Mback in Mbongo
Sorry about the cheesy title. It just came to me so I decided to edit it.
People have sent e-mails that they have tried to add comments but haven’t been able to. I think I changed it so that anybody can comment. I left a word verification setting thing for people who want to comment on the blog. This is I guess to help prevent random computers adding comments. It is like when you buy concert or event tickets on-line through ticketmaster if you’ve ever done that.
My oldest sister Lori wrote to tell me that she also remembers Phoebe’s toes and was equally impressed by them. She also told me that her kids also play James Bond. I still haven’t learned how to play, even though it was one of my goals upon coming here. I’ll learn it in the next few days so I can compare the two games with what my nieces know.
Maybe you’re wondering why I left out all names. I guess it’s something I learned when writing my master’s thesis, and respecting the identity of people who I didn’t ask if it was OK for me to write about them. I’m not going through the backbending I did for my thesis – the people who have met the people will know who I’m talking about and anybody who lives in the community could figure it out, but since the blog is a public forum, I didn’t want to write as freely about people as if I were writing letters individually to people.
We arrived in Bamenda on Friday afternoon, which was a welcome change from the Southwest. As much as I love it in Mbongo – it’s where I feel most at home in Cameroon – the weather is an acquired taste. Luckily I acquired it or else I would’ve been miserable. It’s a similar thing to loving May in June in the Arizona desert before the rains start. I love that hot hot hot dry heat and cooler evenings during that time of year. But going to Flagstaff or the top of Mt. Lemmon is still a nice relief from the heat. Mbongo is hot and humid pretty much year round. It’s lowland rainforest a few meters above sea level. It was pretty comfortable during our stay because it was cloudy most of the day and rained every day for at least an hour. This helps to cool things down. Still, it was nice to pull into the Skyline Hotel overlooking Bamenda and be in the middle of a cool fog. Almost cool enough for a sweater. Bamenda is the capital of the Northwest Province, and is a green, mountainous part of the country. It looks kind of like the Northern CA coastal range, except with bananas, palm trees, and mangoes. When I first came here, I thought “this reminds me of Mt. Tam or Santa Cruz.” When Erik S., an agro volunteer in the NWP when I was here came to visit me in Berkeley, we drove over to the ocean, and he said, “wow, this really reminds me of Cameroon.” Part of this are the eucalyptus tree forests covering parts of the mountains. Australia’s donation to globalisation.
The trip here was mercifully short at only 7 hours. We took Mondial instead of Ton Ton, and are glad for it. We heard a couple other people on our bus mention that Ton Ton service has gone way down, and even though it’s a bit cheaper, they will never use them again. We obviously have left Mbongo, on Wednesday morning this last week. On our way out, we stopped in Mbonge to visit Mr. A., one of the main farmers John and I worked with. We didn’t know it at the time, but he had moved with his family to Kumba almost a year before, but still makes the 2 or 3 hour trip to Mbonge to maintain his food and cocoa farms.
Going to Mbongo was great. Pretty much everything I hoped it would be. V. met us in Kumba and whisked us away in a nice 4x4 borrowed from a friend, a far cry from the Corollas I took when I was a volunteer. When I was here, the way to make the 3 – 6 hour from Kumba to Mbongo or vice-versa was in Toyota Corollas with 4 passengers in back and 3 in front. Cars wouldn’t leave the taxi parks until the thing was full. Taxi drivers thought this was inefficient, since they won’t leave unless there are 4 in front and 4 in back. This is to make up from lost income they have to pay gendarmes at the many checkpoints between Kumba nad Mbongo, sometimes as many as 8 when I was living here. Luckily, there was only 1 on the day we traveled to Mbongo from Kumba since the taxi drivers union got fed up with it all and burned down all the checkpoints the day before our travel. There’s always something interesting happening here.
