Goodbye Bafia

To begin where I left off in my last update, the Health Volunteers and the Agroforestry volunteers switched host families for the second half of training. I moved out to a small village called Nyamsong for my second homestay, with Felix Kihenga, his wife Marie Claire, and three kids: 5-year-old Gabriella, a six month old baby girl affectionately known as “DooDoo,” and their 17-year-old stepbrother Patrick.

I really enjoyed living with the Kihengas. It was a little awkward at first, because Marie Claire’s favorite conversation topic for the first week was how much she had liked Paige, the volunteer I was replacing [Paige actually ended up dropping out and returning the US a few weeks later]. Also, almost as soon as all the Agros moved out to the village, we had to leave again for a week-long visit to our future posts. After we got back, we had to prepare two oral presentations in French on agroforestry techniques to finish our training. We had a lot less free time for family bonding in the last couple weeks.

Marie Claire’s warmth, however, made it easy for me to get close to the family. Felix wasn’t around very much, because he frequently had to do masonry work for weeks at a time, coming home only on the weekends. Marie Claire, short and plump and mother hen personified, ran the household in the meantime. She was very motherly towards me (“Ma fille!”), always insisting that I eat more and very particular about how I do my chores. She could be bossy sometimes- Even though my first family had already taught me a perfectly good way to do my laundry, she informed me I was doing it all wrong. Ignoring my protests, she insisted that I flail my clothes against the concrete and soap each garment about three times until she was satisfied. She was a bit of a busybody too- she loved poking her head into my room when I was least expecting it to see what I was up to and one of her favorite pastimes was to report to me her observations on all the volunteers who passed in front of our house. Her sweetness more than made up for her faults though. She was always looking out for what I needed and insisting I take better care of myself. She sewed me a dress [that I unfortunately can’t walk in; it has a mermaid skirt- with a huge ruffle at the bottom and a seam falling just around my ankles, I’m limited to a fast shuffle] and a bag, and declared proudly that I was getting “grosse” thanks to her cooking.

I loved her kids. Gabby is one of the most vivacious little girls I’ve ever met. She loved being the center of attention and was constantly reciting the poems she learned at school. She also has some sweet dance moves. An actress in the making. Slightly spoiled, she knows how to wrap you around her finger with her exuberant greetings and giggles and warnings that she will “not be your friend” if you don’t play with her. She did bite me a few times though. Little DooDoo was also adorable, especially because she was still figuring out how to control her tongue. It would constantly peek out between her lips without her realizing it, which gave her the drollest little expression. Marie Claire would always tut tut and promptly poke it back in with a piece of grass. In fact one time when I had to carry DooDoo to church Marie Claire gave me a reed expressly for tongue-poking.

Their brother Patrick was more aloof, but still friendly and the handyman around the house in his Dad’s absence. We bonded over getting water from the well. I always accompanied him to pump water and then push the full bidons back in wheelbarrows. A couple of times we raced our wheelbarrows back and forth along the road, which was a lot of fun. I also taught him and his best friend Pierre how to play the card game War which they really liked. He relished explaining to me all the different types of bush meat he’s eaten; cat and hippo are his favorite.

I was lucky because my family was one of the wealthiest in the village. While some of my fellow volunteers were essentially in shacks and fed on rice and water, my house had a satellite dish, TV, speakers, and pretty good food. I caught a lot of guff from other volunteers about my “mansion.”

It wasn’t all comfort though. Living right next to the rainforest has its disadvantages. The bathroom was an outdoor latrine and a huge pain to go to in the middle of the night, not to mention it was pretty gross. When the hole you’re aiming for is about the size of a softball, it’s easy to miss. What’s more, baring my bum outdoors made a good target for mosquitoes. Judging by the caucophony of crazy sounds I heard coming from the rainforest as I crouched sleepily in the latrine, I hope the situation never arises that I get stuck in a rainforest in the dark. Some of my friends whose latrines were far from their houses just gave up and started peeing in cups in their rooms. There were huge spiders chilling on the walls at night and big red poisonous centipedes in our hallway. I had to sweep a layer of fruit flies off my bed each night that slipped through my mosquito net. Ants were also a problem. Our kitchen was invaded by biting ants while I was cooking pizza- they were on the march and swarming all over the place and my host brother had to make a perimeter of hot coals so I could finish cooking. Whenever Marie Claire offered me baguette for breakfast, it was always covered in ants. After gritting my way through a few ant sandwiches I politely declined and got my own breakfasts from then on.

