paceyourself.: Work activities thus far:

The Peace Corps is fairly familiar in America. Most people can usually think of one or two people who have chosen to join, whether it is a family member, friend, or simply an acquaintance. Since JFK established the organization, hundreds of thousands of Americans have served, yet most Americans don’t really know what we actually do. The idea is usually something along the lines of a bunch of hippies going to live abroad and pass out flowers or something rather. I have been living and working in the country I was placed as a Peace Corps volunteer for a year and a half now and wanted to hopefully crease the blinds a little to shed some light on what we actually do. This is generally pertaining to Peace Corps Cameroon, as each country is different and Washington targets different demographics as necessary to focus resources accordingly in each country. Peace Corps Cameroon, when I first came here as a volunteer in June 2012, had five sectors we focused in: Community Economic Development, Teaching, (English, sciences, and ICT), Youth Development, Health and Sanitation, and Agro-forestry. Comparatively, Peace Corps Morocco only focuses in one sector, Youth Development, for example. My own sector is Community Economic Development and under that my title is Farm and Agribusiness Advisor. We are going through a merger now in our sectors so by the time I leave things will have changed. In reality it’s all non-pertinent nomenclature.

My work activities as a volunteer may be particular to Cameroon, and with the diversity of the country, in particular to the region that I live in: the South West. I live in one of the two regions out of the ten that is Anglophone. That being one of the obvious differences between my own experience as a volunteer working here, me speaking English, pidgin English or the local dialect with community members, while other volunteers may be speaking French, Fulfulde, or one of the other 200 dialects in the country. Though I live in an Anglophone region, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have to know French. Government workers are always transferred to other regions and I also live very close to the border of a Francophone region. I have two neighbors who are Francophone and the soccer team I play for is always speaking French on the field, so I am constantly switching in and out of three to four languages. The other difference that will have an effect on work activities is the radically different climates of the regions. Someone in the Extreme North region where it is arid and desert-like, bordering Chad, will have quite a different experience than I will have as a volunteer in the South West region, where it is more Jurassic Park like and rainforest jungle.

For me, developing the economy of a community is very broad and I can umbrella the other sectors underneath it one way or another. Youth development: One of the best ways to develop the economy of a community is to focus attention to the future of the economy, the upcoming youth. Health and Sanitation: If people aren’t healthy then they can’t go to the farm or go to work and earn a living. Agro forestry: The backbone of the economy here is agriculture and forestry so a focus on this sector is germane. Teaching English, science, and computers: A good education is a base necessity for any person wanting to prosper in a developing country.

Since I could relate these other four sectors that volunteers were working in to my own, I ended up working in activities that stretched across all of these in some way, while also focusing attention to some of the typical activities of a community economic development volunteer. My placement in Cameroon and in the South West region in particular was partly based upon my background of having hands on farming experience and educating as a business major, hence my title under the community economic development sector, Farm and Agribusiness Advisor. Much of my time is spent working with farmers on the business side of their activities, post harvest, amongst other projects.

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Work Activities from August 2012 – December 2013:

- Working with cocoa farming CIGs, (Common Initiative Groups): CIGs are legally registered, state recognized community groups, where the members are involved in the same activity, usually for a particular purpose, for example; a group of cocoa farmers, a group of bee keepers, a women’s group living with HIV/AIDS, a traditional dance group, etc.

I have worked primarily with seven cocoa farming CIGs regularly for the past nine months, under one federation, FUCCOP. The problem that struck me when I came to my community was that I have never had any experience on farming cocoa. My own farming experience coming from a pine tree farm in Florida served to be quite irrelevant with the difference in styles of farming. I am used to driving a tractor in big flat fields while the farmers in my community are working in very mountainous dense jungle areas where tractors aren’t plausible. Needless to say, farmers here don’t have the finances for tractors, anyway. Between the numerous field visits and meetings with farmers alongside my counterpart and friend, Chrisantus, (a cocoa farming advisor), it has led me to become quite versed on the subject of cocoa farming, though.

