LETTER #30 Sunday 31 Dec 1995 Dear Everyone: After spending most of the week traveling and acting like tourists, we are back home for a very quiet New Year's Eve, just the two of us and probably a bowl of popcorn. Before describing our travels I will discuss transportation in Cameroon as background. In many ways, public transportation in Cameroon is quite good, although there are some drawbacks. Despite living 12km from work, I can get a taxi from my house after a 5-10 wait, although I usually walk about 1.5km to a busier road where I wait anywhere from 0 to 3 minutes for a taxi, which costs $.25. The ride is inevitably in a 80s vintage Corrolla, and invariably shared with others--the maximum (usually reached) being 3 n back and 2 sharing a front bucket seat, plus the driver. The driving is by different rules of the road and initially appeared quite dangerous, but I have learned that the rules are obeyed and produce safety. Travel between towns is by 'bush taxi,' which in our part of Cameroon means vans with 4 tiers of seats or minivans like ours, with 3 tiers of seats. Also, if the distance is relatively short, say 40km, travel may be by taxi. The cost, government regulated, is $.03 a mile. One travels during day light hours, taxis to a "taxi park" at the edge of town, and takes a bush taxi to a taxi park at the edge of the town of your destination, and then you take a taxi into town. The bush taxis are continually leaving the taxi park, sort of. Given the unwritten rule that a bush taxi never leaves until full, I have sometimes waited less than a minute before leaving, other times as long as two hours. C'est l'Afrique. For our vacation, we chose to travel to the Northwest province, and we took advantage of the "Bamenda Express," which leaves at 6 a.m. from our neighborhood and proceeds to Buea's taxi park. Knowing this, we arranged to have the driver pick us up in front of our house, saving us taxi fare but costing us a wait at the taxi park. Our ride took us off the mountain down to the coastal plane, which is a mixture of rain forest, rubber plantation, and banana plantations. Then we headed north through the west province [on the road N5? straight shot to Bamenda. gk] to Bamenda in the Northwest province, rising into "tropical highlands," mountainous country reminiscent of New Hampshire and Vermont, if you ignore the tropical vegetation. Bamenda nestles in a mountain valley at about 3000 ft, bounded on one side by 1500 foot cliffs. Our approach to Bamenda was spectacular as we arrived at the top of cliffs and ascended steeply into town. We stayed two nights at a house maintained by PCVs posted to the Northwest and saw about 15 of our 'stage' mates. We spent our time relaxing, and exploring Bamenda, inevitably mixing in some shopping as we visited the usual street markets, as well as some of the handicraft shops. We then retraced about 50 mils of our original 200 mile trip, returning to Bafoussam [intersection N5 & N6. gk] and then headed north about 50 miles to Foumban [heading east. gk] in the West Province (in Francophone Cameroun, as opposed to Anglophone North-West Province). Here we got a chance to test our French, which did us fairly well except on those occasions when numerous people were trying to talk to us at the same time. Foumban is noted for its "artisanat" (handicraft market) and its Sultan's Palace, so we spent time visiting both. Because Foumban is fairly 'touristy' but tourists were in short supply, we were besieged on all sides--by taxi drivers, by would-be guides, by artisans hawking their goods--so much so that it became quite irritating. Because we are still unsure of our finances, because we were unsure what were good priced, and because we intend to return [items] with Gwen, Bill, and Talia, we made no purchases, so I suppose we irritated our besiegers in turn. Foumban is a largely Moslem town, and the whole culture there revolves around the Sultan, his palace and the neighboring mosque. he Sultan is the 19th in a line that dates from 1394. His palace is new, relatively, dating from the German period (1884-1914) and its architecture is disturbingly German. Its engineering is distinctly African--in our visit to the huge entry hall on the first floor, I saw that the four vast supporting columns meandered uncertainly in an upward direction. Outside the palace, housed in a separate building, was a gigantic war drum made of a hollowed log about 5 feet in diameter and about 20 feet long. Our trip from Foumban back to Buea was an adventure all its own. It started with three bush taxi drives fighting over us for the ride to Foumbot, about 30 miles away, each driver eager to fill his taxi, so he could get underway. WE ended up in a mini- van for which full means 11 (4-4-3). Once underway, we added passengers along the way until we reached 14. In Foumbot we transferred to a van, bring it to its capacity of 15 (4-4-4-3) and headed for Bafoussam, adding passengers as we went until we reached 22, or at least we think 22, as we had difficulty counting. In Bafoussam we were the center of a major battle for our bodies and learned in the cacophony of French that we could not go directly to Buea but had to go to Douala first. When one driver started dragging me toward a van about to leave for Douala, I stood on principle, wrestled free of his grasp, and walked away. We ended up at a different taxi park in an empty van and waited two hours to leave. Our