The contents of this blogging,
Are not quite what they seem.
Nor are they, I should probably say,
the features of a dream
With minutes in between myself
and hitting Paris, France,
En route to Northern Cameroon
I've a blogging boil to lance.
There's pent up chat that's welling up,
behind my sun burnt brow,
And trepidation oozing
like a waste product of 'cow'
Forgive this lit'ral effluent,
that decks this e-based journal,
And be so very grateful
that for you it's not diurnal.
One minute thirty seconds left
This internet's quite pricey,
And the Yates' Mighty Burger
Was, I think, a little Dicey.
The 'Roon it calls,
It's hours away, and so I must post ...
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
Ethereal Effluent
ethereal (1)light, airy, or tenuous; (2)extremely delicate or refined; (3)heavenly or celestial; (4)of or pertaining to the upper regions of space.
effluent (1) something that flows out or forth; outflow; effluence; (2)a stream flowing out of a lake, reservoir, etc; (4)sewage that has been treated in a septic tank or sewage treatment plant; (5)sewage or other liquid waste that is discharged into a body of water, etc.
The decision, to coin a phrase, is yours ...
Here I sit in the wilds of Dorset, a million miles from the hardships of the 'Roon surrounded by children from a host of nationalities whose sole concept of hardship is being told 'No'. The phonetically massacred refrain of "It's not fair" reverberates around the school and the smell of the unclean stalks the corridors waiting to leap out at the unprepared. The smell aside, I don't think I could be any further from Extremely Northern Cameroon.
Half way through the course and I have to admit to enjoying being back at work. I know that this isn't possibly the best preparation in the world, given that classes here are no bigger than 15 and there are more resources than anyone could wish to use in the space of a 4 week course, but at the same time it's been good to be back behind the wheel. 150+ students with 8 books between them and that on a good day is definitely going to be a little more of a challenge but then it wouldn't be the same if it wasn't.
It's weird to think that in less than a month I'll be back on the sand, grass and gastro-intestinal resident diet, this time with the added pleasure of the marvellous, magical Mrs Anopholes and her parasitic henchmen. Wet season = lying water = spawning grounds for voracious mosquitos and their insatiable apetites for destruction.
Somehow doesn't feel like it's me who's over there but then I suppose given that I'm not at the moment that's probably not that surprising ... doesn't actually feel like I was ever there. Needless to say, going back is going to be a little peculiar.
effluent (1) something that flows out or forth; outflow; effluence; (2)a stream flowing out of a lake, reservoir, etc; (4)sewage that has been treated in a septic tank or sewage treatment plant; (5)sewage or other liquid waste that is discharged into a body of water, etc.
The decision, to coin a phrase, is yours ...
Here I sit in the wilds of Dorset, a million miles from the hardships of the 'Roon surrounded by children from a host of nationalities whose sole concept of hardship is being told 'No'. The phonetically massacred refrain of "It's not fair" reverberates around the school and the smell of the unclean stalks the corridors waiting to leap out at the unprepared. The smell aside, I don't think I could be any further from Extremely Northern Cameroon.
Half way through the course and I have to admit to enjoying being back at work. I know that this isn't possibly the best preparation in the world, given that classes here are no bigger than 15 and there are more resources than anyone could wish to use in the space of a 4 week course, but at the same time it's been good to be back behind the wheel. 150+ students with 8 books between them and that on a good day is definitely going to be a little more of a challenge but then it wouldn't be the same if it wasn't.
It's weird to think that in less than a month I'll be back on the sand, grass and gastro-intestinal resident diet, this time with the added pleasure of the marvellous, magical Mrs Anopholes and her parasitic henchmen. Wet season = lying water = spawning grounds for voracious mosquitos and their insatiable apetites for destruction.
Somehow doesn't feel like it's me who's over there but then I suppose given that I'm not at the moment that's probably not that surprising ... doesn't actually feel like I was ever there. Needless to say, going back is going to be a little peculiar.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Stinky Green and Paris in the Sprung
It’s been far too long since I scribbled on this, my patch of virtual virality but here I am now so back in yer box, as they say.
Back to Blighty and back to a veritable downpour of deluges: the oft-dreamed of drizzle has started to become almost as tedious as the perpetual sunshine and when I’m beginning to feel like it might be my fault that this summer has yet to materialise. I apologise, just in case, but would like to point out that upper-atmospheric goings on are outside my remit.
The garland of partisanship that dangles round the Great British public’s neck for the proper noun that is The Wimbledon Fortnight (for which non-capitalisation is, ironically, a capital offence and punishable by hanging) already looks bedraggled: paper flowers don’t do well in the rain - they just go limp and lose their colour, much like the hopes of the nation especially now Mr Murray has had to pull out. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Tiger Tim (hear him roar ... ) pulled one out the bag and actually won: an instant knighthood, methinks, bestowed on court and almost certainly an instant fatwa care of the losing finalist’s countrymen.
Two-n-a-bit weeks into my return to green and pleasantness and it doesn’t actually feel like I ever went away ... little has changed but so much has. The uncertainty that stalked my pre-departure days has been replaced by a cynicism that has taken me a little by surprise although not anyone else it would seem! I don’t think I was deluded when I went out but perhaps I was self-deluded in my delusion that I wasn’t deluded.
With the benefit of a brain and body that have been chilled to a more sensible temperature and with the benefit of x thousand miles between me and there, as well as the chance to air my thoughts and feelings past people who aren’t so close to the woods as to have the bark pattern imprinted on their faces and squirrels taking up residence in their nostrils, I sometimes feel like I’m missing something.
“Anything can be made better by rubbing money on it”; thus spake if not the prophet then someone with a fairly astute take on the human condition. Money: the great panacea that salves our collective conscience and makes the patient feel like we’re on their side. Is it just me or is there something wrong there? Is it wrong that I disagree with the kind of development that involves throwing money at something and hoping it’ll sort itself out? I could rant and rave til I’m bluer than I already am ... if you want to discuss further, let me know and I’ll save the ranting for then.
Talking of Paris (and reminded of Milan) and comparing both with Edinburgh I have noticed, with some disappointment, quite how sterile the centre of the capital of Scottish culture is: how immaculately clean the streets are and how undaubed the walls. I know that in the less salubrious areas, where children are weaned onto a diet of saturated fats, nicotine and aerosol spray, graffiti is what gives the concrete its character but there does seem to be a distinct lack of what I like to call the Rrrr factor. Street art has its place and without it it's almost too quiet.
Compare, if you will, Paris:
Back to Blighty and back to a veritable downpour of deluges: the oft-dreamed of drizzle has started to become almost as tedious as the perpetual sunshine and when I’m beginning to feel like it might be my fault that this summer has yet to materialise. I apologise, just in case, but would like to point out that upper-atmospheric goings on are outside my remit.
The garland of partisanship that dangles round the Great British public’s neck for the proper noun that is The Wimbledon Fortnight (for which non-capitalisation is, ironically, a capital offence and punishable by hanging) already looks bedraggled: paper flowers don’t do well in the rain - they just go limp and lose their colour, much like the hopes of the nation especially now Mr Murray has had to pull out. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Tiger Tim (hear him roar ... ) pulled one out the bag and actually won: an instant knighthood, methinks, bestowed on court and almost certainly an instant fatwa care of the losing finalist’s countrymen.
Two-n-a-bit weeks into my return to green and pleasantness and it doesn’t actually feel like I ever went away ... little has changed but so much has. The uncertainty that stalked my pre-departure days has been replaced by a cynicism that has taken me a little by surprise although not anyone else it would seem! I don’t think I was deluded when I went out but perhaps I was self-deluded in my delusion that I wasn’t deluded.
With the benefit of a brain and body that have been chilled to a more sensible temperature and with the benefit of x thousand miles between me and there, as well as the chance to air my thoughts and feelings past people who aren’t so close to the woods as to have the bark pattern imprinted on their faces and squirrels taking up residence in their nostrils, I sometimes feel like I’m missing something.
“Anything can be made better by rubbing money on it”; thus spake if not the prophet then someone with a fairly astute take on the human condition. Money: the great panacea that salves our collective conscience and makes the patient feel like we’re on their side. Is it just me or is there something wrong there? Is it wrong that I disagree with the kind of development that involves throwing money at something and hoping it’ll sort itself out? I could rant and rave til I’m bluer than I already am ... if you want to discuss further, let me know and I’ll save the ranting for then.
Talking of Paris (and reminded of Milan) and comparing both with Edinburgh I have noticed, with some disappointment, quite how sterile the centre of the capital of Scottish culture is: how immaculately clean the streets are and how undaubed the walls. I know that in the less salubrious areas, where children are weaned onto a diet of saturated fats, nicotine and aerosol spray, graffiti is what gives the concrete its character but there does seem to be a distinct lack of what I like to call the Rrrr factor. Street art has its place and without it it's almost too quiet.
