Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Bad Request (Invalid Verb)

That's what it just told me ... no idea what it means but seemed to be asking to be a heading.

Sitting here in the canned cool of one of Maroua's more exclusive hostelries pondering, not for the first time, my usefulness. Pondering, indeed, to such an extent that I've just 'penned' a letter to the country director to see if he can help. Idle minds have to keep themselves occupied, particularly minds like mine; minds that don't like sitting still.

Of late my mental facilities seem to have been surviving on a diet of e-numbers and tartrazine which has done little for my sleep pattern and even less for my enthusiasm for the job in hand. I'm not about to throw it all in and leave this peculiar country to its fate, but it has got me asking things.

Such things may be natural after a few months in placement; perhaps everyone goes through this questioning stage. The rose-tinted, wildly optimistic, and generally blinkered enthusiasm and excitement that keeps the adrenalin up during the pre-departure weeks and the first months post-arrival have been gradually eroded by the realities of my chosen role (English teacher as opposed to cheese'n'pickle, though what I'd do for a slab of cheddar and a generous serving of Branston ... or perhaps a spot of Lime pickle ... ).

"What do you mean? You haven't done anything yet!" and hence the reason for my not throwing in the towel. I haven't done anything yet, aside from see how it works in other places, ask questions of the school's 'Elite' and see what types of things they want from me that doesn't fold. The teaching hasn't started yet and I know that that will keep me occupied, but in the background will be the perpetual thought: "what's the bleedin' point?"

Is that really a questions someone fresh to the world of development should be asking? Doesn't sound very altruistic but at the same time it's been asked and there's no taking it back. After 2 years, what is going to have been gained by my having been here? Yes there will be a handful of Cameroonian teenagers who will understand the different uses of the present perfect, but aside from that I find it difficult to see that anything else I do will be sustained. I may be all puppy dog enthusiasm for this that and the other but if there isn't someone here to keep it/them going then give it a year and it'll all have vanished beneath the ever thickening layer of red dust that covers everything else.

The most disheartening thing is that I'm not entirely sure anyone - my director, the school 'Elite', the community - actually gives a shit. Strong words I know, but truthful me thinks. Volunteers are measured locally (not by VSO I hasten to add, but by the employers and their legions of yes men) by what they achieve at a physical level i.e. what gets built with foreign folding stuff. Buildings though, aren't the issue. It's teachers, it's school books, it's pens, pencils, rulers. It's desks and chairs. We've got two fairly well maintained blocks, 2 classrooms in each block. It's not a lot, and it's a bit of a squeeze but compared to some we're not doing badly.

Ask the 'Elite' what they want to see in the immediate future: a computer suite.

Great! Good idea! Any thoughts as to what might be more important than a computer suite?

An office for the director and a staff room?

Ok. Anything that might, perhaps be more benefit than either of those? I'll give you a clue. It falls from the sky in the wet season and everything on this planet depends on it for survival.

Yep, we got none water. I take three litres to school every day and would take more but for the fact the toilet facilities are a little on the exposed side and 420-student induced stage fright tends to put paid to any peeing efforts. Explodingbladderitis: not very nice in any language. On a good day, the students might get half a pint each. Most of the time they get nothing. There's a well half a mile away, but that apparently is enough.

Also, the fact that the school doesn't have electricity you would have thought might be thought to be a key part of the computer lab dream, but apparently they hadn't thought of that.

So, I don't know. It all seems a bit useless at times but I'll stick it out until such time as I can make a more educated judgement. It may just be the lack of sleep that's giving me these outbursts of soul searching and cynicism but I don't think so.

Oh, and just so you know ... 9 June 2007 ... that be the day upon which I reach green and pleasant lands. Until sometime mid-end August ... If you're about would be spiffing to see you.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Interdit de lutter, fumer, cracher, vomir dans le car

Think I might append it to the title bar, just to ensure my French readers don't start taking liberties and sullying the grounds of this pristine, almost Singaporean cyberscape with their gallic expectorations, gauloisic exhalations, gastronomic ejaculations and generally revolutionary exertions.

An undoubtedly wise man once said, "Pygmy Minds could polynate retribution activity for incautious verbosity. Reality Guide Books are best written with the benefit of hingsight - and distance!"; for those of you who are wondering to what it is reference, see the previous posting!

Caution and advice duly noted - 'duly' a word seldom written and, therefore, consigned to a life of looking wrong. Noted, doesn't mean obeyed. This furrow is deep and the ground is good to soft ... may as well keep on ploughing.

Sat, as I am, in Extremely Northern Cameroonian climes, a lone scotsman in a sea of quasi- and real Mohammedans (quasi, that's to say only in appearance), craving a bacon sandwich and dreaming of bangers and mash, it suddenly occured to me whether or not there be any link between fondness for and, therefore, popular consumption of porcine produce and 'Development'.

Is there, indeed, a Bacon Index? I've no idea what, if anything, the answer to this question might imply but you never know if you don't ask so, hence the asking. Have a think ... there might just be something there or is it just me? If, of course, there is a link then the hurdle's a massive one, not that it's not already fairly monstrous, the Bacon index just adds a little, what the french like to call, 'hon-he-hon-he-hon'.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The InsideOutsider’s Guide to Cameroon

"Cameroon is a country of diversity. Of that there can be no doubt. They, whoever they may be, sometimes call it Africa in miniature with its deserts, mountains, jungles, beaches, multitude of tribes, and in a far more literal sense, pygmies. It’s a country of small minds and smaller ambitions; of little means and little idea or inclination as to how to change anything. It’s a little better than a lot of other African countries and a little less dangerous than most of its neighbours. Its miniaturisation is almost complete: much more and one could pop it in a snow globe and flog it to tourists."

