So driving in the car today....

So this morning I took a car to Nakong, to the market, with a box of 5 mangos to plant at a Foulbe Ladde school. At some point along the bumpy road, with two people in the front passenger seat and four of us in the back, the driver turned around to hand a handle, a handle of the car for manually rolling up and down the window. He said something with the word jipugo in it, meaning to get down. The guy in the back said "Mi jipinan, na?" something along the lines of "I throw out, let it out, put it down." And I thought he was told to throw it out the window which he had just rolled down. And then, instead of throwing it out, he passed it to the lady on the other side of me. It was then returned to the driver. And I realized it was the communal handle, one handle in the car that was passed around to roll down peoples windows. I started laughing when I realized that, as I found it so funny, and thought I'd share that smile with you guys.

All levels, all classes

I have been thinking lately about how, as Peace Corps volunteers, we are in very privileged positions, being able to connect, while possibly not belong, to people here on every class level. Perhaps because we will always be outsiders, and never quite fit into any of the structures in place, we are able to develop relationships and form friendships with members of all different levels of society here: government administrators, traditional leaders, wealthy business people, small village farmers, "immigrants" from the south, university educated, high school students, illiterate adults, nomadic herders, Foulbe majority, small ethnic minorities, men, women, children. All these people somehow feel that we are relevent to their lives, or at least, which is even better, feel comfortable approaching us, sharing time together, sharing conversation and being friends. And I take great comfort in that fact, that I can enter the "foyers" of any of these groups and sit with them and talk, and listen, and feel at home, whether it is a spacious palace, or a tight city neighborhod, a country small compound, a mud hut. It struck me how true that was, and got me thinking about it two days ago, when I was flagged down by one of the local princes in the streets of Garoua to catch up on lives. As soon as he pulled away in his SUV, I heard another shout "Elizabeth!" and looked across the street to a construction worker friend who ran over to hug me after spending 6 months in Yaounde with a sick sister. And the more I think about that, and realize it, I feel very blessed to be in such a position, and to realize that blessing, for in our own lives at home, often in understanding social structures, we have an understanding of where we belong. I must say that in America, those social structures are a lot less rigid than here, and people of different economic means might have more opportunity of interacting and sharing with each other. Such lines are more blurry. However here, there are so many social strata, and often incredible importance put on that, whether in the realm of ethnicity, or wealth. So even more so, I feel privileged to be granted a position as a PCV to interact, and be seen as a friend, and get a window into so many different lives of different types of people here. I am thankful for that.

Festival de la Musique--Sunday, June 21

Sunday afternoon, Jessie, Emily, Pete and I went into Garoua for a Festival of Music put on by the Alliance Franco-Cameroonais, a cultural center here in Garoua. The Alliance supports a lot of musicians, both traditional and hip hop artists, as well as a group of artisans who work in leather, wood, silver and painting. They have many many cultural activities as well...Senegalais dinner and movie, documentary film showings, discussions and conferences, dance and music classes, a nursery of plants, an outdoor stage/auditorium where performances take place. and library. And the landscaping there is fantastic, so very beautiful with flowers and trees everywhere. It is there that I take fulfulde lessons once a week. And it is also a sort of sanctuary of sorts, offering so much culture and artistic activities and reminding me in a way of college. It used to be that when I went to the Alliance, it was like entering a different world, so different from village life. Now, as I have become friends with a lot of the people there, and meet them outside the Alliance, for drinks or hanging out, as they have become part of my "other life" the lines are more blurred and it doesn't seem so very different. But at the beginning, the first 5 months or so, when I walked in there, it was such a relief, and I often go there to write and find a little bit of peace and beauty.
But as I was saying....the festival. The festival was held in a park near the bank and about 20 musicians played starting at 4pm. The first set was artists and groups who played just one song each. Included below are some photos, of one group of Chadian musicians and dancers. Music was performed in French, Fulfulde, and a few, I believe in arabic. Rap is very popular at the Alliance, with the young people, so there were quite a few rappers as well. The second set was about 3 or 4 groups including our friends in Sahel Hip Hop, and a group called Waam doing traditional music, who was fantastic. Their traditional guitar player/singer was incredible. The final performance was the artist Isnebo, who is one of the gods/kings of the North. He is very well known, plays in the US and Europe and lives now in Yaounde I believe, although he is from Garoua. I enjoyed most of the concert and was getting tired and almost ready to go home. But as soon as he started playing, I was transfixed. Not only does he have an amazing voice but is very charismatic and had so much energy on stage. I seriously could have listened to him for the rest of the week straight. When it was over, finally around 11pm, I didn't want to leave. I wanted to take him with me or sit at his feet for the rest of the night, week whatever. I believe that night, during and after his performance, I might have been the happiest I have been in Cameroon. I was certainly high off of it. He was/is a fantastic musician, a singer who sang only, and spoke mostly in Fulfulde for all of the night. I actually recognized his first song from a world music album-africa and the middle east. (the entire performance I thought of Bashir, and how much he would have loved and appreciated it and how much I wished he was there to hear!) If anyone has a chance you should check out his CD. I am in the midst of frantically hunting it down so I can listen to it daily....