Compare, if you will, Paris:
Edinburgh:
I don’t know what it means, but Edinburgh feels like a show home whereas Paris feels lived in. Edinburgh still smells of paint and varnish and the bed is too tidily made to have been slept in. Paris smells of last night’s pizza and the bed is barely discernible from the detritus of life that is scattered around it.
Some would say I had too much time on my hands ... and they’re probably right.
It’s time to go and light the barbecue. If it starts to rain, I take full responsibility.
Monday, June 04, 2007
A well got goat.
Here I sit, 4 days from skipping this peculiar country for a couple of month's respite, light drizzle and products of porcine origin. It would be fair to say that I can't wait although there is an element of disappointment.
I'd planned on being here until 2009 with perhaps a sanity break back to temperate climes in the summer of '08 but the peculiar timing of my arrival and the lack of gainful employment of either body or mind since then have forced me to take drastic action. I considered hanging around and seeing the country but the rains are a-comin which means that all those bits I want to see are the wrong side of inaccessible, and what's more the VSO salary, hefty as it is for the simple home life I lead, doesn't stretch to even the most spartan of hostelries, especially once you factor in travel and sustenance. There isn't perhaps as much of me to sustain as there was in March but the Lockhart appetite is a voracious one as any one who has hosted one will atest.
And so I find myself tying up the ends that have worked their way loose over the last three months of mental and physical inertia, which basically means I'm not doing an awful lot apart from twiddling my now well developed thumbs and trying to summon the courage/willpower to clean my dust and insect ridden abode. A lizard of local make has recently moved in which does mean that the flies that insisted on using my house as a knocking shop and then promptly turning up their far too numeous toes, have been drastically reduced in number. The flip side of reduced insect 'life' is an upsurge in the amount of lizard poo one has to deal with; not a sentence I ever envisaged myself saying.
It's been a funny old three months that has seen the sheen of enthusiasm be rigorously buffed by the brillo pad of reality back to the base metal that makes up its all too common place core. Serious flaws have been exposed and flowers of rust are already blooming, but there's will and so there must, by default, be a way. Trying to overcome the hurdle that is 'folding stuff' and everyone who's in power's absolute obsession with it is going to take a man of greater stature than I, but at the same time there is hope. My director, for all his pontificating on life's greater questions, does have an almost violent aversion to corruption, but there is only so much he can do.
While the uniformed satraps that plague every move anyone makes in this country do their best to derail its stuttering development, there are good people out there trying to stick to the rules of life as the world sees them, but they are in a minority. Give a man a uniform and he'll want a little something on the side. You know things are bad when you have to bribe immigration officials to get an exit stamp.
Did I say bribe, I meant 'give a present to'; silly me, I must take more care over what I'm saying.
So much still awaits and there are so many opportunities that I'm looking forward to coming back and getting going. The previously mentioned penned letter received a response along the lines of 'tough, we've made up our minds' which was nice ... nice to know you're being supported in your decisions. Hey ho.
Sometimes it's like nailing jelly to a wall, othertimes it's even more infuriating and I haven't even started yet.
Sheesh!
The beast within needs appeasing; the voracious Lockhart appetite has stirred it's insatiable loins and is demanding a sacrifice. There's a man who sells a fine line in barbequed goat just along the road though don't think he's seen the map.
You may have noticed I've worked out how to add pictures ... gone are the days of the expansive monologue ... now you get visual sustenance too! Don't say I don't think of you!
I'd planned on being here until 2009 with perhaps a sanity break back to temperate climes in the summer of '08 but the peculiar timing of my arrival and the lack of gainful employment of either body or mind since then have forced me to take drastic action. I considered hanging around and seeing the country but the rains are a-comin which means that all those bits I want to see are the wrong side of inaccessible, and what's more the VSO salary, hefty as it is for the simple home life I lead, doesn't stretch to even the most spartan of hostelries, especially once you factor in travel and sustenance. There isn't perhaps as much of me to sustain as there was in March but the Lockhart appetite is a voracious one as any one who has hosted one will atest.
And so I find myself tying up the ends that have worked their way loose over the last three months of mental and physical inertia, which basically means I'm not doing an awful lot apart from twiddling my now well developed thumbs and trying to summon the courage/willpower to clean my dust and insect ridden abode. A lizard of local make has recently moved in which does mean that the flies that insisted on using my house as a knocking shop and then promptly turning up their far too numeous toes, have been drastically reduced in number. The flip side of reduced insect 'life' is an upsurge in the amount of lizard poo one has to deal with; not a sentence I ever envisaged myself saying.
It's been a funny old three months that has seen the sheen of enthusiasm be rigorously buffed by the brillo pad of reality back to the base metal that makes up its all too common place core. Serious flaws have been exposed and flowers of rust are already blooming, but there's will and so there must, by default, be a way. Trying to overcome the hurdle that is 'folding stuff' and everyone who's in power's absolute obsession with it is going to take a man of greater stature than I, but at the same time there is hope. My director, for all his pontificating on life's greater questions, does have an almost violent aversion to corruption, but there is only so much he can do.
While the uniformed satraps that plague every move anyone makes in this country do their best to derail its stuttering development, there are good people out there trying to stick to the rules of life as the world sees them, but they are in a minority. Give a man a uniform and he'll want a little something on the side. You know things are bad when you have to bribe immigration officials to get an exit stamp.
Did I say bribe, I meant 'give a present to'; silly me, I must take more care over what I'm saying.
So much still awaits and there are so many opportunities that I'm looking forward to coming back and getting going. The previously mentioned penned letter received a response along the lines of 'tough, we've made up our minds' which was nice ... nice to know you're being supported in your decisions. Hey ho.
Sometimes it's like nailing jelly to a wall, othertimes it's even more infuriating and I haven't even started yet.
Sheesh!
The beast within needs appeasing; the voracious Lockhart appetite has stirred it's insatiable loins and is demanding a sacrifice. There's a man who sells a fine line in barbequed goat just along the road though don't think he's seen the map.
You may have noticed I've worked out how to add pictures ... gone are the days of the expansive monologue ... now you get visual sustenance too! Don't say I don't think of you!
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.
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'.
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!
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!
Sunday, April 22, 2007
A week attempt ...
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.
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.
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 *
Saturday, March 24, 2007
"Ever pull the wings off a fly? Care to see the fly get even?"*
So here I am. Again. It's the end of the first week of 'work' and the size of the job in hand is, well, a little bit intimidating.
A wise man, unbearded, once said, "anyone can eat an elephant, it's just a matter of how you go about it," and what we've got here is a positively planetary pachyderm. All I've got is a plastic handled fork, whose tines are made of the weakest metal known to man and whose handle has already fallen off. Some would say I had a challenge on my hands, others would stick their head in a bucket of lard. There are others still who would compose a sea shanty and mallemaroke their way around northern latitudes.
The first group would be those closest to the mark, though the jury is still in session, and if I see any Right Whales I'll be sure to let you know.
This week has been a week of firsts. I could list them but it would be a little on the boring side; suffice to say, there were many of them and they ranged in excitement from the first warts'n'all use of the latrine to the first pursuit of monster centipedes from the premises. The latter did not enduce the former but had the former not preceeded the latter then the latter's desire to scale my leg may well have had such an effect. If you catch my drift.
The vultures have been conspicous in their absence, in the same way that a praying mantis who guards my door by night has not been. And the flies must have been in cahoots with the daddy longlegs.
What indeed is the plural of daddy longlegs? Is it daddys longlegs, making sure not to throw in a rogue apostophe; that's to say is it of the same plural class as mothers-in-law. Nothing derogatory meant there, just happens to be the only one I can think of at the moment.
The house is decorated as best I can with the tools available to me and I've been blown away by the sheer amount of dust. People in glass houses should, quite obviously, be discouraged from lobbing lumps of rock around. People in concrete floored houses shouldn't even consider walking about them unless they make Legolas look positively leaden footed. At the current rate of erosion, I reckon I'll be through the earth's mantle by about Tuesday next.
Why the elephant? Well having spent the last week observing my colleagues, their charges and generally being absorbed my scholastic life here, there are so many things to note and areas that can be changed, that it's impossible to know where to start. The fact that there are not jobs for those children who do go through the whole education system is, possibly, one of the fundamental problems, but the others seem all that more important, and that little bit easier to address.
My job is not one of culture change. By that I mean culture with a capital C. There's changing culture and there's changing Culture. One is what makes us British instead of for example French. The other is what makes us, we, the global north understand that gender, colour, religion, race or creed are wrappers (of 'brownpaperpackagingtiedupwithstring' as opposed to 'gangsta' variety) and nothing more.
The border is both broad and blurred and comes bound up in a sea of varying shades of grey. You say /tə'meɪteʊ/ I say /tə'mɑ:teʊ/ etc etc.
I am somewhere in that big sea of bluriness. There are things which I want to change but know that to try and do so would take someone a lot greater than me. In fact it would take an entire nation and would probably take the form of a bloody and violent coup.
