Posts filed under ‘Cameroon’
Death of a Client
On Friday, three members of the GHAPE office went to the funeral of one of our members, Bih Josopha. She was 48 years old and left eight children behind, four of whom are under the age of 14. The daughter had come to the office to inform us of her passing on Thursday, immediately after it occurred, and we decided which office members would go and pay dues. For GHAPE members, attendance at a fellow member’s funeral is compulsory, punishable by a fine. Some of the members were a little discontented when the burial was
food from the GHAPE members
three hours behind schedule, but most of the members wanted to show their respect for a friend. Many of the women made food to feed the GHAPE members during the funeral and also to contribute to the grieving family. A lot of work that was put into the funeral to make it happen only a day after the death, but it seemed that everyone pulled their strength together, understanding the need for the effort.
When we were doing the training to become Kiva fellows, one section of the training was about being sensitive to social interactions among office members. Maybe, as Americans, we would find ourselves more physically affectionate than locals would feel comfortable being, for example. It was a good lesson to take into the field, to be very observant of the way my colleagues acted before asserting my own personality. After all, it’s better to come off a little cold in the beginning, than to make everyone around me feel uncomfortable with the way I’m acting. It turned out that the GHAPE office members are just as physically affectionate as I am, but I took a couple weeks before letting myself be that open with them. I wanted to make sure that it was ok within office politics to joke around and play. Going to a funeral was a challenge of a different kind for me. Not only was I given little observation time beforehand, I was there as a detached member of the company she owed money to and the only white person in attendance. (The loan was forgiven, as happens upon deaths within GHAPE) I did my best to imitate an appropriately somber demeanor, but not be weepy. I didn’t know the woman, but I was really sad to see her young children so overwhelmed with grief. Part of the Cameroonian burial includes music and dance, however, which lifts people’s spirits and brings some light into the ceremony. In this way, friends and family leave the funeral having grieved for the loss, paid respect, rejoiced in the life of the person, and praised God for what they have remaining in their own lives.
musicians after the burial
I had been wanting for some time to go to what Cameroonians call a “Cry Die,” which is the commemoration of a person’s death. I haven’t been to one yet, but I hear that many of the tribes come to support the family and dance and play music on the day in honor of the deceased. As a student of African dance, I am very interested in seeing how the Cameroonian tribes dance and drum and a Cry Die has been recommended to me for this particular display of tribal culture. I hadn’t understood that a funeral service would include dancing and drumming as well, but now I’ve seen that it does. Upon arrival at the funeral, Mercybertha, Fointama, and I were shown in to see the corpse of Bih Josopha, before she was placed in her coffin. I wasn’t extremely comfortable with seeing her, let alone photographing her, but my boss at GHAPE said I had to take pictures to make a good journal for the Kiva lenders. Fointama had a camera of his own and was unabashedly documenting the entire event. Somehow I felt a little more self-conscious wielding the camera in light of the fact that I was a foreigner. Later in the process of the burial, there was dancing around the newly-packed grave, and as a GHAPE member, I was asked to come into the dancing circle and sing with the other GHAPE members. I tried to look around and determine whether I should be animated or sad or somber, but I really got no definitive answer from those I saw around me. Some were smiling and singing whole-heartedly, others were doing more of an obligatory march around the grave, while not singing at all. I didn’t want to be too animated, for fear of
disrespecting the death, so I did a side-to-side step behind the others and didn’t sing. I hope that I didn’t offend anyone by not participating as much.
Death carries a different tone in Cameroon, from what I have experienced. The family that I live with has nine children, four of their own and five orphans who are cousins or friends of the family. The orphans all lost their parents at young ages. Three of the five are siblings and they lost their father first to an unknown disease and then a few years later, lost their mother to brain cancer. They said they never expected to lose their father AND their mother, but it just happened that way. Medical care is not very good here and for something as delicate as brain cancer, there’s really no hope of being cured. I’ve heard the women here talk angrily and disdainfully about the inaction doctors take for hopeless cases, usually these decisions are made upon little more than a basic inspection of the patient. The orphans who I live with are very sympathetic and wonderful people, but they themselves have expressed how death no longer affects them as it used to. They say they can hear of a death or go to a funeral and feel little more than pity. Death is so common here, and unnecessary, preventable deaths are part of everyday life. It seems to me that people try to make a way of celebrating the person’s life and incorporating a hopeful element into the ceremony, so that the event isn’t so bleak.
