Everyday life in Ngaoundéré

After living here for five months now I feel like this is home, and that we have a day routine for each day even though no day is the same as the last one.

On Mondays I try to wake up early, even though we do not have anything on the schedule until two o'clock in the afternoon. Then we get a ride from the one-year-volunteers to the orphanage and stay there for about four hours.At Rainbow Orphanage we play, paint and draw together with the kids. And I like it very much! Last week we taught them a card game called Bellow 15. They loved it! And it actually worked playing with them, although some of them had never played with any cards before.We also watched Charlie and the chocolate factory on the big TV they have. It was really fun and the kids also enjoyed it!

Today we're maybe going to sleep over there with the kids. I am looking forward to it and we're probably going to eat couscous with them again. Last time we did that was when Pernille was visiting. She is Sara-Jeanettes friend and a former Hald student who lived here two years ago. The couscous we got then was with gombo sauce, which is a bit slimy and kind of brown green, but it was really good!! It was the best couscous I have had so far! So I am looking forward to going back and being with the kids over there.

On Tuesdays we usually have a day off to study the curriculum for Hald. So with the books we go down to the pool and read for several hours there in the sun. We also go for a swim or just hang out with the friends we have made here. In the evenings we join the Gospel Singers practise which lasts for about two and a half hours each time, if not for three when they have allot to talk about after we're finished.

Wednesdays and Fridays we work at Centre Socio Ménager, which as I have said before is a school for young girls that are either married or are without any education or have not finished their education for some reason. I am teaching the second and third year girls in English. It is a bit of a challenge, as they are almost the same age as me. But I try to be strict when I need to, and I try to engage them in the lessons I have. Even though they aren't so interested in learning English. Most of them have never gone to school before, and therefore they do not read very well in French or in English. So some of the lessons we have spent reading some text from some schoolbooks I brought with me from my old school in Arendal.
I have also been teaching them how to use a computer, but for some reason the three computers they had that were working have crashed down or something. So we have not been teaching them this for about two months now.

On Thursdays I work at the Direction Central for the assistant to the bishop, pastor Foumgbami. He gives me some documents that I have to write down on the computer. I have been writing some of his speeches, but lately I have been documenting and sorting out the numbers and names of all the newly baptised children and adults in the congregations out by the Tello village. Last time I also wrote an explanation of the conflict that has been going on in the church here in Cameroon for about three years now. EELC, the Evangelic Lutheran Church in Cameroon, has had a group that has split up from the rest, and has tried to keep the old name the Evangelic Lutheran Church of Cameroon. But I won't go any deeper into that conflict now, maybe I will do it in an other post, maybe..

In the weekends we enjoy the life and hang out with friends, play cards and watch films. We also sometimes attend the sermons in the Millennium church on Sundays and sometimes we have choir practises in the afternoon if we have a concert coming up.

Johanne Teresie

Gadjiwan 20. - 22. January 2012

On the 20th of January we were invited to Gadjiwan to visit Solbjørg. So early in the morning that day the boys, us two girls, the driver and two African women who are from Gadjiwan went on what turned out to be a six hours drive.
As Gadjiwan is a small village way out in the bush west in Cameroon, the road leading to it is quite bad and bumpy.
So squeezed into a car, the eight of us had a really nice time and were even fortunate enough to see some wild monkeys running over the road!
The last 25 km. (which is about 15.5 miles if anybody wondered..) took 2 (!) hours, that says a bit about the condition of the road..

Beautiful African sunset in Gadjiwan

When we arrived in the little village we were shown to a house where we were staying for the weekend. Solbjørg and her visitors are fortunate enough to be able to get electricity from solar panels. So for a certain amount of time each day she has light in her house. The others in the village do not have the technology to have electricity, or even water.
The water is in wells and the light is provided from torches or candles.

