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The Friends of Cameroon has designed a stunning, multilingual “pagne” (the six-meter length of African cloth) that incorporates the Peace Corps logo, the continent of Africa, and the names of all the countries where Peace Corps has ever been active in Africa. FOC is now taking orders for the cloth for imediate shipping.
Each piece is enough cloth for one woman’s outfit or 2 to 3 men’s jumpers. The cloth also makes a creative table cloth, window curtain, wall decoration, and more. The pagne project helps to fund development projects in Cameroon, including four HIV/AIDS education projects that FOC funded in 2006.
We arranged for another printing of the pagnes in Cameroon and have a limited number available. Since they sold out last time, do not delay to place an orders. Normally, the price is $38 plus $6 shipping per piece.
Ordering information
To order the cloth, which will ship immediately, send a check for the number of pieces you would like made out to “Friends of Cameroon.” Please send payment to:
FOC Pagne
13201 Stravinsky Drive
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Since the organization was established in 1987, the Friends of Cameroon has funded more than two dozen village-based development projects in Cameroon, valued at more than $30,000. Projects have been located throughout the provinces of Cameroon, and have included a foot bridge in Kumba in the South West, a safe for Maga Health Clinic in the Extreme North, a beekeeping project in Njinikom in the North West, and a school for the deaf in Yaounde. Projects typically are in the health, education, and community development sectors.
The most recent projects funded were four community-based development projects worth 1.589.670 CFA ($3,117) FCFA, were located in Makak in the Center, Mvangan in the South, Batouri in the East, and in Yagoua, Extreme North Provinces, and focused on HIV/AIDS education and outreach. The projects were selected for the various methods proposed to reach out to local communities and educate the populations about the dangers of HIV/AIDS and how to protect against the deadly disease. The proposals were submitted by local organizations working in concert with Peace Corps Volunteers assigned to the areas.
FOC projects have included:
FOC support of $621 to the Club des Jeunes Aveugles Rehabilites du Cameroon helped the group, made upof blind and vision-impaired persons, expand their poultry business in Yaounde with the purchase of a freezer for their store.
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In 2004, FOC funded the purchase of a cassava grinder for the Neyokoty Ariey Cooperative in the Acha Etemetek village. The grinder, purchased for $820, helped the village group to expand its business while making the grinding of cassava more easily availableto the local community.
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One of FOC’s earliest projects was the construction of a footbridge crossing the Kumba River, easing the travel of villagers to the main market in Kumba. FOC contributed $1000 towards the construction of the bridge.
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In the Eastern Province, FOC support of $1,000 helped to purchase a mixed gas and electric refrigerator for the health clinic in Sokamalam, shown with the health center chief Nguel Isiclure. The fridge is used to store vaccines and allow the clinic to reach more people. The project was guided by PCV Jennifer Goldman.
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FOC supported the “Modern Beekeeping Project” of the Boyui Young Farmer’s Club in the North West, which allowed them to purchase needed equipment to improve their hives (such as the one under the arrow) and expand their honey production and group income.
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FOC project requirements
In order to be eligible for FOC funding, the applicant must live in Cameroon, be Cameroonian and/or working in Cameroon with either a private, non-profit organization, a cooperative or registered non-profit, or a village-based organization for by villagers for a communal purpose. The majority of the members of the applicant organization or the majority of the beneficiaries must be Cameroon citizens. It is required that the applicant is planning to provide, in cash or in kind, a minimum of one-fourth of the total cost of materials and/or labor of the project(s) supported by FOC funds.
The Friends of Cameroon was established in the United States in 1987, and the group’s members include persons who worked and lived in Cameroon as Peace Corps Volunteers, staff of the U.S. Embassy, USAID, and missionaries. The primary function of the organization is to keep members informed about Cameroon, continue to link those who served there, and to support small, community development projects in the country.
(Exclusive story on Cameroon protests in Washington, D.C. and interview with Cameroon Embassy)
By Andy Matthews
Editor
The Mount Airy News
WASHINGTON, D.C. ? A spokesperson for the Cameroon Embassy said on Friday that anti-government protesters are not looking for a peaceful resolution to their quarrels with President Biya’s administration, suggesting that they prefer instead to incite riots and civil unrest that have led to the country’s worst violence in the last 15 years.
