I’m currently about to embark on the last leg of a rather epic journey down to Yaounde for my COS (Close of Service) conference, where they will hopefully teach me and the other 40 volunteers from my training group that arrived almost two years ago how to act like normal Americans again (see previous blog post for details on how weird we are). While I’m still hoping that topics will include such things like “resume writing” (mine still lists “waitress” and “wrangler” rather prominently…) and “proper American hygiene” (which I’m guessing involves wearing deodorant and washing your hair more than once a week…), the e-mails we’ve gotten to date from PC admin are not encouraging. We’ve got a stack of forty or so forms that range from “Waiver Promising You Will Fly Home on an American Airline” to “What Airport Do You Want Us to Send You To?”
To mix things up a bit, a couple of my more ambitious Extreme North companions and I decided to take buses down through the East this time, instead of the usual overnight train. This is a part of the country none of us had ever been to before, but where one of our closest friends lives, and so we decided since it was really our last opportunity to see where she lived, we would go all the way out to her post (on the border of the CAR) in a circuitous route to Yaounde.
The East is extremely different from the Extreme North. Usually, when we travel down south, we get on the train in the cooler (but still dry) climate of Ngaoundere and wake up in hot, busy, humid Yaounde. This time we took a bus from Ngaoundere to Meiganga, then an epic eight hour bus ride from Meiganga to Bertoua, the regional capital of the East, and were able to watch the desert shift slowly into jungle. Only about half of the major roads are paved here, and the rest are covered in about an inch of thick, red dust which gets all over your clothes and bags, not to mention in your ears, up your nose, and all over your body so that you look like you have a cheap and horrible tan. Everybody seems to have a different philosophy as to the best way to prevent getting covered in dust: some people demand that ALL of the windows be closed, wherein the bus becomes a hot, rank, stinky box of miserable humans, and you start to sweat so much that the dust trickles down your legs in red rivulets. Others demand that the windows be pulled all the way open, as this somehow is supposed to funnel all the dust to the back (I guess we are not concerned for the poor people crammed into the back row), but still involves you being coated in dust, and having to wrap a filthy scarf over your head and around your face. With sunglasses on, the only part of you that is visible is your nose and eyebrows (which still get incredibly dirty).
After finally reaching Bertoua for the first time, one of us used an entire bar of soap trying to get the dust out, and the lather from my shampoo was bright red, as if I had just dyed my hair.
But it turns out that Meiganga-Bertoua is maybe the easy part of our journey. The next day, we began our journey eastward, nearly all the way to the border. It’s almost entirely thick jungle out there, except for a couple big towns which look like they’ve just been plopped down in the middle of nowhere. Again, the roads are unpaved so we were still dealing with the same dust situation, but now instead of being in a bus, we were riding in what Peace Corps volunteers lovingly refer to as “prison vans” – from the outside, they kind of look like a shortened school bus. But then you climb inside, and notice the metal grate separating the driver from the passengers, the five rows of metal seats (two benches on either side, plus one seat in the middle that folds down. This seat may or may not have a back, as poor Liz discovered on our first prison bus, when the man in front of her sat in her lap the whole way). The rows are so close together that you are inevitably poking the person in front of you in the butt with your knees, and being poked in the butt by someone else’s knees (throw a few children onto people’s laps and things start to get REAL crowded). The only door for the passengers is in the back of the bus, so theoretically the people in the front row should be the first people on the bus and the last people off. This is not the case. As soon as the bus stop, people begin climbing out the windows. But they can’t get back on through the windows (they’re too high up) so they have to go in through the back. The last person to get onto the bus at any given stop (to pray, for a flat tire, to buy bananas (we stopped regularly because the driver seemed to be hungry; basically of an American bus driver doing a detour to take all his passengers through the drive thru)) was inevitably someone sitting in the very first row, who had to climb over several rows of angry people (remember: the aisle has disappeared into folding seats), claiming to not understand why everybody is mad at him. In short: it is an adventure.