fortunes shifted as we reached the Douala road four hours later, and saw the junction we thought we would revisit after briefly seeing Douala. Instead, we connected with a bush taxi for Buea at the junction. When we were left about 1.5km from our home we were immediately picked up by a neighbor who was driving by. Thanks to this week's writers--Wrubles, Krawiecs, Delphs. Ginny asks about Jan's gardening, which is going great. The volcanic soil is incredibly rich, helped by the tropical climate. Ginny asks about the children, so I will tell you our perceptions. We think that Talia is extremely happy at Mt. Holyoke, which has exceeded her optimistic expectations of having a highly intellectually stimulating environment. Bill bought a pickup truck in August and headed for Oregon, intending to get residency so he can attend the U of O as a grad student in Cultural Geography. He is marking time (and making me jealous) by working at Mt. Bachelor, my all-time favorite ski area, which is in Bend, OR. We plan to visit there in exactly two years. Edwin LETTER #31 7 Jan 1996 Dear Everyone: I assume that by the time you receive this, the second semester will be well underway for you. Here we have a mixture of the end of one semester at UB and the beginning of the second term at GTC. If I can do all my UB grading expeditiously, I will have about a two week break until the start of classes on 5 February. That will give me a semi-vacation because I will be teaching Mondays and Tuesdays at GTC. For Janice, there is teaching at GTC and her beginning of involvement in teaching in the OIC kitchen. Final exams started at UB last Wednesday and continue until 15 January. The administration of finals is highly, perhaps overly, bureaucratized here. Each test is written in a university provided booklet with perforated cover sheet upon which the students enter their student numbers and information identifying the subject, date, etc. at the completion of the exam the test invigilators (a real word which, according to the OED, dates from 1553, and is archaic except for the specific meaning of watching over an exam), but not including the course instructor, code the perforated sections and the booklet with matching numbers, remove the perforated section, place the resulting slips in a sealed envelope, give the sealed envelope to the dean, and give the test books to the instructor to grade. The slips and book covers are later reunited in the presence of the dean. This elaborate procedure is meant to guard against tribal favoritism and bribery, both strongly perceived if perhaps unreal problems. I don't believe that I exercise favoritism in my grading, but I always grade blindly anyway. Here I have no choice. The bureaucratic procedure will cost me substantial time because reuniting 358 booklets from my larger course will probably take hours. The 358 booklets make an impressive sight on my desk. If I staked them in one pile, which I will not do because they would surely topple, they would be about 1 1/2 feet tall. The dean protested loudly when I removed them all at one time from his office. I simply muttered that I was being lazy (remembering my mother's warning about a lazy man's load). I'll finish up with a weather update. For as long as we have been in Buea, the temperature has been between 60 and 85. In our house the temperature is invariably within a few degrees of 70. During much of the all it was the rainy season and I could predict the weather by looking down the hill toward Douala, from which banks of clouds would roll up the hill at intervals of 5 to 25 hours. When the clouds reached over head, it would rain for 30 to 90 minutes. In between the banks of clouds it would be crystal clear, giving us 30 mile visibility. Mt Cameroon, because of this clarity, would appear to be about as tall, and as close, as South Mountain, despite being 20 times taller and 20 times further away. Around 15 November the rains suddenly stopped and the dry season commenced, even though the banks of clouds still roll up the hill. We have had two days of (brief) rain since, including the 20 minute Christmas eve rain that comes every year (c'est l'Afrique) and is supposed to be the last rain until March, when the wet season begins, again. The dry season seems to have affected the water pressure so that for some reason only our shower and toilet have been affected, reducing us to bucket baths and infrequent flushes. Thanks to Ticho-Lotts and Rosens for family pictures, Johnsons for Angus's picture, and Longs, Millers, and my mother for letters. We think that the Air Cameroon plane crash [mid-Dec. gk] caused mail to be rerouted for quite a while and thus delayed [mail] so that, for example, this week we received Gwen's 1 Dec and 15 Dec letters but have yet to receive her 8 Dec letter. Edwin From The Other Half on The Very Domestic Scene... A side benefit to the PCV reunion in Limbe, for an in- service training, was the locating of an American foods-import store (as differentiated from a European import store). I delighted in seeing wonderful baking supplies, like Domino's confectioners sugar and brown sugar, along with the likes of lasagna noodles, grated cheese & Kellogg's Corn Flakes. A nice birthday treat for Ed was the Sun-Maid raisins, and I was able to bake some American-style holiday cakes to give to friends and colleagues. We took a short trip to Bamenda, a large town in the North- West province. I