But I was talking about going to Mbongo. When we arrived in Mbonge, a town I never really liked as a volunteer but where I spent lots and lots of time, we immediately ran into a couple people that recognized me. We said our hellos and transferred into the local parish priest’s 4x4. Since leaving, my best friend has since become the Catholic Catechist of Mbongo, and when he told the priest in Mbonge of our coming, he offered his help so we could easily make it to Mbongo. A very nice and appreciated gestrure. The drive to Mbongo was fun because everybody knew the priest and was saying hello. We made a short stop in Illoani for a beer, then kept on moving. When we got to Dikome, the last village before Mbongo, I started to feel kind of high, kind of a heightened awareness of the road, bridges and farms I passed so many dozens of times on endless bike rides to and from Mbongo as a volunteer. We passed where we started a native tree nursery, the defunct oil mill, and then turned onto the back road that passes around the CDC camp and football field. Normally, the road you take to get to Mbongo starts at one end of town and passes everybody’s house. I was looking forward to that and seeing all the houses and people, but the spur road to get to town this way has been closed for many years I later found out. It was fine as it was.
We were dropped off at V’s house and whisked inside to chairs and family and an incredible 2 or 3 hours of my life. Permasmile. There was rice, chicken, stew, beer, and afofo in front of us within minutes which we gulped down since we hadn’t eaten anything all day. I dunno. Those first few hours in V’s house I was on an adreniline high and were some of the happiest most intense moments of my life. Seeing all these faces of people that I didn’t think I’d ever see again when I left, coming up to welcome me and Dana. I didn’t really know what Dana was experiencing at the time I was so caught up in seeing everybody. It was kind of overwhelming and amazing. The best were the old women, many of whom I knew the names of, many I just recognized. But they have a great way of coming up to you and giving you a full body hug that just warms your heart. “Ma mami-ehhh! Mr. Paul! Weh! You’re welcome!” The woman in Mbongo are an important and amazing presence in town, but because of age difference, gender, and sometimes language, I didn’t get to know most of them as well people my own age. But I still had lots of good memories of dancing, drinking, and working alongside them. It was especially great to see the retired catechist, who in a letter to V. telling him we were coming, I asked about him specifically hoping he was still alive so we could see again. He is not only still alive, but amazingly strong and vibrant. He was running all over the place wearing a colorful blue hausa gown and matching cap, carrying chairs for people, helping out. I don’t know if it’s respectful, but the best way I can think to describe it is inpiring and cute. I don’t know what old people think about being called cute, it could be kind of condescending, but with Mr. E., seeing him, you just know you want to sit down with him and hang out. His first words to me with a huge smile on his face were “Mr. Paul, I still dey alive-ohh!!!” I could go on and on, but you get the idea. That night we relaxed with people continuing to visit the rest of the day and evening.
The teachers of the local sedondary and high school were preparing for their end of the semester social event which was supposed to start at 6pm. I went over to the bar at around 10:30 hoping to hang out for a while but only 3 people had showed up yet. The principle offered me a beer, which I accepted and hung out there until after midnight, but the gathering still hadn’t started so I went to bed. I heard the music start when I went to sleep, and when I got up at 6 the next morning to the group cheers of “TEA-CHERS, TEA-CHERS, TEA-CHERS”. I got up and joined the drunken event, was offered a beer, but only took a soda. I knew much more beer and afofo were still coming later that day. Made my first speech of the trip after the princple officially introduced me to the group. Only the principle and two other teachers are still in Mbongo from when I was there. Danced some more till 8 or so, then went back to our host family for breakfast.
Welcome to Mbongo.
Carl, the palm wine was sweet-oh!!
One nice thing about being back in Mbongo is seeing the changes, and that in general, the lives of my friends have moved forward and people seemed to be doing all right. Life is still very difficult and people struggle, but things hadn’t seemed to slide backwards for people. 4 or 5 of my better friends were all living with their parents when I left, often their entire family in a single room of their parent’s home. Now, they have built their own houses with zinc roofs, and various stages of completion. But all had moved into better places than they were 9 years ago.
After being there for a few days, I got a grasp on how things had changed since I left. Some of them were obvious, like my friends’ new houses, some were not.
