Letter 6, August 26, 2001

Lambaréné,

Hey everybody,

I just got back from site visit. My post is Ndendé, in southern Gabon. It's halfway between Mouila and Tchibanga, it's got a high school and a hospital and three grocery stores. I'm not really sure how big it is, but you can walk from one end to the other in about 15-20 minutes, American pace. African pace is 3x as slow, and that doesn't include stopping to chat with people.

I really like Ndendé -- it's not much to look at but it's got a good vibe. Small is good, because people are friendlier. In a year everyone will know me and what I'm about and it'll be my town, and I'll be their volunteer.

and Fougamou. Most of the way down the road was good -- wide like a 2-lane highway, and reasonably flat. There's a lot of washboard effect though, and you're basically just bumping along through the forest and grasslands for 6 hours till you get to Ndendé. We stayed in Mouila for the first couple days to do our bank accounts, and hung out with Patrick and Michelle, two health PCVs. At the bank on Monday we showed our ID and our letters saying we were w/ Peace Corps, filled out some forms, and waited. It was near the end of the month, which is when people get paid, so a bunch of people were there trying to get $ out. For the four of us, it took 2-1/2 hours.

Mouila's nice -- you can buy a lot of stuff there, there are a couple good restaurants and that's where I can receive calls (at the case de passage -- the PC "hostel". A third-year PCV lives there and it has the phone, a PC radio, and a computer. No internet!) and get my money. Jenny showed up with her Gabonese Muslim boyfriend Mohammed, who took us to Ndendé in his pickup. Not very many Gabonese are Muslim, but he converted 11 years ago after his kid was born. I guess he felt like he needed to get his act together, and Islam would help him do that. He is awesome, but more about that later.

So we got to Ndendé in the early afternoon on Monday. The landlord wasn't around, so we continued to Lebamba to drop off Tracy and Julie. Driving through Ndendé, we saw the Carrefour de Bonheur (the intersection of happiness/good times), the lycée, and the three grocery stores. That was pretty much it. (oh, also the hotel with the ping pong table out front). Not much to it, apparently.

[Ed. note: here is a link to a good web map of the area.]

Lebamba seemed much bigger and everyone talked about the market being awesome. People from Ndendé do a lot of shopping there because it acually has food , whereas there's only manioc, tubercule, and plantains chez nous. There's an American missionary hospital there, Bongolo, and I guess they get truckloads of American food and have movies and email. But they don't really like PCVs. I probably won't be visiting Bongolo that often -- I'm still in roughing-it mode.

We got back to Ndendé just after dark and got into the house. Heather, the last PCV, left in March to get treatment for her shoulder (she was in a car accident). Her rehab took more than 45 days, so she was medically separated. Some kids broke in after she left and took clothes, all the English books, tapes, and other stuff. We found a couple pots and skillets, the stove, two beds, one mattress, a table and chairs, some shelves with health info binders and PC manuals and Heather's old fiches (visual aids). The gas tank was still there so we were able to cook all week. The electricity had been turned off so I went across the street to the little grocery store and bought candles and the guys there were Malian, so I greeted them in Bambara. The next morning Jenny went out to get croissants and pain au raisins from the bakery, and was greeted in Bambara by several people. Word had already spread that there was a white girl who knew Bambara! Throughout the rest of the week random people would greet me, and I met more people, and they were all really pysched to hear me speaking their language.

But I'm not here to chill with the Malians all the time. Jenny's boyfriend's aunt, Ma Christine, was our real guide for the week. The first day she took us around to meet the prefet and get our documentation done, and meet landlords. My postmate, Mike Rickard, is awesome -- he's got a very dry sense of humor, is pretty quiet -- he's not what you'd call a people person, but he's super funny. His French is at the point where he can understand most of what's going on, and he can express himself ok. He'll improve really fast though. Anyway, Mike doesn't really care where he lives, so he's agreed to live in Heather's old house, which is pretty moche (ugly). It's in a compound, part of a duplex, and the entrance is a rusted iron gate/door that clangs when it moves. That door opens onto a dark hallway, and the door to the house is on the left.

