#19 15 Oct 1995 Dear Everyone: Everything is fine with us as life is becoming somewhat more routine and there is less of interest to write about in our daily lives. Janice is now dividing her time among GTC (her supposed PC job), OIC, where she has begun teaching a twelve week course on motivation and wondering frantically where she will get twelve weeks of material, and the University, where she is aiding the Fulbright, Ann Laux [does my spelling change each time? gk], in teaching creative writing. My classes are going just fine, except that tutorials have yet to be scheduled, because construction of the needed classrooms continues and will not be finished until the end of October. As a stopgap, I tried to hold tutorials en masse yesterday, telling the students I would be answering questions from 10 until 3:00 in a makeshift classroom in what was planned to be a cafeteria. I had tremendous difficulty in explaining to the students the apparently unorthodox idea that they should come whenever they could and wouldn't miss anything, because they were free to ask me to cover any question they wanted. A number of students urged me to cancel the session, but I argued that having a session had to be better than having no session, and forged ahead, ending up teaching straight through from 10 until 3:30 to a changing crowd of students totally perhaps 200. Janice used the opportunity of my absence to make her first foray into Douala, where she mostly got the lay of the land. [One of the 2 international airports is in Douala. gk] This past week brought a bounty of mail, and some work, which I want to acknowledge. From Bob Ballanger I received on 11 Oct his dissertation (EMSed on 28 Sept for $68! [EMS promised overnight delivery; it weighed 7lb 15oz. gk]), which I very promptly read. I sent a letter with comments to Sue Sherer on 13 Oct. We received letters from Gisela Ray, Jean Davis, my Aunt Thelma & Uncle Ed, Margaret, Maggie Dee and Linda Jacoby, a request for my office hours at LU from Judy Renick, and a surprise letter from Barbara (Gillis) Epstein, a dividend of the wide distribution of e-mail. We also received Gwen's CARE package of dental floss and Rescue pad. [special request. Mailed air 30 Sept. gk] Thanks to all. The furnishings of our house has come to a standstill after our receipt of bed, table and chairs, and living room set. Both Janice and I have individually discussed with Lucas OBen, the man in charge of such things at UB, the promised purchase of a refrigerator and stove, and we have received very vague statements larded with complaints about the costliness of such purchases to the university. Janice tried to make clear that a stove (actually an oven) was essential to her happiness, but that we weren't even sure we would use a refrigerator (as we have learned that here it is quite easy to do without one). And now to some vignettes from our life, starting with the saga of my office key, at the end of which I will omit writing "C'est Afrique." Prabasaj Paul, the other PCV at UB, and I share an office (obtained by removing institutional support from the chaplain) but only one key could be found to its door. The people in charge of keys have no facility for making keys and there is no place in Buea to get a key made, so we had to wait for the university to send someone to Douala to get one made. Meanwhile, when Prabasaj and I went to Douala we tried to preempt UB and get our own copy. Despite valiant efforts with our clumsy French, we could not find one of the few key shops. Instead we stumbled into the hands of a street vendor who negotiated a higher price and then set off for a key shop himself. (While wandering around to kill time until he returned we discovered the location of one of the key shops.) When we returned to UB we discovered that the key would not work. A few days later an employee of UB went into Douala to get a copy that also failed to work. This avenue blocked we thought we could use a mail box around the corner from our office as a place to store the lone kay. But as yet, despite some previous requests, we had no mail box, primarily because they were all taken. The vice-dean of the Science Faculty then volunteered his, noting that he did not use his, and instructed his assistant to take care of it 'tomorrow. A week and a half later, after asking for the mail box every few days and getting reassurances of getting it 'tomorrow,' we learned that they only have been able to locate one key to the mail box... Now a bit about communication here. I have tried to make clear that the mail is now taking about 8 to 10 days from the states. Bob Ballenger's effort via EMS and Bill's effort to send Janice's license via US Overnight mail suggest that these services gain you only a day or two. From this side, aerogrammes and stamps in the right denomination are frequently unavailable. There seem to be few telephone lines in Cameroon. I heard that Kumba, a town of perhaps 300,000 had 200 outside lines. In my month at UB I have never heard a telephone ring. Indeed, I do not know where there is one on campus, although I suspect the administration building is a good place to look, because I know UB has a voice line and a FAX line. The majority of Cameroonians have no phone and resort to telephone boutiques which charge 40 to 60 cents for local calls within the province and $5 a minute (charged by the second: every second counts!) for international calls. Our typical calls home will consist of our very quickly telling the person in the US what number to call and then hanging up. In a later letter I will go into detail about the economy, but to give more meaning to the above figures, a person earning $150 a month makes excellent wages in Cameroon. But how do Cameroonians communicate? Via the local radio station, which is the only station on the air and thus listened to by everyone. Daily there are radio announcements asking individuals to come to the radio station for an important message. My descent (and ascent) of Mt. Cameroon had such good radio coverage that the crowd actually began to gather in anticipation of my finish. In some ways, the Cameroonian's communication system is both more primitive and more effective than ours. Finally, and very briefly, we actually bought some kosher food here, some butter cookies imported from Scotland and marked with an O-U-D. [graphic here that I can't do. but you who know know the symbol anyway. gk] Edwin #20 22 Oct 1995 Dear Everyone: I guess I'll start by thanking people who bring us so much pleasure by writing us. I hope I don't omit anyone. Thanks to Gwen for plateblock of comic-strip stamps. Thanks to Ticho- Lotts, Carsons, John Sumner, et Madame Stanford. I will briefly mention a number of things that happened this week, omitting the details, because the details are just what you would imagine. First, at 4AM local time on Monday [16 Oct. gk] Cameroon gained admission to the Commonwealth of Nations. At 6AM, a national holiday was declared. By 