Before I got here I had been told, and was generally of the impression that, the children here enjoyed school, wanted to be there and, therefore, were hungry to learn; were hungry for an education; an education to help them progress through life, to get them out of the interminable daily grind of wondering whether this meal would be their last. Yes they want to be at school but they're not there for the learning. They're there because if they weren't they'd be watching over a flock of sheep. They're there because their friends are too and they can avoid taking on any responsibility until they find someone/two/three/four to marry and have children with.
The school itself is a secondary school, which according to the law of the land, is for children aged between 11 and 14. Some of them are nearer 20, and at least one of them is married and expecting her third child. How do I know this? She's my neighbour and she very kindly - in a moment of grave concern at my lack of wife and offspring - offered to give me one of her children, should this next crop be twins.
For the girls they go to school because the laws regarding the rights of the child and the millennium development goals state that, and I paraphrase, by 2015 all children will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. They're not there because they want to be, or have huge career aspirations, they're there because a well meaning bureaucrat said they should be. They're there to tick the box marked "Girls receiving primary education". For many, as soon as the senior male in the family decides it's time that they were married, that's what they'll be. Baby making machines, consigned to a lot against which they have no voice. A vicious circle that ensures that they never benefit from 'development'.
The question: Is this culture with a small c or a big one? Is it both? Where, as I said, do I start?
I could go on and on and on and on, but I won't, partly because there's so much to say that this already monologous (is that a word?) diatribe is already getting out of control, but also it makes the beast seem that much more indigestible.
Just to say that there are a huge number of challenges in front of me. Some of them I hope I can help CES de Godola and the town itself overcome. Others are going to take generations. The first morsels of elephant will soon, I hope, start to slip down. A nice chianti wouldn't go amiss, but a cold beer is what beckons and so it is to that that I shall go.
Elephant season doesn't start til September ... that's when the gloves come off and the 'real work' starts. It's a task of Sisyphan proportions and I'm well aware of my own limitations. I know too that the smallest things are going to make a barely discernible difference ... but they might just start something.
But at the same time, and I quote ...
"J: All right, I'm in, 'cos there's some next level shit going on and I'm OK with that. But before y'all go beaming me up there's one thing you gotta remember: You chose me ... so you recognised the skills. So I don't want nobody calling me son or kid or sport or nothing like that. Cool?
K: Cool. Whatever you say, slick. But I need to tell you something about all your skills: As of right now, they mean precisely ... dick."*
I know how he feels.
* The quotes are both from Men in Black ... Quite possibly the best film ever. I know many of you will disagree, but ya-boo sucks to you.
A wise man, unbearded, once said, "anyone can eat an elephant, it's just a matter of how you go about it," and what we've got here is a positively planetary pachyderm. All I've got is a plastic handled fork, whose tines are made of the weakest metal known to man and whose handle has already fallen off. Some would say I had a challenge on my hands, others would stick their head in a bucket of lard. There are others still who would compose a sea shanty and mallemaroke their way around northern latitudes.
The first group would be those closest to the mark, though the jury is still in session, and if I see any Right Whales I'll be sure to let you know.
This week has been a week of firsts. I could list them but it would be a little on the boring side; suffice to say, there were many of them and they ranged in excitement from the first warts'n'all use of the latrine to the first pursuit of monster centipedes from the premises. The latter did not enduce the former but had the former not preceeded the latter then the latter's desire to scale my leg may well have had such an effect. If you catch my drift.
The vultures have been conspicous in their absence, in the same way that a praying mantis who guards my door by night has not been. And the flies must have been in cahoots with the daddy longlegs.
What indeed is the plural of daddy longlegs? Is it daddys longlegs, making sure not to throw in a rogue apostophe; that's to say is it of the same plural class as mothers-in-law. Nothing derogatory meant there, just happens to be the only one I can think of at the moment.
The house is decorated as best I can with the tools available to me and I've been blown away by the sheer amount of dust. People in glass houses should, quite obviously, be discouraged from lobbing lumps of rock around. People in concrete floored houses shouldn't even consider walking about them unless they make Legolas look positively leaden footed. At the current rate of erosion, I reckon I'll be through the earth's mantle by about Tuesday next.
Why the elephant? Well having spent the last week observing my colleagues, their charges and generally being absorbed my scholastic life here, there are so many things to note and areas that can be changed, that it's impossible to know where to start. The fact that there are not jobs for those children who do go through the whole education system is, possibly, one of the fundamental problems, but the others seem all that more important, and that little bit easier to address.
My job is not one of culture change. By that I mean culture with a capital C. There's changing culture and there's changing Culture. One is what makes us British instead of for example French. The other is what makes us, we, the global north understand that gender, colour, religion, race or creed are wrappers (of 'brownpaperpackagingtiedupwithstring' as opposed to 'gangsta' variety) and nothing more.
The border is both broad and blurred and comes bound up in a sea of varying shades of grey. You say /tə'meɪteʊ/ I say /tə'mɑ:teʊ/ etc etc.
I am somewhere in that big sea of bluriness. There are things which I want to change but know that to try and do so would take someone a lot greater than me. In fact it would take an entire nation and would probably take the form of a bloody and violent coup.
Before I got here I had been told, and was generally of the impression that, the children here enjoyed school, wanted to be there and, therefore, were hungry to learn; were hungry for an education; an education to help them progress through life, to get them out of the interminable daily grind of wondering whether this meal would be their last. Yes they want to be at school but they're not there for the learning. They're there because if they weren't they'd be watching over a flock of sheep. They're there because their friends are too and they can avoid taking on any responsibility until they find someone/two/three/four to marry and have children with.
The school itself is a secondary school, which according to the law of the land, is for children aged between 11 and 14. Some of them are nearer 20, and at least one of them is married and expecting her third child. How do I know this? She's my neighbour and she very kindly - in a moment of grave concern at my lack of wife and offspring - offered to give me one of her children, should this next crop be twins.
For the girls they go to school because the laws regarding the rights of the child and the millennium development goals state that, and I paraphrase, by 2015 all children will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. They're not there because they want to be, or have huge career aspirations, they're there because a well meaning bureaucrat said they should be. They're there to tick the box marked "Girls receiving primary education". For many, as soon as the senior male in the family decides it's time that they were married, that's what they'll be. Baby making machines, consigned to a lot against which they have no voice. A vicious circle that ensures that they never benefit from 'development'.
The question: Is this culture with a small c or a big one? Is it both? Where, as I said, do I start?
I could go on and on and on and on, but I won't, partly because there's so much to say that this already monologous (is that a word?) diatribe is already getting out of control, but also it makes the beast seem that much more indigestible.
Just to say that there are a huge number of challenges in front of me. Some of them I hope I can help CES de Godola and the town itself overcome. Others are going to take generations. The first morsels of elephant will soon, I hope, start to slip down. A nice chianti wouldn't go amiss, but a cold beer is what beckons and so it is to that that I shall go.
Elephant season doesn't start til September ... that's when the gloves come off and the 'real work' starts. It's a task of Sisyphan proportions and I'm well aware of my own limitations. I know too that the smallest things are going to make a barely discernible difference ... but they might just start something.
But at the same time, and I quote ...
"J: All right, I'm in, 'cos there's some next level shit going on and I'm OK with that. But before y'all go beaming me up there's one thing you gotta remember: You chose me ... so you recognised the skills. So I don't want nobody calling me son or kid or sport or nothing like that. Cool?
K: Cool. Whatever you say, slick. But I need to tell you something about all your skills: As of right now, they mean precisely ... dick."*
I know how he feels.
* The quotes are both from Men in Black ... Quite possibly the best film ever. I know many of you will disagree, but ya-boo sucks to you.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Back again so soon?
Yes, indeed I am ... after one solitary night in Godola I discovered there were a whole list of things on my list of things not to forget that I had as it happens forgotten. Not just that but there were also no end of things that I hadn't even thought of that I suddenly find I need, and things too which I bought but just need more of ... it's terribly confusing, not very exciting but thought you should know none the less.
Also there was a phonecall that needed to be made: I have reception in my house, but only it seems for 3 seconds at a time and assuming the wind is blowing in the right direction. Text messages get to me but phonecalls get lost in the heat. Who can blame them! +237 9161764 should you be interested. Can't promise responses to texts but I'll try and include you in my emailing duties as and when I can fulfil them.
So, yes, the first night. And what a night it was. Actually it was the whole day really but the night was infinitely more peculiar.
Had what could be described as 'one of those days' yesterday when everything seemed to go wrong. Not badly wrong just wrong enough for you to realise after the 7th little bit wrong thing that it was going to be one of those days, sighing resignedly and letting it take its course.
The journey there in the front of a truck whose miopic driver seemed to manage to avoid missing any of the 38million pot-holes on the road twixt here, Maroua, and there, Godola. Officious army/police types waved us over in the hope of a little baksheesh but whatever was said appeased his uniformed ego and he let us go ... perhaps it was a warning that Saturday 17th March was going to be 'one of those days'.