I thought I'd take this time to share a few cultural notes on musical performances in Cameroon. Ferrete-ing: I am not sure if this is the correct spelling for this french (?) term, which is the practice of giving money to performing musicians. (should be an accent on the last E and silent T) But this is a big custom here and fun to watch as well. At traditional events: Fantasias, parades, weddings, where traditional music is played, while the musicians play, members in the audiance stand up and give the musicians money. Often the money always in bill form is slapped on the forehead of the musicians. Or else tucked into the clothing of the musician. A way to thank the musicians, but also a way to show off your wealth if you are a grand Al-Adji. Sometimes an al-adji will pull out many many bills (the more bills, the more he shows off) and the first bill will be placed on the forehead and after that the bills will be thrown out onto the ground one by one. The rest of the crowd is sure to notice how many bills and what quantity of each! In other cases, this is not necessarily used to show off your wealth but to applaud whoever is performing (whether dancing or playing music). Examples: at a wedding I went to, there were hired professional dancers, but at one point the bride's mother and two aunts, three very large women, went out there and started shaking their butts to one song. People in the audience laughted and a few ran out and started throwing bills onto the ground for them. In a way to joke and say "yes you are a professional performer, we thank you," etc. At the concert, many people jumped up on stage and ferrete-ed many different musicians, to thank or to joke...thanking those that were really good, joking to support and encourage those who maybe were a little on the lower par (usually their friends), but appreciating their passion and interest in music.

Wiping the Brow: Along similar lines, often when a musician is performing really well, or is really appreciated, people from the audience will run (or dance) on stage and wipe their brow. This is during the performance, and there is no break in the singing or playing, which means that sometimes over enthousiastic brow wipers get in the way of the music by blocking the singers mouth. But that's how it goes. A way to show honor and praise and appreciation: we will wipe the sweat off your face because you are working to play us good music.

Communal Stage: One thing that is very interesting to me, and that I like, about the above things, is that at music performance (not so much the official ceremonies with big figures of lamidos and other traditional leaders present) anyone at all can go up there. You don't have to be a rich figure. Going beyond that though, anyone at all can get on the stage to dance with the musicians as well. If the spirit moves you to get up and dance, you can jump on stage. What floors me is that this is the case even with the big musicians...even with Isnebo. Random kids, young folks just jumped on up there at different points of his performance and danced right next to him. And he was really really welcoming, letting anyone interupt his singing, wiping his brow, getting in his way, dancing with him and around him. I really like that. A case of equals on the stage of music.

Chadian dancers and Musicians

enthousiastic audience member jumping onstage to dance with the dancers


Isnebo

Isnebo with Fanta and Cheik of Sahel Hip Hop

A wonderful way to spend the Summer Solstice.

Limbe proper

Limbe. Limbe, Limbe, Limbe. What can I say. It was gorgeous. We actually stayed at a campground a little west of Limbe in a little sleeping village called Batoke, as there are no swimming beaches actually in Limbe. I am a girl who typically is not a "tropical beach" girl. In my head tropical paradises are equated with hotels and tourism, Hawaii, California, Florida in the States not being my places. I grew up with the salt marshes and dunes of Virginia and North Carolina, and even the wild coastline of Ireland or Great Britain, or France seeming more along the lines of my mentality or heart. Limbe was about as picture perfect as a tropical paradise on a postcard can be. And it was amazing. I loved it. The coastline is covered with trees, palm trees, coconuts, terminalia. Mosses, ferns. The beach is black sand and the water is beautiful, not clear or aqua but the beautiful silvery/blue/grey color of the Atlantic of VA and NC. With good waves! It is overshadowed by mountains which tumble straight down to the ocean, towering over you and such great heights, covered in green. Each day, the mist swirled around them, changing the sights, so that at some moments you could see the peak and others not. In fact it rained almost every day, a nice drizzly rain, and the air temperature was cool. Yet contrary to ruining this beach vacation, it came as a relief, the cooler weather a balm to our bodies. I felt as if everything was easier. It was easier to breathe, to eat, sleep. I walked around in a bathing suit (so nice not to be wearing so many clothes!) and felt so light and so comfortable. And the water was warm enough that even in the cooler air temperature we could go swimming every day.
Perhaps because we went in the rainy season, there were very few other people there. There were not tons of hotels (acutally only a few) and very few people on the beaches, other than the people of Batoke. (to be continued--just want to post photos)

