This past weekend was quite interesting. Nothing really went as planned, but, it turned out to be pretty great all in all. On Saturday morning, after running some errands and doing a bit of cleaning, I went to the Ayaba Hotel to meet up with one of my coworkers, Celestine. As I was waiting for Celestine, I decided to grab one of the wooden lawn chairs and start reading my book. There could not provide me with a towel, even after I offered to pay for it to be cleaned after; thankfully I had just purchased 6 yards of fabric in the market and had that to use as a towel. I am still reading “They Poured Fire on us from the Sky”, should be done soon though. It is a wonderful book; the stories from the three boys really engage you. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for a book about real things, presented in a not so academic manner. It started to get pretty warm while I was waiting, and I was the only person at the pool; so I figured I’d take my t-shirt off. Don’t worry, I was wearing my swim suit underneath. I was contemplating taking off my capris, but I felt exposed enough out there and figured I’d wait for Celestine.
Celestine showed up with a friend of his, Rene. Rene was wearing light sunglasses (Cote d’Ivoire rapper style), a polo shirt with the collar popped, and new jeans with embroidered pockets and bleached out in places. As he came over to introduce himself, he pushed his glasses down his nose a bit, looked at me from above his glasses, checking me out, then smacked his lips before saying “Mama mia, you are hot.” Unsure of what to say to that, and very glad I had left my capris on, I replied with a simple but unsure “thank you, it’s nice to meet you.” Rene told me that he was running an NGO in town that worked with youth; they mostly worked on issues of unemployment, HIV/AIDS and gender. Specifically, they were trying to focus on women’s empowerment. During the time we spent in the pool he continued to ask me if I would hold a workshop for him and his coworkers on women’s empowerment and issues surrounding it in African culture; while making these requests his eyes didn’t quite make it up to my face. Yes, I think he has a few things to learn on women’s empowerment before he begins holding workshops for youth on the issue. He did, however, invite me to a “cry die” in Awing. A ‘cry die’ is similar to a funeral, only it is held whenever the family is ready to mourn the death of the deceased or has enough money to do so. It can be one to three days and involves dancing from traditional dancers in masks, lots of eating foufou corn, koki, and njama njama, and of course drinking. The Fon of Awing (Chief type position for a very large community and represented in government) went missing a couple of years ago. His grandson or great grandson became the Fon and has been studying in North America this year. He is finally ready to mourn the past Fon this December. Rene is from Awing and invited me to go and stay with his family and what not; it will be a huge cry die. Depending on the timing of the event, I may try to make it.
I spent the majority of the time in the pool trying to teach Rene how to swim. Celestine would hold him and I would try to demonstrate. Two 14 year old ish boys showed up and started practicing and helping him as well. Then, the “swimmer of Bamenda” showed up. He was apparently practicing for national competitions and the best swimmer in Bamenda. Of course he was wearing a speedo, with a swim cap and goggles, all matching neon green. He dove in the pool and started doing laps. I immediately questioned his swimming ability when his dive made a huge splash and his breathing in his front crawl was all wrong. People started asking if the two of us could race, I tried to politely decline, saying he would beat me easily. When the swimmer started teasing me and saying I wouldn’t be able to make it one lap, my competitiveness kicked in. We were to swim two lengths of the pool, ending back in the deep end. I beat him by about three quarters of a length. He looked a little disappointed, but we all laughed it off. I taught them how to do handstands and summersaults in the water—well, I tried to teach them. The handstands were definitely difficult for them to get the hang of.
After the pool, I took a bike downtown to find some food. I attempted to find a tortilla chip substitute so I could make salsa and guacamole; I grabbed plantain chips, crackers and whole wheat bread—the closest substitutes I could find—and the ingredients for salsa and guac before heading up to Steve’s. The bread was definitely preferred to either of the other options. While we were having lunch, there was a cry die going on, we could hear the gunshots in the distance. As we were out on Steve’s back porch, the bullets started bouncing off his metal roof and landing on the ground around us. They were small little lead balls; we found a couple to keep as mementos. They claim that the guns are shot to release the spirits from the body; it’s a tradition in Cameroon. But I ask, how recent was it that this tradition was created as I find it hard to believe that every family had a gun in Cameroon more than a couple hundred years ago. Fairly certain they just find it fun to shoot guns in the air after having too many drinks—real safe.
This video is from a man in Mbengwi that was dancing with me for a bit while we waited for one of our coworkers so we could come back from one of the centers outside of town. Also on this little excursion our bike was almost impounded, the officer wanted some money from me and then my coworker offered it and it didn’t go over well to say the least. He let us go eventually though and we had a safe, but dusty ride home.
Saturday night I met up with Kat and Heather at the Royal Restaurant. They were supposed to have live music and great food, but shortly after I arrived the electricity went out and we were left to eat and chat in the dark. Not so bad really, the patio was great and the servers were really friendly. We met the owner that night, he immediately offered his services to help us plan weekend trips and hoped we would come back to Royal after our first time in the dark. Sunde had invited us there, but none of us had heard back from him that day, so we assumed he wasn’t coming. He showed up near the end of our meal; he was completely drunk and immediately began eating our food and drinking our wine. After our meal, the lights came back on and with it came live music. The music featured that night was a man with an organ singing Shania Twain covers and Celine Dion—truly magnificent. It was beautiful, people were singing along. We left soon after.
The driver I had asked to meet me and take me home was already there. Sunde lives just past my house so he was planning on hopping on my bike with me. As he was seeing Kat and Heather off, I went to speak to my driver, Joseph. He was pulling whiskey packets out of his coat for his friends as I approached. He seemed drunk, but I wasn’t sure at first. As he went to climb on his bike he lost his balance a bit and just about fell. Sunde was walking over and I told him my concern. Sunde said that we didn’t know and should just go anyway. So, I asked Joseph, “Have you had any alcohol to drink tonight?” he gave a half smile and said yes. I said, well, I won’t come on your bike then if you’ve been drinking. I don’t want to put myself in that kind of danger. Sunde started talking to the driver in pidgin asking if he was drunk and telling me that he wasn’t ‘drunk’. I said I didn’t care, he had obviously had too much to drive. Then Sunde explained to the driver that I would not come on his bike unless he said he hadn’t had anything to drink and it was a misunderstanding. Sure enough two minutes later the driver came up with this story about how he doesn’t understand English well and had misunderstood my question; he thought I had asked if he could drink. Anyway, I was quite frustrated with Sunde at this point and there were no taxis or other bikes around; he had told all the people around that I had called this guy and made him wait and now wasn’t getting on his bike. There was a car of young guys that had pulled in and offered me a ride with Sunde, but Sunde knew they wouldn’t drive him all the way to his place—he’d have to take a bike from my stop, so he said no. Finally, I climbed on the bike and told the driver to go slow and drive carefully; I also told him I knew he was drunk and I would not be calling him again. Sunde climbed on and I got home safe. Needless to say, Sunde is not invited to any more of our dinner and drinks gatherings.
I will write about Sunday’s events later on today. I’m late to go into the field, so I better get moving.
