I have lots of catching up to do here. I am now done with training and settled into my new home for the next 2 years. I will try and briefly recap what I’ve missed since last time.
For the second half of training, we switched homestay families and I was with another family in the more rural village of Nyamsong (right next to Bafia, our training site). At first Nyamsong was quite another culture shock. I was living with a family of 5, consisting of the host father, mother, a 15 year old daughter, 22 year old daughter, and the 22 year old’s 2 year old baby. There was basically never electricity, the bathroom facilities consisted of just a hole in the ground outdoors, and an insane prevalence of ‘moot moots’. Moot moots are the small biting black flies that can cause river blindness (don’t worry we will receive medication to prevent this) several years down the road. They were common in Bafia (my home for first half of training) but are even more so in Nyamsong. They are barely noticeable, though certainly more than mosquitos. Also, their bite tends to break skin and afterwards it itches like hell. Anyways, during this period, the first love letter incident went down, which I’m not going to detail here. By the time I was done with training however, it was incredible how comfortable I’d become even in Nyamsong despite its challenges and lack of development. I feel like I’ve already changed and adapted quite a bit, albeit only 3 months into service.
I received my post of Beka Hossere. It is a village on the outskirts of the major city of Ngaoundere in the Adamawa region. I will talk more about post later but will include only a quick story here. At training in Bafia (which is in the centre region of Cameroon close to the capital of Yaoundé), we all met our community hosts that were invited down from our future posts to attend a workshop. I met my community host, Nana Bakari, who is a charismatic ‘grand’ in my village and has lots of important contacts in the local government and community. We initially had trouble communicating due to my lack of French proficiency and his northern accent. In any case, he told me I’d love the village and I was stoked for my site visit.
To get to Ngaoundere, which is the regional capital of the Adamawa region, we took a train up from Yaoundé. Everyone going to the Grand North (Adamawa, North, and Extreme North) traveled up together. It was a 14 hour train ride but we got couchettes (rooms with beds) so it actually wasn’t too bad at all. On our way up, we randomly came to a rolling stop in the middle of nowhere and realized the front of the train had disconnected and left without us. Not only that but no one had cell phone reception, so we had to wait for them to realize they were missing the back of the train and come back. During this time, many of our community hosts were hanging out outside, so I met up with Nana and we chatted for a bit. A local who lived close to where our train had stopped was nearby talking to Nana and another community host and invited us to his home. Nana agreed so we went. His home was basically a cluster of straw huts (each used for different purposes), about a 4 minute walk through the brush from the train tracks. They guy pulled some peanuts and cassava out of the ground for us which we munched on. My community host bought a big bag of peanuts and also one of his chickens as a ‘souvenir’. After a couple hours we heard the train coming back so we took off toward the tracks. It was sort of funny watching Nana run with the sack of peanuts in one hand and the chicken tucked under his other arm like a football. Luckily, we were out in front of the train so they clearly saw us running in and waited for us to board. We reached Ngaoundere about 3 hours later.
To get to Ngaoundere, which is the regional capital of the Adamawa region, we took a train up from Yaoundé. Everyone going to the Grand North (Adamawa, North, and Extreme North) traveled up together. It was a 14 hour train ride but we got couchettes (rooms with beds) so it actually wasn’t too bad at all. On our way up, we randomly came to a rolling stop in the middle of nowhere and realized the front of the train had disconnected and left without us. Not only that but no one had cell phone reception, so we had to wait for them to realize they were missing the back of the train and come back. During this time, many of our community hosts were hanging out outside, so I met up with Nana and we chatted for a bit. A local who lived close to where our train had stopped was nearby talking to Nana and another community host and invited us to his home. Nana agreed so we went. His home was basically a cluster of straw huts (each used for different purposes), about a 4 minute walk through the brush from the train tracks. They guy pulled some peanuts and cassava out of the ground for us which we munched on. My community host bought a big bag of peanuts and also one of his chickens as a ‘souvenir’. After a couple hours we heard the train coming back so we took off toward the tracks. It was sort of funny watching Nana run with the sack of peanuts in one hand and the chicken tucked under his other arm like a football. Luckily, we were out in front of the train so they clearly saw us running in and waited for us to board. We reached Ngaoundere about 3 hours later.
After site visit, we came back to Bafia to finish up training. I took my language test and passed out of the minimal level of French necessary before moving on to post. I have much French to learn but have already come a long way. After passing out of French I also started learning Fufulde, which is a local language spoken by the Fulbe ethnic tribe and is very common in the Grand North. Though French is spoken by government officials and for business purposes, Fufulde is more widely spoken by the locals. Many people, especially those without formal education (lots of them), speak only Fufulde. I can already see this language barrier posing as a hindrance in the near future but we’ll see how it works out.
No comments:
Post a Comment