Leaving my Heart in Africa

When I wrote my very first bucket list at 16, I included one item I can't quite explain. "Leave my heart in Africa". To this day, I couldn't tell you exactly what I meant by that, other than that I dreamed for years of traveling to the continent. I suppose I had an overwhelming sense that doing so would change me. That something about it- the landscapes, the cultures, the people I encountered- would capture my heart, laying permanent claim on some part of me.

Now that I have been to Cameroon and returned home again, this old teenage goal seems strangely prescient. I may not have been able to predict where or when or why I would go, but somehow I had an inkling of how I would feel when I did. And, as it turns out, I left even more of my heart behind than I ever could have imagined.

I called the branch president in Douala to find a place to stay so I could go to church one weekend.
Instead, I found an extension of my family <3 

The day I was preparing to leave Mokundange, I could barely hold myself together. I had a dozen mini best friends who filled all of my idle moments with laughter, and I could hardly stand the thought of not seeing their smiles day after day. Our beginnings had been slow. After weeks of exchanging shy smiles and waving at one another, a break in my research scheduled had coincided with school strike action, leading to a sort of breakthrough that completely transformed my last few weeks in Limbe. I never did make it out to the pretty beach or to the botanical garden or to the wildlife center (my Limbe bucket list, if you will), but I did spend countless blissful hours skipping rope and making paper airplanes and dancing and playing cards with beautiful little humans who made my heart grow three sizes every time I heard them say "Aunty Brooke Michele".

When this picture was taken I hadn't showered in three days (not by choice, there was no water in the house) and wasn't wearing a stitch of makeup, but felt amazing, just being in the company of these kidlets.

The first day I went outside with my skipping rope and when the kids started swarming and fighting over who got to take the next turn, I went back in for my notebooks, and gave everyone some paper so we could make paper airplanes and boats and whatever little origami I knew. Pretty soon, the kids were asking me to dance. Someone put on the same infernal song that I had been hearing at least 10 times a day (P Square's "Bank Alert" which despite my initial annoyance, is the same song I now play at home to conjure so many happy memories) and we started to dance, right there on the back steps. By this point, there were almost 20 kids between the ages of 2 and 14 all gathered around, emulating my ridiculous dance "moves" and shoving each other to show off their own.

                                  

From that point on, I spent all my free time out back playing with the kids from the nearby compound. I brought out my cards and taught the kids "Go Fish", and they taught me snippets of Pidgin (rendering the name of the game to "Go Boat"). They asked about my tattoos, shocked and amazed at the idea of ink put under the skin by a needle and spent hours playing with my hair. "It's so soft!" they would tell me repeatedly, yanking the brush through my sweat-tangled hair in a way that made me glad my mom used to pull so hard when french-braiding my hair. 

My girls <3 The one on the right was so scared of me at first it took almost four weeks (and constant prodding from Pavel) for her to approach me for the first time, but once she did, she was regularly battling for space on my lap. The one on the left would cry whenever I left, or she had to go home for the night.

A deck of cards makes for hours of entertainment.

One day I pulled out my computer and sat with a group of kids on the backsteps watching Despicable Me, with my laptop balanced on the overflowing garbage can in front of the chicken coop. One little girl fell asleep in my arms and it was as near to perfection as an afternoon gets.

Just try not to fall in love with these kids.

What they loved more than anything, though, was my camera. I have deleted three times more photos than I have kept from this time period, because they were such photog fiends, taking snap after snap after snap. Many of the shots that I did keep are blurry as all get-up, but they show the genuine joy we experienced in each others' company.

The kids were eager to take "snaps", but their photography skills still need a little work.

The last couple of weeks were packed with activity, especially as I had four focus groups to conduct. The first journaling group went great, everyone showed though no one came until at least 25 minutes past the hour we agreed to meet. Both the photovoice groups started way late, but everyone came. Journaling 2 took the cake though. It started almost an hour and a half late and had only two of the five participants show up. Fortunately, I was able to reschedule with two of the others and get that done just a couple days later. I also made it up into a mountain village to do an evaluation for a project conducted there by my local partner organization (a little work to thank them for helping connect me in Limbe).

Sorry dad! I know I promised I wouldn't ride a motorcycle without a helmet, but this was the only way to get to the village!

