I am a girl

« Sometimes I think it would have been better if my mom never gave birth to me. Or it would have been better if I had been a boy.” The confession I heard today from a 17yr-old girl faced with an ultimatum from her father to get married by the end of the month. 

Raised in the south, in the second largest city in Cameroun, Douala, Aminatou is a bright young girl who speaks fluent French and is better educated than most girls her age in Bogo despite quitting school early because “it isn’t very good for a Muslim girl to be too educated”. She went to trade school instead and learnt how to sew. Ever since she has been making a living for herself and even accepted to teach a group of young girls how to sew too. Sewing is an acceptable job for Muslim women because they can work at home and don’t have to leave the house. However, the classes for the young girls proved difficult to achieve when her father at first refused on the basis that it isn’t proper for a young woman to be leaving the house to work. The reasoning behind that being that she might get used to it than be disobedient and difficult to control when she gets married.  (Muslim women aren’t allowed to leave the house at all in their first year of marriage. Talk about trust issues!)

It seems to be a widespread belief among both Christian and Muslim men that working women are both troublesome and querulous. I met one young man who blamed his mother for the fact that his parents always fought. He believed it was best to marry a young virgin (preferably someone you don’t know too well) because that way “you would be her first and she will always fear you”. I tried to explain to him that a healthy relationship was based on trust not fear, and that if he really wanted a happy and peaceful household he would love and respect his wife not terrorize and control her. Unfortunately, I found out about two months later that the young man had a baby so at the time we were talking he was a) already married, or b) found out he had knocked a girl up and had to get married in a hurry. He told me he was 21yrs but he didn’t look older than sixteen. It’s hard to tell here...

One of my colleagues had an experience where she asked a man how he could tell which women were prostitutes and he gave a description that closely resembled the Christian women who sell their goods in the market. (Muslim women are not allowed to sell or even buy goods in the market but will send unmarried younger sisters or daughters to do the work. Yet another reason why they aren’t in school.) While yesterday, in a girls workshop, we (myself and two other volunteers) were told that girls aren’t allowed to wear long tunics with pants (what is known as the Indian or Arab style) because “they would look like prostitutes”. The funny part is that is exactly what all three white women in the room were wearing. Luckily we were told that it was okay for us, but Bogo girls have to wear the traditional pagne skirts or dresses. Oddly enough, this isn’t a Muslim or Christian rule but rather a matter of tradition. The tunic which is known here as the Arab style is commonly worn in many Muslim countries as well as India. Some of the more modern, educated women of the elite will wear tunics including the Sous-prefet’s wife which leaves me to believe that forcing girls to wear only skirts is another “idée villageoise”.

I can see why Aminatou might wish to be a boy. Life here just isn’t easy for a girl. They have so few rights, yet so many obligations (the main ones being to bear children and cook). I feel a painful tightening in my chest and my stomach every time I witness another girl being taken away to be married off; every time I meet a woman who is ill or has an infection but her husband won’t give her any money to go to the hospital or buy medication; every time a girl is pulled out of school because she has to help her mother at home or go sell things in the market; every time a woman is prevented from doing something because her husband won’t allow it. It hurts and I feel so powerless to do anything about it. I spent an hour and a half this morning discussing Aminatou’s predicament and trying to give her advice. She’d asked me to help her, but she knows as well as I do, there is very little I can do other than be supportive. Any intervention from me would just make her father angry (which I don’t want to do because I actually like him and consider him a friend despite his draconian ways when it comes to his daughter. In all other subjects he is open minded, generous and kind, but holds very traditional beliefs when it comes to his daughter’s future.  I have a hard time understanding the contradiction...) and he would mostly likely dismiss whatever I have to say on the basis that “my culture is different from theirs”. So what do I do? What does she do? How do I help a friend? I would like to say that I have the answer, but I just don’t. 

Yesterday, we heard a testimony from one very active woman in the community who told her story to the group of young girls and how she was forced to marry at 18 but then found the courage to leave him at 20 because it wasn’t working out. She continued to study and even did a few years at University (though eye problems forced her to quit) and stayed single and working. She now runs the media centre at the post office, she is active in several organisations mostly in health, but also the young girls group which she founded. She is a strong, independent woman and a good role model for the girls. It gives me some hope for Aminatou that even if the marriage does go through, not all will be lost. I just hope that whatever happens she will find a way to be happy.

