Tuesday, 2 November 2010
In spite of my bewilderment and exasperation and just plain fatigue at all the (negative and positive) attention I receive in this country, I am grateful for the friends in my town who have adopted me.
The head of one of the travel agencies in my village has taken care of bus tickets and package shuttling for Peace Corps volunteers at my post for at least the past 12 years. He’s proud to have the phone numbers of so many Americans in his contact list. He found painters and negotiated a good price for them to paint the interior and exterior of my and my post mate’s houses. He brought us lunches and snacks while we were homebound making sure the painters weren’t tempted to steal anything. He was ready to send a driver to pick us up last weekend when the road back home was blocked by a log truck that had stalled and slipped cockeyed down a hill. He regularly stops by to ask about our health and readily teaches us any Fulfulde phrases we ask about.
The head of security for an American-owned company in my region used to work for Peace Corps and has befriended countless volunteers over the years. When we arrived in town our first day at post, he brought a borrowed pickup truck to haul our trunks and bikes and suitcases to our houses. He rushed to my aid my second morning when I discovered my faucets and showerhead didn’t work. He was at my post mate’s front door not 10 minutes after she called to say her lock had broken and she couldn’t get into her house. He’s always ready with a smile and a hearty laugh and is never shy about poking gentle fun at our American ways. (Recently, my and my post-mate’s neighborhood were without electricity for close to eight days. One friend’s water runs by electric pump to a water tower in her yard, so without current, her tower ran dry. She asked our friend if he could take her to a public pump so she could fill one of her emergency water containers. But he had already thought her. He said he was planning to bring a generator to her house the next day so she could have electricity long enough to fill her entire water tower. Amazing!)
My post mate’s “community host” at the small business where she works invited us a few times for the bouille (a drink made of rice or corn and sometimes peanuts), dates, fried rice, and sweet rice beignets with which he broke his Ramadan fast in the evenings. He’s always ready to answer cultural questions or to teach a bit of French or Fulfulde. My two female post mates and I may not see eye-to-eye with him concerning the place of women in society, but he, too, has an easy smile and jolly laugh. It’s been fun to have him and the other guys join us for meals, movies, and nights out.
My own community host turned out to be a young man with thoroughly modern ideas: He wanted to help me learn my way around school and the local culture, but he wanted to learn from me, as well, notwithstanding my sex. We were to collaborate. “I don’t want to overshadow my shadow,” he said in English. (He’s an Anglophone from the Northwest, part of the 20 percent of the country that was colonized by Britain after World War I).
I was sad at first that all the volunteers in the East are women. But it wasn’t long before I saw how perfect it is. When we’re all together, for business or pleasure, we don’t have to think about censoring girl talk, which mostly consists of unloading the special frustrations we face as female volunteers in a patriarchal society. And in my town, in particular, I certainly don’t want for male companionship, despite the lack of American boys here. I have all these wonderful Cameroonian men who have offered all kinds of manly help and friendship to me and my American sisters since we arrived at post. I owe them a great debt of gratitude for making sure I’ve been taken care of – and have had fun – since I started my service as an official PC volunteer. Inshallah, we will be friends for a long time.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Out of obscurity
Monday, 1 November 2010
We nine women in the East had our regional meeting this past weekend where we met to discuss our work, our problems, and our concerns. A couple of us education volunteers bemoaned the fact that we, so far, have “only” been teaching when we’re also supposed to be seeking out secondary projects. Veteran volunteers assured us that it’s fine to spend our first year learning the ropes at school and adjusting to life in the developing world. Thank goodness, because I feel overwhelmed all the time simply with living.
Peace Corps warned us before we left the States that we may be discouraged by how slow-moving our lives were about to become and by how much free time we would find on our hands once we were in country. Au contraire. I always seem to be busy (hence the dearth of blog posts these past few months). It’s not just the school work. Sure, I still have to draw up schedules for the year for all my classes. Sure, I have exams to create, report cards to fill out, and the English Club to run. But that’s not what makes me feel pulled and pushed and tossed about; rather, it’s the sense that everyone wants a piece of me every moment of every day.
Strangers and students, neighbors, colleagues, and friends all want some part of “la blanche” (the white girl). They want my time. They want my lunch. They want my clothes. They want all the money they think I have. They want me to teach them English. They want to greet me. They want me to talk with them for hours. They want me to be their friend. They want to touch my hair. They want to grasp my hand, and worse, they want my hand in marriage. They want me to get them a green card. They want to go back to the US with me. They want me to be their second (or third or fifth) wife. They want me to have their children.
In the city where we had our training, scores of children I did not know shouted my name repeatedly wherever I went. In the town where I’m living now, it seems everyone joins in the hollering.
One of my post mates (and next-door neighbor) lamented recently that she had not called her own blog “American Idol in Cameroon.” The title would, indeed, have been fitting. We have our own version of the paparazzi ogling us every day. And we can’t hide – because we’re bright white, visible even on the darkest of nights. We don’t have to tell moto drivers where to drop us off after a night out. Everyone already knows where we live. We can’t even make it past our first neighbor’s house before children and adults alike shout “white” or in any number of the local patois. There’s “la blanche” in French, or more annoying, “ma blanche” (“my” white girl); “nassara” in Fulfulde, the language spoken by the Muslim Fulbe people here; and “bouille” in Kako (I don’t actually know how to spell this word, since the Kako alphabet uses several German characters. (The Germans, after all, colonized this land before either the French or British.)) Finally, there is “wot.” This may be some Cameroonians’ attempt to say “white” in English, and it is used as a pejorative term for African albinos.
Often I don’t say anything when people catcall me. Sometimes, though, “You can say ‘Madame,’ can’t you?” Other times, “Don’t say ‘la blanche.’ One can say, ‘sister,’ ‘auntie,’ ‘neighbor,’ or ‘Madame,’ but please, not ‘white girl.’” And sometimes I just mutter a defeated “black” back at them in French, Fulfulde, or Kako – which, my Cameroonian friends tell me, is not an insult here. “White girl” isn’t necessarily meant as an insult, either, but for my American ears, the phrase sounds too much like the flip side of the racial epithet used to de-individualize black men during Jim Crow days (and, in some places, still today). Besides “white” or “white girl,” we get a lot of “I love yous” and many “ma cheries” (“my” dear). Again, I usually say nothing. But occasionally, as I pass by, I’ll retort, “I am not ‘your’ dear,” or “I am not ‘your’ white girl.”
If there’s actually an occasion for me to converse with someone, I’ve learned to answer a simple “yes” to most questions concerning marriage. “Are you married?” asked a stranger who later revealed he’s the one who helped me down a rocky slope one rainy morning on the way to school. Yes, I am. “Is your husband in America?” Yes, he is.
“Is your husband Cameroonian?” wondered the bill collector at the electric company as he eyed my mother’s ring on my right hand. “Yes. Yes, he is,” I replied, exchanging a knowing look with my Cameroonian friend who’d given me a ride to the collection office on his moto.
If my yeses don’t stop further probing, I just extol my virtue:
“But we’re polygamous in Cameroon so you can marry me, too,” quip any number of strange men in the market.
“No, I have only one husband, and he has only one wife.”
“But he is in America, so it doesn’t matter if you have relations with me, too, in Cameroon.”
“No, I’m faithful. I’m a faithful wife.”
I certainly don’t envy the fame of any star or politician. I now know what it feels like to have people pulling at me all the time, and as someone who needs a lot of alone time, I miss my anonymity. Cameroonians say the people of the East Region are more rough around the edges than those from anywhere else in the country. I believe it.
Over the weekend, my other post mate and were called “faux blancs” (fake white people). She explained that this is a racial slur because “real” white people, in Africans’ eyes, move with more grace, panache, and manners than they do; “real” white people are supposed to have higher standards than Africans. Hearing that made me sad because the term seemed to me to demean the man who used it much more than it degraded me or my friend. What does a slur like that say about Africans’ – or at least some Cameroonians’ – mentality about themselves and their potential? Is it that they think they can never be as great or as refined or as accomplished as those from what they perceive to be the “white” cultures of Europe and America? If so, then what a mental roadblock in the way toward political and economic development!
In a way, I’m glad to be heckled. I cannot compare the name-calling I’m subject to here with the derision and discrimination and injustice that black Americans have faced and continue to face today in my own country. But I do now have a tiny taste of what it feels like to be the minority, what it’s like to stick out in a crowd because of my skin tone, how it feels for people’s perceptions of me to be colored by my color.
We nine women in the East had our regional meeting this past weekend where we met to discuss our work, our problems, and our concerns. A couple of us education volunteers bemoaned the fact that we, so far, have “only” been teaching when we’re also supposed to be seeking out secondary projects. Veteran volunteers assured us that it’s fine to spend our first year learning the ropes at school and adjusting to life in the developing world. Thank goodness, because I feel overwhelmed all the time simply with living.
Peace Corps warned us before we left the States that we may be discouraged by how slow-moving our lives were about to become and by how much free time we would find on our hands once we were in country. Au contraire. I always seem to be busy (hence the dearth of blog posts these past few months). It’s not just the school work. Sure, I still have to draw up schedules for the year for all my classes. Sure, I have exams to create, report cards to fill out, and the English Club to run. But that’s not what makes me feel pulled and pushed and tossed about; rather, it’s the sense that everyone wants a piece of me every moment of every day.
Strangers and students, neighbors, colleagues, and friends all want some part of “la blanche” (the white girl). They want my time. They want my lunch. They want my clothes. They want all the money they think I have. They want me to teach them English. They want to greet me. They want me to talk with them for hours. They want me to be their friend. They want to touch my hair. They want to grasp my hand, and worse, they want my hand in marriage. They want me to get them a green card. They want to go back to the US with me. They want me to be their second (or third or fifth) wife. They want me to have their children.
In the city where we had our training, scores of children I did not know shouted my name repeatedly wherever I went. In the town where I’m living now, it seems everyone joins in the hollering.
One of my post mates (and next-door neighbor) lamented recently that she had not called her own blog “American Idol in Cameroon.” The title would, indeed, have been fitting. We have our own version of the paparazzi ogling us every day. And we can’t hide – because we’re bright white, visible even on the darkest of nights. We don’t have to tell moto drivers where to drop us off after a night out. Everyone already knows where we live. We can’t even make it past our first neighbor’s house before children and adults alike shout “white” or in any number of the local patois. There’s “la blanche” in French, or more annoying, “ma blanche” (“my” white girl); “nassara” in Fulfulde, the language spoken by the Muslim Fulbe people here; and “bouille” in Kako (I don’t actually know how to spell this word, since the Kako alphabet uses several German characters. (The Germans, after all, colonized this land before either the French or British.)) Finally, there is “wot.” This may be some Cameroonians’ attempt to say “white” in English, and it is used as a pejorative term for African albinos.
Often I don’t say anything when people catcall me. Sometimes, though, “You can say ‘Madame,’ can’t you?” Other times, “Don’t say ‘la blanche.’ One can say, ‘sister,’ ‘auntie,’ ‘neighbor,’ or ‘Madame,’ but please, not ‘white girl.’” And sometimes I just mutter a defeated “black” back at them in French, Fulfulde, or Kako – which, my Cameroonian friends tell me, is not an insult here. “White girl” isn’t necessarily meant as an insult, either, but for my American ears, the phrase sounds too much like the flip side of the racial epithet used to de-individualize black men during Jim Crow days (and, in some places, still today). Besides “white” or “white girl,” we get a lot of “I love yous” and many “ma cheries” (“my” dear). Again, I usually say nothing. But occasionally, as I pass by, I’ll retort, “I am not ‘your’ dear,” or “I am not ‘your’ white girl.”
If there’s actually an occasion for me to converse with someone, I’ve learned to answer a simple “yes” to most questions concerning marriage. “Are you married?” asked a stranger who later revealed he’s the one who helped me down a rocky slope one rainy morning on the way to school. Yes, I am. “Is your husband in America?” Yes, he is.
“Is your husband Cameroonian?” wondered the bill collector at the electric company as he eyed my mother’s ring on my right hand. “Yes. Yes, he is,” I replied, exchanging a knowing look with my Cameroonian friend who’d given me a ride to the collection office on his moto.
If my yeses don’t stop further probing, I just extol my virtue:
“But we’re polygamous in Cameroon so you can marry me, too,” quip any number of strange men in the market.
“No, I have only one husband, and he has only one wife.”
“But he is in America, so it doesn’t matter if you have relations with me, too, in Cameroon.”
“No, I’m faithful. I’m a faithful wife.”
I certainly don’t envy the fame of any star or politician. I now know what it feels like to have people pulling at me all the time, and as someone who needs a lot of alone time, I miss my anonymity. Cameroonians say the people of the East Region are more rough around the edges than those from anywhere else in the country. I believe it.
Over the weekend, my other post mate and were called “faux blancs” (fake white people). She explained that this is a racial slur because “real” white people, in Africans’ eyes, move with more grace, panache, and manners than they do; “real” white people are supposed to have higher standards than Africans. Hearing that made me sad because the term seemed to me to demean the man who used it much more than it degraded me or my friend. What does a slur like that say about Africans’ – or at least some Cameroonians’ – mentality about themselves and their potential? Is it that they think they can never be as great or as refined or as accomplished as those from what they perceive to be the “white” cultures of Europe and America? If so, then what a mental roadblock in the way toward political and economic development!
