Fulfillment

“What should I say when people ask if you are happy there?”  My parents have been visiting the past week and this was the first question my dad asked me.  This past week I’ve been thinking a lot about that question as well as similar questions I receive from current Peace Corps Volunteers, asking why I decided to come back.   I usually tell the current Peace Corps Volunteers you will understand after you return to the United States and experience the void.   Indeed, some of the Peace Corps Volunteers I served with have contacted me and told me they are living vicariously through me and wish to return.  My dad’s question took me by surprise and I never gave him an adequate answer, primarily because I don’t think I would use the word happy to describe how I generally feel about living and working here.  If its not happiness, why did I and others want to come back?  Malidona Some, an African writer living in America said, “Every Westerner who visits my village leaves with one thing, and that is the experience of the intensity of human connection and attention.  It is not the magic, the ritual of ceremonies that are done, but an awareness of the human connection that they take away.  That is what makes them long to return again, because that is what they don’t get here.”  And I agree, it is a sense of connection, completeness, fulfillment, wholeness that I searched for in other countries and states after I returned from Cameroon and never found until I came back a couple of months ago.  In Cameroon there is little separation between my public and private life.  I work at my house and people knock on my doors at all hours of the day.  They see me when I first roll out of bed and right before I fall asleep.  Because I am white it is impossible to be anonymous and hide, people know when I sleep, shop, work, eat, travel. They see me and are getting to know me, all of me.  My research colleagues here are some of my closest friends, I hang out at their house, know their families, and they know mine.  Cameroon is a very religious society and it is easy to talk to anyone about matters of faith.  When I return from a trip to Bamenda people say, “Thank God for your safe journey.”  Sometimes I wish I had more privacy, but I know that I if I did, life would be monotonous and the connections with my surroundings wouldn’t be as real or complete.  Due to the various challenges living and working here requires all of my mind, body, and soul thus bringing the serenity I yearn for and have experienced nowhere else. 

I realized months ago, that the actual developed and tested audio program may make little difference, but I believe living here and working with Cameroonians to develop the audio program does make a difference.  A couple of weeks ago Dr. Okwen and I facilitated a workshop about designing and disseminating effective health interventions.  We used our project as a template to increase the capacity 20 community development and media professionals on how to do formative research and then use the media to disseminate their results.  I heard some of the participants say that they will use the skills they developed to address other issues in their communities such as injection safety, hospital waste disposal, birth certificate registration, and education.  It was probably the most fulfilling thing I have done so far as I was able to use my knowledge and experience to increase the capacity of local health workers to design their own health interventions.  So am I happy here?  Not always.  But I do feel fulfilled and complete.      

Some of the knowledge development participants

Connections



Katie, Maureen, Mayor Larry, me, Kathie

Connections happen differently in Cameroon then they do in America.  Perhaps it is from the combination of being an expatriate living in Cameroon and the open hospitality of Cameroonians.  In the middle of February I was at a yoga class and met Chris and Katie.  That morning I was equally surprised to find a place in Kumbo that offers yoga classes and to meet two white people from America.  After asking the usual questions of how long they were here and what they were doing here, I invited them to my house for pizza.  That evening I learned that Katie is from Minnesota, Chris from Wisconsin, they met while attending the University of Wisconsin and quickly understood why they enjoyed the cheese on my pizza so much.  They explained that they do not have a refrigerator at their house and were missing dairy products.  Thus, I wasn’t too surprised when they told me they met the Mayor of Jakiri, a nearby city, who also owns one of the few operating dairies in the country. 




Mborro's deworming their cattle

 

This past week they invited me to meet the Mayor and visit his dairy.  Mayor Larry, as we call him, picked us up in his Toyota 4Runner and during the 45-minute car ride explained that he went to the University of Minnesota and lived in the Twin Cities for ten years learning about the American dairy industry.  I made the connection that this is the same industry that my mother’s family has been a part of since they immigrated to Minnesota from Holland.  In his American accent, he told us that he worked with Land O’Lakes to start a dairy in Cameroon.  The dairy operates like a co-op and works the Mborro farmers to produce yogurt and cheese.  This concept is revolutionary in Cameroon because the Mborro farmers do not tend to settle in one location with their cows, but move around with them to greener pastures. However, the Mborros who are a part of the Tadu Dairy Co-Op stay close the dairy during the wet season and then migrate during the dry season.  This explanation led to a good discussion between Katie, Mayor Larry, and I as we made connections between Tadu dairy and how to bring development from the West that is flexible and culturally sensitive




