Next up…

This post will be different than most. I have a lot going on in my head about my future after Peace Corps, and I want to get it out and maybe get some advice. I know it seems early with more than half my service left, but it’s worth thinking about now. If you read this blog to learn about Africa and the experience of a Peace Corps Volunteer, this probably isn’t going to interest you. If you read it because you know me personally, I’d love for you to read this and offer input if you have any. A lot of this will come down to personal choice and there isn’t much anyone can do to advise me, but if you read through it and think of anything, I’d appreciate it.

My two major considerations are professional and social.
Professionally, I’m looking at three options. The “best” option right now, as I see it, is Teach for America in Denver, CO. I get two more years with no loan payments, a starting salary of $32.000 or more, great contacts, and great experience. The program also works closely with University of Denver, so I can easily earn my Master’s in Education during this time in order to pursue teaching as a career. It may not be the most lucrative, but eventually I could transition to a university setting and carve out a pretty decent living for myself. I would need to spend one year in CO getting certified as a teacher ahead of time, which also fits in with my social plans, as I will explain later.

My second option is continued social work. I love working with youth in that capacity, and I could easily jump right into a job when I get back. Over time I could build up my network and experience and move up. It would also give me more freedom geographically (the only place TfA operates that interests me is Denver). Eventually I could pursue my MSW, and earn a modest salary doing something I know I enjoy.

Third option is politics. This is by far the riskiest option, but it nevertheless intrigues me. I find economics, in particular, extremely interesting. Here in Cameroon I’ve devoured no less than five books on economic trends, policies, and theories from a politically diverse selection of authors, and I read The Economist weekly. I think I have a good mind for policy, I’m a good writer, and my education in structural Sociology gives me a unique and (I think) valuable toolkit to analyze and solve these sorts of systemic problems. Working as an analyst or an advisor might be a really great fit for me. I don’t really know the best angle for getting into politics, though. I’ve considered Foreign Service, but I may prefer to just stay in America for a while once I get back, not to mention that the FSO application process for the Economic track is ridiculously competitive; second only to the Political track. Again, though, I don’t really know another way to quickly lay a good foundation for work in politics, and the pay would allow me to pay off my loans in one or two years. There are two final considerations for politics. First, I do really loathe bureaucracy, and enjoying the philosophy of economics and politics is not the same as living it. Government life might not be for me, but I already know that working with youth is very much for me. This brings me to my second point. I am afraid that if I dive into a career with education or social work, I may never get around to politics, and I really think I’d be good at it. Call it an ambition; one I don’t want to sacrifice because the other routes are safer and easier.

Now for my social considerations. First up, I don’t want to do ANY of this as soon as I get back. I want to ski, mountain bike, socialize, and be a full-time twenty-something for 12 – 18 months before I commit myself to a career track. This brings up three points. First, I can do that and get certified in teaching at the same time in Denver, and kill two birds with one stone. Second, I can also get an easy job working evenings at a youth shelter for this period and set myself up well for social work (although it wouldn’t hurt me for education or politics, either). Third, my professional objectives have to be taken into account when I choose where to do this. If I want to do Education, I gotta go to Colorado. If I want to do politics, I should also go to Colorado because Denver has the second most government offices after Washington DC. For other reasons, however, I don’t know about Denver. I do have some great friends in and around Denver, but I also know of five awesome Peace Corps Volunteers who will be moving to Oregon after service, and they’re the kind of people I feel like I want to be around. Also, as far as skiing is concerned, Oregon wins hands down. Colorado has better mountains, sure, but getting there sucks. Traffic is terrible, and I hear it can take 2+ hours to get to the nearest hill. I can live in Portland or Eugene and be at the mountain in forty-five minutes or less. That’s a big deal for someone who wants to ski bum when he gets back. But should be driving my decision? On the one hand, I’m still young and if I want to spend 18 months being a full-time twenty-something, I feel like part of that is not giving a shit about future professional options and doing what I want to do in the moment; on the other, where I move this time is where I want to stay for a little while, and I don’t want to spend a year making friends in one place only to move immediately because my professional life demands it. For that reason, I need to start thinking about what I want to do now.

