Yesterday i got a baby porcupine.. I was going to raise, breed, and eventually eat. Last night, someone stole it. I think it was one of my neighbor's kids... he, uncharacteristically spent a few hours hanging out with me yesterday. I was thinking.. I wonder if he is doing this because he thinks it will help him steal the porcupine...and I thought, wow.. I am cynical...but yeah, maybe. Sure enough. At least he didn't take the hutch I had built. I also got pretty ill last night. A food allergy that seems to be new in the past few years for me. Intense headache, followed by vomiting, and then a sleep that is more like being passed out. Today, I had to deal with an unrelenting slew of demands on me. It never stops, and everyone tries to take advantage of me on everything. One example. This girl died tonight. She was 22. Her family asked me to make up some posters with her photo, a few words, and the dates of her life. I stopped what I was working on, and did them. I have now learned that I have to get paid up front for everything. I printed one of them, and not the full 10 they asked for. Then they said.. oh, we forgot to ask you to put her name on it, and we can't pay for them... can you give us a discount. So, I already do this at cost.. not including my time. I then get shit for being a white man. Oh, and the kicker.. she died of AIDS.. of course, she didn't according to people here. She died of slow poisoning. I mentioned that to Alex, who said: "of course that is what she died of, but you can't say that, and what good would it do anyway".. so I told him about the 14 year old girl who said: "aids doesn't exist, no one ever dies of it, you just made it up to keep me from having sex, and making babies". Makes me feel real good about spending my time doing favors for folks like that...
I miss by baby porcupine.
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.
The past two months have been an ever increasing spiral of chaos. Not all bad, not all good… just a lot of travel, movement, work and the like. I am going to recap them in a whirling miasma of impressions and events with the hope of trying to catch my blog up to more recent events, and start posting regularly again. I do want to, however, flesh out a few of the past two month’s events in detail…but I am going to do that in a more democratic manner. That is to say: tell me what you want me to elaborate on, what you think is interesting, and I will pick a few of the most requested topics and elaborate.
OK. So, I left off in mid January. I have lunch in a shack in town with George and Kira (beans if you were interested). On the TV next door a Nigerian soap opera is playing. It is spectacular in its low budgetness. One light, one camera, one take. The actors walk in front of the lighting rigs and off the sets while the camera is rolling.. and you get to see it all. Lots of yelling and wailing. I want to make one of those. Then I travel… for two days. The first is.. well, easy. The bus has a few empty seats, which I have never seen. It is the first day of the Africa’s Cup.. soccer. The driver came pretty close to flying back to Yaoundé. I hung out with Iza, who is going home. She is the first of our flight of volunteers to pack up and go. She is going back for a bunch of reasons. Boyfriend, mediocre placement, money. The works. Day two of travel. I ride in the fancy VSO car, on pavement the whole way. Before that, I get a few hours of internet time… heaven. On the way there, we discuss the shortcomings of VSO’s training with the head of training. I get to Bamenda for our Annual conference in the evening. Say hi to all the other shiny happy volunteers. OK, not so shiny, but it is good to see everyone. It is also interesting to see everyone after the harsh reality of Cameroon has settled in for a few months. I also get to meet volunteers who I have not met yet. We have dinner, and watch football. From here on in, soccer (what a dorky word) will be referred to as football. I mean, seriously, why in the hell did we name our game football. There are only a few times in the game when you kick the ball. It should have a better American name like.. battleball.. or something. Anyway. We watched the match. Cameroon looks mediocre… but I’m not going to say anything about that for fear of death. Two days of meetings. Boring, hypocritical, and ultimately useless drivel. I doodle, and enjoy the gaps in between to share stories with other volunteers. My stories don’t seem that different than most other people’s.. they just seem much more frequent. Its like I have packed 2 years of the most extreme stories into 6 months… like a greatest hits compilation of volunteer experiences. So, I sort of patiently wait for what I really came up here to do. Kill a pig. Dave and Brian bought a pig, and we are going up to Dave’s placement to have a barbeque. Mmmmmm, spare ribs. We spend the morning doing errands, and getting up to his place. Nice placement. All in all, the teachers seem to be having the most stable and rewarding placements. VSO should stick to what it knows best. I carry a few cases of beer on my head. The locals (Bamenda is Anglophone, but I can hardly understand a word) are cracking up at me. I