Processing yogurt

  During the tour of the dairy, we were shown how they produce yogurt, a desired product among wealthy Cameroonians, cheese, an even more desired product among the expatriates in Cameroon, and the equipment for processing milk.  Our tour guide explained that they aren’t producing milk yet because there is not much of a market for the product among Cameroonians.  I knew this, but was particularly relevant as this past week I have als been researching nutritional rickets in Cameroon and making the connection that the cause of the disease is most likely not because of deficiency in vitamin D, as it is typically classified, but because of a calcium deficiency.  I was doing the research in preparation for a health talk I gave for the physical therapists at the nearby Banso Baptist Hospital.  Because yogurt and powdered milk are too expensive for a typical Cameroonian the best local source for calcium is eating chicken and fish bones (which is normal).   Below are some more pictures of the dairy.


  
 

Cheese to sell to the white men




Containers for milk collection







View of the Dairy







 



 



One Year

Friday, May 7, 2010. For weeks this date loomed in the back of my mind. It was the day all of the paperwork had to be ready to submit to the Nestle Foundation for our research grant. I spent that morning finalizing the necessary documents and came home exhausted and wondering if we really had everything together. Not long after I arrived home, my phone rang. “Sister Kate, this is Mr. Peter. I’m calling to tell you that Eunice died today.” Silence. I knew the phone call from Cameroon was expensive and there was no time to ask questions and even if there was, I didn't know what to say. I simply said thank you and hung up the phone. Thus began the long, slow process of grieving the loss of a good friend. 

Eunice was my closest friend when I lived here before in Bafut. She realized that a young female Peace Corps Volunteer would have trouble living in a small village in Cameroon. She made my problems of growing food and taking care of my health and home her problem. She taught me the meaning of my favorite Pidgin English word, ashia. In American English, ashia means, “I see your problem, I share with you.” It is a very useful word and used to show respect, to greet others, or to demonstrate concern and care for another. One day when I was running, fell, and hurt my knee, the first word Eunice said to me was “Ashia.” When I found her hauling water to keep my garden growing in the dry season I would tell her, “Ashia.” During my two years in Bafut, Eunice and I bonded through many joys and challenges. She stayed with me the night after thieves attempted to break into my house. She encouraged me and affirmed my work when often I felt like I was failing as a Peace Corps Volunteer. She confided in me when her husband was unfaithful. She cried on my shoulder when her uncle died. It is common in Cameroon for people to call each other “Brother”, “Sister”, “Aunt” and “Uncle” when they really aren’t related. We called each other Sister Eunice and Sister Kate not just out of respect, but to demonstrate the depth of our relationship.

Working in garden.  I insisted that we planted groudnuts in addition to the corn and beans.

Shortly after I left Cameroon in 2007, Eunice gave birth to her third child. The baby girl was given the name Kate because according to Eunice, “The baby's coming to my life is a surprise just as Kate who came to as a surprise and very loving to me.” I knew that Eunice didn't want to have anymore children, but after I met Baby Kate in March 2009 it was obvious that Baby Kate was her joy.

Eunice and Baby Kate in 2009

Eunice with her sons Lord and Babila and Baby Kate

After I returned from that visit to Cameroon, Eunice emailed me to tell me that she was diagnosed with gastric cancer. She received chemotherapy treatment in Yaoundé and for a few months, she was better. I will never forget the phone call when she told me, "Sister Kate, I'm better! They told me I wouldn't live, but God is in control and I'm alive!" Then in January of 2010, she got worse. She went to a hospital not far from where I live now and had a hysterectomy. She was in the hospital for over a month and each time I would call she would tell me that Baby Kate was with her. Occasionally she would put the phone next to Baby Kate and she would just giggle. Over time the phone calls became more somber as her cancer progressed and she contracted hepatitis B and C. Each time she would ask me to come and take care of her children. In April of 2010 she begged that I would come see her before she died. My mom and I booked flights to visit in June, but we arrived a month and half after she died.