In a way, I’m glad to be heckled. I cannot compare the name-calling I’m subject to here with the derision and discrimination and injustice that black Americans have faced and continue to face today in my own country. But I do now have a tiny taste of what it feels like to be the minority, what it’s like to stick out in a crowd because of my skin tone, how it feels for people’s perceptions of me to be colored by my color.
The livin' is easy
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
(I should have uploaded this post before some of the others - oops.)
As I chatted with some fellow PCTs last weekend, some lamented that life is so much more difficult here – what with having to draw water from a well, bathe out of a bucket (and flush a toilet with one), and do laundry by hand. I was almost surprised to hear myself say it, but I responded, “I feel like my life is so much easier here.” I like getting up on Saturday or Sunday morning as soon as day breaks (around 6:00) and starting my laundry before the rest of my home stay family gets up. It’s the only time I have all to myself – or almost to myself: My deaf-mute uncle sleeps in a room out back, next to the open-air kitchen, and he’s always up and about around the same time I am.
I don’t mind Gabriel’s presence, though. We get along well. Sometimes I feel like we communicate more effectively with gestures than I do with the rest of my family speaking French. He’s ever observant and ready to help. Once when the home stay cousin who shepherds me the most was out for the evening, Gabriel was the only one who realized when I came home that I needed to eat and told me where the plate was that the family had reserved for me.
Besides making me feel at peace with the world, doing laundry by hand has made my clothes cleaner than they’ve ever been. Concentrating on the collar and the armpits does the trick for shirts, as any African will tell you. I brought one tee with me that I’ve had since high school. Needless to say, its pits didn’t look how they did twelve years ago. But now, voila! They’re like new. Yes, the little things in life excite me.
I don’t mind drawing water, either. Filling my bidon and lugging it up the steps into the house has made my arms visibly stronger. (I don’t know how “bidon” translates, but it’s a container that holds probably four gallons of water.) And I like the hand-over-hand motion of withdrawing the bucket from the well.
Usually, I even enjoy my bucket bath. I use the bottom half of a water bottle that I cut in two to douse myself. I always tense up in anticipation of the first chilly deluge, but after that it’s pleasant. I never scrubbed with a washcloth in the States, but here, il faut (it is absolutely necessary). That red Cameroonian dust sticks in the creases of your neck, behind your ears, in the cuticles of your toes, up your nose. I feel practically born again after my nightly ritual baptism. With all the grime washed away, I realize in the most literal way that tomorrow will be a new day, a fresh start. Here, I don’t carry around the weight of yesterdays like I did in the US. I more easily let today’s mistakes and mishaps roll off my back. After all, on va faire comment? What am I going to do about them, anyway? They are over now.
I also like bathing en pleine air. This isn’t to say my home stay family doesn’t have a bathroom – they do – with a toilet, a drain in the floor, even a non-functioning bidet. But they don’t use it much. Nous sommes en Afrique, and here, the world is your toilet. And it may be where you wash. So why would you ever clean a room you scarcely use? You wouldn’t. After spending the first couple weeks wearing shower shoes and trying otherwise not to touch the walls or anything else around me as I bathed in the bathroom, I gave up. My family thought I was weird, anyway, because I washed indoors. So one afternoon after the fam and I had played a sweaty game of soccer out front, I marched with my bucket to join them in bathing out back. Everyone cheered.
I was running late for the Saturday social with other PC volunteers, and I knew being so careful to avoid grossness in the bathroom would only set me back further. Showering outside would be more expedient. It wasn’t a huge hurdle I had to get over to be OK with bathing in front of 20 other pairs of eyes. During college, I had been abroad to Japan where people routinely soak in front of strangers (usually of the same sex) at public baths. Besides, there are really only two men in my home stay family, and they stay inside when it’s bath time for the women, girls, and little boys. I like bath time because it seems the most family bonding happens at this time. It’s also, for some reason, usually a celebratory time.
The women joke, laugh, sing, and dance with the kids, and sometimes, they even play games in which I am occasionally included. One favorite goes something like this: Everyone chants to one person they’ve singled out, “Your name is Melvine. What’s growing in your field? [or, “What’s cooking in your pot?”]” Melvine responds as she wishes, there’s some unspoken punch line I never understand, everyone guffaws, and the game continues until each has had an opportunity to answer.
I remember writing in my journal a similar sentiment about family bonding while I was in Japan. There, it is customary to wash first, then bathe, which is to say, soak in a deep tub of clean, hot water. It’s a way for those in that workaholic culture to relax at the end of the day. In my Japanese home stay family’s house, the oldest boy, Keito, would bathe first. Then, when he was soaking in the tub, his younger brother, Akito, would go in to wash. It was so sweet to hear them talk and play together in the bath. When Keito came out, Akito would begin to soak, and oto’o-san (the father) would step in to bathe. Oto’o-san’s voice was gentle as it floated out of the bathroom. I don’t know how father and son felt about this most normal of activities, but to me, that they had those few minutes together just the two of them seemed precious.
Last of all, oka’a-san (the mother) would wash while oto’o-san soaked. Hearing them chat together about their day was most precious of all. In a country where most families sleep together in one room, the fact that husband and wife got to be alone together in so intimate a setting seemed like a special gift.
In Cameroon, instead of merely hearing this bath-time bonding through the walls, I am a part of it. And I feel a certain solidarity with this family of women who, in this setting, are in charge, are free to say, do, and be anything they want. In this patriarchal society, that is, indeed, something to celebrate.
The laundry, the drawing of water, the bucket baths all give a rhythm to my days and weeks that I didn’t feel before. Now the tasks of daily living have a purpose all their own. I don’t feel pressure to hurry through them to get to the next, more important thing such as editing that op-ed, paying that bill, or meeting that friend. Daily living is the important thing. Cameroon is more developed than many African countries, but it still has a rocky way to go before one can call it a smoothly functioning state. Thus, many of its people operate mostly in survival mode. When your modus operandi is just to survive, drawing water, for example, is one of the most vital of accomplishments. I hope as long as I’m here that I’ll continue these tasks with the same sense of ease I feel now.
(I should have uploaded this post before some of the others - oops.)
As I chatted with some fellow PCTs last weekend, some lamented that life is so much more difficult here – what with having to draw water from a well, bathe out of a bucket (and flush a toilet with one), and do laundry by hand. I was almost surprised to hear myself say it, but I responded, “I feel like my life is so much easier here.” I like getting up on Saturday or Sunday morning as soon as day breaks (around 6:00) and starting my laundry before the rest of my home stay family gets up. It’s the only time I have all to myself – or almost to myself: My deaf-mute uncle sleeps in a room out back, next to the open-air kitchen, and he’s always up and about around the same time I am.
I don’t mind Gabriel’s presence, though. We get along well. Sometimes I feel like we communicate more effectively with gestures than I do with the rest of my family speaking French. He’s ever observant and ready to help. Once when the home stay cousin who shepherds me the most was out for the evening, Gabriel was the only one who realized when I came home that I needed to eat and told me where the plate was that the family had reserved for me.
Besides making me feel at peace with the world, doing laundry by hand has made my clothes cleaner than they’ve ever been. Concentrating on the collar and the armpits does the trick for shirts, as any African will tell you. I brought one tee with me that I’ve had since high school. Needless to say, its pits didn’t look how they did twelve years ago. But now, voila! They’re like new. Yes, the little things in life excite me.
I don’t mind drawing water, either. Filling my bidon and lugging it up the steps into the house has made my arms visibly stronger. (I don’t know how “bidon” translates, but it’s a container that holds probably four gallons of water.) And I like the hand-over-hand motion of withdrawing the bucket from the well.
Usually, I even enjoy my bucket bath. I use the bottom half of a water bottle that I cut in two to douse myself. I always tense up in anticipation of the first chilly deluge, but after that it’s pleasant. I never scrubbed with a washcloth in the States, but here, il faut (it is absolutely necessary). That red Cameroonian dust sticks in the creases of your neck, behind your ears, in the cuticles of your toes, up your nose. I feel practically born again after my nightly ritual baptism. With all the grime washed away, I realize in the most literal way that tomorrow will be a new day, a fresh start. Here, I don’t carry around the weight of yesterdays like I did in the US. I more easily let today’s mistakes and mishaps roll off my back. After all, on va faire comment? What am I going to do about them, anyway? They are over now.
I also like bathing en pleine air. This isn’t to say my home stay family doesn’t have a bathroom – they do – with a toilet, a drain in the floor, even a non-functioning bidet. But they don’t use it much. Nous sommes en Afrique, and here, the world is your toilet. And it may be where you wash. So why would you ever clean a room you scarcely use? You wouldn’t. After spending the first couple weeks wearing shower shoes and trying otherwise not to touch the walls or anything else around me as I bathed in the bathroom, I gave up. My family thought I was weird, anyway, because I washed indoors. So one afternoon after the fam and I had played a sweaty game of soccer out front, I marched with my bucket to join them in bathing out back. Everyone cheered.
I was running late for the Saturday social with other PC volunteers, and I knew being so careful to avoid grossness in the bathroom would only set me back further. Showering outside would be more expedient. It wasn’t a huge hurdle I had to get over to be OK with bathing in front of 20 other pairs of eyes. During college, I had been abroad to Japan where people routinely soak in front of strangers (usually of the same sex) at public baths. Besides, there are really only two men in my home stay family, and they stay inside when it’s bath time for the women, girls, and little boys. I like bath time because it seems the most family bonding happens at this time. It’s also, for some reason, usually a celebratory time.
The women joke, laugh, sing, and dance with the kids, and sometimes, they even play games in which I am occasionally included. One favorite goes something like this: Everyone chants to one person they’ve singled out, “Your name is Melvine. What’s growing in your field? [or, “What’s cooking in your pot?”]” Melvine responds as she wishes, there’s some unspoken punch line I never understand, everyone guffaws, and the game continues until each has had an opportunity to answer.
I remember writing in my journal a similar sentiment about family bonding while I was in Japan. There, it is customary to wash first, then bathe, which is to say, soak in a deep tub of clean, hot water. It’s a way for those in that workaholic culture to relax at the end of the day. In my Japanese home stay family’s house, the oldest boy, Keito, would bathe first. Then, when he was soaking in the tub, his younger brother, Akito, would go in to wash. It was so sweet to hear them talk and play together in the bath. When Keito came out, Akito would begin to soak, and oto’o-san (the father) would step in to bathe. Oto’o-san’s voice was gentle as it floated out of the bathroom. I don’t know how father and son felt about this most normal of activities, but to me, that they had those few minutes together just the two of them seemed precious.
Last of all, oka’a-san (the mother) would wash while oto’o-san soaked. Hearing them chat together about their day was most precious of all. In a country where most families sleep together in one room, the fact that husband and wife got to be alone together in so intimate a setting seemed like a special gift.
In Cameroon, instead of merely hearing this bath-time bonding through the walls, I am a part of it. And I feel a certain solidarity with this family of women who, in this setting, are in charge, are free to say, do, and be anything they want. In this patriarchal society, that is, indeed, something to celebrate.
The laundry, the drawing of water, the bucket baths all give a rhythm to my days and weeks that I didn’t feel before. Now the tasks of daily living have a purpose all their own. I don’t feel pressure to hurry through them to get to the next, more important thing such as editing that op-ed, paying that bill, or meeting that friend. Daily living is the important thing. Cameroon is more developed than many African countries, but it still has a rocky way to go before one can call it a smoothly functioning state. Thus, many of its people operate mostly in survival mode. When your modus operandi is just to survive, drawing water, for example, is one of the most vital of accomplishments. I hope as long as I’m here that I’ll continue these tasks with the same sense of ease I feel now.
Rub-a-dub-dub, (no) thanks for the grubs
Friday, 4 September 2010
When I was invited to serve Peace Corps in West Africa, my mouth watered. I already knew I loved some of the food. Thanks to my West African friends in college, I had already been introduced to such tasty fare as fried plantains, fish-and-piment (hot pepper) paste, unusual leafy greens cooked in palm oil, okra stew and fufu, and goat-and-pepper soup. I couldn’t wait to try more.
Still, I realized the Cameroonian cuisine scene would also offer dishes I did not find so delectable. I hadn’t really thought about eating cat here (see blog post, “Cat on a hot tin plate”). Cat as food was something I associated more with Asia. I had, however, thought of grubs. I’m an adventurous eater, but these wriggly, wormy larvae were one thing I knew I’d have a hard time swallowing. I actually wrote on part of my Peace Corps application that I feared the possibility of being served grubs by any of my new Cameroonian friends or acquaintances. So far, I’ve avoided the popping and squishing sensation that biting into this snack would surely bring.
Nevertheless, I’m determined to work up the nerve to try the maggoty pests. Another American I know in my town says the big, fat ones that live in the hearts of palm trees are delicious – like eating giant prawns. If someone serves me such a delicacy, I certainly won’t refuse. And anyway, it’s caterpillar season, too, after all. Maybe one day I’ll have the guts (pun intended) to buy and cook some myself. Every morning, at least a dozen Kako “market mommies” hock their baby butterflies by the handful. I’ve seen short, skinny red ones and long, fat black ones as big around as my thumb. Mostly they’re sold dead, in small piles. But I’ve also seen bowls of live ones inching over one another, pulsating as if one large organism. Given a choice between the two, I’d go for the live ones any day. At least I know they’re fresh. Same goes for the live snails I spotted a few days ago.
