LETTER #1 13 June 1995 Dear Everyone, I am writing this at the end of our training in Philadelphia which extended from Sunday afternoon through Tuesday. The program aims to allay our fears about the Peace Corps service (something that has not been a problem for Janice and me) and to take care of the somewhat complicated transportation logistics. It also served the purpose of bringing together the people who will be in training together in Ngaoundere for the next three months. Finally, our curiosity about who we are as a group was satisfied. Forty-five of us converged on Philadelphia from all over the country. We are from big cities as close as Philadelphia and from small towns as far away as Olympia WA. Twenty-three of us are female, 22 male. We include two married couples. With the exceptions of Jan, me, and 65 year old Tom, we are all under 30, a major surprise for Jan and me. (So far, at least, we three oldsters are just one of the bunch.) We are mostly white and middle-class, except for two African Americans. Of course, with a group that size there are several 'small world' coincidences, most notably that one grew up in my old neighborhood in Lawrence MA, attending grammar school (as I still call it) at St Augustine's, two blocks from my old house. Getting back to age, much to my surprise, about 8 of the volunteers graduated this spring. All 45 of us are in the teaching program. Twenty-one will teach English in the Francophone area, 9 including me will teach math in the Anglophone area, and 14 will teach science in the Anglophone area. But what about Janice? We still do not know. Tomorrow we 'bus to Kennedy, fly overnight to Belgium, fly to Yarounde, stay overnight at the Yarounde Hilton (yes, really) and fly the next day to Ngaoundere. At this point Janice and I are eager to be on our way. Today we learned more about mail and where to send things. First, the addresses we handed out would be more complete if the line "Afrique de l'ouest" were added to help US postal workers realize that Cameroon is an African country. Second, although our training lasts three months, we will move to the Anglophone section at the beginning of the third month. Further, since the mail takes at least two weeks, any mail after 20 July should be sent to the Yarounde address. Eventually, we will get a permanent address where we have been posted. Love, Edwin LETTER #2 6/28/95 Dear All: We had a prolonged trip to Ngaoundare (enGOWNdry): 7 hr flight to Brussels, a 7 hr flight to Yaounde, with a layover in Lagos (despite it being on the State Department list of no-no places), an overnight stay in the Yaounde Hilton, a 2 hr flight to Ngaoundere, with a layover in Douala, to recap, we left JFK 7 p.m. on Wednesday and arrived at the Transcam Hotel around 2 p.m. on Friday. Friday and Saturday we had further orientation to the Peace Corps program. Sunday morning started immersion in French: my class of three<---a different class from Janice's (among many classes) never hears English spoken by the teacher, who knows very little English. This afternoon we met our host family, and we moved into our home where we stay for 6 weeks. Then we will finish our training in Kumba, which is in the Southwest province. Now a kaleidoscope of impressions to match our experience. Our first view of Africa (Yaounde) was in the dark, so we only got hints of what we would later see. The Yaounde Hilton is truly luxurious, but it provides a thin veneer on a rougher underlying surface. The water from the tap is brackish and undrinkable. Across the street from the Hilton is a refuse pile and an open market just beyond. We drove to the Yaounde airport as the town awakened. We saw people in a tremendous variety of dress, ranging from Traditional Moslem garb to castoff(?) American clothing. We saw numerous small merchants carrying all of their wares on their heads. Indeed, an egg merchant strode along with 4 dozen eggs riding on top. Our host family consists of a father (a retired veterinarian), his 2nd son, his 3rd and 4th daughter, his 4th (and last) son, and his granddaughter. On order their names and approximate ages are Georges (57), Julius (35), Mariabelle (22), Jeanette (18), Olvi (10), and Nellie (6). Our house is quite spacious, with a living room close to the size of ours, and with about four bedrooms. We are blessed with running water, electricity, and even a washing machine. Our street is dirt and would make a challenging course for a mountain bike. We are on a little hill overlooking the rest of the neighborhood. On the next ridge, about 100 yds away. we can hear the mullah calling his faithful to prayer. Ngaoundere (I am not making this up) means belly button and takes its name from Mt. Ngaoundere, which looks like a herniated navel, a large boulder perched on top of a very substantial belly. The surrounding terrain is spectacularly beautiful: crowded with many small hills, colored with an infinite variety of green (due perhaps to it being the rainy season) and dotted with large purplish boulders. The sunset suffuses everything in a golden glow. Because we are at 6500', the weather is quite pleasant, with (so far) highs in the low 80's and lows in the high 50's. It feels like a small village, with almost all one-story villages but is actually home to 100,000. Despite its size, maize is grown everywhere there is arable land (although not all land is cultivated) even along the streets downtown. Goats and chickens wander everywhere. People get around on foot, by rattle-trap taxi-cab, and by motorbike, with most people walking or motor-biking. There are very few bicycles, because the terrain is considered too hilly, although multiple gears would solve that problem. We live close enough to the Peace Corps center to