“Americans Take Life as Invariable”: Welcoming 2014

These past few weeks have seen me settling into some kind of a routine in Kembong, whether working at the health center, interacting with locals, or planning for future projects. It has also been filled with what I’m coming to regard as the usual rollercoaster, whether it be all in one day, or weekly. Case in point; finding out that Baby Valeria Ruth is dead, a definite low and the reason for round 2 of the waterworks since arriving in Cameroon – aka me bawling my eyes out with her family – but not bad considering all that I’ve been through, and then later that day, having an amazing conversation with the chief of the health center and other villagers that are, from all impressions from our interactions, very enthusiastic about working with me on future projects, and feeling the pure, unadulterated joy in a child’s infectious laugh. Additionally, I’ve now lived in Cameroon for 4.5 months, roughly the same amount of time that I spent living in Africa previously, which put me in a rather introspective mood. So in addition to recounting what I’ve been up to over the past few weeks since the last post, I’ve also decided to throw in some of the more interesting, and often humorous, musings of mine over the past 4.5 months. The New Year also put me in a reflective mood, particularly as all our cluster celebrated the holiday with the District Officer, the sous-prefet for all the francophones, and his family, where we did an interesting activity. One of the DO’s daughters passed out sheets of paper and then had us write the things from 2013 that we would like to symbolically burn in the flames of the roaring bonfire they’d built, while also writing the things that we’d like to amplify, or illuminate in 2014. I know it sounds rather corny, but despite that, I enjoyed it, particularly as everyone took it seriously – well, as seriously as one can take things after enjoying several libations, but let’s be real they even had Jack Daniels. 2013 was not without its challenges, but as I sat there thinking about the things that I wanted to burn and illuminate, it struck me that my list for things to illuminate was significantly longer than the ‘burn’ list. You can either take this to mean that I’m a person not used to looking at my faults, or you can choose to take the ‘glass half full’ perspective, as I did, and realize that instead of focusing on mistakes in the past, I can learn from them, move on, and strive to consistently better myself – in a nutshell, I’m grateful for a lot of things, and excited about the future possibilities. Speaking of future possibilities, Pauline both surprised and pleased me when she asked if I would be a bridesmaid in her wedding – yay – side note, the exclamation marks on my laptop don’t work, so you’ll have to just believe in my excitement, with or without exclamation marks. In accepting her offer, I’ve been learning a lot about how weddings function in Cameroon, particularly as she told me that I would be accompanying her on all of her three weddings – traditional marriage to be conducted on Thursday, legal court ceremony on Friday, and church wedding on Saturday with a huge reception to follow. Additionally, she first told me that I would be a flower girl, which immediately conjured images of me looking dowdy in a little Bo Peep-esque getup that would include me shepherding around five screaming little other ‘flower girls’…definitely cringe worthy. But then she explained that the bridesmaids all walk, or rather dance –ooohh boy – in together and throw flowers as they go – definitely better than what I had imagined, but can’t say I imagined my first time standing up in a wedding to be skipping down the aisle to the tune of a Celine Dion song. Furthermore, bridesmaids are NOT chosen based on their relationship with the bride, but rather based on the ‘look’ or ‘spice’ as they call it here, that the bride wants to have for her wedding. So even though Pauline and I do have a special relationship as she’s my counterpart, my analysis of the situation is that she choose me for a bridesmaid since a. I’m a white Peace Corps volunteer that will give her wedding more street cred/pizzaz and b. she likes how I’ll look in her wedding, again for the aforementioned reasons. Also, contrary to what I’m used to with American weddings, the bride has little say in what she actually wants – case in point with the bridesmaid dresses – the tailor picked out the dresses that she wanted to make, and told Pauline to give her money to make them. The same is true for virtually every other aspect of the wedding, from the flowers, to the food, and the fact that we went from the bridesmaids skipping down the aisle, willy nilly tossing flowers at unsuspecting guests – and believe me, if I’m 23 years old and tossing flowers, they’re darn well gonna be tossed – to sedately walking arm-in-arm with the groomsmen, a la most American weddings, this last piece of advice was given to Pauline by the lady doing her hair. Irrespective of the fact that I’m not very familiar with how Cameroonian weddings