The obvious. Mount Cameroon Project built a big new house at the entrance of town to house visiting MCP people in Mbongo. Currently, the resident nurse is living there. MCP used the house I lived in for a few years after I left, added two rooms to the back, and built a concrete latrine. Once MCP built their new block house, Manyemen Annex Hospital moved an extension to Mbongo, so my old house is now a health center, open every day! Coming from the states, it is still woefully undersupplied, but is still an improvement over before. It has been there for a couple years now. A doctor visits once a month to do minor surgeries. There is also a lab in the new room, (a microscope and hand-cranked centrifuge with places for 2 test tubes), a consultation room (my storage room), office (my room), and infirmary with 6 beds (my living room and kitchen). Mbongo and Bonjare have joined, and if you just arrived, you wouldn’t know they were two separate villages. There is a two story, 5 apartment structure next to the Catholic church that people can rent and where the Father stays on his visits. The Secondary School has added a High School, although the HS is hardly functioning. The forest is also much further away from the village, as a lot more has been cleared for oil palm, cocoa, and people’s subsistence farms. The Scanwater generator and water pump no longer works, but probably half the people have small generators. There were only 2 when I was there. Several people also have TVs. Most local transportation is on motorcycle, which I never saw when I was in Mbongo. The motorcycles and generators I learned are from Korea and China, and are much more affordable than anything that existed and was available 10 years ago. A motorcycle (machine in pigin) costs around $600 and a generator from $100 to $150. There are also cell phones. Only 1 person uses it like a business, where you pay him to make phone calls, but several others have personal phones. Most places in Mbongo receive cell service, with some spots that don’t get good reception. But in all the villages – Boa, Diongo, Bonjare, Bamusso, Dikome, Illoani – you can get cell phone service. No electricity, but you can call America no problem. There is also a new oil mill to replace the defunct one. The old mill was shut down when the local evil man, Mr. L. stole over 1 million CFA of money that was supposed to go to mill upkeep. After this event, Mr. L. has not set foot in Mbongo again.
Less obvious. The Mbongo population is smaller than it was when I was there. Maybe as much of half the population was Nigerian, since wages were actually higer in Cameroon than in Nigeria, and land more available. Mbongo is maybe 60 km from the Nigerian border, so people were flocking across the border for work and other opportunities. These people have mostly left due to tighter Cameroonian immigration policies, and maybe life was harder here than people thought. Nigerians in the SW province, not just in Mbongo, were mostly treated as second class citizens so life could be particularly hard for Nigerians. The ones in Mbongo were mostly Ibibio. Most of the fishermen in the mangrove swamps that stretch from Mbongo far into Nigeria are still Nigerian though. The only Cameroonians you’d see here are government employees. The local market also still only uses Naira, the Nigerian currency. People have started to plant cocoa again. People planted cocoa about 20 years ago, but ripped out their trees when the world cocoa market fell. Now, for several reasons, people see it as a good investment and are planting a lot of cocoa again. Oil palms are also being planted at a faster pace. People struggled to plant these trees 10 years ago, but people’s young palms of 10 years ago have now matured and are producing much more, and everybody seems to be making every effort to plant more. So there is even more palm oil leaving Mbongo than 10 years ago. The mangroves are being cut down at a furious pace by Ibibio fisherman who use the wood to dry fish in massive mat and bamboo smokehouses reminiscent of pictures I’ve seen of smokehouses used by Northwest Native Americans. The mangrove wood is the only wood available to them since hardly any other plant can survive there, except this palm tree that somehow made it to the West Coast of Cameroon from I think Malaysia. Wherever the mangroves are cleared, the soil becomes unstable, and palms are the only plant that can survive. As a result, the mangrove swamps which support a pretty amazing ecosystem and filtration/buffer zone similar to the swamps that are being eroded along the gulf coast, are disappearing. An Mbongo man is now working with the MCP to help deal with the problem.
Well, if you didn’t get bored and tired reading this, I’m gonna try to write more later but have had enough by now, and need to watch the Brazil England match and drink beer.
