I have just killed the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. He must have been 3 inches across, all black and hairy. Ughh! He was on the kitchen wall, up above the cupboards, so fortunately I was able to grab the Raid, jump up on a chair and get a good aim at him. The joke here is that Raid bought Africa actually kills bugs – but this fellow took a lot of sprays before he succumbed. He fell into a wicker basket on top of the cupboard, but kept trying to climb out and get away. At last he became semi-comatose and I was able to get the basket – and him – out the back door and squish him on the back step. The unquieting thing is – how on earth did he get into the house? Until 6 weeks ago, I had no screens on my windows, but now I would have thought the house was fairly bug resistant. Ah well – I am extremely happy that I sleep all enclosed in my cozy mosquito (or spider) net.
Last Thursday I went planting corn with my friend Dorcas on her farm. The farm work is so much a part of every woman’s life here – even for the women who nurse or do other jobs at the hospital. Salaries are too low, and food costs too high, for any family to manage without growing a substantial amount of their own food. Dorcas has a plot of land that belongs to the hospital but is leased to her. It is down in a deep small valley, with a little stream running down the center – and the land itself is on a steep slope. Her rainy season corn had been harvested, and she had had a woman clear the land for her, and make the ridges of earth, about 2-3 feet across, into which the corn and beans are seeded. The ridges keep the seeds from washing away in the heavy rains (which will continue through Sept and Oct) and allow some drainage of the land.
We made our way through some dense bush (mostly bamboo and elephant grass) down a slippery little path to the farm. There were four of us – Dorcas, me, Doris the housegirl, and Dorcas’s niece who is 14 and has lived with Dorcas since infancy. We each took a pocketful of corn kernels, and each took a cutlass to open the soil – and in went 2 seeds to each hole. It is quite a lot like planting potatoes is for us. The girls all went barefoot, and I probably should have too, but there were a lot of ants, of the biting type – so I just let my running shoes get muddy. We worked from 8 until almost 12 when it began to rain, but fortunately it was just as we finished seeding all the mounds of earth. The girls had brought the beans too, which are just planted in amongst the corn, but seeding those was left for another day.
The rain started to really pelt down, making the steep little narrow path out of the farm really slick. Dorcas was wearing flip-flops on her feet, and was carrying a big stick of wood that she was taking home for her fire – but she put the bag of beans on her head, leaving one hand free to reach back behind her to pull me up the path!! These people are amazing.
It was a great morning. I felt honoured to be allowed to go with them to plant, and they were very gracious to let me actually work. I hope I got the seeds in right – it is so important that the corn grows and that the crop is successful. In a couple of weeks it will be time to weed the field, so I hope I can go along with them for that as well. Dorcas says that maybe the corn will be ready so I can eat some before I leave in December. People here are very fortunate that they can grow two crops a year. The rainy season corn and beans, and groundnuts, were planted back in April, and have now been harvested – and now people are planting even more things, corn, beans, yams, plantains, and so on. It is constant work, but many of the poor rural people do not really need to buy much for eating beyond what they can grow.
We have finished the anaesthesia class! It is hard to believe that we've been at it for two years. The class did a couple of long written exams, and two orals each, and did well, to my relief at least as much as theirs - and I knew they had a pretty reasonable grasp of anaesthesia, from watching them day in and day out in theatre for the past year+. They are now on holiday (which means work-work-work for survival money) for a month - and start a 1-year internship on September 15.
Two weeks ago – After having been sickly with a wretched virus, and missing work, I went over to the OR about 2pm to greet and let them know I was alive, and likely to recover. At least half of the men came to greet me, shaking my hand and enquiring about my health Bote did so in Kom, calling me as usual “Nini” (elderly mother). They may not do things I want them to with regard to work, but they are real friends, and a big part of my life.
