Wherein I write about bodies, and not just my own

On the back of a moto, in church, in a bar, standing or sitting on a porch or inside, serving in a buvett, standing around and shooting the breeze. What do these prepositional and participial phrases have in common? They are all places where I have seen breast-feeding. Now why do I bring this up? Because like most people I think it is beautiful, but I never knew it was powerful until Monday night. I walked into Mommy Shah's to take my djamba djamba and drink my shah. She and I chatted for a while and then settled into the comfortable silence that we both like so much. While I was eating, a young woman, almost obviously drunk, danced her way into the shah palace and approached me with all sorts of offers about ways she could earn money from me that evening, while I kept eating and telling her to go away, she resorted to simply asking me for the money. At that Mommy Shah lashed her tongue into this poor woman demanding "do you have hands? Do you have legs? Work for your money or chop them off and then you can beg. Search for your honor. And this house is not a discotheque." The young woman lowered her head in shame and left. Then she asked me to continue eating in peace. Now white people are always asked for money, but usually I completely inaccessible in the shah fortress, but a few moments later, a man entered, latched his eyes on me, and begged money. Again Mommy Shah lashed out, but this man was not leaving, though he left me and walked to where she was sitting and stood inside her personal space. He never yelled or anything, but he loomed high over where she was sitting. But Mommy Shah simply waited until she was annoyed enough with this man of whom she had no fear and only a distant boredom. But she could not move him physically as that would create an altercation--to be clear, she could probably have tossed him out physically; she is mighty. When at last she decided the man was not leaving on her own, she called to her eldest daughter, Esther, who was sitting outside: "Esther, bring me baby." Esther came in with Jocelyn, the youngest daughter (who just crawled for the first time three weeks ago!), and gave her to Mommy Shah. She then lifted a milk-heavy breast from her too and put her child's eagerly suckling mouth to it. And the man stumbled back out of her personal space overwhelmed by this power of the feminine. He dazedly looked around, stuttered an apology and lurched out of the shah citadel. And I continued to set my djamba djamba and drink my shah in an augmented state of awe for a woman whom I already held so highly that I did not know my admiration could rise. In school on Wednesday my student in quatrième, Moussa, poked his nose and complained about pain. He was actually saying he had a cold, but I thought he was saying he had boogers in his nose because whenever he poked he said "it hurts." So I taught the class the funniest word in English, booger. Which, to delight all of you, is coûte de nez in French, or to translate after the manner of Fielding, it is a crouton in the nose. So next time you have salad with croutons, think about sticking one up the nose of a friend, it will hurt. Oh, I will talk about my own body for a moment, and not about my toe that grew an appendage that leaks blood on occasion. So I have big hair, and it is very soft compared to African hair, so my students like to touch it, but a this was the last week, they switched from touching to begin me to allow them to cut it off so they could make wigs and/or braid it into their own hair. And the demanding became so insistent that I had to threaten to count them apsent if they kept sneaking up behind me while I wrote on the chalkboard to touch and stroke and tug on my hair. So the last week of teaching has happened, which happened rather too quickly. Next week the students in the testing grades will write the Mock, which is a practice exam for the actual exam later in the month. Then then the following week I give my final exam and it is over with ColProt. Pretty extraordinary, eh? The rapidity with which it all ended. I got back from vacation and had only three weeks to be awesome with these students. And on the last day, what were the reactions? In 5B, the students tore at my clothes and begged me to say and said they would see me next year, or in America; the students of 5C sang me a strange song called "goodbye teacher" and several of them began to cry. Though some sat in sullen silence. And in 4A, just said goodbye in their cool and composed manner. Though they did line up to shake my hand. But in every class, they begged for stickers and wanted to know where I had bought them! So thanks mom, you made me the most popular teacher with those colorful adhesives. The most popular are the sparkly faces.

