My Morning In Court

This morning we headed to court to submit an application for two wives to claim the land and accounts of their husband who died in 2002 without a will. We arrived at court at 9AM, and did not head out until at least 1pm. I had filled out the ten page form, and had to sort through birth certificates and marriage certificates of not one but two wives of the deceased, so the form was not easy. When we sat down in front of the clerk for our first approval of the form, she did not hesitate to point out my many mistakes. No, I did not know that each time someone signs a document with a thumbprint you have to label the print!

We paid for our form submission in another room, and then brought the whole crowd - the two wives, a daughter, and two witnesses, in to the Head of Registry to approve the application. He started with a formal lecture to the family on the importance of wills. He explained how Cameroonians are afraid to write wills as they believe it is a bad sign that they will die soon. He is in charge of wills in the whole region, yet only has about 200 wills in his safe. The Head of Registry then passed around a book called 'How to Write your Own Will' that he was selling for 1000 CFA ($2.25). But it didn't stop there. He then explained to the wives that this must be hard for them, having lost their husband, and offered two more readings that might help them in this difficult time: 'How to Survive Being a Single Parent', and 'Widowhood and Menopause'.

We stayed with the family in the jovial Head of Registry's office for a while longer while Caroline whirled around getting yet more photocopies, and his attention turned to the two 'white man' in the room. He talked to us about how he would never visit the states until Americans come here and give offerings to make up for enslaving his people. He wished us good travels here, and emphasized that we should be sure to learn from the people of Cameroon, and informed us the best thing we could bring back from this country would be a handsome young husband to share!

Getting to know you

Our Dining Room

Our first week in Bamenda has been packed full of activity (but with plenty of free nights to type my blog entries, so beware this is a long one :)

Our entertainment center

 When Ashlyn and I arrived Friday evening, Roxana and James took us to our new apartment, rented to us by the local Baptist Mission. The living room/dining room is huge, so we expect lots of visitors (yes that means you)!

Friday night after dropping our belongings off we went to eat dinner with Roxana and James, our French neighbor Elphie, and another friend of theirs, Amy. I ate grilled fish and French fries, pretty delicious. Ashlyn and I once again passed out at a ridiculously early hour.

My mosquito-free bed!

Saturday was a shopping day. Roxana and James took us around the market and we got some staples for feeding ourselves. Ashlyn and I have been cooking like champions, which is impressive considering neither of us are regulars in the kitchen. If only you had seen us the first time we tried to light our gas stove! Saturday night’s meal was rice with green pepper, carrot, and mango.

The Official Belo Walk

Hiking through the greenery

Sunday we went up to Belo, a small town to the north of Bamenda. Belo has a nice walking path that an international volunteer created, and we began our walk in the sunshine and relatively cool weather. Unfortunately the markers for the path often get stolen and used for firewood, so we quickly lost the path. However, the diversion was fortuitous, as we came across an older man who was collapsed on the side of the road. Many others passed him, but no one had stopped to help. Roxana and James worked on deciphering what he was saying in Pidgin, the Cameroonian language combination of English and local dialect. Once we stopped to help others gathered around, though many were still hesitant to get involved. The man may have had a stroke, so we hailed a passing motorcycle driver and put him on it to take him home, with Roxana holding him on the bike from behind. Good deed for the day accomplished, and kudos to Roxana for jumping to action so quickly.

Just sittin there being cute

The skies looked ominous for the daily downpour, so we stopped by a local volunteer’s house for tea and chats. Afterwards we completed another portion of the trail, and then headed back for a taxi to Bamenda. In case you are concerned about all our taxi rides, most taxi rides in town are about 30 cents. Our trip 40 minutes out of town was only about $2.25.

Ashlyn in front of the office

Monday we had our first day at the office! Aide Legale Libre (ALL) for Cameroon is a small legal aid organization that provides legal services to those who can’t afford representation. The organization currently consists of a Cameroonian lawyer, Caroline, and a Volunteer Services Organization international volunteer from Britain, Roxana. Together they have gained non-profit organization status, opened an office, secured funding, and built a portfolio of about 50 cases. Pretty impressive. Our first day was intended to be a case review, but surprise client visits took over most of the day.

