From Here to There

The water‘s been out for two days now and my hair‘s getting a bit greasy. At times like these, you think about how great it is that you have to wear a head covering anyway. Really, one could go a few weeks without washing one‘s hair and nobody else would notice. Not that I absolutely couldn‘t wash my hair if I really wanted to. Our next-door neighbor recently put in a well, and when the water is cut, he sells water for 2 cents a bucket. So we can have as much water as we want if we are willing to put the effort into fetching it.

We keep three containers, which hold several gallons each, on our porch. When there is running water, we make sure these are full, and they are our first recourse when the water goes out. Even though that 2 cent water is available, we still act like a major drought is in store whenever the water goes out. I suppose it comes from the reminder that water is precious and the knowledge that even the well could one day run dry. We start to save all the greywater from washing dishes or bathing, and we use this to flush the toilet or water the garden. We stop washing our hair because it simply takes too much water. We bathe with minimal water out of a bucket. We refrain as long as possible from flushing the toilet, and start to contemplate the option of using our neighbor‘s pit toilet, because that stupid toilet takes so much water to flush!

Having stretched the use of our stored water as long as possible, this morning I went to the neighbor‘s well with 2 cents in my pocket. There was a line of men with pushcarts full of containers waiting to be filled, but since I had just the one bucket I was served first. A ten year-old girl filled my bucket, and as I reached to take it (knowing it would be a struggle to carry it back), she looked at me incredulously and called her sister. They each took one side of the bucket and carried it between them to my front porch, probably giggling among themselves at the inherent physical weakness of white people, which is certainly justified in my case. Maybe I‘ll go get some more and force myself to wash my hair tonight.

I thought there were only two seasons here in Maroua, rainy season and dry season, but I have discovered a third: bug season. The month of October, when every rain is declared to be the last rain, has seen a major leap in the insect population. These bugs are varied and versatile, ranging from tiny bloodthirsty mosquitoes to enormous praying mantises that try to attack anyone who gets too close. I‘ve never been one to mind bugs very much, but I prefer not to have things crawling on me when I‘m trying to sleep. The mosquito net finally went up this month, but I‘m already close to giving up, after waking up with my restless legs knotted in net every night. And though the net may prevent mosquito bites, it does nothing to prevent onslaughts of tiny crawling bugs who natural habitat appears to be bedsheets. These bugs somehow manage to hide in the folds of the net and my sheets until just before bedtime, and then crawl out to greet me as soon as I have the net arranged.
Then there‘s the crickets. Kariss assured me that at this time last year they actually had a minor cricket plague, wherein she had to sweep dozens of crickets out of the house every day. Fortunately things are not so drastic this time around, but I must confess the cricket to be one of the more annoying examples of insect life. The noise they make chirping and hopping about is multiplied by the dead silence of nights here. The cockroaches aren‘t so bad after all; they don‘t bite, don‘t make noise, and don‘t make a fuss generally.
These are the bugs of our house, but there are so many more outside, especially out in the fields, where the red millet, jigari, is ripening and ready for cultivations. There is a fat red and black bug that hangs off of purple flowers, and there are butterflies of many colors. They weave between the stalks while little frogs hop along the ground. Frogs are indeed everywhere at this season, perhaps even more plentiful than the usual lizards. And the baby calves and goats and ducks and chicks have all grown into the awkward adolescent phase and children are even louder and more playful because they have to sit in school half the day, and life is generally bursting.
I think that‘s one of the things I like most about Africa, the abundance of life. Nothing is sterile; instead of hard asphalt we have dirt teeming with life, livestock roams the city instead of being penned in, and children spend as little time as possible indoors. In the States, life is contained, allocated to specific areas; here it‘s unrestricted and all over the place. Inconvenient and messy, to be sure, but the sights and smells and sounds keep me ever aware that life is more than stuff.

