I would like to apologize and defend for a minute all those people who think and talk about Africa as if it were a country (and not a continent, don’t worry if you didn’t know I won’t judge you). I know people say it out of ignorance or without really thinking, but lets examine why that happens. As an example I give Cameroon and its neighbors. In my region, the North, you are more likely to find similarities between Northern Cameroon and Northern Nigeria and Chad then any of the regions of the West and South of Cameroon. Similarities range from ethnic background, languages and cultures to agricultural techniques and crop variations. All we have to do is go back in history to see that country lines were drawn over people here without regards to ethnic or tribal relations. Secondly, I point to three books that I have read while serving here, which talk about life in Togo, Nigeria and Nambia. Throughout all three books I was blown away by how much I was reading my own reality. The first is the “The Village of Waiting” by George Packer, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo in 1983, the second is Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart,” which is a work of fiction, but is based on the authors Nigerian culture and lastly “Silicon Valley to Southern Africa: Leaving High Tech for Low Tech,” by Robert Myers a one year volunteer teaching consultant in Nambia. Now these three books span a vast time difference from before colonization to only a few years ago, but the similarities in cultural practices, agriculture, landscape and attitudes have not changed much, or at least not in Northern Cameroon. Peoples’ lives are much more influenced by climate, terrain and availability of natural resources than government policy or former colonizer. Now compare this to the United States and North America. You rarely or never hear people talk in a general sense about North American culture or describing their trip to ‘Central Northern America’ as being well worth the money spent. No, we say the U.S. was well worth the trip or Mexico has such an amazing historical legacy and we will never confuse the two. Is it lack of education? I can’t remember discussing much of Africa as a whole in school let alone specific countries. Is it indifference? Do we just not care about what African countries have to offer or drool over their destinations like we would a trip to Fiji. Or deep down do we see the lines that colonizer drew over Africa as arbitrary?
So what's going on a post?
Sometimes when we pray for answers we forget that God doesn’t always answer you the same day. I was devastated recently when I came home from a weeklong trip to the capitol, Yaounde. Several weeks before I left I started to plant things in my backyard. My mother sent me seeds for cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes (the big juice kind you can’t find here), four different types of sunflowers, etc. I cleared about 1/3 of my backyard and already started to see a few things growing. Every time I walked by my zucchini and my corn my mind reeled with all the edible possibilities. I was even more excited at the prospect of giving some of these foreign foods away to villagers as I have had a hard time explaining that the cucumbers I know are not round balls, but long, deep green things? There is just nothing to compare them to here. I even saw that my sunflowers were coming up and relished the change of my drab backyard over wrought with stalky flowers. Now before I left I had bought weed killer from our local market, which a organization that buys cotton from villagers was selling. I was a little apprehensive to use herbicides on the ankle high weeds that were taking up all available space in my backyard, but I bought it and the kid who brings me water was to kill the weeds while I was gone. I came through my house the first few minutes back dismayed that my cat and my post mate’s cat figured out they could climb through my open windows and use my bed as a litter box, but then was nearly brought to tears when I saw my entire backyard was now a wasteland. Not only did he kill my weeds, but every living thing, save three lonely corn stalks. This spray was so powerful it killed some of my nursery plants and made others droop beyond recovery. It killed neighboring leaves on trees helping one mark the path of its destruction as it floated on the wind. And then my life got worse. If you can’t guess by now what could be icing on my cake I’ll tell let you know it was the worse case of diarrhea I have ever had. So you can see why I was devastated and why for two days I barely left my house or talked to anyone. Then a few days later I decided to pick myself up and start over. I had a few seeds left for some plants and I would take a different approach this time using raised bed methods that I am familiar with and involving the guy who decimated my future food happiness more in the process of planting and maintaining my garden. On that same day as I passed my old garden I happened to glimpse a row of plants that couldn’t have been weeds. Unlike the other bare mounds of earth that produced nothing there was a row of what looked like peanut plants. It all hit me then as I remembered right before I left I planted two rows of corn and a row of peanuts flat on the ground instead of in individual mounds. A row of something actually survived the herbicide probably cause they hadn’t started to grow until after he sprayed the chemicals. I felt like dancing a jig after that discovery and now ever day I go and weed my two rows of corn and one row of peanuts, watching to see if anything else will all of a sudden decide its time to pop up. If nothing else decides to come up, I am okay with that. I still have another year of planting and lessons have been learned from this experience so what more can you ask for.
