Solar Panel Project

Here are photos of the solar panel project where with the help of an RPCV, an NGO, and my host organization, we were able to install 2 80-kW solar panels at an orphanage. The orphanage is located in the tiny village of Bandzuidjong (population of 100). It takes an hour on a moto bushwhacking along a tiny made-up path into the jungle to get to the village. Once you’re there, it is gorgeous with rain forest covered mountains all around. The orphanage sits on a hill overlooking the village. There are about 20 orphans residing at this location, although the orphanage has 2 sister orphanages located in cities nearby.

I recently went to visit the orphanage to see how the panels were working now in the heart of rainy season. Even with daily downpours, the panels (and batteries) are able to produce enough power to keep 20 lights illuminated all through the night! The kids were thrilled because they said that no more snakes enter the house because they are afraid of the light. The orphanage director is delighted because they can now use evening hours (the sun sets by 6:30 pm here) for study time. It was a really fun project to do and I hope to do more soon!

The Notice Board

My postmate and I made plans to have a meeting with all of the geography and history teachers at the high school for Teacher Training activities. On the day of the meeting, we arrived prepared for the activities only to walk into an empty room. Apparently, all of the teachers were told only the night before that there is a geography/history seminar in the city that same day. Of course, they are given little notice as it always happens here and no one tells us that it is canceled.

We tried to get a hold of them to reschedule, but there was no cell phone reception at the high school. Instead, we were advised to leave them a note on the “notice board”. This is just a blackboard in a classroom that is covered in hand written pieces of paper glued (not taped from some reason or even just written in chalk because it doesn’t really erase) to the blackboard. We searched for glue in the classrooms, but all of the teachers and students bring supplies back home with them at the end of the day since there are no doors to the classrooms.

Finally, we found a tree outside and used its sap to paste the note to the board. Nothing ever works as you had planned in Africa, but it always does seem to work eventually in ways you never imagined.

West Africa

Here are a few photos from my trip backpacking around West Africa. I traveled with 2 other volunteers visiting Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Benin for 3 1/2 weeks.



















Highlights include winding along the mud streets around the world's largest mud building in Mali, trekking through the Sahel in isolated Dogon Country in Mali - an area still rich in traditional culture, hopping around the cascading waterfalls in Burkina with one of my best friends from high school who is a PCV in Burkina, climbing to the ancient cliff fortresses in northern Togo, catching butterflies with nets in the rain forested mountains in southern Togo, walking around the Voodoo markets of Lome, relaxing in the sun on the beautiful beaches of Benin, and sailing around a stilt village entirely built on sticks in the middle of a lake in Benin.











It was a great trip and a lot of fun, but its good to be back in Cameroon, which as it turns out, has a lot more than most other countries in West Africa - we actually have a regular supply of fruits and veggies! It was a great break and now I'm ready to take on Year 2...

Summer Camps

Below are a few photos of the adorable children at another summer camp that I helped out with teaching a whole range of topics including savings, water & sanitation, and goal setting. We started this camp out by both milking a cow and delivering a baby cow...

Jewelry Making Project

I started a jewelry making project with another volunteer at an orphanage in Dschang. The idea is for the orphans to make money to pay for school and medical costs, as well as save some money and learn a trade for when they leave the orphanage and start living on their own. We invited an artisan to teach them how to make necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. On the right, the orphans are using a candle to secure the clasps. We divided the older orphans into teams of quality control, anti-theft, and finance, which they really like! We made a website: https://sites.google.com/site/cibaeeva/

A few weeks ago, we also taught the orphans how to crochet purses out of old plastic bags. None of the volunteers got it, but the orphans got it right away and started whipping out purses complete with zippers and handles in just an hour! It's another potential income generating activity which they are psyched about.

How to bake a cake without an oven

Ovens are scare here, but don't worry, there are still ways to make baked goods. What you do is take an enormous pot, put a bowl at the bottom, then put the pan with the cake batter on top. You put the lid of the big pot on and place the entire thing over a fire. It gets tricky setting the right temperature, so you have to play around with it a lot adding wood and taking some away.

