We all had a fun, relaxing weekend in Ngaoundere, going to
restaurants and bars and getting acquainted with some other volunteers. But
once Monday rolled around, I was back to work. Like the Elvis Costello song says,
“Welcome to the working week.” Luckily, the school year doesn’t start for
another month, so I still got to sleep in.
My counterpart, Roger, came to pick me up at the Peace Corps
house at about 10:30 AM. He’s the vice-principal of the high school where I’ll
be working, and it was he who requested the presence of an Education volunteer.
We met over the course of two days during training in Ebolowa, and I feel
exceptionally lucky to have him as my community liaison: Not only is he kind
and generous, but he’s also well read and fluent in English. (We had a
fascinating discussion about neocolonialism over coffee in Ebolowa, but that’s
another story.)
We took a 15-minute motorcycle ride to the home of the
proviseur, or the principal of the high school. He lives past the paved roads
in a more rural setting, but has a lovely large home, surrounded by a security
gate—and with satellite TV! His children were clearly more interested in
watching DVDs, but the proviseur himself is very charming, if not a little intimidating,
since he clearly has high expectations for me. Not only does he want me to
teach English to three grade levels, but he also wants me to “improve English
proficiency among the staff,” in addition to my secondary projects. At this
point, I’m just hoping to do this job as well as I can, and hopefully make some
small impact on the community outside of work, but I didn’t want to disappoint
him, especially since he had his wife cook my favorite Cameroonian dish, sauce
d’arachide (peanut sauce), for me.
In all, the meeting with the proviseur involved a lot of
exchange of pleasantries and filling out paperwork, so I didn’t need to be as
nervous as I was, though I suppose most people are nervous meeting their boss
for the first time.
After returning to the case (the regional office) early in
the afternoon, Kara and I made a quick trip to the market to buy vegetables.
It’s possible to get them in Nyambaka, but the market is only once a week
(Saturdays), whereas the one in Ngaoundere is open every day and has a larger
variety. While at the market, I saw a boy (perhaps 13 years old) being beat
with a shoe outside a store’s doorstep, which shocked me somewhat, but
apparently this is a fairly standard punishment for stealing. Sometimes I don’t
think I’ll ever entirely get used to this country.
Thanks to Kara’s connections, we were able to take a private
car to Nyambaka rather than a bus, which was quite a bit more expensive, but
required a lot less stress. Since I was traveling with all of my belongings in
two suitcases and a large metal footlocker, I felt safer with everything in the
trunk of the car, rather than strapped to the top of a bus or in the luggage
compartment where everyone might have access to my things. I ended up paying
9,000 (about $18) francs for this piece of mind, which was totally worth it—I
even took a nap in the back seat during the 90-minute trip.
It wasn’t until we arrived in Nyambaka that I began to feel
anxious about my new situation. As soon as we stepped out of the car, Kara
began speaking to her neighbor in Fulfulde, and I was only able to understand a
minuscule part of their conversation. To make things even more
discombobulating, a young woman appeared, stood behind the man Kara was talking
to, and began surreptitiously filming me on her cellphone while pretending to
read a text message. I waved at the camera with a displeased expression, as if
to say, “Yes, hello, I see what you’re doing, please stop,” but she only
giggled and continued.
I normally don’t mind being photographed, but something
about this encounter made me feel like an object of amusement, like some kind
of novelty, which I found somewhat disturbing. And so, in a moment of weakness
(and rudeness), I abandoned the conversation and retreated to Kara’s house. I
looked around at my luggage, which was now scattered on Kara’s living room
floor, and thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing?”
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