This entry was originally intended to be a vitriolic rant about the airline services of this country, but then I realized that such a venting would harldly assist my desire to cultivate in myself a more positive attitude. So, in search of a more uplifting topic, my mind ran over its store of positive images accumulated in the past few weeks. My growing friendship with neighbors, the accomplishment of of beginning to understand bits and pieces of Gemzek, my time visiting loved ones in Bamenda, and a really amazing new dress all pass through my mind. But the image that lends itself most to a short and sweet entry is that of the neighborhood children and the guava tree.
Our compound boasts much plant life, but one of the hallmarks is the large guava tree in our backyard, with its spreading branches that give shade to almost the whole yard. The guavas are just starting to ripen in abundance, and this has caused us something of a problem. The children here are generally polite, well-behaved, happy little things who are endlessly fascinated by our white skin. Guavas apparantly have the effect of turning these pictures of contentment into greedy little monsters. I noticed when I first came back from Yaoundé that the neighbors had taken to locking the compound gate during the day. This was unusual because we usually only lock it at night. Carelessly I left the gate unlocked when returning from work one day. Minutes later, I heard a creak and a scurry, and suddenly there was a mob of small children in our backyard, knocking down guavas from our tree with a stick. Still unaware of the danger, I smiled indulgently and went back to whatever it was I was doing. In Cameroon, fruit is generally considered fair game and not private property, so I wasn‘t annoyed by the children‘s behavior. But a little bit later I realized my mistake when I heard loud shrieks and singing all about the compound and began to see small heads peeking in through my windows . The children, who have little sugar in their diet, were apparantly on a guava buzz. This lasted until the neighbor girls finally rounded them up and locked them outside. Throughout the day I could hear choruses of WE WANT GUAVAS as the kids pounded on the gate. They tried going in through the next compound and climbing over the wall. They lie in wait for us to open the door so they can rush in. Sometimes they come one by one, sometimes in a mob of up to fifteen. But they are serious about guavas.
So if any guavas start to grow in your backyard, watch out, because they‘ll be coming for you next!

I’ve begun to notice that most of my blogs have to do with “everyday life” and very little talk about what I actually do here as a linguist. This may be because the concerns of shopping, eating, and keeping house generally occupy much more time and thought than they do in the States. There’s no microwave meal option, no one-stop supermarkets, and the dusty Sahel landscape makes keeping things clean a monumental and ongoing task. But that is not all of my life. Since some of you may be wondering what being a linguist looks like, today I’ll give you some idea.

Unfortunately, my linguistic work has not quite taken off yet. I have been assigned to work with the G people, a group with an estimated population of 8,000, some living here in Maroua, and most living in villages located in a mountainous area about two hours drive from here. The G people requested a language development project about twelve years ago, and a language committee was formed. One man has been working on translation, and with some help from an expatriate linguist in 2005, a preliminary alphabet was put together. A couple of primers have been published for teaching literacy. But there has been altogether little linguistic analysis of the language, and that’s where I come. I will be researching specific aspects of the language and using my findings to help the G people understand their own language better. This understanding will enable Timothy, the translator, to produce text that sounds natural in the G language; may lead to a revision of the alphabet that is easier for G people to learn; and may motivate G people to have a higher value for their language and culture.

But what do I actually do? Right now I am trying to gather Gemzek contacts so I have sources of language speakers who can provide me with data for my work. This is more difficult than it sounds, for life here is slow and the farthest thing from time-oriented you can imagine. My main G contact, who is looking for people to work with me, has not called me in a week. This morning I tried to call him, but his phone wasn’t working, a common problem in this land of power cuts. Well, I will keep trying until something works out. In the meantime, I am working on learning the current G alphabet and reading up on the subject of discourse analysis, which is the study of how languages structure different kinds of speech and writing. For example, we tell a fairy tale different from the way we tell what we did yesterday, and we give instructions in a totally different way. Each language has its own rules as to how these differences are made. Part of my work in G language will be studying these structures in order to help Timothy with his translation work.

