Goodbye Banyo

Well yesterday moring was it, I officially left Banyo. Said goodbye to all my friends, my cat, my postmate, my house and Banyo. And of course my last trip out had to be memorable, so it took us a good 12 hours to get to Bafoussam with most of the passengers covered in mud from pushing/pulling.

I am really going to miss Banyo. I couldn't have asked to live in a better town and I hope that I will have the chance to come back one day.

The Stages of Readjustment

What is the returned Volunteer to do ? It helps, of course, to know that readjustment is coming ; you may still be thrown by the experience, but you’ll get up quicker. It can also help to know how it evolves. For most Volunteers, readjustment unfolds in three distinct stages.

The first stage is a period of great excitement and joy, when you’re thrilled to see everyone and they’re thrilled to see you. Typically, you spend this period traveling around visiting relatives and friends, being welcomed enthusiastically wherever you go. For the moment you are a kind of hero, and because you don’t stay too long in any one place, no one tires of your tales.

This period is followed, a month or so later, by the second stage. This is when people really do have to get on with their lives and, no offense, but shouldn’t you be doing the same? This is the stage the average returned Volunteer isn’t ready for. During this period, you will run up huge phone bills calling other RPCVs, spend many waking hours hating and refusing to adjust to America and scheming madly to get back overseas. You will actively resist adjustment, fearful that it will somehow cheapen and diminish all that has happened to you. An RPCV from Costa Rica observes:

I’m afraid I may be becoming readjusted. Readjusted would take me back to what i was before. I think of it as being back in the mainstream grind. I want life to be slower paced. It helps me remember what I lived like overseas. I don’t think I’ll ever totally readjust. I hope I don’t.

In the third stage, you beging to make your peace with being at home. You find work or go back to school or continue with your retirement activities. You meet interest, decent people, who oddly enough, were never in the Peace Corps. You identify as much with the present and the future as with the past. You’re even starting to become a bit more objective – about America and about your overseas country. You see that carving out a new life for yourself back home doesn’t have to mean that the Peace Corps never happened. 

A Face in the Crowd

Another frustrating dimension of adjustment is the sudden return to anonymity. While Volunteers often complain about living in a fishbowl overseas, they nevertheless enjoy being the center of attention and interest. It makes them feel special, even important. Speaking the local language, for example, makes celebrities – even heroes – out of Volunteers, as does, say, being the first American to teach at the King Hassan II elementary school or to ride the local bus from Song Kwah to Phu Banh. Now, suddenly, no one looks up when you enter a room or squeals with delight when you start speaking in Kiswahili. No one is impressed that you speak English, and your every move has more of less the same novelty value as everyone else’s every move. You aren’t special anymore – and you miss it. “[Overseas I had] a feeling of empowerment, having a lot of influence,” a Volunteer form Swaziland remembers. “Coming back, it was weird to fall back into the role of just another Joe.”

In his book An Area of Darkness, V.S. Naipaul, who was born and raised in Trinidad of Indian parents, remembers the first time he visit India, after living in countries where he had always stood out because of his appearance. The feeling he describes will sound familiar to many returned Volunteers:

[Now] I was one of the crowd. In Trinidad to be an Indian was to be distinctive; in Egypt it was more so. Now in Bombay I entered a shop or a restaurant and awaited a special quality of response. And there was nothing. It was like being denied a part of my reality. I was faceless. I might sink without a trace into the Indian crowd…Recognition of my difference was necessary to me. I felt the need to impose myself, and didn’t know how.

It'll go from situations like this where I'm pretty easy to pick out ... 

To situations like this where it takes some time to even pick one out

How Nice

"Your self-esteem isn’t helped when no one seems especially interested in what you’ve been doing for the last two years. You have just gone through what may be the seminal experience of your life – an experience which has transformed your view of the world and of your own country – and yet your family and friends somehow aren’t bowled over. You have so much to explain, but alas, their capacity to absorb is not nearly matched by your need to recapitulate; they’re filled up before you’re even half empty. Martha Gellhorn writes in Travels With Myself and Another:

Upon your return, no one willingly listens to our travelers’ tales. “How was the trip?” they say. “Marvelous,” we say. “In Tbilsi, I saw…” Eyes glaze. AS soon as politeness permits or before, conversation is switched back to local news, such as gossip, the current political outrage, who’s read what, last night’s telly;

“When someone asks you about your experience,” a Volunteer from Cameroon observes, “give them five minutes and then shut up.”"

