Finally gettin my hands dirty, literally!

Sorry it's been so long. I really can't believe how quickly time is passing, and how much shit I still have to do for my research! Trying to do meaningful research in 4 weeks, with no real field research experience, with menial language skills, in a culture I only kind of understand, is getting really rediculous. I like the topic that I chose, and I am learing so much, but everyday I gain new leads that I do not really have time to explore, and realize new areas that I should discuss.
Oh yah, I'm studying Urban Agriculture (UA), in Dschang, just generally. But specifically, why people do it, and what will happen to it in the future. I'm looking at mechanisms:how people actually do this, whose land they use, what products they use, what they grow and how, etc. Also at the sociology: what kind of people, age and gender structures, and why they do this. Then I've been talking to city administration too to see if they think that UA has a place in the city or if it should be left to the countryside. I've taken so many pictures, because it really is incredible, the amount of crops growing in the city. In every open space there are beans and corn growing.

I just signed on to help to research about Latino families doing urban agriculture with a local NGO in Eugene. Also, I think I may do my senior thesis on comparing urban agriculture with that NGO, with agriculture in Africa urban centers (focusing on cities in Cameroon), and urban farming practiced by people like me. Three very different examples of the same concept. This is all to say that this research will follow me, and I think I'll be able to continue what I've started here in some ways.
I'm so conflicted though too. Do I really have the right to say what Cameroon should do in any way shape or form? Who am I to make claims about development, about right and wrong discourses and ideals? What do I know about the development process? What do I know about anything here? Who am I to say that this country should do anything differently. I just know that I am fucking lucky to have been born where I was born, when I was born. But I feel like even that statement is perpetuating this STUPID discourse of American hegemony. It's like every end points to what we have. We can't all live like that, it's just simply not possible. So what do we do? Do we do anything, or do we just let everything run its course?
I really believe that urban agriculture is important for development here. More important than green spaces and night clubs. And food self-sufficiency can be sustainable environmentally, socially, economicaly. Rather than wasting oil and resources on importing cereals from half way across the world, grown with fertlizers and pesticides made out of petro-chemicals, havested and seeded with giant gazzling machines, people can grow enough next door.
But the work is hard, and the days are always long. I can't ignore that cultivating is often the second job, the supplement to the already meagre income. In the U.S. people are turning towards UA to protest the system of indrustrialized agriculture, but here people are moving towards that system. How can I say that that is wrong? I've already reaped the benefits of that type of systme, and now I it's like I have the luxury of saying that it's wrong.
After class in Ngaoundere, in which we have been discussing women's rights in the northern region, me and my friend were wondering why we didn't choose majors like biology or forestry. International Relations is like pandora's box. I was just so CURIOUS, and so FASCINATED. I really thought that if I chose this I could do something good some day. Now, I realize that more that I learn, the more complicated things become, the more confused I get about my morals, politicas, theories, whatever. Now, I feel like I've become so jaded about everything. The UN Declaration of Human Rights is the biggest joke I've ever read, and I'm sick of wondering if altruism is really altruistic. So what do I do now? Become a professor and hope that someday someone else'll figure it out.
I guess though, I'm still hoping that this area of research is important, but I also hope that I'm not just being naive.

It's funny. In so many ways, I have come to love the U.S. more, and come to hate it in other ways. I miss functioning roads and sidewalks, men who don't grab my wrist on the street, drinkable tap water, public restrooms, women's rights, wifi, general INFASTRUCTURE! I can't really say that I hate certain international policies anymore than I already did, but I HATE the ultra-consumer culture and my god I feel like I need to dread my hair and sell all my shit and move out to the forest when I say that, but that's not what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say that my siblins loves watching all those disgusting Disney channel shows about those sickening rich kids with enough crap to satisify whole cities of children for years! And then I HATE that my siblings think that that's my life. You have no idea how much discussion there was before my family believed that I don't live like that. Which brings me to my next problem: the way the West if portrayed in media here. At the same time, I am equally disgusted by how Africa is portrayed in Western media. It's all genocide and jungle and desert and big animals and AIDS and soccer. Oh and that stupid Akon music video, serious sensationalism.
I don't hate the U.S. though. I love that I can come here, and than spend a month and half traveling around Europe with my boyfriend. God I miss Julian. And I love that we split the price on most everything, and that I live with him but that it's not necessarily expected that we'll get married someday, and that I don't have to cook him dinner everynight, that he cooks for me a lot.
Sometimes, the way women are treated here makes me sick. But again, who am I to say that. Some of my opinions about cultural relativism are falling by the way side. Somethings just are not okay in my book. But so what? I feel like that, big deal. What am I gonna fly in, some, "liberated american woman" come to free the "repressed cameroonian women"? Give me a big fat ethno-centric break.
I feel like my thoughts wind round and round and I'm worried that I'm going to stop sleeping at night.

Ah, I feel better about that rant.

I have just 9 more days here (AH!) which means 9 more days to finish my research and crap out a 40 page essay about it all. Hah, I really wish I had brought my computer.

Alright, time to actually go do some work. I think I may include much of that rant in my paper, actually.

Bye guys!

Actually, before I leave, I just want to say that I'm really happy and having a really good time. I worry that my blog may imply that I am only angry and frustrated here, which is not true. Just some of the times. And only in ideas, really.