was supposed to assist with the slaughter and preparation.. but Dave has.. something else to do, and Brian is going to film it. Farhan (who is also there) doesn’t want to get too involved with the killing. So its me.. The guy they brought in to guide me is really intent on letting me do it all. I do it all… except remove the intestinal sack from the stomach area. It started by me dragging the pig to the ground, stabbing it in the heart with a dagger. Looking it in the eye, and holding it down until it died. Then cutting it up, removing the hair, and cooking it. It is amazing that there is this moment where it stops being a pig, and becomes meat. It took all afternoon. The meat was good. Dinner was great. I’d like to write something here about cruelty, meat, vegetarianism, and stuff like that.. but truth is, I didn’t have any real agenda with this. I just wanted to help and learn. I did both. The locals liked me. They kept saying how much of a bad ass white man I am. Killing a pig isn’t all that. I left the next morning, and took the bus back with Ed (a teacher in the far north) and Ana (his girlfriend who was visiting). I got invited to have dinner and watch the next football match at Steve’s house (he is an expat who works for the power company). Sarah (another teacher from the north), a totally great, and probably insane, Irish volunteer made dinner. It was totally fantastic. Ed and I watched the football match in the street with a bunch of Cameroonians, while the expats all had fancy parties in their expensive pads. We would have, but we couldn’t figure out Steve’s TV. Cameroon won. I get a package from Gwinn. YEAH. I really really like getting these. Thanks everyone for the birthday card. These packages keep me going for at least a month. The highlights? A new gameboy, comics, movies, malarone (my new anti-malarial).. a baseball hat. I do some shopping and get ready to go back to Lomié. We improvise on the way back.. and take a several hour detour cross country. Beans spill everywhere after we hit a huge bump in the road. I get in a big yelling argument with a baggage guy in A’mong M’bang (pronounced: bon-ban). It was a huge yelling fight over a few bucks for bags. He was drunk, and pissing me off. I went off. It felt really good to be able to give as good as I get. The bus was totally overfull on the way back. The worst its been yet. 24 people, plus kids. We get back and Alex broke Jen’s bike. He is in trouble again.
Thursday January 22st, 2004
So, the past two days have been filled with relentless demands on my time… for computer work. Considering we have no power, this is a problem. I keep telling people I can’t do anything to help them, but they still leave with expressions like: fucking white man, all I want is my _ fill in the blank _ and he wouldn’t give it to me… Sigh.
The sous-prefet died. He is the regional power here, and people seem to be running around like the world has changed. Apparently he has been sick for a long time, so this is no surprise, but there will be some heavy drinking this week.
Wednesday January 21th, 2004
As there is no electricity, so I get to draw. I spent most of the day drawing. Ooooh yeah, felt good. The kids next door watched.. and JR spent a few hours trying to copy the drawings that I was doing. I like the kids next door, and they are great one or even two at a time.. but as soon as three or four show up.. well, the amount of time they can play without whacking each other in the head, or breaking something decreases exponentially. Maybe I can make a cage for them, and let one or two of them out at a time.
Tuesday January 20th, 2004
The power is out. It has been mostly out for the past week. I am using my solar panels regularly to keep the computer stuff going. We get about an hour or so a day. I don’t really mind, as the SNV are in town, and I am working with Jaap and Charly on our funding pitch to do marketing support for the community forests here. I like Jaap, but man is he bitter, and have no idea of what he is doing. The good news, is that after some presentation, and my best –sell snow to eskimos- act, he seems to be convinced that this is a good idea. Whew. Thing is, I do think it is a good idea. I’m not sure if it is enough, but good lord, they need to do something to support these communities. He knows it, but he has no idea what to do, and is, frankly, burned out and bitter. I can understand that. He has worked hard on this for years, and there is no appreciation of his efforts. That being said: if you are doing this for recognition of your goodness.. find another job. No one is ever happy when someone else comes in and “helps” like this. So.. what am I proposing? I’m glad you asked. A series of radio spots, some short TV spots. I would do a set of ‘news’ stories, and a set of ads… tangent: if that sentence doesn’t explain the complete bankruptcy of the ‘news’ I don’t know what does. News is nothing but an aesthetic. Tangent over. I would do some flyers, a brochure (real printing, not just my inkjet), a website, a power point presentation for public speaking engagements, The heart of this though, is a short documentary, and a short advertisement video.
water fights are universal.