Got to the house, unloaded the kit and was left with a small shabbily dressed man who was assigned sweeper and general cleanser of future abode. He did as his job suggested, helped arrange the furniture and so I was left.
A breif description me thinks wouldn't go amiss, but then again ... two rooms, one big the other not so. White walls in and out with a metal roof. External latrine is used by me and the family in the other building on the compound and is going to take some getting used to, to say the least. Kitchen consists of a gas bottle with a hob attached to the top, a fridge and a large metal water filter that is going to be working incredibly hard for the next couple of years! And that is about that. A few chairs, a table, a bed, a couple of cupboards ... actually it's almost luxurious in many ways.
Met the neighbour, or rather Mrs Neighbour and her progeny ... two small and smiley things of the female persuasion who parrot everything I say and spend most of their time staring wide-eyed at my obscure, almost ghostly drifting around what is effectively their garden! Mrs Neighbour said she'd show me how to whistle up some Cameroonian fare and also to tell me what's what. When Mr N got home, we did our intros and then they very kindly fed me. Not sure if they knew that my fridge was empty but the gesture was accepted whole-heartedly.
And then the boss rocked up.
There I was thinking "I'll get used to this" and he appeared, gave me the standard security chat which achieved little but to scare me shitless. All those friendly people I'd seen in town that afternoon became ax wielding maniacs with designs on my life and various parts of my anatomy. They were all gun-toting weirdos with no consideration for the sanctity of human life and were all lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to turn out the light and then they'd strike.
No sooner had I turned out the light than they struck.
Imaginary foes are the worst of all and as I leapt out of bed, armed to the teeth with my leatherman, unlocked the door and hurled myself at the imaginary foe in the living room I felt a little ridiculous. Strange house, strange noises, strange town surrounded by strangers ... I think it's alright to be a little on edge! Imaginary foe slain, normality resumed until 5 o'clock when it sounded like someone was trying to get in through the roof.
Leapt out of bed, armed to the teeth again, looked out the window to see a dazed looking vulture who'd clearly done a less than graceful landing on hot corrugated iron and then slid off. Not sure whether it's a good thing to have vultures providing your morning call but I guess it's better to see them than not!
And so there we go ... back in town, this time on the back of a moto-taxi and with a helmet full of millet seed. Got hit by a man going the wrong way with a bag of millet ... him that is, not me. Bag split and he filled my crash helmet with seeds ...
More wiffle, more waffle and a whole load of piffle to go with it. This'll be my last for a while I imagine. Think you've got enough to be getting on with though!
Must dash, the vultures are waiting.
Also there was a phonecall that needed to be made: I have reception in my house, but only it seems for 3 seconds at a time and assuming the wind is blowing in the right direction. Text messages get to me but phonecalls get lost in the heat. Who can blame them! +237 9161764 should you be interested. Can't promise responses to texts but I'll try and include you in my emailing duties as and when I can fulfil them.
So, yes, the first night. And what a night it was. Actually it was the whole day really but the night was infinitely more peculiar.
Had what could be described as 'one of those days' yesterday when everything seemed to go wrong. Not badly wrong just wrong enough for you to realise after the 7th little bit wrong thing that it was going to be one of those days, sighing resignedly and letting it take its course.
The journey there in the front of a truck whose miopic driver seemed to manage to avoid missing any of the 38million pot-holes on the road twixt here, Maroua, and there, Godola. Officious army/police types waved us over in the hope of a little baksheesh but whatever was said appeased his uniformed ego and he let us go ... perhaps it was a warning that Saturday 17th March was going to be 'one of those days'.
Got to the house, unloaded the kit and was left with a small shabbily dressed man who was assigned sweeper and general cleanser of future abode. He did as his job suggested, helped arrange the furniture and so I was left.
A breif description me thinks wouldn't go amiss, but then again ... two rooms, one big the other not so. White walls in and out with a metal roof. External latrine is used by me and the family in the other building on the compound and is going to take some getting used to, to say the least. Kitchen consists of a gas bottle with a hob attached to the top, a fridge and a large metal water filter that is going to be working incredibly hard for the next couple of years! And that is about that. A few chairs, a table, a bed, a couple of cupboards ... actually it's almost luxurious in many ways.
Met the neighbour, or rather Mrs Neighbour and her progeny ... two small and smiley things of the female persuasion who parrot everything I say and spend most of their time staring wide-eyed at my obscure, almost ghostly drifting around what is effectively their garden! Mrs Neighbour said she'd show me how to whistle up some Cameroonian fare and also to tell me what's what. When Mr N got home, we did our intros and then they very kindly fed me. Not sure if they knew that my fridge was empty but the gesture was accepted whole-heartedly.
And then the boss rocked up.
There I was thinking "I'll get used to this" and he appeared, gave me the standard security chat which achieved little but to scare me shitless. All those friendly people I'd seen in town that afternoon became ax wielding maniacs with designs on my life and various parts of my anatomy. They were all gun-toting weirdos with no consideration for the sanctity of human life and were all lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to turn out the light and then they'd strike.
No sooner had I turned out the light than they struck.
Imaginary foes are the worst of all and as I leapt out of bed, armed to the teeth with my leatherman, unlocked the door and hurled myself at the imaginary foe in the living room I felt a little ridiculous. Strange house, strange noises, strange town surrounded by strangers ... I think it's alright to be a little on edge! Imaginary foe slain, normality resumed until 5 o'clock when it sounded like someone was trying to get in through the roof.
Leapt out of bed, armed to the teeth again, looked out the window to see a dazed looking vulture who'd clearly done a less than graceful landing on hot corrugated iron and then slid off. Not sure whether it's a good thing to have vultures providing your morning call but I guess it's better to see them than not!
And so there we go ... back in town, this time on the back of a moto-taxi and with a helmet full of millet seed. Got hit by a man going the wrong way with a bag of millet ... him that is, not me. Bag split and he filled my crash helmet with seeds ...
More wiffle, more waffle and a whole load of piffle to go with it. This'll be my last for a while I imagine. Think you've got enough to be getting on with though!
Must dash, the vultures are waiting.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
On second thoughts, perhaps not: it is a silly place.
Virgin Hair Fertiliser ... need I say more. If anyone has any ideas as to what this does or is do let me know. Answers on a postcard.
Here I sit for the ultimate publication prior to scootling from this hotbed of baptist fervour destination Godola and the building I am to call 'home' for the foreseeable future. It's got walls and a roof and an external toilet as the brochure said it would and so I have little about which to grumble.
As I cast my eyes around the room for inspiration as to what to write I feel that the meagre visual fare on offer, were you able to see it, would not fill you with the anticipation I aspire to provoke in you, my reading public. To my left is a picture of what looks like a man of good intention being distracted by Mr Magic Hands himself from intervening in a street brawl involving nothing but men on crutches. There's loo roll scattered over the baked earth floor and someone seems to have lost his shoes ... answers on a postcard again? Perhaps a letter would be better.
So, yes, I leave tomorrow. This week has been as weird and disjointed in many ways as last week. Having got here on Friday late and having seen the placement and met the boss, the rest of the time was ours to kill. All very well and good except neither of us, me or my travelling companionette, had any idea where we were or what there was to do. After the security briefing in Yaounde that basically told us never to leave the hotel after dark as the kindly street folk we saw by day turned into vampirous murders as soon as the sun set, we were understandably loathe to leave the comfort of our respective dorm rooms. I may err towards the 'XL' section of pret a porter clothing emporia but I don't need five beds all to myself. Perhaps they were allowing for my permitted 4 wives.
Were it not for a current volunteer rocking up early evening with an invite to dine with a handful of other volunteers we would have been at, what many would describe as, "a loose end". Dine we did and it was good to meet some of the others who will be constituting the social scene for various amounts of time twixt now and '09. Joined various of their number for a dip on Sunday - of the chlorinated as opposed to Cream cheese and chives variety - which involved taking my first Moto-Taxi, the preferred mode of transport round these parts: a small and not fast motorcycle.
Nobody wears helmets except for me it seems, and in my excitement at having mastered the transport system so adeptly I sat just close enough to the driver to ensure that every time he touched the brakes I nutted him. Whether or not he noticed history didn't relate. He looked a little dazed when I got off but then again he looked a little dazed when I got on. Apparently it's not totally unknown for them to be stoned out of their skulls on one of any number of mind-altering substances.
Monday through today has largely been spent 'discovering' the heart and soul of this, the capital of extremely northern Cameroon either physically, geographically, gastronomically or, indeed, morally. The last of these has been by word of mouth and region specific briefing; the rest on foot, or Moto-taxi where necessary.
Some of the tales have been jaw-dropping it has to be said. Most memorable has to have been our gender briefing. For those of you who are as confused as I was when I saw this on the timetable, we're not being told what gender we are but how what gender one is, in this melting pot of cultures and beliefs, can have a seriously detrimental effect on your life.
