Pepper Bui and our garden

August 21th 2010-

The last days have not had a lot of rain which enabled us to start having our own African garden. Ta Ta Edwin the probably most hard working and self content man I have met offered us his help. Sometimes it is quite hard to understand him as he often uses Lamnso or Pidgin phrases but we are getting better in hearing.
So we first weeded a part of our garden (we have as most Cameroonians here a lot of cornfields mixed with yama yama - similar to spinach- connected to our house) which took us a few hours but we were surprised at the result: The soil was still so loose and fertile so we really enjoyed preparing the garden ( about 8 times 4 metres)for planting manioc, cabbage and spices. To mention here is that Tata has knocked at our door every morning since ( at seven a clock…) to explain things he wants to do with the garden. The strength Tata has is unbelievable, he digs up the garden so fast and with such technique –I really admire him for this and he always starts laughing about things we say or do and his laughter is so incredible –it reminds me a bit of the laughter of the wise baboon in The Lion King.
He also invited us to his family and village which will take us an hour per foot , there he wants us to join his church and community for one hour ( every Cameroonian I have met so far is very religious, if Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Muslim ( they all are mixed with African traditional religion which is very present here)and then he wants us to play with his seven kids and probably we will get fufu and yama yama as a meal, fufu is a sticky lump made out of corn, yama yama is similar to spinach and of course made with palm oil as nearly everything here. By the way you eat fufu with your right hand which is washed before and after eating in a bucket with leak warm water- eating with your left hand is similar to India seen as dirty.
Talking about food I have to mention what happened to me yesterday (22.August) .We were invited to have dinner at our coordinators house. We had potatoes with cabbage and carrots and fish for the non veggies and green pepper sauce. I really enjoyed the pepper sauce yet I totally forgot that pepper sauce is served with a pepper and this walnut seized pepper was between my vegetables ( which I did not notice). So I ate and ate and suddenly I felt something very spicy in my mouth, this spicy feeling ended in a fire in my mouth and throat, I was crying and sweating, my face was bright red and my heart beating as fast as having run for three hours- and the worst - it took one hour until it stopped… well I won´t eat this a second time ( you are not supposed to eat them as they are soo hot , hotter than any Indonesian dish)
Bernard ( the name of my Cameroonian coordinator) has 4 children. They are so funny , especially Stephanie who is 4 years old , she is very heady and always tries to get what she wants by acting in such witty and incredible ways.
Then the oldest girl (I have forgotten her lamnso name but the translation “who loves you”) has only been living with Bernard for seven months as she is adopted. She is very bright and would love to go to highschool, but out of different reasons she will not be able to attend school until next year or the year after, so this is the reason we are going to teach her and a few other kids a few afternoons a week to enhance their reading and writing skills and preparing them for school.
Here I come up with one of the biggest problems in Cameroon. Education.
Comparing to other African countries education has improved here, yet many children do not attend school because of school fees ( yet as I was told many parents could afford those if priorities would be set right and money was not spend to much on drinking) and then of course even though they get high school degree they are not able to go to university because of their money situation and since there is a lack of places – and all the children and youth I met until now really want to learn ,they envy our opportunities and work so hard .
For example Alex, who I taught how to juggle .He would love to learn German and to study Economics at University in Yaoundé, but he just does not know if he will have enough money until October, when university starts.
I am so sad at the fact that young people who are so eager to learn just do not get the opportunity and we Europeans often do not use our opportunity of educating ourselves ( I mean not only in school terms). Here in the so called democratic state, the pupils are not able to say their opinion especially concerning politics.
As I am living in the Anglophone part of Cameroon you experience the injustice of Paul Biya the president since 1982!! Ministers and Presidents prefer buying big houses in France and investing in themselves and supporting the French patriotism and for example leave the Anglophone part without good streets. So here in the Anglophone provinces you find the strongest opposition, which shows up in Paul Biyas soldiers who you sometimes see walking a long with machine guns. A guy I met at the internet café ( young boy and very sad story) said he would rather have a divided Cameroon and he does not like living in such a undemocratic state, yet if he wants to live without any harm done to him he is not able to criticise Paul Biya in the open. I am interesting in the new elections which occur to happen in January , I hope for the best but I also hope that their will not be use of force and no casualties especially here around this area as there is a very strong opposition.
Talking about force , criminality is seldom here and the people show a lot of respect towards each other. Even the different tribes who in history had bloody fights and the different religios groups here live in peace and strong communities. Communities I think are very important here and as I am myself living together in a community I will tell you more about the structure and life in it…

A berne kbwuishe ( see you soon)
Bri