Christmas Day dinner

We went out on Christmas day with work friends Fanny and Guy for a drink
at Hotel Mont Febe, and lunch at a restaurant called Atlantic. Here are
a few pics. Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

We wish all of you, family and friends and our occasional anonymous
readers as well, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

-- Chris and Ann

A Gift from Afar

No, there will be no Christmas card this year. And we won’t be able to attend any of your parties. But for those of you who like to cook (or might enjoy trying), we present this small gift: a really yummy peanut sauce recipe that we’ve already made several times since arriving in Cameroon. It’s not Cameroonian; it’s more Indonesian. But it’s a wonderful use for the abundant peanuts here, and although we usually serve it over roasted eggplant slices, it would probably be delicious with ‘most any vegetable or meat combination you can dream up. Or eaten straight off your finger from the pan.

It all started when Marie, the house help for the people we’ve been house-sitting for, bought some eggplants for us. Several of them. We’re not usually eggplant-eating types, and hadn’t asked her to buy any for us, but there they were, squat and purple in our frigo. When Chris declared his general dislike for eggplant, the obsessive non-waster in our family (that would be me) set out at once to find the tastiest possible way to consume lots of eggplant. I think I found it. We’ve even asked Marie for more eggplant since then. You go ahead and eat this with anything you like. Enjoy, and a wonderful holiday season to all of you from us in Cameroon.

Spicy Indonesian Peanut Sauce (for Two) modified from Epicurious.com

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small onion, minced

1” of fresh ginger root, peeled and minced

¼ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes (more or less to taste)

Oil for sautéing (olive is good)

¼ c. ground roasted peanuts (use natural peanut butter, no additives)

2 tsp. soy sauce

1 tsp. sugar

2 tsp. fresh lemon juice

1 c. water (approx)

Heat oil (one small pour, perhaps a few Tbsp.) in med-sized pan. Sauté garlic, onion, ginger, and red pepper flakes a few minutes ‘til softened. Add the peanut butter to sauté mixture, stir to combine for a minute or so. Then add soy sauce, sugar, and lemon (we usually combine these in a small bowl ahead of time) and stir. Add water (start with about ¾ c. and see if you like the texture; you can always add more) and let sauce bubble until slightly thickened. Add salt and pepper to taste (may not be necessary) and serve with great joy! (Note: we don’t have red pepper flakes, so we use a small amount of piment, the wonderful local hot pepper sauce, and add it with the wet ingredients.)

Funeral in Sangmelima

Thiery, Ann, and another friend of Thiery's on the main street.

We attended a funeral in a Sangmelima, town two or three hours south of
Yaounde, last weekend. Our friend Thiery invited us to come with him,
so we all took the bus there last Sunday, packed in on jumpseats in rows
built to hold four that had five people each. The funeral was for the
father of Thiery's work friend Emmanuel. "Papa Daniel" died three years
ago at age 82; it's common here to hold the interment immediately and
then have the funeral a year or more later. We arrived about noon and
waited an hour in Emmanuel's family home. Then we headed to a big hall
for food and speeches, attended by family and local dignitaries and
including a couple of hundred people. Then a procession through town to
the family house, where there was dancing. The deceased's portrait was
always around, carried by someone in the procession and the dances, and
his son proudly displayed his beer mug to remember him by. It was a
festive atmosphere celebrating his life. Even the clothing is special;
people often make clothes especially for an event like this, and often
several people will wear outfits made from matching fabric.

We wait at Emmanuel's house for things to get started. Note formal furniture in sitting room, photos of family on walls, beer in large bottles.

The hall where the speeches and meal took place.

One of the hosts at the ceremony. This garment, known as a bubu, goes down to his ankles, with matching pants under it, and is traditional Cameroonian clothing for men.

Dignitaries at the funeral. You can't see it, but the man in the foreground holds a green branch, an important symbol known as the "tree of the father."

More dignitaries. The man on the right is the president of a society the deceased belonged to.

More dignitaries. The man on the right also holds a branch.

The procession following the ceremony.

Emmanuel displays his father's mug in his memory, during the procession.

The dance after the procession, in front of the family home. The portrait of the deceased was carried in the procession and in the dancing as well.

More of the dance. You can see some of the matching clothing here.

Us at the dance. Emmanuel in the center, Thiery on the right. Thiery told us later we honored his family by coming to the funeral, because it showed the community he was an important man.

Another dance, after the first, closer to the house, smaller and more lively.