The Bogo experience

Reflexions on life and death

The mother sat stone still. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t shed a tear. The other women around her made small chitchat. I believe they were just there to keep her company and to distract her from her grieving. In watching a funeral here, an outsider might think that people become numb to the pain; that there is so much death and loss here, particularly of children, that people don’t take it as hard because they are used to it. I don’t think that is true. I think that people all grieve the same even if outwardly they don’t always show it.

Les funérailles chrétiennes, quoique similaires à la surface à celles des musulmans, ont une importante différence, la famille du décédé sert du « vin » local à tous les visiteurs.  C’est-à-dire qu’il y a plus de vielles matantes et vieux mononcles soules qui racontent je ne sais quoi dans leur patois. Moi, je n’ai jamais su ce qu’on devrait dire à quelqu’un qui vient de perdre un proche, alors je me tais. C’est facile à faire puisque les gens supposent que je ne connais pas la langue de toute façon, mais les funérailles ici sont une affaire très sociale ou tous les membres d’une famille se réunissent après de longs moments. Souvent ils se déplacent de très loin, des villages à plusieurs kilomètres (loin, surtout pour ceux qui viennent à pied). Pour certains, surtout les femmes, les funérailles et les mariages sont les seuls occasions qu’elles ont pour sortir de la maison et socialiser. Les funérailles durent trois jours avec les visiteurs qui vont et viennent et d’autres qui restent. Tout le monde est assis dehors, les femmes d’un côté, les hommes de l’autres. Les femmes servent le vin.

I’ve assisted two funerals in the three days. One for my 3 year old neighbour who passed away suddenly after falling sick a couple days ago and one for my friend’s cousin who swallowed poison after getting in a fight with his brother (In the past three years, the uncle has lost three children, this one being the third). The real tragedy in both of these deaths is that had they had access to proper medical facilities, it is likely that both deaths could have been prevented. In the boy’s case, if the sickness had been detected, properly diagnosed and treated on time, he may have recovered (my understanding is he died of malaria).  As for the cousin, he was taken to the hospital, but there were no doctors present (as far as I know, there are never any doctors there, if you have an emergency you’re out of luck). Some attendants did what they could (who knows what kind of training they have) but he died shortly after. Afterward, the family asked the ambulance driver if he could help transport the body, only to be told that he didn’t even have the keys! The ambulance was given about a month ago as a vote-winning gift to the hospital but what use is an ambulance if the driver doesn’t have the keys?

Il est souvent dit que l’hôpital de Bogo est un lieu ou les gens vont pour mourir, pas pour guérir. Ici, ce ne sont pas les malades qui vont à l’hôpital, mais les morts. Ce sont des blagues sinistres, mais qui cachent une vérité tragique. Le développement ne se mesure pas selon le GNP d’un pays, sa richesse économique ou son taux d’emplois.  Je crois que le vrai développement signifie l’accès médical et la santé pour tous. Si on veut avoir une vraie idée du niveau de développement dans un pays ont devrait se demander : Combien d’enfants moins de cinq meurent à toutes les années? Combien de personnes meurent de maladies comme la malaria et le choléra qui pourraient être prévenues avec une bonne  éducation,  de l’accès à l’eau potable, des latrines sanitaires et  des traitements accessibles? Si la réponse est ???????????????????????????? c’est sous-développé.

I have been very privileged in that I haven’t suffered much loss in my lifetime. Death hasn’t been very active or present in my life- something for which I am grateful, but am also made more aware of now that I am surrounded by people for whom death is a frequent visitor. If you talk to anyone here, they will tell you they have lost a child, a sister, a father, a cousin, an aunt and probably more than one. Granted people here have large extended families and many people don’t differentiate between cousins and brothers (they don’t have a word for cousins but refer to them as their brothers and sisters born to their uncle or aunt). Going to a funeral is probably the number one excuse people have for not showing up at a meeting (followed closely behind by going to a wedding). But the fact that it happens more often here doesn’t make it easier to bear, though they do seem to know how to cope. I’ve been to several funerals since my arrival here and have only witnessed one person crying, but I don’t think that it hurts any less. Maybe, they’re just better at hiding it, either that or I’m not looking in the right place.

First school day - Première journée d'école

7:30 – Start of classes at l’école Bogo-Sirataré. Myself and three students are present.

7:45 – Arrivée d’un enseignant

8:30 – Arrivée du directeur et plusieurs enfants.

9 :00 – One more teacher and many more students arrive.

