C, F, L, R

Nurse Ann apparently got clearance to get my root canal done locally, in Yaoundé, by the same Adventists that drilled the same tooth twice. I politely asked if I could maybe go to any other dentist in the country, since I didn’t have a lot of confidence left in those. Nurse Ann demurred but the next day (Tuesday) called me to let me know I was going to Morocco (the jackpot of medevacs). Then Wednesday she called again to say that I needed to be in Yaoundé the next day by noon because I was flying out Friday. What about my tests, yet ungraded? There’s no time; hurry. So I graded what I could and assembled as much of everything and Thursday morning left as early as I could manage for Yaoundé. Through luck I was present at the gonging-out of Henry, Richard, Stephen, and a few other end-of-service Volunteers. Left that night at 1 AM, with a Driver taking me to the airport and making sure I got onto the plane. Had to drink my last sachet before going through the security checkpoint. Fell asleep in the waiting lounge for the 4 AM flight; the staff woke me up, got to my seat in the plane and pretty much fell asleep immediately again. Touched down 11 AM WAT which is 10 AM in Morocco. Hour-long drive from Casablanca to Rabat, the capital, where I was able to deal with Admin on their home turf.

The drive was a little eerie, as a vague discomfort settled over me. I found myself a little overwhelmed with the look of the place — Westernized in vague outlines, good-quality highways with proper signage, but with Arabic on all the signs. The vegetation is a little different too. I’m thinking of what Allison said, that adjusting to Cameroon was way easier than adjusting to the UK, because in the UK things are always only slightly different. Morocco is only slightly different. I was uncomfortable to be in a Westernized, "developed" country, finding myself oddly homesick for the redness and dusty roads of Cameroon. One of my early posts on this blog, I wrote that life-changing experiences only have as much power over you as you let them, and that historically I tend not to give that power out — but Cameroon has changed me, and the things I consider "safe" and "home" are way different now from when I first touched down a year and a half ago. On top of that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was about to run afoul of some nuanced Islam-ish cultural practice, that I was going to give major offense or violate a taboo that I didn’t know about.

All of this discomfort went away when I landed and met some of the local Moroccan volunteers, passing through Rabat on their way to a training next week. So far I’ve met Luis, a guy named Quad (short for "the Fourth", being Herbert Something the Fourth), Gussy (short for Augusta), Donna, Connor, and Lindsay. Within ten hours I was already fully up-to-date on the Organization Gossip Grapevine, providing me with rumors and opinions about every one of the two hundred volunteers I don’t know in this country.

What I’ve seen of Morocco is wildly, unfairly amazing. Rabat in particular is a real place, with sushi places (!) and even a bookstore where I saw a hardcover copy of McCaffrey’s Dolphins of Pern! By contrast Yaoundé is more like someone trying really hard to make a real place without knowing exactly what that would mean. Whereas the Organization has an "office" in Yaoundé, they have a "campus" in Rabat. The stark contrast between their chic-looking wood cafés and restaurants and our "Wood Bar" with its dented pressed-metal chairs and tables is striking — both because of how much nicer everything is here, and because of the important lesson that the Maroc is culturally "dry" due to Islam — although this appears to be a qualified dryness, and it’s not illegal to sell or consume alcohol, and even "au village" the volunteers here say people are definitely drinking, perhaps behind closed doors. But alcohol’s much more expensive here — last night I paid 30 dh (dirham, about 8 dh=$1) for an American-sized beer — versus 500 CFA, about $1, for a Cameroonian 0.65L beer. Something like 7 times more expensive. Morocco’s a shitty place to be an alcoholic, in sum, and I’ve made a lot of friends by promising to start a "sachet of the month" club, to be repaid in local garments.

Gussy said something about how Rabat is a nice city in the style of a generic European city, but doesn’t have any character. I find this wildly baffling. I’m chowing down right now on a bag of olives and another bag of dates, both of which I bought in the medina (which literally means "city", but actually means the Old City, which is actually actually an open-air market) for presque rien. Does Yaoundé’s ramshackle and aggressive manner give it character? I prefer to think that Rabat’s character is just clean and polite, dignified in a way that Yaoundé definitely isn’t. The local volunteers don’t think I can experience real Moroccan culture or cuisine in Rabat, so I should just carouse and live it up a bit, but I’m pretty sure they don’t appreciate how thoroughly the culture is seeping through the city, like a heart on a sleeve. For them it’s normal, thus uninteresting and bland, that no one call out "white person!" or "foreigner!" to you as you go about your business, whereas for me it’s an exciting mark of serious refinement. The volunteers say that the rest of the country is way worse than Rabat, and I believe it, but I don’t think they realize how good they have it all the same. A large majority of Volunteers here have running water and electricity; in Cameroon most get one or the other, and some neither.

