may

19 May 2009

It feels like its been a long time since I have written anything, probably because it has.  But also I have been gone a lot and so the time has gone by really fast.  A couple of weeks I went to the South for a little vacation to the beach.  It took 2 days to get there, a 7 hour bus ride, overnight train, and another 3 ½ hours bus ride.  The beach was great, it was a nice get-away from the crazy heat in the past few weeks.  I got back to my village after staying a night in Yaounde and one in Garoua with my host family.  When I got to post, everyone was getting ready for a big fete.  It was put on by the development committee of the village, who does things like raising money and then deciding what to use it on.  There were a ton of people that came in town just for that.  They elected a new officer team and collected donations.  They served meat, rice, and drinks to the invitées.  I was considered one of the important people so I ate with the chief, the Sous-Prêfet (kind of like District Representative), and the President of the committee.  This was after sitting in the nice chairs for the actual ceremony.  There was a generator and so we had microphones and music.  There was also traditional dancing to their traditional drumming (at the same time, which seemed to bother no one).  The drum is really tall, probably 5 or 6 feet; a man stands on a stool to play it.  The people go around in a circle shaking their shoulders up and down.  They loved it when I tried, even as I profusely stated I see na ta, I don’t know how!  They shook their heads and replied ki see nay lay, you know!  This Saturday there was a repeat of the same fete in Gazad.  The Sous-Prêfet and I will probably be best friends soon.  He speaks to me in broken English and reminds everyone constantly that they better take care of me or they will have to answer to him.  He lectured my counterpart about making sure someone was getting water for me 3 times a day.  I should of spoken up and said I do it on my own, but my counterpart just nodded and said “of course, of course sir”.  We will probably be best friends soon, tomorrow is Independence Day and so I will likely see him again, when we once again sit awkwardly with a few other people, usually men or white, eating rice and meat sauce and drinking Cokes, while everyone else sits outside.

Work has been really slow.  I am reading a book by a guy that was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia a few years ago.  I don’t really like it that much, but one thing he said stuck out to me.  “I thought at first, as many volunteers do, that working for Peace Corps was about the job.”  He was talking about how difficult it was to get things going in his assigned project, but how most people kept saying it was ok, to focus on “cultural exchange”.  I haven’t yet decided what I think about that.  I realize that the exchange is also really important.  But it seems like if I don’t at least try to get things rolling in agroforestry, that people will remember the white girl that was here as the one who played with kids and sat under trees, instead of planting any.  It seems like a cop-out to say that “cultural exchange” is the most important thing.  I am pretty sure that could justify doing whatever you want.  Or maybe I came here with too many idealistic expectations of the impact I was going to have, and I am just not ready to give those up.  It certainly would alleviate some pressure if I thought the work I was assigned to wasn’t that important.  So the jest of this stream of consciousness, is that almost 6 months in my village have passed, and I am still unsure about my role.  But it’s a pretty cool place to have to figure it out.  And obviously by cool, I don’t mean temperature!