L'Américaine au Cameroun

About seven this morning, I heard a banging on my concession door. I opened the door and Marcel, the toddler son of my landlord and his wife waddled down the step into the concession. Marcel hangs out down here a lot. His family lives in the apartment upstairs but the concession is like an extension of their home. The concession is a sort of walled-in patio. I’ve got a few planters out there and Marcel’s mother and I both do laundry in the concession. Marcel’s mom cooks over the open cook fire in the corner. The whole family uses the latrine in the concession. Sometimes my landlord’s father sleeps in a room off the concession as well. Marcel hangs out with me sometimes, coloring with crayons or playing with a wire toy truck in my living room.

Marcel’s a little unusual for a Cameroonian boy, as he really doesn’t like to be out of sight of his parents. Normal for an American toddler, but the kids here have usually developed their independence by now. It’s perfectly normal to see a group of kids playing in a field, and the eldest will be no more than five years old. The preschool kids walk home alone after school gets out. Marcel’s mom is a normal Cameroonian mother, meaning she doesn’t keep him by her side all the time. Since her house is upstairs but her kitchen is downstairs, she spends a lot of time going back and forth and just lets Marcel wander around. But his little legs don’t always keep, so when he gets upset that she’s gone, he’ll either come in and hang out with me or cry in the concession until I go pick him up.

When I got here, Marcel wasn’t talking in words yet, but he could understand things well, like “Pick up those peanut shells you dropped” or “Don’t color on my book.” So when he wobbled down the stair babbling today, I assumed he was just babbling. I turned to walk into my apartment when I realized he wasn’t just babbling, he was saying “Maman a parti. Maman, maman a parti.” Mama has left. Mama, mama has left.

Two things here: First, I have been in Bangou long enough that, somewhere along the line, Marcel has learned how to talk. Second, he didn’t call me tata, or aunt, like most of the kids do. He called me maman. This isn’t necessarily as heart wrenching as it sounds. Any Cameroonian kid will call any adult female in their household maman. Anybody a child lives with who is a reliable source of food and gets angry when the kids have done something wrong is maman.

So this morning, when he couldn’t find maman, Marcel showed up at my door. He ate some bread while I drank my coffee and followed me around munching on a banana while I got dressed for work. One my way to work I dropped him off at his parents’ apartment upstairs.

Three months ago, this little boy didn’t talk, he just hid behind his mother’s skirt, peeking around at the weird white woman who talks funny and has lot of shinny, interesting things in her apartment. But now I’m just the maman he goes to when he can’t find his other maman. And when he’s hungry I give him food, when he’s thirsty I give him water, and when he colors on the books get angry with him.