Reunited

It was dark when we arrived, around 8 o'clock at night. We'd been in transit for about 48 hours. Above us the night was filled with stars swollen by our proximity to the Equator. Around us crickets played their legs like violins. Beneath us craters in the red earth threatened to swallow our feet, twist our ankles. The car delivered us to the edge of the antiquated palace. Crumbling statues of lions and angels leered like gargoyles. I exited one side of the back seat, my mother the other. The only light around was from the headlights, shining in the opposite direction. A crowd of women descended on me, grabbing my hands, clutching my waist, kissing my face, placing babies in my arms. Small children brought me bouquets of flowers. I accepted them gratefully in the dark, and greeted each person by name as they stepped into the dim beams of light and illuminated their faces. These were my friends I hadn't seen in four years. These were the sounds I hadn't heard since I lived here. These were the children I taught when they were toddlers. This was the place where I became an adult. I was back in Cameroon. I was home again. I looked across the hood of the car at my mother, standing alone, watching these Pidgin-speaking shadows consume me. This was her first time in Africa. She looked terrified.

When my mother agreed to accompany me to Cameroon about six months earlier, I was happily surprised. She hadn't visited me at all when I lived there as a Peace Corps volunteer from 2005 to 2007, but the situation changed slightly since then. My sisters had moved out of the house. My dad had two 80-pound Boxers at home to keep him company. My mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer and finally entered remission months later. Life for my family was decidedly different than it was four years ago. When we landed at the Douala airport, dirt floored and un-climatised, I thought that Cameroon had not changed that much, maybe time moved faster in America. I steeled myself for what was to come: the inevitable onslaught of beggars, bribes, and big men with attitudes. Those things were still there. But also there was Carine at the airport, resplendent and shrieking as she dove under the security rope in her blue silk dress made just for this occasion and locked me in a bear hug, shouting, “Auntie Lindsay, you are welcome!” Carine was my best friend in Cameroon, about a year younger than me, and the newest wife to the village chief, called the Fon, who was about 50 years her senior. Carine was a queen of Guneku, and she carried herself as such. She had three daughters, Wee-Mah, who was two years old when I met her, Hope-Mah, who was 18 months younger, and Lindsay, who was born in 2008 after I’d left Cameroon. So when we arrived in Guneku the next night after riding in a taxi, bush taxi, taxi again, and finally a private car, it felt like home. It felt like no time had passed at all. But there were the children, Wee-Mah and Hope-Mah, four years older, with mouths full of awkward adult teeth that their faces hadn’t caught up to yet. And there was Lindsay, Baby La they called her, who was only one month developed in Carine’s belly when I left. No, time had not forgotten us in America, and time had not forgotten Cameroon.

Wee-Mah, 8 in September.

Hope-Mah, 6 in June.

Baby Lindsay, 3 in July.

We ate that night—we ate until, they say—rice, achu, chicken, beef, njama-njama, fufu. All food painstakingly planted, grown, and prepared by Carine and the other village women. Wee-Mah huddled next to me in her mother’s parlor on the red sofa that had once been mine and whispered, “Auntie Lindsay, I hope you’ve brought me some nice thing.” I told her I had and she smiled, satisfied and excited, and shoved a spoonful of rice past those big teeth of hers. I thought to myself how lucky I was that these children had not developed a shyness for Auntie Whiteman during the years of my absence. Mom ate slowly on the other side of me, unsure of what was on her plate, listening as the women peppered me with greetings and questions, not fully understanding this version of English. We went to sleep that night in the house Carine built, a full structure with three bedrooms and an indoor bathroom. She had intended to build an addition to her two-room house that she shares with her three daughters, younger sister, and two nieces. She planned to do this over several years, but when I told her I would be coming to visit with my mother, she cleaned out her savings and built it in just a few months. This was a welcome beyond fufu and rice, much more than I expected or deserved. No one had slept in the new addition yet; she was saving the inaugural night for her friends from America. That first evening, Wee-Mah insisted on giving the tour. She showed my mother and I to our bedrooms, each with a bed the same size as the one she slept in every night with three other people. A panicked mosquito darted around, trapped inside the net hanging over my bed. Wee-Mah grabbed my hand and said, “Auntie Lindsay, Mama have arranged your rooms very well.” Wee-Mah was beyond right.

Mom and I took our cold showers that night in the light of a bushlamp, the perfumed smell of American shampoo mingling with the fresh rain beating dust off the banana leaves outside the paneless window frame. In the dark, their stems bowed under the weight of their enormous heads. Nondescript pigs snorted in the bush. Thousands of insects chirped a refrain they repeated every night. Mamis crouched around small fires here and there, dotting the landscape, turning fufu, frying greens, roasting groundnuts. Africa on the map is huge. Africa as the space around you, on your very first night, is immense. The dark unknown swallows everything but the white of your skin: the first night in Africa is overwhelming. For me, it was sliding back into a familiar routine. For Mom, it was new. It was exhausting. It was the fabled continent.