A traditional masked dancer, part of the second dance.

Especially for Mom

For those of you who know my mother well, you're probably aware that there's almost nothing she appreciates so much as a good praying mantis. So naturally, when one took up residence in our front porch for a few days, I thought of you, ma. The above photo (blurred as I held the camera at unsteady arm's length to get as close as possible) was taken Friday when we first noticed her perched on a wall-hanging. For the past several days, we've spied her in various porch locations as we come and go, and today when we went home for lunch, we couldn't find her. Did she leave through one of the (gaping) holes in the screen? Did a hungry bird snatch her away? Or is she just hidden where we can't see? We never saw her catch any bugs, but the bug population is generally high, so she's probably well fed. And now you know: praying mantids look about the same in Cameroon as they do in Michigan.

Joining Hands newsletter

The Cameroonian NGO we volunteer with here is called RELUFA. If you're
curious to
find out more about what they do, check out the new issue of the Joining
Hands newsletter, specifically the Cameroon section, at

http://www.relufa.org/partners/jhnewsletter/cameroon.htm

It's full of information about what RELUFA does and some of our recent
work. One of Ann's articles, already posted here, is in there, along
with lots of other information and pictures, and even a small video.

Joining Hands is a program of the Presbyterian Church USA that addresses
global injustice and poverty, and a strong supporter of RELUFA's work.
Christi, who returns to Cameroon this month with her family, and for
whom we are housesitting, works for Joining Hands here in Cameroon, and
thus works closely with RELUFA.

I am curious whether our church in San Francisco, First Mennonite, is
involved in something like Joining Hands, which is more interested in
figuring out why people are poor or hungry or powerless in the first
place, and addressing that, than in providing handouts. Give a man a
fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll just have to
hand it over to get his kids into a school that the law says is supposed
to be free. Poverty is complicated.

RELUFA meetings in November

(Ann wrote this article for inclusion in the PC-USA's Joining Hands newsletter, out soon.)

ONE WEEK, TWO MEETINGS, by Ann Speyer

The RELUFA offices.

The week of November 5, 2007 was an eventful one for RELUFA. Twice at their offices in Yaoundé, the main gathering room with its neat square of tables was full of people, French and English words mingling and bouncing off the black and white tile floor. Bookending the week on Monday and Friday, both meetings brought people together from diverse places, ready to focus together on RELUFA’s work and vision.

Check presentation: Methodist missionaries Leah & Wes Magruder, Marie Crescence Ngobo (Centre pour l’Environnement et le Developpement) and Valéry Nodem (RELUFA network coordinator)

The Monday meeting started the week with a celebratory tone, and featured a delegation from the Presbyterian Church (USA), a Methodist missionary couple, Credit Against Poverty (CAP) program beneficiaries, and RELUFA staff. The occasion was a happy one indeed: the presentation of two large donations from Methodist churches in the USA, one for RELUFA’s food sovereignty program and the other for the CAP micro-credit program. Introductions went around the table, beneficiaries spoke about what they’ve gained thanks to their CAP program loans, and smiles broke through as Francophones and Anglophones translated for one another, arriving at well-earned moments of understanding. During the proceedings, trays of dried fruits and plantains passed from hand to hand, produced by a women’s cooperative who had purchased their food drying equipment with help from a CAP loan. The afternoon was a beautiful demonstration of how RELUFA as a network does indeed bring people and organizations together.

Moderator Meg Agbor (director of RELUFA member organization CHAMEG) and secretary Guy Nomigue (RELUFA’s CAP coordinator) keep the CAP work-group meeting running smoothly.

The Friday immediately following, the tone in the room was more businesslike, though no less congenial. For the first time since its launching in January 2007, the CAP work group was reuniting to review the program’s first year. Eight different member organizations of RELUFA were represented, as well as a micro-finance consultant and RELUFA staff. Many of these same people and organizations had planned, discussed, and struggled together for three years to form the CAP program, and now that it was up and running nearly a year, it was time to ask: what worked well? What challenges do we face? What changes can make our program better and stronger? There were suggestions on streamlining the application process, acknowledgements of the creativity and resourcefulness of beneficiaries, hard questions about what to do when payments are not made on time. The meeting moderator and secretary kept the group focused and engaged through each step of the agenda. When the day’s business was concluded mid-afternoon, participants shared a delicious lunch and a renewed sense that Credit Against Poverty, still a work-in-progress, is well worth continued investment, as are the people it serves.