walk. Food vendors (and other vendors as well) set up little stands, and cook food (with roasted maize the most popular) and wait for customers. The eating patterns differ here, with each person eating at will, apparently our family rarely, if ever, dines together. I have found the Africans totally open and trusting. This makes me realize that almost all African-Americans I have interacted with have been wary participation in the interaction. I assume it is not me qua me but me qua white that makes them wary. Race relations have a long way to go in America. Love, Edwin LETTER #3 6/25/95 Dear All: The first week of training was quite varied so that last Sunday seems ages ago. Things are becoming routine now so that time will accelerate a bit. P We can be reached at home at the following telephone number 25.22.44. Keep in mind the 5 hour different (4 during standard time). Starting with three shots in Philadelphia, every few days we get more shots. Also, we started our weekly doses of Mefloquine, a malaria prophylaxis, in Philadelphia. The list of shots includes polio, measles, rubella, mumps, yellow fever, typhoid, and hepatitis A. Only the typhoid shot had a side effect. For the typhoid shot I had loss of appetite for a day and some muscle soreness. We feel we are in very good hands medically. Our language training started immediately and consists of four days a day, six days a week, of complete immersion. Each class has 3-4 trainees, and our trainer, at least, speaks no English in class; indeed, se does not speak English very well. I am immensely enjoying the experience as I have quickly acquired a limited ability to express myself in French. Janice and I are in with about 20 math/science volunteers, and the other 25 are TEFL (teachers of English as a foreign language) volunteers. After 6 1/2 weeks we leave the TEFL people be hind and go to Bokumba. There we get language training in pidgin, plus we continue the technical training, which comprises the other half of our day here. After training, Janice and I will go to Bamenda where there is an extension of Yaounde University. [Bamenda is in the NW province, near Bamendjing Reservoir, about 60 miles from the Nigerian border. --GK] We and the Peace Corps are negotiating exactly what we will do. I would probably learn more by teaching at a local high school but Peace Corps may get more out of me if I teach at the university. In the end I will probably do some of both. Janice will likely teach an African version of Home Economics, which includes instruction in health, nutrition, etc. Right now it is the rainy season here, and the climate is delightful because of the elevation (3500'). The weather, in terms of the rain, is reminiscent of Portland, but it is warmer, with the temperatures, so far, ranging from 58 to 84 F. I was quite surprised to hear second hand yesterday that some of the trainees are finding the weather oppressive, probably due to their having grown up with air-conditioning. The oldest trainee quit the program on Wednesday, and he never made clear why. Part of it may have been his feeling of isolation among all the younger people, although he only said that he didn't feel his body was up to the experience. I did not talk with him too much and wondered whether I contributed to his feeling of isolation. In any case it was merely a taste of things to come when he would have been posted. Without consulting each other, Janice and I have participated in all the activities as independent persons, some times deliberately avoiding each other. This helped our being accepted by a lot of the younger trainees, many of whom are in awe of us because they know we are old enough to be their parents and cannot imagine their parents doing the same thing. In general, they have made us feel very comfortable. Despite our going our separate ways during the day, Janice and I spend a lot more time together than usual. The Cameroon diet lacks variety, because they depend almost solely on what is grown locally. Anything imported is prohibitively expensive. In a country where the per capital income is around $1100/year, I saw a (dusty) 6 1/4 oz can of tuna fish for $4. When we joined our host family, the Tchais, we told them we were veggies who did not eat fish or poultry. This further reduced the variety of our diet, which will consist of selecting from perhaps two dozen food items, many of them bland and starchy, e.g. maize, potato, yam, beans, etc. Some of their fruit is wonderful. I have especially enjoyed their pineapple, which is picked ripe. When we have our own house in three months, I expect that Janice will create some interesting dishes. Most of the shopping in Ngaoundere is done in "La Petit Marche" [sic] a huge, sprawling open-air market that betters Hollywood's fertile imagination. The dirt streets are crowded with vendors of foods and dry gods. Trash is everywhere. The air is thick with the exhaust of the drivers of motorcyclists prowling for passengers for their "motor-taxis." Wicker cages hold live fowl. Arabic and African music blares everywhere, just barely heard above the din of everyone bargaining over the price of the goods. No purchased is worthwhile unless 10-15 minutes have been spent haggling. Tuesday night the sky was clear. With a new moon and no light pollution it was spectacular. It was my first time to see the southern heavens, and now I know why Talia was so impressed by the Southern Cross; it is the most beautiful constellation I have seen. The food distribution system here is very interesting. Every block (a somewhat misleading term in a town of meandering dirt roads and first paths) has a few food vendors, usually people from the immediate neighborhood. For breakfast, for example, you step out the door, go