Bih Josopha died after six weeks of complaining of chest pain. Her brother explained to me that he had taken her to get an x-ray, but had been unable to diagnose her from what he saw in the results, not being a doctor himself. Josopha had been taking care of her eight children alone, after her husband left her, and the four young children now have to find somewhere to live. The brother has seven children of his own and is already stretching his resources. Maybe Josopha’s older children will be able to take care of the younger ones, suggested her brother. The family is not as fortunate as those orphans living in my house, with more affluent relatives to provide a home, an education and affection for them. The outpouring of support I saw, just for the funeral service, will hopefully carry on to help the family afterwards.
A funeral is not something I can say I was happy to have the chance to experience. A death is always going to be a sad thing for me. I would like to say, rather, that I felt grateful to the family to let me attend this ceremony. I’m trying to be sensitive to where my presence is welcome and where it is not, with the understanding that perhaps not all things should be made accessible to foreigners. With this, I extend to the Kiva lender what I hope is a respectful little glimpse into what happened here on Friday and what happens here in Cameroon.
Now in Cameroon
Tuesday was the last day that the former Kiva Fellows, Megan and David, spent at the GHAPE office. The going-away party was really sweet with a board members lunch and gifts of gratitude. The main office in Bamenda is located in a family compound, with an open central area for recreation and cooking. The whole office spent the afternoon preparing the meal of Njama-njama (cooked greens), fufucorn (starchy white food), and chicken that had been freshly slaughtered from the coop out back. Our feast was a celebration for the new friends who had been living and working closely with GHAPE as the first foreigners from Kiva. More than anything, the staff talked about all the advances that Megan and David had initiated in the three months that they’ve spent here in Cameroon. Among other things, they created an office network, so that staff doesn’t have to use flash drives between the various computers when switching machines. My mind was racing, partly with excitement, partly with anxiety about all the things that I want to achieve in this Microfinance Instititute while I’m here.
my new favorite flower
I expected to meet amazing people working at the GHAPE office, but the people I’ve met here have exceeded my expectations. This last week at the branch office, we had meetings to go to every morning with the various centers. The meetings were around 6:30 am every day, which meant that I woke up around 5 to get ready. Upon awakening, I found the three other members already awake each day, putting together records and crunching more numbers for the mid-year report. I’m truly inspired by each staff member and am planning on doing staff profiles to add to their Kiva page. They each deserve special mention, but especially the young Field Manager, Loveline Neh, has captured my respect and admiration. Everyone’s days end between 5 and 8pm, and the office is open on Saturdays, making it a long but successful week for everyone. During all of the adjustment in the office, I’ve also been trying to find my footing in the town of Bamenda, where I’m staying with a family who I connected with through Cameroonians I met in New Mexico.
me with the neighborhood kids
If you’ve been to Africa before, you’ll know that using squat toilets, carrying water for bucket bathes, and dining with your hands are all part of the daily routine. Having been in Senegal in January, I feel like I hardly left, although the cold and rainy weather of Cameroon reminds me that I’m in a different country. I’m startled that the city is as chilly as it is and especially in the mountain town, I felt like I was in the Rockies. I wear a wool sweater and have my rain jacket in my bag at all times. The red earth of the North West Province (which I think is a product of the rapid oxidation of iron in the soil) turns to slippery mud slides with all the rain and has presented its own unique challenge on top of learning to dodge taxi drivers while walking. I have a comical video that I’ve tried (and failed) to upload demonstrating how traction is a learned capability. The experience was a great introduction to Cameroon, reminding me to be humble in the face of tasks as basic as walking. I’ve been so appreciative of the time I’ve overlapped with Megan and David because they’ve caught me up on everything they had to discover from scratch about GHAPE. I still have a lot to figure out, but I got a pretty good start. This week, I’m starting interviews with clients, going to individual work sites and verifying loan amounts while trying to gather personal information for journals to post on the Kiva site. As I expected, I’ve been meeting amazing people and I can’t wait to write about them so I can introduce them to Kiva lenders. These first two weeks have been very busy, but I’m happy to put in every hour I can.
