sometimes i forget i’m white

sounds of cameroon

This past week a carpenter came to the house with the owner who lives in Yaoundé to put shutters and glass in the windows. This is a great thing and I’m no longer freezing to the bone at night, but there was something to sleeping in the “open air”. Just before the sun would completely disappear, i could hear the little squeaks of bats flying by—finally leaving their comfy spots in the trees outside of my house. The squeaks build just until it gets completely black and they’ve all left for hunting.

In the morning I would wake up to sounds of little birds playing in the trees, big birds landing on my thin tin roof, and annoying roosters waking up the village. Every now and then Eric, the guardian of the house, would chop wood, and Rocky, the always-tied-up guard dog, would cry for attention or breakfast. Now that the windows are closed up, i am more aware of the sounds in my own house. Moths that fly against walls and make tapping sounds, though my least favorite is when they trap themselves in plastic bags which give a sound of a louder animal than what they really are. Now in the rainy season, i can hear when the wind pushes hard just before giving way to rain. The tin roof expands above my head and creaks as it lowers back down, then little taps begin followed by the juiciest rain drops slamming on the tin and causing me to turn off any movie or music that was playing and open a book.

The other sounds of village life are more man made. Moto’s can be heard from a mile away with their revving engines and family of passengers holding on tight. Cars make a different sound as they avoid the cracks of the dirt road and bounce around the huge crevaces left behind when the rains take away the dirt in little rivers. Every now and then music will be blasting from one of the boutiques or Ma Josienne’s restaurant, but usually this is on special occasions. Village life is rather quiet. During the school year, a traditional dance group practices every wednesday with the wooden xylophones that you can hear from across the village.

In the cities, the day starts early with the hustle and bustle of taxis and zooming motos honking, trying to take their fair-share of the road. Honking is its own language here. A honk can mean many things. When a taxi rolls up to someone standing on the side of the road he honks to say “Hey! I’ve got open spots in the back! You in?” then the person tells him his/her destination. If this fits into the taxi man’s predetermined route, he honks “OK”. If not he just drives off. If yes the client yells his price and the taxi man honks in accordance or again, just drives off. A honk means you’re passing someone on the left, it also means “Hey Idiot! You’re going too slow!”. For passing taxi’s it often means “Hello”, and for cars who take the mountains to villages like mine, honking means “Hey, I’m a taxi and I’m coming around this here corner.”

People on the sides of the road are shuffling off to school or work, or selling things like bananas, french bread with an assortment of things to stuff inside it for breakfast. The mama’s kiss, hiss and snap to get your attention. Music begins blaring at 7 if you’re lucky, but if it’s a church day its earlier and lasts all day. Friends pass each other and shake hands with a snap at the end. It’s like a secret handshake in the States, but here it’s expected and extremely hard to perfect.

When people are annoyed here, they make a sound like clicking in their mouth while they shake their head, or just look away annoyed. When people clear their throats they don’t hawk loogies like americans, they do the opposite of swallowing air. With their mouths closed they pull whatever in the back of their throat out with making a equally gross guttural sound like hawking. When mama’s are surprised or happy, they yell a sing songy “hey hey HEY heyyy” or just the short “HEY heyyyy”. At night the mama’s chat while the charcoal grills are crackling with fish, prunes and plantains, while at home the fire crackles with the three stone wood fires boiling sauces and rice.

For as nice as the quiet is here, cameroonians are noiseaholics. The music blasts until speakers and ear drums are broken. Yelling is the normal volume for conversation. Radios, music and televisions play usually without people’s full attention. Bars one after another have their own speakers with their own music playing at the same time, and too loud for conversation. Promotional vans drive by yelling with megaphones or speakers strapped to the top about phone plan deals or lottery chances. Cities are full of noise. I prefer my village life. It’s also rare that I walk around or travel with my ipod, because I like to pick up on the sounds, or bask in the few moments of silence.

silence is beautiful sometimes.

markets of cameroon

The markets in Cameroon are like the wrinkles on your hand—intersecting lines crossing the middle and escaping to the edges. A maze essentially, but a maze you come to know well with experience that rarely, or never, changes. My first experience in the market was exciting. I had been in Bafia for a week or two and Mama Lydie, my host mom, hopped on the moto behind me squeezing me into the driver in front. I felt completely safe. We got off in the center of town and mama Lydie grabbed my purse and swung it around to my front and told me to cover it with my hands and guard it well. We walked through the small paths enclosed on the sides by rickety wooden stands holding tomatoes, peppers, dried fish, and other colorful products I had never seen before. Tucked in the middle of the market was a small building filled with freezers and an overwhelming stink of fish. Our outing lasted 15 minutes tops and I was relieved I got to see the inside of a market without getting robbed.