The house is concrete and we cleaned it -- rats had made nests in the oven and all around, but it wasn't too bad. There's just no porch and no place to plant a garden -- it's like a prison with the clanging gate and the views out onto walls. Bleh.

When we met the prefet we asked about houses and he mentioned one by the lycée. Tuesday evening after walking around Ndendé, we stopped by and checked it out. No one was there to let us in, but the area was nice -- it had just been finished, with a big front yard area, and houses for teachers all around. Just behind it was a small manioc plantation, and down the hill a prof was building a house. We continued on to meet Ma Christine, for a drink at the Carrefour de Bonheur. The three Americans got dinner and were going to join up with Ma Christine at the bar, when all of a sudden she burst in and said, "It's finished at the house. Papa has returned his soul." Then she was gone. We finished our dinner, Jenny started crying; we had known the grandfather was sick and had met the nganga (healer/marabout) at the house the day before, but we didn't know he was that close.

After that we went home. Fortunately we had met almost everyone, so not having Ma Christine around was ok, and made Mike and I go out and do things for ourselves. Jenny was over with the family a lot and so we kept exploring town. A young woman showed up the next morning, in fact, saying she owned the lycée house and heard we'd been looking at it. We visited the interior with her and made an offer, and said we'd be back Friday.

That afternoon we walked around and saw the Blue Lake, which is about the size of a tennis court. Apparently it was supposed to be huge and impressive, but now it's Ndendé's water source and it's really underwhelming. We ran into a kid /young man wearing a PC Gabon t-shirt -- Andy. We inquired and he said he was the boyfriend of Heather. After we mentioned we were house hunting, he led us south to the airport and a shady Malian mobster who had a 2-room duplex for rent -- 2 bath, tile, a/c, everything except furniture. The rent? 225,000 CFA/month. Oh! OK, 100 (about 125 bucks). It was too easy, -- the house was too nice (come on, a/c? How can I be in Peace Corps in Africa, and have air conditioning?) and the guy drove a pea-green 1995 Mercedes sedan with a horseshoe on the front grill. Plus, to get there you had to go around and behind and into this walled compound with 4 or 5 broken down cars, and the area floods and it was just bad. Bleh. Far from town in a weird quartier right next to the landing strip. Which is dirt, by the way.

But I was really pumped up after the whole thing -- we had found someone and they showed us a house and we checked it out and negotiated and refused it. I've never done that in the States! And it all felt fine, normal. Mike said he felt really weird, relying on people he didn't know to help us find houses through word of mouth -- no ads, no realtors, no organization. I felt absolutely the opposite. Bring on the chaotic! Bring on the power of interpersonal relationships! I'm a stronger bolder person here and I love it.

The next day was more of the same -- wandering, trying to find out if a landlord was in town (nope), cooking couscous by candlelight. Jenny went to the vigil/wake, where the grandpere's family and the widow's family (ok -- father's family equals his brothers and sisters and their kids; widow's family is their sons and daughters -- kids belong to the mom's family) sit down and figure out who caused the death.

Welcome to Gabon, where death is not natural. Nobody just dies (ok, there are exceptions. Hang on.) You can curse people. You can go to the nganga and use them (sometimes) to cause harm/death/sickness/AIDS/accidents/impotence etc. If you suspect someone is attacking you, you can get up really early and speak to the vide -- hey! whoever is trying to hurt me/my family member/my friend, you better stop, because you know if we catch you in the act you'll be screwed.

Generally, people send themselves out as vampires during the night and that's how they cause harm. Many times they themselves won't be aware they're doing it (but that depends). A PCV, Tom, in Cap Esterias near LBV, was sleeping on his couch one night. All of a sudden he wakes up because his legs are being pushed up. There's a kid sitting at his feet on the couch, with chalk and paint on his face. Tom recognized the kid and was calm, sort of -- then all of a sudden, the kid sinks into the couch, totally disappears, leaving a depression in the cushion. Explain it how you want. What matters is people believe it, to the point where if you tell on a kid he'll be chased from his home and no one will speak to him or help him. So if you see this, don't tell the locals.

