So as I mentioned, I went on vacation and seemed to leave behind me a great deal of cogitating among my readers, but don't feel left out, for I was just as confused and perplexed for a great part of my travels! Let us begin at the beginning. Early in my experimentation in tue culture of the Bumenda people, it was suggested by Alfred and Oliver that I might like to make an excursion to the northwest to see the anglophone zone that is their home. I thought this to be a fine idea, and since we had vacation time, two weeks and a half weeks, for Easter, I decided we should try to make it happen. But I never wanted to put someone out, but Alfred mentioned that he had to go to the region anyway since it had been thirty nine (!) years since he had been home. At first we were talking about sharing the cost, but as time went on it became increasingly clear that he would not have the money to make the trip. However, I thought I could swallow the cost of a trip through Africa for two. (and to spoil the surprise I could have, if certain things had happened). Before we could go, though, I demanded that he prepare a rough idea of the costs for our trip. The preliminary receipt I got was for two hundred and fifty francs. Right, not to bad, about five hundred dollars. I was a little surprised, but decided we might cut some corners. And so we continued planning, here came the first hidden cost. Alfred insisted we have a phone, and so I bought a sim card for that. Then there were cost for the amazing amount of calling that seemed to be going in (and it is not like America, the calls by cell phone gauge everyone here at 100 francs for 0-59 seconds. And then about a week before we were to leave Alfred thought we should visit the Fon of N'du, his home village. Sure, I thought, why not. Well a preliminary reason is that we had to take a gift. I almost backed out here when I found out the gift was to be a fifty thousand franc sword, but I agreed to take half the cost as it appeared to be something quite special. Then we set out, I provided a kitty of 360 thousand francs fully expecting and anticipating at least 150 thousand at the end. And zoom we were off.
First leg: Ngaoundere to Banyo. Estimated cost, 7.5 thousand each. Actual, 6,000. Time. 11 hours
This was a pretty easy ride. It took eleven hours. We were in the fairly typical white van that seats fifteen and in which they put nineteen or twenty. Still it is not too uncomfortable, though a mother fell into a deep narcolepsy and abandoned her child to me and Alfred, and I promptly surrendered my responsibility of the child's drooling mouth to his leg. The country side was pretty as we began to move off of the savannah of Ngaoundere and through the jungle a bit. We stopped in a desolate town for a bite of lunch, tasty rice and pepper sauce, before taking the second half of the trip to Banyo, a small city that feels like an abandoned midwest former steel town. We took a beer with a fellow from Alfred's village and this began my negative beer experience, for it was warm, now 33 is normally a palatable beer, but warm it is faintly uric. But a nice breeze was blowing and I enjoyed looking out. But here three things happened that should have warned me about the nature of traveling with Alfred. Every time the bus would stop he'd complain about delay and immediately say "I know it, it is Africa" or "it is god's choice." but the two were never really comparable. Second, even though his friend spoke English and would try Alfred often switched straight to dialect and explain, the dialect is important. Now I don't normally mind if they have something to say that is serious and private, but just shooting the breeze it is nice to be included. And third and most telling, I said I wanted to get a copy of my ID in case something happened. This I proceeded to do. As I was standing there, Alfred came up and said he needed to do the same thing. Sure, I shrugged my shoulders. And as I put my ID back in my pocket and the copy in a folder in my bag, he put his copy in his ID, which seems to me to ruin the entire purpose of having a spare. But this quickly became normal, a demanded equality without having a reason.
But it was still day one and I was flying fast and free and happy seeing new things. Then we had to book a second leg to get to the village.
Second leg. Banyo to Ndu. Estimated cost: 7,500 actual: 7,000 time 9.5 hours
Now to get to the village, actually to a junction called three corners, is only 230 kilometers, but it takes nine and a half hours. How you might ask, well I invite you to look to the Mars Rover as an example. You know mars is the red planet because of its dust, well we drove Mars Road to Ndu. To get a vehicle, first of all, you negotiate a price with a man running a brothel of cars, sleek Honda and Toyota hatchbacks sit for the customer's purveyance. And we negotiated and placed out bags nearby. After being told to be there promptly at seven, we did not leave until nine-thirty. Not so bad, because it wad a night voyage anyway and it would be rotten to arrive in the very early morning. But then people started getting in the car, it began with three women in the back. Normal. Normal. Then Alfed and I got in the front passenger side. Then FOUR more people got in the back and one more sat next to the driver. This means that we had half a ton of luggage strapped to the hatch and roof, and eleven people in a car that seats four comfortable.
But hey, I'm a great sport and was ready to go. But do you have any idea how hard a four barrel engine has to work to move that many people? And then add the fact that the road is not a road but a deglorified goat path. This means at when the driver turns the wheel a little bit the entire backend of the car whips to the side and so the only way to proceed is to carve ones way through roads made up of deep rivets and an average of five inches of dust. The effect is one of skiing, or being in a dune buggy. For nine and a half hours. Still it could be okay, except I sat on the locking mechanism of the seat belt. (which will account for what is to come). I managed to sleep for a bit, enough to know that at three in the morning when the backstreet boys came onto the all African radio I was jolted out enough to lead the passengers the drowsiest version ever karaoked.
Arriving in the village, we soon found a hotel, called Dallas Complex. One of the dingiest uric locations known where the dips in the bed could rival certain oceanic trenches for deepest place on earth. But we needed to be seeing people. And off we zipped to Alfred's relatives. And then began the eating. Beautiful corn foufou made from yellow ripe corn, and vegetables that lapped the tongue with joy. We then met Alfred's Tata, a sort of sub chief, and drank shah and rafia with him and had a very nice time. And then his sister got jealous that we had eaten at the sister in law's which meant that we had to eat again. This time it was rice and meat sauce, still good, but not as good. And it introduced a problem for me. People thought it was an honor to kill a cock for me when all I really wanted was some vegetables.
Protocol
The next day we were to visit the Fon, basically the king of the area. He resolves disputes, negotiates with the government, has something like sixty wives and over a hundred children. If I had know the last I probably would have been less willing to undergo something I was already not thrilled for. But on we went, after being told there is protocol. What this means: a case of beer and twenty liters of shah (ten thousand total). Okay sure fine. But then, we can't just moto there, we have to rent a car. And we have to provide Hangers-on. And so there are scads of people I don't know, going to a palace. And we arrive at a smallish compound and go in to take seats around grungy tables beside an elevated chair covered in a green cloth. We then sit and drink some, but the beer Is warm and everyone has finished the raffia. So I sit there staring at the drinks I bought. And then there is a shuffling and everyone rises as the Fon enters. We stand until he tells us to sit. He welcomes us. We chat for a moment. We make a formal presentation and I think great this is fun. Let's drink some more and go. But now here are pictures, and I have to give a speech. And then sign the book. And as I reach for the beer determined to at least have something I am told we have to leave and I need to give money to all the Fon's children who did nothing but drink my drinks. Protocol.
The upshot? When we got back to town and went to a bar I discovered an amazing beer called Castle Milk Stout which I could drink warm and it is a very high quality beer. So the day soon got much better.
