Kat and Cara's Glorious Adventure

After being chastised for pretending that nothing happened between July and November, I hope this post can remedy things a bit. Work wise, it was a difficult time because people were working in the fields. The start of the rainy season means a good 4 monthes of labor with millet, corn, black-eyed peas, beans, and okra. After that the drying and storing process begins with the goal to be finished before the end of December celebrations.

So, to that "ode" to that anonymous visit: Katherine! She decided that Mali was close enough to Cameroon that she could pop over before school starts again, so I was graced with a visitor. She's much more qualified to be a Health Volunteer than myself having lived in Africa for over a year, speaking French since she was a wee babe in England, and going to her 2nd year in med school. It's also a nice stroke to my ego to hear, "Wow! Your friend speaks much better French than you," but so does most people, so I handled it well. Unfortunately, she was the one who took all of the pics and I can't figure out how to get them from facebook.

It started out with some intense traveling to get from Douala to my post: 4 hour bus to Yaounde, 14 hour train ride to Ngoundere, 8 hour bus ride to my provincial capital, 1 hour bus to Mokolo, 1 hour moto ride to my house.

After a rainy market day, we headed to Rhumsiki, the nearby tourist trap that is amazingly beautiful. Hit up the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhumsiki for more info. That afternoon we took a tour through the village and saw the crab sorceror who told us the future. He scoops up the crab in his hands and whispers the question to it before placing it into a special bowl with sticks and other things in it. After a minute he takes off the bowl's cover and according to what the crab has knocked down, the future is read. Apparentely, I'm going to be happy and successful with work and I will/already have many suitors and I'll have my pick. Afterwards we had an amazingly romantic dinner by the light of the moon. The next day we hiked into the valley. Well I hiked, Kat, after leaving her kicks to dry in Maroua, had to hike in flip-flops and almost tumbled down the mountain. It was kind of scary, but our guide decided to walk next to her afterwards so that he could catch her the next time it happened. Don't worry, we made it back.

Anyway, it was an awesome visit! If you have facebook check out Kat's album.

FARNG Updates

The volunteer house in Maroua now has internet!!! Now crazy things like youtube, gchat, and uploading pictures at unimaginable rates (just did 5 in 10 minutes!) are possible. Therefore, I also no longer have an excuse to slack on my blog. (has it really been 4 monthes? oops)

First with an update on that FARNG program I talked about in a previous entry. The goal for this program is to create support groups for pregnant women where they listen to a health message, share their experiences, rest, and eat a meal together. They would also receive prenatal consultations at a central location brought by the Tourou Health Center. My counterpart, the head nurse of the health center(Tanembe), another female nurse(Dalika), and myself trained 30 people to organize and do health presentations at the end of September. The group was made up of members of the health committee from the 6 villages, midwives, and mothers (who would actually be doing the presentations to the pregnant women). This was the first time many of them had been formally educated on health topics so there were a lot of questions. It was great because everyone

This is me with Ayuba, the translator doing a nutrition animation on the first day of the training. We had some trouble finding a good language to speak in; we ended up translating into two which made the day a bit longer than planned.


The program is based around improving the nutrition of pregnant women and their children so of course lunch had to be a good example of this. This is Matt and Tanembe enjoying some couscous and sauce made from huckleberry leaves, peanut butter, and dried fish. I promise it's good.


Everyone rocking their new t-shirts.

A month later the 6 villages had their first meeting with pregnant women from each village. Because the Tourou Health Center has only 3 regular staff members, only two of which are trained nurses, it was planned to have all the meetings in a central location. This first day 70 women showed up which was exciting and extremely overwhelming. Tanembe and I did prenatal consultations from 10am to 7pm. This month we have to find a better way to organize the 6 villages to break-up the work.


The pregnant women receiving a presentation on nutrition.


The mothers that were trained are using their manuals to give the presentation.


Tanembe and myself doing the prenatal consultations.

Thanks so much for your support in this! This program still has some kinks, but my plan is to use this pilot program as a jumping off point for similar programs in other villages around Tourou.

Ciao

New Four Footed Friends

That's right. I am officially the proud owner of 2 goats, male and female. They are very cute and (I think) they like me. As a first-time goat owner, my neighbors have been rightly questioning my ability to keep these animals and keep them happy. This started with me trying to drag my goats from the market to my house after I bought them; apparently if I continued my method of transport for much longer I would have had two goat bodies on my hands due to suffication. For future goat owners: Throwing the goat over your shoulders is a better and more comfortable way to get from market to doorstep. I have been getting tons of advice from neighbors and bundles of herbs and grasses find their way to my doorstep as presents for my goats.

