VOLUNTEERING IN CAMEROON

I met my husband when he was involved with an international organization that sends volunteers overseas to work in developing countries, such as Cameroon. My husband is a Canadian who volunteered to spend 18 months in a rural area in northwest Cameroon, working with the local Council in the area of capacity building. The organization he was with was called VSO (now Cuso International), which works in over 40 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. The North American volunteer recruitment office is located in Ottawa. Cuso International focuses on certain key areas of development, including governance, health and education. (http://cusointernational.org/volunteer)

During the period my husband-to-be was in Cameroon, I found myself learning about the volunteer experience, while seeing my husband learn about the local customs, issues and people of his adopted home for 18 months. I had always thought the purpose of volunteering was to provide services to communities that could not afford to pay for themselves. However, what I learned from the many international volunteers that I met was that their intent of being there was not so much to provide a service, as it was to help the local people develop the skills they needed to take care of themselves.  For example, in the education sector, volunteers would spend some time with students, but the majority of their time was used in training teachers and helping improve the way the school system operated. Of course, the purpose of this approach is to help improve the school system to a point where it is no longer dependant on international assistance.

RAINY AND DRY SEASONS IN CAMEROON

Cameroon has two seasons which are the rainy and dry seasons. The rainy season begins in April and ends in November. Most streets, especially in the rural areas, are dirt roads, so they become very muddy during the rainy season, as you can see from the attached photos. Travel is very difficult, to a point where a simple trip can take three times as long, due to the condition of the roads. It is quite common for cars to get stuck on transit to remote villages, and are unable to move for several days. People sometimes have to spend one or two nights by their car on the road. It even happens that access in or out of town can be blocked because a car or large transport vehicle got stuck in the mud in the middle of the road. Depending in what part of Cameroon you are, the rains may come to an end mid October. The rainy season in the northern part of Cameroon has a rainy season that starts in May and ends in September.  Average rainy fall per year is between 1,500mm- 2,000 depending in what part of Cameroon you are. Most areas around the south coast get higher rain fall than areas in the northeast. Kribi, one of the cities around the coast, gets about 2,970 of rain each year.  

POVERTY IN CAMEROON

My home country of Cameroon, like many Sub-Saharan African countries, struggles with high levels of poverty. From an international perspective, the average gross domestic product per capita is estimated at approximately $2,300, compared with $41,100 in Canada. Unemployment in Cameroon is estimated at 30%, and 48% of the population lives below the poverty line.[i]
These statistics suggest that people struggle to survive in Cameroon, but I do not think statistics really tell a story the way it should be told. I would like to tell you a bit about life in the city where I lived before coming to Canada, as well as the village where my mother currently lives. To help with your perspective, try to imagine your own hometown looking like what I’m describing below, keeping in mind that Bamenda is a city of three hundred thousand people.