--warning--the next section is very graphic about my bowels--
The next day I did not feel so good. I had some pain going to the toilet, but thought it nothing but minor indigestion. After all today was a major reason for my trip. I was going to give a lecture to a class of students at the Baptist Seminary in town. Now, I am here preparing a lot of research material but lack an audience, and so jumped at the chance for this grip especially because of the opportunity it would allow me. And off I went to make some copies of my handout. We were soon strolling to the campus, a beautifully manicured lawn, paved sidewalks, nice library and seminar room. It has that special academia feel. And inside my classroom I had chalk, a blackboard, and most importantly sixteen students had agreed to stay an extra day after break began to listen as well as two professors. I began and everything felt fine and I was waxing pedantic and people were taking notes and interested. And the question and answer was full of perspicuous inquiries. I had a great talk afterward with the professor of Hebrew and old testament (an American with an excellent mind for bibliography and who gave me a lot of fabulous and generous feedback). But when I stood up something was wrong. I thought I had been sweating through the talk, but actually the chair was covered in a thin film of blood and feces. I quickly ran to the bathroom and discovered three large protuberances standing out of my anus. But unlike normal piles, they were white with a tinge of blood. I decided to do something and told Alfred. After twenty minutes trying to explain to him what it was and that maybe I should go to a hospital, he shrugged and said it was normal and African's did not go to the hospital for such things. And, since the hospital was far and at this point I could not sit and could barely walk and needed to lie on my stomach in order to avoid pain I agreed. I gave him twenty thousand francs to covered costs. Six hours later he returned with two men. One wad the great John, his inlaw who was very kind to us, and the other was a lanky man who kept taking copious snorts of snuff. Well, this man was a bush doctor. He looked at me, nodded, and began mixing crushed powders with red oil. And mixing a juice in an old coke bottle. He had been out to the bush special to make these powders and searched for the special leaves. He had then slaughtered a cock over a sacred stone, washed the sacred stone with raffia wine, and pestled the powered on this particular mortar. I then applied one of the powders to my anus, washed my hands, and took a huge scoop of it with the middle finger of my right hand. Everyone there then did the same because the problem would try to escape my body and jump into someone else unless they had this protection. They then left and I lay down to read. Two hours later a shudder ripped through my body in the reverse direction, as though a vacuum were in my intestines and I felt a painfully powerful suction. I lay panting at my contractions when another ripped my body followed my a third of somewhat reduced state. And I felt amazing. I stood up. I sat down. The pain was gone. I went to examine my rectum and the protuberances were gone.
This was a pretty amazing experience.
Unfortunately it did not remain so. We were, apparently, to be 'honored' by the Fon. Alfred was reluctant to tell me what this means, he thinks because he wanted it to be a surprise, I think because he knew it would make me upset. And so once more we underwent protocol. We bought the beer and wine. We fetched the retainers, we arrived and stood and specified. And then he gave us red feathers. Which, if you happen to see it, are pretty cool. My awesome red cap with a feather does look good. And we had the honor of buying the most expensive fabric in Cameroon to make a bubu. And we had the honor of honoring the Fon for his honoring us, in the form of twenty thousand. But more honors were to come. We got to take the retainers out for more beers and print pictures for them. Honors! But at least there was castle milk stout to drink.
Oh, I never mentioned. We left the Dallas Complex before even one day and moved to the wonderful Santana Clara where the rooms were clean (still no running water, but that's no problem).
Said at this point to Alfred that we had to double check our finances. He said we would once we got to our next destination.
Next: edward's in Bumenda Town. Estimated cost 7,000 each actual, 4,000. Time. 4.45
This is Alfred's elder brother, a former diplomat in NY and really fun to talk to about politics. I mostly read here in the morning, played games with the children in the afternoon and talked in the evening, in between making awesome shopping at the market for cups made from horn and the classic Bumenda bag which resulted in me being asked everywhere if I was a "Bumenda boy." but the city is clean and every first Thursday of the month there is city wide cleaning, and there is a bit of a breeze and excellent aquon and corn foufou djamba djamba. And castle milk stout.
We passed an excellent time here until Alfred told me that 150,000 francs was missing. He started saying that god would take care of it, but I was too upset to let him finish. I said that he had insisted on carrying the money and that I had put all I could into the trip and we had to go home on the thirty thousand left and that if it needed to be taken care of further he'd have to find some money. Luckily he did, but the second half of our trip we did a great deal of traveling for sixty thousand while we had done the first half of the trip, which was less travel, for 190,000 so I was and actually am confused whether to be confused or upset, but gravitating toward upset right now. My mood was thus rather sour as we turned to the next phase.
Visiting Limbe. Estimated cost, 11,000 each. Actual cost 5,000. Time 8.5 hours
Travel was on a big bus and no trouble at all. Are you understanding now why I am including the estimated and actual, the trip should have been a reasonable price, and the estimates were outlandish when I thought they were serious. The city is beautiful, on a shore, old colonial buildings (its original name is Victoria) and large avenues. We enjoyed walking a great deal here beside the shore, at my insistence, and through botanical gardens. And then I discovered the best thing in the city, keg beer. It has been since America that I have had beer out of a keg. It has been longer since I could order it by the liter. And, sorry everyone who complains about my drinking, it just got a lot easier to deal with the loss of the money and my increasing irritation with my traveling companion. My irritation was augmented by the fact that in Limbe his son and daughter are going to school and he has not seen his son for nine years. I decided to take responsibility for this and insisted we bring him down to spend time with us and his sister because it seems apparent to me that a parent should see his or her children when he travels twelve days to do so.
We also snatched a day up to Buea, a town that creates a sort of twin cities with Limbe, and passed time with some really wonderful relatives of Alfred's. And then it was into a bus to Yaounde (estimated cost, 13,000; actual 5,000) and then the train up to Ngaoundere estimated 22,000; actual, 10,000--total travel time Limbe to Ngaoundere 23.6 hours). And now I am back in what does feel like home and have met with Phil and June and the Canadian gals. I have showered and shaved and clipped my finger nails and typed my blog and taken care of my 93 emails and really thinking I had a great time on the trip.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Wherein I differentiate the lips from the belly
I heard a great piece of supposed wisdom yesterday a few moments before I ate a great piece of traditional cake. It was from a famous pop singer here in Ngaoundere who told the entire audience, made up of private invitees--worry not I will unfold the tale more thoroughly presently--that "when your lips say you love me / but your heart never says yes / then you kill me." this got me thinking, as I was digesting various forms of awesomeness, that the most erotic moment of saying I love you is the lip formation of you. Because you proffer a kiss with it, and if the parter responds with either "I love you too" or "I love you also" then the lips can meet somewhere betwixt the people. This seems a nice meeting in the middle, but if you are asking heart to yes, well there are many problems. For the start, it will be hard to hear the heart unless you are awesome at Morse code, second yes is rather a snake-like hissing response. That is why it is best when one responds to a marriage proposal not to say yes, but rather "I never had a clue, but I will" something like that, a response that keeps the snakes away from the chicken eggs of early love.
Are all of you readers thoroughly confused yet? If this were a Harlequin posting, it would end with you learning that I had actually proposed and there would be at least three scenes of lovemaking and probably six horse-back rides between persons of incompatible job descriptions but nonetheless star-crossed qualities and certain muscular thighs and shapely triceps. (I'm running out of reading material).
Still confused, well, I shall explicate. This week's post is about appetite, but I wished to open with a false trail, for it is actually the appetite of the belly.
On Thursday my darling mischievous students in 5B invited me to a party. Now I was a bit hesitant because they had invited me to a soccer match the day before that proved to be a myth but I accepted because I saw something of actual veracity shining out of their normally mendacious eye-sockets. And so on Friday at 9:30 am (also known as third hour) I found myself outside a classroom being asked to wait for the other professors. Ahh, at last a sign of the veracity of the situation. As a result, I stood gently off to the side and began reading my book, some seven or eight minutes later Aie Sabine came to me with a gym t-shirt over her arm, as though she were a server in a high class restaurant, and she gestured me inside. I was the first, a typical state to which I have accustomed myself, and I sat behind student desks turned buffet table. There were vegetables, five types of spaghetti, salads, meats, juices, grains. It turns out that the class was throwing a surprise party for their professors. Soon after me, in filed others. We filled our seats to the cheers of students, two of whom gave darling speeches about thanking their professors who work too hard. The principal was there and gave a gracious speech, and then we ate to a chorus of M. X eat my food Mlle. Eat my thing, I did not make it, my mother did. Mdm. You make sure to try my salad I put extra avocado in it for you.