In closing, would you like to learn the G alphabet? There are 41 letters, 8 vowels and 33 consonants:
a, b, ɓ, d, dz, ɗ, e, ə, f, g, gw, h, hw, i, k, kw, l, m, mb, n, nd, ndz, ŋ, ŋg, ŋgw, o, œ, p, r, s, sl, t, ts, u, ʉ, v, w, y, z, zl, ‘

You never know how great things are until you‘ve done without them for awhile. For example, our vegetable man came on Saturday for his usual weekly visit. He is a farmer who does some experimenting with different kinds of seeds, trying to grow things other than the normal northern crops. He boxes up a selection of the fruits of his labor, ties them onto the back of his bicycle, and comes straight to our door. This weekend, among the usual fare, was a plastic grocery bag stuffed full of – drumroll please – spinach! I have not had spinach the whole time I‘ve been in Cameroon, and had no idea that it could grow here. We bought the whole bag, which yielded more than three large ziploc freezer bags packed to maximum capacity. The funny thing is, I never thought I liked spinach until it was suddenly something special. Yesterday Karissa made a spinach frittata, and visions of spinach pizza and spinach dip fill my head. This large quantity of spinach plus a dozen tomatoes, three green peppers, a small cabbage, a plastic sack of basil, eight leeks, and a watermelon cost us a grand total of $12, and was delivered to our door.
Another example is internet. As I write this I have been at the office for over an hour, waiting for The Return of the Internet. I came into the office with no other object than to check my emails and was disheartened to learn that the whole network was down and that we had to wait for the computer guy, Hallelu, to come and fix things. To occupy myself, I‘ve worked on reorganizing the library, writing emails to be sent, and balancing my budget. Just now, the internet icon has switched from dead bars to a plug with a yellow exclamation point. Progress, but we‘re not there yet. When (if) the internet finally works, I shall jubilantly download my emails as quickly as possible, and answer in order of priority, for who knows how long my access to the rest of the world shall last?
And some rare things I could just do without. It‘s hot here. I‘ve been told this is one of the warmest rainy seasons (Maroua‘s coldest period) in the last decade. Yesterday we had a cold snap. It was like 60 degrees or something instead of the 80s or 90s. You‘d think I would be happy for this respite from the heat. Oh no. I was miserable. I spent the whole afternoon in bed, shivering under a blanket. Karissa caught a cold. I wondered why I didn‘t bring any sweaters with me to Africa.

Well, I must admit to feeling a tad guilty about not updating my blog for two months, but I can think of plenty of good excuses. I don‘t know whether to plea my mom‘s visit, moving, lousy internet access, or malaria; the choices are practically without limit. Suffice it to say that I have been busy, and too absorbed in dealing with changes to want to write about them.

But now I‘m somewhat settled. I moved to Maroua going on four weeks ago, and am once more in the midst of learning a new culture. Maroua is in the Far North, where it rains only a few months out of the year, people survive off of a type of dry-season millet, and culture is greatly influenced by the Fulani people. Herds of cattle are driven down the road several times a day, pigs and goats forage in the garbage piles heaped along the sides of the streets, and if I walk three minutes from my house, the land opens up into a scrubby plain with patches of crops, all sorts of trees and flowers, hedged by a short range of mountains to the west. Frenc h is used, but Fulfulde is the main language of the streets and markets. Every now and then I see a bareheaded young woman wearing jeans and a T shirt, but I, like most every other woman here, would be embarrased to leave the house without a long skirt, covered shoulders, and head scarf. There are few cars and I get about by walking or by hopping onto the back of a motorcycle taxi (with my helmet, of course).

The main reason for being here and not in Tuki land with Helma is my health. My back continued to deteriorate after my injury in February, and there was no decent physical therapy to be had down south. In spite of Maroua‘s relative lack of public amenities, there is a mission hospital here with an excellent physical therapy department. It is just across the street and I walk back and forth three times a week. I am living with Karissa in a little two bedroom house, and we are enjoying talking and cooking together.

My work here involves language learning and helping the Gemzek people with their language development. I will be studying how their language structures different types of discourse, such as storytelling, history, and exhortations. I am eager to start digging into linguistic studies and to make friends with Gemzek speakers.

It‘s what some people might call the simple life here. I only get internet at the office, our power goes out most weekends and occasionally during the week as well, the water system is far from reliable, and there are a multitude of consumer products that are just not available. But our beef and milk products comes from cattle grazed just outside of town, most of our vegetables are grown locally, and this month‘s electricity bill was ten dollars, so what is there really to complain of?

These last few months of hanging out in Yaoundé struggling with back pain and wishing to be in the village have not generally been much fun. I had given up hope that Yaoundé could be fun. Just none of the kind of challenge I like. We have western grocery stores and my friends have a stereo system and the missionary community is so self-contained that one can actually go a whole week without spending more than ten minutes interacting with Cameroonians. I feel like I spent more time with Africans when I lived near Chicago. An exaggeration, but it hits a bit close to home. But this weekend I discovered that Yaoundé can be fun if you have male friends.

