First of all a very merry Christmas to all of you. Enjoy staring at your Sapin du Noel and fetching presents from the underneath of them. Enjoy the carols, the candles, the wreathes and the jingling of bells when santa's sleigh coruscated upon you icy roofs.
Second of all, mail call! We enjoyed heaps of laughter over the comics that mom sent me, several of which were, as always, unexpectedly apropos to late events. A second letter came, absolutely unknown from St. John American Lutheran Church in Sioux falls, it contained a very nice chain letter full of well wishings. And I got a card from my grandma and grandpa on the farm! Though they are actually in Texas. And on this Christmas card was...S N O W. Ahh, how I stared at it last night over my plate of french fries and my beer. It was a really swell card with all sorts of nice things written in it. So, are you others feeling jealous yet for not sending me mail and having your deed immortalized in the digital form?
Last week, M'baya held a bereavement for Genesis, the wonderful owner of Mandela bar where we gather for our monthly meetings and where more often I go to drink shah. I was rather flattered to be asked to attend, but he wanted me there since in the last few months I have become something of a part of his life. I have now attended two meetings and visited him often, toured his shah production and his farm and shared peanuts with his family. Now the bereavement is a bit strange. It begins a bit like the meetings. There is an enormous hundred litre container of shah, the chairs are set in a circle and everyone just palavers at ease. This setting was further offset by the fact that it was the day of the Cameroon Football Cup and so the TV, small with wretched staticy reception, was merrily giving blurry entertainment and the conversation would be periodically interrupted on account of someone suddenly commencing to cheer for a team, following by a fervid assertion that "I have no preference for who wins, I just like to see goals". I've never been in such a crowd of those who refuse to take sides and worried a bit about the consequences if the afterlife is dantesque (review your commedia all ye who don't recall the Inferno). several half-hours into the evening of solidarity, Eugene, a retired army parachuteer, who has far and away the hardest handshake I've shaken here-and I've shaken _a lot_ of hands-, stood and gave a short very tender eulogy for the brother of Genesis. The conversations then resumed. Not having the bereavement stamina of the Africans, who can go all night and several days, I wanted to leave to continue with my reading schedule for the night. But before I left I delivered my own eulogy of sorts, but since I did not know the brother, it instead turned into a praise of the way life is celebrated here in Africa, because it was not just us in Ngaoundere who mourned the brother, but anywhere where two or more villagers were a bereavement was held. My eulogy, involving as it did the key words of myth, family, futurity, and culture, culminated in me giving the peculiar triplicated hug to Genedis and then there was a smattering of applause. And Alfred and I left, though after he dropped me at home he returned.
The second bereavement came very recently, two days ago, when Oliver learned that his grandmother had died. The grandmother of the village, his own having passed away in the seventies. There again we gathered for a bereavement and again the seating occurred in a circular manner and the television flashed away from a distracting corner, although this time at least it was blissfully silent. The shah passed around, and everyone laughed when I offered my opinion on a particular new brand that came neither from Mandela nor Mama Shah, at whose restaurant I most frequently drink it and whose corn fou fou I most frequently drink and whose tiny daughter frequently grasps my wrist to pull herself on the bench beside my left side, punch the buttons on my watch and then force my gaze down with an imperious "regardez" to see that she has the power of making the watch light luminescent. It was wonderful to meet Oliver's family and see his home and I mentioned the same in my speech in this house as well. For even as bereavements mourn the loss of someone they inevitably widen the circle of acquaintances that can turn into new family (such was the theme of this speech, liberally mixed with metaphors of corn, growing, harvest, and shah and fellowship).