Pretty flower from our hike

Here is a taste of our client visits for the day: Asunkwen is a client who is a journalist and a member of the Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC), the political group based in Bamenda that favors secession from the northern part of the country. SCNC members have faced much persecution in Cameroon, and Asunkwen spent a considerable amount of time in prison for his membership in SCNC and his political writings. ALL helped him submit a complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Council reporting the wrongful detention and the abusive conditions of detention. We met with another client, Richard, who is disabled and in a wheelchair. Richard wants to file a labor case for wrongful dismissal due to his disability. He must first submit a complaint with the labor inspector, as per Cameroon’s requirements. Another client, Joseph, had his land taken from him and has filed a case to gain the land back.

Monday night we attempted our own version of the spaghetti omelet, with spaghetti, egg, and tomato. It was a bit of a fail, but spaghetti with egg tastes great anyway.

Tuesday we reviewed cases in the morning. Ashlyn and I will be working on a bunch of cases of youth (under 18) who are in prison. These cases were recently given to ALL by the prison administrator, and some of the minors have only been incarcerated for a few weeks, while others have been there over a year. Most of their charges are for theft. There is one young boy who has been in prison for nine months for stealing a football. Both of his parents are deceased, and we think that the courts may have lost his file and thus no one has checked in on why he is still in jail. Another group of three boys were accused of stealing a pig from a local farmer, and confessed after the farmer beat them severely and threatened to burn them.

As all of these cases were given to us by the prison administrator, we must circle around to the courts to find their official charge sheets and trial date information. This task has already proved to be a challenging search, as we need to check handwritten record books for each different court room, arranged according to the approximate date the child first appeared in front of a judge. Talk about an administrative nightmare.

Tuesday afternoon was our first law clinic meeting. Every Tuesday and Thursday ALL holds a clinic for local law students to come learn about a certain topic or work on a case. The students seem really interested in learning about human rights work. They are a nice group and Ashlyn and I look forward to get to know them better. Tuesday we played a game called Werewolf with the group, where designated werewolves kill off civilians in the town, and the townspeople must hunt out the werewolves by killing off suspects. We used the game as a jumping off point to talk about jungle (mob) justice. The students discussed how once someone is accused of a crime, there is very little they can do to convince others they are not guilty, and how one outspoken person’s accusation heavily influences the rest of the group.

Tuesday night was pasta with ‘tomato sauce’, but we used tomato paste which neither Ashlyn nor I have much experience with… another botched pasta attempt, this one not quite as tasty as the last.

Wednesday was court day! We dressed up in our suits (most days are just ‘look smart’ days, but court requires a suit). As we found out later that day, there are some who didn’t approve of our pants suits. A lawyer stopped us in the (outdoor) hallway to the court, and asked Caroline why the two white ladies were wearing pants. All of the other women wear skirt suits, except Roxana who has tried to challenge the trend of trying to kick women in pants out of the courtroom. Nobody kicked us out of anywhere, but we will probably wear skirts next time, just in case. We also had an interaction with another difficult lawyer. He seemed nice at first, but we soon realized he is the lawyer who is threatening to take Caroline and Roxana to court for child trafficking. Roxana is caring for, and hopes to adopt, an adorable five year old girl named Princess that was abandoned by her family. He derisively calls Caroline “Human Rights”, as in “Hey you, Human Rights, you think you can just step in and change things?”

