The marriage feast in Maga

The wedding reception

The wedding ceremony

Aicha

It is said that volunteering is a life changing experience and benefits the volunteers more than the people they are trying to help. While this can be a bit trite, in my case there is a lot of truth in it. Shortly after arriving in Cameroon I formed a friendship with Aicha and we have become very close over the past 14 months. It has made a huge difference to my life here and some time ago we decided to get married. We were married in Maroua on Saturday 6th June. If this comes as a sudden revelation, please accept my apologies. As events developed they seemed too personal for my blog but as I am travelling to Ireland for three months I have to tell people at this stage. We had originally planned that Aicha would come with me but her visa application was rejected and although she has submitted an appeal she has been told that this will not be heard until late July. Hopefully she will be able to join me for part of the three months after which we will return to Cameroon.

Aicha lives in Maroua and up to a few weeks ago she worked as a nurse, specialising in HIV/AIDS counselling and awareness. She was based in a hospital in Mindif which is about 25 kilometers from Maroua. A few weeks ago she received a letter from the Minister for Health saying that the programme on which she works has been suspended indefinitely due to lack of funds. International donors have stopped funding the programme because of corruption. While this is bad news for Cameroon it is timely for Aicha. She had not been paid for nine months and although she had negotiated leave of absence to come to Ireland in any case, life had become too difficult for her since she also runs a bar in Maroua.

Aicha inherited the bar from her mother who died in 2007. She used to stay up until around 2:30 most mornings, depending on the clients, and then get up at 5:30 to organise the bar for the evening and make the journey by moto on an unsurfaced road to Mindif. She kept the bar going in order to pay for the education of her two brothers who are at university in Yaounde. She and the bar are very popular with volunteers. This is also true of her cookery skills and she is frequently called on to provide food in her bar for volunteers’ celebrations.

Aicha was born to a Christian father and a Muslim mother and she is a practising Muslim. She was her mother’s first child and her father subsequently divorced her mother. Her father died nine years ago.

Aicha was brought up by her grand-mother in Foumban. I have met her grand-mother, who is a most impressive person, and her family was most welcoming and hospitable. Aicha is a member of the Bamoun tribe. The internet has quite a lot of information on the Bamoun whose king lives in a grand palace in Foumban. Foumban is recognised as the centre for Cameroonian art, and is also a clearing house for art in neighbouring countries. I visited Foumban twice and an account of the first visit may be found in my September 2008 post.

Some people have asked me whether Aicha was previously married. The answer is “no”. When Aicha was 17 her family tried to marry her to a man whom she had not met but she ran away from home and hid with friends in a neighbouring village for a few months before being accepted back into her family without having to marry. When she was 20 there was a man whom she wanted to marry and who wanted to marry her but his family vetoed it because the two tribes were hostile. She subsequently did a two-year course in HIV/AIDS care and then came to the Far North to live with her mother in Maroua and work in Mindif.

Although the Bamoun come from West Cameroon, which is like a different country from the Far North, there is an influential community of Bamoun in Maroua. Aicha is active among them and among other things is captain of a hand-ball team, of which she is the main play-maker. There were 180 at our wedding, of whom the majority were Bamoun. We also had a wedding celebration in Maga on 30th May with around 130 people at which, among other things, I was given a sheep and two cocks. These have since been égorgés for the Maroua celebration along with various livestock which we were given there.

Local Projects

Some ex-colleagues in the Bank of Ireland raised money to support my work in Cameroon. This was hugely generous of them given what was happening in the Bank and in the Irish economy at the time (December/January). It was also very encouraging for me. I had not asked them to raise funds but their contributions were very timely since my budget was inadequate and I had begun to use my own money to press ahead with my programme in the council and also to support some valuable local projects. There is great scope for supporting projects since the real worth of money transferred to the Far North of Cameroon tends to be between 5 and 50 times its value in Ireland, and sometimes much more, depending on the use to which it is put. Having these funds available also freed up my own money for meeting the immediate needs of the people around me.