Total for the morning: 1 principal, 2 teachers out of 13, and lots of kids with nothing to do and no one to teach them.

Deuxième journée

8 :00 – Start of classes at l’école Mororo. One teacher, 6 kids and the principal are present. When we pass again an hour later there is still no one else.

Same day at l’école Zalao only the principal showed up. Not even the cows came.

On m’avait prévenu que la rentrée scolaire ici serait “timide” mais j’étais très déçue par ce que j’ai vu la première semaine d’école. Les excuses sont nombreuses. Du côté des enseignants et des directeurs, ils blâment les élèves et les parents en disant que les enfants ne viennent jamais la première semaine. De l’autre côté, les parents et les enfants refusent d’y aller parce qu’ils disent que les enseignants ne viennent jamais.

It’s a vicious cycle where the teachers don’t go to school because they say the students won’t show up and the kids don’t come because they know the teachers won’t be there. But it isn’t just people not showing up, it’s also the school materials. As one school principal explained, each school should receive a minimum package of updated manuals, textbooks, small chalkboards, pencils and chalk at the beginning of the school year, but it never comes on time. If it did arrive, then teachers could motivate kids to come the first week by handing out school materials to the first to arrive. As it is, this principal saves up leftover materials from last year to reward kids for coming to school the first week so that they won’t be discouraged. One of the fears is that if teachers don’t show up, the kids will get bored, go home and not bother to come back. It takes so much effort to convince parents in the first place to send their kids to school that any delinquency on behalf of teachers can represent a major setback.

L’un des problèmes qui empêchent les enseignants et les élèves de faire une bonne rentrée à l’automne c’est que le département d’éducation affecte les enseignants seulement une semaine avant le début des cours. C’est-à-dire que les enseignants apprennent seulement là ou ils seront affectés à la dernière minute. Pour ceux qui viennent des régions du sud ceci représente un problème. Souvent, les sudistes n’aiment pas beaucoup travailler dans l’extrême-nord. Souvent ils sont séparés de leur famille et placés dans des écoles de brousses ou les conditions d’enseignements sont difficiles. Selon les témoignages d’autres enseignants, les sudistes rentrent souvent 2 à 3 semaines en retard à leur poste et d’habitude vont quittés pour les vacances plus tôt.

Normally there are consequences for teachers who do not show up for school, but they are rarely enforced. Already the school days are short and the school week is only four days in practice because children and teachers frequently miss school on market days (Thursdays). Add to that, that any time a teacher is sick kids go home because there is no one to fill in including cases of long term illnesses or even pregnancies.

Après tout ça, est-ce qu’on se demande encore pourquoi le niveau d’éducation ici est si faible??

I just hope to see an improvement next week, with a few more teachers and students attending school.

Forage à Zalao

 

L'ONG ACAMAS de la Turkie est venu construire un forage à l'école Zalao- ce village demande qui n'a pas un point d'eau, demande depuis déjà plusieurs années d'avoir un forage. Cette année, c'est leur année de chance!

 The Well that ACAMAS built for Zalao- the village requested a well years ago, but it never came through- until now!

 Le Sous-Prefet, Le Président d'ACAMAS, Le Lawane de Mororo (dont Zalao fait partie de son cantonat), et Le Maire Adjoint à l'inauguration du forage.

 The President of ACAMAS at the inauguration of the well with Hadjia Maïramou (me).

 Hadjia Maïramou (moi) qui puise l'eau pour les femmes attentives.

Women from the village attended the opening ceremonies armed with buckets, excited to be going home with water!

Aissa

It’s Thursday today- market day. The girls come over to my house (not too) early in the morning excited because they’ll be going to the market with me. It’s become something of a routine for the girls to accompany me when I go to market, though it makes me nervous because traffic is really bad on market days. Cars inch forward trying to cut a path through the crowds, pousse-pousses are everywhere, motos weave around various obstacles in the form of people, cattle and goods. A few weeks ago, I saw a little girl get knocked over by a moto near my house on a market day so I try to walk closest to the road and keep the little ones on the other side. However, the cows are what you really have to watch out for. Cows here have long pointy horns and could seriously injure someone with a simple swing of the head. Occasionally, there’s a rogue cow, these ones charge forward trying to break away from their handlers (one leading from a rope around the cow’s neck and one preventing it from running by holding a rope tied to its back ankle). People clear out pretty fast when any cow shows signs of resisting and it’s a good idea to wait till the road is clear before continuing on your way. I’m surprised no one has been impaled yet...

