Ken

Allez au geocities svp

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:08:42 GMT

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

Happy Thanksgiving

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 11:38:05 GMT

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

Random bits of news

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 11:48:10 GMT

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.

Settling In

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:23:20 GMT

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.

Miscellaneous

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 12:03:44 GMT

I’m pretty burned out on French and Holiday school right now, so instead I’ll post a few of my experiences in Cameroon so far:

I’ve been carrying big bundles of firewood to my family’s house from other neighboring houses in the village. There are two other boys in my family who are old enough to lift them but usually my family needs four or five bundles at a time, so I’ve been recruited for the job. The bundles have pieces of wood about ten feet long, and I either carry them on my shoulder or on top of my head like the rest of the villagers. To save my scalp from splinters and rough edges, I roll up a small shirt or jacket and place that between my head and the wood when carrying. I’ve watched others carry things like this for weeks, but now that I’ve tried I have a newfound respect. Watching others effortlessly balance 100+ lb. sacks of corn or beans is really quite amazing to me now, but it’s entirely the norm here.

My home stay father is a pig butcher at a local market. He buys huge pigs (120 kg?) from neighbors in the village and keeps them in the pigpen in the back of the house until he’s ready to restock at the market. I recently helped the father pick up one of these huge pigs by the ear and pull him over the wall of the pigpen... a brother took the hind legs and the father was pulling up on the other ear. This piggy was not too happy while we moved him, but he was fine afterwards. To transport the pigs to the market, people usually bind all four legs with rope (this is not an easy feat) and throw them in the back of a car. My home stay father pays someone to transport the pigs so that he doesn’t have to find a taxi that is willing to deal with the squealing. After a beer or two, he’ll take the pig into the shop and smack it on top of the head a few times with some blunt object, followed by a quick stab to the heart. They drag the animal outside to the street and remove the innards, and then proceed to chop up the meat. People buy these chunks of pork with a set price per kilogram.

There is a French-dubbed Argentine soap opera called Muñeca Brava that is all the rave here. Each night, my family drops what they are doing at 8 p.m. and huddles into the family room to catch the 20 minute long program. I don’t really understand why they like it, but a lot of people here seem to follow along with the sappy events.

Each morning I fill a bucket of water from the running water supply out in the courtyard, and take a bucket bath in the shower room attached to the house. The bucket bath consists of huddling and pouring and/or splashing freezing water all over the body while scrubbing with the refreshing scent of shampoo and soap. This morning, my bucket bath was accompanied by a flat, furry, brown spider chilling up in the corner of the room. It was the largest spider I have ever seen. Without exaggeration, it was approximately the size of my hand if opened widely. I have younglings of the same species in my bedroom, but I have never been able to catch one. They have some innate spidey sense that tells them to run when another animate object comes close to them. The little spiders don’t bother me, but I have no desire to see the huge mother in the bathroom make tracks anytime soon.

Although I occasionally crave a hamburger, the food here is excellent. Stables include peanuts, rice, beans, corn, plantains, and fish. Pork, beef, and chicken are also quite easy to find but a little more expensive. Bush meat (rats, monkeys, etc.) is available on the side of the road, but none of us go for it. Fruit is generally seasonal, but Cameroon has delicious pineapple, mangoes, papayas, and oranges. Each morning I have an omelet with spaghetti and beans, half a baguette, and some hot chocolate made with condensed milk. Lunch is usually fish and plantains, or avocados and bread. At the school in Bafoussam, there are kids that sell bananas, peanuts, cookies, and beinges which are the closest things to donuts here. For dinner, I’ve had a lot of couscous with okra sauce (usually not very tasty), pork, and most of the stables already mentioned. They use a “cube” spice in just about everything, often with a piment, which is a hot pepper.

Ebolowa

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 16:01:55 GMT

Since Rob and I are posted to provinces in the north, we tagged along with Hugh to Ebolowa in the south province for site visit. Garoua is just too far and will require patience to travel there: It's 4 hours from Bafoussam to Yaounde, and I've been told that it's a 12-15 hour train ride from Yaounde to Ngoundere, and an additional 3-4 hours by bus. Since we only had five days for a round-trip site visit, I was happy with a shorter voyage and to have more time for relaxation. Also it was a chance to see the south province, somewhere that I doubt I'll be able to visit when posted in the north.

