I've sat and waited for what seems like a lifetime for this page to load up and so I must apologise if the forthcoming entry is little more than a Kerouac-esque stream of consciousness drizzle through which you are wholly at your leisure to wander although I would suggest a sturdy mac and a decent pair of wellies. Should there be any deluges of cranial excrement that threaten to innundate then I will try and stem the flow but as it is I've reached line four and I'm not entirely sure what is going to come out I think it best to warn you. Pack your waders and a brolly just in case, but if it looks like it's going to get nasty I can recommend a hot buttered crumpet and a cup of tea.
Week one of term three has evaporated in a manner in which I am almost wholly unaccustomed. Quite what happened to it is neither here nor there but then I don't have the pressures of exams or courses to keep me on my toes. The first day back was largely spent fawning at the feet of the intellectual juggernaut that is the school's director. He's a philosopher, you see, and being such he asks an almost endless stream of questions that seem to have little if anything to do with the realities of running a school. The existence of god is his current favourite, itself usurping the anglo-saxon work ethic. Fascinating in many ways, particularly in a second language, but is it going to get another classroom block? Spent the day observing the biology teacher and learnt, once again in a second language, just how many types of worm I am pretty much guaranteed to play hostelry to during my time here. Fun comes in packets of all shapes and sizes, one just has to hope that it's not 80cm long and wrapped in paper fitting my description. It's not all doom and gloom though; I just have to be careful about what I eat, drink, where I walk, who I talk to and generally avoid fruit, vegetables, uncooked meat, cooked meat, fish, dairy products, cereals, pulses and tubers and whatever I do try not to touch anything.
Tuesday came and went in a blur of almost comatose inactivity on the part of CES de Godola. Lessons didn't really seem to happen and I was given the rare treat of ignoring the threat of gastric guests and dining with the Director. Wall paper paste with shredded nettles and the remains of some long-dead animal, helped down with balls of gloop all to the aurally anaethetising wail of the director's youngest spring-off who is absolutely terrified of me. The small fry over here generally are, although strangely enough if they're crying when they see you they stop, but if they're not they start ... hmm, he says, stroking his chin pensively. Did though manage to organise a meeting with the elite of the school where I can pick their collective brain and see what they do, for one, want, for two, and expect of me, for three. I suspect the answers will be along the lines of not a lot and money. We shall see though ... I bet you can't wait for the next installment!
Wednesday's a half day that singularly fails to do any justice to the nordic deity after which it's named. The afternoon saw a visit to a fellow vol in Kaele to see things from a different point of view. The bus was a white-knuckle ride of terror across Diamare and into Mayo Kani, past rock stacks with rocks, surprisingly stacked ... quite something to see. Off revisiting the rockstacks this week so will take phots and see what happens. Wednesday eve was spent feeding and watering and generally chewing the cud of life. The undoubted highpoint was having Mama Flo (the owner of the bar), having her daughter drop her shopping indecorously on the floor of the bar right next to our table then proudly stand up and announce to the bar that that is what she had done. Not sure what she was expecting but the stick and shouting that ensued was a little shocking to say the least.
Thursday saw a visit to the Lycee de Kaele which puts little old CES de Godola to shame. 1800+ students and a library that would contain our entire school. They even have a swimming pool. It doesn't have any water in it, but that's beside the point. Was hoping to observe a class but alas they were all cancelled because of mocks which having seen the question papers is a frighteningly fitting adjective. Scuttled back to Maroua squeezed between the collected buttocks of a villages worth of people and was decanted unglamorously at the side of the road at prayer time. Just as a matter of interest, does anyone happen to know what's on the flip side of the 72 virgins? What's the alternative?
