Feels like home

At last, on Tuesday we saw our new home, in Foncha Street in Bamenda, and moved in!
Arrangements here, we've learned, are very flexible to say the least, and we are definitely learning to go with the flow. I'm sharing a house with another Welsh volunteer, Gweneira, for a few weeks anyway, and we'll be collaborating to some extent in our work.

Ibrahim, the VSO programme officer, and Kareen, the VSO long-term volunteer with whom I'm going to work, took us round to see the house. It's a nice size, 2 bedrooms, large lounge/dining area, small shower room and small kitchen. The laundry is out the back. We have cold running water, electricity, fridge and gas rings to cook. It's in a secure location with a yard surrounded by high walls, solid metal doors, window bars, gates and the row of houses has both a day and night guard.

Everything gets dirty so quickly that there was a layer of brown dust over everything, and leaking taps and toilet, with a lot of rubbish and stuff left by the previous tenant. So Ibrahim got on the phone to the cleaner recommended by previous VSO tenants, and she turned up within a few minutes. We struck a deal and went off for lunch and to collect our luggage.

Wow - what a difference after a few hours! Anne is a real treasure, sweet and hard-working. She'd cleaned the place over and washed all the sheets. Another call to Yusuf, a young neighbour, brought his help to get a new gas bottle and fix up our mosquito nets. He called a plumber - who came and fixed leaky things the following afternoon - would you believe it in Wales?

We've made the place our home - local cloths hanging on the walls, Welsh teddy bear, family pictures. Battling with the ants and cockroaches in the kitchen is non-stop, but no worse than in southern Europe (so far). We've shopped, eaten and drunk locally, introduced ourselves to people and started to make friends.

Our cleaner comes at 6:30 for an hour or so, but we wake soon after 5 anyway with the morning call to prayer from the muezzin, and a cock crowing. We do feel a bit strange sometimes, waking in the middle of the night when the rain hammered on the tin roof. But sitting here now, listening to Norah Jones on my laptop while we write up our journals, it feels so relaxed to be living in a house in Africa!

She

African queens and princesses danced for us - wow!

Our first day in the north west, Sunday, and we behaved like tourists. VSO took us to Bafut, about 20 km away, where we were treated to a tour of the Fon's palace and museum guided by his second wife. A well-dressed English-speaking lady, who's a home economics teacher, she explained so much about the local history and culture. These are my words, not hers, so any errors are mine.

Many villages have a Fon, a tribal leader who has a lot of power and respect from his people. The man who became the first Fon of Bafut came to this area about 500 years ago and united several groups of villages under his leadership. Nowadays people come to him for guidance on problems, and there are many traditional rituals carried out by powerful secret societies.

We saw the large stones where criminals - thieves, adulterers - used to be tied naked and executed or given to lions, in a big open area so everyone could watch. This ended in 1914, when the Germans came. An alternative punishment for some crimes was ignoring people - nobody would speak to them at all. The criminal would be so ostracised that they would either leave or commit suicide!

There's a large museum where Gerald Durrell, the English writer, lived and wrote his book "The Beagles of Bafut", which I must read. We saw wood carvings, weapons, clothing, beds. Plenty of animal skins including a massive boa constrictor skin from their land near the Nigerian border, which they keep as a reserve.

The Fon has 4 current wives and plenty of children and siblings, who all live in the houses within the palace compound. When his father died in 1968 he also inherited his father's wives, including his own mother! Our guide explained that this means he takes on the responsibility for looking after them. The queen mother had died a week or two ago aged 80; they say she is "missing" rather than "dead". The Fon still has 3 of his father's wives as well as his own four. 

The Fon himself chooses his heir from among his sons, "the best behaved" according to our guide. He doesn't tell the heir, but the secret society know and they sort it out when the Fon is "missing". Our guide said if the heir knew he might run away, to avoid the responsibility!

The ceremony includes all the women parading naked, to ensure the new Fon has a long life! They

have a big feasting annually for the grass-cutting. The most important building has a thatched roof, and they repair one side each year. People have to go out and collect the grass, and beforehand the men go hunting to get enough food to feed all the roof-repairers.

Yes, it's a very patriarchal society. But we can see benefits in the extended family which we in the UK have lost. Care in the community means care in the family, and the strong social cohesion prevents a lot of the problems we face.

