Culture Shock

                                                                           Paris!!!

                                                                "Cinq Femmes"

                                                                  My Garden

Time has slipped by.  I have officially been in country for one year now.  

I have just returned from a week in France with old friends Mickey and Chris from CA who met me there.   It was rainy and cold almost every day, but it was still a wonderful getaway.  We laughed, ate, and drank our way thru Paris for 5 days. (Talk about culture shock...my body is still reeling!) It seemed like we ate non stop, always seeking out new restaurants and sampling new wines. I stayed in the Marais at the Hotel Georgette, a charming boutique hotel right near the Pompidou center. We managed to get some walking and exploration in, mostly to the next restaurant! My favorite (culinary) adventure was having brunch at the top of the Eiffel Tower...ridiculously expensive but so wonderful and delicious.  I lost count of the courses.  We were there for hours. Oh!  Did I ever get spoiled!!!!  And yes!! We still managed to squeeze in dinner that night!  Missing a meal was not on the program! We even squeezed in a day at the French Open (between meals) and got to see Rafael Nadal play! …. a very special treat for me.  After Paris, we spent 2 days at the truly fabulous Hostellerie de Levernois in Bourgogne with it’s gorgeous rooms, beautiful grounds and, of course, gastronomic restaurant. It was so hard to get on that plane to come “home”, especially since I knew that M and C would be boarding a plane for Provence later that day….ouch!….but I am back safe and sound…. and constipated) and realized that I had missed my new friends and family here (not the food tho!!).  I’m refreshed and ready to get back to work.

Speaking of work, I have been working with my group of 5 mamas to try to get our chicken raising business off the ground.  We have been doing so much research. The mamas have been working so hard and doing everything I need them to do and doing it on time!!!!!  (what?  in Cameroon?).  I am having trouble getting it to pencil out...can’t seem to find the profit.  We keep coming at it from different angles trying to see where the profit is. It’s taking a lot longer and taking a lot more work than originally planned, but it is so important to get the business off on the right foot! At least, through this process they are learning how to draw up a budget and how to do feasability studies….so it is not lost time to be sure. There is so much cutting of corners and risk taking here to eek out a profit that I am not at all convinced it can be done otherwise.  We will see. I have written and re-written the grant proposal. I’ve been totally focused on this project for the past couple of months at the expense of everything else…..wheels spinning. One of the group said to me yesterday that she was becoming discouraged….ouch!….”Non!”, I said, “do not be discouraged, It is the planning phase when we determine what we must do to make it work.  This is the hardest part.  We have to discover what WILL work….that’s the point of all this work we are doing now.  Du courage!!! “ Luckily, the other mamas backed me up. We are going to make this work. The business is named “Cinq Femmes”.  Don’t let the picture above fool you.  They are full of energy but they were up all night at a “Deuil” (funeral party) the night before.

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but a couple of months ago, some friends (mamas, of course) came over and planted the hell out of my garden, so now, with the rains, I have my garden that you see above full of corn and peanut plants thriving. I’ll eat and share the peanuts and give the corn (mais) to the mamas to prepare or sell as they wish.  The mais is not sweet corn, but what we call feed corn in the States.  They crush it and make foo foo from it ….balls of mush wrapped in palm leaves….not my favorite thing to eat, not to mention lots of work to prepare. A storm has just rolled in as I type this with thunder, lightening, winds and rain. I love these storms, but as the rainy season progresses, they will become more constant and make it difficult to get out of the house.  It will become cold and damp and gloomy every day….full on rainy season. Then I will yearn for the dry season which will become hot and dry and dusty at which time I will yearn for the rainy season.  What ever became of spring, summer, winter and fall, I ask myself. But perhaps, when they have returned to me, I will say to myself…”Gee, i miss the rainy season and the dry season….what ever became of those? No, probably not...but I know I will miss my mamas whatever season it is. Yes, probably so…..

Yaounde, Bafoussam, Bamenda and Loose Ends

                                                 Business Class with Attestations

April 22, 2013

My business class has successfully drawn to a close and the “Attestations”  have been presented.  This is a big deal here.  The students planned a party and took up a collection for food and drink during which my Cameroonian counterpart and I presented the “Attestations” (like a diploma) to them.  We did it outside on a patio-like area at the main carrefour, so the general population who happened to be passing by would see it.  Many who did happen to see it were very impressed and expressed an interest in signing up for the next class.   We spent two of our 12 sessions on marketing, so this in itself was a teachable moment. The students were very proud and loved the attention and admiration they received. The students also became very bonded and sought out each other’s contact information in order to “network” in the future on possible businesses….another concept we tried to convey during the course.The whole process was a very rewarding experience for all of us. The next step for me is to follow up with each of them to see who, if any, are actually using what they learned to form a business or improve an existing one.  

So the downside to all this is that I am kind of in between projects in a sort of no man’s land where I am trying to pull together another project.  The idea is to pull together a small group of women who would be willing to work together to form a business with me as their facilitator.  If they show enough interest and commitment, we could apply together for a PC grant for start up costs. They have to come up with 25% of the amount (cash or in kind) that we can prove that we need (through a detailed budget of a feasible business idea) to show good faith. I have found a group who have shown interest in the idea and have actually chosen a business they want to start, but that is about as far as I have gotten.  Getting them together to develop the idea and begin work on the grant process is another question.  