The Notion of Home

“The trouble with coming home is that you don’t expect it to be difficult at least not in the way you expected Mali, or Turkmenistan or Guatemala to be difficult. These were exotic ‘foreign’ places, after all, and the whole point about foreign is that it’s bound to take some adjustment.

But home is the antithesis of foreign, it’s the other extreme. Among other things, it represents the known, the familiar, the place where you know how to act. Surely no one needs to prepare you for diarrhea-proof ice cream, air-conditioned theaters, and the luxury of speaking English wherever you go. In short, whatever applies to foreign by definition does not apply to home.

This is all true except that in most sense of the word – including all those just mentioned above- the place you call home is now, in fact, a foreign country.

The problem, then has to do with this word ‘home’ and what it really means. In The Art of Coming Home, Craig Storti writes:

In the sense that home is the place where you were born and raised, where people speak your native language and behave more or less the way you do – what we might call your home land and your home culture- then it is indeed home that awaits you as you step off the jumbo jet. If you should happen to think of home only in this limited sense and expect nothing more of it,then the place you return to will not disappoint you.

But this is not what most people mean by home – which is where all the trouble starts. Most people use the word in a more profound sense, referring to a set of feelings and routines as much as to a particular place. In this formulation, home is the place where you are known and  trusted and where you know and trust others; where you are accepted, understood, indulged, and forgiven; a place of rituals and routine interactions; of entirely predictable events and people and very few surprises; the place where you belong and feel safe and secure and where you can accordingly trust your instincts, relax, and be yourself. It is, in short, the place where  you feel ‘at home.’

This is a much broader definition, of course, though much closer to what most people expect and require of home. Needless to say it is also a much higher standard by which to measure the place you have returned to – a standard, in fact, that any such place cannot possibly meet. As we will see, this very realization, that home is really not home, is at the core of the experience of reentry.

….. Of course, neither the place where you left off nor the person who went overseas exists anymore. Transitions, even when they’re expected, can be troublesome. When they’re not expected, they can be genuinely debilitating.”

Chapter Seven: Coming Home

During my move to my new house, I discovered all sorts of stuff I never really realized I had. One such item was a booklet about the adjustments volunteers may have to make during their service. I vaguely remember having received the booklet in my invitation packet months before I even left America. It wasn’t one that really stood out or that I particularly even read that much. However this time, when I opened it up and began reading (and began with chapter seven as that’s the stage I’m at in my service) I couldn’t believe how much the content applied to me. Not to be cheesey, but it was like finding a friend who completely understood all the thoughts going on in my head. So in my last month here, rather than splashing personal random thoughts in an attempt to express everything going on, I am going to just share the entries of this last chapter (with possibly a few comments of my own in between in blue) as I feel they come about as close as possible to capturing all the thoughts going on right now. So let’s begin reading…. (this first part is short, just the intro)*

“As frustrating and challenging as it is to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, many Volunteers will tell you it’s even harder to be a former Peace Corps Volunteer. It can be as hard to leave the Peace Corps, it seems, as it is to be in it (or harder I think…). As one returned Volunteer from South America wrote, ‘My problem is I’m 23 years old and I’ve already had the experience of a lifetime’” 


*A few minor adjustments is the title of the booklet I am pulling passages from for the next month. 

2 years done, 2 months left

Today officially marks 2 years of being in Cameroon. This time 2010, I was first arriving in Yaounde with my ‘stage’ (group), excited for everything that was to come, probably much like the newest group of volunteers or trainees who have just arrived this past Friday. Congrats to everyone else who has also reached this moment.

Today also marks my last bit of time left here. In exactly 2 months I’ll be arriving back in America. Friends have already been saying that the date is so close and ask if I’m excited, if I’ve started packing, if they can have dibs on things, etc. But when I look at my calendar, I think 2 months is still a long time and I have only barely begun packing (and really what I sorted through so far is just as a result of moving houses). I still have many things to do and look forward to here before I go back and I am planning to enjoy every moment left. 

Perhaps the most important thing for life here: buckets

Well I know I’ve mentioned these things before in other posts, I believe about water and washing clothes but sometimes when I just look at life here, I still can’t believe how important these things are. Yep, buckets that’s what I’m talking about. Buckets. Buckets of all colors, even tie-dye, all sizes – big and small, pretty much one shape – round, but really there is an endless variety of buckets here and for a reason.

