrival, SDI had identified 20 teens in Maumu who we would target to work with for the Teen Mother Empowerment program. I am unsure how this identification process took place, but it obviously wasn't the best way - we only had 6 of 20 girls show up. Because of the low turn out 2 weeks in a row and the obvious lack of interest, Suliman (SDI director) Max and I had a meeting with the Chief of Maumu. I wrote a letter expressing my concern about the lack of interested and overall participation. We told him that if we did not have the serious interest of more than 10 teens we would have to take our efforts elsewhere.

Low and behold the following week we waited until 4:30pm (30min after the workshop was supposed to start) and not a soul had showed up. We packed up our things and took a motobike back to town. That was out last effort in Maumu and we will be taking our efforts to other neighboring villages including Upper and Lower Muea, Bolifanba and Dibanda.

Lesson learned:  

You cannot help those who do not wish to be helped.

Mama Africa with Baby Jason. Jason is Bernadette's
(my host family sister) baby, he just turned 5 months.

The markets have always been my favorite part of Africa.

Here at the Muea Market held every Thursday and Sunday, you can find an plethora of goods ranging from used clothing and African fabric to toothbrushes, lotions and perfumes to literally heaps of dried foods and many locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables.

African prints: the patterns and colors are mesmerizing.

Sardines anyone?

I have a tendency of overloading my self with work but I like to stay busy. Besides the Teen Mother Empowerment Program, I took it upon myself to fill as many administrative roles with SDI and in the office itself as I possibly can. Seeing the mounds of paper documents scattered on chairs, shelves and on the floor throughout the office was unsettling; how can this NGO possible get anything done without any sort of organization or record keeping methods? When the internet is not working and I have nothing of immediate concern to tend to, I go to the office and spend my days organizing. I have purchased binders and labeled them with various headings and one for each SDI project. I hope that this organization helps future volunteers to become more equip with the knowledge of what has happened in the past, how people have done things and where to start once they arrive.

While I am here, I am also hoping to create some sort of 'policy and procedure' document for interns, volunteers and other staff of SDI. There is no sort of record keeping in place so when I went to make the 'annual report' for 2012 there were no tangible records I could find. All of this needs to change. The unsustainability of the projects here are being more and more apparent to me so I am sincerely hoping I will be able to collaborate with Suli and other volunteers to improve the effectiveness of SDI's programs so that the community will see lasting results. In addition, I am aiming to also create an Emergency Preparedness Plan and apply for grants to get more funding for current projects. I have a lot of things on my list, things are very slow moving here, so we'll see how much I can get done!!

Paul lives just up the road and comes to visit sometimes.
He also made a new friend: Baby Jason.

Monica and I getting ready for Sara's Passover Seder.

Once I heard that Cameroon was affectionately referred to as "Africa in Miniature" because of its diversity - I made it my goal to visit all 10 regions of the country. Since the kidnappings in the Extreme North I decided not to go there, but plan to spend time in all the other regions. Cameroonians have told me that Cameroon is the best African country because everything you can find in all of African is in Cameroon, but you cannot find everything that is in Cameroon in any another African country. Here you can find beaches, tropical rain forests, mountains, desert and more!

My first adventure took me on a 5 day trip to Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon in the Central Region. Sara, Monica and I left Friday morning and arrived back Tuesday evening. In Yaoundé we visited the Mefou National Park, made tons of friends, went out to the clubs and cabarets and discovered the city on foot.

Ape Action Africa: works on the front-line of great ape protection. Their goals are to address the immediate threats faced by gorillas and chimps in Africa, and to work with communities to develop long-term solutions to ensure their survival in the wild. They rescue orphaned and injured gorillas and chimpanzees, some only days old, hours from death

Baby chimpanzee and mommy.
The DNA of chimps are more than 98% identical to that of humans.

Peek-a-Boo!

Silverback Gorilla

Reminds me of Lion King.

Mandrill

Monkey

On the left you can see bruise marks and on the right you see a scratch.
While visiting Mefou I was attacked by a monkey that somehow got out of
her enclosed habitat.

Our guide was showing us around the sanctuary when I saw a monkey walking around out of the enclosure. I told our guide, Elvis. At first I wasn't scared but then it ran around Elvis and headed towards me! Earlier that day Monica had told me a story about an Australian woman who had her faced ripped off by a monkey - - that story was racing through my head as the monkey latched onto my leg. Elvis advised me not to move or try to run just to be still. I listened. It let go of me and climbed a wooden poll that was directly to my right, the monkey was now at eye level with me so I slowly turned away so that my face was not in front of him, I couldn't get that story out of my head...I did not want my face ripped off. As soon as I turned, the monkey grabbed onto my right arm. She grabbed even tighter and then as she went in to bite me Elvis open hand slapped it off the wood post and onto the ground. She then became very angry and I was very scared at that point. Elvis began to distract the monkey and try to use his body as a barricade. He advised both Monica and I to slowly start walking away and moving down the path away from the monkey. I was convinced she was going to follow my scent and attack me again but thankfully she didn't and we made it out alive. Elvis said I was very lucky it was not a male or the alpha male because it would have been much more aggressive and would have bitten me for sure.

As I wondered around Yaoundé on Easter Sunday I stumbled upon Le Musée Camerounais de la Blackitude (Cameroonian Museum of Blackitude). I figured it was closed so I went to look at the hours as it was open. As I approached the front door a women came out of her house (which was situated right next to the museum) and offered to open the museum for us right then and there.

The artifacts in this museum had several different traditional purposes and significations. Most of them were from the West.

