July 19, 2005

All of my volunteer friends left Cameroon the first two weeks of June, but I stayed on to complete a well project in Kentzou. On the border with the Central African Republic, this town is infinitely livelier than homely Ndélélé. There's no electricity, yet everyone has lights (thanks to small gasoline generators). There's hardly more people than in my village, but there's food everywhere, all the time. Not to mention the greatest part - it's 30 kilometers from my house, and I cover the distance on the back of a cheap Chinese motorcycle, alongside speeding logging trucks, through sleepy 5-person villages, and across the fast-flowing Kadey River in a dugout canoe (sometimes 3 motorcycles with all their passengers in one canoe).

In May, the team of diggers reached the water table at the project site. And when I say “team” I mean one man armed with a shovel who carved a perfect circle 1.5 meters in diameter and 14 meters deep. Now we could start the expensive work, the heavy-duty stuff I received $4000 from the British High Commission for. Encasing the 14-meter hole with cement, fabricating 5 cement cylinders, lowering the cylinders into the hole, digging past 14 meters to increase the reserve of water, removing all the dirt with a bucket and pulley, covering the well, installing the hand pump (with 16 meters of PVC pipe), and sterilizing the water (a hi-tech process … involving 1 liter of bleach). That's a summary, and really only the photos can accurately tell the story. What blew me away about the whole project - with our team of 10 village guys, our engineering expert Ndomo, and an amazing retired 65 year-old named Gabriel (who spent half his time at the bottom of the hole) - was that the whole thing was done by hand. All modesty aside, it had to be the single greatest engineering feat I've witnessed.

But there's another reason I'm writing about it. Over my two years, I've learned that a lot of international development work is bullshit. Even the Peace Corps. But, also, not the Peace Corps. The greatest strength of the Peace Corps - and its greatest weakness - is that it gives the volunteer complete autonomy to carry out his/her work. And so I was able to become friends with the mayor of Kentzou, and provide his village with water. I was able to work with primary school teachers on their English skills. I was able to bring a wooden penis into the classroom and teach and make jokes about condoms with my older students. I was able to sing Céline Dion and R. Kelly with the English Club.

OK, yeah, you'll have to forgive me for that one, but the past two years were unbelievable, and to anyone who's thinking about joining the Peace Corps I say go for it.

Of course, a lot of people would say that the Peace Corps is not for them, and a lot of them are probably right. And for them, I'm going to make a shameless plug for the Peace Corps Partnership Program. Contrary to President Bush's 2002 promise to double the worldwide presence of volunteers, Congress has been cutting the budget and has now eliminated the small projects budget in Cameroon. The Peace Corps Partnership Program gives anyone the opportunity to fund a volunteer's project - you can pick it, you can give all (or part) of the money, and you're guaranteed that it is going right into something the community wants and not through the maze of corrupt ministers and foreign contracters. Find more information at: http://www.peacecorps.gov.

We finished the well project the 23rd of June and I left village the 24th. Saying goodbye to my newfound (but now somehow old) friends in Ndélélé, Bertoua, and Yaoundé was difficult. Similar to leaving my friends and family two years ago, but these were people I might never see again - indeed, only three weeks before I left, my vice principal Bekada died. And so it was a somber departure. Luckily, there's e-mail, telephones, and Western Union - so I can help pay for orphaned 3-year-old Junior's education. Cameroonians always say, “We are together,” to show their solidarity, and they mean it.

I've been in the United States now for two weeks, and during every trip to the grocery store, I stand transfixed. My dad, diligently running around checking off Mom's list, inevitably comes to find me staring at the hundreds of kinds of potato chips (or else salad dressing or cereal or cheese or soda). And it's cold everywhere. The other day we went to Applebee's and they must have had the thermostat set at 50 degrees. So I wear pants a lot.

When people find out you did the Peace Corps, there's the unavoidable question, “So, what's it like over there?” I'm still working on the short answer to this, since “It's hot” or “There are a lot of black people” don't seem quite sufficient. As for the long answer, well, you've been reading it all along.

Thanks to everyone who sent me letters and packages over the past two years (especially music, which ensured my sanity in trying times). I'm here to stay, at least for now, so I'll see you around.