It was in all a marvelously warm experience wherein I was far more happy for my lips (which held the food in my mouth) than for my heart.
Of course I discovered an hour later when I returned to teach the reason that they had specified that "sometimes their professors work too hard." They wanted the day off! I told them to keep dreaming and cooking and we spent an hour on the vocabulary of computers.
On Wednesday Alfred's wife gave me an invitation to be present at a community even. The invitation and envelope were quite large and I expressed my gratitude. Alfred then told me that one best expressed gratitude through hidden sums of money in marked envelopes, so I slipped some cash in it and waited until saturday night. Now I am sort of used to the wild inconvenience that is called African time (and, sometimes rather awkwardly for me, Black Time). So I figured, the invitation said seven so we ought to arrive at eight. And so we did, but we were the third group there. I went with Alfred and Genesis (the president of M'Baya). And we sat and sat and sat and at ten thirty the event began and we could begin eating the small sugared pop corn and drink some luke-warm beers. But the event was really fabulous. The president of group we were celebrating stood up and said that they had invited the governor and so had to wait for him. Even though the governor was on drips all day (.I.e. He had malaria) he said he would try to make it and so the organizers were under compulsion to wait because "protocol must be followed." but once it began the cultural evening was stunning. Alfred's wife comes from the south, from a region called Kumuda, short for Kupe Muanengouba. The people are called the Bakossi, which means "you hate us." the president of the Ngaoundere branch explained that the name originates from the first German explorers who asked the people "who are you" but the people thought they asked "why do you think we have come." and so they answered "you have come because you hate us" that is "you have come because Bakossi."
And there was great dancing and great speeches and CRTV (Cameroonian radio and telivision) was there. Something I did not know until after I left and Alfred informed me. They were un-uninformed and I thought the man with a camera was just there to register the archive. There is one definite memorable moment that comes from my certain peculiarity about condiments. You see, if I have the chance to dip things, I dip them. This ranges from women and men with whom I dance to chips and salsa to pizza and ranch to soups and food. Well this latest dip was the famous green soup of the Bakossi. I was supposed to eat it with only the pieces of cow tail already in it. As a brief aside, I have become quite adept at eating tail, a feat that is neither easy nor instinctual for me. But I had a fish head, and so I dunked the fish head in and sucked down the eyeballs. Three other people at my tabl stared at me, and when I repeated it they shot beer and Smirnoff ice across the table as they guffawed at my audacity. Who, they demanded to know, had ever though of drinking the soup out of the empty eye socket of a fish skull. Alfred, fortunately, just shrugged. He's used to my embarrassing ways. And the table soon adjusted so they expressed no surprise to my various other mixtures.
Throughout the evening, we had musical interludes from the famous pop star H. Peizon, he of the opening quotation. Women loved him, men to, but I could not help wonder why, despite his obvious hotness, they were so attracted. He was lip-syncing the entire time, his mouth had a mouthy ironic twitch, and his lyrics were soporificly saccharine to the core. But I guess, at the end of the day, one likes to think that the heart speaks more truth than the lips, even though it is the lips that let great food in. Me, I'd far rather eat some tasty cocoiams dipped in soup that listen to the morse code of another's heart. Or if the person actually wanted to talk, I'd engage in the palaver, but elsewise there are too many linguistic problems with translation that just don't occur in the kitchen or in the dance. After all, as Shakira told us all, hips do not lie, whether they are the hips of a babe still struggling to crawl of or a nine year old poking her honey hips into me, the dance is still the dance.
Are all of you readers thoroughly confused yet? If this were a Harlequin posting, it would end with you learning that I had actually proposed and there would be at least three scenes of lovemaking and probably six horse-back rides between persons of incompatible job descriptions but nonetheless star-crossed qualities and certain muscular thighs and shapely triceps. (I'm running out of reading material).
Still confused, well, I shall explicate. This week's post is about appetite, but I wished to open with a false trail, for it is actually the appetite of the belly.
On Thursday my darling mischievous students in 5B invited me to a party. Now I was a bit hesitant because they had invited me to a soccer match the day before that proved to be a myth but I accepted because I saw something of actual veracity shining out of their normally mendacious eye-sockets. And so on Friday at 9:30 am (also known as third hour) I found myself outside a classroom being asked to wait for the other professors. Ahh, at last a sign of the veracity of the situation. As a result, I stood gently off to the side and began reading my book, some seven or eight minutes later Aie Sabine came to me with a gym t-shirt over her arm, as though she were a server in a high class restaurant, and she gestured me inside. I was the first, a typical state to which I have accustomed myself, and I sat behind student desks turned buffet table. There were vegetables, five types of spaghetti, salads, meats, juices, grains. It turns out that the class was throwing a surprise party for their professors. Soon after me, in filed others. We filled our seats to the cheers of students, two of whom gave darling speeches about thanking their professors who work too hard. The principal was there and gave a gracious speech, and then we ate to a chorus of M. X eat my food Mlle. Eat my thing, I did not make it, my mother did. Mdm. You make sure to try my salad I put extra avocado in it for you.
It was in all a marvelously warm experience wherein I was far more happy for my lips (which held the food in my mouth) than for my heart.
Of course I discovered an hour later when I returned to teach the reason that they had specified that "sometimes their professors work too hard." They wanted the day off! I told them to keep dreaming and cooking and we spent an hour on the vocabulary of computers.
On Wednesday Alfred's wife gave me an invitation to be present at a community even. The invitation and envelope were quite large and I expressed my gratitude. Alfred then told me that one best expressed gratitude through hidden sums of money in marked envelopes, so I slipped some cash in it and waited until saturday night. Now I am sort of used to the wild inconvenience that is called African time (and, sometimes rather awkwardly for me, Black Time). So I figured, the invitation said seven so we ought to arrive at eight. And so we did, but we were the third group there. I went with Alfred and Genesis (the president of M'Baya). And we sat and sat and sat and at ten thirty the event began and we could begin eating the small sugared pop corn and drink some luke-warm beers. But the event was really fabulous. The president of group we were celebrating stood up and said that they had invited the governor and so had to wait for him. Even though the governor was on drips all day (.I.e. He had malaria) he said he would try to make it and so the organizers were under compulsion to wait because "protocol must be followed." but once it began the cultural evening was stunning. Alfred's wife comes from the south, from a region called Kumuda, short for Kupe Muanengouba. The people are called the Bakossi, which means "you hate us." the president of the Ngaoundere branch explained that the name originates from the first German explorers who asked the people "who are you" but the people thought they asked "why do you think we have come." and so they answered "you have come because you hate us" that is "you have come because Bakossi."
And there was great dancing and great speeches and CRTV (Cameroonian radio and telivision) was there. Something I did not know until after I left and Alfred informed me. They were un-uninformed and I thought the man with a camera was just there to register the archive. There is one definite memorable moment that comes from my certain peculiarity about condiments. You see, if I have the chance to dip things, I dip them. This ranges from women and men with whom I dance to chips and salsa to pizza and ranch to soups and food. Well this latest dip was the famous green soup of the Bakossi. I was supposed to eat it with only the pieces of cow tail already in it. As a brief aside, I have become quite adept at eating tail, a feat that is neither easy nor instinctual for me. But I had a fish head, and so I dunked the fish head in and sucked down the eyeballs. Three other people at my tabl stared at me, and when I repeated it they shot beer and Smirnoff ice across the table as they guffawed at my audacity. Who, they demanded to know, had ever though of drinking the soup out of the empty eye socket of a fish skull. Alfred, fortunately, just shrugged. He's used to my embarrassing ways. And the table soon adjusted so they expressed no surprise to my various other mixtures.