7AM the whole cou ntry ground to a halt fo r the day. Second, our landlord failed to pay the elctric bill for the period just preceding our occupanyc of hte house. On Thursday the man from Sonel came by and threw the switch to turn off the elctricty. (As you might guess, Lucas Oben is supp;osed to take care of these things.) Third, today I discovered waht I suspected, that I could throw the switch and turn on the electricity. I will probably adhere to this stange honor system, because all we ahve lost to power is 13 light bulbs. Fourth, the Vice-Dean of the Science Faculty, distressed at spending adjunct money for a teacher of only two students in a required course, decided he could save money by having the adjunct swap courses with a regular teacher of a larger course. Of course, no meony is saved but the Vice-Dean feels better. Fourth, the saga of the key ended Thursday when Prabasaj and I took possession of the mail-box of the Vice-Dean's assistant. Fifth, three of the new class rooms go into service tomorrow, relieving the sapce crunch to some extent. Separately, Janice and I have made some nice purchases from local handcraftsmen. I had made a mahogany bookshelf to accomodate our gas "cooker" and to provide more space in the kitchen. If Lucas Oben ever does get us a stove, we will then use the bookshelf for books. In Douala, Janice bought a wooden, hand-crafted frieze, about 40"x16", which depitcts a dance in a tradtional African village. How we will get this back to the US is unclear [Talia...] This week Janice started her "farm" (local term for garden) int eh back yard. The soil is incredibly rich, so that a garden seems foolproof. Today we got cabbage, lettuce, and various herb seedlings, all of which Janice will plant this week. I hav eput off some questions for awhile but now realize it will be some time before I can answer them in detail, so I will give some short answers now. From Mimi Silberstein: 1)Laundry? I do it in cold water, using a local detergent that, unhindered by EPA regulatins, would probably dissolve a mahogany stump in a week. 2) Medical facilities. They are pretty grim, and PC won't let us use them. Of course, there are local witch doctors (I am not making this up, details to follow). 3) Where to shop for non- food items? Most anything is in the open-air market, by the food. There are more permanent specialty stores around, including what are called "white-man stores" for exotic items, like jam or Colgate toothpaste. 4) Occupations? Government employemtn (including electric, water, teaching, doctors, etc), plus road side vending of practially anything you can imagine. 5) Women? Spend their time at home or at roadside or market vendors. Differ in there outlook but not by age but in whether they are traditional or modern (i.e. feminist); there is a very storng feminist movement here. 6) News sources? Buea radio and some CRTV, the lone, government controlled channel. News is mo stly local. From Rona Roberts: 1) How do we travel 12K each way to work? By foot & taxi (part way by each). 2) Restaurants: From cheap Cameroonian to very expensiv eEuropean (say 15 times as expensive). We tend to eat out once a week in Cameroonian restaurants as we learn to eat the local food. Janice is also learning local dishes. 3) Fruits? Grapefruit, orange, papaya, mango, pineapple, lemons, guava, banana. 4) Nuts? peanuts, coconut. Well, until next week, Edwin P.S. Happy Anniversiry to Ferriters, and Happy Birthday to Jeremy. P.P.S. Yes--the letter is shorter than usual. Supposedly they will all be confined to a single Ed-written page. We'll see how long this lasts. gk #21 29 Oct 1995 Dear All: As I write these letters I am conscious that I tend to focus on my life here much more than Janice's. It bothered me for a while but now I have accepted that it is difficult for me to change the focus of these letters. When we applied to Peace Corps the literature hinted that PC service put a strain on marriages. Further, during a phone interview late in the process the people in DC asked us pointed questions about the stability of our marriage. This did make us wonder about unforeseen dangers. As far as we can tell, there are none. The experience to date has put much less stress on our relationship than our day to day lives in the states. In some ways we find our relationship more satisfying here, probably because we spend a lot o f time together and because we spend a lot of time comparing notes about our experiences. Just so you won't wonder, we finally got our electricity back on Tuesday. Also, the key saga continues. Once again, someone went to Douala for a second copy but came back empty handed. That person planned to return to Douala the next day on the locksmith's promise of getting the right blank but nothing came of that. To be continued... On Thursday I went on a field trip to Limbe with a class studying Chemical Processing, and I got an inside look at an oil refinery. I saw a lot of plumbing in what appears to be a very modern and very well-run operation. Within the confines of the facility I had few hints (besides Mt Cameroon looming in the background) that I was in Africa. The only difference between the refinery and the ones in Bayonne NJ is that the refineries in Bayonne look run down. The contrast between the inside of the refinery and the surrounding neighborhood, which consists of poor shanties, is startling--the difference between two worlds. Most of my attention this week was focused on school because I finally got my tutorials under way, and I gave my first test [draft on back of letter. gk]. Both processes made me keenly aware of the UB's lack of resources. To get a test photocopied (in this case 120 copies) one usually requests the paper from the vice-dean (signing for it) and hand carries it to the administration building where one gives the paper and the test to the operator of the only high-volume photocopying machine on campus. Hearing that the vice chancellor was short of paper and had to requisition (a few reams, I believe) more, which requisition requires the vice-chancellor's signature (vice- chancellor=president), I bought a ream of my own paper from a vendor near campus. Laden with moisture (it's still the rainy season) this paper gave the photocopier fits. Nevertheless, I got my test copied after only waiting an hour. My reading of British novels and my talking to a friend here who attended Oxford give me the impression that tutorials have 2- 5 students. Not here. Because of the lack of classrooms, only slightly alleviated by the addition of three new ones this week, and because of the lack of funds for instructors, my calculus of 388 students (who attend either Tuesday or Thursday in Amphi 150E which holds 150) have been offered the choice of one of 5 tutorials in rooms ranging in size from one that holds 45 to Amphi 150A. Unfortunately most students can only make the tutorial held in the room that holds 45. All this leads to some interesting behavior. As I saunter to class in Amphi 150E I have to be careful not to be trampled by students running in the same direction to ensure a seat. It does bring a smile to my face when I realize that students are running to hear my lectures, that I lecture to an overflow crowd. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Janice's Portrait of Karon Karon: unpresupposing, mature, a woman of substance; of average height, not heavy nor slim--dark brown eyes that crinkle with a smile and busy brown hair controlled by a barrette. A sensible person, wearing comfortable clothes made by her mother. She is grassroots, from a small town outside Lexington KY. Karon majored in linguistics and spent her junior year of college studying in France. After graduation in 1994, Karon spent the summer living in Cameroon through a Church sponsored program. While waiting to be accepted by the Peace Corps Karon was a substitute teacher of French. When notice came of her acceptable into Peace Corps and of her assignment to Cameroon she was doubly delighted. As I came to know Karon through our daily walks together to the training center in Ngaoundere, I tried to recall my first recollection of her, as one of 44 new faces entering my life in June, in Philadelphia, at the Holiday Inn. She was the young woman walking around, balancing a beverage tray on her head. How telling! Occasionally Karon would not show up at the appointed time, when Ed and I departed from our homes to walk to the Center. When she did not come one morning we thought her alarm clock did not go off again or she was having a reaction to one in the series of inoculation we were getting. But this was not the case. On that morning, Karon was robbed at knife point in front of the home of her host family. Her backpack was taken with items not easily replaceable in Cameroon; she was also ordered to hand over the boots on her feet. Her assailant replaced her boots with his rubber thongs (not an unheard of exchange in such circumstances). Some days later Karon spoke with me about how she would tell her pa rents about the incident; she did not want them to tell her to pack up and come home. She wanted to put this ugly experience behind her. And this is what she did. She continued to immerse herself in Cameroonian customs and created many friendships. She spoke French at every opportunity. She spent evening and weekends with her host family, accompanying them on social, religious and recreational outings. By the time I left Ngaoundere, Karon was learning Fufuldeu, a language spoken among Muslims in the northern province where she would be posted. I look forward to seeing Karon again when our stage regroups in December. For now I envision her congregating with others at the village well and walking away with a bucketful of water on her head. [#22] 4 Nov 1995 Dear Everyone, Whenever I have an intense experience I am compelled to write about it, perhaps to clearly articulate the dynamics of a given situation. A number of times in the past I have written short stories, which, once I have written them, I shelve. Here in Cameroon I have had many intense experiences which I want to commit to paper, and each week I look forward to writing this letter to satisfy my craving to be literary. This past Tuesday I began teaching students in Form 2 (roughly 9th grade, with students of ages 15-19, roughly) at Government Teacher's College (GTC), where Janice also teaches. I am teaching there to keep busy and to better understand the classroom in Cameroon's secondary schools. Until I volunteered to take the class, the students were not getting any mathematics instruction because of a shortage of math teachers. I guess GTC thought something was better than nothing. I approached the task with some misgivings, because of my inexperience with students of that age, but the first class (and only class this week, as it meets Mondays and Tuesdays) went fine. I hope it is at least passably enjoyable, as I hope to stick it out for the year. This week, on parts of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the assistant PC Director for Math & Science, Dr. Sammy Enyong, came by to assess how Janice, Prabasaj, and I were doing. He got good reports from all of the people for whom we work. Janice told him of her continuing efforts to find an appropriate niche here, and he reassured her that she had his approval to do whatever she likes. He also mentioned that he has a video tape of me from national TV. I hope I eventually get to see it. He brought with him our mail from Yaounde and the previous 7 weeks of Newsweek International, which PCV's get gratis but late. One of the more surprising things about Cameroon is the presence of a strong feminist movement. I first became aware of this in discussion with Mariabel, our host sister in Ngaoundere, and subsequently I have been exposed to radio and TV programs on the same issue. Mariabel's views were thoroughly modern and up- to-date, as if she had read enough of the relevant literature so that she was aware of the evolution of feminist ideas and could adopt the est and most mature of these ideas. At the same time, most Cameroonian men are oblivious to feminist ideas, are oblivious to Cameroonian women having these ideas, and are oblivious to the changes that will come to Cameroonian society because the women have these ideas. Ann Loux (the Fulbright here) notes that the Cameroonian women focus on the important issues, like job equity (in a society where women to most of the farming and marketing of farm products and have few if any positions of authority) and social equity (in a society where polygamy (male) is legal and in recognition of Moslem practices and of tribal practices and where single mother (but not single fatherhood) is more common than in the US). At first I agrees with Ann, thinking that bra burning was frivolous, but then I thought of the subtle and profound comment of Mrs. Doubtfire on her maiden voyage on high heels: "I'd like to meet the misogynist bastard who invented these things." Such actions as bra burning would serve the useful purpose of getting the attention of the Cameroonian males and engaging them in the discussion. Right now, the women sound like the US women of the mid 90's and the men like the US male chauvinists of the mid 60's. It's fun to be here to watch and listen. Edwin * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [part of my personal letter. gk] I am in an elevated mental state as I begin to focus on my ideas on what to do here. [All PCV's must also do a community project, if I'm not mistaken. gk] I am heading toward the path of being involved in the area of women's economic development. One project idea is to get permission from U. of B. to use their modern unused kitchen facility to allow a "women's student cooperative" to develop. With a facility to bake from, students could work and share in the profits of our goodies. I am thinking of being involved with a newly formed (1993) organization called