down the street a few houses, and buy a few baguettes. For lunch you step out and approach a woman who has been conveniently roasting corn over a brazier. Transportation is by foot, by taxi, by motor taxi, or by bicycle, with almost no one using a private vehicle. The streets and byways are always alive with people walking along, with frequent motorcycles, and an occasional car or bicycle. The taxi drivers drive fast and do not yield to people (although they do yield to the numerous pot holes), coming close to people but avoiding them. The pedestrians gently yield to the traffic. Already I subconsciously move to the side of the road. Until next Sunday, Love, Edwin LETTER #4 2 July 1995 Dear Everyone: Things are going well here as life has settled into a routine: 5 1/2 days of training and a leisurely weekend. Usually we have 4 hours of French in the morning and 3 hours of "technical training" in the afternoon. This Friday Janice and I talked with the assistant director for math/science, and he clarified our placement. It is reasonably clear we will be living in Buea in the southwest [near the coast & fairly close to Mt Cameroon. GK] I will probably spend most of my time at the U of B in the Math & Comp Sci Dept, and some of my time teaching high school. The Peace Corps aims to be involved in having volunteers train Cameroonians for education. Thus, teaching high school will help me understand the Cameroonian educational system. On the side I will try to get involved in providing statistical consulting for agricultural researchers. Janice will be involved in teaching home ec & will also aid in developing a program in guidance counseling at the U of B. There is a great deal to tell you about life here, so each week I will pick a different topic. I am a little reluctant to be totally frank, because it might sound like we don't like a particular aspect of our life here. It is akin to the difficulty I have explaining to people that I really enjoy running in the rain or that I really enjoy swimming in the ocean at Salisbury Beach, MA. Having said that, I will tend to be frank. Most of this letter will be concerned with Cameroonian housing. I first note that Cameroonian society is extremely diverse, and so is the housing. I will describe our housing in detail and contrast it with other housing here. Our house is quite large and consists of a living room, kitchen, foyer, three bedrooms, and a bathroom. It is constructed of poured concrete, (Houses here are either cement block or poured concrete.) and is all on one floor, as are most houses here. The public rooms have ceramic tiled floors, while the bedrooms have cement floors. The furniture is simple and adequate, the kind you would find in a used furniture store in the States. The windows are jalousies and are framed with fancy metalword whose pattern is continued in the porch railing and in the heavy metal & glass doors. The metalwork, while serving an aesthetic purpose, are there for reasons of security. When the doors are padlocked each night, the house becomes a veritable fortress. The house is among a substantial minority that have electricity and running water. We also have an honest-to- goodness toilet (although without a seat), whereas many houses simply have a pit 60' (yes, 60') deep, covered with a lid that has a hole in the center about 1' in diameter. You can use your imagination about its use. By the way, we understand our house in Buea will have facilities similar to those we have here. We have no hot water and can either have a cold shower or a "bucket shower," which starts by filling a bucket with heated water. With a bucket shower a cup takes the place of a faucet. So far we have opted for cold showers, which are better described as cool showers. After the first few such showers, I found them reasonably pleasant. The kitchen has a 3-burner propane stove and is unusual in having a refrigerator, which is shared with a number of neighbors. I think the refrigerator is needed for keeping the insulin used by our diabetic father. There are very few utensils, very few dished, very little glassware, and very little cutlery. There is absolutely no food in the cupboards, indeed only one cupboard. All food is procured daily. Theland here has practically no topsoil so that our yard is essentially sunbaked red clay, my kind of yard--zero maintenance. The yard continues into our street, which is also sun-baked clay. Ah, home sweet home. Love, Edwin LETTER #5 9 July 1995 Dear Everyone: Around 1 September I will go to Buea for a two week orientation, and Janice will join me two weeks later. When we get settled in at Buea I will open a post office box and send you our permanent address. [I will email this to everyone; my parents see no US news, get little mail. GK] Now I go into some detail about transportation in Ngaoundre. The town apparently has 100,000 people spread out over quite a large area, say 25 square miles. It is hard to believe there are so many people here because any particular part of town feels like a sprawling village. In any case, very few people own cars, somewhat more own low-powered motorcycles or mopeds, and a few own bicycles. In almost all cases, the vehicles are in a decrepit state, just barely functioning. The cars often need to be jump started and spew out clouds of black smoke. The few bicycles are remarkably beat up. My five speed which I threw away last winter in disgust after 25 years of service I now realize had many useful years of life left in it. Within the town, most people have three choices for transportation: foot, taxi, or "moto-taxi" (the second seat of a motor bike, which can accomodate as many as three people by last count). About 90% of the motor traffic consists of taxis and moto-taxis. The