After eating a great dinner and a really good cake the youth, Solbjørg and Erik Sandvik who had joined us went on a visit to a neighbouring village to deliver a mattress to one of the pastors there. We sat on the back of a pickup truck and had a blast driving to Mayo Balèo on top of the mattress, however the way back was a bit more painful and bumpy!

Kristian, Runar, me, Andreas and Sara-Jeanette on the back of the pickuptruck

On Saturday morning we went into the village with Solbjørg and visited some of the families that live there. We did not get to speak allot with them as there are very few people there that speak French, so most of the things we managed to say in Fulani/Fulfulde was: good day = sanou,  how are you/ fine = djamna, djam, and thank you = ossoko.
It was very nice seeing how they lived together there. The small houses that were made of dirtbricks and straw roofs looked quite cosy, but it was dark inside most of them. But why stay inside in the dark during the day? People were mostly outside chatting to their neighbours while sitting on their homemade stools and porches leading up to the houses.

Woman making peanut butter from scratch

One of the families we visited had a man who was digging a well right outside their house. He did not know for sure if there was any water to find, so hopefully the hard work was not for nothing.

In the evening we were invited to a neighbouring village. We visited the Muslim leader of the village and an other family. We were served couscous and makkala and sat on the floor while eating the latter.

Erik Sandvik and the village leader

There was another reason for us to be there that evening an this was to show a Christian film for the inhabitants of this village. The film was a Nigerian Catholic made film but as Solbjørg said it is still Christian so it would make do. The film was shown on a TV that was placed on top of the pickup truck with great speakers and an aggregator that made it all possible as there was no electricity. A man sat next to the truck with  a microphone and translated the French into the mother language of the villagers. This meant that the film was paused several times to make sure the most important parts were translated properly. And if there was something funny show it was rewind and played again and again and again. And each time was as funny as the first!!

The TV that was used for the christian film we saw with the village

It was an amazing experience to sit there and watch this little screen together with maybe about 100 other people seated on the ground around us. As they knew that we were not used to sit on the ground for that long we were given plastic chairs to sit on.

On Sunday morning we went to the church in Gadjiwan and experienced a different kind of sermon than what we are used to in Ngaoundéré. With only Fulfulde and Péré as the spoken language, we did not understand so much more than  the bible verses that were read as we had bibles in French and Norwegian with us.
After the sermon Solbjørg served Couscous and some leftovers from the delicious cakes she had served us that weekend.

We were really lucky to be invited to visit her, and we had a great time there! While we weren't visiting Solbjørgs friends or eating her delicious cakes we were playing cards or hunting down the enormous rats that lived in the attic over our house we stayed in.
This was quite an entertaining adventure in it self! The boys took turns in trying to sneak a peak at the great beasts by climbing up on weakly mounted chairs. Kristian threw a makkala up as bate so that the beast would attack something else than him when he lifted himself up there. Andreas managed to take some better pictures up there than what I was able to.. But Runar was not as keen on this risky game we had going as the rest of us were, but he had to take a look as well.

BATE! = Makkala

Kristian taking a careful look up in the attic

No giant rats were seen though... so the knifes the boys got from Solbjørg were not put in use yet... But we could hear them over our heads when we went to bed, probably having a feast over the makkalas that we had thrown up there!

After dinner and church on Sunday we drove home again. This trip was mostly spent on trying to get home to the last minutes of the football game the boys had been talking about all weekend. Which was "unfortunately" not possible as we had a stop in Tignère where we visited a sibling of one of the madams we had with us in the car.



All in all, it was a great trip! And we were given the opportunity to see the life in the small villages of Africa. Without electricity, water, TVs, computers, Internet and even mobile reception they live a completely different life than what we do in Norway!

Johanne Teresie

Grasshoppers, filmnights, sunbathing and work

By the pool

Since the last time I wrote I have been busy with a lot of things. On Wednesday last week Sara-Jeanette and I went sunbathing by the pool for a long time after school. The pool is by the way still empty ... But the paint has come and I think someone has started to paint it, so hopefully it won’t be long before we can hang out there again. 

