Day 49

On November 10, professors and lecturers all across Cameroon, organized through the National Union of Teachers of Higher Education (SYNES), will attempt to stage a week-long nation-wide strike in protest of poor working conditions and abysmal salaries. According to SYNES, professors in Cameroon are the poorest paid University level educators in Africa, including less wealthy and stable nations such as Chad. I’ve been told that the police and the military (including gendarmes) earn much more than professors, and that their salaries will be increased yet again because of government fears of a coup.

Professors aren’t the only ones that are unsatisfied with their working conditions or low pay: the Cameroonian postal service has been on strike, demanding higher pay. This has been fairly disruptive; especially since the nearest DHL office is in Douala, about 60 miles away. This also means that I have no idea if will be able to get my absentee ballot to the US in time to be counted. These strikes follow strikes and riots in February, when discontentment withe the government, a taxi strike protesting high fuel costs, and the global spikes in food prices coincided with deadly consequences.

I'm confident that these strikes will be safe and nonviolent, but they do seem to be signs that the discontent of the current administration are becoming increasingly outspoken.

Day 46

I am at the halfway mark: I’ve been in Cameroon and month and a half. I have to admit I feel a small bit of pride on being able to adjust to life here (compared to the bumbling, stumbling, and oblivious me who spent 2500CFA on an egg and baguette breakfast). One aspect I’m still struggling with, though, is the slow pace of work at the university. I don’t think I’m behind on my research, but there are days that I’ve felt fairly restless.

To focus some of my energy and eat up my time, I’ve started volunteering with Helps International, a local NGO here in Buea. They work with a wide array of issues, including HIV education, literacy, and computer training. Currently, I’m working with the founder, Genesis (such a great name), on a grant proposal for a microcredit loan program for women in the Southwest province. The program is pretty innovative and well thought out. It aims to provide 300 microcredit loans to women, organizing them into groups of 15 women who are collectively responsible for the loans, so any women who default on the loans have to be supported by the other women in the group. In order to get the loans, the women are required to take small business management classes. In their pilot program, they’ve had a loan default rate of 1%, and a loan return of 100%. In addition, the women also are trained as HIV educators, in the hopes that they will increase awareness of the disease and any business success garnered from the loans will increase their status as opinion leaders in their families and communities.

Day 41

I made fufu and eru! Well, kinda. It turns out that the rough instructions I was given to make eru was incomplete. I took the ingredients I had, chopped eru and waterleaf, maggi sauce, and oil and obliviously threw it all in a pot before the meal was rescued by a Cameroonian couple staying at the guest house. Coincidentally, they had also planned on making fufu and eru that night, and I played apprentice while trying to salvage my own meal.

So for those of you who are curious, here’s a ballpark recipe for making fufu and eru:

Ingredients:
Dried fish
Dried crayfish (prawns)
Canidae (beef skin)
Maggi cubes
Red palm oil
Hot peppers
Eru
Waterleaf (spinach can be used instead)
Beef

Cut the canidae into squares and place into a large saucepan with a little bit of oil and enough water to just cover the canidae and cook until tender (may take a while, but you can get this precooked). If beef is being used, cook this as well. Wash and chop the waterleaf, and crush the crayfish until they’ve become powdery. If you want to add peppers, crush them as well.
Add a little bit of water (maybe half a cup to a cup) to the saucepan and add the eru until it’s begun to wilt and reduce. Also add the peppers, the crayfish, dried fish, and maggi. There shouldn’t be too much water in the pot, since the eru should be steamed rather than boiled. After the eru has been steamed, it will wilt down. At this point, add the chopped waterleaf and the red palm oil (about ¼ cup). Wait until the waterleaf is also wilted and mix everything.

The fufu involves adding water to fufu mix and kneading out all the lumps. This mixture is then place into a pot and cooked. The fufu needs to be “stirred” or pushed around with a big stick to make sure it cooks evenly and doesn’t burn on the sides of the pot.
The fufu is pulled into pieces and rolled up and served with eru. Traditionally, fufu and eru is eaten with your hands by pulling off a small handful of fufu, rolling it into a ball, making an indentation, grabbing or scoping the eru, and eating the ball.

Cameroonian, and most African, dishes are flavorful, savory, oily, and so damned filling. At first, I balked at the amount of oil that is required for making the eru, but the wisdom of African nutrition becomes evident when you realize that every traditional dish has ample amounts of complex carbohydrates, proteins, oils, and fiber.