Eunice's grave

Part of the reason that I chose to do my doctoral research in Cameroon was so I could come back to Cameroon and be close to Eunice’s family, to keep my promise to her that I would look after her children. It has been joyful to visit them for Youth Day, Kate’s birthday, and Easter, but also very difficult. I see Eunice’s tenacity in Kate, her broad smile in Babila, and dependability in Lord and wish she were here. I wish she were here to listen to Kate laugh and see how Babila and Lord take care of their sister and other household chores. I wish she were here to see that I did come back to Cameroon and am building on what she taught me about solidarity with others and how to survive in Cameroon. When Peter, Eunice’s husband invited me to attend a small memorial service last week to commemorate the year anniversary of Eunice’s death, I knew I had to be there, but also knew that it would be hard. I knew that it would conjure up everything I learned and experienced this past year in grieving the loss of a good friend—the questions, the guilt, the sorrow, the anger, the disbelief. But I went. I went and cried with Babila and reminded him that it is okay to cry and miss his mother. I held Kate as she cried herself to sleep in my arms. Lord and Babila drew pictures to remember their mother. Babila drew a picture of a tree because, “Trees make places to be nice and my mama made places to be nice.” Lord drew a picture of him helping his mother making frozen ice cream. Kate just copied her brothers and enjoyed the new colored pencils.

Babila and his picture of a tree

But we also laughed and ate good food.  Lord and Babila love to play with my camera and we took a lot of "snaps".  Their reiliency never ceases to amaze me and am honored that they call me, "Sister Kate".

Those who have died live on in me and inspire me with their example and the rich legacy of love from their earthly lives. Their lives touch mine. Their lives make a difference in mine. As part of a family or community we make the dead part of our members so as to receive the gift of their spirits. Loved ones who have died are remembered in worship and prayers, in conversations, with photographs, and by visiting their graves. Life goes on, but with their rememberance enriching our lives.

Henri Nouwen, Finding My Way Home

Laughter

In an effort to balance some recent serious postings I think now is a good time to write about what makes me laugh in Cameroon. 

People’s perceptions of me: I do not think a week goes by that someone doesn’t ask me where I am from.  I usually respond by saying, “Guess”.  Sometimes the person will say the US right away, but other times they will say Germany, Canada, the UK, or the Netherlands, and just today someone guessed Tokyo.  I still am proud of the day when someone said Morocco because of the way I was dressed that day.  Of course, he also thought I was a refugee from that country looking for a job in Cameroon, so I don’t know what that really says about my African style and composure.  However, the funniest so far was when I played the game with a half-drunk man in a taxi in Bamenda.  After he asked me and I said, “Guess” he said, “I haven’t heard of that country, I’ll have to look at my atlas.”

Children:  It is always hard not to smile and laugh when children are around.  Sometimes I laugh at their hats like in the picture below:

More commonly, I laugh at their greetings.  There is a group of children that I pass on my runs.  Without fail they yell out, “Good morning, white man!” but lately they have change their greeting to, “Good morning my friend!”  After I pass by, they resolutely shout out, “Good Bye!”

Awkward situations: Sometimes these situations are just embarrassing like people starring at me when I forgot to greet the Fon (the Northwest version of a tribal chief) properly, or forgetting that pants refers to undergarments instead trousers, but sometimes they are just funny.  For example, last week tile was installed in my house and it is beautiful, but slippery.  A couple of nights ago, right before I went to bed, I climbed the ladder to get something from my loft.  Just as I place my foot on the top rung, I felt the ladder slip from underneath me.  I quickly scrabbled onto the loft floor, but then realized I had no way to get back downstairs.   I called out the window and a guard heard my pleas for help. The next problem was that my house was locked from the inside and no spare keys.  Thankfully, he found an open window and climbed through, “like a pussy cat,” as he said and held the ladder while I climbed back down in my pajamas.  Ever since that night I feel a special bond with Joe.   

Names: Some Cameroon names (and the people, for that matter) are so inspirational you feel like you’ve had your daily devotion after meeting them.  Hope, Faith, Godlove, Blessing, Promise, Favor, to name just a few.  But sometimes it is hard not to laugh out loud when someone introduces himself as Mystery, Danger, Maxim, Spy, or Ma Boy.  I have recently been given a Banso name, Fomonyuy.  It means God’s gift.  I find that having a traditional name is handy when men are proposing marriage and I don’t want to give them my real name.     

Pagne: The market is full of colorful fabrics just waiting for someone to buy and make dresses in all sorts of styles.  Usually these fabrics are just colorful designs, but sometimes I laugh when I see objects on them like lampshades and tea kettles, the President Paul Biya, or food like beans and groundnuts. I’m still searching for the right groundnut pagne.

Lampshade Pagne. 

