Omelet Sandwiches

It's Friday night and I am in the nearby town of Mora with a couple other volunteers. We are helping my friend Liz move out of her house the next morning and have just finished a week-long camp for her primary school girls. We are all exhausted, and some of us are sick and lying on mattresses on the floor. Claire and I volunteer to make a run into the market to pick up omelet sandwiches for dinner.

It's light when we leave, but is starting to get dark by the time we arrive at the market. The power has gone out, and by the time we find an omelet stand, most of the light is coming from motorcycle headlights driving by. We ask if we can order omelets, and the man at the table says yes, but there are no eggs. Can someone go get eggs? Yes. Is there spaghetti (a standard component of a Cameroonian omelet)? No. We give up on the spaghetti, take a seat, and order a glass of hot, sweet tea while we wait for the eggs to arrive.

There are a few other men sitting around the table, drinking tea or having dinner. As Claire and I converse, the man next to us starts listening in. British or American? He asks us in English. It turns out his name is John, and he is from the southwest, an anglophone region. He has just arrived in Mora a few months ago, and seems relieved to find others with whom he can speak English. He has a job doing some kind of environmental protection, and speaks passionately about how Cameroonians need to care more for their environment. I try to quash the bitter part of me that wonders how much of his words will actually turn into action. My phone dings, and I have a text from the others at the house that says, “Where are you? Also, bring toilet paper!!”

The eggs arrive, but now there is no gas for the little stove. Our chef borrows some coals from someone cooking nearby, and starts fanning them vigorously with a plastic plate. As they heat up, someone comes over with a bucket of spaghetti, and it is added to the omelets. Claire shines the flashlight on her phone over the fire to help the cook. It turns out it takes a long time for an omelet to cook over a fire.

After two hours, all of the omelets have been finished, covered in mayonnaise, and stuffed into baguettes. My phone rings, and it's Emily at the house. Are we still alive? Also, can we please not forget the toilet paper? We pay and thank the cook and say goodnight to John. We dodge motos in the dark as we cross the street and pick up a roll of toilet paper. A man outside the boutique shouts “hee haw” at us – a Cameroonian interpretation of a Chinese greeting, and their favorite way to harass Chinese people. Claire and I are both blonde.

We find a motorcycle to take us home, as we don't want to walk home in the dark. A crowd gathers to watch us climb on, and people start shouting “Sarkozy” at us. Apparently now we are French. The moto is large enough to carry both of us and the driver, but has a mysterious number of pedals. Claire's feet end up underneath the feet of our driver, and my feet are balanced precariously on pedals of different heights. As we leave the market, the lights suddenly turn back on.

We pull up at Liz's and give a couple coins to our driver. As we walk successfully back into the house, Claire and I agree that buying dinner in Cameroon is a whole lot more interesting than going through the drive-thru.

Greatest Hits: Year Two

Here one more time is a list of the funniest things my students have written this year. A disclaimer: I might feel guilty about poking a little fun at my students, if I didn't know how much entertainment they got out of the equally ridiculous things I say in French/Fulfulde/Mandara.



Responses to an assignment to write 10 sentences using the word "If":
"If I had eaten my foot, I would have been hungry."
"If you lie to your father, he will bite you."

On unemployment in Cameroon:
"Many efforts are being made to dehydrate this problem."

Describe a wedding you have attended.
"Last week in my village there was a wedding of my neighbours. At night young boys and girls was dancing hands in hands and heads with heads. My friend girl was waiting for me to dance but me I was absent because I was lerning my leson to success the first sequence."

Conclusion to an essay on a person you admire:
"Finally Eto'o is very shine as Lord he is popular with the showers."

Why are careers in music difficult to achieve?
"-difficult to achieve
-little security
-many thieves, adulterers"

Is it better to live in the city or the village?
"It is better to live in the city, because the city no have sorcerors."
"You see many pretty girls which you like."

What causes a student to lose interest in a subject?
"The consommation of the substance toxique."

Why didn't the English originally like soccer?
"Because King of Scotland stabbing anyone who didn't approve his decision."

What job would you like to have after you finish school?
"My job I would like to have when I finish school are: I reding a boobs, I do my homework, I slept after I wach. After of the toilet, I eat my food and I rerede my lesson. At 20:00 I slept."
(I was looking more for something like "teacher" or "doctor", but I guess this works too)

Where did Oscar work?
"Oscar didn't French Wilma."

Write a letter to your parents, telling them how you feel about your arranged marriage.
"Please let me pass my Bac first, and then I will marry. I cannot put cats in front of horse."

What are the advantages of science?
"Science enable for your field that you study your soil, then you give a feces to improve your soil."


The last exams have been graded and report cards filled out, and now I am just leading a few night classes to prepare kids for the national exams they will take next month to determine if they get to graduate or move up a year. Saying goodbye is bittersweet -- I am very much looking forward to returning home in July, but at the end of two years there will be a lot of difficult goodbyes. My English Club president (who has been one of my best students for two years now) has taken to stopping by my house a couple times a week, just to say hello. He says, in English, that he wants to spend as much time with me as possible before I return to America. I think I worried a lot (especially my first year) about whether or not I was accomplishing anything, or if I would leave with a bitter taste in my mouth. There definitely continue to be ups and downs here, but in general the things that bothered me the most have become funny stories, and when I walk around the village and think about the work I've done, I feel like I have definitely made a difference -- at the very least with individuals (like my English Club president), even if I cannot necessarily see the progress made at a larger level.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to a few more weeks of weird, wonderful adventures...and then to seeing everyone at home (and eating a lot of delicious food).

Environmental Camp

Last weekend I went to the nearby village of Meri to help with a Peace Corps Environmental Camp. Some volunteers in the anglophone regions in the south started developing sessions to teach kids about their environment, and the project has since expanded to the north, where we are translating the sessions into French and adapting them for the desert rather than the jungle. The hope is that eventually we will have a toolkit of sessions anyone can use, so if a volunteer wants to host something like this, they don't have to start from scratch but can pull off the lessons and activities volunteers before them have developed, tried out, and modified. Meri is a small town in the mountains a couple of hours away from my village. We had about forty sixth graders come to the day-long camp, between the ages of about 10 and 15. There were around ten Peace Corps volunteers there too, which meant we had a lot of resources to wrangle kids and a lot of energy to keep them interested. The kids were split into three teams (the Champions, the Lions, and the Pharaohs), given different colored headbands and a team leader, and earned points every time they correctly answered a question. Volunteers led sessions on land, water, air, food security, and fauna. We talked about desertification, pollution, purifying water, and endangered animals. A lot of the subjects were completely foreign to the kids, even though they dealt with things happening all around them every day.

 Perhaps the most exciting part of the camp involved the numerous activities that we did, beginning with a recycling activity where kids strung together bottle caps to make what we had intended to be a neat snake toy to drag around on the ground. The kids rapidly figured out, however, that it doubled as a noisemaker and also as a nunchuck to whip each other with. I guess we did accomplish our goal, though, of showing kids how to reuse an everyday object in a new and exciting way. A couple of girls asked me as I was walking around with a giant bag of bottle caps where they had all come from. They were astounded when I told them they came off the ground in their own village.

Another excellent activity involved handing three unsuspecting students each a glass of water. All three glasses looked the same, but one secretly had sugar in it, and another salt. A lot of spitting, throwing water, and fighting over who got to chug the sugar water ensued...but I think they also learned a lesson about how water that looks clean may not necessarily really be clean.

It was a learning experience for us volunteers, too. A lot of the questions we asked the kids elicited answers that we did not expect. For example, while talking about climate change, a volunteer asked what will happen if the Earth keeps getting hotter. Without missing a beat, a girl raised her hand and said, “All the white people would die because they can't handle the sun.” The volunteer tried to point out that everybody would be effected, and this caused a lot of indignant shouting from the students. “No, the white people would all burn up because their skin isn't strong! It's true!”

