September 11, 2004

The 2003-2004 school year fizzled to an end in the middle of May, and as I passed over the one-year mark in Cameroon I found my life hurdling into fast forward. Suddenly, summer vacation was pouncing on me like a Peace Corps Volunteer on a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. I had hoped to spend a lot of free time reading, playing basketball, and hanging out in Ndélélé. It didn't quite work out that way. But before I get to that, a message from the Ministry of National Education.

The francophone Cameroonian education system has 3 national required examinations before students are awarded a diploma. The results are in, and they are paltry. The students of the Lycée Classique of Ndélélé performed as follows: on the Baccalauréat (12th grade), 1 of 6 passed; the Probatoire (11th grade), 3 of 35; the BEPC exam (9th grade), 5 of 113. Let the record show that I was not the English teacher for the BEPC level. But, then again, let's be honest and say that it probably wouldn't have made any difference.

Time to put the school year behind me, I decided. Thus, the summer began with the profound feeling that I was personally hated by the Man himself, His Excellency Paul Biya, President of the Republic of Cameroon. All right, perhaps he equally despised the 60 Cameroonians seated with me in the giant Centrale Voyages bus from Yaoundé to Douala - but they probably didn't stand to lose $1600 and a 10-day trip to the United States of America. Without warning His Excellency decided (rather executively) to close the road from Yaoundé to Douala to welcome His Royal Highness the King of Morocco. I imagined them sipping on mint tea and smoking a hookah while alternately taking turns behind the wheel, freely zigzagging back and forth across the highway’s dotted white line simply because they could. Meanwhile, I frantically called the Peace Corps office to measure my options. The clock ticked on.

No one should have been surprised, of course. The same thing had happened a week before for the inauguration of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, a successful project which now links land-locked Chad to an outlet for a valuable natural resource. Nine African heads of state attended the ceremony in Kribi, and the busiest road in Cameroon was closed off from public access during their transit.

(At the time, I wondered what inconsiderate head of state asshole would inconvenience so many people to the advantage of an elite few. Then I read an article about how President Bush diverted a Boston-Washington flight to Albany to pick up his twin daughters...)

The worry amounted to nothing, since I made the flight with plenty of time. In Zurich it was astonishing to see how clean everything was. And I could hardly contain myself when they served us ice cream on the plane. First stop after deplaning in Chicago: the ubiquitous Mars Cheese Castle on I-94, where I happily downed my first bag of cheddar cheese curds in over 12 months. Indeed, my goal for these 10 days of industrialized goodness was to gain as much weight as possible. I think that was the easy part, especially since America was so considerate to point out all the “low-carb” and “no-carb” foods that would thwart me. Attempting to see everyone I wanted to proved difficult, but I got to spend plenty of time with my newborn baby nephew, Thomas Edward Binder. Feel free to call me Godfather and kiss my ring.

Yes, I marveled at potable running water, walking around on carpet and grass in bare feet, driving an SUV, and packing my suitcase full of 70 pounds of the greatest food to be found in a Pick 'N Save. My heartfelt thanks to whoever invented Easy Cheese.

Back in Cameroon, I headed for Mbalmayo, the site of this year's Education and Small Enterprise Development training. The group was half the size of mine, but every bit as clean-cut and wide-eyed. There were only four English teachers, and I was fortunate enough to be the volunteer to help them through teaching in Model School for 4 weeks. It was a fun time since I got to hang out with my good friends and training-mates (and cohorts of the infamous jungle adventure) Ryan and Susan.

With their help, I decided it was time to rid myself of the hair I'd let grow for the past 13 months. Make no mistake; I was not about to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to exploit my mop for all it was worth. It was clearly time to go straight for the mullet. When I walked into our favorite chophouse on Monday, trainee Dave looked at me and cheerfully said, “Hey, you got a haircut!” before adding uncertainly, “Is that a ... mullet?” Dr. Babila, our head technical trainer, told us he hadn't seen a mullet in Cameroon since the early 1980's.

The four trainees I so thoroughly introduced to the intricacies of the Cameroonian educational system swore-in as volunteers on August 5th, 2004. Now they are nobly protecting the U.S. Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, just like me. But the best of the summer was yet to come, as I awaited the arrival of my friends Tom and Jeff from the United States for a three-week around-the-country tour of Cameroon.

BUT time runs short in the CyberCafe so...

TO BE CONTINUED (in one month)