saw wheatberries at a store, bought them, had them ground at the market and today got to bake my first wheat bread. Rising to the challenges of cooking here is greta fun and I look forward to recipe development at OIC. I have 'created' crepes Florentine using bewole (African spinach) and my gingerbread recipe has been transformed to a honeycake due to the unavailability of molasses. I contribute this cake weekly to raise funds for a women's organization hat produced honey. I am now experimenting with yeasted honeybuns for another item to donate. The yogurt we make is made with whole milk powder and is reich tasting and provides a wonderful nutritive boost to my cooking. However, Chava, my favorite preparation for it is cucumber soup. My garden is producing prodigious quantities of green beans and soon an abundance of tomatoes [woe to Ed. gk] will be ripening. They may end up as ketchup. Mimi, the zinnias and nasturtiums are coming along, too. Til the next time--Janice LETTER #32 14 Jan 1996 Dear Everyone: For me, this week has been all invigilation and grading while Janice is getting ready for her return to OIC this coming week. Just before my invigilating an exam on Monday a white woman appeared in my office. Being rushed I invited her to the exam saying we could talk once things settled down. She and her boyfriend were bike touring, and she had been given my name by some PCVs she had met in Bafoussam. She and her boyfriend joined us for supper, slept over, and had breakfast before moving on. In between we traded touring stories, and I showed them some pictures of our tandems loaded for touring. I couldn't quite get the details straight because of my poor French and their weak English, be he started in France in September of '94 (15 months ago) and she met him some months ago (by previous plan) in West Africa. After touring Africa they may move on to Asia. After talking with them my appetite for touring has been whetted. It appears that the promised PC bike will not materialize, and I am somewhat reluctant to buy one of my own. There is plenty of time to think about it. During the week I learned more, perhaps all, of the details of the security measures for the finals. By regulation, work during the semester counts for 30% of the grad and the final 70%. I could not obtain the anonymously coded final exams until I submitted the grades for work during the semester. I cannot obtain the slips that allow me to decode the exams until I submit a coded list of final exam grades, the actual decoding of the grades, the calculation of total scores, and the assignment of grades are all done in the presence of (and with the help of) my department chair. Given that the cutoffs for the various grades are determined by University regulation, once I have graded the final examinations, I essentially have no power to control this grading juggernaut. Right now my main worry is being able to finish all my grading before my schedules meeting with my chair a week from this coming Tuesday. I anticipate spending about 10 hours a day on this test and am only somewhat confident I will finish with the 469 exams I have strewn about my office and my house. This week we received our first packed via surface mail, spices from Jean (thank you, Jean) mailed just 3 months ago. Our mail is now arriving fairly quickly [unlike this letter! gek], thanks to Steve and Rona, Gwen, Stephanie, Anna Kadama, Brenda and Carol in the CEAS Dean's office. Some people apparently have used the diplomatic pouch (by addressing the mail to Ann Loux) to send us packages. We have yet to receive any packages via this route. In any case, this avenue is no longer available, so anybody having that address should discard it. Until next week, Edwin LETTER #33 21 Jan 1996 Dear All: The semester is also over as I finally have finished the actual grading of the papers (or marking of scripts as they call it here). After Tuesday, when the department gathers to determine grades, I will be free of university duties until 5 February, the start of the second semester. Until Tuesday, I will be mulling over the Cameroonian approach to grading which differs significantly from ours. Test questions, for grading purposes, are assigned a number of marks, each mark representing a step to the solution of a problem (or, I suppose, the main points of an argument in the humanities), with the range of marks usually anywhere from 1 to 5, depending on the number of steps. The student then attains a number of marks (or half marks), depending on how many steps were correct. In a test of 100 marks, half of whole marks are readily lost for minor mistakes, and a number of marks are lost when the student goes awry on an early step. In my class, as in most classes, each of two tests counts 15 marks and the final 70 marks toward the final grade. Any score below 50 marks is a failure, and it is expected that the average mark should be around 50. Because it took me about 80 hours to mark my final exam scripts, and because I mark scripts one questions at a time for greater fairness, disaster in my abstract algebra course came into focus slowly over a number of days with intervening sleepless nights. Exactly 80% of the students scored below 35 (out of 70) on the final so that approximately the same number will score below 50 marks in the course. Horrified, I consulted the head of my department, and I learned of a more subtle feature of the system called