The food here, otherwise, is sometimes great and sometimes not so great. Unlike Madagascar where I had rice every single day, I eat a much more varied diet of starches here: corn, manioc, rice, pasta, and lots of plantains. My homestay family’s favorite meal was couscous de maize.Do not confuse these couscous with those of Northern Africa…what they mean by couscous here is dried, powdered corn or manioc that is added to boiling water and essentially tasteless and void of any vitamins. My first night in country we ate it with Gumbo – a snot-like, guey green sauce, which did not make a good first impression. Luckily, there is really great fruit!

On the right is a picture of a baker's oven. I'm trying to teach him how to make chocolate chip cookies!

The Bread Man

This is the Bread Man. He, along with his buddies arrive bright and early every morning at each boutique with a big stack of bread on the back of their motos delivering fresh loaves. In my village, we get Mbouda bread as it comes from a town called Mbouda and it is the best bread in all of Cameroon. It can only be purchased from the bread men if you’re not actually in Mbouda, so there is only small radius in Cameroon where it can be bought. If you put a little cream cheese on there, it is the closest thing we can get to a Bagel!

Introducing Wala Wahala

This is my new kitten! I got her to chase all the mice away and maybe even some bugs. Her name means “Nothing but Trouble” in two languages spoken throughout Cameroon– Fulfulde (Wala) and Pidgin (Wahala).

The World Map Project

My postmate and I decided to do the World Map Project at the local high school. We are doing this project for two reasons: 1) Unlike in American schools that have walls covered in diagrams, charts, and art work, the walls of schools in Cameroon are completely blank, and 2) Some of the students have never seen a map and many had trouble pointing out which continent was Africa.

The painting of the map went well until we started getting help from the students. As a result, some of the countries are now missing as they were painted over with the wrong colors, some new countries have appeared because two colors were used on one country, and I’m pretty sure Brazil is never going to dry after the technique of globing paint was used. Also, all the islands around Canada were painted, as in the sea was painted – not the actual islands. It turns out half the project is going to be devoted towards touch-ups. In the end, however, everyone had a lot of fun, especially since many of the students have never painted before (no art classes here). And the map eventually turned out all right:

Expo

ACREST and I organized an expo to sell their improved stoves among other products. We set it up outside the microfinance bank on big market day, which takes place every 8 days. On big market days, the 30,000 people of Bangang come to sell and buy food, which is usually pretty overwhelming since downtown Bangang is pretty deserted any other day of the week.


Above is a picture of me and my counterpart, Beatrice, setting up. We made posters illustrating the difference in wood usage of the improved stoves vs. traditional stoves (which are just 3 stones that you put a marmite on). We also made tea and boiled peanuts to attract people. Below is a picture of me trying to explain how the improved stove works to the villagers in French and in the few local language words I know.

Youth Day

February 11 is Youth Day where all the children from the schools in the area march in a parade wearing their school uniforms, which come in almost every color. I even saw a school in hot pink:




It started with the primary schools, and then went to the older kids. Many of the schools had clubs that paraded together – the most popular were dance, non-violence, scouts, English, and integrity clubs. The dance clubs usually had more elaborate outfits always consisting of socks, silly hats, and mini hula-hoops:


And what Youth Parade would be complete without a finale of adults parading for the president’s political party (below). You can see the president of Cameroon’s face on the pagne they are all sporting.











And no Cameroonian event is complete without throwing money at dancers, although usually bills are stuck on the dancer’s sweaty forehead:













The final dance:

Waterfalls of Bangang

These are two waterfalls in my village. The pictures were taken during dry season, so the water level was down.

Reaching the bottom waterfall is somewhat difficult since you have to sort of sled down the mountain as it is very steep, but it's a lot of fun when you get there because you can go swimming (although it's freezing)!