In my work in the Maga council I have been caught between two financial crises, one in the council and the other in VSO. The council is currently unable to collect enough taxes to pay its way and salaries are four months in arrears, there is no money for maintenance and no money for development, nor even to prepare proposals for projects which would attract funding to the area. VSO has lost some of its sources of funds and has fallen short of its financial commitments under my programme. In response to my pleas for help VSO recently found a small budget which has enabled me, among other things, to hold a workshop with the council's 38 tax collectors and to follow this up with a meeting on taxes with the council's executive. We have now completed an action plan for increasing the council's tax receipts. Hopefully these initiatives will bring about an improvement in the council's finances, but there is a mountain to be climbed.

Some of the money contributed in Ireland went directly to VSO Ireland to help them with their work in putting volunteers in the field. This is important because in the long term sustainable development will only come through programmes such as strengthening the capacities of councils and of civil society organisations. The next layer of funds contributed has gone towards furthering my work with the council, e.g. paying the costs of workshops and meetings of task groups. The rest of the money has gone towards supporting local projects.

In supporting projects I have tried to find ones where a little money will have a big effect. For example, I was asked to help prepare a proposal to attract state funds to provide "roads" to remote villages which are cut off from the main villages and from the main access routes of the county for several months each year because of the rains. The consequences of being cut off include not being able to transport produce such as rice to the markets when prices are high and not being able to get sick people to medical centres. The latter is a serious problem because villages in flooded areas are hotbeds of disease. State funds (sourced from the World Bank and other international donors) are available to support councils with improvement of local roads but in order to attract such funds one has to mount a campaign of letters and visits to a whole range of bureaucrats, including the Governor of the region, the Prefet of the district, the Sous-Prefet of the county, reprentatives of various ministries and local members of parliament. Once these people's commitment has been engaged, it is necessary to bring a team of technicians to survey the routes in question and assess the work required and its cost. This work has now been completed for three of the county's most inaccessible routes and a proposal has been prepared seeking the state funding. The amount of money required to get thus far is tiny in relation to the state funding but the council is unable to find this money at present. The prospects of getting the state funding look good.

A second project for which I have provided assistance has to do with handicapped people in the area. State funds are available to help handicapped people, e.g. by providing tricycles or crutches for them or by providing special training for them to enable them to become part of the workforce. To apply for such funds each handicapped person has to have a file containing a photo and four certificates, e.g. a certificate containing a description of the disability signed by the local doctor. At this stage we have just a photo of each handicapped person but this is no mean achievement. I paid for the rental of a moto and lent my camera to a to a man who spent a considerable amount of time and energy visiting all the villages and tracking down the handicapped people. It was arduous and dangerous given the state of the roads and the unhygienic condition of some of the villages in which he had to eat and sleep. Even getting the photos printed was a saga in itself. The main printing facility in Maroua was not working and I came to an arrangement with an individual who had the equipment. We agreed on a price but he ran out of ink with around a quarter of the photos not yet printed and I also found that his printer chopped off the heads and feet in about a third of those which had been printed. Given that the heads are needed for identification and that the feet are needed in many cases to illustrate the disability, these photos needed to be reprinted. He has not been able to get a replacement ink carton but luckily I had to visit Douala, the industrial capital of Cameroon, for other purposes and I had the remaining photos printed there. Getting the certificates will be difficult. For example, the Maga health centre's doctor has gone to Belgium for a year for training and we must await his return.