I helped teach the session on fauna, where we talked about the difference between domesticated and wild animals, and then endangered and extinct animals. Again, a lot of the answers were pretty surprising. When I asked kids what it meant for an animal to be endangered (in French, en danger), a kid raised his hand and said, “it means that they will try to eat humans.” I explained the difference between endangered and dangerous, then moved on to talking about why animals became endangered. “What are some reasons why people kill animals?” I asked, hoping to talk about bush meat and poaching. “Because the animals attack people!” was the first response.

We eventually got around to talking about some of the other reasons animals become endangered, and then moved on to the difference between being endangered and being extinct. I held up a couple pictures of a T-Rex and a triceratops. “What kind of animals are these?” I asked. “Crocodile!” “Hippopotamus!” shouted the excited kids. Finally a confident hand went up in the back. “Dinosaurs!” A murmur of “ohhhhs” went around the classroom. I continued, “Are there still dinosaurs here today?” There was some confused muttering, and a few nodding heads. Finally one of the more ambitious students called out, “Yes, but only rarely!”

Although there was a fair amount of confusion and hilarity on the part of both the volunteers and the students, by the end of the day we all felt like we had accomplished something. At the beginning of the day, most of the kids could easily describe the water cycle or give a memorized definition of desertification, but by the end of the day I think we had done a lot to make them think more critically about their environment. By asking questions like “where did all these bottle caps come from?” and “what will happen if the world keeps getting hotter?” (we did eventually arrive at a more thorough response than all the white people burning up), we pushed kids past the rote memorization they were used to in their regular schooling to thinking about how to apply the facts they learned to better understand the world they lived in, and maybe even change the way that they lived in it.

One of my favorite moments of the day came when a volunteer asked the students what they could do if they went to a store and bought one small thing, and the storekeeper tried to put it in a plastic bag. The first kid's response: “Ask him for a smaller bag!” Progress...when asked for other ideas, there was a puzzled pause, then finally a lightbulb clicked on for one of the students. “Tell him you don't need one!” Maybe you can just carry that soda home in your hands, instead of wrapping it in one (or multiple) plastic bags that you will later just throw on the ground. Revolutionary!

As many of you may already know, I'm reaching the end of my two years of Peace Corps service and will be returning home at the end of July. As we get closer to leaving, we are all reflecting on what we've accomplished and how much we've changed in our time here. Last weekend, in a new village with new students and a mix of volunteers at all stages of their service, was a nice reminder of that. After two years, us teachers have no problem standing up in front of a group of people, talking about pretty much any subject (English grammar? Endangered animals?) in English or French. We've learned how to get inside the heads of 6th graders, how to present information and pose questions in a certain way so that they will know how to respond. Some of these skills, like public speaking, make me excited to come home and use them in a new context. Other things I've learned here, like speaking Mandara, riding motorcycles, or being able to list ten different wild animals you can eat, are less applicable and make me sad to leave. For the next couple of months, though, I am going to try to enjoy as much as I can the culmination of two years' worth of knowledge and friendships.

Through the East!

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!

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.

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.

Les Clubs

The clubs have launched! Last year I was overwhelmed with the number of hours I was teaching (not to mention the stress of adjusting to life in village, trying to learn Mandara, fighting off malaria, etc. etc.) and did a few night classes later in the year, but never really started any extracurricular activities. This year, however, after doing some projects with other volunteers' girls' clubs, and with all the women on staff, I decided to try starting a girls' club. Then, pretty much as soon as school started, I got demands from my amazing terminales for English Club. Somehow it took until November to get all this started, but as of this week both Girls' Club and English Club are under way!

English Club actually met for the first time a couple weeks ago, and I was totally surprised by the number of kids who showed up – I had over 30 (from a school of less than 700...I was pretty impressed), all from the oldest couple of classes, most of whom I knew already. It can be hard to manage everybody's schedules, and so we only had a short meeting between classes, but the level of enthusiasm was high and we heard some great speeches and managed to elect a president and vice-president, who ended up being two of my favorite students. Our vice president is the student that asked to borrow my text book during every school break last year so he could practice (he would then bring me back pages of activities to correct); this kid LOVES English and works his pants off. I actually ended up agreeing to pay his school fees this year (on the condition that he got good grades, and paid for his own national exam registration), and so it was extra gratifying to see his fellow students choose him for their vice president – not to mention the HUGE smile on his face when he found out he had won.

This week for our second meeting, I had thought we could brainstorm a list of activities to do this year, as well as finish electing our officers (we still needed a secretary and a treasurer...not that we have any money, but I guess we still need someone responsible for our hypothetical funds). However, due to some snafu with the French teacher (somehow one teacher canceling their classes on Wednesday resulted in 90% of students leaving class three hours early? The specifics were not made clear to me), I walked into English Club to find five of my older students from the previous meeting (all the others had apparently gone home), and about sixty ten year olds from the sixieme class who didn't know a single word of English. The other English teacher never arrived this year, and so they had just not been having class, but it turns out REALLY wanted to learn. Super sweet, but kind of blew my plans for English Club out of the water. I'd been hoping we could do things like read short stories, have debates, play games, etc...but brainstorming we did (in French) involved kids raising their hands and answering the question “What do you want to do in English Club?” with “Learn to speak English!”, followed by “Learn to read English!”, followed by, “Learn to write things in English!” It was great to see these kids so excited, and so sweet to see my older students patiently explaining things to them, but it was not quite the upper-level English only discussion I had been anticipating. Way to throw me another curve ball, Africa.

The next day I decided that, since so many kids were interested, maybe I could just go teach an hour of sixieme every week and this would satisfy their need for English while still allowing me some serious English time with my upperclassmen. I simply don't have enough time or energy to take on another class (6emes are supposed to get five hours a week of English, and I'm already teaching four other levels of English), plus if I started teaching one section of 6eme, then I'm sure I would feel guilty for not teaching the other one, not to mention my old amazing 6eme class who are now 5emes now, and still have no teacher. Anyways, I figured a compromise would be to stay a little later at school once a week to fill in for their absent teacher. No homework, no exams, just an hour of English time for those kids who wanted it. Apparently the only English words these kids had learned in primary school were “Good morning!” and “Yes!”, but they used them profusely in the few minutes I talked with them. It's pretty difficult not to get excited when you have 90 ten year olds beaming at you, and all shouting “Yes yes yes!” when you ask if they want to learn English. It's even more difficult not to get excited when they burst into applause after you finish speaking. There have been a couple of times that I've gotten a serious round of applause from a class – once last year, when I finally gave an explanation in French in my 1ere class after refusing to speak anything but English all year, and then this week when I offered to teach the 6emes English. I guess there will maybe not be a lot of other times in my life when 60 people will applaud me for doing my job...but I'm really enjoying it while it lasts. It's a pretty great feeling.

So, with English Club figured out, I headed over to talk to the girls. Again, I was astounded by the number that showed up – I must have had at least 50 (which must be literally like 80% of girls in the entire school). It was amazing, but overwhelming, especially when I realized that I would have to do everything in French, and maybe didn't know as well what I was doing as I did with English Club. Also, I realized that I do not really know how to talk to girls. This is another one of those things that I guess I thought would just magically be different once I received the title “Peace Corps Volunteer”, but I've never been good with large groups of girls. I've never been good at girl stuff, and always found it easier to hang out with guys, and it was a little overwhelming to have this huge room of teenage girls chattering away or waiting for me to do something interesting. Still, we managed to get through introductions and talk about our ideas for the year.