moderation. In my course, I am to add 8 points to each final exam score so that the failure rate is reduced to 'only' 43%. By any measure the students did poorly on the final, and the Cameroonian approach to grading simply made the fact explicit. I am left trying to understand why (poor students? poor teacher? lack of texts?) and thinking of strategies for improving the students' performance in abstract algebra next fall. I am also faced with a much smaller but similar problem in my calculus course and am unsure whether I can consult my department head before submitting the final exam scores to the dean, an act which chisels the results in stone. Janice has put in her first week as a permanent (but less than full-time) employee (well, volunteer) at OIC. She is giving small group instruction in dessert making and at the same time trying to find desserts that appeal to the Cameroonian palate, which is so radically different from ours that the concept of dessert is foreign. This week we received Gwen's package which included dental floss and Rescue (tm) pads (one of the few great inventions of the 20th century in the opinion of this dishwasher. We thank Gwen. We now have two pieces of evidence that packages via ship take around three months. We eagerly await more evidence. Until next week, Edwin P.S. thanks for letters from Carr, Pearl, Steve & Rona LETTER #34 28 Jan 1996 Dear Everyone: Although school work has considerably slowed, it has not abated as I had anticipated. I am back in class two days a week at GTC, and the grading process still drags on at UB. Last week I spent two days decoding exams and assigning grades, a process that was even more elaborate than I had expected, a team of five people being required for each course. Three people each had copies of the class roll for a course and independently entered the final exam score called off by a fourth person who matched the coded slip against an exam book. The fifth person verified the exam score against the list of exam scores compiled by the teacher of the course. In unison the first three people added the semester score and the exam score, and then determined the final grade according to school rules, only hesitating for students on the crucial pass-fail border line, and usually giving the student the benefit of the doubt. My course, the largest, took five hours to decode, and of course I then had to help decode the remaining courses. At the end of all the decoding the department met to review the distribution of grades in all the courses, to write down explanations for the high rate of failure in three courses (failure rates int eh range of 70%), to estimate the percentage of syllabus covered in each course, and to write explanations for our (many) failures o cover the syllabus in a course. All this information is in preparation for a college faculty meeting this week when the grades are officially approved. Although this grading procedure is monumentally inefficient, I do like the way it makes grading more public than in the states. During the two days of decoding the faculty were quite congenial, developed clearer ideas about what each of us was doing in the classroom, shared knowledge about the contents of our courses and about our students, and developed some consensus about our pedagogical aims. As always, I want to acknowledge mail, fearful that I will forget somebody. The Cameroonian mail system seems to be becoming slowly unclogged, as we received many different dates from Gwen (12/10), Krawiecs (12/12), Epstein (1/2), Melcherts (1/10), Kesslers (1/10), Goldberg, Kniagers, Corliss, and Bill (12/18). Yesterday Janice and I, along with Fred, a taxi driver we have become friendly with to the extent of his refusing our fare, took a walk to Limbe, which is about 11 miles from here through the woods, er, rain forest. We followed dirt roads that are barely motorable and never saw a car during our five hours on them. [just like the Yak. gk] We passed through a series of small, quite poor villages, each with a population of a few hundred. The inhabitants we met were c lad in a peculiar assortment of cast off clothes--simply, suit jacket and short on one man, a mixed pair of shoes that could be put on from more than one direction on another. These clothes may very well have been most or all of their wardrobes. The quality of the housing was up to the same standard--one and two rom shacks with tin or thatched roofs and glass-less wooden-shuttered windows. Given the benign climate, these effects of poverty may be primarily aesthetic. Also, given the fertility of the local soil, subsistence farming provides adults, at least, an adequate diet. In one village we viewed the remains of a water system built by the Germans, who lost possession of the country in 1914. Remarkably, the system is sill serving the village. Further along we visited the first Catholic church in Cameroon. Built in 1894 at the top of a miniature mountain, it dominates the surrounding countryside. Along the way, on our trek (as it is called here), we gathered some wild raspberries, which Janice has already converted into sauce. Although our water pressure is sill much reduced (which compounds the problem of a leaky municipal water system by allowing contaminated ground water to leak into the system) I have learned how to get water to course through our shower head. Luckily our hot after tank is high on the wall in our bathroom. So