The Bafia market is relatively small, which makes sense for its village size. After finishing training in Bafia, the group of pcvs heading to the west packed up their things and a bus dropped us off in the regional capital, Bafoussam. From here we all went our individual ways—some to big villages like Bafia, others to small cities, and the rest headed to tiny villages like Bandenkop. In Bandenkop there’s no market to buy household things so my shopping was to be done before arriving to post. I made my list of what I thought was essential (looking back this list is a little embarrassing) and I had asked the language trainers what prices to try for. I set out into “Marché A”, the larger market in Bafoussam, with my purse in front and my list out and ready to cross things off. Every “aisle” had something I needed, but every aisle further I went the more lost I became. I was so overwhelmed by people in their boutiques on either side of me yelling “ma cherie!” or “what are you looking for?” “Asso! Asso!” “ooh look at la blanche” and pointing to their friends. It was more attention than I’d ever had in my life.

I couldn’t let them know I was lost. I asked someone at a boutique where to find sheets. All the sheets were mix n’match so I demanded to only see matching sets. Having a goal made me more confident since I was loosing composure with all this overwhelming attention. I needed to seem confident or I wasn’t getting out alive. The only matching set I came across had gigantic cat faces on everything. I laughed as though it was too ridiculous to buy and he’d better make me a good price if I was going to buy cat sheets (though I fell in love at first sight and knew I had to sleep on them every night). With the help of every 10 boutiques I found my way out of the mass of stands, and took a deep breath of air when I finally found an opening to the streets with my hands full of housewares.

I’ve now been back to that market 50+ times, and have memorized the inner-workings of its’ alleys and paths. Maybe one day I’ll make a map—or just a guide—if you’re looking for fabric go two levels in from the corner with the super market, pass the women selling honey and palmist oil, go up the second set of stairs, pass the police station and take a left for pagne and a right for western fabrics and jeans. What, you want to find traditional things? Enter the market from the side, across from the quincailleries, not the first opening where they sell school books, and not the third where they’re selling cell phones, but the middle opening. At the first level you will run into the man who sells beaded jewelry and nice wooden masks. You can buy bows and arrows from his neighbor there, but if you take a left down the alley, a nice man sells dyes, and other ground up natural medicinal plants as well as old painted masks and traditional clothes. The frippery with used clothing is the entire back side of the market, just past the produce, where you can find curtains and bedding as well.

The best thing about the market in Cameroon is that everyone will help you. If you ask anyone they will either take you to their brother who sells it, or direct you with a point, and when you get lost again you just ask someone new. Bargaining is my other favorite part of visiting the market. There’s many different strategies people employ, but I’ll let you know the best strategies I know and use. First, go in knowing what a good price is for what you want to buy. If you need to ask a local outside of the market before going in, or at least someone who is not next to the mama you’re buying from. The other strategy involves a little studying. After pointing out what you want, looking it over and thoroughly examining whether or not it will fulfill your job, bring up that you live in a village or at least know a village language. If you know one greeting in this language you will make the seller laugh and tell their friends. Becoming a spectacle for a few minutes is a small price to pay to have the seller give you a great price. Lastly, always start with a lower price than what you want it to end at. If they give you a “white-man-price” divide it by three and start bargaining below that. Never get too attached to what you want to buy because there are other stands with the same product and the “walk-away” strategy is the best last-resort strategy there is.

Market in tiny villages is much different than the city markets. In Bandenkop there is Market Day, which falls on every 8th day. This makes no sense for us Westerners, but the market is still based on the old traditional calendar of the Bamiléké tribe, which had 8 days. Bandenkop’s market day falls the day after Bapa’s, it’s neighbor village, and three days after Batie’s. All of which are based on this old calendar. Bandenkop has only 2000 villagers, but our market is extremely impressive. It’s not unusual that I stumble upon anglophones who have traveled from Bamenda to sell their products in the West market days. Ours is an agricultural village so many mama’s have blankets laid out or bamboo tables filled with their harvest. There’s an old man who weaves market bags from raffia with one or two other colors. Frip clothes are even cheaper here, with t-shirts at 200cfa and socks at 100cfa. Usually shirts are 500cfa which is about $1. Bapa has a larger population, and the Swiss even helped build a new covered marketplace, though on market day it’s difficult to find more than tomatoes. No one knows why this is.