When I proposed the idea of girls' club in premiere and tried to explain what it was, one of my male students interrupted me and said, “No, you're not doing a good job, I'll explain for you. Madame wants to talk to the girls about majorettes,” – aka a dance club. I wanted to punch this kid in the head. Anyways, I came prepared this week and explained it as an opportunity for us as girls to discuss our problems at school and how we can solve them, as well as to learn about ways to improve our lives. I pointed out that it was also an opportunity for us to have fun and do activities together. Everyone seemed pretty interested. Then I asked for speeches from our presidential candidates. The girl who won (who I was hoping would; she had taken the lead on organizing the meeting and is just super smart and dynamic) ended up running on the platform that she wanted to help girls in our school...and she also wanted us to do majorettes. All the girls started shouting and clapping. It looks like we are doing majorettes. Le sigh. Anyways, we finished electing our officers and it was a pretty powerful experience for me to see all these young women who usually do not have much of a voice stand up and speak for themselves about what they wanted, and then get elected into these positions of power (high school club power, but still – girls in any kind of leadership position, standing up and taking charge of what they want to do – that is not something you see every day in village). I'm honestly not sure of what to do with so many girls this week, and I feel like the pressure is on, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the potential of girls' club (even if there ends up being some dancing involved).

I guess I had been in kind of a funk lately, but I realized in the last couple weeks that the perfect cure for the frustration I'd been feeling working with all these apathetic adults, was to spend more time with the amazing young people at my school. It was an exhausting week, but a very exciting one. I could not make it through a day at school without several kids running up to me, asking me where our meeting was, or how to translate the club announcement into English. I had been so down, sick of dealing with the same problems and the same people that didn't care...seeing these students so enthusiastically taking on leadership roles, planning activities, and seeking out knowledge was very refreshing.

Five Great Things About My Life

Usually, when things are not going well here, it's pretty obvious to me. And there have definitely been some rough patches in the last sixteen months, but I kind of thought things were going okay now. It's hot, but not too hot, and most of my students are coming to school and some of them even seem to be learning. I can speak French and get by in Mandara and Fulfulde, I have friends and work and I don't have malaria. But as some of you have probably noticed, lately when I talk to people at home, all that comes out is a whole lot of negativity. I set out trying to tell a story about how wonderful my seniors are, and end up instead complaining about how annoyed I am with the discipline master at my school. And then I shout at a bunch of small children. I've been trying to figure out where all this negativity is coming from, and I have three possible ideas: 1) Everything kind of sucks, but I have only realized this subconsciously; 2) Everything is fine, but I am just really cranky and perceiving it all negatively; and 3) I have just become an awful storyteller. Regardless of which scenario is correct, I thought maybe I would try to write a blog entry focusing on five awesome things that are going on in my life right now.

1) My seniors are amazing.
Seriously – these kids are the coolest (and the smartest). About 80% of them passed their English exams this sequence, and about half of them wrote smart, insightful, eloquent (and, okay, often depressing) essays on the topic of unemployment. Because we finished exam review early last week, we had a spelling bee (something they had never heard of before, but got really excited about), which turned into a really cool opportunity for them to practice pronunciation, go over vocabulary, and shout “CORRUPTION!” at each other when they refused to leave the stage after making a mistake. These students call me out if I am late or unprepared and are always asking to have discussions or do another exercise to practice for the Bac (while most of my other students complain if I ask them to do anything other than copy off the board). Teaching them is a delight and the best part of my week.

2) We didn't get evacuated.
The election is over, results have been announced, all is quiet, and we get to finish our last few months of service. We also are not on standfast anymore, which means we can leave post. Pretty sweet.

3) My house is successfully catproofed.
Things had been going pretty well with Nagano...until she figured out how to break into my house. I'd been putting her outside at night (I have a high wall around my yard so she can't get out, and she doesn't like being shut in when she could be out hunting), which was going okay (except that she would sit outside and cry at 5 a.m. every day – not because she was hungry or thirsty, she just wanted to hang out...) until one night, around midnight, I was startled to wake up to see her sitting at the end of my bed, meowing excitedly. I figured she had maybe snuck in as I was closing the door, and put her back outside...only to be woken up an hour later by her clawing at my mosquito net and meowing triumphantly (yes, it was more than a little startling). It took a couple nights of this for me to figure out how she was getting in – my house is cement with only two windows, which are barred and have screens over them. Finally I guessed that she was jumping off my water bidons and forcing her way underneath the screen, then crawling in through my bedroom window. I moved the bidons and shut the window and still woke up with her in my bed in the middle of the night, crying to go back outside. I spent the better part of this week setting cat booby traps, to block her entrance or make the window an unpleasant place to enter through (I'm not going to lie, she had more than one cup of water dumped on her head). Finally, creating a window blockade out of my PC medical kit (just kidding?), tupperware, and old clothing, and through the strategic placement of duct tape, it is now impossible for the cat to break into my house.

4) It's almost cold season.
A glass-half-empty person might say instead that in reality, it's the beginning of “petit hot season” (November is going to be WARM), but a month from now I may even be sleeping with a blanket and putting a sweatshirt on in the morning (okay, it's likely I'll take it off like an hour later when the sun comes up, but still. A sweatshirt!). This also means that the rain is finished, which is a bummer, but that means that the power will stay on pretty much all the time until maybe May (barring any ridiculous telephone wire/power company bill drama like last year...). It ALSO means that there will soon be a lot of delicious food at the market. We've already got delicious heirloom tomatoes, and in December we may even have cabbage and carrots – in village! (To put this in perspective, the market normally has tomatoes and onions...which are delicious, but get old...)

5) My brother is coming to visit.
Cold season also means it will be December, which is when my brother is taking vacation from his work in Madagascar to come spend Christmas and New Year's in Cameroon. There will be some crazy frogging expeditions in the south, then some awesome (awkward?) hangouts with my friends in village. Pretty exciting, particularly since it will be the first time since June 2010 that I will see someone who knew me before June 2010.

So, no matter what ridiculous stories I tell you, things are in fact pretty great here. Thanks as always for all your love and support. Special shout out to Kyle for his awesome package filled with coffee, fake cheese products, and Del Scorcho sauce (yummm). You're the best!

Assemblee Generale

Every year, we begin the annee scolaire with an assemblee generale, or general meeting. This is basically the first staff meeting of the year, an opportunity for all the teachers to introduce themselves, and to go over some basic policies and the schedule for the year. These meetings can run anywhere from one hour to six hours, depending on how much your principal likes to talk and whether your school runs on real time or Cameroonian time (which is usually at least an hour or two behind). At last year's assemblee generale, I found myself in a dusty room with fifteen strangers (and several lizards). I was the only woman, the only white person, the only one who couldn't speak French, and pretty clearly the youngest person in the room. I have never felt more overwhelmed or out of place in my life. I sat through three hours of introductions and statistics and policies (of which I maybe understood 10%) and spent the entire time trying to keep myself alternately from falling asleep or bursting into tears. I bolted at the first opportunity, claiming I had a Peace Corps meeting in Maroua (which was kind of true...except that the “meeting” was at a bar).

This year, I showed up ten minutes late (still well before the meeting started) and greeted several friends before sitting down. We now had tables in our teacher's lounge (as opposed to the beginning of last year, when there was just a sad handful of plastic lawn chairs) and we pulled them into a circle and sat behind them, with my principal at the head table, the new vice principal and discipline master on either side. The principal wore a beautiful, spotless white boubou (traditional menswear consisting of a long flowing dress-like garment with matching pants underneath; or, as an American friend of mine calls it, “wizard's robes”). The vice principal next to him wore a jean suit (yup, jacket and pants. Cameroonians love their Texas Tuxedos), while the discipline master opted for the middle ground of Western-style dress pants and a button down shirt. When we started – only about 45 minutes later than the time written on the board – there were about twenty of us in the room, including six (!) other women (last year at a Peace Corps training with my principal, I complained about the difficulty of being the only woman on staff; the principal was shocked and immediately set about hiring as many women as possible for this school year).