long as we do not flush the toilet (well, I really mean don't allow the toilet tank to refill), the water trickles into the hot water tank and provides a pressure head for that part of the house. This is all theory, mind you, but I believe that the water back up and out of the hot water tank into the cold water line where we draw water for the shower. Sounds a bit loopy, but ever since I started filling the toilet tank with buckets of water drawn from the kitchen where the pressure is better, we have been able to shower. The egg wholesaler in Buea sells his eggs from the usual carton trays that hold about 30 eggs. He is a remarkable sight to behold as he tools around town with a stack of about 20 trays of these eggs bungee-corded onto the back of his motorcycle. Unfortunately, we break more eggs than he does, because the eggs are sold directly from the trays and given to us in plastic bags. If (plural) you send us a package, please use intact styrofoam egg cartons as packing material. By the way, PC tells us that despite the eggs not being refrigerated by either wholesaler or retailer (or us before getting our refrigerator), they are less of a threat to our health than eggs in the states. LETTER #35 4 Feb 1996 Dear Everyone: Much of last week has been relaxing as the grading of the first semester has wound down. I suppose, since the final is worth 70% of the grade, the faculty work at the end of the semester should be proportionately heavy. The last act in the grading drama consisted of the faculty in the Science College meeting to approve the grades given by each department. This meeting, whose start was only delayed 2 1/2 hours, lasted a bit over five hours but was never dull or boring, at least to me, because it revealed so much of the inner workings of the college. Just as did the corresponding meeting of the math department earlier, it involved a prolonged discussion of numerous academic views, most especially those concerning the content of various contents and how they should be taught. With one hand the university took away much of my anticipated vacation because of the prolonged grading process, and with the other gave it back by delaying the start of the semester a week. This also coincides with a week off (actually Monday and Tuesday, my days of work) from GTC in honor of "Youth Week" when the students are involved in many activities outside and none in the classroom. On Thursday Janice postponed some responsibilities at OIC and went into Douala with Ann Loux for a mini-vacation. On Friday, while enjoying my own little mini-vacation at home, I was interrupted by a van full of OIC employees looking for Janice, because she was being summoned by the director of OIC. Uncomfortable with the knowledge that her laxness on Thursday was taken so seriously, I told them that they could find Janice in the kitchen at OIC, and they returned whence they came. A little later in the morning, I began a 5km saunter through town, arriving at OIC for a pre-arranged luncheon date with Janice at noon. I then learned that Janice had been called into a meeting, once they found her, and had been offered a position overseeing the management of OIC's kitchens and of OIC's hotel. Initially during lunch Janice expressed many misgivings about such a position because of her lack of experience and lack of understanding about the way things are done in Cameroon. But, from roughly the middle of lunch on, she has been bubbling over with ways to improve various parts of the operation. IT is just as well that she is receptive to the idea, because the higher ups at OIC (of which there are now many fewer because of the change) consider the change a fait d'accompli. We are fairly sure that there are some internal politics involved in this move, but we will have to wait to understand what they are. A while ago at GTC a student was playing with something in his desk. I went over to him and asked him to give me whatever it was distracting him and his neighboring classmate, whereupon he pulled out a two foot machete and handed it over to me. At the time, I thought nothing much of the incident, because on any given day about 10% of the students bring machetes to school so that they can carry out various work assignments intended to keep the campus grounds neat and trim, a cost-free substitute for Allied Maintenance (or is now Beickman's?), the outside contractor that maintains Lehigh's grounds. The machete is extremely common in Cameroon and is an all purpose substitute for axes, lawn mowers, edge trimmers, hedge trimmers and chain saws, although I must admit recalling hearing a number of chain saws three times and actually seeing a lawn mower once. Not surprisingly, practice makes perfect in these matters, and Cameroonians are remarkably adept at using machetes. Bending over and sweeping a machete parallel to the ground, they can reduce grass to a nubble. In self-defense against the rampant fertility in our unfortunately large yard, I bought my own machete and have become fairly good at taming the grass, hedges and assorted plant with it, although I am not up to the Cameroonian standard--yet. Today, Janice, I, and the Canadian Bill Shilanksy, took a hike up Mt. Cameroon (only a little way up). The trail starts by passing a minimum security prison and goes through a series of farms tended by the prisoners, none of whom were in sight today. Somewhere we wandered off the main trail, and we followed