My geocities site was down for a bit while I planned to move everything to a better webhost and register a domain name. i wanted to integrate a PHP Gallery program into the site () and drop the livejournal altogether. I had gallery running on localhost just fine, and my journal has been transferred to static html. unfortunately my card numbers are in yaoundé and paypal has already blocked one of my accounts for some reason or another. So despite my preparations for a new and improved site, I'm sticking with yahoo.

Go here for updates from now on: http://www.geocities.com/kenincameroon/

Ken

To family and friends in the Midwest: Enjoy the gatherings, turkey, football games, and slightly chilled air. Is it time for a sweatshirt yet?

Garoua is stressful. It just has this constant tension in the air that keeps you feeling uncomfortable and looking over your shoulder every few minutes. Consequently, I think intermittent traveling is good for anyone that lives near this city. So I got permission to take off on Friday morning and visit the resource center and high school in Maroua in the extreme north province for the weekend.

Since Maroua should be only about three hours of travel, I was hoping to arrive before the end of the work day and possibly check out some systems before the weekend begins. Unfortunately we left about 90 minutes late, but as I've already mentioned in other journal entries, this is pretty normal in Cameroon. The trip then ended up taking an extra two hours of travel in a bush taxi, and I realized there was no way I could arrive before the end of the work day. The road between Garoua and Guider is narrow, scattered with huge pot holes that haven't been filled in for months, and many people bike and walk along the side while vehicles zoom past a couple feet away. As a result our bus would slow down to 5mph, cross a bump, speed up to 50 again, slow down to 5mph to wait for a goat to cross the road, cross another pot hole, and speed up once again. It’s tiring. At one point there was a bridge closed off, so our bus with baggage piled twice the height went off-road and crossed the river bed, OregonTrail-style.

The city of Maroua is actually pretty scenic and located at the base of a mountain range. I arrived at about 5:30pm and met up with a couple volunteers who live in the city and then we headed out to get some food. The night life in Maroua is fantastic - there's a major road, divided two-lane that runs east-west through the city and is lined with bars and busy restaurants on both sides. We decided on braised fish, beef soya (with piment powder!), salad, and drinks. Saturday I managed to visit the high school, explore the market, and hike up one of the nearby mountains a little bit. Sunday we traveled to Mari to the west of Maroua where a couple other health volunteers are posted at the moment, and then I took a greyhound-sized bus back to Garoua. All in all, a good weekend, and a nice break from the city of Garoua.

Every three months, volunteers in the province are required to get together and hold a meeting to check on each others' work progress. One representative of the province meets with the administration in Yaoundé quarterly to communicate volunteer problems and talk with representatives in other provinces. We're supposed to have provincial projects with collaboration from each volunteer during the coming months, but so far it's been difficult to organize. Over half of the north province volunteers are outside of the cell phone network range and visit Garoua only once every two or three weeks on weekends, hence communication is the most limiting factor. I've been told that the extreme north province has volunteers biking around en brousse for a week or two, giving AIDS seminars and passing out safety pamphlets... just one example of a fun project.

Our recent provincial meeting was held in Lagdo, located just southeast of Garoua (it's situated at the base of a reservoir, visible on most maps). A health volunteer living there is finishing up her service this month, so it was convenient to get our meeting out of the way and say farewell at the same time. There's a nearby restaurant, club and hotel situated on the reservoir named Lagon Bleu, and was one of the more scenic and touristy places that I've visited in Cameroon so far. Since a lot of traditional homes in the grand north of Cameroon are basically straw huts, the resort models their rooms after this type of design and adds modern amenities. Buildings are constructed with brick and furnished with television, air conditioning, and normal rectangular walls, but the exterior is layered with a straw roof and shaped cylindrically to give the more traditional appearance. The lake shore rests just in front of high-rising mounds of boulders and tall grass, and a large island nicknamed Madagascar rests within moderate viewing distance from the shore. The African sun set is always colorful but at Lagon Blue, one can lie on a beach or in a nearby gazebo and watch the sun set over the island in the distance. It's really a sight to behold.

Five others and I also took a boat tour of the island during the weekend. Two Cameroonians aided us with the transportation - one man sat in the back to control the motor, and another man stayed in the lowest point to scoop water out of the bottom of the leaking wooden planks as we moved along. After circling the island, we landed and walked around to greet the natives and hike around a bit. Some of the north volunteers are fairly fluent in Fulfulde and were able to hold a conversation. We took a photo on the digital camera and thrilled the kids with their instantly available digital thumbnail on the LCD.

