blog

“YAN-in-a-Day”

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:25:33 +0100

When we announced plans for the YAN internship in late April, most of our students immediately asked if they could be involved. Knowing that we only had openings for 7 interns—and also knowing that some of our younger students would probably struggle with the demands of a 4-week internship spent full-time in an office—we quickly scrambled to create an alternative internship for those not selected for the real deal. Our alternative plan finally came to fruition last Tuesday, when I welcomed 6 of our Form 2 and 3 YAN students from Lycee Molyko into our house for what I called “YAN-in-a-Day.”

The idea was for students to brainstorm, plan, create, and edit a video all in one day on a topic of their choice. Fortuitously, I had discovered the night before that several 6’x3’ pieces of plywood that have been sitting around our house—originally sliding doors for our bedroom closets—function really well as chalkboards. When students arrived Tuesday morning, I had already mapped out on several boards an agenda for the day, and a set of graphic organizers that students would fill in themselves in order to plan their video. The prompt I provided was for students to come up an object or idea that would improve life in their community, and then create a video pitching their idea. That day, my students’ brainstorm included ideas like, “build dams to provide power to communities in case of power failure” (sadly, a very common occurrence here), and “sell healthcare workers a machine that will detect whether people have brushed their teeth recently” (my favorite idea). Ultimately, my students went with an idea to install community-based solar panels to mitigate the effects of regular power outages. Then, they started using another chalkboard graphic organizer I had created in order to plan out their video.

By 11:00 am, we started to shoot. Ekema and Shemilove acted out two scenes to demonstrate how not having light can lead to a thief (played by Ekema) more easily stealing a wallet from a homeowner (played by Shemilove; the wallet was provided by yours truly), while having light can prevent such a problem. Abunaw acted out a scene to demonstrate how using candles in the event of a power outage can lead to house fires (I created a set-up using a bucket of water for fire control purposes, and admonished the kids beforehand not to “try this at home”). Balemba was our photographer. And Besskennie and Elisée wrote and recorded the voiceover that we then placed over the other students’ videos and photos. We took a break for spaghetti omelets at lunchtime; contrary to most of the 13-year olds I know in the U.S., my students waited for each person to be served, and for a prayer to be said, before eating. And by 3 pm, our video had been completed. I was impressed, and the kids had a great time—so much so that I invited them back to my house two days later for another session of “YAN-in-a-Day.”

Our second session went just as well as the first—better, perhaps, because I decided to add some more games to our daily activities. Since school has let out, Clara and I have been struck by little most students have to do in Buea. Apart from carrying water and helping with chores, students are mostly left to their own devices from June to September; and with so few books, games, or organized activities available, kids pretty much wander around and play in small groups all summer long. Luckily, we have a small collection of games and young adult fiction here in the house, so we played a few of the former and read a few of the latter during our “YAN-in-a- Day” (In fact, a few girls expressed interest in taking books home, and have since brought them back, eager to take another. If there is one thing these kids need, it is a good collection of age-appropriate books!). In any case, it’s been fun running “YAN-in-a-Day,” and seeing what our kids have learned from us this year, put to practice all in 6 hours—and equally fun to get to know them outside of school, as the people that they really are.

Meet the 2013 YAN summer interns

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:56:14 +0100

We are just finishing up week two of the four-week, YAN-sponsored internship program for local students. So it’s about time you met the interns!

Lucia (GHS Buea Town) and Josiane (GHS Buea Town):

Hi, my name is Nanje Lucia Masare and I’m a student of GHS Buea Town and also a member of the YAN club. I work with an organisation called ProClimate International. This organisation is out to protect the environment from pollution and also to protect the ozone layer. In order to achieve these objectives or goals, the organisation has come up with a type of stove which uses less firewood as compared to the three stone fire which uses a lot of firewood with smoke and also encourages deforestation. My job in this organisation is to help them create a new website and last week everything went smoothly. I found difficulties in transferring pictures and information from their old website to our new one but it wasn’t really serious because our YAN teachers Josh and Clara came and helped me figure it out. I also learned how to sell the stoves to women in Kumba.

Nelson (GHS Limbe), Eyole (GHS Buea Town), Florantine (GHS Buea Town)

My names are Nanjembe Nelson Mbongo; I am a member of YAN and student of GHS Limbe, Cameroon. I am currently a student intern at the International Centre for Environmental Education and Community Development (ICENECDEV) in Molyko, Buea, Cameroon. My internship site is located at the University of Buea junction beside Saint Therese Primary School. My intern organisation is an NGO involved with environmental education in schools, forest conservation, and library and prison programs. At this organisation I am involved in creating blogs and newsletters, specifically on environmental education in schools and forest conservation. Last week my friends and I created our very first newsletter called the ICENECDEV Quarterly Newsletter. I was also sent to the field to cover the World Environment Day on which I wrote an article, which I put in the newsletter. I have learned quite a few new things, especially how MSWord 2007 works and how to produce a newsletter. I can say that without YAN I wouldn’t have been able to do most of the things I did last week, so YAN did prepare me well.