Making the long walk up Mount Fébé in the Bastos area of Yaoundé to see Le Musée d'Art Camerounais (Museum of Cameroonian Art) was definitely worth it. Unlike the first museum I visited, there was tons of information to read on nearly every peace of art in the 3 rooms. I would have loved to buy the book for future reference but it was out of my budget.

The first room had several wooden pipes of all different shapes and sizes in display cases smoked by several different classes of people and for many purposes. The book explain how all members of society smoked cannabis sativa (no joke, that was in the book); the larger the pipe base and mouth piece the high status: therefore women traditionally smoked very small pipes and chiefs smoked the largest. There was one pipe with 2 bowls and one pipe with 3 bowls which were smoked by a father celebrating the birth of twins or triplets.

Traditional masks used for ritual dances.

The next room is pictured below. It was full of statues, masks, stools and beds. Several things were made with geometric patters and/or spider legs. Spiders represented wisdom so it was used often.

One of the 3 rooms in the museum. Notice the stools on the ground: chiefs and quarter heads
would carry these from meeting to meeting, village to village - it was like their portable throne.

View of Yaoundé from Mount Fébé!

I spent the last night in Yaoundé was with some friends at Dani's house (the Algerian Consulate to Cameroon) eating homemade Algerian soup and couscous whilist taking about his work throughout Africa. We had met him our first night out on Friday at a bar where he immediately extended an invitation to dinner. We saw him quite a few more times over the weekend and was very happy to have made that connection.

In only 5 short days I feel in love with the Francophone capital. I made so many friends that I cannot wait to visit again. I know I will be going back soon - it was a 7 hours bus ride but very worth it. It is a fantastic place to improve my French as well - not many people speak English.

I had the Teen Mother Empowerment identification on Wednesday after I returned and had spent the entire previous week preparing. Last week I went around to different radio station in the area to broadcast messages about the program, met with the Upper and Lower Muea chief and had a friend pass out announcement/introduction fliers to all 25 churches in the village. I was certain there would be a satisfying turn out. 

As I walked around Muea Village before the identification workshop, I noticed that there were some (just 1-3) very nice looking houses amongst more normal looking ones like in the picture of Maumu earlier in the post. I mentioned it to Max and he told me that when someone passes away and there is a funeral celebration, it is usually held at the families house. The family does the major remodeling/redecorating in honor of the deceased loved on and for the funeral celebration. The houses I had seen he explained, had recently had a family member die.

There was a somewhat disappointed number of attendance but my hopes are still high! I had tons of community support and many local adults were interested in helping with the program. They told me that the community center (where the workshop was held) should be full, the message was just not getting out to the teens. They suggest that we find 'social mobilizers' who will go from door to door

I'm starting to understand the logistics of the country/regions/cities here as well. Buea is a huge city - there are more than 200,000 people living here (which is a lot to me). Buea is in the Fako division (like a county) of the Southwest region (like a state) of Cameroon. Inside of Buea there are tons and tons of small villages. These small villages each have their own chief. Traditionally, the chief is an inherited position but sometimes it is chosen by local elders. Below the chief are "quarter heads" which are just in charge of a very small area (like a couple of blocks ) of the small village. Also within the village is a "town crier" which is someone who runs around from door to door spreading news of some sort. Sometimes the town crier is paid other times he is not. What a neat form of communication.

Yesterday I went to the villages of Bolifamba and Dibanda which are also known as Mile 16 and Mile 14 respectively. The chiefs were not around so we left the letters introducing the program with their wives asking him for cooperation and to mobilize the 'quarter heads' and the 'town crier' so that we can get the maximum amount of participation. As we were walking around looking for the chiefs 'palace' (it is just the name of the chief's house: it is not usually like the palace on Aladan or anything) Max explained the tradition of greeting a chief. Here in the Southwest region of Cameroon and in the Littoral region right next door to us, people are allowed to greet a chief by simply shaking his hand. The Southwest and Littoral regions are both coastal regions and are what Max calls "more liberal and civilized" because they were the first areas to be infiltrated with white men, they picked up the custom of handshakes. In every other region you must greet the chief by bowing your head and getting on one knee. That is a good thing to know for when I am traveling.

Locally grown fresh bananas: 12 for 300 cfc (= $.60).

10 mangos from Maumu for 500 cfc (=$1).

While I was traveling and studying in 2011/12 I spent some time in Senegal which is where I first discovered this wonderful purple sweet juice. I never learned the name of it but frequently bought it on the street, and even paid one of my friends to make me a couple of bottles to enjoy at home. Once I left Senegal I never saw it again. To my surprise, it is a traditional Cameroonian drink and they call it Folore.

I am pleased to present you all with my first of many recipes from Africa and specifically Cameroon. Here is a short video of the preparation, continue scrolling down to see the full recipe.

Folore - le jus des ananas et des hibiscus 

Ingredients
2 Pineapples
2 ½ cups dried hibiscus leaves
2 cups dried hibiscus powder
2-5 cups of sugar (to taste)
10 liters of water
*have rubber gloves available*

Directions:
Put all dried hibiscus leaves in a big bowl with the water.
Cut pineapples into large 2-3 inch chunks and put in bowl. Save all scraps in separate bowl.
Using your hands, squeeze together the pineapple chunks and the hibiscus leaves extracting all of the juice. Literally squeeze and rub the hibiscus leaves and the pineapple together – twist, rub and smash them. When finished, let it sit for 30min-1hour or more.
Transfer to large pot and add remaining pineapple scraps.
Bring to boil and then remove from the heat and set it aside to cool.
Once cooled, put on your gloves.
Remove all of the large pineapple and hibiscus chunks by squeezing all of the juice out.
Strain out all solids with a strainer.
Add sugar to taste.
DRINK and ENJOY!!!