Spider Guts

I have seen my fair share of spiders in Cameroon. I have seen black widows, I have seen tarantulas, I have seen daddy long legs—and just about everything in between. It was no surprise to see the giant spider in the kitchen. But it was still gross. My postmate and I were sitting in the kitchen, eating cookies, when I spotted the spider sitting on the stool’s leg. It was one of those big, hairy ones, with a fat abdomen. It was roughly the size of a baseball with its legs included. Just chillin below our water filter. It looked disgusting and it looked like it could do some damage if it wanted to. We could not let it live. That was never an option. We began debating what to use to kill it. Our shoes were quickly removed as a possibility as that would require us to get far too close to the creature. It was in a bit of a confined space, being on the stool leg, so it was going to be a bit tricky to get the force and speed to kill it without it getting away. We finally decided on an empty plastic coke bottle. After hemming and hawing and making multiple “we are so grossed out” noises, I finally stepped up and into position. As I whacked the bottle into the spider’s location, two things happened simultaneously. First, the spider’s body went leaping off in the other direction, towards the wall—the thing just shot through the air. Second, something hit the back of my neck. As expected, this second occurrence took up most of my attention. I immediately slapped my hand to the back of my neck and wiped at what I had felt land there. When I pulled my hand away, I saw a brown goo. I then commenced the classic scream and dance. I began squirming around, shouting “get it off me, get it off me!” to Elizabeth. It was a scene straight out of the movies. Looking back, it’s hilarious. At the moment, it was very far from it. The best words I can use to describe my feelings at the time: absolute repulsion. It was disgusting to realize I had spider guts on the back of my neck. Of course, by realizing there were guts on my neck, I knew the spider must be dead, or at least mostly. But the fear that worried me was that there would be a half-living, angry, dying spider on my back, oozing guts as it sought to cling to life. I was also very confused as to how the guts ended up on my back, as it went against all laws of physics. I splatted a spider in front of me and its guts ended up not only behind me, but then 180 degrees around again, on the back of my neck. It made no sense. I was still trying to process all of this, while dancing around, but Elizabeth confirmed there was no spider on me. I didn’t fully trust her at first—if its guts could defy all possibilities, why couldn’t it? But eventually, she convinced me it was only its guts, which were also located in several other locations on my shirt. After I recovered from being beyond grossed-out (let me tell you—I do not like the feel of spider guts on my bare skin), we finally realized we hadn’t found the spider itself. We were pretty sure it was dead it its guts were all over me, but we had also seen it leaping off the other way. Thus ensued a manhunt, which was finally ended after several minutes when we found its head and deflated body. Incidentally, this was the day I decided I have been in Cameroon long enough and am really looking forward to coming home. 

Mosquito Net Distribution

Cameroon is in the process of distributing free insecticide-treated nets to its entire population. It’s not exactly an easy process, especially when you consider all of the normal difficulties of such a project and then try to have it carried out in Cameroon. In the South West region, the distribution was supposed to take place several months ago, for example, but had to be postponed because the cars could not deliver the nets to villages due to the road conditions. Also, the first company hired to distribute the nets ultimately refused to do the job. Eventually, however, the nets did arrive at our health center, and then we had to wait another month or two for every other health center in the region to receive their nets before we were allowed to give out our own. But, apparently as of several weeks ago, all hospitals received their nets because we were permitted to give them out! A census was done by community health representatives in the previous weeks to record how many people slept in a house and prescribe nets based on that number. The family was given a ticket, stating how many nets they should receive, and the following week, the family was supposed to come to the health center to turn in the receipt and collect their nets. It was a big day at the health center. 

Staff and volunteers were there to accept customers, record results, and distribute the nets. 

I gave several lectures about malaria and the importance of using mosquito nets, and health care workers demonstrated how to hang them. In all, we had four days of distribution and gave out nets to at least over 400 people on the two days I was involved. Most importantly, there was some pretty great style. 

Thanksgiving

I just spent my third Thanksgiving in Cameroon, and it was the best one yet! This year we got a group of volunteers together in the beautiful town of Bangem, which is nestled into the Menenguba Mountains, featuring twin crater lakes. We had quite the haul, from collective care packages, and a certain volunteer recently returned from a trip abroad. We therefore had brownies, cinnamon swirl cake, m&m cookies, pumpkin pie, chocolate pudding pie, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes, marshmallow yams, greenbeans, biscuits, salad (with ranch dressing!), quinoa, and hot wing sauce. Not necessarily your totally traditional Thanksgiving spread, but certainly better than anything we could imagine! 