We opened with introductions, giving only the essentials: our names, the subjects we taught, and our marital status (I said I was engaged; other responses included “Single...but looking” and “Single”, followed by another teacher shouting “Yeah but how many kids do you have?” and everybody laughing). Then the principal began the meeting in earnest. To keep myself entertained, I took notes (in English...or, well, in Franglais). Here are some of the highlights from the principal's speech:

-Neither the principal or Americans like wasting time, so our school will run efficiently
-Computer technology will be mandatory this year...so we should probably get some computers...or at least get the school's electricity turned on...
-We have well-behaved students. They do not attack their teachers.
-It's good to have a mixed staff. Especially if the women are single (this part was added by our gym teacher...).
-The principal is not a sorceror. He will not know your problems unless you tell him.
-It's a good idea to plan your classes before you go to teach them. Also, it's not a good idea to teach your entire class with your back to your students.
-Our quatriemes (8th graders) suck, but everyone else is pretty okay.
-Be nice to your students, but not too nice.
-Please fill out the class logbooks (which say what you did in class that day). Please do not steal them.
-Don't wear your gym clothes to school unless you are a gym teacher.
-Please don't be an alcoholic. You can drink as much wine as you want, just as long as the students can't tell. Also, please don't share your bil-bil (traditional millet beer) with the students. And don't accept alcohol in return for doing favors for your students.
-Don't put your butts on the table. It's not hygienic. (this is a direct quote, by the way...)
-Our school doesn't have any money. Oh, but we will find a way to pay you...

Aside from the things that made me laugh, the principal also said a lot of things that reminded me how lucky I am to have such a smart, progressive, non-corrupt counterpart, and to work at a school with such wonderful students. 75% of our 6th graders continued on to 7th grade (which is VERY high – for more on these great kids, see my “Ode to 6eme” blog entry from last year), and almost 50% of our 3emes (9th graders) and 1eres (Juniors) passed their incredibly difficult national exams. The year before it was more like 20%. And it's true – our students are incredibly well-behaved. Not only have I never been attacked (I did not actually realize this was a possibility...) but I have very few kids who even talk out of turn or fight amongst themselves during class, and only a handful of cheaters (all in the lower grades).

The principal also pointed out that because we are a smaller school and we have much smaller classes than most places (25 in Terminale, 60-some in Premiere...a friend of mine 10 kilometers away has 180 in her premiere class), we can have more interesting classes. We can do experiments and play games rather than just lecturing. This is an incredibly progressive idea here, as most teachers were taught by copying notes off the board with little explanation or practice, and expect their students to do the same. With all the women on staff this year, the principal is also making Girl's Club mandatory (for female staff members and students), which is an awesome opportunity for girls from the village to get some role models (the number of educated, independent women in their lives is extremely limited).

I was surprised at how often the principal brought me into the conversation (every third sentence seemed to end with “Eh, Rose?” or “N'est-ce pas, Rose?” -- another incentive to pay attention). At first I thought he was teasing me. Then I thought he was just showing off his foreigner to the new staff members. Then I realized that I was actually one of the senior staff members in the room, and one of the only people who was there last year who saw the things he was talking about, and he might actually be calling on me as a professional because he wanted others to hear my opinions and experiences. How strange! (In reality, it was probably some combination of the three...)

Anyways, it was a good start to the school year, and another nice reminder of how much has changed since last year. Not that everything is perfect – last Thursday, for example, immediately after I finished exam review in all my classes (for exams that were supposed to start the coming Monday), I was informed that we would have normal classes instead next week, as the new vice principal had been put in charge of organizing and typing up all the exams, and it turns out he doesn't know how to use a computer...Oh Cameroon.

It's been a funny couple of weeks here...the election was last weekend, so we were told by Peace Corps not to leave our villages, and to pack an emergency bag with ID and a change of clothes and to keep a low profile (which is super easy here when you're white...), etc. Basically I was expecting at any minute to have a motorcycle pull up at my door with a note from Peace Corps telling me to grab what I could carry and get whisked away to Morocco. In reality, I had a quiet Sunday at home with my cat. It's been quite interesting to observe the politics here, and while I'm not sure how much I can really say on the subject right now while I'm still in country, I will say that I am definitely appreciative of being a citizen of a country where you're allowed to say what you think about the political situation and vote in elections that are free and fair. There were a couple of riots down south before the elections, but since then, everything has been quiet here, and is likely to be until the results come in (probably later this month). You never know what will happen, and with all that has gone on in other African countries in the past couple years people are on edge, but the general attitude I get here is that people are dissatisfied but apathetic. A striking example of this came to me a few days ago, when I was sitting with a friend in village who was going on about a certain politician visiting a nearby city “to tell his lies”...meanwhile this same friend was wearing a t-shirt supporting said politician's political party. Anyways, for now, it's business as usual and I'm keeping busy in village teaching and grading and trying to come up with an explanation for my students as to why Americans say “I don't have a pen” rather than “I haven't a pen”, but would say “I haven't been to New York.”