•  A new mosquito screen that I added to my house was recently ripped open when someone tried to steal stuff off of a table next to the window.  I believe he took a blank piece of paper and a book of matches, but left the coins and lighter sitting next to that.  Smart guy, whoever it was.  I've since reinforced the screen and moved my table.  While I have 10 foot high compound walls all around my house, there's a tree nearby giving kids access, and a few places where the wall can be easily scaled.

• The cat that I was planning on taking home to my house has died.  It was the kitten of a volunteer's cat that lives nearby, but I guess it got sick after her guardian fed the cats food scraps filled with maggots.  I was planning to name him Arthur, since no francophone would ever be able to pronounce his name (strong R, and that TH sound are tough for them; the combination even funnier to hear them try).

• I got a refrigerator from the Peace Corps office and have been enjoying cold beverages at the end of a day in, well, Africa.  It's been in circulation among volunteers for many years and has rust covering most of the outside, but hey- cold beer.  Yesterday I came home to find a puddle of water in my living room, presumably from the frost melting on the inside.  The fridge still turns on and off, but I don't expect it to last much longer.

• My In-Service Training (IST) is coming up in about a month, running for a week Dec 11-17.  As far as I know, it's in Bamenda and should be a nice drop in temperature.  I'm looking forward to seeing all the friends that experienced the hell that is Peace Corps training with me.  If others are up for it, I'd like to go hike mount Cameroon and possibly tour the beaches along the Atlantic coast.  Should be a nice break and lead-in to Christmas.

• Five volunteers from my education training group have terminated service early, before the end of two months at post.  This leaves eight remaining out of my original training group of 13, although each person who left has had a good reason for leaving.  It’s difficult to see them go!  Cameroon is generally not a friendly place for Americans; the constant verbal harassment gets old quickly, and many of the "friends" you meet and develop relationships over time turn out to be someone that's just trying to get into the United States.  White people are perceived here as either ultra-rich or religious & generous due to French corporations and missionaries "helping out" by giving away money while driving away in an SUV.  In turn, Cameroonians don't need any excuse except for being white before asking for money and gifts.  The beggar children will pass up the rich Cameroonian climbing into his mercedes in order to hold the bowl in front of my t-shirt, shorts, and moto helmet.  It gets old.  It gets real old.

The provinces in the grand north of Cameroon have an interesting cultural contrast from the south in that the majority of the people here are Muslim. Ramadan started with the new moon on the evening of the 4th of October, and most of my neighbors woke up at 4am to make breakfast and pray, and then fasted without food or water from 6am to 6pm with the usual prayer times throughout the day. It was a challenge for most since the farmers end up harvesting their crops during this time and hence spend the day working in fields without food or water. By the end of the month, they just sat in the shade, talked to neighbors, and waited for nightfall to come. Their energy is absolutely gone.

Something I hadn't read into much before is their calendar. The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, meaning that months start and end on moon cycles. So people mark the beginning and end of Ramadan with the new moon, and end up waiting an extra day for visual confirmation if it's a cloudy night. Since the annual lunar calendar is shorter than our solar calendar by about 11 days, the month of Ramadan shifts earlier each year, relative to the solar calendar. I believe this means that every so often, people will fast without water during the dry season while temperatures approach 120 degrees during the day.

The end of Ramadan in Garoua had been described to me as both a large feast and a day where nothing happens. After spending some time in Garoua that day, I can say that to some extent these are both good descriptions. The official end of Ramadan was November 3 and thousands of people went to pray at a grand mosque in the city, coming from Garoua and nearby villages to celebrate. Afterwards, people congratulate each other ("barka da sallah" in fulfulde) and go home to eat until they bust. My guess is that many are sick after eating practically nothing for a month, so the rest of the day is uneventful. People in my village killed goats and cattle to celebrate.

My teacher enrollment at the resource center is officially up to 40 now. Classes started two weeks ago on the blackboard, and I had about 12 people there on the first day. My country director visited that day and watched this class as well, and he said he was happy with how things are going. The vast majority of people that I'm working with have never touched a computer in their life, so it's kind of neat to see their eyes light up after pressing "ON" for the first time. It's also sometimes very reminiscent of working god-awful Internet helpline; most adults are scared they're going to break something and just don't have the sense of exploration that kids benefit from. So far, I've just been teaching how to use the keyboard and mouse and give some idea of how things work inside the case. Eventually they'll get an introduction to configuring Windows and using MS Office.
The equipment at the resource center was a mess when I arrived and is now a disaster waiting to happen. I’ve found French versions of Windows 2000 and Office 2003 to install on each of the systems, since they previously had Windows ME and no Office software whatsoever. This is a big improvement in stability, but the hardware is old and programs still run very slow. We have one electrical outlet for the entire room where I teach, located next to a frequently used sink (yielding lazy workers that interrupt the middle of a lesson to ask if they can plug in the coffee maker). Three computers, three monitors, and a printer are connected through this one overloaded outlet. The power drops briefly at least a couple times each class, and we don't have money to buy a universal power supplies or at least a better voltage regulator. Each day I cross my fingers that things work out.