the Rural Women's Development Council. Village women are getting organized & producing things like honey, soya flour, etc. A bakery at UB could become a buyer for the rural women's commodities. The head of the Council is a British educated Cameroonian woman and would love to go to the USA (as would everybody!). Possibly I could facilitate an arrangement within the next two years to get her monies to travel and drum up the money she wants for her Women's Council. Janice #23 11 Nov 1995 Dear All: It is roughly half way through the semester, and our lives here have settled into a changing routine. In terms of work, my routine has changed with the teaching of Form II math at GTC. Now I get to see how a Cameroonian secondary school functions through my own eyes, rather than second hand through Janice's eyes. I was somewhat intimidated my first day in the Form II class, but as a hardened veteran of three classes I am now more confident. My experience was complicated by a lack of textbook, which precluded my knowing what material to cover and at what level, but that problem was resolved yesterday when Janice brought home the Form I and Form II math books. Meanwhile Janice is still trying to decide what her job is, or rather what she would be most comfortable with. After getting a nod from Dr. Enyong, she is now expanding her work at OIC, hoping to get out of the classroom and into their kitchen, which trains cooks and which supports two restaurants. Her teaching duties at GTC are light, and she has decided to keep them that way, as she finds that she is only lukewarm to teaching. This afternoon I gave my first test in my large calculus course (of 394), two weeks later than I wanted. You know I always return papers and tests at the very next class, but I may have met my match in this case; I will give it the old college try but 394 papers is quite a stack. Acknowledging various letters....I presume Gwen mails hers on Monday morning. We receive them the Friday of the following week. So far, my mother has the speed record. A letter she mailed on 4 Nov we received yesterday on 10 November. We especially thank Mimi Stanford for sending us flower seeds and a copy of the RPCV [Returned Peace Corps Volunteers? gk] newsletter. We are glad the local RPCVs are supporting Dan Slayback's project at the Limbe Zoo. We hope to be able to bring back our Limbe Zoo poster whose purchase supports the same project. PCVs get remaindered copies of Newsweek gratis (a tax write- off for Newsweek?) so that our news is somewhat old. Indeed I finished reading the 25 September version today. Two related articles, one on NGO's, the other on mob violence in Kenya, spark the following comments on the darker side of Cameroon's society. I am fairly sure that I was unfamiliar with the real meaning of NGO (non-governmental organization) until coming to Cameroon. It turns out that some parts of government fail to function here altogether. Tow very visible examples are the roads, which simply don't get repaired and slowly metamorphise from tarmac into dirt, and the police, who are invisible. Less visible but universally believed to exist is a pervasive corruption that simply prevent any money from being spent on services as the money gets siphoned off along the way. For example, a tax is levied to support the radio station, but the station never receives any money for the purchase of equipment. In such a situation, NGOs spring up to deliver services that the government is incapable of delivering. A grimmer side to all of this is the breakdown in police authority. The people here believe that criminals who are apprehended readily bribe their way out of jail. This has very unfortunate consequences, some of which a few of the trainees witnessed in Kumba. A habitual thief and convicted rapist spent little time in jail and much time terrorizing the neighborhood near GTHS, where we lived. After one crime too many an enraged mob beat the individual to death in response to shouts of "thief, thief." None of what I have written is meant to condone what happened, but I certainly feel obligated to report its happening. I also note I have never had any fear for my safety here. While jogging in the morning the last few weeks, I had seen a white man, a rare occurrence. Once he said, "Good morning," and the accent of the two words made me think he was American. Subsequently, when I passed a group of jogging Army recruits in front of him, he said two more words, "Competition, eh?" I concluded he was Canadian. Last Sunday morning he walked by our corner just as I was about to jog, so I stopped to talk. Bill Shalinsky is a retired teacher of social work (University of Waterloo) who is teaching research methods at the Pan-African Institute for Development--West Africa (PAID-WA) and who increases the known Jewish population of Cameroon by 10%. We had Bill to dinner Sunday, and Thursday Janice and I joined him and the Director of PAID-WA in a meeting to discuss ways in which Janice or I might help PAID-WA. For the moment, it is unclear where this may lead. Until next week, Edwin and from Janice (from pvt communications): The official channels have been tapped to get me "permanently" posted at OIC. It is not clear that a permanent status at any institution will produce a regularly scheduled forty hour work week. I realized at some point that being busy, occupied and involved does not really mean that I must work many hours many days. The first school term is up in December and I want to continue teaching the weekly Nutrition (and possibly) the cook ing class and give up my involvement in two other cookery classes that meet once every three weeks. It may work out once I give input in to developing a work schedule at OIC. I want to teach cooking and be in the kitchen and hopefully this will take place. ... What is truly exciting me is the activity of a group that formed under the OIC umbrella. Mrs. Fonkern heads the Rural Training Unit (since 1987). In 1993 she formed the Rural Women's Development Council. She has organized grassroots projects for village women, conducted workshops & gotten speakers etc. on topics such as nutrition, economic development, child care, and environment. I support her efforts on behalf of rural women developing income-generating projects. Over 13 groups exist involving over 300 women in the Southwest province. I am perusing material on women in development (which provides telephone numbers in the US--impossible for me!!) to direct Fonkern for funds for such purchases as refrigerated display cases to sell fruit juices and yogurts that women could produce, a roof for a building that exists and is owned by the group (but not useable without a roof; so the group has monthly rent bills for a storefront from where women vend honey and soybean products. I think I will end here. #24 18 Nov 1995 Dear All: We have been in Cameroon 5 months now, and we are approaching what for you is the holiday season. Normally, Thanksgiving week is