Any ideas, suggestions, alternatives, insights, whatever would be greatly appreciated. Currently all of this is a big mess inside my head, and while it’s still far enough away that it doesn’t stress me out too much, I would like to bring some order to this chaos. My e-mail, for those who don’t know, is blocha@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you.

PICTURES!!…

…are coming soon. Suckers! Sorry, that was mean. Anyways, got a post coming up about using my frail, doughy office worker hands as they were intended for once, and with it, a bunch of sweet pictures of our farm and some other stuff. Until then, enjoy the next two posts about a thief and a potentially homicidal maniac. Guess which one is me for bonus points!

The Pickpocket’s Guide to Le Cameroun

So I got pickpocketed. Pretty painless, really. Other people get robbed at the point of a machete. They get their clothes stolen so the thieves don’t miss any pockets. They get beat up. They have to run around half-naked in a dark and hostile city trying to find a way home without any money. Me, I just checked my pockets and by golly, seems $80 just vanished right on outta there! I was in the notorious crime capital of Cameroon – Douala – with some friends, and I made a series of decisions I thought were intelligent but later turned out to be pretty stupid. That’s kinda how it is, I guess. I was keeping a bunch of money in a “hidden” side pocket, but said pocket caught the eyes of professional thieves like naked breasts, and suddenly someone is tapping on my shoulder telling me my money “fell out” and a bunch of boys grabbed it and ran. I ran some tests back at the hotel; turns out opening that pocket without pulling the pants enough to tip me off is easy like Sunday morning. Hindsight. But, as I said, it was painless. Sure I got boned, but they at least had the courtesy to lube up. Thanks, fellas.

I talked about this a lot in my post on corruption, but the system doesn’t leave people too many options. Even if you can pay the school fees, buy the books, stay focused despite sweltering heat and rooms with 100 – 300 other classmates, work hard despite a general dearth of support, avoid the omnipresent risks and temptations, get into university, and your parents can then somehow afford to pay for you to live in a city and study with eight siblings and no money, and you can graduate… even if you can do all that, odds are still against you getting a job. The streets are choked with boys on motorcycles, living not day-to-day but meal-to-meal, and many of them have university degrees. The opportunities simply don’t exist for them. Why not?

A few months back someone asked me if the government will give me a nice job when I get back because of Peace Corps, and I told them maybe, but that I might look elsewhere. “Oh, the government will find you a different job?” No, the government has nothing to do with it, what are you talking about? Somehow, I didn’t realize until that moment that the private sector would be the biggest joke in Cameroon, if only it existed. As it is, people don’t know there’s anything to laugh about. They just expect the government to provide jobs for everyone, which it couldn’t do even if it wanted to (it doesn’t).

How could this happen? Well, the lack of even one McDonald’s anywhere in the country should be a big clue. Hmm… what could it be… I’m gonna put on my thinking cap… drink some coffee, visit the bathroom or something… aha! Could it maybe be the 70% tax on businesses woah wait WHAT yep that’s right there’s a 70% tax on businesses. And that’s before the corruption. Like most civil servants, tax collectors saw a 65% salary reduction under the current regime a couple decades back; therefore, like most civil servants who oversee money in Cameroon, they steal it. So… 70% plus…? I asked a successful business owner in town how he manages it: “I don’t pay it. I pay what I can, sure, but if I paid a quarter of what they ask I’d be bankrupt in a year.” Last year they asked him for $9.000 in taxes (that’s 300% to 500% more than what most civil servants earn in a year). After months of arguing, he finally gave the tax man $500 to go toward his taxes, and $900 as a bribe, to make sure the first $500 all went to his taxes. The man sent him a receipt for $170 two weeks later. If that didn’t break your neck when it smacked you across the face, reread it slowly. Assuming all tax transactions carry that same equity/bribe ratio, the tax rate comes in at about 570%.