Not only is the climate in the East pretty different (those of us adjusted to desert living were all sweating bullets as soon as it got the least bit humid…and it was extremely humid pretty much all of the time in the East), but the culture is as well. People in Bertoua definitely spoke French with a much different accent in the north (although I wondered if this was just because they were perhaps native speakers who used French at home too, rather than people who mostly spoke mother languages and had learned a semi-functional version of French at school like in the north), although there is still a LOT of Fulfulde too, as well as of course a whole different stock of local languages.
The East is pretty famous for being one of the most “social” (for lack of a better word) parts of the country, and we found that this translated into people being either incredibly friendly, or incredibly rude. You get a lot more “nasara” calls down here – yes, I am aware that I am white. Thank you for brining my attention to it. I also got a couple glimpses into how much we had assimilated into the quiet, polite Muslim culture of the north when on a particularly crowded bus ride, a couple of us ended up with men putting their hands on our knees or in our laps. Men in my village don’t even shake hands with women, and these ones were touching my leg! How inappropriate!
Our first morning in Bertoua we had a delightful time at a sandwich shack with a bean momma who chatted us up, smiled at our weird accents and weirder orders (spaghetti omelette sandwich with tomatoes, onions, beans, piment and mayonnaise? Check!)…then walking home from dinner a couple days later, a guy tried to run us off the road with his car, then pulled the car over and said the Cameroonian equivalent of “Hey baby, whatchoo doing?” That’s totally what I look for in a man: someone who drives a piece of shit car, tries to hit me with it, then spouts a super cheesy line. Basically, everybody talks to everybody all of the time, whether they know them or not, and whatever their intentions…
We found this attitude rubbing off on us pretty quickly when we were stranded at a bus station for four hours waiting for a car to fill. A teenager selling cigarettes and Kleenex packets was sitting on the bench across from us, taking a rest. We were sprawled about, already covered in filth, reading or complaining or eating bean sandwiches, when we noticed the kid staring at us, and then pulling out his phone to take pictures of us.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Liz called to him. He looked down and frantically pretended to be dialing a number on his phone.
“Yeah, a picture costs 100 francs,” I joined in (in more touristy areas, people demand payment for having their picture taken…we figured the same thing would work in reverse, right?).
Meanwhile, the surrounding Cameroonians have taken an interest and all started to laugh at this kid, who was now pretending his cell phone had just rung.
“Oui, hallo?”
“Who’s there?” Liz counters, and everybody starts to laugh, including the kid. Then we bought some tissues from him and the whole thing was resolved…but needless to say, my heckling skills have been finely honed – another thing they should probably try to unteach me at COS conference.
All in all it’s been a weird and wonderful trip through the East, and it is now time for me to throw my filthy clothes back into my filthy backpack, and jump on one more bus, which will thankfully will deliver me to the Peace Corps house, where there are both showers and a washing machine. Deluxe!
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
21 Things I Haven't Done in 21 Months
Next week, I begin traveling down south for my Close of Service conference -- a week with the rest of my training class where I guess they attempt to teach us how to act like normal Americans again. This week I passed the 21 month mark for time spent in Cameroon, and in honor of that, as well as this upcoming conference where we all start seriously looking homeward, here is a list of 21 things I have not done since coming to Cameroon:
1) Used a dishwasher
2) Ridden on an escalator
3) Painted my nails
4) Driven a car
5) Eaten a taco
6) Bought new, pre-made clothes at a store (I regularly buy fabric which I take to a tailor, or buy used clothing at an outdoor market, but I haven't done anything remotely resembling going to the mall and picking out a t-shirt)
7) Gotten a coffee from Starbucks
8) Used a debit card to pay for something
9) Been through a drive-thru
10) Ridden on an airplane
11) Used a smartphone
12) Shoveled snow
13) Worn boots
14) Watched a movie at a movie theater
15) Used a microwave
16) Been carded at a bar (I have to show my ID regularly, but only to police officers while traveling so they can make sure I haven't illegally snuck into their country/am not a Nigerian bandit...)