the beginning of the rush to end the semester and the start of a round of holiday parties. Here it is quite different. The semester ends in mid-January, and I have no idea what the holiday season entails. Of course I will be in class Thursday, rather than eating turkey. We sent an open invitation to all volunteers in Cameroon to join us on Saturday for a vegetarian Thanksgiving, but we have no idea whether anyone will show up. Gwen and the Davises have sent us a number of packages, but we have received none as yet. Some people have written us to say that a long list of items are forbidden by Cameroon, whereas Mimi Stanford says that only platinum, gold, and radioactive materials are forbidden. I think that parcel post is simply slow, although we hope to get the cranberry sauce sometime this week. [on Thursday, he said one or more packages had arrived, and they would get them on Fri. gk] I spent ever spare moment last week grading papers and just barely finished them in time for class. Luckily 'only' 336 students took the test. A few enrolled students missed the test, and I suppose the remainder of the 394 are dropping the course. The big surprise on Friday was the arrival of our 'cooker' and refrigerator. Each is new, each is miniature, and each has pleased Janice no end. Within hours of my hooking up the LP gas to the cooker (after de-hooking the LP from the PC-provided countertop cooker) she made her first loaf of bread. We have yet to turn on the refrigerator and are unsure how often we will use it. We get old US news from 6-8 week old Newsweeks and new US news from the BBC World Service, which provides, on average, one headlined snippet a day. Two days ago, the budget impasse comprised the headline, whereas today the resignation of the general who made an injudicious remark about the three accused rapists in Okinawa made the headline. In this reading of the news we end up with only bits and pieces, never seeing the whole picture. Is the budget impasse resolved? Does it continue? We don't know. In that spirit, despite my having only a murky idea of the economic condition in Cameroon, I will state (some of) what I know, intending to continue later on when my understanding hopefully improves. Cameroon is in a union with 9 other former French colonies who use the CFA Frank [sic] [NYT travel section-- Senegal--gives exchange every wk. gk], which is fixed against the French Frank at 100-1. This puts the 10 counties in what is apparently a deadly economic embrace with France, an embrace that mostly favors France and retards development here. Due to lower commodity prices, rubber and cocoa in particular, the economy has been in a downward slide since 1985, but then fell of a cliff on 1 January 1994 when the 10 governments fixing the CFA devalued the CFA by 50%, and the Cameroonian government, which employs about 80% of all salaried people, cut salaries by 1/3. The net effect was a 2/3 cut in salary for most people. In some ways, the non-salaried people, consisting mostly of subsistence farmers and the larger number of people in the food distribution system, were less harshly effected, because the devaluation most immediately affected the cost of imported goods. The salary cut was extremely demoralizing. At the same time it froze the economic condition of many people, so that they whatever they earned at the time had to suffice. We constantly see reminders that people haven't purchased much of anything the past two years. For example, a person having a car at the time has not repaired it since. If the battery goes dead, the person has to take the car off the road. I hope in our two years in Cameroon we see some changes for the better. Briefly, I acknowledge letters from the Milets, the Goldfeders, Janice's parents, Avitzur, Krawiecs, my mother, and Davises. We just love reading those letters. Edwin * * * * * * * * * and from personal communication from Janice: ...After much deliberation I have agreed to hire a 16 yr old neighbor girl to help around the yard and house for what is really a nominal monthly fee. Precce (the young girl) [accent aigu on e] is very anxious to please, to show me the correct way to cook Cameroonian foods and to tend to my garden. This evening I successfully baked a cheese pie, using a yogurt cheese that my friend Ann prepared. I made a tangerine sauce for the top. It was quite good. I do enjoy having an oven. Now I will get some basic tins made and buy some basic baking supplies. Bed time is often 9:15--the days wear me out (and I believe that the prophylaxis I take on 3 days also makes me tired/groggy) #25 26 Nov 1995 Dear All: This is the end of the Thanksgiving week, which has been quite a bit different than usual. Although we put in a regular work day on Thursday, we spent the evening in a telephone boutique awaiting calls from the U.S. Thanks to Gwen's coordination, we received calls from my parents, from the Krawiecs, and from Gwen, Talia, and the rest of the family in Leominster. I am not sure we conveyed a great deal of information, but it was good to hear all your voices. Saturday, in response to our open invitation, five PCVs and Ann Loux, the Fulbright, joined us for a vegetarian Thanksgiving meal (sans cranberry sauce, which we have yet to receive, but we did try). It is amazing how the simplest American dish like jello can please a crowd of sensory-deprived individuals. In the first big test of our new oven, Janice made cornbread, an onion quiche, and chocolate cake. On Friday, I teach a tutorial at 7 (yes, 7) AM (yes, AM). This week, at 6:45 AM, when the taxi turned the corner to the main drive to campus we found the road strewn with rocks and boulders, which puzzled me. Since the road was impassable, I got out of the taxi and started to walk to campus. When I reached the gate, I saw an overturned car that had been burned, which puzzled me more (I guess I am slow about these things). I asked the first person I saw what was happening, and learned there was a student strike. I have not been here long enough to really understand what is happening, but of course the strike was not going to wait until I could understand it. What follows is my tentative understanding, which is based only on the most noticeable differences between our societies and which misses all the subtleties. Both Janice and I have been intrigued by how badly students throughout the education system are treated. Corporal punishment is liberally used, but beyond that, the students are subjected to a constant stream of verbal abuse. Simply put, in the US we seem to have much greater respect for students of all ages as individuals. The behavior of Cameroonian teachers seems to reflect the surrounding society which is strongly authoritarian, with subordinates fawning over their bosses and, at the same time, treating their underlings with disdain. The Vice-Chancellor and the Registrar (whose US counterparts would be the President and the Provost) rule the school by edict. Lacking any other means