My landlord approached me one day asking if I cared to visit his and his friends’ farms to share any advice I had for them. After trekking the three hours down into the valley of the jungle I visited each of their farms and since the plants were so young that the cocoa wasn’t baring yet, the best advice I had for them at the time was to form a legal Common Initiative Group, (CIG). They also needed to start having regular monthly meetings together to discuss finances, issues common in each other’s farms and problems amongst the group. Trust and collaboration amongst community members is a problem, so forming these groups helps to curb that. I also wanted them to start initiating a compulsory monthly savings contribution for each member. These group savings can be used to buy things common for the group or to be combined with other groups’ savings to buy farm inputs in bulk at a discounted price. I also gave some chemical spraying advice since they were in need of controlling their pest and fungi problems at such a critical stage of development of the cocoa. Another reason for forming a legal group is that if the farmers want to be recognized for any assistance from an NGO or from a government program it is necessary to be legally recognized. A support program can’t just pull a farmer’s name out of the air to benefit from a program, but if the farmers are legally registered than it is easy to see the group’s location, mission, objectives, and the individuals who are registered to the group. This is the last idea we want to promote to the farmers, though, because we don’t want them to always be relying on assistance or funding. Our objective is to help them help themselves in a sustainable manner, so after I leave or any other NGO leaves they can continue increasing their productivity on their own.

Two of the groups I work with were previously unregistered and I assisted them through the process of becoming legalized. I then linked the three groups with the local credit union to open bank accounts where they keep their savings for inputs of the next farming season and possibly receive loans from in the future. We have one federation formed with the seven CIGs, (FUCCOP, Federation of Union of Cocoa and Coffee Farmers), in the area where they market and sell their cocoa as a group, which yield them higher prices selling in larger quantities directly to a trusted buyer. This is then disrupting the process of a middleman coming into the hard to reach village and cheating one lonely cocoa farmer who doesn’t have a choice but to sell for an extremely below market price. Another buyer may not come that distance again to buy his or her cocoa. Now we can help coordinate directly with the buyer to come and buy a large quantity from our group at a certain price, hurdling the middlemen. “Strength in numbers.”

This poses a second problem that has to be tackled where I spend a lot of my time on in regards to farming related activities. Having a large number of farmers coming together with different types of land, soil, climate, farming techniques, and situations in general, selling their cocoa as a group, is going to prove difficult to have the same quality of cocoa across the board. I cannot teach the farmers how to grow cocoa. It’s not their first rodeo on that front, but there are certain techniques that my colleagues and I can address that will help alleviate the quality and productivity level for the buyers to be satisfied. A lot of these techniques are in the spraying/fertilization stage and also post harvesting in the fermentation and drying process of the cocoa beans.

Most of the cocoa in Cameroon is brought to the port city of Douala and then exported to Europe/America to be transformed into chocolate and various other cocoa products. A lot of cocoa has recently been rejected from Europe due to toxic levels of chemicals in the cocoa beans. A big problem here is that farmers have X, Y, and Z chemicals with X, Y, and Z different concentration levels all being measured out at the same quantity level, i.e. using an old tomato can or sardine can as a standard of measurement, unknowingly over-saturating the plants with harmful amounts of toxic chemicals that could then be found in the chocolate products after transformation. This is why we have focused many training workshops on proper chemical spraying and teaching proper dosage levels for common chemicals on the market.

Other trainings and advice we give most often, which deals with the post harvest process, are the proper fermentation and drying methods. The dryer the cocoa is, the lighter in weight it becomes, so the better it is dried, the less money the farmer receives as the weight decreases. At the same time, some of the middlemen will have scales rigged to decrease the weight, which the farmers know, so the farmers will try to offset this by not drying the cocoa fully and having the extra weight from the wet cocoa offset their loss from the rigged scales. So forming the groups to sell together at the same quality with a larger quantity to a trusted buyer with a true scale at a higher price has proven to be really beneficial. People here have been farming and selling cocoa for a long time. It has been a long and difficult process to get this idea fully accepted by all of the farmers. One of the most difficult parts to initiate was the farmers gaining trust in each other to sell together, but once we had one group adhering to our advice and seeing the advantage, the idea soon began to snowball. We still have a small problem where a middleman will corner one of the members of the group and offer a slightly higher price just for his cocoa and the farmer will abandon and sell out from under the group. As the prices increase for the group and the quantity levels increase to such a level where a direct exporter will bring a whole truck straight from Douala to buy our cocoa this will soon cease. The old way was that a middleman would buy the cocoa from a farmer for say 700 FCFA/kilo and then resell it to the exporter at 1000+ FCFA/Kilo. Now the farmers will be receiving the 1000+ FCFA/Kilo directly, and part of the group’s strategy is to take advantage of this extra money and cut 10-15+ FCFA/Kilo sold and put in the bank to save for inputs like pesticides/fungicides for the subsequent year.

