Cry-Die (Woah Woah.)

My landlord’s wife woke me up yesterday when she called me at 6:30 in the morning. She asked where Mami was. I told her that she had spent the night in Mbengwi town, working on her farm, that she would be back in the evening. We hung up and I went back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later, a motorcycle pulled up. Someone was yelling, wailing, woah-woah-ing. In my mid-waking stupor, I thought it was a madman. After 10 minutes, I got up and went outside. The compound was already lined with people sobbing, men on one side, women on the other, like a middle school dance. The motorcycle had carried Mami back from Mbengwi. In the small patch of grass at the center of my compound, she was on her hands and knees pounding on the ground, yelling in Meta. When she saw me, she crawled toward me, sobbing, “That my son. That my son for Mbingo. That my son doctor.” I bent down and put my hand on her shoulder and said, “Ashia, my mother. Way, ashia, ashia, I’m sorry.” She said, “Thank you,” and crawled away. Over the past day and a half, people have come and gone out of the compound, but the women didn’t just come up to give condolences, they came up screaming and wailing. When they arrived in the middle of the compound, they fell on the grass and pounded the ground. Everyone cried with them, and would finally pick the newcomer up. Then things would calm, people would sob quietly until the next person came in, crying and yelling. She would fall on the ground, everyone would cry and fall with her, then eventually pick her up. (Talk about a metaphor.) This will continue day and night, for about another five days, until they bury her son behind our compound.

Cry-dies are something that I usually just pass, or hear in the distance. But I can’t really avoid this one because it’s in my front yard. Mami’s son, a man who worked for the monastery in Mbengwi, has been sick for some time. He was in a hospital in Yaoundé for the past two months or so. They moved him to the hospital in Mbingo (a town in the Northwest Province) about two weeks ago. They said he was improving, then he died sometime during the night on Monday.

Times of grief here are interesting, at least for me, because for the majority of the time, people here remain stoic regardless of the circumstance. I have only seen a grown Cameroonian cry once outside of the context of death. When they lose someone, however, it’s no holds barred. They scream, they cry, they sing low, mournful “woah woah” refrains for hours on end. And they collapse in the dirt. I think that part of it is especially telling of their expression of grief because, for the most part, they’re such clean people. If I sit on a stone on the ground or on the church steps, everyone will say, “Aye! You will dirty yourself!” I don’t much care; it brushes off, but they think it’s crass. Even 3-year-old Wee-Mah will say, “Auntie Lindsay, Hope-Mah will dirty you, na!” if I pick her little sister up off the ground.

This being my first full-on cry-die, it’s interesting and also slightly trying. Yes, watching 50 people mourn in my front yard is moving, but it becomes less moving and more tiresome as the days wear on and I’m kept awake all night. Plus, I have no idea how to respond to everything and it seems like everything I do is wrong. If I were truly integrated, I would be weeping and crawling on the ground with them, but, one: I’m not moved to that level, and two: I think it might seem like I was just making fun if I gave up my composure like that. I don’t know if I can greet people when I come into the compound, whether they’re crying or not. They only respond quietly, and certainly don’t go out of their way to greet me when I come in like they usually do. Do you not greet during times of sorrow? I brought sugar cane and kola back with me after a hike yesterday for everyone. They accepted it quietly, and didn’t shake my hand and say, “Thank you!” like they usually do. Do you not give food in times of sorrow? So for the most part, I just stay in my house when I’m here and go about my life as usual. But that seems like I’m just ignoring everything and not giving due gravity to the situation. I don’t really know how to respond, and I’m afraid that I’m losing a few points with these people.

So like any normal 20-something, when confronted with a circumstance difficult and potentially daunting, I’m running. Yesterday I ran for four hours and took a 5-mile hike up into the mountains. This weekend, I’ll run again, before the body gets here. But in all fairness, I had these plans before the man died. So really, I’m not fleeing, but I’m not fighting the current pulling me away. Yes, I feel guilty about that. No, the guilt will not override my urge to avoid certain levels of discomfort. Ashia.

Some Fulani men I met on my hike yesterday.
...Nothing to do with the cry-die.
I just like the pictures.

A Man of the People

Holla.

(Carine and I ready to head to the new Fon of Mbemi’s coronation.)

I spent Thursday at a coronation ceremony. (Admit it, you were busy doing the same.)

Mbemi is one of the villages just adjacent to mine. The Fon of Mbemi died two weeks ago on the same day as his first wife. She was the first wife he married, but the last of his four wives to die. They all died within the past year.

