Random thoughts from the week of July 20th

I have a request to make to my readers. If you think you can help the grant-writing process at all by providing leads to foundations or tips on inquiry letters and/or proposals that would be awesome. But above all else I would really like to give my friend Vitalis as many Star Trek DVDs as I can get my hands on. If you think you can help in this area please email me! (cgm33@cornell.edu).

So I have been asked to cover more about the culture and I just thought maybe really quick examples would be good. Just a few hours ago I got back from watching a movie at Helen’s place. Helen is a trainee from Holland and she is staying at a girl’s hostel. I admit that I am a little jealous because living with 2 girls who are not African sort of removes you a bit from the immersion I was hoping for. At the same time it’s really really nice not to have mice in our house like Helen has in her hostel room which she shares with a Cameroonian girl named Dorcas. What this ultimately means for Helen is that she is one six ft.-tall blonde haired, blue eyed girl among 45 Cameroonian college-age girls who worship the ground she walks on. We were interrupted twice in the span of one movie with invites to come upstairs and meet inquisitive residents as well as plates of food. It was really nice but when we were done with the movie I think everyone was asleep.

We know because we flashed them and they didn’t flash back. Flashing is a way to contact someone without spending too much valuable credit on a phone call. People here use a system sort of like our trac-phones, where they buy a certain amount of credit and then just add more as they need to. I definitely think it ends up being more than what Americans pay for with a monthly calling plan, but it does create jobs. I would say (and this I wish was a joke but it’s not) that 40% of the gainfully employed people around here sit all day long at little wooden boxes with their cell phone and wait for people to come along so they can put more credit on their customers’ phones. What’s really sad is that since there are hardly any chances for young ambitious graduates to jump into the work force (even at the bottom wrung of the ladder with plans to work one’s way up) you see that most of the call-box people have degrees and dreams and this is just the best way to feed themselves for the time being. It’s really tough. Bill told us the other day that only 30% of the graduates will find employment in Cameroon within two years of graduating. That makes the temporary recession-induced hiring freeze in the US seem like no big deal. That 30% has been a reality for Cameroon since the beginning of higher education, but yet so many kids still go because the government does make it pretty affordable to attend university. And the public universities are (similar to what Laura has said of German universities) much better than private schools. This fact is probably the only positive thing I’ve heard of the Cameroonian government since I came here.

A random thought before I go to bed. The way Cameroonians pronounce “government” is SO cool to me for some reason. Watch Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond and he says it once or twice and that’s close enough to get the idea. It just makes you feel like you are in a Bob Marley song or something. Hard to explain. Good night!

Oh wait, one last thought. I promise. The other day in class we were playing an icebreaker and I had a kid in my group who told me his name was Leonardo DiCaprio. I don’t think he was kidding. But then again the last name DiCaprio is not Cameroonian at all, there are NO Italians here. I was and still am really confused because he signed the attendance sheet as Leonardo DiCaprio and his email is apparently ghettoleoking@yahoo.com . I am glad I only joked with him about being Kate Winslet for a little while before dropping it.