Work at the high school is never predictable, but hopefully I've suffered through the worst of the shock. Discipline is definitely the key to giving a good lesson at that age level, but it's very hard to keep everyone in line when there are 70-90 kids that think my accent is funny or can't understand me at all. Some of the norms of classroom etiquette are simply annoying me to the core: kids snap their fingers, interrupt in the middle of my announcements to the classroom, and on the whole do not pay attention to what's going on. Cheating is uncontrollable when I give out homework. Consequently I kick kids out of class and yell a lot. I have no mercy on kids at the high school, and honestly I fit right in with the other teachers in that respect.
Introducing new programs is tough at the high school, even when there is a nicely equipped resource center. Why? Because there are no textbooks, no activities, no homework ideas available in the realm of computer science at the school. Certainly textbooks are available somewhere, but the school thinks they are too expensive. The majority of what I've done so far has come from French web sites or whatever I can make on my own, but I can't print documents for the kids at the high school because "paper and ink is expensive". All they have to work with is the digital content they see during class. Perhaps just being able to pass the time in front of a computer and explore a bit is all that it takes for some kids to learn, but all they have is a two hour class, once every two weeks- hardly enough to pick up typing ability or strong familiarity with the systems. It’s hard for students to learn here under the circumstances.

Finally starting to be settled and discover my schedule a bit. After five weeks at post, I finally have a bed to sleep in again, a closet to hang clothes in, and a shelf to organize 100 pounds of books and papers. Also recently put up mosquito screens on outside of the windows to keep bugs out. I've explored a large fraction of Garoua already and know where to go in order to find necessities, including ice cream and fruit smoothies.

While it's nice to have that off my shoulders, I'm staying busy with classes, meetings, and lesson plans. All my courses are two hours long, and I teach one or two courses a day at the high school, monday through wednesday, and one or two courses at the resource center as well, thursday through saturday. Each saturday there's a meeting at the high school for all computer teachers where we organize class materials for the upcoming week. The meetings are never productive but at least they're trying to be responsible unlike a lot of other teachers.

Other news: I am getting a cat soon to control the roaches and lizards at my house, but haven't thought of a name that's vulgar or geeky enough yet... suggestions welcome.

Or, journee mondiale de l'enseignant. In Cameroon, World Teacher's Day is a national holiday where there is no class for students and the teachers all get together and party. I disagree with the kids getting a day off, but the teachers really treat it as their own celebration. In Garoua there is a small parade on one of the main roads, and the teachers march around for a little bit. I bought some patterned fabric from a coworker for the event (it's pretty ugly, so I've taken a photo) and brought it to the tailor to make a shirt and pants. I wore this all day on Wednesday although I never received a compliment, even at the bar.

I ride on motorcycles to get from place to place in garoua. That is to say, I pay a moto taxi a little bit of money to drive me somewhere, which is totally the norm here. They're always easy to find on the streets, no more than a few minutes to wait, and it's kind of fun to hop on and weave through the sea of traffic in Garoua. PC is strict about volunteers wearing helmets, so this means I carry around my bag and helmet where ever I go... work, meetings, the market, the bar. No Cameroonians wear helmets here so I get some funny responses, and it's a bit annoying to carry the thing everywhere I go.
So here's my first experience on a moto which took place about 2 days after arriving in Garoua. I first flagged someone down and bargained the price for my destination a bit. He didn't know exactly where the place was, so I told him I would give directions a bit once out of the city. After he agreed, I took off my glasses, put them in my shirt pocket, and threw on my helmet. I got on the moto, grabbed onto the passenger bar with one hand and held my newly purchased deskfan in the other hand. Two seconds later, I realized that I couldn't see much more than a big blur in front of me, since I had forgotten to put my glasses back on after the helmet. Normally not a big deal, but how was I going to guide this moto driver through new territory? In no time we are up to 40kmph, and I reach with my deskfan hand to get my glasses out of the shirt pocket. Somehow this motion causes the wind to hit my deskfan just right and make it spin at 5000 RPMs. The moto driver got freaked out a bit, did a little swerve in the road, but we kept going. I never did get my glasses on so the rest of the trip I was squinting for landmarks, gripping for dear life to the passenger bar with my left hand, and tilting the deskfan at an angle to control the RPMs a bit. Managed to get home okay, but my preparation for moto departures is much more under control since the incident.