On Thursday last week we had bible studies together with some of the other Norwegians here. And on Friday the boys had borrowed a projector and invited some friends and all the Norwegian youth here. We watched “Les Miserables” and ate a lot of something called “Makkala” in the local language Fulani. It is fried dough of some kind and tastes really delicious. Especially when it’s fresh! 

The brown balls are Makkala, very tasty!

That Saturday we went to visit Helene and Erling and got Taco for supper. It was great; though it’s not the same as in Norway it was still really good! Sunday went by with some homework and choir practice.

The French course was a big part of my everyday life here until last week, since it was the last of the "two week intensive course" with four hours a day. This week we have started working in some of the places we are going to work at for the next six months. And it has been really interesting! On Tuesdays we will usually have self study days, but this week and maybe some weeks further on we will continue on with French courses until we have completed 80 hours of it. 

On Monday we had the opportunity to sit down and draw the dresses we want to get sewn for us. It was fun to draw again and to design our own dresses! We went with Sandra to the tailor and she helped us with explaining the way we wanted our dresses to be sewn and what we wanted them to look like.

Designing the dress

 

On Wednesday we went to the Centre Socio Ménager. It is a small school with 51 students. We are trying to organise how we are going to arrange the classes between me and Sara-Jeanette and how to make it fit so that all the girls have one class with Informatics (computer study) and two classes with English in one week. It was quite a puzzle! As there are only 5 computers and 20 students in one group and 31 in the other, so we sat and arranged the timetable so that it would all fit together.
On Thursday we went to work at the church office for one of the pastors there. We helped him type some speeches into a computer. The hours went by quite fast and as we sat there we wondered if the speech we had just copied was the same as the one we heard when we were in church two weeks earlier when we did not understand much.

The grasshopper that hid in our sink

As it is close to the end of the rain season there are many bugs around here that get in to the house. Especially grasshoppers!!
The boys have hundreds of them in their apartment through out the day! But we girls are lucky because we are careful to close all windows and doors when it gets dark. So there are only about twenty inside here... But now it has been dry for two days and the grasshoppers gather in thick groups to get in through the door! And when we go out we have to use a broom to get them away. The creatures are a bit disgusting, but they are also fascinating in their own way. I found one in our sink in the kitchen and as it walked around on the counter I managed to take some nice pictures of it.

Amazing how close I could get to it before it moved!

We also have a lizard living in the tree right outside the house. I saw it some time ago and stood really close to it when I took some of the pictures, amazing how it didn’t run away from me! 








Can't wait to start to work some more! It is going to be great adventure!

Johanne Teresie

The first week in Africa

This is going to be a long post about my first week here in Africa. So if you don't want to read it all, there's a light in the end of the tunnel: I will write a short summery on the end for you.

The first few days here in Ngaoundéré went by quite quietly. On the first Saturday we looked around at the station together with the "one-year-volunteers" and we also went to some shops in town where they have some European groceries. That comes in handy when we feel a bit homesick :) In the evening Sara-Jeanette and me went over to Runar and Kristian, who live in the same house as us, just in an other apartment. We watched a film and ate some chips that the boys made themselves.

As it was election time here in Cameroon everything was a bit out of the ordinary that first weekend we were here, at least that is what we were told.. We couldn't really see any changes now, could we? Since we came two days before the election... The Sunday was therefore spent inside the Missionary Station, playing volleyball together with the boys next door and with some of their African friends.

Our teacher and the classroom in  L'ecole Norvegienne

Monday one week ago was the first day we had french class. Our teacher is a former Hald student who lived in Norway three years ago. (It took a while before I figured that he knows my sister who attended Hald at the same time...) After school we went to visit Bernard, a friend of the boys here, and we were served Couscous. This was the first time I tasted it and we ate it like the Cameroonians do; with our hands. In the evening we got a visit from some girls who we played cards with. The communication was a bit poor as we struggled with french and the understanding of the English was not so good at their part either. But it was really nice to have someone over and to feel like we were welcome here.

