Dear friends,
sorry for the wait, I'm alive and I'm good, I had promised to write but here the very first time really flies, there is always something to do and I realize that eventually those who puts you who live reflection of my adventure. Last night I said goodbye to the chagrin of Yaounde with when you return home after the summer holidays in two weeks when you have so much affectionate to people, places, habits that you seem to be part of your life forever, but then you are obligated to understand that those faces and those images were not merely content with an open parenthesis in the economy of a long novel. Semicolon. Starting over.
My two weeks in Yaounde were intense, chaotic metropolis, but is a very lively: the red dust that rises with the slightest hint of wind accompanying gestures, dances, brawl of thousands of Cameroonians that every day populate the streets, the old, multi-ethnic and westernized, forgotten neighborhoods, which happen to find one or two years of children who have never seen a white (there's a lot of white in some places but obviously we do not pass) .
Maybe I won because it is similar to my Milan, although more extreme and intrusive.
Yaounde is a city where everything is more aggressive.
Yaounde are taxis yellow for 200 francs take you everywhere and fill until you see the people sitting on the handbrake, Yaounde is the sound of car horns, the streams of people, military parades, Yaounde are the chickens who try to escape from bags where they were strung together with just tomatoes and a bag of rice for lunch on Sunday, Yaounde markets are endless, the smell of dried fish and the colors of spices, Yaounde Hilton is looking through its windows lit the finely "palace of death", day dilapidated building that you only notice the enormous votez Paul Biya written in black spray at night without laws home for street children.
Yaounde are beer 33 express and castel , T-shirts eto fils proudly worn by adults and children, women working in Yaounde are combing sisters, daughters and friends in the street at any hour of the day.
Yaounde are invented football fields in any open space and crowded from dawn to dusk.
Yaounde shops are tuned to Canal Plus.
Yaounde are the churches, cults, religious gatherings, associations of tontines .
Yaounde are embassies, Italian restaurants, cultural centers, the desire to emerge.
But the capital Yaounde is above all an African country where it dominates la contraddizione.
Difficile farci un'idea da su; difficile anche per me. Tina mi ha raccontato di un prete italiano a cui erano stati donati dalla sua chiesa un milione e mezzo di lire per la sua missione in Cameroun e alla domanda di due parrocchiani "Padre, dipendesse solo da lei, come impiegherebbe questi soldi?" questi aveva risposto "Vi pagherei il biglietto aereo perché possiate scendere giù a vedere le cose coi vostri occhi". Da noi domina ancora troppa mala-informazione (o comunque informazione ridotta) e appena sentiamo la parola Africa il nostro cervello la associa alle pance gonfie dei bambini, alla povertà, ai tamburi, alla gente pitturata. E già inconsciamente ci poniamo in una situazione di superiorità. Nella nostra head just can not see an Africa that is walking.
This is not a day passes without at least one person you have addressed the fateful plea " pleasant moi mon ami en Italie avec toi" (friend, take me with you in Italy). Italy then what they know? What they saw? Absolutely nothing. We respond that we have is good and beautiful. Po'circoscritta an analysis for the Eldorado. Why
last mail you wrote that the fault is a po'nostra and po'loro? And 'our (as West) because we have plundered the continent and continue to do so, we come down and not happy with our strong currency - many members of NGOs, researchers, volunteers, missionaries, volunteers civil service are paid in euro and then down in our countries can make a living from nabobs; stand the choices of people living real experiences to share. even the money - and without understanding of what is passed on the cultural context, spending and scatter, we give money, do not just beg our sympathy has been teased a minimum. Results: Children who will constantly yell cadeaux, cadeaux (gifts, gifts), the inability to relate on a par with a friend because it knows you have more, and then ask you forever (not a relationship of friendship because are similar, but because I can get something from you), people who invented sisters grandmothers, children and sick people because the white gets excited without investigating, and trust bestowed.