17) Gone to the gym
18) Ridden a horse
19) Paid a bill (I slip some cash to my neighbor for electricity every once in awhile, but that's as close as it gets...)
20) Gotten a real haircut (although every once in awhile a fellow volunteer does chop off my split ends...)
21) Been to a museum
The closer we get to going home, the more things like this I realize, and the more I wonder about what a weird transition it is going to be to come home. I also try to pay more attention to the things I will miss about here, but I'm finding it's the same as when I was leaving America -- everything seems so normal, you don't know what you will miss until you don't have it anymore (drinking tap water, or putting ice in your drinks, the change of seasons, etc.). I have this image of myself in Target, wearing a muumuu and calling over a clerk to haggle over the price of toothpaste ("$2? That's like 1000CFA. Preposterous. I will give you 50 cents."), then hissing at someone's frightened child to make them carry my bags. Maybe this post should serve as a warning to those of you who will be picking me up at the airport in July and living with me those first few months: I will probably try to wear Tevas to a fancy party, will add blocks of MSG powder to everything I cook for you, and will insist you turn the heat on in the car, even when it is 75 degrees out (that is parka weather here). Get excited.
1) Used a dishwasher
2) Ridden on an escalator
3) Painted my nails
4) Driven a car
5) Eaten a taco
6) Bought new, pre-made clothes at a store (I regularly buy fabric which I take to a tailor, or buy used clothing at an outdoor market, but I haven't done anything remotely resembling going to the mall and picking out a t-shirt)
7) Gotten a coffee from Starbucks
8) Used a debit card to pay for something
9) Been through a drive-thru
10) Ridden on an airplane
11) Used a smartphone
12) Shoveled snow
13) Worn boots
14) Watched a movie at a movie theater
15) Used a microwave
16) Been carded at a bar (I have to show my ID regularly, but only to police officers while traveling so they can make sure I haven't illegally snuck into their country/am not a Nigerian bandit...)
17) Gone to the gym
18) Ridden a horse
19) Paid a bill (I slip some cash to my neighbor for electricity every once in awhile, but that's as close as it gets...)
20) Gotten a real haircut (although every once in awhile a fellow volunteer does chop off my split ends...)
21) Been to a museum
The closer we get to going home, the more things like this I realize, and the more I wonder about what a weird transition it is going to be to come home. I also try to pay more attention to the things I will miss about here, but I'm finding it's the same as when I was leaving America -- everything seems so normal, you don't know what you will miss until you don't have it anymore (drinking tap water, or putting ice in your drinks, the change of seasons, etc.). I have this image of myself in Target, wearing a muumuu and calling over a clerk to haggle over the price of toothpaste ("$2? That's like 1000CFA. Preposterous. I will give you 50 cents."), then hissing at someone's frightened child to make them carry my bags. Maybe this post should serve as a warning to those of you who will be picking me up at the airport in July and living with me those first few months: I will probably try to wear Tevas to a fancy party, will add blocks of MSG powder to everything I cook for you, and will insist you turn the heat on in the car, even when it is 75 degrees out (that is parka weather here). Get excited.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Discipline
I returned this week from an awesome vacation with my brother – we traveled all over the country, spent a night in Africa's oldest undisturbed rainforest, climbed multiple mountains, saw dozens of frogs (including the world's biggest – the Goliath frog), and ate a ton of awesome food. I had missed the village and was particularly looking forward to seeing my students and teaching again, but unfortunately, at our weekly student assembly on Monday, something happened that made school a difficult and unpleasant place to be.
Before I go any farther, I'd like to say that I normally try to avoid telling negative stories about my time here. Like anywhere, there's always something to complain about, but after a year and a half, I really believe that the good far outweighs the bad. A lot of people have this idea of Africa as a scary place, somewhere anything can happen (this second part is true – anything can happen, but that's one of my favorite parts about living here; most of the time the “anything” that happens is wonderful, like my girls club organizing itself this fall to play the high school's first ever girls' sports game, or hilarious, like all of my sixth graders last year shouting “Yes We Can!” every time I walked into the room), and that's part of the reason I avoid negative stories that might affirm these kinds of stereotypes. Also, I just think my parents and other loved ones at home probably worry enough on their own, without any extra help from me.