Buckets are probably the thing I use most and for most of my household activities. It’s really crazy sometimes how much I rely on buckets and how much I would probably be in trouble if I didn’t have them. They are used for so many things: washing clothes and shoes, taking a bath, cleaning dishes, storing water, collecting water when it rains, storing items or even food, selling items on the street – buckets are essential to life here. I myself have about 6 buckets and one giant trashcan (kind of a bucket, right) that I use every day. Particularly now with a not-so-reliable water system and it being rainy season, any time it looks cloudy I make sure to put as many buckets out in a row under the roof to collect water.

It’s funny to think sometimes that we almost never use buckets in the States – maybe we have some stored in a garage or shed with junk or who knows what in them but very rarely are there buckets actually in the house and that we use often. And yet after being here now and using them all the time, I don’t know what I’ll do when I go back with no buckets. 

Almost all my buckets...still a few more around the house

Mosques

Since my particular area of Cameroon is mostly Muslim, there are mosques almost everywhere. In Banyo there is a mosque almost every hundred feet. Some mosques look pretty shabby and are practically falling apart, little square houses that you only know are a mosque because of the small Arabic writing in front or the minaret. Sometimes it isn’t really even a building, but just any area blocked off with bricks in the shape of a square building with a minaret cut out. And then sometimes the mosque looks amazing. it’s beautiful with lots of detail and just really a great structure within the community. In fact I would say that some of the msoquees I’ve seen are really the most beautiful buildings I’ve seen here altogether. I will really miss walking down the street and seeing such lovely buildings when I go back and of course I’ll miss hearing the call to prayer everyday multiple times of day. Can’t say however that I will necessarily miss the constant stops while traveling for passengers to prayer…

Mayo Djinga Mosque - The newest, probably most expensive and certainly nicest building 

in this small village

my favorite - the big mosque in Ngaoundere 

Another nice mosque in Ngaoundere

Banyo's main mosque 

Babies everywhere

In America, I would have to say that the average high schooler/college student/younger adult comes across babies maybe once in a while – perhaps a family member or family friend has a child and one gets to see and hold the baby. Here, well you practically can’t get away from babies. They are everywhere. I can’t even begin to count the number of babies I’ve held since being here, let alone all the ones that I just see every day. And sometimes I’m talking day old babies. Not only does everyone have tons of babies, but maybe since they’re just all over, people are not as concerned, I’ll say, about possible risky behavior for the baby. For example, it’s quite normal to allow a 3,4,5 year old to hold the baby, even walk around with the baby. You often see young children with babies attached to their back (like the mothers do) but sometimes I swear I don’t know how the child doesn’t almost fall over from the baby as the child isn’t much bigger herself. Then it's also normal to put babies on motos - either the woman just keeps the baby on her back while riding or even better, the moto driver rests the baby on the gas tank in front of them while on the moto. 

I really liked this particular baby and asked to
'borrow' him for a day or two but it never
happened don't think they took me seriously

Another common practice thats not so much possibly dangerous but just different from what we know is for one to allow someone else to raise their child. Often people send their young child to an extended family member for a while. And it’s also acceptable to even ask for someone’s baby. For example, maybe a woman’s own children are grown and she wants to have a young child to help with household chores and have around – so just ask someone you know who has recently had a baby. 

Here are some photos of just a few babies. Believe me there are many, many more …

A few day old twins

How most babies are carried around - just tie them to your back with some fabric

Home Sweet Home

My new house ! 

So almost an entire year and a few close calls later but I finally have the house that I want. And while it may seem ridiculous to be moving now when I have only 3 months left, it’s worth it. My first house was really great itself but there were problems more so with location. I’ll just say the problems were due to culture differences - some people here don’t have the same ideas about personal space and what’s appropriate as a neighbor. And for anyone who’s visited me, I’ll say one word – kudjo. So it’s better now that I have my own compound.

My new house is literally across the street – maybe 10 steps. It’s owned by the Lamido and was recently finished. It’s pink and green with a giant living room and high ceiling, two bedrooms and bathroom that even has a toilet seat and cover, an indoor kitchen and a detached kitchen for wood fire cooking. And there’s running water and power (most of the time)

  

I’ve only been here a few nights so far and still have a lot of work before it’s all pulled together, but it’s already been amazing being here and not having to worry about the many things I did before. I will most certainly thoroughly enjoy my last few months in my new house. And I hope my replacement will enjoy his or her full 2 years in this great house. 