A third project which I am assisting has to do with providing birth certificates for children in the local primary school. When a child is born the parents have 30 days in which to register the birth. After that, children who need birth certificates, e.g. to continue their education or get jobs with the state, have to go before a tribunal with three witnesses and present a file with a photo and various certificates in order to become registered. It is a cumbersome and expensive process and the tribunal sits in a town which is 80 kilometers away when the direct road is useable (typically for three months each year) and 200 kilometers away when not. I was approached by a person who had assembled the files on 114 children and was asked to support an initiative to have the tribunal come to Maga to hear these cases since bringing all the children and their witnesses to the other town would be too difficult. I agreed to do this but after six months and after sending various emissaries to the chairman of the tribunal, going to see him myself and even sending him some fish from Lake Maga, we still do not have a firm date. The rains have started and the road will be impassable for the next nine months. As they say here, "il faut patienter".

These are just beginnings. If the funding is granted for the roads there are several other roads which need to be tackled. Assembling the files on the handicapped people will require a lot of work, and then they will have to be categorised and requests prepared for various kinds of assistance. Procedures are now in place to make sure that most current births are registered but there are thousands of children in the county who have not been registered in the past. And of course there many other useful projects which could be supported.

On a more personal level, I am frequently approached for money by people who cannot feed their families, cannot pay for treatment and medicines when ill, whose children have been sent home from school because small fees and levies have not been paid, etc. I am also asked to provide capital for individuals' money making enterprises, e.g. to rent land to grow rice, to buy fertilisers, to buy nets for fishing. Many ask for loans but my experience of repayment is bad, I have to be prepared for non-repayment and I have become hard-nosed about only providing funds in cases of need. While my main focus is on long-term sustainable development, I cannot ignore the immediate needs of those around me. For example, the son of a colleague in the council was knocked down by a moto and had a broken leg. He could not pay to have the leg set until the next pay day, which could be up to three months away. A small donation in such circumstances is clearly immensely valuable. Judgement of whether people are really in need can be difficult. However the consequences of refusing to help those genuinely in need vastly outweigh any embarrassment of being misled by those who are not in need. In any case, I do not use funds contributed from Ireland to meet such immediate needs but use them only to support development projects such as those discussed above.

September 2009:

When I was in Ireland on holidays many friends donated generously. I will give updates here from time to time on how these funds are being used.

One initiative which has already taken place has to do with children who are HIV positive. Aicha works with many such children on Cameroon's HIV/AIDS programme. These children are entitled to free drugs but must first undergo an examination. 30 of these children have up to now been unable to pay for this examination but this week she brought them to Maroua and we paid for the examinations out of the fund. Or so we thought at the time! Aicha asked for a receipted invoice for the examinations and was told that this would take some time. She kept asking and eventually the director of the hospital rang her to say that the examinations are free for children and he returned the money that she had paid. None of Aicha's colleagues knew that the examinations are free for children and one can surmise what would have happened the money she had paid had she not insisted on a receipt.

October 2009:

A survey has shown that more than 200 new deep wells are needed in the county. We paid for a delegate from the appropriate ministry to come and inspect 10 proposed sites and we have prepared demands with his help. He also helped us to prepare demands for extending the electricity grid to a number of villages. Both these projects will be funded by the state, if successful, but without our financial support and guidance the local people would not be able to raise the demands. We clearly need to do much more, particularly in relation to wells since dirty drinking water is undoubtedly a cause of illness and deaths, and we are talking to organisations which could help us with this.

A day in my life in Maga

My alarm goes off at 4.40 a.m. I scan the floor with my torch before stepping outside my mosquito net. I found a scorpion in my bedroom a few nights ago. Unlike some other volunteers, I have not as yet found any snakes in my house, although I had to deter one from entering my gate. The usual occupants of my house – bats, lizards, frogs and spiders – are welcome since they help to keep it clear of mosquitos. There are also owls nesting in the roof. I woke one night to the sound of heavy breathing. I searched the house (all two rooms) but found nobody. Then I heard the screech of a barn owl and there was hissing and frenzied excitement in the roof as the nestlings anticipated being fed. The nestlings are now almost fully grown and very active. At times it sounds as if there is a football match in the awning of the roof but I have learnt to sleep through this, as also through the Muslim calls to prayer which can start as early as 3.30 a.m. At times in semi-consciousness I can hear calls from several mosques, some rather like the lowing of cattle in the west of Ireland. The cocks have not yet begun to crow.