But the Cameroonians are certainly not exempt from blame: first people work little, the work lacks a po'perché po'perché and we do not strive to look for or create. Even those few projects of whites willing to put up a firm with local staff to teach a business and create jobs, eventually ending, since it disappeared three days after a drill, after four ten employees will already have applied for a loan, people come to work one day a no.
Going around you feel a state of backwardness widespread but little effort to get out (not none, few). The problem of Cameroon is not poverty. They are mostly water, education and health. Problems related. Some examples? At the top of the list of causes of death in the country are malaria, AIDS and road accidents (in that order).
The last is not even the case to analyze it: if you go to 200 per hour and you crash you're an idiot. Both in Italy and in Cameroon (and do not cite the excuse of the condition of the roads, if you go to two hundred per hour on a rough road you an idiot twice).
AIDS kills in Cameroon as in few other countries in the world (it is second to South Africa to other African countries). The money to buy condoms do not miss anyone, use it or not is a choice. That the disease is spread by sexual contact, perhaps in a few villages still do not know, Yaounde know well the walls. But here the head always tells you that you must have a personal and immediate return in full. Apply it to the sphere of pleasure and you explain the 9.9% of HIV in the capital.
Malaria is the most difficult case. The reasoning to do is this: to cure, to treat other diseases as the government and families spend a ton of money. NGOs are raising awareness in the districts saying that to avoid to prevent typhoid fever, and Ebola verminosis must be careful to water putrid and infected (for malaria in not near as it attracts mosquitoes, in the other three do not drink or eat things that have been surrounded by bad water), not considering that few people in the house running water and even less to have it filtered, purified and ionized salinized. And wherever open sewers, marshes, streams of black water that flow through the houses. Why was the money he spends in the care and raising them at least the capital invested to build a sewer system of respect? Maybe because in this way the money coming from international organizations, which can then turn round to your liking without realizing it-and often then again to swell the coffers in the West? Maybe because the long-term projects are not even provided - as recently from the rest of us - why not give immediate results? Perhaps because the projects are faced with a slow bureaucracy, with thousands of permits and authorizations and with a lace to be paid to any official in the word you ask? I a response when you do not provide the know. Documentatevi you, think, debate, stimulated contradditemi.
All this I am writing from my bed Mbalmayo. I will miss the community of the CASS: Tina, Claire, AnneMarie. At home with them was just a nice atmosphere enhanced by pleasant chats and long debate on what everyone (who is here for many years and who has just arrived) see, appreciate or understand of this country.
In these two weeks I was welcomed by children's soccer despite my sore ankle, and it was really nice to know, know the way they play, share training, participate in challenges, solve problems together.
I watched the boys dance dance and percussion group play and was surprised by the talent of some of them and afternoons spent tirelessly to try to improvise, to play with the body and the rhythm in a masterly way.
I spoke to children, so curious, with a surprising range, often in search of a hug or a hand, a po'd'attenzione a summary of affection, which may not always home è dato.
Ho conosciuto gli animatori, preparati e determinati (non sempre presenti e coordinati), ho imparato ad apprezzare i loro metodi di lavoro e la loro passione. Ho visitato le altre strutture del centro, mi sono fatto un idea di cosa fanno e come lavorano.
Tra i momenti più forti ricordo le visite in quartiere: un occasione per uscire e cercare di dare testimonianza tra gli ultimi con la nostra presenza; la presenza di bianchi che non sono qui né per dare né per insegnare, ma solo per ascoltare. Con la voglia di capire.
Mi porterò dietro il sorriso di Lela e gli scherzi di Georgette.
La voglia di Moise di imparare a suonare la chitarra.
L'estro calcistico di Alexi e Sussa.
Le prime parole Gaetana
spells and lies of Anjo.
The beautiful voice of Junior. The big face
Aisha.
Daniel and Ezekiel.
time delivery with an extra suitcase: a wealth of positive memories that I carry around on the road. With great affection
JJ
ps de Andre said that the flowers come from manure. Look at this flower born a few years ago in a mud hut, where he still lives
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