Saturday, July 28, 2012

Then I came back to lovely Cameroon with Hilary Muffin Griffin '08. While Hil was here, we did about the same route as when my dad came to visit. We came straight to my village first. I figured do the least exciting thing first; then there is always something to look forward to after. We spent about a week and a half in my village, but we did quite a bit of tourist/sightseeing just around Gangassaou. I heard since last year that there is a cave and waterfalls close by, but had never been to them. I asked a friend who works at the hospital, Babba, to take us to them. We went to see the cave first on that morning. I thought our headlamps were strong, but they were no match for how dark and deep the cave was. Hil and I wanted to explore, but legit could not see a thing, so we didn't stay too long.

Hil and our two guides in front of the cave

Then we went to see the waterfall, which also involved Hil's first Cameroonian photo shoot, or a CPS as I like to call it. Other Peace Corps Cameroon volunteers know just what I'm talking about by a CPS. And for others who do not know; let me break it down. A CPS is an opportunity to take as many photos as possible, with as many combinations of people as possible, in as many stances/positions as possible. A CPS could easily be transferred into a wild math problem. For the waterfall CPS:
Number of people (Hil, Babba and Alison) * Combinations possible (HandB, BandA, HandA) * Stances in front of waterfall (standing up with back to waterfall, standing up looking at waterfall, standing up against rocks, crouching down with back to waterfall, crouching down on rocks, crouching down by water) = many many photos

Hil's first CPS
Hil was getting a bit annoyed at the waterfall CPS, but clearly that was her first one and she just wasn't used to JUST how many photos can possibly be taken. Side note: in all CPS photos, you must look dead serious. No laughing, no smiling. Serious Business face.

While around Gangassaou, we also went and did something I've been wanting to be since I arrived; climb Mount Nganha. Nganha is the district in which my village is located and there is this huge point-in-the-sky mountain there. Everytime I run in the fields, or walk home from the hospital or walk to the high school; I see this mountain and have always wanted to climb it. So Hil and I get the number for a guy that works up in Nganha and we call him the day prior to let him know we are coming. We hire a guy from here to take us up to Nganha on his motorcycle. The road starts out as pavement and then become dirt. In the rainy season (as it is now) the dirt part of the road is a hotttt messssss. But it hadn't rain for a couple of days when we headed up so it was mostly just bumpy. So we get up there and find the man that we called. He goes and tries to find another guy who is the guide for the mountain. He finds our guide; this tiny tiny little man wearing a winter red and blue snowmobiling outfit. No joke; zip-down the front. It gets better: he wore this outfit the entire hike up and down the mountain. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So we find snowmobiling guide and he's like "you have to slaughter a goat before going up to the mountain because of the ancestors". And I'm like "um, we are pressed for time, is there any way we can not do the whole goat thing?" So we go and talk to the Chief of Nganha and he's just more interested in us and why two little white girls have come to Nganha than in eating goat. So we leave the chief's house and the snowmobiler is like "It will be 16000; 8000 for the chief and 8000 for the motorcycle and us two guides". Our other guide was this little town punk, but it was fine. He was the one with the motorcycle so he got to come along. Hil is like "Al, that is so expensive no let's not" and I'm like "no we're here already, it's cheaping than killing a goat let's do this". So snowmobiler and punk go off to get a snack to eat and then all 4 of us head up to the base of the mountain on the moto. We park the moto and we head up. It takes us about an hour total to make it all the way up. Side note: as soon as I told Hil that I wanted to climb the mountain a couple of days prior, she was like that looks like an awful idea. And she was right. At many points in the climb, due to the incline, we had to crawl and grab legit grass to pull us up the mountain. The pants Hil was wearing, that she had freshly patched, we ripped all up in a matter of minutes. It was great though. Snowmobiler leading the way (sweating completely and all over his suit) then me behind pulling myself up using grass, then Hil swearing at me because I made her come on this unsafe hike, then the punk pulling up the rear. A few times, our two guides stopped to have a cigarette while Hil and I drank water. That is how in shape these dudes were. Even with smoking up the mountain they were still struggling less than us. Once we got to the top (where we were informed monkeys live), we had our lunch. Hil and I had brought hard-boiled eggs and popcorn. The dudes brought bennets and beans. Snowmobiler collected a little from us and took a little from him and put them on a leaf on the ground for the ancestors. I have a feeling I know who will get to them first though...and it rhymes with donkeys. Then we took some photos, but not a CPS because the dudes smiled in the photos, and made the trek back down.

