Pikins, Ashia, Chop

Pidgin lesson of the day:

1. Pikins = Children
2. Ashia= I’m sorry for you. (This is the catch phrase for just about everything... I hear it at least 50 times a day. It's hot= Ashia. I have to go cook= Ashia. When I jogging by people= Ashia. I'm full= Ashia. I have to take a taxi to Molyko= Ashia. EVERYTHNG)
3. Chop= Food

Despite the aggressive University of Buea campaign against pidgin English (signs around campus include “SHUN PIDGIN”, “PIDGIN RUINS YOUR ENGLISH”, “COMMON WEALTH: NO PIDGIN HERE” etc.), I’ve been making every effort to learn this odd language. The past two weeks have been full of impromptu lessons in taxis and restaurants in hopes of helping my research and equally as important, bargaining in markets. Being white+ knowing pidgin= major street cred.

I’ve started the fascinating but exhausting interview process with women recipients of micro credit loans through LINK-UP. I’ve sat in on their meetings, witnessed the “njangi”, watched how they save, and learned how the various groups work in general. Njangi is a common practice with women’s groups- every week each woman donates 1,000 CFA (about $2)- one lucky woman gets the pot each week when it is her turn. Njangi is there own more traditional system of saving, which they combine with the more modern LINK-UP system of savings (where interest is accrued). For more information, see my 40 page research paper due December 7…yikes.

The groups are a small but strong community. It has been evident so far through the interviews just how much the group means to the women. They are constantly telling me how “we be sister white man, you get?” Beside the social aspects, they also financially assist each other. They have a “trouble fund” used to assist a person if they are sick or a close family member dies. Recently, a group member passed away, and the women worked together to repay her loan to LINK-UP.

I’m starting to get a first hand look at the level of poverty these women are facing. Saturday night I sat in on my second meeting, and afterwards the eldest woman led us through a trash pile maze up the hill to her house. She showed me and Vivian (my sassy pidgin interpreter/LINK-UP social worker) where her neighbors were living. Basically, they are sleeping under umbrellas and with a giant plastic tarp as a blanket because half the roof has rusted away. This woman (I have no idea how to spell her name… phonetic spelling tells me Ngamadou?) is about 80 years old and lives alone in her dilapidated and barely furnished home. She uses the LINK-UP loan to help with her business, selling maniok to her neighbors who come to her house to buy. Before we left, she made sure to send Vivian and I with enough maniok for both of our families.