L'Américaine au Cameroun

So I’m a Small Enterprise Development volunteer here. That means I am posted to a microenterprise institution, in my case the MC2 Bank Bangou, and given a whole lot of free reign to do whatever I want. Anything even half-way related to small enterprise development works: SED volunteers have given businesses classes, led women’s empowerment seminars, counseled businesses one-on-one, assisted NGOs working in economic development, whatever. And then all volunteers are also expected to work on “secondary projects,” meaning just about any kind of good work you can muster up. Not exactly a tight job description, which is fine by me.

I spend about half my time at the bank, and have done everything from help Napoleon learn how to turn on the computer to assist the bank manager write reports about our loan portfolio. I also spent the first month or two just talking to people in the community, telling them what the Peace Corps is about and what I am interested in doing.

So one day, after I’d been here for about a month, I was lying on my couch in my sweatpants, flipping the pages of a People Magazine from 2004 and cursing the grilled fish I’d bought off a mommy on the street the night before when my door bell rang. Yvette, the accountant from my bank, and someone Yvette introduced as her sister came in for a visit. Turns out that Valérie had recently opened a preschool and was having a hard time making ends meet. Was there any way that I could help?

Well, I explained, I don’t have any money. So if you’re looking for money to help pay the bills for the school, I can’t help you. But what we can do is look at the money you do have and how you’re spending it and see if there is any way to make it stretch further. So we made an appointment for me to come see the school.

A few of the reasons why I expected outrageously horrible things from this school:

Francophone Cameroon still operates under the schooling system the colonists instituted in the 1930s. This means memorization, memorization, and more memorization. I’m talking about kids who answer essay questions by copying, word-for-word, entire paragraphs from their textbooks. Of course that’s if they have textbooks, but seeing as how kids have to buy their own books – and these books can cost as much as 30,000 CFA each – most don’t have the books. Corporal punishment is a-ok here, not a problem at all. Teachers often don’t get paid. Schools don’t have toilets; many don’t even have a latrine (meaning enclosed hole in the ground, for those lucky enough to never have squatted above one). Kids have a ‘manual labor period’ where they clear the school grounds with machetes. (Therese once asked me what kids in America do for manual labor period – I wish I had a video of that conversation.) Forty students per class, three kids crammed onto a bench made for two. So this, but with forty preschoolers . . . You can imagine why I had low expectations.

Valérie’s school is in a one-room bamboo-ceilinged house just up the road from my bank. On the appointed day, I knocked on the bamboo door and peeked inside. Forty little bodies wearing forty little pink pinafores, sitting in forty little chairs around five little octagonal tables.

“Dit bonjour au Madame Jessie.”
Forty little voices: “Bonjour, madame!”
“Say good morning to Madame Jessie.”
Forty little voices: “Good morning, madame!”

Now this certainly isn’t a preschool like any you’ve seen before, unless you’ve seen a preschool in Central Africa before. There’s no electricity or running water. But they color, even if they have to share the crayons. They sing a French version of head shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes. They have naptime. It doesn’t matter if there’s only one bed, because Africans can sleep anywhere.

As cute as this all is, there’s one big piece here: These kids are learning French. See, we’re villageois here in Bangou, and that means that folks speak patois at home. Most kids don’t go to school, and those that do rarely go to preschool first. They show up for their first day of primary school, and many of them are thrust three-deep into those two-seater benches not understanding French. Three-deep in an awful learning situation and miles behind before the class even starts. But not Valérie’s kids. They are going to show up understanding French, speaking a little English, knowing the alphabet and able to write their names.

Valérie and I spent months meeting once a week after school. We started by adding up all the tuition the parents have paid and writing down all the money she has spent. This eventually led to a cash-flow analysis, which led to a break-even analysis. The break-even analysis eventually showed that, where she had charged 8,500 CFA tuition, she needs at least 11,500 to break even. Before her salary, of course. I thought this was all pretty clear, until Valérie said: “So, at the parents meeting, I’ll tell them the price next year will be 12,000 and I won’t take less than 10,000.”

“Valérie, you can’t take 10,000. You can’t take 11,000. You can’t take 10,499.” (I didn’t actually say 10,499 because I have no idea how to say that number in French.)

“But Jessie, 11,500 is a lot of money for people in Bangou.”

So I told Valérie this story of trying to buy an umbrella: I tried to buy an umbrella at the market my first week, long before I had any idea how bargaining works. The woman told me 2,000. I said 1,000. She said 1,500. I said 1,200. She said 1,500; look it’s a nice umbrella. I said 1,200 and it’s not even that big. She said 1,500 and I walked away. I walked away slowly, waiting for her to say “Donnez l’argent.”* But she never said “Donnez l’argent.”

“Valérie, how come she never said ‘Donnez l’argent?’”

“It wasn’t enough. And somebody else will pay 1,500.”

“Right, somebody else will pay 1,500. And 1,200 wasn’t enough. Why wasn’t 1,200 enough? How much do you think she paid for it?”

“How do I know what she paid for her umbrella?”

‘Well, she must have paid less than 1,500 for it, because she would sell it to me for 1,500. But she preferred not selling it at all to selling it for 1,200, so maybe she paid 1,200 for it.”

“Or maybe she paid 1,300 for it.”

“Right! Maybe she paid 1,300 for it. And if she sold it to me for 1,200 she would be giving me 100 CFA.”

So Valérie and I have done financial analysis, even though she might not know she knows how to do a break-even analysis. We’ve talked about marketing for next year. She’s formed a PTA and is planning an open house night. Lately we’ve been planning for next year’s expansion.

Preschool here is two years and each year has its own class. Her one-room school was sufficient for this year, her first, but next year her students will be in the second-year class and she’ll have a new first-year class coming in. That means that she’ll need another classroom and another teacher. And she’d like to hire on the two young women who currently walk the kids home as assistants. We’ve worked through a budget for next year. If all goes well, she’ll be getting a modest salary. Plus she’ll be creating three new jobs in Bangou – and seeing as how I probably have enough chairs in my living room to invite all of Bangou’s steady employers over for tea, that’s a big deal. The protestant church has an old school building they have agreed to rent at a good price. We’re applying for a grant to pay for new equipment, like tables and chairs, another chalkboard. I’d like to paint a world map on the wall of the new building.

It’s not exactly what I had in mind coming over here. But it’s fun. Valérie’s become one of my closest friends here. She’s helping me learn the patois and her house was one of my stops on my Christmas eating tour. She’s doing amazing work at her school, and I feel like I’m doing great work as well: Hopefully, what we’ve done means that her school will make it past its first few rough years. Bangou will have a few more jobs and some kids better prepared for school.

Plus, when I go for walks now, I don’t only get shouts of “La blanche! Jessie!” Sometimes I also hear: “Madame!”

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*“Give the money.” Always said under the breath, with a little roll if the eyes before they pick up something else to show you, saying, “Look, look, I have lots of nice things.”