My old house is on the left - again literally like 10 steps away

My new room 

Living room before... 

And after

Indoor kitchen 

So fresh and so clean

I would have to say that the thing that struck me the most about life here that I hadn’t expected at all is the importance of appearances, specifically clothing. I’m sure anyone back home wouldn’t really expect to see people here in Cameroon so nicely dressed and I know there are plenty of volunteers here that use the excuse – ‘It’s Africa and you just get dirty so why dress nice’. But appearances and attire are actually very important to people.

When people go out, they try to look their best, whether they are wearing traditional clothing or more modern clothes. And yes things are dirty here particularly now with the height of dry season and red dust absolutely everyone but that doesn’t stop people from putting on their whitest t-shirt and going out. It’s important to have clean clothes and clean shoes – yes shoes. People wash their shoes some almost every day. And for example every morning after students and teachers make the trek out to the school and are covered in dust, the first thing they do after arriving is make sure to dust off and clean their shoes. And even tennis shoes that are used for sport are cleaned. I myself have even begun to clean my tennis shoes even though I wear them every day for sport and they get dirty every day, it’s important here. Ironed, pressed clothes are also important. And when you look extra nice and clean, sometimes people will say you look ‘fresh’ which is a nice compliment.

So cleanliness is across the board an important part of looking nice when going out. But then there are other things that maybe wouldn’t be that popular back home, but people do love here.

- Tight t-shirts with decals or glitter/sparkles. ‘Africa’ and ‘Cameroon’ t-shirts are super popular right now. And Ed Hardy knock off t-shirts also.

This was given to me for my birthday

- Small ties. Every big man, important person at some point rocks out a super small tie. The smaller the tie, the more important you are. Also super pointy men's dress shoes.

- Man purses worn around the neck. You know something nice like Gucci or Louis Vutton.

- In the realm of traditional clothing, right now a popular outfit is pants and a long tunic for girls with of course a scarf to cover the head and hair

So while I don’t necessarily follow all the particular fashion trends here, I do always try to look presentable with ironed clothes and cleaned shoes. And I would say for any volunteers coming, don’t underestimate your appearance here. If I could do it over, I would definitely bring some nicer clothing and dressier shoes. Things do get dirty, but it’s nice to look clean and professional every now and then.

Don't they look so nice and clean

How integrated do you feel in your community?

Every 4 months, one of the responsibilities as a volunteer is to complete a report about my activities. As you would imagine, I list all the work that I have done over those months. but in addition, I report about basically all the aspects of my life in my village – how my language skills are, if I’ve had any security or safety issues, culture exchanged, etc. Well one of the questions we are asked is ‘How integrated do you feel in your community?’ I find this to be one of the most difficult questions to answer. What does it even mean?

I feel like so often when we talk about life in another country as a volunteer, we talk about how we have ups and downs, how it can be so challenging with a different culture and how we try to integrate into our community. But really what does any of that mean? I think we often too easily say that our life is so different just because we are in a different country, but is it really? Why do we put such an emphasis on the highs and lows and that we are working and living in another country? I mean do you not have good days and bad days when you are back home in America? Do you not have moments when it feels like nothing is working how you want when you are in America? Maybe other people don’t but I definitely do. When I look at my life here and compare it with my life from before, I realize that really there are so many similarities. Yes, of course some of my daily activities are different, but in essence, isn’t most of it the same? I have my friends here who I care about and spend my time with. I have my work and responsibilities. I have days that I wish would never end and some that don’t end soon enough. But isn’t that all part of life no matter where you are or what you're doing?

So back to the first question – How integrated do you feel in your community? – Well for everyone back home, I mean do you ever ask yourself this question? No who does. And well if you did, what would you even say? It’s not something you think about and even when you do, how do you determine an accurate response. But here it’s something we discuss at times a lot with one another and I would just like to say that sometimes I find it to be an absurd question that we would otherwise not ask one another if it weren’t for living in another country and culture.

Boys English Group

So I don’t usually really talk about my work and most of that is because my work is really just teaching English everyday but here is a small project that I’ve recently started that I wanted to share about because I was happy it was finally happening.