There's a lot, too, that just doesn't translate between cultures. This is the main reason I decided to write about my experience this week, because it is just such a tangle of conflicting ideas and beliefs. There are things that you know you can never talk about with Cameroonians – not even your closest friends. Things about American culture, like homosexuality, or abortion, or even many political topics, that are dangerous to bring up, and that just will not compute. I've been noticing too, though, the longer I'm here, that there are more and more topics like that that I just don't know how to talk about with other Americans anymore, that people who haven't lived here won't read in the same way. Corporal punishment, the subject of this entry, is one of those big ones.
Earlier this fall, I had had a frustrating week at school, and was talking to my parents on the phone about the fight I got into with a colleague about how I didn't want him hitting my kids. In Cameroon, it is technically illegal to hit kids with sticks as a form of punishment, but it is still the most common form of discipline, and most people have no problem with it at all. I talked about how I had confronted my colleague, explained to him that I really disliked it when he hit my kids, that there were far more effective strategies for discipline (lowering grades, detentions, cleaning the school, or maybe even – gasp – rewarding students for good behavior, thereby discouraging them from misbehaving in the first place (this was a particularly ridiculous suggestion)). His response:
“Well, who is supposed to do those things?”
My response: “Uhm...you are. You are responsible for discipline, right?”
He burst out laughing, and said I must not understand, then switched to English (which he doesn't really speak), as if clearly the problem here must be with my ability to comprehend French, rather than with me disagreeing with his actions. We entered into a lengthy, circular argument where I explained how hitting kids was illegal, not to mention lazy and ineffective, and how when I took points off my sixth graders' exams last year when they were late, they all came on time, etc. etc. and he responded that I didn't understand how things worked in Africa and laughed at me. I finally ended things by announcing that I didn't want to work at a school where things like this happened, and left. This seemed reasonably effective, and while this colleague still walked around with a switch, I didn't see him hit kids again.
After this frustrating week, my parents called, and I told them this story, and about how pissed I was. At the end of my story, there was absolute silence. I had forgotten how much more shocking beating kids is to Americans – how do you even respond?
Flash forward to this week, and our 7a.m. weekly assembly. Another colleague of mine called a student forward and ridiculed him in front of the entire school, forcing him to kneel in front of all his classmates and be called out for being absent and for not wearing his uniform. It was painful to watch, but I was thinking, “Okay, shaming students. That is a form of punishment I find acceptable.” But then this student's class president was called forward, handed a switch, and told to whip the truant student ten times so he would learn his lesson. The class president was clearly extremely uncomfortable, but unable to say no to an authority figure. I watched in shock as he hit his classmate the first time and the rest of the students laughed, then walked away as the beating continued, and waited behind the teacher's lounge for it to be over.
After I heard the students disperse, I went into my colleague's office. He shook my hand and said, “Sorry you had to see that, but it was necessary.” “No,” I replied, “It was not.” He rolled his eyes and said, “What do you expect me to do? He disrespected me. If I didn't discipline him, he would become a bandit.” I angrily repeated some of the discipline alternatives I had offered my other colleague, but this just made him laugh. Then he proceeded to tell me that in America, we don't beat our kids, and so they come to school with guns and shoot everybody, so what was he supposed to do? I think my jaw literally dropped. I was so furious, and so confused. It had ever occurred to me before that I would have to explain to someone why it was bad to hit children – it was like explaining to someone why they shouldn't set a house on fire, or run someone down with their car. In my anger, my ability to speak French was rapidly leaving me, and so I finished quickly by telling him that beating students was the opposite of development, and as long as it was happening, he wouldn't have a development worker at his school. I then stormed across the yard and away from school, ignoring the alarmed vice principal as he chased after me. “Why are you leaving?” He asked. “Ask my colleague,” I responded, and went home.