Throughout the evening, we had musical interludes from the famous pop star H. Peizon, he of the opening quotation. Women loved him, men to, but I could not help wonder why, despite his obvious hotness, they were so attracted. He was lip-syncing the entire time, his mouth had a mouthy ironic twitch, and his lyrics were soporificly saccharine to the core. But I guess, at the end of the day, one likes to think that the heart speaks more truth than the lips, even though it is the lips that let great food in. Me, I'd far rather eat some tasty cocoiams dipped in soup that listen to the morse code of another's heart. Or if the person actually wanted to talk, I'd engage in the palaver, but elsewise there are too many linguistic problems with translation that just don't occur in the kitchen or in the dance. After all, as Shakira told us all, hips do not lie, whether they are the hips of a babe still struggling to crawl of or a nine year old poking her honey hips into me, the dance is still the dance.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Seven cups of tea
Reading Stephen Greenblatt's rather caustic review of Ralph Feinnes face in "A Man of Principle," his take on the recent film adaptation of Coriolanus written for the NYRB, I was delighted by his focus on the one moment of great pity that Shakespeare gives us in which a man treats Coriolanus kindly and when the meet again C struggles to remember the man's name. I was thinking about this exchange between anonymous soldier and commoner because the station has recently become inundated (an ironic word to use in the dry season) with soldiers performing military reconnaissance exercises. I did not know this at first, for the first time I saw them they were looking up into the mango trees and I thought they were a community organization devoted to helping cats stranded on high. But their fatigues (and fatigue?) made their allegiance to violence clear. But I decided to withhold judgement because of contemplations on Coriolanus and watched them take their ease beneath a tree. I went to my kitchen and gathered seven cups and glasses (I had to make do with what I had) and took from my fridge a carafe of very cold water. I then took this outside and shared it with the sweaty and frustrated soldiers. I hope by this act of kindness that they will remember humanity if they ever encounter inhuman situations.
The above is written with charming naïveté. No? The reality is that I live in a city where there are infrequent clashes between the police and the army that end in death and property destruction. That might be something you do not know, the sheer level of violence that I hide in my Potemkin village.
School this week was wonderful. I gave the exam, the students complained, and almost universally their grades improved. My enforced system of note taking culminated when, on Monday, I looked through their notes and offered extra credit (one says bonus points) ranging between .25 and 2.25 for them. By the way, my students are terribly confused by my system of grading. In Cameroon, and perhaps elsewhere, when a teacher makes a check on the paper it means that something is correct. But when I do, it means their is an error. Here is a common scenario. One side of the sheet has three sets of five questions each for a total of fifteen. I tally each of the sections and write the number to the side and then the total at the bottom. But I guess this is difficult to figure out because the students will approach me and say that I counted incorrectly and proceed to add the four numbers together! Or, say there are five questions. Two of them are wrong. I thus put 3/5 at the top of the page. The students who missed the two questions laugh thinking that I made a mistake (after all there are two red marks and the student thinks he or she should have gotten 2/5). But the students that actually score 2/5 groan at me that they should have 3/5 because there are three red marks.
It is all very confusing and made all the more so by the secret of the stickers. I handed out my exams and made sure everyone got one sticker. Anything over 12.5 earned two stickers and over 17 three. Well what a hullabaloo. Students pealed off stickers and claimed I forgot while wearing the sticker on the forehead or ears. They begged for an additional point not, though, to change the grade but simply to gain more stickers. Others thanked me for the gifts and one particularly wiley girl exchanged stickers with other students put two more on her exam and showed me that she had three stickers and thus I made a mistake with the grading, she had earned 17/20! So I had a big laugh with them all.
The only other relevant event to relate concerns an experience I had while drinking shah. I remain the only white person I've seen drinking the nectar, and so am used to people coming in and joshing a bit with me. But yesterday five came in and started complaining that tourists were overrunning everything. They then proceeded to try and order shah, but had no idea how to do it. When they got their tasters they received the small colored cups with only a tiny sip. For contrast, when I enter I get a long handshake, greetings from the kids, laughs and hoots. I receive my shah in a big translucent cup and it is always full. You see the irony of the situation?the Cameroonians were complaining of me as a tourist, but they were the tourists to this small world of mine. After they left we all had a bit of a laugh and I ate some corn fou fou djamba djamba.
The above is written with charming naïveté. No? The reality is that I live in a city where there are infrequent clashes between the police and the army that end in death and property destruction. That might be something you do not know, the sheer level of violence that I hide in my Potemkin village.
School this week was wonderful. I gave the exam, the students complained, and almost universally their grades improved. My enforced system of note taking culminated when, on Monday, I looked through their notes and offered extra credit (one says bonus points) ranging between .25 and 2.25 for them. By the way, my students are terribly confused by my system of grading. In Cameroon, and perhaps elsewhere, when a teacher makes a check on the paper it means that something is correct. But when I do, it means their is an error. Here is a common scenario. One side of the sheet has three sets of five questions each for a total of fifteen. I tally each of the sections and write the number to the side and then the total at the bottom. But I guess this is difficult to figure out because the students will approach me and say that I counted incorrectly and proceed to add the four numbers together! Or, say there are five questions. Two of them are wrong. I thus put 3/5 at the top of the page. The students who missed the two questions laugh thinking that I made a mistake (after all there are two red marks and the student thinks he or she should have gotten 2/5). But the students that actually score 2/5 groan at me that they should have 3/5 because there are three red marks.
It is all very confusing and made all the more so by the secret of the stickers. I handed out my exams and made sure everyone got one sticker. Anything over 12.5 earned two stickers and over 17 three. Well what a hullabaloo. Students pealed off stickers and claimed I forgot while wearing the sticker on the forehead or ears. They begged for an additional point not, though, to change the grade but simply to gain more stickers. Others thanked me for the gifts and one particularly wiley girl exchanged stickers with other students put two more on her exam and showed me that she had three stickers and thus I made a mistake with the grading, she had earned 17/20! So I had a big laugh with them all.
The only other relevant event to relate concerns an experience I had while drinking shah. I remain the only white person I've seen drinking the nectar, and so am used to people coming in and joshing a bit with me. But yesterday five came in and started complaining that tourists were overrunning everything. They then proceeded to try and order shah, but had no idea how to do it. When they got their tasters they received the small colored cups with only a tiny sip. For contrast, when I enter I get a long handshake, greetings from the kids, laughs and hoots. I receive my shah in a big translucent cup and it is always full. You see the irony of the situation?the Cameroonians were complaining of me as a tourist, but they were the tourists to this small world of mine. After they left we all had a bit of a laugh and I ate some corn fou fou djamba djamba.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Wherein I teach heart with a silent aitch
What a peaceful and restful and productive week this was, no onerous duty, no surprise landings by aliens, in fact there were only four blows of note on the gong of life.
In the first gong, whose echo sounded brazenly, we administered the loot from bilingual week to the students, the administration came up to our small office (principal, vice, discipline master, chaplain) and each said a dozen or so words in English and then we coordinators called the names and told what the prizes we for and the administration handed them out. The prizes were crayons (called colors), erasers, pencils, notebooks, scissors, and pencil sharpeners. Following this we had a feast which Oliver's wife had made of fish, fuleri juice, and plantains. We was a very pleasant affair.
The second gong, which thudded bodily, was on Valentine's day. A day where things happen here in a rather subdued manner. I began each class by drawing an enormous heart on the board and dozens of small ones. I then game a short lecture on sending, always a good verb, valentines (thanks again for the Tree ma). I then brought out a piece of paper and gestured for the students to imitate me. I folded it in half and tore the folded side along the lines of an exaggerated question mark. Ooo the students were delighted to see that I suddenly held a heart in my hand, and incidentally all their hearts in hand as well. How delighted they were, insisting that they could not figure it out and I simply must do it for them. But I simply
Put on my long-suffering look and began a slow glasses polish that jumpstarted their brains. I then had them all write out "roses are red / violence are blue / sugar is sweet / and so are you" and told them to give it to their mothers. I then began to start on the lesson, but could get nowhere for every time I turned around one would yell for me to look and he or she would show me a valentine fresh-formed. Some students had near a dozen at the end, and then by Thursday they had the audacity to tell me they had run out of room in their notebooks! That evening I delivered my own valentines. Mommie Shah got a bottle of Djino (a very sweet tropical fruit drink that people like) and so did Alfred's wife. Then I got cooking. The other day one of the three recently arrived Canadians mentioned a hankering for reeses. I tucked the knowledge away and then went out on Tuesday to purchase a small thing of Tartina (like nutella but without the hazelnut) and some scoops of ground peanuts. I then melted the tartina in the sun, which is now blazing merrily, and poured it over the mounds of peanut and pricked it with a toothpick and set it in the freezer. Wait wait wait. I delivered the platter and ended the giving of valentines.
