CAMEROON, Bamenda :: General Links, GHAPE, Kiva & Microcredit

Expanded July 1: For those that still don’t know what Megan and I are doing at 1000 meters (altitude) and 6-degrees (north, latitude), here are some quick links and a general explanation:

• Megan’s got a Kiva Fellows blog exclusively for our 3-month stint working for Kiva, which is partnered with a local NGO, GHAPE. Read it. There’s great bits on GHAPE, plucking corn, life in Bamenda, and the epic, mud-laden journey getting here. When they say “bad road” they mean BAD road.
• On the Kiva website, here’s general info on GHAPE.
• THE GIST: GHAPE - Grounded and Holistic Approach for People’s Empowerment – is an organization that helps to extend Empowerment Credits (microloans) to Cameroonian people in Northwest Province who have no collateral. The text-heavy sign in the photo also provides highlights. The GHAPE head office – conveniently, also where we live – is in the largest English-speaking city in Cameroon, Bamenda. There are over a dozen satellite sites in outlying communities, most set within lush farmland. Every week, GHAPE employees go out to the field to interact with members during center meetings and collect repayments. GHAPE empowers people by providing lines of credit (money), akin to a credit union or bank, but also offers life-skills and community building. (The GHAPE Anthem, sung at every meeting, has each stanza end with, “Goodbye to poverty, Goodbye to Ignorance, Goodbye to HIV/AIDS” – if it’s catchy, it’s because almost all rules/content/ideas/songs come from the local people and founders, not from the outside.) Kiva collects money from anyone in the world, and funnels funds through GHAPE to reach farmers, seamstresses, and other entrepreneurs directly. I think of Kiva as the “money” end and GHAPE as “doer/collector” end in the world of microcredit. Kiva sends volunteer “Fellows” like Megan and myself to like-minded groups like GHAPE – there are many worldwide – and we help where we can.
• One of our jobs is writing LOTS of journals of Kiva clients. Here’s the first one I did. On this page, skip below the dark photo of Godlove Shu – hey, nice name – and initial bio for the latest information. Unlike blogs, the new info is not at the top. One of our main jobs is to update photos, their loan projects, personal info, etc. We do NOT actually give the money away to people in poverty – that’s the job of the GHAPE field managers – but sometimes they let us count the repayments, which is fun.
• Megan’s kicking my butt. She’s been getting terrific comment feedback from her journals. Again, skip to the bottom of this page for Megan’s journal and photo of a farmer, Magdalene Mankah, with her son.
• Does that make sense? Do a search for “microcredit,” and you’ll get the picture – as well as sponsored links to Kiva . They’re from San Francisco, they’re good at buying Google ads.

CAMEROON, Mefou :: Monkeys! “Put Your Hands On Me, You Dirty Ape” *

* Quote obviously In Memory of Charlton “from My Cold, Dead Hands” Heston. Planet of the Apes, still a classic.

It’s what you’ve been waiting for.

After vehicular disasters.

After unclaimed persons curbside.

We have MONKEYS! More scientifically, Baboons, Chimps, Gorillas and Drills (wait, those are monkeys).

These we saw at a primate sanctary, created by the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund in Mefou. It’s a wild 45-minute taxi and motorbike ride south of the capital, Yaounde, and with Visa extensions in limbo for several days we ventured outta town (don’t ask! Ok, ask: we finally did get our Visas extended ’til August; so here we’ll stay through July). The Worldwide Wildlife Fund offices in Yaounde told us about 100% wild habitats in the far corners of the Congo basin, but we opted for something closer to get our feet wet – with electrical fencing as a bonus! It’s actually incredible the spacious room they get – several acres per species sanctuary, and they say 1044 hectares of forest, total. Think of little wired jungles surrounded by old-growth forest. The primates are all left behind as babies when poachers kill the mommies or are taken from illegal private “homes”. Most can’t rehabituate, they told us, though some might be able to someday.

Eventually, three days later, we travelled down to one National Park on the south Cameroon coast bordering Equatorial Guinea, Campo Ma’an, which was gorgeous, but the most animal life we saw were monkeys from afar – and we heard a leopard purrrrrrrrrrrr just off the trail. For conservation’s sake, the limited interaction was probably a good thing.

For now, enjoy the photos! Click once on photos for your primate close-ups. Check out the CWAF photo/video gallery here for more monkey shines.

Ok, all those above was from Mefou. But the week before, we caught some interesting time with monkeys at zoo run by CWAF, mentioned above. Megan, Claire (her friend working for the World Health Organization), and I enjoyed a swell day. But not as swell as this guy’s:

That Yaounde zoo was fairly crazy – the electrical fence went down, and baboons and monkeys literally ran wild. Imagine after seeing lions, hyenas and crocs, you  look up above a cage, and go, “Is that baboon OUT of his cage?” Then the red-butt-cutie climbs down off the cage to give us our answer. Our guide used his wits and advanced knowledge of stone throwing to keep the animal at bay. It was merely curious and harmless (we think). No pics for that – we were on the move. BREAKING MAY 18 NEWS: Los Angeles has the same problem with freedom-loving orangutans (video). Can’t blame this one on constant power outages, though.