Our most recent development working within these groups has been creating a uniform financial reporting system to ease us in monitoring and evaluating their results. We held a training workshop with the executive members of the groups, which included training on budgeting, utilizing cashbooks, production records, membership books, reporting, and income statements. This will give us a snapshot of where any group or group member stands financially and production wise at a glimpse in regards to the group. They can then apply for loans or ask for assistance on their own by having these documents to provide legitimacy.

“Mbing-Mbong CIG” = “The forest is good CIG”. (My landlord’s cocoa farming group.) L to R: Me, Dennis, Jo Jo, my landlord Mr. Martin, Francis (hidden), and Nkem Atabong; discussing issues regarding their farms during the first field visit of their farms.

Francis and Jo Jo discussing about their young “Promised Land.”

“Cocoa breaking.” The first step in harvesting. This is the process of removing the pods from the trees, splitting the pod with a machete, and then scooping the raw beans out by hand. Raw beans are pictured in the buckets on the left. Yellow and brownish pods are on the ground. Men standing are cracking the pods with machetes and then tossing them to the people seated behind to remove the beans. The morning of this day we were delayed due to torrential down pour and so what do you do when you can’t go to the farm? You drink. When walking to meet these guys pictured we got caught in the first part of the rain and ran for cover under a random person’s house and were invited in to drink whiskey at 7:30 a.m. It certainly was a bit warmer when we got back out in the rain.

Raw cocoa beans on the right in the fermentation process next to the drying oven.

Cocoa beans drying on the oven after fermenting for seven days.

Environmentally friendly chemical spraying workshop participants

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- SPA Project. When I first came to my post in Menji I met with the different delegates of ministries in the division to introduce myself into their community and to share ideas about necessities for the community and it’s members. One of these interactions was with the Divisional Delegate of Secondary Education where the issue of water and sanitation came up. My colleague, Chrisantus and I, along with the Delegate’s advice, were to do a priority needs assessment of water and sanitation levels of ten schools in the division. We took ratios of number of students per toilet, per water faucet, severity of conditions, amongst other factors, all into consideration and found out that the main high school in my local community of Menji, (Government Bilingual High School Fontem), the mother institution of our division, proved to be ranked as the first priority in needs of assistance.

We completed writing the project for a funding source available through the Peace Corps that is called Small Project Assistance (SPA) that can be up to $3,000 USD. In our project, the numbers would be alleviated in these ways; students per toilet would be reduced from almost 300 per toilet down to 80 per toilet. One flowing faucet would be increased to six faucets with two heads per faucet. A water tank with capacity of 14,000 liters was constructed to keep water flowing throughout the dry season, water connected to the science laboratory, and the original spring water catchment rehabilitated. We were granted almost the entire $3,000 USD available.

Panorama with the school in the far left background and water tank in foreground.

Mid-construction of the water tank.

Conflicting methods. L to R: Plumber, supervisor, & project partner.

Herve (close friend & rural development engineer, supervising technician). Inspecting the fresh slab of cement poured for the new faucet.

Filling the mold of the water tank with cement.

Lawrence, water tank technician, taking a few moments to step back and admire his work.

Finished 14,000L tank

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- Trainings/workshops with a women’s group living with HIV/AIDS: I meet with a women’s group once every month for a series of trainings. One of the trainings we held was a tofu demonstration where we introduced the importance of soy in the diet of people living with HIV/AIDS and the benefits of the soy for their immune system. We gave demonstrations on how to prepare tofu and soy milk from soybeans and how to incorporate it more into their diet. They also can use it as an income generating activity by selling the tofu in their villages. Since we were making it into an income generating activity I also wanted to give some basic financial skills to the women to help them manage their money. The most recent training we held I taught a lesson covering the topics of keeping a cashbook and on budgeting.

