flight home from the north

Here are some photos from our flight home from Maroua last week.

Ann rode in the front on the way home.

And here are a few pictures out the window of landscapes in Cameroon's Extreme North:

We flew through a curtain of rain, in between two thunderstorms, on the way to our fuel stop in Ngaoundere.

This next surreal photo is looking down on the airstrip in Ngaoundere. That's a herd of cattle being shooed off the runway for our approaching plane:

And here are a few last ones I shot flying into Yaounde:

And landing:

Since the photos on the blog are so tiny, I might clip out some portraits of the people we met as well, just the faces, and post a few of those sometime soon.


Elsewhere in the news, besides being back from the north, we had a good meeting with Valerie at work this week and decided to go into the office every Monday, so people there know when to find us. Ann continues to work on fair trade research and article writing, and I'm working on the microfinance program database, an Excel training session (in French, ulp!), and may be doing some web design work, which is always fun. Our social life here on the SIL end of town where we live is a continuing pleasure; last night we had David and Danielle and Karen over for dinner; D&D brought gazpacho, Karen brought smoothie fixins', Ann made a salad and I brewed coffee and did dishes and talked a lot. We talked about books and food and the boat D&D lived on for a year back in the states and friends and things we love and hate about Cameroon for hours and hours, blissfully ignorant of the time in a way we never seem to be back home.

more photos from up north

Here are more photos from our time up north last week, in the Extreme North Province of Cameroon, near the city of Maroua. The trip was to visit granaries in villages participating in RELUFA's food sovereignty program.

A granary, and a Presbyterian volunteer. Those sacks are 100 or possibly 120 kilos. The granaries we saw stored millet, sorghum, rice and corn.

He's displaying an open bag. This is either millet or sorghum, which is also known as millet.

There are lots of kids in the villages we visited, and they were always interested in our delegation.

One of the men who welcomed us.

A village in northern Cameroon: conical roofs, mud-brick architecture, hot sandy ground, stony hills behind, and trees for shade.

A traditional one-family granary, accessed through a roof hole. The ladder is the log at right, with steps carved in it.

People dressed up for our visits, especially the women.

Visiting with women in one of the villages.

We were fed at one stop, by this lady, just outside the granary behind us. That's me in the yellow shirt.

Ann and Christi visiting with women in one of the villages.

Lionel (left) from PC-USA, and our driver.

Me with Elias. Elias heads up an NGO that is very active in the food sovereignty program. He's the one who reports on this program at RELUFA assemblies, and he lives in the region, in a village himself.

Meeting under a tree, in one village. Ann's on that high rock in the middle.

There were often goats around. Or maybe sheep. Not really sure how to tell them apart, since I'm a city boy. Chevres and moutons, respectively, in French.

More village architecture. We heard people don't sleep indoors except during the rainy season, since their houses get so hot in the sun.

Village well.

More kids. This meeting ran long. Can you tell?

We saw donkeys here and there as well.

This is fresh-harvested millet.

A thatched-roof house belonging to a Christian family, which I was told is discernible by the cross at the peak.

This guy seemed a bit lost.

This one actually spent awhile looking for his friend from the previous photo.

One of the village women who administers a granary.

Roof thatch.

More kids. This was a shorter meeting.

Talking things over at our hotel in Maroua after our visits, on the morning of the day we flew out. From left, Elias, Lionel and Christi.

Basil, who works for an NGO in Garoua, the next city south, who came along to observe. I found out he's another computer guy.

Mangoes, lots and lots of mangoes, for sale at the side of the road in Maroua. It's mango season here at the moment. There are a few different varieties.

That's our whirlwind tour of the north. We had a great time seeing it all for the first time, and never would have gotten to see the villages like that if we had just wandered up here on our own instead of coming along on a work trip. This was much better than simply being a tourist. We made ourselves useful by taking pictures and tracking expenses.

And, actually, by blogging. RELUFA has a new intern we met just today, and apparently she found RELUFA partly through our blog. So maybe this will all be useful in ways we can't predict.

