Cameroon
Banso Highlands, Northwest Province, Cameroon, 1993
Cameroon Mother and Child
Training women in the Tadu Dairy Cooperative how to teach others provided many firsts for both my students and me. I soon learned that cattle are highly prized by the Fulani people with whom we worked. Because the tribe used to be nomadic, the “cattle chief” or “Ardo” is the community leader. This woman, Abiba, was the second wife of the Ardo and the hostess of our 3-day training.
Roles are clear: men graze the cattle and women milk them. The women were enthusiastic to learn sanitary milk handling practices since selling high-quality milk provides personal money to buy medicine for their children or to send the boys to school. Girls in this tribe do not attend school and only one of the dozens of women we worked with could write her own name. It was humbling to be the first teacher any of them ever had. Lessons were between household chores and five-times-a-day prayer. I left my hand drawings of sanitary milking steps as a teaching tool for the women to use when they are trainers. I knew I’d made a difference when they said they didn’t need their literate sons to interpret the drawings, “They’re our cows and we’ll do it ourselves!” They also gave me a calabash, the traditional but unsanitary milking pail, symbolizing their new and improved practices.
When a curious villager stole my camera, Abiba brought it to her husband’s attention. “When we go to the mosque tonight for prayer, we’ll discuss it,” the Ardo said. The word went out and several weeks later I had my camera. Another first for me.
Mary Crave, consultant for U.S. Agency for International Development project. Now adult and extension education methods teacher for University of Wisconsin-Extension, Madison, WI.