of communication, they simply post the edicts around cam pus and expect them to be obeyed. For example, on Monday of this past week, there appeared a rather cryptic announcement of an orientation to take place on Wednesday and Thursday for first year students and for prospective students. Students and staff were vaguely enjoined to aid in this enterprise (without any previous planning). On Tuesday a schedule of events for the orientation appeared, confirming in detail what we knew in principle, that numerous classes would be cancelled to make room for the orientation. The students at UB could make numerous complaints about lack of facilities, lack of classroom space, overcrowded classes, excessively high failure rates, etc., all of which I have alluded to previously. Then, of course, there is the verbal abuse. We often wondered out loud why the students put up with it. Then the Vice-Chancellor and her flamboyant, autocratic registrar collided with the students. For much of the semester the student union President and Secretary have been trying to get access to the $16,000 in fees the students pay for the student union. Having been put off by the Vice-Chancellor and the Registrar for lacking an approved budget, they sent a strong yet obsequious letter Thursday morning demanding action. Within two hours of sending the letter the two were suspended from the university. By the time the registrar was ready to drive off campus around 6:30 PM, a crowd of students blocked the way. Applying the customary verbal abuse only inflamed the situation, and the registrar's car was toast. This is all so reminiscent of the 60s, when administrators had to learn the hard way that conciliation is humbling but effective. I think that the UB administration will have to learn their own lessons. Although reliable information is very hard to come by, because the government owned Buea Radio has to date only acknowledged the strike in a single sentence ("Most people have heard that...") and then read two releases by the university, I think the UB administration is trying to ignore the strike and resume operation tomorrow. I don't think the resolution will be that simple. In my most pessimistic fantasies, I see my PC assignment going up in smoke. I hope to be more optimistic when I write next week. (C'est l'Afrique.) Edwin PS. Thanks for letters from Katy, Weismans, Krawiecs, and Talia and Janice wonders, in part: "As I contemplate the tenor of Ed's letter I feel like everyone is going to be thrown off balance at the unexpected happenings at the UB? And that they will begin to experience the unpredictability that we live with daily. Are Ed's letters beginning to read like a saga, that the reader is left waiting breathlessly for the next installment? #26 2 Dec 95 Dear All: If I were at Lehigh I guess this would be the last week of classes. Here I am unsure whether classes will resume on Monday, and I am unsure when the semester will end. Things kept on deteriorating with the student strike. Buea is really a necklace of small communities strung together along a single 10km paved road, with UB at one end and our residential area at the other end. On Monday, after teaching from 7:30-9:30 at GTC, I started to walk down the road to UB but discovered the necklace newly adorned with burning tires, rocks, boulders, etc. Some newly armed gendarmes were trying to clear the road and relive the resulting traffic jam (consisting mostly of taxis). I made some tentative attempts to enter the campus. When an army platoon in riot gear arrived I left, having read the outline of the script in the 60's (ah, the good old college days). In detail, around 40 students had excessive force applied before being carted off to jail. The administration, in a bind because UB was supposed to host a big ceremony marking the opening of Cameroon's system of six universities on Thursday, had a special meeting for faculty, staff, and students on Tuesday, when the Minister of Education would speak. My hopes that the administration would take a conciliatory approach at this meeting were forlorn. The Vice-Chancellor (president) started with an explanation of her version of the story: the President and Secretary of the Student Union had been disrespectful in demanding the funds that the student body paid in fees, disrespectful initially in their letter and later, when she visited them in their office. Thus she suspended them. The Minister of Education then spoke, saying he had only heard the Vice-Chancellor's side but would not lift the suspensions (which had become the proximate bone of contention between the students and the administration). Further, he said the students should apologize in writing to the Vice-Chancellor for their errors. At the very end of this hard-lining speech he left open the possibility of his lifting the suspensions if the student body toed the mark. I was dismayed by these speeches, because I thought things would get much worse before they got better, that a dialogue was needed but the administration had no motivation to enter the dialogue. An hour later I was dumbfounded to find myself at a large meeting held to iron out the details of the Thursday ceremony. Clearly everyone at the meeting assumed the strike was ancient history. Whereas the students used the threat of disrupting the ceremony as a weapon, the administration now used the occasion of the ceremony as a cooling off period, with most people assuming, or perhaps hoping, classes will resume Monday. Well, stay tuned. From the time on Friday of last week when I learned that the high-handed registrar (provost) owned the burned-out car at the UB gates, I knew the script well until the sudden change after the Minister's speech when the strike appeared over, and I have wondered a lot about this departure. I think the answer may be simple. In the US the boundaries of police behavior are quite clearly defines, so that when students push police over the boundary by egging on the administration and their agents (the police), the administration (and the police) are penalized for violating the rules of the game. Here in Cameroon the boundary is at least very hazy and probably does not exist. (I continue, with apologies to Gwen, but so much of interest has happened.) I first became concretely aware of the opening ceremony about three weeks ago when construction started on a 2,000 seat outdoor amphitheatre. The detailed planning for the ceremony (including transportation and housing), originally scheduled for last Friday, was postponed until Tuesday. This hints at what Prabasaj Paul calls the worst organized even he has witnessed on three continents. Originally instructed to be assembled at 9AM, I donned my borrowed academic regalia at 3PM and started marching at 4PM. I spent much of the time between 9 and 3 watching frantic preparations of all sorts, most notably the construction of the stage roof which started with the unloading of the trusses around 10 and finished at 3:30. Also