Mango Chutney

Okay, I’ve been holding out on you in the mango department. Not on purpose, but it’s been several weeks, perhaps even unto a whole month, since I tried making mango chutney for the first time. Got a recipe from epicurious.com, played around with it a bit so it suited me, put it all together one afternoon, and there it was. One nice jar-ful, plus another cup or so to freeze. As it boiled along contentedly on the stove, I had a taste every now and then to monitor the progress. But then I put it away and went out to play ultimate Frisbee, and didn’t really think much of it until nearly a week later at dinnertime.

Our friend Kerry (she used to work as a chef) was over, and we had some couscous with a few raisins, some sautéed chicken pieces seasoned lightly with salt and pepper (thanks Chris!), and then added a few dollops of the chutney. Wow – it was SO GOOD! Absolutely loaded with flavor, not too sweet, with a nice round of spices and fresh ginger to perk up the fruit and onions. So without further ado, here’s the recipe. Even though most of y’all don’t live anywhere near a mango tree, I bet you’d still enjoy this if you made it with an imported mango from Mexico. (The apples I used were imported from Europe, so we’re even.)

Mango Chutney (adapted from epicurious.com)

1 ½ medium apples, peeled, cored, and chopped (I used golden delicious)
1 large mango, peeled and chopped (not quite fully ripe)
(You should end up with roughly equal amounts of apple and mango.)
¾ cup granulated sugar
½ cup finely chopped onion
¼ cup raisins
¼ cup white vinegar
¼ cup (scant) finely chopped peeled gingerroot
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp each: ground nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt (be slightly generous with the nutmeg and cinnamon)

Combine apples, mangoes, sugar, onion, raisins, vinegar, and gingerroot in a large stainless steel or enamel saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat, and boil gently, uncovered, for 20 minutes or until fruit is tender and mixture is thickened, stirring occasionally. Add lemon juice, curry powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt; boil gently for 5 minutes. Can, freeze, or just refrigerate if you’re going to eat it right away.

back from the far north

Here's a first few pictures from our trip to the far north of Cameroon. We flew on SIL's airplane, piloted by our friend Rob. We left Yaounde on Monday and flew up north to the city of Maroua, with a stop for fuel on the way, and then flew home again on Wednesday.

The Extreme North Province, as it's know, is a completely different part of the country from where we've been so far, in the region of Africa called the Sahel, a hot, dry area that lies south of the Sahara desert and stretches across several countries. This part of Cameroon suffers poor harvest, droughts, and people often simply run out of food at certain lean times of the year.

Our RELUFA network has a food sovereignty program to help villagers set up communal granaries in this part of Cameroon. The purpose of our trip was to visit some of the villages where the granaries are located with Christi, and with Lionel from the Presbyterian Church USA's Joining Hands program, who was here visiting Cameroon for a week.

Here's the plane, just leaving the hangar. We got there about 545am, so this picture is at maybe 615.

Christi, Lionel and Ann. We work with Christi on a regular basis; she is the Joining Hands liaison to RELUFA and, along with her husband Jeff, the one who offered us volunteer work in Cameroon. In fact, we're officially Presbyterian Church USA volunteers. Jeff works with Presbyterian churches in Cameroon and other central African countries, and he and I are collaborating on a French training session for Microsoft Excel at the moment. Christi and Jeff live in Yaounde with their two high-school age kids, and we typically see them several times a week. Lionel is Christi's boss. He's lived in a few different African countries, lives in the US now, and is originally from Haiti. He's been doing development-related church work a long time, and it was a real pleasure to get to meet him and talk with him a bit about development projects here and elsewhere.

Me in the front seat. I don't have a lot of small-plane experience, and I loved it. I kept thinking of the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars. Lionel and I agreed that this was the next-best thing to motorcycling.

Rob, who works for SIL as a pilot, and is flying the plane.

Shot this out the window as we were leaving Yaounde on a clear, beautiful Monday morning.

Another shot from the plane. Cameroon's terrain is varied; we're still in the green central part of the country here, headed north into the mountains.

Partway to Maroua, stopping for fuel. We lingered about half an hour refueling from a drum some local missionaries trucked to the airstrip. A couple of friendly Cameroonian guys in soldier uniforms showed up and I think Rob checked in with them briefly. Us passengers stretched our legs. People kept trickling in from the surrounding bush, and we had a crowd of maybe 10 scattered along the sides of the runway by the time we taxied to the end, turned around, and took off for Maroua.