progressively fainter trails through numerous farms. Eventually we were retrieved by a very poorly clad man toting the usual machete. After he led us back to the main trail, he explained he was one of the prisoners, and we parted company. Now this is minimum security where the prisoners are all given machetes! This week we received packages via the diplomatic ouch and we are grateful to Gwen for the cookbook, to Ellie Ferriter for two cookbooks, to Chava for dehydrated maple syrup, and to Stephanie Katz for a very useful Chanaka present of pot-holders. We acknowledge letters from Jean, Don and Abe Gruber (an ultimate blast from the past: Abe is a childhood friend of my father's who relocated to Manchester and later to Florida and is the father of a high school friend of Janice's). Edwin LETTER #36 11 Feb 1996 Dear Everyone: My tiny vacation is winding down, and I am getting ready for the first day of classes on Tuesday. I will be teaching a single course, the second semester of the calculus course, which finishes up the calculus and goes on the matrix algebra and probability and statistics. I will have two lecture sections of perhaps 200 students each, plus 6 recitation sections. In addition, I will be teaching one lab session in the introductory computer science course, provided, I suppose, any of the PCs function. Whereas last semester it took about four weeks for the recitation sections to get organized, due to the spectacular shortage of classroom space, this semester I hope to start meeting the second week. There are fewer courses being taught, and I already have obtained classrooms for the recitations. My optimism is tempered by my knowing that I am still in Africa, where I should expect plans to go awry. Yesterday was the official running of the Mt. Cameroon race, which I did not run despite the urging of many friends and many more strangers in the streets (and taxi cabs). Representing the US and PC in my place was a PCV from our stage, John G. Robinson, as well as his father Bud, a well-heeled (pun intended) bank president from Jackson Mississippi who is into 'adventure running,' having run races in the Antarctic, Morocco, the Sahara Desert, the Himalayas and more mundane places like Pike's Peak. John G and his parents stayed at a nearby hotel, and we hosted them at a traditional carbo-load dinner to which we also invited Ann Loux, a visiting friend of Ann's, Ann's daughter, who is here for three weeks, Prabasaj, and Terry Luschen, a PCV in Kumba. In the middle of all the festivities, Dr. Sammy Enyong, our assistant director (PC), who was visiting family in Buea, dropped in. The presence of all these people incidentally produced an explosion of mail for us. Prabasaj brought letters from Box 283, which we share. Ann brought a number of boxes from Douala, where she had been to welcome her daughter. Terry brought some from his house, which acts as a provincial collection point. Dr. Sammy brought some from Yaounde. After everyone had left we opened all our letters and gifts and inventoried the bounty. We are extremely grateful to Ann Feigl, who sent two cookbooks, the Ticho-Lotts, who sent us Lehigh Mountain Hawk t-shirts, Ann Goldberg, who sent us two boxes of books for promoting literacy, to Steve and Margaret who sent us a marvelous variety of foodstuffs that are unobtainable here, and to Steve and Rona, who betrayed Rona's PC experience by sending us a brilliantly illogical collection of goodies, producing oohs and ahs as we unwrapped it. Getting back to the Robinsons, father and son acquitted themselves well, with John G finishing in about eight hours and his father in about 10 1/2 hours. While we were waiting to cheer the finish of Bud's run, a girl said to me "Dash me your camera" (pidgin for "Give me your camera as a gift"). This happens to us often, and the behavior had puzzled us. Did she really think I would give her the camera? If not, why did she ask? Being both irritated and inquisitive I responded I would give her the camera if she would first dash me the shirt she was wearing (part of a school uniform). She demurred, saying it was the only (school) shirt she had, and I demurred for similar reasons. I then quizzed her about her question. She agreed that she would never say that to a Cameroonian but felt it a reasonable request of a white, because they are all so rich and wouldn't mind giving away whatever they have. I then told her that I have found such requests form Cameroonians quite annoying, especially since my PCV salary was about the same as that of her teachers or of my colleagues at GTC. AT my mention of GTC I discovered the girl is a daughter of Janice's closest colleague at GTC and a niece of Kini, one of our trainers from Ngaoundere. This discovery did not especially surprise me because (all together now) c'est Afrique. Finally, I acknowledge letters from Jean, Margaret, Dave Kniager, Ed Braverman, Betty Benson, Stouts, Passans, Glassers, and of course Gwen. We are somewhat amazed that the list of e-addresses Gwen sent us has 68 names. [it just got bigger. gk] There are a lot of people reading our letters. This clearly fulfills one of the (three) PC missions of teaching American about other cultures. Edwin LETTER #37 18 Feb 1996 Dear Everyone: The second semester is finally under way, and I feel like an old hand. Yet, things are still a bit confusing. After the first day of lectures, it looked like I only had about 170 students