22 January, 2009
A meeting with the Rotary Club of Garoua / Une reunion avec le Rotary Club de Garoua
On January 12, I had the pleasure of attending with Emily a meeting of the Rotary Club of Garoua at the Hotel la Benoué. Emily and I were warmly received by the club President Njialeu Blaise and all of the other members. I shared information about how I was using my Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, and they in turn told me about the club’s activities, which include some great work with an orphanage and rural schools. After the meeting, the club treated us to dinner at a nearby restaurant. Emily and I were both extremely grateful to be able to spend the evening with such friendly and generous hosts. I will now translate this into awful French.
Le 12 janvier, Emily et moi, nous étions ravis d’assister à une réunion du Rotary Club de Garoua à l’Hôtel la Benoué. Le président du club, NJIALEU Blaise, et tous les autres membres nous sont rendus très confortable. J’ai partagé des renseignements sur mon bourse de Rotary et mes études au Ghana. Ils nous ont parlé des projets du club. Ils travaillent avec une maison des enfants abandonnés et des écoles rurales. Après la réunion, les membres du club nous avons offert un repas à un restaurant proche. Emily et moi, nous étions très heureux de passer une soir avec des gens si gentils et si généreux. Maintenant, je vais traduire ceci en français horrible.
Le 12 janvier, Emily et moi, nous étions ravis d’assister à une réunion du Rotary Club de Garoua à l’Hôtel la Benoué. Le président du club, NJIALEU Blaise, et tous les autres membres nous sont rendus très confortable. J’ai partagé des renseignements sur mon bourse de Rotary et mes études au Ghana. Ils nous ont parlé des projets du club. Ils travaillent avec une maison des enfants abandonnés et des écoles rurales. Après la réunion, les membres du club nous avons offert un repas à un restaurant proche. Emily et moi, nous étions très heureux de passer une soir avec des gens si gentils et si généreux. Maintenant, je vais traduire ceci en français horrible.
20 January, 2009
18 January, 2009
Christmas en brousse (in the bush)
It’s about 650 miles from Douala, Cameroon’s commercial hub and main port, to Garoua, provincial capital of the Région du Nord. Another 45 miles to the border with Chad. The road network between Cameroon’s lushly forested south and arid, sahellien north is in poor condition, making the route one of Africa’s most expensive transport corridors. (According to the Institute for Food Policy Research, it costs 11 cents / km to transport goods by road between Douala and N’Djamena, Chad. The comparable rate in the US is estimated at 5 cents / km; in Pakistan, it’s 4 cents / km. To make matters worse, Douala’s is West Africa’s most expensive port.) Consequently, most people and goods go north by rail, that is, by the government-owned, French-operated CAMRAIL train running daily between Yaoundé, the capital, and N’Gaoundère, about 200 miles to the south of Garoua. It’s a 15 hour ride, a red-eye leaving at 6 in the evening.
The Midnight Express disgorged me, red-eyed and rubber-legged, under the concrete fin of the N’Gaoundère train station a little after noon on December 21. I was lucky to wedge myself onto the first bus leaving for Garoua, where I was retrieved by my girlfriend Emily, a radiant vision in an African print skirt, bronzed skin, lugging the bulky helmet that the US Peace Corps requires its volunteers to wear whenever they travel by motorcycle taxi (moto). As I caught sight of her from the window of the bus, all of the time between when we said good bye in Philadelphia and the present collapsed.
Cameroon was one of the first countries to receive Peace Corps volunteers after the Corps’ inception in the early 1960s. Agroforestry, Emily’s sub-program, is, however, a much more recent endeavor, opening operations in Cameroon’s three northernmost provinces in 2000. Emily is posted in a rural village called Bamé, about 30 miles southeast of Garoua. As a Peace Corps volunteer, she wears many hats (headscarves, actually): ambassador of goodwill, student of culture, cultivator of foodstuffs. But essentially, she’s there to peddle trees. And she’s got a good product to push. Trees do everything but tuck you in at night. They generate income. Emily is helping some of her neighbors to acquire gum Arabic trees, the sap of which is in high demand for its industrial applications. Trees offer shade, a luxury easily forgotten until you get stuck without one in the 125F heat. Fast growing trees provide sustainable sources of firewood and construction materials. They can improve crop yields by fixing nitrogen and furnishing green manure. They say no to erosion and desertification, critical functions for a region on the doorstep of the Sahara.