Pavel celebrated his birthday at the beginning of December, and his one wish was to eat achu, a northwest speciality, and to have me taste it. The soupy dish is eaten with the hands, and it is a yummy mess. I ALMOST didn't get any on my shirt. Something I appreciate most about Pavel is how much he wanted me to see and do and taste everything he loves about Cameroon. From football to sugar cane to "pumpkin", Pavel was determined to help me experience it all. It was such a nice contrast to all the people who just wanted me to take them to Canada. Pavel even started to teach me little phrases in his own dialect and quiz me on an almost daily basis to make sure they stayed in my mind. One of my favorite moments in Cameroon is going to the semi-final AFCON game with my bestie. We purposely went to sit behind the traditional dancers from his region. During the first half, he got up and put on a cap and danced with his people, grinning ear to ear. It was the happiest I'd seen him, so happy he was glowing, and it was hard to focus on the game, so much I enjoyed seeing him so blissed out. 

Mm Kong Wu my brother!

Before I left Mokundange, one of my participants came to see me about a project he would like to pursue, building a home and school to educate children that have been orphaned by AIDS in his home region. He has land, but lacks management skills and resources to move forward. Something about him already having the land made the whole thing seem so feasible, so I'm planning on doing some research over the next few months and who knows-- maybe I'll be back in Cameroon before I know it!

Tu me manques!!

I spent my last weekend in Cameroon back in Douala with what will heretofore be known as the "African side" of my family :) I think it's a beautiful blessing, the soul's capacity to recognize others from beyond the veil and the heart's capacity to love and connect across all barriers of age, race, background, distance, etc. An equally beautiful blessing? The fact that it hurt to leave. That pain is the echo of dozens of names and faces that reverberate in my mind and memories... and always will! 

Held Hostage and Interlude in Douala

With a lull in my schedule the day before I had plans to spend the weekend in Douala with members of my church, I made my way to Down Beach, the area of Limbe town that stretches along the shoreline. From a distance, I could see the clustered wooden fishing boats in the sand, set against a backdrop of greenery and wisps of swirling smoke coming from the long, squat houses behind. Immediately, my mind conjured so many canoes on the pebbled shores of Haida Gwaii, set within an ancient scene of longhouses and north coast wilderness. For just a moment, I felt a pang of longing for home. Not for the first time, I felt the kindred nature of the culture and traditions of Canada’s First Peoples with the indigenous populations here. When children and others ask me whether “you people” have dialects and traditional dances, food or clothing, the first thing that always comes to mind are the rich traditions of the Aboriginal nations I grew up beside. I know “my people”—the Norwegian, the Scottish, etc. have their own deeply rooted traditions, but it seems that many of us in North America of European ancestry are too far removed from it to be deeply connected to these traditions. Industrialization, modernity, consumption and celebrity—these are the factors that make up the bulk of our “culture” today; the same culture we are exporting wholesale to anyone who will have it.

From a distance, this sight reminded me of old images I'd seen of Haida Gwaii.

I had been looking forward to going to the beach and putting my feet in the ocean, but as I arrived I was greeted with a wafting putrid smell and the sight of plastic bottles and other garbage strewn everywhere. In a way, it seems almost symbolic—the legacy, the mess left behind by colonialism. It doesn’t negate the natural beauty of this place, striking and resilient. But it is sad to see the distracting detritus that mars the surface, and hints at more insidious environmental damage, otherwise invisible to the naked eye.

It's just a shame that the beach is a dumping ground.

Before I could head to Douala on Saturday I had to return to Buea to deliver the disposable cameras my participants had used to be developed. Given my fruitless Google searches (most businesses don’t have active websites and there are no yellow pages to speak of), my host had connected me with someone—a friend, he said—who had in turn agreed to connect me with someone who had the equipment necessary to develop the photos. Suhfai, as he calls himself, is an actor and singer who fancies himself pretty famous in Cameroon. Famous or not, I certainly wasn’t a fan after essentially being held hostage for more than 6 hours.

He delivered on his end of the bargain, taking me to a photography studio as soon as I arrived in Buea. There, I delivered the cameras, arranged the terms and, having completed my errand, was ready to leave within half an hour of arriving. But Suhfai had other plans. He wanted to go get something to eat. Fine, I thought. I could do with some food. While we were eating, he detailed his proposed agenda for the day, vaguely referencing this friend’s house, that other place. I protested, saying I really needed to get to Douala, but he ignored me. I could feel my blood boiling, angry at him for imposing his will on me, but also feeling a sense of obligation to him, born by his helping to connect me to the developer, not to mention his insistence that he bring the photos to me in Limbe rather than me coming back to pick them up myself, and not a little bit of fear, given as I hardly know him or how he might react if I straight up refused to bend to his will. I followed him with a chip on my shoulder as he took me to a friend’s house, where he made me watch one of his movies. A cheery tale of a young girl in a village who had her chest rolled with hot bamboo in an attempt to stop her developing too early, became a victim of female genital circumcision, was then sold by her father to a much older man in marriage to answer a debt, and then died in child birth. I managed to convince him not to put on a second movie, and then he took me across town to a bar, where a group of men sat in plastic chairs, speaking in pidgin and dialect… and continued to do so for three hours, while I repeatedly told Suhfai I would like to leave. Suhfai had taken up court at the head of the circle, clearly feeling his own importance, and my discomfort and fear was gradually replaced entirely by frustration. Seeing that I was not impressed, Suhfai began to tell me (warn me?) that he is “more than a Shaman” and that if someone offends him, he can send them bad, terrorizing dreams. Otherwise, he largely ignored me—talking to me only to insist that I choose a weekend to come back to Buea to spend with him (doing what, I have no idea). He specified that I must come on a Friday evening and keep my schedule clear until Sunday evening. It was like he wouldn’t let me leave until I had committed to coming back. Finally, he let me go with the promise that I would look at my schedule.

