business as usual

11/10/2002:

"The young person who has trained to be disciplined will, in the final analysis, survive better than the one who has been instructed to wear a piece of rubber and continue with 'business as usual'... When we fail to tell our children that there are limitations to human freedom... When we fail to teach our young that there are some moral absolutes and they must reckon with them or perish, then we do grievous harm to the future of the human race."

-Janet Museveni, First Lady of Uganda

...and Uganda has made Africa's – if not the world's – most dramatic and positive gains in the fight against HIV/AIDS. from 30% to 6% in the past few years. supposedly with a combination of abstinence and fidelity advocacy, dynamic political leadership, and compassionate social programs for those with HIV/AIDS. 

the first lady criticizes the UN policy of promoting condoms, condoms, condoms. the cheap and easy way out? i'm not ready to get into this debate. reference my entries a couple of journals ago about talks with Pa Wango. suffice it to say here that condoms alone cannot stop AIDS in Africa.

i think i said something about a band-aid on a finger that keeps getting cut. what does the hand keep getting itself into? condoms do work. should be used and distributed. i just wonder if we're not selling ourselves short morally if we think this is the most effective means. i think that's what the first lady is saying.

SIV/Bushmeat

11/6/2002:
Questions on SIV/Bushmeat Article
[Newsweek, July 8, 2002 – "Breeding Grounds"]

1. How could SIV have led to HIV? Give 2 current examples.
2. How can the risk of exposure to and/or infection with SIV be minimized? Identify 3 practices.
3. Do you think it is more important to identify the origin of HIV/AIDS and prevent new diseases or to concentrate on controlling the current HIV/AIDS crisis? Explain.

oh what a staff meeting!

10/10/2002:

Questions on Sustainability Article: Year 3
Newsweek - September 2, 2002, p. 39-41

1. What is sustainable development?
2. What are the two (2) deadliest environmental problems?
3. According to the article, what is truly needed to solve our environmental problems?
   

...right. well, I never asked my students the 3 questions above. they were dismissed early. surprise, surprise. we had a staff meeting. and oh what a staff meeting! they keep getting better every time.

we didn't start too late. more-or-less on time, actually. good turn out. the VP stayed in his office and only left 1/2 way through. after the hard rain that kept us from hearing everything clearly subsided. we laughed in the meeting... we laughed to keep from crying.

Menget went off at the DS. who asked a stupid question about why Menget criticized people's presentations at the seminar. he should've known better. Menget blew his lid! then came Kum. who decided he'd comment on the Teacher's Day he didn't even attend.

as soon as Mr. Nshu and i began to object, Kum went off. you know how Kum can be... we (GTTC teachers), principals (including Auntie) and even the DO got "thrashed." we just laughed... at both Menget and Kum, and the DS and Auntie.

funniest thing is that while all of us were either busy laughing or trying to shut them up and sit them down, there was Mr. Muzih writing away – quite seriously – at the minutes! trying hard to keep up with the violent pace of the meeting. can't wait to hear those minutes read next month. i'll be the first to move to accept them. WHAT A RIOT!

anyway... i attempted to say something about the students always leaving before my afternoon classes. how teachers really need to come to class and lean on the students to stay through 3pm. Auntie interpreted that in her own way, of course. she told the SG never to leave before 3:05pm.

as if Mme. Nkwain could/should babysit 3 classes with no other teachers/staff around! just like a people in positions of authority here–cut you short and give an immediate answer, even when your grievance may not have immediate answers. "next!"

so i sat down without even finishing my comment. what's the use?... a year ago, i'm not sure what i would've done. don't think i could've stayed. grinned and bore it. now, i laugh. on vas faire comment? there's just a few months left.

but i'm not that fatalistic or disenchanted. just picking my battles. honestly, i think about what it is i can do. what problem i may be able to address and how i could address it. small and subtle. insha'Allah.

the ride up

 

10/4/2002:
"Breeding Grounds" July 8, 2002 Newsweek ...good article on bushmeat/SIV/HIV.

back in Wum. short journey from Yaoundé to Bamenda yesterday. stopped a bit in Bamenda. safe journey to Wum. bad road. good car. John Fru Ndi's truck, to be exact. well, his wife's. Alhadji in Bamenda hooked that up. it cost a pretty penny, but was worth it.

mama enjoyed the ride up. impressed by how green things are now. i forgot she hadn't seen it like this. the contrast between dry and rainy season. this is probably a good time of year to visit. glad to have her here. still an exercise in patience, understanding and respect. that's good for me. she does so much. God bless her.

