Vive le Dash

I spent a day out in the bush with cow herders.  Me with my cow wacking stick. Bush veternarian  This is my buddy who took me drinking/eating... yogurt type stuff  I preferred the fresh, fresh milk... which might give me TB Here's a cowpen.  Those cows are off to market.  Where they will become dinner.  That was the biggest cow there.  They told me it weighed 500 kilos.  I have no idea what that means. 

Someone died.  I'm told that he was my neighbor and we talked a lot.  His name was Soule, a young guy who worked at a little boutique near my house selling music.  I don't know that name.  And I can't place him or even imagine his face.  I'm not sure who he was. In a small village, people just know things.  They grew up together.  I had to ask directions to go wherever I was supposed to go.  There were a ton of people sitting outside a compound so I went up and greeted people.  I don't know what you say in English when you lose someone and certainly am at a loss in French or Fulfulde.  It was his father's house.  I was told to enter the compound.  Inside there were more people.  A ton of women in one courtyard and older men in a second.  One man I greeted was in tears, but I was being directed too quickly to even think that perhaps that was the grieving father.  Unlike everyone else, I don't generally know t...

There I am in the middle of ten or fifteen guys; it started as just a couple, but very quickly grew.  They are all yelling at each other in Fulfulde or various other local languages.  Right now they are just arguing and it isn't unusually physical: just some grabbing of the shoulders and like.  The disconcerting thing is all the pointing and glances my way.  Clearly whatever is going on is about me. Part of being a foreigner in a strange land is knowing when to sneak toward the door.  A couple of months ago I was sitting on the porch of the chief's house talking to him when someone came up, started yelling, threw his shoes at the chief, and started trying to fight the old man.  Quickly a group of people were surrounding the situation and I'm standing in the middle.  My cue to quietly leave.  I didn't know what the fight was about, but being in the middle of it was not going to help me any. Now I found this argument, that was about me, fun...

His hands were rough.  Calloused and worn with time.  Dry and white, I foolishly believed I should be gentle or risk tearing them apart.  But they have become that way with years of toil.  He carried a hammer in one hand and a crowbar in the other; passing it to free right and shake mine in warm greeting.  My own hands are embarrassingly soft.  A desk jockey's hands, skin untouched by labor.  He's never sat at a desk.  I'm embarrassed in front of this man who earned his keep.  But only for a moment as his warm smile reassures me.  Like we are old friends though we've only ever crossed paths and spoken in the street.  It is people like him that make me want to make Africa a more hospitable place.  Ease his burden. Allow him to rest.  Of course he is old and happy.  Proud of his life.  Or so I imagine.  At least content that this is his lot.  Still, don't we all deserve some rest in this world?  If ...

Americans don't celebrate Woman's Day.  Closest we seem to have is probably Mother's Day, but at least that is somewhat of an accomplishment.  You have to at least try to be a mother.  Or try in order to be a good one.  It's OK though; Cameroon really needs a chance to celebrate women.  Even if they are born that way. Woman's Day starts off with a parade.  That's par for the course as every holiday in this country starts out with a parade.  Normally whatever groups you might be in march together in front of a grandstand where all the notable important people sit (comme moi) and everyone who isn't important or marching gathers nearby to watch.  For Youth Day (congrats on being born!) most people march with school clubs or just their schools in general.  Mbakaou is pretty small so there usually aren't many marchers, but Woman's Day had only thirty.  There are more than thirty women in Mbakaou of course, but you are sort of socially re...

I feel like every time I sit down to write to you guys I'm reminded of what my friend told me long ago.  I may have even mentioned it in this blog before (do you want me to go to search or actually use this time to write to you?).  The hardest pull for the writer is between finding time to write and doing things worth writing about.  Probably one reasons writers often become drunken recluses. My friend Sarah visited Cameroon.  While she'd never spent time in Cameroon before, she currently works with Doctors without Borders in the Central African Republic.  It was less of me showing her the hard life in Africa and more her trying to relax in the relative tranquility of Cameroon.  Honestly the idea of vacationing in Cameroon is… somehow sinister.  I certainly can't complain about my rough life to someone who has to figure out how to provide doctors with the supplies and materials necessary to put machete victims back together.  And really compl...

I remember visiting Tony in Nicaragua.  He had a room in a house he shared with a family.  His room did not even have walls that went all the way to the ceiling.  Meaning you could a) hear everything at all times and b) anyone could easily have gotten in by hoping over this divider.  Technically, Peace Corps wouldn't have approved had they ever bothered to go check it out.  If I recall, the door only locked from the inside, meaning it was never locked when he was away.  Security via the family that was constantly there though.  To my knowledge, nothing bad ever came of it. I bring this up to point out that I've only lived in the equivalent of mansions.  Technically, I've never had more space and rooms to myself than in Africa.  I've obviously lived in way nicer homes, but I shared them with people.  In Bogo, I had a whole compound to myself.  A walled enclosure, that while small, was all mine.  Here in Mbakaou, I share my ...