Introduction

I usually get the urge to clean my room at the most inopportune time, never when I have time on my hands but rather when I am looking for a particular item and in trying to find that item I realize just how unorganized I am. I usually have something planned in the afternoon but figure if I am quick I will be able to do it in the time I have left. I start by pulling everything out of every drawer and putting things back in an organized but overcrowded manner. I’ll often come across a memento or picture that will inevitably pull me back into another time and place and sidetrack me into a completely different project (for example scrap booking). Hours pass, I now have to rush to go where I am suppose to be and my room is left in more of a mess then it started off in (except for probably two or three draws that are extremely well organized). While I am completely aware of this rather ineffective method, I seem to constantly fall back into this routine. I say this, not because you are particularly interested in my cleaning habits, but rather as an insight into my personality type and as a backhand explanation as to why I have decided to completely erase my blog and start anew (and a forewarning in case it takes a while). It’s sort of a spring-cleaning of my travel journals. Now deciding what drawer I want to organize first…

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m sitting in a chair in my living room with my feet up, listening to Michael Jackson. Despite the fact that it is almost 6pm on Oct 19, that I am wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and that I have a fan blowing on me- I can’t stop sweating. Maybe I should explain; I am in Maroua, the capital of the Far North province, in Cameroon. I am currently completing the second month of my second VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) contract in Cameroon. Last year I came on a six month CIDA-IYIP internship through VSO. I was placed in a small village with no running water, no electricity, and no telephone signal with the mandate of mobilizing the education community and facilitating the creation of a long-term education plan to improve the quality of education and increase the number of girls in schools. I don’t know that I can say that by the time I left that significant changes took place, but I think that when working in the field of development, it’s the small victories and the little changes that you have to celebrate. And of those, there were many and because of that I was delighted when the opportunity arose for me to come back and do another contract.

This time around, I am living in fairly large city (by Cameroonian standards). I have a charming little house with one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, an indoor washroom, and a semi covered compound. I have electricity (thus the fan- yeh). Still no running water- but I ironically I have all the fixtures for water; including toilet, shower, sinks and various taps- I guess it’s comparable to living in Roua last year where I had light switches, light bulbs, and electrical outlets throughout the house despite the fact that the village has never seen electricity. Inexplicable mysteries.

I work for PLACEEN, a Platform for Actors in the Education Community in the Extreme North. My mandate is to create an operational plan, restructure the platform, find potential partners, and create training modules… all of this in 4 months (of course)!?!?! Oh, and get this; they wanted me to restructure the platform 2 weeks after arriving, before meeting any members of the organization. The people I work are very nice, although I am finding it challenging to get them involved the process that I am doing because, the majority of the members are community members with rather time-demanding jobs (ex: Mayors, Principals, Teachers, Other NGOs etc.) This is why far too often I find myself alone in an office with nothing to do but with a lot on my plate. It is kind of difficult to facilitate any kind of process when the participants are too busy to give you the time of day. I don’t mean to sound cynical; the truth is that I find the members of my network incredibly smart and motivated. It boils down to the fact that everyone has to make a living and must therefore prioritize the activity that will put food on the table before being able to think about developing the education sector in their province.

For those of you that followed my last journey, you may already know about Tomazi, but I thought I should probably formally introduce him in my new ‘drawer’ as he is a large part of my life here. He is a Cameroonian from Yaoundé (the Capital of Cameroon), and he is a chef. I met him during the Christmas holiday last year and we have been dating ever since. He accompanied me back to the Far North and has since been trying to start up a catering business. Equipped with an oven and lots of creative recipes, he is actually starting to do pretty well. Pizza and banana bread are the current rage- what can you say, ex-pats really embrace the opportunity to obtain familiar or variations of familiar foods.

I think that covers most of the basics. I hope that I can keep things in order and that I keep ‘cleaning’ before I get sidetracked and / or have to devote my energies into something else. Please give me feed back on anything and please let me know how you are doing… writing a blog can sometimes be very frustrating because you never know if anyone is actually reading what you are taking the time to write… it’s kind of like writing into an abyss.