- The day started with beautiful sun – for about 3 hours. Rain threatened all afternoon. You can see the rain coming from the hills to the south of us, and then hear it as it pounds across the compound. The sound usually gives you time to run, if you are too far from the house. Sometimes it comes slowly – today it began to pound on the zinc roof of the house below me, but took another minute to reach my own roof. That approaching rain noise is such a typical Africa sound… and then the deafening sound on one’s own zinc, drowning out conversation, and even drums and singing…
- After the rain, I took Goddie down to the other end of the compound, where you can see at least 7 waterfalls coming down the side of the escarpment that is above us. The noise of the falls is loud, even though they are quite a distance away. After a rain, you can see how muddy the water is, and it really does pour down. In dry season of course, all but one of these falls completely dry up. They are one of the positive features of this time of year (helping to make up for the everylasting cloud…..)
A couple of nights in the past 2 weeks, I have actually been able to see stars, and the full moon. It’s unusual in rainy season. Jupiter is very bright up above, and Mars is getting brighter on the eastern horizon, just above Mbingo Hill (a friend just wrote that it will be at its brightest in years on August 27 – I hope I get to see it).
School starts in less than 3 weeks. The headmaster sat all last week in the hospital library, so parents could come and register their children for Mbingo 1 school. As of Wednesday, 3 had come. Parents are feeling the pressure now to raise the money for the school fees; periodically during the school year, children are “driven” , that is, they are sent home, until the fees are paid - although this apparently does not work. My friend Esther who sells vegetables in the market, has her application in for a government teaching job (for about the 3rd year now), but she will not hear if she has a job, or where it is, until the weekend before school starts. How to have well-prepared teachers……. These are the trials of education for both the teachers and children in a developing country.
This Monday, I walked to Mejang, a village that Jan and I hiked to in April, maybe 4 miles from here. It is a lovely walk, through farm fields, very quiet and peaceful. The birds are wonderful in this season. Much of the rainy season corn has been harvested, and the fields reworked, and now women are beginning to plant corn and beans for dry season. In Mejang, which is a tiny village, the only people to be seen were working preparing cassava (at least the women were working). The father of the compound turned out to be Prince Martin, one of the many sons of the Fon of Mejang, and a very interesting man. He is probably in his 50s, has 18 children (I did not find out how many wives), has traveled overseas, and has an interest in many things, agricultural methods, ecotourism, care of the elderly, and he is even wondering if he could open a retirement community for Europeans and North Americans here where life is very cheap! He took me up to a rise above Mejang where I had a wonderful fiew of the village of Baitchem about 2 ½ km further on along the “road” (a loose term) but far down into a valley, at only about 3000 ft, or 1500 ft lower than Mbingo. He tells me that monkeys come all the time to eat his corn – I would love to see them, but it is all a matter of being lucky on the day you are there. Maybe I’ll get back again before I leave.
He told me that when he was a youngster, he could walk to Bamenda and back (at least 30km) in a day, just to sell a few eggs. I have heard stories like this from others too, of vast distances trekked, without a second thought. Even now, people walk significant distances and accept it as part of life. "Motos and motorcycles are ruining our children" he said. "Now a child will not even walk to Mbingo without asking for money for transport". The Prince himself is sizeable, so he also is being ruined by the life of ease. I wonder what he would think of North America!
The Prince grows palms; they will not produce palm nuts here at Mbingo because they need a lower altitude – which Mejang has. The nuts are boiled when they are ripe, then crushed in a processor and the oil drains out. It is used extensively here for cooking and is what makes so much of the food orange in colour. As well, the palms can be tapped for palm wine, there is “cotton” fiber in the stems, the trunk is hollow and can be used for bee hives, and anything that remains is good fodder for animals.
The Fon just died 2 weeks ago. So in November, his 80 – yes, 80 – children, all princes and princesses, will gather to decide who will become the new Fon. Fons are the rulers of the traditional kingdoms of the Grassfields region, and still hold considerable power under the national and regional government.
Rain plays a prominent part in life these days, as you can tell from how often I mention it. In a community where almost everyone travels by foot, often significant distances, rain matters. Sometimes it falls quite gently , without wind, but more often it comes down in torrents that will soak you in a minute or two, and an umbrella, even the giant size ones that most people here carry, is inadequate protection. And sometimes the torrents are accompanied by strong wind – and then all people can do is take shelter on someone’s veranda until the storm passes (which may be a couple of hours).
