ANNE

Work:

The last couple of weeks since Heather left have been very busy trying to meet VSO’s impossible deadlines. It was useful to be in Maroua last week and talk to other education volunteers – they had all decided to send in as many results as were possible within the time limits and then stop. As one of them said, if nobody could meet the deadline, there was something wrong with that deadline and not with us. I felt much better after that but still concerned that the results will be poor because of the rush.

I have to grudgingly admit that a lot of the work was very interesting to do and I learned a lot. We had to hold discussions with groups of girls in school, groups of girls who had dropped out of school and girls who have never been to school. We then talked to parents of these groups and to teachers. The point of the exercise was to find out why there is such a problem getting girls into school to stay and to see if anything can be done to improve the current situation where there are at least 2 boys for every girl. I found out that often girls will miss whole days of school to go and fetch water, clean, wash dishes and even make bricks for teachers, head teachers or a traditional leaders. One girl told us that girls are “objects” in Cameroon. They don’t want to be treated better than the boys, just as equals.

One of the most rewarding things Godam and I had to do was talk to a group of 10 girls (aged between 12 and 18) who have never been to school.  They told us they feel jealous of girls who can turn to the right hymn in church and sing in French.  They want jobs but can’t get any without an education. After our chat, we gave them all a pen and jotter, printed and wrote their names and told them to have a go at copying. Apart from one girl who had been to night school, it was the first time any of them had tried to write their names. We finally threw them out about an hour later! Since then, 5 of them have come back to ask if we will run evening classes for them and teach them to read and write. We hope to get a room at the church and run classes two afternoons a week for up to 40 girls and young women. Empowerment, capacity building and development at last! 

Another part of the work involved collecting statistics for our district. We tried the Lamido (who is part of local government) but with no luck. Eventually we had to make the hour’s drive to Mokolo (our County town) to visit the Sous-Préfet. He was out so we were sent to the Town Hall to be sent to the Délégation Départementale de l’Economie de la Planification et de l’Aménagement du Territoire du Mayo Tsanaga. Phew ! There the Délégué told us that the last census was done in 1987 and only the President can publish the figures. What he could do for us though was give us an estimate but we would have to come back with a letter from my boss 80 kms away, explaining how we intend to use the statistics. When we asked for stats of handicapped children he sent us to the Délégué of Social Services. After scrutinising our badges and asking many questions, this second delegate told us to visit the 113 schools in the district and ask each head teacher. Yeah right! After 5 hours in Mokolo we left empty handed.

On Monday Godam and I headed for Mokolo again armed with our explanatory letter. This time the Délégué said he would do the calculation for us and send the results to Zidim with the gendarme due to be on duty on market day. I am still reeling from shock that he kept his word!

Village life:

At a meeting of parents of girls who have never been to school, one father said that he has sheep, goats and cattle which his 3 children look after at the moment. His family is well fed because of that but who will look after his animals if the children go to school? I wondered if he could share care of the herds with neighbours. He thought Zidim was too big for that to work but went on to talk about a small village on the other side of the mountain. There, one family takes care of everyone’s animals, giving all the children the freedom to go to school. As each crop is harvested, all the other families give the herdsman’s family an agreed amount of that crop. Simple but brilliant.

Market:

Corn is out, pumpkins, peanuts, sweet potatoes and chickpeas are in! We have 4 giant pumpkins at the moment so if anyone is thinking of Hallowe’en…. Alternatively, recipes on a P.C. please.

Lemon Curd and Guava jam have been this week’s attempts as I indulged in a little kitchen therapy.

Random facts/thoughts:

• I still marvel at the many beautiful and completely natural lily ponds that exist here in sub-Saharan Africa
• Another wonder is the dried up ponds and rivers that fill with water and fish during the rainy season. Inland villages become fishing villages for a short period and fish smoking becomes widespread. A nurse at the hospital told me the fish fall from Heaven with the rain but as he has not actually seen it himself, he cannot be sure.
• Copied from a VSO document full of advice for new volunteers: “In a bus where people sit in rows facing each other with knees interlaced, sit opposite a fat person because thin persons’ knees can be very piercing”.

Hamish

The malaria season is in full swing and the hospital has become very much busier. We are seeing mainly children with severe malaria, pneumonia and anaemia.  I have a message for the NHS back home; when there are no beds left, tell the patients to sleep in the car park – when there’s no space left here, they just settle down on the ground outside the ward!

One clear message here is don’t travel at night.  This week we received a patient who’d been travelling on the Rhumsiki road at 11pm on Monday night.  He was attacked by bandits and left with multiple knife wounds.  He also told us he had an arrow in his abdomen and the attached x-ray picture shows he was quite right!  When the team operated they found the arrow had punctured his bowel in four different places.  These Africans really are tough – when he arrived examination of his abdomen gave no clue that there was a serious problem inside.  Guess he hadn’t read the text books!

We now know Anne Poppelaars will be back in Cameroon on the 25^th October.  She’ll have to spend a bit of time in Douala and Yaoundé sorting out things like registration but I’ll be very relieved to see her back here.   We hope she and Francois will be able to spend some time together getting accustomed to their new family status before coming back to the rigors of life in Zidim.  Dr Djemba continues to enjoy a quiet life here.  We have had a routine that the round of the medical/paediatric rooms is done by whoever is on call – this week it’s been Dr Djemba.  I had been asked to represent the hospital at a 2 day meeting about the provincial TB & AIDS programmes on Wednesday & Thursday.  On Friday I discovered that Dr Djemba hadn’t appeared to do the round those days, even though the medical side is extremely busy at the moment.  By 7.30 am yesterday he hadn’t appeared for work so I started the medical round – took me 3 hours as there were many complex problems needing decisions made.  I have no idea what salary Dr Djemba is paid but the UEBC is certainly not getting value for money!

This weekend we’re back in Maroua for another wedding – this time a VSO volunteer, Victoria, whose family are members of Mannofield Church in Aberdeen where brother-in-law John was minister.  We’ve a message for John from Victoria’s Mum, Sandra; she’s missing his “holy hugs”!