Hello my name is Eyole Emmanuel. I am a student of GHS Buea Town and I am a part of the YAN club. The name of my organisation is the International Centre for Environmental Education and Community Development (ICENECDEV). Last week at my organisation I was working alongside my colleagues to create a newsletter for the organisation. I created the part about the prison rehabilitation project and we combined the other parts to form a general newsletter for the organisation. I learned that ICENECDEV carries out rehabilitation projects like organising literacy classes for prisoners and training them in vocational aspects such as tailoring and carpentry so that the prisoners will feel at home.

Ruth (GHS Buea Town) and Emmanuel (BGS Molyko)

I am called Suh Ruth, a YAN student, a student of GHS Buea Town, and also an intern in the Environmental and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF). I live in Buea. ERuDeF is situation in Molyko. When at Malingo junction, turn left and walk in straight until you meet a signboard on which is written Environmental and Rural Development Foundation. Take a left and walk in till you meet a building fenced and on the first floor is sign board written on it BIOPHARMCAM; turn left and move in. Last week, we were celebrating the World Environment Day and writing on articles on the day.

The first ever YAN internship begins!

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:47:45 +0100

In the morning of Monday, June 3, with summer vacation barely 72 hours begun and YAN graduation just 48 hours into the past, we welcomed 7 of our students into our house at Pala Pala field. These students, among the strongest in all of our YAN classes, hailed from each of the three schools that we teach at. We had selected them based upon the strength of an application and their work in YAN classes to participate in the first ever YAN internship, whereby students were paired with organizations in the Buea area to serve as interns for the month of June. Emmanuel joined us from Lycee Molyko, Nelson came from G.H.S. Limbe, and Eyole, Lucia, Josiane, Tetsop, and Ruth arrived from G.H.S. Buea Town, just down the street.

After these seven students introduced themselves to each other, we proceeded up to Pala Pala field for a game that Clara frequently plays with student groups in Costa Rica—and which I once had to play as a part of a job interview. The game, called “Eyes, ears, mouth, and hand” requires students in groups of three to each take on one role to retrieve an object (in this case, a water bottle) hidden in an open field. One student, who is blindfolded, has the task of trying to find the object. Another student in the group has the job of directing them verbally, but must face away from the field (and thus, their partner), and cannot see what they are doing. The final student stands facing the other two, and can see the entire scene but cannot speak; this person must use visual cues to indicate to the talker what he or she should tell the blindfolded individual to do in order to find the hidden object. It was great watching our students struggle with this game together, and then debrief it with us. What, we asked, was hard about the game? What was easy? What worked and what didn’t? What does this game have to do with collaborating with others in an NGO office setting? Our students (at this point, no longer our students but our nascent interns) got the idea right away.

After discussing the purpose of the internship, we arranged some logistical matters including finances (our interns are supported by individual donations to Youth Advocacy Network; if you’re interesting in supporting an intern for their month-long work, check out our website!). We then took our students around to their organizations and introduced them to their supervisors for the month. Emmanuel and Ruth went to the Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF), an NGO that works with local communities on agroforestry projects and on protecting wild primate species; Eyole, Tetsop, and Nelson went to the International Centre for Environmental Education and Community Development (ICENECDEV), an NGO that runs educational programs in a local prison and at local schools, and houses an environmental education lending library; and Lucia and Josiane went to ProClimate International, an NGO that sells—and educates the public about—environmentally-friendly wood stoves. We introduced students to their supervisors, made sure that everyone felt comfortable with each other, and then—like anxious parents dropping their kids off on the first day of school—we left our students to begin their work.

In the days that followed, as we visited internship sites and checked in with our interns, we have been beyond impressed by the work that they have already undertaken. Our ERuDeF interns, on just the second day of work, participated in activities for the International Day for the Environment, and documented the experience for inclusion in a forthcoming newsletter. Our ICENECDEV interns have created an amazing newsletter about ICENECDEV’s work, complete with dozens of color photographs, and will begin making a blog about it this coming week. And our ProClimate interns have already journeyed to the neighboring town of Kumba to help sell stoves in the local market, and see how ProClimate goes about its work. With our interns so busy and yet so independent at work, we have been gratified to find that we are scarcely needed at all, apart from a quick drop-in every few days to see how everyone is doing. We are so proud of our interns for their hard work, and so grateful to our partner organizations for giving these students the chance to learn from their organizations and contribute to their organizations’ work in the Buea community.

One final update about the internship: today (Monday), we again hosted our interns at our house, as we will do every Monday morning, just for a quick check-in about their progress. It was great to see new friendships already being formed between YAN interns from different schools who otherwise would have never had the chance to meet. Our theme for the day was “thinking outside the box,” and so we presented our students with a stations activity featuring several puzzles that they needed to solve by “thinking outside the box.” The puzzles, of course, were just a means to push students to access new parts of their brains, and to think about how they could think outside the box in their internship work (a concept that our students grasped perfectly during our debrief); but I thought it would be fun to copy some of the puzzles below, just to see how you, our readers, fared. Thanks to our old Belgian roommate Tijs for providing these two! Answers are forthcoming next week. Good luck!

Puzzle 1: You have exactly 6 toothpicks. Use them to make exactly 4 equilateral triangles of the same dimensions. No toothpick may cross another toothpick.

