The Face of Poverty

Finally on Sunday I was able to travel to my target village of Grand-Batanga. It is about a 20-minute taxi drive away but it is relatively super expensive ($20 round trip) because all the locals take moto taxis that we aren’t allowed to take so car taxis don’t want to go all the way there. There are also two checkpoints along the route where government officials demand bribes that taxi drivers are obligated to pay. But I went with my contact from the town and got so much accomplished! The leader of the woman met me right away in her house and set me up with interview after interview, extraordinarily efficient. I asked people about their needs, the village needs, how they define poverty and things that could help them make life a little easier. In total I did 10 interviews, which is unheard of in just 1 day! In general I heard over and over that people need “les moyens” – the means. They told me that if they could improve their little businesses their lives would be a lot easier. Most people sell things like fish they’ve caught, or crabs, or beignets, or other little things that they can make at the house. It brings in a small sum of money that is used to pay for their children’s schooling and food and clothes. Men in the family pay for very little though they make the most, when you walk around the village you see men drinking alcohol even in the morning and sleeping and hanging around. It’s the woman who are hard at work to make ends meet and provide for their children. I ended up interviewing mostly woman and they told me repeatedly that they just need a little money to modernize and make their businesses a little better. Then they can pay for schooling and health and everything else. This was really contrary for me to developmental ideals from a Western standpoint. We tend to want to build schools and install big things but these women don’t even think of changing the system, they just want to be able to succeed better within the existing, broken system. So I think my final paper is going to focus a lot on the difference between Western ideals and village realities and how they meet and should mix to create a development plan that has Western elements but fits within the village context.

My American friend Jozy and I went back to the village today to do our research projects. First I went to the local clinic that is run by a nurse and a couple local volunteers. It is only two small rooms but it the only option for the village besides paying $2 (a big expense here) to go to the town and back. The clinic isn’t free because it doesn’t have funding but it gives treatment as cheap as it can. It was really interesting to see it. I walked around the village just observing and trying to understand what life is like there. I met a Frechman who has been living there for 8 years who helped us understand things we would have otherwise missed. He showed us a house owned by a Swiss person that was for sale. It has many rooms and would be the perfect location for the clinic but it is too expensive for them to buy (even though it is a big house right on the ocean for about $400.) He then led us back to the clinic for probably one of the most life changing things I’ve ever experienced. We walked up to the clinic hearing screams and he told us to look in the back room. We watched a small girl, around 6, squirming and screaming as the clinic workers unwrapped her leg. The bandage was soaked with bodily fluids so I assumed she had a cut underneath it all. Finally, we saw that she had a gaping hole in her shin area. As it got unwrapped more we saw the huge chuck of her knee that was missing. The Frenchman explained that a while ago she got a cut on her leg and developed an infection, this in itself was not a problem, but her parents didn’t have the money to bring her to get treatment, so they just left it. By the time they brought her to the clinic her entire leg was massively swollen from hip to foot. They had to cut out pieces of her leg to get rid of the infection and pulled about a liter of liquid from the area of infection. They cut right through her muscles straight to the bone to get rid of it all. She will never walk the same, if she walks at all, and in Cameroon this is detrimental because crippled people are shunned. And the probability of further infection in this very unsanitary environment is high. She was in the room alone while her mother waiting outside, worrying about how to pay at all for this, and was constantly screaming “doucement tonton doucement” (softly uncle softly.) People call their elders uncle and aunt often, but I was so struck by the fact that a 6 year old child was going through this, without any anesthetic whatsoever, squirming a bit but trying to stay still all while saying please just do it softly. Her reality is unlike anything I have ever encountered. She has to sit through someone cutting up her leg with no medication to ease to pain, or face death, all as a 6 year old child. I don’t think I will ever lose that image from my mind and it proves to me that no matter what academics say about Africa needed to help itself, and no matter how many people criticize different types of aid, as long as there are children like that here, I have work to do. She is my face of poverty. Her story portrays how unfair the world is. The sacrifices I make to be here are nothing compared to the pain she is going through just because of her parents’ neglect. I know this is corny but please take a minute to think about just how lucky we all are and maybe find the time in your busy life to do something for someone a little less lucky.

A local woman I interviewed

We live in paradise

Spending the afternoon by the beach with Jozy

So many boats!

No words for this.