Judge attire in Cameroon

Most of the day we went around to different judges, magistrates, and other officials for introductions at both the Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeals. Introductions seem especially important to the Cameroonians, as we learned during our visit to the Court of Appeals. Caroline had a scheduling matter to present at the Court of Appeals, and as the three judges had already taken their seats up front when we arrived, she quickly donned her black robe and wig and directed us to a side bench to sit while she joined the other lawyers at a front table. [Yes, both judges and lawyers must be dressed in the traditional black robe, white collar, and (conspicuously blonde) wig when presenting at the Court of Appeals. Judges have additional decorations. It is quite a sight.] However, after we sat for a moment, the three judges noticed us and made a comment to the lawyers. Caroline spoke up on our behalf, but the judges continued to speak and soon enough Caroline got up and motioned for us to follow her out. Apparently the judges did not want us in the room if we had not first met the President of the Court of Appeals. Caroline explained that we could be from a whistle-blower international organization, there to record any shortcomings of the Cameroonian courts and expose them to the world. White people listening in on official government proceedings was never a good thing in the eyes of these judges.

Wednesday night we went to a live concert! We heard Kareyce Fotso, a well-known Cameroonian solo artist with a gorgeous voice. Kareyce played guitar, drums, and other local instruments while dancing and singing. She also had a magnetic personality that the audience seemed to love, and they went on stage continuously to put money on her head and kiss her cheek while she played. At one point Kareyce took a poll of the audience to see who was in favor of polygamy and who was against (polygamy is a common practice in much of Cameroon). As far as I could tell the results were about 50/50, though it was too dark to tally the gender breakdown of opinions. Kareyce made many other jokes that the audience loved, but she spoke mostly in French so we had a tough time following. 

Thursday was a holiday (at least for the Christians) in Cameroon – Ascension Day, when Jesus went up to heaven. We didn’t see much celebrating going on, besides for Caroline going to Church most of the day. We got down to the office early because apparently taxis stop running for the morning. We were meant to head down to the market to help a youth environmental group do a river clean-up, but we had a surprise potential client visit that delayed us and we missed the cleaning portion. (After seeing the riverbed they were cleaning, I can’t say I’m too sad about missing it…). The potential client was another SCNC member, and he had lived in Japan for a few years and applied for political asylum there. He was detained in Japan for nine months as his case was being processed, and eventually he came back to Cameroon because he could not take any more time in jail. Unfortunately we could not do much to change the Japanese asylum process, and many other countries have similar practices.

We arrived at the clean-up day as they were cleaning up (hehe), and chatted with some of the participants. One was a recent law school graduate who was just joining the ALL law clinic, Tsenghor. Ashlyn and I decided to take advantage of being down at the market to fill out our supplies, and Tsenghor spent the next few hours helping us get non-white man prices at the market. (Have I mentioned yet that all foreigners are ‘white man’ according to Cameroonians? It does not matter if you are female, if you are of a different ethnicity, or even if you are more than one person, you will still be called ‘white man’.) We headed back to the office for law clinic in the afternoon. During this clinic we assigned specific minor prisoner cases to each of the students, so that Ashlyn and I have local student partners to work with on each case. When we go on jail visits we will be accompanied by the student so that they can translate from Pidgin into English.

Thursday night we cooked black beans and rice. Our new supply of spices really helped out the meal.

The Mayor of Bamenda

Friday we headed back to the Court of First Instance to represent a woman who was pressing charges against her husband for accusing her of being a prostitute, kicking her out of the house, and otherwise abandoning his husbandly duties. We also spent a good deal of time trying to track down prisoner charge sheets, but realized we needed a more organized search system, so headed back to the office to create a proper spreadsheet.

Caroline and Melissa cooking

Ashlyn and I left around 3pm to attend a lecture given by the Mayor of Bamenda on decentralization. It was a small gathering of westerners and Cameroonians, and the Cameroonians led the Q&A in asking all about governmental plans to decentralize different ministries, and how much power the mayor now has in various areas. It was an interesting and lively discussion. Afterwards we met a few other volunteers at the International Hotel for dinner and drinks.