The Kako people of eastern Cameroon are known for making meals of whatever protein sources they can find. The other day, instead of caterpillars, I found mounds of what appeared to be toasted cockroaches. They could have been some other kind of beetle-like creature, but they sure looked like the same bugs that love to crawl all over my (well-sealed) cans of Ovaltine and Nido and that feel right at home in the cubby on my knife block where my kitchen shears reside. (Thank goodness for Moon Tiger (an aerosol insecticide that I hear is banned in the States).)
Another thing I haven’t learned to love: manioc. I’d had fufu before in the US, but I didn’t remember it tasting the way it does here. Fufu is a glutinous mass of mush made of pounded manioc, a vitamin-free tuber that is one of the main staples of the Cameroonian diet. Except “fufu” is an Anglophone word I learned from my Ghanaian and Nigerian friends back home. The East is a Francophone region, and here, “fufu” is known instead as “couscous” (but couscous it is definitely not). “Couscous” can be made of manioc or white or yellow corn flour. The former version tastes putrid; the latter has no taste at all; and neither has any nutritional value.
Manioc comes not only in mush form; there is also boiled manioc and my least favorite, baton de manioc. Baton is made like couscous but with less water, so it’s less like mush and more like rubber. It’s called “baton” because the final product is rolled into stick-like cylinders, which are then wrapped in banana leaves and tied up with cord. I walked into my home stay house one day, and the smell made me wonder who had gotten sick all over the living room floor. I looked around but saw nothing that could have created the stench. Then I stepped out back into the outdoor kitchen. Malodorous mystery solved: Everyone was in perfect health; my family had just made baton de manioc for dinner. I ate what I could and gave away the rest to my eager little brothers and sisters. I’ll keep trying baton de manioc in hopes of building up a tolerance for it. But I don’t think it’s a culinary tradition I’ll carry back to the States.
I will, however, bring home the practice of eating whole fish. It’s the only way fish is done in this country. We nine volunteers in the East region are all women, and we all have to travel from our villages once a month to the regional capital to do our banking. For me and my two post mates, the journey is a harrowing four hours each way on what we loathingly refer to as prison buses. To make up for roughing it on the road, every trip, without fail, we all go for fish dinner in the capital’s Quartier Latin. Here, we get to choose our own fish (mackerel or carp) from one of two mommies whose platters are piled high. I shine a flashlight on all their wares, looking for a specimen with clear eyes.
Americans don’t know what they’re missing eating only neatly shrink-wrapped fish filets. There are two indentations in the little skulls out of which one can scoop succulent meat. I haven’t worked up the nerve to try the eyes (I’m afraid of what it would be like to bite into the pebble-like lens), but the meat on the rest of the fish head is scrumptious. And fish dinner always comes with onions, piment, green sauce (mashed, spiced parsley and basil), and my new favorite condiment: mayonnaise. I get fried plantains, too, to go with it. What the meal lacks is utensils. But no matter; the cooks always bring us bowls of water in which to rinse our fishy fingers. A fitting end to a fabulous feast.
When I was invited to serve Peace Corps in West Africa, my mouth watered. I already knew I loved some of the food. Thanks to my West African friends in college, I had already been introduced to such tasty fare as fried plantains, fish-and-piment (hot pepper) paste, unusual leafy greens cooked in palm oil, okra stew and fufu, and goat-and-pepper soup. I couldn’t wait to try more.
Still, I realized the Cameroonian cuisine scene would also offer dishes I did not find so delectable. I hadn’t really thought about eating cat here (see blog post, “Cat on a hot tin plate”). Cat as food was something I associated more with Asia. I had, however, thought of grubs. I’m an adventurous eater, but these wriggly, wormy larvae were one thing I knew I’d have a hard time swallowing. I actually wrote on part of my Peace Corps application that I feared the possibility of being served grubs by any of my new Cameroonian friends or acquaintances. So far, I’ve avoided the popping and squishing sensation that biting into this snack would surely bring.
Nevertheless, I’m determined to work up the nerve to try the maggoty pests. Another American I know in my town says the big, fat ones that live in the hearts of palm trees are delicious – like eating giant prawns. If someone serves me such a delicacy, I certainly won’t refuse. And anyway, it’s caterpillar season, too, after all. Maybe one day I’ll have the guts (pun intended) to buy and cook some myself. Every morning, at least a dozen Kako “market mommies” hock their baby butterflies by the handful. I’ve seen short, skinny red ones and long, fat black ones as big around as my thumb. Mostly they’re sold dead, in small piles. But I’ve also seen bowls of live ones inching over one another, pulsating as if one large organism. Given a choice between the two, I’d go for the live ones any day. At least I know they’re fresh. Same goes for the live snails I spotted a few days ago.
The Kako people of eastern Cameroon are known for making meals of whatever protein sources they can find. The other day, instead of caterpillars, I found mounds of what appeared to be toasted cockroaches. They could have been some other kind of beetle-like creature, but they sure looked like the same bugs that love to crawl all over my (well-sealed) cans of Ovaltine and Nido and that feel right at home in the cubby on my knife block where my kitchen shears reside. (Thank goodness for Moon Tiger (an aerosol insecticide that I hear is banned in the States).)
Another thing I haven’t learned to love: manioc. I’d had fufu before in the US, but I didn’t remember it tasting the way it does here. Fufu is a glutinous mass of mush made of pounded manioc, a vitamin-free tuber that is one of the main staples of the Cameroonian diet. Except “fufu” is an Anglophone word I learned from my Ghanaian and Nigerian friends back home. The East is a Francophone region, and here, “fufu” is known instead as “couscous” (but couscous it is definitely not). “Couscous” can be made of manioc or white or yellow corn flour. The former version tastes putrid; the latter has no taste at all; and neither has any nutritional value.
Manioc comes not only in mush form; there is also boiled manioc and my least favorite, baton de manioc. Baton is made like couscous but with less water, so it’s less like mush and more like rubber. It’s called “baton” because the final product is rolled into stick-like cylinders, which are then wrapped in banana leaves and tied up with cord. I walked into my home stay house one day, and the smell made me wonder who had gotten sick all over the living room floor. I looked around but saw nothing that could have created the stench. Then I stepped out back into the outdoor kitchen. Malodorous mystery solved: Everyone was in perfect health; my family had just made baton de manioc for dinner. I ate what I could and gave away the rest to my eager little brothers and sisters. I’ll keep trying baton de manioc in hopes of building up a tolerance for it. But I don’t think it’s a culinary tradition I’ll carry back to the States.
I will, however, bring home the practice of eating whole fish. It’s the only way fish is done in this country. We nine volunteers in the East region are all women, and we all have to travel from our villages once a month to the regional capital to do our banking. For me and my two post mates, the journey is a harrowing four hours each way on what we loathingly refer to as prison buses. To make up for roughing it on the road, every trip, without fail, we all go for fish dinner in the capital’s Quartier Latin. Here, we get to choose our own fish (mackerel or carp) from one of two mommies whose platters are piled high. I shine a flashlight on all their wares, looking for a specimen with clear eyes.
Americans don’t know what they’re missing eating only neatly shrink-wrapped fish filets. There are two indentations in the little skulls out of which one can scoop succulent meat. I haven’t worked up the nerve to try the eyes (I’m afraid of what it would be like to bite into the pebble-like lens), but the meat on the rest of the fish head is scrumptious. And fish dinner always comes with onions, piment, green sauce (mashed, spiced parsley and basil), and my new favorite condiment: mayonnaise. I get fried plantains, too, to go with it. What the meal lacks is utensils. But no matter; the cooks always bring us bowls of water in which to rinse our fishy fingers. A fitting end to a fabulous feast.
Value meals
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Although I was bothered by the dearth of food at my home stay, I tried to give my family the benefit of the doubt. With 13 kids (11 of them age 10 and under) and eight or 10 adults, there were more mouths to feed than in any other host family. My family was middle class, to be sure. They had a nice house and a laptop, digital camera, and camcorder – all things that most Cameroonians can’t boast. Still, 20 to 25 people are a lot.
One night in the pantry room, my cousin had me help dole out that night’s provisions. She and I scooped rice, sauce, and bits of fish into sundry sizes of bowls. It was a mathematical challenge each day, she said, to figure out how to ration what was available. As the kids crowded the doorway, she’d hand one a big dish and say, “You, take this to share with your mother.” To one of the little ones, she’d give a smaller bowl, saying, “You, go and share this with your sisters,” and so on. Suddenly, I had a lot more compassion for their alimentary situation. And since I’d learned the joys of eating street food, I hadn’t lacked any good thing. Ca va aller (loosely: However it goes, it goes, and that’s OK).
I knew my post had a good market every day, and soon, I would be cooking for myself – all the non-starch, nutrition-packed, fresh vegetables I wanted. I feel fortunate to have been placed in a town with such availability. Some volunteers’ villages have market day only once or twice a week, and even then, they can often find only onions and tomatoes. At my market, I can buy dry beans, peanut paste, fresh herbs and spices, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, cabbage, eggplant, mandarins, occasionally cucumbers and carrots, and a plethora of grassy and leafy greens. Mango, avocado, pineapple, and prune season is over, but now is the time for papayas and passion fruit. Passion fruit, I’ve learned, is aptly named. I’ve never ogled any other fruit with such adoration; its taste is like ambrosia.
If I wanted, I could also buy just about any meat I liked. I was never a big chicken fan in the US, but here, it just tastes better, somehow. You can choose your live chicken at the market, and if you pay extra, the market mommy will kill it for you. There’s also beef, pork, goat, mutton, and sundry bush meats I have yet to try. I hear porcupig (sp.?) is really good. It’s like a porcupine, but a lot smaller and lankier. I haven’t bought raw meat. Seeing it bake in the equatorial heat with scores of flies sunning themselves on the great, red slabs (or matted fur) is a real turn off. But I have enjoyed soya – grilled meat on a stick – and a type of beef jerky that’s made by drying thin sheets of meat in the sun. When I get my teaching and school life more organized, I hope to tackle meat preparation in my own kitchen.
I didn’t eat a lot of meat in the States when I lived on my own because raising animals for food is such a strain on the environment, and we Americans are so far removed from the raw realities of factory farming and animal slaughter. Here, there are no neat, cellophane packages of defatted, deveined cutlets of meat. There are no factory farms. The cattle munch not grain but grass, as ruminant beasts were made to do. And if I’m going to eat meat at all, I feel better that, although I haven’t slain any animals on my own, I’ve at least withstood having to witness their being led to slaughter.
I like being close to my food. It makes me understand the real value and real cost of getting a meal to my plate. And I like how people treat meat here the way New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman has implored Americans to do: as treasure. Meat is costly – to the environment and to people’s pocketbooks. In Cameroon, it’s never the main event in a meal. With your rice and sauce, you usually get just one morsel of meat that’s meant to be savored. I think that is as it should be.
Although I was bothered by the dearth of food at my home stay, I tried to give my family the benefit of the doubt. With 13 kids (11 of them age 10 and under) and eight or 10 adults, there were more mouths to feed than in any other host family. My family was middle class, to be sure. They had a nice house and a laptop, digital camera, and camcorder – all things that most Cameroonians can’t boast. Still, 20 to 25 people are a lot.
One night in the pantry room, my cousin had me help dole out that night’s provisions. She and I scooped rice, sauce, and bits of fish into sundry sizes of bowls. It was a mathematical challenge each day, she said, to figure out how to ration what was available. As the kids crowded the doorway, she’d hand one a big dish and say, “You, take this to share with your mother.” To one of the little ones, she’d give a smaller bowl, saying, “You, go and share this with your sisters,” and so on. Suddenly, I had a lot more compassion for their alimentary situation. And since I’d learned the joys of eating street food, I hadn’t lacked any good thing. Ca va aller (loosely: However it goes, it goes, and that’s OK).
I knew my post had a good market every day, and soon, I would be cooking for myself – all the non-starch, nutrition-packed, fresh vegetables I wanted. I feel fortunate to have been placed in a town with such availability. Some volunteers’ villages have market day only once or twice a week, and even then, they can often find only onions and tomatoes. At my market, I can buy dry beans, peanut paste, fresh herbs and spices, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, cabbage, eggplant, mandarins, occasionally cucumbers and carrots, and a plethora of grassy and leafy greens. Mango, avocado, pineapple, and prune season is over, but now is the time for papayas and passion fruit. Passion fruit, I’ve learned, is aptly named. I’ve never ogled any other fruit with such adoration; its taste is like ambrosia.
If I wanted, I could also buy just about any meat I liked. I was never a big chicken fan in the US, but here, it just tastes better, somehow. You can choose your live chicken at the market, and if you pay extra, the market mommy will kill it for you. There’s also beef, pork, goat, mutton, and sundry bush meats I have yet to try. I hear porcupig (sp.?) is really good. It’s like a porcupine, but a lot smaller and lankier. I haven’t bought raw meat. Seeing it bake in the equatorial heat with scores of flies sunning themselves on the great, red slabs (or matted fur) is a real turn off. But I have enjoyed soya – grilled meat on a stick – and a type of beef jerky that’s made by drying thin sheets of meat in the sun. When I get my teaching and school life more organized, I hope to tackle meat preparation in my own kitchen.