In a country where "Is this is a polygamous marriage? Y/N" is one of the questions on the marriage certificate, it doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to realise that, for the most part, that second X chromosome is a burden that would break the strongest of backs. There are of course exceptions, people who escaped the vicious cycle of childhood marriages to men 40 years their senior, or 'selling' themselves to their teachers to get better grades, but in this vast and multifaceted country and in this its most nomadic region, they are few and far between.
Part of my remit is to start an after school club for girls to encourage them to continue to the end of secondary education, here in a country when most of them consider themselves on the shelf if they're not married by 16. I've got to try and encourage their continued education in a country as a whole with very few female role models, not only that but also to get them to try and persuade their younger female siblings to do the same. The sad thing is, the generation I'm teaching will not be the ones who reap the rewards if indeed there are any. Their children may benefit, but in a country where surviving today is the challenge and tomorrow can wait it would be fair to say we've all got our work cut out.
Where do you start? I've no idea ... you can add the answer to that as a P.S. Incidentally, the best address for those who feel the urge/need ...
c/o VSO
B.P. 1004 Maroua
Extreme Nord
Cameroon
Djam Waala, as they say.
Here I sit for the ultimate publication prior to scootling from this hotbed of baptist fervour destination Godola and the building I am to call 'home' for the foreseeable future. It's got walls and a roof and an external toilet as the brochure said it would and so I have little about which to grumble.
As I cast my eyes around the room for inspiration as to what to write I feel that the meagre visual fare on offer, were you able to see it, would not fill you with the anticipation I aspire to provoke in you, my reading public. To my left is a picture of what looks like a man of good intention being distracted by Mr Magic Hands himself from intervening in a street brawl involving nothing but men on crutches. There's loo roll scattered over the baked earth floor and someone seems to have lost his shoes ... answers on a postcard again? Perhaps a letter would be better.
So, yes, I leave tomorrow. This week has been as weird and disjointed in many ways as last week. Having got here on Friday late and having seen the placement and met the boss, the rest of the time was ours to kill. All very well and good except neither of us, me or my travelling companionette, had any idea where we were or what there was to do. After the security briefing in Yaounde that basically told us never to leave the hotel after dark as the kindly street folk we saw by day turned into vampirous murders as soon as the sun set, we were understandably loathe to leave the comfort of our respective dorm rooms. I may err towards the 'XL' section of pret a porter clothing emporia but I don't need five beds all to myself. Perhaps they were allowing for my permitted 4 wives.
Were it not for a current volunteer rocking up early evening with an invite to dine with a handful of other volunteers we would have been at, what many would describe as, "a loose end". Dine we did and it was good to meet some of the others who will be constituting the social scene for various amounts of time twixt now and '09. Joined various of their number for a dip on Sunday - of the chlorinated as opposed to Cream cheese and chives variety - which involved taking my first Moto-Taxi, the preferred mode of transport round these parts: a small and not fast motorcycle.
Nobody wears helmets except for me it seems, and in my excitement at having mastered the transport system so adeptly I sat just close enough to the driver to ensure that every time he touched the brakes I nutted him. Whether or not he noticed history didn't relate. He looked a little dazed when I got off but then again he looked a little dazed when I got on. Apparently it's not totally unknown for them to be stoned out of their skulls on one of any number of mind-altering substances.
Monday through today has largely been spent 'discovering' the heart and soul of this, the capital of extremely northern Cameroon either physically, geographically, gastronomically or, indeed, morally. The last of these has been by word of mouth and region specific briefing; the rest on foot, or Moto-taxi where necessary.
Some of the tales have been jaw-dropping it has to be said. Most memorable has to have been our gender briefing. For those of you who are as confused as I was when I saw this on the timetable, we're not being told what gender we are but how what gender one is, in this melting pot of cultures and beliefs, can have a seriously detrimental effect on your life.
In a country where "Is this is a polygamous marriage? Y/N" is one of the questions on the marriage certificate, it doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to realise that, for the most part, that second X chromosome is a burden that would break the strongest of backs. There are of course exceptions, people who escaped the vicious cycle of childhood marriages to men 40 years their senior, or 'selling' themselves to their teachers to get better grades, but in this vast and multifaceted country and in this its most nomadic region, they are few and far between.
Part of my remit is to start an after school club for girls to encourage them to continue to the end of secondary education, here in a country when most of them consider themselves on the shelf if they're not married by 16. I've got to try and encourage their continued education in a country as a whole with very few female role models, not only that but also to get them to try and persuade their younger female siblings to do the same. The sad thing is, the generation I'm teaching will not be the ones who reap the rewards if indeed there are any. Their children may benefit, but in a country where surviving today is the challenge and tomorrow can wait it would be fair to say we've all got our work cut out.
Where do you start? I've no idea ... you can add the answer to that as a P.S. Incidentally, the best address for those who feel the urge/need ...
c/o VSO
B.P. 1004 Maroua
Extreme Nord
Cameroon
Djam Waala, as they say.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Best put the kettle on ... I may be some time.
What we've got here is ... failure to communicate.
Actually as you can probably tell that is far from the problem! Far too much communication many would say and I'm sure they'd probably be right. It's not my fault. Too much time on my own means I get a huge build up of words which I just have to get out the system ... the result is often messy and I apologise.
So here I am. Another Saturday another change of location. Next saturday sees another move, or at least the back of another move, and then I will be there. That's to say Godola. The location of my latest vocation. Met the boss today and what a charming chap he was ... if only all future bosses were that enthusiastic I feel that the world would be a better place. As I baffled him with my dodgy french he just shook me by the hand and kept shaking.
On Friday Godola becomes home and then dot dot dot
Sitting here in the Cameroonian Baptist Mission, Maroua, regional capital of the Extreme North and there's almost too much to say! Yaounde, the capital, was hot and humid and noisy and smelly and hazy and crowded and bustling and bursting and intimidating and fast paced. When we got on the train surrounded by all that, as well as hundreds of porters screaming for our business, Maroua seemed like a foreign country and to be fair that's about the sum of it. Heat aside this is a different country.
16 hours on the train which started by pulling through the kinds of areas that tourists never see; where resourcefulness is the difference between existing and shuffling from this mortal coil. People squeezed into the strangest of places, their only source of water a fetid pool of the kind that if you were to look at it for too long you'd probably contract something: a raw cholera based infusion of typhoid and dysentry evaporating from mosquito ridden pits ... Houses perched over railway lines, boardered by mountains of rubbish, the cast offs of someone elses life. Families one on top of the other, their clothes still as clean and vibrant as the day they were bought ... I've only been here a week and everything's already taken on an orange hue.
Everyone tells you that Yaounde is in a jungle but it's only when you leave that you understand the truth of this statement. It really is a jungle. Massive trees with car sized leaves; the deafening sound of a thousand courting insects and the sudden disappearance of the smell of pollution that abounds in the centre of town.
One thing I have noticed and which I feel I should share for the benefit of the masses is that night here doesn't so much fall as collapse. One minute it's dusk and the next nothing. Evening is a but a moment between day and night, and I mean literally a moment ... blink and you miss it, either that or think you've gone blind. The stars though ... wow. There is something incredibly comforting about the stars and oh my god are there a lot of them. In all my wanderings I've always found it vaguely reassuring to know that those self same stars I can see in Scotland, assuming I don't stray south of the equator, are there looking down on me pretty much anywhere else. Orion's belt may be a little skewed and the man himself struggling with the concept of upright but he's very much there ... when everything else is of the hang a left at the lights variety, it's nice to know that somethings are still the same.
With morning comes more difference. The jungle has made way for vast tracts of open savannah ... trees scattered here and there, villages similarly so. Settlements spawned by the "chemin de fer" ... restaurants and shops down either side. They may only have one car a day but it brings a lot of trade. Honey, fish, baton de manioc, even people looking for empty bottles. In India they serve tea in the most delicate clay cups you're mind can cope with. Not so here but the people look frighteningly familiar.
24 hours later we arrive: Maroua. And it's like a different country. The noise has gone and been replaced by silence. The smell is no longer the smell of people and their lives, of cars and their exhausts of the city. The smell is more akin to the smack in the face so favoured by the John Lewis's of this world, but then over the smell of rotting meat and humanity give me Jonelle any day.
The landscape is definitely not jungle ... Baobabs appear where they can and life goes on. Time means next to nothing which is the way it should be. Cameroon knows that she can't control time and so in mutual respect they doff their hats and continue on their way. Cameroon doesn't control time, nor does time control Cameroon.
It's all still a great big adventure waiting to happen and there'll be more cranial effluent where this came from ...
Carry on!
P.S. For those of you wondering why the first edition of this was quite so unformatted, and why the one below was originally all italics, the computer I was using didn't like publishing, so I had to email it ... think I probably did something wrong ... boh!
Actually as you can probably tell that is far from the problem! Far too much communication many would say and I'm sure they'd probably be right. It's not my fault. Too much time on my own means I get a huge build up of words which I just have to get out the system ... the result is often messy and I apologise.