The girls are Aissa, Nafissa (sisters), Daada and Djamila (sisters). Other kids come hang out at my house, but these four have been the most consistent.  Aissa and Nafissa are my closest neighbours, directly beside my house. I have become particularly fond of Aissa who has been coming around my house since the day I moved in.  Aissa is ten years old and the oldest of five kids. She is in CP (equivalent of about a grade 2 level) but she can neither read nor write, she is learning a bit of French through me but otherwise speaks only Fulfulde. She can count though she struggles with the numbers in French and she is learning how to add. One of my goals while I am here is to make sure that Aissa completes her elementary school exams-  A difficult task since most girls particularly from poor families, like Aissa’s, never make it that far. Furthermore, Aissa struggles with school. Before I arrived, she missed class often, she is a slow learner (which in a class of a hundred students, the slow ones get left behind) and she gets angry when she makes a mistake.  But she is a bright little girl and a great dancer. I’ve learnt a great deal of Fulfulde from listening to her chatter and have learnt quite a bit about life in Bogo from her.

Aissa

 

I often get invited over to her concession next door. Our two houses offer a sharp contrast. I live in a large cement house with a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. I have doors, electricity, a gas stove, a fridge, a real bed, a ventilator, a table and chairs...and I live alone. Aissa’s concession is an agglomeration of mud rooms with dirt floors covered by nattes (type of carpet, I have one I use when I want to sit or sleep outside).  Most of the rooms are used for sleeping.  The only room with a door and a lock is the one with the sacks of millet recently harvested. One is reserved as the cooking area where the walls are black from the smoke of a wood fire and piles of charred pots and dusty plates are stacked. The family can’t afford meat so meals usually consist of millet (couscous) with peanut and folléré (green leafy stuff put in almost everything) sauce.  The grandma often invites me to stay and eat. The meals aren’t the tastiest but it’s palatable and it makes the family happy to have a white person share their meal. The kids will break off hot pieces of couscous for me and place them on the side of the bowl to cool so that I don’t burn my fingers. This how small children eat so it makes them laugh and tease me saying “Natasha banna bingle!” (Natasha is like a child).

Grandma cooks and takes care of the kids because their mom left to visit her family in Ngaoundéré. She has been gone since before I arrived and I get the impression that she isn’t coming back. Aissa’s dad, who speaks a bit of French, told me that she would be home in less than a month but that was already a couple months ago. She took the youngest son with her but left the other kids behind. Aissa’s dad again told me the other day that she would be back in less than 20 days but I’m not too hopeful so we’ll see if she actually does come back. In the meantime, I know the three sisters see me as something like a mother figure though I have got them to call me aunty (Yappendo) instead of mommy (Daada). Aissa’s grandmother has suggested a few times that I take Aissa home with me when I go back to Canada and I’ve had to explain to her dad why I can’t take her with me. (I stuck to excuses such as Aissa has no birth certificate or passport and you can’t adopt a child who still has both her parents and the whole process of adoption is lengthy and complicated. It’s easier to point out logistical problems than to have to explain why I don’t want to adopt their daughter).  I know they just want to be able to offer Aissa a better chance in life by sending her off with a nasara, and in fact it makes sense- it’s true that Aissa would probably have a better future if she were to come back to Canada with me. Here she has no future. It breaks my heart when I look at her and realise that all she has to look forward to in life is to become some man’s third or fourth wife. If she finishes elementary school then she might not get married until she is fourteen or fifteen, but it would take a miracle for her to get into high school. That is I don’t think her dad could ever afford it. Though he is a good man and he seems to want good for his children so maybe he would send Aissa to school if he could. He himself isn’t educated, but seems proud that his wife finished elementary school so maybe I could convince him to pursue Aissa’s education...