Go ahead, enlarge this picture. What do my eyes tell you about how I really feel in this moment?

When I got to the park, I was the first person on the van to Douala, so it meant having to wait until enough passengers came along to fill the vehicle, another delay. I knew that the terminus was in Bonaberri, in an area that people had repeatedly warned me was “rough”. All I could do was hope that I would arrive before dark and that my host and I wouldn’t have any trouble finding each other. After an uneventful but cramped ride, I found myself in Bonaberri, attracting a great deal of attention by virtue of my skin colour. One man worriedly told me that I should put my purse inside my backback, which of course was supremely reassuring. 

Funnily enough, after picking me up, my host—the local branch president—told me that when we had spoken on the phone, he thought that I was black. That’s a new one! It reminded me of my experience last winter in Ottawa, when the man I was walking behind turned and I was surprised to find that he was black. For no reason in particular… just, with it being winter, there was no exposed skin, so I didn’t have any cues beforehand. Talking with a friend here, she told me that unless otherwise expressly stated, she assumes that all characters in a book are black. It shocked me a little to realize that my default assumption is white, unless otherwise stated. It just goes to show that even if we’d like to think we’re not racist, we DO usually have ethnocentric frames of reference that “colour” the world we live in.

Mmm... street meat and fixings.

Back at the house, the electricity was out so we were in for a long, hot night without a fan, but the company was more than worth any discomfort. I immediately bonded with Victor and Edvige; Happy and generous, the parents of four are shining examples of Christ-like love. Victor took quickly to calling me his daughter, and I easily saw him—so like my own hardworking and devoted dad—as a father figure. I had a harder time thinking of Edvige as a mom, simply because she looks young enough to be my sister, but I connected implicitly with her radiant spirit. So far and so long removed from my own family, it was an unspeakable blessing to feel as though I was in the company of loved ones. For the first time since arriving, I felt truly at home in Cameroon.

Put shreddies in a blender with a little milk and a touch of brown sugar.
Drink it and you will have an idea what this tastes like.

I was asked to bear my testimony in church, and it was the first time I’d ever done it in French. This was more than a little intimidating, but it was a beautiful opportunity for me to reflect on what I know and hold to be true at my very core. When I left church, my spiritual tank was full to overflowing; gratefully, I had received the refueling I had so badly needed and I felt re-energized and reinvigorated to face my last couple of weeks in the field.

Traffic was pretty intense on the way back from Douala.

Falling in Love with "Football"

It’s no secret that I love what we in North America call football—some of my best university memories are centered around the time I spent at LaVell Edwards stadium, as a marketing assistant and a fan. Contrarily, I’m no great lover of what they in Africa (and the rest of the world, for that matter) call football. Soccer has just never really been my thing. Except that, as it turns out, it kind of is. Maybe it’s the excited reverence for the sport that is in such abundance supply here. Maybe it’s the culturally infused energy of the fans. Maybe it’s a sense of solidarity because it was women playing. Whatever the cause, I found myself falling hard for the one sport I never could have imagined could lay any claim on my heart.

Cameroon hosted the 2016 female African Cup of Nations football tournament. Group B played at the new stadium in Lime, offering plenty of opportunities to go see the action live.

I went with Pavel to the stadium for the first double header, and we decided to cheer for opposing teams. I took Nigeria and Ghana, while he repped Mali and Kenya. When Nigeria demolished Mali 6-0, we decided to make a bet on the second game. When the game ended in Ghana’s favor, I was one pineapple richer. Between the games we went and found John, and walked around the outside of the stadium, generally blowing off steam from a long week. I had to laugh when a group of guys asked to take a picture with me. It’s still strange to me that the colour of my skin alone inspires such interest and curiosity. After weeks of first being housebound and then research-bound, it was strangely euphoric to be out of the house after dark, and being social.