Me eating Couscous

Tuesday we started school at one o'clock, right after diner. It was a bit hard, because we were working hard to understand all the grammar rules and I was really tired after I ate so much food.. Not used to having four hours of school after diner..But it went alright. In the evening we went to the College Protestant where the Gospel Singers are practicing. It lasted for three hours.
Not so bad you think? Well imagine trying to dance and sing in a language you don't understand for the whole time without any breaks..But it was a lot of fun!! We had to introduce ourselves on the end but it wasn't so bad, Sara-Jeanette did most of the talking..


Wedesnday went by quite fast, we were in school and tried to speak some french, it helps a lot! We had a visit from a girl after sunbathing by the empty pool. And when she was here we managed to speak with her quite alot in french!
After she went home Sara-Jeanette and me watched Merlin and had a good supper, our cook always makes something good for us!


On Thursday we got a visit from a deaf boy and we learnt how to say our names and some words in signlanguage.  It was fun! And we actually remembered some of it afterwords! We're maybe going to work in the spesialised school for deaf pupils so this might be useful to remember too...

The second weekend here in Cameroon was great! Friday was spent on visits to a friend of the boys where we got to taste some good Cameroonian food again and joining in on leading the Sports Club for the kids at the station.
This Saturday we went in to town together with two other norwegians to buy some material for new Cameroonian dresses that we want to get sewn for us!

The rest of that day went by while we were trying to read some corriculum and write some updates on the blogs and being interupted every other hour by someone who was at the door selling stuff.








"When you hear a knock on the door for the umteenth time the same day, it is difficult to be polite to the person who is there to sell something to you"... From the frontdoor: "Knock, knock!"

Inside the Millenium Church

In the early morning on Sunday Sara-Jeanette, Runar, Kristian and me attended the Sundayservice at the Millenium Church. It was a bit boring as we did not understand much. And it lasted for three hours!!! When one and a half hour had passed by the Bishop still hadn't preached! But they had a lot of songs and many of them were in english so at least we understood that.
We went to eat diner at a resturant in town with the boys. And in the afternoon Sara-Jeanette and I went to visit a girl called Lora. We looked at some pictures of her and her familiy (that's normal here, to show your visitors photos of your family and friends) and sat and talked in her room for a long time.We were also served some fishtales which were kooked whole. It tasted really good! But I'm not sure my stomach thought so.. 



For this monday we had some homework. We had to write a text in french which we went through in class. We were then supposed to say it by heart and try to keep up a conversation on french about what we had written.
I have never been this good in speaking french and it feels great!! After school and diner we went to the College Protestant and joined a volleyball team practice. It was fun, and it felt good to come out and do something with other girls and to get some new friends!

College Protestant

The summary:

I have this past week attended an intensive frech course; our teacher is a former student at Hald, and is really nice and good at teaching.
We have gotten a lot of visitors here throughout the week. Some who stayed to play cards and others to teach us a little bit of signlanguage. We might be working in the Specialised School for Deaf Pupils.
We have eaten our first Cameroonian meal, Couscous, which we ate with our fingers. It was good, especially the sauce!
We have also been to the first choir practice with the Gospel Singers. It was difficult as the songs were in french, pere and english. And as if that wasn't enough, we had to dance too! But it was fun! Even though we were standing all the time and it lasted for three hours.
Sara-Jeanette and I have bought our first material for some Cameroonian dresses. And we have been to church on Sunday that lasted for three hours! And another choir practice.
Monday afternoon we attended a volleyball team practice, it was fun and we got to know some more girls and got more friends.



I'm looking forward to the next week. I have not been able to post often because my computer has been almost broken, and when it has worked, the internett has not.
But now this is finaly out there and I can blog a bit more often, as the rainseason is almost over and the internett is more stable than before.

Johanne Teresie