The present obvious
I am writing a blog entry.
There is a pidgin tense that is used all the time here that is really great. I don’t know if it has a name, but I like to call it the present obvious. I don’t really know anything about tenses. I can use them but don’t know what they’re called or anything. I failed my French class and never wrote well because tenses suck. But I love the present obvious. When you walk into a room, you say “I dey”, or for emphasis “I dey-oh!” (I am here). If somebody is eating in the room you just walked into, you can ask them “you di chop?” and they’ll answer, “yes”. Or if they beat you to the punch, they’ll tell you, “I di chop”. They aren’t hiding the big plate of food in front of them. It’s pretty obvious. Hence the name present obvious. When you arrive somewhere, you can also say “I don come” (a different way to say “I am here”). If you come up to people drinking palm wine or beer, they often will tell you, “We di enjoy” or “We dey for enjoyment”. Or you can ask them “Wuna dey for enjoyment?”, to which they will reply “Yes, we di enjoy”. You can ask a question about anything you see somebody doing, or people will tell you they are doing something right in front of you. I dunno. At first it seems kind of silly or redundant. After a while, it starts to make sense and I wish we had an equivalent in English. It’s the acknowledgement thing. Having something to say to somebody, even if there isn’t really much to say (read the bit about ashia below.) In English (in the US at least), it seems we are caught a lot of times without anything to say even though we want to say something. I mean, when I was a wilderness counselor at Camp Tawonga, it would’ve been great to say to some kid, “you di puke?” (in pidgin it’s vomit).
We are in Limbe, a nice seaside town that I was lucky enough to spend a good chunk of time during my Peace Corps service. We will leave Cameroon on Thursday the 7th - a week earlier than planned - and go visit with a friend from grad school who lives in Amsterdam. But we'll still be coming back to the States as originally planned, on Bastille Day, July 14th. Why the early departure? In part, because Dana got malaria last week, and we're a bit tired of traveling and Dana really really really wants some fresh vegetables. Fresh veggies were easy to get and prepare as a PCV. There is tons of great fresh produce here. But as a tourist without a kitchen to prepare veggies in ways that turn veggies into good comfort food, cooked Cameroon style, they end up being very different. Lots of palm or peanut oil and frying pretty much sums it up. Good stuff, but not if you're hankering for a fresh salad. I remember during Peace Corps training being over at a friend’s house for dinner and they prepared us spaghetti as a special treat. We watched them cook the tomato sauce for our spaghetti – a couple cups of palm oil heated till smoking, put in two cans of tomato paste, spices, sliced onion, and voila, spaghetti marinara.
Malaria. Yikes. I should say quickly that Dana recovered very quickly after starting her treatment less than 24 hours after the first fever spike. Now, she is feeling much better, although still a bit weak and dealing with some dizzying side-effects of the anti-malaria drugs. I won't say anything more about it and let her tell what she wants about the experience. But I want to emphasize she is doing OK. If you’re gonna get Malaria, Bamenda is as good a place as any to get it. It has relatively good medical facilities, and for the non-malarial, lots of food to eat, markets to browse, and internet cafes to pass the time in. In a way, it’s much better to get malaria here than in the States, where even seasoned professional doctors have probably never seen the disease. It’s old hat here, hospitals have the latest anti-malarials and can diagnose the 4 main strains in a malarial minute. I remember my Mbongo predecessor telling us about getting malaria while he was in his grad program in Ohio, and insisting he had malaria but the doctors not believing it. Once you’ve had it, you know when you have it again. It’s a familiar feeling and cycle you go through.
It's kind of funny telling people here that you have malaria. People usually reply with a simple "Ashia". Ashia is a wonderful pigin word that covers almost every aspect of sympathy, pity, empathy, and comfort. You see an old man or woman carrying a huge load of firewood on their head while you're drinking palm wine, and you can say "ashia", and they’ll respond “Oh”. You can say it to just about anybody who is doing any kind of work or having something unpleasant happen, from something as simple as a little kid learning to walk who falls on his butt, to somebody who cut off their finger with a machete . . . to somebody who has malaria. It's a great word because it acknowledges somebody else's hard work, suffering, or discomfort in a non-condescending, empathetic way. In the US, we don't have any equivalent. Just saying "I'm sorry" sounds kind of lame. “Sucks to be you” would probably be the best translation, but that usually isn’t appreciated very much by the suck-ee, as is way off of the meaning and intent of ashia. In the US, if you see somebody who has had something happen to them, we often feel uncomfortable because there is no good empathetic word to say, so we don't say anything. If I am uncomfortable, sick, bleeding, puking, potching, weeding etc. and people say ashia to me, even if they are drinking palm wine and I’m not, I do appreciate it. It’s the acknowledgement thing mentioned above. Back to malaria. People here are vastly unimpressed by malaria because pretty much everybody has it at some time or another in their lives, and in many cases, several times. It is unfortunately a part of life here for most people.