So starting a legitimate business, with employees, is next to impossible. Supply of workers is therefore very high, while demand is very low. Most economists would argue that the resulting equilibrium wage is bottomed out, so people don’t consider it a worthy trade for their leisure time and they don’t work. That’s because most economists are worthless. What actually happens is that everyone is dirt poor because they can’t find work, and after years of hopeless subsistence they finally give in to the illusion of a promised land – Douala! – the economic capital of Cameroon! A place where legends are made and dreams come true! A place where anyone with a little gumption and elbow grease can ride the river of money all the way to fast cars and loose women!… well, they will probably find the loose women, but not after any rides on any rivers of money; which, by the way, sounds like a great fucking time. You hear of anything like that, I got lukewarm beers ready to go. Call me.

Anyways, this has two really debilitating effects. First, you have a gigantic influx of people into a few major cities, all trying to start small, off-the-grid businesses by purchasing bulk quantities of shitty Chinese goods. What happens when you have a whole city full of people trying to sell the exact same products and hardly any of them have money to be consumers themselves? All the people with no money end up with even less money! Yay! Or maybe they rent a motorcycle: breathe it in lads, that’s the freedom of the open road you’re smel- OH MY GOD DID I REALLY JUST GET CUT OFF BY NO LESS THAN NINE OTHER MOTORCYCLE TAXIS AND NOW I’M QUITE LITERALLY EATING THEIR DUST BECAUSE THE ROADS SUCK SO BAD? Yes, that just happened. Same as the ragtag business owners, everyone smelled the same money and it turns out there isn’t nearly enough to go around. Now they smell the exhaust of a million other broke-ass moto drivers instead, who actually would be able to carve out a meager living if the motorcycles weren’t rented, but they are, so they don’t.

Effect #2: Massive rural exodus. All the young people not making money in the cities are also not making money in the country – because they moved out – and neither are the towns they left behind. As a result, you have a really troubling age composition in most of rural Cameroon – children, adolescents, and older people. Given that the primary rural occupation is farming, that’s a serious problem. In terms of development, the effects are even worse. Some of the middle-aged people are well-educated, but frankly, education is a fairly recent phenomenon in Cameroon; the majority is not. There isn’t a whole lot of innovation or enterprise happening because the energetic, educated, motivated young people who might have tried to start a business despite suffocating tax rates are instead suffocating on moto exhaust in Douala.

Dejected, disillusioned, and broke as shit, they do what they gotta do to make ends meet. There ain’t money in business. There ain’t money in motorcycles. There ain’t money in shoddy Chinese products which somehow break before they even get off the assembly line… but there is money in the “hidden side pockets” of naïve, debt-strapped young Americans like me. Call it a redistribution of wealth: from poor to really, really poor. Take what you can get Marxists, it’s the best you’re gonna get in this day and age. Hey, someone get these guys some pre-approved credit card offers, stat!

This is my hell

I don’t believe in Hell, but if I did, it would consist of a line of new mothers that disappears into the horizon, all waiting to hand me their shrill, damp, putrid, squalling spawn, and I would just have to sit there and take each in turn, and coddle them, and coo at them, and smile at them, and tell their mothers how cute they are; all the while suppressing my fiercely uncontrollable urge to mortally dislocate each of their necks.

I’m gonna make a great dad, huh?