Grilled fish and a spider-ridden room constituted the evening's entertainment and then while the sparrows roused I hot-footed it back to Godola for a day of educational pleasure. Or not. Exam invigilation ensued. 2 hours it was meant to last, it perhaps took the students an hour at most. Geography was the subject and I don't think I've ever seen an easier paper and this is bearing in mind that it was in a second language and largely on the topic of Cameroon, whose geography I know like the back of someone else's hand
A wild afternoon of domesticity and then a Saturday spent being seminared on how to take excellence into the classroom. Free food and accomodation and a chicken fest last night so can't all be bad. And so another week passes. This one went faster than the rest which has to be a good thing. Got more plans for visiting this week and so it should scuttle past too ...
Not the most exciting stream of thought perhaps but there we go ... it can't be all excitement. Lunch beckons and it would be rude to ignore it any longer. The beast within needs satiating.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Ostensibly Elephants
Imagine, if you can, that you are in Cameroon.
It's 48,000°K, and you're in the middle of the country's foremost wildlife park, Waza. You've seen giraffes, antelopes, a gazelle, a couple of jackals, warthogs, ostriches and more different varieties of bird than anyone in their right mind should ever know the names of. Big ones, small ones, huge ones, tiny ones, colourful ones, brown ones, black ones, ones that look like they belong in cartoons and others that circle you, ominously, on the off chance that something life-terminating happens.
You've spent most of the day perched on top of a Ubiquitous Toyota Landcruiser - Japan's all-pervading gift to the world tourist trade - and the seat of your formerly beige trousers bears all the hallmarks of a sudden and somewhat dramatic bowel evacuation but it is, in fact, entirely due to the fact that you were sitting on the filthy and bald spare tyre, on the roof-rack.
Your impatient and almost wholly incomprehensible driver has hurtled down dirt tracks at something close to warp-speed, paying scant regard for your life and trying his best to have you neatly kebabed on any number of heavily armed trees. Your toothless and gurning guide gurgles at you in what you assume is a contented manner.
Bruised and battered and a little pink about the gills, you come to a halt in a cloud of dust atop a man-made viewing mound: it's that time of day, you see, when packs of pachyderms perambulate waterwards after a hard day's grazing.
..... .. ..... .. . .......
From our 'vantage' point, that there line of dots is about as much as we saw. They were elephants and there were a huge number of them: if Sini the guide and Sali the driver are to be believed, and who am I to doubt them, there were in the region of 200 and that's a lot of elephant no matter which way you look at it.
We looked at it from the front and from the side and had I not run out of water and my fellow trippers out of patience then I could have told you for sure.
Oh well. There's always next time.
It's 48,000°K, and you're in the middle of the country's foremost wildlife park, Waza. You've seen giraffes, antelopes, a gazelle, a couple of jackals, warthogs, ostriches and more different varieties of bird than anyone in their right mind should ever know the names of. Big ones, small ones, huge ones, tiny ones, colourful ones, brown ones, black ones, ones that look like they belong in cartoons and others that circle you, ominously, on the off chance that something life-terminating happens.
You've spent most of the day perched on top of a Ubiquitous Toyota Landcruiser - Japan's all-pervading gift to the world tourist trade - and the seat of your formerly beige trousers bears all the hallmarks of a sudden and somewhat dramatic bowel evacuation but it is, in fact, entirely due to the fact that you were sitting on the filthy and bald spare tyre, on the roof-rack.
Your impatient and almost wholly incomprehensible driver has hurtled down dirt tracks at something close to warp-speed, paying scant regard for your life and trying his best to have you neatly kebabed on any number of heavily armed trees. Your toothless and gurning guide gurgles at you in what you assume is a contented manner.
Bruised and battered and a little pink about the gills, you come to a halt in a cloud of dust atop a man-made viewing mound: it's that time of day, you see, when packs of pachyderms perambulate waterwards after a hard day's grazing.
From our 'vantage' point, that there line of dots is about as much as we saw. They were elephants and there were a huge number of them: if Sini the guide and Sali the driver are to be believed, and who am I to doubt them, there were in the region of 200 and that's a lot of elephant no matter which way you look at it.
We looked at it from the front and from the side and had I not run out of water and my fellow trippers out of patience then I could have told you for sure.
