View imageJust in case you thought I was dying.. I am not. This was a rejected (by me) photo for my office portrait.
View imageSomeone gave me this perfect Gorilla Skull. It is larger than my skull. It is amazing. Now I have to figure out how to get it home.
or how I learned to love the Pastor.
Sunday November 9th 2003
Today was consecration day. So, originally, Alex was supposed to take my equipment and tape the consecration.. which seems to be some sort of ritual where a chosen few become church elders. In this case, the pastor, who is a very shrewd polititian and business man, seems to have chosen a group of people who were a combination of up-and-coming elite, and elites. As confirmation of the political nature of the choices, there were two sermons about jealousy. One about Cain and Able, and Cain believing that he knew better than god, and getting punished for that, it then drifted into: if you think that these people shouldn’t have been chosen, god will punish you. All in all, a very effective proposition. So the elders of the church are pretty much every power broker in town.. either politically, or fiscally.. except the Muslims.,. of course. There seem to be two power structures here. The protestant one, and the muslim one. The muslims have no power in the official sense…but I think that many of the most successful business people here are muslim.
So… the event was slated to start at 9:30. I rained a bit in the morning, so I knew that meant.. not before 10:30. Alex (who has already spent the money he was supposed to earn on this gig buying some shoes) was nervous, and ready to go at 8. I, being sick, and not particularly excited to do this thing at all, was not going to leave the house before 9. As we left, we passed the pastor wandering around town. Apparently, not in any real rush. It rained more as we walked the mile to the church. We got there, I scouted a little. The light was both beautiful, and a total nightmare. There were windows on all sides, that didn’t have glass or anything. The light pouring in was very bright… and came from all over. There was no place for me to set up the camera where I could get a nice back lit shot. Alex kept hovering. Trying to get me to let him use the camera. Not a chance. I did let him sit with the recorder, as I need sound.
After an hour or so of waiting, and setting up the room, the event started. The mass seems to start with a procession of singing from the pastor’s house, followed by more singing and drumming inside. A brief run down of church business… and more signing. There were 4 singing groups that each took a turn. Girls, Women, a mixed group with drums, and another, which seemed to be led by.. some woman who takes care of the pastor. When I say take care, I’m not sure how far that extends. There was an old casio heyboard that was playing through the obligitorlly blown speakers (in this case, on the edge)…and actually, the guy got a great sound out of them. It sounded very twangy, and very analog. This continued for a while, until the 7 candidates were introduced. There was some preparatory speech making…and then a pause for the babptisms. A few kids, and a few adults (who were being born again, renewing their vows, whatever). The kids cracked me up. I have some great footage of their reactions. Some of the kids screamed bloody murder, others looked like they had no idea what was going on: “I know I’m inside, but it must be raining, because I am wet. One kid really got into it. He must have though that this was bath time. He kept reaching for the water after they had doused him.
More singing, and then consecration begins in earnest. All in all it was not very interesting.. except for the super secret part where all the elders clustered around the candidates who got on their knees, so that the assembly couldn’t see them, and then.. like magic, when they stood up, they had changed into their special ‘elder’ outfit (basically… black). It seemed pretty silly to me… and most of all not really effective as a magic trick.
Then the 7 newly dressed elders stood in a line, with baskets in front of them, and the pastor told the crowd to show their appreciation by putting money in the baskets of the newly consecrated, and that there was a surprise waiting for the elder who collected the most money. Nice. The came the processions of gifts. First by the wives… and when I use the plural, I mean that both times. Each canditate’s multiple wives. In the case of the women, the husband, and the other wives of the husband.
I love Africa. I mean, that the church (which ever one) decided to sort of look the other way on polygamy was very astute, if not a tad hypocritical. It is also cracks me up that I get the: we believe in family values speech at the drop of a hat… in fact they care so much about family values that they have more than one. I mean the logic of that is simply stunning… its like the argument that polygamy is an effective barrier against aids.. because there is no way the man will stay faithful, so if he has a few wifes, then there is no need to get sex elsewhere. I have no equipment to argue either point… nor the desire.
So, back to the ceremony. After the wives, came the families, and then finally, friends. A final blessing or two, some more singing, and that was all she wrote. It was almost 3pm at this point. I set up the camera outside to get some portraits, and interviews. Lots of handshaking, and then an invitation to the pastor’s to have some food. I sat next to the local head of MINEF (the one I called out at the world bank meeting) who had just been consecrated. He is, sort of, responsible for hunting and the environment. Anyway, I had to spit out the shot from my ant-eater. Gotta love that. I’m eating illegal game in front of the the man who is the highest local authority on regulating it. A man who I called out as an obstructionist in front of his boss and the world bank.. and he’s as happy as a clam now that I have commited him to eternity via video. After the food came the drink. The pastor has quite the supply of whisky.. and I mean whisky. Everyone was getting good and sauced. The mayor, the other elders (read: elite…which is the local word, not mine, by the way). I excused myself at around 4:30-5. I had to go lie down. Several times during the ceremony I got the malarial hot and cold flashes, sweats, and sore joints.