More pictures coming soon, including the villages and countryside up north.

music night

Music Night, one of the final social events of the annual SIL branch conference, was last night. Ann and I were invited to help out a pop bottle orchestra. She played and I held up the music for everyone, which is a pretty good distribution of labor based on our relative musical skills. I got a couple of photos with friend-and-fellow-orchestra-member Karen's camera. Here are the players:



And here's a shot of us at Karen's later, where the orchestra ended up hanging out after the show:



Images are shamelessly purloined from Karen's blog, which has some great pictures and some stories as well from her own experience here.

cultural differences

Here's a list of cultural difference from a handout at the anthropology
seminar I attended at SIL yesterday. (Scroll down to see it, for some reason Blogger is having a hard time displaying tables.)

African culture	Western culture
strong community values (group participation, decisions)	strong individualistic values (individual initiative, decisions)
community identity	individual identity
community living style	private living style
extended family emphasis	immediate family emphasis
holistic approach to life	categorical approach to life
importance of the event	importance of schedules and clock time
people-oriented priorities	task- and goal-oriented priorities
real-life (situational) thinking	abstract and academic thinking
preference for real-life learning	preference for academic learning
spiritual worldview	scientific worldview
emphasis on spoken communication	emphasis on written communication
emphasis on spoken agreements based on relationships	emphasis on written agreements based on policies
respect for the elderly	respect for the educated
traditional inherited leadership	elected (democratic) leadership
death is passing into the spirit world, survivors must perform rituals	death is a practical problem, survivors need couseling and support
resolve conflicts through a mediator	resolve conflicts face-to-face
practical, ritual response to spirit realities	intellectual response to spirit realities
practical, ritual approach to religion	intellectual approach to religion
vulnerability seen as weakness	vulnerability seen as strength
much interest in the spirit world	little interest in the spirit world

Why "Western", I wonder? Maybe "Northern" instead? The Cameroonians I've discussed some of these differences with, if they're not university-educated, just say "white" for this category.

I wonder which "Western" people this list applies to as well? Where on this scale would a rural American, for instance, without a lot of educational opportunities lie? Sure, the list is a generalization, and it certainly does seem to express pretty clearly, judging from what people said about their own experience, a set of different expectations between the foreign missionary community where this discussion took place yesterday and the Africans they encounter, employ, and seek to serve with their Bible translation work. But the missionary community here is an elite group of people, with a high level of education and the resources and motivation to come all the way here to do complicated and often difficult work. Would you find a lot of these differences within the US depending on which groups you compared? Maybe as class differences within the US? Or between the evangelical community Ann and I grew up in back in Michigan, and the Mennonite religious community several people in our San Francisco church grew up in back east, with its focus on community and group decisions and spiritual harmony? And where would, for instance, our San Francisco yoga instructor Kristie lie on this chart? I'm guessing somewhere in the middle.

This handout was actually an adjunct to the main discussion, which was based on a book called African Friends and Money Matters, by David Maranz, although the discussion did cover a lot of the differences on this list. Here are a few items from Maranz's book, which is actually published by SIL:

"Africans find security in ambiguous arrangements, plans and speech."

"Westerners find security in clearly defined relationships, arrangements, plans and speech."

And this:

For many Africans it seems that they believe there is such a danger of offending others that they prefer silence, indirectness, the solution of time making opinions clear, and extreme tact. An African friend told me this is one reason that Westerners are often misled, interpreting silence to mean that all is well. And of course to many Africans the Westerner comes across as insensitive, callous, indifferent to how others think and feel, and as having a great lack of human sensitivity and tact.

The thrust of the discussion yesterday was on this point, the difficulty in communicating based on very different expectations of social and economic relationships. Everything here, from employment arrangements to the prices in the markets to the traffic in the streets, is endlessly, constantly in a state of negotiation. It's exhausting until (or perhaps unless) you get used to it.

