New Addition to the Ginger Family

Well, my lonesome empty house is no more!  As of this past Thursday, I am the proud owner of a tiny, crazy, affectionate, high-maintenance, energy-filled orange kitten.  It truly feels like having a newborn in the house because he keeps me up all night, cries when I leave the room, and makes me worry that he’s not eating enough.  His name is Colby and he’s about as needy and energetic as a kitten can be, which, though exhausting, is really what I wanted.  Once I figure out what he likes to eat (canned sardines seem to be a hit), how to get him to poop outside, and what I need to do to get him to stop climbing my legs with claws at full extension, I think we’ll be very happy together!

I now realize that, for the sake of closure, it might not be the best idea to get a kitten from your next door neighbor’s cat.  It is absolutely heartbreaking that from inside my house I can hear the mama cat crying for her baby as Colby cries for his mama.  One time I came home and saw the mother outside my gate, meowing, as Colby pressed himself against the crack in my gate, trying to get out and back to his family.  I know, right?  Tears.

In Cameroon, pets, like children, are more like members of the household staff than adorable toys for us to play with and spoil.  People still have pets, but if they have a dog, it’s probably for protection, and if they have a cat, it’s probably to kill bugs and mice.  And in fact, most Cameroonians don’t particularly like cats and are afraid of dogs.  I have been taking care of David, Ricky’s dog, for the past few weeks while Ricky has been on vacation.  I let him out for a few hours each day so he can stretch his legs and “ease himself” (as Anglophone Cameroonians put it).  David is the sweetest dog ever and has never hurt a fly, but Cameroonian children still run screaming when they see him approach.  In fact, last week Amadou (the Youth Development program manager) came to make a routine visit to my post to make sure everything was alright.  I saw the Peace Corps car pull up outside my gate.  After a minute or so, my phone rang.  It was Amadou, standing outside, unwilling to enter because David was in my yard and he was afraid of him.  I body-guard escorted Amadou past the ferocious pup and into the house.

Another thing about Cameroonian pet culture is that there is a weird superstition (if anyone has evidence that this is actually true, please correct me) that a cat’s whiskers are poisonous.  They are said to contain something that causes illness in humans.  To protect themselves against it, people cut off the whiskers.  I was at Alima’s house one time when they were cutting all of the kittens’ whiskers.  I tried not to look; to me, this is a form of mutilation.  I have promised Colby that no one will ever clip his whiskers again (despite Alima’s urgings).

Utilities have been going crazy for the past week!  Before one week ago, the longest blackout I’d experienced since Bafia was about eight minutes, and that was the only time power was cut for longer than 30 seconds.  Now we have lost power almost every night for the past week for at least a couple of hours.  I have plenty of candles and there is something kind of fun about “roughing it” in the dark, but still.  I expect better from you, electricity of Bafang.  Plus, water has been erratic, too – for about five days I didn’t have any, but during that time, Ricky and Lee sometimes did have it and sometimes didn’t.  I kept meaning to go the landlord to figure out why I didn’t have it but then it would be cut for everyone and I’d have to wait again.  Finally I got it figured out last night and celebrated by washing my dishes and flushing my toilets, only to have water cut again this morning just before I planned to take a shower.  What is this!!  I feel like I’m living in the bush!

Like any city, Bafang has a small number of crazy people (“fous,” en français) who you always see around.  There’s one guy in my neighborhood who has very few teeth and likes saluting me.  He’s very friendly and harmless but still definitely a fou.  One day last week I was at work, waiting for class to start.  Prisca, the secretary, and I were the only two sitting in the office.  A guy walks in.  I quickly identified him as a fou based on his mis-matched clothes and floral hat.  He brought with him a wall of odor like you wouldn’t believe – as if his clothes had been carefully preserved to retain every particle of BO and cigarette smoke from the past five years and exude them all at once, in our office.  He greeted Prisca, and greeted me, and greeted each of us again a few times.  I wasn’t paying attention to what they were saying for most of the time, but at some point he asked me for money (which Prisca indicated I should refuse, and I did).  She was humoring him pretty well but at some point she started to ask him to leave and picked up the phone to pretend to call the police and have him kicked out.  Soon he started yelling and pointing angrily at Prisca, threatening to smack her or beat her.  I was getting freaked out but she seemed to be doing okay and staying calm.  He walked to the door like he was going to leave but instead grabbed the big wooden rod next to it (used as a portable flag pole) and went at her brandishing that like a weapon.  At this point, another of the teachers had come into the room and the two of them were still pretty calm, whereas I was ready to flip my shit and chase him out of town.  He threw the flag pole down and stormed out as Prisca and Madame Moukam chuckled and shook their heads.  If I had been alone and his rage had been directed at me, this story would have a very different ending (of tears).