notable was the final pouring of the (quick, very quick setting) cement at 1:30, which I can attest was solid as a rock when I trod on it at 4:30. Oh, but I forgot to mention, the previous night there was no concrete stage. When I left campus that night a pay loader was still bringing in fill to support the floor of the stage which was poured some time over night. The workmen trudging away after their 24 hour work day signaled the start of the ceremony. Because the rank of professor is very rare in Cameroon and because I am a professor, I was one of five from around the country at the ceremony. We were given the privilege of sitting in the front, making me a captive. As the ceremony wore on, I became more and more worried about Janice's worrying about my absence. I hoped she knew by now, C'est l'Afrique. I got home at 8:45, skipping the supper, which ended up getting served by UB at 1:30AM. (I feel very strongly obliged to say I am not making any of this up.) I hope by next week things are back to what passes for normal here. Edwin PS. Hoping we haven't forgotten anyone, we acknowledge letters from the Krawiecs, Wilanskys, Epstein, Talia, Rona, Weismans. We love reading all the details of your lives. #27 10 Dec 95 Dear All: I am happy to write that things are pretty much back to normal, with the student strike mostly in the past, with the exception of the burnt out carcass of the registrar's car, which rests aslant on a guard rail by the university gates. Now we are scrambling to reschedule the second round of tests and to make arrangements for the finals, which occur in early January. This week at OIC there was a series of events to mark graduation from the 18 month program. Janice and I started our participation n the festivities by running a so called 10km race, which was more like 15km, and by contributing to sponsorship of a talent show on Wednesday, which we planned to attend. Somewhat at the lat minute, we heard of a wrestling exhibition to take place Wednesday afternoon, before the talent show at 7. Knowing that traditionally prowess in wrestling was an important determinant of leadership in the village, I have been eager to see traditional wrestling, so I anted to see the exhibition, even though I knew I might see WWF variety wrestling. Indeed, Janice and I sat through a rather pale imitation of the pale imitation WWF, ending up captive in the process. Because we were 2/3 of the whites in attendance and because whites are accorded an undeserved deference (which I don't understand, which annoys and embarrasses me, and which I will explore at length in a later letter), we were asked to stay and present medals to some of the participants. Then, because we had partially sponsored the talent show (and because we are white) we were asked to act as judges of the talent show, which they tried to organize at the conclusion of the "wrestling." This gave us no opportunity to eat, and we ended up going to bed hungry. Each participant in the talent show submitted a cassette and either lip-synced to the music, or danced to the music, or mimicked an MTV-video to the music. Much of it was dull and uninspired, but some of the dancing was quite entertaining. The audience was quite enthusiastic, with members of the audience frequently joining a given act. As part of a substantial medical kit, PC gives us an exceptionally fine book, "Where there is no Doctor." This title is parodied in our PCV-written cookbook, "Where there is no Cook," and in our instructions for making copies, "Where there is no photocopier." PC has given us instructions for constructing a duplicating machine, which uses spirit masters. I used this process years ago but thought it had been totally superseded by the photocopier. My PC hectograph (after the French name for the process, carbon hectopgraphique) consists of a mat of jello (well, actually gelatin, glycerin, sugar and water) in the bottom of my medical kit. Laying a carbon master on this mat leaves an image and gets about 60 good copies before it fades-- quite crude, quite effective, and quite cheap (the total cost of the machine was $6). After about 6 hours, the image diffuses sufficiently into the jello so that a new and different image can be used. I did not think I would use a hectograph but made one anyway. Then, this week the University's photocopier went down, and the university is having problems getting it repaired because of unpaid bills to the repair service. This had led to panic among the faculty and to a wave of photocopier failures as the demand for photocopying spreads through Buea. Luckily I was able to use some clever stratagems suggested by Prabasaj to coax about 500 copies out of my hectograph for tests I am giving on Wednesday. C'est l'Afrique! Edwin and from private communication w/Janice: "To speak a bit about food/diet and related topics--just to inform you about circumstances here. Eggs are plentiful--not really expensive but comparatively to the US, they are. Butter is available at one "Cold Store" (a store where there is a refrigerated case) in Buea. It is tres cher so I do not buy it though I loved being given some by Ann. The cost for 200g (less than 1/2 pound) is 800cfa ($1.60). No heavy cream or cheese or whole milk is available (possibly UHT?!) in Buea. It is available in Limbe, a seaside resort (of movie fame in Chocolat) 20 miles away. In Limbe there are European food stores and I look forward to getting a cocoa powder there. Making pudding and brownies and fudge (all these are not done here frequently) is not satisfactory using a breakfast cocoa drink mix, made up mostly a sugar than cocoa. I have purchased a kg of white flour which is 2 1/2 times as expensive as the standard flour which is imported from Nigeria & is a blend of corn, millet and wheat. I am dubious that I will locate whole wheat flour for bread baking. I may however find wheat bran. The quest is on. "I am going to start baking a honey spice cake for the Rural Women Development Council to sell. I plan to use fresh grated ginger as my main spice since it is always available. I am thinking of grating in some citrus rinds for additional flavorings. Nutmeg also is readily available. I found a great buy on cinnamon in Douala but it is too dear to make as a staple part of a recipe. #28 16 Dec 1995 Dear All: Life has become quite hectic for us as we are preparing to attend an inservice training (IST) Conference in Limbe, where all 40 of the remaining 'stage-mates' will gather to relax,s hare war stories, and get some additional training and some additional shots. Because IST is so close I can commute one afternoon and not miss any of my classes. Still, IST it taking precious time away from my grading of the second tests, which I gave this week,a nd from preparations for finals, which start right after New Year's. Lately, the mail has slowed considerably so that, for example, Gwen's letters are taking in excess of 18 days. Given that the 25,000 inhabitants of Buea are readily served