Puzzle 2: Your boss asks you to bring her precisely 4 liters of water. You don’t have a 4-liter bucket; all you have is an unlimited supply of water and 2 irregularly shaped buckets. You know that one bucket holds 3 liters and one holds 5, but because of their shape, you cannot easily demarcate when either bucket is ½ or ¼ full. How do you collect exactly 4 liters for your boss?

Graduation!

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:22:13 +0100

A Graduation Organised by the YAN fellows in Cameroon, Southwest Region

“It was on Saturday the 1^st of June, 2013 in Buea, precisely in the Buea Council Hall in Buea Town that the graduation of YAN students took place. It started with the welcoming of guests and students after which we had some words of prayer from Sei Stella, a YAN student who schools in Government High School Buea Town. Then we had an introduction from Miss Clara, our YAN teacher. After that, Walters, the YAN coordinator in Cameroon gave us a speech, which was actually in the form of a video rather than directly. Later on we had some speeches from Bessinula Emmanuel and Njie Derick who are YAN students. Also, we had a word from Mr. Josh, our YAN teacher, after which we had the presentation of videos. Actually, the videos were not full length because they were long and so we watched parts of each video. Then there was the issuing of special awards for attendance, best interview, best videos, and many others accompanied by the issuing of diplomas to graduates. First of all there was the presentation of diplomas for people who just graduated, after that those who had graduated with honours, and last of all those who graduated with highest honours. Then we had refreshments at the closing. We had some food and drinks and lastly there were performances from some students who danced.” –Suh Ruth

Ruth is a graduate of the 2012-2013 YAN program, the recipient of the award for best interview, and one of 9 students chosen to participate in YAN’s pilot internship program. She wrote this article as part of her first assignment from her internship supervisor at the Environmental and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF). Congratulations, Ruth! More on the internship soon.

What Ruth did not mention in her succinct description of the final graduation event we held last Saturday was how the electricity flickered on and off all Saturday morning, and then resolutely disappeared at 2 pm, just 1 hour before our scheduled start time. She also (kindly) left out our frantic (but ultimately successful) attempts to find a generator in town. Amazingly, the generator worked smoothly after two naked wires were used to connect it to a power strip—our rented speakers and borrowed projector crackled quickly into life. At 3 pm, we were ready to go. At 4:15 pm, we finally decided we had enough people to start the event (only an hour late…miraculous in Cameroon!). Conveniently, the power returned at this time, but we decided it was safer to continue running the electronics off the generator.

You already know how the graduation proceeded, so I’ll fast-forward to just after the last diploma was presented. Josh invited all of the parents, teachers, and other adult guests to proceed from their seats of honor in the front of the room to the tables waiting with giant coolers full of steaming rice, water fufu, eru, and stew and crates full of Fanta, Coke, Malta, and (because we were told adults would be offended if it was not offered), beer. Remarkably quickly, the 100 plates we bought for the occasion were loaded up with food. We sent a few students to buy 50 more plates, but those disappeared as well. The drinks ran out next and so we hurried into town for a few more full crates. All the while, people talked, watched a slideshow of photos from YAN classes this past year, and used up our camera’s batteries shooting pictures of themselves with their diplomas in front of the meeting hall.

It was incredible to see so many of our students and their parents (in their finest outfits) at the event, some of whom had traveled over an hour to attend; we had been told repeatedly that parents simply don’t attend this kind of thing here. Many of the community members that volunteered their expertise during student interviews were there too, as were several other friends from around town. One woman approached me after the ceremony to inquire about involving her own children in the YAN program—“I’ll rush to the website right now,” she told me when I gave her the link. Another guest—a man whose younger brother had participated in YAN in Limbe this past year—approached me and explained that he was a student at the University of Buea, and wanted to see if YAN could come and hold classes at the University. His reason, he explained, was that “my classes are not interesting or practical, but this program seems like it is both.”

The few students who were absent for the event have been stopping by our house over the last week to collect their diplomas and explain they’ve been busy studying for their Ordinary Level exams. They are always eager to see the video compilation we shared during graduation, and often bring friends along to watch as well. Even if they are not a part of YAN, students love seeing video footage of familiar places and people. One non-YAN student sat riveted as she watched an interview conducted with the principal of her former school—she nodded her head in agreement when Principal Lois suggested the government should start a text-book support program for low-income students and considered with interest the idea of creating more government supported healthcare.

The Last Two Weeks…

Fri, 31 May 2013 17:31:50 +0100

Firstly, a note of apology: we’ve managed to be so busy in the last few weeks that we haven’t posted a blog for ages. We’re sorry! But, never fear—we are indeed still here and hard at work. A brief recap of the activities of the past few weeks:

At all of our schools, we’ve closed out our YAN classes for the year! Final classes at all of our schools was rather hectic, since events at each school at the end of the school year, combined with a national holiday, combined with preparations for the administration of the G.C.E. exam for Form 5 students, all conspired to make our own classes very difficult to schedule (That national holiday, by the way, was the 50^th annual Cameroonian Unification Day, held on May 20 to mark the day in 1963 that the Anglophone western provinces merged with the Francophone eastern provinces to become modern Cameroon). Nonetheless, we did manage to track down our students at each school to finish up videos, take a final YAN survey, watch a video we put together for them, and say goodbye. It was really great seeing our students one last time, and we’re going to miss them—and teaching classes here in Cameroon—a lot. Plus, our kids have put together some pretty awesome video projects, which we can’t wait to share on YouTube when we get back to the U.S. in July. And luckily, it wasn’t too tearful a goodbye (at least not yet), because…
Tomorrow will be our YAN graduation ceremony! We’re so excited to present our students with diplomas and congratulate them on all of their hard work, and have been hard at work the last 72 hours getting everything ready (i.e. speakers, projectors, food, drinks, diplomas) and hoping that the power and weather both cooperate. We’ve invited lots of people from around town—local women from the market, teachers, YAN students’ parents, other foreign volunteers, and of course our students themselves—and are really hoping that many will come. Not only will attendees be there to celebrate with our students, but this will also be an occasion to show some of our students’ video projects about their communities, and thereby engage in the advocacy work that our students have been immersed in all year long.
As if that weren’t enough for the coming days, the YAN internship officially kicks off on Monday! The internship will involve 9 full-time interns, and handful of other part-time interns, drawn from our YAN classes. Interns will serve at several local organizations in the Buea area, creating websites and blogs and, in turn, learning about these organizations’ vital work in the Buea area. We’re looking forward to this exciting (and nascent) project, and will report on how it is going in about a week. Just as a shameless plug, we’re still looking for donors to sponsor interns—just $48 supports one of our young Cameroonian student intern for the entirety of their month-long experience, as they learn about a local NGO and build their skills in the non-profit community development sector. For more information, or to sponsor an intern, check out _____. Lastly, many thanks to our partner organizations for supporting YAN students and YAN; check out what these organizations are doing at their websites below!

The Environment and Rural Development Foundation/Trees for the Future (ERuDeF) engages in environmental activism across Cameroon, including cross-river gorilla protection programs and agroforestry education and support. See what they do at www.erudef.org
The International Centre for Environmental Education and Community Development (ICENECDEV) supports Buea-area environmental education and prison-based education initiatives, and houses a growing library of sustainable development literature. Their website will be improved by YAN interns in the coming month.
ProClimate International conducts educational programs across Southwestern Cameroon to support the use of safe cooking stoves. Like ICENECDEV, their website will be improved by YAN interns in the coming month.

In the midst of all of this, Clara and I have also gone on two short trips to Nkongsamba (site of a beautiful waterfall and a pair of volcanic crater lakes) and Campo (site of the gorilla and chimpanzee-rich Campo-Ma’an National Park).

The bottom line: the last few weeks have been full of good things! Details on the internship and final graduation are forthcoming, we promise.

Before I wrap up this blog post, I wanted to share a quick story from a few weeks back that may represent one of the best moments that has happened in our YAN classes so far. Since May 1, students in all of our classes have been eagerly learning how to edit video projects, and then diving into editing their own, but nowhere more so that in Buea Town. With our students all living right near our house, and with school ending at erratic times each day, we were greeted most days by several students, who popped by over the course of the afternoon to polish their own project on our computers. Many of our more driven students had previously shot good interviews, so their work entailed putting the pieces of their video together with text and transitions; however, two of our groups had not taken the initiative to shoot a good interview yet. Stella and Pauline, who were focusing on malaria prevention, had shot a short interview with a nurse about their topic, but the interview was conducted in a dark location and was short and mediocre; and Gibril and Gwisho, studying water pollution, had not yet shot an interview at all.

One of those mornings in early May, all of these four students popped by, two by two. Stella and Pauline came first, at around 9 in the morning, asking to borrow a camera and providing little explanation of what they intended to do with it; and then Gwisho and Gibril came by, asking to borrow another. When Stella and Pauline came back, we learned that they had taken the camera to Mount Mary Hospital down the road, and had independently entered the hospital, asked to speak with a nurse, and conducted a full-length interview with her about preventing malaria in Buea. For all of our students’ other interviews, we had helped to coordinate logistical details; so hearing that Stella and Pauline had gone and done and interview independently, and in their free time, made us beyond proud. I think that one of the coolest moments of YAN this past year was getting to watch the footage that they had shot in the hospital; we saw usually-shy Stella on camera saying to her interviewee, “Hello, my name is Stella, and I am a student of the Youth Advocacy Network, a local organization that engages in advocacy work in the Buea community. I’d like to ask you a few questions about malaria, if you have some free time…”). Gwisho and Gibril returned to our house a few hours later, and made us just as proud, even though they were slightly less successful. They had independently taken taxis down to Small Soppo, where they had tried to interview a representative from CamWater, Cameroon’s nationalized water provider, to discuss water pollution and water scarcity. They were told that they needed to submit such a request in writing, and so they returned to our house asking if we could help them with writing such a letter to that they could conduct their interview. We did so together, and they delivered the letter; though they’re still waiting for a reply about when to return to conduct it, we are confident that they will get it done.

So, I suppose this story turned out to be slightly longer than expected. The point, though, is that four of our strong (but not extraordinary) students decided to independently take taxis around town, conduct interviews, and engage in meaningful fact-finding work, all in service of their YAN advocacy video. All of this, they did in their free time, and they went far above and beyond the demands of our class (although, I should mention, almost two dozen of our Buea Town students have been coming by to work on videos at all hours of the day; these kids are loving their projects, and they are relentless! Junior and Cedric, it should be noted, have spent probably four hours each editing videos on our laptops). But these four–Stella, Pauline, Gwisho, and Gibril—have made us incredibly proud. They get what YAN is all about, and they are working so hard to make their projects as great as possible. And there is no doubt that, given the right push, they will go and do amazing things for themselves and for their communities.