See, the day was only half over. There was the gala soiree that was scheduled to start at 7… oh, no wait, it got changed to 9, oh wait.. when I showed up at 9:15, there was nothing. No food, no drinks, no people… just a rooom full of empty plastic chairs. So, the plastic chairs. For every event, the same uncomfortable plastic chairs come out from some invisible storage area. Green or white. There is, apparently, a never ending supply of plastic chairs for all of the myriad events. I’m surprised that there aren’t labels on the chairs by this point.
At 9:30, I quietly headed home. I was totally beat, and had to pass out. What really made up my mind was the description of the events about to unfold: we would all be given a seat (no tables, by the way, just the chairs), and we would sit there, until a few speaches were completed, the food brought out, and the protocol officially engaged. It would probably be around midnight before I ate. Then, after that, the dancing would begin…all the while, the heavy drinking would continue. I’m not sure if the dancing was done with formal partners chosen, and the traditional african music of Celine Dion used to get people going. All I know, is that I wasn’t going to wait to find out. From all reports, the festivities didn’t really end until dawn. I am very happy that ‘palu’ (malaria) is considered a fine excuse for missing the event. Next time, I fhink I won’t be so lucky.
View imageI am uploading this image from the classroom as I am delivering a speech on the power of communications technology. Pretty wild, if I do say so myself.
here comes sickness.. here comes Alex.
Saturday November 8th 2003
Not surprising, I have malaria again. I seem to be getting it mildly. I feel tired, a bit disoriented, and my muscles and joints are sore.. mild hot flashes, and crazy dreams (I converted Rush Limbaugh into a tolerant liberal.. was the most memorable this last time). My relationship with Alex continues to go south. It comes out that he has been lying to me about all sorts of stuff…and since I confronted him about the pump payment, he knows he’s in trouble. He is especially panicked as Sunday is the Presbyterian Consecration ceremony that he is supposed to be filming as his first paying gig… and he knows he is totally dependant on me. He is making all sorts of impassioned pleas, promises, and passive aggressive supplications (If I don’t let him use the equipment Sunday, they will put him in jail.. but I shouldn’t worry about him). I sat and listened, without speaking. Very difficult for me.. but I hadn’t made up my mind as to what I was going to do with him.. so I just listened. I was also going to talk to him when I was ready, not when he was slightly drunk, and babbling on. If I get this right, he spend some 15,000 CFA that he was supposed to spend on different things for me on one night of drinks with his friends… and has basically been struggling to make that up ever since..by lying, and stalling… hoping that I would just forget.
So I meet with Charlie this morning to basically let him know what is going down. I have his blessing to send Alex packing. Charlie tells me basically: he doesn’t trust Alex either. Nice. Thanks for dumping him on me. So, its pretty much up to me, but at least my ass is covered.
It was around noon that Alex showed up with my Game Boy. I have been asking almost daily for a month, and he shows up as if he had delivered the holy grail. This after he had promised me.. on pain of jail and death, that he would deliver all of the delinquent items on his to do list by first thing this morning. One item down, 5 to go.. plus the missing money and other things that aren’t even on the list. I tell Alex that we are going to talk now. I tell him that I was ready to kick him out.. but that Charlie asked me to give him one more chance (not true, but the spirit was there). I told him the next time I had to talk to him about something he didn’t do, or a problem I had, it would be to tell him to move out, and that our deal was completely off. I told him I didn’t think he would make it through the week. I told him he wasn’t going to use my equipment anymore. I told him I didn’t trust him…that I have no idea what he was thinking, but I didn’t really care anymore. He sort of got it..but I don’t think he really did. He started asking me if he could use this and that a few hours after our discussion. I said, let me think about it.. um, no. I told him that I was going to film the ceremony the next day. He could carry stuff, maybe. I wish I wasn’t sick… that would make all of this easier. I slept a lot.
I got more visitors today. Kate (another youth for development volunteer) and Jed (her boyfriend) showed up today. Surprise. They are both really nice, and crack me up. Both totally lost in the immediacy of the experience, and each other. They went off to see some choral music with Jen and Alex in the evening.
or everyone gets drunk, and kitty makes her kill.