Being a whitey in Cameroon

So I know I promised a bunch of posts on the negative impacts of development, which have yet to make an appearance. I’m working on it… I’m not working on it. I draw and read a lot in my free time, and I have other things I decided I want to write about more, so sue me. I’ll get to it when I feel like it, and the result will be better for it. This post is a mash-up of an article my mom sent me and a book I’m reading, and it’s about being white in Cameroon. I need to start with a qualifier though. Some of the things I say in this post may, without proper explanation, appear offensively naïve and insensitive; namely, I’m going to draw some comparisons between being a minority here and in America. I want to let my readers know that I understand how profoundly diminished the “white minority experience” is, both socially and historically. In fact, the word “diminished” utterly fails to capture the scope of that statement; I’m not sure such a word exists. Furthermore, I understand that I suffer none of the deeply embedded institutionalized disadvantages which characterize modern racism. In making these comparisons, the message is not, “Hey guys I totally get it now, thanks for welcoming me to the club, high five bro!” Instead, the realization has been enormously humbling; having caught a glimpse of that world has opened my eyes to the incredible depth of my inability to fully understand it. I think that when you see the nature of my comparison you’ll understand why I feel a comparison is even possible, because in almost every other aspect, it’s not. In any case, I have nothing but the deepest respect, and hope this article reflects that.

Whew! That was probably overkill, but if you’ve been following my blog for any length of time you already know I tend to be a little – OK, extravagantly – wordy. Onwards!

I’ve already talked about some of the superficial elements of the “white man” experience in some of my previous posts: getting called “white man” all the fucking time, for example. Though it can be irritating depending on my mood, it’s something I’ve learned to accept. First off, I am pretty damn white. I’m like a beacon for lost ships, actually. The sun’s rays reflect a harsh, blinding iridescence off every inch of my exposed epidermis, proclaiming as if by megaphone, “HI EVERYBODY! HI! YEAH ME OVER HERE! GUESS WHAT? I DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING MELANIN!” I literally burned out someone’s retinae the other day. Just seared the motherfuckers right out of his skull, like the worst pre-op LASIK nightmare imaginable. I felt terrible, but what can I say, it comes with the territory. You get a (blindingly) white man for two years, you lose the power of sight forever. Square business. My skin is so gaudy and ostentatious people here can’t help but take notice, like wearing a liger-skin coat to a PETA rally…. …OK, I’m done. It’s about to get mad serious yo, you’ll appreciate it in a minute…
Second, “white man” isn’t even a slur. It’s born out of ignorance, not hatred. More often than not, people just want to get my attention, don’t know what else to call me, and don’t understand that it’s rude. Sometimes I patiently explain to a ten-year-old that I don’t like to be called that and I tell him my name and then he defiantly shrieks “white man” right in my face and I want to snap his flimsy stupid neck, but for the most part I’ve learned to ignore it because it doesn’t invoke centuries of violence, exploitation, degradation, and abuse.

For me, an interesting question comes out of that: “What DOES it invoke,” because even though it’s born out of ignorance, it’s not empty of meaning. What do West African kids learn about white people in schools? First, we made their countries our property, and then we made their people our property. The former is still true, by many definitions, and the effects of the latter are still felt to this day. So, to a certain extent, getting called “white man” conjures up some of that old white guilt, which is kind of a weird balancing act for white people. Every white kid with a half-decent upbringing has that feeling branded into his subconscious; however, in the modern American racial landscape, that guilt can manifest itself offensively. So, in America, we tend to just not talk about it and hope our subconscious doesn’t bite us in the ass. As a result, at least in social settings, it usually gets ignored, which is probably for the best. But here in Africa, the shameful legacy of your ancestors is thrust in your face by “white man” cries a hundred times a day, and it’s pretty damn uncomfortable to be forced to reckon with a reality you intellectually understand but emotionally suppress, especially when the effects of that legacy are visible everywhere you go.

So it’s even a little more uncomfortable when you get completely unwarranted preferential treatment, which happens all the time. “Hey, you’re white! Get your shiny white ass on up to the front of this three-hour line at the ticket window! Say, you are lookin’ mighty white today, why don’t you just move that crippled old man’s stuff and claim the best seat on the bus for your young, virile white self? Why are you looking so hesitant? I know! It must be because you don’t think you should have to waste your precious white time and energy moving it! Don’t worry, I’m black! I can move it for you!”…