-Josh

P.S. A few shots of the last few weeks: kids editing videos at our house, Nkongsamba’s 80-meter-high Ekom falls, and the twin crater lakes in nearby Bangem. Clara is jumping in front of the “female” lake, and I’m in front of the “male” lake. I’m not sure what’s with my pose, but I do think that of the three attempts at “jumping” photos that we took, this is the only one that looks reasonable—that should give you a sense of what the other two look like…

Food: the universal language?

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:45:58 +0100

Throughout classes this year, I have told our students bits and pieces about life in Costa Rica (where I grew up). Sometimes, I use this as a tactic for getting their attention—breaking into rapid Spanish achieves instant quiet in the classroom. Other times, I use Costa Rica as a point of comparison—when at the health clinic with a group of students interviewing a nurse about malaria, I explained Costa Rica’s nationalized health care system (an almost inconceivable concept here). Recently, I decided it would be fun to give students a real taste of Costa Rica, so I invited them over to our house for a culinary surprise.

In preparation for the event, I made a few small posters to hang around our living room:

Did you know that about 25% of Costa Rica is protected by national parks or private reserves?

The traditional meal in Costa Rica is a casado, a plate with rice, beans, fried plantains, meat or chicken, and a tortilla!

Costa Rica abolished its army in the 1940s—this saved the state money, which was instead used for public benefit (education, healthcare, water…)

Learn Spanish! Yo me llamo…(Spanish). My name is…(English). Ma name na…(Pidgin)

Next, I attempted to make my first ever tres leches cake. I knew it would be easy to find cans of sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk, but I was astounded when I managed to find a carton of whipping cream. I mixed together a simple white cake batter and baked in on my stove (cake pan rests on several small stones that sit at the bottom of a large covered pot, gas flame is turned low to avoid burning). Once baked and cooled, the cake needs to be stabbed repeatedly with a fork and then drenched in the sticky tres leches syrup.

Finally, I made tortillas. Stacks of them. Stella and Kennedy arrived early, so I put them to work flattening the moist masa into disks.

Josh made guacamole and salsa. Our living room slowly filled up with students. Lucia and Josy tried to make whipped cream, but ended up with butter that they happily slathered on warm tortillas. Samson wanted to use our Podcast software to record a religious rap he had written. The cake was devoured in 2 minutes. The tortillas disappeared enthusiastically once students discovered there was extra sweetened condensed milk. The guacamole and salsa went untouched until someone decided to try sweetened condensed milk on those as well (with mixed results).

Florantine and Josy asked for blank paper and tape, and soon our walls were covered with new language lessons:

What are you doing? Weti you di do? Tu fais quoi? Qué está haciendo?

How are you? You di do how? Comment ca va? Como está usted?

I want to eat. I want chop. Je veux manger. Yo quiero comer.

Editing and Pala Pala

Thu, 09 May 2013 18:36:08 +0100

I’m sitting in my living room at 3 pm on a Thursday afternoon. Classes have been cancelled here in Cameroon due to Ascension Day, and so with no school, our Buea Town students have been hanging out in town all day. I did manage to corral a few of them earlier today to come to our house and do some YAN work, and so now five of our students are sitting with me around the table, editing videos on our computers (I coaxed them here with promises of popcorn, and now Clara is glaring at me for making greasy snacks whose oil will now end up on our computer keys. Oh well). During other classes this week, I’ve consistently been amazed by how quickly students have figured out how to use iMovie and Windows Movie Maker for video editing, and today is no exception: these five, after a demonstration lasting for maybe a couple minutes at most, are now flying along with selecting clips, discarding extraneous footage, and adding transitions and text to the clips they keep. Silvanous is continuing the editing work that Junior started earlier this week on their video about cholera in Cameroon, for which they interviewed a local doctor and nurse; and Kennedy, Jude and Mingeley just stepped out with a camera to shoot the conclusion of their video about water pollution in Buea.

Editing is one of the last tasks our students will do to complete their YAN projects; in fact, somehow, improbably, we only have 2 weeks of classes left before the end of the school year. It’s hard to believe that almost one full academic year has passed since we first arrived here and nervously stood in front of big classes of unfamiliar young faces to pitch YAN to students; now, we’re preparing for a graduation ceremony (June 1^st!) to conclude the year and present diplomas to acknowledge our students’ efforts and accomplishments. Then, we’ll wrap up our time in Cameroon with an internship program, where we’ll support a dozen of our best students to serve as interns at local NGOs in the Buea area. We’ve already arranged partnerships with organizations like ICENECDEV, where several interns will work to create a blog about that NGO’s work in a local prison, and at ERuDeF, where interns will document that NGO’s projects supporting agroforestry and cross river gorilla preservation (shameless plug: if you or a friend would like to support one of our student interns, you can do so for a one-time donation of $60! This amount offsets the cost of providing transportation, food, and internet access to one of our student interns for the entire duration of the internship, and every dollar goes straight to them. To learn more, visit our homepage at www.youthadvocacynetwork.org).