Traveling salesmen: This is often the best source of humor in Cameroon.  Whenever I travel between Bamenda to Douala or Yaoundé, it is common to have a man on the bus who is trying to sell his magic potion that cures every kind of sickness and disease.  My favorite traveling salesman is a renaissance man.  He first comes on board the bus, gives us traveling advice about where to buy food along the road, and warns us not to put our hands outside the bus. Then he leads us in corporate prayers, songs, and dances.  He gets us moving around on the bus shaking people’s hands and singing.  After that, he gets out his black stone to cure snake bites and his magic potion to cure hemorrhoids, diabetes, cough, and reproductive problems and shows us exactly how to use it on different body orifices.  I have never bought anything from him, but I have bought sesame seeds in the market that promised the same miraculous treatment.  I ate some granola with the sesame seeds. I don’t feel any different.       

     

Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God

Teilhard de Chardin

The Sorrow

“Today we didn’t have classes because one of our classmates died yesterday.  He tripped over a gun and shot himself.”

“My husband didn’t know how to swim and he drowned in the lake.”

“One of our members from Christian Women’s Fellowship lost her husband last week.”

“Our house was attacked by thieves.  They came in and forced my son to drink kerosene because they wanted to kill him.”

“Ah, Sister, the day after you left some thieves came and broke the bars on the doors and stole money I had for the children’s school fees.”

“Last week our friends where held at gun point while the thieves went through their house.”

I heard these statements from various friends this past week.  Statements that remind me how hard and short life can be in Cameroon.  Statements that evoke the same feelings I felt when I was here before and came flooding back so strongly right before I came that I almost didn’t return to Cameroon. As I deepen relationships with friends in Cameroon I am reminded that sharing in their life means opening myself up to their sorrow and pain.  I don’t want to.  I want to just experience the joys of a shared hug, smile, meal, song, dance, safety-- the beautiful moments I have had the past two months.  I want to go around or run away from the pain, the sorrows, the fear.  I want to live a safe life in my house doing my research and believe that I can make a difference through scholarly achievements alone.  But I know that in doing so I’m not really living or being helpful to my friends.  As Henri Nouwen says, “We want to be professionals: heal the sick, help the poor, teach the ignorant, and organize the scattered.  But the temptation is that we use our expertise to keep a safe distance from that which really matters and forge that in the long run, cure without care is more harmful than helpful.  Let us therefore first ask ourselves what care really means and then see how care can become the basis of community.”

I was thinking about this again this morning, Palm Sunday, and realized that when I returned to Cameroon it was a joyful, triumphal re-entry.  It was great to be back, to renew friendships, to eat the food again.  Now I am called to move through the other emotions that Holy Week evoke—pain, separation, grief, sorrow, and stay with and care for my friends, not run away, not try to cure them, and patiently wait the promise of Easter.     

For many of us, the life we need to lose is life lived in the image of the autonomous self, and the life we shall then find is that of the self embedded in community—a community that connects us not only to other people but to the natural world as well.  No wonder resurrection is so threatening; it forces us to abandon any illusion we may have that we are in charge of our own lives, able to do whatever we want accountable to no one but ourselves, free of responsibility to others.

Parker Palmer

Chop Fayne

Considering that I spend a significant amount of time each day thinking about, looking for, preparing, and cleaning up meals it is surprising that I haven’t written much about what I eat, or as it is said in Pidgin, chop.  I usually find it an enjoyable challenge to experiment making American food with Cameroon ingredients.  Thanks to my Mennonite cookbook, More with Less, and the Cameroon Peace Corps cookbook, Chop Fayner, I have recipes to make everything from laundry soap to Apple Pie.  I’m  also fortunate to live in a house with a refrigerator, a stove, oven, and a freezer, in a region in Cameroon with access to plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and a white man store nearby to buy yogurt, cheese, and butter. 

My day usually begins with coffee and vanilla flavored powdered milk.  The coffee market in Cameroon is resurging after bottoming in the early 90’s.  My favorite kind of coffee, which I have only found in Kumbo, is called Every Sip a Safari.  It is my favorite not because of the taste, but because of what it says on the back of the package:

A wired galaxy of savored darkness

The swirling dark liquid in my cup, in my mouth.

Ah what soothing fire, a plague upon sleep this coffee is.

Seep sanity away, ye champion of caffeine.

Wither the coffee curves around blocks of ice in my cup

of a hot steam gallops from the hot liquid, I shall sip with affection and lust.

Sweep my stress away, ye champion of flavor.

Turn the jumbo into jingle.

Turn the swamp into a river.

Turn the woman/man into a lover.

Yet I plead to every God, and oath to every start, turn the water into coffee. 

What an ode to coffee!

That is the coffee package on the left, my French Press, and starbucks mug.  The mug was here when I moved into my house.  It brings a smile to my face to drink coffee from a starbucks mug even though I don't think there is starbucks on the African continent.