So here I am. Another Saturday another change of location. Next saturday sees another move, or at least the back of another move, and then I will be there. That's to say Godola. The location of my latest vocation. Met the boss today and what a charming chap he was ... if only all future bosses were that enthusiastic I feel that the world would be a better place. As I baffled him with my dodgy french he just shook me by the hand and kept shaking.
On Friday Godola becomes home and then dot dot dot
Sitting here in the Cameroonian Baptist Mission, Maroua, regional capital of the Extreme North and there's almost too much to say! Yaounde, the capital, was hot and humid and noisy and smelly and hazy and crowded and bustling and bursting and intimidating and fast paced. When we got on the train surrounded by all that, as well as hundreds of porters screaming for our business, Maroua seemed like a foreign country and to be fair that's about the sum of it. Heat aside this is a different country.
16 hours on the train which started by pulling through the kinds of areas that tourists never see; where resourcefulness is the difference between existing and shuffling from this mortal coil. People squeezed into the strangest of places, their only source of water a fetid pool of the kind that if you were to look at it for too long you'd probably contract something: a raw cholera based infusion of typhoid and dysentry evaporating from mosquito ridden pits ... Houses perched over railway lines, boardered by mountains of rubbish, the cast offs of someone elses life. Families one on top of the other, their clothes still as clean and vibrant as the day they were bought ... I've only been here a week and everything's already taken on an orange hue.
Everyone tells you that Yaounde is in a jungle but it's only when you leave that you understand the truth of this statement. It really is a jungle. Massive trees with car sized leaves; the deafening sound of a thousand courting insects and the sudden disappearance of the smell of pollution that abounds in the centre of town.
One thing I have noticed and which I feel I should share for the benefit of the masses is that night here doesn't so much fall as collapse. One minute it's dusk and the next nothing. Evening is a but a moment between day and night, and I mean literally a moment ... blink and you miss it, either that or think you've gone blind. The stars though ... wow. There is something incredibly comforting about the stars and oh my god are there a lot of them. In all my wanderings I've always found it vaguely reassuring to know that those self same stars I can see in Scotland, assuming I don't stray south of the equator, are there looking down on me pretty much anywhere else. Orion's belt may be a little skewed and the man himself struggling with the concept of upright but he's very much there ... when everything else is of the hang a left at the lights variety, it's nice to know that somethings are still the same.
With morning comes more difference. The jungle has made way for vast tracts of open savannah ... trees scattered here and there, villages similarly so. Settlements spawned by the "chemin de fer" ... restaurants and shops down either side. They may only have one car a day but it brings a lot of trade. Honey, fish, baton de manioc, even people looking for empty bottles. In India they serve tea in the most delicate clay cups you're mind can cope with. Not so here but the people look frighteningly familiar.
24 hours later we arrive: Maroua. And it's like a different country. The noise has gone and been replaced by silence. The smell is no longer the smell of people and their lives, of cars and their exhausts of the city. The smell is more akin to the smack in the face so favoured by the John Lewis's of this world, but then over the smell of rotting meat and humanity give me Jonelle any day.
The landscape is definitely not jungle ... Baobabs appear where they can and life goes on. Time means next to nothing which is the way it should be. Cameroon knows that she can't control time and so in mutual respect they doff their hats and continue on their way. Cameroon doesn't control time, nor does time control Cameroon.
It's all still a great big adventure waiting to happen and there'll be more cranial effluent where this came from ...
Carry on!
P.S. For those of you wondering why the first edition of this was quite so unformatted, and why the one below was originally all italics, the computer I was using didn't like publishing, so I had to email it ... think I probably did something wrong ... boh!
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
And so it begins ...
The sleeves are rolled down, I've doused myself in deet and have braved the swarms of mozis and, more surprisingly, bats - not little ones, great big fruit bats and literally thousands of them - to find myself firmly wedged in the middle of a trio of transatlantic types who've just had the good grace to inform me and the rest of this particularly hot and sweaty part of Africa that "No Scrubs" by that bastion of R & B brilliance, TLC, is without doubt their combined favourite track when it comes to number one songs to hear in a taxi.
What, by the way, is yours? What do you mean you don't have one?
'Perplexed' is, you'll be glad to hear, the word of the day. 'Discombobulated' was vying for a position at the top of the chart but my no(i)sy transatlantic neighbours may have taken umbrage at its syllable count and we don't want to go around upsetting people willy-nilly or we might force them do something they'll come to regret.
I shouldn't really be surprised to be fair. Not about them doing something they might come to regret but about the omnipresent bamboozlement. The omens were not that auspicious: by which I mean that my journey began with a conspicuously unintentional couple of laps around the visual delight that is Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2. Got the distinct impression that the pilot was looking for a parking space nearer the terminal but, as is so often the case, the only free one was everything but. Thankfully all was not lost. He did find one somewhere near the Belgian border. (An ex-employee of Michael O'Leary's perhaps ... old habits die hard.)
A mad dash ensued as time was something of the essence and so it was I parked my dainty hind-quarters in a sea of Saga-esque norweigan types whose female components sported such variety in the hair highlighting department that it looked as if they had been set upon by a gang of poster-paint wielding delinquents.
Question: Why is it that people who choose to sit in anything but aisle seats have the smallest bladders? And more to the point, what exactly did they find to do in the 14 hours they had sitting in the departure lounge? Is there something wrong with terrestrial toilet facilities that they feel they can only wee when they're in international airspace. Perhaps it's some kind of Duty Free thing. Can't say I was aware of having to pay tax on bodily excretions or have I been doing something wrong? And what's more, why do they all have bladders the size of thimbles?
Eh-hem.
"Shaken or stirred?" "Do I look like I give a dam!" I wasn't expecting you Mr Bond, but I have to say you were very welcome.
Now if I must be folded into a seat barely big enough to seat an anorexic Oompa Loompa, for 8 hours, unless me and my neighbour are on intimate terms then I think it's only right that the space afforded to me is mine and mine alone. Sadly my scandi-neighbour-ian nemesis was not of the same belief and managed to increase my discomfort further by insisting on peering over my shoulder to watch my showing of Casino Royale.
It was only through the medium of an Air France spork to the kidneys that I managed to persuade her she could actually watch it, or any number of other films, in her own language on the small screen, almost but not quite totally identical to mine, that had been kindly placed in the seat back in front of her by the good people at Airbus. The fact that the person in front of her seemed determined to soak Mme Norway with every liquid presented did take the edge off things slightly but, I mean, honestly: Can't they implement airline etiquette tests? When I'm King, ra ra ra
As flights go it went and that's the main thing. Immigration was a walk in the park. Albeit a dark park with a history of muggings and improbable geological traits and were it not for a vicar clearly unversed in the art of queuing there would have been little of note to report on.
So here I am. Cameroon's great and glorious capital. And what a capital it is.
Rome's got 7, Athens has a few, Edinburgh's got a handful and La Paz is surrounded by them but I don't think I've ever been to a city that's quite so hilly. I'd like to say mountainous as that sounds dramatic but it's difficult to get any idea of scale when visibility is as hampered as it is. Got driven up a hill to see the view and alas all that was to be seen was a large amount of haze and a Swissish type with a motorbike and pocket New Testament, perched in a manner that would make a Danish pine. [N.B. This is neither a tree nor an emotional cinnamon swirl ... think Copenhagen]
Pictorial evidence provided. Of the haze that is. Not the Swiss. Much like many things of Swiss inclination, he was a little too holy ... pun very much intended. Oh look, the picture has arrived ... aren't you lucky. No it hasn't, or if it has then good, if not then blame technology ...
Drove through the kind of crazed markets you don't believe exist until you find yourself in the middle of one in a white van that could so easily have been stolen from a UNICEF documentary. All it needed was Angelina and Brad, and Bob would have been your uncle, albeit only by marriage, and possibly only through an obscure semi-aunt who became part of the family by mistake.
[serious moment]
One of the things that we took in during our grand tour of Yaounde was the zoo. Now, I'm not going to moralise on zoos as in some very rare cases they can be justified, but sadly this was one example of what happens when things go wrong. Don't worry it's not going to cloud my judgement of the country as a whole as I'm sure, in its heyday, it was an entirely different experience.
The image though that will stalk me until my dying day is, somewhat ironically, that of one thing that probably would do just that in the flesh. The lion enclosure was noteworthy primarily for its size. As I've already said, no moralising but seriously: there's swinging a cat and there's housing a pair of adult lions.
The most distressing thing of all though, was the state of the male. While the female, stomach distended, languished in a soporific haze of recently consumed herbivore, her cage-mate, while mimicking her languishing, laboured under pained breaths, his pelvis, ribcage and spine making a bid for freedom through what was left of his skin. A haunch of the aforementioned herbivore lay at his feet but he didn't have the energy to even sniff it, let alone eat it, and it looked like that wasn't his first missed meal.
Distressing doesn't go nearly far enough.