…Believe me, I would never publish something so hellaciously offensive all over the internet if that wasn’t exactly the way it is. People want to give me special treatment all the time, and it puts me in a very awkward position. “Yeah, no, no like I understand you’re just trying to be nice, yeah, it’s just that there’s this vulgar history of slavery and oppression and racism where I’m from, and I’m kinda on the wrong side of that in this situation, so this just FEELS weird, like I didn’t do anything to deserve this, I’m not special, I’m just white – right, no, I know you’re just trying to be nice…”. Not a fun conversation, believe me. It’s not just in the behavior, either, it’s in the mentality. I’ve been told white people are “closer to God”, that we’re smarter; all sorts of stunningly racist claims which are presented with such embarrassing certainty that they can render you speechless. You feel like you’re on an episode of Punk’d sometimes, like you’re strollin’ on through through the Baltimore projects just minding your own business and fucking Ashton Kutcher shouts the N word from behind a dumpster and you stop dead in your tracks like “No seriously, it wasn’t me! What the fuck!” God that guy’s a butthole. Anyways, you do your best to educate them that race isn’t even real, that white people made it up to assert superiority back before we realized that it’s a heinous thing to do, but all the while you’re plagued by this very unfamiliar and inescapable feeling…

…the “black gaze”. I know that sounds racist, hold your fire. Touré, a Black American journalist and TV personality, discusses this feeling in a great book I’m reading about modern race relations. He says that there’s a constant pressure on Black Americans to “represent the race well,” and whether that pressure is real or imagined, it nevertheless occupies a place in the subconscious, much like white guilt. It’s not something white people normally have to deal with, but it’s something Black Americans deal with daily, from both sides. For them, the “black gaze” is a pressure to both represent the race well and still be true to unspoken rules of Blackness in front of other Black Americans. Then there’s also the “white gaze,” which is about representing the race well and not confirming stereotypes in front of white people. Because I’m white, this is the “black gaze” for me here in Africa. Touré claims that in both cases there are stereotypes and preconceptions which must be carefully managed depending on his “audience”, and that a fundamental part of his self-actualization was learning to ignore that nagging feeling and doing what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it in front of whoever the hell happened to be there at the time. White people never have to learn how to do that. Sure, we’re aware of being awkward and uncool and, well, white sometimes, but it has absolutely zero social or historical context or consequence. It’s actually pretty funny most of the time.

But then you’re a white guy in Cameroon, and you quickly come to the realization that everyone has a set of stereotypes and preconceptions and even emotions concerning YOU. Let’s start with the big stereotype: You drive one of three Ferraris to work every day, you live in a gorgeous studio in Upper Manhattan, and you wipe your ass with $100 bills on Wednesdays and Fridays, only because printed cotton is uncomfortable for daily use. The emotions are less concrete. It’s an undefined, enigmatic brew of jealousy, resentment, reverence, love, pride, and indignation. I’m serious. The knowledge that everyone around you harbors these stereotypes and these emotions is
overwhelming sometimes. You don’t know what to do with yourself. You say or do something near a group of teenagers and they all start giggling uncontrollably as soon as you turn your back and you’re left scrambling to figure out what you did that either completely violated or confirmed one of the many stereotypes those kids hold about white folk. Some kid tells you to “go back to white man land, white man” because you refuse to give in to his blunt demands for cash and you can’t help but ask yourself, “How many other people think I’m totally useless except when I’m handing them my money?” You ride into a dirt-poor village in your high-tech, breathable work clothes on your fancy, imposing Trek bicycle and you’re greeted with wide eyes and open mouths and you wonder which of the many emotions you know exist behind those faces is getting the most playtime. You get called in to the consultation room at the hospital eight names out of order and you try to decipher the true motives of the nurse as she takes your blood pressure. One of the worst; you try to avoid eye contact with everyone on the road as a Cameroonian dumps sweat hauling your oversized furniture uphill to your oversized house for $1.

