Arrival in Nyambaka

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?”