July has been a cold month. An expat who has a minimum / maximum thermometer says that the temperature reached 62F (about 17C) one night, and that is unusually cold for here. I know that people from home will just laugh at that, but with the dampness, and of course no heat in the houses, I agree that it has been really cold a lot of the last month. People are used to warmer temperatures too, so feel this more. And after all, we are living just 5 degrees off the equator!
Rains here begin classically on March 15 (after 4 months without a drop of rain, or at most 2 or 3 showers) – and gradually increase in frequency and amount to July and August which are the two wettest months (30 inches a month) - and then there is a gradual reduction through September and October (with very heavy sudden rains, but not so often) until the rains cease on November 15.
Last Friday was nice until about 2pm, and then the rain began. Gideon had been here all day redoing the front rockery flower beds, so as the rain began he came in to warm up with a cup of coffee. My Fulani friend (who I only know as Madam) soon arrived to get out of the rain before she started her long trek up into the hills to her compound at Coffee, so I made her tea. She left, but soon the rain started to just pound down. Another friend from the hospital, Charity, came along the path on her way home, and met 2 small kids just in front of my house, walking slowly toward the hospital, in light clothes and already soaked. So she brought them in. The girl was about 7 and the boy maybe 3. Clearly they were terrified at being led into the whiteman house, so the girl slipped out past Charity and ran off toward the hospital. This left the small boy sitting on a stool in my parlour, wrapped up in some warmer clothes, looking like he would begin to wail at any moment. It was like the house of the refugees. Before long the girl came back. Grabbed her brother’s hand and pulled him out into the rain, and off they plodded back to the hospital where I suppose their mother was working.
At least in rainy season things grow. Mostly weeds. We had a 14 year old girl come for 4 days to weed the lawn which was at least 50% weeds. She was an excellent worker – for $2.50 a day which is the going rate. She was just so happy to be able to earn some money, and her mother sent thanks back to me as well for giving the girl a job. Gideon then said he’d plant more grass where it was very thin. I thought this meant grass seed. Instead, he arrived one afternoon with a big plastic bag full of tufts of grass that he had dug up from another lawn. These all had to be individually planted – a huge job. Apparently it is very difficult here to get grass seed – so this is how you do it.
The corn which was planted in March and April is now mature, so every day you see people coming back from their farms with dry husks of corn in their farm baskets on their backs. Someone gave me a number of cobs as a gift. I cooked it in the usual way, for about 10 minutes – and oh my, was it tough corn. The fellows in OR then told me that they cook it for 2 – 3 hours! This is what I guess we would call “cow corn”. Sweet corn will not produce proper cobs here, as it is light sensitive and needs 14 hours of daylight to grow – and of course we never have more than about 13 even now with the longest days. Some of the corn here is eaten fresh, but more is dried. The kernels are either ground fine for corn flour that is used to make fufu corn – or are “husked” in a special machine, and cooked with beans. Soon every house will have dozens of cobs of corn hanging under the eaves, the place where it is stored for future months.
Other happenings – We have only 2 weeks left as an anaesthesia class. The students wrote the first written exam on Thursday (and did fine, to my relief as well as theirs). We planned to have the first of two orals tomorrow, but I am down with some noxious respiratory bug and am not sure my brain is fully functional, so we will try for Tues – and then another oral and another written before the end of the week. The plastic surgeon who was here for 2 weeks did some lovely work, including a couple of cleft lip repairs on babies. He told me that he has repaired cleft lips in Africa on all ages of people, even a 65 year old man. It is a simple operation, and can be done under local anaesthesia – and what a difference it makes to the person. And finally, yesterday all 5 of the whitemen on the compound (our numbers have reduced) drove 20km up the road to Njinikom to visit the Catholic hospital there. Dennis who is our internist here, and Sister Xaviera who is administrator there, had known each other 30 years ago at Banso further north, but had not met in years. That hospital is smaller than ours – but has extensive overseas funding and is quite beautiful – it was fun to see.
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