Wherein I throw the school into chaos

Nothing happened this week except that I single handedly threw the students into revolt, made babies cry, and generally ruined the world. But it all started on Monday, as most things do for a teacher. Walking into my first class, of the day, I realized something was wrong. I start Monday at the third period, but I was the first teacher that day. Because the others decided not to come on account of a little...okay, a lot...of rain that was leaving from the lofty cerulean heights to visit our lowly green meadows and brown streets. So it was hard to get the students into the mood. But eventually I lured them out with fun reviews of the present and past continuous tenses. However, I noticed not everyone was taking notes, so at the end of class I stopped and went around to everyone's notebooks and put bright shiny stickers on the ones that displayed a command of the notes from that day. Now if there was ever an order I sent to America that succeeded, it was my commanding books of stickers from my mum. Ever since I began with them the students are out of control in their eagerness to gather them all. As a brief aside a propos of stickers. I am in the midst of collecting letters responding to American students who sent them, and my students have decorated their letters with the stickers I awarded them. It is rather touching because they are crazy out of control proud of earning stickers. But then the next day, to a crowd of students proudly showing me their notebooks and their noted, I said that such note taking was normal and I expected it of them everyday. But now their pretty good because they never know when sticker rewards will come by. And why is it so important rit now? Because next week is the last week of teaching. Then comes a week of students in testing levels taking mock exams, and then I give our cumulative final. It is all coming to a close, but I desperately want these students to have notebooks with clean and clear explanations of English grammar to which they can refer in the next years. And so the week passes with me eating djamba djamba, drinking shah with Alfred, and the occasional wine night at the house of canada, all the while reading reading reading. And we come to thursday. I don't have my quatrième on Thursdays, and so I was trying to think of something fun with the cinquième. Now I am sure there are few American students who went through elementary and middle school without playing a certain number of games. The most universal is probably Heads Up Seven Up, but others include fruit basket upset, around the world, and various other races of writing on the blackboard. So I decided to invent a game. It's rules were simple. Three teams would compete to write a sentence that I'd dictate on the board as quickly and as error-free as possible. Well it took a long time to divide into teams for some reason, as I don't think these students have ever in their lives numbered off. But once they figured it out they began to move to the rows that I singled out. There were, naturally, a few who tried switching teams, but when it became clear that I could tell it had happened simply by counting the number of people on each team, they shaped up on account of their awe for my magic. It's true, sometimes I feel like C-theepio on Endor. Okay, in the first class the first round went well. I said the sentence and the students tried to answer with hardly any help from their teammates. But as soon as I out the points on the board, the stakes changed. After each round fewer and fewer students were in their seats. Everyone was packing into the first rows to scream at their teammates the proper spelling/verb form/punctuation/pronoun by round seven, no one was standing and students were sprinting to the front to erase the sentences of their opponents, they were writing for their own teammates. They were writing the answers in notebooks and showing it to their teammates, the stakes were insane, but I had neglected to slaughter a cow, and so there were no steaks. But what I have not captured is the noise. From round six on, no one could hear my sentences. The screaming was out of control. Only one or two students from every team could hear and they would gather around me and hear the sentence and rush up to their teammate to repeat it before rushing back to hear me say it again. Well, I soon found this tiring and ended the game. Though it took me five minutes to settle the students. Then came the lunch break and the class I'd just had wad bombarded with the class I was about to have with questions of what had happened. And so I walked into my second class and the students began counting off as soon as I announced game. They divided easily into teams and even planned the order of writing. We got through five rounds pretty well and quickly on account of the sound level, but then it started getting loud at the same time as heavy storm clouds poured in. There are no lights in the classrooms at ColProt, and so I was standing in a storm-darkened classroom screaming sentences like "I have gone to the restaurant with my sister and her friends." or "Will you please call your grandmother on her birthday?" and "I drank juice and ate food while wearing a suit." and then class was over, we managed to play the whole period. And as all the students stood on the edge of the rain afraid of a bit of moisture I moseied forth and danced my Fred Astaire to their hoots and hollers. Friday I came up with a new game, correct the teacher, where I wrote a few dozen sentences with various errors and made the students correct them. But then I played the racing game with my quatrième. Now in the other games there were clear victors, but here we had to have s championship round. For this, I allowed each team to have two players each and said I would disqualify any that had aid from the outside. Remarkably this worked. I then gave my sentence, something like "Would you have ridden your bicycle to school if it had not been broken by your uncle's friend?" Both teams had errors, but as I circled them, I realized team one would lose by one point. And as I circled the error, the brouhaha began in force. Team three leaped up ensemble. They raced across the tops of tables, did flips off the walls, and one crashed into a desk causing it to break. And them the smack started being talked because the best student in the class had made the error that caused her team to lose. And so I put the regulations down on that. As I left the school the other teachers just sort of stared at me.