Maranz's book not only explores these differences, but explains how they make sense for people in Africa, which has a very different history from the West and where people's material conditions are usually very different today. He has a list in the book that summarizes these differences; here it is (somewhat abbreviated and annotated), and as he takes pains to note, this chart concerns the fewer than 50% of Africans who are employed, and thus doing better than lots of other people here (again, scroll down to see the table, due to strange Blogger layout trouble):

Concern of Life	Westerner [in Africa]	[Employed] African
Residence	big house, upscale neighborhood	small house crowded full of extended family members
food	varied, balanced, eats in restaurants, invites friends over	local affordable foods, feeds many friends and relatives, food budget always under stress
clothing	buys as needed, well-dressed per chosen lifestyle	tries to dress well but struggles to afford, buys used clothing from West, has one/few very good outfits
transportation	has efficient private vehicles to go to work, church, club, for shopping, outings	uses inefficient public transportation, walks [I question whether it's really "inefficient", based on our experience]
social life	varied; entertains at home, hangs with friends, big budget	largely centered on visiting and receiving kin and friends with food and drink; possible sporting events
vacations	takes vacations in home country	may have mandated vacations, does not leave country
educational background	university-level	limited opportunities in ill-equipped schools
educational resources	books, magazines, tv, videos, [internet!], keeps up with the world	radio, possibly tv, possibly newspaper, owns few books or magazines
children	few	many
children's education	good, well-equipped schools, well-trained teachers, relatively small classes, up-to-date curriculum, headed for university	difficult to ensure minimal schooling for all, large classes with almost no equipment, univerity possible only for the bright and lucky
telephone	home, work	public phone, possibly at work too
computer	up-to-date machine, email and net access	possibly available in office, hard to afford [this may be changing somewhat; we know at least one family with few resources but with a computer that was donated]
family responsibilities	to nuclear family	to large extended family including parents, grandparents, cousins and others
medical situation	access to well-trained doctors, dentists, specialists, hospital care, prescription drugs [and an insurance policy that promises medical evacuation if services are needed that are only available abroad]	can barely afford marginal care in a very limited local clinic, well-trained doctors beyond reach, may consult traditional healers and use traditional medicines [the interurban buses we've ridden often have someone on them selling herbal medicines, who gives a one-hour lecture and then does a lot of business]
discretionary income	lots of money for nonessentials	hard-pressed to make ends meet for food, housing, power, water and clothes
retirement expectations	preparing with investments, house ownership in home country, government-provided security	paying into government-run social security fund with marginal prospects of ever receiving its limited benefits [this sounds a bit familiar, actually...]
economic security	little-concerned with long-term unemployment or destitution, possibly concerned about maintaining a well-paying job	very much concerned with obtaining or maintaining long-term employment, loss means hard times and possibly destitution along with many dependents
physical security	solid construction, iron bars, guards [and secure location, dog, a yard with high walls topped with glass shards and barbed wire, and ex-pat and local friends to call in case of trouble]	questionable construction, neighborhood insecurities

The other thing that all this leaves me wondering, both these great, thought-provoking lists and the discussion yesterday, is how best to leverage all these differences to communicate effectively across our cultures? To partner with Africans to do the kind of linguistic and translation work that SIL does? To do the kind of development partnership with African organizations that we're helping with at RELUFA? How do you partner in a way that lets you collaborate not just on your methods, but on your goals? (Joining Hands seems to be doing this very thing with RELUFA, based on the meetings we attend). What does a development project based on African cultural values look like, and how does it differ from a development project under Western management? How about a church? And what does it take for an institution that may have its origins in a culture of domination, like colonialism, to reclaim its identity in a way that frees people instead of dominating them, to leave or reformulate alien values that don't work well here into something local that does? There's such a long history of foreign domination in much of Africa, culturally and religiously and in the rawest and most practical physical terms (slavery, resource exploitation, colonization) that it seems to be part of people's worldview, foreign and local people alike, seems to have molded everyone's expectations.

I wrote more about this and then deleted it. Back in college, I took a trip to Africa for a month, an overseas anthropology class during the interim between semesters. We went to Kenya for three weeks and then spent a week in Liberia. I came back and wrote up an article for the Calvin College Chimes about it. I didn't use the right language to express what I had to say, and got an outraged letter from an Ethiopian student at Calvin shortly thereafter, asking me if I had ever taken the time to actually talk to an African while I was there, and informing me how ignorant I was. I kept that letter -- it's in a box at home -- and I have never forgotten it. It made clear to me that, whatever my intentions were, I had offended someone through my ignorance of cultural differences and poor choice of language.

So all this is really interesting, but complicated. And dangerous.