Cameroon

Walking Forward

Suddenly, it was December. Christmas was approaching, and I had over two weeks of holiday time to plan. When I had learned that I would be sent to Cameroon, which is basically in the heart of Africa, I was at once terrified and thrilled. I naively imagined scenes from Tarzan movies and National Geographic episodes. I thought I was going to be immersed in that kind of life. Instead, I had been stuck in cities or large towns for most of the time. These places were unique and unlike any place I had ever visited before, but they were not what I had envisioned of Africa.

By chance, one evening I met up with another Peace Corps volunteer who had taken a trek through the southern jungle the December before during Christmas. He told me all about it, and I was hooked. Everything I had imagined about Africa he had experienced in a week-long walk. He said it was relatively simple. Take a bush taxi to a town called Meyo Center. Then follow the thin red dirt road through the forest for a few days until the road became a path through the forest. The path would be overgrown, he warned, so I might get lost, but if I really couldn't find the path, I could head south until I found the river that separated Cameroon from Equatorial Guinea. He told me I would come across some villages where people maintained traditional ways and where people had never seen a white person before. I would know that I had come to the end of path when I could see the Atlantic Ocean.

This was what I wanted. I started planning. I could do this for a week during Christmas vacation and still make the Peace Corps News Years Eve celebration.

Campo Reserve Forest

I made that walk. Everything my friend had said about the walk was true. It's a good thing he didn't tell me about the giant monstrous spiders that were in my path during the walk. If I had known about those terrors, perhaps I might not have gone. Truly, they were terrifying. But I made the walk, and had an absolutely incredible adventure. For the first four days I traversed a thin red dirt road. It often rained, and it often shined, and then it steamed. I was never comfortable, since sweat held my dirty clothes to my body like sandpaper glue.

On the first day, someone stole my prescription sunglasses, which was annoying, but since this was the middle of the rainforest, there wasn't much sun to see. And then I became good friends with the local Babtist minister who then fed me dinner and gave me a place to stay for the night. Even though I lost my sunglasses, I felt like I had made a new friend. In the morning, he made me a nice breakfast and when I parted, he told me that God would be watching over me. I thanked him, wondering which god or gods.

The next night I came across a small village where the local chief and his wife had recently been killed by an elephant, leaving their teenage daughter without parents. On the day that they had finished eating the meat from that elephant, a large python wound its way into the village, and the villagers suddenly knew something big was about to happen. A short time later, I walk by, and they knew that the gods had sent me to rescue the daughter and the village. I was expected to marry her. Clearly, I was not going to marry her. Let me put it this way, I felt very awkward until I left the next morning. She pleaded with me to stay. I can never forget the look on her face as I walked down the road and around a turn out of her view. The gods had sent me to her, but now the gods were taking me away. Nothing in my Peace Corps training had prepared me for this.

The final friend I made before leaving the road and being swallowed by the forest was a government official who had offended his superior officer and had been sent to this small office at the end of the road. He was the only person in the office. There was no phone. He spoke only English, and the local people spoke a little French and something else entirely. He was completely alone. We became friends fast. He begged me not to leave him in the morning, but I insisted, and I left him standing alone there looking at me, as if I was fading away.

Suddenly, I was alone in the jungle. Completely alone. For the next three days I did my best to follow a path that was barely there. Several times I became lost when I followed paths that had been created by animals. I panicked a few times, but I regained my senses. The spiders were terrifying. That's all I want to say about that. There were so many birds, birds that stayed low to the ground, others that flew amongst the trees, and birds that went above the canopy. They all had different sounds, some beautiful, and other just loud noise. The insects were of all sorts, and the armies of ants marched with such precision from somewhere unknown to someplace else unknown. I saw all sorts of small mammals on the ground and monkeys in the trees. Most animals that had any sense heard me coming and ran away. As I said, the spiders terrified me, because I saw them and didn't need to imagine. However, I never saw any panthers, crocodiles, hippos, or snakes. I'm sure I walked by many, however. Only the spiders did I nearly walk into. Oh! The terror!