streets have a mix of motor traffic and pedestrians, with pedestrians predominating. The majority of the roads are unpaved. The unpaved roads are quite uneven, with many ruts and gullies. The paved roads have numerous large potholes. Apparently, once a road is paved it is not repaved, so that it slowly fades away. So far I have given a static description of the system; now I describe this system in motion. The taxis, moto-taxis, and bicycles weave their way down the road trying to avoid the numerous hazards, only vaguely staying to the right. The pedestrians, because they predominate, walk in the road, yielding to the passing traffic. As a pedestrian, I have learned to "read" the road so that I know where oncoming and overtaking traffic will go. For example, if I see a large pot-hole ahead of me to the left, I kow that oncoming traffic and overtaking traffic will pass to the right of the pot hole. Thus, when I see oncoming traffic or hear overtaking traffic I move onto the shoulder or the right side of the road. If the pot hole is in front of me on the right, I ignore traffic in either direction. By the way, Cameroonians generally walk on the right side of the road. Also, my walking behavior became fairly automatic after a couple of weeks. As a side note about the roads, I understand that during the dry season the unpaved roads are smoothed out, and they stay smooth as they bake in the hot sun. The advantage of a better road in the dry season is offset by an immense amount of dust. The rainy season keeps the dust down but erodes the roads. Further, during the rainy season some parts of the country are inaccessible as the roads become impassible. Transportation between towns is usually by train or bush taxi (and very rarely, by plane). I have yet to see a train, so I will wait until after our trip to Kumba by train to describe them. The bush taxi looks like a bus and has three long benches that are parallel to the direction of travel. These seats are jammed with as many people as possible, much like you might imagine Japanese subways are packed. Then a huge mound of luggage (perhaps along with some goats and chickens) is formed on the roof. Typically, trips on bush taxis last an hour or two. As much as we might like to avoid traveling by bush taxi, I am sure we will do so. Back to the home front; much of our family is going on vacation. Our younger brother Herve and our cousin Blase left today for a month stay in Younde. Janice was quite amused to see Blase leave for the train station by moto-taxi, because Blase brought with him about 80 lbs of gear. The moto-taxi driver carried one huge duffel balanced in front of him on the handle bars, while Blase rode on the back with a second duffle slung over his shoulder. On Monday our sister Jeannette leaves with her boy friend for two weeks in France followed by two weeks in the U.S. Love, Edwin LETTER #6 10 July 1995 Dear All: Everything is fine here as we end our first month in Africa. Our language and technical training continues, with some interesting variations. As we all will be teaching at the secondary level and mostly lack any teaching experience, this past week we concentrated on making lesson plans and using them for a 15-minute simulation of instruction before our peers. Although I had never written a lesson plan before, it was a straight-forward exercise for me. For Janice the exercise was challening and time-consuming. This Friday, as part of our cross-cultural training we visited the head of the local Moslem community, local in this case meaning the province (Adamoud), which has perhaps 500,000 people, with, say, half of them Moslem. The Lamido ("sultan"), as he is called, lives in a compound adjacent to a large mosque. The 44 trainees went to the mosque around 11:30, and watched from the edge of the prayerground as the faithful, dressed in traditional garb, arrived for the noon-time sabbath prayer by bicycle, by moto-taxi, and by taxi. By noon the prayer ground of about 3 acres was completely full of Moslems praying on their prayer mats. Further, all the streets leading to the mosque were completely full of Moslems kneeling in prayer. The almost exclusively male throng of perhaps 5000 finally convinced me thag Ngaoundere does indeed have a large population despite its feeling like a small village. After the noon day prayer, we watched the Lamido participate in a large procession that accompanied him as he walked the 20 yards from the mosque to the reception hall of his compound. The royal guards, visiting nobles, and even a royal magician, whom the Lamido often consults. In the reception hall numerous nobles paid their respects. Then he retired to a consultation room, where he had detailed political discussions with some of the nobles. Some time later he received all of us Peace Corps trainees, shaking each of our hands and allowing us to take a series of group photos. We waited about an hour to be received, idling our time in a courtyard, inadvertently being entertained by the drumming and singing of a man who was accompanied by a chorus of boys. We subsequently learned that the man and three boys were all brothers and have the hereditary job of learning and singing the history of the Lamido and of his ancestors. The four brothers have the job of preserving the oral tradition of the Lamido. The Lamido is the political and judicial leader of the Moslem community in a secular state. Three days a week he decided civil and religious cases arising from disputes among his followers. Criminal cases are all heard by the civil authorities. I am not sure how reliable my information is, but I understand the Lamdio has four wives (who, once they marry, move to the Lamido's compound and never leave the compound again, even