I adopted Nigeria (seen here in green) as my team for the tournament, but I vowed that I would cheer for Cameroon if it came down to the two teams facing each other.

I was still riding the high as we left the stadium, but as we descended, I was surrounded by men, all trying to talk to me at once, encouraged by each other’s presence. The attention, some of it clearly predatory in nature, was overwhelming and mostly not in a good way. To his credit, Pavel was trying to intercede, get them to leave me alone. The other men began to jokingly argue with one another in pidgin, playfully shoving each other and in the melee I got jostled. Nothing major, just enough to take away my attention from the ground in front of me for a moment, and in my next step, I caught a large rock, and in a fraction of a second I had fully twisted my ankle and ended up on the ground. The pain was pretty immense, battling with my pride for which was more hurt in the tumble. I tried to hobble on for some time anyhow, but Pavel eventually insisted on calling Eric to come get us. Sweetheart that he is, he felt so bad, blaming himself, even though I insisted it wasn’t his fault in the slightest. He went out and got me a cold drink and the next day, when he saw I was having great difficulty bearing weight, he went out and got sugar cane for me to use as walking sticks. Meanwhile, I re-purposed my yoga pants as a compression bandage, trying to keep the swelling at bay.

Sometimes it pays to have a little MacGuyver spirit in you.

I hadn’t really planned to watch Cameroon’s first game, especially seeing as the Lionesses were in Group A, playing at the capital in Yaounde. Nevertheless, I found myself watching the broadcast from the seat of honour at MaMa Ida’s modest home. I had met the kindly older woman at church, and she invited me to visit her (already, this is out of the norm here—not many people around here like to entertain at home, they prefer to spend time with friends at bars and restaurants). Upon my arrival she installed me in the biggest, most comfortable chair she owned and waited on me, bringing me pineapple soda and refilling my class any time it dropped below three quarters full. Honestly, it made me almost uncomfortable, though I could see it made her so happy just to have me there. We didn’t speak all that much—MaMa Ida speaks primarily pidgin, so Gloria had come along to serve as a sort of intermediary—but soon, she was insisting that I think of her as my Cameroonian mother, and telling me to come to her if I needed anything at all.

MaMa Ida is the sweetest. She regularly sends me pineapples from her farm and I'm in heaven.

I was still hobbling, though finally with a proper tensor bandage in place, by the time we went back to the stadium for the second double-header. This time Mali and Kenya took the W’s over their respective opponents, leaving every team in the group with a single victory. It was hard to be disappointed by “my” teams losing, though, with the joyful traditional singing and dancing going on right in front of me throughout the night.

Such energy-- they sang and danced through two whole games.

As far as work was concerned, it was a productive week, despite delays. Here, there is a lot of waiting—whether it’s because things aren’t working or are unavailable, or because people don’t conform to the same strict notions of time that I’m used to. Often, the only real option is to wait out the issue. Like when I traveled to Buea to print the documents for my orientation sessions, and had to wait more than three and a half hours because there was no “light” (aka power). There’s just not much you can do about electricity being unavailable.  Similarly, I had to exchange all the money I had brought to pay my participants, but had to do it in repeated trips over a period of several days, because the exchange office only had so much money available every day. Then I had to work at collecting smaller denominations over a period of several days so that I could give each participant the correct amount. Then there was when my cell phone network wasn’t operational, and I had to call participants. I ended up having to go to town to buy a second SIM card and credit, like so many here who have phone numbers on different networks, because the cell networks aren’t reliable enough to only have one. Nevertheless, I was able to get a message out to all participants to check in on the progress of their self-directed participatory activities and went with my research assistant to do the “observation” portion of the research, namely mapping and outlet audits in two key neighbourhoods.

Continuing to sample new cuisine... "Peypey" aka Pepper Soup. So spicy, but so yum.

Finding a New Normal

There’s a sweet moment that comes a few weeks after you arrive somewhere new, once the culture shock has subsided and you’ve more or less acclimatized to the idiosyncrasies of life in that particular place. When your daily activities start to take on a routine quality, a certain normalcy. When you’ve figured out how to get around and where you’re going, where to get the things you need. When you’ve lost the deer in the headlights look and you start to run into people you know when you are out and about.

How can you not love living in a neighbourhood that looks like this?

For me, this moment came some two and a bit weeks after arriving in Cameroon. It was mid-evening, but well after dusk and the power went out (again). Retreating from the cave-like recesses of my dark bedroom, I found myself out on the back steps, in the company of John and Pavel, the two young men who live and work out of the house. Though we had exchanged good mornings and similar pleasantries since my arrival, we had yet to have a real conversation. As I joined them, they began to pepper me with questions, largely beginning with “Do you people…?” They were especially amazed by our food, how we produce it (or don’t) and purchase it, what we do and don’t eat.