It is the beginning of the rainy season and thus planting season, so all the mamas are busy working their butts off in their fields.  For myself, the Peace Corps has pulled me out of town for various training sessions (3 days in Yaounde, then a week in Bafoussam) and then I spent another 3 days in Bamenda with friends, so I myself have been unavailable. Suffice it to say that the momentum has been lost, and I am feeling at loose ends and unfocused. I am also feeling overwhelmed by the grant process. So, I have decided to sit down and write a blog rather than try to re-focus and face the problem.  But, perhaps this is part of the process and putting my scattered feelings into words will lead to renewed resolve. One can hope….

Bamenda is known as the most westernized city in Cameroon and is in the Anglophone North West region.  It was very strange crossing into that region and suddenly seeing all signs in english and people actually speaking english (or at least understanding it)….most speak Pidgin among themselves which is like a foreign language to my ears, but is really just the local patois version of english. The thing that makes it more “westernized” is that there are a few restaurants here and there that serve burgers, pizza and salads. ( Naturally I partook of them.) This is because there are more westerners living or traveling to Bamenda, so these restaurants sprang up to cater to them.  Otherwise, Bamenda is like any other city in what is called the Grand West of Cameroon….dirt roads, garbage piles, market place shacks, a few “white man”s stores, over stuffed taxis, motos, terrible pollution, lots of poverty. The friends I and another volunteer visited there are 2 of my favorites….a married couple both on the brink of turning 30, The four of us are planning a trip to Ethiopia in August….a place I’ve wanted to visit since reading “Cutting for Stone”. 

I also have a week in Paris coming up on the near horizon with 2 of my favorite people from the home front!!!!!! You know who you are.  Hmmmmm, I’m strating to get a better sense of why I am having trouble focusing on the next project…… not feeling so bad for me now, are you…..

Stay tuned.

Some pics

                                                      walking to business class

                                                Dancing with mamas on Women's Day

                                                    Distribution of reading glasses

All is well. Staying busy. Just wanted to replace the rats. Diarrhea all gone on it's own.  Hope works.

Rats and Diarrhea

                                       Rats for sale at Batie carrefour.  It's what's for dinner!

That’s the rat part…..no there are none in my house, alive or dead! And they don’t have diarrhea...that’s me...tho the spider wars continue…. I feel like a wimp complaining about spiders when many of my fellow vols do (or did) have rats in their houses.  Most got cats and that has more or less resolved their situations.  I have my geckos for my own personal war….and RAID!….tho I hate to use it.  Many of the larger spiders stagger around the house for a while wildly before dying...and other actually survive it...tough buggers….scary!  I had these huge ants for a while that refused to die….some tough ass ants that I had to chase down and smoosh several times….God!!!!  I finally found their entry point and plugged it with duct tape.  Wouldn’t want to meet one of them in a dark alley.  Things learn to survive under harsh conditions here and that makes them TOUGH!…me included.  Bring it on!!!!!

Well, maybe not so tough.  I seem to have developed a mild diahrea problem.  It’s not too bad yet….but each time I eat, it follows.  I’m thinking I have gotten some kinda (un-american) parasite in the deep dark recesses of my guts.  But!...God bless Pepto Bismol (I never thought I’d hear myself say that). It’s a miracle drug and seems to resolve the sitch for a day or two...but then….May have to go to the local hospital (and I use the term loosely) for some meds.  We’ll see. It’s not too serious compared to what some of my fellow vols have been thru so I am hoping it will resolve itself….ahhhhh “hope”.  But, on the brighter side, it’s a way to lose weight!  (now that’s American!)

It’s Weds. eve and I am sitting here writing to you and drinking an icy cold huge beer.  Yes, icy cold…..whaaaaat???  I got a little fridge!!!  It makes little ice cubes and makes things cold….YEAAssssssss!!!  Now I can have cokes with ICE in them and COLD horrible beers. I’m in heaven! (with spiders). 

I am knee deep itno my business classes now and am starting to learn how to teach...tho being in a foreign culture makes teaching more difficult.  It’s not the language (tho that doesn’t help), it’s the culture….for example, the idea of organizing things (like your day or week or business) doesn’t exist here. It’s an alien idea that takes a long time to teach. I actually realize that I enjoy teaching tho...who knew???  It’s fun and rewarding….especially because my 19 students are charming and really want to learn about business...or more specifically...how to make money.  This is especially challenging in a village where nobody has any money to spend!

In the future, I hope to start working with the women’s group in my neighborhood who are desperately poor and work like dogs every day of every week with very little to show for it, how to work as a group (another alien idea) to create a business and build on it to get ahead each year.  They have chosen elevage des poulets (raising of chickens to sell for meat) as a possible idea.  Now all I have to do is teach them to work as a group, and then find a place to do it and do a feasability study and write a business plan and apply for a grant to get started, and get someone to come in and train them on how to do it...and...and…..this should keep me busy for a while.  But, don’t be surprised when you get a message on how to contribute to the grant for my Peace Corps Elevage project in many months….possibly.  I ran into a woman today who told me I would never be able to convince Cameroonian women to work as a group…..oh boy….may have to rethink this. But, it’s a learning experience...for all of us. 

Okay, now it’s time to watch “Modern Family” episodes on my computer for the evening’s entertainment….or maybe “True Blood”…..or maybe “the L Word”….the list is endless….thanks to my fellow vols.  It’s how we survive.  A bientot. Love.