Ready to Start
Tuesday morning at 8:15, all 20 of the new Kiva Fellows were on time, crowded around the breakfast table where Noah’s bagels, pastries and coffee were available to power us through the intense four days of training that would follow. The table in the middle of the training room was perpetually covered with beverages, snacks and laptops for the week we were there. I was extremely grateful for every ounce of caffeine and every handful of trailmix that JD, our Fellows Program Director, had to offer us along with the 800 Powerpoint slides and hours of practice sessions. I could tell in the first hour that the other 19 Fellows in the room with me were just as psyched as I was to have the amazing chance to work with Kiva, who is only 30 months old, in their very new program. Kiva puts an incredible amount of faith in strangers, a four day course, and the selection process to gather crucial information for the website via these new liaisons between the San Francisco office and the many MFIs around the world.
The reading materials for the course seemed like a lot of information to digest, being about 150 pages of microfinance terms, practices and the history of Kiva, as written by Matt Flannery. When I got to meet Matt and Premal (who joined Kiva in the beginning stages), I felt like I was in the presence of celebrities, although their demeanor suggested that I was in every way their equal. I would come to understand that microfinance terms and practices were the mere tip of the iceberg and that what appears on the Kiva website is a highly refined, user-friendly interface to simplify the complex workings of what they do. I also learned that my job as a fellow was not to be a microfinance specialist (thank god!) but primarily to write journals because that’s the humanizing element that Kiva adds to this industry. I think that I can do that so we’ll see how it goes once I get to Cameroon.
I want to introduce myself to everyone who may stop by the Fellows blog every once in a while to read my postings. My name is Lucy Gent, from Santa Fe, NM. I just spent a year in Brazil as a junior in college, and this is my fourth trip to Africa. This last year has been full of travels for me, spending 5 months in Rio de Janeiro studying economics in the fall, then going to Egypt and Senegal for 6 weeks while I took my Brazilian summer break, and finishing the school year back in Rio. I flew back to the US last Sunday so that I could participate in the Fellows training on Tuesday in San Francisco. Friday night I came to Santa Fe and I’ll be leaving on Tuesday for Cameroon, as long as my visa and passport get back to me by my 11:00 AM flight. I had been investing with Kiva for about a year when I found the Fellows program and knew that it would be an amazing opportunity to work in this field that greatly interests me and gives me the chance to continue traveling in Africa. With my graduation nearing, I’m trying to find where I can place myself to make an impact in the world and see results to gratify the hard work I’m willing to put in. I was so discouraged in Brazil by seeing the extreme poverty on every street corner and then going to my classes where my peers owned iPhones and 7 Jeans, which in USD equivalent cost about $700. I just didn’t feel like I should be in classes if there was any way I could be working to bring people out of poverty. This may provide the circumstance to experiment with that. I’m most excited see first-hand the nitty-gritty transactions of microfinance in the field and to talk to the individuals who are benefiting from this work. Probably what I’m most nervous about is running out of energy to give to the people I’ll be working with. I’m stepping into an office that works 45+ hour weeks and who have been dedicated to the cause for longer than Kiva has been around. I want to do the best job I can to help GHAPE, the office I’ll be at, and Kiva, and I’m just a little anxious about how much effort I can squeeze out of myself for the 10 weeks that I’ll be there. We shall see.
I’ll be arriving next week and hopefully I’ll be posting blogs pretty regularly. I would love to hear from anyone in the Kiva community about what their ideas and reactions are to what I’ll be experiencing so hopefully this is the beginning of a relationship I’ll have with you as the reader. Please feel free to write me or post comments. I’d love to hear from you! After getting pumped full of exciting information and energy from the training this last week, I’m ready to spring off into the field and I can’t wait to see what awaits in the field for me and for the other Kiva Fellows who will be heading off soon.
“Ashia, Sister” – Words & Working in Bamenda
I am proud to say that I have earned two blisters in the last week: one from hand-washing my clothes (I’ve now learned to really scrub ‘em), and another from pulling the kernels off corncobs. As a woman who has earned most previous blisters from breaking in new hiking boots or rowing crew, both luxury sports of a sort, this feels different.
Work in its many forms is so deeply ingrained in the culture in Bamenda that it takes shape in language. In pidgin, you would not believe how frequently the words “struggle” and “suffer” are used, usually not as self-pity but rather as matter-of-fact. When someone is getting by, they are “managing.” I suspect you may have to hear these words pronounced in Bamenda to get their full meaning.
