Going to Africa, for Reasons Large and Small

“Malawi….isn’t’ that in Africa?”

“Yes, in southeastern Africa.”

“Well, it’s still Africa, and with this Ebola, I don’t think I’d want to send my kid there.”

Over Family Weekend at our son’s new school, I was at a presentation about Global Initiatives. The term abroad that used to be possible for college students seeking adventure—in Europe, usually– is now often available for high school kids who are, because of increasingly connected world, likely to see going even to Chile or Tanzania as not all that big a deal. There might be a lot of good reasons, of course, to wait at least a few years for a major trip like this; but a parent’s fear probably shouldn’t be one of them. And I’m here to attest to the fact that a Big Experience Away is really more about Many Small Things That Matter.

Our daughter is now right in the middle of her semester in Cameroon, and—so far anyway—it’s going beautifully. She’s lived with two different families in two different cities, Yaounde—the capital, and Kribi—a beach town on the coast, and a few days ago she left with her group to go a third new place, where she will live with an even bigger family than the previous ones. I think I heard something about multiple mothers, too. The town is “Bamenda,” in the northwest part of the country, quite close to Nigeria.

Nigeria!  We’ve just learned in the news that the government has made some kind of a ceasefire agreement with Boko Haram, the terrorist group that kidnapped 200 girls last April, and that the girls should soon be returned to safety. The story held us in a grip for a while, as we heard reports about the inability of people in power to find the girls and bring the criminals to justice; but then the weeks turned into months, and the headlines faded. The grief-weary families are not celebrating yet, but there is finally a glimmer of hope. And, when it comes to Ebola in Nigeria, there definitely is reason to celebrate. Yes, there were 19 cases, and some people died. Just the other day, though, the World Health Organization declared the country completely free of the disease. Here’s a recent article about this from the L.A. TIMES. The success must be attributed to a whole lot of very hard and determined work, when it mattered most, by scores of medical and public health professionals, not to mention just regular Nigerians.

What with both of these stories—one after the other– so much in the news, my husband and I were not at all sure in August that we could enthusiastically get behind our daughter’s looming departure to a country sharing such a long border with the behemoth to the north. The stakes seemed to be a whole lot higher than they were when we were just deciding whether she could play hockey on a Sunday morning. But we were reassured by the fine track record that her sponsoring program, the School for International Training, had and by our own recognition that the dangers we may have sensed were so completely in the abstract that they almost had no tangible dimension. She went, with her purple pillow in hand.

Since then, we have had a steady stream of upbeat messages and occasional pictures, all indicating that she is learning and growing every day. I’m just her mother, but I can feel it almost as if it’s happening to me. Speaking in French constantly is a big stretch, and the academic work is definitely harder than it was at her home college; but she likes the other members of her group, feels supported by the staff, and with the families she’s been living with, she’s really hit the jackpot. They have exuded warmth, made her feel special, and shown her what it’s like to live a regular daily life in a country on the other side of the world. Before leaving the family on the coast, she bought fish for them all…it stunk up the car on the way home, but they had a hilarious time.  And new siblings abound…

Here are her two brothers in Yaounde, working out.

And one, with new soccer ball.

Her little sister started greeting her after school with her own sneakers, because she knows that a run is always the first thing on the agenda.

With moments like this, it seems to me that meeting with representatives from the World Bank and from the Peace Corps (they’ve done that, too) is just so much gravy. OK….I actually have no idea whether people in Cameroon ever eat gravy, but I have a way to find out now.

Just to the east of  Cameroon, there has been a terrible conflict raging between Muslims and Christians in the Central African Republic, with unspeakable violence. Three West African nations are battling a dreadful disease, fighting for their lives. There are tremendous problems on this continent, to be sure, and tremendously brave people trying to solve them. And yet, everywhere, in every corner of this earth, there are also people living and laughing; learning and loving. For now, we can be grateful that our daughter is in that category, so far from home. She will bring many riches back to us; in fact, she already has.

“