That was the only night Mom faltered. The next morning, under the high sun, after a hard sleep, we picked the flowers and seeds off of huckleberry leaves for the afternoon’s meal. Village women stopped by to greet, to welcome, to see if it was true that I came back after all these years. We gave coloring books and jump ropes to Wee-Mah, Hope-Mah, and Lindsay, and watched as they taught themselves how to jump. Wee-Mah, 7, and Hope-Mah, 5, quickly picked up how to maneuver the fancy American version of the jump ropes they use with their friends. These, with handles and a long, braided body, took a moment to master. Lindsay, nearly 3, followed every step of the way, imitating her sisters as best she could, holding the rope in her hands and jumping up and down, not realizing and not caring that the point was to jump over the rope. Village children came after a while to watch the princesses with their new gifts from far away. A boy named Blaise, about the same age as Lindsay, watched her timidly for a long time, then stepped out and started jumping as well, just like she was jumping. For a long time, Carine has been telling me how much Baby Lindsay and I are alike in personality, but I didn't really believe it, assuming it was mostly projected by the adults around her. That day when Lindsay spotted Blaise jumping, she stopped in her tracks and yelled, "You can't jump! You don't have a rope!" Blaise started crying and ran away, and I thought, for better or worse, Carine was right; Lindsay is a lot like me.

The coloring books were a massive hit as well, a point I didn’t (and still don’t) really understand, since I toted those with me when I arrived in 2005 and none of the kids paid them much attention. But this time, they devoured the books and crayons like pirahnas: by the third day, the fresh pack of 80 crayons were tiny nubs that the kids had to clutch precariously between their index fingers and thumbs. They gathered every night, about 15 to 20 kids, on the veranda of Carine’s house, shouting, “Auntie Lindsay, look at this!” “Oh, that’s very nice, but you have to color the background,” I’d say in an attempt to elongate the life of the three coloring books we brought. “Auntie Lindsay, come check!” they’d shout again, and I’d shimmy through the little bodies sprawled on the dusty cement to look at a completed sheet on the other side of the porch. “Auntie Lindsay, see!” they’d yell, and after about two hours of this, I’d say, “Take that one to your mother, I beg.” Take it to their mothers they did, and soon women stopped me on paths during the day and asked, “Please, should Felix (or Genio, or Walters, or whoever) come up for lessons tonight?” I smiled at the simple sweetness of these questions—that the women naturally assumed I would immediately resume my teaching responsibilities upon returning to the village—and said yes, they should come.

So we passed most of our evenings in village just like that, coloring, chatting, watching a Zambian game show on Carine’s small TV, tsking each time the Fon changed the satellite channel from another building in the palace. We went to sleep around 9 each night, and the next morning, we’d do laundry by hand, stroll the village, eat. With each new stroll, the same thing happened over and over. I had many names when I lived in Guneku: Lindsia, Rin-sing, Lindsoon, Sandrine, whatever they thought sounded vaguely like Lindsay, but mostly people called me Auntie Lindsay or Akwi Mafor, a name of honor the Fon gave me after initially arriving in village. So every time my mother and I took a walk, I’d hear one of these names muttered softly, as a question, then after a little deliberation on the part of the speaker to make sure it was really the same Whiteman, they’d shout, “Auntie Lindsay/Mafor/Rin-sing!” and they’d charge me. “You have come! Thank God!” They’d hug me, hold me back, look at me, exclaim, “You are fat, eh! That’s good!” and then hug me again. I’d hold their hands and say, “I’ve brought my mother. This is her.” They’d say, “Eh-eh! Your mother! Wondaful!” They’d hug her, “You are welcome!” and then turn back to me. “Your mother is looking younger than you are!” So Mom went to Africa and was called young. I went to Africa and was called fat. This might be funny, but to be honest, not at all too far from what I expected.

On the days when we weren’t strolling aimlessly, we visited with people and chatted with the Fon a bit, but not as much as I had anticipated. His health had not seemed to deteriorate as much as I had expected, but he didn’t beckon for me unceasingly, which led me to believe that he was, at least, a bit more tired than he was four years ago. When I saw him, he remembered who I was and still had grand plans, just like he did when I was his Mafor every day. He wanted to build things, see things, buy things, make things better, or at least better in his perception. More fountains, more cars, more schools. I smiled and agreed and gave him our gifts of sugar free Life Savers and Ben Gay. He accepted them with thanks and dismissed us after 20 minutes to go back to Carine’s house in a different part of the palace grounds.

This visit had several purposes: to spend time with my mother, to see my friend Carine, to visit with the Fon while I still could, and—probably the biggest reason we traveled this far—to see Wee-Mah, Hope-Mah, and Lindsay. In between our time visiting the schools, clinics, and churches in the area, we had some time to talk to Carine. That’s a misleading statement. We talked to Carine for hours a day, but to really talk to her, to learn more about her history and why she only completed school through the fifth grade, why she became the wife of an elderly Fon, how she has plans to make things better for herself and her girls... I was surprised to hear her open up this way. We scratched the surface on a lot of these topics when I was a volunteer, but over the past four years something shifted. Some sort of trust has been nurtured. Maybe it was that we both matured, maybe it was that we’d had such a long correspondence, maybe it was that she knew now that I was not going to disappear from her life like most white people do after leaving Africa. Whatever it was, we had solid time together to talk and joke and connect, and though she was always my dear friend in village, I can say now that she doesn’t need the “in village” addendum. She’s just a dear friend. Period. Without the context of cultural exchange, without the classification of the cultural divide. Even though Cameroon is still vastly the same as it was four years ago, and though most things were just as I expected, this arrival at a new level of a genuine relationship is something that surprised me.