Alison, Hil and snowmobiler guide at summit 

That was worse by far than coming back up. Half the time, we were crab-style hands and legs shimmying down the sharp incline. We were in the same order going back down, although I'm sure this time, Hil was cursing at me about more for dragging here on this suicide hike. Snowmobiler kept telling us not to look down and that "everything will be alright as long as you don't look down". Everything was fine though. Right when we got to the base and we were walking back to the moto, it started pouring. Thank goodness that hadn't started earlier. We moto-ed back to Nganha which was now a slip 'n slide mud road. Once we got back, we hung out in front of the chief's house and waited for the rain to stop. Hil and I munched on popcorn, and stayed close together for warmth. We were soaked through to the bone. We paid our snowmobiler and then looked for a motorcycle. We found one and started to leave....and realized that that was not happening on this now mud pie beneath the moto's tires. So we waited for a car....for another half hour or so. We squeezed into the normal-sized car with 6 other people and 4 sacks of manioc in the back. It smelled like mud, sweat and manioc. Yum. The car was sliding all over the road and I thought for sure we would be stuck halfway down the mountain but our driver was good and he slowly but steadily drove through the mud furrows in the road. We arrived back at Gangassaou soaking wet, exhausted, and freezing but accomplished about the day.

Another thing we did around Gangassaou was to visit the market of Goprey which is up the dirt road about 45 minutes. My boss, Essaya, brought us. I love the market there because it's so big, there is a huge cattle selling area, they have yummy meat for sell, and my friend Lundee is Mbororo and comes in to sell milk. Because the market hadn't picked up yet when we arrived, we went to visit a friend of Essayas before coming back. We walked through the cattle market and Hil and I bought some sweet knives. We searched for Lundee first and when we couldn't find her, we sat down to eat what is, inmy opinion, the best cow meat in Cameroon. Of course, as we're sitting down, I see Lundee walk by. "You are coming to stay with me?" is the first question she asked. I met Lundee last year when she came to visit a sick relative at the hospital. When she stayed at the hospital, she stopped by Rose and Essayas next door in the evening to ask for something. They invited her in because they were eating a watching the news on the TV powered by their generator. It was her first time ever watching TV. When I arrived at the hospital, she started asking me questions and wanting me to come stay with them at the hospital. We needed a translator because my fulfulde is awful and she doesn't speak any French. The time after that when I traveled to the Goprey market she was there and asked if I had come to live with her. I said no, not this time and that I had come to buy a shirt like the once she was wearing. We went behind someone's house and she just took the shirt off her back and gave it to me. I have not been to the Goprey market as often as I could, but before I leave Cameroon, I have to go and see what her village is like and where she lives. So Hil met Lundee, who, of course, asked us to come and stay over with me. Essaya politely told her another time for me. Then we headed back to Gangassaou.


Mbororo girls at the Goprey market, girl in the middle
 is Lundee's daughter

After the time spent in village, Hil and I headed up north in search of animals. We met a guy who took us up to see hippos. That was a long moto ride, and shady in some parts while it was rainy and making the road difficult, but worth it. We arrived in Maga and negotiated a price to go see the hippos. We ended up getting the price down to less than half of the guy's original offer. So the hippos are all in the water, right? And the only way to get to them is on a boat. But not a boat like we know in the US. This boat was make out of random wood pieces and tin and cardboard to mend it in places. There was water leaking all over the place, but it seemed to just all leave at the end. A motor was attached to this Tom Sawyer boat and it took us about 20 min to get out to the hippos. Mind you, this was right after Hil told me the previous day that hippos are the most vicious animals on the planet. So here we are, in our cardboard boat, just going up to this herd of hippos. "Oh look they're so cute!! YAAA" Hil said. "Oh shit, we're going to die!" I said. In one bite, those hippos could eat through our canoe and then what would we do? After Hil sang "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas", we peaced out. I was also feeling kindof sick. The entire time we traveled, Hil and I had some sort of bug/amoebas/something going on.


Hilary on cardboard boat to go see the hippos
Up north, we also went to Waza for a day. There we saw tons of antelope, birds galore, warthogs and giraffes. So we're going along in our little Jeep four-wheel drive in the park, and we get stuck in the mud. Hil and I peace out and go chill in nature to let the men work and fix the problem, or so we thought. So they are throwing sticks and grass under the tires and trying to shovel stuff out to get us out, when Hil notices that the reason they can't get out is that they didn't lock their wheels right. I never knew this but Hil said with older 4-wheel drive vehicles, you have to manually lock the wheels when you're going from 2-wheel to 4-wheel drive. As soon as she fixed the wheels, he drove out of the mud. Piece of cake. What would we do without Hil? Be stuck in the mud in the wildlife park for a very long time?


Our lil jeep stuck in the mud in the middle of the wildlife park

Then after that, we came upon a group of young giraffes. So, you're not supposed to get out of the car cause these are wild animals and blah blah....but we did. We got up close to the herd of young giraffes. They were so beautiful.


a baby giraffe :)

Also, up in the north, we went to the artist market. Haggling haggling galore but we got a few good gifts off Hil's list.