Monday January 19th, 2004
More video work, more photos, and more calendar work. I finished up some video work that I have been doing (for the funeral a few weeks ago), photos of the town for the Mayor’s calendar, and the actual designing of the calendars (the one for the Mayor, and the one for GECEC). I am going to have some trouble with these. Charly bought some thick paper that cannot fit through my printer. I am going to try to find some glue to see if I can work something out, but I am pretty limitted by the available materials…although, as usual, the real limit is going to be the aesthetic one. As long as I keep pretending that it takes me a lot longer to do the work I do than it really does, I should be fine. I’ll still have enough time to work on other things for myself… although, I haven’t been doing much of that lately. Still, I think that I will start picking that up again as I have more room for action, rather than just reaction in my day to day now. Oh, and the Tatiana, JR, Lolita and D’oh had an extended waterfight today. It started with a floor cleaning, and ended in a full on soaked house. It is clean though… and the dust has been getting really bad.
Sunday January 18h, 2004
I still have no fridge. Izzy ran out of gas, and Alex has to go back up to Abong M’bang and get more. Apparenly there were some leaks in the pipes, and Izzy had to start over. Sigh. I’m never going to get a working fridge here again. I do make light of it, but it is a real problem. Nothing here is built for single people (not single as in not married, but as in sole, alone, not part of a larger family). The fridge is the great equalizer. It allows me to cook enough for days at a time, shop for days at a time, and keep enough variety in my diet so I don’t get ill. I have been without for a month now, and my diet is clearly not as good as it was when I had the fridge. Hopefully, Alex and Izzy will figure it out, but I am not tremendously hopeful. The problem is, they have both made it a matter of pride… and so, it is hard for me to take it away from them. Well, not them, but Izzy.
There are some Chinese merchants in town. The have a big car, and fill it full of stuff, and drive down the road selling things until they run out, or hit the end. It is a collection of the worst quality crap available. Alex found some picture frames he wants. I am going to loan him enough to buy some. He wants to sell the framed pictures at a premium.. and he even has a few buyers (I verified this myself before agreeing). I helped him negotiate the price down, and now he has a business of his own. Not a chance I’ll see the money again, but I do want to support his efforts at being responsible. Funny thing. Chinese people are white here as well… so he wanted me to negotiate with my brothers to get a better price. I didn’t, but I gave him a few tips on negotiation with merchants from the rest of the world… like the idea of a quantity discount.
Saturday January 17th, 2004
I got a present today. George came back to town carrying a package from Todd. He sent me a Peanuts book. Fantastic. Aside from making me happy and laugh, I look at it, and it reminds me of everything we do/did do well.. better than any other culture in history. It is the best of america, and it is now sitting on my coffee table.
I have gotten to the stage where I ration my media, and it actually makes it all much better. Scarcity enhances value... so what does that mean for an information/consumer society based on ubiuquity and entertainment? Either we have built an economy on a currency in perpetual decline, or nothing. Probably nothing.
The neighbors kids (who have names.. JR the oldest boy, Tatiana the oldest girl, Lolita the middle girl, and D’oh the youngest girl… apparently named after the Simpsons) came over again today. Now I am half called the white man, and half called Ben. Anyway, they used a toilet for the first time in their lives. It was a group activity, which included a lot of laughing, and lamenting the fact that you can only get so much shit to come out before you are done. I sent them to get more water after they used almost everything we have in the house to flush. They are to small to carry the buckets, so they used empty soda, and water bottles. It took them a while, but they were very excited. Very.
Thursday January 15th, 2004
Alex came over this morning with a black eye. Hah. Apparently I’m not the only one who wants to belt him. He wouldn’t really tell me much about why, but someone hauled off and belted him. I’ll post the photo I took of him. It is not flattering.