Oh well. There's always next time.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
'It's life, Jim, but not as we know it ... "
It's that time again when the cranial flatulence that builds up during the week/month needs to be released for fear of more dramatic and possibly explosive effects should it continue to be contained. In many ways this blog is like the tap thing at the curved but not noisy end of a trombone: you press it and the result of all that "thpwttt"-ing drips out onto the heads of the unfortunate bassoon players in front. You lucky people are the bassoons and I apologise for the dripping but needs must.
I have now been here for what is affectionately refered to as "a calendar month". That is, of course, as opposed to a lunar month, solar month, synodic month, sidereal month, anomalistic month, nodical or draconic month.
In fact to be totally correct I've been here for just over a calendar month and I'd like to say that time has flown but, alas, it has been dragging it's talon like nails over the blackboard of life and it has only been those brief moments of respite while the hand returns to the top of the board that have scuttled past. It feels like I've been here a lifetime but then I did get here at possibly the most obscure and least busy time of year so I can only hope that things will start to speed up.
March and April. Daffodils. Winter's retreat. Lambs. A mud:grass ratio that favours green over brown. Longer, warmer days. April showers. A temperate utopia ... we don't know how lucky we are!
That battleship greyness that plagues our winters and condemns us to a perceived drizzley misery. That battleship greyness that stalks our every waking hour, that blots out the stars, that hides the sun, that wraps us in its damp and gloomy interior and forces us to retreat indoors.
What I'd give for one solitary cloud ... if it could just drift in front of that heinous ball of flame for just a moment ... is that too much to ask?
Yep, the heat is not good! There really is no escape. From 11 til 3 it's almost unbearable and there's little or no respite after that. Everything becomes a washed out beige colour; life collapses in whatever shade it can find. The people melt into pools of inactivity. The most deranged of mad dogs and even the most pith-helmeted and handle-bar-moustached of Englishmen hide themselves away. Not that it's any better the rest of the time, and in fact nights are almost worse. At least by day there's an excuse. It may be an excuse that's 93million miles away but it's an excuse all the same.
By night, the walls that during the day had absorbed all that radiation, do their best at getting rid of it ... that's to say the house becomes an oven. Lying in bed, stuck in limbo between needing to sleep and not being able to because of the infernal heat, the foam matress doing its level best to ensure that you don't toughen up by basting you evenly like a chicken in a rotisserie. The fan, stirring the air and blowing like a hairdryer over your already baking body.
A nice cold shower would go down a treat, except the only cold water you have is in the fridge and has been filtered for drinking ... when you have to fetch your water from the well, filter it before you drink it and you're drinking 10+ litres a day, it's a little extravagant to pour it over you for all of a 10 second respite.
I could go on, but I think you've probably got the message!
So, yes, after a whole two weeks of work I now find myself on holiday. What from I'm not entirely sure as there didn't seem to be a lot being done when I arrived. Next term apparently gets really hectic with a whole 4 weeks of teaching before the school can't afford to pay its teachers any more and exams start which means it doesn't have to! I'd like to say I was joking but ...
As I said, an obscure time of year to be sure. In speaking to one of my fellow education volunteers who is nearing the end of her stint, it seems that September to December is really the only time that anyone gets any educating done. In a school year of 38 weeks, under half of them (16) are spent constructively. What happens for the other 22? Good question, although I guess if the schools run out of cash 10 weeks before the end of the school year that really only leaves 12 to fill. And if the last two weeks of the 'spring' term (and I use the term 'spring' loosely - far too energetic a word: slump would be more appropraite) are spent writing reports, then I guess that only leaves 10 to account for. A week is lost at the beginning of each term while students realise they're meant to be back at school (8), and then the week leading up to Independence Day is lost while everyone practises their marching (7) ... the weeks flee like rats from a sinking ship and I can't think of a more appropriate analogy.
The good ship Cameroonian Education is listing badly. The pirate ship Bureaucracy has riddled her barnacle encrusted hull with great holes of corruption and the barrells of goods have been thrown overboard. The Captain is clinging on to the worm-infested steering wheel while his inexperienced crew are being keel-hauled for their troubles. You get the picture.