People have sent e-mails that they have tried to add comments but haven’t been able to. I think I changed it so that anybody can comment. I left a word verification setting thing for people who want to comment on the blog. This is I guess to help prevent random computers adding comments. It is like when you buy concert or event tickets on-line through ticketmaster if you’ve ever done that.
My oldest sister Lori wrote to tell me that she also remembers Phoebe’s toes and was equally impressed by them. She also told me that her kids also play James Bond. I still haven’t learned how to play, even though it was one of my goals upon coming here. I’ll learn it in the next few days so I can compare the two games with what my nieces know.
Maybe you’re wondering why I left out all names. I guess it’s something I learned when writing my master’s thesis, and respecting the identity of people who I didn’t ask if it was OK for me to write about them. I’m not going through the backbending I did for my thesis – the people who have met the people will know who I’m talking about and anybody who lives in the community could figure it out, but since the blog is a public forum, I didn’t want to write as freely about people as if I were writing letters individually to people.
We arrived in Bamenda on Friday afternoon, which was a welcome change from the Southwest. As much as I love it in Mbongo – it’s where I feel most at home in Cameroon – the weather is an acquired taste. Luckily I acquired it or else I would’ve been miserable. It’s a similar thing to loving May in June in the Arizona desert before the rains start. I love that hot hot hot dry heat and cooler evenings during that time of year. But going to Flagstaff or the top of Mt. Lemmon is still a nice relief from the heat. Mbongo is hot and humid pretty much year round. It’s lowland rainforest a few meters above sea level. It was pretty comfortable during our stay because it was cloudy most of the day and rained every day for at least an hour. This helps to cool things down. Still, it was nice to pull into the Skyline Hotel overlooking Bamenda and be in the middle of a cool fog. Almost cool enough for a sweater. Bamenda is the capital of the Northwest Province, and is a green, mountainous part of the country. It looks kind of like the Northern CA coastal range, except with bananas, palm trees, and mangoes. When I first came here, I thought “this reminds me of Mt. Tam or Santa Cruz.” When Erik S., an agro volunteer in the NWP when I was here came to visit me in Berkeley, we drove over to the ocean, and he said, “wow, this really reminds me of Cameroon.” Part of this are the eucalyptus tree forests covering parts of the mountains. Australia’s donation to globalisation.
The trip here was mercifully short at only 7 hours. We took Mondial instead of Ton Ton, and are glad for it. We heard a couple other people on our bus mention that Ton Ton service has gone way down, and even though it’s a bit cheaper, they will never use them again. We obviously have left Mbongo, on Wednesday morning this last week. On our way out, we stopped in Mbonge to visit Mr. A., one of the main farmers John and I worked with. We didn’t know it at the time, but he had moved with his family to Kumba almost a year before, but still makes the 2 or 3 hour trip to Mbonge to maintain his food and cocoa farms.
Going to Mbongo was great. Pretty much everything I hoped it would be. V. met us in Kumba and whisked us away in a nice 4x4 borrowed from a friend, a far cry from the Corollas I took when I was a volunteer. When I was here, the way to make the 3 – 6 hour from Kumba to Mbongo or vice-versa was in Toyota Corollas with 4 passengers in back and 3 in front. Cars wouldn’t leave the taxi parks until the thing was full. Taxi drivers thought this was inefficient, since they won’t leave unless there are 4 in front and 4 in back. This is to make up from lost income they have to pay gendarmes at the many checkpoints between Kumba nad Mbongo, sometimes as many as 8 when I was living here. Luckily, there was only 1 on the day we traveled to Mbongo from Kumba since the taxi drivers union got fed up with it all and burned down all the checkpoints the day before our travel. There’s always something interesting happening here.