Wherein what turns green is not my face

Not that my face has ever turned green he from what I've eaten, unlike others with stomachs made of frangipani. No, what I am talking about is the sweet song of green sung by the earth of Ngaoundere. For five months we've been living in the monochrome of brown, and while it is interesting, it is only for about as long as John Cage can keep silence interesting. After a week of strong rains grasses are everywhere, pushing up out of the dirt, past layers of dust, through disintegrating plastics, to get a look at the Cameroonian sky. Spring has arrive
While all this was happening, I spent the week basically moving from bed to school to my living room, to bed. I slept about ten hours every day and moved, since last Sunday, from fevers of 102-103 with a high point on Tuesday of the fever, rabid shallow breathing, enormous pain in my lung and rib area when I breathed, and blurry vision. Wednesday marked my recovery as the fever began to lower and then Thursday night it broke and returned to 98.6 so with two more days of drugs left I'm feeling pretty strong and everyone is relieved it was not malaria. And though I still sleep a crazy amount, the fierce night sweats that I was suffering from for a long time have ceased. It is something horribly awful to fall asleep and awake under a sweat frozen sheet and then search for andry corner to continue sleeping and to drench that as well. I had to take to sleeping on a towel and hanging both towel and sheet up in the morning to dry all day before repeating the process. But now I am watching sheets, towels, and putting my pillows in the sun as a mark of overcoming the sickness.

School started.

Right now, in colleges across America after spring break, boys and girls become like curious goats and are eager to get out of class to search for new clover, thus little gets accomplished in class and it is sad. And the other teachers said there would be a similar experience for me here. But they are wrong. I whipped into class on Monday, feigning health, and roused those students into a frenzied state of review for englsih grammar. It was like Friday fight night between Bob "broken bottle" Casey and Finn "don't mess with my shamrock" McCasey. Sabine bit and clawed over Ngo-Yetna to give me the three principle parts of the verb To Swim. Ousmanu flung his small narrow chest out against the bustier Simo to change the present tense sentence to present perfect. Bere stood up and gestured the students to silence and declared the opposite of hot is cold, while Mariyamou let none fool her into thinking the adverb of fast is fastly. And everyday was the same. I had only a listening comprehension gave set for Tuesday, an activity that used to take the students the whole class, but they sat in silence, whipped through my questions that emphasized dates and numbers and left me with a half an hour of activity to come up with in a fevered state. Then Wednesday and Thursday we did huge verb review where I wrote fourteen verbs on the board of which five were knew. We did the principle parts, and then students volunteered to write sentences for those verbs on the board in the various tenses and persons I indicated. And it is was beautiful mutual support that they supported one another's successes and with the most naive attempts at secrecy that they whisperingly pointed out an error to a fellow. So even though I have only two more weeks of full serious teaching, I am feeling ecstatic about it.

Last night I took the Canadians to a Femme pour Christ Soiree Gastronomique. It began only an hour and a half late, and given our arrival time we only had to wait forty minutes. It began with some singing, some speeches, including one pretty neat one by a lady who gave the exhortation and declared women are 55% of the church population and need to understand that this translates into economic power and that they can use that to leverage for whatever change they see fit. Then there was some more singing including a sweet counting song that was like the twelve days of Christmas only it was about numbers in other was. For example, one god, two testaments, three persons in god, four apostles ten commandments, I forget the rest. And at the end the whip down the list and I was up on my feet rapid clapping and hooting my support. It was really rather exciting to see all these women sweating through this song. Plus there were sweet actions, much different from the normal hand-cum-wave gesture. Food was the normal fare, though the chicken was particularly scary looking, so I contented myself with some delicious fish eyes.