Thursday November 6th 2003
Kitty is growing up. She is getting larger, and more coordinated. She was sitting on my lap, purring, as I was sitting on the veranda talking to Jen and a neighbor, and suddenly she was bolting down the path. All claws and fury. I had no idea what was going on. Pounce, pounce… she cough a frog. She trotted back up with the frog in her mouth, showed it to me, and promptly headed indoors to eat it up. So much for the vegetarian kitty. She downed it in no time at all. Fresh from her first major hunting success, she went right back out and caught a lizard… and polished that off as well. This is great. Now I don’t have to worry so much about feeding her. I’ll give her an egg in the morning, and she can still eat scraps. She is at that very cute stage, where she only runs, attacks, and sleeps. She also follows me to bed every night. Whatever she might be doing, as soon as I head to bed, she shows up, curls up next to me (she has to be touching me), starts purring, and falls asleep. Kitty.
Brian’s project is officially dead. He seems to have wrangled it so that he will be working on a sort of VSO Cameroon Intranet (my idea, thank you very much…). I sent him an email with a list of ideas, but we are going to talk about it more when I head up to Yaoundé next.. which is in a few weeks to ‘facilitate’ a workshop. Ug… but at least it will subsidize my next Yaoundé trip… so can’t complain too much.
I played around with Keynote to put together a short presentation for my job transmogrification to marketing and publicity for all of the ROLD members. It is a pretty decent application. The presentation is simple, but it gets the point across. Charlie and Patrice are both keen on the idea of me doing this. Now it remains to convince Rolf (of the SNV) that it is a good idea, and to find some dough to help repay GECEC for its investment in me. I think this might happen… which would be a good thing for me, I think.
Alex is officially fucking up. I went to get water this morning, and the well manager told me that I hadn’t paid my monthly dues. I gave Alex money for 6 months when I first arrived.. only one month was paid for. Not only that, but I gave Alex some money to buy soap, and lunch for me. He bought the soap, and bought himself lunch. I ended up not eating all day. Michelle (an eco-tourist guide) came to ask me to help him with marketing, and made a whole pitch about having Alex join him in the bush with my camera to take some real pictures for his brochure… Alex in the meantime slowly slumped in his chair, and passed out. Later, when we woke him from his drunken stupor, he staggered towards what used to be his room, breaking a glass on his way. I explained to him that he didn’t live in that room anymore, and that he should go to his room. After a minute of complete incomprehension, he staggered off to his room. There is a context for the drunkenness, but still, it didn’t leave a really good impression with me. The next day, the lies continued. The promises continued. Nothing materialized. Our deal is pretty much done. I’m going to have to let him know where he stands soon.
The context of Alex’s drunken stupor? The Party Party. The political party in power had it’s annual celebration. A semi-official holiday (if you don’t close up shop.. “what, you don’t support the party?”) that consists of several running events (women, kids, men running about 6k), checkers, spear chucking (you read that right), singing, dancing, and… a movie. 21 years of peace and prosperity, the ‘triumph of the will’ Cameroon style. Anyway, I stayed away from it all. There were a lot of imported petty party functionaries. I didn’t want to give them an excuse to hassle me.. not that I felt threatened, but my profile is already higher than I would like. Wandering around during a political celebration just causes more eyes to turn my way. Anyway, they asked Alex to set up the PA system, and some microphones… which he did. While he was hobnobbing, they plied him with drink. He was really fucked up.
i go to the jungle.
Tuesday November 4th, 2003
I went to the Gorilla Habituation Project in Kungulu on Sunday, and got back this afternoon. I went with Matthew, who works for the John’s Hopkins project that is starting up in Ngoyla. His family came for a visit, and this was the first stop. The project is part of CIAD’s efforts (think CIAD, think George). There are two villages where there are ongoing habituation efforts. Karagua, and Kungulu. Karagua was nixed because the village chief has fired one of the trackers (even though he isn’t really their employer, and actually, he didn’t have a problem with the tracker, it was his brother..but things work a bit differently here), so Kungulu it was. The idea of the project is to get the Gorillas used to human presence, so they won’t run away, as they do now.. so that tourists will come, and bring that filthy lucre with them. No one has been able to successfully habituate the Western Lowland Gorilla to date, but that is what they are trying to do.
