Carrying the Weight

It’s not that I don’t have things to write about, it’s just that I care too much what people will think. I don’t want to sound negative, I don’t want to sound pessimistic, and, God forbid, I don’t want to sound fake. Blogging, for me, is totally love-hate.

This blog is going to be factual. I’m going to describe the events of the past few weeks or so, and let any readers (bless your hearts for actually reading this) draw their own conclusions as to what sort of blog this is. I’ll present the sections of this blog as 5-pound weights that I’m attempting to carry on my back.

1st 5-pound weight:

Two weeks ago, a young European woman contacted me in a panic. She had been attacked by an aggressive Cameroonian man while she was alone in her dwelling. She was not hysterical; she was numb. The details are too sordid to mention here. She needed a place to escape and a place to hide until she got on a plane and left Cameroon. We provided refuge to this young lady.

(Note: I don’t consider Cameroon a particularly dangerous place for young women, as long as certain very strict rules are followed. Quite frankly, walking around in Washington D.C. scares me more than walking around Cameroon. I don’t want this to be a “don’t come here!” blog. But NGOs --non-profit organizations-- have a responsibility to treat volunteers, especially females, with safety and only safety in mind.)

This young woman left the country feeling better, and we at Green Eyes in Africa did our best to fill her last days in Cameroon with happy memories. Junk food abounded. The Green Eyes in Africa children were overjoyed to have a new friend, whose beautiful hair was braided over and over in quite stunning hairdos (well, that is, according to the little girls doing the braiding. There may be differing opinions).

2nd 5-pound weight:

This young woman’s attacker was a “big man” in his village (drives a Mercedes and all in a village where people are dying of malnutrition), and she was afraid to press charges against him. We tried to encourage her to find a way to prosecute him, as we know of other women who have been repeatedly raped by him (I cannot go into detail concerning this matter in this blog). Nothing has happened police wise. Such is the case with almost every rape victim in Cameroon. I’m glad that our friend is safe and back at home with her family, at least.

3rd 5-pound weight:

We have been dealing with the unexpected departure of Olivier Batangle Wendjel, our former African Director. This was over seven months ago, and his departure was a shock. As is the case with every organization in Cameroon, a high turnover rate is a difficult reality. This is due to illness, theft, family tragedies, lack of training, and more. But where one door closes, one opens.

It’s as if Bridget, our current live-in caregiver, flew in out of the sky right when we needed her to take over Mr. Wendjel’s responsibilities. We’ve even joked that she’s like our very own African Mary Poppins! She’s a kind woman, an excellent cook, and gives the children with whom we work a mother’s touch. Our overall situation has drastically improved. And Bridget was formerly in an abusive situation and finds life with Green Eyes in Africa to be God-sent. She’s safe, she does not live in fear, and she’s no longer hungry. She speaks English and helps the children learn English each day. If there’s one tool that will serve a Cameroonian child well into the future, it’s the English language.

It must be known that Mr. Wendjel is in no longer associated with Green Eyes in Africa in any way, shape, or form. Anyone wishing to contact Green Eyes in Africa must do so through the website (www.GreenEyesinAfrica.org), and we ask that any outside solicitations or communication concerning Green Eyes in Africa coming from anyone other than Patrick Hansen, Heather Moore, or Ryan Oliver Hansen be reported immediately.

4th 5-pound weight:

Our mini-bus has been having troubles, mainly, the problem of oil leaking out of the bottom, smoke shooting out of the tail pipe, and the horn not working. We’ve had the car “fixed.” Now, it seems there are four times as many problems than before, mainly a screeching steering wheel and a problem with interior overheating that cooks passengers like an oven. They said the “smoke shooting problem” out of our back pipe was fixed. It’s still shooting smoke in clouds. It’s often said that mechanics in Cameroon break more than they fix so that customers will return. This happens in the states, too, of course. But it’s easier to catch them in the USA. Mechanics are not my favorite group of people.

5th 5-pound weight:

Over a year ago, the water heater in my room exploded at 4 a.m. It was a terrifying explosion that melted plastic bottles, the shower curtain, and shattered the bathroom mirror. Rent was due this month, and I was sure our landlord would replace the faulty water heater. No luck. She blamed me for “abnormal usage” (what?). And our electricity does not work properly; about 8 lights in our small center do not work. I hoped she’d get them fixed before we paid rent. No luck again, even with police present to defend my rights as a renter. Rights, such as renters' rights, simply don't exist in reality in Cameroon, only on paper (to please international donors).