No Woman No Cry

International Women's Day on Monday 8 March was a tremendous gathering of women here in Bamenda, and all over Cameroon - wonderful to see!

Women band together in groups for a variety of purposes - women's empowerment, informal credit unions, farmers, churches, social groups. They wear a uniform for the group, and many make a special one with cloth printed specifically for International Women's Day each year. One really struck me - a group called the Women's Employment Empowerment Process had the slogan - Women Weep No More.

In Bamenda they marched in their groups along the main Commercial Avenue in the centre of town, past the grandstand. It reminded me of trade union marches in the UK - but all female. After the parade and speeches, came the partying! All the bars were crowded with groups of women, drinking beer.

In our hotel there was a marquee in the car park, with plush seating and tall stands of flowers, as if for a wedding, and the public spaces were thronged. Thankfully the music didn't go on all night - many people like to go home early as the taxis finish about 9pm.

On this one day, women don't have to work. Of course, the rest of the year belongs to the men!

Travelling light

Road travel in Cameroon is a real marathon. To get the bus from Yaounde to Bamenda, someone had to go buy the tickets early in the morning. Then at 8am we packed ourselves into taxis to the bus station - a vibrant, smelly, crowded place - where we eventually found our seats at the back of the 70-seater.

Once we got going, at least there was some air through the windows, but I can't say it was a comfortable ride! Lucky to have only 5 on the back row, with narrow seats, a real problem for the 2 tall guys among us. The road was mostly tarmac but very bumpy in places, so we were both shaken and stirred during the 7 hour trip.

Children on the bus were lovely - really well behaved in spite of the long hot journey. In front were two women and 4 small children under 5, all on a bench seat for 3, dressed as if for a wedding and quiet as mice.

Views were tremendous. Passing close-ups of the city, people working, shopping, selling, then giving way to rural life, back-breaking work on small plots of land. Plantains everywhere, few animals to be seen, the landscape changing from forest, shrubs, drier grassy areas.

On the city outskirts the bus was pulled up by police, who checked our visas and identity documents. A couple were taken off the bus and we waited to see what would happen. Some men got off to pee at the roadside. Then the couple got on again, having paid an instant fine perhaps? and the bus set off again. Apparently this is quite common, an extra income source for policemen. Bus and taxi drivers seem to know which are the genuine police road blocks and which are thieves.

During the 360 kilometre trip we stopped once for food and toilet. Food was hastily bought from roadside stalls: roasted plantains, peanuts, barbecued fish pieces, and a strange sort of pudding made of pistachio, melon and fish wrapped in leaves. Vendors held up goods to the bus windows at every halt on the road, or got on the bus if they could.

As we reached the north west we saw carrots and cabbage, signs in English - a man got on the bus to give us a real pedlar's spiel about this fantastic detergent in a bottle, our first experience of pidgin English. He seemed to be saying you put your knickers in the bottle, shake it a few times and pull them out clean!

We don't need no education

We all knew there are problems here - that's why VSO work in this country - but I think the reality is only just hitting us. First during the training sessions and then travelling north west to Bamenda on the public bus, we are seeing more and more of how people live. We've learned a lot about the main VSO programme areas here - education, HiV/AIDS, participation and governance. As education is my professional interest, here's a bit of what I've picked up (my views of course, this is not an official VSO blog).

Women's lib? You gotta be joking. Overall in Cameroon 35% of people are illiterate; but in the Far North region, 72% of women cannot read and write. Over half of school age girls don't even register for primary school - of those who do, over half don't go on to secondary education. One in 5 are married at the age of 15.
Why?

• People think girls are less intelligent than boys
• No point investing in educating girls because they marry and leave home
• It's better to keep girls to work in the home
• Girls who do go to school get scared by the bullying and physical punishment, so they drop out.

These cultural, religious, social attitudes and behaviours are deeply embedded. VSO are working with teachers to change their techniques to be more girl-friendly, with education management to increase participatory strategies, and raising general awareness to change attitudes - a massive job.
Currently Cameroon is devolving the responsibility for education, health and other social services to local government. VSO are working in partnership with councils, community groups and other non-government organisations to increase participation in local decision-making processes and improve local governance.

I'm going to be doing organisational development work with Santa council, near Bamenda, to help increase their effectiveness and engagement with their community. Other Welsh colleagues are working with other councils and community organisations in similar ways, and one is evaluating the effectiveness of this whole short-term volunteer programme.