Easy like drinking water

I just got back last week from another trip to Yaounde, where I worked on the training design for Peace Corps Cameroon's new Youth Development program (the first trainees arrive next week!). After spending the last few months almost completely unscheduled, and the year before that working 7:30-12:30 Monday-Thursday, a full week of working from 8am to 5pm (okay, fine, we had an hour and a half for lunch and were offered “Coffee Break” from 10-10:30, where we guzzled free hot beverages and baked goods in a way that only PCVs can) was definitely a change, and gave me some doubts about my ability to hold down a normal job in America next year. Still, it was nice to be working, particularly on the very beginnings of such a cool program. The health and agroforestry programs were also doing their training design during the same week, but while they had years of information and sessions and plans, the dozen of us working on Youth Development were starting from scratch. We began in July with the goals of the program (“What should a youth development volunteer do?”), and then this month took that and transformed it into “What does a youth development volunteer need to know to be able to do their job well?” ...and then we had to go out and create those resources, along with all of the official Peace Corps documents (which meant spending hours writing “technical competencies” and “session objectives”, arguing over using terms like “cultural custodian” or “community leader”, “family planning” or “contraceptive methods”, among other more technical PC jargon). It was a lot of work, but at the end of it, I think the program is shaping up even better than most people expected.
I left Yaounde with two other English teachers from the Extreme North, all of us having missed the first week of school, none of us knowing our schedules for the coming year, and trying to prepare ourselves to show up on Monday and teach (even though what classes we would be teaching was still a mystery). There had been some kittens hanging around the backyard at the Yaounde volunteer house, and as I've never owned a cat before, naturally I decided to put one in a box, smuggle it on board a train, and take it back up north with me. She was not a fan of the box, or the taxi ride, or the 16 hour train ride, or the eight hour bus ride the next day...or the bush taxi ride after that, or the motorcycle ride that finally got us home, and when I was finally able to let her out of the box, she proceeded to disappear (which is pretty impressive, as my house is not large, and hiding spaces are limited) for such a long time that I was afraid she was gone for good. But a couple hours later she emerged from I still don't know where, and has seemed to recover well from her traumatization since then. We've had a couple arguments since then, mostly over the litter box (she preferred to use the spare mattress), but have generally worked things out. It turns out we have a lot of the same interests, like napping on the couch and sitting in the yard watching the lizards. She takes this second one a bit farther than I do, though, and is actually an excellent hunter. A game shes likes to play involves catching a lizard, bringing it into my bedroom, batting it around for awhile until I think its dead, but not actually killing it, so when I go to remove it, it springs back to life and runs around the house, allowing the kitten to trap it again. Hilarious.
The two of us arrived in village Saturday to find that the power was out. It took until Sunday for me to figure out that the power was not cut all over the village, but once again only in my house. A proper amount of harassing of the bursar (who I share the power line with, and whose teenage son calls himself a technician, but I think it's maybe only because he's really tall and so can reach the wires on the ceiling), and finally a call to an actual technician friend of mine, and power was restored 24 hours later...although this led to a tres villageois argument between the bursar and my technician friend over whether or not my cables needed to be replaced. The bursar came to my house that night, angrily claiming that the technician was lying and just wanted to make money off me (which is believable, except that he didn't charge me anything even though he spent the whole afternoon fixing cables and taking apart and putting back together all of my various appliances that had stopped working). I told him I didn't really see what the problem was, as long as the power was working (which it was). This whole situation was also another opportunity for the deficiency of my french to be revealed. The technician spent the afternoon screwing and unscrewing things, and asking questions like “Do you have a b;ldfsakd?”, to which I would respond, “A what?” He would repeat, I would continue to not understand, and he would sigh and go fetch it himself, or give up. Then I would ask questions like “What was wrong with my fan?” and he would respond, “The sdlfa'dkjfljhu was broken,” to which I would respond, “The what?” and so on and so on.
Monday morning, I showed up at school, received my schedule from our new vice-principal (who was sent to the village this year along with our new discipline master, meaning that, as my principal said “we are like a real school now”), and jumped right into teaching. I have the four oldest classes this year, and two of those classes are the same students as I had last year – it was incredibly wonderful to walk into the room and recognize so many faces. I spent the first day doing introductions and talking about why we are all here. My new classes were shocked when I made everyone stand up and say their name and what they had done this summer (“What? We have to talk in English class?”), and my older kids laughed when I explained to them that it wasn't sorcery that helped them pass their exams, but actually doing the work, studying, asking questions, etc.
My terminales – the seniors – are a combination of my small terminale class last year (who I knew really well, because there were only 13 of them) and about half of last year's premieres, who passed their exams (this is a super high pass rate, especially for the village), and who were my absolute favorites last year. So basically I have this all-star class of about 25 super smart, motivated, funny students who actually speak pretty good English (I was explaining something to them in French this week and someone called out sarcastically – in French – “We get it Madame”; when I asked them if a verb tense review exercise was difficult, one of them said “It's easy like drinking water!”), ask tons of questions, call me out on my mistakes, and are a ton of fun. They love to discuss things (rare for students here, who are taught to sit quietly and copy off the board) and ask lots of questions about America, which I always love to talk about (I think it's because they are actually interested, but then I remember those teachers I had who could be easily distracted into not teaching you anything if you brought up their favorite topic, and I wonder if I haven't become one of them...).
My premieres – the juniors – are the same students from my seconde class last year, who were a workout. They love to talk through the whole lesson and not pay attention, then get mad at the end when they don't understand anything. I'm hoping the prospect of taking a national exam at the end of the year will make them a bit more serious as time passes. I was nervous about my two new classes, especially as last year's secondes had been such a challenge...but they are so far pretty terrific. The new secondes are fresh off their success on the B.E.P.C. (a national exam they had to pass at the beginning of the summer to get into seconde), serious and smart. The troisiemes (freshman) are nombreux (about 130 on the roll right now, maybe 80 in the class so far), but eager to learn, and I've found that as long as I go slow and use French when needed we get along pretty well. There are a lot of SUPER smart kids in that class, too, and it's always great to have the chance to work with new motivated students. It's fun, too, with the new classes to see the nasara shock and awe factor again – my old ones have gotten used to me and my teaching style (which tends to be pretty different from their other teachers), but for the new ones, I am full of surprises, and I can tell they are still paying attention just because they have no idea what ridiculous thing the white lady is going to do next.
So, we are only a week in, but I am thrilled to be back teaching again, and really looking forward to this year. I guess it doesn't seem this way to you all in America, but for me and my stagemates, it is starting to set in that this will all be over sooner rather than later. We've begun nostalgically saying things like “Aww, our last first day of school!” which I'm sure will deteriorate later this year into “Aww, the last time I get pickpocketed!”, or “Aww, it's my last case of amoebas!” Maybe my happiness with this last first week of school has something to do with my ability to look back on last year's first first week of school and be able to see how far I (and my students) have come. I'm sure I will probably feel differently at times later this year when students cheat or lose interest or it's so hot in my house that my candles literally melt or the power gets cut yet again, but for now I am feeling happy and optimistic, and wonder how I lucked into having such an awesome job.

Hanging with the chief

My village is relatively small, and is not an official “arrondissement” (township?) of the government. Instead of our own police station, we have a traditional chief, who is responsible for solving problems and maintaining order in the village (although for bigger problems, he does refer to the government-appointed prefet (similar to a mayor) and gendarmes in the nearby town). Anything of significance that happens in the village requires the chief's approval, which makes him a pretty important ally if you want to get anything done (or even simply live in) the village. The chief lives in a large compound on the edge of the market with his four wives (each of whom has her own house) and a large quantity of children, varying from babies and toddlers all the way up to teenagers (I'm not actually sure how many are his; it seems likely that at least some are nieces, nephews, or other relations – in Cameroon, it's normal for people to send their children to stay with wealthier family members). I arrived at the chief's compound for the first time last August on the back of the bursar's motorcycle, armed with a letter from Peace Corps explaining who I was and what I would be doing in his village for the next two years. I was replacing a volunteer, so obviously the chief knew about Peace Corps and approved of having a volunteer in his village, but I couldn't help but feel incredibly nervous as I climbed off the moto and followed the bursar inside. Every day in Cameroon, there are tons of opportunities for a nasara (white person) such as myself to commit faux-pas, but here in the compound of this very important traditional figure the possibilities for embarrassing myself seemed limitless, and it seemed certain that I would be unable to make it through this visit without doing something incredibly inappropriate and/or offensive. I decided to try to do exactly what the bursar did, and as he slipped off his shoes before entering the compound I attempted to do the same.

“No, no, don't do that,” he said, stopping me. I looked at the pile of shoes at my feet, then back at the bursar dubiously. I was pretty sure everybody else in the compound was not wearing any shoes. “No, really, leave your shoes on,” he insisted, and so I did. Apparently not only are there a million rules I didn't understand, but these rules would then change when you were a nasara.

I followed the bursar into the compound, where about fifteen or twenty men (all of whom were barefoot, I noticed) sat on a mat on the dirt floor of a large straw hangar. The chief sat facing them from a reclining chair – a fancy version of something you might lounge in on your lawn in the summertime in America – his feet propped up, looking simultaneously powerful, intimidating, and totally relaxed. A plastic chair was immediately produced and placed next to him for me to sit in, while the bursar joined the barefoot men on the mat at his feet. The chief and I shook hands and I introduced myself, then attempted to muster up all of my shaky French to answer his questions. What was I doing here (teaching English?), had I chosen this village (well, no...Peace Corps sent me here), how long would I stay, etc. etc. I bungled my way through his questions, attempting correct answers, and ending most sentences with “I'm very happy to be here”, knowing the words for that in French and hoping that it could not possibly offend. We sat in awkward silence for a bit, and at some unseen signal, the bursar got up and we said goodbye to the chief and left.

I didn't return until this June, being busy with school, travel, and sickness, and also figuring that the chief had more important things to do than hang out with some awkward nasara. Then a volunteer who lived in Meme a few years ago came back to visit, and I accompanied her to visit the chief. Now that I was more experienced in the village and in French, this visit was less intimidating, and I realized that despite all his grandeur, the chief is actually a pretty laid-back and friendly guy. He asked me about school and why I never came to visit him (whoops) and insisted I return the next morning to make a “photo de famille” – family portrait. We did, and I promised to return to his compound after my trip to the south.