Once, I almost walked into a family of gorillas. There were quite a large number of them. Babies, adolescents, parents, and old folks. I felt sad for disturbing them, but at the same time I was thankful they didn't come charging at me. Seeing them runaway from me was quite a sight. The next day I saw the first human I had seen in three days, and he was Japanese! I was very confused at first, but then I learned he was a Japanese researcher living in Cameroon studying gorillas. He hadn't found any yet. I burst out laughing when I told him I had scared away a family of gorillas the day before. He was actually happy to hear that, because from my description, he could guess where they were living.

The last few miles of my journey were in the front seat of his jeep. by the time I had reached his little home, the path had already widened into a space large enough for vehicles to pass through. It was not an easy drive or each hole or root, but the jeep was well built. He dropped me off at the beach and waved to me out of his window as drove back into the forest.

I threw off my backpack pulled off my boots and unpeeled my socks. Then I stood in the water with my feet settling in the sand. Oh, what relief. I made it.

Limbé

After relaxing for a little bit on the beach, I grabbed a bush taxi back to Yaoundé. That was about a 6 hour journey in cramped mini-van. I was clearly the dirtiest and smelliest person along for the ride, so the driver allowed for some extra space to accommodate me. I made it back to the Peace Corps headquarters where I showered and slept on a mattress in an air-conditioned room. Such luxury.

The next day I headed to Limbé, a coastal city where all the volunteers were meeting for the year end party, along with some additional training. The hotel we were booked at was on the beach, and since I arrived after midnight when everyone was sleeping, I decided to sleep on the beach. That sleep, while as not as luxurious as the one the night before in the Peace Corps office was nicer than the ones during my forest journey when I feared being eaten, stung, or bitten by any sort of wild animal while sleeping. I didn't have a symphony of insects and birds keeping me up throughout the night, but I did have the rolling surf going rhythmically going in and out all night, along with the wind rustling the palm trees. There was occasional thunder, but that was in the distance, so there was no rain.

When I woke up I saw my good friend, Rachel sitting next to me. She said I was silly for not sleeping indoors in the nice air conditioning, but I told her that my sleep was wonderful, nonetheless. We hadn't seen each other since August, so we had much to catch up on. We spent most of our free time together over the next few days.

While my stories of teaching were told like fun adventures, the stories of her classroom experiences were those of frustration. She had difficulty getting the students to pay attention to her and remain engaged in learning. She was an English teacher, so the curriculum she needed to cover was vastly different from what I had to cover. However, though I hadn't put it to words yet, I realized I was also an English teacher, but within the context of carpentry and math. I told her something to the effect that our purposes weren't really different; we need to get students to understand needed information. The best way to get them to learn, I said, was to let them explain what they know and then help them fill in the gaps and take some leaps forward. I talked to het how I had discovered group work and collaboration (though I didn't know to use that term yet). She liked my suggestions, and in the end, it was her direct influence that caused me to become pursue a career as an English teacher. Later, when I left the Peace Corps and returned to the US, I earned a master's degree in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL).

Besides for the New Year's party on the beach and at the pool, the few days we were in Limbé were spent in trainings regarding culture, teaching, health, and other matters. After only a few hours after sunrise that first day, everyone seemed to have learned of my jungle adventure, and everyone wanted to hear my tales. At first it was exciting telling what happened as I recounted different scenes, and I guess it's good that I was able to recount the stories, or much have been lost to time. but after enough retellings, I couldn't do it anymore, and so Rachel and a few other friends took over, since we had been together the entire time. That was fun, as I only had to chime in occasionally when I needed to correct a detail or add in something I suddenly remembered.

The main purpose of the get together wasn't really for the different trainings or even the New Year's party. The time together for all of us at the beach was to give us a chance to reflect on our experiences and give us a chance to compare and contrast our experiences with others, to hear stories that were different, but somehow similar, to imagine the different scenes and events that the different volunteers experienced, and to learn al the new and interesting words, concepts or beliefs that we had all learned.

Life in Cameroon was as different from any life I could have imagined growing up on the east side of suburban Cleveland. Was I happy living there? Yes and no. By and large, the people were extraordinarily friendly and nice, perhaps the nicest I have met in all of my travels. But, I was isolated. We all were. I was sometimes literally the only white person for miles and miles. I came across people who had never encountered white people. The people had their not so nice slang words for white people. The words were not as bad as what you will hear in America regarding black people, but it does have the effect of isolating a person and making the person stick out even more so. All groups of people, wherever you go will have saints and sinners. That's a fact of life.

