Round Cameroon with a Backpack and a Blog

Songs from Mbosha

Every now and then we go on a site visit that is so heartwarming it’s hard to leave.  Visiting the tiny village of Mbosha was like that.  It’s settled in the midst of several hills, and “bumpy” does not adequately describe the barely-a-road you take to get there.  (I was amazed that our little car made it, although we did eventually have to change a tire…)  There’s no electricity, and the only way the villagers can get cell phone reception is by climbing a hill.

In Mbosha, Self Reliance Promoters’ NGO (SEREP) is working with the local women’s group on a palm oil project and building a new health center so that they can move out of the tiny rented house they’ve been using all these years.  Pharmacist Ndzenyuy Juliette Yofun and birthing attendant Ngoran Benedicta Kibong, both SEREP-trained, showed us around their current clinic.  Benedicta has delivered 71 babies in the tiny room in back, barely fifty square feet.

According to Juliette, the women’s group got together and decided they needed to bring in outside help to get a new health center.  It’s unusual for the women of a village to make a unilateral decision on something like this without the men, but since medicine and maternity are their responsibility anyway they decided they would take charge.  (In fact, I never saw a single man while we visited the site—just eight or nine women and several dozen children.)  Juliette refers to SEREP Managing Director Wirkom Fred Mbiydzenyuy as their “leader”—“I told him that our group needs advice so he comes here.”  Fred’s been helping the village plan and execute all the work that can be done locally, and bringing in specialists and outside materials for things like roofing and digging a safe latrine.  He was also managing a project that helped the women’s group buy and sell palm oil for food and income, but since the money for that project has dried up they’re now focusing all their energy on the health center.  There’s no other medical help nearby, so once the center is finished people will come from miles away.  In addition to providing medical services for the community, the small amounts of money the health center raises will help pay for food and other necessities for the women who work there.

I asked Benedicta, one of the few women who speaks a little English, about the women’s group.  Without a doubt, she said, it makes them all happier.  “We talk together, we connect together, we work together; if I have a problem they help me.”  Those who couldn’t speak with us sat together in the health center, laughing and nursing babies as we looked around. 

When we pulled out a certificate to award SEREP as a vetted GlobalGiving partner, the whole room went wild!  Anyone would have thought we’d showed up with a bag of money.  Everyone passed the certificate around, yelling and clapping.  Within a few moments, everyone was singing—first a song about how “dignity of labor is our motto,” and then another that said “we work hard, we will do what you want us to do.”  They even substituted our names into a few verses.  Every woman came around to hug us, clasp our hands, and say a few words in their language.  They thought it was hysterical when we told them that one of the gestures is called a “high five” in the US, and were soon shouting “high five!” as they clapped each other’s hands.  Two dozen children (several of whom were born in that very room) flooded the doorway, staring at us strange-looking people and listening to the songs.

Before we left the women insisted on sitting us down for a big meal of potatoes and cabbage… the second of three lunches we would be served at villages that day!  On our way out they gave us a sack of potatoes so big I could hardly carry it, and sang one final song welcoming us to their village.  I wish we had an extra day to go back!