Women’s Group

Teaching the women about budgeting

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- Business Classes: Entrepreneurs here have the ideas and motivation to start businesses, but the skills to hold a business together, long term, are lacking. Shops will open at peak periods of selling, (Christmas and New Years are huge), and then shortly after, a few months later, the storeowner will gather his/her losses and abandon the business. This, most of the time, is due to squandering finances, lack of control, poor marketing & customer service, and absence of managerial skills. I have been doing a six-week business-training workshop where I cover the basic topics of finance, marketing, and management. Mainly just skimming the surface of these areas. Most stores here lack any promotional material or signage, record/stock keeping books, and most importantly for me, customer service skills. Shop managers behave like it is an honor to buy something from their store. I spend two days strictly talking about customer service skills in my classes. “The customer is always right,” is far from true here in Cameroon. Another major problem that is felt around here is products being out of stock. I cannot count how many times I have gone to a store and asked for something and they say, “It is finished.” In other words, out of stock. Spending quite a lot of time covering the topics of the cashbook and stock book are very pertinent to curbing this problem as record keeping is few and far between. At any given point in time, most businesses could not tell you if they are running a profit or deficit.

The first round of classes I held went very smoothly. The class was fairly educated coming in, mostly males ranging 30 – 50 years of age. Everyone understood the material for the most part and I was eager to begin my next round. The second round of classes was comprised of about fifteen women ranging from 20 – 40 years old, not including the babies on their hips brought to class. The first day of class I began to write on the board, turned back to face the class and found only a few people copying what I had written. I stood their confused until one woman raised her hand and said, “Please Sir, not all of us can read and write.” Out of the fifteen women, three had reached high school level; the rest had dropped out during or after primary school. I sat perplexed as to how this was going to be feasible. With time, patience, and much needed assistance from the more educated women of the group, we managed and graduated fourteen of the fifteen women. The drastic difference between the two classes is evidence of the effects of the old tradition of pushing the males to education, and females to early pregnancy and farm work.

Business classes (two babies in class seen on the right)

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- Youth Group

I work with a youth group on the weekends that was handed over to me from a previous volunteer who chose to work in a separate village. The group is named “Hello Youth” and is usually comprised of about 15-20 youths, ranging in age from 11-18 years. We meet every Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Topics can range from: sexual education, HIV/AIDS awareness, girls inequality and empowerment, volunteerism, environmental excursions (for my birthday last year we hiked to the local waterfall and my counterpart, Chrisantus, gave a lot of informative information regarding the youth’s own environment surrounding their community they didn’t know about), to computer skills, to news broadcasting (many of the youth aspire to be journalists). Any positive life skills can be discussed and the name is properly given as “Hello Youth” to wake up the youth, inform, and them to go and disseminate the messages amongst their peers.

Coyness doesn’t fly with this group, or they won’t be interested and will wander. So being blunt and assertive, as I have seen, is the best method to really interest the group. On the subject of sexual education, I always start with the idea of abstinence as the best option, but also tell them that I know we are all human beings. Many parents here strictly tell their children not to do it, and leave it at that. My approach is to bring in a box of condoms and a bunch of bananas, give one to each and ask them what they are going to do if they are in this situation. If they cannot abstain, they should at least know how to protect themselves, their partner, or a friend who hasn’t had the training. This usually receives a great giggle from the participants, but always turns into a very informative lesson after each person has mastered the correct application and disposal of a condom. (This might be why the matron of the Catholic hospital in my community doesn’t care for me too much. Oh well, I’m here to help and inform, not to preach.) Since September started a new school year there has been a new batch of youth coming to the meetings so I have handed over more of the responsibility to the elder youths to pass on and teach these demonstrations to the new comers. It shows me that the work I did with the veteran youths last year has sunk in and paid off, and now they can pay it back to me by showing the younger ones.

Three big days we prepare and have occasions for are Youth Day, International Day of the Girl Child, and World AIDs Day. The youth will prepare dances, dramas, and songs relating to the subject and perform them in public. We will also go to the local radio station and have question and answers with the MC regarding the topics, informing and contradicting myths on the subjects the days preceding up to the event. The radio is always a great medium of use, as the majority of the population doesn’t have a television, but virtually everyone listens to the local radio station at night.

Waterfall excursion for my birthday.

Radio panel discussion for World AIDs day 2012.

The Hello Youth practicing a dance for a project launching.

No more practicing, game time in public.

One of the veteran Hello Youth members presenting the topic of the “effects of tree planting.”

Hello Youth performing a song/dance on Youth Day 2013.

Hello Youth and other local school kids joining in on “Carnival.” The day before Youth Day the group dresses up in funny clothes and paints themselves. They start at one end of the village and run through town making a bunch of noise and racket to increase awareness of the message they want to send that year.