So, Sunday evening we head off. The roads are getting worse, and in the dark it wasn’t very clear where we were going. After about 45 minutes, and a few questions, we get to Karagua. We get out at the chiefs house, he welcomes us. He is surprised that we are there, but happy. We sit around his house, exchanging small talk for about an hour or so. My being with GECEC, and being there to take pictures of the project both score big-time. He is very excited. We make some awkward exchanges of gifts.. well, we bring them some basic supplies for the village is what really happens. Soap, rice, cheap wine, salt. The chief then discusses the idea that with the proper motivation, the local women want to dance and sing for us. Motivation costs about 2,000 CFA a bottle, and is probably 80 proof. 5 bottles are suggested. 2 are purchased, with the wine acting as the remaining motivator. The official head of the Kungulu Motivation Department showed up. If I get this right, he is basically the designated drinker. He was totally ripped, and in charge of getting other people to his state. It was almost ceremonial, his drunkenness that is, and seemed to be held in high esteem. He definitely was in charge of doling out the libations, which was a task he did with aplomb. The dancing and singing commenced, as we told them we were getting tired. It seemed to be something that was an every day occurrence.. I mean, there was nothing else to do at night. No electricity, no water, no transportation..but moonshine and drums. I watched for about a half hour, and slowly backed away to go to bed.. .which was on a flat board in one of the tracker’s houses. The singing and dancing continued for many hours.
Sunday night is Meflaquine night, and Monday morning is the ensuing stomach ache, and explosive release caused by the medicine. I forgot to ask where the hole in the ground was located… I really need to get better at this going into the bush thing. I also, like a total dumbass, forgot to cover myself in mosquito repellant. At about 4 in the morning my bowels told me that I had to find that hole in the ground. The moon was full, and with minimal stumbling.. I found the hut with the hole. Now if I had only remembered to bring the toilet paper as well. Good thing that there are plenty of leaves lying around in the jungle.
I stayed up, and watched the sun rise, and the mist break. Now that was absolutely fantastic. The village slowly woke up, people headed to the fields. We started to prepare for our departure. The idea being that morning is a good time to see some Gorillas, and Chimpanzees (rumor had it that there were Chimps around the camp). Then the final of the 3 trackers who was to go out with us showed up. He didn’t think we should go out. He said we had to have a paper from CIAD authorizing us to go. He also wanted to wait until their liaison (Achilles) was going to come down. I told them that we couldn’t find Achilles in Lomié before we left, and that he had last been seen at a funeral, and the roads were bad, so probably wasn’t heading down. None of this seemed to work. Matthew and I played a bit of good cop, bad cop. The chief wanted us to go (a bird in hand) and the other guy was insistent. I suggested that we send the car back to Lomié to fetch Achilles, while we headed into the bush. This seemed to work, somewhat...but again rebuffed. Matthew then laid out the strong bargaining position. We will indeed go back to Lomié to get this mythical paper signed, but instead of coming back to Kungulu, we would go to Karagua. That settled it. The chief was not going to lose this deal.. and have his authority challenged. We headed out 15 minutes later (turns out Achilles didn’t even go down the whole week).
The camp site was about 4 kilometers into the bush. This is hardcore jungle. I find the jungle to be..well, not beautiful. It is, rather, full of beautiful things. Overall though, it is too much for the senses to comprehend, and the beauty lies in the details. It is so thick that you can’t look at the canopy while walking. You pretty much can’t look at anything except the next step… if you don’t, pow. Face, meet ground. Machetes are being used the whole way to hack at the vines that cover everything. The ground is the same red earth, but covered in dead leaves, dead branches, fungus, flowers, bushes, roots, and whatever else can possibly exist. There were several streams, and bogs that we had to cross. I have a great pair of hiking boots. They are pretty much the state of the art, waterproof super boots. I would have happily traded them for the crappy rubber boots that all people who really tromp around in the Jungle wear. I was covered in mud up to my knees after the first two streams. I was totally soaked after the first kilometer.. top half in sweat, bottom half in mud. You have to wear long sleeve shirts in the Jungle, or you will get bitten, torn, or otherwise abused. I only had a thick shirt, and was paying the price.
We made it to the camp, which was a little clearing in the jungle populated by a few huts. We dropped our stuff off, rested a few minutes, and went out looking for Gorillas. We split into two groups. I went back into the boggy, dense part, near the plantain plantations where the Gorillas had been recently seen destroying the young plants to eat the tender insides. 3 hours of grueling cross country hacking and slashing produced: 3 paw prints (which were actually recognizable) a few nests, some eaten fruits, and several piles of Gorilla shit. It was fantastic. I had my camera, and was mostly shooting photos. I have some images that are pretty fantastic. We got back to the camp, totally wiped out. We waited around for the other group, who came back with similar near miss stories. It takes the trackers a few days to find the most recent tracks, then luck… pretty much. Matthew’s Cameroonian girlfriend picked mushrooms while hiking, and we set about making dinner and setting up the tents. Well, to be honest, I didn’t do much of anything, except take some pictures and chat. There wasn’t really much I could do to be helpful, so I didn’t bother. I did however, manage to get bitten by every mosquitoes around. I came out with almost 70-100 welts. Some were from the ferocious ants that.. are really mean…but most were Mosquitoes. The moon came up early, and was stunningly beautiful. It was full, and lit the sky like a lantern. We ate our rice and mushroom gruel for dinner, had some bread, and watched the fire slowly burn out. At the very late hour of, maybe 8, we all crashed out. I, of course, the epitome of preparedness, didn’t bring a sheet for sleeping.. or really, any clean clothes… so I pretty much slept in my soaking wet jungle clothes on the ground. I slept just fine.