But I was talking about going to Mbongo. When we arrived in Mbonge, a town I never really liked as a volunteer but where I spent lots and lots of time, we immediately ran into a couple people that recognized me. We said our hellos and transferred into the local parish priest’s 4x4. Since leaving, my best friend has since become the Catholic Catechist of Mbongo, and when he told the priest in Mbonge of our coming, he offered his help so we could easily make it to Mbongo. A very nice and appreciated gestrure. The drive to Mbongo was fun because everybody knew the priest and was saying hello. We made a short stop in Illoani for a beer, then kept on moving. When we got to Dikome, the last village before Mbongo, I started to feel kind of high, kind of a heightened awareness of the road, bridges and farms I passed so many dozens of times on endless bike rides to and from Mbongo as a volunteer. We passed where we started a native tree nursery, the defunct oil mill, and then turned onto the back road that passes around the CDC camp and football field. Normally, the road you take to get to Mbongo starts at one end of town and passes everybody’s house. I was looking forward to that and seeing all the houses and people, but the spur road to get to town this way has been closed for many years I later found out. It was fine as it was.
We were dropped off at V’s house and whisked inside to chairs and family and an incredible 2 or 3 hours of my life. Permasmile. There was rice, chicken, stew, beer, and afofo in front of us within minutes which we gulped down since we hadn’t eaten anything all day. I dunno. Those first few hours in V’s house I was on an adreniline high and were some of the happiest most intense moments of my life. Seeing all these faces of people that I didn’t think I’d ever see again when I left, coming up to welcome me and Dana. I didn’t really know what Dana was experiencing at the time I was so caught up in seeing everybody. It was kind of overwhelming and amazing. The best were the old women, many of whom I knew the names of, many I just recognized. But they have a great way of coming up to you and giving you a full body hug that just warms your heart. “Ma mami-ehhh! Mr. Paul! Weh! You’re welcome!” The woman in Mbongo are an important and amazing presence in town, but because of age difference, gender, and sometimes language, I didn’t get to know most of them as well people my own age. But I still had lots of good memories of dancing, drinking, and working alongside them. It was especially great to see the retired catechist, who in a letter to V. telling him we were coming, I asked about him specifically hoping he was still alive so we could see again. He is not only still alive, but amazingly strong and vibrant. He was running all over the place wearing a colorful blue hausa gown and matching cap, carrying chairs for people, helping out. I don’t know if it’s respectful, but the best way I can think to describe it is inpiring and cute. I don’t know what old people think about being called cute, it could be kind of condescending, but with Mr. E., seeing him, you just know you want to sit down with him and hang out. His first words to me with a huge smile on his face were “Mr. Paul, I still dey alive-ohh!!!” I could go on and on, but you get the idea. That night we relaxed with people continuing to visit the rest of the day and evening.
The teachers of the local sedondary and high school were preparing for their end of the semester social event which was supposed to start at 6pm. I went over to the bar at around 10:30 hoping to hang out for a while but only 3 people had showed up yet. The principle offered me a beer, which I accepted and hung out there until after midnight, but the gathering still hadn’t started so I went to bed. I heard the music start when I went to sleep, and when I got up at 6 the next morning to the group cheers of “TEA-CHERS, TEA-CHERS, TEA-CHERS”. I got up and joined the drunken event, was offered a beer, but only took a soda. I knew much more beer and afofo were still coming later that day. Made my first speech of the trip after the princple officially introduced me to the group. Only the principle and two other teachers are still in Mbongo from when I was there. Danced some more till 8 or so, then went back to our host family for breakfast.
Welcome to Mbongo.
Carl, the palm wine was sweet-oh!!
One nice thing about being back in Mbongo is seeing the changes, and that in general, the lives of my friends have moved forward and people seemed to be doing all right. Life is still very difficult and people struggle, but things hadn’t seemed to slide backwards for people. 4 or 5 of my better friends were all living with their parents when I left, often their entire family in a single room of their parent’s home. Now, they have built their own houses with zinc roofs, and various stages of completion. But all had moved into better places than they were 9 years ago.
After being there for a few days, I got a grasp on how things had changed since I left. Some of them were obvious, like my friends’ new houses, some were not.