How's that as an introduction. It's my new business concept: Senza Merda Guides ... for the discerning tourist who's going to go whatever the guidebook says but would like to know the truth.

Hope you're sitting comfortably, I may be some time.

In my more egotistical moments I like to think that those of you who take time out of your busy lives to peruse the wanderings of my under-worked mind and fingers as they range, seemingly unchecked, across this now somewhat grimy keyboard, will have been worried and wondering what’s happened to me. After the surge of blogging activity that was the first weeks here, there has - the more observant of you will have noticed - been something of a lull. Nothing more untoward than time has happened which after the knuckle-dragging,semi-bipedal and painfully slow staggerings of the first few weeks has to be a good thing. In fact the stealth, speed and general vitesse of the most recent ones have borne all the hallmarks of steroid abuse.

Yes, indeed, tempus has done its best and fugit’ed. And I for one am not complaining. If my tasks here could be likened to the seeds of parable fame, those relating to teaching have fallen on decidedly stony ground and it’s going to take a few millennia of erosion before they bear fruit. Others though have struck lucky and fallen in a fortuitously placed pile of poo and are doing their best at doing what they do best. Things have been agreed; whether they come to pass is not entirely in my hands so we’ll just have to wait and see. Either way, the things I've done to get tempus airborne has succeeded with unexpected success.

Time has been absorbed in a manner that puts Always Ultra to shame and all without the addition of wings and a dry-weave top sheet. In this still baking heat I suspect it is more likely to have evaporated than been absorbed, but either way there’s still no sign of it on the surface. Think I might be pushing things on the analogy front but better that than the alternative I’m sure you’ll agree.

A tripette to the wilds of Moutourwha to pick brains achieved its aim and a brain was picked. The following day was supposed to include a further brain selecting session but alas Thor had other plans but seeing as it was his day one could hardly begrudge him that. Donner und Blitzen and a downpour of biblical proportions gave some relief from the infernal diurnal. Back to school on Friday for another day lost; the top year’s P.E. exam distracted the entire school, largely I suspect for its outright absurdity. They run, they jump, they throw something not very far and then they do a gymnastic routine that even the most sedentary of lard-arses could do from the comfort of his own sofa and without spilling any of his Coke.

Drunken learing of 12-year-old students by government P.E. examiners, and a dribbled and almost entirely incoherent offer of a lift into town on the back of the director’s motorbike - which I politely declined - were thrown in to make things just that little bit more exciting, although a near death experience still ensued thanks to the ‘my one’s bigger than yours’ mentality of an f’wit in a 4x4.

Saturday was taken up almost entirely by the end of paragraph 2, despite lasting only two and a half hours and having started at 9am. The maths doesn’t really add up but then again I’m an English teacher so what do I know?

This last week has been notable not least for the almost microscopic amount of time I’ve actually spent at home or indeed at school. With Tuesday being May day, Monday was naturally a day off too: the ‘pont’ as it’s affectionately referred to and something of which I am quite fond; its Italian counterpart allowed for no end of mini-adventures. The adventures this time were purely domestic and involved buying new saucepans which, believe me, is exciting in any language.

Odin in his prime couldn’t have predicted his day to be so full of adventure, albeit a vaguely Cameroonian adventure, worthy of mention not least for its almost total lack of activity. Spent a large amount of time waiting for things to happen. Went to school and waited while the director slaked his beer induced thirst then, with his permission, waited for a brace of Olde English hours for a bus to depart. Disembarked at a nameless junction of a nameless town and waited for the one available moto-taxi to have its tyres and wheels put back in their respective places and then bog off with someone else. Eventually got to where I was wanting to get, Midjivin, a little parched to say the least and only to find that there was nothing to drink in town except peanut juice which is something that defies explanation. Midjivin makes Godola’s solitary horse look like a marvel of technology; on the evolutionary scale of habitation, Midjivin is still dragging itself, somewhat reluctantly it seems, from the primeval ooze.

Less than 12 hours later I was back at the same junction waiting for a bus to take me back the other way; back to Maroua. The visit was a success and achieved all I’d hoped it would which has to be a good thing. CES de Midjivin and CES de Godola have the same number of students. CES de Midjivin has 6 classroom blocks, and administrative block and a football pitch; CES de Godola has 2 classroom blocks and a tree. Some of the issues are much the same but others don’t even compare.

The weekend saw another mini-adventure to the wilds of Rhumsiki and it’s environs. What a place! Were it not for the legions of midge-like Cameroonlets who plagued our every step in a desperate attempt to flog us tat for prices just the wrong side of extortionate, it would have been even more of a pleasure. Still, a good time was had by all even if the evening fare of garlic basted in a rich and more-ish “sauce MSG” left one more than a little parched. Rhumsiki itself has been referred to as ‘lunar’ though I have to say it reminded me more of Monument Valley crossed with Andalucia ... all it needed was Clint and an Ennio Morricone soundtrack.

And so another week went. It’s Wednesday now and I’m off on another tripette this afternoon: does it get any more rock and roll.

A slice of excitement though to finish on a high: those of you who thought you’d seen the back of me ‘til 2009, bad news I’m afraid. Heading back to the cold and drizzle and insects that are a normal size for a couple of months from mid-June. Was going to stay here but, alas, the VSO salary doesn’t allow for a huge amount of extravagance and I’d go mad if left alone for too long! Also everything is washed away and travel becomes close to impossible throughout the wet season. Ready the tickertape, dust off the bunting and get that calf fattening … failing that I’m always keen on a drink or two!