Modeste Michel Essono, the First Secretary of Communication for the Embassy of Cameroon’s Communication Center, also said that some Cameroon protesters in the United States are deliberately misleading the media, providing news outlets with sensational stories of government brutality so that they can seek refugee status in the United States. The military was forced to act, Essono said, to restore order in the country, adding that there is no way to know if some of the deaths linked to the military’s crackdown weren’t “accidents” separate and apart from the demonstrations.
“The duty of the government is to protect the people; to make sure everything is done peacefully,” Essono said in an exclusive interview with The Mount Airy News from his D.C. office. “These people ? these protesters; they show you a lot of pictures. They just come here with pictures of dead people. How are they sure they did not die in accidents? How are they sure they are killed by the military . . .
“They just want to go out and start fires everywhere. Why do this? They just want to create some stories to convince people there is unrest in Cameroon . . . They are insulting their own country.”
Essono’s comments came as about 100 hundred protesters gathered Friday morning in front of the Cameroon Embassy to demonstrate against President Paul Biya just weeks after protests rocked the central African country, leading to the worst violence the country has seen since 1992. Human rights activists claim that more than 100 lives were lost and many more injured. The Cameroon government initially placed the death tool at 15 but has since raised it to 40.
Biya wants to amend the Cameroon constitution to allow him to go on ruling until 2018 when he will be 85. Currently, the constitution says that Biya cannot stand for another seven-year term in the 2011 elections.
Property damage from the protests, which began February 25, has been estimated at 10 billion CFA francs (23.4 million dollars). Between 1,500 and 1,700 people are thought to have been arrested so far. Many have been sentenced to prison terms in a process that has been decried by the independent press as unfair.
Taxi drivers parked their vehicles and many cities resembled “ghost towns” as protesters burned tires, tossed stones at vehicles and destroyed some gasoline stations. The protests were a response to a rise in fuel and living costs. The government has since cut fuel prices marginally and said it plans to raise civil service pay.
Standing in front of a crowd of demonstrators, Chief Alexander Tabre lifted up a bullhorn as he excoriated the Cameroon government for what he called the brutal repression of free speech and prominent opposition leaders who he says are routinely locked up by the military when they oppose Biya’s desire to extend his presidential rule.
“My friends, we do not know the exact numbers of children who have died,” Tabre shouted, turning his voice and attention to the large three-story Cameroon Embassy complex. “We don’t want the United States or the United Nations to come after people have died. We want to avoid that. We want a peaceful transition of power.”
If anyone is to leave, Tabre said, it should be Biya.
“The only person we want to exile is Biya,” Tabre shouted as the crowd exploded in applause and cheers of “Yes we can!”
As more protesters continued to gather in front of the Cameroon Embassy, the small grassy area was adorned with signs demanding that Biya step down. “No to Constitutional Change” said one sign. “No to Biya’s Life Presidential Bid After 26 Years,” said another. “Amnesty International: Cameroonians Need Your Help,” said a sign that showed a beaten, bloody body on a hospital stretcher. “President Bush Helps the Cameroonians,” said yet another placard.
Larry Eyong-Echaw laid out the protester’s requests.
“We want peaceful change through elections,” he said as the crowd chanted “Down With Biya.” “We don’t want bloodshed. We want a peaceful resolution . . Biya wants to put his son in power.”
It’s difficult to imagine how an opposition party will be able to wrest control from Biya since all opposition leaders are called unpatriotic if they criticize the president. In a rare television appearance on Feb. 28, three days after the riots began, Biya accused demonstrators of manipulating youths to destroy property and called them “demons.”
Organizers of Friday’s protests still believe that they can use the power of the media, the Internet and diplomacy to achieve their goals. They want to avoid civil wars that have plagued other African countries.
“The only way to get results is through international pressure,” said Admin T. Tazifor, who like many protesters, drove several hours all night to arrive at the early morning protest.
Two protesters, Talla Corantin and Eric Tagne, say they are political exiles in the United States. If they return to Cameroon, after organizing anti-government protests, they will be arrested by the military.
“We cannot do this in Cameroon,” Corantin said. “This is forbidden in Cameroon.”
Tagne agreed, noting that his wife and daughter remain in Cameroon while he tries to find them a home in America.
“If I go back, I’m dead,” Tagne said. “As a student I organized a strike and I was tortured.”
Larry Eyong-Echaw said that the United States and France are “colluding” with multi-national corporations to reap the benefits of Cameroon’s natural resources.