Since coming to Banyo and starting work at the lycee, I have wanted to work with students outside of regular class – to work with a small group and do more activities that I was interested in and that they were interested in. Well I have finally gotten things rolling (only after a year and half). Some of my younger students came to me a few months ago and wanted an opportunity to practice English with more of a focus on conversational skills. So I invited a few more students of the same age level and we set a day and time to meet each week. It’s been going well for about a month now. And the students really seem to enjoy it and I definitely enjoy working with such a small group where I can actually hear everyone and they all have a chance to participate. The meetings thus far have been rather unstructured, some meetings we go over more in depth what they learned in class, some meetings we just talked about culture like school and differences in America and here. But I think it is going well and I am planning on using our meetings to incorporate lessons on topics like study skills and life skills while also allowing them to practice their English.

Here are some pictures of an activity we just did this past week. I brought in maps of the US and the world and we discussed some geography and I shared about America. Then they drew a map of Cameroon and described their country. All of this in English of course for them to practice.

Cooking with Fire

I know I’ve talked about food before but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned just how exactly people go about cooking their food. Most volunteers cook with gas which means when we first move to our post, we have to search for a gas bottle to buy in a big city, transport the bottle to our village and attach to a ‘stove’ which usually has just 2 burners, maybe a small third one if it’s fancy. The gas bottle can last anyway from a few months to over half a year depending on how much cooking you do. When it runs out, you hope there’s gas available in town so you can exchange the empty bottle for a new one otherwise you’re stuck waiting with no way to cook or heat water for a warm bucket bath. Well this was the case for me a few months ago and I waited but apparently the whole country was out of gas (still don’t quite believe that) so I had to turn to more traditional ways of cooking….

Cameroonians do cook with gas but most find it expensive for the kind of cooking they do so they prefer to cook with wood. Just set up a few rocks to put a pot on top of. Place a few logs underneath and start a fire. Well at first I thought I would try this after I failed to find gas but one of my friends who I asked to help me get started advised me or more so gave me a reality check and told me that would be too difficult for me to do. However, he suggested a different method that would be a little easy. Here’s what I got: a metal cylinder, wood chips and wood. Here’s how it works: use an empty bottle and place in the center while you pack in wood chips then take the bottle out leaving an open hole in the center. The wood goes in a little opening on the bottom and put some petrol on it all to start the fire. Then get a cooking. Now my friend after buying everything did explain and show me (while almost starting a fire in my house as he told me it would be no problem to cook with inside – not true) and I have seen Cameroonians using them all the time particular at night cooking beignets, omelettes, etc. Well here’s what happened the first time I tried to use it (fortunately I had a fellow volunteer with me to help so she can attest to the story and could probably tell it much better)

Well we wanted to cook French toast and some tea. We set up the cylinder outside my back door and the volunteer got a stool to sit on so she could cook and fan the fire. We also decided that we had way to many things to do at once so we brought out my living room table to put the bread and everything on. Thing started okay but then… well we had a difficult time fighting off my neighbor’s chickens while also keeping the fire under control and in the madness I knocked over the petrol bottle and almost got both of us burnt. And we ended up eating burnt French toast. It was rough but I eventually got gas a few days later and it was like back to living in luxury.

The first morning cooking with wood...stressful

I will say though since this experience months ago, I have continued to use the wood fire and for the most part have gotten the hang of it. I heat water, make cakes – it’s not that bad, kind of fun sometimes when I don’t mess it up.

Youth Day

February 11 is a national holiday: Youth Day. It’s pretty much like any other holiday with special pagne, games and events, parade, party – the whole package but it’s dedicated to ‘youth’ which in this country can stretch to mean as long as you are not married you are a youth.

Last year I was not in Banyo for the holiday so this year I got to see and participate in all the awesome activities. And of course being a teacher, there really were some things I was supposed to help with. the first was ‘parade practice’ at school with all the students. Basically I just stood around and watched but the other teachers did help direct students and yell at them when they were not in a straight line. The students marched under the hot sun and chanted songs about how they were tired and wanted to go home.

Another day was ‘community service’ which basically meant students had to do manual labor and complained the whole time that they were again tired. And I again I didn’t really know what I was doing and I still don’t understand sweeping dirt here so the students asked if it was okay and I just said I don’t know. After about an hour of them asking I just gave up and they left. I think the ground was clean?

Then there were other events like some games against schools but I didn’t make it to all that. I did of course go out for the big parade on the Saturday. All the schools march in their uniforms and then youth groups and associations come out also. Even the moto-taximen march. It was quite an event.

It's Toga!