First week in Cameroon

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Greetings from Cameroon,

This is only my 6^th day here in the city of Dschang ("Chong"), but I'm already feeling well assimilated. We arrived at Douala airport on Friday, where Lindsay's host family (one of them) was there to meet us. We then drove to the city of Limbe on the coast, maybe an hour or two's drive through bustling Friday night traffic. The traffic itself is worth mentioning, as the experience was wholly foreign. It would appear that there are no real traffic laws, or things like designated lanes, or stoplights. Any space where a car can fit on or next to the road is fair game. This is even more true for the motorcycles that weave outrageously through the traffic. There also appears to be an as yet undecipherable system of communication involving the flashing of your lights at approaching vehicles.

Upon our arrival at Limbe, I got to meet the rest of the Abe'ele family, in total I believe it was 11 or 12 kids ranging in age from 13 to 28, and the two parents, plus 2 dogs and a cat. I have no idea where everyone slept. Only maybe 6 of the kids are biological, but as the family is fairly well off, they end up taking in a lot of extended family. This kind of thing turns out to be fairly typical of Cameroonian families, you live with as many people as your household can support, students as well as relatives in university towns like Dschang.

That evening we went to a restaurant by the ocean where I ate my first Cameroonian meal of fish and this jellied ground tuber thing "baton de manioc" (cassava root). Following the lead of the host father, I ate pretty much every part of the fish save its fins and spine, this includes the head, which is saved for last, not so appetizing but not so terrible either. I also got to have my first Cameroonian beer, a Guiness brewed and distributed in country.

The Cameroonian beer selection contains a number of different labels put out by maybe two larger breweries, but for the most part they all consist of standard USA type piss lager. Here and there it seems you can find a German import or a this French/African import Pelfort, and always there is Guiness. Beers come in 750-800 cl bottles, so the process of meeting multiple people for a drink throughout the day can become somewhat incapacitating.

Lindsay and I hit up a local black sand beach the next day, for some much needed recuperation. It was a really beautiful spot. After an excellent homemade dinner of "N'dole" (a paste of greens and peanuts and beef) served with balls of ground plantain we gave out some small presents and prepared for our departure in the morning. While packing a few of the younger children came into my room and I got a change to really interact, playing some hackey sack and showing off all my gear.

The next morning's bus ride to Dschang was fairly uneventful though we passed through some great scenery, upon our arrival we hired a porter guy to cart our bags and set out walking for our host's neighborhood. I knew we must be getting close when a small boy burst out of a doorway, screaming "Lin-say" and launched himself around her midsection. This was Martiel, 11 yrs old, who had been visiting his aunt's but promptly lead us to his house where we are staying.

After being forced to renegotiate the price for carting our bags (a typical experience for us rather conspicuous white folk) I got to meet the Nana household, consisting of mom, dad, grandma (an ancient woman who speaks only dialect), Rosine (at 25 the eldest daughter, currently pregnant but expecting in a month, so during my stay!), Clemance (a sweetheart daughter of ~23), Valerie (a cool guy musician of 20), Marionette (the sassy 16 year old daughter), then Marcel. In addition to this immediate family, Rosine has two adorable children, an 8 yr old boy Delmass and a 2 yr old girl Lindsay! There is also a grown son of maybe 27 working and studying in Douala, another son of ~23 in med school, and a daughter of ~13 that an Aunt took a liking to and essentially claimed as her own. These three no longer live at the house. There are also two male students in their twenties, Jojo and Mireme, who each rent a room. Mireme has demonstrated a real interest in my research and has already been a great help in tracking down a water quality questionnaire he helped distribute as part of a research project from 2 yrs ago.

Papa Nana and youngest son Martiel in front of the house

After meeting the family Lindsay and I went out with Delmass and Martiel to take a preliminary look around town. As it was late in the day on a Sunday, not too much was going on, but I did get to see some of the local landmarks and a fair amount of Lindsay's old stomping grounds. Downtown Dschang is a quite manageable size, consisting of maybe 12-15 square blocks but this relatively small area comes alive with activity during the week. On the market days merchants travel in from the surrounding villages, filling up the streets and giving the city the feel of a bustling metropolis.

View of the petite marché

On Monday I got the chance to see the people of Dschang during working hours. Lindsay took me around to her favorite café and restaurant and showed me some of the best places to buy everything from hardware to shampoo. Throughout this process we were making countless introductions as Lindsay encountered old friends she hadn't seen in two years. By the time we returned to the house just before dark I was dead beat. I've made an almost immediate transition to a very Cameroonian sleep schedule that I previously would have thought very unlikely: up at dawn (around 7am) and in bed reading by 10 or even 9. The Cameroonian day is strongly dictated by the hours of daylight, with concerns for safety (marauders are said to abound) and sorcery (traditional superstitions are very much a part of life) keeping most people indoors after dark (around 7pm).

Monday also happened to be the birthday of our host mother. Together we went to the market to go shopping for "panya," which means cloth and refers to 3m bolts of fabric festooned with traditional designs. Lindsay and I each selected a design that Mama Nana will turn into hand tailored outfits for us and bought her a panya of her own as a birthday present. I also got to meet Adamou, a friend of Lindsay's and member of the police force. He was quite friendly and should be able to help us get our various papers in order and meet with the right officials.