My best friend at school came to my house that afternoon to check on me and ask what had happened. I explained the situation to him, and he nodded thoughtfully but didn't seem to understand why I had reacted so extremely. “But what about your students?” He asked. “They didn't have English class today.” “I know,” I replied guiltily. “But I can't work someplace where those things are happening.” To the same degree that this situation was so shocking it was difficult to explain to Americans, it was so commonplace here that it was next to impossible to explain to Cameroonians. First, that someone would care about students getting hit; second, that someone would stand up to someone in a position of authority; and third, that an abstract principle (the importance of not hitting students) could outweigh the importance of doing one's daily work (teaching). I think these are the three main factors that have made my reaction on Monday so difficult for even my open-minded colleagues to understand.
Not wanting to punish my students for my colleague's inappropriate actions, I did return to school the next day and taught the rest of this week. I decided for the time being that my policy would be one of avoidance, and I was successful in avoiding this particular person for the rest of the week. I also decided that every time I saw a student being hit, I would go home, and if something as extreme as Monday happened again, I would think about leaving permanently. The next day when I returned to school, my premieres (Juniors) asked me where I was yesterday and why I had left. I explained to them that I didn't agree with my colleague's decision, that hitting students is illegal and if I had stayed at school, it would have been the same thing as supporting it, which I couldn't do. They seemed to understand, and I reflected that even if everyone doesn't understand now why this practice is so offensive and inappropriate, they at least understand that it makes me really upset, and that might cause some of them to start questioning it themselves.
As a Peace Corps volunteer, I often feel way out of my element, totally under-prepared to deal with some very serious situations. There's an episode of the Office that I think about a lot, where Michael Scott has organized a race to raise awareness about rabies, but has a breakdown towards the end. He says something like “There are so many people out there, and they have all these problems, and there's nothing I can do about it.” Pam's response is, “Yeah, but you shouldn't worry too much about it. There are other, better people trying to solve these problems.” I regularly feel like Michael Scott at the end of the Fun Run, except that I am supposed to be the other, better people fixing the problems, and I often wonder who decided I was qualified enough to be given that much responsibility.
Traveling back up from vacation, I met a French woman on the bus from Ngaoundere to Maroua. I asked her how long she had been here, and she said just a couple weeks – she was here to visit a friend and do some tourism. Then she said to me (in English), “You've been here awhile, haven't you?” I said yes, a year and a half, and she said, “I can tell. You look used.” I realized later that she might have meant “used to living here”, but I thought that “used” was an excellent adjective to describe me right now. Sometimes I feel like the last year and a half has led me to be adjusted, comfortable, and happy. Cameroon feels like home, to the point where I have trouble explaining certain things about my life to Americans, and can't always turn the French off in my brain, or filter it out of my English, even when speaking to other anglophones. But other times, I feel the year and a half like a weight on my shoulders that has gotten heavier with each case of amoebas, argument at school, bout of homesickness, culture clash, and miscommunication.
But I don't feel like that most days, and this is what I have been trying to take away from this week. It was so easy to go home on Monday and say “I hate school,” which quickly became “I hate the village,” which quickly became “I hate Peace Corps.” But then I took a step back and realized that wasn't true – I was frustrated with one person at school, but there were literally at least a hundred other people there (mostly my students) that I adored. And that is why I am here – for those people that give me shit for missing class, that come to my house to make sure I'm okay, that hand me worksheets they found on their own to be corrected. I'm here for my terminales, who today shouted “He lies, he lies!” (with 's'!) when another student made an outlandish claim, and for my troisiemes, who independently elected a representative today to stand up and apologize on behalf of the entire class for the students who were late...these are the people I will be trying to focus on for my last few months.