I didn’t eat a lot of meat in the States when I lived on my own because raising animals for food is such a strain on the environment, and we Americans are so far removed from the raw realities of factory farming and animal slaughter. Here, there are no neat, cellophane packages of defatted, deveined cutlets of meat. There are no factory farms. The cattle munch not grain but grass, as ruminant beasts were made to do. And if I’m going to eat meat at all, I feel better that, although I haven’t slain any animals on my own, I’ve at least withstood having to witness their being led to slaughter.
I like being close to my food. It makes me understand the real value and real cost of getting a meal to my plate. And I like how people treat meat here the way New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman has implored Americans to do: as treasure. Meat is costly – to the environment and to people’s pocketbooks. In Cameroon, it’s never the main event in a meal. With your rice and sauce, you usually get just one morsel of meat that’s meant to be savored. I think that is as it should be.
Filling the food hole
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Food was a hard problem during my home stay. When I first arrived at our training site, the elderly patriarch of my family had just passed away. Scores of relatives had come from all over Cameroon and even France for the funeral. We had a feast. I mentioned in an earlier post that we slaughtered a pig that had been named in honor of me and my next-door neighbor (and fellow PC trainee). This spectacle was not so hard to watch. It took four or five men to hog tie the porky, and with their strength and the help of a large, sharp knife, sawing through the neck was a relatively quick process that I think did not inflict an inordinate amount of suffering.
The goat slaughter the next night was more heart-wrenching. Then, only my deaf-mute home- stay uncle was on the scene for the kill. Although the goat was much smaller and easier to handle, it was still a handful for one man to manage by himself in the dark. He had to both hold down the animal and cut through its jugular – and with a smaller, duller knife, at that. Rather than severing the head, he just slit its throat and left it to bleed to death. It took awhile before the little maa-maa was out of its misery. It was sad, but there wasn’t much time to reflect, as my family and I had a couple hundred fish to gut.
After the feast and funerary celebration, the deluge of victuals slowed to a trickle. PC compensated our home stay families amply for food, and we were supposed to have two meals each weekday and three meals on weekends with our Cameroonian kin. I got only dinner, and until the last couple weeks of my stay when we ate rice, the evening repast was cold, congealed corn couscous and cold, often slimy sauce.
For someone who’s hungry all the time even when there’s abundance, this time of famine was difficult to adjust to. At first, I just endured. Then, one of the volunteers who showed up to help train us newbies convinced the owner of our local watering hole to start making pizza sandwiches for us to buy. What a luxury! You, too, can try this at home. All you need is a baguette, a small can of tomato paste, a couple triangles of Vache Qui Rit processed cheese food, and some poor-quality salami. In the States, such a processed, pre-packaged concoction would gross me out. But tastes change according to what’s available. In Africa, pizza sandwiches are mmm, mmm good. (So is Kool Aid, which I hated in the US. Here, the brand is Foster Clark’s, and it comes in flavors of all kinds of locally available fruit: mandarin, pineapple, mango, passion fruit, guava. When the water from your filter tastes like a PVC pipe, a little added fruitiness goes a long way. And crumbly, store-bought cookies? I never touched them at home, but in Cameroon, where baking in an iron pot can be onerous, I seek out such delights.)
Pizza sandwiches filled the hole for awhile, but I knew I couldn’t eat them all the time. I was wary, however, of street food. PC medical staff had painted scary pictures of what microbes lurked in every morsel one might be tempted to buy off a tray balanced effortlessly on some small child’s head. But then I traveled to visit my post for the first time, and I had no choice but to eat street food on the road. It was fabulous! You don’t even have to get off the prison bus to buy dinner. When it stops for passengers to honor the muezzin’s call to prayer, the kids with trays of boiled eggs and bread, grilled prunes and plantains, oranges, bananas, beignets, and cookies come right to your window. (Prunes might be my new favorite food. They’re small purple, pink, or white, oblong, fist-sized fruits whose buttery, savory, slightly sour flesh ranges from ecru to lime green.)
After site visit, I was never hungry again. I found a bean “mommy” in our training village at whose shack I ate beans and beignets every morning. When she didn’t show up, I got a bean sandwich from another mommy down the road. I started making sandwiches myself for dinner before I went home – usually egg and avocado, but as avocado season slipped away, egg and banana sandwiches it was. (People eat banana custard, don’t they? And isn’t that just eggs and bananas, too?) I tried not to eat too many bananas in the States because they’re shipped from so far away, and besides, who would eat more than one of any kind of fruit or vegetable in a day, anyway? In my training village, I thought nothing of eating three to five bananas every day. Sometimes, they were the only fresh food I could find.
When Model School started, where all the education trainees completed student teaching, vendors appeared on campus with fish pockets (they’re a bit like samosas), and a guy I called Willy Wonka opened a shack with more varieties of cookies than I’ve seen even in the States. My epicurean options were expanding. Cookies and fish pockets made mouth happy.
Food was a hard problem during my home stay. When I first arrived at our training site, the elderly patriarch of my family had just passed away. Scores of relatives had come from all over Cameroon and even France for the funeral. We had a feast. I mentioned in an earlier post that we slaughtered a pig that had been named in honor of me and my next-door neighbor (and fellow PC trainee). This spectacle was not so hard to watch. It took four or five men to hog tie the porky, and with their strength and the help of a large, sharp knife, sawing through the neck was a relatively quick process that I think did not inflict an inordinate amount of suffering.
The goat slaughter the next night was more heart-wrenching. Then, only my deaf-mute home- stay uncle was on the scene for the kill. Although the goat was much smaller and easier to handle, it was still a handful for one man to manage by himself in the dark. He had to both hold down the animal and cut through its jugular – and with a smaller, duller knife, at that. Rather than severing the head, he just slit its throat and left it to bleed to death. It took awhile before the little maa-maa was out of its misery. It was sad, but there wasn’t much time to reflect, as my family and I had a couple hundred fish to gut.
After the feast and funerary celebration, the deluge of victuals slowed to a trickle. PC compensated our home stay families amply for food, and we were supposed to have two meals each weekday and three meals on weekends with our Cameroonian kin. I got only dinner, and until the last couple weeks of my stay when we ate rice, the evening repast was cold, congealed corn couscous and cold, often slimy sauce.
For someone who’s hungry all the time even when there’s abundance, this time of famine was difficult to adjust to. At first, I just endured. Then, one of the volunteers who showed up to help train us newbies convinced the owner of our local watering hole to start making pizza sandwiches for us to buy. What a luxury! You, too, can try this at home. All you need is a baguette, a small can of tomato paste, a couple triangles of Vache Qui Rit processed cheese food, and some poor-quality salami. In the States, such a processed, pre-packaged concoction would gross me out. But tastes change according to what’s available. In Africa, pizza sandwiches are mmm, mmm good. (So is Kool Aid, which I hated in the US. Here, the brand is Foster Clark’s, and it comes in flavors of all kinds of locally available fruit: mandarin, pineapple, mango, passion fruit, guava. When the water from your filter tastes like a PVC pipe, a little added fruitiness goes a long way. And crumbly, store-bought cookies? I never touched them at home, but in Cameroon, where baking in an iron pot can be onerous, I seek out such delights.)
Pizza sandwiches filled the hole for awhile, but I knew I couldn’t eat them all the time. I was wary, however, of street food. PC medical staff had painted scary pictures of what microbes lurked in every morsel one might be tempted to buy off a tray balanced effortlessly on some small child’s head. But then I traveled to visit my post for the first time, and I had no choice but to eat street food on the road. It was fabulous! You don’t even have to get off the prison bus to buy dinner. When it stops for passengers to honor the muezzin’s call to prayer, the kids with trays of boiled eggs and bread, grilled prunes and plantains, oranges, bananas, beignets, and cookies come right to your window. (Prunes might be my new favorite food. They’re small purple, pink, or white, oblong, fist-sized fruits whose buttery, savory, slightly sour flesh ranges from ecru to lime green.)
After site visit, I was never hungry again. I found a bean “mommy” in our training village at whose shack I ate beans and beignets every morning. When she didn’t show up, I got a bean sandwich from another mommy down the road. I started making sandwiches myself for dinner before I went home – usually egg and avocado, but as avocado season slipped away, egg and banana sandwiches it was. (People eat banana custard, don’t they? And isn’t that just eggs and bananas, too?) I tried not to eat too many bananas in the States because they’re shipped from so far away, and besides, who would eat more than one of any kind of fruit or vegetable in a day, anyway? In my training village, I thought nothing of eating three to five bananas every day. Sometimes, they were the only fresh food I could find.
When Model School started, where all the education trainees completed student teaching, vendors appeared on campus with fish pockets (they’re a bit like samosas), and a guy I called Willy Wonka opened a shack with more varieties of cookies than I’ve seen even in the States. My epicurean options were expanding. Cookies and fish pockets made mouth happy.
Cat on hot tin plate
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
What was on the menu for this mid-week repast? Why, none other than Miss Kitty. Yes, indeed. And I must say: She was delicious. Who knew?
I was walking home from school one evening when I found most of my home stay family sitting on the side of the road outside my Tonton’s (home stay uncle’s) hair salon by the house. They liked to kick back there in the evenings and salute the passers-by. I joined them and let one of my cousins start to tress (cornrow) my hair. As it got darker, we retreated inside. Then there was great commotion in the yard, and my cousin left my hair, half tressed, to see what was going on. She shouted for me to join everyone outside. Tonton and my other uncle were going to kill a cat. I couldn’t leave our training village without trying cat, they said. I followed the kids out of the compound where I saw that my uncles had cornered a cat in a bush and were waiting, with burlap sack in hand, to capture it.
I’m not sure what happened next, but everyone decided then that I shouldn’t witness the killing. So my cousin took me back to sit at her feet while she finished my hair. Afterward, we went out back to see the cat Tonton had dragged in. There she was: a little white, spotted kitty with vacant eyes lying on the cement on the edge of the outdoor kitchen. Tonton’s face shone in the firelight as he put a pot of water on to boil for the de-furring.
Stray cats were abundant in my training village. Most mornings, I’d see at least two or three out my window, scampering across the tin roof of the back building in our family compound. I suspected this kitty to be one of those. “C’est un chat sauvage?” I asked. Oui, said one of my aunt’s. It’s a wild cat. What could I do but go back inside and do my evening chores? When I’d finished bleaching my drinking water for the next day, I went back outside to have my bucket bath. This time, the now furless cat was charring on a makeshift grill. As I stepped down the stairs, Tonton turned it, whole, to crisp the skin on the other side.
By the time I finished my bath, kitty was in a pot, boiling, in pieces, with fresh herbs in salted water. I admit I felt unsure about eating cat – stray cat – but what bothered me more was knowing that it was for tomorrow night’s dinner, not tonight’s. My family didn’t have a refrigerator. What were they going to do with this bush meat (if you will) during the 24 hours before we ate it? I’d been served plenty of meals that had sat out all night and all day before I ate them, but those meals weren’t wild cat. How would it keep overnight? Just fine, I learned.
The next night, I got a plate piled high with seasoned rice and piece of what I saw later was the best part of the cat: its meaty little haunch. My aunt had re-grilled the kitty, so I felt OK about it being relatively microbe free. And it had a wonderful flavor. I was surprised to see that domestic cat meat is white meat. It’s so cliché, but it really did taste like chicken – rich, dark-meat chicken with gamey overtones. I would have it again if someone served it to me. Eating cat. That’s tres bien integre, as we volunteers like to say. I’m very well integrated into Cameroonian culture – at least on the gastronomical front.
What was on the menu for this mid-week repast? Why, none other than Miss Kitty. Yes, indeed. And I must say: She was delicious. Who knew?
I was walking home from school one evening when I found most of my home stay family sitting on the side of the road outside my Tonton’s (home stay uncle’s) hair salon by the house. They liked to kick back there in the evenings and salute the passers-by. I joined them and let one of my cousins start to tress (cornrow) my hair. As it got darker, we retreated inside. Then there was great commotion in the yard, and my cousin left my hair, half tressed, to see what was going on. She shouted for me to join everyone outside. Tonton and my other uncle were going to kill a cat. I couldn’t leave our training village without trying cat, they said. I followed the kids out of the compound where I saw that my uncles had cornered a cat in a bush and were waiting, with burlap sack in hand, to capture it.
I’m not sure what happened next, but everyone decided then that I shouldn’t witness the killing. So my cousin took me back to sit at her feet while she finished my hair. Afterward, we went out back to see the cat Tonton had dragged in. There she was: a little white, spotted kitty with vacant eyes lying on the cement on the edge of the outdoor kitchen. Tonton’s face shone in the firelight as he put a pot of water on to boil for the de-furring.