We arrived at the bus stations in Bafoussam at about 8:30AM on Wednesday morning. Purchased tickets and then proceeded to wait on the bus for about half an hour before departing. In Cameroon, there is no schedule for bus departures... they leave only when the bus is full. It could be ten minutes or ten hours depending on your luck. So in hindsight, thirty minutes was not too bad. There are about five or six bus agencies to choose from in Bafoussam when traveling to Yaounde. The buses are relatively small compared to those in the US and do not resemble a yellow school bus or greyhound bus, although those larger buses do exist here. Huge sliding windows surround the vehicle to allow for easier purchases at villages en route. There are 6 narrow rows in the vehicle, and a "full" bus that I mentioned contains 30 people. While you're waiting for luggage to be loaded and strapped to the top of the van, salesmen will pop in the door and give their 5 minute speech about some miracle medicin or witchcraft product. Nobody has much interest, but there's probably one person from time to time that keeps their income going. I guess one could think of them as the QVC of Cameroon. After an uncomfortable four hour trip to Yaounde, short break at the PC office, and another two hour trip southbound, we arrived with Heidi in Ebolowa at about 6PM.

We walked around Ebolowa quite a bit and had the chance to absorb our surroundings for a few days. There's a strong Bulu influence on the French speakers there, so we (the trainees) had a difficult time understanding but Heidi was able to help us out. Hugh visited the TRC he will be working in, and found a potential secondary project at a nearby library that's looking for computer literacy teachers. Heidi took us up to one of the bluffs nearby and we managed to get a few photos. These are posted on my Yahoo gallery under 19-7-05 Ebolowa. Heidi's satellite phone with a GPS indicated we were 2 degrees, 55 minutes north of the equator!

Shannon arrived on Friday. She arranged a trip Saturday for the three trainees to travel into the bush and visit a village where she had started a water project. We took a really crappy car over 45 minutes of bumpy roads to get to Ngouzip II. The villagers greeted us, and we walked around for a few minutes to stretch. Rob asked someone about the trail at the edge of the clearing, and some of the village kids agreed to take us for a tour. I'll save most of the details since the pictures in my yahoo photo album do a better job of describing, but needless to say, it was a great experience and the landscape was beautiful. The village gave Shannon some gifts as a token of appreciation for the work she'd done there, and we returned to Ebolowa after eating some plaintain pillet, corn, and orangish fruit that does not have a French translation for the Bulu name given to it.

Probably the biggest thing that trainees took away from the experience was the intense drive to finish training and move on to begin our jobs. Between language training, lesson plans, technical and cross cultural sessions, and managing everyday tasks under careful watch of a homestay family, we are all ready to move on to post and have a little bit more freedom in our lives...

Posts and Site Visits

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 10:23:23 GMT

Posts for education volunteers have been assigned. I was initially offered three options when talking to the Associate Peace Corps Director (APCD) for Cameroon: Bafoussam in the west, Garoua in the north, and Maroua in the extreme north province. Since I'm seeing a little bit of Bafoussam each week during training at Bandjoun and because it's an anglophone province (I'd rather have a francophone province), I opted for one of the two francophone cities in the north. Garoua was my decision and was later officially assigned by the APCD. /me googles for info on Garoua.

From Wednesday through Sunday this week, each of the education trainees is visiting their tentative post that was given out on Saturday and getting acquainted with the staff there. Since Garoua and a couple other cities in the north (Maroua, Ngoundere) are too far to travel to and from in five days, I will be heading down to Ebolowa with Hugh to see the TRC at which he plans to work. Ebolowa is the provincal capitol of the south, and to my knowledge it is basically a tropical rainforest. I'm anticipating a heat wave compared to the 50-60 degree (F) nights we typically have in Bandjoun during the rainy season.

Our French skills are progressing. An initial language interview during orientation in Yaounde determined our groups for language training so far. We had a second language proficiency interview this morning to determine how our language groups should be shuffled for the next few weeks. I think that language proficiency categories are pretty arbitrary and that placement is subjective to the interviewer, but PC Cameroon assigns trainees to novice, intermediate, and advanced levels of fluency for organization. There are low, medium, and high subgroups for each level, and it's based soley on a verbal interview with a Cameroonian. At orientation I tested in at novice high, and I'm fairly confident that I'll be moved into some intermediate level soon. Before the end of training, we have to be at an intermediate mid proficiency for anglophone posts or intermediate high proficiency for francophone posts. Peace Corps provides further lessons after that for people who are interested. If someone doesn't make the language goal for their anglophone/francophone province, then they usually get another week of language lessons... if they still don't achieve intermediate mid, they head back to the States. The volunteers who are already at or above the required levels will start learning Pigeon(sp?) or Fufulde (sp? again), a different language that's used a lot in the northern provinces.

5 things that I most appreciate bringing (so far): hand sanitizer, USB key, rain jacket, digital camera, and life saver candies.

Not much more time to write... next post should be early next week. A bientot.