Possibly not the cheeriest of blogs but an honest one! The pre-match sheen of enthusiasm has worn off and the realities of this peculiar life of mine are thrown into sharp relief by the glaring and relentless sun. Everything they tell you before you arrive, the briefings, the lectures, the workshops, they help but it's only on arrival that you realise just how thankless a task this is. And the doubts then start to surface.
Why am I here? What can I do? Where do I start? Why am I doing this? The answers, that seemed so clear through the rose-tinted but blinkered spectacles of blind optimism drift away with the smell of gunpowder and all that fills your head is the sound of water pouring in.
You start to question the merits of 'Development' ... who are we to impose our thoughts, our beliefs, our morals on anyone else. If any of you, friends, strangers, whoever were to come up to me in the guise of Cameroonian culture and to start expounding your views on life, the universe, everything, we'd disagree on an awful lot of things and I may find many of your views offensive but who am I to say that you are wrong and that I am right; with freedom of speech, after all, comes the freedom to offend.
Oppression is something that we, the global North, have only relatively recently seen as being an overcomable affliction. For centuries it was seen as part of life. It made society what it was. Society, that huge organic organism of which we are all a part; it grows, it changes, it develops, it evolves, just like everything else. As those first primitive life forms dragged themselves from the primordial soup, breathing raw air for the first time, nobody could have known, least of all them, that we'd get to here and possibly further.
Yet we did ... it took time but we got here. Society has done the same: it dragged itself through its own primordial soup albeit at different rates and in different directions the world over. It adapted to the environment it found itself in. It evolved to where it is today. Society isn't technology: you can't very well throw it away when a new and purportedly better version is developed, particularly when the infrastructure isn't there to support it.
Edinburgh and Glasgow are different enough and they're only 50 miles apart, and they've got their own share of troubles, yet here I am trying to instill Northern social mores on a people and culture who have ones of their own.
If someone is right does that mean everything else is wrong? That big sea of greyness is swallowing me up again ... alas the light drizzle is conspicuous in its absence.
This weekend I are be mostly seein' elephants and giraffes ... which reminds me: mustn't forget to remember not to forget the drugs.
* B A N G *
I have now been here for what is affectionately refered to as "a calendar month". That is, of course, as opposed to a lunar month, solar month, synodic month, sidereal month, anomalistic month, nodical or draconic month.
In fact to be totally correct I've been here for just over a calendar month and I'd like to say that time has flown but, alas, it has been dragging it's talon like nails over the blackboard of life and it has only been those brief moments of respite while the hand returns to the top of the board that have scuttled past. It feels like I've been here a lifetime but then I did get here at possibly the most obscure and least busy time of year so I can only hope that things will start to speed up.
March and April. Daffodils. Winter's retreat. Lambs. A mud:grass ratio that favours green over brown. Longer, warmer days. April showers. A temperate utopia ... we don't know how lucky we are!
That battleship greyness that plagues our winters and condemns us to a perceived drizzley misery. That battleship greyness that stalks our every waking hour, that blots out the stars, that hides the sun, that wraps us in its damp and gloomy interior and forces us to retreat indoors.
What I'd give for one solitary cloud ... if it could just drift in front of that heinous ball of flame for just a moment ... is that too much to ask?
Yep, the heat is not good! There really is no escape. From 11 til 3 it's almost unbearable and there's little or no respite after that. Everything becomes a washed out beige colour; life collapses in whatever shade it can find. The people melt into pools of inactivity. The most deranged of mad dogs and even the most pith-helmeted and handle-bar-moustached of Englishmen hide themselves away. Not that it's any better the rest of the time, and in fact nights are almost worse. At least by day there's an excuse. It may be an excuse that's 93million miles away but it's an excuse all the same.
By night, the walls that during the day had absorbed all that radiation, do their best at getting rid of it ... that's to say the house becomes an oven. Lying in bed, stuck in limbo between needing to sleep and not being able to because of the infernal heat, the foam matress doing its level best to ensure that you don't toughen up by basting you evenly like a chicken in a rotisserie. The fan, stirring the air and blowing like a hairdryer over your already baking body.