just need to carve out my own time for work. i'm sure days will become busy. it's almost 11pm now. didn't accomplish much today. Maggie did eat dinner with us, though. she had a good convo with mama. her and i also talked about family and friends.

tomorrow is Teacher's Day. not much planned. people couldn't meet on account of a ban because of October 1st. which passed without incident. mama and i will buy meat tomorrow. then i'll check out the [teacher's day] program.

here's a thought connected to what i just wrote in my peace & freedom journal... here's to saying all that we know, doing all that we say and, of course, thinking about all of that before we say and do.

we don't judge

also 10/1/2002:
mama said hello to a few people around the office. met the CD. spoke for while. about politics, of course. America. here. Mideast. i think mama pushed the "we don't judge people" and "we treat everyone equally" tip a little much.

two interesting points:

1st... we're back to worrying about volunteers in Muslim areas as attacks on Iraq may be imminent. i don't see that, at least not here. one never knows though. just look at the Ivory Coast. who would've thought?!

2nd... the CD's mother-in-law is coming to visit, and she's of Lebanese-Syrian origin. not been back since the war. he wants her to meet mama. for lunch, in yaounde, on sunday 10/20/2002. small world.

mama and i ate Indian today. at Taj Mahal. all right food. they didn't have but can make sweets, ras malai and gulab jamun. yum!

OK. tired. need sleep. we'll see how tomorrow goes. we leave for Bamenda by car on Thursday. may need to call Paul and Maggie, to assess the Bamenda-Wum road. then call Alhadji to arrange a ride with him.

where is kyoto?

Questions on Global Warming Article: Year 3, due 9/21/2002

1. Who are Richard and Alastair Fitter and how are they related? (father and son biologists)
2. Where is Kyoto and what is the Kyoto Treaty? (Japan, treaty to curb carbon emissions)
3. Identity 2 ways in which, according to the article, Global Warming impacts the environment. (polar ice melts, animal migration, altered plant leafing/flowering)

...REVIEW THE ARTICLE 1st!

okro soup and nuclear war

5/28/2002:
bought my tickets [to Mali] yesterday... June 6th through July 1st. TOT starts this morning, but i have a few more emails to send out to set up the trip.

...full moon out last night. found myself in Marche Mokolo (looking for sandals), so i walked over to Dairou's. they were making dinner... couscous du riz avec sauce du gumbo! [pounded rice with okra sauce]. very good.

met an RPCV from Guider, Dairou's hometown (in the North)... she's married to a Cameroonian, working in CAR. work is well with Dairou. good for him.

Pakistan and India are posturing for war. more later...

holy father in cameroon

BBC News | Africa | Pope visit raises Cameroon Hopes

Sky News | Vatican Plays Down Pope's Condom Comments

Articles of Faith | Quel chapeau! Cameroon welcomes Pope

NCT | Pope: Cameroon a model of interreligious tolerance

Encounter with Representatives of the Muslim Community of Cameroon, at the Apostolic Nunciature in Yaounde (March 19, 2009). Apostolic Voyage of the Holy Father, Benedict XVI, to Cameroon and Angola (March 17-13, 2009).

My Dear Friends,

Grateful for this opportunity to meet representatives of the Muslim community in Cameroon, I express my heartfelt thanks to Mr Amadou Bello for his kind words of greeting extended to me on your behalf. Our encounter is a vivid sign of the desire we share with all people of good will - in Cameroon, throughout Africa and across the globe - to seek opportunities to exchange ideas about how religion makes an essential contribution to our understanding of culture and the world, and to the peaceful coexistence of all the members of the human family. Initiatives in Cameroon, such as the Association Camerounaise pour le Dialogue Interreligieux, illustrate how such dialogue enhances mutual understanding and assists in the building up of a stable and just political order.

Cameroon is home to thousands of Christians and Muslims, who often live, work and worship in the same neighborhood. Both believe in one, merciful God who on the last day will judge mankind (cf. Lumen Gentium, 16). Together they bear witness to the fundamental values of family, social responsibility, obedience to God’s law and loving concern for the sick and suffering. By patterning their lives on these virtues and teaching them to the young, Christians and Muslims not only show how they foster the full development of the human person, but also how they forge bonds of solidarity with one’s neighbors and advance the common good.

