June 4, 2005

In keeping with Peace Corps tradition, we had our “Close of Service” (COS) conference at the beginning of April. It amounted to three days of listening to them ask us, “What can we do to make Peace Corps better?” Tired of this exercise after two years of giving suggestions, one volunteer asked, “Can you give us one example of a suggestion that we have given and you have implemented?” Uncomfortable silence. Then we split into groups for one last time and wrote the same old list of suggestions. But if the conference itself was boring and tedious, our free time would be dedicated to more worthwhile pursuits - namely homemade pepperoni pizza accompanied by a refreshing 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. (The beer was successfully smuggled into country last year and protected under lock and key in Yaoundé for no less than 10 months.)

Spring Break was finished off with a 3-day hike up Mount Cameroon, described in the guidebooks as a “moderately strenuous exercise” needing “no previous climbing experience or equipment.” Ascending to the 13,000 ft volcano’s peak was exhilarating. We walked through some of the oldest rainforest in the world, scrambled along the ridge of two still-steaming craters from the 2001 eruption, and wandered through a moonlike landscape of pure black lava pebbles. Then we had to come down, and this gave me a new definition of hell. As the trail snaked on and on through the jungle and our guide Martin constantly chimed in with a cheery “Almost there!” every five seconds, an inexplicable stream of obscenities streamed under my breath to the rhythm of each agonizing step (my left knee was twisted coming down, my feet were minefields of blisters). And then my bus to Yaoundé blew a tire as I drowsed, awakening to the loud *BANG* and shouts from all around (“Jesus, you are the Lord, save us from harm, oh my Jesus!”) but there was no accident. Back at the transit house, I was more than happy to head to the bar and drink a cold Castel.

Arriving in village, my neighbor Eveline told me her best friend Julienne had taken seriously ill, had collapsed in the road and was now in a delirium. This was worrisome since, in January, Julienne took a month off because she was feeling fatigued. It was a difficult separation for her 3-year old son, Junior, who wasn’t the same without his mom around. She came back and seemed fine, but now this. I went over to the house to visit her, and found her fellow nurses administering an IV in hopes of pulling her back to consciousness. When she failed to improve, Eveline made the grueling 8-hour round trip to Batouri just to phone the family, to ask if they could come and take Julie to a place where tests could be done. We waited. Next day I came home from school and ran into Junior with his usual smile and excited “Bonjour, Tonton Andy!” (“Hey, Uncle Andy”). I walked him home, asked him how his day was, how his mom was. He responded with his ubiquitous “bien.” That day a nurse started going door to door to raise money to get Julienne evacuated, and finally her sister and mom showed up. They arrived and left so quickly I had no chance to say goodbye, and anyway I was optimistic. A few days later, I was walking home and exchanged greetings with Chelsea, Eveline’s 3-year-old daughter. “Ça va?” “Ça va bien.” Then she informed me in the matter-of-fact tone of young children, “Junior’s mom died.” Everyone was devastated, people organized themselves to go to the funeral, and the caravans left. Since Julienne died on the road between Bertoua and Yaoundé, no tests were ever done. The best guess we have is that she passed away, at 29, with a brain tumor.

And life goes on. The 1st of May, Labor Day. Over the course of the holiday, I learned that Cameroon’s civil service are not considered as “workers,” a notion which may stem from the rather unromantic term used in French - “fonctionnaire,” one who helps the government to function, little more than a cog in the great Biya machine. All the more bizarre when you consider Eveline, Julienne, and their fellow nurses haven’t received any salary for the past 10 months. For as compassionate and welcoming as I’ve found most Cameroonians, they surely find a way to thoroughly screw over their fellows. But hey, I got my free Ndélélé t-shirt and hat. Not to mention two free beers! So we’re all happy little cogs.

As for school, once the month of May starts, things fall apart. Classes grind to a halt. Teachers start leaving. And we give mock exams. So I took my turn as “the invigilator.” This kind of job seems mostly boring, just standing watching kids take a test. But it becomes oh-so-much less boring when you start catching cheaters. The two geniuses I foiled this time had a brilliant plan:

1. Wait until the end of the period when we’re the only ones left in the room and Mr. Binder will never notice us.
2. Wave to my accomplice so he moves closer to me.
3. Hold my paper up in the air and point to the question I can’t get, while whispering “What’s the answer to this one?”
4. Wait for my accomplice to hand in his test, go to the front of the room, and drop the piece of paper with the answer on the floor.
5. Immediately raise my hand and ask Mr. Binder if I can go to the front of the room to take some more “scrap paper,” before my accomplice has even left.

