These are my very first words here, on the Village Diary Blog. I am excited to lend my voice to this project and its cause—so excited, I confess, that I’d begun to get romantic about my role. A few days ago, I thought of myself as an amazon for the Village Diary Project, not unlike one of the amazons of the famous West African kingdom of Dahomey. I wondered, Could I be a female warrior or guard for the Village Diary? Could I be a woman of high status whose insightful opinions are coveted by kings? And what if I were more than a servant of kings? I am the first woman to join the Village Diary team, so I started to think of myself as a great matriarch, an African queen of sorts. Would I be expected to bring blessings to this project, perhaps just like the Queen of Lobedu in South Africa is expected to bring the blessing of rain to her people? Could I make the other team members comb the streets of Cameroon’s South West Province and return to me with tributes like gold nuggets of roasted yellow corn, hot and fresh from the busy mines of Cameroonian women’s hillside farms and roadside fires?

With a mischievous grin, I considered the possibilities of these roles, but very quickly, I came to see the responsibility of it all. Yes, I am a fighter of a woman, but I am not a warrior. I can’t say for sure that I know how to protect and defend anyone, or whether I even have the courage to do so. And though I was born and raised in Cameroon, I live so far from home that any blessings I might be able to impart to this project will have to make the long, almost interminable journey from California to Cameroon, and they’ll have to do so with no guarantee of safe arrival and delivery.

It was with these humbling realizations that I returned to earth and began to think about the beneficiaries of this project: they are women and children, widows and orphans living in communities served by the Buea-based NGO, Link-Up Development Group. The Village Diary, a
project of this NGO, will seek to assist these women and children with the hard work that they, as individuals, are doing to meet their needs. I see the Village Diary as a resource to these individuals and their communities. However, it is not the only resource these women might have access to. In my opinion, the Village Diary is best viewed as a supplement to the other resources widows and orphans have at their disposal, however limited these resources may be.

I frame our mission in this way because I feel this view not only empowers the women and children we will be of service to but also gives these individuals and their communities credit for the hard work they have done in the absence of our services. While these widows and orphans often face various insurmountable difficulties, I resist any discourse that violates their individual agency or fails to acknowledge their resourcefulness and that of their communities.

A goal I envision for the ethnographic component of the Village Diary Project is the goal of learning from these women and children about the forms of support they have at their disposal and the forms of support they are in need of. From this, we will be able to gather what we can offer to them that would enhance the types of support they already receive from their families, friends, communities and any other social networks they belong to. They will tell us how our services can fit into or augment the networks of support they rely on. In this manner, our services will be grounded in our knowledge and understanding of the contexts—familial, social or other—of the lives of widows and orphans in the South West Province of Cameroon.

This is what I will keep in mind, as I begin to talk with our team about the ways in which the ethnographic component of the Village Diary might be designed and implemented. Even as I write this, I am creating a list of things that I see as essential to any ethnographic inquiry—things that are very relevant to a project that deals with individuals who find themselves in vulnerable positions in their families and communities. I am open to suggestions, recommended readings, and questions. Please do not hesitate to contact our team and share your thoughts with us.

Now, back to the subject of roasted corn…can I have some?

Tags: Dahomey, empowerment, ethnography, Lobedu, women

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