goodbye party

To say ‘Oh Ombe’ to the village I’ve been in for the last two years, I threw myself a little good-bye party. The party was a way to get everyone I’ve lived and worked with in the last 2 years at once, thank them all for welcoming into their community and to tell them that it’s not a good-bye, it’s “Au revoir”.

A lot friends came and it really was a great party. The Chief even came and gave a little speech. Afterwards, some of my other friends said some nice things and then we ate and drank, surely part of the reason they came in the first place. A few even presented me with gifts, Dr. Tchengue gave me a banana leaf picture, Yvette gave me some nice traditional things, and the representatives for the mayor of Bangou and Bangangte also had nice gifts for me.

It was a fun time had by all, which hid the sadness that most of us felt. I will Bangou and my friends there a lot.

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PCV of the Quarter

My colleagues and PC admin voted me SED PCV of the Quarter last quarter and I got a certificate as well as dinner at the Ambassador’s house as a reward.

As a non-strategic country, PCVs in Cameroon are a lot more in the forefront of the American community and the Ambassador Janet Garvey has been very attentive to the needs of Peace Corps Volunteers since she arrived in Yaounde in September. As well as the Ambassador’s attention to Peace Corps, the Deputy Chief of Mission, Mr. Stephen Fox is an Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, and is very welcoming to volunteer inquiries.

Ambassador Garvey received myself, as well as two other volunteers, the PC Country Director and the Country Desk Officer, Jennifer Brown, for the dinner. She was very welcoming and warm in receiving us, and I could see how she makes an excellent representative of the United States government in Cameroon. After dinner, Ambassador Garvey and James Ham presented us with certificates from the US Embassy and the US Peace Corps to commemorate our awards. This was a pretty cool way to finish my Peace Corps service… just one more thing missing…

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AADB-PC business classes

The business classes are finished, thanks to AADB of course, as well as 5 community leaders who came an spoke on the last day of class. For the last day, after 11 weeks of learning about marketing, management, accounting and project management in the class room, we invited 5 community leaders from the area to speak about what these business principles really mean and how to apply them in the real world. This Leadership round table was the first of its kind in Bangou and the first one done in the Peace Corps context of business classes. It was a great success and I hope that it will be adapted by other volunteers in the future. Congrats to the students who passed the class and received an AADB business class diploma, which include our own Aladji, General Manager of AADB.

 

no phone

I don’t currently have a phone right now, so don’t try to call me at my Cameroonian number. Please send me an email if you need to get in touch with me. But don’t worry, I’ll be home soon. I should arrive back in the States August, 26th, but I’ll be in the NJ/DC area until late September. In the meantime, I’ve uploaded a few more pics to the AADB gallery: picasaweb.google.com/VelardeAADB

 

Anthony Rodriguez scholarship 2009

Anthony, one of AADBs founders and Vice President, has been supporting AADB since I arrived in Cameroon with his generous donations. At his request we have been doing a scholarship since 2008 for the best 20 students at the Bangou high school. For 2009, thanks again to his donations, We were able to give more to the students. Along with a 5,000 CFA scholarship for the best 20 students, they each received school supplies such as pens, pencils, notebooks and calculators for their excellence. This scholarship will continue to grow as AADB funds also grow so that excellence is rewarded and students in Bangou never have to worry about paying for school.

Congratulations again to the 20 recipients of the Anthony Rodriguez Scholarship.

 

chicken tonight

As much as I love my rooster, at the end of the day, he’s still what he is, and he was put on this earth for me to eat. So, after spending the last 4 months with him, feeding him, washing him, talking with him and playing with him, it was time to kill him.

Tara uploaded the video of killings, and in fact, she uploads a lot of videos about her time in Cameroon. You can check out the rest of her videos on youtube, but for now, here is the video of the killing of my rooster:

 

business classes

I’m teaching a business and project management class to entrepreneurs in Bangou. The course is 3,000 CFA and runs for 6 weeks, twice a week.

Part of making the classes sustainable is having a local teach along side of me, and it was when I met Jean Calvin who had taken the class twice already, that I found my counterpart for the project.

We teach management, marketing and accounting from a western perspective but taking into account local laws and customs. For most of my examples I will use local businesses or agriculture, and adapt our techniques to managing those local problems.