During our stay in Bamenda, we stayed at the Skyline Hotel, a venerable, slightly run down, European-feeling hotel built somewhere in the 70s, with a million dollar view on the cliff’s edge looking out over Bamenda and the surrounding mountains. I stayed there a couple times as a volunteer and always enjoyed it. This time, we got a discount because of a dispute with Sonel, the Cameroonian utility company, caused Sonel to turn off their lights. Shitty during the world cup when you can do a booming business if you have good reception and cold beer. They told us the lights have been out for a couple weeks, but should be back on in the next couple days. When we got there, it seemed a lot more run-down than I remembered it. Dana was underwhelmed, which disappointed me because I remembered it being really nice. I had the Douala thing going on I mentioned in one of the first blogs. Is it really more run down than I remember, or am I still too fresh from the US? One night when a taxi was taking me home, people were discussing the legal problems of the Skyline, to which I replied, “I guess the lights have been off for a couple weeks but they should be on soon”. One of the passengers basically said, “Are you kidding? They haven’t had electricity for years!”. Not very good for business over the long haul, and confirmed my run-down impression. We had to pay promptly every day so they could buy petrol for the generator so we could have 3 hours of electricity each evening. In the 6 nights of staying there, they were maybe 2 other people that spent a night, and a small handful of “quickies” during the day, when you could see. Other than that, we had the place to ourselves.
Happy 4th of July. We found pizza and a hamburger to eat tonight. Not so good, but it was a bit of comfort food. We remembered about the national holiday after we ate.
There is a pidgin tense that is used all the time here that is really great. I don’t know if it has a name, but I like to call it the present obvious. I don’t really know anything about tenses. I can use them but don’t know what they’re called or anything. I failed my French class and never wrote well because tenses suck. But I love the present obvious. When you walk into a room, you say “I dey”, or for emphasis “I dey-oh!” (I am here). If somebody is eating in the room you just walked into, you can ask them “you di chop?” and they’ll answer, “yes”. Or if they beat you to the punch, they’ll tell you, “I di chop”. They aren’t hiding the big plate of food in front of them. It’s pretty obvious. Hence the name present obvious. When you arrive somewhere, you can also say “I don come” (a different way to say “I am here”). If you come up to people drinking palm wine or beer, they often will tell you, “We di enjoy” or “We dey for enjoyment”. Or you can ask them “Wuna dey for enjoyment?”, to which they will reply “Yes, we di enjoy”. You can ask a question about anything you see somebody doing, or people will tell you they are doing something right in front of you. I dunno. At first it seems kind of silly or redundant. After a while, it starts to make sense and I wish we had an equivalent in English. It’s the acknowledgement thing. Having something to say to somebody, even if there isn’t really much to say (read the bit about ashia below.) In English (in the US at least), it seems we are caught a lot of times without anything to say even though we want to say something. I mean, when I was a wilderness counselor at Camp Tawonga, it would’ve been great to say to some kid, “you di puke?” (in pidgin it’s vomit).
We are in Limbe, a nice seaside town that I was lucky enough to spend a good chunk of time during my Peace Corps service. We will leave Cameroon on Thursday the 7th - a week earlier than planned - and go visit with a friend from grad school who lives in Amsterdam. But we'll still be coming back to the States as originally planned, on Bastille Day, July 14th. Why the early departure? In part, because Dana got malaria last week, and we're a bit tired of traveling and Dana really really really wants some fresh vegetables. Fresh veggies were easy to get and prepare as a PCV. There is tons of great fresh produce here. But as a tourist without a kitchen to prepare veggies in ways that turn veggies into good comfort food, cooked Cameroon style, they end up being very different. Lots of palm or peanut oil and frying pretty much sums it up. Good stuff, but not if you're hankering for a fresh salad. I remember during Peace Corps training being over at a friend’s house for dinner and they prepared us spaghetti as a special treat. We watched them cook the tomato sauce for our spaghetti – a couple cups of palm oil heated till smoking, put in two cans of tomato paste, spices, sliced onion, and voila, spaghetti marinara.