But back to our students, who have been hard at work for the past hour (and who have actually increased in number—Josiane and Lucia, along with a little sibling named Norbert, just came by to see what’s going on). Silvanous is almost done with his project, and is putting in credits and some music to go along with them (he’s been interested in adding instrumental music, so I showed him John Coltrane and Bill Evans as possibilities). And Jude, Kennedy, and Mingeley are busily rearranging clips, with lots of giggling every time they come upon an outtake. In the background, some drumming has started near our house—in fact, we’ve been hearing drumming all week long, which we’ve told has been happening to mark a special event that took place last Sunday and will take place every Sunday for the next month.

When we first arrived here in Buea, we were told on our first night that our house was located next to Pala Pala field. This unusual word was at first nothing more than a location to tell to taxi drivers and friends wanting to visit us at home. We soon learned that Pala Pala in fact refers to a local form of wrestling, which sometimes takes place in the open field adjacent to our house. For months, though, we had not seen Pala Pala take place—that is, until this past Sunday, when we heard loud drums coming from the field (much like the ones I hear right now) and decided to wander up and see what was going on. When we got to the field, we saw hundreds of people standing on the perimeter of the field, where a small wrestling ring had been drawn. Drummers sat on a raised platform under a big tree in the corner of the field, beating out a steady rhythm on large hewn logs (they’ve been doing so ever since, in the afternoon and evening, to mark this month of Pala Pala wrestling). White signs ringed the field, each written with the name of a Buea-area community—Bokwoango, Bova, Soppo, our own Buea Town, and many others. And in the center ring, under the watchful eye of a referee, two incredibly muscular men grappled and locked heads while the onlookers cheered wildly. A friend of mine came by and explained how everything works. Young men and women from each community, he told me, come to the field in the early afternoon and look over at the men and women who have come from other communities. Each man or woman then selects a partner with whom they want to wrestle. Later in the day, the pair is called to the ring, the referee blows a whistle, and the match begins. A whole Pala Pala match consists of three one-minute rounds; the winner is the first wrestler who can pin his or her opponent, or who can lift his or her opponent entirely off the ground. If neither has happened after three rounds, the match is considered a draw; and if either wrestler is forced out of the ring, the wrestlers simply reset themselves in the center of the ring and start again. Over 100 such matches can occur over the course of a day of Pala Pala; at the end of the day, the matches are tabulated, and the community with the most winners is considered to have won the competition. During our few hours of watching Pala Pala, we saw lots of inventive ways wrestlers used to egg on their opponents or get them off the ground—one of the most common was for wrestlers to swat at each others’ heads before locking shoulders and engaging. Most of all, though, I was impressed by how amiable the whole event was. No fighter walked away in anger from a fight—most, in fact, hugged and then went their separate ways—and everyone was included, from men to women to kids to even a German volunteer, who wrestled and won (when he won, the onlookers went wild and carried him on their shoulders from the field!). The whole event was pretty cool—and apparently, it will continue for the next month, when there will be a Pala Pala match every Sunday. I’m trying to convince some friends to come and do Pala Pala with me in front of the whole Buea community. It’ll take some convincing, to be sure; but it would be pretty cool to do…

Interviews

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:49:20 +0100

Two weeks ago, I delivered two letters to Principal Ayompe Haddassah in Limbe— the first was handwritten by one of our students, Nelson, and requested an appointment to interview her about education for his final video; the second was from Josh and me, reiterating Nelson’s request in type with the YAN logo stamped prominently in the upper right-hand corner. We’ve finally figured out the power of an official looking letter...

Last week, Nelson and I walked into the principal’s air-conditioned office. We stood by the door while she gave instructions to her assistant and finished conversing with a woman from the secretariat. When these two left, I approached the desk hesitantly—Principal Ayompe always appears to be busy—and asked if she still had time to talk with Nelson. “It will just be 5 minutes?” she half asked, half stated. I explained that Nelson had a lot of great questions, but we could stop whenever she needed to go. She nodded. At that, Nelson sat down across from her and I took my position with the video camera.

“Good afternoon, Madame. My name is Nelson and I am a student here at Government High School Limbe…” Nelson went on to give a succinct and eloquent overview of YAN and of his project about improving education in Cameroon. He then asked the principal to define education. Simple enough. However, after a few warm-up questions, Nelson began digging deep. “I have read that the dropout rate in Cameroon for girls is higher than it is for boys. Why is this?” “Some of my peers say that they do not pass their examinations because the teachers are not preparing them adequately. What would you respond to these complaints?”

Nelson and Principal Ayompe talked for 20 minutes straight. It was clear this was not a common scene in the principal’s office—and Nelson looked almost (but not quite) as happy with it as Principal Ayompe did. When they were finished, Nelson politely thanked her for her time, and she in turn thanked him for being such an excellent student and then matter-of-factly told him: “We will put your video on the school website.” It was awesome.

Nelson and I debriefed quickly after his interview, talking about the tone of the discussion and the information covered. When I asked him if there was anything else he wished the principal had mentioned, he said he had hoped she would encourage students to take advantage of the resources at school such as the computer lab. We agreed he could put an encouraging statement of this manner in his video conclusion. Before class was over, Principal Ayompe stopped in for a visit (a relatively rare occurrence). “You know you are blessed,” she said to the students.