Stray cats were abundant in my training village. Most mornings, I’d see at least two or three out my window, scampering across the tin roof of the back building in our family compound. I suspected this kitty to be one of those. “C’est un chat sauvage?” I asked. Oui, said one of my aunt’s. It’s a wild cat. What could I do but go back inside and do my evening chores? When I’d finished bleaching my drinking water for the next day, I went back outside to have my bucket bath. This time, the now furless cat was charring on a makeshift grill. As I stepped down the stairs, Tonton turned it, whole, to crisp the skin on the other side.
By the time I finished my bath, kitty was in a pot, boiling, in pieces, with fresh herbs in salted water. I admit I felt unsure about eating cat – stray cat – but what bothered me more was knowing that it was for tomorrow night’s dinner, not tonight’s. My family didn’t have a refrigerator. What were they going to do with this bush meat (if you will) during the 24 hours before we ate it? I’d been served plenty of meals that had sat out all night and all day before I ate them, but those meals weren’t wild cat. How would it keep overnight? Just fine, I learned.
The next night, I got a plate piled high with seasoned rice and piece of what I saw later was the best part of the cat: its meaty little haunch. My aunt had re-grilled the kitty, so I felt OK about it being relatively microbe free. And it had a wonderful flavor. I was surprised to see that domestic cat meat is white meat. It’s so cliché, but it really did taste like chicken – rich, dark-meat chicken with gamey overtones. I would have it again if someone served it to me. Eating cat. That’s tres bien integre, as we volunteers like to say. I’m very well integrated into Cameroonian culture – at least on the gastronomical front.
Model students
Thursday, 12 August 2010
This was the last day of Peace Corps training that involved any work on my part. The culmination of our three months as trainees was a 15- to 20-minute cultural presentation delivered, in French, in front small groups of our peers and trainers. Mine was about freshwater resources in Cameroon. (They’re dwindling as the region becomes drier and everyone continues to bathe, launder clothes, and relieve themselves in the same rivers and streams from which they get their drinking water.)
Such a weight lifted off me after I finished my presentation. I had been so busy student-teaching in Peace Corps Model School that I didn’t really start research until the day before we were scheduled to present. I was so elated knowing that my training work was finished that I spent the rest of the afternoon dancing through the PC classrooms and reading to my 42 American fellows the three (or more) good qualities I had written down about them at the beginning of “stage” (which, in French, approximates the English “internship”).
Here are two of my favorites, about two of my favorite PCVs: “[E.] – Inclusive, individual, delights in his girlfriend.” I love this guy, in part, because of how much he loves his girlfriend back in the States. He constantly sings her praises and always has a smile on his face and a twinkle of adoration in his eye when he talks about her. That’s how a person ought to feel about his or her significant other.
The other: “[R.] – Compassionate / understanding of children, childlike, open, a riot!, finds it hard to contain himself.” I just love this boy’s spiritedness. Sometimes he has to stop talking in the middle of a sentence because he just can’t hold back his enthusiasm, amusement, excitement, or laughter for a second longer. I sat in on one of the IT classes he taught a class of 13- to 15-year-olds. He was delightful and so amazing with the kids! He had a great command of French, too.
I was happy this day, too, to be finished with Model School. I’m so grateful for that trial-by-fire training, but it was intense. My happiest days were when I could teach a small life lesson or two in a mix of “special” (read “slow, deliberate, and British-ized”) English and “cave-woman” French (as my friend J. calls it). My favorite hour: when I came in one morning to find this message on the blackboard – “[Mme.] do not come at classroom you do not teaching good we don’t understan your lessons”.
I sucked in my breath knowing I had two choices: I could cry because the kids thought that I was a bad teacher, or I could turn this slight into a teachable moment. A student who arrived before most of the rest volunteered to erase the board for me. No, I said, I wanted to leave it as it was. As the others filed in, they were especially quiet – save for a few muffled giggles – as it dawned on them that the message I was standing next to was not from my own hand but was an insult scratched out by one of their classmates. In a culture of corporal punishment and shouting out others’ foibles, I think the kids were mulling which of these two methods I’d choose to deal with this wrong.
First, I made sure everyone had read and understood the broken English. I think I even had one kid stand and read the insult aloud. Next, as my adolescent students stared wide-eyed, I asked them if the English on the board was correct. No, Madame, they insisted somberly. We spent the following 15 minutes tweaking the grammar and punctuation until we arrived at something like, “[Mme.], do not come to class anymore. You do not teach well. We don’t understand your lessons.”
When we finished, I probed my class for their opinions. Do I speak too quickly? Are my explanations unclear? What can I do to help you understand better? I didn’t get a lot of response – except from the exceptional students, who said there was no problem at all with my teaching. Then I asked them whether they thought education was important. Of course they answered in the affirmative, despite my admonition not to lie and tell me what I wanted to hear. If education is important, then, who is responsible for it – teacher or students? Oh, students, students, they all said, thinking I would believe their potentially poor performance was their own fault alone.
OK, I countered, but I believe both parties are responsible for learning. Students must respect the teacher, one another, and themselves by coming to class prepared, listening, studying, and doing their work. But teachers must evaluate themselves, query the class about where they need help, and be observant about who needs extra attention and in what areas. If I was failing them, they needed to be honest and let me know. We are here to learn, I said; it’s OK for all of us to make mistakes, as long as we work to correct them when we realize them.
We had a good class the rest of that morning. The students listened and, I think, understood more than usual. I got a kick out of recounting the story later on in our weekly PC student-teacher staff meeting, and that day remains one of the highlights of my time, thus far, teaching in Cameroon.
This was the last day of Peace Corps training that involved any work on my part. The culmination of our three months as trainees was a 15- to 20-minute cultural presentation delivered, in French, in front small groups of our peers and trainers. Mine was about freshwater resources in Cameroon. (They’re dwindling as the region becomes drier and everyone continues to bathe, launder clothes, and relieve themselves in the same rivers and streams from which they get their drinking water.)
Such a weight lifted off me after I finished my presentation. I had been so busy student-teaching in Peace Corps Model School that I didn’t really start research until the day before we were scheduled to present. I was so elated knowing that my training work was finished that I spent the rest of the afternoon dancing through the PC classrooms and reading to my 42 American fellows the three (or more) good qualities I had written down about them at the beginning of “stage” (which, in French, approximates the English “internship”).
Here are two of my favorites, about two of my favorite PCVs: “[E.] – Inclusive, individual, delights in his girlfriend.” I love this guy, in part, because of how much he loves his girlfriend back in the States. He constantly sings her praises and always has a smile on his face and a twinkle of adoration in his eye when he talks about her. That’s how a person ought to feel about his or her significant other.
The other: “[R.] – Compassionate / understanding of children, childlike, open, a riot!, finds it hard to contain himself.” I just love this boy’s spiritedness. Sometimes he has to stop talking in the middle of a sentence because he just can’t hold back his enthusiasm, amusement, excitement, or laughter for a second longer. I sat in on one of the IT classes he taught a class of 13- to 15-year-olds. He was delightful and so amazing with the kids! He had a great command of French, too.
I was happy this day, too, to be finished with Model School. I’m so grateful for that trial-by-fire training, but it was intense. My happiest days were when I could teach a small life lesson or two in a mix of “special” (read “slow, deliberate, and British-ized”) English and “cave-woman” French (as my friend J. calls it). My favorite hour: when I came in one morning to find this message on the blackboard – “[Mme.] do not come at classroom you do not teaching good we don’t understan your lessons”.
I sucked in my breath knowing I had two choices: I could cry because the kids thought that I was a bad teacher, or I could turn this slight into a teachable moment. A student who arrived before most of the rest volunteered to erase the board for me. No, I said, I wanted to leave it as it was. As the others filed in, they were especially quiet – save for a few muffled giggles – as it dawned on them that the message I was standing next to was not from my own hand but was an insult scratched out by one of their classmates. In a culture of corporal punishment and shouting out others’ foibles, I think the kids were mulling which of these two methods I’d choose to deal with this wrong.
First, I made sure everyone had read and understood the broken English. I think I even had one kid stand and read the insult aloud. Next, as my adolescent students stared wide-eyed, I asked them if the English on the board was correct. No, Madame, they insisted somberly. We spent the following 15 minutes tweaking the grammar and punctuation until we arrived at something like, “[Mme.], do not come to class anymore. You do not teach well. We don’t understand your lessons.”
When we finished, I probed my class for their opinions. Do I speak too quickly? Are my explanations unclear? What can I do to help you understand better? I didn’t get a lot of response – except from the exceptional students, who said there was no problem at all with my teaching. Then I asked them whether they thought education was important. Of course they answered in the affirmative, despite my admonition not to lie and tell me what I wanted to hear. If education is important, then, who is responsible for it – teacher or students? Oh, students, students, they all said, thinking I would believe their potentially poor performance was their own fault alone.
OK, I countered, but I believe both parties are responsible for learning. Students must respect the teacher, one another, and themselves by coming to class prepared, listening, studying, and doing their work. But teachers must evaluate themselves, query the class about where they need help, and be observant about who needs extra attention and in what areas. If I was failing them, they needed to be honest and let me know. We are here to learn, I said; it’s OK for all of us to make mistakes, as long as we work to correct them when we realize them.
We had a good class the rest of that morning. The students listened and, I think, understood more than usual. I got a kick out of recounting the story later on in our weekly PC student-teacher staff meeting, and that day remains one of the highlights of my time, thus far, teaching in Cameroon.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Stranger in a strange land
Saturday, 24 July 2010
As I write this, I’m sitting in the building where other Peace Corps trainees and I have our regular Saturday-night social (and most of our training classes). This weekend’s theme is “middle school dance party,” only the music that is from many stagiaires’ middle-school days was popular when I was in mid to late high school. Before I left the U.S., I thought I would want to be away from all things American all the time. After all, hadn’t I joined Peace Corps, in part, as a rebellion against a culture into which I didn’t feel I fit very well? I wanted to become as Cameroonian, as African as a pale-faced girl can. I still do. But I’ve come to be so grateful for these Saturday socials and any time that I get to spend with my fellow PCTs (we won’t become full-fledged “volunteers” (PCVs) until we’re officially sworn in after completing training).
While in Yaoundé, I was constantly delighted by the newness of my surroundings. Then we came to our training site where we received strips of paper listing the names of our host parents and the number of family members whose house we’d be sharing. As far as I know, everyone else had a simple, single digit on their slips. Mine said, “11 and more.” What? I soon learned: My host grandfather had died three weeks before, and tons of extended family had poured in from as far as Paris for the funeral and other celebrations. Except in Cameroon, there really is no distinction between nuclear and extended families. The first night, there were about 25 people sleeping in my 3-bedroom home-stay house. More came later. The number has since dwindled, but, still, there are consistently about 20 people in my house, including 11 or 12 children and two infants.
This was wonderfully fun for me at first and in many ways still is – I love the kids; they behave beautifully – and I spent as much time as I could with my host family. Then came the day of my late host grandfather’s funeral, which fell on the afternoon before the evening of one of our first trainee socials. Because the funeral was “au village” (outside of town), I hadn’t planned to attend the social because it was a day for family, and I’d be out the whole afternoon, anyway.
I’d learned a night or two before the funeral that my home-stay grandmother was just the second of her husband’s five (yes, five) wives. Oh. I asked the next morning during training if anyone else’s host family was polygamous. Not that anyone knew of, and the Peace Corps home-stay coordinator hadn’t even known that my family was. Despite its absence among other host families, polygamy is commonplace here. It’s as natural as monogamy.
So back to the funeral: Those closest to the decedent often wear white, not black, to show they’re in mourning. At the ceremony for my host grandfather, there was a separate tent for each wife’s offspring and descendents arrayed around (but at some distance from) the open casket. Behind the deceased was each of his five wives in elegant, bright white finery, seated in order, with the first wife farthest to the right.
A Christian pastor or priest gave a sermon over crackly loudspeaker before the burial. My host grandfather had his own house “au village” and each wife and her children have their own separate houses elsewhere. The service was held at the grandfather’s compound, and he was interred right next to his house. Burial often happens at home here, just as do the issues of life and death. (And why not? Why should our most important moments be spent in hospitals, as they are in the U.S.?)
No one wailed openly until the burial, but before that was even finished, traditional dancers began whooping and parading past guests to an intense drumbeat. Soon, one of them laid what appeared to be a cow bell at my feet. At first, I thought I was in his way and stepped aside. But the dancer laid the bell at my feet once more. I was at a loss. My host cousin from the coastal city of Douala told me I must take up the bell and join the dance. As I did so, my family cheered (and also mocked my poor sense of rhythm).
On the way home, we took a public bus. Twice the driver stopped before our destination and made us all get out, arguing with my family about why they planned to pay for only our relatives and not all the other passengers on the bus. Once, en route, the side door flew open, and the woman squeezed against it would have fallen out but for all the nearby arms that reached out to grab and steady her.
When we finally made it back to our house, it was feast time. A couple days before, my host cousin had offered that I could invite any friends I wanted to come see the pig slaughter at our house. Many PC trainees seemed eager to witness such an event, but only two showed up for the actual spectacle. The next night, we slaughtered a goat and gutted at least 250 fish.