Wherein I spend some time in bed

It was with great delight that I returned to my small chateau here in Ngaoundere, and I quickly set out to reacquaint myself with familiar haunts. Thus I was quickly seated in Mommy Shah's filling my new horn cup with her delicious drink and partaking heartily in her djamba djamba. I headed down to Genesis' and admired the huge amount of work he had done on his wife's shah place. But mostly I sat in my house and read and read and read. For I had gotten quite behind my schedule whilst on my trip. I had all this free time because this week has been the last week of Easter break. Then on Good Friday, holy week began and I went to a service at 8.30 in the morning at the very loud Bethel church, where there were eight choirs that sang in increasingly unpleasant ways. Most singing is pretty good here, so I was shocked to be suffering so much at the keening noises that the loudspeakers distortions probably only made more tolerable. But the strangest part was the pageant of the crucifixion. You'll recall from Christmas, that pageants are a bit different here. Well. In the midst of church, three men came forth clad only in loincloths and placards down there neck. The two on the sides each read "brigand" with the other said Jesus Christ. He even had a crown, but it was of mangoe leaves, not of thornes. And then a choir sang a long mournful song about the crucification and the Christ figure slowly turned his head to one brigand and looked mournfully at him, then ot the next. This switching continued for a good five minutes. During which time these strong boys never let fall their outstretched arms.
Then I was excited to go to the Easter sunrise service but on Saturday I began feeling very strange. I would take great deep breaths and be in huge amounts of pain. My legs hurt and I hat sudden onset narcolepsy. I went to figure out what was wrong and was diagnosed with walking pneumonia. I was still determined to go to the Easter sunrise service because it was at the top of Mt. Ngaoundere and I like the idea of a dawn hike. Accordingly, I went to bed at seven thirty thinking I'd wake up for sure in time because I had already slept the majority of the day. But unfortunately I did not wake up until eight this morning. And while I am still in pain, my fever is still at 102, and I have hot and cold flashes, it is not as bad as yesterday. Well this post will be my record short post because I am in pain and it hurts my eyes to look at the screen of my iPad. By the way, I am on antibiotics and should be getting better quickly.

(late addition) I have just heard that the sunrise was not even on top of the mountain, but was rather at the foot of a much smaller mountain. So nothing lost there.

Alright, second wind...
So the Mangoes are ripening, and because of my former terrorizing of children who attacked my trees, they now most respectfully knock on my door an request permission to gather mangoes. This I give them, but only in return for the provision of two mangoes. This means that I have a steady supply of delicious mango. And they are ripe. Even though the major of the mangoes are not yet ripe, these young ones can tell, even though to me they look and feel the same--ripe and unripe.

Also, the rains have begun a small bit. Two enormous storms we had at the beginning of the week and one small one yesterday. This means that the entire earth gasps heartily and already small patched of green have arisen.

About food, at the bar the other day, a man interposed himself between me and the sunset, after I tried convincing him that it is okay to look at nature rather than always wagging the tongue, he conceded the point only if I talked to him. So that was frustrating, but he nought me a beer and I decided I could chat a bit. One of the things he asked is, like all, how I like it here. I said it was great, nothing really horrible and the nature was beautiful and the people kind, and the normal platitudes one offers to a native stranger. But once I told him that my favorite foods are djamba djamba and bread with beans, he reared back in shock. he exclaimed that those were poor people's foods, and the way he said this made it clear that the poor, to him, are lesser people. Instead, I should be eating spaghetti or fish or even better steak. Now why did this interest me? Because the healthiest foods in Cameroon are the poor people's foods, while in America the healthiest foods are the most expensive and thus for the middle to upper classes. So I told this man that my digestive tract receives no wages other than the food it processes and I'd rather it be happy in its poverty than not moving in its wealth. The strangest part of this conversation though came when the man confided in me that he was worried about getting into heaven because he only had four children. I responded that I'd be worried because I had so many children and was hurting poor mother earth. He laughed at that, thinking it a might joke.

I decided to play a game the other day, where I said I would take five hundred francs and have a huge meal that was interesting and that I had not had before. I accordingly headed out to the street. The firs thing I bought was two hundred francs worth of goat belly. With this and the free pepe and onions (score) I kept moving. I bought a hundred francs of carrots, and then a baguette and a hard boiled egg (and I took the scoop of free mayonnaise). So I had a huge meal that caused everyone watching me buy it and later hear of it to be rather perplexed. But I think, for a moment of self reflection, that this is precisely the reason I do these things, so I have something to talk about.

Alright, I just got back from M'baya and am feeling loads better though still exhausted, but while there I was honored with a dance and cheers and painful high-fives. So that was pretty swell