Education Training

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 12:03:00 GMT

Everyone is beginning to feel more settled here at we tie up the third week. While we have a different training schedule each day and are still up to our necks in things to do, it's comforting to know that the food, weather, people, and places are becoming predictable.

As I mentioned in a post at staging, our group consists of education and small enterprise development (SED) volunteers. With the exception of a few hours a week and 4th of July drink fest, each group hasn't seen the other one very often. The French language training is separated into education/SED groups. I haven't a clue how the SED trainees are spending their time. My group (education) has been busy learning to write lesson plans and realistic classroom objectives, and even started in on peer teaching today. I am one of three people in the group that will teach math in addition to computer science; the others in the group are teaching biology, chemistry, and english. Today we are at a school in Bafoussam for training. We each did 30 minute classroom presentations this morning on Form 3 level material (about 8-9th grade in US) and will do the same presentations and an additional 30 minute lesson, to anglophone Cameroonian children towards the end of next week. My presentation topics for peer teaching and upcoming holiday school are the basic trigonometric ratios and an introduction to matrices. The teaching has all been in English so far, but soon those posted to francophone Cameroon will integrate French into the presentations. Although they are not treated very well by the government, teachers are well respected in Cameroon. I look forward to having some teaching experience... it's completely new to me and after this first presentation I have some things to improve on for next time.

Posts for education volunteers are going to be handed out tomorrow, which is big news for all of us. SEDs have to wait a few weeks. :) The country is divided into 10 provinces - I think Northwest and West provinces are anglophone, and the rest are francophone. The associate peace corps director had us fill out a few pages with preferences of posts and met with each of us briefly last week to discuss what we thought was most important. I tentatively selected Garoua in the North province, but the final decision is up to the Peace Corps administration. Some posts are teacher resource centers (TRCs) where you basically teach Cameroonian teachers new computer skills, and other posts are high schools that would require a more consistent schedule. I said that I prefer the high school schedule. After getting our posts, we have a site visit from next Wednesday to Sunday where we check out the school/TRC and begin to have a better idea of what and who we'll be working with.

All for now... off to speak some more francais.

En francais s'il vous plait!

Sat, 02 Jul 2005 15:21:20 GMT

First post in Cameroon!

What can I say, it's been a very busy two weeks. We flew out of Philadelphia and arrived in Paris early in the morning via Air France. After a quick beigne and coffee, I got on the next jet to Doula, Cameroon via the same airline. The lady sitting at the window next to me was Cameroonian, knew no English whatsoever, and liked to go to the bathroom a lot. I tried to ask her how to pronounce the peanuts that they handed out during the flight, and due to my limited French, she told me all of the ingredients instead. At Doula, the plane remained parked at the airport for close to an hour before departing for Yaounde. After that it felt great to finally be at our destination, but I think most people (myself included) just wanted a non-aiplane meal and a flat bed to snooze in. Robert Strauss (country director) and a few other admins met us near the baggage terminal. Power in numbers was the key until we could get everyone's baggage loaded into the bus. The drive from the Yaounde airport to the hotel took about 40 minutes and was one of the more frightening drives I've experienced. Traffic in Cameroon is crazy enough during the day, but driving at night for the first time seemed very chaotic. More on traffic some other post. We arrived at the hotel, dragged our luggage up to our rooms, and ate a good meal with fresh papaya for dessert. After not getting more than 15 minutes of sleep at a time on the flights totaling 17 hours of travel, we all slept very well that night.

On Sunday, we had the chance to visit the congress center, which is less of an administrative building at the moment, and more of a location to see a lot of the city because it is at the peak of one of the many bluffs. Starting on Monday we had orientation. PC provided some initial cross-cultural awareness, medical sessions on the major concerns (i.e. water sanitation and malaria), a survival french session, and a tour of the PC Yaounde headquarters. Besides the chance to walk back from the office to our hotel, Peace Corps kept us locked up pretty well during our stay. Guess the neighborhood we stayed in was pretty sketchy.

Thursday we packed our bags in the hotel and loaded up the buses for Bandjoun. It was our first chance to see the Cameroonian landscape and absorb the village culture a bit. Between Yaounde and Bandjoun, green jungles span for miles and miles uninhabited. Towards Bandjoun, there were large bluffs that rise a couple thousand feet. Buses (more like large vans here) blaze past with 30 or so passengers crammed inside. The roads were fairly well paved, but there is no speed limit and people drive very fast. When we slowed down to pass through villages, people offered us dead monkeys, fresh slabs of beef (flesh intact!), fruit, drinks, and even packaged goodies. These are usually purchased through the windows of the bus so that you can be on your way quickly.

