Water Projects

Both of the water projects have picked up speed and seem to be nearing completion. Or at least I sure hope so. After months of delays and other hitches, it looks like we might actually have come out on top. This past week I divided my time between Nzimbeng and Akid, spending the nights in village to oversee the work.

The Nzimbeng people have been incredibly hardworking and motivated. They have finished the storage tank and are in the process of constructing the filters and catchment. They have been carrying materials, cracking stones, collecting sand, and digging pipeline. I’ve been very happy with their results so far. Hopefully the cement work will be finished within two more weeks and they can finish the digging and begin connecting pipeline. Its looks like we’re actually on schedule to finish by January. Of course, things on my end aren’t quite as smooth. I’ve been going back and forth between the village and my house, my house and a larger town to transport material, and have barely slept in my own bed the past week. The community does their best to welcome me, and my days in village generally aren’t too bad. I sit at the site watching the work, mostly there for moral support, while men cut up fresh pineapple for me and feed me. The other day I was literally sitting in the warm sun, reading my book, while men went into the bush beside the tank site and chopped up pineapples with their machetes for me to eat. Then I went back to my host’s house and was fed several meals. Not so rough. Sometimes I do pay the price however. For example, this past time I had to knowingly sleep in a bed that would give me bedbugs. To top it off, some sort of rat or animal had died in the bedroom during the day (but they couldn’t find the body) so the whole room reeked of decomposing meat. I had to just tough it out and enter the room and sleep encompassed in the smell of rotting carrion. But Peace Corps has increased my ingenuity, if nothing else, and so I simply smeared toothpaste under my nose (just like vick’s right?) before going to bed, and everything was fine.

The Akid project hasn’t been quite as smooth, but there have been fewer incidents of things dying in bedrooms, so at least that’s appreciated. The Akid community was disheartened after a few mishaps with the pump. A few pieces broke as it was being installed, and after that they became demoralized and didn’t want to work anymore. That has created some problems for me and has caused the project to last longer than necessary. However, the engineer came out this last weekend and finally installed the pump, so everything should work now. The people were happy to see things moving, and are now eager to work and the project should (theoretically) really take off. All that’s left is to connect pipeline and build the standtaps. They are saying they will finish by Christmas (which I rather doubt), but January seems like a reality. Additionally, this past weekend in Akid offered me the highlight of having a meal prepared for me exclusively by a man. That’s right, in my two years here, I have never had a man prepare food for me (unless I was paying someone—like the streetmeat men or omelet guys). I have been served many meals in Cameroon, but all of them have been prepared by women. That morning, a man cooked pancakes for me. Building water systems and breaking gender roles, one person at a time! Love it! Of course when we asked if he ever did this for his wife, he quickly said no. We’ll work on it. 

Nutrition in Schools

Elizabeth and I went to the local nursery school to do a follow-up nutrition screening of children under the age of five. When I first arrived in village, I checked children for signs of malnutrition, gather information on weight, arm circumference, and anemia. 

During that initial survey I found that a decent number of children were below their proper weight for age, many had low arm circumference, many were anemic, and many students reported low levels of protein, fruit, and vegetable intake. I then conducted nutrition lessons in the schools and within the community, educating 221 elementary school students and an additional 268 community members. I taught participants about balanced diets, proportion sizes, specific vitamins and minerals, and reviewed healthy meals made out of locally available foods. 

By doing this year’s screening, we were hoping to discover if that education made any difference. I’m happy to report that the children’s health has improved. Whether its due to our efforts and lessons is hard to say, but at least there has been a vast improvement in healthy weight and dramatically less cases of anemia. We still find that children are not eating enough fruit, so we plan to do further cooking demonstrations and are going to try to get the nursery school to start a snack program where they will provide fruit to students. 

Lost Cat

As if my latest display of spider killing was not embarrassing enough, we one-upped ourselves in the “How American Can We Be?” category two days after that incident. Elizabeth had found a kitten in one of the villages under our health district that she wanted to adopt. We spoke to the owner and he was ready to give it to her on the spot, but we were unprepared to take it home, so we asked him to drop it off at the house on the upcoming market day. Bright and early on Thursday, he showed up as promised, with a cat in a bag. The poor thing was clearly slightly traumatized from its trip in the bag and immediately ran for cover under the couch. We tried coaxing it out for a while, but eventually decided food would be the only thing to do the job. We went up to the market and got some food and a can of sardines for the cute little kitten. We poured the sardines into a bowl and then went out to find the cat. It wasn’t under the couch. We realized the door was open just a crack. We had been the proud owners of a cat for about two hours. We checked all over the house, looking under the bed, behind the bookshelf—everywhere—but came up empty. The cat had clearly escaped. We began to inform all of our neighbors. “We lost our cat, it ran out of the house,” we told them. To which they gave us blank stares, as if to say, “Yes, cats belong outside.” But they would kindly respond, “Oh, so sorry.” Still clearly thinking, “Crazy Americans, why would you even want a cat in your house?” Nevertheless, we continued to tell our friends that it was just a baby, we had just gotten it, it wouldn’t know to come back to this house, so if they saw it please return it or tell us. They were all very supportive and told us if they saw it, they would return it. We even got all the kids to go out and look around. The neighborhood was on high alert. Then, that evening, we heard meowing. We ran outside, looking all around the compound. Nothing. We asked our neighbor again, “Did you see that cat? Can you hear it too?” She responded, “Surely, it’s still in the house, it’s just hiding.” We told her no, we had really looked everywhere. But it really did sound like the meowing was inside… We did another check of the house, and there was the cat, under the bed. We had lost a cat that had never been lost, and “found” it again. It was not our proudest moment, but we were once again the proud owners of a cat. Now, when any of the multiple neighbors we informed ask if we found the cat, we just say yes and never mention that it was never lost in the first place. 

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.