This past week I spent a little bit of time out of Oku. A
group of Peace Corps volunteers were on their way out of country and many of
them are good friends, some very good friends, so I wanted to be down in
Yaounde to see them off. On my way back from the Central Region I went ahead
and stopped over in the village I used to live in before I started working for
Mocha Joes; a place called Bangang, which is somewhere between the reasonably
large towns of Mbouda and Dschang. It was nice to see some people I used to
work with and catch up on some of the work their doing.
Again, traveling is not really the point. What I want to
write about today is the difficulty of scheduling work for myself, especially
when I’m out of village for a few days. This is on my mind right now because I
was stood up for some work this past Monday and the week before I had gotten
stood up on Saturday. Frustrating, especially when the people don’t even have
the decency to have been locked up in prison as an excuse. When I finally talk
to these two farmers there is a toss up between which reason they’re going to
give me: either they forgot which day we were supposed to meet or, since I
didn’t confirm the appointment 24 hours before hand, they figured I wasn’t
going to make it. The latter explanation makes sense for dentists in the US,
but is less explicable for farmers who have unreliable telephone service. The
former is the more likely cause, particularly because both of these meetings
were planned more than five days in advance.
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| A non-sequitor iguana |
In these situations I usually lose at least a half day of
work, plus the loss of time on whatever project we were going to be working on
(compost production in the first case and contour lines in the second). At best
I can salvage the trip in order to drop in on some other farmers in the area
and that’s not a complete waste but a small consolation since I’d have gotten
to do that anyway. So far, this post has been pretty gripe-filled; so as soon
as I finish writing it I’ll get out of the house and make a few calls to
reschedule those two appointments. In the upcoming week I have two of seven
days of work confirmed; believe it or not I feel pretty good about that.
Tomorrow is free, so I’d like to get my former Saturday compost buddy on the
docket for the morning and then Saturday I’m open so I’ll try to get the
contour guy that day. Monday I’m good to go, but I’m open on Tuesday and
Wednesday, then on Thursday we start the monthly training cycle again. I’ll
actually do my best to keep Wednesday open until about Sunday because if I went
ahead and penciled something in now I’d just be inviting another frustrated
morning.
Sunday I won’t schedule anything, I’ll do my washing in the
morning then probably head up to the market in the afternoon. In fact, Sunday
July 28th is a double whammy non-work day. Obviously Sunday is a
non-work day for Christians but in the traditional eight day week the 28th
is also Ngokse, a rest day and the day of the biggest market in Oku. That
actually makes my week a little easier to schedule because I don’t lose two
work days.
After a quick look back, I see I’ve never explained the
eight day week...that’s weird. In many parts of Cameroon, life follows an eight
day pattern. I’ve never been 100% clear on which day is the ‘start’ of the
week, but Nsamnen is the most important rest day; it’s often called Kontri
Sunday. After Nsamnen you get three work days (Eydintuwiy, Teweykamnen, and
Teweykfoy) then another rest day (Ngoske) and three more work days (Ebkwey,
Ebkwotuwiy, and Kemewiy) which brings us back to Nsamnen. Different quarters in
Oku will host markets on the same day each week with the largest market town,
Elak, hosting on the second rest day of Ngokse. Schedule without considering
the traditional week at your peril. A whole group of people will happily agree
to meet you next Wednesday and then none of them will show because it turns out
to also be Ngokse and everyone went to the market.
I'll let you know what I'm up to on Kemewiy.
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