We had a local mama make a chicken for us, and it turned out pretty great. To top it off, one of our favorite local Cameroonian beers was “winning” (Cameroon beer is owned by the Cameroonian government and its beers go through a cycle of offering customers the chance to win a free beer simply by looking under the bottle cap for the image of a beer, in order to promote beer sales, which is one of the few things that is taxed in Cameroon). We invited some Cameroonians over as well to participate, and while they did not enjoy all of the dishes, they clearly enjoyed some of them. We ended the weekend by hiking up to the lakes, hopefully burning off some of the Thanksgiving meal. 

Water Project

Nothing comes easy here, that’s for sure. If I hadn’t learned the lesson already, Cameroon sure seems to be doing its best to reinforce it now. This week I had all the pipes and plumbing parts for the Nzimbeng water project delivered. A man brought them to the closest large town, which is still about 30 km away. It was up to me to find transport to my village. Things seemed to be off to a good start— the man delivered everything the day he said he would, I was able to buy all the other materials needed in the town, and the Chief even bought me lunch. Now, all I needed to do was find a vehicle to carry the pipes and parts and cement. I saw a big truck that normally carries cocoa and has to go all the way past my village. It was perfect! He could carry my things and drop them in my village on the way. I spoke with the “moto boy” (the man responsible for making deals, loading and unloading materials, and serving as the general assistant to the driver) and struck a deal. He agreed to take everything for a good price and went off to the hardware store to start loading to truck. He would also be carrying some dry goods and things to a store owner in my village. They loaded those things first, then put all 30 bags of cement into the truck, added more things for the shop, and all that remained were the pipes. I was starting to feel really good about things, it seemed too easy! Just then, the driver of the truck comes stumbling up, raging drunk. He had clearly just been sitting at the bar all morning. He was not a calm or quiet drunk. Nor was he rational. He came up, shouting about time, and demanded that they unload the things for the shop owner. Everyone was very confused and all the poor men who had just labored to load those things tried to speak up to reason with him. He wasn’t having any of it. He began shouting that it wasn’t enough money. They called the shop owner and he agreed to pay more without a problem. The driver still began shouting that they should remove the supplies. Everyone was shouting at him, begging him to just take the stuff. But he was determined. He forced them to unload everything, including all of my water project materials. As he was shouting at them over and over to “unload the cement” he turns to me and says, “Don’t worry, I will take your cement.” I pointed out the irrationality of his statement, but it didn’t really matter. They unloaded every single item from the truck, and once that was finished, the man drove away, with an empty vehicle. He went empty all the way to his destination, losing out on nearly $200. At that point, I had spent all day trying to send the materials up, and no cars were left. It was very disappointing. Luckily, I found another truck the next day, one without a crazy driver, and all of the supplies made it to the village.

With those materials, we will construct the tank and filter. The community has already dug the pipeline through their village and cleared and dug an area for the water storage tank. Everything is ready for construction! Unfortunately, the latest person hired failed to show up this past weekend. We'll try someone new and hopefully that person will come to work next week. It was still worth our efforts to go out to the village, however, because the head engineer had the chance to finish mapping out the pipeline and found a good site for the catchment area. And the community was as dedicated and hospitable as ever. They fed me seven meals in one day, three of which were back-to-back-to-back. Literally, one Ma would bring out a spread of food, clear it away, and the next Ma would enter with her own meal. So other than being uncomfortably full, the weekend was a success! 