Bamé is a sprawling classroom with a faculty of approximately 3,000. Mbroro pastoralists, Toupori famers, Muslim Fulbés, Christian Mafas, and a half dozen other ethno-linguistic groups are scattered across the dusty plain. The diversity is at once fascinating and a bit daunting. For instance, a matter as simple as saying hello becomes complicated in such a cosmopolitan environment. Use French and you run the risk of being that nassara (foreigner) who hasn’t taken the time to learn any of the local languages. Don’t use French and you may be implying that you don’t think your interlocutor has had much formal education. Use fulfuldé, the lingua franca across Northern Cameroon, and you may offend non-Fulbé, some of whom carry a historical grudge dating to the Fulbé jihad’s of the 19th Century and don’t appreciate being addressed in the conqueror’s language. Even if you do select the culturally appropriate greeting, it’s likely to touch off a chain of rapid-fire pleasantry exchanges, a dizzying call and response that Emily navigated effortlessly but which left me feeling like I knew even less of the language than when I started.
It’s easy for an outsider to see Bamé for what it doesn’t have. It doesn’t have a paved road. It doesn’t have a secondary school. It doesn’t have running water. It doesn’t have electricity, even though high tension wires run right through the middle of the village. I was struck, however, by what it does have. Friendly people welcoming to visitors and supportive of Peace Corps’ mission. A great weekly market. Lots of fat, tasty looking ducks. And, of course, Emily. That’s more than enough to lure me back.
The Midnight Express disgorged me, red-eyed and rubber-legged, under the concrete fin of the N’Gaoundère train station a little after noon on December 21. I was lucky to wedge myself onto the first bus leaving for Garoua, where I was retrieved by my girlfriend Emily, a radiant vision in an African print skirt, bronzed skin, lugging the bulky helmet that the US Peace Corps requires its volunteers to wear whenever they travel by motorcycle taxi (moto). As I caught sight of her from the window of the bus, all of the time between when we said good bye in Philadelphia and the present collapsed.
Cameroon was one of the first countries to receive Peace Corps volunteers after the Corps’ inception in the early 1960s. Agroforestry, Emily’s sub-program, is, however, a much more recent endeavor, opening operations in Cameroon’s three northernmost provinces in 2000. Emily is posted in a rural village called Bamé, about 30 miles southeast of Garoua. As a Peace Corps volunteer, she wears many hats (headscarves, actually): ambassador of goodwill, student of culture, cultivator of foodstuffs. But essentially, she’s there to peddle trees. And she’s got a good product to push. Trees do everything but tuck you in at night. They generate income. Emily is helping some of her neighbors to acquire gum Arabic trees, the sap of which is in high demand for its industrial applications. Trees offer shade, a luxury easily forgotten until you get stuck without one in the 125F heat. Fast growing trees provide sustainable sources of firewood and construction materials. They can improve crop yields by fixing nitrogen and furnishing green manure. They say no to erosion and desertification, critical functions for a region on the doorstep of the Sahara.
Bamé is a sprawling classroom with a faculty of approximately 3,000. Mbroro pastoralists, Toupori famers, Muslim Fulbés, Christian Mafas, and a half dozen other ethno-linguistic groups are scattered across the dusty plain. The diversity is at once fascinating and a bit daunting. For instance, a matter as simple as saying hello becomes complicated in such a cosmopolitan environment. Use French and you run the risk of being that nassara (foreigner) who hasn’t taken the time to learn any of the local languages. Don’t use French and you may be implying that you don’t think your interlocutor has had much formal education. Use fulfuldé, the lingua franca across Northern Cameroon, and you may offend non-Fulbé, some of whom carry a historical grudge dating to the Fulbé jihad’s of the 19th Century and don’t appreciate being addressed in the conqueror’s language. Even if you do select the culturally appropriate greeting, it’s likely to touch off a chain of rapid-fire pleasantry exchanges, a dizzying call and response that Emily navigated effortlessly but which left me feeling like I knew even less of the language than when I started.
It’s easy for an outsider to see Bamé for what it doesn’t have. It doesn’t have a paved road. It doesn’t have a secondary school. It doesn’t have running water. It doesn’t have electricity, even though high tension wires run right through the middle of the village. I was struck, however, by what it does have. Friendly people welcoming to visitors and supportive of Peace Corps’ mission. A great weekly market. Lots of fat, tasty looking ducks. And, of course, Emily. That’s more than enough to lure me back.
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