The obvious. Mount Cameroon Project built a big new house at the entrance of town to house visiting MCP people in Mbongo. Currently, the resident nurse is living there. MCP used the house I lived in for a few years after I left, added two rooms to the back, and built a concrete latrine. Once MCP built their new block house, Manyemen Annex Hospital moved an extension to Mbongo, so my old house is now a health center, open every day! Coming from the states, it is still woefully undersupplied, but is still an improvement over before. It has been there for a couple years now. A doctor visits once a month to do minor surgeries. There is also a lab in the new room, (a microscope and hand-cranked centrifuge with places for 2 test tubes), a consultation room (my storage room), office (my room), and infirmary with 6 beds (my living room and kitchen). Mbongo and Bonjare have joined, and if you just arrived, you wouldn’t know they were two separate villages. There is a two story, 5 apartment structure next to the Catholic church that people can rent and where the Father stays on his visits. The Secondary School has added a High School, although the HS is hardly functioning. The forest is also much further away from the village, as a lot more has been cleared for oil palm, cocoa, and people’s subsistence farms. The Scanwater generator and water pump no longer works, but probably half the people have small generators. There were only 2 when I was there. Several people also have TVs. Most local transportation is on motorcycle, which I never saw when I was in Mbongo. The motorcycles and generators I learned are from Korea and China, and are much more affordable than anything that existed and was available 10 years ago. A motorcycle (machine in pigin) costs around $600 and a generator from $100 to $150. There are also cell phones. Only 1 person uses it like a business, where you pay him to make phone calls, but several others have personal phones. Most places in Mbongo receive cell service, with some spots that don’t get good reception. But in all the villages – Boa, Diongo, Bonjare, Bamusso, Dikome, Illoani – you can get cell phone service. No electricity, but you can call America no problem. There is also a new oil mill to replace the defunct one. The old mill was shut down when the local evil man, Mr. L. stole over 1 million CFA of money that was supposed to go to mill upkeep. After this event, Mr. L. has not set foot in Mbongo again.
Less obvious. The Mbongo population is smaller than it was when I was there. Maybe as much of half the population was Nigerian, since wages were actually higer in Cameroon than in Nigeria, and land more available. Mbongo is maybe 60 km from the Nigerian border, so people were flocking across the border for work and other opportunities. These people have mostly left due to tighter Cameroonian immigration policies, and maybe life was harder here than people thought. Nigerians in the SW province, not just in Mbongo, were mostly treated as second class citizens so life could be particularly hard for Nigerians. The ones in Mbongo were mostly Ibibio. Most of the fishermen in the mangrove swamps that stretch from Mbongo far into Nigeria are still Nigerian though. The only Cameroonians you’d see here are government employees. The local market also still only uses Naira, the Nigerian currency. People have started to plant cocoa again. People planted cocoa about 20 years ago, but ripped out their trees when the world cocoa market fell. Now, for several reasons, people see it as a good investment and are planting a lot of cocoa again. Oil palms are also being planted at a faster pace. People struggled to plant these trees 10 years ago, but people’s young palms of 10 years ago have now matured and are producing much more, and everybody seems to be making every effort to plant more. So there is even more palm oil leaving Mbongo than 10 years ago. The mangroves are being cut down at a furious pace by Ibibio fisherman who use the wood to dry fish in massive mat and bamboo smokehouses reminiscent of pictures I’ve seen of smokehouses used by Northwest Native Americans. The mangrove wood is the only wood available to them since hardly any other plant can survive there, except this palm tree that somehow made it to the West Coast of Cameroon from I think Malaysia. Wherever the mangroves are cleared, the soil becomes unstable, and palms are the only plant that can survive. As a result, the mangrove swamps which support a pretty amazing ecosystem and filtration/buffer zone similar to the swamps that are being eroded along the gulf coast, are disappearing. An Mbongo man is now working with the MCP to help deal with the problem.
Well, if you didn’t get bored and tired reading this, I’m gonna try to write more later but have had enough by now, and need to watch the Brazil England match and drink beer.
posted by Paoulo | 8:29 AM
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