Wedding Day in the Village

The Cameroonian Ambassador to South Africa’s (whose house I’m living in now) niece got married at our house yesterday…or at least the traditional wedding took place. It involved a lot of back and forth negotiations between the father of the groom and the father of the bride in front of everyone for the right price for the bride, who was not present for this part. It took longer than usual because they were from different tribes, which is usually frowned upon, even for these more modern families.

Eventually, some women stopped the debate and said they couldn’t find the bride. So the father of the groom gave them some money for a taxi to find her. They pretended to drive away in a taxi and came back with a girl under a big cloth so you couldn’t tell who she was. The family of the groom then had to guess whether or not it was the bride. If they got it wrong, then the wedding was off. The family said it wasn’t her, and then gave them money for a moto. The same thing happened again, and then they gave money for an airplane. They ladies came back pretending they were in an airplane with a third bride. The family guessed that this was the correct bride, and alas, they were right! Then, both families shared a jug of palm wine, made some speeches, settled the dowry, and then handed the bride over to the groom’s family.

There was lots of food, drinks, music, and dancing like in western weddings, but no white dress, bridesmaids, walking down the aisle, vows, rings, or anything I was accustomed to. Apparently, the traditional weddings are really more for the families of the couple, who are the recipients of all the gifts.

Here is a photo of one of the brides during the guessing game:


Here is the bride and her mother sharing the palm wine:

Funeral Season

It’s not as bad as it sounds. Funerals here are a celebration of someone’s life and they occur at least 5 years after someone dies, but it’s usually more like 20 years. This is because traditionally, they would dig up the body once it had decomposed and take the skull to put with all of the ancestors’ skulls in a little house built close to the main house. Only about 1/3 of the village still practices this tradition, but the rest of the funeral traditions remain the same. This includes an abundant amount of food and drinks and dances where you throw salt all around (no one could tell me why they do this). Funeral season coincides with dry season and there are about 3 every weekend in the village.

Girl's Soccer Club

Here's a picture of some of the girls on my soccer team that I'm coaching.

Crowd Surfing

Traveling in Cameroon is usually an unpleasant experience at the time, but makes for some good stories afterward. Buses are always at least a few hours late, there are twice as many people as should be in the bus, and sometimes you have to hold someone’s baby or chicken on your lap. In rainy season, you have to get out and push the car through the mud; and in dry season, you can’t see or breathe because all the dust kicks up from the dirt roads. Oftentimes, the buses break down and you’re stranded on the side of the road for hours until the next bus comes by. It’s also usually very hot, but Cameroonians refuse to open the windows because the wind will make them sick they say.

All of these things are expected whenever traveling and I can usually deal with them, but the worst part about traveling is finding a bus at the beginning. For example, upon arriving at a bus stop to catch a bus to the capital last week, I had about 15 people pulling at my arm and my bags trying to get me to travel in their bus. I eventually broke through, but my friend was not as lucky. They grabbed every limb, hoisted her above their heads like she was crowd surfing, and started to put her into a bus that wasn’t even going to the capital! Luckily, I found a nice Cameroonian and told him to save my friend, which he did and we eventually made it to the capital without too many more problems. For people visiting me, no fear – I know how to avoid this scenario now! Apparently, you have to get dropped off before you reach the bus stop, then look for private cars to flag down.

Rainforest of Central Africa

I spent the holidays at the beach and in the second largest rain forest in the world (behind the Amazon) where I got to see chimps! We weren't allowed to touch them because the last time a human touched them without being quarantined first, the chimps got meningitis. But I got a little too close to the baby who smacked me while I wasn't looking. Here he is:


Here is a sunset at the beach in Kribi:


Here are the little cascades that flow into the ocean at Kribi:

Decorating Christmas Cookies

A couple of volunteers and I baked sugar cookies for the kids at the orphanage to decorate. We even had frosting shipped to us from the states! It was a big hit and the kids didn't hesitate to finish off the frosting tubs by the spoonful once the cookies were all decorated.