Tuesday also brought a host of introductions that have put me in touch with some very promising contacts. After meeting Tereza, the wife of Thomas, the owner of the chauffering company that Lindsay will be using when her family visits, where I got to breakfast on some "bouille" (Cameroonian cream of corn), we went to Doombu, the village where she taught in 2006 and had the library constructed and school improvements made. I can tell you that the reception was very warm indeed, the teachers are totally in love with Lindsay, and it was incredible to be so warmly received. It was also impressive to get to see first-hand the improvements Lindsay was able to make on the educational facilities there. Even with the school out of session, the impact Breaking Ground has had on the community there is clearly tangible. I also met with a couple high school teachers who also attend the University, one of whom is a biochemistry student that could help me secure additional supplies for my analyses.

Lindsay and her fellow elementary school teachers

After a quick beer with all the teachers, we jetted back to Dschang to meet with Noupa, a generous man who has already been a great asset to Breaking Ground. He has been investigating possible water projects on my behalf, and is also available for French lessons. I hope to be able to arrange something regular with him to help my language skills progress. We also met with Maurice, a former employee of SIT and brother to the chief of a neighboring village. He is a great guy who has arranged with us to come to his village tomorrow to discuss a community development project they are working on as well as some aspects of their water system.

Wednesday morning our host father took me to a couple neighboring houses to see about finding a new host family as conditions will be a bit crowded at the Nana's once Lindsay's brother Matt arrives. Lindsay and I also checked out an apartment that I might rent as a living space later in my stay. It's a great spot right in town at the old location of the offices of the SIT study abroad program that gave Lindsay her first introduction to Cameroon. It consists of two bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bath for the equivalent of only $50 a month, just one example of how far the dollar can take you here.

We also met briefly with Paul, the director of the bridge construction project that Breaking Ground is involved with to see about visiting the work site tomorrow. Our main excursion was to Kelang, the village of Maurice to meet with him and his brother the chief. They are trying to construct a community center there that will function as a general gathering place/town hall and also a nursery school for the children who are too young to walk to the schools in town. The project is well underway but work can progress only as funds become available. With the support of Breaking Ground, the village leaders believe that the roof and most of the walls could be readily finished, permitting use of the building even as finishing work continues. Besides providing valuable communal space, the nursery school will allow the mothers of young children to pursue additional enterprises outside of the maintenance of their households.

I was also told about their most recent water project which involved the construction of a collection basin at a spring head up in the hills. The basin fills and is gravity fed through pipes to 6 faucets distributed throughout the village, providing readily accessible, clean water to the villagers. At 20 m³ capacity, the basin is rapidly emptied, necessitating that someone man a master valve at the head of the system, turning the water on at certain times each day and shutting the valve once the basin is emptied to allow the source to replenish. The elders' hope is to eventually construct a second basin as the current capacity only partially meets the village's needs.

After returning to Dschang, we met with the N'djoko family, which hosted Alex during her SIT experience. The father works for the university in the administration, and has agreed to put me in touch with a chemistry professor he knows. As my research on local water quality gets underway my hope is that I will be able to rely on University contacts to help me with their chemical expertise and knowledge of how to secure additional supplies.

The N'Joko family

Thursday we traveled by moto to the bridge project, where we spent most of the day. The workers are currently in the process of filling the second stage of the bridge foundations. By the end of the day, the cement for the first 3 meters of the foundation had been poured on both sides and left to set. This brings the foundations approximately 1/3 of the way to what amounts to the 100 year flood plain, as reconstructed from the memories of the village elders. With an additional 240 bags of cement (at about $13.60 per bag) the bridge foundations could be complete within a month, to the point where progress should be insured against all but the most severe flooding the rainy season might bring. In the end, the completion of the bridge project will turn an 18km journey to town into a 7km journey, greatly facilitating the transport of goods to market for the 4 or 5 villages that will share the use of this bridge just as they have shared in the construction.

At the bridge project

Friday we set out to the Commissariat to see about obtaining national identity cards to facilitate work in travel throughout Cameroon. We spoke with Officer Wabo, who was very helpful and turns out to have been the host father for Breaking Ground's own Brendan Schwartz. During the process of having the ID cards explained to us and getting photocopies of our passports and visas certified, I met a member of the Cameroonian surveillance agency David Mbock. While Lindsay went off to Doombu to eat 7 different dinners at the homes of all the teachers, I stayed in Dschang and David took me apartment shopping. We visited a couple different buildings which were renting single rooms that might be suitable for setting up my laboratory. We also visited a local hotel so that David could follow up on claims that the hotel owners weren't paying the employees their agreed wages. We returned to his village of Foto just outside downtown Dschang to try and see if there was a room in his building and to have a drink.

My current hope is to sleep and take evening meals with a family and have a separate space in town where I can do my analyses. I want to do a home stay for at least the first month, month and a half as this kind of immersion should make learning the language and adapting to the culture all the easier while also providing me with some solid community of my own. I meet with Noupa again later today to discuss his water projects and teaching availability in greater detail.

Thus marks my first week in Cameroon; I can only hope that week two will be even half as productive!