My French serves me well in this country — everyone can speak it, although Dirisia (Moroccan Arabic; sp?) or the variety of Berber tongues would be useful to know too. The accent is pleasant, both a little Frencher in some places and a little lighter, like when Fulbe speak it, in others. And an appalling number of people speak to you in good-quality English, and have no problem with American English. My Cameroonian sense of fashion is a little less useful; no one wears pagne here, everyone wears long sleeves, and there are actual seasons here (we’re coming up on winter). Volunteers in Cameroon very occasionally use words like "summer" as abstract constructions to refer to certain time periods, like the holiday vacation, but more often we just use months, because for us the only seasons that exist are "dry season" and "rainy season". Par contre, here it’s breezy here bordering on chilly, and I’m enjoying the novelty. Dry season can get a little boring so I’m also enjoying the phenomenon of weather, such as rain (last night).

I saw the dentist last night at 4 PM, after having only been in the country for a few hours, and he confirmed the diagnosis of a root canal. That nerve is dead, super-dead, and Dr. Rami decided that we could just start drilling now, and why not skip the Novocaine just to prove that the tooth is dead? So I now have a hole in tooth #5, whence the abscess can drain and be exposed to air and basically get better. My parents will also be happy to know that I am on fucidine 250 mg twice daily. Dr. Rami let me know that the abscess probably stayed mild instead of getting to really incredible swelling because of the doxycycline that I take for malaria prophylaxis. Take your doxy, kids. It’s a wonder drug.

The Organization behaves a bit differently here — there’s no case or transit house, so I’m being put up in a hotel which has adequate, but not incredible, wifi. There’s no Education program — or indeed any programs any more; they’ve changed the whole country over to Youth Development. There are sushi restaurants, plural, in Rabat, and a tram (!), and I expect to be in the country for about a week. Wish you were here.

A few weeks ago I played in the students-vs.-teachers soccer game. It was a shitshow. Here are some pictures of me being sprotif.

Yeah, you know, wearing my sport outfit. No big deal, guys.

Warm-ups.

Most students aren’t capable of doing thirty of these.

Don’t have sneakers? Boots’ll do in a pinch.

Children!

Madame Ann sells oranges. She’s got more important things to do than sporting events.

[Note: my fridge is doing nicely since I can’t cook at the moment. Also, I read a review of Cory Doctorow’s newest book; sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?]

In all honesty, my little Sumi training manual is an amusement, a project I work on when I’m too angry to work on anything else. It’s a little soothing to compose Sumi triplets to explain technical concepts, and with a little poetic license some of those triplets are just the synthesized names for Earther technical words which don’t have indigenous equivalent. Mental exercise, which I hardly get any more. Mostly it’s just waiting. Example: fuel cells for my stove are sold out everywhere within a hundred kilometers. I’m promised that more will be delivered "by the end of this week, and if not, surely by the end of the next one." I therefore took the liberty of acquiring a handheld convection coil, runs off the power grid, when I was in Highest Gardens today, which (I will admit) does a pretty good job of heating my bath water. That should at least make the waiting a little easier.

Even Revolutionary Committee stuff is simmering, proceeding mainly based on obstinancy and patience. In all honesty — which, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is hard to find on this planet — it’s probably that which is making it so hard for me to focus. I was at a meeting last night with Jamie and one of the administrative staff at my school, a sage little Zhenae named Utkeu. I had been hoping to talk him around to our side, provide some kind of memetic strategy for the kinds of public messages we needed to make, so we all went out for drinks and grilled skitters. I was plying Utkeu with a line of reasoning about the need for change.

"The corruption part is the worst," I’d said. "No Zhenae wants need to change because the whole system, straight up to the Planetary Counsel, is just as bad. And even the Zhenae who denounce corruption still perform it themselves, when they can."

"True," said Utkeu, deigning not to notice that my awkward phrasing had included him as potentially corrupt. "It is a problem with deepest roots. Hope that they will wither and be replaced."

"That’s the thing," Jamie said. Jamie’s Sumi is serviceable, but with very English sentence constructions. "The tree is sick. Don’t you want to replace it?"

"Replace? With an axe?" Utkeu did the Zhenae equivalent of a snort at a funny joke. "Not wise. Its fruit may be poison, but its branches still provide shade.. and shelter. Zhen is a peaceful planet."

"Very peaceful." I said, with a glance at Jamie. "But I ask myself, if this were my world, would there not come a day when I thought peace was no longer enough?"