A couple of days later, Lee and I were getting a beer at a bar on the main road.  Another of the Bafang fous came and greeted us and sat at the bar with us, one table over, not saying anything but sitting with us quietly.  At some point, a man passing by tried to shake Lee’s hand and our fou jumped up and angrily lunged at him, as if he was committing a terrible offense by trying to greet Lee.  Although that was a major overreaction, we thought of him as our protector after that incident.  After sitting there (fou having resumed his post as sentinel) for a while longer, someone else came by: the same crazy guy who threatened Prisca a few days before.  Then the two of them got into it together and were yelling at each other and one picked up a plastic chair as if prepared to beat the other with it.  This chapter in my memoir will be titled “Fightin’ Fous.”

One thing you may not have known about Cameroon: Recycling is taken to a whole new level.  And it’s not out of some environmentally-conscious desire to save the planet, just to save money.  Bottles have bottle deposits the same way they do in the US, but instead of just paying five cents and probably never turning in that bottle, most vendors will not allow you to leave with a glass bottle.  Or, if you do, you are expected to bring it back within a couple of days (or even bring some empty bottles with you to trade in when making the purchase).  Even plastic bottles are treasured and valued here.  If I’m ever throwing out any kind of bottle or container, I try to set it aside and not burn it because it’s certain to be snatched up by someone soon.  And on the street, people who are selling folere juice or red oil or honey will be selling from all those different containers that used to hold juice or soda or whiskey.  Even Kadji, one of the major brasseries that produces my favorite Cameroonian beer, uses recycled beer bottles from other companies, so you never know what color or shape of bottle your Kadji will come in.

My last random cultural note about Cameroon is that, without fail, every single time someone knocks on my gate and I ask “C’est qui?” (who is it?), they will always, always respond, “C’est moi.”  And to be fair, it’s always true.  But it is so frustrating because why would I be asking if I knew who “moi” was??

This last month or so has very well followed the “emotional rollercoaster” model.  I have had many good days, and unfortunately many bad days, sometimes alternating exactly one by one.  I will spare you details from the bad days for the sake of keeping this blog readable.  In short, I don’t have that much work to do and I have days where I feel bored, useless, unproductive, and like all I am to the people in this town is “la blanche” – someone who is interesting to stare at, great to solicit for money, and even better to harass for a phone number.  But all that aside, let me tell you about a few of the good days!

Last Friday was a feast day at Lee’s school and he invited me to come join in.  I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from a “feast day,” so I was surprised to find it looked exactly like a middle school dance.  Kids, released from the confines of their obligatory uniforms just for the day, dressed in their finest night-clubby attire.  Each classroom played loud music and students danced beneath pink and white toilet paper streamers.  Eventually, all the kids piled into the gym for an all-day all-night dance party.  As Lee and I sat on a table with some of the other teachers, watching the students run excitedly from one group to another, whispering, gossiping, flirting, enjoying being at school in this unfamiliar setting, I became intensely nostalgic for my own middle school days.  I never thought I would end up on the other side of the party, as the teacher chaperone, looking on but not really partaking in the fun.  It was weird and one of the first times in my life I’ve felt so acutely like a grown up.  I will never have another school dance of my own.  When did this happen???

At some point the student:teacher ratio got a little too high, and the students got a little too friendly, so Lee and I left to find some place to have a drink.  Now, pretty much every single bar in Bafang – and perhaps Cameroon – looks exactly the same: it’s a room with shelves with beer on them, and there are some crappy looking tables, uncomfortable chairs and/or benches, and absolutely no ambiance whatsoever.  It can make it hard to choose between the hundred or two bars when they are all absolutely interchangeable.  We passed one with a group of people laughing at a table outside.  “Well, they look like they’re having fun,” Lee remarked.  Right on cue, the people waved to us and wished us a happy New Year.  We wished them a happy New Year back, and continued walking.  They beckoned us over to join them.  This happens pretty often when I pass people at bars, but I’m always going somewhere or else alone and therefore not about to intentionally spend time with drunk Cameroonian men.  But this time we figured, why not?  We’re looking for somewhere to take a beer, and here’s a friendly group of people we could share one with.  Anyway, they turned out to be a group of teachers from Bafang and a nearby village, and we all had a great time together!  They all struggled to speak English, we struggled to speak French, and they laughed a lot at all of their mistakes and generously at none of ours.  We talked about our respective cultures and teaching and all kinds of other stuff.  There was a ton of laughter and even when I didn’t really understand what it was about, I felt so happy being there that I joined in anyway.  They said that they go to that bar every Friday night, so Lee and I have vowed to go back.

