My wife and I recently returned from Cameroon, West Africa, just in time to read the New York Times “Best Places to Go in 2008” list. Bummers! Cameroon didn’t make the cut again. Savvy travelers, however, will know that the “Republic of Cameroon” is considered a microcosm of the entire African continent, and thus worth visiting. If it’s a T.E. Lawrence-like desert experience you crave, Cameroon has it. Ditto: high peak mountains, bio-diverse rainforests, wild life preserves (esp. gorillas and elephants), indigenous peoples (e.g. Baka and Bagyeli “pygmies”), birding options (Africa‘s best), water falls, fishing lakes and rivers, beach resorts, etc. In fact, if you have the money there are small planes daily departing the capital, Yaounde, or the major port city, Douala, that will fly you directly to these more-or-less classy tourist destinations without having to mess with crowded busses, speed bumps, pot-holed roads, goat herders, peasant farmers balancing all manner of goods on their heads, among other such inconveniences.

Since our retirement a decade ago, my wife and I have combined our teaching professions with travel opportunities, but now as international volunteers, and generally from six months to a year. So far we have lived and taught in university cities in the Philippines, Mexico, South Korea, Lithuania, and most recently, as noted above, for six months in Kumba, Cameroon, a small town of 150,000 in the country’s Southwest Province.

Cameroon! Portugal conquered and named the territory in the 15^th century, calling it Cameroes, the Portuguese word for “lobster“, a crustacean that apparently was both very large and plentiful in the region’s coastal rivers a few centuries ago. Subsequently, the country was colonized, in order, by Germany, France, and England, gaining independence in 1960 and retaining its original name. Cameroon: Cameroes: “lobster”: it’s a good metaphor we think for the country as we experienced it. Like fresh lobster meat, there is much to like about Cameroon–from the natural beauty, resources, and tourist destinations noted above, to the dance, music, arts and crafts, cultural and kinship traditions of the people, which we judge to be equal to any in Africa. We experienced and savored much of that, including trips to the country’s primary tourist attractions, traveling by bus or car with students who guided us to food and lodging within budget. But, of course, “cameroes” can be hurtful if their pinchers strike, and in Cameroon today roughly 90% of its 15 million people are stricken and gravely hurting. The 2006 United Nations Human Development Index, based on a combination of economic, demographic, and educational data, lists Cameroon 144^th among 177 countries. An entry from our journal dated September 5, 2007, helps make the point:

Three rain-drenched days into the upper-level ethics course a student stood tall in the back of the room and asked, “Why are you here?” Before I could respond he continued, “I’m the son of a peasant farmer from the north who never earned more than a dollar a day. Like my father, I’ve never owned a book, a bike, a car, or a suit of clothes. Our one room house had no stove, refrigerator, or running water. Endless poverty is my destiny, the destiny of my village, and of every student in this room. We didn‘t choose it. We don‘t want it. We can‘t change it. Clearly the world is not working for our people. Why?” Nothing in the readings or lecture should have prompted the student‘s question. But for him, its time had come. Like Shakespeare in King Lear, he could not stop himself from pouring out the question that poverty brutally raises wherever it exists: “What does one need to be human?” This must become the question that we work on in the course!!!

As an American teacher it’s difficult to listen to such remarks, or to hear the pathos in the student’s questions. But not to listen or hear or see is to miss the whole point of travel in developing countries, or so it seems to us. The student, of course, spoke for the masses in Cameroon, mostly uneducated peasant farmers, many who suffer from malaria or AIDS, and all who survive somehow on subsistence earnings, have little access to health care, cannot afford education for their children, and are without any apparent exit from their condition. The cause of this, as in all of Africa, has a long history and is complex and varied, but surely much of it is the consequence of Cameroes corrupt, unjust, and dysfunctional government. And yet. . . And yet, despite all of the above, the people we came to know and love in Kumba, found strength in their ancient traditions to believe that tomorrow will be no worse than today, and this somehow was sufficient to move them to song and dance.

Jim and Mary Van Hoeven

jmvanhoeven@aol.com

My wife and I are retired teachers, she in English and I in philosophy and ethics. We are also lifelong travelers. Fortunately, most of our careers were tied to colleges and other institutions with strong international programs or branch campuses in Mexico, England, Switzerland, Japan and South Korea. Through these teaching and travel opportunities we came to believe that in the end it is the reality and privilege of cross-cultural experiences and relationships that will finally save us all!!