When we came back down through Ngaoundere, we took a car through the East region of Cameroon. This is the first time I had been there and honestly I was a little nervous to go. The East is all rainforest and rainforest means water and the more water you have the bigger the creatures like cockroaches and snakes are. It was beautiful though and Hil's favorite part of Cameroon. She loves rainforests. In the East, we went to the chimpanzee reserve outside of Belabo. Another moto ride, but this time a gorgeous one, through forests. This chimp sanctuary was started 12 years ago by a woman from the US. There are 40-something chimps living there. They don't breed them, the girl chimps are all on human-birth control, but just raise the chimps. The take care of chimps found in the wilderness whose parents were killed and eaten. Or people will bring them chimps that are found. Or they take in chimps that people have as pets, because that is illegal in Cameroon. It was a bit surreal arriving there because the majority of people working and helping out there are from the US and UK. Bizarre to walk into the middle of a forest I guess and meet people that live right next to where Hilary is working for the summer in Oregon. Small world after all.

After the East, Hil and I continued (in a very very long and trying day of transportation) to the west to the beach town of Limbe. Limbe is in an anglophone region of Cameroon. We stayed at a lovely little hotel on the water that overlooked the beautiful mountains, scenery and - a large oil rig off the coast.


Hil + Alison, not happy about the oil rig ruining the beautiful Limbe beach scenery

We spent a couple of days lounging around, eating fish and shrimp, and thoroughly enjoying ourself. Then we headed back (in a much less-painful bus journey) to Yaounde and I dropped Hil off at the airport - just joking. The engine of the airplane/no fuel/a bird of somesort caused il to extend her vacation in Cameroon for two more days. Brussels Airlines put her up in a hotel, and I hung out with her there. Hil and I celebrated my 24th birthday on June 30, 2012, in the nice hotel room, with a bottle of wine and some x-men :)

PHOTOS OF HIL'S TRAVELS TO C-ROON: more photos of hilary's travels in cameroon
Then, before I knew it, I traveled to the States. Those 2.5 weeks flew by. I saw my sister, Sarah, graduate at Hofstra on Long Island. Then went to lovely Vermont to see family and friends with a week. Then I traveled out to Elmira to see some 2012s graduate. It was wonderful being home, but very surreal. Here are some observations I noted in my journal while traveling/ being at home:

while waiting in Brussels airport, my thought: people don't talk to each other here, it's too clean, what's the rush anyway?
"i have no service here, it says searching" - an american tourist.....honey i never EVER have service in my village, i wanted to say to her.

on airplane from brussels to jfk:
woman sitting next to me with her newborn baby: i hope you don't mind if i breastfeed
me (chuckling): it's no problem, i live in africa

thoughts while in the states:
-everyone is technology CRAZY, they are all hooked in, not to each other but to their technology
-instantaneousness (is that a word?), craze about the news and what is going on in every corner of the world at every single second
-facebook/twitters is turning our nation into a bunch of narcissists
-EXCESS of food, cards, clothes, materials

I think the hardest part about being home was simply explaining my life here to people. Only my father really knew what questions to ask, because he's been here and experienced it. The majority of my conversations went like this:
Friend: "So, how is Africa?"
Me: "Um, I'm not sure, but I can tell you how my small village in Cameroon is doing."
Friend: "Ya, what are you doing there?"
Me: "My job is health overall, but I'm doing mostly HIV/AIDS education with students from the high school".
Friend: "So, is it really hot?"
Me: "Not right now actually. The rainy season has started, so it's cooled down a bit".
Friend: "Oh ok. So did you hear what happened to (fill in name) last week?"

God love people. I guess it is normal. So much has changed and happened to me, but for the most part, everything is the same back home. I can't be upset with people about not asking about the children, or my peer-educators, or how I'm growing as a person. If they were in my shoes, I wouldn't know what to ask them either.

I was pleasantly surprised, though, at how many people told me they read my blog or loved seeing my photos on facebook. That means that all the trouble and time that it takes to upload a post/photo is worth it. Thanks for reading ya'll!