This is my vegetable mommy.  I buy tomatoes, onions, and pears (avocados) from her about two times a week.

This is me working in the farm.  Almost all of the women here plant, weed, and harvest by hand using that hoe. I usually don't help much, but provide a lot of comic relief as the African women pass by and laugh at the white girl trying to weed grass.

Picking pumpkin leaves for that night's dinner. I cooked the pumpkin leaves with tomatoes, onion, and salt and served with my version of fu-fu corn---cornbread!

Today I helped Emmanuela's family make ekwang. I call it a Cameroon version of manicotti, but instead of stuffing shells with cheese you stuff leaves with mashed yams.

We first started by washing the cocoyams,

destemming the cocoyam leaves,

 grating  the cocoyams into a fine mush,

putting into the leaves, rolling them,

and putting them into the pot and cooking it over the fire with tomatoes, onion, and crawfish.

Chop Fayne!

But I usually don't make Cameroon meals when I'm by myself.  Instead I make American food like pizza, tortillas and guacamole, lentil soup, cheese enchiladas, and bread.

Now that mangos are coming into season I'm beginning to experiment with the fruit.  The other day I made mango kuchen.  It is kind of like cobbler. 

In the picture is my locally made bread pan.  I went looking for a bread pan at the white man store and they brought me to a car part store where a man was making things out of sheet metal.  So yes, my bread pan is made out of sheet metal. 

I'm realizing that cooking in Cameroon is a good metaphor for life--making the most of what you have while adapting to the local context. 

Good food should be grown on whole soil, and be eaten whole, unprocessed, and garden fresh.

Helen and Scott Nearing

Living the Good Life

The Second Goal

Even though I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer, I sometimes feel I am still working towards achieving the second goal of Peace Corps service, “Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.”  Sometimes this happens without really intending to do so and other times it is an overt attempt to transfer skills and build capacity with my research colleagues.  Regardless, it usually turns out quite different than I expected.  For example, this past weekend Odette has been staying with me in my house.  I met Odette when I lived in Bafut as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  We both attended the Bafut Presbyterian Church and she would come once a week to wash my floors in my house.  When I visited Bafut for Youth Day, she asked if she could come to Kumbo during school holidays.  I said yes, but didn’t think it would actually happen.  Nevertheless, she called two weeks ago and said she was coming this week and how could I say no to such an excited voice on the phone?  She met me in Bamenda on Thursday accompanied me back to Kumbo.  When we got to my house Thursday night I asked, “What do you want to do tomorrow?”  “I will clean your dresses and dry clean your floor” was her reply.  When I heard this, I had two simultaneous thoughts.  First, only an African child would say that on vacation they want to wash clothes by hand and second, I get a break from having to wash my clothes by hand!  But I also wanted her to have fun while she was here and promised her that we would have a slumber party in the evening.  This was my attempt at sharing American culture.  I had a great plan of moving the mattresses from the beds and putting them in the loft and staying up late telling stories and sleeping in and eating pancakes the following morning.  After all, isn’t that what an American slumber party entails?  But this is what actually happened—it took some persuading that sleeping on mattresses on the floor would be fun, she went to bed before me at 9 pm, and after she woke at 6 am she immediately started sweeping my floor.  Well, I thought it was fun, and not because I didn’t have to sweep my floor that morning. 

Unfortunately, I cannot say that my attempts to transfer of knowledge and skills turn out any better.  Last week I was working with some colleagues of Dr. Okwen’s and Nancy’s because they wanted to learn about qualitative research methodologies.  I wasn’t exactly prepared to go over the mechanics of the process as I thought the trip to Bamenda would be about coding our data, not giving a crash course in health behavior change theories.  After the few hours of working with them on Tuesday and Wednesday, I’m not sure they really understood what I was saying.  Upon further reflection I was reminded of my bad habit of assuming because I understand how something works, everyone else does too and make too many leaps and assumptions in my teaching.  Instead, I think I should take a cue from the following picture:

This paper was posted on the stall of a flushing toilet in a training center.  I think many Cameroonians from rural areas come to the training center and may never have used a flushing toilet.  At first I found it humorous, but later realized it actually is a very good teaching tool because it provides step by step instructions and doesn't assume the reader has any previous knowledge or experience with using a flushing toilet. 

Maybe whenever I find myself working on the second goal my mantra should be, “Look to the toilet!” 

Men and women confronting change are never fully prepared for the demands of the moment, but they are strengthened to meet uncertainty if they can claim a history of improvisation and a history of reflection.

Mary Catherine Bateson, Peripheral Visions