So I went down to Yaounde for a few weeks, and upon my return I went back to visit the chief as I had agreed, mentally preparing myself for the awkwardness of being the only person in the room who is a) a woman, b) sitting in a chair (besides the chief), and c) wearing shoes (except, I noticed, for the chief's guard, who lost a leg to diabetes and wears a prosthesis with a built-in shoe on it)...not to mention having white skin, speaking English (or French, really...all the conversation that happened in the compound except between me and the chief was in Mandara or maybe a little Fulfulde), etc. The chief was reclined as usual with men on a mat at his feet, but he sat up and smiled when he saw me and I shook his hand, bowed a little, and looked at the ground (a sign of respect). A plastic chair once again materialized at his side and I took a seat, smiling and attempting to remember everything I had ever learned about appearing polite and respectful in Cameroon. We shot the shit for awhile (“How was your trip?” “How have things been in village?”), and men filtered in and out of the compound, shaking hands and taking their shoes on and off. A car pulled up and two important-looking men came in. “Salaamaleikoums” went around the room and then they sat down and everybody raised their hands and began to pray. I was feeling pretty uncomfortable and even more out of place, when I realized that this was pretty much the same as every other religious situation I had ever awkwardly and accidentally found myself in, and I could employ the same coping mechanisms I used when people, for example, said grace before dinner – sit quietly with my hands in my lap and look at the floor. Perfect.

The chief proceeded to disappear inside with the newcomers, telling me he would return in a minute. We all sat around for awhile (me awkwardly in my chair, the men on their mat on the floor), some of the men chatting in Mandara, others nodding off. A few goats strolled out of the compound and off towards the market, followed by a nervous looking peacock and her baby (peacocks are status signals here, and all the important people have at least a couple). Then to my surprise a giant tortoise came ambling nonchalantly across the compound, and mentally I kicked myself for making fun of my Mandara tutor, who had attempted to teach me the word for 'turtle' a few days ago – I had laughed and immediately forgotten it, never having seen a turtle in the desert of the Extreme North. I guess you never know what vocabulary you will need when you are a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. The chief's guard – an ancient, toothless man with diabetes, one leg, and apparently a few words of French – struck up a conversation with me. We began with the universal conversation-starter, the weather:

“It's been raining.”
“Yeah, that's good.”
“White people like the cold, don't they?”
“Yup.”

...then moved on to other topics:

“You have diabetes medicine in America, don't you?”
“Well...yeah?”
“Next time you go, you'll bring me some, right?”
“Of course.”

People are always asking you to bring them things from America, and this used to really annoy me and send me off on a typical Peace Corps tangent about how not all white people are rich, and about how I'm here to share skills and information, not just give presents, etc. but now that I'm a worn out second year volunteer, I tend to just agree to whatever they ask. I could see the guard was attempting really hard to think of things to say (“What the heck do you talk to a nasara about, anyway?”), and after the weather and diabetes, we moved on to airplanes and finally Ramadan before the chief reappeared. We hung out a bit more, and he explained to me that the two men who had arrived were important marabouts (spiritual healers?) from Mora. After about an hour of small talk and awkward silences, I figured it was about time for me to go. Unsure how to make my exit, I suddenly just blurted out:

“I'm going to the market now.”

This seemed about as good a way of doing things as any, and after discussing what I would buy at the market (“umm, food?”), the chief disappeared into his room again and came back with a can of Malta (basically a non-alcoholic beer-type product that Cameroonians love). It was Ramadan, so we couldn't eat or drink, but it's rude to send a guest away without eating or drinking, so this apparently was the compromise. I thanked him and promised to return again soon, feeling accomplished and relieved to once again have made it out of the chief's compound without doing anything terribly inappropriate.

As I hung out waiting for the chief to return from the marabouts and watching his menagerie stroll in and out of the compound, I had ample time to think about the real purpose of my visit. In linguistics, we talk about “phatic” expressions – things you say not to convey any information, but simply to open the line of communication and acknowledge that the other person exists (for example, “hello”). The purpose of my visit to the chief seemed to me purely phatic – I was going just to remind the chief that I knew he existed – and as an American who values efficiency, it was difficult for me to see why this visit should last more than five minutes. At first I became restless during awkward pauses and while the chief went off to do other business, knowing that it would be rude for me to leave but also feeling like I had accomplished the true “purpose” of my visit. But then, looking around at all the other men who were just waiting around for the chief too, I realized that just greeting the chief and acknowledging his existence wasn't enough. Sitting and waiting while the chief wasn't even there had its own purpose – to demonstrate my respect for him. Important people in Cameroon do this all the time – a prefet will announce that he will arrive to begin a ceremony at 10am, then not show up until noon, sometimes making hundreds of people wait hours in the sun, for the sole reason of seeing them demonstrate their respect for him. For Americans, with the monetary value we place on time, and also the importance we place on equality rather than hierarchy, being made to wait is one of the most difficult things to get used to...but it has the same function as addressing someone as “sir”. This again is one of the challenges and (often) joys of being a Peace Corps volunteer – learning how to redefine “purpose” and “success”.

Locked Out

The other day I was heading back to post after spending the weekend in Maroua. I had had a successful weekend, eating good food, spending time with friends, getting some work done. That morning I had bought phone credit, gone grocery shopping, and was feeling like a successful, prepared volunteer as I crammed myself into the bush taxi. We made great time and didn't make a single stop (it's normal for a car to stop several times on the way to village, for prayer or to show identification to gendarmes or because you break down) and I was enjoying myself thinking about how I would spend my time in village this week (visit the chief, swing by the Catholic mission, start planning lessons, try and practice some Mandara...). We arrived at the turn-off for my village in no time at all, and as I climbed out of the bush taxi I saw my favorite moto driver, Amada, waiting for me. He grabbed my bags and I put on my helmet and climbed onto the back of his motorcycle. Everything was going perfectly, until halfway down the three kilometer dirt road I realized I had left my house keys in Maroua. Shit.

We arrived at my house and I went about trying to locate a pair of spare keys. I always leave my house keys in my cubby in Maroua, not wanting to carry anything superfluous in case my purse gets snatched. Super paranoid about getting locked out, I had also planted spare sets of keys in strategic locations to avoid a situation like this. My postmate – who had just left for the south on vacation – had a copy at her house in a nearby village, there was a spare in my box at the Peace Corps house in Maroua (currently sitting next to the originals) which I had intended to give to another volunteer, and there was a spare securely locked inside of my house. As I sat down on my stoop next to a goat I realized that all my elaborate back-up plans had led me to do an excellent and thorough job of pranking myself. Plan C? I called my principal.

“I'm locked out of my house...do you know anyone in village with a spare key?”
“Of course not. You have all the keys. No one else should have copies of your house keys.”

This is true. That is incredibly unsafe...and in every other situation, it would be very reassuring...but I had kind of been counting on a key magically materializing. I proceeded to text my postmate, who was en route to Ngaoundere, to see if the guy watching her house could find my spare key and send it to me. As I waited for her response, I called him myself.

“Le numero que vous avez compose n'est pas disponible pour l'instant...” His phone is off.

Fortunately, everyone in Cameroon has two phone numbers (there are two main cell phone providers here, and one will have better reception than the other in certain places, so most people have both), so I tried the second one. Indisponible. I began running down the list of phone numbers I have for people in her village (which turned out to be quite a few). Indisponible. Indisponible. Indisponible. I was getting pretty desperate as I made it all the way to the bottom of the list, calling the second phone number of my Mandara tutor. It rang! And he picked up! I explained the ridiculous situation, and asked if he could get in touch with Claire's housesitter.

“Oh Bello? He's out working in the fields. He won't be back until tonight.” Shit. I hung up the phone to find a text from Claire, informing me that my key was securely locked in a trunk in her house. Awesome.