6th 5-pound weight:

We all still wash with cold water, which feels ice cold on chilly days (yes, it gets cold, even in Cameroon). Speaking of weather, the sun has not shone brightly for weeks and weeks. Each day I wake up to clouds that make it feel as though it’s late evening. I’m a sun person (I was born in always-sunny Nevada; Mom's a California girl) and the lack of sun is taking its toll on me emotionally. The stereotypical images of Africa always include sun. Well, we live in a rainforest-dominated region. They don’t call it the RAIN-forest for kicks. Clouds, clouds, clouds, always clouds.

7th 5-pound weight:

School has started. All of the Green Eyes in Africa kids (resident and non-resident) are back in school. Ornela, 10, is our phenomenally intelligent young darling who happens to be severely physically handicapped. We’ve put all of the kids in a school that’s closer to our center, thus eliminating the need for a driver (money saved).

The day of registration, Ornela was sent away and called a “retard” that needs to go to “retard” school (their wording). They wanted to send her to a school for physically and mentally disabled children, many of them incapable of speaking. This school for the disabled is the sort of place that breaks one’s heart as child after child demonstrates severe physical conditions that lead to drooling, out-of-control yelling, and worse. Ornela does not belong there. She did fine in “normal” school last year.

Ornela was heartbroken. I went to the school and did my best to prove that Ornela is outstandingly smart in front of the director. The director was disrespectful to Ornela and also to me. He made us wait outside his office for one hour. He scoffed, but somehow the next day, Ornela was allowed to attend classes. She never looked happier.

8th 5-pound weight:

The frenzy of buying school books is in full-force. There’s no one central location where books are sold, and each “boutique” has different prices for the same books (“boutique” in Cameroon usually means “shack”). “Text books” resemble pamphlets that could be found in a doctor’s office in the USA about smoking. Yet they cost up to ten dollars each, often more.

Joel,12, a 6th grader, has half of his books so far. The price? 64 dollars. This is for a non-prestigious school and enrollment and tuition have already been paid. All of the “text books” are crookedly photocopied, and contain page after page of serious grammatical and mathematical errors. I’ve begun correcting some of the books with an average of 8 to 11 errors per page (in order to make sure Green Eyes in Africa Kids aren’t misled). Some are quite alarming,for example: “Multiplying Fractions” is followed by an example of dividing fractions below it. Honey, this subject is for a whole other blog.

9th 5-pound weight:

We care for a five-year-old little boy named Aloha. Aloha is his nick-name; his real name is David. But one year ago we lost a little boy name David to malaria, and hearing the name “David” within the walls of our center brought back many painful memories for all of us at Green Eyes in Africa. Aloha means a lot of things such as love, peace, and good will. We feel that his nick-name suits him well.

Last Saturday, we arranged a trip for Aloha to go and visit his parents at his former orphanage (four hours away through dense rainforest). Without going into detail, his former orphanage is perhaps the most shockingly abusive place I have ever seen. Dozens and dozens of children are left all day in their own excrement, sticks of wood are used to beat children as young as one or two years old, and scabies (an itching skin condition caused by insects that lay their eggs under the skin) is endemic. When the children defecate, worms come out.

Child-on-child abuse (many of them mentally disabled) is rampant. Many children have open wounds all over their bodies. Of course, the explanation for these intensely mentally disabled children is that they’re possessed by demons. Exorcisms, organized by Catholic nuns, are regularly performed.

Aloha’s father is around 65 or 70 years old, his mother seems to be around 25. They had placed Aloha and his sister in this orphanage because his six-year-old sister was raped by an adult and they couldn’t feed Aloha, who suffers from epilepsy. I have no idea how many other children this man and woman have, or if they all come from the same father. I have recently learned that Aloha’s sister left the orphanage for “home” because “she didn’t want to go to school.” This news was unsettling, to say the least. This little girl is essentially mute. Her face expressions are constantly blank. Even our bubbly American volunteer, Natalie Lannan, holding candy, could not make her smile when she met her last year.