Before I go any farther, I'd like to say that I normally try to avoid telling negative stories about my time here. Like anywhere, there's always something to complain about, but after a year and a half, I really believe that the good far outweighs the bad. A lot of people have this idea of Africa as a scary place, somewhere anything can happen (this second part is true – anything can happen, but that's one of my favorite parts about living here; most of the time the “anything” that happens is wonderful, like my girls club organizing itself this fall to play the high school's first ever girls' sports game, or hilarious, like all of my sixth graders last year shouting “Yes We Can!” every time I walked into the room), and that's part of the reason I avoid negative stories that might affirm these kinds of stereotypes. Also, I just think my parents and other loved ones at home probably worry enough on their own, without any extra help from me.
There's a lot, too, that just doesn't translate between cultures. This is the main reason I decided to write about my experience this week, because it is just such a tangle of conflicting ideas and beliefs. There are things that you know you can never talk about with Cameroonians – not even your closest friends. Things about American culture, like homosexuality, or abortion, or even many political topics, that are dangerous to bring up, and that just will not compute. I've been noticing too, though, the longer I'm here, that there are more and more topics like that that I just don't know how to talk about with other Americans anymore, that people who haven't lived here won't read in the same way. Corporal punishment, the subject of this entry, is one of those big ones.
Earlier this fall, I had had a frustrating week at school, and was talking to my parents on the phone about the fight I got into with a colleague about how I didn't want him hitting my kids. In Cameroon, it is technically illegal to hit kids with sticks as a form of punishment, but it is still the most common form of discipline, and most people have no problem with it at all. I talked about how I had confronted my colleague, explained to him that I really disliked it when he hit my kids, that there were far more effective strategies for discipline (lowering grades, detentions, cleaning the school, or maybe even – gasp – rewarding students for good behavior, thereby discouraging them from misbehaving in the first place (this was a particularly ridiculous suggestion)). His response:
“Well, who is supposed to do those things?”
My response: “Uhm...you are. You are responsible for discipline, right?”
He burst out laughing, and said I must not understand, then switched to English (which he doesn't really speak), as if clearly the problem here must be with my ability to comprehend French, rather than with me disagreeing with his actions. We entered into a lengthy, circular argument where I explained how hitting kids was illegal, not to mention lazy and ineffective, and how when I took points off my sixth graders' exams last year when they were late, they all came on time, etc. etc. and he responded that I didn't understand how things worked in Africa and laughed at me. I finally ended things by announcing that I didn't want to work at a school where things like this happened, and left. This seemed reasonably effective, and while this colleague still walked around with a switch, I didn't see him hit kids again.
After this frustrating week, my parents called, and I told them this story, and about how pissed I was. At the end of my story, there was absolute silence. I had forgotten how much more shocking beating kids is to Americans – how do you even respond?
Flash forward to this week, and our 7a.m. weekly assembly. Another colleague of mine called a student forward and ridiculed him in front of the entire school, forcing him to kneel in front of all his classmates and be called out for being absent and for not wearing his uniform. It was painful to watch, but I was thinking, “Okay, shaming students. That is a form of punishment I find acceptable.” But then this student's class president was called forward, handed a switch, and told to whip the truant student ten times so he would learn his lesson. The class president was clearly extremely uncomfortable, but unable to say no to an authority figure. I watched in shock as he hit his classmate the first time and the rest of the students laughed, then walked away as the beating continued, and waited behind the teacher's lounge for it to be over.
After I heard the students disperse, I went into my colleague's office. He shook my hand and said, “Sorry you had to see that, but it was necessary.” “No,” I replied, “It was not.” He rolled his eyes and said, “What do you expect me to do? He disrespected me. If I didn't discipline him, he would become a bandit.” I angrily repeated some of the discipline alternatives I had offered my other colleague, but this just made him laugh. Then he proceeded to tell me that in America, we don't beat our kids, and so they come to school with guns and shoot everybody, so what was he supposed to do? I think my jaw literally dropped. I was so furious, and so confused. It had ever occurred to me before that I would have to explain to someone why it was bad to hit children – it was like explaining to someone why they shouldn't set a house on fire, or run someone down with their car. In my anger, my ability to speak French was rapidly leaving me, and so I finished quickly by telling him that beating students was the opposite of development, and as long as it was happening, he wouldn't have a development worker at his school. I then stormed across the yard and away from school, ignoring the alarmed vice principal as he chased after me. “Why are you leaving?” He asked. “Ask my colleague,” I responded, and went home.
