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.