Apparently, it’s tradition for a guest to serve her hosts, so there I stood the next afternoon at the head of the buffet table handing out plates to scores of guests, and suddenly, I felt overwhelmed by everything – the polygamy, the superstitions surrounding death, the mass of people, the drumbeats I could still feel in my gut, even the fact that we ran out of forks and goat meat before I would ever get any. I tried not to cry. Finally, it was my turn to eat, but by then, the flies were having their fill, too, and everything seemed a little less appetizing. I slouched awkwardly near the compound gate before one of my aunts from Douala offered to have me sit with her.
Then, although I had invited only one or two of them, I spied four or five fellow PCTs striding toward the food tent outside my house. That day, seeing that cluster of Americans in the distance felt like salvation. My family welcomed them and offered us our own place to sit apart from most of the rest of the guests. We shared a soda, and one PCT gladly ate the bulk of the food on my plate that I couldn’t finish (I had no problem eating all the pork, which turned out to be delicious).
Just to speak English with a few people, to know what was going on in the conversation around me sent a flood of relief through my veins. It was then that I knew I would ask my family if I could go to the Saturday PCT social – and that I would probably gratefully go to each one ever after.
I wrote to a friend back home recently that I love being around things foreign in my own country. It makes me feel connected to the world. But in the States, I experience whatever is new and exotic and strange in small pieces and from the context of my own culture and comfort zone. Here, I am the stranger swallowed up by strangeness. I'm still searching for which way is up so I can break the surface of this culture and gulp air into my American lungs to maintain my American insides. When I can breathe, then I can learn to tread these Cameroonian waters, to navigate through them, and eventually, to walk on land, dripping with Cameroonian culture on the outside, but still centered and American in my inward parts.
As I write this, I’m sitting in the building where other Peace Corps trainees and I have our regular Saturday-night social (and most of our training classes). This weekend’s theme is “middle school dance party,” only the music that is from many stagiaires’ middle-school days was popular when I was in mid to late high school. Before I left the U.S., I thought I would want to be away from all things American all the time. After all, hadn’t I joined Peace Corps, in part, as a rebellion against a culture into which I didn’t feel I fit very well? I wanted to become as Cameroonian, as African as a pale-faced girl can. I still do. But I’ve come to be so grateful for these Saturday socials and any time that I get to spend with my fellow PCTs (we won’t become full-fledged “volunteers” (PCVs) until we’re officially sworn in after completing training).
While in Yaoundé, I was constantly delighted by the newness of my surroundings. Then we came to our training site where we received strips of paper listing the names of our host parents and the number of family members whose house we’d be sharing. As far as I know, everyone else had a simple, single digit on their slips. Mine said, “11 and more.” What? I soon learned: My host grandfather had died three weeks before, and tons of extended family had poured in from as far as Paris for the funeral and other celebrations. Except in Cameroon, there really is no distinction between nuclear and extended families. The first night, there were about 25 people sleeping in my 3-bedroom home-stay house. More came later. The number has since dwindled, but, still, there are consistently about 20 people in my house, including 11 or 12 children and two infants.
This was wonderfully fun for me at first and in many ways still is – I love the kids; they behave beautifully – and I spent as much time as I could with my host family. Then came the day of my late host grandfather’s funeral, which fell on the afternoon before the evening of one of our first trainee socials. Because the funeral was “au village” (outside of town), I hadn’t planned to attend the social because it was a day for family, and I’d be out the whole afternoon, anyway.
I’d learned a night or two before the funeral that my home-stay grandmother was just the second of her husband’s five (yes, five) wives. Oh. I asked the next morning during training if anyone else’s host family was polygamous. Not that anyone knew of, and the Peace Corps home-stay coordinator hadn’t even known that my family was. Despite its absence among other host families, polygamy is commonplace here. It’s as natural as monogamy.
So back to the funeral: Those closest to the decedent often wear white, not black, to show they’re in mourning. At the ceremony for my host grandfather, there was a separate tent for each wife’s offspring and descendents arrayed around (but at some distance from) the open casket. Behind the deceased was each of his five wives in elegant, bright white finery, seated in order, with the first wife farthest to the right.
A Christian pastor or priest gave a sermon over crackly loudspeaker before the burial. My host grandfather had his own house “au village” and each wife and her children have their own separate houses elsewhere. The service was held at the grandfather’s compound, and he was interred right next to his house. Burial often happens at home here, just as do the issues of life and death. (And why not? Why should our most important moments be spent in hospitals, as they are in the U.S.?)
No one wailed openly until the burial, but before that was even finished, traditional dancers began whooping and parading past guests to an intense drumbeat. Soon, one of them laid what appeared to be a cow bell at my feet. At first, I thought I was in his way and stepped aside. But the dancer laid the bell at my feet once more. I was at a loss. My host cousin from the coastal city of Douala told me I must take up the bell and join the dance. As I did so, my family cheered (and also mocked my poor sense of rhythm).
On the way home, we took a public bus. Twice the driver stopped before our destination and made us all get out, arguing with my family about why they planned to pay for only our relatives and not all the other passengers on the bus. Once, en route, the side door flew open, and the woman squeezed against it would have fallen out but for all the nearby arms that reached out to grab and steady her.
When we finally made it back to our house, it was feast time. A couple days before, my host cousin had offered that I could invite any friends I wanted to come see the pig slaughter at our house. Many PC trainees seemed eager to witness such an event, but only two showed up for the actual spectacle. The next night, we slaughtered a goat and gutted at least 250 fish.
Apparently, it’s tradition for a guest to serve her hosts, so there I stood the next afternoon at the head of the buffet table handing out plates to scores of guests, and suddenly, I felt overwhelmed by everything – the polygamy, the superstitions surrounding death, the mass of people, the drumbeats I could still feel in my gut, even the fact that we ran out of forks and goat meat before I would ever get any. I tried not to cry. Finally, it was my turn to eat, but by then, the flies were having their fill, too, and everything seemed a little less appetizing. I slouched awkwardly near the compound gate before one of my aunts from Douala offered to have me sit with her.
Then, although I had invited only one or two of them, I spied four or five fellow PCTs striding toward the food tent outside my house. That day, seeing that cluster of Americans in the distance felt like salvation. My family welcomed them and offered us our own place to sit apart from most of the rest of the guests. We shared a soda, and one PCT gladly ate the bulk of the food on my plate that I couldn’t finish (I had no problem eating all the pork, which turned out to be delicious).
Just to speak English with a few people, to know what was going on in the conversation around me sent a flood of relief through my veins. It was then that I knew I would ask my family if I could go to the Saturday PCT social – and that I would probably gratefully go to each one ever after.
I wrote to a friend back home recently that I love being around things foreign in my own country. It makes me feel connected to the world. But in the States, I experience whatever is new and exotic and strange in small pieces and from the context of my own culture and comfort zone. Here, I am the stranger swallowed up by strangeness. I'm still searching for which way is up so I can break the surface of this culture and gulp air into my American lungs to maintain my American insides. When I can breathe, then I can learn to tread these Cameroonian waters, to navigate through them, and eventually, to walk on land, dripping with Cameroonian culture on the outside, but still centered and American in my inward parts.
Yes, we're in Yaounde
4-6 June 2010
During the three nights our Peace Corps group spent in Yaoundé, I slept harder than I’d slept in the past year and a half. I budged not when my roommate came in late, when the music of the hotel night club blasted until 3:00 a.m., when there were violent storms during the night. I think I slept the sleep of one who has been relieved of a great responsibility. Although my tasks often were not many, I’d spent the better part of a year in my hometown developing a finely honed “mother’s ear” at my grandmother’s boarding house. Every stir Grandma made in the middle of the night, every footfall on the back stairwell where her mentally ill residents drifted in and out, roused me to attention. And I’d wait, poised to act if something seemed amiss. Sometimes I’d go right back to sleep when I felt all was clear, but usually I’d lie there brooding for awhile.
I knew Peace Corps would give me many more responsibilities than I’d had back in the States, but, in Yaoundé, I slept serenely, knowing that those responsibilities would be ones I had chosen. While I’m grateful for the shelter my grandma’s boarding home provided as I awaited a verdict from the DC PC office, the house and all it included was not where I’d ever envisioned myself as an adult.
Orientation in Cameroon’s capital was whirlwind of activity. The highlight was dinner at the PC country director’s house where I felt we tasted authentic Cameroonian food for the first time. At my table sat a former PC volunteer and retired diplomat who gave me hope for my future. He, too, had been a graduate school dropout. He’d gone back to school to avoid the draft and had studied political affairs, just as I had done. But he flunked out after barely a year. Then he joined the Peace Corps. Save for my three-year interlude working for a newspaper, this diplomat’s story sounded just like mine. He went to law school after PC (as I have thought so long of doing) and said it was a great background for what he did following that: join the Foreign Service. So someone who never finished his master’s degree still went on to do great things. And his trajectory is so much like the one I’ve imagined for myself.
I still have no idea what I will do after my PC service. But I’ve filed this man’s narrative in my memory bank to spur me on when I feel discouraged because of all I feel I have yet to accomplish. In the meantime, I was so grateful finally to be in Africa, to have been selected to serve my country – and the world – in this peaceful way, that it was hard not to get teary. Soon enough, however, I’d be overwhelmed by different feelings: bewilderment at our seriously intense training schedule and culture shock.
During the three nights our Peace Corps group spent in Yaoundé, I slept harder than I’d slept in the past year and a half. I budged not when my roommate came in late, when the music of the hotel night club blasted until 3:00 a.m., when there were violent storms during the night. I think I slept the sleep of one who has been relieved of a great responsibility. Although my tasks often were not many, I’d spent the better part of a year in my hometown developing a finely honed “mother’s ear” at my grandmother’s boarding house. Every stir Grandma made in the middle of the night, every footfall on the back stairwell where her mentally ill residents drifted in and out, roused me to attention. And I’d wait, poised to act if something seemed amiss. Sometimes I’d go right back to sleep when I felt all was clear, but usually I’d lie there brooding for awhile.
I knew Peace Corps would give me many more responsibilities than I’d had back in the States, but, in Yaoundé, I slept serenely, knowing that those responsibilities would be ones I had chosen. While I’m grateful for the shelter my grandma’s boarding home provided as I awaited a verdict from the DC PC office, the house and all it included was not where I’d ever envisioned myself as an adult.
Orientation in Cameroon’s capital was whirlwind of activity. The highlight was dinner at the PC country director’s house where I felt we tasted authentic Cameroonian food for the first time. At my table sat a former PC volunteer and retired diplomat who gave me hope for my future. He, too, had been a graduate school dropout. He’d gone back to school to avoid the draft and had studied political affairs, just as I had done. But he flunked out after barely a year. Then he joined the Peace Corps. Save for my three-year interlude working for a newspaper, this diplomat’s story sounded just like mine. He went to law school after PC (as I have thought so long of doing) and said it was a great background for what he did following that: join the Foreign Service. So someone who never finished his master’s degree still went on to do great things. And his trajectory is so much like the one I’ve imagined for myself.
I still have no idea what I will do after my PC service. But I’ve filed this man’s narrative in my memory bank to spur me on when I feel discouraged because of all I feel I have yet to accomplish. In the meantime, I was so grateful finally to be in Africa, to have been selected to serve my country – and the world – in this peaceful way, that it was hard not to get teary. Soon enough, however, I’d be overwhelmed by different feelings: bewilderment at our seriously intense training schedule and culture shock.
Taking flight
Friday, 4 June 2010.
This is the day we arrived in Cameroon. Of course, I’m writing this long after that day, so what I felt then I don’t necessarily remember the same way now, but I’ll do my best to record my impressions accurately.
First, I just have to say how excited I get any time I fly over earth I’ve never before trod. I can’t say I’ve been to those places, but I can say I caught a glimpse. Flying over western Canada, southern Alaska, and the Bering Sea on my way to a study abroad in Japan was amazing. My friend Alex, who wanted to sleep, kindly gave up his window seat, so I could stare agog out the window for 12 hours. What a strange experience to fly west, following the sun so that night never falls.
My staying-awake powers were not so great on the trip to Cameroon. I’d slept only three hours before my 6:00 a.m. flight to Philadelphia for “stage,” where 42 other “stagiaires” and I had half a day of “This is Peace Corps” orientation and half of another early morning of waiting for our yellow fever shots. I managed to keep my eyes open most of the bus ride to New York where we would fly out of JFK to Brussels. I’d been to the city only once, when I was eight, so it was pretty cool to ride through the barrios of Brooklyn and catch sight of the Statue of Liberty between industrial buildings and skyscrapers.
I was sad I hadn’t gotten a chance to say good-bye to one of my favorite former students at the refugee center, but happily the morning of 3 June, I found a message on my phone from her. My co-worker must have given her my number. Once I’d eaten some au bon pain at the airport, I called my family, said my last “I love you” from the States, and then called this wonderful Iraqi woman who’d grown to love me more than I’d realized.
I didn’t dream it would be so, but it was sweet that the last person I spoke to before leaving my homeland was someone who’d reluctantly left hers so many months before. I said how I loved and would miss her and told her what I’d told my other ladies: that I was so grateful for what she had taught me about courage, about how to be a (nearly) perfect stranger in a strange land. Although she had never wanted to leave Iraq (or Jordan, where her family sojourned before coming to the U.S.), she had transitioned into American life with such grace.
