L'Américaine au Cameroun

I haven’t been writing here much lately mainly because nothing that big has been happening. Life has started settling into a rhythm for me, and it is a rhythm that I think doesn’t really translate into interesting material. A typical day goes something like this:

6:30: Wake up. Start water boiling for coffee. I recently learned how to make real coffee without a machine and my life has improved dramatically. Get dressed. Find something to eat.
7:00 - 8:00: Drink coffee, eat breakfast and read. Just finished Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Not exactly shining analysis, but funny and stomachable at this early hour. Also just got the latest Harry Potter from the Canadian anthropologist in Baganté.
8:00: Leave my house for the bank. Say hello to the peanut mommies in the garre.
8:10 - 8:45: Wait for the bank employees to show up.
8:45 - 12:00: Sit in the bank. Learn how to do paperwork.
12:00 - 1:00: Reheat leftovers. Eat lunch. Read more.
1:00 - 3:30: Sit in the bank. Try to keep up with the conversations of the employees, which move back and forth between French and Bangou’s own language.
3:30: Go home, exchange greetings with the women who cook in my concession. Often involves using the infrequently-studied 15th French tense: The present obvious. Ex., Me: Hello. The women in the concession: You have returned. Me: I am there.
4:00 - 5:30: Go exploring. Maybe down though the valley to Batchingou, or toward Bana and the forest. Pass though fields where women cultivate beans and peanuts. Have learned that pineapples grow on things that look like bushes, not at all on tall trees like I always imagined.
5:30: Look around the carrefour for vegetables for dinner. Am always hopeful for potatoes, squash or green peppers but usually end up with tomatoes and basil. Go home and write for a while, or maybe sketch or read again.
6:15: Head back up to the carrefour, and over to Therese’s boutique. By boutique, I mean bamboo-walled, dirt-floored, tin-roofed, ten-foot by fifteen-foot shack. But there’s an overhang out front with a few benches. Sometimes Therese will give me a beer, sometimes I’ll give her one, sometimes I’ll buy a beer for Odette, my favorite mommie next door.
7:00: Head home and make dinner.
7:30 - 9:00: Eat and read again. Good thing I brought a lot of books.
9:00: Bathe with water heated up on the stove and poured into a big bucket.
9:30: Read again before going to sleep.

Excitement means going into Baffousam to go to the tailor, or market day here in Bangou and the eternal search for different vegetables. Or maybe going to Baganté to check the post office box. People give me things a lot, and they are the most simple, touching things. By this I mean that people give me whatever it is they have to give: Odette gives me grilled corn and manioc. Sylvie gives me mushrooms. Therese gives me peanuts and beer. The butcher gives me meat. Sometimes I stop by a restaurant here and talk with the man who owns it about opposition politics, Cameroun before colonization, Roots, the first Bangou chef to have a car. I do a lot of explaining myself, a lot of waving because it’s the only response to all the staring, a lot of learning new names and then promptly forgetting them, a lot of clasping my hands together and saying "Oh, mama" to women who speak to me in Bangou’s patois. I stand on the road and look at the mountains. I try to not slip in the mud. I wait for things a lot: People, phone calls, cars to fill or be fixed, letters.

I’ll try to make it more interesting next time, but can’t promise that it will translate. If all goes well at the internet café today, I'll post pictures from my walks, so check the photo site again.

À la prochain.

Posted by: Jessie / 11:03 AM