Kira, the boy that George is essentially raising, wandered over today. It is a bit surprising that I haven’t seen him in a few days. He usually is over all the time when George is out of town. Apparently he has been a bit sick. Anyway, he smelled of piss. He had peed on himself, and had been wearing the same clothes for a while. I washed him, and payed some attention to him. The neighbors where he stays when George leaves, are heavy heavy drinkers. They are also constantly having trouble. They are also the patriarchal familly in town (the grandfather’s name is.. Lomié). Anyway, they were very happy to let us take care of cleaning Kira. What bad news. I can only imagine what is going to happen to that boy when George leaves.
Athough, funny thing happened as we were discussing it when a girl came over to visit Jen. She had a bag. A simple plastic bag with school books or food, or whatever. Kira’s first instinct was to reach for her bag and ask what was in it, and could he have some. She wasn’t interested, and pretty much ignored him. He kept at it for a minute, and then gave up. I started talking about how much of a trouble maker Kira was (‘cause he is bigtime), and I wondered what the future was going to be like for him. A minute later Alex strolled up, and went through almost the exact same gestures and questions. We started laughing. Tragically, Alex is the model… which is a shame, because Kira is a good kid, and smart as well.
Wednesday January 14th, 2004
So, I have written a lot about what has happened, and my reactions to them. Emotional reactions, phsyical ones. I have not really written much about how I feel in the broader sense. I think that might be because I have been so overwhelmed with this new world, that it has been pretty much all I can do to keep up. I think this is starting to change. The whole winter holiday crush was so extreme, that things feel calmer now, and I feel like I have enough room inside for more than just reaction. I feel like my tourist phase is over. I feel like I am really here. I also feel like I have let go of a lot of my past. Not memories, but the habits associated with the moral and practical realities of living in the US and Europe have warn off enough for me to feel.. well, like I am changing. I feel adrift. It is a good, if unsettling feeling. The world is a big place. I like that feeling. It is something I have been missing for a long time. I also feel like I can peel away what I care about and what my environment pushes on me. It is liberating. Very. I have no idea where this is all going to lead me, but I do know that I am going to be a very different person. The biggest difference is the feeling of weight being lifted off of my shoulders. Ironic that I have a job where I am ‘officially’ supposed to be saving the world, and I feel none of that. You are constantly reminded of just how insignificant you really are here. Every day. For me, that is a huge relief. The wieght of pretending that what we do with our lives is important is such a burden. I just want to spend my time exploring, and working on how I live. How I find my way… not with propping up some mass delusion of self importance. Anyway, this is going to be a turbulent time for me, but we are all here to suffer and die right? That is better than being numb and narcisistic.
Tuesday January 13th, 2004
My neighbors, well the store next door really, is run by Mauritanians. A small Islamic country north of here. Anyway, we (the US) dropped off some military folks to make our presense felt, and pay a few corrupt officials to let us wander around in the desert and talk tough about terrorism. Well, shortly after that, our neighbors stopped looking at me, and actually shuddered when I walked by, and have been asking Jen a ton of questions about me. Great. They were really nice to me, and then all of a sudden… fear. I wonder if they know I am american and jewish? That would be a joy now, wouldn’t it. Well, I hope things settle down. I hope there isn’t any trouble… although, the worst I can imagine is being run out of town.. but that is highly unlikely. I may just have to do my shopping eleswhere. Fucking asshole American Military. The worst part is that this ‘fighting terrorism’ is total bullshit. You can’t fight terrorism, it’s a tactic, not an enemy. And even if it were, you can’t fight it the way that they are pretending to. Life here is not nearly organized enough to do that. Many people here have never had identity papers. There hardly any real government control in the sense that we measure it here. What we are really doing is trying to keep poor people poor and harmless. We are making freedom of movement, freedom of speech and assembly pay to play activities. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about how much of a total fraud this all is. Actually, that doesn’t make me sick. It is that most people want to believe it.. that is what makes me sick.
Monday January 12th, 2004
Gwinn is coming. Sooner rather than later. My first visitor. This should be quite a trip. I am very excited.