Food and stuff

Well, no more African teams in the World Cup. The people we were watching with figured out that the Ghanian team lost because they eat too much rich and not enough fufu corn, and achu, a NW Province specialty. It’s this kind of match-side philosophizing that makes watching here so much fun, and in general, sitting around listening and talking with people.

I was thinking about the Mback in Mbongo entry, and the heightened sense of awareness I was talking about was due to hunger and beer. Where was I? The road to the weekly market still is in really bad shape pretty much the whole rainy season. In the dry season it’s pretty good. The farm I had when I was in Mbongo has now been planted in oil palms that are 15 feet tall. A lot of people still called me John, who was my predecessor in Mbongo. When I first arrived there in 1996, pretty much everybody called me John for the first six months. I hated it, but eventually came to accept it. You have to because some people called me John for the entire two years. It’s much better than “white man” or just “White”. John. Paul. We’re both apostles. It doesn’t matter at all anymore.

When you walk around, especially it seems like in crowded market situations, people just yell at you “White! Helooo! White! Look here!” etc. There’s also this syrupy high sing-song voice that some people use that just makes your skin crawl. It’s really annoying. Some are more obnoxious than others, not stopping, while others just yell “white man” or the equivalent in the local language and leave it at that. It is fun, however, yelling “Black” right back at people. People usually think that’s pretty hilarious, and leave you alone afterwards. I realized that living here for two years you just learn to accept the harassment. You can’t get too angry about it or else your time here will just be one big anger-fest. Since we got here, though, Dana has been pondering exactly why people feel the need to yell our skin color at us. It’s a good question, and one I just kind of took for granted. Because we’re different and stand out? Because we’re perceived as rich? (which in Cameroon is true comparatively. One thing I did sometimes as a PCV but stopped doing, and didn’t have much patience for other PCVs who did this was “cry poor” when people asked for money. Even with our monthly salaries of CFA 135,000 as single people with nobody to support, we were still rich. On the other hand, we aren't the endless money pots people may think we are.) But still, it’s just bad fashion, but one that is completely acceptable here. I know Asian-American PCV’s had to put up with people karate chopping and yelling “ching-chang” and other obnoxious stuff. There’s not much you can do about it because it’s mostly so anonymous from somebody far away and you’re moving – walking somewhere, in a taxi, a bus. A couple times I’ve gone up to a food seller or other vendor this trip ready to buy something from them and as I walk up I can hear them say “White” to me. They just lost my business. It’s just 20 cents or a dollar, but still. It just seems like a passive thing, not filled with hate or aggression like if somebody in the US yells at a black or Hispanic or gay or Asian person. But it still doesn’t really make it any more pleasant.

Carl, I’ve been chopping plums left and right. I had some really good ones yesterday at Sam Soya.

When we first arrived in Douala, and also traveled on the train between Ngaoundere and Yaounde, people mostly carry their luggage on their heads. I didn’t even notice it. Dana thought it was funny because suitcases with wheels and pull handles are on heads just the same as bags of produce or other goods in bags without handles. If you have that skill, it makes it easier and more sense to maneuver through crowds. But it’s not a very common way to carry things in, say, Fiesta Mall or the Phoenix airport.

One of the coolest things we’ve seen here in Cameroon was in the Extreme North after a heavy rain. It had only rained a tiny bit apparently before we arrived, and on the road between Maroua and Mokolo, it had rained heavily the night before. We were going to the Mokolo market that day and as we passed villages and people’s fields, everybody was out planting. A digging stick to make a small hole, drop in seeds. Make a hole, drop in seeds. Everybody planting millet mostly, which is needed for people’s survival. I talked with a man who has a salaried job at a health center, and Dana asked if he had a farm. He replied, “What will my family eat? Of course we have a farm.” I also had forgotten how close to no food the majority of people here live. It’s easy to forget looking at the markets here that are so overflowing with food for sale. But it’s expensive, and most people can’t afford to have much variety in their diet. Even passing at high speed, just seeing the number of people out and knowing what they were doing felt very grounding to me, a farmer wanna be. Without romanticizing it, it is just such a human activity that is mostly lost from the American landscape. Seeing individuals and whole extended families actually farming, and the complex pattern of hundreds of people’s fields.