My best friend at school came to my house that afternoon to check on me and ask what had happened. I explained the situation to him, and he nodded thoughtfully but didn't seem to understand why I had reacted so extremely. “But what about your students?” He asked. “They didn't have English class today.” “I know,” I replied guiltily. “But I can't work someplace where those things are happening.” To the same degree that this situation was so shocking it was difficult to explain to Americans, it was so commonplace here that it was next to impossible to explain to Cameroonians. First, that someone would care about students getting hit; second, that someone would stand up to someone in a position of authority; and third, that an abstract principle (the importance of not hitting students) could outweigh the importance of doing one's daily work (teaching). I think these are the three main factors that have made my reaction on Monday so difficult for even my open-minded colleagues to understand.
Not wanting to punish my students for my colleague's inappropriate actions, I did return to school the next day and taught the rest of this week. I decided for the time being that my policy would be one of avoidance, and I was successful in avoiding this particular person for the rest of the week. I also decided that every time I saw a student being hit, I would go home, and if something as extreme as Monday happened again, I would think about leaving permanently. The next day when I returned to school, my premieres (Juniors) asked me where I was yesterday and why I had left. I explained to them that I didn't agree with my colleague's decision, that hitting students is illegal and if I had stayed at school, it would have been the same thing as supporting it, which I couldn't do. They seemed to understand, and I reflected that even if everyone doesn't understand now why this practice is so offensive and inappropriate, they at least understand that it makes me really upset, and that might cause some of them to start questioning it themselves.
As a Peace Corps volunteer, I often feel way out of my element, totally under-prepared to deal with some very serious situations. There's an episode of the Office that I think about a lot, where Michael Scott has organized a race to raise awareness about rabies, but has a breakdown towards the end. He says something like “There are so many people out there, and they have all these problems, and there's nothing I can do about it.” Pam's response is, “Yeah, but you shouldn't worry too much about it. There are other, better people trying to solve these problems.” I regularly feel like Michael Scott at the end of the Fun Run, except that I am supposed to be the other, better people fixing the problems, and I often wonder who decided I was qualified enough to be given that much responsibility.
Traveling back up from vacation, I met a French woman on the bus from Ngaoundere to Maroua. I asked her how long she had been here, and she said just a couple weeks – she was here to visit a friend and do some tourism. Then she said to me (in English), “You've been here awhile, haven't you?” I said yes, a year and a half, and she said, “I can tell. You look used.” I realized later that she might have meant “used to living here”, but I thought that “used” was an excellent adjective to describe me right now. Sometimes I feel like the last year and a half has led me to be adjusted, comfortable, and happy. Cameroon feels like home, to the point where I have trouble explaining certain things about my life to Americans, and can't always turn the French off in my brain, or filter it out of my English, even when speaking to other anglophones. But other times, I feel the year and a half like a weight on my shoulders that has gotten heavier with each case of amoebas, argument at school, bout of homesickness, culture clash, and miscommunication.
But I don't feel like that most days, and this is what I have been trying to take away from this week. It was so easy to go home on Monday and say “I hate school,” which quickly became “I hate the village,” which quickly became “I hate Peace Corps.” But then I took a step back and realized that wasn't true – I was frustrated with one person at school, but there were literally at least a hundred other people there (mostly my students) that I adored. And that is why I am here – for those people that give me shit for missing class, that come to my house to make sure I'm okay, that hand me worksheets they found on their own to be corrected. I'm here for my terminales, who today shouted “He lies, he lies!” (with 's'!) when another student made an outlandish claim, and for my troisiemes, who independently elected a representative today to stand up and apologize on behalf of the entire class for the students who were late...these are the people I will be trying to focus on for my last few months.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