The third gong sunk into the spirits of all woodenly. My mom sent me some stickers and I graded the student homework with them and suddenly had students throwing homework in my hands at the end of class that they had "forgotten" to give me the day before. Yeah right, they just wanted stickers! And to do what with? Well to feminize the male of course, for it is apparently great fun to stick them on the ears and adopt a Runway Strut. I also, during coffee, rather impishly stuck one on the hand of the vice-principal next to whom I sit. He sort of looked stunned and the administrators at the table were nonplussed while he asked me why I had done it. I said that it was because he was good homework, a comment which got the table laughing. Then he asked why I had chosen pink to give him. Well I had not chosen the color for it was simply the next in the row of stickers, but since he was wearing an elegant pink tie I told him that I wanted him to match. Well, that afternoon, while sitting on Alfred's porch-he is convalescing from a flare-up of his old injury-the vice came to visit as well and proudly showed me his hand which was still adorned with the sticker.
The fourth gong sounds hollowly. I came into class pouring forth energy, brilliant lesson in hand and was met, not with the accustomed cheer of thirty voices, but with thirty hollow eyes. That is right, I am not miswriting (though given the atrocity of the spelling on this blog I can forgive you for thinking that). I only had fifteen students. The school the afternoon before had driven everyone out who has not paid. And thus in my other classes I had nine and twelve. It was, sad to say, amazing. We were productively to a scary early-Fordian manner. The students labored along the assembly line of knowledge and as a class produced brilliant vehicles. And by vehicles I mean conversation vehicles. And by brilliant I mean that the sentences had subjects and matching verbs in a tense that made sense.
In the first gong, whose echo sounded brazenly, we administered the loot from bilingual week to the students, the administration came up to our small office (principal, vice, discipline master, chaplain) and each said a dozen or so words in English and then we coordinators called the names and told what the prizes we for and the administration handed them out. The prizes were crayons (called colors), erasers, pencils, notebooks, scissors, and pencil sharpeners. Following this we had a feast which Oliver's wife had made of fish, fuleri juice, and plantains. We was a very pleasant affair.
The second gong, which thudded bodily, was on Valentine's day. A day where things happen here in a rather subdued manner. I began each class by drawing an enormous heart on the board and dozens of small ones. I then game a short lecture on sending, always a good verb, valentines (thanks again for the Tree ma). I then brought out a piece of paper and gestured for the students to imitate me. I folded it in half and tore the folded side along the lines of an exaggerated question mark. Ooo the students were delighted to see that I suddenly held a heart in my hand, and incidentally all their hearts in hand as well. How delighted they were, insisting that they could not figure it out and I simply must do it for them. But I simply
Put on my long-suffering look and began a slow glasses polish that jumpstarted their brains. I then had them all write out "roses are red / violence are blue / sugar is sweet / and so are you" and told them to give it to their mothers. I then began to start on the lesson, but could get nowhere for every time I turned around one would yell for me to look and he or she would show me a valentine fresh-formed. Some students had near a dozen at the end, and then by Thursday they had the audacity to tell me they had run out of room in their notebooks! That evening I delivered my own valentines. Mommie Shah got a bottle of Djino (a very sweet tropical fruit drink that people like) and so did Alfred's wife. Then I got cooking. The other day one of the three recently arrived Canadians mentioned a hankering for reeses. I tucked the knowledge away and then went out on Tuesday to purchase a small thing of Tartina (like nutella but without the hazelnut) and some scoops of ground peanuts. I then melted the tartina in the sun, which is now blazing merrily, and poured it over the mounds of peanut and pricked it with a toothpick and set it in the freezer. Wait wait wait. I delivered the platter and ended the giving of valentines.
The third gong sunk into the spirits of all woodenly. My mom sent me some stickers and I graded the student homework with them and suddenly had students throwing homework in my hands at the end of class that they had "forgotten" to give me the day before. Yeah right, they just wanted stickers! And to do what with? Well to feminize the male of course, for it is apparently great fun to stick them on the ears and adopt a Runway Strut. I also, during coffee, rather impishly stuck one on the hand of the vice-principal next to whom I sit. He sort of looked stunned and the administrators at the table were nonplussed while he asked me why I had done it. I said that it was because he was good homework, a comment which got the table laughing. Then he asked why I had chosen pink to give him. Well I had not chosen the color for it was simply the next in the row of stickers, but since he was wearing an elegant pink tie I told him that I wanted him to match. Well, that afternoon, while sitting on Alfred's porch-he is convalescing from a flare-up of his old injury-the vice came to visit as well and proudly showed me his hand which was still adorned with the sticker.
The fourth gong sounds hollowly. I came into class pouring forth energy, brilliant lesson in hand and was met, not with the accustomed cheer of thirty voices, but with thirty hollow eyes. That is right, I am not miswriting (though given the atrocity of the spelling on this blog I can forgive you for thinking that). I only had fifteen students. The school the afternoon before had driven everyone out who has not paid. And thus in my other classes I had nine and twelve. It was, sad to say, amazing. We were productively to a scary early-Fordian manner. The students labored along the assembly line of knowledge and as a class produced brilliant vehicles. And by vehicles I mean conversation vehicles. And by brilliant I mean that the sentences had subjects and matching verbs in a tense that made sense.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Wherein the gong is forgotten
How wonderful Monday was this week, I three upon the board a brilliant set of vocabulary, which the students eagerly copied. Animal, the sound it makes, and a common verb associated with the animal. Thus the sound of a duck is a quack and the duck can swim, waddle, or fly. And so on and so forth. I was very excited to have this preliminary vocab development out of the way because this week we would be practicing comparative adjectives and superlatives. Feeling might, I returned home. And then I came to school on Tuesday.
I had known that there would be a phenomenon called Youth Week, but I fused to let it enter my intelligence in such a way that it would play a role in forming my calendar. But it was not to play a formative role but rather a destructive one. I thought for sure I could teach until noon, but at morning coffee I learned that all non-testing grades had school canceled. Arrggghhh, I watched my intellectual property (my syllabus for the week) grow dusty. So I passed the week by coming to school in the morning to see if maybe there would be a chance I could teach only to have my hopes continually dashed, though on a brighter side my students delighted in seeing me and we spoke a bit of English together while they, very kindly, lamented the fact that they could not be in class. I say "very kindly" but a great deal of the actual reason is that the students have to march for hours. This is the phenomenon of youth week. It culminates in every school marching in Independence Square. And the marching needs to be well rehearsed. But also, and I did not now this until Thursday night, the students practice for a talent show, which brings us to...
The gong show of Ngaoundere wherein someone neglected to bring the gong.
Thursday morning Alfred and I went to a dingy quarter of Ngaoundere because I wanted to try a new drink that is only really served in the morning. Bili-Bili is a drink made from millet. But where shah is smooth, almost food like, bili-bill is sharper and foamy if it sits. It is also a mysterious red color that swallows the light. Not great, it is nonetheless fun to drink because it comes in small pails for 500francs and one serves those around and is equally served in turn. And the cups are the bottoms of calabash gourds. We did not take a lot since we arrived late and it was gone for the day, but after grabbing a quick piece of meat some folks there decoded to share with us do we had a taste. An enormous diffence between this place and Mommy-shah. Is that the latter is small and intimate and the former is rowdy and filled with workers about to head out on their day. Also it had a courtyard wherein a constant impromptu market is in session, and in a delightful manner everyone has a calabash resting on the ground before him or her as though they were school children gathered alongside a river bank preparing to release their boats like so many little rascals.
