RIP Simba

About my 2^nd week at post, I had gotten a kitten which I named Simba.  I’m not a huge pet aficionado but the rodent problem at my house was getting out of control, so I brought in a specialist.

Simba was a beast. Not only was he incredibly friendly, but he also enjoyed annihilating household pests. That includes mice, lizards, roaches… he even ate wasps.  He took care of the rodent problem almost immediately. Simba and I got pretty tight and hung out on a regular basis. 

He was an outdoor cat so I’d leave a window open practically at all times and he would come in and out as he pleased. Pretty much any time he wasn’t at my house, he was chillin at the neighbors or busy destroying mice outside.  The neighbors also loved him and the kids next door also grew pretty fond of Simba. Simba grew even bigger, faster, stronger.

Last week, I hadn’t seen Simba for about a day or two. I wasn’t too alarmed as I thought he could be just taking a little vaca.. between my oven of a house and all the hyper kids overrunning the area, he probably needed a break. However, when my neighbors also indicated they had not seen him at all for about 3 days, we grew a little concerned.  I told everyone to keep an eye out to see if we can find Simba.

The next day I came back from town and one of the kids next door told me he found Simba. I asked him if he was sick, the kid said no. He took me behind their house into a little plot of land and pointed to the ground. As I walked up, I saw what I initially thought was just another cow turd, nothing out of the ordinary. But as I got up close, to my horror, I saw Simba’s little decapitated head already in the process of decomposing. He took me a few meters further, and there laid his intestines and a severed paw. The rest of the body was pretty much missing.

To say the least, I was shocked. As we thought of the possibilities, we concluded that the most likely explanation is that someone had eaten Simba, as his head did look as if it had been burned.  Had another animal killed him, there would most likely be a mangled carcass, which was not the case as it looked as if he had been deliberately been taken apart. People in the region have been known to eat just about any animal that comes there way, including dogs, cats, monkeys and mice, because it is more or less free... which I guess is a big draw when you have no money.  I still don’t think any of my neighbors would have eaten him. Many of my Cameroonian friends claim it was an act of sorcery.

I guess we will never know.  RIP Simba

Cyrus Kikgui

So I had a baby named after me last week.

Background

As a part of our Peace Corps program, we are to attend a week long seminar called In Service Training (IST) after 3 months at post. Now that my first 3 months at post (and 6 months in country) had flown by, it was time to prep for IST.  IST also happened to be taking place in my town (Ngaoundere) so I was sort of the quasi-host volunteer for my training group. One of the most important aspects of IST is for every volunteer to invite their primary counterpart. A counterpart is a host country national that will work side-by-side with us and provide support, resources, and sustainability, for our projects.

As I’ve mentioned, I have been working quite a bit with a local Microfinance institution called Credit du Sahel, and my counterpart there, David Kikgui, works predominantly with Agro-pastoral common interest groups and associations. I’m therefore paired with him to help serve this demographic.  Meanwhile, David’s wife was pregnant at the time and due in about a month. However, just about as soon as he arrived at IST with me, his wife started having pains and had to be attended to. Thus, David ended up missing out on about half of IST due to his wife’s hospitalization and his second son being born.

The day his baby was born, he called me and gave me the great news. I said congratulations and whatever other appropriate thing I could think of with my 3^rd grade French vocabulary.  He then asked me for a first name. I was totally at a loss at the moment, so I told him I’d think about it and let him know. So, I did what I usually do in uncomfortable situations... ignore it completely

I saw him about 3 days later when he asked me again about the first name. I had then realized he actually wanted my first name for the baby, which made my job considerably easier. I of course gladly hooked him up. Thus was born Kikgui Dourine Gnassiri Cyrus (first names are listed last here, and his family name is Kikgui, same as his dad's)

The Situation

Is Jersey Shore still cool? I’ve clearly lost touch with all important things

Work Situation 

Now that we’ve hit our 3 month mark at post and just had our IST conference (in service training), we are expected be reasonably integrated and begin working on projects. This brings me to the real reason I’ve come here… development work.

My work situation here is pretty interesting yet chaotic.  As an Agribusiness Advisor, my focus is to improve profitability of agricultural operations with enhanced business practices and move from subsistence farming to commercial farming. Till now I’ve been mostly meeting lots of common interest farming groups and other contacts around the area that will be valuable resources for my work going forward. I’ve thus far learned quite a bit about local agricultural issues and the general challenges faced by the poor in West Africa. 

I am also partnered up with a micro finance institution called Credit du Sahel, and work closely with an associate dealing primarily with Agro-Pastoral common interest groups and associations in the area. I often take trips with him en brusse to meet with clients to follow up on undergoing projects and financing proposals. I am also looking to work on management projects that could improve our branch’s efficiency somewhere down the line. Being paired with an institution helps with work consistency and support, and my counterpart there is pretty legit. As a random side note, I’ve just realized everything I’ve described thus far sounds a lot cooler than it actually is. score.

Apart from primary activities, I have ended up working quite a bit with the local youth. Specifically, I had been teaching English at the local primary school once a week, and now that I’ve finished there, I will be teaching English for the last trimester at the local Jr. high. I will probably not continue with teaching English past this year because I’d like to focus on my primary work, however, it has been a big boost in helping me integrate into the community and raising my visibility around the village. Probably the most random thing I’ve worked on here is my girls group. It was a project my predecessor left me, and is something I’ve continued, with the help of my post mate, who is a girl (it makes much more sense when she is there). Every Thursday at my house we usually do some lecture or activity, followed by an English lesson. The girls range from 7 to 14 years old and are a pretty spontaneous group.  A few of them are standouts in their class and the group has been helpful to them in promoting a certain degree of ambition and motivation.  This has also helped me integrate into the community but I will probably be looking to hand off the torch as I get busier with my primary projects.

Other miscellaneous ambitions include my attempt to make the village’s first computer lab as well as an upcoming business class.  Work here comes along at a snail’s pace, but as they say in Pidgin… small small catch monkey (real English translation: little by little).