These evenings are juxtaposed with the following when Alfred informed me that his wife had invited the two of us to a celebration of the husbands of her own meeting. Everyone has meetings here, which is a rich tradition lost to America. Of which you can read more in the rather shocking Bowling Alone by R. Putnam. Anyway, we arrived at a bit after seven, which was an hour after the start time and a good forty eight minutes early. We took a moto through the back ways of Ngaoundere into a wealthy quarter of the city and entered through a large portal set in a thick wall. Then up a set of ceramic steps and into an enormous living and dining room space dominated by a huge white draped table. The drapes hid strange mysterious castle-like shapes and I swiftly imagined an entire medieval countryside complete with ravaging dragon. In this case the dragon would be me eating whatever may be beneath the cloth. Set along the entire perimeter were the huge couched and easy chairs upholstered in gaudy patterns favored here. So Alfred and I took a seat, leaned our heads against the wall and closed our eyes murmuring conversation. When we opened them from our pseudo siesta dome forrty minutes later, the chairs had filled with men and women and I watched as several women dressed in working clothes disappeared behind a curtained aperture to emerge moments later artificially coiffed, jeweled and be-dangled, garbed in flowing garments, and healed in a high and vicious manner. Then the program began. First the women thanked their husbands for attending, then the president was called forward (alfred's wife!) and she introduced the governing committee of the meeting group and we all clapped. Then there was a report of what the women had done that year, bought notebooks for the children, taught each other new recipes, taught a new healing potion with a particular leaf, etc. And then the husband of the woman whose home we stayed in offered an official thanks to us for coming to his home and offered a gift. Out came some crated of beer and the women all leaped up and ululated and crowded around him to express gratitude. And then they said that a special guest would speak and I looked around for the speaker and saw instead everyone looking at me. Luckily the off the cuff speech is my favorite genre and I rose to begin with a desideratum that I was woefully unprepared for such a moment not least because of the rather recent knowledge that I would give the speech, but more on account of the fact that I was the only unmarried person in the house with the exception of the children of the home. With the laughs falling behind me, I shifted gears to discuss being invited into the homes of various persons and seeing this particular moment as but a natural extension of the Cameroonian family whereby family ties are hardly the strongest based on blood but on fellowship. After sharing my reflections, I commented that I had to apologize for having nothing to give them to drink, but since their sense of taste would soon be sated I might seek to sate their sense of hearing and so launched into a heavily bass rendition of Silent Night that was soon arching tenor over the audience and led to them all joining in in various forms of dialect, French, English and a dozen times as many different tunes and rhythms. It was quite cacophonic. Afterward the mistress of ceremonies thanked me for reminding all of them that we were in the season of the fete and that she wished she hadn't forgotten the carol sing in the program. And then the cloth was undraped revealing the feat. Four different salads, thee different types of fish dishes, two of chicken, a chancy tomato sauce, some piment, fried plantains, beer, rice, batons of manioc. Excellent. I ate. I drank. And I thought that was all. But then the table was moved away. At first I was confused, but then the patriarch of the home was called forward, handed a bottle of Irish whisky, and a tray of kolo nuts (traditional to share over drinks, I think I've mentioned them in relation to shah. They are horribly bitter). And he knelt in the middle of the hall and began chanting and then began telling jokes about various ancestors all the while pouring periodic libations. Then when the ancestry had all been invited inside, he went around to all the luminal spaces in the home and poured a line of whisky to hold them all their till the evening ended. And now, it was a bit after eight thirty and hidden speakers began to thump forth music of the south west region and the mistress of ceremonies called for the opening dance! this is a mixed number between the husbands and wives of the committee. And it is ladies' choice as long ad wife does not choose husband. Alfred stood ruefully up and the dance began, that slow rhythmic dance of Africa that could go all day. One just switching the weight from one foot to the other in a languid shuffle while moving the fists clenched to the side. And then it was over, lastly hardly thirty seconds. Ha, I though, I can match that. And so I asked the mistress of ceremonies herself for the next dance. Now she is probably one of the most revved personage in Ngaoundere, having run a school and being wealthy besides, but she agreed to a dance, and so with my hips jockeying and my fingers snapping and my feet jostling I whipped out to the dance floor with the ghost of Swayze staring gap mouthed over me. After all, I could keep this up for the thirty seconds of dancing demanded. Ha, I realized that the ancestors matched me laugh for laugh. This particular song and dance lasted for a solid seven minutes. After forty five seconds people started grinning as they saw my panicked look. But then with a robust chortle I broke into some quick spins and leaps and was ready. Fully energized I moved rapidement. And by the end the white dancer (also called Michael Jackson at various points in the night) won great applause. From there on out Alfred and I alternated danced, though I will freely admit that he was far and away the most popular and many and more women asked him to dance while I asked as many old women as I could, as is my want. Throughout the night two dancers stood out. The first was astonishing with her flat red shoes and middle length sleeve jacket and black slacks. Whenever she was on the floor she moved with a stately grace that belied the stately and left only grace. The other was a heavily muscled women with a flouncy blue dress and leggings who looked more out of a nightclub off forty second street than a dancer at a women's meeting. The latter I had the honor of dancing with at what I thought was the last dance. The music came on fast and thick and she moved alone to the floor. All else sat back, but I soon figured the dance he danced and rose with a step two three movement and tested and slid behind her to bounce up and down and bow. With her backing up and me following, we had the floor alone. And then the music shifted to a more intense speed and she grinned and flowed away, but I was there to catch her and sliding my suit jacket of my shoulders and tossing it behind me we whirled the dance floor as other joined in. And then the dance was over, but it was only over because there was a set of speeches to happen while more beer was handed out. This particular set of speeches was about gifts. The proprietor first gave out some money and spoke some kind words and gave some cash. Alfred did the same, and as movement was getting ready for something I stood to give my second speech of the night. Overflowing with emotion of the night, after all it had only been one year before when I spent all night dancing in the dance halls of Lima with my father and step-mother (there too with great energy and begin all the matriarchs for the honor) and then I said I would like to dedicate my gift to her in the red shoes who graced the floor in such a stately manner and arabesqued a wad of cash toward her which was intercepted by cheers of the attendants and then the second wave of dancing began. And I was thick and center, sweating and laughing. At a bit before two the next morning, though, I admitted defeat to the falling asleep Alfred and we walked the several kilometers home through the silent night that I had sung about five and a half hours ago.
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