 

Djawe teaching Aissa French

I don’t know what Aissa’s dad does, but I know whatever it is, he doesn’t make much money doing it. Their Grandma has a crippled leg and she is frequently sick. The Grandma frequently asks me for ”cadeaux”. At first I was able to pretend I didn’t understand, but my increasing knowledge of Fulfulde means that she knows I can understand her. I’ve explained to Aissa’s dad though that I don’t want it to become a habit for them to always ask me for things in particular because it teaches the kids to beg. Once I sent the girls home after I had heard “Hokkam (give me) one too many times. Cameroonians’ take on manners differs slightly from what we westerners would consider “polite”. In English, we will ask “can I please have?” or “could you please give me this?” but in Fulfulde, you simply say “give me”. It isn’t rude, it’s just culturally and linguistically different. Fulfulde does have a word for please but it seems they only use it for emphasis or when directed at someone of authority. It took me awhile to get into the habit of saying give me when I started learning Fulfulde I made the mistake of trying to translate directly.  So although I know it is acceptable to just say “give me” here, I still get irritated when kids come to my house and all I hear is a succession of “Hokkam bic. Hokkam diam. Hokkam biscuit. Hokkam papier. Hokkam mangoro.”  I’ve made it clear to the girls though that if they ask me for things then I won’t give them anything but if they play nicely and don’t “derange” then I will give them cadeau of my own accord.

It is always a hard balance between knowing when to give and when to draw the line. I have a hard time justifying not giving when I really am rich by their standards, but I also know that they live within a system and a culture that pushes them towards always trying to get their share. So I have to watch out or they will walk all over me. I also try not to encourage the colonial habit of always expecting the nasara to give a “gift” or as some people call it “motivation”. Which is why I try to give only in situations where I know it will be appreciated and not taken for granted. That is I try to give to families like Aissa’s and not to certain people who show up at Parent-Teacher Association meetings with the expectation that I am going to pay them for their troubles. It frustrates me to no end that people (men) expect me to give them something in return for their participation at meetings as if they were doing me a favour by coming. No matter how often I repeat myself, some people still don’t seem to understand that the meetings aren’t for my benefit, but are in fact being held to help the schools and to help their children get a better education. Unfortunately, too many people here still don’t see the intrinsic value of education and the advantages it has for the future of their kids. So in the next two years, I might not be able to revolutionize the education system here nor even make a dent in what is perceptibly a broken and corrupt system, but if I can help even a handful of Aissas get an education then my time here will have been a success.

If you can find it in your heart to care for someone else, then you will have succeeded.

Maya Angelou

They’re not kidding when they say it’s hot in the desert...

Il fait chaud. La sorte de chaleur qui te donne envie de dormir toute la journée parce que même rester assis prends trop d’énergie.

It’s the kind of hot where you sleep all day trying to hide from the sun, then can’t sleep at night but lay tossing and turning in a sweat.

Même le vent, qui pourtant souffle fort toute la journée, n’offre aucun répis, mais fait seulement circuler l’air chaud.

Even the fan is useless, as it blows just more hot air in my direction.

It’s the kind of hot that makes you want to shed your skin because even being naked feels like you’re wearing too much.

C’est la chaleur qui me fait regretter le fait que je sois trop grande pour rentrer à l’intérieur de mon frigo et y rester.

It’s so hot, I want to immerse myself in cold water and stay there. I dream about jumping in the Yukon river or any number of lakes and rivers back home- even the tatshenshini seems like just a refreshing dip to me right now.

Mais il n’y a pas de rivières pour se baigner. Il n’y a pas d’eau tout court. Même pour prendre une douche froide, je n’ai qu’un seau d’eau qui chauffe au soleil depuis le matin.

C’est une chaleur qui te coupe l’appétit. Je pense commencer une diète d’eau glacé, mangues et yogurt congélé.

Cooking is out of the question right now. I’ll just have to live of of mangoes and frozen yogurt. Litterally, yogurt frozen into little plastic baggies that you buy for 100f then you bite a hole into the corner and suck out all the cold yuminess inside. Like a popsicle but without the stick...

Étrangement la chaleur extrême, tout comme le froid peut aussi causer le rhume. Tout le monde ici se plaint de mal de gorge, toux et écoulements du nez. C’est la sécheresse et la poussière.

How can you catch a cold in the heat? Apparently it happens all the time due to the omnipresent dust that fills your eyes, mouth, nose and ears (especially if you’re riding on a motorcycle). I’ll cook up a strong batch of ginger juice to help with my sore throat in the mornings, but I’ll wait till it’s cold before I drink it.

La petite fille du Yukon, qui a passé toute sa vie à se plaindre du froid se retrouve maintenant dans une situation de chaleur extrême qu’elle ne savait même pas pouvait exister.

I guess it’s one of those situations where someone might say: be careful what you wish for or you just might get it. I wanted to escape from the cold and I guess you can say I’ve succeeded.

Mais la prochaine fois que je décide que j’ai besoin d’un “break” du froid, je vais au moins choisir une région chaude où il y a de l’eau!