Pete, Emily and Jessie at the campground

The coastline


Fisherman in the distance

pulling in one end of the seine net

my new friends

view from our tent

children on their way to church walking there on the beach

stormclouds and sunset

Trip to Limbe--Voyage down

So after nine months of being in the North of Cameroon, Jessie, Emily and I took a vacation to the south. I had been planning on going to India to my friend Becca's wedding and at the last minute was not able to get the visa, so I decided since I was heading down there, to go on with the other two to the beach, Limbe. Sometimes 9 months feels like a long time, but mostly it feels pretty short. But the long trip down south revealed to me how long it had been since we had been in the Sahel region. It really was something amazing. So surreal to be making the same trip, each leg exactly the same as when we first came to Cameroon, in reverse: Garoua to Ngoundere, train to Yaounde, bus to Douala. And when we got to Yaounde, the new batch of trainees were there, having just arrived a few days before, adding to the odd feeling of experiencing the whole trip in reverse. However, in Douala we didn't get on a plane heading to the US but instead took another car to Limbe, to rest and recuperate.

The first leg of the trip was a bus to Ngoundere in the Adamawa, and we stared wide eyed and open mouthed as we looked out the window. The father south we drove the more and more vegetation there was. At some point we were in a teak forest and another point we began to see pine trees. Pine trees! We haven't seen those in 9 months. I didn't know they existed here. And its that sort of thing that makes you realize how much time has passed, how unaccustomed we had grown to lush and varied vegetation. The whole route was spent just soaking in the vegetation, the green, the lushness. When we got to Ngoundere, we had a few hours to kill before the overnight train left at 5pm or so. And went out to lunch and got caught in a rainstorm. Lovely at first, although after walking back in it for 10 minutes and being soaked to the bone, I was freezing (first time I felt that in 9 months too) and my fingers and lips were actually blue. This time, we took sleeper cars on the way down to Yaounde (as opposed to our first class seats for the ride up to training), which was so much nicer, so cozy and comfortable, in fact more comfortable than my mattress at Mafa Kilda; and the motion of the train, the swaying and even the bumps, was nice, just like the motion of a boat is nice, as long as you can curl up in a bed. My eyes were glued to the window again, until it got dark, looking at the changing vegetation. As we passed through Adamawa on the car and on the train, I thought, I really could see living in that region permanently and wish in some ways I could have been placed there. It is so beautiful.



The morning, waking up on the train was much of the same, only this time, the landscape outside had completely changed into tropical rainforest. Houses, trees and plants, and peoples clothing all were different. "We're not in Kansas anymore" kept ringing through my head.

We stopped in Yaounde for a total of four hours, getting a chance to talk briefly with some other volunteers in our stage, who were there for other meetings or getting ready to fly out of the country. We also stole glimpses and brief conversations with the new volunteers who had arrived in Cameroon a few days earlier and who looked so remarkably fresh and so clean, so peppy, compared to us, the weather beaten, aged volunteers! Ha. At least that's how we feel. From Yaounde we took a bus and started heading towards Douala.

Guardian Angel #1: Isabelle
We met a beautiful woman on the bus at the tail end of the trip, just pulling into Douala. We were running behind schedule and starting to worry about arriving in Limbe before it became too late. It was already dusk. So I turned to a woman behind me and asked about where to get cars going to Limbe. She was a young professional woman who had just taken a trip to Yaounde for fun because she "likes to travel and wander a bit." She told us where to get off, but when we arrived she grabbed us and said, we'll drive you to the carrefour! So she took us in her car to the point of getting a car to Limbe, and helped us find one, sending us off with her number. She was so sweet, and actually called later in the night to make sure we had arrived safely in Limbe. It is always such a blessing to met such beautiful people, especially when traveling in other countries.


Guardian Angels #2: Richard and ?forgot his name!
When we got to Douala, to get a car to Limbe, we were snagged by two brothers and their car, saying they'd take us. This is the normal way of travel around Cameroon for short distances, and we figured it was just them trying to make their money, but found out that they just happened to be going home to Buea and wanted to give us a ride because they like to help people. They spoke English, French and Pidgen, like most people we ran into during our week, and truly were hysterical people. The one brother was a talker. He talked the whole time, with a really funny accent, more American than Cameroonian English, because he studied English in Australia. He was a businessman and is very well traveled. His brother was picking him up from the airport because he had been living in Korea for 1.5 years, after Australia. Anyway, I was laughing, in stitches most of the hour and a half ride, and even considering our lovely police stop for 30 minutes, it was a really nice and memorable ride. They even dropped us right off where we asked, meeting an ExPCV who now lives in Limbe.

The two brothers, me and Emily, and the tail end of their car

Jessie and Emily with the two brothers

Finally we arrived in Limbe and were graciously welcomed by an exPCV who now lives there permanently working on computer tech, one specific project developing a program for documenting property titles in order to help Cameroonian widows susceptible to family members stealing their property.

All and all a long full two days journey. All to reach the ocean. (And I prayed all along to be posted in a village near the ocean, ha!) But all worth it and we arrived very well safe and sound, if a little tired.