Nobody says HIV, but everybody knows. Polygamy isn’t bad in theory, as long as all of the wives are virgins when they’re married and the husband stays faithful to his wives. But of course that’s not always realistic. The HIV/AIDS rates in Cameroon and the Northwest Province are 12% and 11.5%, respectively, so of course new infections happen all the time. Even to fons, untouchable though they may be.

So a new fon had to be crowned, and because the Fon of Mbemi produced only daughters, a male successor had to be chosen from elsewhere in the family line. The job has fallen to a brother named Humphrey. He’s 25 years old, and has only completed Form 1 of secondary school. He tried to refuse the position, but was not allowed. “You can’t run from tradition,” Carine explained to me. But it’s understandable that this kid is frightened. That’s like me being made queen of Johnstown at my age. No, thank you. It took me 6 months just to get my new Chacos to fit right, no way could I rule a whole town. And beyond the immense responsibility that he has just had shoveled upon him, it’s just a bizarre transition. One day, you’re just another guy hanging around and the next day, nobody can call you by your first name, nobody can shake your hand, nobody can sit in the same chair as you, nobody can see you eat. A man of the people, yet completely isolated.

The name of the successor is kept hidden until the time of the fon’s death, so this kid had no idea that this was his fate until about two weeks ago. Since the prior fon died, Humphrey stayed hidden in another palace (happened to be the Palace of Guneku this time) until the day of his crowning, as is customary. It’s common for family members to be jealous of the fon-to-be and to try to poison him in an effort to pass the title along to another. So they keep him hidden until he’s officially fon.

Humphrey doesn’t have a wife yet, and he has to choose one soon because the villagers want him to finish secondary school, but won’t pay for him to do so until he has a wife, so that there’ll be less of a chance that he sleeps around. (Euphemistically dubbed “misbehaving” by the villagers.) In case you’re wondering, just like he could not refuse to become Fon, the girl (or girls) he chooses to marry cannot refuse to become his wife (wives) or they’ll likely be disowned by their families and left without a job or place to live.

Despite all of the apparent downers surrounding the situation, the coronation was still treated as a time of great jubilation. Practically everyone who owns a shotgun in the tri-village area brought it so they could fire off a few celebratory rounds. Plus it was an excuse for me to wear my traditional outfit. Plus they fed me njama-njama. …So it can’t be all bad, right? After we left the coronation, Carine and I stopped at the bar at the Guneku junction and I bought her a Coke. “So it is really a wonderful day!” she exclaimed. “You only need that somebody buy you a drink for it to be a wonderful day?” I asked her. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “What more can you ask?” A wonderful day indeed.

Local fons at the coronation.
(The new Fon of Mbemi is the younger guy in the middle
with the cheetah skin hanging from his neck.
The Fon of Guneku is the fon in the foreground on the right.)

Old mamis bowing as the fons pass.

Ain’t a party without drums!

My first plate of fufu corn and njama-njama of the new year. Love it.

Palm wine + Guns = Fun for all!

The Fon of Bome (Carine’s father) and I
in our almost-matching sunshades.
Bling.

A Story About a Life

It's easier to take pictures when they're not there.

Far and away, the most trying group of people that I work with are my secondary schoolers. Even though I only spend 2 hours per week with them, they still manage to make my voice hoarse quicker than any other group, including my toddlers. I’d be lying if I said I’m not looking forward to finishing the school year so that I never have to teach teenagers again.

In the meantime, we’re still working at it. Most of them have the literacy level of a typical American fourth-grader, though they’re up to 20 years old. Even the most advanced student has barely reached a junior-high reading level. The most irritating part of all of this is that very few of them (maybe 10 students out of the 70 that I teach) actually seem to care about improving.

The latest assignment, writing their life stories, was worth 90% of their grades, and still less than half of the class completed it. During the 8 weeks that I gave them to write the five pages that I demanded, I heard a daily plea of: “Please, Madame, it is too much!” Well, tough. The story that they wrote was to cover their whole lives, birth to death. Birth through present would be factual and present through death would be fictional. The toughest time that they had with this was visualizing the future. I gave them free reign to give themselves the life that they would have in a charmed world, but “dreaming big” is not exactly a national pastime here.

A few months ago, I met an American woman who was here only for a few weeks. She was donating money to a girls’ school outside of Bamenda and while she was here, she was having the girls make patches for a quilt that had a “Reach for the Stars” theme. “I just really want these girls to know that if they work hard, anything is possible. They have choices in their life and they can be whatever they want,” she told me one night over dinner. It’s a very pretty thought, but not at all practical for Africa. Later in the week, I told another PCV about what she said and he responded, “Sure they have a choice: they could sell Orange or MTN.” (Orange and MTN are the two major cellular providers here, and the phone credit cards are peddled on the streets.)