There were also these tiny biting flies called “mootmoots” that were nasty- daytime and nighttime, they bite you to the point of drawing blood and are so relentless that you simply cannot wear a skirt and be comfortable unless you cover yourself in bug spray. Even then, they sneak in. I wore pants as much as possible and bug spray and I still had a lot of bites. Some of my friends looked like they had chicken pox. They’re silent too, so it’s hard to catch them before they bite you, unlike mosquitoes.

Every morning I grabbed a bagful of warm beignets and biked into town for training. My bike trips were always eventful, whether I had to battle the mud or get soaked in unexpected rain showers or dodge motos or greet the hordes of schoolkids walking the couple of miles to school. One time the local administration randomly set up a check point and a woman in an orange vest stopped me and declared she would have to confiscate my bike. I told her I didn’t believe her and refused, but she kept insisting, so finally I just biked away laughing. If the road became too muddy to bike, I walked to the village square with the other volunteers to be picked up by Peace Corps SUVs. A promising young entrepreneur we dubbed “Peanut Boy” made a fortune selling us sugar-covered peanuts every time we had to wait for the car.

Even with PC SUVs, though, the roads were sometimes barely passable. One particular section of the road eroded so easily in the rain that it was more like playdoh than a road. Where one day it had been flat and smooth, the next day there were huge ruts that trapped cars. It was so muddy that you couldn’t even get by on foot without sliding all over the place (I know because I tried and got home covered in mud). This made car rides with all the volunteers a lot of fun, because we were always jammed into the SUVs like sardines, bush taxi style. People had to sit on each others’ laps and squish against each other as the car rocked back and forth at steep angles over all the humongous potholes in the road, and everyone complained loudly and cheered on our driver. One time Justin, one of the tallest guys in our group, was the last to get in, and since there was no room he just dived in head-first and laid across our laps for the entire ride home.

At night, I would sit outside with my family on their porch and play cards or chat or just sit and look up at the sky if the electricity was out, which was frequent. I could see three times as many stars as I’m used to-the Milky Way is very bright. There were also these lightning bugs everywhere that flashed on and off like little strobe lights. The stars above and the lightning bugs below in the pitch dark with all the sounds of the rainforest made for quite an effect. [Other cool rainforest fauna: The ground was covered in tiny ferns that close up when you touch them. Every morning I biked by a tree full of bright turquoise birds, and my favorite trees were the huge “baoba” trees with white trunks that tower majestically above the rainforest floor.]

The village sent us off in style our last week. My host family threw me a going-away party where the main dish was antelope meat wrapped in termites! I gave it a good try but…I hope I don’t have to eat it again. In return, I cooked the whole family pizza with soda and chocolate for dessert. They ate it but I don’t think Marie Claire was very impressed- I caught her buying grilled fish for the kids afterwards. We were all invited to a marriage celebration in the village, which was basically one big dance party and a lot of fun, although the traditional dancer wearing nothing but a grass skirt did give me an unsolicited poke in the boob . The chief of the village also threw a going-away celebration for us, where he had a group of traditional drummers and dancers perform for us. As is the tradition, the chief came out and danced with us. We thanked the chief and his entourage for having us, he thanked us for coming, and then we all ate a large meal cooked by the village women.

My last day in village was rather stressful. Turns out my host brother had been sneaking into my room and stealing things. He took my pen knife, Ipod and Ipod charger, and some cash. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this until the last night when I started packing. I confronted him about it, and he flatly denied it. The facts were there though- he had played with my camera, so there were pictures of him to prove it! I had to confront Marie Claire about it the morning I was leaving, and she was really upset and tried to get Patrick to give the things back but he wouldn’t. I eventually got everything back- my host dad came home the weekend after and made Patrick give everything back- but it was a shame to have to end a great stay on a bad note.