So… on that note… er… Well, as you can see… damn, concluding something like this is not easy… I guess all I can say is that “being a minority” is something everyone should experience. Mine is hardly the “full experience” – thank God – but one thing I have learned to appreciate is how deeply psychological it is. It gets in your head, even when it isn’t there. In fact, I’d say that for me, it’s as much a psychological condition as a social one. Finally, you develop a whole new layer of respect for the people who endure a far more sinister brand of racism back home.
That’s all she wrote, folks! You can expect another article on this topic never.

Development: Learned Helplessness Intro

A theme of this series is going to be “learned helplessness and entitlement,” which wrestles with an aggressively corrupt government for the prestigious honor of “biggest obstacle to development in Cameroon”; and, as Cameroon is the only country in the whole world to score the #1 spot on Transparency International’s “Most Corrupt Governments” list twice, it’s a noteworthy concern. A quick aside for tits and giggles, Cameroon’s government responded to its placement by saying that the mere fact that they made the #1 spot indicated that they weren’t the most corrupt; a more corrupt government would have bribed Transparency International to knock them down in the rankings. Slick move, Cameroon. I’m sure your attempts to bribe an international watchdog organization dedicated to exposing federal corruption had nothing to do with your placement on that list… either of the two times… really?

Anyways, I was talking shop with my friend Chris the other day, and he asked me a very interesting question: “At what age did you realize that the world was divided into ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, and that you were fortunate enough to belong to the former group?” Well, I spent the first eight years of my life in a middle-class suburban
neighborhood in Virginia , then moved to a wealthier middle-class suburban neighborhood in Vermont, so a long damn time. I can’t recall a specific experience that awoke me to the reality of social class, which makes me think it just happened gradually, over time, with education. “Maybe eleven, twelve years old,” I said. I might have known people were less well-off than my family before then, but I had no perspective on that, no concept that some people truly have nothing. Maybe they drove a worse car than we did, but then I could have named ten families with better cars just off the top of my head, so even if I understood that some people have more money than others, I didn’t comprehend the range or the extremes of that disparity until much later.

In Cameroon, I’m inclined to think that knowledge is genetic. I’ll have three- and four-year-olds waddle up to me and cry, “White man, buy me something,” “White man, give me your ball,” “Give me 100 francs”. Parents waste absolutely no time informing their children that blacks inherently have nothing, and whites have plenty; and worse, that the only way to get anything of value is to receive it from someone more fortunate than you. I have had full-grown adults literally get angry with me for refusing to give them my money; just today, a teenager told me to “go back to white man land” when I flatly denied his repeated requests for a handout. Yesterday, an older gentleman insisted no less than five times that I give him my bicycle, because “he wants it” and “you should help your brothers”. These interactions occur multiple times daily, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

The country is steeped in a suffocating “fuck it” mentality. That’s really the best way I can describe it. My family is eating one meal a day? I can’t afford school fees for half my kids? Fuck it. If someone gives me something, hell yeah! It’s a party. But if not? Fuck it. The mantra of Anglophones is, “Just managing”; Francophones, “On va faire comment?” Combined, they formulate the typical Cameroonian outlook on life: “I’m just barely managing, but what am I going to do about it?” (Hint: It’s a rhetorical question).

Countless people with educations are stagnating, waiting around for a nonexistent government job instead of taking initiative and doing something for themselves. They don’t think it’s worth their time. There’s no motivation to build something, to invest in something. I can point to people in the community who have done just that and are reaping the rewards, but others don’t seem to understand. Fuck it. They tell me they need to get to America where life is easy, where money is free, because there’s nothing for them in Cameroon. This is patently false on both counts, but let’s focus on the second assumption. Cameroon has a wealth of resources, and while many are unavailable to the average citizen due to corruption, many more are not. Land here is basically free! Chat with a traditional ruler for a few minutes and you can score a sizeable plot no problem, at least in this region. You don’t even need to “stoop” to farming, as many young people see it. America used to be the land of opportunity, but it’s not any more. Cameroon has boundless entrepreneur opportunities for savvy youth with a decent work ethic and a few management skills. Anyone with those two attributes can support even a large family. One widow I know started buying and selling peanuts with $10 five years ago; she is paying school fees and supplies for seven children, feeds them reasonably well, and now has $100 in capital. But fuck it. Why go through the trouble? Just scrape by as best you can, forcing your family to live under squalid conditions if necessary, and hold out for something to drop out of the sky. It will, eventually. Right?