Once the teachers started to leave, Lee and I went across the street to a sort of cabaret/night club.  It was pretty small and pretty empty, but there was at least nicer lighting and some kind of a mood.  We talked and shared more beers, and it was already a wonderful place to be, but then something happened that changed everything and launched me swiftly into a state of pure ecstasy: Total Recall started playing on their television!!!!!!  And not the remake, either – the actual Arnold Schwarzenegger classic!  For those of you who don’t know, this is honestly one of my favorite movies of all time and carries a lot of sentimental value from late nights growing up.  The sound was covered by loud Cameroonian music, but Lee kindly tolerated me narrating some of the best scenes.  As if sent from above to ensure that this would be the best night ever, someone came over from a nearby table and offered us birthday cake in honor of one of their friends’ birthdays.  And it was the most American-like cake I’ve had yet in this country, with actual frosting and everything.  It was great.  At some point, Lee and I got up to dance.  Practically everyone else had gone home and the only people on the dance floor were the two of us and the two Cameroonians working there, a man and a woman.  They were both super nice, good dancers, and Lee and I got to request all our favorite songs to be played.  The four of us danced for a good long time and by the time we headed home I really felt like it was the best day ever.

A couple of days later, Lee and I set out to climb one of the mountains(/hills) that we can see from our street.  Without really knowing how to get there, we scrambled down into the valley area, were stopped by a river that I never knew ran through our town, and re-navigated.  After fighting our way through the bush for a while, we did end up successfully at a summit, with a great view of Bafang and our own houses!  Afterwards, we went to visit the town waterfall, which I had never seen.  As you descend to the waterfall, there is a line in the dirt of red oil and salt, or something, which Lee says is for spiritual purposes.  The waterfall is huge and impressive!  I will definitely post pictures soon.  And then we wandered around that area of town for a while, which is in the opposite direction from our houses of most of town, so it’s pretty new and undiscovered.  We found an amazing boulangerie with ice cream and cake and so many delicious things and reasonable prices.  Then we found an amazing restaurant with a great view, fully stocked bar, comfortable chairs, actual menus… all kinds of things you never see in this country.  We didn’t eat there but plan to return with some frequency.  And then we got spaghetti omelets from a nice man who insisted on only speaking to us in Fefe and then making us repeat what he was saying to learn it.  It was another really fun day of getting to know a new part of Bafang.

Yesterday, John (an Anglophone friend of mine) invited Lee and me to join him on a full-day excursion.  I guess a group of about 30 teachers from a bilingual high school in the Adamoua region came to Bafang to do a sort of exchange with John’s bilingual high school.  Now Cameroonian invites are implicitly all expenses paid – and I mean ALL expenses, including activities, meals, and every leg of transportation even if you’re traveling in a separate taxi.  First John paid for a wonderful, extravagant, so-close-to-American breakfast for Lee and me at that very restaurant we had recently discovered on our own!  Then we met the chief of a village in the Littoral region, who happens to be John’s uncle, and went to John’s school in Foukwankem for food, speeches, introductions, mingle time, and a game of handball between schools.  Next we all headed to another nearby village called Kekem where we met the local sous-prefect (a big shot government official) and had refreshments and mingled.  John pulled Lee and me aside and took us into a room with the sous-prefect and left us there to chat with him.  Though mildly awkward (and I kind of hate being treated like a VIP when I know I’ve done nothing to deserve it), the sous-prefect was really nice and had very well-informed opinions on a lot of issues.  At one point, he started talking about how he loves that in America, although people come from all over the world and have all kinds of different backgrounds and histories, everyone feels united in their Americanism.  I almost got choked up as he talked about it.  It is a beautiful country. 

Later, Lee left the room for a minute, and I immediately went into defensive mode of being left alone in a room with a Cameroonian man.  The first thing he did was ask for my number (surprise surprise).  Then he started speaking slowly and carefully in English.  “You know, Antonia, there is a subject I would like to tackle…” I inhaled deeply.  Please don’t ask me about my husband.  “It’s about religion.  I don’t care whether you’re a believer or not, it doesn’t matter, it’s just… I’ve heard of something that America has… called… Mormonism.  And apparently… these Mormons think they’re Christians!  What’s that all about???”  J Cultural exchanges are so fun!

Anyway, I have been teaching English three times a week.  So far we’ve covered salutations, numbers to 100, writing the date, the weather, and family.  Overall, the girls are really good and fun to teach.  One of my classes is clearly the worst behaved, so that’s not usually a great time, but the other two have been engaged and helpful and cooperative.  Plus, I am so lucky for my class sizes – while most teachers in Cameroon are wrangling 50, 60, or 100 kids per class, my “big” class is 21 (although on a typical day it’s more like 15), and my smallest class is just 8.  It’s so nice, especially for language, because I can have each of them repeat individually and I can call on them by name (or call them out by name, as I have had to do with that rat Linda).  Although I wasn’t thrilled about teaching English initially, it’s great to have something to get me out of the house and keep me feeling productive.

Oh also I finally got to enjoy the fruits of my labor tonight by putting some basil from my garden in my tomato soup!  And, it was yummy!