After we ascended the hill back to our quarter and went to school for the daily disappointment of not teaching, I ran into Oliver whom I hadn't seen all week. He proceeded to tell me that the English club would perform that night. I responded enthusiastically but confusedly because I knew nothing of any performance. Turns out that all the schools that would march on the weekend also have talent shows on the thursday before. How I wish I had known since it would have been great fun to plan a whirlwind to some other schools. The event was to begin at six o'clock, but being accustomed to the fact that Cameroonian clocks are all broken, I was at ease when we did not arrive until seven ten. After all, we should get a chair at least. But it then did not begin for another half hour. It was neat to see my students come in and take their seats as well because I never see them outside their school uniforms and they all came very well dressed. It is also interesting to see who travels together outside the classroom. If I had guessed about close friends before that night I would never have paired those who were together. It was also really wonderful to see the older kids in the class watching out for the younger and making room on chairs for them. They're good kids, I suppose, just with ephemeral memories and that is what I struggle to remember myself.
The show began with a traditional dance number by the youngest classes and they performed admirably, and then everything intensified as the em-cee raised his voice to welcome the youth of Nigeria, the name of a five-male breakdance troupe. And who should lead them than my very own Nana, the same young man who broke dance way back when I did my lesson on Rihanna. It was quite thrilling and everyone was watching eagerly. Then came the strangest dance of the evening. The Chadian dance. Out came six or seven boys in garb, the leading one waving an umbrella, and they bobbed up and down to know rhythm I could figure out, and the crowd went wild, they went wild not for the dance but for what was suddenly happening. Chadians poured out of the crowd and were throwing 500, 1000, 2000 franc bills everywhere and this went on for at least eight minutes. Then there was a long series of lip-syncing, called playback in French, which is horrifyingly popular here. The way in which it works is that a group gets together, practices a dance, and then pretends to be the performer. Some are entertaining, but it is the sort of thing that is neat once or twice and in doses of under two minutes. But tens of these shows of five minutes gets unbearable. Intermittent with these entertaintments, came the out-of-tune / step / energy gospel singers, the unique form of Cameroonian entertainment called the NewsCast, and a brilliant brilliant ColPro school day in three minutes. In the style of Complete Works of Shakeseapre, abridged, these students went through all their teachers and the imitations were spot on, from the physical and tonal characteristics of the principal, to the whistle of bell, to the students who are hungry, lazy, sleeping. It was the highlight. Every time my students were out I felt very proud, so that was nice to recognize in myself. Although I am torn because a show like this should, I still feel, be organized outside of school and not have school canceled for it. Then Alfred, Oliver, and I left because our ears hurt. Two hours later when we came back, the show was still going strong and indeed continued until midnight, and that is just too much playback for me.
The marching on Saturday was as you might imagine, hot and dusty and tedious to watch. But I only saw two or three schools. Lycee Classique and ColPro before retiring to a bar with a chief of Buminda who came with me and Alfred and Oliver, driving us around in his military jeep that Nader would have written a sequel to his first book about. Not just unsafe at any speed, but unsafe at no speed.
I had known that there would be a phenomenon called Youth Week, but I fused to let it enter my intelligence in such a way that it would play a role in forming my calendar. But it was not to play a formative role but rather a destructive one. I thought for sure I could teach until noon, but at morning coffee I learned that all non-testing grades had school canceled. Arrggghhh, I watched my intellectual property (my syllabus for the week) grow dusty. So I passed the week by coming to school in the morning to see if maybe there would be a chance I could teach only to have my hopes continually dashed, though on a brighter side my students delighted in seeing me and we spoke a bit of English together while they, very kindly, lamented the fact that they could not be in class. I say "very kindly" but a great deal of the actual reason is that the students have to march for hours. This is the phenomenon of youth week. It culminates in every school marching in Independence Square. And the marching needs to be well rehearsed. But also, and I did not now this until Thursday night, the students practice for a talent show, which brings us to...
The gong show of Ngaoundere wherein someone neglected to bring the gong.
Thursday morning Alfred and I went to a dingy quarter of Ngaoundere because I wanted to try a new drink that is only really served in the morning. Bili-Bili is a drink made from millet. But where shah is smooth, almost food like, bili-bill is sharper and foamy if it sits. It is also a mysterious red color that swallows the light. Not great, it is nonetheless fun to drink because it comes in small pails for 500francs and one serves those around and is equally served in turn. And the cups are the bottoms of calabash gourds. We did not take a lot since we arrived late and it was gone for the day, but after grabbing a quick piece of meat some folks there decoded to share with us do we had a taste. An enormous diffence between this place and Mommy-shah. Is that the latter is small and intimate and the former is rowdy and filled with workers about to head out on their day. Also it had a courtyard wherein a constant impromptu market is in session, and in a delightful manner everyone has a calabash resting on the ground before him or her as though they were school children gathered alongside a river bank preparing to release their boats like so many little rascals.
After we ascended the hill back to our quarter and went to school for the daily disappointment of not teaching, I ran into Oliver whom I hadn't seen all week. He proceeded to tell me that the English club would perform that night. I responded enthusiastically but confusedly because I knew nothing of any performance. Turns out that all the schools that would march on the weekend also have talent shows on the thursday before. How I wish I had known since it would have been great fun to plan a whirlwind to some other schools. The event was to begin at six o'clock, but being accustomed to the fact that Cameroonian clocks are all broken, I was at ease when we did not arrive until seven ten. After all, we should get a chair at least. But it then did not begin for another half hour. It was neat to see my students come in and take their seats as well because I never see them outside their school uniforms and they all came very well dressed. It is also interesting to see who travels together outside the classroom. If I had guessed about close friends before that night I would never have paired those who were together. It was also really wonderful to see the older kids in the class watching out for the younger and making room on chairs for them. They're good kids, I suppose, just with ephemeral memories and that is what I struggle to remember myself.
The show began with a traditional dance number by the youngest classes and they performed admirably, and then everything intensified as the em-cee raised his voice to welcome the youth of Nigeria, the name of a five-male breakdance troupe. And who should lead them than my very own Nana, the same young man who broke dance way back when I did my lesson on Rihanna. It was quite thrilling and everyone was watching eagerly. Then came the strangest dance of the evening. The Chadian dance. Out came six or seven boys in garb, the leading one waving an umbrella, and they bobbed up and down to know rhythm I could figure out, and the crowd went wild, they went wild not for the dance but for what was suddenly happening. Chadians poured out of the crowd and were throwing 500, 1000, 2000 franc bills everywhere and this went on for at least eight minutes. Then there was a long series of lip-syncing, called playback in French, which is horrifyingly popular here. The way in which it works is that a group gets together, practices a dance, and then pretends to be the performer. Some are entertaining, but it is the sort of thing that is neat once or twice and in doses of under two minutes. But tens of these shows of five minutes gets unbearable. Intermittent with these entertaintments, came the out-of-tune / step / energy gospel singers, the unique form of Cameroonian entertainment called the NewsCast, and a brilliant brilliant ColPro school day in three minutes. In the style of Complete Works of Shakeseapre, abridged, these students went through all their teachers and the imitations were spot on, from the physical and tonal characteristics of the principal, to the whistle of bell, to the students who are hungry, lazy, sleeping. It was the highlight. Every time my students were out I felt very proud, so that was nice to recognize in myself. Although I am torn because a show like this should, I still feel, be organized outside of school and not have school canceled for it. Then Alfred, Oliver, and I left because our ears hurt. Two hours later when we came back, the show was still going strong and indeed continued until midnight, and that is just too much playback for me.