And he’s right: maybe people here don’t regularly indulge in “reaching for the stars” because you can’t get anywhere in this country if you don’t know the right people or have the right money. To get into a university or a teaching college, for instance, you have to bribe the admissions officers. Last I heard, the going rate for bribes at higher-education schools here was between 1 and 2 million francs. That is, of course, if you’re not out-bribed by somebody better off than you. This in a country where only about half of the families can afford the 7,000 francs per year that it costs to send their children to primary school. It’s so frustrating to me that the majority of the kids that I teach seem to be satisfied being functionally illiterate because I know that their parents (read: their mothers) have had to struggle to come up with the $14 for them to try to learn something.

In any case, the life story assignment was difficult, but those that actually completed it did a good job. I think that it gives a good cross-section of what life is like for Cameroonian teenagers, and what they wish life was like, even though they know that the world isn’t perfect and what’s real is much more likely than what’s ideal. A few of my favorite excerpts are below.

I was born in Yaoundé Central Hospital in the year 1997. My mother called my father in his office that she had delivered a baby girl and he was very happy that he ran into his car and was running to the hospital and had an accident and died. My mother cried until she fainted three times. After four years, she got married to another man and had twins with him and died during the birth. From there, I went to Douala with my auntie where I started Class 1 and stayed there until I was in Class 5 and she died. Her husband ran and I came to Guneku with my grandmother and she sent me to Classes 6 and 7 and now I am in Form 1.

Nelly, age 10

I started nursery school in Bamenda when I was two years old. My teacher loved me because I was always in the first three and hated me because I was very stubborn to them and even at home. I completed nursery school when I was four and started Class 1. I still maintained my number as being among the first three. My best subjects were English and Arithmetic. When I was in Class 3, I left from Bamenda to go to the village to stay with my grandmother. I loved staying in the village because since I was born, I had never been in the village. When I had already started staying in the village, I started failing my exams and I was very angry. I started hating the village because the villagers were very wicked. When I was nine years old, I had to repeat Class 4. I was beaten very well at home for failing my exams.

Collete, age 17

I am now preparing to finish Form 1. In the future, I will finish Form 7 in G.S.S. Guneku, by God’s grace. By the time I will finish, I will go to America and finish university there. I will get married to a white in America. His name will be Eric. I and my husband will build story buildings in many countries like Germany, China, Europe, and Italy. All those my houses will have houseboys and girls. I will marry at the age of 35. When I will be 36, my husband will be 38. We will have two children because in America, you don’t give birth to more than three children.

Melany, age 14

In future, I will be like Miss Lindsay. I want to be like her because I love the way she behaves and that she is trying to make a way so that we understand better. When she is moving in class, we look at her and it is as if we are in heaven. She moves majestically in class, and she does not like children who make a lot of noise or disobey her. She does not make like other teachers. Before she comes to school, she will bathe before coming.

Rahama, age 14

When I complete school, I will go abroad to study where I will learn very many things about how to be a good leader. When I return to Cameroon, I will become the president when I am aged 43 years. I will be a good president and will change very many things in the country. I will teach fellow Cameroonians to stop wicked habits like corruption and lying. When I die, people will say that I was a good leader who drove out corruption and evil ways from Cameroon.

Hassan, age 16

I will go to the University of Yaoundé Two and I will go for further studies abroad, so as to become a teacher by profession, and I will be teaching History and Geography. I will have two cars, which will be a convertible car and a limousine. I will be going to school with the convertible car and the limousine to occasions, important occasions only. I will get married at the age of 39. I will marry a Japanese woman. I will have three children: two girls and a boy. I will educate them to the highest level. None of my children will be a truant. I will have a dog, a very wild dog named Puma. I will have a house with three bedrooms, one sitting room, and a stranger’s room, one only because I will not like more than two strangers. I will have two servants, a boy and a girl, and I will be paying them 40,000 francs per month each. I will work for the government for 30 years, not above and not less than. By 80 I will be old. I will travel at the age of 83 to Libya, China, Ethiopia, U.S.A., Japan, and back to poor Cameroon, with my family and we will be staying in Ndu town. I will die at the age of 99 years, 11 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds, to make 100 years.

Augustine, age 17

I told them to try and be as specific as possible when they were writing, so you can see how some of them like to poke fun at me. Little jerks. God bless all you teachers (or soon-to-be, sister!) out there because I was not made to put up with teenagers, despite their best efforts to suck up. (And that one was a pretty good effort, not so?) Regardless, I’ll remember them nothing but fondly. Naturally.

(...And for the record: yes, I move quite majestically. When I'm not falling down stairs or making a general fool of myself.)