Anyway, so there's lots of sorcery here, and death is only natural chez babies (because it's thought it wasn't the right time, and that they'll come back when the time is better) and some old people (they've lived their life). But anyone over 10 and in reasonable health who falls ill or drowns or dies in an accident, the vigil is all about whose fault it is.

And, what to do with the widows (if there are any). Someone like the daughter of the sister of the grandpere has the power to say, "You four women (he had 4 wives) have to sleep on your right side for 2 weeks and you can only go to the W.C. once per day and once at night and you have to cry whenever someone comes to say condolences, and walk hunched over, and we'll yell at you if we don't think you're sad enough and crying properly." And that, effectively, is what happened. The grandpere's family can also take away their plantations, houses, and livestock, and tell them to go back to their villages. And, they have to pay back the dowry their husband's family gave them. Each widow had to scramble for 100,000 CFA the day after the death to pay the dad's family. The dad's family set the amount by giving 10,000 CFA to each widow -- you then have to pay 10 times that amount. "If they wanted to be really mean, they'd 've given 20 or 30,000 CFA," said Jenny. "This is so fucked up!"

The grandpere had left instructions -- I don't want my wives to suffer, I don't want there to be a long deuil (mourning period). But they still had all of the above stuff happen (not the plantation stuff or being sent back home.) And the younger generation doesn't want to follow all these practices either, so it's on its way out. Marriages are equally complicated but I'll get to that later, when it makes more sense.

Basically, the week was spent balancing funeral stuff and house-hunting/people-meeting. We met the assistant principal at the lycée who was super psyched to have us start teaching (yo! hold your horses!) We signed on the lycée house for 80 mil/month -- she's gonna put in a washing sink and a terrasse (hopefully). She seems like a good landlord--her timber guy husband built the house so she can get income from it, which is pretty common -- in Mali Dante had bought land and buildings for Aicha and Moustaf so they would have $ later on. So for right now, this is my house.

It's 3 houses back from th road, so it's secluded a little bit. It's also closer to our new family, although really Ndendé is small enough that proximity is not a problem. So, Friday I

ran into the prefet and he got us in to see the cute house -- tile, 2 bedrooms, fans in the ceiling, porch, wood shutters, really cute. Not quite finished. The landlord wasn't there, but we may have a shot at getting it once we get back. It's near the bakery, and these weird trees that grow vines from their branches that go down and root in the ground. Banyon trees? I don't know. In the afternoon we went to sign the contract on the lycée house, then went to the family to pay respects and greet the widows (you touch their feet, not shake their hands). We hung out with the family and Mike and I learned some Punu and I talked a lot with Mohammed about Punu matriarchy and marriage customs and language and politiques. Jenny suggested we buy beers for the 20-25 adults, since we couldn't really cook anything. They said they appreciated it and it was fun to voir the old papas drinking their Regabs. Even the widows got some.

We came back Saturday and heard everyone else's stories -- people had a great time and have huge houses for the most part. Amanda has a bad cockroach problem; Laura has no water in her town (7 km away); it takes Tom and Victoria 2 days to go 200 km from Medouneu to LBV in the rainy season. Jim was awakened by guys creeping around his house at midnight -- they climbed up on the roof and banged on the door and lit torches outside his window and played flutes. For 4 hours they were there, and he yelled for his neighbors for 45 minutes and no one came. He's in a real small town in Franceville region, on the border of Congo and says he's not going back. Adelaide, the 70 year old, went home so there's a post open in Lambaréné, but our APCD Pauline has so far been unsympathetic towards Jim. She may insist he stick it out in Boremongo, but after 4 hours of mortal terror he's not too psyched to go back.

Adelaide went home because they wouldn't put her in LBV. She had big ideas about national AIDS curriculum and public service announcements and radio and tv campaigns, and she wasn't flexible at all. If she had done a year in Lambaréné, she probably could've switched to LBV and done that kind of work, but she wasn't willing to wait.

Now all we have left is our big animation and swear in and this dumb newspaper for French class. I'm getting Punu lessons and getting antsy to get to post and set up my house and get started. My new address for letters and packages is B.P. 326, Mouila (everything else is the same). I look forward to hearing from all of you and also to having time to write you all! I'm sure there will be lots to say once I get back to Ndendé.

Love,

Hannah