Journey to Mokolo: Part III

Over the next few days I began to feel like the luckiest volunteer in the program. My site is perfect. I was awed by its ambience: cosmopolitan yet traditional. Women sit in colorful pagne skirts on the curbsides, surrounded by pots of beans and donut balls sizzling in oil, while their clients eat from aluminum bowls on benches or rugs that are supplied for their sitting. They speak fulfulde, French, Mafa, and Kamsiki, sometimes a melange of it all in one sentence.

Aside from these curbside cafes there are three restaurants and numerous shops along the town center, which are bustling with pedestrians, a few motos, and an occasional automobile. They offer nearly everything that the nearby city Maroua does, beds, electronics, custom carpentry, even soy smoothies (my newest guilty pleasure). There is a small vegetable market each day, with fresh lettuce, tomatoes, onions, etc laid on rugs lining the dirt road, where merchants wait. Fruits are scarce, but more likely to be found on Wednesdays. Each Wednesday merchants line the town for market day, where everyone, despite religions and cultures and even countries (many are from Nigeria), come together to barter for anything from eggplants to used clothing.

Not only is the city itself perfect, but also my living circumstances. My house has electricity, two bedrooms with closets (which are practically unheard of here), a kitchen, bathroom with running water, and a beautifully tiled living room. The outside of it looks like a Mexican hacienda. The soil surrounding it is so dry it is like sand on a beach, with the same color of walls, bright blue windows, and a bush of scarlet flowers lining the cement compound wall. I also have two Peace Corps postmates that live within a ten minute walk and are very cool: a 26 year old named Zach, who has curly dark hair and an easy-going demeanor credited to his homestate of California; and Emily, who is 23 and bright-eyed but with an edge. And on top of all this, I feel that I am most lucky because of the main project I inherited. It is a project to empower women by having them tell their stories in the media. Through a local radio program, digital photography, blogging, and other mediums, women will make their voices heard on gender inequalities such as underage marriage, female circumcision, and education access. Additionally, they are numerous local NGOs working on a plethora of issues in Mokolo, so that I will be able to partner with them as I plan other projects, such as my work with prisons, prostitutes, and street kids.

All of these combined have made for the perfect match for me. I returned to Bafia, my training site, with a profound sense of comfort that I will be okay for the next two years. And while I am trying to stay present and respect the now, it is somewhat difficult to not want to board that train again tomorrow.