To add to the whole stress of the morning, I had designed my own swearing-in dress. There are few shops that sell ready-made clothing in Cameroon. The shops that do are usually called “Ready to Wear!” like it’s something special. The piles of clothing in the markets are mostly secondhand Western castoffs donated by charities. So you have to go to the material store or shack- beautiful richly colored and richly-patterned African fabrics or “pagne” from the Ivory Coast covering the walls, always hard to choose!- and then take your material to a seamstress. It’s a lot of fun designing your own clothes. I had an elaborate vision in mind when I went for swearing-in, combining several different styles I had seen women wearing. There were about 6 seamstresses pedaling their machines at once and they got a kick out of hearing me describe what I wanted in gestures and poor French. They all gave their two cents on the design and clucked at my narrow waist and chest measurements.

Anyway, for some unknown reason my seamstress didn’t sew a zipper into my swearing-in dress. So I had to quickly split the seam and re-sew it the morning of the ceremony. This plus re-packing and trying to figure out how to keep all my stuff together with the newly acquired bike, watering can, shovel, machete, hoe, and bucket provided by Peace Corps plus dealing with Patrick put me in a bad mood. I wasn’t the only one stressed for swearing-in- half of our group got sick the week of, with lovely things like typoid and malaria and amoebas, so several of my peers were coming back from the hospital or leaving for the hospital the morning of.

The actual swearing-in ceremony was great though. The new American ambassador to Cameroon came, plus the Peace Corps Country Director and several Cameroonian government ministers. We took the oath together standing in a line in matching pagne outfits, with hugs all around. It felt good to know we had survived the first phase of Peace Corps and were now free of all the restrictions attached to being a trainee (in particular the night curfew). We all felt very ready to leave Bafia and get going on our work. Afterwards, we had a host family appreciation banquet and members of both my host families came to say good-bye. We’ve been in touch since, and I hope to be able to visit them both the next time I go to Yaounde.

I have to say that my last night in Bafia was one of my worst in Cameroon thus far, due to the sketchy hotel we all stayed in. We rented it out and used the downstairs lounge for an after-party. I knew my stay would be unpleasant when I saw the dingy walls, bathroom door completely unhinged, and the rusty pipes that erratically squirted brown water. The worst though was when I went to bed. After dancing for four hours, I went upstairs to my room and saw cockroaches crawling all over the bed!!! Three huge cockroaches on my pillow. If they had been on the floor or on the wall or in the bathroom I could deal, but on my bed??!! I watched for a little bit (I just made it worse for myself) and there were more and they kept crawling over the bed even when the light was on. When I scared them away they just went into the cracks of the bed and chilled there. The bed was basically infested.

I was exhausted and not in the best frame of mind to be a good sport about it. I freaked out and got out my DEET and sprayed all over the place. I considered sleeping outside in the neighboring cornfield. Then I remembered I had two travel sheets- Hallejulah! Only to find that they were soaked with bleach- my bottle had spilled in my suitcase. I spent several minutes considering all the possible health impacts of inhaling bleach fumes and DEET all night. I ultimately decided that the alternative- touching the hotel sheets- would be worse than losing a few brain cells. So I wrapped myself in both travel sheets and slept with my head at the foot of the bed, as far away as possible from where I had seen the cockroaches. Even still, it took me three tries to turn out the lights, and a while to fall asleep. I couldn’t help imagining all the various ways they could come crawling on me or into my ear or something in the dark. When my roommate YaYa finally came to bed, I mercifully decided that her ignorance would her bliss in this case and did not mention the cockroaches. She thanked me later! In the morning, I leapt out of bed and got the heck out of there.

The whole journey to get from Cameroon’s capital Yaounde to my post in the Far North takes about two and a half days. First, you have to take a train from Yaounde overnight to Ngaoundere, the regional capital of the North region of Cameroon. The train reminds me of the Hogwarts Express in Harry Potter - it’s bright red and each room has four bunks and you get served food [We paid extra for beds; apparently third class is a nightmare- it’s always overbooked and passengers are so crowded that some people just sit on their luggage in the aisle, there’s nowhere to lie down and sometimes you can’t even get to the bathroom! I saw the second class cars and it isn’t much better.] The speed of the train is laughable. It goes about as fast as the tour trolleys at Hershey Park, with frequent stops. I could probably run alongside it.