My favorite new word is “ashia,” a way of greeting, sympathizing with, or appreciating someone who is working hard. The response, if you are a bit confused, as I was the first few times I received an “ashia”, is a simple “thank you.” The best parallel may be saying “bless you” when someone sneezes in the U.S. – although my sneezes here (which I’ve managed to suppress over the years so that they actually sound like the word “achoo”) tend to elicit laughter, since “achoo” is a favorite kind of soup in Cameroon.
Ashia has become a special word because there is no direct translation. It expresses something that I cannot express in my English – although when I tried to explain this to some people here, they tried to explain to me that “ashia” is English, meaning here that it is not from any one of the many dialects spoken in the Northwest Province, but is rather part of the common language, pidgin English.
Once I finally convinced my coworkers at GHAPE that we really don’t have the word or anything like it in the U.S., discussion ensued. Calista (the accountant) asked, “Well, how do you appreciate someone?” I struggled and pondered for the better part of five minutes, and finally offered the possibilities of “thank you”, “good work”, or “good luck,” none of which capture “ashia.” Could you say “Thank you” to a stranger on the street who you saw pushing an especially heavy load?
I’ve discovered that “ashia” is the best way to break the ice of being an obvious stranger. Naturally, as two of very few white folks in Bamenda (I may have seen two or three other white folks in the whole time I’ve been here), we stick out. By this time, five months of travel through West Africa later, we’re used to sticking out and everything that comes along with it – “You are welcome!” How is Cameroon?” “Come here!” “Where are you going?” “White man!” and many other things regularly shouted at us on an everyday walk to the market.
But, at a certain point, like one month into our stay in Bamenda, the desire to just be part of the scene grows. Since we can never be invisible, I’ve got a couple of tricks to break the ice or turn the tables. When an adult shouts, “White man” or once in a while acknowledges gender and says, “White woman,” I usually shout back “Black man!” This brings laughter that I find pretty refreshing after 26 years marinating in P.C. land, U.S.A. When it’s a child shouting, “White man!” and usually pointing, I either make faces and point back at them, or sing the song I’ve just learned, apparently a childhood favorite of everyone in Bamenda:
White man, white man, white man,
White man with a long nose,
Since my mother born me,
I’ve never seen a white man!
It doesn’t get much better than that for winning laughter and respect.
As far as fitting in goes, well, “ashia” is the best. I can catch someone’s eye as they’re toiling over some project, pronounce an “ashia,” and immediately feel some kind of communion. The communion is enhanced if I adapt the Bamenda way of addressing folks as “sister”, “brother”, “auntie”, “mami”, “pa,” etc.
The same day that we discussed the word “ashia,” Auntie Calista (the GHAPE accountant) asked me, “What do you say if you want to give someone respect?” This question also left me without a good response. Of course, we have “sir” or ma’am” but to my American ear now used to Cameroon, these both sound awfully formal. When we say “sir” or “ma’am” it is usually in a formal context, almost pushing someone away from us as we offer respect. In Cameroon, these respectful terms are add-ons to someone’s name and at least in feeling bring them closer. To an older woman or a woman I want to respect, I can say, “Auntie” or “Mami” (pronounced like mommy). To an older man, I can say “Pa.” To a woman about my age, I can say “Sister.” All these show respect and immediately break the ice for me, a “stranger” as they say here.
Not that there’s much ice in Cameroonian culture. Using these terms of respect, I don’t feel like I’m dancing the who-can-out-polite-who dance that I’ve felt in other parts of the world. I don’t ever feel like I’ve given someone offense. And, nearly every argument or serious discussion I’ve witnessed in Cameroon ends in laughter, usually a burst of it that comes out mid-rant as if someone has suddenly heard themselves talking or seen things form a bird’s eye view and finds it all hilarious.
This is a culture I enjoy settling into.
We be thankful we arrive fine for Cameroon. Or how the cross-Africa dash came to a welcome pause in Bamenda.
Cameroon. For us, it is the end of a long road. Since we left the U.S. in December, Dave and Megan have set foot in 13 countries, 11 in Africa. Our overland trek started in Casablanca and took us through Morocco/Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, and finally here, Bamenda, the capital city of the Northwest Province, altitude above 1000 meters, surrounded by mountains, green, lush, and yes, the beginning of the “light” rainy season.
Our arrival in Cameroon three weeks ago occurred in several stages.
• First, crossing the border from Nigeria to Ekok, Cameroon, a process involving conversations with passport checks by no fewer than 8 border officials.