I've taken to calling the back steps "The Gathering Place". 

We sat for a long time, just talking in the utter darkness, each of us little more than a shadow against the dirty white tiles of the alcove. The slightest of breezes wafted, giving momentary prickles of chill where beads of sweat had gathered on my brow and upper lip. The shine of innumerable stars was visible through the palm fronds overhanging our line of vision. As we sat there, I realized that nothing about my day had left me overwhelmed or anxious. From the cold “shower” from a bucket that morning to the wandering neighborhood chickens chasing little lizards and disturbing my workout in the front yard to the broken skin at my knuckles from hand washing my laundry to using the necessary protocol for hailing a taxi– it had all just become my new normal.

Why is it the little lizards don't scare me at all, when everything else did?

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you no longer see the novelty or humor in things like goats tied by ropes to cinder blocks, left to graze in the grass and weeds along the side of the street, or the hen and her chicks pecking in the garbage scattered in and around the half barrels that pass as dumpsters along the main road. Nor does it mean that you cease to notice the things that might offend your own ingrained cultural notions… in some cases you become better informed, and learn to see things through another perspective, and in others you just kind of reach an acceptance about them where they no longer make you visibly cringe.

♪ Plantains roasting on an open fire, sweat drops dripping down your nose ♪

This is particularly true with regards to local standards of hygiene. Rinsing one’s hands briefly in a bowl of water, especially before a meal that is eaten with the hands, typically passes as handwashing. With no running water in most bathrooms, I don’t want to dwell too much on what handwashing habits might be in there. There are no qualms about preparing food on the floor, even on the ground out by the fire—indeed, having a “real” kitchen is a luxury many people here don’t have. I’ve eaten plantains covered in ash, because they were grilled directly IN the fire. I’ve helped pick up peppercorns that fell into the dirt off the stone slab on which they were being ground and watched them get thrown directly back into the mix without so much as a cursory blow to get the dirt off. I’ve watched my host take a knife that had just been used to butcher a chicken and proceed to immediately use it to cut up a papaya, after splashing it with water to remove the blood.  Mind you, the scrubber that is used to wash dishes looks to be about 10 years old, the drying cloth is filthy, and the soap chunk is regularly swarmed by flies, so perhaps actually washing it might not have been much better.

Once killed, the chicken are dipped in the pot over the fire to facilitate plucking, and then they are prepped for freezing or sale right on the back steps.

The chickens are plucked and gutted directly on the tiles of the back steps, and they sit in a pile attracting flies until all are done. Then they are rinsed in a 200-litre barrel and put into thin black plastic baggies which are tied at the handles before being put in the freezer. The back steps are rinsed with the same bloody water that the chickens were rinsed with, and an old t-shirt, dirt-crusted from being used as a mop, is used to swab the decks. I sometimes have to consciously will myself not to think about the lurking bacteria when we are sitting out on those very steps later and the flies are still swarming certain spots. Bleach is about the only cleaning product that is readily available in the village, so that’s what I use to clean my room and bathroom, along with torn chunks of the old sheet I had brought for the hostels in Europe (you know, seeing as how I don’t have any old t-shirts here to commit to the cause).

All that being said, while I am vigilant about using hand sanitizer myself regularly throughout the day, I have been eating with my hosts for weeks and have yet to contract salmonella, e-coli or any other particularly unpleasant bugs (knock on wood), so by and large it also makes me wonder if we aren’t a little germophobic in “the west”, if don’t go a little overkill on our cleanliness standards. Kids here are definitely hardier. They may have names like Precious and Blessing (true story), but they are far from the coddled, overprotected, over-scheduled little prizes they are back home. On the one hand, it is refreshing to see kids who are actually expected to chip in and help out with chores, like I was as a kid. On the other hand, it is disturbing from my own cultural perspective to see a full grown adult give a child a full force smack on the head, especially when they are not that child’s parent. Nevermind the way the kids wail on each other and the constantly and casually tossed threat, “if you… I’ll beat you”.

Watching these kids laugh and play, though, I find myself overjoyed that I see such contrast to the sad images of Africa that I grew up with. Sure, I see tattered clothes and runny noses and poverty so real that soccer is played on a dirt patch with an empty soda bottled and a balloon or a pack of playing cards is a prize worthy of innumerable hours of entertainment. But the image of a skeletal child with a distended belly, too powerless to swipe a fly off of his own face (I’m looking at you World Vision) does not exist here.