"No longer enough," Utkeu repeated. "No longer really enough. I understand what you say. But this tree is very big, very heavy. If it were to fall, it would crush. Pups are like you, too young to remember. There were many stories during the Zhenae struggle for independence. Some things happen to a family before one’s eyes, and they never really see correctly again." A pause, and then Utkeu fixed me with a suspicious stare. "We are just talking, correct? Hypotheses?" We’d agreed beforehand not to say anything incriminating, just feel him out, but Utkeu was dancing dangerously close to a true question, and if he asked it, I didn’t know if I could bring myself to lie to him.

"We are Missionaries," I dodged. "We are not political. We ask to understand better." I chewed on my skitter, not trusting myself to make eye contact, but I could sense his unease bordering on anger.

"Children should be careful when playing with sharp tools," he said softly. "Have the best night." And then he walked off.

I’m dwelling now on this conversation. Utkeu’s not stupid. Is this just a cultural misunderstanding? He can’t really be willing to spend his life in a broken system with no possibility for getting better, can he?

My faith is what helps me in times like this. My being on this planet, or coming at the same time as Jamie, or the whole affair with Morgan — these coincidences are all part of a greater plan. I can feel that in my bones. We’re going to be the agents of progress. All we need to do is apply a gentle pressure in a few tender areas, and we’ll see if this place doesn’t squeal. I think Utkeu will be pleased once the dust clears, pleased to see the same potential, the same wide-open canvas that we’re used to having on Earth.

Halloween is one of those holidays that we celebrate way too much here, like July 4th and probably like the upcoming Thanksgiving, because it’s one of those ways to revel in your Americanness. This year the place to be was Buea, although there was a simultaneous party in Bangangté. It’s kind of a tragedy that we had two different parties in the Grand West, but with so many expats it’s kind of inevitable. Almost all of the ICT volunteers still in this country, including Jenny who came back for it, went to the Buea party, which included:

• drunk nerds

(That’s Jared and Julius.)

• LMFAO’s "Party Rock Anthem" theme including costumes

• Jello Wrestling

This is where me and Lindsey exchanged shirts.

• Most importantly, the "gonging out" of Jenny Wang, the heart and soul of the ICT crew.

Heather’s playing Kim, part of Organization Admin. This is the sort of joke that explaining doesn’t make funny.

Allison is playing Lahomabot.

Good luck, Jenny Wang! If we pass through Geneva, we’ll be looking for you.

Today I took another step towards domestic African satisfaction. I purchased a fridge, frigo, from a neighboring Volunteer who’s near the end of her service and therefore won’t need it any more. Here’s a picture.

It’s in my bedroom, next to my bed, so I can keep it with all the other things I don’t want to share with people. I even took this picture and then deleted it off my camera immediately so that when Brondon decides to flip through the photos I’ve been taking (as he inevitably will) he won’t find out I bought a fridge.

Unfortunately all my subterfuge was for naught because the woman who lives across the street that sells bread and food saw me rolling up in the car that was carrying the fridge and told Brondon. So the secret’s out. He’s already asked to see the fridge, and among other stupid questions, he asked (while the fridge’s door was wide open and the fridge empty) if it was plugged in and if someone had taught me how to use it.

Liz (the woman who sold me the fridge) herself bought it from Wendy, who was here in my village before I was, so it’s a venerable and time-worn machine. Singsung brand. Liz bought it for 80,000 CFA, and sold it to me for 50,000. (I don’t know how much they are "new".) Liz says if you freeze bananas you can blend them and make something that tastes remarkably like soft-serve ice cream. Suffice it to say that my taste buds have been whetted.

So this is the day my service utterly changes. Now I can buy canned things in bigger quantities and keep leftovers for later. I can cook and not have to consume it all within a day. I can have cold beverages. I’m really excited about the world of potentialities. It’s going to be grand.

That’s not all, either. Yaya explained to me that a lot of spices and herbs that I assumed didn’t exist in Cameroon are actually quite common. I’m sitting next to a bag of feuilles de l’oreillier or something like that, which are bay leaves, and while I was in Bafoussam I managed to buy thym, herbs de provence, menthe, and anise. (I forgot what it was but was able to figure it out because it tastes like licorice.) So I’m pretty thoroughly kitted out as far as feeding myself goes. And since food, like alcohol, candy, and video games, is one of my best coping mechanisms, I’m that much better equipped for the remaining 294 days of my service.

In other news, Yaya’s got her own laptop now, a 14 or 15 inch Toshiba that her family managed to acquire for something like $350. I helped her transition the last of her data onto her new machine and picked up my little netbook jonah-hex. So if anyone (is still reading this and) needs to borrow my spare netbook, just let me know. In the meantime I guess I can still use it to play Desktop Dungeons!