I was the first one up again.. at around 5, and watched the sun come up again. After a breakfast of tea, bread and more rice for those who wanted it, we packed up, and headed back out. We took anther route out, which took a few hours of trekking. Less streams, and more flowers, and more Gorilla tracks. The path outlet into the Baka village that is next to Kungulu. We chatted with the Baka a bit, took some pictures, and headed back to the car. On the way, I saw a giant black and white monkey swinging from the trees. He was moving to fast for me to get footage, but he was pretty amazing nonetheless. In town, a man who had a pet monkey, wanted me to take a picture of him with it. I have a bunch of photos of that monkey. I go to the jungle, and have to take pictures of tied up monkeys… what is that all about?
or.. i make pictures move, and I have a new housemate.
Saturday November 1, 2003
The ongoing process of figuring out how to get my NTSC video work output to PAL based video cd players (which are all knock-offs…”Sony, by Japan” is my favorite) has come to a _relative_ end. I figured out how to output stuff to Video CD that will work with pretty much all the local players. The quality, for my standards, is not good enough, but people here are still so amazed that it can happen at all that they are satisfied. The problem is that NTSC is roughly 30 frames per second, and PAL is roughly 25. That means that 5 frames per second get… eaten, leaving gaps in movement. I haven’t figured out how to fix it. I’m not sure there is a good fix. Using frame blending in after effects seems to take some of the edge off, but it isn’t a solution. Ideas anyone?
The outcome of my experimentation phase being done, is that I have a ton of video production to do. I am sticking to Final Cut Pro for most of the editing duties on the more straight forward editing projects. I think a year or two of working with it, and I should get pretty comfortable. I have the two elements I need to learn: time pressure, and the ability to make mistakes. My mistakes here, are a giant step forward as far as everyone else is concerned.
I have a housemate. Jen, a youth for development volunteer… how horrible of a name is that… who’s project was one of those that went south, showed up in town yesterday. When she came to visit (while I was in Yaoundé last time), she met with George’s placement people, and they said that she could come and work there…so after a few days of mulling it over, here she is. She is going to be working in, and around Messok with an agricultural collective that is buying some sort of mill. The details are sketchy, and she has yet to go to Messok due to the project leader’s illness, and rain.. which has finally decided to start showing up, a month late. She has already planted a garden in front, cleared the back yard, and is starting to plant a more substantial garden back there.. although at the moment is losing the battle to the pigs.
One of the outcomes of her arrival is that Alex has moved out, and into the room attached to the house. This is a very good development. The Alex experiment is starting to bring definitive results: not good. After a week of pressure, I bought Alex some clothes. Apparently during his drunken stupors, he has been giving away his clothes. He has been wearing the same outfit for almost 3 weeks now. He gave away his pants, his shoes, some shirts, and whatever else he could. Why? The cynic says: to create a need, the optimist says: because he is a really nice guy. The pragmatist says: both of these things are true. The bottom line, he needed some new clothes. He found some stuff he liked, and started to pressure me to buy him some clothes. Normally, this is exactly the kind of thing I would like to do in exchange for the work he.. sometimes… does around the house. The problem is that his change-keeping- techniques have turned out to be growing. I agreed after a week of stalling, to buy him the shoes he wanted, but that I would keep them, until he had done some work, and delivered the growing list of things that had been paid for, but not delivered. He came back with a whole outfit… which I had not agreed to. The outfit is hysterical. Will the real Alex please stand up. He is a total pimp. I have some photos which I will post soon, but in the meantime: Black jeans, shiny shoes, silk (well, polyester really..but you get the idea) shirt, unbuttoned, fat gold chain, and a Kangol style hat… all worn with a certain swagger that says: PIMP circa 1994. The first time I saw him coming up the road I thought to myself: who is this guy who looks and talks like Alex? Does he have a brother who dresses like a complete fool? No, it was the man himself. I almost wet myself laughing.