PHOTOS WITH A FRIEND WHILE IN THE STATES: visiting ithaca, ny with my friend laura
22 july 2012

I have not blogged in an embarassingly long amount of time. When was the last one? Ah, February? There is much catching up to do then. Here is a brief timeline of what has happened since February:

March-April: Dad came to visit

End of May-June: I traveled to the states

States-end of June: Hilary came to visit

early July: 2 girls summer camps

Now: Ramaddan

Ah how the time flies. Now for the elaborated version of the past 6 months of events:

Dad flew into Yaounde on March 22, 2012. We came straight up to Ngaoundere on the train; and by straight up I mean we left Yaounde at 6pm and arrived in Ngaoundere at 4pm (usually the train departs at 6pm and arrives at 7 am the next morning). Welcome to Cameroon Pops! Sometimes an overnight train takes two days. Apparently the problem was with the engine/the rails (neither of those being good things to break down). We occupied ourselves though; played cards and cut up a pineapple we had bought in Yaounde. Also during the train ride, I woke up at 3am to the sound of people talking outside. I looked in the bottom bunk of the train to find my father....not there. He had gotten off the train and went outside to speak to some children. "Dad, what are you doing?" I screamed out the window. "Just talking to some kids", he said. "Their French is too fast for me though". "Dad get the hell back into the train right now!!! What are you thinking?" I yelled back. After that, he didn't leave the train again. After Ngaoundere, we came straight to my village and spent about 4 days here. We did the tour and he met nearly everyone I know. He was fed couscous after couscous, but it was too much. "You are telling me these people eat this stuff three times a day seven days a week 365 days a year?" he asked me after trying it. "Yup", I said, "and they miss it if they can't have it". "Unbelievable", he commented, "it's not that it's bad...but every single meal for the rest of your life....no thanks". At night, when we wanted to make our own food, of course Fadi brought over a huge couscous and sauce....needless to say, Puppy ate a lot of couscous that night. After visiting my village, we headed up north in search of "les animaux". We went to Waza Park, the most-known wildlife park in Cameroon. We saw giraffes, antelope, so many birds, and a lion. We were so lucky with the lion. March is the dry season so usually there are more animals than usual looking for the man-made watering holes. But we got really lucky with the lion, who was sitting under a tree panting. I felt sorry for the guy with his big fur coat and all. After the animals, we spent time in Maroua shopping for cool locally-made crafts. My father's impressions of the north: hot hot and more hot. Yes, he had a point. It is the dry/hot season, and my thermometer no longer worked in the Adamawa (after 120 degrees farenheit it just says HIGH), and we were even more north and hot up in Maroua. Then we came back down through Ngaoundere and took the train back down (thankfully with no interesting events this time). We took a bus in Yaounde to the beach town of Kribi. It was the first time I'd been there, and we had a great time. We went out one morning on a canoe-trip to see the pygmies. There were a lot of other white people there as well. Apparently when you visit the pygmies, you're supposed to bring a gift of alcohol or cigarettes. We were not informed of this fact, so we just gave them money, but the other nasarasa brought boxed wine and cigarettes as a gift. The pygmies put on a show/dance for us, and I danced with them!! It was cool to dance with them especially because their way of dancing is so different from the north, but at the same time it was sad. It was clear to see that putting on the daily show for visitors was their livelihood. We were told that hunters from their tribe were out gathering food, but I don't know if I believed it. After the pygmie voyage, we went to these beautiful waterfalls called "les Shutes de Lobes". Those were beautiful and we ate some FRESH shrimp (my dad watched the guy catch them) on the beach. While in Kribi, we also enjoyed some great big fish and "baton de manioc". Manioc is a root found in the ground and it is dried out, ground up and cooked into a paste. This paste is then put into a banana leaf and tied so that it maintains its shape, hence the baton/stick part. After Kribi, Pops and I headed back to Yaounde and he flew out.

PHOTOS WHILE DAD CAME TO VISIT: facebook photos from dad's visit

After Pops left, so much worked happened in a short amount of time. The end of the school year had come; which meant lots of exam-giving, correcting of exams and filling out of report cards. On the last day of school, I gave out awards to the best students. The awards were not only based on the marks from their exams, but also for participation, attendance and most improvement in English. The students liked the little certificates.

Work also finished for the year in terms of Health Club and peer-educators of HIV/AIDS Awareness. Since the majority of my peer-educators are not from Gangassaou, they go to their hometown for the break. During vacation, they help their parents in the fields and at home. One of the peer-educators, Atou, suggested that we make pamphlets and each students take some home and educate his family and friends. So, the pamphlets were created by us and distributed during our last meeting. We will pick up with more activities when the students return in September for the school year. Also, at the end of the year, we had a diploma ceremony for the peer-educators. Diplomas were sent from Peace Corps Yaounde to peer-educators who not only participated in the HIV training back in November, but helped out with a minimum of 2 activities afterwards. Activities included: World AIDS Day and the HIV awareness campaign that we did between January to April. We held the diploma ceremony in the evening, so a lot of other students were present to see their peers receive the diplomas. However, before receiving their diplomas, we did our awareness routine for all who were there. Many students came up to me afterwards asking to me in the club for next year. I'm hoping they want to be in the club to educate other students, and not just because they want the diploma.