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.