I sat next to a Sierra Leonean and his white girlfriend on the way to Brussels, so I was far from the window seat I wanted. But we were flying east, so it was night sooner than it should have been, and we were mostly over ocean, anyway, so I wasn’t too sad. I think it was just barely dawn when we flew over part of Ireland and the U.K. It was also cloudy, so I don’t think I could have seen much of the start of Western Europe, even by the window. Morning was crystal clear over Belgium, however.
Oh, what gorgeous Belgian countryside and architecture I drank in as we descended for landing. What I saw is exactly what I picture when I think of Europe. Classic: rolling hills dotted with country manors, then something more akin to quaint row houses in lovely earth tones as we approached the city.
On the next flight – yippee – I had a window seat! It was a struggle to stay awake all the way south, and I succumbed to a couple minutes of shuteye here and there. (And “shuteye” is exactly the word: My eyes would just shut despite my best efforts to keep them open.) Still, I managed to see some picturesque villages nestled in the valleys between the snow-capped crags and aquamarine lakes of the Swiss Alps. In some ways flying over an area is better than visiting it. I didn’t see just one town or one peak but many, across an entire range of mountains.
Then it was on above more-populous northern Italy and finally over the edge of Europe itself, into the airspace above the Mediterranean. I’ve seen the Mediterranean! I did get confused at one point. Suddenly we were over land again, but I didn’t think it looked at all how I imagined North Africa. There was too much greenery (well, not that much, but too much to be Libya, over which the plane’s trajectory map showed we would spend a lot of time flying). Does anyone know what this could have been? One of Italy’s islands? We had been over water about 15 minutes when we came upon this land mass, and we passed over it for another 10 or 15 before reaching water again. Twenty minutes or so after that, finally, there was Africa, almost just how I pictured it.
I saw more brush than I expected, but it was sparse and grayish, and the land was visibly arid. I wish I could recall more details of the towns I saw. Some were rather large and dense. I remember a lot of white and drab beige construction against the pale-orange of the soil. This was surprising to me: Satellite photos I’d seen all show the semi-arid and Saharan parts of Africa to be yellow. What I saw from the plane appeared peachy, almost rosy in some places. It was so cool to see, too – I don’t know how to call them – salt-production ponds, maybe? I’d only seen those in documentaries. They are a series of progressively drier pools where saline water is corralled and left to evaporate, leaving the salt deposits behind.
It took longer than I thought, but the landscape eventually melted into the endless sands of the Sahara. Occasionally I could discern a windswept pattern on the ground, but mostly, this earth was as featureless and uninhabited as my weary mind. I let myself sleep.
I awoke to more desert, only this time, there were a few wispies obscuring my view. I had this stereotype that the sun bares down all the time on the Sahara, but there was a sizable chunk of time when I could spot the orange sands only through keyholes in the clouds. It was pretty depressing flying over infinite barrenness, but I had Belgian airline ice cream to distract me there at the last, just when I needed it: as the desert sun baked my face through the window, and my top half broke a sweat.
I had always wondered how the Sahara ended. In satellite photos, the swath of yellow just seems magically to morph into a band of brilliant emerald. And it was so.
(I did follow the shining filament of a tributary for several minutes before it broadened to become a blinding blade of reflected light that sliced through the parched earth, but this was the only indication that perhaps the sandy tedium would soon end. To my chagrin, however, the river didn’t seem to flow anywhere; it just stopped, as abruptly as that golden line first appeared.) Just when I thought the desert may truly continue eternally, a rich garland of green materialized, and the sand was no more. Like in the space photos, there was no succession of landscapes – no desert to scrub land to grassland to forest. Nope. Just straight from sand to subtropics.
How happy I was to break the visual monotony and see my favorite color once again.
I had been a little worried because I read that parts of Cameroon were arid, even desert, but I was glad to see green, even in the north, that continued all the way to our touchdown in the capital city of Yaoundé. (I learned that during rainy season, even the dry regions bloom.)
The green was broken up, though, by patches of bare, red earth: redder than Georgia clay – deep burgundy in some places, I would learn later – but in Yaoundé, the soil was a rich, burnt-orange red. On the way in, I was awed that I was now witnessing what I had eyed only in National Geographic before: the sparsely populated landscape, the little villages, the tin and thatched roofs, the airport landing strip that seemed so spare compared with those in the West. I was about to set down in Aaaaahhhfrica, and I was thrilled – a teary, weary, wondering kind of thrilled.
I was not thrilled to note the time the sun went down: around 6:45, not long after we made it out of baggage claim. There’s no daylight savings time here, and besides, when you’re sitting so close to the equator, the days approach 12 hours all year round. Alas, no 9:30 sunsets or 15.5-hour summer days like in my home state. But n’importe – it didn’t matter – I was in Africa.
This is the day we arrived in Cameroon. Of course, I’m writing this long after that day, so what I felt then I don’t necessarily remember the same way now, but I’ll do my best to record my impressions accurately.
First, I just have to say how excited I get any time I fly over earth I’ve never before trod. I can’t say I’ve been to those places, but I can say I caught a glimpse. Flying over western Canada, southern Alaska, and the Bering Sea on my way to a study abroad in Japan was amazing. My friend Alex, who wanted to sleep, kindly gave up his window seat, so I could stare agog out the window for 12 hours. What a strange experience to fly west, following the sun so that night never falls.
My staying-awake powers were not so great on the trip to Cameroon. I’d slept only three hours before my 6:00 a.m. flight to Philadelphia for “stage,” where 42 other “stagiaires” and I had half a day of “This is Peace Corps” orientation and half of another early morning of waiting for our yellow fever shots. I managed to keep my eyes open most of the bus ride to New York where we would fly out of JFK to Brussels. I’d been to the city only once, when I was eight, so it was pretty cool to ride through the barrios of Brooklyn and catch sight of the Statue of Liberty between industrial buildings and skyscrapers.
I was sad I hadn’t gotten a chance to say good-bye to one of my favorite former students at the refugee center, but happily the morning of 3 June, I found a message on my phone from her. My co-worker must have given her my number. Once I’d eaten some au bon pain at the airport, I called my family, said my last “I love you” from the States, and then called this wonderful Iraqi woman who’d grown to love me more than I’d realized.
I didn’t dream it would be so, but it was sweet that the last person I spoke to before leaving my homeland was someone who’d reluctantly left hers so many months before. I said how I loved and would miss her and told her what I’d told my other ladies: that I was so grateful for what she had taught me about courage, about how to be a (nearly) perfect stranger in a strange land. Although she had never wanted to leave Iraq (or Jordan, where her family sojourned before coming to the U.S.), she had transitioned into American life with such grace.
I sat next to a Sierra Leonean and his white girlfriend on the way to Brussels, so I was far from the window seat I wanted. But we were flying east, so it was night sooner than it should have been, and we were mostly over ocean, anyway, so I wasn’t too sad. I think it was just barely dawn when we flew over part of Ireland and the U.K. It was also cloudy, so I don’t think I could have seen much of the start of Western Europe, even by the window. Morning was crystal clear over Belgium, however.
Oh, what gorgeous Belgian countryside and architecture I drank in as we descended for landing. What I saw is exactly what I picture when I think of Europe. Classic: rolling hills dotted with country manors, then something more akin to quaint row houses in lovely earth tones as we approached the city.
On the next flight – yippee – I had a window seat! It was a struggle to stay awake all the way south, and I succumbed to a couple minutes of shuteye here and there. (And “shuteye” is exactly the word: My eyes would just shut despite my best efforts to keep them open.) Still, I managed to see some picturesque villages nestled in the valleys between the snow-capped crags and aquamarine lakes of the Swiss Alps. In some ways flying over an area is better than visiting it. I didn’t see just one town or one peak but many, across an entire range of mountains.
Then it was on above more-populous northern Italy and finally over the edge of Europe itself, into the airspace above the Mediterranean. I’ve seen the Mediterranean! I did get confused at one point. Suddenly we were over land again, but I didn’t think it looked at all how I imagined North Africa. There was too much greenery (well, not that much, but too much to be Libya, over which the plane’s trajectory map showed we would spend a lot of time flying). Does anyone know what this could have been? One of Italy’s islands? We had been over water about 15 minutes when we came upon this land mass, and we passed over it for another 10 or 15 before reaching water again. Twenty minutes or so after that, finally, there was Africa, almost just how I pictured it.
I saw more brush than I expected, but it was sparse and grayish, and the land was visibly arid. I wish I could recall more details of the towns I saw. Some were rather large and dense. I remember a lot of white and drab beige construction against the pale-orange of the soil. This was surprising to me: Satellite photos I’d seen all show the semi-arid and Saharan parts of Africa to be yellow. What I saw from the plane appeared peachy, almost rosy in some places. It was so cool to see, too – I don’t know how to call them – salt-production ponds, maybe? I’d only seen those in documentaries. They are a series of progressively drier pools where saline water is corralled and left to evaporate, leaving the salt deposits behind.
It took longer than I thought, but the landscape eventually melted into the endless sands of the Sahara. Occasionally I could discern a windswept pattern on the ground, but mostly, this earth was as featureless and uninhabited as my weary mind. I let myself sleep.
I awoke to more desert, only this time, there were a few wispies obscuring my view. I had this stereotype that the sun bares down all the time on the Sahara, but there was a sizable chunk of time when I could spot the orange sands only through keyholes in the clouds. It was pretty depressing flying over infinite barrenness, but I had Belgian airline ice cream to distract me there at the last, just when I needed it: as the desert sun baked my face through the window, and my top half broke a sweat.
I had always wondered how the Sahara ended. In satellite photos, the swath of yellow just seems magically to morph into a band of brilliant emerald. And it was so.
(I did follow the shining filament of a tributary for several minutes before it broadened to become a blinding blade of reflected light that sliced through the parched earth, but this was the only indication that perhaps the sandy tedium would soon end. To my chagrin, however, the river didn’t seem to flow anywhere; it just stopped, as abruptly as that golden line first appeared.) Just when I thought the desert may truly continue eternally, a rich garland of green materialized, and the sand was no more. Like in the space photos, there was no succession of landscapes – no desert to scrub land to grassland to forest. Nope. Just straight from sand to subtropics.
How happy I was to break the visual monotony and see my favorite color once again.
I had been a little worried because I read that parts of Cameroon were arid, even desert, but I was glad to see green, even in the north, that continued all the way to our touchdown in the capital city of Yaoundé. (I learned that during rainy season, even the dry regions bloom.)
The green was broken up, though, by patches of bare, red earth: redder than Georgia clay – deep burgundy in some places, I would learn later – but in Yaoundé, the soil was a rich, burnt-orange red. On the way in, I was awed that I was now witnessing what I had eyed only in National Geographic before: the sparsely populated landscape, the little villages, the tin and thatched roofs, the airport landing strip that seemed so spare compared with those in the West. I was about to set down in Aaaaahhhfrica, and I was thrilled – a teary, weary, wondering kind of thrilled.
I was not thrilled to note the time the sun went down: around 6:45, not long after we made it out of baggage claim. There’s no daylight savings time here, and besides, when you’re sitting so close to the equator, the days approach 12 hours all year round. Alas, no 9:30 sunsets or 15.5-hour summer days like in my home state. But n’importe – it didn’t matter – I was in Africa.
Last day at the Family Center
Thursday, 27 May 2010
I continued work with my refugee students up until May 27, five days before I left for Peace Corps Cameroon. These mothers I taught were amazing – often frustratingly chatty, but amazing, nonetheless. I always thought the Family Center was good for them. I hoped they could learn at least a little useful English from me there, but mostly, I just thought it was good for them to have to get out of the house and come be social with each other – with those of their own language group and those from the other far corners of the globe.
I knew most of them liked coming to class, at least for the social aspect, but I never realized until my last day just how much of an anchor and a comfort my co-teacher and I were to them. I knew I would cry, and I expected a few tears from the moms, too. But I didn’t anticipate the shuddering sobs.
My colleague had the wise idea to say a few parting words to our group privately, before administration from the main office of our organization arrived for an official send-off. She told our women how much she loved them, how much she had enjoyed being their teacher, and how much she had learned from them: how to be strong, how to keep moving forward, how to be brave. Her words encompassed how I felt, too, and I added that I was grateful for how our ladies had taught me how to be a stranger. Here they had been forced to flee their homes and had had no say in where they were sent in this unknown American land, and they adapted. They cared for their husbands and children, coped with a brand new culture and language, and still managed to share smiles and laughter whenever they came to class.
And here I was about to become one of them. I was about to be the alien, to be the one who stuck out, who didn’t speak the language, the one for whom everything was strange and unfamiliar. When I became the foreigner, I hoped to express half as much grace as they had. For the poise they had shown and the affection and joy they had maintained during a difficult transition, I thanked them. And I cried. So did they.
We collected ourselves when the executive director showed up to say farewell and present us with mementos and cake, and I thought that was the end of our being emotional. But after I finished eating, I began the rounds, kneeling in front of each student’s chair to give one last hug to every one. Then came the real tears. Almost without exception, each woman buried her face in my neck and shook with sobs. In turn, I stroked the mothers’ hair and held them as I also wept, and when I could manage, I told each how strong she was, how we would both be OK, how much she would like and be cared for by her new teacher.