The marching on Saturday was as you might imagine, hot and dusty and tedious to watch. But I only saw two or three schools. Lycee Classique and ColPro before retiring to a bar with a chief of Buminda who came with me and Alfred and Oliver, driving us around in his military jeep that Nader would have written a sequel to his first book about. Not just unsafe at any speed, but unsafe at no speed.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Wherein many hips tell many truths
Cameroon likes weeks of celebrations, and I guess yoking them together is the preferred calendrical control. Thus we go from the National Week of Bilingualism to the National Week of Youth but the latter begins on Monday while the former ended on Friday. The week proceeded in three stages, the third of which had to do with ColPro but not bilingualism.
Wednesday
The day of competitions between the various colleges and lycées of Ngaoundere, of which there are over fifteen. I had no idea, and each has its own special uniform, ranging from the scotch-plaid of Amity International, to the yellow of Classique, to the gray with flowing white veils of Islamic, to the sweater vests of a school I never quite caught to our own sky blue with Boy-scout patch on the breast pocket heraldring (I.e. In the shape of a medieval heraldry) allegiance.
The day began with a surprise, the administration had met and decided to give each student five hundred francs for the day. Now the words sit easily on the page, but the battles that took place to make it happen would scar the screen of my iPad and burn the eyed of any readers out there. As it was, we were the only school to bring all our students by moto and not some sort of rented vehicle. This is, as a sideline, one of the most enormous differences between America, at least Yankton, and Cameroon. I never attended a school activity and did not have my transport guaranteed. In fact I had to fight to attend the event in any way other than by the school provided transport. But here someone must know someone who knows yet another to get a vehicle. The school does not even have possession over a car, much less a bus. And what is more when they tried to borrow from the ELCA bureau they learned that certain vehicles lacked the papers to be driven. But we arrived at the competitions and took our places. We were only abou an hour and a half late which meant we were an hour and ten minutes early to the actual start. And why did we wait? For the same reason as at the military camp many years ago. These official events like to have public figures, who are less than thrilled to be there, launch the ceremony, and the new regional director of bilingualism took his sweet time in getting there, stood up, sat down, hear a rendition of the national anthem (marvelously performed, I might add, in a really stimulating and understandable manner. The words and rhythm of the anthem are impossibly hard and most people sing it without understanding it). And the director stood up and delivered an utterly unpracticed speech, some lackey must have written it, and struggled through the English making the obvious mistakes of someone uncomfortable to be reciting (much less speaking) a foreign language. And then the speech switched to French and that two was painful. And this man is director of bilingualism? Ahhh, okay we accept such things as cameroonian, I suppose. Hut then he left and the truly bilingual directors of Ngaoundere Launched the program. We began with:
Poems. The style here is not that of oral interp in SD, but of a cross between epilepsy and rap with some limb-throwing gestures. At least that is what the popular ones do. The dullest were a series of acrostics. And the other style is a crisply spoken English with lots of military metaphors connected with styles of education. The most bizarre a man came out and introduced himself as Cameroon. A woman came out and said she was English. Another woman came out and said she was French. The boy proceeded to say "I am a polygamist. I am married to both. I sleep with English when I want to do business and go oversees. I sleep with French when I want to travel in Cameroon and conduct civic affairs).
Songs: everyone was supposed to have three minutes, but this they told us only upon arrival (organization is something Cameroon education waits for) and so some schools entered singing, sang three songs, and left, here too there are differences. Some schools featured a dynamic singer with a backup, other schools made signs that they would throw up to intitiate chanting. Also, I heard We Are the World five times and in three of them the singers were crying even as the impresario was pushing them off the stage. It is pretty cool, though, because everyone knows it and would join in.
Newscast. Self explanatory, and very hard to understand as the mics failed here. Also, for a country where all the kids I've met want to be journalists (that is television newscasters) there is a major lack of creativity and practiced voice presence.
Skit. These varied from classroom scenarios where a student refused to go to English class and thus finds her future closed off to confrontations in a hospital about AIDS prevention.
Debate. I thought this was going to be really dynamic but it turns out not to be a debate between schools but rather a school presented a practiced discussion. It was pretty boring, but there was a funny announcement before it began that said this was an academic exercise and we were not to think that the opinions revealed belonged to the students, the teachers, or the institution.
Quiz, this was very interesting. Questions were asked in both French and english and varied from grammatical issues to Cameroonian history and geography, to international sports. I did not do very well past the grammar questions.
Traditional dance. And this is where the hips stopped lying. You know the reference? A song sung by Shakira (or a song that Shakira sang) a while back, perhaps in 2006, no? Back when she called out her hips don't lie and she danced for the world cup in Germany. Well these student groups came gyrating out in groups from three to twenty. Boys were bare-chested and heavily muscled and girls wore whirling colors and often skirts of long grasses. And for the most part they had slashed of white paint across their bodied in different patterns according to where they came from. But this was no hula, lest you get the wrong idea, for the drums best impossibly fast and the bodies dashed against nature's imprisoning bodies. Unlike dervishes, these dancers do not move in circles, rather it is a hypnotic pentadecahedron. Shakira might have moved her hips through four or five angles, but these kids gave proof to her mendacity when their moved through a cycle of truth equal to fifteen sharply defined angles of the hips. It is astonishing to watch as they pop lock and drop to the best of traditional drums.
The results gave ColPro
first prize in the essay contest (held on Jan 7th)
second In the poem
Third in the dance
Friday
I found myself accompanying five students to Independence Square for an event before the governor and mistress of education. There was no money, so I paid the student transport. We arrived on time at eleven. We learned at eleven forty that the event had been postponed until two, so I rushed back and taught a class the manner of making comparatives and superlatives with less, least; more, most and then returned to the kids awaiting. Or rather, I awaited them. We were soon together, but I had no ides what to do having been left to fend for myself by the actual coordinators of the club. So I ended up failing to register us in time and so was scolded by someone. But it turned out okay. The prizewinners accepted their loot. Twenty thousand francs, two backpacks filled with notebooks and pens, and six satchels filled with crayons, notebooks, and pencils. Very cool.
Saturday, and the reason I did not post yesterday
The faculty had an obligatory spiritual retreat that was weird because the faculty has not been paid and so are upset at the administration but everyone had to pretend to get along. It bugs me a lot, but everyone seems quite good at it. We were supposed to leave at seven and actually managed to leave at seven forty, so that was pretty good. When we arrived Alfred and I split off because he has some folks from his village there. We were at Wacwa (where I was last week for the student picnic) and when we got to their house they gave us some corn foufou djamba djamba. Excellent. And by the time we returned people were ready to get down. We were in a small airless chapel, which did not really matter at eight thirty, but by three was filled with flies and distress. The program was simple, two two-hour talks by church officials, a pastor and the bishop. The former spoke of dynamic faith and delivered a series of platitudes. The most distressing thing here is that one of the teachers asked the difference between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. Then, because we were behind schedule, the coffee pause was canceled so we kept sitting there. The bishop then spoke, his piece on "être use eglise ensemble" seemed a smooth rehash of what he has spoken of before, most angled to defend himself from detractors. Nothing really addressed teaching, though of the first speaker I asked a question about translation (because he was talking about Luther) an the role of translating the world for students in a way that does not bring about blind obedience. This, by the way, was the overarching theme of his speech and continued a bit in the bishops and underneath it all was the demand that they want obedience to themselves. It was rather a pity when I thought spiritual retreat would mean thinking about pedagogy in a church school, but it was instead honoring figures of power. For lunch Alfred, Oliver, and I went and visited another friend of theirs on the camp, so that was refreshing, and when we returned we broke into small groups. At the end, during discussion, I stood up and scolded everyone for talking about being "ensemble" when certain teachers were noticeably absent, our fellow English teacher Rev. Besson who is sick something horrible, but the administration told no one, and I said that if togetherness is desired, than it needs to be a circular share of knowledge and not pyramidal tyranny. Then I clinched it by saying "the faith of an institution is in the people, not the building" and then there was a lot of fuss because no one else had known Besson was sick, and so we ended. We ended at 4:36 a full hour before reported. This is the first thing I have attended in Africa that ended early. So yeah for that.
