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.