Next project: quacoco, or pacoco

Day 38

The second attempt at pizza went much better. I added more yeast this time, and whereas the tomato sauce for the last pizza consisted mainly of tomato paste, this incarnation included diced tomatoes, onions, and minced garlic in addition to the watered down paste. The cheese, which has a consistency of cream cheese, was difficult to slice and impossible to grate and all in all too much of a hassle to add, so I topped it off with sliced sausage, chopped onions, and okra. It was greatly enjoyed by Seque, Dr. Kamga, and friends, many of whom had never tasted pizza before. Even I was surprised at how well it had turned out.

Every Tuesday and Saturday is market day and numerous merchants appear at wooden stands along the main road in Buea. I usually get ply my local market in Buea town, a small collection of stands down a side alley. This time I decided to check out the larger market, so I wander down and practice my haggling. My haul at the end of the day was better than I imagined. At the end of the day, I brought back:
3 hands of plantains: 500 cfa
1 pineapple: 300 cfa
6 oranges: 200 cfa
5 tomatoes: 200 cfa
1 bag of fufu gari: 100 cfa
1 bag of eru and waterleaf: 300 cfa
1 clove of garlic: 100 cfa
4 green onions: 50 cfa
1 large red onion: 100 cfa

When I got back to the guest house, even Jim, the manager was impressed. The plantains were an especially good deal, which he said usually goes for 500 cfa per hand. I'm not sure how I got such a low price myself, unless the merchant thought she'd get me hooked with a low price, which, knowing Cameroonian food, is a good possibility. And yes, I am going to attempt to make fufu and eru. We’ll see how that goes…

Day 36

I conducted an interview with Dr. Musonge yesterday and it went very well—much better than the other interview!

In my time here in Buea, I’ve really gotten into cooking, mostly since cooking my own food is much less expensive than buying meals at restaurants every night. Every time I visit the market, I come across a new food, spice, or ingredient and it gets me thinking of what I could make with it.

The kitchen in the guesthouse has an oven, which, by what I gather from anecdotes told by well-traveled friends and acquaintances, is a rarity. So I’ve decided to take advantage of this to make a pizza. No, really.

I’ve invited Dr. Kamga and Seque over to the guesthouse on Sunday and I’m planning on making pizza for them. Today’s attempt was to just make sure things go well, since I’ve never actually made pizza that didn’t involve a microwave, and even then, it was nothing gourmet.

Here are some pictures: (coming soon)

Day 31

The Liko tea I got from the Ecotourism office is a lot better than the Lipton alternative. It’s a little pricier, but considering that the Ecotourism office is one of the few places you can still get Liko tea in Cameroon, it’s worth it.

I also did laundry today—successfully! No more mildew smell, or at least leas of it. The clothes got thoroughly cleaned, and it was sunny most of the day, which was essential in avoiding mildew.

Day 30

This weekend, Martine, Lenneke, and Sharon, three NGO workers from Yaounde, stayed at the guest house during their weekend visit to Buea. Martine and Lenneke, from the Netherlands, work with Focarfe, an environmental NGO, and Sharon, from Germany, works with a company that deals with printing and literacy.

This morning, they took a rain soaked hike up Mt. Cameroon. In the meanwhile, I took a walk through Buea town, did some grocery shopping, picked up some Cameroonian tea from the Ecotourism office, and went to check out an outlook with a stunning view of Buea. The first time I went up this route, I had forgotten to bring my camera. The children in this neighborhood are really cute. The last time I took a walk, there was a man teaching a little boy words. On the way back, the man was teaching the boy how to say ‘white man’ and as I passed, the boy waved at me and shouted “wat mahn!” On the way back this time, I left a group of children gawking and giggling with my crude pidgin, and joined in a game of football with some local teens.

In the evening, the girls from Yaounde and I went out for get some tasty grilled fish and some drinks. Almost all the bars here serve only beer, so if you wanted some wine, you’d have to get it from a convenience store, which, in addition to bottled wine, also sell it in juice boxes. I’m still curious if it comes with a little plastic straw. All in all, the bottled wine was pretty good, and I enjoyed drinking it out of the bottle as the bar had no glasses. We were told this was the Cameroonian way to drink wine.