Almost every time I go to Bamenda, usually around 7AM, my company at the bus station includes a few other travelers and a mob of men tossing back beer, wine, and whiskey indiscriminately at the same time they complain that they have no money. “Well,” I ask them, “Why don’t you do something to make some money instead of spending it at the bar thirty minutes past dawn?” Goes in one ear and out the other. “Like what,” they intimate with their blank returning stares. By 11AM half the men in town are doing the exact same thing.

Say you manage to engage them in something, have you succeeded? Hardly. They’re working with a white man, they expect some money to weasel its way into their pockets one way or another. When I make it clear that is not going to happen, interest evaporates. A lot of it is because I’m white, but not entirely. My counterpart never fails to note that participants must be properly “motivated”. “Oh no,” he’ll laugh, “You must provide food, who will come to the next meeting if there is no food at the first one?” He understands how tragic that reality is, but doesn’t see it changing any time soon. In Cameroon, there must be some tangible and immediate benefit for participation or almost no one will bother. When I tell people about my farming project, some think it will be great, but many more scoff: “You’re not going to pay them until harvest? Ha! Good luck”. Well, that attitude right there is precisely the thing I’m trying combat with this project, thank you very much, but your pessimism is nonetheless discouraging. Cheers!

The Dutch couple in town do micro lending. One man repeatedly took loans to start a hardware store, but ended up eating his capital and running his business into the ground within months. Twice. His logic? The hardware store wasn’t going to get him anywhere, but he was sure as hell going to enjoy the “free money” he received to start one up. Now the Dutch are holding his hand for the third attempt, monitoring his books carefully, and of course the business is thriving, but most Cameroonians don’t get that opportunity. If they get some money and blow it, that might be it, and they generally don’t see long-term rewards. When you’re up, you’re flush and everyone should know about it, but when you’re down… fuck it.

This is obviously a generalization. I’ve encountered a handful of hard-working, self-motivated people here and they’ve been fantastic work partners; but they’re the exceptions that prove the rule. All over the country, this widespread attitude is smothering internal development. The educated and highly motivated Cameroonians are despairing, resulting in a mass exodus of all the people this country needs the most. What remains is a population utterly dependent on development efforts, which further hamstrings the vision of a self-sufficient Cameroon in the future. So where did this attitude come from? How can it be changed? That’s the topic for the next few posts.

As I see it, there are four main causes: tradition, religion, a corrupt centralized government, and shoddy development work. I don’t know if each one will warrant its own post, but there’s only one way to find out…

Development: Religion

In the last Development post, I talked about this issue of learned helplessness, and outlined a few causes. I’m going to start with religion, specifically Christianity. My Dutch friend Hank described Christianity as “best development program in Cameroon” after discussing this same topic I’m about to cover here; I looked at him quizzically and he laughed, “Well, at least the most successful”. It’s true. There are no atheists in Cameroon. Not too many casual believers, even. Their adherence to the commandments might be tenuous at best, their understanding still grounded in very literal
interpretations of Hell which even the Vatican has eschewed, but their loyalty to the man upstairs is fierce.

As someone who attended church mostly regularly through the age of eighteen, I wrestled with Marx’s “opiate of the masses” analysis for a considerable amount of time when university seminars first exposed me to the idea. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense, but it didn’t sit well with me. I recognize the virtues of Christianity as well as its shortcomings. Many people need that moral compass, the concepts of eternal reward or punishment, a meaning for life, a spiritual connection to something larger than themselves… maybe they just need a supportive community, and the church works for them. Who am I, and who is Marx, to trivialize all that?