One month before, we visited an amazing rehab & breeding center for monkeys, the Drill (monkey) Ranch in Calabar, Nigeria. This is one of the most endangered primate species in the world.  To the right are some materials they offer and below is a this is just one of about 30 monkeys in this mini playland. It was created by people from my hometown, Portland, with help from the Nigerian government (though, they say they have another spot in Limbe, Cameroon, that gets more gov support). They started 3 places total, and you can read more here. The very sweet Boston-based zoo keeper stresses that most employees are Nigerian, and with chimps, too, it’s worth checking out – if you make it through the dreaded 2-day-doomed-rides through Nigeria.

Just in case you still think any animal in a cage is inhumane, (I don’t; many of these animals would be dead or house-slaves otherwise, and for the species, like drills, it’s their chance to be around beyond the next 50 years), consider the plight of this manic monkey below, that sat scared and jittery for 5+ hours of a bus ride from the north of Ghana to Kumasi, the cultural center of the country. If you ever think of getting a pet monkey, don’t. These eyes don’t say “great pet” they scream “get me to a tree – now!”:

PHOTOS :: From Beasts to Beauties

As of May 7, on my fumbling flickr page, it’s still a bunch of semi-chronological, mostly unrelated Photos from Senegal to the Nigeria/Cameroon border. Crazy bus shots (large farm animals and motor bikes are typical cargo), the giant club made famous by Fela Kuti in Lagos, and photos of our uneventful (“dead”) 24-hour spell in Togo – all are present. But only ONE cute farm animal – a pig – representing Cameroon is present. Captions also fill in the details.

1000s to come. Probably in some boring 4-hour marathon slideshow in Chicago and possibly the West (August 2008? Likely!) Benin, one hiccup ride before Nigeria, may not be represented – sorry.

Megan’s photo coordination of our pics is worthy of Dancing With the Stars. She is making organized, logical, and chronological folders of all our “best of…” shots together, so refer to Megan’s 100s of images with keen captions (as opposed to digital scraps). Beasts of burden and Megan are one thing, but you can’t beat this smile for cuteness factor:

Back story: Before leaving Senegal for the Malian border, we had a 2-hour “pause” on our journey at a road stand when a passenger forgot a bag. Long delays are normal, so you make the best of it. We made friends with the kids selling us bags of frozen hibiscus juice, our first venture outside purified bottle drinks. This girl really dug the Ipod, and lit up to “Good Day Sunshine” by Beatles. Not sure she thought too much of Aphex Twin.

FROM ALL OVER EU/W.AFRICA :: Postcards! Postcards! & More Postcards! (Check Here Often)

(Update: New postcards from Burkina “where?” Faso added May 27. Click once on each thumbnail to read the nitty gritty. The one on the right tells 3 B.F. episodes, including a short tale of trying to get into Ghana twice at the wrong border crossing. We thought we could be cavalier and enter – the map had a little icon for “border crossing” – but alas, we got turned back. Twice. More police, more guns, more fun!)

< children rule :: Burkina Faso rules>

(Update: New postcards added May 10. Click once on each thumbnail. Written January in Morocco. Last two on right, yes, “Berber whiskey” (mint tea) and “love camels,” are the same as those at bottom of post, but with face of card added.)

I believe at this point I’ve sent at least one postcard to everyone who sent me their updated address. If you did not get one, um, feel free to flame email me, “Dude, where’s my card?”

Because I obsessively collect images/items on camera, and I don’t really trust the post offices, I’ve taken a photograph of every postcard before I’ve sent them out. This helped in Morocco when it was actually ME losing the card before it went out (sorry, Ami in Chicago). Thus, I have a digital backup that I can EMAIL to people. Touche!

There’s another bonus. I’m collecting all my postcards on this post so people can see a general “what-David-or-Megan-was-thinking-at-X-location” overview of our 7.2 month trek. Elation, frustration, or both, you get it here. Oh, and if this is tacky, I’m thinking the ends justify the means. For one, about 75 percent of my writing is on postcards, not journals or blogs. Also, I’ve blacked out most addresses and names, so I’m not divulging personal info. As Milan Kundera writes in the book Megan and I are finishing, Immortality (Megan has a 5-star review here on goodreads.com) every letter you write can conceivably go out to the world after you die, so why wait? Here’s the dirt.

Plus, most everyone I’ve asked says, “Go ahead and use them online.” More will come later. Click once for full size. On the left is about the so-called “Hollywood” of Morocco, and the right, a top 10 list of things we love/hate on Morocco (mostly love).