There is no sadness in these eyes. Mischief, maybe :)

And yes, I hear the yelling rows of the compound behind me—there are an obscene number of people/families living in very close quarters. But I also see a tremendous communal spirit. Everyone is “Aunty” or “Brother”. They share supplies, share food, share work. One of my favorite things to observe is when one of the nearby water sources is flowing, and everyone, from the youngest child on up, grabs buckets and receptacles in sizes relative to their own and sets out to collect. I couldn’t help but smile watching three of the littlest ones struggling together, clutching the sides of a burlap sac filled with individual bottles refilled at the community tap. Watching the young men, each carrying two of the large jugs—jugs that must weigh about 50 pounds each—I see why people here don’t need gyms to be ripped. Let me tell you, it is an effort to lift these jugs to put water in your bucket, let alone carry them 300 plus meters over rocky, uneven terrain. It’s like the ultimate farmer’s carry exercise.

From the research perspective, during this time period I completed recruitment and held the orientation sessions for my two main groups—one of which will be participating in a photography exercise, and the other in a journaling exercise.

My photography participants doing a mapping exercise.

So for now, the only problem is that after that moment when your new normal is established, time enters a warp and the days fly by. Suddenly six weeks could never be long enough, and the prospect of having to leave so soon after getting comfortable is just plain sad.

Ethical Dilemma

Arriving in Cameroon I had one major concern with regards to my research: I did not yet have local ethical approval to proceed. Despite the fact that I had reached out via multiple phone calls and emails more than four months before my arrival, I had yet to get in touch with anyone who could give me the information I needed to actually submit my ethics application in Cameroon. In October, I had (finally) received a return email inviting me to come visit the Vice Dean of research and cooperation once I arrived in Cameroon. Everyone I spoke to seemed sure that I could sort it all out on site, but that didn’t relieve the stress of not being sure if I would get approval in time to carry out my research within the short time frame I had available.

So, of course, once I had my bearings enough to know how to get to the neighbouring town of Buea, I set out. The trek involved two taxis, a “bus” ride and a 15 minute walk, but I found where I was going fairly easily. The Vice Dean, like everyone else I had encountered up to that point, had a slow, lolling demeanor that would be calming if it didn’t first inspire a rage of impatience. He sat me down and began talking to me like old friends shooting the breeze on a Sunday afternoon for a good while before turning the focus to my research topic. A half dozen questions later, he gave me a lopsided smile and said “See, your review is half done”.

He proceeded to try to call another professor, the chair of the Faculty of Health Sciences’ Institutional Review Board, but couldn’t get through. Then, as if fate itself were intervening, that very professor walked into the Vice Dean’s office looking for chalk. We were introduced and he assured me there was an expedited review coming up in just a couple of days and if I could get my application in by then, I could have my review done immediately. So the Vice Dean passed me along to an assistant on the main university campus (going so far as to ensure I had someone to drive me over and take me to the assistant’s door) to get all the documents and remaining information I needed.

Fortunately, from that point it was mainly a matter of revising the application and other materials I had prepared for the uOttawa ethics review and two days later, I was able to travel back to Buea to hand deliver two copies of the application package. Not even a week later, I was relieved/elated/ecstatic/pick your own preferred synonym of the foregoing to travel to Buea (for the 6^th time in less than 2 weeks) to pick up my approval letter. And not a single palm greased in the process!

Officially official, I have ethical approval in Cameroon :)

There was plenty to see, riding back and forth to Buea, even if the cramped conditions weren’t exactly conducive for taking pictures. Leaving Limbe, it is all plantations, big bunches of bananas protected by blue plastic wrapping. Further along, its palm plantations, with intermittent makeshift stalls along the road side selling opaque white liquid in reused water bottles—palm wine. A government school has a big sign out front proclaiming that “Pidgin is a hindrance to technological development.” Towards Mutengene, a butchering house swarms with activity, while the nearby stream is crawling with people washing their clothes. A little further up the road is a shallow pool of water, into which people drive to wash their vehicles, a line of taxis and buses waiting to wash off the grime of the workday. In town, the market is in full operation; wooden stalls bursting with fresh fruit, clothing and shoes in piles, giant buckets of hair extensions. Tubers like cocoyam and cassava lay in large, ugly piles, alongside firm green plantains on the stem in bundles on the ground. Itinerant vendors mill about, selling goods and food from buckets and platters balanced on their heads. Between the market and the road is a solid layer of garbage a foot thick, giving the whole atmosphere a vaguely putrid smell.

Beyond Mutengene, plant and flower vendors add beauty and variety to the roadside. For kilometers, men work, digging trenches for a water line. Their bulging biceps and bare backs glisten with the sweat of their labor. Everything is manual, there is not a single piece of modern machinery in sight. And all along, messages spray painted in red can be spied on the outer walls of the homes and other buildings lining the roadside. Instructions to “replace roof”, “conform to standard” or even “demolish” are accompanied by a date, sometimes with an additional “Final Warning”. Arriving at Mile 17 in Buea, vendors swarm the vehicles. On the weekend, it’s mostly children—often grubby and in tattered clothes—selling peanuts, oranges, smoked snails, tissues, watches and packaged cookies and candies.