• Second, discovering that the guidebooks had not lied, and that the road from Ekok to the next major city, Mamfe, is in fact “terrible.” We departed Ekok at about 5:00 PM, crammed into a car dwarfed by its oversized wheels, makeshift rear-wheel drive, and jacked-up suspension – and arrived, mud covered, via motorbike, 63 kilometers later, in Mamfe at about 6:00 AM. In between: a bonding experience with our driver-cum-auto-mechanic and fellow passengers, involving a borrowed battery, siphoned petrol from the tank directly into the carburetor, and hours of pushing and pulling (with a rope attached to the front axle) through a series of mud traps with 8 foot walls of mud on either side carved out by the rains and previous vehicles.
• 
Third, from Mamfe to Bamenda, another 127 kilometers on a slightly better road in a much better vehicle, we bore witness to the “raw power” of four-wheel drive beyond Jeep Cherokee commercials. We sat in the open-air back of the pickup with ten or so other passengers and, though the trip took another 12 hours, we were content with good company and fantastic views of farms nestled in the rainforest, and across the mountains we were gradually climbing. Midway, a tree with an 18-inch trunk blocked our muddy path, but through geometry, rope, and 8-cylanders, our Toyota managed to pull it aside – take that weekend warriors! Of course, it rained, and as predicted, the air turned cooler as we approached Bamenda, so that we were happy to arrive as night fell.
The folks at GHAPE, our host organization, had been awaiting our arrival for days, and Loveline, the field manager, rushed to the bus station to meet us, greeting each of us with a hug, and quickly scooped us into a taxi back to the GHAPE office/house compound. There, we were greeted by about ten smiling faces, mostly women of many different ages – from 16 to 70, we would later learn – and ushered into our apartment in the compound. For her part, Megan can honestly say that she has only experienced welcome like this from her parents when arriving home the first few times from college to find her room newly cleaned and rearranged, food specially bought for her consumption.
Our two room apartment was perfectly outfitted – tables and chairs, living room set, stove, dishes, pots, buckets for dish washing, broom, bed, wardrobe, radio, TV and DVD player. Within moments, we had guests in every chair of the apartment, were reviewing names for the second time, trying to guess just who-was-who and what role each played, and brewing a pot of tea on our stove. Learning that Dave loves eggs, a man named Michael (who we later learned is the brother of GHAPE founder Bernadette) practically snapped his fingers and two-dozen eggs miraculously appeared.
That was Friday night, and we quickly learned how hard-working GHAPE – and most of Cameroonians – are. Work began at 8:00 AM the next morning, with a meeting of all the staff: Loveline, field manager; Donald, Fointama, Mercy, Josephine, and Bridget, credit assistants; Calista, accountant; and two volunteer workers, Mr. Eric and Hostensia. At first we thought this meeting was specially called for us, but in fact GHAPE works not only a 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM week workday, but also a half-day on Saturday mornings.
Saturday afternoon and Sunday introduced us to our neighbors – the immediate, extended, and adopted family of GHAPE founder Bernadette, a mostly female family, led by “Mama,” a warm and hilarious septuagenarian. By the time we returned from the food market and Megan from the cyber, where she sent the requisite “we’re safely out of Nigeria and at home in Cameroon” email, the other ladies of the house were helping Dave to properly wash and prepare his vegetables for dinner-making. Pascaline then lent us a grinding-stone-cum-cutting-board and helped Megan to prepare dinner, including the new (for us) “bitter leaf.” By evening, we had 17-year-old Abigail and 10-year-old Fru sharing food with us in our room and watching The Gods Must be Crazy with us on bootleg DVD (thank you, Nigeria!).
Sunday morning, Megan was collected at a quarter of eight to accompany Pascaline and Mama to mass at the Catholic Church down the road. She had her first practical lesson in the local Pidgin English, listening to the Kenyan priest, himself not a native speaker, read the mass: “We be listen for we lord and he talk say he helup all he piking (children). We be thank he for we protect and guide.” Walking home, Pascaline laughed when Megan proudly announced that she could understand much of the mass, and explained that the priest spoke more slowly and clearly than any native speaker. She is right. If either of these subjects piques your fancy, don’t worry, as we will certainly be writing more on religion, which infuses every aspect of life here, and language, which fascinates at least one of us, in future chapters.
Until then,
Send your comments and questions
(We promise to respond), and
Finance a loan for a GHAPE member
(We’ll write more about them soon)!
~Megan & Dave