Aloha met with his parents, whom he hardly knows due to the fact that they placed him in this orphanage as a toddler. They interacted on what I hope was a positive level, and said their goodbyes. Aloha was more excited about the sucker he received than seeing his own father and mother.

All of this is heavy, but then came the 9th 5-pound weight:

Aloha’s mother, covered in crippling and unbearable scabies, has had another baby since we began caring for Aloha. The baby in her arms was also covered in agonizing scabies. Scabies can kill a baby. Did the fact that we "liberated" them of Aloha justify her decision to have another baby?

Aloha’s mother has yet another child for whom chances of longevity are slim. How old will the baby be when the father dies? What then? Was he even the father? Did she have a choice in the matter?

10th 5-pound weight:

The Cameroonian Presidential elections are coming up on October 9th. I don’t know what will happen. I’ve heard from most people (foreign and Cameroonian) that there’s nothing to worry about. But African elections have a reputation for being, well, a little heated. The Ivory Coast, Libya…need I go on? I’m sure things will be fine, but what puts a knot in my stomach is that people like me who were in those places prior to elections (Ivory Coast, Rwanda) were probably saying that there was nothing to worry about. There are those in Cameroon who expect bloodshed. Fortunately (?), they’re not the majority.

11th 5-pound weight:

Better safe than sorry.

I’ve been stocking up on non-perishable food supplies, in case things turn sour (and by sour I mean looting with machetes and inexperienced people shooting guns everywhere. It happened during a “taxi strike” here in 2008, the Green Eyes in Africa kids remember bullets flying over their heads). We also purchased a water tank (about the size of one of those green power boxes you see in the states on the side of the street). It’s plastic and comes inside of a metal cage to protect it.

Negotiating the price of the tank was an ordeal due to my foreign appearance (6’1 and blonde somehow stands out in these parts). As a foreigner, haggling prices is always a challenge, but especially so when I have no idea how much something should cost. We paid $160.00. I went to five different sellers, and all of them gave about the same price, so I assumed this was reasonable.

And if worst comes to worst, you can’t put a price on water storage in an emergency. Not to mention the convenience the tank will bring when our water is cut off (elections or not) for four days at a time, which occurs on a regular basis (as I write, the water is cut off). The day of purchase, I installed the heavy water tank on top of two wooden benches and filled it up with our hose. I had peace of mind knowing it was finally full. SNAP! Two hours later, the benches collapsed. But the tank was okay (the cage around it is very useful).

Yesterday I put the caged tank on top of cement stones, carefully balancing it just high enough so that water buckets could be put underneath the spout. Voila! It was time to get the hose and fill the tank. I was clearing away some of the broken pieces of the benches and one slipped out of my hands and landed in the trench behind the house (sink and bath water run into open trenches around homes in Cameroon, only toilet water goes to a sewer). The piece of wood landed on a black, plastic piece of pipe, and water was shooting out because I broke the pipe.

Just when the work was finished with the tank, just when my sweat-drenched body was to be rewarded by watching the tank fill with water, I had randomly broke a pipe and had to cut off our water. The water was off for the rest of the day.

12th 5-pound weight:

Now, how to find a plumber? There are no official, licensed plumbers in Cameroon. I could call a diplomat. They’d have connections. But the plumbers they know would charge “white man” prices (at least 4 to 6 times what Green Eyes in Africa could afford or would pay). So I turned to my cell phone contacts. I contacted five different acquaintances. The woman who guaranteed that her plumber would come “right away” never showed up. The next day, she said, “I forgot. I was busy.”

Next day came, I call her again. She says he’s coming over. He does not show up.
Today I call her once more, and the plumber finally arrives. He’s a chipper fellow, ready to work. He gives me the prices to buy the materials, which seem reasonable, and gets right to work. Within an hour, the pipe is fixed and we’re ready to see if his work is a success. We open the water supply nozzle on the other side of the house, ready to fill the tank, turn on the hose, and…and…

Our water supply has been cut off (not by us, by the government-operated water company). It will most likely be cut off for the next three to four days.

So, 12 X 5 = 60. I am perfectly capably of carrying 60 pounds of weight on my back.

It would be interesting to find out exactly what my weight limit is…