The correct way to eat oranges, apparently.

Speaking of oranges… Did you know we’ve been eating them wrong our whole lives? Here, they are “cleaned”—the outer layer of the peel deftly removed with a knife, and a flap cut into the top from which you can suck and squeeze out all the juice. Poppa got quite a laugh out of the fact that I could not clean the oranges myself. When I began peeling with the knife, I kept knicking too deep in the white layer, so that when you squeeze, you end up getting covered in juice. Likewise, Pavel found it pretty funny that I could not pry the coconut out of the shell, even though I said I loved coconut when he gifted me with half of one he had just pulled off the tree.

One of the best gifts ever. Especially when he removed it from the shell for me.

Spiders and Catholics and laundry, oh my!

It’s a good thing I’ve been single for as long as I have.

That’s what was going through my mind when, roughly 17 hours after landing in Cameroon, a rather large spider decided to pay me a visit in my bathroom. See, without the benefit of an SO to put on pest control, I’ve been in charge of all my own spider killing for many years now. Which I’m convinced is the only reason I could sanely and calmly (on the outside) ask for the straw-like bundle that passes as a broom, and steel myself to take a smack at the colossal demon spawn. The bugger was quick, though, and it took a few swipes to take him out. He fell, unceremoniously, beside the toilet, where I proceeded to leave his corpse for the next two days, because I couldn’t bring myself to touch it.

He's harmless, but still not a welcome visitor.

Then I woke up one morning and it was gone. Poof! Vamoose!

Do you know what’s creepier than having creepy crawlies as unexpected visitors? When their corpses freaking disappear between when you go to bed and when you wake up! Like, what was in the name of all that is holy was in my room while I was sleeping? Maybe it was the mouse, out for a midnight treat. Maybe, MAYBE it was the cockroach that woke me up in the middle of the night, crawling on my legs. (Do cockroaches eat spiders?) I can assure you, there’s not much like a middle-of-the-night cockroach wake up call to freak you right out. Nevermind the adrenaline rush of the subsequent hunt to kill it. Cause you best believe, I’m not going back to sleep with that thing on the loose. 

I lovingly refer to my mosquito net as my "princess canopy". It seems to do a good job at keeping out mosquitoes, but you know what it does not keep out? Cockroaches. Cockroaches that like to come and crawl on me in the middle of the night.

This… well, this is where I admit that I’ve taken to sleeping with the light on, because I'm a baby and the bugs and vermin seem to prefer the dark. Also, with ear plugs, which serves the dual purpose of drowning out some of the cacophony the neighbors make in the morning (seriously, children crying, mothers yelling, fire crackling, water sloshing, music thumping, brooms swishing…  it all sounds as if it is happening inside my room) and ensuring that no stray crawling things attack my brain (I know, I’m crazy, I can’t help it, that’s all I really have).

But lest you think all I can do is complain, let me assure you, Cameroon is lovely. It is a beautiful country, rich in resources and full of friendly, smiling faces. I have a fantastic host family, in a great a community that has been both curious and hospitable. It really just is an entirely different way of life, of thinking, of being and it takes some getting used to.

Welcome to the Jungle

My home away from home. 

I am living in a seaside village called Mokundange, which is a neighbourhood of the town of Limbe. My host, Eric, has a number of jobs and positions, but his main source of income is a poultry farm, part of which is adjacent to the house. He and his wife Gloria have three children, two of whom are away at university, and the youngest, who goes by the nickname Poppa is an active and mischevious boy of 10. Two other young men also live at the house with us, students who also work at the farm. Before introducing me, Gloria told me that one is black and one is red. For a moment, I actually thought she might mean Native American... but it turns out Pavel is albino.

My incredibly hospitable hosts, Eric and Gloria.

John and Pavel also live in the house.

My first few days here were obviously the most shocking to the system. In addition to the usual constraints of being in a new place-- not knowing anyone, or where to find anything you might be looking for-- there is an added level of complexity in not knowing how the local transportation systems work, confronting language barriers, and the self-conscious feeling of being blatantly stared at wherever you go. Not to mention confronting foods that are entirely foreign to you and your taste pallet. Notably, without an Internet connection, for the first few days I felt a sense of isolation, even a little trapped, lacking courage to venture far beyond my temporary home, or even the confines of my own room.

My hosts have a gas stove-- a luxury that not everyone around here has-- but only one burner works anymore. The oven is never used in cooking.