I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first blog post I’ve titled "voyage" but I really have no other idea what to call it. It’s just one of those "day in the life" posts that you write because you don’t know what the hell else to do, to try to give those of you following along at home a sense of what it really is to be a Volunteer.

I slept in this morning till about 9. I just wasn’t motivated to actually do anything except try to recapture a dream I was having, based roughly on the setting of Connie Willis’s Blackout/All Clear, where I and all the other Cameroon volunteers were sitting on a beach, waiting for the beacon to signal the opening of the portal that would take us back to the future. The signal was going to be subtle, because the portal wouldn’t open if people from "the present" were there to watch it, and with the rail line just behind us, just off the beach, there could be people at any time. So we were all sitting and waiting, including some already-returned volunteers like Wendy, when suddenly we saw three flashes reflected in the water, though they didn’t reflect anything I could see. I charged forward, swimming with all my might into the ocean, hoping to make it to the portal, knowing I wouldn’t have a lot of time, but it was all right, and it closed over me in warmth, and it took me…

Back to Cameroon. Fuck this, I’m going back to bed. I didn’t feel guilty about steadfastly refusing to wake up since technically we were on standfast again due to election results being announced yesterday. Allison’s gotcha covered as far as that story goes. Long story short, Biya won and no one’s done anything. But although there was a deuil for the father of another teacher (M. Ignace Simo, the P.E. teacher who is exactly what you expect him to be), I could legitimately not go as long as we were technically on standfast. I could always make excuses later, "Oh sorry, the Organization told us to not go anywhere until XXXX o’clock", and that’s really all I cared about. Ideally I’d blow off everyone and waste the day in Bafoussam kicking around on the Internet and drinking and buying exotic things until nightfall. But around 9:30 M. Teukeu called me and asked me if I was already on my way to Bafoussam or what and I told him I hadn’t left the house yet and had no idea what I was doing. M. Teukeu understood and told me that if I was at Baf by 11:30, to call him, so he could show me the center where the library was that I had sponsored for Books for Cameroon.

I couldn’t kick around my house forever if I wanted some juicy high-speed Boffice Internet, so I tried to get my ass together and when we got the all-clear at 10:30, I headed out right away. Caught a car directly to Bafoussam which dropped me off in front of the bank, where I withdrew 200,000 CFA (about 5-6 weeks worth of salary) because I’m, in the words of my postmate, CFA rich, dollar poor. Called M. Teukeu as the rainstorm started to come down; he utterly insisted on picking me up in his car, and so it was that we made it to CERPIES (which, yes, is pronounced an awful lot like serpillière). He and his colleague showed me around; I popped my head into their Terminale C class which was reviewing Physics and was greeted with the same measure of respect and insolence that older kids normally use to greet a teacher who is also white.

I was surprised to also find M. Noumi, one of the other censeurs at my lycée, there and wearing a suit, but he explained that we were going to the deuil ensemble, weren’t we? So I guess even though I wasn’t dressed for it, I was going after all, which is good because you always want to support your friends when they’re having funerals, and anyhow it’d be a good time. The three of us climbed into M. Teukeu’s car and off we went. This was around 12. Around 12:20 I started to get nervous about the thumping the tire was making, and although I feared the wheel, unnoticed, coming off and condemning us to a messy death, M. Teukeu also noticed it and we pulled over to look at it. It turns out that three of the nuts holding the wheel on had come off and gotten lost. Cameroonians are terribly, terribly clever, so we decided to cope with the rain long enough to take one nut off of each wheel and use them to reattach the wheel that wasn’t staying on. Once we turned off the paved road and onto the mud path, we were going slowly enough that the problem was less the recalcitrant wheel and more the vivid fishtailing, combined with the other cars on the road. The Mercedes ahead of us wasn’t sure what it wanted to do, and then trying to pull around another car we found ourselves stuck. Me and M. Noumi managed to get us out with a little muscle and before too much longer we were at the place.

I’d blown off breakfast figuring I’d be able to grab some beans and beignets while waiting for a car or something delicious in Bafoussam, but this was the fourth or fifth hour I’d gone since waking without really eating anything. But, as my language trainers told me back during stage, in the West people sell stuff everywhere, at any time, even during funerals, so I bought 100 CFA of bananes and snacked. Snacking while I waited outside the house with what felt like almost every other teacher from the lycée for the family to get back from the church, I reflected that back in the States, I would have started to get irritated, waiting for whatever-it-was to start, whereas here I basked in the knowledge that this, standing outside while leaning on a 4×4, eating bananas and talking to other teachers, was the event I had come for, and there was no sense hurrying it; it was going to take as long as it was going to take and I may as well try to enjoy it.

