At the Market


To buy produce one must go to market. Big Market Day is held every eight days and Small Market Day is every three days after that. Either day, sellers bring their produce or other things to sell to the main market area. It is a bustling place with hundreds of people moving around, small boys with their wheeled carts to carry your purchases, and cars trying to weave around the masses of people. It is exciting and a little intimidating since any purchase necessitates the interaction with the seller and of course, it is all in French or Pidgin or some combination of the two. However, I enjoy the interaction and of course, getting really fresh produce. It is time-consuming. Not like a quick trip to Publix.


My favorite things to buy are "farm eggs." These are MUCH better than the commercial eggs which are tasteless things. They also hang around without refrigeration for who knows how long. I also like passion fruits. They are the best fruit in the world and taste a bit like a sour version of a kiwi. I buy as many as I can when I find them. The tropical fruits are really good too (papaya, pineapple) and about 25-50c each.

I bought peppers and tomatoes from these women. Hard way to earn a few francs.

At the University

The university is pretty small as far as infrastructure is concerned although there are 13,000 students. It has an "upcampus" at the top of the hill and a "downcampus" about a mile away at the bottom of the hill. The upcampus was built by the US as a land grant college. I don’t know the year but the buildings look 70s era. The buildings are really solidly built but are slowly crumbling away since there is no money for maintenance. Everything is dirty, mostly due to the very dusty dry season. Many things are broken and left unrepaired (cabinet doors, broken tiles, dangling light fixtures). The American builders also never finished the job since they were accused of spying (on what I can’t possibly imagine) and left. My office is located upcampus although all my classes are downcampus. Fortunately, where I live is about halfway between them and it is an easy walk to either place.


It is a challenge to teach here. The most annoying thing is that there is no water on either campus except for a spigot outside the main building upcampus. Even though there are toilets, you must flush them with a bucket from a 55-gallon drum. The toilets have a sign on the door "Sanitaire," a misnomer if I ever heard one. They are also unisex and locked for faculty use only. The students have no access to toilets that I know of. Guys have it easy, they go anywhere but I don’t know what the girls do.


The other really annoying thing is that the power goes out for at least some period of time every day. At least once a week, it is out for the entire day. This week is has been off more than on. If the power is out, it is out over the entire city. This usually happens when I am settling down for a productive time of writing or course preparation or when I am intending to go to the faculty internet room to do email and such. Can you imagine FPL getting away with that? A former Fulbrighter told me of this so it seems to be a chronic problem. They seem to take it all in stride.
Once reason I chose to live at the "resort" is because they have their own water source. Anyplace else, the water can be shut off for hours, days, or weeks. I can live without electricity but not water. I see people bringing containers up the hill to get water from the campus tap or doing laundry. The Centre Climatique also has a generator but they only fire it up at night. So while the rest of the city is dark, we have lights and I am grateful for it.

Principle of Limited Good

In Anthropology, there is a concept called the Principle of Limited Good. It means there is only so much luck/success/money to go around and if someone is getting too much of it, there is that much less left for everyone else. If someone is trying to get ahead, say, by having a successful business, others will try to bring him down. The operation of this Principle is a cultural thing and its daily operation, I’m sure, is mostly subconscious. It often prevents people from even trying.

I had a discussion with one of the faculty members and it seems that the Principle is happening here, occasionally with deadly consequences. Sometimes other faculty will scheme to try to keep another from getting ahead. Sometimes budgets will be cut so that a research program is hurt. Sometimes it can get deadly. One faculty that I met during one of my past visits here was a highly talented chemist who was testing local plants for medicinal properties. He was getting funding from abroad and had a well-equipped lab and a number of students. He was advancing rapidly and was working his way up the administrative ladder (more money and prestige). When I was preparing for this trip, I asked about him only to learn he died in a car accident. There is some suspicion that this was no accident. The driver of his car came through without a scratch (apparently he swerved the car so that the passenger side was demolished) and he was also suspected of causing a similar accident. In any case, it was not investigated since it was “just an accident.”

I have had personal experience with this in the past – not yet on this trip. I have had dealings with no fewer than three people who seemed to go out of their way to try to make me fail. On my first trip, one suggested several “detours” when I was investigating how to get the project started. On the second trip, one advised me to take a particular trail to get to the forest that caused a five hour hike for nothing – there was a MUCH shorter and easier way. One particularly egregious example was when I went to the other end of Cameroon where another person was to arrange a demonstration of tree harvest (harvest is forbidden on Mount Oku, where I was working) and to arrange some interviews. After four days of frustration, I finally understood that what I was seeking was impossible (for various reasons) but he knew it all along and let me flounder around anyway. I left without accomplishing anything. I have to wonder what is in store for me on this trip. My defense is knowing what to look for and to expect the “detours.”