I do yoga exercises for an hour. It is normally so hot here that you have to walk or cycle very slowly and avoid doing anything energetic, otherwise you will dissolve into sweat. A session of yoga in the “cool” of the morning is therefore one of the few ways to keep fit. It also helps keep all the joints and muscles in trim and ready to withstand the squashing and buffeting which they get in the buses. The very few vehicles that are here are all loaded to an unbelieveable extent before every journey and the “roads” are mud paths with big potholes.

Before breakfast I take my anti-malarial prophilaxis and drink lots of water so as not to be sick. Breakfast consists of fruit in season, quaker oates, bread and tea. Only food grown locally is available here and the choice is always very limited. At present I can get oranges and bananas once a week on market day, and also dried dates which I eat with my quaker oates. Later on in the year there will be mangoes and mangoes and mangoes. Honey is also available, which I take on my bread.

After shaving and showering, at around 7.30 I head for work on my bicycle. It is currently mid-winter here (this was written in January). The temperature sometimes falls to a low of 20 degrees at around 7.30 a.m., climbing above 35 degrees in the mid-afternoon and not falling below 30 degrees before I go to bed. I still only need to wear a shirt in the morning but my colleagues wear several layers, including heavy over-coats and woolly hats, rather like people in ski resorts. In a few months’ time the temperature will never fall below 35 degrees and will be mostly in the 40s.

On my way to work I pass the local primary school and often groups of children jog along with me or hang out of the back of my bicycle on their way to school. Curiously they say “Bon soir, nasara” but later in the day this changes to “Bon jour, nasara”. Apart from its use in the early morning greeting, here the word “soir” usually refers to the afternoon, rather like the word “evening” in my native Limerick. “Nasara” is the Fulfulde word for a white person and is usually intended in a friendly sense. During school holidays it is very quiet on my way to work and sometimes I see fascinating bird life, especially birds of prey such as eagles and vultures.

I am nearly always the first to arrive at the Maga council building. Work is supposed to start at 7.30. Less than half the employees ever turn up for work. Very few come every day, on time or for a reasonable length of time. Those who do come to work shake hands with all those already there and have ritual conversations about the cold and whether they slept well and some sit outside chatting all day and do no work at all. Tuesday is market day in a neighbouring village and it seems to be accepted that almost nobody need work on that day. I have regular meetings with my working party on Wednesdays at 9.00. I am usually the only one on time. If the Secretary General is in his office I tell him that I will call him when I have a quorum. On a good day that will happen by 9.30, on a bad day by 11.00, if at all. Quite often the Secretary General, who is the most important member of the working party, will have disappeared by the time that the meeting starts. Members are capable of turning up at any time during the meeting, later in the day or not at all, without alerting me or apologising. At the meeting they sometimes take calls on their mobile phones, which is especially disruptive since all Cameroonians shout into their phones and they have voices like megaphones. Other people at times enter the room, shake hands with everybody, converse with some and ask somebody to go outside for some purpose.

Virtually everything in the building is not working. Most bulbs are missing, most sockets are broken, fans have disappeared and there is air conditioning which does not work. There is a helicopter landing pad which was used in 1982 but there is no toilet. There used to be a photocopier, computer and printer but all broke and were brought to Maroua to be repaired over a year ago. In any case there is no electricity since the council has not paid its bills. The council is in severe financial crisis, salaries are four months in arrears and there is no money for materials of any kind. My job - strengthening the capacities of the council - is to change all that! It would be easy to throw up my hands in despair but when I see the widespread hunger, disease and death around me I am much more strongly motivated in my work than I have ever been previously. Despite the lax behaviours (which I am trying to change), I get very strong commitment from the mayor, his deputies, the councillors and the staff of the council. I am encouraged by progress to date and I think that good improvements can be made.

