1/8/09

Anne

Village life:

The talk of the village this week has been the fact that Suleiman, head teacher of Zidim secondary school, is going to Yaoundé to become P.A. to the Minister of Transport, who just happens to be his cousin. His salary will apparently not change but there will be lots of “perks”. Suleiman studied at Moray House in Edinburgh in the early 90s and still has a pretty good Scottish accent. Every so often he makes requests for shortbread and would like us to get a replacement for his much loved diploma from Edinburgh as the termites have eaten the original.

We are now having rain most days; yesterday it bucketed for about 7 hours and I went to market wearing my anorak. That’s a first. I managed to get a few small wild mountain bananas and a pineapple. Wow! I don’t remember the market being so poor for such a long time last year.

Crops are growing fast now with the millet between one and three metres high, depending on the individual village or even field. Houses are disappearing behind it and the scenery now looks as it did when we first arrived in September 2007. I discovered recently that interest on fertiliser obtained on credit from the state owned Sodecoton stands at 28% - criminal and an excellent way to keep the peasants under control.

Work:

No work in the schools yet but Godam and I have been preparing for meetings with treasurers and secretaries to help them manage funds and affairs better. It’s quite a challenge as so few of them can read or write. I still seem to be spending a lot of time queuing in banks, either to deposit money donated to the schools or to close my own account. I thought I would get ahead early with that as I could see a lot of pain ahead. In fact it took only an hour and was relatively painless.

VSO are revising the subsistence rate given to volunteers in Cameroon and I was asked to do the “breadbasket” for a month for a rural area in the Extreme-North. At the moment we receive the equivalent of about £145 per person per month. It was about £190 when we arrived here but the global financial crisis has taken its toll. While making allowances for our advanced age, Hamish and I have made no attempt to live on that sum but most of the younger volunteers have no choice, so I had to bear that in mind when filling in the form. Calculating on using public transport rather than the car, our biggest expense still turned out to be transport. Close behind that was food and although our family would probably complain that we don’t contact them enough, our next biggest expense has been communication, with leisure pursuits at number 4. Bearing in mind that food is much more expensive in the bigger towns like Maroua and adding toiletries, clothing and utilities, the end result was a bit too close for comfort on £145 a month, so I will be interested to see what VSO come up with now.

There have now been 11 weddings during our stay here, with 9 of them between volunteers and Cameroonians. The latest one was conducted in secret and has caused a lot of “congossa” (gossip) within VSO which I dare not put in the blog because my boss reads it! My theory is that young volunteers cannot afford to stay in hotels or even at the much cheaper missions when they escape from their villages into Maroua at wekends. They make friends with locals, spend nights with them and end up marrying them! Maybe it is time for a substantial increase in the subsistence given to the volunteers before VSO comes to be regarded as a marriage bureau rather than as a serious international development organisation. Maybe they should do what the Peace Corps and other NGOs do and have a flat for use of volunteers in Maroua.

• Photos show Membeng’s new classroom with its plaque above the door as a tribute to all the donors who made it possible. One last paint job and it will be ready for its official opening.
• Just heard that the daughter of one of the waiters in Porte Mayo (our favourite watering hole in Maroua), who's wedding we were at last year, has had her first baby - a boy.  She also got news last week that she'd passed her Baccalauréat.  This is quite a feat as the pass rate here this year was only 36% 

Hamish

Pleasant surprise last week – just as Anne Poppelaars was about to leave, Claudia Klemp, who was here for five years from 2002 and was Médecin Chef before Anne, arrived for a visit.  She immediately offered to do the overnight on call until the Saturday, so just as I was thinking I’d have a hard week, suddenly I was facing an easy time!  Dr Davide arrived back on Thursday, so life is looking up!

The rainy season has started in earnest.  On Wednesday 22^nd, I was due to head for Maroua to present AIDS patients to the treatment committee.  It had rained overnight, so we took the long way round to avoid the more muddy road.  On the way back, I decided to come back the other route, following our hospital driver’s advice.  According to Jean, if we wait 4 to 6 hours after the rain, the road will have dried enough not to be too slippery, and when we get to the bits with deep water, don’t be tempted to go off the road, keep to the main track through what looks like deep water and it’ll be fine.  We were a bit disconcerted to note the absence of tracks from four wheel vehicles, meaning we were the first to try the road after the rain!  Well, Jean’s advice was accurate and with 4x4 and the car’s high ground clearance, we got through no problem.  And to think at home you’d pay a fortune for an off road experience like this!

The weekend of 18^th/19^th July we did our last bit of sight seeing before we leave Cameroon.  We visited a village called Djingliya which is in a very picturesque mountain setting.  There is a hotel with a craft centre attached and a reconstruction of a traditional settlement.  The road, however, was something of a challenge – another dirt track but very rocky in parts and quite steep at times.  Just glad we had been able to get Shona to bring out new locking hubs for the four wheel drive when she was here in May!  After that, we drove on to Koza where there is another hospital, this one built by the Adventists.  I had met the surgeon from there, a young American, who was very keen for us to send patients to him for gastroscopy (an examination of the stomach).  He and his wife were on leave, but we were shown round by the nurse on duty.  A well constructed complex, but badly in need of some serious maintenance work.  Given the condition of the access roads to Koza, I can’t see many of our patients wanting to head there!  The next day, we went to Oudjilla, a settlement on top of a “mountain” where the lamido (chief) has 50 wives (allegedly – more than 4 wives is illegal in Cameroon!), but ONLY 113 children!  Once again, the road was a real challenge, although parts of it were “goudron”, i.e. surfaced.  Most, however, was dirt track and parts were like sheer rock face.  Rapid progress was impossible which means the local children can run alongside the car shouting “cadeau”, i.e. looking for money.  Once at the top of the hill, we met the lamido sitting on his throne at the entrance, with TV and motorbike at his side!  Each of his wives has her own “case” consisting of four identically sized round buildings built of mud.  Two are grain stores, one is her kitchen and the other is the bedroom for the woman and her daughters.  Any sons leave the mother’s bedroom once they are seven years old and sleep in a “dormitory” outside the wall of the main complex.  We were also shown the sacrificial “boeuf” which is kept indoors in the dark for a year with no room for exercise and fattened up ready for the kill.  Later, our Fulfulde teacher, Oumarou, explained the process of the sacrifice.  I’ll spare the details, but our veterinarian daughter, Wendy, would be horrified!  Our tour of the complex had been conducted by one of the lamido’s sons (by his first wife).  He was clearly well educated and spoke at some length about the need to eradicate polygamy.  When Anne said she assumed he was monogamous, he admitted he has five wives!  Having seen how much money his father can make from the visiting tourists, we suspect his ambition is to continue the family business.

Finally, I’m delighted to attach a photo of Michaelou, the young boy who had the horrendous head injury.  His surgery in Yaoundé has been very successful and the wound is now healed.  He is a very happy young man, so don’t be fooled by his _expression_ in the photo – Cameroonians NEVER smile for the camera!  The dressing on his head is not covering an open wound – it was explained as being for protection as he’s a normal active young boy!