September 30th, 2014 by Rachel | Tags: Peace Corps | No Comments »
Training is very exhausting and intensive. It starts at 7 AM or 8 AM and runs until about 4:30 PM. We do have training on Saturdays too except that it ends at 12:30 PM. Sunday is the only day of the week when we are free. I have gotten more headaches than I normally would have, and it’s probably because I’m spending many hours listening to lectures and my brain is working harder in listening to accents that I’m not used to hearing. I have frequently asked myself, “How did I get through middle and high school where I sat for eight hours a day listening to lectures?” I often frequently heard that people with hearing loss do get headaches more frequently when they are in the classroom all day.
On the other hand, the training is a very rewarding experience and I wouldn’t trade my new job for anything else. I am receiving all the necessary information to ensure that my service will be successful and safe. The training includes lectures on cross-culture, technical skills, safety and security, and medical. We also have a French class.
On some days, the French class run for at least six hours. We will actually have the French class for a total of 120 hours by the end of training. I am placed in intermediate/advanced level which is very good because volunteers are required to be at intermediate or advanced level to be sworn in at the end of training. Intermediate/advanced level means that one can speak French fluently and has good grammar skills but needs to polish up on communication skills and improve vocabulary. My biggest weakness in French right now is learning how to listen well to different accents, especially in overhearing people’s conversations, and also vocabulary. It’s not that I need to secretly listen to other people’s conversations but being able to overhear means that I am also able to understand speech in any situations including communicating in large groups at cafés and holding conversations on the phone with ease. There is so much health terminologies that I need to learn in French. There were only three trainees including myself in our French class for the first two weeks. Every two weeks, they change our teachers and maybe some students’ placements. So, a few days ago, our teachers were changed and two trainees joined the three of us trainees. All French classes have no more than six trainees. My French teachers have been very open to working on meeting trainees’ and my needs in how we want to improve our French communication skills. For example, because we agreed that listening to different accents was something that we desperately needed to work on, we went to a bar during one class and sat with a few Cameroonians to just simply practice communicating in French.
If I am placed in a region where people speak Pidgin English or Fulfulde, I will have to also learn either language too based on where I’m posted. Pidgin English is based on English with some French and African local languages meshed in and is primarily spoken in Northwest and Southwest region. Fulfulde is a language that is primarily spoken in the Muslim community in Far North, North, Adamawa and East. I will find out where I will be posted on October 15th.
The cross-culture classes have been absolutely fascinating as we spend a lot of time understanding why Cameroonians and Americans interact and think the way they do. We’ve done a number of hands on group work where we had to create diagrams. For example, female trainees had to create a list of what are traits of men in general and male trainees had to do the same for women. Then the Cameroonian female trainers had to do the same, creating a list of what they thought of men and the Cameroonian male trainers had to do the same for females. It was quite interesting to see how perceptions of gender roles differed and were similar between the Americans and Cameroonians. Both American and Cameroonian men see women as strong and beautiful human beings. Cameroonian men saw women as caregivers and the ones who maintained the home while the American men saw women as independent and career driven people. While Cameroonian women saw men as breadwinners, American women saw men as career driven but sometimes lazy. Both American and Cameroonian women saw men as “macho.” The trainees then also had to create a graph showing how close we are in relationship to our family, friends, pets, colleagues and neighbors. The Cameroonian trainers had to do the same. The most striking difference was that Americans are generally super attached to their pets while Cameroonians in general do not really care so much about pets. Otherwise, Cameroonians and Americans both agreed that friends and family are equally important and they both generally don’t have very close relationship to their work bosses. It’s important to note that these opinions are just a small sample of Americans and Cameroonians and they do not represent everyone.
We’ve also been having classes on understanding how to perform our job in community health. We visited a community health center in Mengong last week to get a feel for what community health centers look like and how they are run. We also learned how the health system works in Cameroon. There are both private and public hospitals. Only 3% of Cameroonians have private health insurance. These are just a few little facts about the healthcare in Cameroon. I will later on write a blog exclusively about the healthcare. We still have so much more to learn about how to do our job.