So I made one last phone call, to my moto driver Amada who had just picked me up from the Maroua car, asking if he was willing to pick me up again to take me back to Maroua. His French isn't that good, but I managed to get across that I wanted him to come pick me up, and he said he was getting on his moto immediately (in fact, he would spend the next half hour hanging out at his house and presumably taking a nap (it was hot that afternoon), before coming to get me). I passed the time at my neighbor's, sitting on a low stool in the mud-walled entranceway to their compound with four of the older women (ranging from probably late thirties to sixties). My neighbors speak approximately three words of French, but coupled with the approximately fifteen words of Mandara I have learned, we got by okay. And when I say “got by okay” I mean we both just said things to each other that the other didn't understand, and then everyone laughed a lot. They asked me what was happening, and I explained in Frandara (Mancais?) that I had left my keys in Maroua. There was a lot of discussion and each woman seemed to have a different interpretation of what I was trying to say. Then Tata – one of the mothers (rather than grandmothers) I know best, who is a typical big African mommy, missing a couple teeth and always with a giant grin on her face – asked me some more Frandara follow-up questions (“Cles? Baka? Haa Maroua?”). Her eyes widened and she shot off in rapid-fire Mandara to the other women. This was followed by everyone bursting into fits of laughter. I had made myself understood.

Forgetting one's keys is stupid in any location, but the idea of “locked out” is I think particularly ridiculous here, where there are usually at least five, and up to twenty or thirty people all living in the same compound, so there is ALWAYS someone at home. The idea that a house would be empty and everyone would be gone long enough that it would need to be locked up in the first place must have seemed pretty bizarre to my friends in village, making my predicament all the sillier. Oh, the goofy things that white people do.

After the laughter died down and normal conversation resumed, Tata pointed to her shirt and said two words in Mandara that I *did* understand: “Patele. Shagra!” 'Patele' means pagne/fabric/clothing/etc., and 'shagra' is a versatile term that means 'it's good'. The other women echoed her sentiment, and as I looked around the little room I realized that all the woman there were wearing my old t-shirts (which I had given them after cleaning out my house a few weeks ago), and were really excited about it. As we were all laughing about this (and I was attempting with my limited vocabulary to find a way to say “You're welcome! I'm glad you like them!”), Amada finally pulled up and I began my return to Maroua.

We stopped at the “gas station” (a wooden crate on the side of the road filled with old water bottles that now contain gasoline; you pay an eight year old and he funnels it into your motorcycle) before heading out, and I was starting to chill out a bit. Then, approximately five minutes later, the moto sputtered to a stop.

“Umm...what's going on?” I asked.
“Oh, it's no big deal. I had like NO gas in my moto when I came to get you, so it just hasn't gotten down there yet.” This did not make a lot of sense to me, but I got off the moto, Amada shook it back and forth a few times, it started back up, and we set off again sans probleme. About an hour later, we were starting to get close to the city and I was letting go of my frustration, when the moto sputtered to a stop again. In the middle of nowhere.

“Umm, Amada, what is the problem?” Amada inspected the moto, laughed, and said:
“Hmm. Maroua is far, huh? I guess I should have put more gas in!”

I climbed off the moto and looked to my left, then to my right. Fields and mountains and a few cows. No “gas stations” in sight.

“Well...what are we going to do?”
“Il n'y a pas de probleme,” Amada reassured me with a smile. It seemed to me like there definitely WAS a probleme, and like we were going to be walking to Maroua, when Amada climbed back on the moto and once again performed his magical moto shaking moves, and somehow the moto sputtered back into life and we were able to ride out the last few drops of gasoline to make it to the next gas station.

We made it into the city hot and tired (and sunburned...I spent a lot of the ride picturing my sunscreen, safely locked away in my house in village...) but uneventfully, and as Amada dropped me off at the Peace Corps house I decided to take this whole experience as a sign from the universe that I should spend another night eating ice cream, taking showers, using a toilet, and enjoying the internet. And so that is what I did.

Often in Peace Corps, you will have days where everything you try to do – no matter how simple – will just fail completely. In fact, most mornings as I leave the house, even if I am just planning to visit a friend or go to the market, I try to remind myself that it's pretty likely that things will not work out at all as planned, and that that is okay. One of my favorite things about Africa is that no matter what you try to do (easy or complex, normal or new), absolutely anything can happen to you. Sometimes these things are incredibly frustrating (like getting locked out), but even the frustrating things usually lead to funny and wonderful situations (like hanging out with friends and eating ice cream). And at the end of each day – whether or not you can call it a success – you almost always end up at the very least with another ridiculous Africa story.

The 4th of July

I returned to village this week from a month of traveling and conferences in the South, where I, among other things:

-visited seven of Cameroon's ten regions;
-saw crocodiles and hippos in the wild, and lions and gorillas at the zoo;
-participated in a conference to design Peace Corps Cameroon's new Youth Development program (first volunteers arrive in September!);
-met Cameroonian soccer player Samuel Eto'o;

...and celebrated the 4th of July, four separate times. It turns out that Americans who are not living in America get VERY excited about our country's birthday. The first of these 4th of July parties took place on June 29th at the U.S. Embassy. I guess each year they throw a fancy soiree, and this year's theme was “50 Years of Peace Corps”, which led them to invite 50 Peace Corps volunteers to help them celebrate. We all got ready at the Peace Corps house beforehand like we were going to prom, fighting over mirror space, trying on multiple outfits, fretting over jewelery and shoes, trying to figure out how to class up our pagne. We arrived early as the ambassador's wife had decided that as a way of sharing American culture with Cameroonians, the embassy staff and the Peace Corps volunteers would do a flash mob after the ambassador gave his speech. A lot of us had been in country so long that we didn't know what a flash mob was, but we went along with it anyway, and when Bruce Springsteen's “Born in the USA” came on after the ambassador finished speaking, we streamed down the lawn of the embassy and burst into dance. I'm not sure that the Cameroonians really understood what was going on, but the Americans called it a success. The rest of the night involved a lot of meeting and greeting (non-Peace Corps Americans as well as Cameroonians), delicious food, and plenty of attempting to look classy and grown-up while rethinking my decision to wear heels to a lawn party (particularly as it had been over a year since I had worn anything besides flats and flip flops).

I'm not sure the embassy was entirely prepared for the damage fifty Peace Corps volunteers can do to an open bar, but we must not have made too poor of an impression, because we were invited back a couple days later for the embassy's annual 4th of July barbeque/pool party. Without the distractions of ridiculous shoes, dance performances, or free drinks, I became more aware of my surroundings. As I ate my hot dog (so good) and mingled with embassy workers and their families, I started experiencing some culture shock. Here I was, standing next to a pool, celebrating my country's independence day with maybe a hundred other people, also from America and now living in Cameroon, and I realized that everyone else around the pool seemed to have a better idea of who and where they were than I did. Standing on American soil, eating American food, wearing American clothes, speaking American English, celebrating an American holiday, I looked across the grounds to the African forest and above it the mountains surrounding Yaounde and felt confused and terribly out of place. I was not so sure what I had in common with these people, many of whom were much older or younger than I am (there were more families than I expected), the majority of whom lived in Cameroon, but had never ridden a moto taxi, eaten a baton de manioc, or spoken Fulfulde at the market. Were we living in the same country?
A beer later and I found myself contemplating what we were celebrating. America's independence...but what is America? People, place, language, food? I watched a hundred or so white people in Africa drinking beer by the pool and acting like the land we were standing on was America and I wondered what made it so. Eating hot dogs while speaking English, wearing khaki shorts, talking about sports and listening to Bruce Springsteen?

On the last 4th of July, as an overwhelmed Peace Corps trainee on site visit to the Grand North for the first time, I had a boisterous and rather intoxicated volunteer at the end of her service inform me that if nothing else changed for me, at the end of my Peace Corps service she guaranteed that I would leave loving America. I've always been kind of mystified about the meaning of the word “patriotism” and how one loves a country. I'm still not sure how to define this place that I come from, but already after a year I feel that I can truly say that whatever it is, I feel a love for my country that I did not know before I left it.