My friends, I believe a particularly urgent task of religion today is to unveil the vast potential of human reason, which is itself God’s gift and which is elevated by revelation and faith. Belief in the one God, far from stunting our capacity to understand ourselves and the world, broadens it. Far from setting us against the world, it commits us to it. We are called to help others see the subtle traces and mysterious presence of God in the world which he has marvelously created and continually sustains with his ineffable and all-embracing love. Although his infinite glory can never be directly grasped by our finite minds in this life, we nonetheless catch glimpses of it in the beauty that surrounds us. When men and women allow the magnificent order of the world and the splendor of human dignity to illumine their minds, they discover that what is "reasonable" extends far beyond what mathematics can calculate, logic can deduce and scientific experimentation can demonstrate; it includes the goodness and innate attractiveness of upright and ethical living made known to us in the very language of creation.

This insight prompts us to seek all that is right and just, to step outside the restricted sphere of our own self-interest and act for the good of others. Genuine religion thus widens the horizon of human understanding and stands at the base of any authentically human culture. It rejects all forms of violence and totalitarianism: not only on principles of faith, but also of right reason. Indeed, religion and reason mutually reinforce one another since religion is purified and structured by reason, and reason’s full potential is unleashed by revelation and faith.

I therefore encourage you, my dear Muslim friends, to imbue society with the values that emerge from this perspective and elevate human culture, as we work together to build a civilization of love. May the enthusiastic cooperation of Muslims, Catholics and other Christians in Cameroon be a beacon to other African nations of the enormous potential of an interreligious commitment to peace, justice and the common good!

With these sentiments, I once again express my gratitude for this auspicious occasion to meet you during my visit to Cameroon. I thank Almighty God for the blessings he has bestowed upon you and your fellow citizens, and I pray that the links that bind Christians and Muslims in their profound reverence for the one God will continue to grow stronger, so that they will reflect more clearly the wisdom of the Almighty, who enlightens the hearts of all mankind.

an american abroad

feels good. it is good. at least for the moment. to be an american, that is. to be an american abroad today. an american in "the muslim world," for that matter.

i spent much of my two years as a peace corps volunteer coming to terms with my american identity, among other things... i also spent a good deal of that time wondering why my government was making it so difficult for me to be an american abroad. especially in "the muslim world."

all that is on hold for a moment... i pray it'll be more than just a passing moment. of hope and change. for those of us abroad. and those of us in america. after all... we, too, sing america.

praised. seeker of the subtle. purveyor of patchwork.

hollow land

Indeed, beyond their physical reality, the territories of Israel/Palestine have constituted a schematic description of a conceptual system whose properties have been used to understand other geopolitical problems. The ‘Intifada’ unfolding in Iraq is a part of an imaginary geography that Makram Khoury-Machool called the ‘Palestinization of Iraq’. Yet, if the Iraqi resistance is perceived to have been ‘Palestinized’, the American military has been ‘Israelized’.

Furthermore, both the American and Israeli militaries have adopted counter-insurgency tactics that increasingly resemble the guerrilla methods of their enemies.

When the wall around the American Green Zone in Baghdad looks as if it had been built from left-over components of the West Bank Wall;

when ‘temporary closures’ are imposed on entire Iraqi towns and villages and reinforced with earth dykes and barbed wire;

when larger regions are carved up by road blocks and checkpoints;

when the homes of suspected terrorists are destroyed, and ‘targeted assassinations’ are introduced into a new global militarized geography

...it is because the separate conflicts now generally collected under the heading of the ‘war on terror’ are the backdrop to the formation of complex ‘institutional ecologies’ that allow the exchange of technologies, mechanisms, doctrines, and spatial strategies between various militaries and the organizations that they confront, as well as between the civilian and the military domains.

Eyal Weizman. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (Verso, London, 2007), p. 10.

this is what i'm presently reading... can't help but make the connections b/w current events in Gaza, my recent posts on Israeli incursions into the Occupied Territories almost 7 years ago, and the links the author makes in the excerpt above (and i allude to in the previous post) b/w American and Israeli approaches to the 'War on Terror.'

note: i've broken up the excerpt for easier reading... it's all one long paragraph in the book.

until they understand...