A nice cold shower would go down a treat, except the only cold water you have is in the fridge and has been filtered for drinking ... when you have to fetch your water from the well, filter it before you drink it and you're drinking 10+ litres a day, it's a little extravagant to pour it over you for all of a 10 second respite.
I could go on, but I think you've probably got the message!
So, yes, after a whole two weeks of work I now find myself on holiday. What from I'm not entirely sure as there didn't seem to be a lot being done when I arrived. Next term apparently gets really hectic with a whole 4 weeks of teaching before the school can't afford to pay its teachers any more and exams start which means it doesn't have to! I'd like to say I was joking but ...
As I said, an obscure time of year to be sure. In speaking to one of my fellow education volunteers who is nearing the end of her stint, it seems that September to December is really the only time that anyone gets any educating done. In a school year of 38 weeks, under half of them (16) are spent constructively. What happens for the other 22? Good question, although I guess if the schools run out of cash 10 weeks before the end of the school year that really only leaves 12 to fill. And if the last two weeks of the 'spring' term (and I use the term 'spring' loosely - far too energetic a word: slump would be more appropraite) are spent writing reports, then I guess that only leaves 10 to account for. A week is lost at the beginning of each term while students realise they're meant to be back at school (8), and then the week leading up to Independence Day is lost while everyone practises their marching (7) ... the weeks flee like rats from a sinking ship and I can't think of a more appropriate analogy.
The good ship Cameroonian Education is listing badly. The pirate ship Bureaucracy has riddled her barnacle encrusted hull with great holes of corruption and the barrells of goods have been thrown overboard. The Captain is clinging on to the worm-infested steering wheel while his inexperienced crew are being keel-hauled for their troubles. You get the picture.
Possibly not the cheeriest of blogs but an honest one! The pre-match sheen of enthusiasm has worn off and the realities of this peculiar life of mine are thrown into sharp relief by the glaring and relentless sun. Everything they tell you before you arrive, the briefings, the lectures, the workshops, they help but it's only on arrival that you realise just how thankless a task this is. And the doubts then start to surface.
Why am I here? What can I do? Where do I start? Why am I doing this? The answers, that seemed so clear through the rose-tinted but blinkered spectacles of blind optimism drift away with the smell of gunpowder and all that fills your head is the sound of water pouring in.
You start to question the merits of 'Development' ... who are we to impose our thoughts, our beliefs, our morals on anyone else. If any of you, friends, strangers, whoever were to come up to me in the guise of Cameroonian culture and to start expounding your views on life, the universe, everything, we'd disagree on an awful lot of things and I may find many of your views offensive but who am I to say that you are wrong and that I am right; with freedom of speech, after all, comes the freedom to offend.
Oppression is something that we, the global North, have only relatively recently seen as being an overcomable affliction. For centuries it was seen as part of life. It made society what it was. Society, that huge organic organism of which we are all a part; it grows, it changes, it develops, it evolves, just like everything else. As those first primitive life forms dragged themselves from the primordial soup, breathing raw air for the first time, nobody could have known, least of all them, that we'd get to here and possibly further.
Yet we did ... it took time but we got here. Society has done the same: it dragged itself through its own primordial soup albeit at different rates and in different directions the world over. It adapted to the environment it found itself in. It evolved to where it is today. Society isn't technology: you can't very well throw it away when a new and purportedly better version is developed, particularly when the infrastructure isn't there to support it.
Edinburgh and Glasgow are different enough and they're only 50 miles apart, and they've got their own share of troubles, yet here I am trying to instill Northern social mores on a people and culture who have ones of their own.
If someone is right does that mean everything else is wrong? That big sea of greyness is swallowing me up again ... alas the light drizzle is conspicuous in its absence.
This weekend I are be mostly seein' elephants and giraffes ... which reminds me: mustn't forget to remember not to forget the drugs.
* B A N G *
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