“If you take our oil, you must take our refugees,” Eyong-Echaw told a cheering crowd.
There was one tense moment in Friday’s demonstrations as members of the Civil Society Platform for Democracy in Cameroon, which organized the protest, delivered a letter to Cameroon Embassy officials. Washington, D.C., police moved toward the crowd, instructing demonstrators not to cross the street.
The letter to Cameroon Parliamentarians pleads with government officials to oppose a constitutional amendment that would allow Biya to extend his rule until 2018.
“We remain hopeful that the President of the Republic will listen to the message we sent to him,” the March 14 letter says in part. “Nonetheless, we are cognizant of the fact that you remain the voice of the people and we are calling on you to recognize the potential for civil unrest and political instability that may ensue if the intention to modify the constitution is put into effect.”
Andy Matthews
Editor
The Mount Airy News
www.mtairynews.com
Amatthews@mtairynews.com
1-336-749-8974
Published Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2008, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
For most recent college graduates, living in over 100-degree temperatures with no air-conditioning, television or fast food in sight would not be a top choice, but Kate Donovan, 24, chose to do exactly that when she graduated from Boston College in 2006.
Donovan is one of the thousands of Peace Corps volunteers who have enlisted with the organization every year since its creation by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Donovan felt that “this was an experience that only came around once,” and that this was the best time in her life for it.
So, rather than returning to Sarasota, where she was born and raised along with her sisters, Patricia and Deirdre, and her brother, Sean, she packed her bags and flew, drove and rode to Mayo-Oulo, a small village in a northern province of Cameroon, Africa. Donovan has already completed 15 months of her commitment, and will return to Cameroon soon to finish her last year.
In her time in Mayo-Oulo, Donovan has been hard at work teaching elementary students about basic hygiene and high school students about the importance of HIV/AIDS prevention and testing, and doing prenatal consultations with expectant mothers.
In addition, she recently completed a project to build latrines at the local elementary school where previously there were 900 students and 12 teachers, but no bathroom facilities, save a garbage pile behind the school.
After returning to the village, Donovan will begin planning her next project: repairing three wells in low-income areas of the village and four in “the bush,” with construction beginning in February.
Without these wells, villagers have had to walk three kilometers each way to get to the nearest water source. Donovan hopes that the repairs will allow the wells to provide water during the dry season, which usually lasts from December to March. In the last year, Donovan has become a teacher, a nurse and a civil engineer
But she said she was most excited to return to the United States to begin her next chapter as a law student and fiancée to Brian Pennington, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis.
By Mark Wineka
Salisbury (NC) Post
12/26/07
To reach the extreme north region of Cameroon, where Salisbury’s Ryan Lesley works as a Peace Corps volunteer, count on almost a five-day trip.
It takes two days of air travel, one day on a train, a 10-hour bus trip, then catching a ride on a market (flatbed) truck for several more hours to his village of Hina.
Lesley, 24, lives daily without running water or electricity and depends on a pit latrine for a bathroom. He takes bucket baths to stay clean, and his meals consist of Hina staples such as fried bean paste and onions, native sauces and grilled meats.
The next nearest Peace Corps member is 52 kilometers away.
For transportation, Lesley relies on his feet, a mountain bike, motorcycle taxis or a market truck. He stays in a two-room, concrete-block house, different from most of the mud huts with thatched roofs that dominate the rest of Hina, a village of about 5,000 people.
For entertainment, Lesley goes to the home of a friend with a generator and joins others in watching Champions League soccer on television.
At night, the friend also shows videotaped movies. Lesley thinks he has seen every Kung Fu movie ever made.
Lesley has adapted to a “solar schedule,” waking at sunrise as the prayer call sounds for the mosque at the end of his street.
Concentrating on agri-forestry, he has followed three other Peace Corps coordinators before him in serving as an extension agent — a stretch, when you consider his background as a history graduate from Wake Forest University.
But it fits with Lesley, who studied a semester in Nepal; is an experienced summer landscaper, backpacker and Eagle Scout; and has always had an interest in the outdoors and other cultures.
In Cameroon, Lesley has worked with nurserymen in propping up their businesses and helping with orchards, alley cropping and wood lot plantings. He’s all about creating something that will be sustained long after he closes out the Peace Corps program in Hina next year.