Malaria. Yikes. I should say quickly that Dana recovered very quickly after starting her treatment less than 24 hours after the first fever spike. Now, she is feeling much better, although still a bit weak and dealing with some dizzying side-effects of the anti-malaria drugs. I won't say anything more about it and let her tell what she wants about the experience. But I want to emphasize she is doing OK. If you’re gonna get Malaria, Bamenda is as good a place as any to get it. It has relatively good medical facilities, and for the non-malarial, lots of food to eat, markets to browse, and internet cafes to pass the time in. In a way, it’s much better to get malaria here than in the States, where even seasoned professional doctors have probably never seen the disease. It’s old hat here, hospitals have the latest anti-malarials and can diagnose the 4 main strains in a malarial minute. I remember my Mbongo predecessor telling us about getting malaria while he was in his grad program in Ohio, and insisting he had malaria but the doctors not believing it. Once you’ve had it, you know when you have it again. It’s a familiar feeling and cycle you go through.
It's kind of funny telling people here that you have malaria. People usually reply with a simple "Ashia". Ashia is a wonderful pigin word that covers almost every aspect of sympathy, pity, empathy, and comfort. You see an old man or woman carrying a huge load of firewood on their head while you're drinking palm wine, and you can say "ashia", and they’ll respond “Oh”. You can say it to just about anybody who is doing any kind of work or having something unpleasant happen, from something as simple as a little kid learning to walk who falls on his butt, to somebody who cut off their finger with a machete . . . to somebody who has malaria. It's a great word because it acknowledges somebody else's hard work, suffering, or discomfort in a non-condescending, empathetic way. In the US, we don't have any equivalent. Just saying "I'm sorry" sounds kind of lame. “Sucks to be you” would probably be the best translation, but that usually isn’t appreciated very much by the suck-ee, as is way off of the meaning and intent of ashia. In the US, if you see somebody who has had something happen to them, we often feel uncomfortable because there is no good empathetic word to say, so we don't say anything. If I am uncomfortable, sick, bleeding, puking, potching, weeding etc. and people say ashia to me, even if they are drinking palm wine and I’m not, I do appreciate it. It’s the acknowledgement thing mentioned above. Back to malaria. People here are vastly unimpressed by malaria because pretty much everybody has it at some time or another in their lives, and in many cases, several times. It is unfortunately a part of life here for most people.
During our stay in Bamenda, we stayed at the Skyline Hotel, a venerable, slightly run down, European-feeling hotel built somewhere in the 70s, with a million dollar view on the cliff’s edge looking out over Bamenda and the surrounding mountains. I stayed there a couple times as a volunteer and always enjoyed it. This time, we got a discount because of a dispute with Sonel, the Cameroonian utility company, caused Sonel to turn off their lights. Shitty during the world cup when you can do a booming business if you have good reception and cold beer. They told us the lights have been out for a couple weeks, but should be back on in the next couple days. When we got there, it seemed a lot more run-down than I remembered it. Dana was underwhelmed, which disappointed me because I remembered it being really nice. I had the Douala thing going on I mentioned in one of the first blogs. Is it really more run down than I remember, or am I still too fresh from the US? One night when a taxi was taking me home, people were discussing the legal problems of the Skyline, to which I replied, “I guess the lights have been off for a couple weeks but they should be on soon”. One of the passengers basically said, “Are you kidding? They haven’t had electricity for years!”. Not very good for business over the long haul, and confirmed my run-down impression. We had to pay promptly every day so they could buy petrol for the generator so we could have 3 hours of electricity each evening. In the 6 nights of staying there, they were maybe 2 other people that spent a night, and a small handful of “quickies” during the day, when you could see. Other than that, we had the place to ourselves.
Happy 4th of July. We found pizza and a hamburger to eat tonight. Not so good, but it was a bit of comfort food. We remembered about the national holiday after we ate.
posted by Paoulo | 12:58 PM
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