To explain, it is not safe as a woman to be out long after nightfall around seven. So going out to dinner or anything like that is an event that requires careful planning, large groups, and the hiring of trusted taxi drivers. But if you have a guy or two with you, suddenly you can actually walk down the road after dark! Spontaneity becomes an option! I knew guys were useful for SOMETHING, and I’ve finally figured out what it is: Token Protection. Not that I really expect any of my guy friends to be any more capable than me in fighting off potential threats. But their mere presence averts danger. It really is quite a phenomenon.

Some girlfriends from Chad came in to visit and Karissa and I ended up taking them out to dinner. We someone how managed to get three guys to come along. This is quite a feat. I mean, I think SIL actually only has three single guys under the age of 40 living in Yaoundé. And we got them ALL. So one of the guys drove and we hired a taxi so all nine of us could fit. The idea was that since we didn’t know exactly how to get to Café Yaoundé, the taxi driver would lead and Michiel would follow with the car. It soon became apparant that the taxi driver didn’t have a clue where he was going. I was impressed by Michiel’s ability to keep on the tail of the taxi as we were led in circles through the city at rush hour. I even remembered to tell him of my appreciation. I spend so little time with men that I have to be very deliberate in remembering things like how they need to be told that they are doing a good job so they feel properly appreciated. As boosting the male ego is not one of my preferred pastimes, I was very proud of my ability to verbalize appreciation. Anyway, Karissa was with the taxi, and she finally told the guy to just stop at this random restaurant. She got out to ask for directions and discovered that we had just happened to stop at what had been one of her favorite restaurants as a teenager in boarding school here. Happy day! We all piled out and I paid the taxi driver the minimum possible in a very chilly manner which earned me kudos from the guys. It turned out to be this amazing Vietnamese place, where I ate Asian food for the first time in Cameroon without having to make it myself.

Matthew actually knew of a “jazz bar” down the street, so we walked there after dinner. Music wasn’t great, but I was out at night, and didn’t much care where. As the SIL 10:30 curfew approached, Michiel took half the group home, and Joey got the rest of us a taxi and “protected” us all the way home. Sometimes I think the guys here stink, but once in awhile I am very appreciative.

Our house still isn’t finished. But it does has all of its mud brick walls and they are beginning to plaster it with cement. The doors and windows are going in soon, but we still need to buy locks for the doors. The pit for our toilet, five meters deep, has been dug, but will not be covered with cement until rainy season is in full force. Why? Because the neighborhood well has dried up, and the community figures they can use the water in our pit since we’re not using it as a toilet yet. In any case, we won’t be using the pit to begin with, because our handy toilet that dumps into the pit is still sitting on a freight ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. In the meantime, I am setting my mind to a temporary indoor toilet option.  My plan is to bolt a toilet seat onto a bench with a hole in it. The bench will go over a large plastic bucket with a tight lid. Time to go, remove the lid, seal it when you’re done to contain odor. Dump the contents in the outdoor neighborhood pit toilet each morning. After reading an interesting article on the use of human waste, the plan has expanded to include two buckets, one for number one and one for number two. Number two will still be dumped in the outside pit, because I don’t think I’m quite ready yet to experiment with human poop composting, but number two will be diluted with water and used to fertilize my garden. Yes, really. I’m serious. And Helma didn’t freak out when I told her about my brilliant idea, which I’m really glad about, because I wasn’t sure if she was going to be OK eating vegetables grown with her own pee. I mean, it all ends up in the same place, right?

Today we went shopping in our borrowed Suzuki Samurai. It’s totally the kind of car white people always drive in movies that take place in Africa. It even has a winch, so we can pull a “Gods Must be Crazy” car in a tree stunt if we want. It is hideously loud, has no AC, and the speedometer is broken. We bought a metal sink. It is going to fit into a table with a hole cut into the surface, and will empty into a plastic bucket. Word to the wise, a house without running water requires like a million plastic buckets. Fortunately, they are plentiful and cheap here. I also found a Monopoly set at the Indian grocery store. It was only nine dollars! Of course, it’s in Spanish and made of super-cheap cardboard. They have a nice, normal set at the French grocery store, but that costs ninety dollars. I’ll just learn some Spanish. So with a sink and Monopoly, I think the house will be fine. We’re still short chairs, a couch, a toilet, and tables, but we have beds and a stove and a sink. Rome wasn’t built in one day.