after the Lamido's death), around 20 concubines, a whole bunch of children (he guesses around 30), and a mistress in town. His compound is quite large, as he has to house a large number of his father's wives and concubines who survived his father, as well as his own entourage. Now onto some general topics. Because I have heard fragments of information about a prolonged heat wave you have been having as I write, I am inclinde to write about the weather here. In contemplating our living in Africa, I imagined our lying in bed at night, sweating in the humid heat. Instead we have had spectacularly nice weather here in Ngaoundere, much more pleasant than summer in Bethlehem. Right now it is the ra iny season (which locally extends from May to September) which means that often it is quite cloudy and that it rains pretty much daily. Despite all the rain the humidity is quite low. Because of the clouds and the rain, the temperature most often is in the 70's during the day, and any heat in the 80's (and rarely 90's) only lasts for part of the day. The nights are always cool, so that it is always pleasant to sleep. Ngaoundere's elevation of 3500 feet is the main cause of the salubrious climate. We have been trying to get more information about the climate at Buea, where we will live. It has a similar elevation but is on the eastern slope of Mt. Cameroon, quite near the ocean. We know that the western slope of Mt. Cameroon, one of the world's rainiest locations, gets 200" of rain a year. We know Buea tends to be cool, but we have not been able to learn its rainfall. And now some words about our local post office. Despite its size, Ngaoundere only gets mail twice a week. I doubt that any mail is delivered anywhere other than to mail boxes which can be rented at the post offices. Most streets have no name and street addressed are non-existent. Mail takes about two weeks from the States. Regular mail to the US costs $.90, aerogrammes cost $.45 but are in short supply (we have heard a rumor that the local post office has exhausted its supply for this month), and we have been unable to determine the cost of sending postcards. As best we can find out, post cards require $.32 postage, but the smallest denomination stamp available at the local post office if $.40. To add spice to the transactions at the post office, one of the two clerks has a reputation of never giving change (claiming he lacks change) and always trying to short the (white?) customer. As of yet we don't know how reliable the mail is, although it has been about two weeks since we have received any mail from [GK] and about two weeks since our last (and first) copy of Newsweek. (Do we have a really short subscription?) Edwin LETTER #7 7/23/95 Dear Everyone: The past week of training was varied and interesting. We spent part of the week preparing for a "Community Outreach Fair" on Friday, where we gave various demonstrations of ideas and skills that might be useful for Cameroonians. The fair was meant as practice for us so that we would be able to conduct similar activities at post, and we invited our host families to attend. It all seemed a bit hokey but worked out very well in practice as I saw many people assiduously copying instructions for making soap, vasaline, medicine for inssect bites, etc., and copying various recipes. My project (in collaboration with three others) was a demonstration of a primitive airtight mud stove that saves substantial amounts of wood, while Janice's project (of course) demonstrated the cooking of banana chips and plantain chips. The highlight of the week was our visit yesterday to a traditional village "in the bush." In this case "in the bush" means outside our (large) village town. We drove about 15 miles north on a paved road and then about 80 miles east on a dirt road across highland savannah (grasslands) to the all-Moslem villange of Nganha at the foot of the Nganha Mountain. Much of the grassland is farmed, but some of it is sufficiently wild for us to see a wild monkey along the way. At the village we first heard a lecture on and viewed a display of historical artifacts that had been discovered in a group of caves on the mountain. According to oral tradition, the Nganha people emigrated from Yemen about 1200 years ago, and the artifacts, which are 200-300 years old, have designs that corroborate this oral tradition. We viewed clothing worn by ancient chiefs, a wooden throne, heavy metal jewelry, and various kinds of metal weapons, the most interesting of which was the "Ha" form which the word Ngan ha (Ngan=mountain) is derived. The Ha is a flat metal weapon consisting of three blades and a handle, roughly in the shape of a swastika. It is thrown through the air like a frisbee, cutting anything in its path. Subsequent to our viewing the antiquities, we went to the village square to view and participate in a series of ceremonial dances, the focus of which were the impending circumcisions of two males of about 10. (The female trainees were relieved to learn that only males can attend the ceremony; the male trainees were relieved to learn that the ceremony would take place after we left, precluding their own direct participation in the ceremony.) The music for the ceremony was provided by village musicians playing a variety of instruments dominated by band and snare drums. The other instruments included a reed instrument similar to the one we associate with snake charmers, a wooden xylophone, and a primitive lyre that has a solid body and a curved neck which allows the strings of different length to be arranged in the same plane, i.e. it looked like a cross between a violin and a harp. Nganha is a remote village in a country with few tourists, so that I doubt that many people other than