Similar scenes have been playing out all around Buea and Limbe as we bring groups to interview experts around the community. On Monday, we took our entire Limbe class to the Limbe Wildlife Center (LWC), a wildlife sanctuary designed to take in primates (and a few reptiles) that have been confiscated from hunters or those trying to keep wild animal pets. The main purpose of this visit was to talk about snakes—one of our student groups is studying snakes and is interested in improving snake-human interactions so that fewer humans are bitten by snakes, and fewer snakes are killed by humans (one idea Adams had was to put all snakes in zoos…we had an interesting discussion about that!)—and it just so happens that one of the environmental educators at the LWC , Glenn, is a snake enthusiast who collects any dead snake he finds and has an impressive collection of snake-related literature. After talking snakes, we all enjoyed an incredible tour of the primate residences—Glenn knows the names, behaviors, and intricate social structures of all the mandrills, drills, chimps, and gorillas in the facility. After an hour and a half, I felt like I had met several large families and been given the inside scoop on their feuds, insecurities, and quirky habits…incredible. Although no one student group was working on a primate conservation project, students took photos and videos, and asked engaging questions throughout the tour.

On Wednesday, I took four students to the 7^th Day Adventist hospital/health clinic in town. One group was studying malaria and wanted to ask about transmission, treatment, and prevention, while the other group was studying prostitution and wanted to ask about sexually transmitted diseases. Vivian, one of the nurses there, generously agreed to answer their questions in the second-floor conference room. Both interviewers and interviewee appeared to be slightly nervous as they proceeded through formal introductions—I kept mouthing ‘LOUDER’ to my students from behind the camera. After the first few timid questions (what percentage of patients in the hospital have malaria? Where does the malaria parasite live in the body? How hard is it to cure sexually transmitted diseases?), everyone relaxed a bit. When students reached the end of their question lists, the camera was turned off, but the discussion continued. Ekema wanted to know if prostitutes can get married. Besskennie wanted to know if it is true that ‘you lose your womb’ if you have an abortion (abortions are illegal in Cameroon, so it is possible that there is a high percentage of botched abortions that lead to infertility). Shemilove was curious about the hospital capacity: “what would happen if a very sick person came in but the hospital was full? Would you make a very sick person pay before treating them?”

We’ve had students talk with a farmer about her agricultural practices and a water project manager about water scarcity and conservation in Buea. Students have interviewed one Peace Corps volunteer about agroforestry and another about government corruption surrounding the distribution of donated mosquito nets. And the list goes on. As you can imagine, finding interviewees and organizing meetings for over 60 students with three video cameras has been slightly chaotic…but so worthwhile. And now, we have three weeks left to finish-up interviews, shoot conclusions, and edit videos! Wish us luck!

'How things are done in the U.S.' (with Cameroonian comments)

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:05:11 +0100

Back in January, our students wrote descriptions of ‘how things are done in Cameroon,’ and then learned how to share these on the YAN Facebook page. You may remember some of the topics—how to take a taxi, how to buy goods at the market, how to cook a traditional meal, how to prepare for a soccer game, how the education system works…

The beauty of these descriptions was that they gave students the opportunity to write authoritatively about activities they knew, and simultaneously set the stage for what proved to be a very interesting cultural exchange. We sent copies of these descriptions to the 7^th and 8^th grade class at the Friends School of Portland, in Maine (where my mom is the head of school). There, students learned about pieces of Cameroonian life through the eyes of our Buea high schoolers and wrote descriptions of specific activities/themes central to their own lives in the U.S.—getting to school in the morning, breakfasts in America, skiing, the role of animals in U.S. society, how to make potato leek soup, New England seasons…

As their teacher explained to me: “this was a good assignment and brought up the issue of writing for a particular audience and not knowing very well how much the writers and readers have in common.” She asked that I look their descriptions “to see if they are too explicit about things your students would already know or too assuming about what we think they know?”

Josh and I printed copies of the ‘how things are done in the U.S.’ pieces, and have been sharing them with our students during free class moments. We attached several simple questions with each piece: What is different? What is the same? Do you have any questions for the author of this description?

Here are some of my favorite comments and questions posed by our students—they speak for themselves:

Differences:

· “They take breakfast in America as an important meal for the day, while here in Cameroon many people do not consider it as something important.”

· “The fact that breakfast is being eaten before brushing your mouth. In Cameroon it is very strange for someone to eat before brushing his/her mouth.”

· “I have learned that you guys take breakfast with many different foods. Here in Cameroon the most common breakfast is tea, bread and fried eggs and spaghetti.”

· “In Cameroon we usually take just bread and tea with some fried eggs and for the rich, they can include juice. “

· “I learned that pancakes are usually served with maple syrup. It is different here in Cameroon because pancakes are eaten with egg fried and frapped in or eaten empty.”

· “In Cameroon lunch is the most important meal, but it does vary in certain climates like in the rainy season people tend to eat much in the morning to get warm.”

· “We normally sauté potato or leeks with groundnut [peanut] oil and not butter. This recipe is different in that it’s fast to prepare and looks really tasteful.”