are conducted, I’m ridiculously excited to be in my first wedding, even if our dresses come straight from the likes of what you’d see in the prom photos of an ‘80’s yearbook. On the downswing of the rollercoaster, having/recovering from malaria is not fun in any way, shape, or form. Additionally, when I returned from celebrating the New Year in Mamfe, I found that some children had stuck small twigs in the lock of my door, rendering it inoperable – blargh. Although I think the children were probably just playing house or something of that nature, in the moment that I discovered what happened, I seriously thought about the merits of corporal punishment for said spawn of Satan that tampered with my door – as I may have mentioned, all children are beat here, whether at home or in school. Furthermore, after a carpenter finished prying my door open, I discovered that my most unwelcome house guest – a mouse – had not only taken the liberty to contort itself under my mosquito net to crap on my bed – not to worry, the sheets were washed in bleach immediately upon discovering the droppings – but mousey dearest had taken up residence in my kitchen – no bueno. After laying a poison-laced crawfish trap for dear mousey, I had my first experience of really killing an animal with by myself, previous lab experiments aside, when, after seeing mousey, I proceeded to douse the thing in Raid insect spray and then bludgeon it to death with the broom handle, after trying unsuccessfully to throw my doorjamb rock at it from a safe distance where it would be guaranteed that mousey couldn’t backtrack and run over my sandle-clad feet. All in all, despite my willingness to go out hunting with others, I’ve even field-dressed/gutted a few deer, I can say with absolute certainty that I will not ever enjoy killing an animal myself – and it was just a piddly, bothersome mouse, for god’s sake. Another huge downside/shock to the emotional rollercoaster was when Baby Valeria Ruth died. The baby was born with club feet, which, in order to be corrected so that she could walk properly, would need the aid of a specialist – in other words, lots of money that the family really doesn’t have. On top of that, it turns out that the baby has a congenital defect with her ‘alimentary canal’ as they call it here – essentially, the baby wasn’t able to drink breastmilk, let alone absorb the nutrients in the milk. Combined with the fever and eye problems, the baby died of malnutrition. I got the news early in the morning (a foggy morning, befitting the somber mood of the village – because it’s cold-ish at night here, many elderly people are dying of the flu due to the climate change, and there were at least 5 funeral preparations made that day). I went to be with her family, thinking along the way of what kind of life the baby could’ve had had circumstances been different; thinking about how she died due in no small part to money. As you can probably imagine, this line of depressed thinking is not productive in the slightest – imagining what could’ve been cannot bring back the baby girl, or ease her family’s grief. So instead, I just sat with the family, hugging them as we cried together. When I spoke with the chief of the health center about the baby, he made a very offhanded, and what I thought was a very heartless comment to the effect that ‘well, nature took its course with the baby, and it’s good that she died.’ I was furious. How could he say such things when I had just come from grieving with the family. It took me several days to realize that his comments did not originate from a place of heartlessness, but rather one where he grasped the severity of the baby’s medical issues and knew that if the family continued to spend money as they did, instead of trying to save 1 life, the lives of the rest of the family would’ve deteriorated. And he was absolutely right. It’s just a damn hard pill to swallow. Dr. Tanyi mentioned to me on his second visit the next week how Americans take life for granted, and as invariable: when I have children, there’s no doubt in my mind that I will try my absolute hardest to give them the world, and the thought of my child not having access to basic things, like school, medical care, safe water to drink, etc is incomprehensible as an American. But this is not America. I have seen firsthand the effect of not having these things – not to compare between the two, but I will not be taking anything granted anytime soon. I also forgot to mention that a common response here when you ask people how the holidays is “poverty, we are just managing the best we can with poverty.” So if you had any images in your mind of the ‘noble African savage,’ happily plodding along in the bush without any concept of their quality of life or their situation in the world, put it out of your mind at once. So it’s on a slightly melodramatic/depressed tone that I end this post, but also a hopeful one, because all that has happened has made me think critically about my life, my place in the world, my future, etc, and anything that forces me to do that is inherently valuable.