Brush With Death #357

Since joining the Peace Corps, I’ve probably had more close encounters with death than I would have if I had stayed at home. This is my latest experience. I was traveling, which is always risky—the cars are older than I am, no less than seven people are crammed into a car meant for a maximum of five, drivers pass one another in daring stunts at high speed, and the roads are in poor condition, to say the least. I thought I had managed pretty well for myself. The car I took was a small sedan, there was no “petite chauffeur” (the person who normally sits under the driver in driver’s seat), and I couldn’t see the ground through the bottom of the car. We were cruising along, making good time, without driving too crazily. I was happy. The driver wanted to buy potatoes on the side of the road, so he pulled over and got out. Some of the other passengers also got out to look at the food options.  Unfortunately, the driver forgot to put on the emergency brake when he left the car. Also unfortunately, we were parked on a giant hill. As he began loading the bags of potatoes into the trunk, the car began to rock. He slammed another huge bag into the back, and we began rolling. The woman sitting next to me opened the door and was literally about to jump out of the moving vehicle. I wasn’t sure I exactly wanted to do that. I was still debating which option to take as I started to move up to try to pull the brake. Luckily, before it came to that, the crowd of people watching were able to jump behind the car and grab it and bring it to a halt. The driver jumped in and activated the brake himself at that point, laughing hysterically as he did it. The other passengers entered, all cracking up at how funny it was the car almost plummeted downhill with two of us inside it. One of the passengers then went on to tell us that this was the exact scenario in which his cousin had died. I’m just glad I survived the ordeal and escaped death yet another time in this country. 

World Teacher’s Day

This past Monday we celebrated World Teacher’s Day. And, boy, do the teachers here deserve a little appreciation. They work with large classes of unruly students without many of the classroom luxuries we are accustomed to in the U.S. The teachers accordingly went all out for their celebration. They had clothes made out of a national fabric made purposefully for the holiday. (It had lots of numbers and letters covering it, interspersed with drawings of classrooms and school items with “International Teacher’s Day 2015” written sporadically across it, all on a background of bright yellow). The teachers canceled classes for the day so they could take full advantage of time to celebrate. They rented a dance hall in town and invited all the teachers and other community leaders. The event, like any typical event in Cameroon, involved a lot of food and drink. They served plantains and a local soup and giant pieces of antelope. You know the food is fresh when you find buckshot in your meat. Let me just say, my food was very fresh. I mean it’s not a party until you’ve pulled buckshot out of your mouth, right? That was just the start of my surprises that evening. After finishing the meal, I was called upon to give a speech to the assembly of people in the hall. “And now a speech from your Peace Corps!” rang through my ears as I looked up bewilderedly from the remnants of my meal. Had I known I was to give a speech, I probably would have planned at least an outline in my mind of what I intended to say, but I think I pulled it off pretty well given the circumstances. Following the speeches, the program called for dancing. Once again, I probably should have foreseen the events slightly better, but still managed foolishly to be caught off guard. “And now, to open the dance floor, three couples will be selected…” Guess who was picked to participate in one of those honored couples? Yup. I had to get up and dance alongside the headmaster on the wide-open floor while the room looked on. However, the sound system broke out halfway through the song and I was able to escape, and for that, I am truly thankful. All in all, in was a great celebration and I am glad the teachers get some credit at least one day a year because they certainly deserve it! Happy Teacher’s Day!

Nzimbeng Water Project

We officially began the water project in Nzimbeng this week! The same engineer who volunteered to help in Akid has agreed to continue his service in Nzimbeng. He came out for the weekend to begin our plans for the system.

This village is the most remote in the entire clan. To get there we had to take a motorcycle to a certain spot inside the forest, and from there we had to trek. We crossed several streams and rivers, some of which we crossed by using bamboo bridges, and some of which we had to wade through. There was also a lot of mud involved. By the time we reached the actual village we were tired, dirty, and very thankful to be welcomed with a meal.

With the help of several villagers and their eager children, we began to plot out the path the system will take. This involved hiking into the jungle to look at different streams to determine a water source. We have identified two streams that would serve as good sources. One contains purer water and would be a more ideal source, but it is smaller and might dry up during the dry season. The second is larger and will flow in every season, but is slightly farther away. The best news that the engineer gave us is the fact that by using either of these streams, we will not have to use a pump. Gravity will power the system, which is much better for the sustainability of the project. After identifying these sources, we tracked out the pipeline through the village and calculated the necessary pressure needed for the system through a series of measurements involving a hose full of water, a measuring tape, and many people. We also marked where the tank and filter will stand and where the spigots will be located.

Ultimately, the water will be collected from the source river and then flow, through gravity, down to a filtration tank and storage tank. From there, it will go to four separate spigots within the village (one at the school, and one in each of the three neighborhoods). I am very excited to finally start this project, and I know the village is also incredibly happy to begin the process that will bring them water.