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.