Normally at this kind of event, there’s a kind of buffet-style thing controlled by caterers with angry faces and strict rules, stuff like "at most one piece of a meat, be it fish or be it chicken, per plate", none of which prevent the first people up from taking way too much food and leaving hardly any for the people who go up later. But someone had displayed some kind of critical thinking and food was packed in little aluminum take-away boxes, precisely rationed with one piece of chicken, one of fish, a handful of plantain chips, a bit of cake, and a little packet of piment. Following M. Teukeu I grabbed a little box and a piece of bread and a canned soft drink, labeled in English and Arabic as "Linda" (pomegranate flavor, or grenade in French, whence our word grenadine). Of course, eventually wine came out, first boxes of Peñasol, and then (oddly) bottles of Peñasol, which are higher-class and actually taste different. Around 15h it seemed like it was time to go.

Piled back into the car, witnessed a little bit of repartée between M. Noumi and M. Diffo (who had chosen to accompany us back) about how M. Diffo graded his papers in the secretary’s office instead of his own, and whether this meant he was trying to flirt with the students. Went to M. Fotso, who’s also a censeur (we have four now for no really good reason) and drank more wine (something something Saint Jean? The light wasn’t very good in his house). We were down to two wheel-nuts again, and M. Teukeu hazarded taking another from one of the front tires. That got us to a crossroads where a bunch of kids were pushing or possibly pulling a bus which was going God-knows-where. While we waited for that little circus to calm down, Teukeu tightened the nuts again, but once we swerved around the bus and plowed on down the road, Teukeu pulled over again and discovered that we’d just lost another one. We walked the few hundred meters we’d just driven, but we couldn’t find it. We decided to just keep going, M. Teukeu saying, "Ça sort où ça sort", something like "It is what it is" but (to me) with overtones of "The tire may leave the car at any point and we may all die".

We managed to make it back to the paved road after some more intense fishtailing, and from there we got to (I think) the ancien péage, the old tollbooth, which is different (of course) from the new tollbooth. There was a bar and we found more of our colleagues still drinking, and I thought we were going to join them but a few minutes later we all climbed back into the car and got to a mechanic. I stayed inside with Mme. Wana and Mama Rose, who were going back to Batié by way of Bafoussam with me, M. Teukeu, M. Noumi, and M. Diffo. Mme. Wana and Mama Rose were talking about how to best organize the réunion, meeting, that one is obliged to throw in honor of newborn grandchildren. It seemed that if possible, you delay the meeting to as late as 9 or 10 AM, which gives you enough time in the morning to make a big batch of couscous and legumes. I decided that if the car was broken I may as well drink one of my "in-case-of-sachet-break-emergency" dealies that I’d brought with me back when I expected a mild day of relaxing in the Boffice. Soccer brand. Don’t buy it. It’s the worst brand of sachet I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something. M. Diffo wanted one and so did Mme. Wana, and I was happy to get rid of them. The technician changed the tire; apparently the fixtures where the wheels ought to screw on had been worn away and so the nuts weren’t holding very well. We continued without incident to Bafoussam, where M. Teukeu dropped me off where cars going to my village are. It was 5:30, and I try to be home by 7, but that still gave me enough time to stop by the supermarket and buy rice or whatever the hell struck my fancy (about 13500 CFA worth of random crap, including rice, more pickles, and a bag of couscous arabe, what we think of as couscous).

Got once more into the car, this time the car that would take me back to village, and was surprised when next to me climbed the carpenter who works in my courtyard. We had a fun discussion about the economics of living in the village vs. in the city, what kinds of materials he buys and where he buys them, and what his plans are for the future (moving to the city because food’s cheaper). I was also immensely gratified when he mentioned that he often wondered if the Boys didn’t bother me, seeing as they spend so much time at my house and as a grown man with a real job, I have need of rest, lesson planning, etc.

So that was Saturday. Tomorrow’s market day and I’m gonna ask all my favorite vendors if they cultivate soybeans, because I think it is legitimately possible to make there be edamame here in this village. I’m also possibly going to buy a fridge from Liz, who’s very near the end of her service, which should open up certain culinary possibilities. Side note, I finished Apocalypse Chow the other week, which is kind of a fun book, but most of the recipes call for things like "precooked polenta" and "15.5-ounce cans of chickpeas", stuff which either isn’t available even in big cities like Bafoussam or is prohibitively priced for a Volunteer (I’ve seen cans of sweet corn and petit peas but never seriously considered buying them). It seems like the kinds of constraints that Jon and Robin Robertson face when they’re facing down a hurricane are just different from the kinds of constraints that you face when the nearest, best market only operates once every 8 days. I’ve learned a lot about living without a fridge, though: tomatoes do go bad but some can stay fresh for a long time, so check all of them daily; string beans can last about a week, and carrots a little less than that, though some will start disintegrating and molding before then; cabbage can stay good for weeks if you just peel off leaves.