In Cameroon, especially, the function of Christianity is readily apparent. How else do you make sense of the death of a child? How else do you convince yourself that your tireless struggle for strained subsistence is worth it? At first, Christianity seemed to be an almost necessary coping mechanism for the harsh realities of life here. But, as soon as you make that leap, have you not conceded that it is, indeed, an “opiate for the masses:”? The question, then, is whether that’s a good or a bad thing. People have nothing to eat, their lives hang precariously in the balance on a daily basis, and Christianity allows them to be happy regardless. That’s the most powerful argument in favor of the positive effects of Christianity, and it comes with a concealed barb: in the long run, is complacency really a good thing?

In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote a famous detour to the main plot of his novel known as “The Grand Inquisitor”. In it, two of the brothers are talking over a drink; Alyoshka, pure and devout, and Ivan, the intellectual cynic. Ivan talks about a poem he’s working on about the Second Coming of Christ. Jesus goes to a prominent church to speak with the Grand Inquisitor about announcing his return the following day. The Grand Inquisitor is coldly amused. He tells Jesus that tomorrow he will be hanged, not glorified. Jesus confidently assures him that the people would never do that to him because they love him. No, the Inquisitor counters, they love the church. Jesus made the mistake of giving people freedom of choice, he explains, which is the greatest burden of mankind. The church takes that away from them, and so their love for the church will always be greater than their love for the objects of worship who supposedly bind them to it. What better embodiment of this reasoning than the church’s insistence on “surrendering your life to Jesus Christ”? Jesus himself never made that demand, but there it is.

So what happens when Cameroonians surrender their lives to Jesus? In one of my classes, we were discussing a short reading passage in which the main character’s father became ill, and could no longer work the farm. The book asked what a child should do in this situation to help the family and demonstrate spiritual strength. For five minutes we labored over this question, and the only answer I got was, “Pray to God to make everything better”. The more conversations I have with people – just ordinary day-to-day small talk – the more obvious the relationship between Christian thinking and the “fuck it” mentality has become. “No, I still don’t have a job, God will find a way”. No, God is not an employer, you’re going to have to look around a little. “My younger sister died; I’m sad, but it was God’s plan”. No, a twelve-year-old girl didn’t die because it was God’s plan, and if she did, why do you worship that guy? She died because of malnutrition. What are you going to do about that? There’s plenty of free land to grow the food you need to stay healthy. “No, with God we will manage”. Really? How’s that been working out for you so far?

In my experience here, Christianity has smothered peoples’ motivation to improve their lives. Not all the time, though. There are people who ask for strength from God to accomplish something, and then, you know, do something to accomplish it. I’ve talked to people who lead selfish, unhealthy lives who were transformed by their faith. I don’t mean to entirely discount the benefits, but for the majority of people, the complacency is slowly killing them, and for what? I talked to a “devout” elderly man the other day who simply could not believe that two years of celibacy was even possible. “Sure, I’m faithful when I’m in Wum, but if I travel… whew, eight days is about the limit for me”. So you claim to love, respect, and worship a God who can choose to bless you with eternal happiness or smite you with undying misery, and you can’t keep it in your pants for EIGHT DAYS to adhere to one of his TEN COMMANDMENTS? Seriously, dude? But the same guy tried to assert moral superiority the moment I declared myself an atheist. Do you really not understand how feeble your argument is?

What I’ve learned to do is to take advantage of religion, rather than resent it, because it can be channeled to positive effect. “Do you think God will make food appear by magic in your kitchen, will fill your pockets with money while you sleep,” I’ll ask them, “Of course not. God doesn’t do handouts. Pray to Him, and he will open doors and create opportunities for you to get what you’re after, but you have to be looking for them. You have to work for it.” It’s a message they hear, and whether or not it changes their behavior in any meaningful way is unknown, but it puts me at peace with something I otherwise find destructive, and having a vendetta against my population’s way of life isn’t winning me any favors.