Wednesday
The day of competitions between the various colleges and lycées of Ngaoundere, of which there are over fifteen. I had no idea, and each has its own special uniform, ranging from the scotch-plaid of Amity International, to the yellow of Classique, to the gray with flowing white veils of Islamic, to the sweater vests of a school I never quite caught to our own sky blue with Boy-scout patch on the breast pocket heraldring (I.e. In the shape of a medieval heraldry) allegiance.
The day began with a surprise, the administration had met and decided to give each student five hundred francs for the day. Now the words sit easily on the page, but the battles that took place to make it happen would scar the screen of my iPad and burn the eyed of any readers out there. As it was, we were the only school to bring all our students by moto and not some sort of rented vehicle. This is, as a sideline, one of the most enormous differences between America, at least Yankton, and Cameroon. I never attended a school activity and did not have my transport guaranteed. In fact I had to fight to attend the event in any way other than by the school provided transport. But here someone must know someone who knows yet another to get a vehicle. The school does not even have possession over a car, much less a bus. And what is more when they tried to borrow from the ELCA bureau they learned that certain vehicles lacked the papers to be driven. But we arrived at the competitions and took our places. We were only abou an hour and a half late which meant we were an hour and ten minutes early to the actual start. And why did we wait? For the same reason as at the military camp many years ago. These official events like to have public figures, who are less than thrilled to be there, launch the ceremony, and the new regional director of bilingualism took his sweet time in getting there, stood up, sat down, hear a rendition of the national anthem (marvelously performed, I might add, in a really stimulating and understandable manner. The words and rhythm of the anthem are impossibly hard and most people sing it without understanding it). And the director stood up and delivered an utterly unpracticed speech, some lackey must have written it, and struggled through the English making the obvious mistakes of someone uncomfortable to be reciting (much less speaking) a foreign language. And then the speech switched to French and that two was painful. And this man is director of bilingualism? Ahhh, okay we accept such things as cameroonian, I suppose. Hut then he left and the truly bilingual directors of Ngaoundere Launched the program. We began with:
Poems. The style here is not that of oral interp in SD, but of a cross between epilepsy and rap with some limb-throwing gestures. At least that is what the popular ones do. The dullest were a series of acrostics. And the other style is a crisply spoken English with lots of military metaphors connected with styles of education. The most bizarre a man came out and introduced himself as Cameroon. A woman came out and said she was English. Another woman came out and said she was French. The boy proceeded to say "I am a polygamist. I am married to both. I sleep with English when I want to do business and go oversees. I sleep with French when I want to travel in Cameroon and conduct civic affairs).
Songs: everyone was supposed to have three minutes, but this they told us only upon arrival (organization is something Cameroon education waits for) and so some schools entered singing, sang three songs, and left, here too there are differences. Some schools featured a dynamic singer with a backup, other schools made signs that they would throw up to intitiate chanting. Also, I heard We Are the World five times and in three of them the singers were crying even as the impresario was pushing them off the stage. It is pretty cool, though, because everyone knows it and would join in.
Newscast. Self explanatory, and very hard to understand as the mics failed here. Also, for a country where all the kids I've met want to be journalists (that is television newscasters) there is a major lack of creativity and practiced voice presence.
Skit. These varied from classroom scenarios where a student refused to go to English class and thus finds her future closed off to confrontations in a hospital about AIDS prevention.
Debate. I thought this was going to be really dynamic but it turns out not to be a debate between schools but rather a school presented a practiced discussion. It was pretty boring, but there was a funny announcement before it began that said this was an academic exercise and we were not to think that the opinions revealed belonged to the students, the teachers, or the institution.
Quiz, this was very interesting. Questions were asked in both French and english and varied from grammatical issues to Cameroonian history and geography, to international sports. I did not do very well past the grammar questions.
Traditional dance. And this is where the hips stopped lying. You know the reference? A song sung by Shakira (or a song that Shakira sang) a while back, perhaps in 2006, no? Back when she called out her hips don't lie and she danced for the world cup in Germany. Well these student groups came gyrating out in groups from three to twenty. Boys were bare-chested and heavily muscled and girls wore whirling colors and often skirts of long grasses. And for the most part they had slashed of white paint across their bodied in different patterns according to where they came from. But this was no hula, lest you get the wrong idea, for the drums best impossibly fast and the bodies dashed against nature's imprisoning bodies. Unlike dervishes, these dancers do not move in circles, rather it is a hypnotic pentadecahedron. Shakira might have moved her hips through four or five angles, but these kids gave proof to her mendacity when their moved through a cycle of truth equal to fifteen sharply defined angles of the hips. It is astonishing to watch as they pop lock and drop to the best of traditional drums.
The results gave ColPro
first prize in the essay contest (held on Jan 7th)
second In the poem
Third in the dance
Friday
I found myself accompanying five students to Independence Square for an event before the governor and mistress of education. There was no money, so I paid the student transport. We arrived on time at eleven. We learned at eleven forty that the event had been postponed until two, so I rushed back and taught a class the manner of making comparatives and superlatives with less, least; more, most and then returned to the kids awaiting. Or rather, I awaited them. We were soon together, but I had no ides what to do having been left to fend for myself by the actual coordinators of the club. So I ended up failing to register us in time and so was scolded by someone. But it turned out okay. The prizewinners accepted their loot. Twenty thousand francs, two backpacks filled with notebooks and pens, and six satchels filled with crayons, notebooks, and pencils. Very cool.
Saturday, and the reason I did not post yesterday
The faculty had an obligatory spiritual retreat that was weird because the faculty has not been paid and so are upset at the administration but everyone had to pretend to get along. It bugs me a lot, but everyone seems quite good at it. We were supposed to leave at seven and actually managed to leave at seven forty, so that was pretty good. When we arrived Alfred and I split off because he has some folks from his village there. We were at Wacwa (where I was last week for the student picnic) and when we got to their house they gave us some corn foufou djamba djamba. Excellent. And by the time we returned people were ready to get down. We were in a small airless chapel, which did not really matter at eight thirty, but by three was filled with flies and distress. The program was simple, two two-hour talks by church officials, a pastor and the bishop. The former spoke of dynamic faith and delivered a series of platitudes. The most distressing thing here is that one of the teachers asked the difference between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. Then, because we were behind schedule, the coffee pause was canceled so we kept sitting there. The bishop then spoke, his piece on "être use eglise ensemble" seemed a smooth rehash of what he has spoken of before, most angled to defend himself from detractors. Nothing really addressed teaching, though of the first speaker I asked a question about translation (because he was talking about Luther) an the role of translating the world for students in a way that does not bring about blind obedience. This, by the way, was the overarching theme of his speech and continued a bit in the bishops and underneath it all was the demand that they want obedience to themselves. It was rather a pity when I thought spiritual retreat would mean thinking about pedagogy in a church school, but it was instead honoring figures of power. For lunch Alfred, Oliver, and I went and visited another friend of theirs on the camp, so that was refreshing, and when we returned we broke into small groups. At the end, during discussion, I stood up and scolded everyone for talking about being "ensemble" when certain teachers were noticeably absent, our fellow English teacher Rev. Besson who is sick something horrible, but the administration told no one, and I said that if togetherness is desired, than it needs to be a circular share of knowledge and not pyramidal tyranny. Then I clinched it by saying "the faith of an institution is in the people, not the building" and then there was a lot of fuss because no one else had known Besson was sick, and so we ended. We ended at 4:36 a full hour before reported. This is the first thing I have attended in Africa that ended early. So yeah for that.
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