Even though there can be a lot of food available in the markets, if you compare it to the varieties of different foods we have in the States, it is still pretty limited. Well, the food products we have in the States is overwhelming, since I’ve heard a statistic somewhere that 80% of our processed foods is corn, soy, or wheat (or something like that. Anybody know that statistic?). We have 80 different sodas all with different flavors, colors, and brands, but they all have the same shit. Artificial flavorings, colorings, carbonated water, and corn syrup. Here, there is a huge diversity of food and ways to prepare it (if you take Cameroon as a whole), but on a daily basis, people seem to mostly be able to afford a fairly limited diet. In different places, food choices can be completely different. Some places in the country have more varieties of fruits, veggies, grain, and meat, while others have much less. Every part has it’s specialty, though. Onions, millet, sorghum, rice, in the Xtreme North, pineapples, cassava, egussi, plantains in the Southwest, corn, beans, market vegetables in the Northwest. Of course there are tons of other foods I didn’t mention and lots of crossover between different regions. There are also lots of wild harvested seasonal and regional foods that you can only see at certain times of the year. It’s fascinating to see what kinds of foods and how food is transported around the country, as well as how the price changes. Avocado for CFA 500 in the Xtreme North sells for CFA 50 in the NW.

So much of American life is so much inside, in gated communities. Private. Individual. Even during public events and activities – parades, sporting events, grocery shopping, bars – people apologize if you barely touch the outside of another person’s thick leather shoe. Personal space is sacrosanct. Here, a woman won’t hesitate to give you her baby when she needs a free hand to buy something outside of the taxi window. People are used to being in each other’s space. You have to be to be stuffed inside the taxis and other public transport. It can drive you crazy coming from the US, and it did when I was here. But I also grew to really appreciate it. So there are just some really human moments here that just kind of blow your mind coming from the States. Like sitting on the top of a small mountain and suddenly becoming aware of the sound of people, hundreds if not thousands of people, for kilometers around you all pounding millet in mortar and pestles preparing the evening meal. Seeing all the people outside planting was a similar moment for me. In Tucson or Davis or Tempe, I’ve never gotten goosebumps sitting in a park listing to hundreds of people cooking spaghetti or making scramble eggs all at the same time. Although, I do get good feelings on beautiful spring or summer evenings when you see and smell BBQ fires coming up from everybody’s backyards.

People sometimes come onto big greyhound style busses you take between some of the bigger cities to sell stuff. Asian medicine and other health products are especially popular. This one guy was selling the latest de-worming medicine (vermiquin or something like that) with particularly graphic descriptions. I learned however, all six types of worm his produce helps get rid of. Hook worm, tape worm, round worm, filaria worm, flat worm, and one other I can’t remember. One worm in particular makes you “scratch scratch scratch your anus until blood di kommot”. Then he pulled out pictures to back up his claims. One poor guy had excema (his medicine was a cure-all) all over his butt that we were told made a map of Africa. The salesman pointed out Malawi, Cameroon, Senegal, Egypt, and Central African Republic. Thanks, dude.

Later the same trip, a guy climbed on the bus to sell “Super-Clean”. He rubbed it on the bus ceiling, which was that tight pile carpeting, and it became much lighter and cleaner. Dana pointed out that the ceiling was covered with these clean spots, so it wasn’t this guy’s first time on the bus selling his product. Then, he said Super-Clean was good for cleaning jewelry. He went around the bus collecting people’s chains and bracelets and put it in a cup of Super-Clean. He shook it around and said, “I am shake-ing, and the duh-tee is kommot-ing”. The whole bus just cracked up. Sorry, that’ll mostly be funny to pigin speakers. The mixture of grammar and pigin and just the way it sounds was just hilarious. He had the entire bus in the palm of his hand, asking who had or had not used Super-Clean, with people finishing his sentences in a way that many people make speeches here. When he finally got to selling the stuff “for CFA 2,000, but at the special promotional price of CFA 500”, they were gone before you could say “scratch scratch scratch your anus”.

When we left Mbongo, we stopped in Mbonge to visit with a farmer I worked with a lot as a volunteer. We went to the bar with him and some friends to have a beer while waiting for transport the rest of the way to Kumba. There was one small old man sitting in the bar sipping on a small Guiness, and the 7 of us sat down at the same table. He just kept on doing his thing and didn’t really participate in our conversation, although he did share some interesting history about Mbonge since he’d lived there almost his entire life. When he finished his beer, he felt moved enough to stand up and give a speech, thanked us for the unexpected and honored company we’d given him, that he enjoyed his beer, and that is was time for him to go home, and he left. He had such kind and appreciative words, just expressing what he was thinking. It’s something that can be really great here, the speeches. I paid for his beer. It was the least I could do. A tiny small way to repay for all the beer, soda, palm wine, and afofo that was offered me and Dana during our stay in Mbongo.

Well, France and Spain are playing. Gotta go.