No doubt the Robertsons would do a lot better with the vegetables and tubers you find around here (plus maybe they’d buy a fridge and supplement with things from the city), but I’m still kind of feeling it out. Every time I see a spice of any kind at a supermarket, I grab it. (Recent finds include canelle, which is cinnamon, and curry, which is just curry.) I’m starting to mess around with my sesame oil from back home, and mustard can stay fresh for a long time (doesn’t go great with pasta though). I faked a Spanish rice last week using some of those sachets of tomato paste and a lot of wishful thinking. So what if we didn’t get evacuated? There’s only 299 days left for me here, and when I’m back home I’ll start to miss being an instant celebrity and the many fascinating ways people judge me based on my skin color. I’ll have to switch back to the ways I used to use to be weird, like growing my hair out and dressing funny.

I had a handful of pictures and things I wanted to upload when I was in Bafoussam today, but you know how that goes. Guess you’ll have to wait until next time. Now that there was no Cameroonian revolution, expect more of the "fiction" on the same subject, full of effusive retcons and extemporaneous sacrilege..

Today was a good day, my first good day since before exams, possibly my first good day since the beginning of the year. Good days make me happy, and technically French for happy is content — my neighbor Marie-Cha, approx my parents’ age, could tell I had been drinking wine the other weekend because I seemed content — but Boris in Douala at least, and I suspect other youth-y types too, use instead the word fier, literally "proud". My own armchair-linguistic theory about this (and of course I have one!) is that content sounds too passive and low-key, like it does in English, so kids are starting to switch to fier because it sounds more active and enthusiastic. Of course, this requires that the French word have the same connotations as the English one, and there’s no reason that should be the case…

I can think of three or four proximate causes for my fierèté:

1. I bought a jar of pickles last week for one-five (approx $3). They are so, so good. Also, watched "Hot Fuzz" the other night.
2. Finished grading papers. Calculated all the grades. Haven’t been in a hurry to fill out report cards yet, but maybe soon.
3. Quality of Internet is acceptable. Cut out last night just before bedtime, but tonight I’m getting a pretty reliable 6-7 kilobytes/sec.
4. Wednesdays are my Fridays, since I am free Thursdays. Fridays are also my Fridays, but I’m more often trying to go someplace on the weekends and not as able to just relax.
5. One of my students from première came to me to look for extra lessons. In première I teach programming, it’s probably the most advanced material I teach or can teach at a lycée, and the "arts" première class I have is still kinda delinquent. That a student might recognize that he’s having difficulty, and try to come for more information, more practice, or whatever, is really heartening and encouraging. That I was able, after two or three hours, to kinda bring him up to speed, that he kinda got what the program was doing and how integers versus strings played a role, was cool. A lot more satisfying than talking about even RISC vs CISC (which nobody should care about nor ever will understand).

I’ve also been reading Lindsay’s blog. (Lindsay’s a couple villages over from me, close enough that we have the same patois, she’s the one dating Claude.) Here’s a post from about February about Christmas. She writes:

It’s funny, some days I dream of being back there where I can wash dishes in a kitchen sink and take a shower without a bucket and a cup but at the same time I know that when I do get back it’s going to be a major adjustment and in the end I’m going to damn sure miss it here. Ever since my first time on this continent it’s been under my skin. It’s a place that just changes you in ways you can’t explain. Maybe it is that being back closer to the way humans were designed to be, farther from all the technology and instant gratification. Where, when I think of my loved ones I’m forced to sit down and actually write them a letter instead of just sending them a text message or a face book chat. Where I have to appreciate every single drop of water that falls from the sky, every positive interaction with someone, where every indication of minute progress in any sense is a blissful reward. In fact, I think on the whole I was far more stressed out and miserable when I was suffering through making payments on time, rushing from meetings, sitting in traffic jams, and attempting to balance the scales of social and professional life without losing my mind, even despite coming home to a host of modern luxuries designed to make life easier and better.

(My italics.) I hesitate to endorse her perspective all the way — "the way humans were designed to be" involves procreating by 20 and dying by 40, and I certainly wasn’t more stressed out in NYC than I am here. But it’s true that this place changes you in ways that you can’t explain, soit the place itself or soit the experience of being a Volunteer here, alone, a long way from home..

Here’s a pasthèque, watermelon that I got at the last market day. It turns out it wasn’t as ripe as I’d hoped. Still, kinda bite-size, considering.