My words can’t capture the depth of affection and emotion that poured out of us that day. After everyone left, and we were still trying to stanch the last trickle of our tears, my co-teacher, in a quavering voice, got out something like, “Don’t you just want to go home and cry the rest of the day?” Yes. I was spent.
My childhood friend, who had just moved back to town a few days before, wanted to see me teach before I left the country. She came to school this day and was so glad. She was let in to the inner sanctum of what the Family Center meant to all of us, students and teachers. She was happy to see that I was so loved – and perhaps that I loved so much.
By the end of the day, my eyes burned and my head was full and heavy from too much crying. But I was happy. It was my time to be at the Family Center the year I was there, to touch students’ lives and be touched by them. And it was just the right and appropriate time for me to leave for new journeys.
My students will continue to progress and so will I. And when I think of them, I’ll remember the way the sun shone that day through the stained-glass window of the cross and the dove. I’ll remember how the room glowed with love more than with that light. I’ll remember holding each of my girls in turn, knowing that they were, at least for a time, my girls and that in them, I was – and am – well pleased.
I continued work with my refugee students up until May 27, five days before I left for Peace Corps Cameroon. These mothers I taught were amazing – often frustratingly chatty, but amazing, nonetheless. I always thought the Family Center was good for them. I hoped they could learn at least a little useful English from me there, but mostly, I just thought it was good for them to have to get out of the house and come be social with each other – with those of their own language group and those from the other far corners of the globe.
I knew most of them liked coming to class, at least for the social aspect, but I never realized until my last day just how much of an anchor and a comfort my co-teacher and I were to them. I knew I would cry, and I expected a few tears from the moms, too. But I didn’t anticipate the shuddering sobs.
My colleague had the wise idea to say a few parting words to our group privately, before administration from the main office of our organization arrived for an official send-off. She told our women how much she loved them, how much she had enjoyed being their teacher, and how much she had learned from them: how to be strong, how to keep moving forward, how to be brave. Her words encompassed how I felt, too, and I added that I was grateful for how our ladies had taught me how to be a stranger. Here they had been forced to flee their homes and had had no say in where they were sent in this unknown American land, and they adapted. They cared for their husbands and children, coped with a brand new culture and language, and still managed to share smiles and laughter whenever they came to class.
And here I was about to become one of them. I was about to be the alien, to be the one who stuck out, who didn’t speak the language, the one for whom everything was strange and unfamiliar. When I became the foreigner, I hoped to express half as much grace as they had. For the poise they had shown and the affection and joy they had maintained during a difficult transition, I thanked them. And I cried. So did they.
We collected ourselves when the executive director showed up to say farewell and present us with mementos and cake, and I thought that was the end of our being emotional. But after I finished eating, I began the rounds, kneeling in front of each student’s chair to give one last hug to every one. Then came the real tears. Almost without exception, each woman buried her face in my neck and shook with sobs. In turn, I stroked the mothers’ hair and held them as I also wept, and when I could manage, I told each how strong she was, how we would both be OK, how much she would like and be cared for by her new teacher.
My words can’t capture the depth of affection and emotion that poured out of us that day. After everyone left, and we were still trying to stanch the last trickle of our tears, my co-teacher, in a quavering voice, got out something like, “Don’t you just want to go home and cry the rest of the day?” Yes. I was spent.
My childhood friend, who had just moved back to town a few days before, wanted to see me teach before I left the country. She came to school this day and was so glad. She was let in to the inner sanctum of what the Family Center meant to all of us, students and teachers. She was happy to see that I was so loved – and perhaps that I loved so much.
By the end of the day, my eyes burned and my head was full and heavy from too much crying. But I was happy. It was my time to be at the Family Center the year I was there, to touch students’ lives and be touched by them. And it was just the right and appropriate time for me to leave for new journeys.
My students will continue to progress and so will I. And when I think of them, I’ll remember the way the sun shone that day through the stained-glass window of the cross and the dove. I’ll remember how the room glowed with love more than with that light. I’ll remember holding each of my girls in turn, knowing that they were, at least for a time, my girls and that in them, I was – and am – well pleased.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Mother's Day 2010
Monday, 10 May 2010
Before I begin recording my escapades in Cameroon, I want to put on “paper” two experiences I had just before I left the U.S. Here is the first:
It was the day after Mother’s Day, at the refugee-resettlement organization where I worked teaching English. For those who don’t know already, for a whole year, I was privileged to work with a richly diverse and ever-changing group of women from (I just have to list the countries): Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine (yes, I recognize the Occupied Territories as a political state), Nepal, Bhutan, India, Burma (no, I don’t recognize the military junta’s “Myanmar”), Thailand, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Burundi, Sudan, and Somalia.
The students I co-taught with a colleague and friend were all mothers of children under five. At the Family Center, these ladies could bring their youngsters who weren’t yet in school and leave them in the care of other resettlement workers while they learned the language of their new home country. When all the mothers showed up, we had a class of 22 to 24. On this day, our art therapist was scheduled to come get creative with our ladies. She usually spent the first half of our 3-hour class with the moms and the other half with the kids.
So by 9:45, our moms were making tissue-paper and pipe-cleaner flowers meant to honor themselves as mothers. I hadn’t been much for art therapy up to this point. I mean, most of these women couldn’t understand English, much less grasp such a linguistically complicated concept as using art to help them process the trauma they’d been through as refugees. Our sessions were usually just a fun break for all of us from my boring phonics and grammar lessons.
This Monday meeting was no different at first (except for the fact that we had a new male volunteer, and so far, none of the women had balked at his presence). We all chatted and smiled while we arranged blooms in our little aluminum buckets. Then, it was time to share. The art therapist asked each mom to talk about what it meant to her to be a mother.
Let me stop here and mention how important mothers are to my former students. These women ranged in age from 18 to around 45. Some had family who’d also been resettled in Kentucky, but most had left everything they’d known, including their mothers, to escape to a presumably safer life in America or to follow husbands who insisted the U.S. would be better than the families’ previous host countries. Some could contact their mothers regularly; many could not. A few had no way of knowing whether their mothers even still lived in the refugee camps they’d left behind. Has anyone ever heard of the children’s book, “I’ll Love You Forever”? There were always many misty eyes whenever we read this to the ladies during our daily story time.
So here were our students who were supposed to talk about themselves as mothers, and instead, each one spoke only as a child with a mother of her own somewhere far away. My turn was toward the beginning, and after me came the male volunteer. Then a mom from Cuba. She got a little choked up talking about what she cherished about her mother, but she did great, despite the din from across the table where the Arabic speakers were rudely chattering, as usual.
Next was one of our newest arrivals and our youngest, an 18-year-old Karen mother of two from Burma. She got out maybe one sentence about her mother, and that was it; she lost it. My co-teacher was sitting next to her and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Often our students tried to wipe their eyes, sniff back the snot, and carry on when they cried, but how gratifying to see this girl accept my friend’s comfort: At first touch, she buried her face in the shoulder of a woman who’d only offered a hand. The Arabic speakers were silent.
We were out of Kleenexes, so I went to the nursery to grab a few, and by the time I came back, everyone (including me) was in tears. As we continued around the room, the only sounds were the occasional sniffle and the dulcet tones of whichever mom was giving voice to the child-love that beat within her.
Now I get it. This is what art therapy is all about. What catharsis. What a good thing for each of our women to be given the opportunity to talk about the person who is perhaps most precious to her. What a salutary thing for each to have taken the opportunity to cry. What strengthening thing for us to have been bound by this shared experience. What a comforting thing for all of us to know that the same love flows within those of all cultures and creeds.
Our art therapist really earned her keep that day. Rather than going upstairs to the kids after break, she stayed with us to facilitate a more light-hearted conclusion our creative session. This time, the moms spoke as moms. Their kids drive them crazy. But two-year-olds slurping from the toilet notwithstanding, the same deep love that flooded from each woman for her own mother poured out for her children also.
I ran into another new volunteer at the optometrist later that day, a prim, middle-aged woman with a heart for service. She remarked what an amazing morning we’d had. After seeing those mothers share like that, cry like that, she just had such a deeper respect for what these women had been through. Didn’t we all? It’s not often that volunteers (or any of us) are privileged to witness what moves so deeply within the hearts of our refugee clients. But that day, these women of strength, grace, composure let us see the love and sorrow that makes them also fragile – that makes us all human and binds us together for good.
Post script: Now that I am in a foreign land, I understand on a whole new level why mothers are so important to my former students. My mother now represents the comfort of all that is familiar. When I feel overwhelmed by strangeness, she is the one I think of, the one I want and need. As I strive to adapt and assimilate, to change and grow here, she knows who I have always been and always will be. She knows the core of who I am – that part of me that will never change. She is the earthly keeper of my identity.
Before I begin recording my escapades in Cameroon, I want to put on “paper” two experiences I had just before I left the U.S. Here is the first:
It was the day after Mother’s Day, at the refugee-resettlement organization where I worked teaching English. For those who don’t know already, for a whole year, I was privileged to work with a richly diverse and ever-changing group of women from (I just have to list the countries): Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine (yes, I recognize the Occupied Territories as a political state), Nepal, Bhutan, India, Burma (no, I don’t recognize the military junta’s “Myanmar”), Thailand, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Burundi, Sudan, and Somalia.
The students I co-taught with a colleague and friend were all mothers of children under five. At the Family Center, these ladies could bring their youngsters who weren’t yet in school and leave them in the care of other resettlement workers while they learned the language of their new home country. When all the mothers showed up, we had a class of 22 to 24. On this day, our art therapist was scheduled to come get creative with our ladies. She usually spent the first half of our 3-hour class with the moms and the other half with the kids.
So by 9:45, our moms were making tissue-paper and pipe-cleaner flowers meant to honor themselves as mothers. I hadn’t been much for art therapy up to this point. I mean, most of these women couldn’t understand English, much less grasp such a linguistically complicated concept as using art to help them process the trauma they’d been through as refugees. Our sessions were usually just a fun break for all of us from my boring phonics and grammar lessons.
This Monday meeting was no different at first (except for the fact that we had a new male volunteer, and so far, none of the women had balked at his presence). We all chatted and smiled while we arranged blooms in our little aluminum buckets. Then, it was time to share. The art therapist asked each mom to talk about what it meant to her to be a mother.
Let me stop here and mention how important mothers are to my former students. These women ranged in age from 18 to around 45. Some had family who’d also been resettled in Kentucky, but most had left everything they’d known, including their mothers, to escape to a presumably safer life in America or to follow husbands who insisted the U.S. would be better than the families’ previous host countries. Some could contact their mothers regularly; many could not. A few had no way of knowing whether their mothers even still lived in the refugee camps they’d left behind. Has anyone ever heard of the children’s book, “I’ll Love You Forever”? There were always many misty eyes whenever we read this to the ladies during our daily story time.
So here were our students who were supposed to talk about themselves as mothers, and instead, each one spoke only as a child with a mother of her own somewhere far away. My turn was toward the beginning, and after me came the male volunteer. Then a mom from Cuba. She got a little choked up talking about what she cherished about her mother, but she did great, despite the din from across the table where the Arabic speakers were rudely chattering, as usual.
Next was one of our newest arrivals and our youngest, an 18-year-old Karen mother of two from Burma. She got out maybe one sentence about her mother, and that was it; she lost it. My co-teacher was sitting next to her and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Often our students tried to wipe their eyes, sniff back the snot, and carry on when they cried, but how gratifying to see this girl accept my friend’s comfort: At first touch, she buried her face in the shoulder of a woman who’d only offered a hand. The Arabic speakers were silent.
We were out of Kleenexes, so I went to the nursery to grab a few, and by the time I came back, everyone (including me) was in tears. As we continued around the room, the only sounds were the occasional sniffle and the dulcet tones of whichever mom was giving voice to the child-love that beat within her.
Now I get it. This is what art therapy is all about. What catharsis. What a good thing for each of our women to be given the opportunity to talk about the person who is perhaps most precious to her. What a salutary thing for each to have taken the opportunity to cry. What strengthening thing for us to have been bound by this shared experience. What a comforting thing for all of us to know that the same love flows within those of all cultures and creeds.
Our art therapist really earned her keep that day. Rather than going upstairs to the kids after break, she stayed with us to facilitate a more light-hearted conclusion our creative session. This time, the moms spoke as moms. Their kids drive them crazy. But two-year-olds slurping from the toilet notwithstanding, the same deep love that flooded from each woman for her own mother poured out for her children also.
I ran into another new volunteer at the optometrist later that day, a prim, middle-aged woman with a heart for service. She remarked what an amazing morning we’d had. After seeing those mothers share like that, cry like that, she just had such a deeper respect for what these women had been through. Didn’t we all? It’s not often that volunteers (or any of us) are privileged to witness what moves so deeply within the hearts of our refugee clients. But that day, these women of strength, grace, composure let us see the love and sorrow that makes them also fragile – that makes us all human and binds us together for good.
Post script: Now that I am in a foreign land, I understand on a whole new level why mothers are so important to my former students. My mother now represents the comfort of all that is familiar. When I feel overwhelmed by strangeness, she is the one I think of, the one I want and need. As I strive to adapt and assimilate, to change and grow here, she knows who I have always been and always will be. She knows the core of who I am – that part of me that will never change. She is the earthly keeper of my identity.
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