My new home
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 10/Sep/2009 18:56, 34 days ago
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I'm moving into my new home in the chief's house in Maga on Saturday. I think he lives in the next door village called Pouss most of the time, but several of his wives, children, relatives, and now me live in the Maga house. I've been told it's round and has a room with seventeen sofas in it so I'm not really sure what to expect! The role of the chiefs is very complicated here, as they retain huge amounts of power through patronage, and the honour and dignity they are held in within the community (like Romans), but the actual administrative power is wielded by a complex system of local councils and sub-divisional officers. These often don't work very well though, and VSO does a lot of work here with capacity building in councils.I've also been hearing a bit more about primary schools, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the four schools and meeting the School Councils, Parents' Associations, and Mothers' Associations I'll be working with in Maga. Teachers and schools here have been hit hard by the economic crisis- the Cameroonian government have been saying that they can't afford to fund paying new teachers because of budget cuts, although a little bit of money is being made available through debt relief. As teachers here have to work for free for at least two years before they get paid, and then only get paid about the equivalent of twenty pounds a month, this puts our own credit crunch related complaint (that the Department for International Development has withdrawn promised funding for our first aid kits) into the shade.Things here are slow- trains (twenty four hours instead of twelve on our journey, and lots of cockroaches in the carriage), training sessions (a five and a half hour first aid class in french this morning, where there were repeated demonstrations of how to wind a bandage round and round and arm), and internet connections. But it's much more beautiful in the North of Cameroon than the South, and the atmosphere has a great vibe.