[ends]
Zoo aside it was quite a tour. Barely a ministry passed without being pointed at, and a smile flashed across my face when I noted that the only one that wasn't situated in the kind of tottering monolithic edifice so keen on crashing to the ground in an apocalyptic manner was that for the Ministry for Health and Public Safety: itself a somewhat modest single storey construction. Irony is clearly as wasted on the Cameroonians as it is on the rest of the world (says he in his lofty British manner.)
The folk so far have been welcoming without being in your face and the staff in the Programme Office have done admirably, fetching, carrying and hosing down when required. As for my fellow volunteers, at this moment we are three: a Parisenne, a Mumbai-ian and li'l old me ... the absent two arrive tomorrow before the sparrows have even thought about farting. Four of us are destined to depart for Extremely Northern climes on Thursday; One of us heads coastwards. Til then we do what we must and twiddle our thumbs when necessary.
Today, I have to admit has been tough. We were meant to be busy with bureaucracy but because of the absence of 40% of our number, such excitement was postponed. Idle minds tend to wander where they shouldn't and mine spent a large part of today reminiscing about where it was this time last week and wondering why exactly it was here.
When you rationalise it and put it into the context of first day in a new job life becomes that little bit easier ... besides, it's self inflicted.Can't wait to get to where I'm going but have to admit that a little over 24 hours in, can't help but wonder whether my jaw is up to the work.
What, by the way, is yours? What do you mean you don't have one?
'Perplexed' is, you'll be glad to hear, the word of the day. 'Discombobulated' was vying for a position at the top of the chart but my no(i)sy transatlantic neighbours may have taken umbrage at its syllable count and we don't want to go around upsetting people willy-nilly or we might force them do something they'll come to regret.
I shouldn't really be surprised to be fair. Not about them doing something they might come to regret but about the omnipresent bamboozlement. The omens were not that auspicious: by which I mean that my journey began with a conspicuously unintentional couple of laps around the visual delight that is Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2. Got the distinct impression that the pilot was looking for a parking space nearer the terminal but, as is so often the case, the only free one was everything but. Thankfully all was not lost. He did find one somewhere near the Belgian border. (An ex-employee of Michael O'Leary's perhaps ... old habits die hard.)
A mad dash ensued as time was something of the essence and so it was I parked my dainty hind-quarters in a sea of Saga-esque norweigan types whose female components sported such variety in the hair highlighting department that it looked as if they had been set upon by a gang of poster-paint wielding delinquents.
Question: Why is it that people who choose to sit in anything but aisle seats have the smallest bladders? And more to the point, what exactly did they find to do in the 14 hours they had sitting in the departure lounge? Is there something wrong with terrestrial toilet facilities that they feel they can only wee when they're in international airspace. Perhaps it's some kind of Duty Free thing. Can't say I was aware of having to pay tax on bodily excretions or have I been doing something wrong? And what's more, why do they all have bladders the size of thimbles?
Eh-hem.
"Shaken or stirred?" "Do I look like I give a dam!" I wasn't expecting you Mr Bond, but I have to say you were very welcome.
Now if I must be folded into a seat barely big enough to seat an anorexic Oompa Loompa, for 8 hours, unless me and my neighbour are on intimate terms then I think it's only right that the space afforded to me is mine and mine alone. Sadly my scandi-neighbour-ian nemesis was not of the same belief and managed to increase my discomfort further by insisting on peering over my shoulder to watch my showing of Casino Royale.
It was only through the medium of an Air France spork to the kidneys that I managed to persuade her she could actually watch it, or any number of other films, in her own language on the small screen, almost but not quite totally identical to mine, that had been kindly placed in the seat back in front of her by the good people at Airbus. The fact that the person in front of her seemed determined to soak Mme Norway with every liquid presented did take the edge off things slightly but, I mean, honestly: Can't they implement airline etiquette tests? When I'm King, ra ra ra
As flights go it went and that's the main thing. Immigration was a walk in the park. Albeit a dark park with a history of muggings and improbable geological traits and were it not for a vicar clearly unversed in the art of queuing there would have been little of note to report on.
So here I am. Cameroon's great and glorious capital. And what a capital it is.
Rome's got 7, Athens has a few, Edinburgh's got a handful and La Paz is surrounded by them but I don't think I've ever been to a city that's quite so hilly. I'd like to say mountainous as that sounds dramatic but it's difficult to get any idea of scale when visibility is as hampered as it is. Got driven up a hill to see the view and alas all that was to be seen was a large amount of haze and a Swissish type with a motorbike and pocket New Testament, perched in a manner that would make a Danish pine. [N.B. This is neither a tree nor an emotional cinnamon swirl ... think Copenhagen]
Pictorial evidence provided. Of the haze that is. Not the Swiss. Much like many things of Swiss inclination, he was a little too holy ... pun very much intended. Oh look, the picture has arrived ... aren't you lucky. No it hasn't, or if it has then good, if not then blame technology ...
Drove through the kind of crazed markets you don't believe exist until you find yourself in the middle of one in a white van that could so easily have been stolen from a UNICEF documentary. All it needed was Angelina and Brad, and Bob would have been your uncle, albeit only by marriage, and possibly only through an obscure semi-aunt who became part of the family by mistake.
[serious moment]
One of the things that we took in during our grand tour of Yaounde was the zoo. Now, I'm not going to moralise on zoos as in some very rare cases they can be justified, but sadly this was one example of what happens when things go wrong. Don't worry it's not going to cloud my judgement of the country as a whole as I'm sure, in its heyday, it was an entirely different experience.
The image though that will stalk me until my dying day is, somewhat ironically, that of one thing that probably would do just that in the flesh. The lion enclosure was noteworthy primarily for its size. As I've already said, no moralising but seriously: there's swinging a cat and there's housing a pair of adult lions.
The most distressing thing of all though, was the state of the male. While the female, stomach distended, languished in a soporific haze of recently consumed herbivore, her cage-mate, while mimicking her languishing, laboured under pained breaths, his pelvis, ribcage and spine making a bid for freedom through what was left of his skin. A haunch of the aforementioned herbivore lay at his feet but he didn't have the energy to even sniff it, let alone eat it, and it looked like that wasn't his first missed meal.
Distressing doesn't go nearly far enough.
[ends]
Zoo aside it was quite a tour. Barely a ministry passed without being pointed at, and a smile flashed across my face when I noted that the only one that wasn't situated in the kind of tottering monolithic edifice so keen on crashing to the ground in an apocalyptic manner was that for the Ministry for Health and Public Safety: itself a somewhat modest single storey construction. Irony is clearly as wasted on the Cameroonians as it is on the rest of the world (says he in his lofty British manner.)
The folk so far have been welcoming without being in your face and the staff in the Programme Office have done admirably, fetching, carrying and hosing down when required. As for my fellow volunteers, at this moment we are three: a Parisenne, a Mumbai-ian and li'l old me ... the absent two arrive tomorrow before the sparrows have even thought about farting. Four of us are destined to depart for Extremely Northern climes on Thursday; One of us heads coastwards. Til then we do what we must and twiddle our thumbs when necessary.
Today, I have to admit has been tough. We were meant to be busy with bureaucracy but because of the absence of 40% of our number, such excitement was postponed. Idle minds tend to wander where they shouldn't and mine spent a large part of today reminiscing about where it was this time last week and wondering why exactly it was here.
When you rationalise it and put it into the context of first day in a new job life becomes that little bit easier ... besides, it's self inflicted.Can't wait to get to where I'm going but have to admit that a little over 24 hours in, can't help but wonder whether my jaw is up to the work.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Broadsword this is Danny Boy. Come in. Over.
I am here.
It is hot.
The keyboard is french which means that while "the quick sly fox doesn't jump over the lazy brown dog", instead it "junps over the lqwy brozn dog" ... as for the numbers and puctuation, don't get me started!
I'll try not get too confusing but if there are rogue letters, you'll understand my plight ...
Will pontificate further when time permits ... just to say I'm here, safe, a little perplexed and starving hungry ... lunch beckons though, as may dysentry.
Woo and, dare I say it, hoo.
It is hot.
The keyboard is french which means that while "the quick sly fox doesn't jump over the lazy brown dog", instead it "junps over the lqwy brozn dog" ... as for the numbers and puctuation, don't get me started!
I'll try not get too confusing but if there are rogue letters, you'll understand my plight ...
Will pontificate further when time permits ... just to say I'm here, safe, a little perplexed and starving hungry ... lunch beckons though, as may dysentry.
Woo and, dare I say it, hoo.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Normality will be resumed as soon as possible ... don't hold your breath
As I sit here with a little over 2 weeks to go, I find myself wondering whether I'm stuck in someone else's reality and that, in fact, I am not going anywhere.
It is a strange place to be but with my passport and visa, airline ticket and confirmation from my employer all conspicuous in their absence, it's not difficult to brush my looming departure under the coarse carpet upon which I insist on itching my nomadic feet.