by 500 post office boxes, it is unlikely that the trickle of mail is affected by the Christmas season, but perhaps the Christmas rush in the US and Europe is causing the delay. Our theory that mail boxed don't exist in Cameroon was shattered last Sunday during a walk we took when we actually saw a mail box, although we were unsure it was functional. Sad to say, we have yet to receive any packages, although I have some hopes that Peace Corps may have the books that Don sent us via the diplomatic pouch. We will learn more tomorrow when we go to Limbe. To finish up this random discussion of mail, we thank the Weismanns, Silbersteins, Jeanne, Margaret and Kritzes for wonderful letters. I start what will be a continuing discussion of Cameroonian foods with a description of a groups of Cameroonian foods which are called Foo Foo (Fu Fu) here and couscous in the Moslem areas (not to be confused with couscous available in the States, which is entirely different and called Couscous Algerian here). The Foo Foos are all starchy foods that are ground, have water added, and are then pounded until they thicken Typical foo foos are water foo foo, which is made from cassava ("manioc," from which tapioca is derived), and corn foo foo. The resulting food is served in a loaf, weighing a pound or more, along with a variety of spicy sauces. The foo foo itself is quite bland, but tastes quite good with the various sauces. For many Cameroonians, foo foo is a daily staple, especially because cassava grows like a week, or perhaps is a weed. Now onto a mystery which I heard about on NPR about a year ago, and which I think I have solved, but I'll let you judge. The longish NPR piece described a peculiar shortage of baby food in some rural parts of the US. Black males would literally buy out a supermarket's supply of certain flavors. This was all very mysterious, and the authorities were at a loss to explains it, although they had the suspicion it was related to the drug trade. They were unable to explain how. This past week I was lunching with a Dr. Fanso-Free (whose name I knew was not a source of jokes in Cameroon, because the phrase "footloose and fancy free" is unknown here), and we were talking about his years in graduate school at Cornell and about Ithaca. Somehow we started talking about foo foo, and he recalled how a fellow Cameroonian at Cornell had discovered that some baby foods could pass for foo foo. The two of them satisfied their craving for foo foo by buying cases of baby food at the local supermarket. Luckily they weren't arrested. If this explains the mystery, I wonder why the authorities did not ask the men why they were buying all the baby food. Or perhaps they did and just did not believe them. Enjoy the holiday vacation. Edwin P.S. to Edwin's letter (from Jan): A toast to all for a Happy New Year. #29 24 December 1994 Dear All: For both Janice and me this has been a week of running around. On Sunday we went to Limbe for our PC In-Service Training (IST) conference. This was a mixture of relaxed reunion and business. It was fun seeing our old friends from stage (French for "training period") but I was impatient with the conference because of pressing UB work, including the grading of 500 papers, which I brought with me. The timing of the conference almost dovetailed with my class schedule, so that commuting to UB Tuesday afternoon allowed me to meet my UB responsibilities. At the conference i learned from other PCVs that surface mail can take as long as 6 months, which may explain why we have received no packages yet. The PC people did deliver the books that Don Davis sent me via diplomatic pouch. They will be very useful, thanks to Don, Cliff Queen, Tom Wilansky and Bell Labs Library. Airmail is also sluggish, with Gwen's letters taking 3 weeks and others less time (thanks to Cathy Barrett, Ticho-Lots, Chava, Hirschs, Kerns, Ferriters and Bill). Friday and Saturday, with the semester's classes finished for all of a few hours, I spent my time with two other members of a committee studying bids to provide the Pan African Institute for Development (PAID) with a large number of computers. They must decide before the end of 1995 in order to spend a Dutch grant, which I assume is in the order of $200,000, and which is beaucoup de bucks in this part of the world. The Director of PAID, when recruiting me for this job, apologized for the hast in the process, such haste being typically Africa, he claimed. I assured him that I was quite familiar with such haste, that I recall acquiring two work stations because I was willing to solve the problem of another faculty member "desperate" to spend money before the termination of a contract. It was unkind to Janice to start vacation with 12 hours of deliberations over two days, but it was fun working with the other two members, who were bright, knowledgeable, hard-working and efficient. It was also fun to discover that my back-of-the-envelope estimate of FCFA 100,000,000 was only off by FCFA 50,000. Melodie Weismann asked an intriguing question about pets. We are unsure of the exact roe of the various animals in our neighborhood, although we do see goats, chickens, horses, cats and dogs. Chickens and goats in particular one sees everywhere in Cameroon (and I do mean everywhere, e.g. on campus). We do know that today, the day before Christmas, marks a precipitous decline in the goat and chicken population. We also know that when I order chicken at a restaurant slow service means life is imitating the old joke about the management going out, killing a chicken, plucking it, etc. We don't know whether horses are eaten here, although we suspect not, and we are fairly sure dogs are kept as pets or for security. There is no leash law here (no surprise), but we never had trouble with dogs. When we encounter dogs they are never territorial and seldom bother to bark. Edwin P.S. To answer Chava's question: we hear one good headline a day, plus African news and thus we heard about Rabin's assassination and Nigerian hangings. We tape letters because our year supply of envelopes lightly bonded in the high humidity here, rendering the glue useless. and Janice writes, in part: 'Tis Christmas Eve and we had our friend Bill Shulinsky from Canada--a volunteer through NY-based Jewish World Services--over for the last night of Channkah. He missed my latke, which I made last night. I will be standing at some street corner tomorrow to give out cake to the taxi drivers. I have been passing out cookies at the marketplace--it was great fun because it brought a smile to everyone's face. Woe be to the young woman who would not negotiate a price on her cucumbers...she did not get a cookie. We are off for a four-day tour of Bamenda, a lovely town in the Northwest (according to everyone). and Gwen writes: well, the mails (re: #28) are clearly slow both ways. The letters are postmarked the 18th and the 26th, but I only received them yesterday (the 11th). Happy new year and new semester to all!