Peace Corps volunteers have seen the dance ceremonies. On the other hand, the dress of the villagers made me doubt the full authenticity of what I was seeing. For example, many villagers wore the traditional long Muslim robes over western style pants and, say, dilapidated running shoes. Many others were barefoot. One dancer had an elaborate skirt he had constructed of green leaves. Many dancers enhanced their costumes with tufts of green leaves. One villager had constructed an elaborate costume consisting of leggings made of plastic rice bag streamers and a wooden mask decorated with similar streamers. His costume's spell was broken by his wearing a t-shirt witha Canadian National (RR) logo. Many of the females wore the traditional Moslem garb. In general, the dress suggested the villagers were quite poor and that the dress represented the collision between western and traditiona, with the salt of poverty added to the resulting wounds. After watching the dances we paid our respects to the 80 year old chief of the village, each of us shaking his hand. We gave him two cartons of Cameroonian-style soap, which is quite crude by our standards but quite welcome by the village. Before leaving, Janice and I snuck off for a private tour. The village has no electricity, gets its water from a well, and uses the traditional pit toilets. The main "industry" is subsistence farming. Most of the homes are round, mud-walled, thatched-roof houses, and some are rectangular, mud-walled houses iwth tin roofs. The village is laid out "on the square" (so that we did not get lost), with each person's lot surrounded by a thatched fence. We did not find it difficult imagining our living in a similar village, as some PCVs do. although we know we will have more amenities at our post. Friday a second person announced he will return to the States. Jeremy was in my 4-person language class and I came to know him fairly well, even though what I will write about him will have some inaccuracies. Jeremy, like many of the trainees, is unusually bright and talented. He entered college at 15 (NM Tech), got a BS in math and MSEd. Equivocating between a $70k job at Hughes and a $28k teaching job (in combination with a summer search & rescue job with the NFS) he chose the latter and became a very innovative teacher of math, using the discovery method. He volunteered for PC, because he was led to believe he was more needed in Cameroon. From our training so far we have learned that the Peace Corps aims to bring some of the same ideas that Jeremy advoated to a dual education system (one part modeled after the French, the other part after the British) that puts great emphasis on drill and rote memory. (I often think that our US educational system could use a little more drill and rote memory.) Jeremy thought his approach here would be futile, because it would be too radical. He decided he was needed more in the State. I think he is wrong, that he would have greater impact here. In any case, I will miss him. A postscript on my weather discussion last week. I subsequently read a discussion of Cameroonian meteorology which clarifies why there are dry and wet seasons here. The equator is the rough location of a permanent front between a northern "Harmattan" wind and a southern "Monsoon" wind. The Harmattan brings out hot dry air drom the Sahad. [Sahara? gk] The Monsoon brings warm humid air from the ocean. It perpetually rains along the front. The sun controls the exact location, keeping the front over land when north of the equator and over water when south of the equator. As I write these letters I am painfully aware of the lack of a word processor. I apologize for my clumsy prose, which I cannot edit once committed to the page. Edwin LETTER #8 7/30/95 Dear Everyone: This past week marks our last full week in Ngaoundere. The 24 math/science trainees depart on Wednesday, leaving behind the 19 TEFL trainees, who will continue their training in Ngaoundere. All 43 trainees will spend a few days scatterered around the country, guests, in groups of 1 to 4 people, of various volunteers who will show us what life on post is like. Janice, I, and two other trainees will spend a few days in Limbe, with a PCV and then move on to Kumba to continue training. Limbe is a resort town on the Atlantic coast. Perhaps I can get in a little body surfing at the beach there. This past Fridaw was the last day of French classes, which have occupied us four hours a day since we arrived. Both Janice and I have satisfied the Peace Corps requirement for fluency. We speak a broken form of French which enables us to survive. Thus, we were able to go on a shopping expedition through the open market yesterday and buy the necessary ingredients for pizza. The big challenge was to get some dry active yeast in small quantity, but we succeeded. It was much easier buying tomato, pepper, garlic, parsely, etc., because we could point at the visible product if nothing else worked. Although we have learned a lot of French, it has been slightly disappointing, because we have had only limited conversations with our family. I hope that we have contact with Francophones in Kumba and Buea, where we will live for two years, but it is unclear how much French is spoken there. As far as we can figure out, the Francophone and Anglophone areas of Cameroon are as linguistically separated as their counterparts in Canada. Here in Ngaoundere English is quite rare, French is the most common, followed by Fufuldi, a local African language. I think the first language in the Southwest province, where Kumba and Buea are located, is English and the second language is Pidgin. English is the language of the elite and Pidgin the language of the market. Our Pidgin instruction started Friday