Here is the story of a momentous Yaoundé traffic jam.

Our plan was simply to bring a dish of hamburger tomato stew to a SIL couple who had just had a baby. Then we would drop off my friend Pat, who lives across the street, and go back to the apartment. It normally takes five minutes to drive from our apartment to the place where this couple lives. This time it took an hour and a half. Why is traffic this bad? This isn’t even in the downtown area of the city. Matters were certainly made worse by the breakdown of a beer truck on one side of the road, but this unfortunate occurrence did not explain why another beer truck with no problems at all needed to park itself on the other side of the road, effectively preventing anyone from getting through except the motorcycle taxis. Not that people didn’t try to squeeze through the narrow gap. Maralee was even revving up to try it when a rush of other contestants went past and blocked her path.

Eventually police were called in and they managed to make the one beer truck move, then guided traffic from each side through the one lane. By the time we reached our destination, all were starving except the new baby. At Pat’s we scarfed down some food before heading back out into the evil traffic. Maralee decided rather than going back through, we would take a big loop around to get home. This was a brilliant idea, except she had never been this way at night, and we got somewhat lost, in spite of asking various roadside vendors for directions. Maralee was so grateful for the help of a woman selling bananas that she almost threw some coins at her. I took the coins and made a reasonable banana purchase instead. We made a nice circle that took us right back to where we had started, and decided to use the Phone a Friend option. Ginger, possessor of Yaoundé road knowledge, to the rescue! She talked us through the whole thing. And finally, after an hour, we were back at home, with bananas. I gobbled one down, feeling a definite potassium deficiency. I downed my pain meds, as the time in the car had seriously strained my back. Too wired to sleep, we stayed up late and chatted.

We could have panicked, two women lost at night in an African city, but instead we just took what we got and enjoyed it as much as we could. It’s not too bad being lost with a friend.

I think the US misses out by not celebrating International Women’s Day. We got all these holidays celebrating things like Columbus’ discovery of the New World, fathers, mothers, people in romantic relationships, various presidents, and soldiers. Women’s Day is simpler, just celebrating everyday women, regardless of their reproductive history or relationship status. It is, in fact, the only holiday I’ve ever heard of in which single women are included in the honors.

Here in Cameroon, it is a big enough holiday to close government offices, though not to close businesses. Including the organization for which I work. My two roommates ditched work anyway, and we all went to town to see the festivities. The day before saw us running around the market picking out ready-made women’s day dresses. So when we got into town, we caused our own parade. We were among very few white women who had come out to celebrate, and we were cheered for wearing the dresses and joining in the fun. There are times when the color of my skin is an irritant, setting me apart from others. This day it was fun to be white, to see the appreciation that Cameroonians showed for our participation in their culture. To celebrate something that certainly transcends culture, womanhood, humanity. We cheered for the women’s groups that marched in the parade, “Women against domestic violence,” “Women’s Rural Agricultural Union,” “Handicapped Women,” “Union of Albino Women,” and so on and so forth. And what a sight to see every woman dressed in the same fabric, in the green or pink background color, but in an amazing panoply of styles, unique but the same.

The slogan printed in French on the dress fabric says “La femme, une partenaire incontournable pour le developpement,” which translated literally means “Woman, a persistant partner for development,” but on the fabric “incontournable” was translated as “unavoidable.” Hmm, I wonder if it was a man who did the translation…

I would never consider myself a feminist, but being here and seeing the “traditional” treatment of women makes me realize how blessed I was to grow up in a country where girls are valued enough to be given access to education and are given equal access to jobs. You are a blessed woman if you live in a country that enforces sexual harrassment laws and punishes wife-beaters and rapists. So I am making it a tradition to stand with Cameroonian women on this holiday, to celebrate the blessings I have, and to pray that my Cameroonian sisters may experience these blessings too.