April 18th, 2015 by Rachel | Tags: Peace Corps | No Comments »
Ruth’s shop. It’s where magic happens. On many days, you may not find me in the office of my host organization. You will instead find me on most days in the shop of my counterpart, Ruth, where I work with her to tackle many challenges in the disability community.
While Ruth is a treasurer for the Coordinating Unit of Association for Persons with Disability and President of Northwest Association of Women with Disability, she is also an entrepreneur. She owns a little shop at the Bamenda Main City Market, often also known as the “Big Market” as it’s the biggest market in Bamenda. She sells all sorts of items that would be found in a convenient store in the United States such as toothpaste, soap, sponges, milk powder, pasta, and toilet paper. In her little shop, she has two benches, each sitting on the opposite sides. Ruth often sits on one of the benches inside the shop or sometimes outside of the shop on a stool. As the market is often crowded and packed with people, people come and go in her shop throughout the day.
On many days, I sit on the bench that Ruth is not sitting on, and spend at least three to five hours talking and collaborating with her on work projects. This is what a conversation can be like on an ordinary day in her shop:
“Have you figured out how to monitor people for your malaria project?” said Ruth.
“I thought I have mentioned that in the proposal,” I said.
A woman walks in and says, “How much is the Nido milk?”
“2700,” says Ruth.
“I’ll buy it,” says the woman.
Ruth takes one of her crutches and pulls the milk powder can off the shelf with her crutch as it was sitting too high up for her to reach with her hands. She hands the milk powder can to the woman. The woman gives her the money.
“Ok. No, I mean, we still need to figure out how we are going to choose which homes we are going to visit to evaluate their hygiene and sanitation?” Ruth returns to our conversation.
“Well, I know we have said 50 to 60 people in the proposal, but I realize that is too much as it will take time away from other projects. Should we limit the number to about 25?” I said.
“Yes, about 20 to 25.”
“And we can choose people from each disability association meetings.”
“Yes, we’ll choose about 4 to 5 people from the disability association meetings.”
“And we’ll visit their homes every few months so that we can see if their behaviors have changed and also if they went back to old behaviors later on after if they changed their behavior.”
“Yes. And we won’t tell them when we will visit their homes.”
“Right, we don’t want them to get prepared by making their home clean just for us.”
In spite of distractions and noises, we get work done. We clarify our goals and guidelines for each projects.
“We need to contact Dorcas and find out when we should have a meeting on the malaria project,” I say on another day in the shop. Ruth pulls out her phone and dials Dorcas, a Community Health Educator at a university in Bamenda. A minute later, a meeting has been scheduled for the following day. We make our phone calls in the shop.
I bring print outs of my proposals for Ruth to review. I always have my calendar when I’m at her shop so that we can also plan our activities and meetings.
It’s also place where the light bulb gets turned on and so many inspirations and creativity become developed. Ruth and I both came up with the idea of integrating persons with disability into existing HIV/AIDS support groups, collaborating other volunteers in other parts of Cameroon to teach them about how to implement persons with disability into their assignments, and talk on the radio about malaria issues in the disability community.
Some men have come in the shop and asked to marry me. Some customers have sat with me to have deep discussions on colonization, cultural differences, religious beliefs. This was a great opportunity for me to work on Peace Corp’s second and third goal which is to share each other’s cultures. While one Cameroonian tried to persuade me to believe in the bible, I told him that I wished he would acknowledge that there are wide variety of beliefs and respect my and other people’s different beliefs. I then explained to him that the United States is a very diverse country where there are a variety of beliefs. Some little children have entered in just to stare at me with a tremendous curiosity. I have also learned some Pidgin with Ruth and other customers.