Since his arrival in Hina, some 5,000 trees have been planted — a way to fight desertification, or the advancement of the Sahara. He often works with a close friend and nurseryman, Djoulde.
In addition, Lesley’s “very open job description” has him teaching and tutoring English. (Fufulde is the predominant language of the Grand North, and French is favored second.)
Lesley also participated with other Peace Corps volunteers in this northern region in a 125-kilometer bike tour through six villages to raise AIDS awareness.
The tutoring and a separate needs assessment he completed for Hina has led Lesley to create a special Peace Corps project aimed at putting more text books in the high school.
Typically, he says, the students have one book per 100 students. Lesley has written a proposal, which is on the Peace Corps Web site, that is trying to raise $4,251 toward a text book library and scholarships for three girls to continue their high school education.
His goal is to provide the high school with 300 additional textbooks, so there are at least 10 books per class. Each student would pay a small fee to use the textbook library, and those fees would be reinvested to buy more school materials.
In his teaching, Lesley also has discovered that girls are vastly underrepresented in the Hina high school. Of 800 students, only 50 to 60 were girls, Lesley says. For financial reasons or because a girl may have to get married, few women complete high school or even reach that level.
On another front, Lesley is writing a new proposal to build bore wells to provide drinking water for three different communities. About 4,000 people would benefit from the three wells. The communities have to raise about $400, and a non-government organization would provide the rest of the funding.
Lesley also is trying to raise funds for Abdoulaye, a 21-year-old graduate of the high school who has just finished his first semester at university.
“The community is outstanding,” Lesley says of Hina. “They’re so supportive, nice and caring. They accepted me so quickly, and they love the Peace Corps and everything we’re doing.”
It’s not that Lesley hasn’t faced challenges, however.
He lost 30 pounds while trying to cope with the diet changes and sickness. Over the first seven months, he dealt with six staph infections, although he feels fortunate that he hasn’t suffered the intestinal problems often common with other Peace Corps volunteers.
Lesley has done his best to ward against malaria and typhoid fever, which are common in a place where the temperature can reach 140 degrees and the rainy season swells rivers and makes any significant travel almost impossible.
Lesley says the people in Hina have such a different perspective on life than Americans, and that’s not necessarily bad. “Your job isn’t everything,” he says.
And while the people in this Third World region may seem impoverished by U.S. standards, they are generally happy and care deeply for one another, Lesley reports.
“The sense of community is something I’ve learned a lot about,” he adds.
Several months ago, a friend told him to quit wasting his money on food for dinner and eat instead with him and his wife. The wife prepares food much better than he did, Lesley acknowledges.
Lesley, son of Debbie Lesley of Salisbury and Jason Lesley of Georgetown, S.C., recently returned to Salisbury for the first time since leaving for Cameroon some 15 months go. He’ll head back in early January, and will be closing out the Peace Corps commitment to Hina next fall.
Lesley says he realizes that Peace Corps volunteers arrive in far-off places such as Hina and have “visions of grandeur,” believing they are going to be a force for great change.
But the reality is they enter places such as Hina with many challenges — rainy seasons, incredible temperature swings, lack of water, diseases, limited educational resources, meager medical facilities, no electricity and more.
And you learn quickly, Lesley says, that you make progress and create something sustainable in small increments. That’s OK with him, and the new friendships alone are an incredible bonus.
“There’s not many times in your life you can drop everything and take two years to do something like this,” Lesley says.
If you want to contribute to Lesley’s Peace Corps project for the textbook library and high school scholarships for three women, go to www.peacecorps.gov. A link on the left side of the Web page will say “Donate Now.” It will link you to the various volunteer projects. Go to the African link and scroll down to Cameroon, “R. Lesley of NC.” Donations are tax-deductible. The ADK teachers’ sorority in Rowan also has adopted Lesley’s projects.
http://www.PeaceCorpsWiki.com is now up and running. Peace Corps Wiki is a collaborative project whose goal is to create a free, interactive and up-to-date source of information about serving as a volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps. Anyone is welcome to edit, add, or change any entry, or start a new one. The beginning entries and original outline of Peace Corps Wiki were copied directly from the official Peace Corps website. Also, the Welcome Books for each country were turned into a wiki as the starting point for each country. (Both the Peace Corps website and Welcome Books are in public domain in the United States and outside of copyright, as they are the work of the United States Federal Government.)