The pills have all been taken and my arms are full of holes where innocuous bouts of pandemics have been sent rattling across my immune system. Aside from the feeling that my right arm had been used for pugilistic practice the side effects have thus far been none, aside from an increase in the number of dreams I've had ... thus far I feel like I've got off lucky ... watch this space.
And I quote:
"Most common unwanted effects: feeling or actually being sick, dizziness, vertigo, loss of balance, headache, sleepiness, sleep problems, diarrhoea, stomach ache." Sounds to me remarkably like a hangover ... I suggest Irn Bru and a bacon butty.
"Less common unwanted effects: - psychiatric reactions which may be disabling and last for more than several weeks." Definitely an unwanted effect ... it goes on: "... these include unusual changes in mood or behaviour, feelings of worry or anxiety, depression, feelings of persecution, crying, aggression, restlessness, forgetfulness, agitation, confusion, panic and hallucinations."
As if that wasn't enough I also may suffer other neurological reactions including fits, pins and needles, weakness, visual disturbances (are hallucinations not enough?), ringing in the ears, hearing impairment, co-ordination problems and shaking of the hands and fingers.
That's all?
Oh no, "There have also been rare reports of suicidal tendencies and suicide" ... Don't get me started on the effects on my circulation, skin/scalp and the other effects ... sheesh!
Apparently it's better to be a miserably angry insomniac who's forgotten where he is while being stalked by a deranged hoard of cloned Darcey Bussels around a darkened room that goes on forever to the soundtrack of Mariah Carey's greatest hits than to get Malaria ... I'll leave that up to the 'experts'.
I must go now ... my penguin has developed a lisp and is mooning on the heathrow flightpath.
It is a strange place to be but with my passport and visa, airline ticket and confirmation from my employer all conspicuous in their absence, it's not difficult to brush my looming departure under the coarse carpet upon which I insist on itching my nomadic feet.
The pills have all been taken and my arms are full of holes where innocuous bouts of pandemics have been sent rattling across my immune system. Aside from the feeling that my right arm had been used for pugilistic practice the side effects have thus far been none, aside from an increase in the number of dreams I've had ... thus far I feel like I've got off lucky ... watch this space.
And I quote:
"Most common unwanted effects: feeling or actually being sick, dizziness, vertigo, loss of balance, headache, sleepiness, sleep problems, diarrhoea, stomach ache." Sounds to me remarkably like a hangover ... I suggest Irn Bru and a bacon butty.
"Less common unwanted effects: - psychiatric reactions which may be disabling and last for more than several weeks." Definitely an unwanted effect ... it goes on: "... these include unusual changes in mood or behaviour, feelings of worry or anxiety, depression, feelings of persecution, crying, aggression, restlessness, forgetfulness, agitation, confusion, panic and hallucinations."
As if that wasn't enough I also may suffer other neurological reactions including fits, pins and needles, weakness, visual disturbances (are hallucinations not enough?), ringing in the ears, hearing impairment, co-ordination problems and shaking of the hands and fingers.
That's all?
Oh no, "There have also been rare reports of suicidal tendencies and suicide" ... Don't get me started on the effects on my circulation, skin/scalp and the other effects ... sheesh!
Apparently it's better to be a miserably angry insomniac who's forgotten where he is while being stalked by a deranged hoard of cloned Darcey Bussels around a darkened room that goes on forever to the soundtrack of Mariah Carey's greatest hits than to get Malaria ... I'll leave that up to the 'experts'.
I must go now ... my penguin has developed a lisp and is mooning on the heathrow flightpath.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Taking the 'ou' out of Cameroun
Before you all start getting uppity and questioning my competence as an English teacher, there is method in my misspelling ... twas but an historical hark back to it's, by which I mean my soon to be country of residence's French roots ... and what with "où" being French for where, it seemed too good a chance to miss.
So there.
Cameroun, Cameroon ... you know what I mean.
Where is it?
So there.
Cameroun, Cameroon ... you know what I mean.
Where is it?
but then you probably new that ...
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Time waits for Norman and I am not he ...
"Time time time, see what's become of me ..." A wibbling, dribbling wreck cast upon the still ticking ruins of an horological blow-out.
Yes, it didn't wait and I am here once more with the cranial excretions of my fast decomposing mind.
Cameroon creeps ever closer and in 24 hours will be approximately 7 weeks away ... that's to say 49 days ... *gulp* to coin a phrase.
How do I feel. Remarkably composed at times; intensely excited at others. Trepidation, anticipation, anxiety, and a peculiar desire to run around screaming, allied with an understandable wish to stop time ... 'tis a queer frame of mind but I guess it's only natural.
Back in July, as I pressed the innocuously labelled "submit" button on the VSO webpage, how was I to know that in less than 6 months I would be here, and I don't mean Birmingham. The 'here' of now is as diverse as my diet in two months won't be. Not that I can really grumble as this is something I've always dreamt of doing and feel so incredibly priviledged and honoured to have been accepted to do that it still seems a little unreal.
Yes, it's self-inflicted as is the impending separation from everything and everyone that means anything to me ... it's going to hurt in all those parts you don't want to hurt. Yes I could avoid the hurt but that wouldn't be me.
The unpredictable looms, and it is wrapped in its multifarious, malformed and malcoordinated limbs that I am casting myself. Unpredictability is at the heart of what makes me tick and if two years enveloped in it's uncomfortably clammy grasp doesn't keep me going then ...
2 years isn't so long in many ways but it is an awfully long time in others ...
Yes, it didn't wait and I am here once more with the cranial excretions of my fast decomposing mind.
Cameroon creeps ever closer and in 24 hours will be approximately 7 weeks away ... that's to say 49 days ... *gulp* to coin a phrase.
How do I feel. Remarkably composed at times; intensely excited at others. Trepidation, anticipation, anxiety, and a peculiar desire to run around screaming, allied with an understandable wish to stop time ... 'tis a queer frame of mind but I guess it's only natural.
Back in July, as I pressed the innocuously labelled "submit" button on the VSO webpage, how was I to know that in less than 6 months I would be here, and I don't mean Birmingham. The 'here' of now is as diverse as my diet in two months won't be. Not that I can really grumble as this is something I've always dreamt of doing and feel so incredibly priviledged and honoured to have been accepted to do that it still seems a little unreal.
Yes, it's self-inflicted as is the impending separation from everything and everyone that means anything to me ... it's going to hurt in all those parts you don't want to hurt. Yes I could avoid the hurt but that wouldn't be me.
The unpredictable looms, and it is wrapped in its multifarious, malformed and malcoordinated limbs that I am casting myself. Unpredictability is at the heart of what makes me tick and if two years enveloped in it's uncomfortably clammy grasp doesn't keep me going then ...
2 years isn't so long in many ways but it is an awfully long time in others ...
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
kilo alpha kilo ... you'd better believe it!
Do not adjust your sets ... this is indeed an update.
Not a very exciting update, perhaps, but an update none the less.
Why, I hear you cry, have you been shirking your blogging responsibilities? What about us (read 'me') your reading public. We've been champing at the bit and yearning for words of wisdom and excitement as to your goings on. Some bon mots on the whys wherefores and whatevers of your crazy, fly by the seat of your pants life.
Alas, I wish my life was like that. At the moment I am stuck in a peculiar limbo between being here and not being here. I have things that I must do interspersed with periods of mind-numbing tedium, themselves interspersed with periods of thrills, spills and the excitement to which I had become accustomed. Those, alas, are too few and far between.
The 'not being here' aspect has been finalised and now I just wait, with the baited breath of proverbial fame, to find out a little bit more than I know at the moment, which is not much. I know that on the 2nd of March 2007 I will be boarding a plane to Cameroon. Where in Cameroon I don't know.
What I do know is that I am currently the proud owner of an innocuous bout of yellow fever as well as diphtheria (and no, there aren't too many 'h's), tetanus and polio ... who needs class A's when you've got the beginnings of a pandemic?
From what I've been told I believe that I am going to be living in a village of approximately 5,000 people, teaching in their secondary school and educating them in the ways and means of English, HIV and AIDS and also teaching their teachers a little bit of how to teach. Godola's the name, Maroua's the nearest big town and if you google earth the latter, I'm destined to be approximately 10km to it's east; that's to say the area of google earth that is uncharted ...
While I twiddle my thumbs in anticipation of training courses to tell me how to cope with change, how to work in development, how to teach teachers and how not to contract any number of curiously named afflictions that would win a game of Scrabble in one move, I find myself speaking to the local paper and begging people to sponsor me for one of any number of daft undertakings.
In other words, there's not a lot going on, and if there is it's happening slowly. I'm torn between wanting time to fly and not wanting it to pass at all. Not all of it that is. This beige, wishy washy and generally tofu-esque state I find myself in at the moment can get knotted quite frankly, but then the week after next can slow down, as can the new year and January, and then February too ... life though, being what it is, means that the obverse will be true and the in between bits will drag and the excitement filled parts will fly by with scant regard for me ...
-Ends-
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