Spare chicken parts

Saturday we had a lunch party with Roxana, James, Caroline, her daughter Melissa, and Princess. Roxana and James had a chicken they had received as a gift, and Saturday was slaughter day. Caroline cooked up lots of other food as well – she was particularly nervous about having enough to feed Ashlyn, who is a vegetarian. Ashlyn and I perfected our

Roxana chopping and Princess helping

black beans for the occasion (and made so many of them we will be feasting on black beans for the next week), guacamole (they have the most amazing avocados here), and sangria with fresh pineapple and mango. We had a great time listening to James play guitar, chatting with Caroline about her family, and playing with Princess. The sad news is James has to leave Cameroon this week,as he got an unexpected job interview. So the gathering served as a goodbye party as  well.

Arli and Princess bonding

Saturday night was game night with some volunteers and some Cameroonians. We played dictionary, where you make up definitions you think might fit a word. The cultural gap between the various countries represented added a special twist to the game. We also told some jokes and riddles. What is a name made up of two four-letter words – the first word a child hates to hear and the second word a child loves to hear. Give up? BEAT-RICE. Don’t worry, I didn’t guess it either.

Which brings us to today! Ashlyn and I spent the morning on home improvement. It’s amazing the furniture you can create out of stacked boxes and random pieces of wood. Then we went for a great walk through Bamenda. Once we split off of the busy, honking, craziness of the main streets, we discovered the real Bamenda – rough dirt roads, kids playing jump rope, laundry flapping, and greenery everywhere. We didn’t take our cameras on this walk, but next time we will do a Bamenda city life series of photographs.

Miss you all, drop me a note when you get a chance!

The Journey Over

Off to Cameroon!! On May 24^th I left for the summer, and I will be followed by Sarah in a few weeks. After a tasty last lunch in the United States with my grandparents, my brother dropped me off at JFK around 4pm for the first leg of my journey. My flight to Casablanca was on Royal Air Maroc, though nothing about the airline struck me as particularly royal. I made friends with my seat-mate, Anniessa, and chatting with her helped pass the long time between take-off and our first airline meal. Anniessa’s dad was already in Casablanca and her grandparents live there, so she suggested I chat with her father to get some tips on where to go during my 14 hours in the city. Sleeping on the plane was only mildly successful, and I was thrilled when we finally landed at 7AM. After some confusion as to whether my baggage was actually checked all the way through, we made our next friend, Nate, who also had an all-day layover.

Cute kids and delicious snacks

Anniessa introduced us both to her dad, Rafiq, who works for the U.S. Army doing cultural sensitivity training. Her dad immediately offered to drive us in to the city, and take us to their grandparents house for tea and snacks. He was incredibly friendly, and seemed to know or chat with everyone in the airport and on the streets. The grandparent’s apartment was quite impressive, with a Moroccan-style sitting room in one half and a Western-style dining room on the other. They adopted an orphan recently, Oumnia, who was the sweetest thing and immediately came over to sit in my lap. Rafiq warned us ahead of time that grandpa is rather grumpy, and indeed after he greeted us hello he retreated to the rest of the house. Grandma proceeded to bring out juices, delicious fresh peppermint tea, cookies, and pancakes with honey, jam, and cheese to spread on them. Heavenly.

Rafiq had a quick dentist appointment that we all walked to, and then he took us on the bus downtown. He showed us around the medina (the marketplace) and warned us not to get lost, and showed us a central sculpture that he refers to as ‘the pimple of Casablanca’.

My New Friends with 'The Pimple'

Then he walked us to the train station where we needed to catch a train back to the airport that evening, and helped us buy tickets. Nate and I bid farewell to our wonderful tour guides around mid-day. We went to a café to relax, get out of the sun, and hydrate. Then made our way back in to the medina, where we wandered narrow alleys for a while, looking at all the goods for sale, getting harassed by salesman, and smelling all sorts of scents.

Small Arli, Giant Mosque

After the medina we headed over the Giant Mosque, which was true to its name. I wandered down a flight of steps to the side of the mosque into the women’s washroom, where women come to wash themselves before their five daily prayers. I met a nice girl who showed me around and explained that the Jews and the Muslims are like brother and sister here in Casablanca, they just want love and peace. We continued our cab ride to another marketplace, and unfortunately got a bit ripped off on the ride, but so it goes on your first day in another country. Then we high-tailed it back to the train station to catch a 5:30PM train back to the airport. By that time we were both having trouble keeping our eyes open to watch for our stop because we were so tired.