All of these shenanigans for only 1 point on the test. In some ways I’d like to give a workshop on improving your cheating. Also around this time was the Secondary School Entrance Exam, which takes place before the Primary School Certificate Exam (does it seem redundant? Yeah, I think so, too.) My colleague Francis gave me the honor of joining him on the “Secrétariat.” The 4-day job entailed administering the test to 144 candidates, supervising the correction of the 6 tests, hand-writing the results (that’s 864 grades to record) on 6 identical spreadsheets, calculating the 144 final grades, ranking all the students, and alphabetizing the 52 names of the passing students. All of that and I got 5000 francs (10 bucks) to show for it. Never in my life had I wanted so badly to use Microsoft Excel. (*type*type*type*click*click* Finished!)

Ah yes, and then came the 20th of May, Independence Day. I missed it last year, so I was more than pleased to take part in the festivities. Donning my yellow-and-blue-horses-galloping suit coat and pants I went to the “Place des Fêtes” to join my fellow members of “L’association des Bétis et Sympathisants.” (These types of groups meet once a month to share a meal, give out loans, and help fellow members who might be sick or who’ve just had a baby. And to wear really funny clothes. This one is predominantly people of the Béti tribe and their sympathizers. I would be the latter.) Reaching the center of town, I emerged in an Ndélélé I never though could exist. So many people! So much music! Where the hell did all this food come from!? It was like I’d been magically transported to Douala, a Douala in the midst of the Wisconsin State Fair. (If only there were funnel cakes and deep fried cheese curds...) Little children danced with hula-hoops in front of the town notables, motorcycle taxi drivers showed off daring stunts, the church’s marching band provided a constant beat, and then came the surprise of all surprises. (*drum roll*) The rural radio!

Thanks to a generous donation, the mayor of Ndélélé procured all the equipment necessary to mount his own radio station - 103.5 FM, the Radio of Grand Ambitions. Previously, you could only get a fuzzy reception of the Bertoua radio and practically no clear signal for Yaoundé. Since the 20th of May, the village has transformed. Now everyone walks around with a radio. Information has never been disseminated as effortlessly as it is now. The newest thing for kids is to wait outside the station to get a chance to speak to all their friends - and, as the teachers lament, to show off some awful French (“Je salis tous mes amis!”). One of my students even came to see me, determined to speak English on the air but terrified of making a horrible gaffe. I translated his rather simple sentence and asked, “So, Jean-Pierre, are you going to speak tonight?” He replied, “Of course not sir, I have to practice a lot first. Maybe in a few days.” The doctor can’t wait to start hosting weekly health programs with his nurses. School directors and politicians give interviews every evening. This was truly something to celebrate. On the eve of my departure, I can only think of all I could have done to teach English and to fight HIV/AIDS using radio broadcasts.

Days later the excitement was still buzzing when some bad news came across the airwaves. My neighbor over the fence, Mgbaba, had died at 46. He was the caretaker of the town’s caretaker of the electricity generator and a friendly guy. He would always greet me with a hearty, “Hello, neighbor.” But for months he’d been losing weight and barely ventured out of the house, and when I finally asked Eveline about it she answered in hushed tones. Villagers would have other explanations, but Mgbaba had “it.” The “illness.” The “four letters.” After testing positive, the mayor insisted he follow some counseling and treatment at the provincial hospital in Bertoua. Mgbaba went, but depression overtook him and he ran away, coming back to his wife and 6 children in the middle of the night. There was a suicide attempt foiled by the staff of the Ndélélé hospital, and then a hunger strike. Less than a week later he passed away, choosing a quiet death over an ashamed life. At the funeral, the family spokesperson vaguely insisted, “The family blames no one and we don’t want anyone spreading stories and lies.” The mayor was compelled to speak out against a rumor that working on the generator had killed Mgbaba. In all the eulogies no one dared mention that illness, those four letters.

Cameroon hasn’t yet found its Magic Johnson, a celebrity with AIDS courageous enough to speak about it to young Cameroonians. This has been a frustrating aspect of my two years in Ndélélé, something that seemed so easy to me on paper back in the United States but has been difficult to get across. Then I think of my junior year in high school, when an HIV-positive couple came to speak to the school. Their story was touching, but distant. To me they were strangers. We left the auditorium and rejoined our classes for the last period of the day when in walks our favorite science teacher in tears. He quietly explained that he lost his brother to AIDS and that we would not have class that day. Then he walked into his office and shut the door, leaving the class in uncharacteristic silence. And so it hit me. But how could I convey this to my students? How do you take four letters off the chalkboard and render them in three dimensions? How do you get past rote memorization of Abstinence, Fidelity, and Condom? I don’t know. But the two days when I had my oldest students come one by one into the classroom and demonstrate how to use a condom correctly on a wooden penis, I couldn’t help thinking, “Well... at least it’s something.”

There are twenty days left until I leave Ndélélé for good. I’ll be flying out on the 1st of July and arriving in Milwaukee on the 2nd. Guess that means I’ll see some of you in a month... PBR anyone?