i am a grown ass man

1st of July, 2008
I’m in my room right now working on my Scheme of Work- or weekly lesson plans for the upcoming model school . I’m working with my friend Matt on the 5eme (Cinqieme- or the equivalent of a junior high class ). Let me set the scene for you so you can picture me here in Cameroon. I am listening to my ipod on which is plugged into my speakers and its playing softly as I work. It has to be soft so my little sisters and brothers don’t run in here and start dancing- even if it would be to the likes of Damien Rice- not the shake your groove things I think they want. I’m munching on my 12th cookie of the day- no joke! I eat so many bisquits here I think I’m going to turn into the Cookie Monster and then my Sesame Street friends will have to have an intervention and I’ll become the Legume Monstre! For dinner I had some rice and this sauce de tomate- which is really just tomatoes some spices and half a fish- hot. However, this is one of my favorite thigns because I can just eat rice with a little of this sauce and if the power goes out my family won’t notice that I’m not eating the fish that they have prepared for me. I’m still working on not gagging when I find little bones or ‘spears’ as I call them, but I think they are little fish tusks that get caught in the body while you are eating. On my desk is a bottle of Tangui- also known as the bottled water here that keeps us from getting sick on the local water- even though I’m filtering mine now and that seems to be going well. I also have my glass of Cameroonian red wine I’m working because today has been a long day. Next to me sits my cell phone that might be the most unused things I own. I only have to plug it in on Sundays because I never use the battery – except for the occasional text from my friends here who want to know if my power is off or my water is off or what I had for dinner. Also on my desk are- millions of books about French and English teaching, hand sanitizer-almost out, flaws, my measuring cups that I use to keep my bobbie pins in and my American pen which makes me the envy of all the students.
Today was a rough day and I’m glad I’m getting to journal about it because I think I need to decompress. We had no language class today, though I did do some tutoring with my fearsome Cameroonian counterpart Sonya! Today was 8 hours of knowledge about HIV and AIDS or VIH and SIDA (the French equivalent). I ended the day with a testimonial from two Cameroonians who are living with the disease. Talk about intense~ The testimonials really took it out of everyone- but I don’t think they were what I was expecting. The first gentleman was about 30 or so and had 7 children and was the principal of a high school. His story started when he started getting petit maladies (little sicknesses) and he kept being away from the school. Well he was in the hospital once and his boss came and had them run an AIDS test behind his back and found out that it was positive. Then the newspaper got ahold of the news and everyone in his town and area knew about his illness- except he did not know. He got fired from his job and people started treating him different and they wouldn’t touch him or shake his hand. Finally someone came over and asked if he was the man in the paper and he finally read the article that told him he had AIDS- he didn’t even know after the whole village had. His mother and whole family abandoned him and his wife died soon after and his 18 year old son blamed him for her death. The village gave up on his children because they assumed they were ‘as good as dead’ though they were tested and they weren’t infected. Though he did have triplet girls who were 9 months old when their mother died. He can’t get work and now travels from place to place doing testimonials because there is no risk for him because everyone already knows about his disease because it is so publicized. He lost all of his friends and his family still won’t speak to him. However, he has an amazing amount of strength and smiled the whole time he was very religious and kept talking about how this was his cross to bear, though he didn’t know how he contracted it. He thought it might be because his grandma used the same knife to cut out the chiggers from the local kids feet, or the dirty knife that was used during scarification (a tribal practice much like tattooing where they make scars to symbolizing things).
The woman who testified told us that her husband was from yaounde (the political capital) and she should have known he was a cheater. He slept with many women and infected her but she forgave him soon after he died and she found out. She had 3 children and they all crowded around her and her son who was 6 went to school and ended up getting into a fight with another kid because he was defending his mother when other children were calling her names. The woman was a hair dresser but all of her clients left here and her whole family disowned her when she was diagnosed, they called her a prostitute and told her it was her fault.
The stigma here is insane and people get called prostitutes or they are thought to have offended God and that is how they got the disease. Others believe the white man brought the disease to Africa to sell condoms! There are so many problems that seem so odd and foreign to me. For instance, it is very common for a very old man to pay a very young her for sex and he becomes her ‘sugardaddy’ and many girls do this because they need someone to pay their school fees. Oftentimes the man has many STIs and ends up infecting the girl who was probably a virgin.
I know that this will definetly be one of my focuses while I’m here and I hope to make a womans group where we can talk about these issues.