So, What IS Peace Corps?

Quick Update!

            Our Sante' (Health) group took a lovely field trip outto the West region of Cameroon at the beginning of last week-- it was a muchneeded and wonderful break from village. We were able to see some volunteer'sposts/projects and met some local NGOs. The trip was great all around. Uponreaching Bokito at least 8 of us were a bit sick. My sickness was quite latentbut I eventually came down with a 'petite' typhoid. Typhoid can easily be deadly and kick some touchie-- luckily I've been vaccinated and am pure beast so I hadminor minor minor complications. All is well now--no worries. In other health related news, while being weighed at the hopsital I clocked in at around 106kg (233lbs)-- meaning I've lost at least 10+ lbs while here. Cool beans.

            Our group swears in this Thursday! This means we allofficially become PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers)!! We're most certainlyincredibly ecited! I know I cannot wait. So that also means I move to post thisFriday--well, at least begin my trip to post. I will spend about two days or soin Bamenda which is the capital city of my region for banking, food shopping andbuying jazz I most likely don't truly need etc. Overall, very exciting time.Also, come the beginning of next week my internet access should improve! So, yay!

So, What Do You DO in Peace Corps?

                So I’ve been here for some ten or eleven weeks, my training is finally approaching a swift end (!) and many of the recent short conversation I’ve had with friends over Facebook chat have concerned what it is I am actually going to DO while here in Cameroon. So I figured I will take a moment to talk Peace Corps so we’re all on the same page.

What is Peace Corps?

                It is a pretty cool governmental volunteer organization started by J.F.K. in the 1960’s that is a small part and parcel of the Federal Government of the USA. It has worked in over 110 countries across the globe and currently has volunteers posted 77 countries. Over 200,000+ volunteers have served since its inception. Cameroon was actually one of the first countries to receive Peace Corps (PC) volunteers in 1962 and currently there are over 167 volunteers in Cameroon. Here in country there are five sectors represented; Health, Agro-forestry, Youth Development, Small Business Enterprise and Education. Peace Corps has three overarching goals:

1.       To help people of interested countries meet their needs for trained manpower.

2.       To promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of peoples served.

3.       To promote a better understanding of other peoples on part of the American people.

How exactly am I to do this?

                The idea is to integrate into my community, build the local capacity of my community members and serve as a professional and self-reliant volunteer. Easy, right? Maybe, not. But—this is all so exciting none the less. Peace Corps’ approach towards development stresses the ideas of capacity building, appropriate technology/services and community involvement—this tri-fecto ideally will help ensure sustainability. It, in theory, seems to be one of the more effective ways of approaching development work. It is great that we, volunteers, have the opportunity to work with our respective communities for a full two years—especially seeing that so many Western NGOs and BINGOS (Big-International NGOs) enter communities, import knowledge and technology, implement projects/build stuff while neglecting to involve community members—hence not transferring skills/knowledge, not utilizing locally made and accessible materials and continuing to (in some respects) ruin the agency of local communities by continually ‘giving, giving, giving.’

(Before getting into the future let me tell you about what I’ve been doing here for three months)

What have I done here for 11 weeks?

                Training! Training. Anddd training. Our training program is intense. It involved language, cross cultural training and technical training.

Language is the most intense part of training. By the time I finish I will have had some 125+ hours of language training (most of this being French but over the past few weeks I have been working on Pidgin English). It is really affective, I can hold a conversation in French after only three months or so. It is pretty phenomenal considering I came here with three words in the title of this blog.  I, seemingly, cannot write French very well, but speaking it I can most certainly get by. Pidgin is awesome and I am enjoying my time learning it. I like to think I have a nack for it—but then again it is directly derived from English and a few local languages—it’s essentially a creole. Seeing this, it comes easy.

Cross-cultural training has been quite extensive too. We’ve done countless sessions on an assortment of topics relating to our integration here in Cameroon. To further enrich this experience, and my French, I’ve been living with a Cameroonian host-family (they’re awesome—see one of my earlier blogs for more if you’d fancy). As for our sessions, we’ve covered topics like: family structure, safety and transportation, sexual harassment, corruption, history, we grazed over politics and touched upon geography, and lastly we looked at different religions, public holidays and cultural ceremonies—of which there are soo many seeing there are over 200 ethnicities here.

Technical training has maybe been the most fun and potentially fruitful. Here I feel like we’ve tackled it all; water/sanitation, community mobilization, community assessment, STIs/HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, gender norms and their consequence health affects, working with community groups, nutrition, the healthcare system’s structure and operation, infectious diseases and more. So much I cannot even remember everything we’ve talked about without referencing my syllabus. Solid.

What will I do in Fundong?

                As I mentioned, the Peace Corps is all about community development (in the sense of helping building a community’s capabilities and capacities) and sustainability. So, before doing anything I will spend the first three months assessing my community. I’ll take this time to identify community groups, key community members, existing resources, strengths, weaknesses, health issues, social issues—essentially my goal is to really understand my community to the fullest extent I can. I’ll meet and greet and see what is actually going on, trying to learn some of the concerns and needs of the community. I then, slowly, will start to formulate ideas and see who I can work with and what we can all do together. Ideally, no matter what I do, I will not be the ‘head’ of any particular project—I’ll be helping community members work on their own projects towards their own goals at their own pace while employing their own standards.

                I do, however, know I will be most likely watching a community water project start up. The community host, Simon, that I have been paired with is a gentleman who runs an NGO called the Better Family Foundation. They are planning to beginning a water project around the time I arrive. The thought is to build a spring box on top of a mini-mountain and pipe it to a local community—water committee, community construction and all! This is like a dream. I am so eager to watch the project, become lightly involved and learn more about the process—I’ve done a good amount of classroom/lab study regarding water and communities, it is going to be awesome to finally see it in the flesh.

What am I doing now?

                Basically I am cherishing these last few days with my ‘stage’ (::insert French accent::) and host-family while trying to soak in and appreciate everything I can about Boktio, Cameroon. I will be sworn in this coming Thursday December 8^th 2011! Since it is the 50^th anniversary of Peace Corps in Cameroon and we are an enormous stage the Peace Corps will be video-casting the swearing-in ceremony. Well, it is most likely not going to be a live feed from Bafia but it will be recorded and put on the Peace Corps’ website for the world to see. Or, maybe I am confused, and we’re just simply begin featured on a Peace Corps Newletter. Either way, watch out because we’re a fun-loving group and have got original music to show for it. Not to mention our matching pagne (clothes) are exceptionally amazing!

                As always! Miss everybody and love you all.

                Wakka fine, small time we go see!