At around 12.30 I usually venture out into the midday sun, to the mocking accompaniment of laughing doves, and go to my house. I do not find any mad dogs or Englishmen, but the local primary school runs two shifts and I see large numbers of children going and coming in all directions across the wasteland with their school-bags. Some of these “children” are in their late teens but have not yet made the grade for secondary school.

Although work is supposed to continue until 3.30, unless there is a meeting in progress there is usually nobody left at work when I leave. The afternoon is not a good time for meetings since most people are Muslims and break for prayers. Although the prayers usually take only around 10 minutes, washing and conversation take up a lot of time and they do not all say their prayers together, with the result that it can take the best part of an hour to get everybody back in the meeting, if at all. It makes more sense to have lunch and then work in my house in the afternoon since it is the hottest time of the day and I can use my fan and drink chilled water from my fridge. I can also run my laptop from the mains and recharge it. I have persuaded the mayor to buy a new computer (not yet paid for) and have set it up in my house where I am training my assistant in its use.

Lunch usually consists of beans, which I have previously steeped in water for 24 hours and then boiled for 2 hours. I make up a sauce for the beans with onions and tomatoes and also eat some bread and bananas. I put more effort into preparing my dinners but the choice is very limited. I could eat in a “restaurant” for €0.50 but the food is awful and probably unsafe. The highlight of my week is fresh fish, “capitain”, a lake equivalent of sea bass which is excellent if you can get it. There is great demand for fish from Maroua and Kousseri, nearby cities, and it is necessary to go to the lake at 10.00 in the morning to buy directly from the fishermen as they come in from their night’s fishing. I can usually only do that at week-ends. The choice of other food is extremely limited. Since I have only a gas ring, I buy beef or goat’s meat which has been cooked at the side of the road and I re-cook it to get rid of germs. It can be very difficult to find these or any alternatives since the local people have run out of money and there are few customers to attract vendors. I am often reduced to vegetarian curries and pastas (with very limited vegetables, such as potatoes, carrots and yet more beans) or to opening canned food which I bring from Maroua.

Visitors call to my house most days. These are a mixture of neighbours, work colleagues and a collection of teenagers who seem permanently bored. Some of them arrive when I am preparing meals and in Cameroon the custom is to share whatever you have, however small. At week-ends I can have as many as three visitors before 7.00 a.m., to whom I may have to give breakfast. I have had to draw a line and refuse some of the teenagers who turned up regularly at mealtimes since this was causing havoc with my provisioning. However, most week-ends I escape to Maroua to meet other volunteers and some Cameroonian friends and this is a very pleasant change from my bucolic existence in Maga.

In the evening I have a small amount of time to do some extra work, read a novel or listen to music on my ipod. We rarely have power cuts at this time of the year, except when a neighbour on the same line has not paid his bill, but between March and September there are storms and rains which can result in power cuts for as much as three weeks per month. There are only 12 hours of daylight, from 6.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m., and when there is no power in the evening, usually the only thing I can do is play my tin whistle and my harmonica. My children used to tell me that of all the instruments that I have tried to play, the tin whistle annoyed them most. I therefore usually reserve the tin whistle for storms, which are deafening. Occasionally also I venture out to a local bar if it is showing a football match. I have to put on a large amount of mosquito repellent since mosquitos like the bars too, especially in the rainy season when the air at night is full of insects and one can have the sensation of being attacked by dive-bombers. I always bring a torch so that I will not step on a snake. The moonlight can be absolutely beautiful, and when there is no moon I can see the Milky Way more clearly than I have ever seen it before.

I normally go to bed between 9.00 and 10.00. At this time of the year at night I hear just the screeches of owls, the hissing of lizards and barking of dogs. There has been no rain since September but once the thunder showers begin in March huge numbers of frogs and toads will appear from nowhere and there will be a loud chorus of croaking. The snakes will have a feast.