Pictures of the 2 will be included in the future. Their names are Bean (girl) and Beneigt (boy, means doughnut in French). Their future plans include making babies so that I can have more, cuter friends (girl) and getting castrated, fatten, killed, and eaten (boy). I've had them for a month and so far, only one event has marred our friendship (besides the attempted murder of transport). Bean got into the house a week after I got screens for my doors. She freaked out and tried to escape for freedom through the closed screen of the front door. There are now 2 horn holes in the screen for misquitoes to find their way through.

In other news, rainy season has officially begun which means my life has become a little bit lonelier as everyone has taken to the fields. It's me and the children under five left in village all day long. The other day the temperature dropped to a little bit less than 60 degrees and I couldn't feel my fingers. Hmmmmmm.

FARNG Fundraising Project

This entry will be a bit different than the others; not as fun filled but will give you some more insight in what my work is like and to share a little bit of my Peace Corps experience with friends and family back home. Below is a quick summary of a project that I am currently doing and below that is the more in depth fundraising letter that has more information and the budget. Thanks and Enjoy!

Introduction to the FARNG Fundraising Project
I am posted in a village about an hour north of the city of Mokolo in the Extreme North Province, right on the border of Nigeria. It consists of 22 smaller neighborhoods, or quartiers, one of which will be hosting the pilot program for this the FARNG project, . This pilot program is centered on maternal and child health care. The overall objectives of the FARNG program are to increase connectivity and communication between pregnant women and the health center, increase knowledge of nutrition among pregnant women, and to prioritize the needs of pregnant women. Thus, the program will decrease the astronomically high infant and maternal mortality rates in the community by supporting the women through their pregnancy, childbirth and throughout the months following the birth of their baby. Because of the isolation of this village, development has been slow to come and certain basic needs are not available.

The following link is for the fundraising letter:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dhjzxp8p_5pvqpzzcr

The following link is the Budget Spreadsheet
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rK1RaJaHpoL0S8Q1L9qCdlQ&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Patois Smatois

yes yes yes i know, i've been such a slacker with posting. I apologize perfusely and will not be suprised to find out that my readership has dwindle to just my mother. (P.S. Happy Mother's Day. Love!) Please check out the pics added to the post before this one too.

Theme: Language (aka why i now realize why the rest of the world thinks that Americans stink at learning languages, or even trying to...it's true or at least i do)

Every Tuesday I do a presentation at the Health Center for pregnant women while they get their prenatal consultations. One of the nurses, Dalika, translates for me as most of the women in village do not speak French. She also adds real life stories from her own extensive experience in womens' health; basically she's much more quaified than me, but likes for me to come and bring pretty pictures. The presentation goes a little something like this: I say something in French, Dalika translates in Hide (the language that most of the village speaks). She realizes that one woman only understands Mafa, so she then translates to Mafa. Then another only understands Fufulde (the language that most of North Cameroon speaks), so another round of translation happens.

Yep. So quick summary.
Me: French
Dalika: Hide
Dalika: Mafa
Dalika: Fufulde
and on and on.

Presto! My 15 minute presentation has turned into a one hour or more extravaganza. It's really amazing to watch. Another example is going to meetings and having people flip between three languages in one sentance. As a person whose struggling with basic French, it's a little intimidating to watch people turn on and off languages without any struggle.

The patios of my post is Hide and just over 40,000 people speak it in the whole world and they are all in this little area of Cameroon/Nigeria. I guess I won't be breaking it out when I go home much. The days of the week are the names of the Hide villages' market days (Thursday is "Luma Berek" which is the market day in Tourou Centre or Berek).

It also took just the first Hide lesson to realize that unless i was planning to spend my two years aggressively studying the language, i was not going to be able to delve in that far. It's been almost 6 months at post and I can do only basic salutations and say where i'm going. There are 14 sounds unique to French or English, most of which require throat and tongue gymnastics which i'm not capable of. Also the structure of the sentance is kind of flip-flopped (I go to the market is "Go market I") To be honest I could be spending more time on the language bit, but i feel that improving my plateaued French would be a better way to go.

Also kind of interesting, I'm no longer Cara (Care-ah), i'm Cahrrah (as in Spanish for 'face' way). The long 'a' and soft 'r' aren't part of the normal sounds here. The kids in my neighborhood call me Cahrrahss, which is Carrot in Housa, another local language. There's also a moto driver who calls me carrotte (french for carrot). Basically I respond to anything that remotely sounds like my name.

Until next time.