Wherein women are celebrated...and me too!

Every so often, a week occurs in Ngaoundere and all of Cameroon, a week of common celebration filled with exuberant cries of felicitations and a new fabric worn by whomsoever happens to be being celebrated, we last had the youth week, some will recall the teachers week that occurred in september shortly after I arrived and which was suppressed by the government fearful for its elections. And this last week was huit mars. The eight of march, women's day and week, and what a week it was for a smiling charmer like me. See before the week began, I handed out a few small envelopes, those white envelopes with red and blue stripping along the edges and filled with a few bills. And how the gifts payed out. How well I ate nestled in the bosomed hearths of the women who love me. I ate and ate and when I imagined there was no more food in Ngaoundere, some was found along with bottles of beer and cups of shah. And throughout it all my feet moved in increasingly learned steps as I shuffled rhythmically with these large women and their hard earned smiles. 

Tuesday Alfred and I followed through an invitation to the Gastronomie, namely an event held on the dusty lawn of the Social Welfare building. Here dozens of women provide a cultural food court that resembles a domestic, as opposed to international, mall food court. Moving from station to station, one forks over a thousand francs (as opposed to the normal price of 300, for a plate of food. Not only is it carnivalesque, it is a fundraiser. And happily I handed over the folded bills and took heaping hot plates of food, some that I have had before like my ever-present favorite, djamba djamba, and some with which I am less familiar, aerot, and the missing dish from my palate that I have only heard of but finally got to try. aitchou. This yellow soup is poured into a hollow of cocoiams. And like a volcano it is awesome and hard to take in. While a volcano is hard to take in because of the enormity of its destruction, aitchou is hard to take in because it is a soup but cocoiams do not fold up well like other types of balled grain that we use here. Thus I had to sip sloppily, but it turns out that that was the proper method, so ooophta good for my instincts. And good for my belly! 

But the big main day was Thursday, and boy celebrations occurred. I first noticed it when I came to school and kids were running a bit ragged, because many teachers were not there, in fact none of the women teachers were there. They took the day off and while it is well deserved it was amusing to see how disordered the school became without them. In the first plce, the students lacked activities for several subjects a day, in the second, no one knows hoe to work the copy machine except for the secretary and men at various points throughout the day would look at it, poke at it, grumble ill-naturredly about it, and then go disgruntedly about their business, although they never quite new what their business was because they lacked women to guide them. In every class I had we had successful lessons and with making all the boys wish the girls a good day and tell them they are very special. I then said that they need not a calendrical hint to do so and they should always be nice to girls. At which point certain roguish boys of mine rapped the boy next to them and said they would beat any boys that were not nice while leaking over their shoulders for grateful looks from girls but all they got were eye rolls and feigned disinterest. It had been, as a side note, rather astonishing to watch youth turn from their adolescent 'eeeew-ing' of girls to active heated pursuit.

Well that afternoon I arrived to Alfred's wife's house according to invitation to see them dancing something wild with pots on their heads. Turns out some of the university aged children of the women gave everyone a new pot and they were dancing their praise with some joyous hoots and hollers. Then we ate some fish and batons of manioc and I danced with some of them. Afterward Alfred and I went to a bar according to the wishes of another matron in my life and danced with more strange middle-aged women. But really it is impossible to describe the way the city was dominated by wome. It was like science fiction. Every moto-taxi had a women or two on it, pitched laughter carried everyone, and haunted-looking men were everyone muttering to themselves that the governor had promised to lock up any women that got drunk and took off their clothes in public. 

All in all it was quite a good time.

Tuesday, as some might know, was my birthday but I did not do anything really special because everyone was so busy, but I did bring in treats for all my classes and the professors, all of whom were perplexed why I was doing so, in the same way they were perplexed when I did the same for Christmas. I got songs sung to me in several languages and many compliments when, after demanding their age and hearing my response of 26 (thanks mom for the reminder!) they to,d me that "o, you're not nearly so old as I thought." or maybe that is not a compliment but a reflection on my premature aging, what with my enormous head of hair and smooth cheeks and high pitched voice and distint lack of muscle and style of dress that more nearly reflects Calvin (the friend of Hobbes) than Bruce Wayne.

But the awesome result of my giving out of treats is that on Friday he canteen-master, from whom I normally buy beans on bread and to whom I gave a birthday treat, returned the birthday favor. He gave me a candy bar. So mark one up on changing Cameroon.

I am now pursuing my second attempt to change something, namely everyday I have begun to pick up plastic sacks that the students and professors let fall upon the ground. I do so in as ostentatious a manner and with as many onlookers as possible in the hope that they take notice and start seeking a trash, or better yet following my example and refuse unnecessary plastic sacks. I am a bit worried, though, that it will backfire like my environmental movement in high schools, fittingly called SAPS-students against plastic silverware. After ostentatiously refusing plastic silverware for the chopsticks that I carried in my bag, some of my fellow students seval days in a row dumbed huge handfuls on my lunch tray. Ahhh, how long-suffering I am to have carried that burden with me even to this day.

Okay, next week I am traveling so can make no guarantees about a blog appearance but if I find an Internet cafe I might toss a few words into the air as I enter the carnival of the Internet as a lesser known juggler.