Day 29

Today I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Atanga, the provincial chief of HIV prevention for the South-West province and the “focal point” of PMTCT in the region. I have to admit the experience was both a little awkward and intimidating. Despite this, the fact that I didn’t have any time to prepare questions, and the Nigerian music videos in the background, the interview went well, I got the information I wanted, and then some, and Dr. Atanga was in general very helpful.
No, I’m not going to post anything about this interview, because it’s embarrassing. I think if Lexi swings by Buea again, I’m going to bribe her with some grilled fish for pointers on interviewing.

Also: I've begun to post the pictures I've uploaded onto my blog, here and there. I'm including some random ones in this post.



Left to right: a cattle drive up Buea road, my room in the guest house, and the view down the mountain early in the morning

Day 27

This is Seque and his daughter, Kati. Seque, the Corporal Radar O’Reily of the University of Buea, took to me as soon as I arrived and has looked out for me at the University, showing me where important and useful people’s offices were located, liaising between myself and the super-busy Dr. Ndumbe, and showing me where things on campus were, like the printing office, internet center, and the staff canteen (cafeteria).

Today he invited me over to his house as a guest. He had discovered that I liked a Cameroonian dish called Pacoco and declared that I was invited to his house and that his wife would prepare the dish for me. Needless to say, I was very honored.
Seque’s house is very close to the university, about a ten-minute’s walk. From the outside, his house is impossibly small. His unit is one of many in a building that can’t be more than ten feet high and forty feet wide. The inside, however, was extremely welcoming and cozy. It was amazing how so many of us were able to fit inside of such a small room without feeling the least bit uncomfortable. Seque, his wife, his daughter, his niece, the secretary from the University, four neighbors who had come to see the American, and I dined on his wife’s Pacoco, which was delicious, even better than what I’ve had at Duke and Harvey’s.

After the meal, another neighbor joined with a large bag filled with drinks and we sat in the cozy room, discussing American, Cameroonian, and African politics while a rerun of the presidential debate ran on CNN. American politics is unavoidable when with Cameroonians in a close social event, especially with a candidate like Barack Obama. American politics, of course, leads into African politics, and then into Cameroonian politics. I can’t say that I don’t enjoy it at all. It’s nice to hear what people think of the US and of their own country, and it’s better than talking about why I’m not married or don’t have a girlfriend or which Cameroonian girl I’m going to take back with me to the US.

Day 25

Since it’s the rainy season in Cameroon, it isn’t surprising that it rains everyday in Buea. Every precipitation that amounts to more than a sprinkle, however, seems to be accompanied by power outages at the university. A few of the power outages have involved the entirety of Buea, sometimes for hours at a time.

Things are going well on the work front. I’ve designed a questionnaire for distribution to antenatal clinics to evaluate current PMTCT practices, and I’ve been working with Dr. Nde, the head of the department of public health, to refine the questions and layout. Turns out, the number of workers in the Buea Health District that would be targeted by this questionnaire is small enough that I can administer the questionnaire myself, one on one with the workers. According to Dr. Nde, interview style questionnaires elicit more accurate answers from a Cameroonian group. I think I’ll go with his advice on this one and not bumble around blindly on my own.

Speaking of bumbling around blindly, while my French has gotten better I still have some trouble with things that are more complex than greetings or cooking (most of the French I’ve picked up is from a woman from Gabon and her 11 year old son who are also staying at the guest house—Mark Anthony, the boy, only speaks French and points out French words while I cook, hoping I make too much, which I usually do). Anyways, I’ve finally received a copy of the Cameroonian National PMTCT Guidelines from my Dean, but alas, it’s in French, all one hundred and twenty odd pages of it. There is a school for interpreters and translators, but from what I’ve gathered from a few colleagues, if I want to get something like this translated without paying a large fee, I’ll be wading into Cameroonian inter-departmental politics. Hmm. This should be interesting.

Day 20

The Uninet is back up! The connection is still fairly slow, but much better than internet cafes. Things at work have picked up and things are becoming routine so there is not much else to blog about. The one thing that's still a bit of a challenge is finding change for large bills. When paying a taxi or buying small groceries, you want smaller bills, or ideally, coins, since it's not guaranteed that they will have change otherwise. Fakoship, the large grocery store, may have change but it's hit or miss. The western unions and the banks also usually don't change bills. You have to find a gas station with the right bills available, or buy something from someone who has enough change.

I'm going to try to upload some more photos while I have the internet and see if I can't retroactively add pictures to my other posts.