· “This [potato leek soup] is a very different dish. I don’t think if I am given this dish to eat I can because the ingredients can cause a damage in one’s body for example the leeks.”

· “The car pool stuff I think is different because here either our parents drive us to school or we use a public transport or our feet, you know? Also taking lunch to school to us it looks embarrassing.”

· “In Cameroon, we are not allowed to take food to school, it attracts punishment.”

· “I learned that the student in his free time is distracted by his computer while in Cameroon students don’t have computers.”

· “In Cameroon, most kids aren’t privileged to have computers so have to do other things.”

· “I learned that cats are raised as pets. This is amazing because here in Cameroon people regard cats as a wild animal.“

· “She always plays games with her family and that is not a practice in Cameroon.”

Similarities:

“People in both the United States of America and Cameroon are distracted by social medias.”

· “I learned that dogs are working animals. This is similar in Cameroon because some people raise dogs to protect their homes from thieves. And also dogs are used for hunting mostly by hunters.”

· “After dinner you go to your bedrooms and do your homework or other house chores. Here it is similar because it is exactly what happens here in Cameroon. After dinner every child has to do his/her homework or do house chores.”

· “The manner in which potato is prepared. It is similar because we also prepare potato until it gets tender and soft. “

· “The way pancakes are made in America is similar to how they are made in Cameroon. The batering of eggs, milk and flour makes it similar.”

Questions:

· “I think I didn’t understand what chicken broth was or meant.”

· “Can you eat potato leak soup with something else than bread like for example bananas, plantains, yams, rice, or any other tubers?”

· “I would ask that if a person from Cameroon eats this Potato Leek Soup how will the person look like?”

· “I would ask the author if he paid for the Internet connection he had and if he paid was it monthly or weekly.”

· “I would like to ask the meaning of camping trips and going on hikes in the woods.”

· “Do you see a lot of animals as you hike?”

· “I would like to ask the author if the animals which are raised as pets don’t litter the homes with their waste such as exreters and urines.”

· “Why are some animals unevenly distributed in the world?”

Shooting Introductions

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:12:47 +0100

“We are students at GHS Buea Town, and are here to present a project about water pollution,” Kennedy said, gazing into the camera 4 feet in front of him and trying simultaneously to remember his lines but also look like he was reciting them fluidly and effortlessly. “Water pollution is a major problem in Buea today. People wash all sorts of things, like cars and clothing, in streams that run down from the mountain. Then, people who live downstream carry the polluted water to their homes, and drink and cook with it, and it makes them sick.”

So began one of the dozens of introductions that YAN students shot over the course of the past week. These introductions—each, between 1 and 2 minutes in length—will be paired with an interview that students will conduct with a local expert about their project, and will be published on student websites as a culminating project for their year of work in YAN. All week long, Clara and I were excited to see students working cooperatively and creatively to shoot them. In Limbe, several of our students went to the polluted but scenic “Downbeach” area to shoot their introductions while looking out over the Atlantic; at Lycee Molyko, students sought out a non-working tap at which to shoot a video about water scarcity there; and in Buea Town, one group shot their video near a pool of stagnant water, to illustrate a possible breeding ground for malarial mosquitoes (it’s interesting that a common theme—water—underlies so many of our student’s different projects!).

One of my favorite moments from the week was watching Kennedy and his group—mentioned earlier—shoot their own introduction in Buea Town. The group selected a spot for the shoot in a large field overshadowed by Mount Cameroon, reviewed their storyboard to determine how to compose the shot, and then began recording. During take one, Kennedy forgot his lines; during take two, Gibril (the camera man) started smiling a bit, and laughter ensued. All in all, the group shot perhaps seven takes until they were satisfied with what they had recorded. Each time, after someone forgot a line or made a mistake, the students regrouped to determine how to do it better. There was no yelling or blaming; instead, each offered constructive suggestions, and the group prepared to try it again. Gibril suggested that the group try to slow down when speaking, and worry less about remembering their exact lines and more about remembering, generally, what concepts they wanted to say. And Jude pushed Kennedy to be more relaxed on screen (Mingeley demonstrated the concept on camera during a test shot, only to tell Kennedy afterwards that “you should move your arms, but maybe not as much as I just did. That probably looked weird”). There was constructive criticism. There were redos upon redos. There was lots of talking—in both English and Pidgin—as the kids tried to articulate to each other a vision of what the video would look like. And ultimately, there was success, as the students came back to the classroom holding their camera proudly, knowing that they had a perfect take captured on its memory card.

When I was in graduate school last year finishing my masters in education, I remember having a conversation about classroom management and student engagement with a professor who suggested trying something unusual. “The next time you are teaching a student-directed activity in your classroom,” I remember him saying, “try to run the class with as few words as possible. Don’t say anything at all. Just watch what happens. If you students know your expectations, and are excited about their work, then you should end up with the smoothest class you’ve ever run. That’s what real student investment looks like.” I’m not sure how I feel about running a class by saying nothing at all (in fact, I once had to do so last year in Boston when I lost my voice, and I don’t think it was my smoothest class ever). But watching my students successfully figure out how to shoot a great introduction on their own, while saying almost nothing myself, gave me a pretty good feeling.