3/9/2002:
40+ people (mostly Palestinian) were killed yesterday in and around the Occupied Territories. it was a Friday, of course. now Sharon is talking about a cease-fire... without the need for the 7 days of peace he’d been calling for as a condition to talks. he’s been saying things like: we have to inflict pain and casualties on Palestinians until they understand...

i don’t think he or a whole lot of other Western leaders understand that this will not end in that way. that no matter how many die or are killed in one day, tomorrow there will be more [resistance]. even more. i think maybe Sharon finally understood he couldn’t butcher that many people on a consistent basis and go on alleging they were all terrorists.

i think maybe Sharon got a phone call from DC telling him to cool it. that our "War on Terror" takes priority and he’s giving it a bad name. especially with the “Moderate Arab States.” yeah... God bless the Moderate Arab States. God bless America. God bless foreign national interest in our part of the world. peace.

on a lighter note... i went out to the farm with Paul and his crew [siblings] this morning. planted maize. got my hands dirty. good stuff.

the hypocrisy of we

3/4/2002:
palestine keeps getting worse. afghanistan is still going. the philippines, georgia, iraq and yemen are next. listening to the BBC this evening [2002, Review of the Year] i didn’t know what to think. what is there to think? one just feels in cases like these. and [we] Americans (the administration, at least, but the public to the extent that [we] don’t protest) seem unable to do either; think or feel, that is. only for [our]selves.

and [we] send troops around the globe reflecting that... an ethnocentric egoism blind to how others are affected or may ultimately react. and [we] send volunteers around the globe talking about peace and understanding. i cannot believe i got a letter from George W telling me what an important job i’m doing. the hypocrisy disgusts me. makes me sick. ashamed that i’m out here. as an American... that i’d even begin to defend American values, ideals or culture... let alone represent them.

i was so disgusted as i listened to yet another self-righteous, myopic “ugly American” political viewpoint that it made me want to leave. head right to Yaounde and tear up my passport in front of anyone high enough to do something about it. to send me home. to take this label off of me. where do they get off? ...and how do i utter we anymore without buying into that same hypocrisy?

the Peace Corps... are you kidding me?!

honest constructive

3/3/2002:
...still here at Muhammad’s. his mother refused to let me leave before 1pm. after prayer, that is, wants to feed me again. good folks.

we went out to see the cows. Abdu and a bunch of the young men were struggling with an injured cow, itself struggling. this place is sooo big. beautiful open grassland. [my stereotypical] Africa.

saw Suhaibu in the morning. had a most interesting conversation about America, Israel, the MidEast and Oil... politics, that is. Suhaib was translating questions from an old Fulani man from Esu to me.

conversations like that make me think. they tire me b/c it’s tough enough to deal with topics like that without the language/cultural barrier. that makes expression and comprehension that much tougher.

question(s): other PCV’s... when they’re asked about America, how do they respond? how frank are they? how biased? and i? am i giving an equally biased view? an inaccurate one? an unAmerican one? a detrimental one? not constructive or just honest? can honest be constructive?

...is that the trick. be honest about American government. constructive about American people? can’t have conversations like that without thinking “wow... this PC experience.” surreal, the cross-cultural exchange. you take it for granted, but at times you can’t help but notice the exchange as you’re having it.

and the questions about America don’t stop coming. keep them coming. just need the answers myself. and in trying to answer i learn more. about here. about there. about me. about us.

walk fast or far?

"If you want to walk fast, walk alone... If you want to walk far, walk with a friend."

-Zimbabwean proverb... heard it
last night from the South African
Rev. Eddie Makue [see his bio, PDF].

unrest in cameroon last month

you may or may not have heard about the riots in cameroon late last month. it certainly made the news. but unless you were digging a little deeper than just headlines and a few brief paragraphs, you probably wouldn't have gathered much:

BBC News | Africa | Cameroon Head Blames Opposition (2/28/2008)

it seems like a taxi strike on increased fuel prices in douala sparked more general rioting (and, in some cases, looting) in cities like yaounde, bamenda and kumba... the riots being attributed to everything from frustration with cost of living increases, attempts at altering the constitution to extend the president's term in office, to youth copycatting the violence in kenya.

IRIN, the Integrated Regional Information Network (part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), has a series of 3 brief articles that are worth reading on the situation:

-Douala Burns as Taxi Strike Turns into General Rioting (2/25/2008)
-Unrest Spreads to Yaounde Even After Taxi Strike Ends (2/27/2008)
-Not Quite Back to Normal (3/6/2008)

there are a number of more detailed articles posted on the US-based Friends of Cameroon website. and an interesting blog post on Peace Corps Cameroon's response to the rioting (to evacuate or not?) from a volunteer currently serving in the country: CONSOLIDATION Vacation, by Tim Hartman.