A couple weeks later, I found myself on the very last leg of my journey, sitting at the dusty bus station in Maroua where I waited for a tired bush taxi that would take me banging down the series of potholes that is the road to my village. I had survived the sixteen hour train ride from Yaounde, immediately followed by a ten hour bus ride from Ngaoundere, and was looking forward to getting home, greeting my neighbors, unpacking my suitcase, and taking a bucket bath. As I sat waiting on a wooden bench in my worn out pagne dress, a Cameroonian woman in designer jeans and a nice t-shirt followed by her young daughter came and sat next to me. She struck up a conversation, asking me in beautiful French (so beautiful it was almost difficult to understand) what I was doing here, where I was from, etc.: the standard questions you ask a nasara sitting at a bus station in Cameroon. When I told her I was from America, she asked what part, and I said “Wisconsin,” giving my standard explanation of, “it's near Chicago.” She laughed and said she knew, and that she had been to the States several times. It turns out her husband is an international journalist, and they have actually been living in France for ten years (explains why I was having trouble understanding her French) and traveling the world, and she's just come back to Cameroon for a visit.

She turned to talk to some friends and I returned to my book, but a short while later I overheard her ask her friends if it was the Mundang tribe that lived in Mora (the town we were headed towards). Her friend said she didn't know, so I jumped in and said that no, it was the Mandara that live in Mora, and the Mundang live out by Kaele. At this, we both burst out laughing, and she slapped my leg and said “Of course it would take an American to teach me about Cameroon.” At this point she introduced me to her daughter:
“This is Hope.”
“What?”
“Hope. You know, espoir,” she translated into French. Of course I would need a French translation to understand the words of my native language. We both laughed again. We chatted some more, and I found myself asking her all the same questions Cameroonians usually ask me. Where do you live in France? People always ask me this question about America, despite the fact that unless I said “New York” or “Los Angeles”, they wouldn't really understand the answer (often they've heard of Chicago, which is how I explain where I live...sometimes I just say “near Canada”). After asking her where she lived in France, I realized I'd just done the same thing: unless she said Paris, I was not really going to understand. She explained to me anyway, laughing, and when I said I had never been to France, she immediately invited me to come stay with her. She asked me when I was going back to America, then said she would be there sometime next year, and could she have my e-mail address so maybe we could meet up. Officially the second time a Cameroonian has asked me for my e-mail, rather than just for my phone number or a description of the location of my house. She then handed me some type of shiny smart phone to type the address into. I took it nervously, looked at it for a minute, then blurted out “I don't know how to use this.” She laughed and demonstrated how to press different parts of the screen to make letters appear.

Soon after we climbed into our bush taxi, and an hour later, as we stopped at my village and I climbed out, she promised to e-mail. Will I go stay with her in France? Will she meet up with me in America next year? I guess probably not, but you never know. Whatever happens, I think we both learned something about how different we have both become since leaving our home countries.

Greatest Hits -- Year One

So I have somehow managed to make it through my first year of teaching. Classes are finished, exams are almost graded, and once I fill out a few hundred report cards I will officially be on summer break...except there's no “summer” here so I guess I will just officially be on holiday. To commemorate my first year of teaching, I have decided to share with you some of my favorite answers to essays and exam questions from this year. Grading is a long and tedious process, but every once in awhile I come across answers that make me stop and laugh and then wonder how Peace Corps let someone as immature as me become a teacher (like when kids write “Fart North” instead of “Far North”. Hilarious). A quick disclaimer: maybe it is not the most professional thing in the world to laugh at my students, but they (and pretty much everyone else in Cameroon) in turn get a lot of enjoyment out of my mistakes in English, French, Fulfulde, and Mandara (actually, most people don't even laugh at my mistakes in particular – they just laugh every time I open my mouth, no matter if what I'm saying is grammatically correct or not), so I feel like it's a pretty equal exchange. Also, we talked a lot this year about how it's okay to make mistakes in my class, and about how what's important is to TRY and to say SOMETHING. We try not to take our mistakes too seriously in Miss Rose's English class, so in that spirit, here are some of my favorite answers from this year:

Response to a question about the achievements of Hillary Clinton:
“Three things are Hillary Clinton has achieved are: elected to the U.S., to pass legislation, and terrorist attacks.”

Introduction to an essay about someone you admire:
“He is popular, he sing very well and he name AKON.”

Essay: Write a letter to a friend you have not seen in a long time, asking what has happened in his/her life. Use the present perfect three times.
“My friend OBAMA, I have not seen you for a long time. What have you happened in your life in U.S.A.? Me I have was very well and you? Please has called me this is my number: xx.xx.xx.xx. Goodbye! Your friend ABDOU.”

Introduction to an essay on “The Importance of Music”:
“Music is a factory of dance.”

On a matching section:
g) to have self ______ vii) sex
(I think the correct answer was “self-confidence”, but this works too)

An essay on the advantages and disadvantages of using cell phones:
“Some people can be gaven the atomic bomb. The cellphones have been killing the many persons.”

An essay on an important woman you know:
“Titan is man who I knowed since old ago. His head is like a town. His eyes sind like a ball put down under the table. He eats a lot of food like a cow. He cannot run very fast. He stink like a butterfly.”

And finally, one my personal favorites...The essay prompt was “Girls make better leaders than boys. Discuss.” But this student copied it wrong, and wrote “letter” instead of “better”. He was obviously pretty confused, but tried really hard anyway and wrote about the differences in the letters girls and boys write. This is an excerpt from the two-page essay he wrote (which was actually one of the better ones I received, despite not being on topic...):
“Women's, particularly the girls, interested every time the letters. They use them when they want to speak their grooms....because they haven't courageous, they feel ashamed, they used the letters to resolve their problems. It is true when we say 'the girls make letter leaders than boy'? The boys cannot make the most?”

Joking aside, I would like to say that my students really are an amazing group of people. They are smart and funny (often on purpose!) and motivated. They travel long distances (often as much as five or ten kilometers) every day to get to school. They live in a place where education is not normal or valued – most people in the village haven't been to school, most students' parents don't read or write; many don't speak French. These kids don't have running water; a lot of them don't even have electricity, and all of them have plenty of responsibilities outside of school (cooking, cleaning, caring for their younger siblings, fetching water, working in the fields, selling at the market, etc...), but they have recognized the way education can improve their lives, and so they find the time, money, and energy to show up and learn. There are so, so many obstacles to learning in Cameroon (even once you find a way to attend school): lack of teachers; lack of desks (many students sit four to a desk); lack of money to buy pens, notebooks, textbooks, etc.; illness; language barriers (many kids are less than fluent in French, even at the higher levels); different ages and levels of students (I have 16 year olds and 23 year olds in Seconde; 10 year olds and 17 year olds in 6eme); a standardized curriculum that encourages memorization rather than actual learning and has unrealistically high expectations...etc. etc.

I often feel like students are set up to fail, and grading these last exams has been pretty discouraging. The majority of students fail, and it's easy to get discouraged when yet another student gets 6/20 on their final exam. But I've been trying instead to focus on the success stories – the group of girls in 6eme who have gone from getting 7's and 8's/20 to 11's and 12's (these are passing grades) and who now raise their hands to answer questions and come to write on the board. The twenty premiere students who showed up to my night classes and spent three extra hours each week taking practice exams and asking questions about the English language to prepare for their national exams. The seconde student who asked me every break if he could borrow my textbook, and then brought me back pages and pages of exercises he had done independently and wanted me to correct. I realized early on that there is no way I can help every student; there is no way I can tackle all the huge problems they face. I can't make kids study or learn or pass their exams. But I can create opportunities for learning to take place, and from that perspective I think I can call my first year more or less a success. It's a start anyway. When I applied to the Peace Corps, two years seemed like a ridiculously long time...but now that I've finished my first year, all I can think is “Thank God I have another year. I can do this better.” So that is how I will spend my summer, and then next year: looking for more and better opportunities to help learning take place.