One particularly positive lesson involved the project management process. I gave the example of two farmers with the amount of money and land, and how each would fare if one just did what the rest of farmers usually do, and the other farmer followed the project management plan. They were genuinely interested as I showed them how the second farmer, by just taking a little bit of time to plan and strategize, would run a successful farm and eventually grow it, where as the first farmer would stay a subsistence farmer his whole life.

As with most of my activities AADB again helped. We charged 3,000 CFA for the classes, but to encourage women, AADB paid 2,000 for women who signed up.

 

Well it went

I don’t know if anyone remembers, but in the village of Badzuidjong, a small village, hard to get to, about 45 minutes from Bangangte, Tara Smith the volunteer in Bare started a project build a potable water well there. In the whole village there was not one place to get potable water, and people from the village as well as kids from the orphanage would often get sick.

I asked a few months ago for your support to this project, and I’m happy to announce that the project has been completed!

I was the project manager and had a meeting with all of the stakeholders, including Father Michele, who runs the orphanage in Badzuidjong and Aladji, the AADB Director, who was charged with building the well. We set the schedule and Aladji got to work a few days afterwards. The planing phase was really helpful because project management isn’t really something thought about in Africa, and it got everyone on the same page as well as excited and motivated to go.

Like most development projects we ran into trouble. Aladji agreed to do the project at a barebones price because he is someone that cares about development but mostly because his star, Tara, convinced him to. He started working on a hole but once he got to about 20 meters, about two or three meters away from water he ran into bedrock. He sent extra people and tools to try to break thru it, but after a week of almost no progress, he decided to move the well elsewhere.

This would have meant that the project would be completed later than projected, but because we had planned a few days extra and Aladji started early, meant that we would still be able to finish the well in time.

The second well was a few meters away from the old one and after a few days, they had already found water. However, that is bad news because a well needs to be at least 10 meters for the water to be potable, at the new site they found it at 5 meters.

So off to another location, which meant there really would be a delay now. This new location however was deep enough and Aladji could finally continue. But when he installed the pump, it didn’t work properly – the pump was defective. So another delay of about a week as he had to uninstall the old one, return it (returning an expensive pump isn’t like going to Home Depot and asking for another one, plus remember the village is far and difficult to get reach) bargain for a new one, and come back and install it.

He did all that, and finally we were able to inagurate the well, about a month later than planned. Some of my brothers from Bangou went to support Aladji and their adopted sister Tara for a job well done.

In fact, the village was so grateful to finally have drinking water available to them, to finally be able to drink water without the danger of getting sick, that they gave Tara the village title of Mevrou Napte which translates to something like “Queen who fixes or arranges things”.

Before you go around thinking that Africans give out titles to everyone, Tara is the only volunteer other than me (and our national Peace Corps director who was given one in Bangangte) who have received titles in Cameroon.

I was happy to be there as a fellow notable and her good friend, with the rest of my Bangou family to support her on a great honor.

Check out her pictures and blog about it:

http://taraforpeace.blogspot.com/2009/06/bandzuidjong-installation-and-water.html

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giving SOP a bath

One day I decided I was tired of my rooster running around all dirty and give him a bath. You can imagine what he thought of that idea:

Not a happy camper

But despite his protests I gave him a bath anyway, you never know when a young spring chicken may come around and you want your feathers to shine.

If I have to take bucket bath’s so does lil SOP. I heated up the water a little at least.

lil SOP right after his bath.

All clean and ready for a day out on the town.

 

cute chickens growing up

They grow up so fast. Can you believe it was only a few months ago that I adopted 5 chickens to test my hand at chicken raising. They’re getting so big now. But we all know what happens to chickens, they get eaten! (maybe that is why they are so scared.)

The other chickens aren’t big enough to eat however, so I had to sell them. I kept SOP however, the biggest one of them, who I figured was big enough to eat.

The first few days I had SOP alone, he was really sad – lonely. I could tell he missed his friends, so I let him come up to the house and spent a lot of time with him. However, A man can only spend so much time alone with his rooster, so I left him alone for a few days.

look at how little and cute they used to be. I can still tell each of them apart though.

wrestling before bed

like all African chickens, they love watermelon!

they’re all grown up, but still sleep in the same room