Here is a song that I heard once upon a time in the weird linguistic limbo at Up Station in Bamenda, neither wholly Anglophone nor wholly Francophone, but somehow a little of both. It is therefore one of the songs (like "Quality Doctor") that I’ve been hunting for a while. It turns out to be by a performer named Samy Diko; I bought a CD "of his" at the village marché yesterday for 300 CFA. It’s all MP3s so I’ll probably be uploading a few more of them.

The lyrics go:

C’est toi qui m’as tout appris

Les bonnes choses et les mauvaises aussi

Dans tes oreilles, je t’ai murmuré,

Dans tes bras, je me suis confié, Anaïs (ah oui)

Je t’aime, je t’ai donné mon coeur, ai

Tu m’as laissé tomber, tu est allée ailleurs

Tu m’as laissé tomber, tu m’as brisé le cÅ“ur

Les projets que toi et moi, on avait

Tu les as laissé tomber pour aller ailleurs

Aujourd’hui tu est allée à villa, tu laisse tomber [et ta beauté???]

Là où toi et moi, on avait commencé

C’est toi qui m’as tout appris

Les bonnes choses et les mauvaises aussi

Anaïs, pourquoi tu m’as fait ça?

Toi et moi, depuis nos debuts

Mais aujourd’hui tu as vu la lumière du jour

Tu as laissé tomber.. la torche

Anaïs, Anaïs

Il n’y aura pas une autre comme toi

Tu m’as laissé tomber, tu m’as brisé le cÅ“ur

Tu m’as laissé tomber, tu est allée ailleurs

—Samy Diko, "Anaïs"

Translated with no regard whatsoever to poetic beauty:

It’s you who taught me everything

The good things, and the bad things too

In your ears, I murmured to you

In your arms, I entrusted myself

I love you, I gave you my heart

You let me go, you went elsewhere

You let me go, you broke my heart

The plans that you and I, we had

You let them go to go elsewhere

Today you went to the villa, you let go [and your beauty???]

Where you and I, we started

Anais, why did you do this to me?

You and I, since our beginnings

But today you saw today’s light

You let go.. the torch

There will not be another one like you

You let me go, you broke my heart

You let me go, you went elsewhere

It’s obviously a breakup song, but as a linguistic note it’s interesting that he uses "tu" forms to address the woman who dumped him. "Tu" forms predominate here in Cameroon when addressing singular people — only in rare, formal situations do "vous" forms come out — but still I like to think that once you’ve achieved a certain level of intimacy with someone, they can never become a formal "vous" for you ever again.

For contrast, here’s another song by the same artist. You can here that the melody he sings is pretty much the same, but the background changes. It’s like that in a few other songs too, which is maybe why none of them grab me the way "Anaïs" does.

Today’s the start of "standfast", our state of heightened awareness due to elections. Naturally, I’m tipsy, just got back from drinking with M. Teukeu (have I told you about M. Teukeu? Only my FAVORITE CAMEROONIAN EVER including my host family) and my neighbors (all teachers, so like family). M. Teukeu somehow got appointed to an electoral commission or something. He’s going to be leaving tomorrow bright and early to make sure the elections are conducted fairly, while I’m going to be sleeping until at least 8 AM, probably later, and then correcting papers until I no longer care about anything (i.e. probably Monday). Did you know I’m a contact Volunteer? Well, I am, charged with the duty of ensuring the security of my village (me and my postmate) as well as neighboring villages (Charmayne, Kim), and also bigger cities than us (Liz, Kalika). So let’s talk security.

Standfast is like level 1 of a list of "shit is happening" states. It’s like code yellow. It means "stay in your stupid village and try not to do anything stupid". Our standfast (this time) is going to go until around the 24th, during which time the elections will hopefully have concluded safely with everyone satisfied with the way there were performed (spoiler: the current president is going to win). But maybe things won’t be that simple. Maybe there’ll be some riots or even a real political action, in which case, please be aware that: After standfast is "consolidation". Consolidation means "get together with nearby volunteers so if we have to send cars to find your inebriated ass, it’s at least straightforward for us". If we get to consolidation, it’s pretty much a ticking time bomb, because at that point we’re in someone else’s house (unless we consolidate at my house, in which case I’m good), we’re living out of our backpacks and showering in a pit latrine, and we’re running out of money and it basically comes down to: do we go back to post and try to continue our lives? OR do we evacuate this fucking hole-in-the-ground, leave them to sort out their issues and continue with our lives? We can’t punt this question forward forever — if (as Mike said) it’s a coup, then no big deal, give it a few days and we’ll be back before breakfast. But after X days, it becomes a civil war, and the Organization is very, very concerned with the safety of its Volunteers. So either we’ll let it go and return to state 0 ("normal") or we’ll go to state 3, Evacuation, which involves everybody going home, or some subset of Volunteers going home, probably carried to the airport in those giant Range Rovers the Organization drives amidst gunfire and riots.