After arriving in Bandjoun, we stopped at the Centre Climatique and waited for the host families to arrive. It was a small ceremony to greet the family and introduce each other for the first time. Peace Corps provided transportation to the homestay family's house so that we could get all our baggage at the same time. The first night with the homestay family was one of the more humbling experiences I've ever had. My French is very limited, and to my surprise there was a husband, two wives, 14 children, 2 dogs, and a cat. After a week, I'm still learning the names of all the children and have verbally confused each one at least a couple of times.

The week since I arrived at homestay has been overwhelming. A typical day for me is to wake up at 5-5:30 to do homework, shower, and eat breakfast. I leave for training at 7:30AM to do two hours of French training, followed by a teacher training session, lunch wherever the group can find it, and some cross-cultural session. After that there's another 1.5 hours of French training before we finish at 4:30. This first week, I've been going straight home to improve ties with my homestay family and try to improve my French a bit. The French used in the families is mixed with other languages in Bandjoun and has proved difficult understand, even for the couple volunteers who are entirely fluent in French.

I'm currently in a cyber cafe in Bafoussam, which is just a short taxi ride from the training site in Bandjoun. I will definitely update more in the future but probably not as frequently as I previously thought, at least until arriving at post in a couple of months.

All for now! Hope to update again soon. New photos posted on my yahoo photos account: http://www.geocities.com/kenincameroon/ -> 'photos'. Au revoir!

Staging complete

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 15:49:44 GMT

So yesterday we finished both days of staging activities, which included a realistic introduction to Peace Corps policies and an initial opportunity to work with the 25 volunteers in my group. Honestly, this group is great; they're very creative, enthusiastic, intelligent, and some have already traveled quite a bit in the past. Our programs are computer science education, science education, and small enterprise development. This morning we received yellow fever, mumps/measles/rubella, and polio vaccinations, and currently I am about an hour away from hopping on a bus to the airport. There we'll wait for about 5 hours (Peace Corps gets early check-in apparently, ugh), and then fly to Paris at 7:25. After a two hour layover there, we fly out of the same terminal via Air France to Yaounde, Cameroon. The total trip time should be about 17-18 hours.

In our spare time the last couple of days, we've had the chance to wander around Market Street near downtown Philadelphia for meals and last minute shopping. The food is great, streets are narrow, and the locals are always on their way to somewhere else. I've uploaded some photos of historic monuments on my photo gallery.

I've also been informed that we'll have nearby phone and internet connections once we arrive in Yaounde. Next update will likely be Sunday.

BTW, web homepage is http://www.geocities.com/kenincameroon/

One more week

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 00:04:54 GMT

Somehow, I finished school and stopped working over three weeks ago. The time since then has gone by incredibly fast! It's been an interesting mix of long phone calls, trips to visit family, organizing belongings, being with friends, and taking time to really think about what's important to me right now.

Highlights for this final week in Minneapolis include: 1) dinner with Nikki on Thursday 2) my sister Jenny is coming up to visit on Friday/Saturday 3) Hope to have one last trip to the bar with my brother Ryan and friends on Saturday night, and 4) my parents are driving here Sunday to spend time and to help me wrap things up before I fly out on Wednesday at 7AM. Also I still have to buy some things for the trip, pack my bags, move out of my apartment, and a gazillion other miscellaneous things to take care of. A little bit busy at the moment!

Staging

Fri, 20 May 2005 16:02:22 GMT

I just received my staging information in the mail. Looks like I will be going to Philadelphia for 12 hours of orientation, before training begins in Cameroon. I need to contact SATO Travel to get a plane ticket to Philadelphia. Guess the plane tickets for traveling out of the U.S. are given to all the volunteers in the group once we arrive in Philadelphia.

A website for holding more of my Cameroonian experiences is in the works (photos, contact info, etc.). I will post the link here when I have it setup.

Graduation

Mon, 16 May 2005 04:59:13 GMT

I'm officially done with college now! It's great to have sense of completeness in the last four (okay, five) years of life. On the other hand, the realization and excitement has already come and gone, and I'm anxious to move on to what awaits. In the four weeks before I leave, I plan to practice a lot of French and otherwise prepare for training in Mbalmayo, Cameroon. Most in-country sources have said that Internet cafes are becoming more and more common now (CIA Factbook says >100 in 2002), so even though updates might be infrequent, I should be able to keep this journal going while living abroad. Cool.

Cameroon!

Mon, 16 May 2005 04:36:24 GMT

I recently received an invitation from Peace Corps to teach computer science in Cameroon! I'll be leaving June 15, 2005 after I graduate from the U of MN in May. I'm very excited. I hope to keep this journal going after I leave, partially as a way to keep others posted on what I have been up to, and also to document my experiences. I'll have more time to customize this page after I graduate.