in my single course. Prabasaj suggested that students are a little slow to get back into the swing of things. Sure enough, on Tuesday my enrollment increased by about 40%. I guess I will have to wait until the end of next week to get a clear picture of the numbers. On Saturday Janice and I took a trek (hike) of about 16km in which we explored parts of Buea that lie away from the main road, essentially the only paved road. Because I cannot find a good map of Buea, a map which probably doesn't exist, and because hardly any road is straight, we are unsure of the relationship between various sections, sometimes discovering shortcuts between sections we originally thought were very far apart. Saturday we set out to (and succeeded to) discover some of these shortcuts. We also tried and failed to find the Bakwei village, which is home to the indigenous tribe, the Bakweri. Along the way we traveled through a huge banana planation of at least 1 square mile. I found the plantation fascinating because of its excellent roads and because of a tramway system that is used to bring bananas to the plantations packing plant and that make the roads unnecessary. The planation is on the lower part of Mt. Cameroon and therefore on a tilt, which puts the tramway on a tilt. The cable for the tramway is fixed and about 6 feet off the ground. The "dollies" have two wheels that ride on the able and have a hook for the bananas that travel downhill by gravity, restrained by the workers. I guess labor is so cheap and ripe stalks of bananas so scattered that this system is more economical that to use trucks on the roads. Saturday night we went to a play written by a local playwright [sic] and performed by local actors. It was quite melodramatic, provoking laughter with lines that I thought were serious. It was overly long and literally put me to sleep. In general, I did not know what to make of it but will reserve judgement because I know that theatre is very strongly bound by conventions, and I simply do not understand conventions here. This afternoon we had a visit from Sandy Robinson, the (assistant) PC Director for Africa. I suppose we, along with Prabasaj, were 'representative' PCVs. We gave her our thoughts on our PC experience. Well, no more room. Edwin P.S. thanks to Chava for pictures, my parents for pictures, Dave Kniager for letter, Don Davis for letter, Stephanie Katz for letter, and Gwen's letters 34 & 35 on the same day. LETTER #38 25 Feb 1996 Dear Everyone: We are having a quiet weekend at home after a somewhat unusual week. Janice took advantage of the visit of Sandy Robinson, the PC director for the African region, by hitching a ride back to Yaounde for a medical consultation. The anti- malarial drug Mefloquine has been giving her the blues which have been fueled by her missing her friends and her family, especially the three children. She has been switched to a different drug, which should improve things. Tuesday was a national holiday, because it was the last day of Ramadan, but its announcement, as is customary, was made at the very last minute, depending upon some Moslem lad in the Far North Province 'sighting' the new moon (on Monday evening in this case). Now why the whole country should be poised for a holiday, unsure of exactly when it will occur is beyond me. I was armed with a Jewish calendar that told me that Rosh Chodesh was Monday (the last day of Shevat) and Tuesday (the first day of Adar) but did not know until after the fact whether the holiday occurred on the last day of the old month or the first day of the new lunar month. Next year I will know the exact day. None of my GTC students are Muslim, but they must have been praying anyway, because their test got postponed by the holiday. We have socialized relatively little with Cameroonians, partly because of quiet different social customs. During the week Cameroonian males tend to spend a lot of time in the numerous "mimbo houses," which are sort of bars but need further explanation just as it is insufficient to say that an English pub is a sort of bar. A mimbo house is overwhelmingly male, with proper women staying at home, although occasionally a woman may accompany her husband. Some mimbo houses serve beer and soft drinks almost exclusively, while others serve only palm wine, a cheap alcoholic brew that comes straight from the palm to you and whose potency depends on the variety of the palm and the time of the day when it was tapped. The patrons of a mimbo house sit on low benches, slowly nursing their drinks and talk endlessly about politics. On the weekends the mimbo houses are relatively quiet and the streets lack their mid-week buzz of excitement, because many Cameroonians are attending at private homes meetings organized along tribal lines. Last night we were fortunate to be invited to such a meeting. A pot luck dinner of tradition food followed the monetary business related to the Njanga (Tontine), to which all the attendees but us belong. The Njanga combines the communal needs of a group of people who come from the same village (in this case near Bamenda) with the fiscal needs of the inhabitants of a country whose banks are none too secure (we have money in a bank which is in the process of failing). In a Tontine, members gather, say monthly, and contribute a fixed amount, with the proceeds going to a single member, with the benefactors chosen in rotation. This is a fairly secure way to save money