Marché Mokolo is the largest market in West Africa by square footage, with the largest frippery in Africa. This market is located in Yaoundé, the political capital of Cameroon. Mokolo is still a scary experience for me. The alleys are narrower than any other market I know, and the sellers are not shy about grabbing your arms to pull you into their stands. The last time I went I literally hugged my purse the whole time and was still scared it would get stolen. The amount of people inside the mass of boutiques is overwhelming for the little space there is. Goods are creatively presented climbing the highest of the existing walls—up is the only place to go. You can find anything you’d ever want to look for, though the prices in the city are much higher than Bafoussam or the villages. Rows of high heeled shoes of every color and every height shine on blankets, while the best in Yaoundé fashions hang on hangers in the boutiques behind with zebra leggings and a skin tight neon club dress is presented on a white mannequin. Short and fat ties are all the rage here, and t-shirts with offensive sayings or funny errors that didn’t make the cut in America or Europe are being sold at “high” prices. Grills for fish and meat are sold just around the corner and down the road men are auctioning off used clothes from the back of a truck for pennies. As long as you watch your back, the markets are the most exciting places.

Matt and Preston buying chickens from the market for last year’s Thanksgiving

first week in AFRIKA

this first week in cameroon has already felt like months! I haven’t had time to blog and the only email I have sent was a quick note to my parents letting them know of my safe arrival to Yaoundé, Cameroon and check my email and Facebook—all while using the tail-end of another peace corps trainee’s internet minutes at the hotel, and the connection was slooooow. welcome to africa. We spent spent a few days in Yaoundé getting shots and medical handbooks, kits and lectures on safety, water & food prep and the schedule of whats to come. My stomach started feeling weird just after the second meal. The hotel food was a little unnerving, and caused me to become extremely jealous of my uncle who got to serve in the peace corps in south korea. Each night the group hung out after playing cards and drinking Cameroonian beer which comes in 32oz bottles. It turns out we have a pretty great training group.

Some people reminded me so much of friends from home. A girl here named michelle is the spitting image personality-wise as my friend from high school, christine, down to the hand gestures and up-to-no-good smile, except that she cusses like a sailor. Another PCV came from her post to help with our first training week, and we’ve been bombarding her with questions and listening carefully to each of her words of wisdom and stories of do and don’t. She’s an extremely tiny asian girl who alleviated any worries I had of gaining 20 pounds in Cameroon as I’d been warned. She reminds me of Haylie from high school—she’s bubbly and has a big pretty smile that she uses all the time, and stands on chairs to get everyone’s attention.

Just before we loaded on the buses to head to Bafia we received little slips of paper with a clip art picture of a stork and the names of our host moms and dads and their professions, as well as the number of people living in the house. I was sooo excited when they were being passed out. We also got a little map with numbers associated with each house so we could find our relative location to the training sites and each other. I was happy with my family because it was neighbors with another PCT i’ve gotten to know well, Eric, and also my parents were a nurse and doctor with 2 others. The ride to Bafia was 2 hot hours in a dusty bus and when we arrived to the school it was full with “expecting mothers, fathers, brother sisters and cousins.” I could have cried it was such a strange thing. I honestly felt like i was a chile being adopted in a foreign country, and I couldn’t wait to find out who my new mom was. They called each PCT and each Family name one-by-one and they family greeted each PCT in the middle of our big circle with 3 kisses on their cheeks.

My father was Celestin, but his younger son (20) Jerry was who came to shake my hand and helped me carry my bags over to his mom Lydie, soon to be dubbed “Mama Lydie.” When the truck came we loaded it up with my bags and Eric’s who would be right next door and headed to our homes. I carried my bags inside and the 2 girls, Patricia (8) and Epiphany (14) started unloading/helping me unload my bags and arrange my room. By this point I hadn’t really eaten much in the past days and had already been the first PCT to visit the PCMO (PC Medical Officer) so I told them I was sick and sat on my bed while they happily did most of the work. At dinner they had big fried pieces of fish with vegetables in oil and rice, fried plantains and pineapple. I had some rice and went to bed early, happy with my family, but unhappy with what my body was doing to me. That night was the worst. I didn’t sleep at all. I got a fever and chills, rolling side to side all night. I ended up throwing up numerous times and eventually moaning for my mom. I had never been so uncomfortable in all my life. At 6 Patricia came in to wake me up and I told her I was sick and to get her dad. I looked up all the phrases to explain to him my horrible night. I called the PCMO who arranged a car to come take me to the catholic hospital.