and will continue two hours a day through the rest of our training. At the same time we will be teaching at a "vacation school" in Kumba, under the watchful eyes of our trainers. Last night we had a party at the Centre de Formation for all the stall and trainees and the host families of the Math/Science trainees to thank the host families for their hospitality. One of the highlights of the evening was a fashion show with some of the trainees as models and with the clothes provided by our director of cross-cultural instruction, Dr. Kini, The compleat [sic] person, Kini has a doctorate in Anthropology from the Sorbonne, teaches at the U of Ngaoundere, works summers for the Peace Corps, maintains a museum of African artifacts in his house (which Janice and I will visit tomorrow), and, on the side, designs clothing for sale in Paris and California (an interesting combination of locales). Last night we saw about thirty different ensembles from his collection. They were quite impressive but quite expensive by Cameroonian standards. [My mom says the clothing runs at least 35,000 CFA; last week's NYT exchange said US$1=Kenyan435CFA. Per capita income is US$1100. GK] In general, they are fancy variations of the Muslim and African garb we see locally. Though I would feel comfortable wearing the clothing here, I would need some courage wearing it in Bethlehem, hence, I suppose, Kini's choice of Paris and California for marketing his designs. Well, next week from Kumba. Edwin LETTER #9 6 August 1995 Dear Everyone: Tonight I write from Kumba, which is in the Southwest province, about 50 miles north of the Atlantic and about 70 miles east of the Nigerian border. We arrived today and moved into the Government Technical High School (GTHS) dormitories, where we will live for the next 5 weeks. Our day will be split between teaching at a "holiday school" and learning Pidgin. living in the dorm is like going back to college. Janice and I have the privilege of sharing what would be the dorm counselor's room and which is the usual generous size you find in dormitory rooms. The other trainees are segregated by gender into large rooms that house 16 people in generous (this time no irony intended) cubicles that are formed by wooden closets and which accomodate two people each. To complete the sense of deja vu, we dine together in a dining hall. The campus of GTHS is on the edge of town. A result of a Canadian foreign aid project, it could easily be mistaken for some US campus. It stands in stark contrast to the surrounding impoverished town. Wednesday [2 Aug. GK], Janice and I, along with the 22 other Math-Science trainees packed up all our belongings and took the overnight train to Yaounde. There most of our belongings were loaded on a truck and taken here, while we got a ride to Limbe where we spend Thursday through this morning visiting Don Slayback, a PCV, who works at the Limbe zoo. His first two years were spent in a small village. Then he "extended" for a third year so that he could work at the zoo. A third trainee, a woman named Eddie Engle (to add some confusion), joined us at Limbe. Limbe is a beautiful town on the Atlantic coast at the foot of Mt. Cameroon, which rises from the ocean's edge to its height of 4000 meters (about 13,300 ft [?]). As this is the rainy season in Limbe, it was always cloudy during our visit, and we got some rain of course, but the temperature never exceeded the low eighties. Although similar in some ways to Ngoundere [yes, he changes the spelling from one letter to the next], there were many noticeable differences. First, Limbe is an Anglophone town so that we heard little French and lots of Pidgin. Second, the Moslem influence is absent, or at least invisible. I saw no mosque, I heard no mullah calling the faithful to prayer, and I saw no traditional moslem garb. Third, the town appears wealthier than Ngoundere. The housing looks marginally better, and the people dress better. Fourth, there is almost a complete absence of both bicycles and moto-taxis, I suppose because the weather is so much wetter here. Finally, the food is more diverse and less expensive. On Saturday, Dan gave us a guided tour of the zoo which is small and badly maintained but now being refurbished wtih Dan's help. Primarily it houses a collection of apes, chimps, and monkeys, some unique to this zoo. The Mt. Cameroon area is ho me to a large and diverse population of these animals which are under some pressure, especially from hunters who sell their prey for meat, one kind of what is generically known as bush meat. (As one trainee said, "When my family serves me bush meat, I don't ask questions, I just eat it.") We also spent time in the adjacent botanical gardens which is quite pretty and has a very extensive collection of palm trees. The Garden was created by the Germans (who got the boot in 1916). It has had its ups and downs over the years and is now benefitting from an influx of British money. Later on the same day, we took a taxi to a beach about 11 miles west of town. There, in honor of my many years at Salisbury Beach, I rode the waves. Because this is the rainy season, I had only one companion in the surf. To continue an earlier "small world" story, when Michael Dean and I discovered we both grew up in the same neighborhood of Lawrence MA, he wrote this exciting information about a volunteer named Kay to his mother. Subsequently, when calling him she asked if my name was Edwin and if I lived on Olive Ave. When Mike said yes to the first question (later verifying the second) his mother (Pauline Gosselin) said she babysat Steve. At the moment, the Deans are about 2 miles down the road from the Kays at Seabrook Beach. Out of space. Love, Edwin LETTER #10 13 Aug 1995 Dear Everyone: We are finishing our first week in Kumba and starting to settle into a routine. Unlike at Ngoundere we spend almost all of our time at the "training centres" which consist of the dormitory, cafeteria, and administrative buildings at GTHS and the classrooms next door at CCHS. The main focus of our activity is the teaching of holiday school, and we have less interest in our Pidgin instruction. For most of the volunteers this is their first experience in the classroom, and they are tremendously excited about the experience. Because they have had no previous formal teachers' training they are somewhat intimidated, but as they gain experience they become quite enthusiastic. Janice has been especially intimidated by the experience because she has so little experience in biology, the subjet she is teaching in holiday school, but she too is gaining confidence after each class. I am especially enjoying one of my two classes, which involves the teaching of calculus. I have always loved the calculus, so it is fun to return to it after 25 years. My other class involves the teaching of 9th grade physics which is more challenging because I have forgotten so much of it, and less fun because the students are so much more unruly (I have been convinced for a long time that 9th graders are an invention of the devil). Mail has effectively come to a halt, because no one has recently traveled between Yaounde and Kumba. [Letter #9 arrived Sat 26 Aug; #10 Tues 29 Aug. GK] We expect that some of our next batch of letters will be as much as a month old. When we finally get to post and get a mailbox, I hope we expedite the process a bit. Ironically, foreign mail into Cameroon "only" takes about two weeks, but internal mail takes about six weeks. Kumba is the commercial center of the Southwest, where much of the natural wealth of Cameroon is located. The town apparently has a population of 300,000-400,000, but, just like Ngoundere, has the feel of a small village. I guess, in fact it is a large sprawling village. Yesterday, as part of our Pidgin class, we went to the downtown market to practice our language skills and bargain for various items. Many Americans find the bargaining process absurd, thinking it a great waste of time to haggle over the price of everything, but I think it great fun and a wonderful way of socializing with the Cameroonian people. I am looking forward to all the transactions we will have to make when we set up our house in Buea in early September. We will be somewhat at a disadvantage because whites are assumed to have a bit of money and because we don't yet have a good feel for what the right prices should be, but we will be ready for the battle. I will use the rest of this letter to describe the educational system in Anglophone Cameroon and to describe the contrasts between GTHS, where we live, and CCHS, which is more typical of a Cameroonian school. Unsurprisingly, the Anglophone Cameroonian school system has a strong British cast. Primary school consists of grades one through six. Secondary school consists of 7 grades: forms 1 through 5, lower 6th and upper 6th. There are special exams after primary school, after forms, and after upper 6th, each exam acting as a barrier to admission to the next level. I don't know the exact numbers, along the way, but I think that 50% of the students fail to make it into secondary school, and at the end of the whole process, only about 4% go on to the (three year) university course. At our holiday school students are trying to get a head start on the next year. Thus we have forms 2 through 5 and upper 6th. Lower 6th is omitted because the results of the exams following form 5 are yet to be announ ced and will probably be announced during holiday school. If we had a lower 6th, those students who failed the exam (say 30-50%) would melt away when the results are announced. The classroom in which I teach is fairly typical of the Cameroonian schools. It has a poured concrete floor, concrete block walls, a tin roof and cardboard tile ceilings. Front and back the walls are sold; the side walls are solid for the first three feet and then open almost to the roof line. At one time the windows had jalousy panes, but all the glass is missing. My blackboard is a 4x8 sheet of plywood painted black. The students sit at wooden benches, three to a bench. The normal classroom has about 80 students, but vacation school has only 30-40 per class. There is no electricity in the classroom, so all lighting is natural. It rained heavily during one of my classes, and my shouting voice just barely sufficed over the noise of the rain on the tin roof. This kind of classroom is an interesting test of my idea that the only weapon I need in the classroom is a piece of chalk. The GTHS, where we live and prepare our lessons, is an interesting study in foreign aid, Canadian in this case. Effectively, the Canadians air lifted on of their vocational- technical schools to Cameroon. Everything about the buildings is Canadian, from the basic architecture, to the electrical fixtures, to the Crane-of-Canada Inc. hoppers, to the pizza ovens, to the fire alarm system (which includes fire extinguishers, whose quantity and type doubtless meet Canadian fire codes). Some of the equipment in the kitchen is top quality but a complete puzzle to the Cameroonian cooks who have left it in pristine condition. Whatever breaks down cannot be repaired, because there are no parts locally available. Despite its somewhat misguided design and construction, GTHS is vastly superior to the school next door and will remain so for quite a while before it gets worn out. Meanwhile, we have nice living quarters and access to a gymnasium better equipped and in better condition than that of Liberty High School.