on a periodic schedule. The rest of the evening was spent eating and talking endlessly about politics. I found the discussions much more astute than in the states, perhaps because Cameroonians don't think in terms of sound bites spoon fed to them on TV. That's all for now. Edwin P.S. After thinking I understood the mail here I am now perplexed. ON consecutive days we received two letters from Bill, one mails on 20 December, the next mailed on 12 February. Also, thanks to Talia for a card mailed on my birthday and to Jennifer Scavuzzo. Bill mentions sending me a chapter by Goertz but I have yet to receive it. "A postscript: I first awaken at 4:15 a.m. and then sleep lightly until dawn. This a.m. was different. Sleep was replaced with thoughts of friends and family and the latest news that came in your wonderful letters. I know that we are in your thoughts, the vibrations come through! We think of you also. Stay well, my love, Janice" LETTER #39 3 March 1996 Dear Everyone: Janice keeps on striving to develop a routine to her work, and things keep on changing. She has been trying to acquaint herself with the operations of the OIC hotel and kitchen and trying to figure out where she fits in. At the same time, Peace Corps does not want he rot displace some Cameroonian and does want her to contribute to OIC in a way that her impact will endure after she leaves. To compound an already complicated problem, OIC is having financial and organizational problems severe enough for them to close down for a week, trim staff, cut salaries, etc. Janice learned about this when she went to work on Wednesday. It all makes for an educational experience. Yesterday we left early in the morning for Kumba for a quarterly meeting of the PCVs of the Southwest Province, who jointly rent part of a house for overnight stays, meetings, etc. Kumba is centrally located and has the best market outside Douala. We had a chance to meet with our friends from stage, get to know 'older' PCVs a bit better (including a Lafayette alum probably older than I and in his fourth year as a PCV) and to meet some brand new PCVs (including a woman from Brunswick ME). We also snuck n a highly successful visit to the Kumba market for purchases hard to make locally. We were prepared to stay over but with the meeting finished at 6:45 PM we thought we would try to get back to Buea, and we saw Cameroonian transportation at its best and worst. Just as we walked from a side street onto the main road to the taxi park, a bush taxi went by, saw us in the gloom, stopped, and asked us if we wanted a ride and where. To my 'Buea' he said 'get in,' and we were on our way on the last taxi to Buea, which to our great surprise was only partially full by African standards. As this trip progressed, however, the minivan's load fluctuated, going as high as 13 passengers and as low as a comfortable six. Towards the end of the trip intrigue set in as we wondered how the driver and his assistant (the ever present 'moto boy') would deal with the passenger headed for Douala and us, who were heading in a different direction. When the driver turned toward Buea, the Douala bound passenger became progressively more vociferous, until, unassuaged, he climbed toward the front and grabbed the steering wheel. Janice was not very frightened by anticipated our ending up in a ditch, I was just annoyed, and the moto boy pulled the passenger back and soothed him enough so that we could get out very shortly thereafter at the university, where we got a local taxi for home. While in Kumba we received a few pieces of PC mail, including a note from the editors of a PC publication, the Exchange, which highlights "women in development." Janice learned that hey are publishing an article and picture she submitted about the Women's Rural Development Council and its promotion of beekeeping. The dry season is now ending, which means it is time for replanting our farm, which so far has yielded potatoes, onions, garlic, beet, turnip, mustard green, two varieties of lettuce, three varieties of bean, two varieties of cabbage, spinach, huckleberry, two varieties of tomatoes, parsley, basil, hot pepper, leeks, and ground nuts. The past month has been a time of slash and burn in Buea, a process that cleared the grasses that grow to 20 feet, slowly exposing much of the town to view and filling the air with acrid smoke. Next year I will recognize the smoke as a sign that the dry season is coming to a close. Until next week, Edwin P.S. Thanks to Kritzes, Waldmans, Stanfords [sorry i can't make the PCV parents shindig. gk], Jeanne, Bruce Hargreaves, and Gwen for letters. ********* A Sense of Perspective: Janice on Edwin On Saturday we attended a business meeting for PCV's living in the Southwest Province, in Kumba, 70km away. As night was falling, we said our goodbyes and hastened to catch the last bush taxi home. No sooner did we arrive at the main thoroughfare than the bush taxi passed us, espied us, backed up and took us on board. Says Ed, "This is Cameroon transportation at its best." I was weary and nauseous; Ed was chatty and regaling me with adventures he experienced on the cross country bike trip in '91 with Gwen, Norm and John. I won't repeat the tale, but it took place in Redwing, MN. [Norm & John: might it have been about Malmo and potato chipping? gk] Says Ed, "That was a time of high adventure but it doesn't compare to this." Ed, isn't that an understatement!!