The downside of this is that the trip takes forever. The first time we went up North for post visit, the trip took 22 hours because our train broke in half. Yes, broke in half. Apparently, our end of the train broke away from the front half and it took a while for the front to notice that we were gone. All of a sudden we just rolled to a stop and looked out the window and saw that our engine was gone. To top it off, we were in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but jungle on either side, and the train official in our car told us that he couldn’t call the conductor because he had no cell phone service, so we’d just have to wait until they realized and came back. We waited for about two hours- all the Cameroonians on our train grumbling “That’s Africa for you”- but were soon able to resume our snail pace. I made sure not to linger crossing between cars after that. When the train stays in one piece, the trip takes about 15 hours overnight.

The upside is that because the train moves so slowly it’s a lot like being on safari. The speed is perfect if you want a leisurely tour of the countryside. We got to see almost all of Cameroon out the train window. It was very cool watching the landscape evolve as we moved farther and farther North. All the vegetation starts to disappear. When we went to bed, all we could see was dense rainforest, silhouetted in the dark by flashes of lightning. When we woke up, the scene had changed abruptly to miles upon miles of flat dry savannah, punctuated by clusters of thatched mud huts. As always, we were on the lookout for lions or giraffes or elephants, but no luck. At every stop, villagers run up to the train balancing trays of food on their heads and you have your choice- bottles of black honey, peanuts, avocadoes, bananas, clementines, baton de manioc, grilled meat, and sticks of sugar cane to suck on. Between gawking at everything out the window, sleeping, and grabbing snacks at each stop, the ride passes quickly.

We reached Ngaoundere (Northern Region) around 10 in the morning, dazed and struggling to carry our huge bags. You have to be on your guard in the Ngaoundere train station because there’s a lot going on. Before you even get off the train, porters run at you and try to convince you to let them carry your bags for a few francs. Food vendors are everywhere- dried dates, grilled beef sandwiches with onions and peppers, hardboiled eggs, rice pancakes, smoked beef covered in spices, avocadoes, pineapples, etc.-and pushy about getting your attention. In the confusion, a pickpocket almost stole my cell phone, but I felt his hand in my jean pocket and grabbed his arm; he dropped the cell phone and ran away. I felt pretty badass.

Happily, Peace Corps staff were waiting for us with a travel van all ready to go. The van ride took all day, with more window-gazing. We passed through another climate zone in the Adamawoua region of Cameroon, which is a large plateau. We set off in dry heat, but on the plateau the landscape was softened by green again and cool and shady. There were beautiful views as we descended from the plateau and looked out at steep green hills gradually disappearing into brown savannah. A little over 7 hours later, we arrived in Maroua, the regional capital of the Extreme North [where, as it happens, my grandfather Peter worked as a technician for USAID improving pasture lands in the 1980s. Quelle coincidence that I’m posted in the same area!]. After a couple days in the city buying household items and settling our bank accounts using the Maroua Peace Corps House as a home base, I rented a car with the two volunteers closest to me and headed up to post. Two hours later, I was in my new house, miraculously with all my baggage intact.

The first couple hours spent in my house were comical. I was immediately surrounded by lots of people. All the women in my compound were waiting outside when I arrived, and they escorted me in speaking only broken French. My landlord was not there, so I was shown around the compound by a random relative who was just visiting and whom I haven’t seen since. My house wasn’t finished when I walked in, but my arrival galvanized everyone into action. It was as if it took me actually arriving for them to realize that they had to actually finish the house. A herd of teenage boys came in to fix things, chattering to one another in Fulfulde. Two changed doorknobs on my doors, a couple climbed into the ceiling to rearrange wires, another screwed in lightbulbs while two others held the stool he was standing on, and the rest stood around and offered commentary. At one point they all crowded into my tiny kitchen at once to look at the lighting, so I had about twelve guys in one room. I joked that we were having a “fete” and they all laughed. Meanwhile, three girls came in to sweep the floors and knock down spider webs. Just when I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have any time to myself to unpack, they all left at once. After a whirlwind of a trip and so many weeks of shelter and support by Peace Corps staff, it felt odd to be suddenly cut loose, all on my own in an empty house- scary and really exciting at the same time. I went to bed with a big smile on my face for having successfully arrived at post without mishap, and determined to take the new and unexpected in stride the next day.