Toward the end of our time in village, the night before we left, the Fon called my mother and I to his parlor to say goodbye. No grand blessing for safe travel, no photo shoot in his royal outfits, no pretense. He just wanted to say goodbye. We talked for a while about current events, his diabetes, his intention for Carine to return to school. He sat in a chair designated for him alone. We sat on one of his six worn plush couches shoved into the room. Behind him two polished giant tortoise shells stood guard. On the walls, photos of himself throughout his reign looked down on us. After a while, he told us that we should go and rest, and he said to my mother that I did great things for his village, and that he knows I will continue to help his people. I don’t know how great the work that I did as a 23-year-old girl was, but I thanked him anyway. He grasped my shoulder and said, “Safe journey, Akwi.” I said, “Good night, Mbeh.” My mother and I walked through the darkness back to Carine’s house and I thought to myself that that would be the last time I ever saw my Fon. I wiped a tear off my cheek and went back to my final night of coloring with the girls.

The next morning a car picked my mother and I up at 5 o’clock. It was still dark out, and it was the same driver who dropped us off weeks earlier on our arrival night. Not much time had passed, but Mom had adapted to this place with a quickness. She walked assuredly in the dark, knowing now to duck under a low doorframe at the edge of the palace, past the rows of cocoyams that she’d helped Carine plant days earlier. The queen and her daughters lit our way with bushlamps and guided us to our rickety transport, built for five passengers but stuffed with eight. I told Wee-Mah that I would see her again before she finished secondary school. Mom and I were heading to Limbe, a black sand beach town at the foot of Mt. Cameroon, for the last five days of the trip, and Carine would meet us down there in a few days. But this was goodbye for the girls. We hugged briefly, something Cameroonians only really do to greet, not to part, and we entered the cramped car. When I did this four years ago, Wee-Mah was 4. Hope-Mah was 2. Lindsay didn’t exist. And now here I was, back in the chilly morning air of Guneku, surrounded by the cassava-covered mountains, in my Chaco sandals and head wrap, dressed for a journey that would carry me away from this place, away from these girls. It seemed almost no time had passed at all. But here I was, and here they were. Almost 8, almost 6, almost 3 years old. How old would they be when I saw them again? How old would I be? I didn’t know and it scared me, brought tears to my eyes. I didn’t know—I don’t know—when I’ll be back, but I’m certain: time won’t forget them, and neither can I.

Limbe was a welcome respite. I love Cameroon, and I love Guneku more, but to be honest, this trip was a little trying at times, just because there was no break from Cameroon. When I was a volunteer, I had my own cocoon of a house to escape to. This trip was Cameroon in our faces 24/7. Eating, breathing, sleeping Cameroon. And it was great, it was beautiful, but that first night in Limbe, Mom and I ordered hamburgers, took hot showers, and cranked the air conditioning to frigid. We slept until 10 the next morning, and when I woke my hair was soft and wavy from drying in the cold air, not greasy and plastered to my head from a night spent in sticky humidity. We sat on the patio of our hotel, overlooking Ambas Bay, and had a lovely breakfast of baguette, eggs, and fresh grapefruit juice… with ice, despite the recent cholera outbreak in Limbe.

We passed days at the beach, Mom reading novels and me being pummeled by waves, the island of Malabo on the horizon in front of me, Little Mt. Cameroon behind me, and the velvet volcanic sand squishing between my toes. I floated and pretended that it was 2006, and this was my real life, not a vacation. I was lucky, so lucky, to have ended up in Cameroon. When Carine met us the day before we flew out, item number one on the agenda was going to the beach. She had never been in the ocean, or in any great body of water for that matter. The waves were huge that day, and for a long time she said that she was too scared to get in, even though she’d somehow managed to get her hands on a bathing suit. Finally, towards the end of the day, when I headed to the water for the last time, she decided it was now or never. And so we sat, my friend and I, at the edge of the Atlantic, waves rushing up around us, sometimes surprising us by tossing us sideways. She laughed and I laughed, and we watched our legs stretched out before us sink deeper into the sand with each retreating wave and before long we were both buried, hip-deep in Cameroon side by side. She took each wave to the chest with the grace of a queen, straightening her spine, never wetting her hair. I was smacked in the face a few times, water invading my nose, hair stringy with salt. She was lean, the shade of mocha. I was round and alabaster. We were different from each other. We were different than we were four years ago. We were joined by a myriad of unlikely circumstances. Somehow, our lives have crossed. She built me a house and named a child after me. I taught her about HIV and brought her to the ocean. It doesn’t seem like a fair trade. But here we are, years later, friends still and lucky, so lucky.