Monday, November 24, 2003
Wow, what a surreal bunch of events this weekend! It started Friday when, after work, several of us went to the tailor to pick up our "shirts" which were not yet finished. I tried it on and I have to say, it is clearly one of the ugliest things I have purposely worn in public (I'm sure my mother has a differing opinion). Its closer to a short-sleeve sportcoat with three pockets and is mostly lime green with the medallions of my bank in purple. Its rather hard to describe- hopefully I can upload a photo soon.
Friday night, I was invited to my neighbor's house for a dinner party. Lucky for me, my new neighbor happens to be the Director of Alucam/Socatral, a large company that refines and transforms aluminum. Until recently, it was owned by the French company, Pechiney, but they were bought out by some Canadian company. Anyway, being the end of November and my neighbors largely French, it was, of course, a party to celebrate the Nouveau Beaujolais! It was quite a strange feeling being in the middle of Africa, being served french wine, pâté, and chocolate mousse. It was all fantastic, and I ate and drank entirely too much. I did meet my neighbors, virtually all of the expats in Edéa, who were all really nice folks and some of whom even speak pretty good english. Not quite the Peace Corps experience I was expecting, but a great moment to remember.
I had to leave the party a little early so I could get some sleep since I was to wake up at 5:30am the next morning to leave for Douala. I met about twelve other folks from my bank all dressed in the same fabric (called tissue) at 7am at the bus depot to head to Douala for National Credit Union Day. When all arrived, around 8am- I can't believe I still feel like I have to be on time!- we piled in a bus to meet the several hundred other "cooperators" from around the region- almost all wearing the same tissue as myself and the others from Edéa. I guess somehow its not quite as ugly when there are lots of others dressed just like you. We got in line behind a band with large drums and horns, and proceeded to parade down the main two streets of Douala, diverting traffic and making quite a ruckus. I was, needless to say, the only white man in the parade, so I was joked with and heckled by the spectators, but it was all in good fun. The parade finished and we retired to a large hall where we were subjected to several hours of speeches and finally, mercifully, fed.
Upon returning to Edéa, I stopped by Gabriel's supermarché to say "hi", and he asked if I had plans for the evening. I said "no", whereupon he said we were going to Douala for the night, even though I had just come from there. As it turned out, we went up for the funeral of his aunt, and he wanted me to meet his family and see where he grew up. It was interesting meeting his father, brothers and even old girlfriends from back in the day. We got back at a punishing 3am whereupon I slept for most of the next day.
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
Last tuesday, I left for my big trip to Bamenda and beyond for work and to spend Thanksgiving with friends. I left my house a bit before 7am to attempt to make it all the way in one day. After 10 hours of riding buses and taxis and waiting for buses and taxis, I arrived at my friend Mike's house in Bamenda, Anglophone Cameroon. Mike is a twice-divorced computer programmer from Cleveland, who is quite entertaining. We went to Dreamland, the "western" restaurant where we would eat three more times over the next two days. We ran into another volunteer there, Mike from Limbé, and had a nice meal of steak and fries.
Wednesday, I spent the day at CAMCCULL headquarters (my bank is part of the CAMCCULL network) meeting people and collecting as much information as I could to bring back with me to Edéa. I was even able to meet the new President of CAMCCULL, who is charged with turning this ship around. Good luck. I spent the afternoon with the Ntaringkom branch of CAMCCULL checking out their operations. For a couple hours, I rode around in a taxi with their two loan officers (they have 4000 members, and have about six employees, as opposed to our one) as they went around to collect delinquent loans. We knocked on doors, talked to children, wives, and even found people at bars to deliver a delinquent loan notice and to find out why they haven't paid on their loans recently (read: last three months). We even told some of them we would take their house if they didn't come into the office to pay or work out a new payment plan. Sadly, this seems not only necessary, but is apparently the only way to get many debtors to pay. For me, it was a great learning experience. That night Mike from Limbé and I had grilled fish for dinner and walked down the street to talk a bit. We ran into George, Director of the Agro-Forestry project of Peace Corps. He bought us a couple of drinks as we talked with a local drunk who was quite amusing, but kept touching Mike a little too much.
Thursday, I went up to Njiningkom for the 40th Anniversary of CAMCCULL, the oldest credit union network in Africa. The mountains there are quite beautiful, and it was nice and cool, a welcome change from Edéa. I took the tour and then ran into the volunteer there, Mindy, who I had tried to call that morning. She was with another volunteer, Fran, and they were heading back to Bamenda for dinner and the night. I saw that the celebration was not really going to happen until the next day, so I left with them. That night, we had a big dinner, again at Dreamland, with about seven volunteers, to celebrate Thanksgiving- with a cheeseburger and fries and a cold beer. It doesn't get any better.
On Friday morning, I went to Bandjoun to meet some of the volunteers in training there, catch up with my favorite trainers, see my friend the mirror man, and share stories of Edéa with my family. Everyone seemed happy to see me, and I was quite happy to see all of them. The new volunteers all seemed quite nice, and I had lunch with Will, who will be my new postmate! That's right, I'm getting someone right here in Edéa! It'll be nice to have an American to hang out with from time to time without having to travel, and since he's Agro, we can do projects together to hopefully have a greater impact.
Jean-Guy, the small businessman I tried to help in Bandjoun, was quite surprised to see me. I hadn't called to tell him I was coming since I only had a couple of hours. He told me that business was going alright, but that his shop had been broken into and money and mirrors stolen a month or so before. I didn't want to ask whether he had been using the accounting methods we had discussed since he didn't bring it up. I'm assuming no. Three months isn't enough time to make that kind of change permanent.
The family was ecstatic to see me, and I had brought them some candy, a CD and some papaya, which they loved as well. I had a large dinner with them on Friday night, and came back again on Sunday to take pictures- this time with the digital camera. The photos I had taken of them with my manual camera didn't come out for all kinds of reasons. I'm getting better at it though. Katie, the volunteer living with them now, told me all kinds of stories about how she hated me because they talked about me all the time and showed her pictures of me, and wanted us to get married. Nice girl, but I don't see a wedding in our future.
Saturday, I went to Bangou to have Thanksgiving dinner at Loren's house. Bangou is what we call "en brousse"- in the bush- so it was about an hour ride on dusty, dirt roads to get there. He had already begun cooking the two turkeys the eight of us who made the trip were to eat. The turkeys had been beheaded and deplumed that morning by a neighbor. After several more hours of cooking, we had a great meal with mashed potatoes, squash, stuffing and gravy with pumpkin cake for dessert. A few of us tried to leave town after dark, but there was simply no way, so we slept on thin foam mattresses on the floor.
I returned to Edéa on Sunday, just catching the last bus out of Douala and avoiding an unwanted overnight there. It was truly nice to be back home...
One last item- there seems to be some confusion as to my current address. I did move houses, but my address is a post office box (BP stands for Boite Postale), so my address has not changed. It remains:
Peter Bine
CPC/FIMAC/SM
BP 508
Edéa, Cameroon
The initials are the name of the bank- Caisse Populaire Cooperative des groupes FIMAC de la Sanaga-Maritime. The abbreviation is much easier.