A small fire pit near the back steps outside the kitchen serves as an additional burner. This back area is also where the chickens are killed and plucked.

Plantains are yum. The veg... less so. Bitter is a taste sensation that is much more appreciated here. Alas, it is a very healthy, balanced meal

The day after I arrived, Gloria was going to a church event in a nearby town called Buea and invited me to come along, as I would have to go there by myself during the week to try to sort out some ethics stuff for my research at the local University. It was a Catholic mass celebrating the closing of the Year of Mercy for the diocese. The singing was lively and full of praise, accompanied by large African drums, but I could scarcely understand the sermon, as it was given in pidgin English. We joined the crowd clamoring for taxis and I marveled as people streamed in to the yellow vehicles, many in various stages of use and disrepair-- four in the back, two on the front seat, crammed together like clowns in their little car. Some even opened their hatchbacks and allowed another half dozen people to squat in its depths. It was much the same on the "bus" back to Limbe. Really, a 15-passenger van, made to fit 19 people, the smell of BO hung thick in the air and personal space was nonexistent as we piled in, a mass of slick limbs and handbags. 

That Sunday I also went to church with Gloria, since the LDS churches are too far to attend. I enjoyed the joyful music, the swaying congregation, the genuine worship I witnessed all around me. At the end of the service, everyone gathered outside, where the harvest offerings were auctioned off, and various presentations of dancers and dramas (including Satan tempting the Lord) were performed in celebration of the Feast of All Saints. 

On Tuesday, I was able to meet with the person who would serve as my research assistant to go over all the plans with her, to talk about recruitment (even though I technically would not be allowed to start until I received my full ethical clearance) and generally introduce her to my work. It was a huge relief to feel like SOMETHING was under way after days of not accomplishing a whole heck of a lot, other than maybe acclimatizing a little.

By then, I’d already had to wash my first load of clothes… which in and of itself is not new. I’ve washed by hand before. But the reality that here, this is my only option settled squarely on my shoulders as I hunched over the purple bucket—the same bucket that triples as my personal washing basin and holds the water I have to keep beside the toilet to “flush”. There is something pleasantly mindless about scrubbing your clothes, especially as I did under the morning sun on the veranda, but suddenly I appreciate that much more the time-saving convenience of my washing machine at home.

This is what laundry day looks like here.

I thought about the hours people here spend cleaning their clothes by hand—literally, not so much as the scrubbing boards and wringing implements that our elders used before they had machines in North America—and wondered what might be accomplished if all that time could be allocated somewhere else. Then I thought about what we… or at least, what I do with that time. Most of the time, I think I squander it. Facebook or YouTube, maybe reading about celebrity babies online. Too rarely, I think, do I actually make good use of the time it saves me. Which is probably why despite having all those “time-saving” devices at home, it feels like there are more hours in a day here. Without my phone and the Internet distracting me by small measures throughout the day (and admittedly without the regular aspects of social activities and volunteer stuff to attend to) I seem to have more hours in a day than I really know what to do with.

Gloria would tell me it’s because I move too fast (I don’t think this is something I’ve ever been accused of at home). The other day when we were walking she kept telling me to slow down. She started telling me that their impression of Europeans (which is how everyone here refers to me, even though they’re well aware I’m from Canada) is that they are always running, always busy, always stressed and harried. Life is not like that here, she explained. “We take our time”. True enough, sometimes it is an exercise in patience to walk with someone here, meandering at a dawdling pace, perhaps a touch faster than a snail, or you know, a glacier. Practically, it is to help avoid sweating too much, Gloria tells me. “If you go too fast and you sweat much, then no one wants to sit beside you in a taxi”. Having been in a fair few taxis and buses now, I can honestly say I have the impression that you’d have to smell bad enough to knock over a rhinoceros to really offend the olfactory senses of anyone here. Plus, I have the blessing of deodorant that helps keep the smell at bay, even if I’m sweating like a pig on the spit on the middle of August.

Mind you, I’m not sure how fast I’d be going if I was carrying the loads that many people here regularly carry—usually on their heads. We’ve all seen photos of African women carrying giant jugs of water and other things on their heads, but it is something else entirely to see it up close. To lift a full jug from the floor to fill my purple bucket with not a small amount of effort, and realize that many women balance that preposterous weight on their heads, with another one strapped to their front, and an infant strapped to their back. And it’s not just the weight that’s impressive—the things that they balance: an entire stem’s worth of plantains, bags of rice, buckets full of soft drinks, trays of peanuts or sunglasses. Or, or… the one that makes me chuckle a little—backpacks. Because, like why use the handles and carry it on your back if you could put it on your head?