Vacation Tales

I recently attended a mind-bending event: my Close of Service Conference. Contrary to popular belief, I am actually leaving Cameroon, and rather soon. Of course I have mixed feelings about this, but overall I'm really happy to get back to a place where my clothes fit properly and people can't ridicule me to my face, while I stand there smiling like an idiot, eating my banana. 'White girl eats too much' my ass.

Before arriving at the conference, I tooled around Cameroon with a friend, getting an idea of exactly what kind of country I've been living the past few years. Turns out, a pretty cool one. In nearly everything you read about Cameroon (which is a whole lot for most of you I'm sure), the country's labeled "Africa in miniature." Now, during training I heard this a few dozen times and for some reason thought only of shoebox panoramas and how fun those were to create in grade school, effectively forgetting I was even in Cameroon, let alone the phrase and how it applied to my life in the near future. After touring the country, I get it. Cameroon is geographically a perfect shoebox panorama of the African continent. I live in the Sahel, very similar to the Sahara, but a touch less sparse. Further south, one finds legit jungle in the east, rolling mountains that look straight out of Lord of the Rings (granted, less so than the NZ mountains actually filmed for the movies) in the west, really dirty and unorganized urban sprawl in the center, and palm trees EVERYWHERE. Cameroon's the size of Texas, with the climatic variation of the whole United States. Ok, this is probably exaggeration; it still never goes below 50 degrees. Anywho.

We first went to visit Ryan, the volunteer who used to live in Bibemi with me, at his new post in Baffoussam in the West Province. The city is located up in the mountains, so I was fricking freezing the whole time. Like, I had to wear thick socks and a sweatshirt to bed, under 3 blankets. And I'm coming home for Christmas? Things are much greener there, and generally more developed, due to its proximity to the capitols. (I got WAY too excited about buying a whisk for my kitchen.) While in the north women generally wear the traditional garb all the time, regardless of age, it's relatively rare to see someone young wearing it down south. Western clothing is available in greater quantities there, and the dominant culture is Christian, much more accepting of hoochie attire (in this context, jeans and sleeveless tops). The general thinking is that Northern women are more attractive, but Southern women let you see it. Don't ask me why I know this.

After Baf, we swung down to Douala, which is the industrial and commercial capitol of Cameroon, due mainly to the fact that it's a port city, with all the cheap Chinese electronics and haircare products I've grown to love arriving daily by the boatful. Douala's also Cameroon's biggest and most well-developed city, but also its most obvious example of the economic stratification plaguing the country. I saw some pretty ridiculous mansions a few blocks up from the grossest red-light district I've ever seen, and American-style restaurants (this is the only place in Cameroon with a significant American population outside embassy walls) with more beggars hanging around them than the whole of Washington, D.C. But all this is to be expected I suppose. The city as a whole was rather beautiful, and showed me that there is in fact a lot more going on in Cameroon than growing peanuts and having babies.

We stayed with my friend's sister, who has a swank apartment there, and is building one of those ridiculous mansions I was talking about. She spends a third of her year in Cameroon, and the rest in Portugal with her husband who plays soccer there. She was interesting to meet, since she was born in my village, but ended up with a great job in the capitol, and eventually an extremely successful husband. She had quite a lot to say about the woman situation in Cameroon, and acknowledged that a good portion of her success was based on family connections, looks and luck. While she's clearly very intelligent, and this is a lot of modesty, it still wasn't very encouraging.

Beach plans were rained out (tis the season in Cameroon), so we stayed a few extra days in Douala, eating ice cream and watching the Olympics (and my story abruptly becomes dated), then headed back to Yaoundé for my conference.

They put all the volunteers up in le Mont Fébé, probably the nicest hotel in Yaoundé (maybe tied with the Hilton) as a sort of a thank you for completing the two years (there are plenty that don't). We sat through talks on life after the Peace Corps, where to start job searches, how to not look like a freak in your first interview by mixing in French words or clicking randomly, etc. I found it all extremely useful, and it finally hit me that this stage of things is about over. I've spent so much time not thinking about the end, that it's come up fast and blindsided me.

After the conference, I had a week to kill before starting another seminar, so I traveled to the English-speaking Northwest Province. Bamenda, the provincial capitol, is located in the valley between a few mountains, and is even colder that Baffoussam. I assumed the English would be refreshing, but it ended up more stressful than I could have imagined, and I spent the whole time wishing I could just speak French. Why, you ask? Cameroonian English is heavily accented, vaguely British, and full of some of the weirdest vocabulary and phrasing outside of A Clockwork Orange. Instead of saying 'please,' little kids would 'beg me in the name of God' to do menial things like shake their hand or give them an empty water bottle. A common greeting is 'how is the day?' and sometimes (my favorite), just 'how?' Don't be confused; the answer is still 'fine.' Pidgin is thrown in everywhere. Someone saying 'me don go' actually means 'I'm going,' though the phrase is almost phonetically identical to 'me don't go,' implying the opposite. In short, English-speakers are wacky.

Now I'm back in my hood, and settling in for the last three months. It would figure that now I would have way too much to do, after I spent July basically sitting on my thumbs, watching the rain destroy my mud wall. That just means time will go even quicker, and I'll be back sipping eggnog and wearing several sweaters before I know it. Until then, I beg you people in the name of God…to have a good fall. SLAV