cameroon log

Month number 2

It is February now. I start working my ass off again. Calendar for the mayor, posters, site for the gorillas (…like they use the internet). The fridge is still broken. I eat like shit. I get tired of waiting for the tables and chairs that Alex ordered (yeah right) a few months ago. I scrounge/steal a great table from the SNV building, get some shelves, and do some general clean up. It feels very productive. The fridge even works for a few minutes…before its craps out. I will never have a working fridge. Izidore is now avoiding me as he has not been able to fix the fridge with two months time and a bunch of money. The gorilla site is uploaded. Thank you Locke. I then spend a day waiting for the mayor to pick me up to take some photos for the Calendar. He never shows up, but I don’t really care, I get to draw some. I get used again and again by locals for my computer skills. I don’t mind being used so much (well, I do, but I can handle it), but when people are rude to me about it, and act as if I am some sort of lapdog… It pisses me off. This time it was the local debt collector, and a priest. It is Saturday the 7th of February. Alex’s women problems are piling up. Some girl comes by and delivers me a subpoena for him… and some girl that he has been hitting on (I call her no-name lying girl) comes by with a sob story, and I get to listen as Alex isn’t there. She is Jen’s ‘friend’ as well…but she really can’t deal with her either anymore. I sit patiently for a few minutes trying to play my new gameboy, and she is really bugging me with some sob story about her parents getting killed in an industrial accident in France when she was a baby. She is so totally full of shit. I’ve had it. I am tired of Alex. I type up a countdown list. “Alex’s final 5 fuck ups” and post it on the wall in the living room. He is pretty freaked out…as he should be. I finish Final Fantasy. It is very good. I mean, really good. Even the story is good…or at least the little things in the story are good. I work on lightwave, but it is very limited as it doesn’t work with Panther on my Mac. Lightwave 8 is only two months late. Looks good though. I look at Charly’s financial planning report for the year. This is another kind of final fantasy. The numbers are kind of scary. I will be responsible for bringing in half of the annual budget in outside funds. I am now a fundraiser. Not only that, but GECEC is not a viable financial organization. Maybe it will be in the future, but right now.. its not looking that strong. Microfinance is not all its cracked up to be. The Lions (the Cameroonian national team) loses. The are clearly physically more talented than their opponents, but the don’t share, have no cohesion, and all want to be the ‘star’. I think there might be a national lesson in this..but that would be… well, snotty. The Dutch descend. A few Dutch people drive a truck down here for “Pere Paul” one of those religious types hell-bent on turning the baka into good Christians. He has been here 30 or so years. His niece came down with them to do a radio story. They are nice, if a bit lost… and surprised that Pere Paul is no longer here. He is old, and went to Yaoundé to live. His parish here is falling apart in less than 3 months after his departure. Entropy rules. CIAD’s main funder is in town. There is a huge clusterfuck of politics, money and lies. George (he is great) has a bout of honesty in front of the donor, and when asked, tells the truth about CIAD’s lies. Ooooh. They didn’t expect that. I make valentines day cards with Petit. He is trying to sell some. It is really dry, dusty and hot here now. There is about 3-4 inches of fine red powder pretty much everywhere outside. The trucks hauling trees generate a 40 foot cloud of red dust as they pass. February 11th, the festival of youth. Basically, all the children march in rows, singing about their great leader. I film it. The good news is that they aren’t really good at it, and couldn’t really care much about the parade. I’m finishing up the GECEC calendar. The mayor’s? Don’t count on it. Lolita is a hermaphrodite. Now its Friday the 13th. I feel sick..but its really a reaction to a massive shift in barometric pressure. Then a rainstorm. The first in a while. The change in pressure was so massive and sudden, that I pretty much passed out for a few hours while my body reset. That night, I heard yelling out front. I peek out. I see a naked man yelling at a group of people near my neighbors house. Next day, I see that Alex has a fucked up hand. Apparently, the naked guy from the night before got mad at them for stripping him, pouring beer on him, and sending him home (he had peed on their house without permission). He came back with a machete and an axe. He got wrestled to the ground after trying to hack his brother to bits. Alex got hurt a bit in the process. I rest for a day or two. Then, some VSO volunteers show up to visit the Gorilla project. Some VSO officials show up. I meet with SNV. There are fund raising documents to write. They look suspisiously like project proposals to clients, minus the clarity of purpose. Jen heads to Kargua with the other volunteers after an.. awkward exchange with CIAD folks. The kitty, who is doing great, brings a tree frog in the house to torture and kill. The tree frog jumps on the wall, and stays there most of the night. The kitty is not amused. I collect it the next morning, clean it off, and let it go outside. It is magnificent. I have my review with Charly and Arlette. It goes fine. I couldn’t care less. My fridge still doesn’t work, and we are now in late February. Jen and George head off to the forest with the Baka. I have a day totally to myself. It is great. I play with lightwave again. I seem to be having a really easy time with it. For some reason, not working with it and thinking of totally different things for a few months has really made it easier for me to use. I get some cool models done, but the Panther/Lightwave problems limit what I can do greatly. Iphoto craps out on me. It can’t handle the amount of pictures I have in it. I lose my whole photo archive system. Sigh. More working on lightwave… and the refrigerator repair man came back to town. Oh my. I might actually get a working fridge.
Karen (from the Peace Corps) stops by and treats me to dinner and brought down some veggies. Some Canadian lady talking about “adaptive flexible process management” comes by. She is really annoying, and scoffs at us volunteers (because she lived in Congo for 10 years… so what could we possible know) until she finds out that I have internet access. Ha. Gwinn has a birthday far away. Alex fucks up, and lies to me about it. Two strikes out of his five gone in 10 minutes. He lost another one a bit back, so he has two left. He is now genuinely scared. I make ID cards for GECEC employees.. you know, so we can tell each other apart. I go to fix Eccofac computers, they are the people who are supposed to be protecting the forest and the animals in it.. but are likely to be the largest source for the bush meat trade. An HIV positive guy hits me up for money. He has an elaborate story, but I believe him, cause.. well, he’s an asshole, and liars are usually nicer. I still don’t give him money, but I try to find some other solution. It highlights a huge problem with volunteers and development. The need far outweighs the supply… and those that are willing to help basically come down and get drowned.. while those who are less giving, or less inclined to give, stay and further the problem. I fear that only massive and sustained violence directed at the rich will cause any kind of structural change needed to fix the MASSIVE imbalance we have created. George leaves. He has a party where the people who have been trying to destroy him.. were all weeping and singing about him leaving, and mentioned, casually, that as the last white man in town, I was not responsible for helping them. Monday, Jen’s problems begin with them. Sorel is trying to get rid of her. To much of a reminder of George. I am getting a new video camera when Gwinn comes. The 24p Panasonic, with cinema gamma. I am very excited. It should make what I do work with PAL (with a bit of conversion) better, and the look we got working on the Hellboy stuff before I left is really good. It really can look and move like film. I’m hoping that it will allow me to really take my video work to another level. Things with Jen and CIAD are getting worse. Jen publicly denounced Sorel in front of their clients (CIAD’s). Public humiliation is about the biggest insult here possible. I am preparing for Gwinn’s visit. She should be bringing a bunch of computers and other supplies with her. Getting that past customs requires preparation. I am getting some governmental stamps on papers. My computer is dying, or dead really. I’m not getting power anymore. This really sucks. I have some battery time left. I am turning the screen brightness all the way down, and using a flashlight for screen illumination. I probably have about 5 hours of time before I am totally cut off. This sucks. Brian, another volunteer, wants to come down for a few weeks.