I’m not concerned, of course. M. Teukeu (in numerous discussions on the subject — and despite my fictional writings, I’m not encouraging locals towards armed revolution) has quite reasonably pointed out that this country loves peace, and that peace is one of the foremost concerns for people like him. He doesn’t want to live through another génocide Bamiléké where people watch their own families being killed/raped in front of their eyes. And as much as I want to get out of this country, I can’t blame him. Nor can I blame the other Volunteers (i.e. every single one I’ve asked except for me and Jenny Wang) who are eager to finish/start their work in this country and have nothing to gain from an evacuation except frustrated ambitions. I’m the only one who wants to go home, who wants to pack it in and start with my Real life. Because this isn’t, it turns out, what I’m here on this earth to do. I’m here to write software, believe it or not, and the extent of what I can do here is therefore kind of limited.

(Can I take a minute, therefore, to talk about France? I’m scanning the "génocide Bamiléké" page that I linked to and among other things it says (in French) that "According to Shanda Tonme, the silence about the genocide is explained by the privileged position occupied by France in today’s world and the lack of patriotism on the part of Cameroon’s leaders". OK, sure. Pop quiz: who the fuck cares about France? Seriously. Do you think their political might is worth a damn? How about their economic prowess? No. The only thing I care about chez the French is their wine. So why the fuck, where the fuck do Cameroonians get this idea that the French are this global power? Movers-and-shakers? Fuck, stop speaking French and just listen for once.)

So here’s where shit might get real, but for the benefit of all the other Volunteers who don’t want to go home, I hope it kind of doesn’t actually get real. I hope it remains as placid and peaceful as it normally does in this country. I hope that for their sakes, as little changes tomorrow, the 9th, the elections, as has changed in the last thirty years. (Paul Biya. Isn’t it interesting? Cameroon being a democracy with a political head who’s had power for thirty years, who is still considered "the last of Africa’s ‘strong man’ dictators".) And in the meantime I’m correcting my feuilles, the tests from the last half-week of exams, for the first sequence. Only five more repeats of this bullshit, and then I’m home free..

P.S. Got an MP3 for you! I’ll try to rip it and hopefully upload it tomorrow, amidst all the grading.

[Edit: so incoherent when I blog drunk. M. Teukeu spent the night here because he normally lives far but has to supervise elections here in my village.]

The closest deadline at present is the Saturday deadline for our Trimestrial Report, 2011 June-September. So that’s what I’m working on today, my "day off", after I went shopping at the market. Un rapport is a report, but it’s also used in le rapport sexuel, sexual contact. My dictionary gives "contact" as a general meaning for rapport.

I figure I’ll be sitting at my computer for a while typing up notes and observations about the fairly meager activities I fostered during this period, which (you’ll note) centers largely around summer vacation. But I figured that while I’m writing, I’m not using my Internet, so I may as well upload some pictures.

This is from the pool party at Dschang. It’s an actual swimming pool! This is at the Centre Climatique, which is a beautiful place.

Dschang also features an artificial lake.

A ceremony at one of the local hospitals. One of the local notables had arranged for some French partners to donate some medical stuff, including a bunch of mattresses and a delivery table.

The "SISTERS", the association of village women in Douala (ex-pats?). They helped somehow with the gift or something.

Some other association, this time all of local village men (J-C is the really tall one). The way the pictures are framed, it looks like they’re squaring off to fight.

This kind of ceremony is improved by dancers.

Sa majesté saying some words in honor of the occasion.

I was surprised to see a for-reals political cartoon in Bafoussam a week or two ago. The subject is the recent ban on night travel, which was protested loudly by the population. Kirikou is a famous cartoon character here, who is very very small but very strong and clever. (There’s a pop song that goes Kirikou est petit, mais il est fort. I have a copy of "Kirikou et les bêtes sauvages" if you’re interested.)

J-C’s wife Véronique (host mother #2?) called me the other day to say she was cooking something and did I want to come over for dinner, or should she just send her son up the hill with my portion? But by the time she had finished cooking, it was already dark, and they decided it would be best if I went home with the food, so I could eat at my leisure. They sent enough for two days. It’s cabbage cooked somehow, there’s fish in it too, and the complement is what they call couscous, or in Anglophone foo-foo. This is couscous de maïs, and it’s made from ground corn. It’s dense and bland but has a crisp texture. (Couscous de manioc is pretty much despised by volunteers, but couscous de maïs is acceptable. I think there’s also "wata foo-foo" and couscous de riz, but those don’t turn up much in the West.)