My flight from Casablanca to Douala, Cameroon left at 9:30PM, and I slept whenever the flight attendants were not bothering me for a meal until we landed at 3AM. I got a nice Cameroonian man to help me get a good exchange rate at the airport (450 Francs for $1), and crossed my fingers that there would be a taxi driver, Seraphin, with my name on a piece of paper when I exited the building, as arranged by my organization. He was indeed there, though we couldn’t communicate much because he spoke mostly French. We made it to the Baptist Mission at 4AM, where I had a reservation for the following night. However, the night guard did not have the key to the office, and so there was nowhere for me to wait inside. Seraphine decided we must wait in the taxi, as there were too many mosquitos outside. He reclined his seat and promptly fell asleep, while I lay awake sweating in the hot car and listening to the mosquitos enter the car through his open window. I was thrilled when the first signs of daylight peeked through the trees, and even more thrilled when people finally began to emerge from their rooms. I paid Seraphine extra before sending him off, and yes it would have been worth it to rent a room for my arrival night.

The mission served breakfast at 7AM, and after some tea and eggs I felt slightly more human, though still incredibly dirty. I made friends with a Canadian family that had just spent a month travelling in Cameroon. The father, Marvin, grew up as a missionary kid in Bamenda, and took his family there to show them the sights. He gave me plenty of tips on living in Bamenda and surviving Cameroon. I finally got a room around 11AM, and slept for an hour and a half before heading back to the airport in a taxi to meet my classmate Ashlyn. I had a communication failure while buying a SIM card to use for calls in Cameroon, and ended up spending much more than I wanted to and getting very frustrated, but it worked out fine and the credit on my phone should last a good while.

Ashlyn’s flight landed a bit late, and we fought our way out of the airport refusing offers to help us with bags or show us to a luxury taxi, and made it to a yellow taxi with a small crowd following us to ‘help’. Douala airport seems to have a bit of a reputation for being pushy. We hung around the mission for a while and checked communications, and then ventured out into the streets for supplies. We got fruit and pastries for the bus the next day, and ended up eating half of them for dinner because it started to get dark and we could not find a cheap place to eat. We lay down to read around 8PM and were sound asleep not long after.

Gospel entertainment on the bus

The next morning we caught a taxi to the bus station at 7AM, grabbed our bus tickets, and went to a little snack shop for breakfast. We both had our first spaghetti omelets, a popular dish here of spaghetti mixed with egg with tomato and other seasonings. I love it. We met a nice older white business man who told us lots about Cameroonians, and when we asked where he was from he replied ‘from earth’. The bus finally took off around 10:30AM, and almost immediately a woman stood up at the front and began to preach. She was a gospel singer, and got all of the bus singing and clapping along with her. After a lot of talk about Jesus, she moved on to talk about her new CD, which sold quite well amongst the passengers, then her soap, which miraculously removes all skin problems. We had another salesman come on later in the ride, and we bought his candies that help you piss out any impurities. Everybody on the bus loved those.

We had a bit of a mishap over the lunch stop, when our new Cameroonian friend had us sit down with him to eat grilled plantains and meat, and grilled sour plum. We were not aware that the break was a strict 15 minutes, and were just starting our bathroom trip when we spotted the rest of the bus filled with passengers and ready to take off! We got some glares as we rushed to our seats in the back of the bus. All things considered the bus ride was quite pleasant, not too bumpy and great scenery. We arrived safely in Bamenda¸ greeted by Roxana and James, our wonderful work colleagues and guides to how to survive life in Cameroon. Roxana and James are from Britain and have been working with ALL for Cameroon, the legal aid organization where we will be working.

Updates to come soon from my first few days in Bamenda and work at the legal aid organization!