I arrived and walked up to the “waiting room” which was a pair of benches outside of what more resembled and american summer camp infirmary ward. A few old lady stared at me as I tried not to think about throwing up. Finally I was called in and a nurse weighed me and took my blood pressure. In the next room I discussed in french and english what was happening to me while the whole time I just wanted to be horizontal. He told me he thought it was a bad reaction to all the vaccines I’d gotten and a reaction to the new Cameroonian diet of tons of oil. He game me what constitutes as pepto and had a nurse hook me up to an IV. She took me to a room behind the maternity ward building, and i sat on a bed while we waited for clean sheets and she repeated “Ca va passé.” (it will pass) as she smiled at me. The bed I was sitting on smelled like pee. Who was I to complain, though. Not only can I not explain that in french, but I could already tell going to the hospital was a luxury not a lot of people in this village can afford. I counted my blessings and when my sheets came I slept for the next 8 hours on and off out of tiredness at the beginning and then to forget how hungry, hot and bored I was.

Finally in the afternoon Monique, our go-to in Bafia, came by to check on me and I finally got the banana I’d been wanting for hours. Another PCT had arrived in the room next door, too, and I was so happy to have company. We balanced our IV bag on our head as we played cards and sat on the bench outside our rooms. At night our moms showed up with little pots of the foods we’d asked for. I had one of rice and one of pineapple chunks. We ate and chatted, and after they left I lit my kerosene lamp, journaled until I fell asleep. At midnight they nurse came to inject some meeds in my iv and I went back to sleep. In the middle of the night I needed to go the bathroom and as the bathroom door was typically locked I decided to go behind the another building off the courtyard as i’d seen another lady do previously in the day. The next morning they let me go. I was so happy.

The next days I was at the school doing language class and lectures on development and safety, but I can only honestly remember the intense cramps happening all over my stomach. After finding blood in the toilette, I freaked out and consulted my med handbook hoping to find a reason that wouldn’t direct me back to the hospital prison. I was in luck! I could now check ever symptom of bacterial dysentery! And this may not sound good to everyone, but for me it meant only one or two more days of pure agony, but i could stop taking the pepto that was doing nothing and just wait it out. The only good thing was that my host mom had made a vegetable soup I’d been eating with my tony’s seasoning for the last 3 days. so good!

The next day I was already loads better. I went to my first legit language class. I threw the frisbee around with people after classes. I sat at the bar and finally drank more than two sips of a cold orange fanta. At night I sat on my porch with eric and my host dad and just chatting and watching the bats fly by and listening to paul simon. I ate my first meal with my family! More fish, pasta and fried plantains and some pineapple. It’s amazing what being sick does to your mind. I absolutely loved that day. I could definitely do this for two years—and that’s not what I was thinking two days before.

Today was my favorite full day so far. I woke up at 7 to start my laundry. Mama Lydie instructed me step-by-step throughout the day, but first we emptied a sachet of laundry soap in a bucket of water and i put my clothes in to soak for the next couple hours. In the mean time Mama Lydie and I headed to the market by moto taxi. The market was extremely overwhelming—winding stands of fruit and herbs, some with spirals of dried fish emitting the strongest smell and a bunch of african women, men and children talking, selling watching me closely and joking with Mama Lydie calling me her step-daughter and laughing. I pulled out my local Bafia “hello” (why-emm-bay) and won over their hearts, though, and mama lydie and I continued on with our shopping. When we got back home I started on my laundry. Sitting on my stool on the porch elbow-deep in soapy water I began hand scrubbing each piece as Eric (my neighbor pct) sat in a chair next to me and we chatted and watched the people walk by the front of my house and practiced our greetings in french and bafia.

Later, eric and I left to meet up with the other PCTs at the usual bar to drink and throw around the frisbee. We had heard of a hotel that had french fries, shrimp and A/C and decided to check it out. It was everything we’d hoped for and more. They turned on the window unite just for us when we walked in and ketchup, and an amazing bathroom with a toilette that flushed, paper and soap! After, Eric and I walked home and did our homework on the porch as the sun went down and went inside when dinner was on the table. I love porch sitting no matter where I am. It’s always just what I want.