Even though I felt different and isolated, and was frequently ill, I seemed to have found my place. I had made a couple local friends in Bamenda, I had a few good Peace Corps friends, and I felt like I was in the groove with my teaching. Plus I had a good house, though it was falling apart, but the view was worth it. I was even beginning to speak Pidgin English. I felt like I was where I needed to be at this time in my life. I was a novice teacher, and I was excited to be improving my skills day by day.

Teach What You Know

Sample Paragraphs

Preparing for a Journey into the Unknown

As a child I dreamed of going on a real adventure through the jungle so that I could meet interesting people and see incredible wildlife, flora, and fauna. When the opportunity came, I needed to prepare. I didn't really know what to do, since I had never done anything like this before. All I had was the advice of a single Peace Corps volunteer who had made the hike a year earlier. He told me that if I kept my wits and followed some simple advice, I should be ok. That was good enough for me. Be careful about food and water, don't fear meeting new people, and don't wait until it's too late to find a safe place to sleep, as it gets dark quickly in the jungle once the sun is down. There was other advice he gave me, such as getting a machete, waterproofing everything, and some useful items to pack. I made several mistakes on my trek, for example not getting my machete sharpened before entering the forest -- big mistake. However, I did follow enough of his advice and my own common sense so that in the end I had an incredible experience. The experience was so good, that I think other people should take such a journey into the unknown at some point in their life, though more carefully than I did.

If I were to teach a group of explorers, I would use the advice of my Peace Corps friend as a framework. Make sure you have food, water, and a place to sleep, and don't be afraid to meet new people. I would also add in, make sure you know what direction you are going. I would give my learners some scenarios, perhaps like mine, and ask them to discuss what they would do and come up with strategies for anticipating the unexpected, such as almost marrying the daughter of a deceased Pygmy chieftain. When people explore, they are facing the unknown, and the unknown by definition isn't understood; it must be waited for. When I trekked down the road and path through the forest, I brought with me iodine to keep my water drinkable, and I brought many bars of soap. One for me, and the others to give as gifts. I also carried many Time and Newsweek magazines to give out as gifts. Even though the people couldn't read the magazines, they loved the pictures. I brought only three sets of all my clothes, as I washed my clothes in steams when I needed, of course being careful not to bet bitten or stung by anything. When such an adventure is completed, explorers should take t he time to reflect on their journey and share their stories with friends and even strangers. When you tel your stories to others, it helps keep the memory stronger in your mind so that you can recall the smallest details later. A successful journey into the unknown could be scary at moments, but good preparation should allow for success and a life changing opportunity.

Reflect on Your Experience

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Did I Really Do That?

For much of my young life I had dreamed of journeying off into the unknown. Incredibly, I had lived and taught in west-central Africa. I had met people who were as different from me as probably could be found anywhere on the planet, I had ventured into thick tropical forests, witnessed traditional dances and ceremonies, and eaten all kinds of new foods. I never thought I could be a teacher, but suddenly here I was in one of the poorest countries in the world bringing new knowledge and understandings to groups of students who I could barely understand much of the time. My experience have gone many of my expectations, indeed, but problems arose that sometimes dampened the spirit of the successes. For the most part, these problems could probably have been prevented if I had been more hygienic, mindful of the food and drink I consumed, and aware of my surroundings. I could have also given more attention to improving both my carpentry and language skills. doing both would have improved my credibility immensely. This would have also helped me make more friends and perhaps more of a social life. In the end, certain things like the endless need to have papers on me and the rampant corruption were matters I could not control, and since they were out of my hand, I did my best to not let them affect me. Now that I am away from Cameroon, what I miss most is probably the way the people interacted with one another, and how they used space, time, touch, music, and other nonverbal forms of communication that I had never fully considered before. When I departed Cameroon, I was sad, but left with a sense of optimism, because I felt like a fire inside of me had been lit. I felt a passion and need to do something of importance for the first time in my life. I was determined to return overseas as a teacher, and next time I would be better prepared.

White and Black, Joseph taking a nap with Black, and Joseph practicing guitar.

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