After 2 weeks in Bogo

I have now been in Bogo for nearly 2 weeks. If I was trying to summarise in one sentence I would say the real African culture overwhelms you and you are humbled by their acceptance in peace and grace of what are really difficult living conditions.

I have also had my first overwhelming bout of missing FP and spent quite a good proportion of one day crying – to my new boss who told me about how he cried and was homesick when he was sent away from his parents for several years to be educated when he was 7 and over coffee and a piece of chocolate with Eve a 24 year old Canadian volunteer who has a vso boyfriend here. She was so sweet and I felt much better afterwards if not very grown up. One of the things I wanted to get from this experience was learning to be on my own, but it is really hard for me. Introvert I may be, but I don’t do 24/7 aloneness. I also got claustrophobic squashed in one of the mini buses and had to climb over to a seat nearer the front. People were really understanding and didn’t get mad or see it as some privilege ‘nassara’ thing.

Suddenly as a minority amongst Black Africans, I have also been thinking this week of Black Africans I have met in my life. There was one black girl in my secondary school that I can remember, no black African or African Caribbean teachers when I taught. The first time I came across Africans other than on holiday were Somalians in Tower Hamlets, Nigerian colleagues at Renaisi and a lodger from Ghana. Unlike my children I wasn’t born into or even educated in a multi-cultural society. My university friends were all white. So I am curious about them. I find myself studying their faces and trying to guess how old they are. Amadou says that most people on the street are about 30. People don’t age well here. 50 and they can’t walk.

 

In the far north of Cameroon there are two distinct groupings, tall, angular, ascetic, almost Arabic looking Africans that probably originate from nomadic tribes travelled south and then stockier, very black, muscular Africans. They are all strong because of the level of manual labour, the majority have wonderful teeth and in repose their faces look quite stern and scary. Because they have to wait bloody ages for everything they have a capacity to sit absolutely still. This calmness copes with getting stuffed 20+ into a mini bus that seats only 12. Some of them are also so thin that male and female alike they have the bodies of a British 12 year old. You can’t get quite so moral about bony underfed cattle and horses when a good percentage of the human population have bones that jut out in an equal extreme. I don’t know if this is malnutrition. There is not famine here, but people are poor.

The house isn’t brilliant, but I’ve visited other volunteer houses of those who live in villages and they are worse than mine. I have a bathroom with sink, shower tray, bidet and toilet even if I don’t have running water. Some colleagues have a hole in the ground outside and a shower area that is a ring of smoothish pebbles. I have 2 rooms and it is in an enclosed compound so it’s peaceful and quiet and the ground is sandy dust, but not littered with fragments of plastic bag. The saddest thing about Bogo is that the ground is littered with plastic bag debris and there is no rubbish collection as we know it.

I have come in the hottest dry season and we have just endured 5 days of sandy smog where you can’t see 50 yards and it chokes up your lungs, gets everywhere and is generally unpleasant. There are trees everywhere, but the earth is just sandy dust. In the market in Bogo you can buy onions, tomatoes and mangoes because the mango season is just starting, some green leaves called folare, eggs and meat. That is your choice. I’ve tried millet as the ‘Mama’ or ‘Hadja’ of the compound invites me to eat which is like a giant ball of brown dough you dip in whatever sauce/ gravy it is served. It’s edible. I have an extended diet to that only because I can bring food from the nearest town Maroua 30 kms away and I have a fridge so I can get carrots, aubergine, courgette, apples, pineapple, spring onions and European foodstuff at very high prices.

My boss, the incoming SG reminds me of J1. He is called Amadou and about 30. He is very tall but the very black African and like J1 every bit of him is muscle rather than fat. They seem to be labouring away on accounts at the moment while I have been tasked with becoming fluent in French and Fulfulde in 3 weeks. Of course this isn’t going to happen, but I have been reading and writing up everything I can get my hands on and have been to the catholic mission to organize lessons. I am having 2 hours 3x a week starting this week. Necessity is already seeing me improve.

I may get an office with desk and chair eventually as a cleaning lady came to open up one of 4 or 5 mysteriously locked rooms in which lo and behold were 2 desks and chairs, cleaned a bit and then went away with the key and when she will return is unknown. I could make a fuss, but it seems ridiculous and unlikely to help my immediate goals one of which is to remember the social niceties, never my strong point. I had to be reminded to go and say hello to the premier adjoint (leader of the council) to whom local people go prostrate on the floor. God alone knows what they make of me, but maybe that’s just it. My being here is just a reminder that there is a different world out there especially for women.

So if I can run a ‘keep plastic bags out of Bogo’ campaign and encourage diversification of markets I’ll have cracked it! Unfortunately the skill is getting my council colleagues to do it. At least most of them do turn up to do some work which is more than that experienced by other vso colleagues.

 

I’m too intellectually absorbed by it to be bored yet. I’ve gone outside my comfort zone and travelled 3-4 hours to meet with other volunteers and socialize. I don’t miss the commute. I’m coping with the food. Lessons on managing without running water would have been handy e.g. how many buckets do you need. I now get my water delivered as pumping it is hard work. I’ve got a camping stove and all the pans get covered with sooty slime that I then get over everything and struggle to keep my hands clean. I boil and filter all my water. I take my malaria tablets which many volunteers don’t and could be sent home for. A lot get sick with malaria, typhoid and what they call amoebas here. The doctor apparently never turns up for work at Bogo hospital and 100,000 people trek to a village clinic or the American hospital in Maroua. We get access to a private one where you don’t have to queue and of course they are experts on malaria, typhoid and amoebas. Other stuff they fly you home for.

I’ve sorted out a wooden frame for the hammock and I lie on it on my shaded sort of balcony during the heat of the day and read. The vso resource centre has hundreds of books volunteers have brought and left.

The gongle and MTN mast in Bogo is an absolute blessing!