Memorials and Anniversaries

July 1st, 2011

“What had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an object but a pattern, and that although that pattern included the flesh and blood of Chris, that was not all there was to it. The pattern was larger than Chris and myself, and related us in ways that neither of us understood completely and neither of us was in complete control of.
Now Chris’s body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. But the larger pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the center of it, and that was what caused all the heartache.”
-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Wow, July 1st. When I was a kid the adults in my family always told me that time would only pass more and more quickly the older I got and it turns out they were right. I have been in Cameroon a year already. Christmas feels like it just happened when in fact it was already half a year ago. My first year of teaching is over and I’m finally settling back into village life after two whirlwind trips to the US in the past 3 months.

Life, in fact, could hardly be more different than six months ago. I feel like I’m in an entirely different place. I was running into the first group already heading back to the States in June and it was so strange to feel like I’d hardly gotten to know them and now they’re already going back to their American lives. It seems like I just got here and was looking at them like the wise volunteers who already seemed to know so much more than I could imagine knowing about surviving in this strange place. Now that group of people is my group.

Yesterday I had this really funny experience. My colleague invited me to lunch to meet his older sister and nieces who live in Massachusetts. The younger daughter is 17 and the oldest is 21. They have been in the States for the last 8 years and the youngest girl has drastically more American habits than her older sister. When she speaks French it’s like hearing another volunteer speak it and when her aunt was calling her to come do something from the other room and she asked her mom, “What, is it like, if someone calls you, you have to go, you can’t say you’re busy?!” I had to laugh hysterically at this.

They were amazed that I had acclimated so well here and in fact while they were talking about how much things cost at Whole Foods, I felt more connected with the world of picking fruits and nuts from a tree. She served me pesto and broccoli and they were so surprised when I said I was growing broccoli and spinach and arugula in my garden. The youngest daughter said I am brave.

Since getting back to the village life has been easy like Sunday morning. In fact, I have absolutely nothing to do and it’s strange and blissful and also terrifying because I haven’t had absolutely nothing to do in like… 4 years. Grandma’s passing has settled in me much more calmly than I ever expected it to in the lifetime I dreaded it. She has graced me with serenity in her absence and I really feel her with me all the time, perhaps more so than ever while she was alive.

Claude and I are about to celebrate our first year together in just a couple of days and we just seem to get happier with each other everyday. It’s something I never imagined could be so simple. We have created balance and fairness in so many areas of our lives from the music we listen to the food we eat. Being from such different backgrounds, everything is a negotiation, and after a year of practice I’m happy to say that it just keeps getting easier to get along.

I’ve been trying to catch up on the myriad things I had longed to do from September-March like writing back friends who’ve sent things, reading and cooking more, visiting other volunteers, and doing my secondary project work. Unfortunately that last part has been a disappointment up until now. Since Bafia my hope has been to organize the women here. In fact, they already are organized, but to provide them with something that may be able to help them. Over time the patterns I seemed to notice indicated that they could be most helped with income generating projects. My community host has been on board to help me from the beginning so he says, but usually I guess he just talks a lot about it and doesn’t do much of anything to make it happen. Actually since I’ve been here he’s done things like not include me in meetings and gatherings and then asked me why I didn’t come as if I had some telepathic way of finding out it was happening. After going to talk about work a couple weeks ago and winding up having dinner and a beer with some others and he, work was merely mentioned. I went to his house a few days later and told his wife to send him over to see me or have him call me so we could discuss organizing and he never showed up. I finally called him and he told me he’d be here at 9 the next morning. I set my alarm (since now that it’s summer break I sleep in!), and, after a year of adapting, I made enough breakfast for everyone and Claude went out for baguettes and coffee. At 9:30 with the eggs already finished on the stove I called him again and he told me he’d be here in one minute. An hour later we decided to eat and shortly thereafter Claude watch him ride past on his motorcycle, not even seeming like he intended to stop.

I don’t know if I offended him in some way or he isn’t completely enthusiastic about my agenda which is fixated on women as well as certain behaviors that probably he’s involved in, like marrying a child and having kids with her. Either way, I’ve abandoned these high hopes of large gatherings of women or a large, ongoing project with them. I would still like to organize a few small opportunities for them to get information about different activities that could generate money for them but I’m basically convinced at this point that most of them will do nothing with it. Thus, my primary focus now is really on improving the scope of work of Girls’ Club next year and really trying to get the entire staff on board with the objectives of the group.

Outside of all that, though I don’t know if I can say I’ll ever really get used to the 24 hour analysis of every behavior, word, change in my body (the teenage girl from the States yesterday told me with disdain, “Everyone keeps telling me how much weight I’ve gained!”), and the calculation of every minute I spend inside or outside my house, I have finally started to adopt the attitude of not giving a shit about pleasing everyone or even what they think of me at all. I feel like I go out of my way to be generous to my direct neighbors. I am constantly giving them baguettes or other food when I‘m out. I baked them cornbread and printed out tons of pictures for them from the States. I give the kids candy, pencils, and sometimes toys. Yet, they still constantly leave garbage all over my yard or in my compost pile and stomp on my garden. One of the kids even dug up all my first tomato plants and moved them to his own hidden garden. This may sound cute in a way until Claude called the kid out on it and he responded, “What have you ever given me?” My impression is that is not the talk of a 7 year old but rather, most likely, the adults around him.

I try to be sociable but mostly I just feel like this alien from outer space with them. That’s not to say I feel like that with everyone in the village because I’ve finally actually started developing some solid friendships with people, but these neighbors in particular just seem to have no respect for me. I think in some ways the way I handled the problems with water and electricity were less than completely tactful and they still hold it against me. They also don’t like that I tend to step in when a child is screaming bloody murder on my stoop or directly outside my window. A few weeks ago when all the kids were taking a turn on one of the younger ones who’d stolen food after I’d already told them it was enough, I huffed outside ready to really shake some fear into the kids and felt totally embarrassed when their mother came hobbling out of the house, having obviously instructed them to beat him. She never looked at me or spoke a single word for minutes until I retreated in shame back into my house. I’ve finally just decided I need to live and let live. Now if I hear screaming, I just try to turn up my own music and I don’t so often open the shutters behind the house that looks into their compound, even if that means being constantly told that I’m always locked up inside.

Today the chief’s wife drug Claude around when she caught him walking to buy bread. She said she was afraid to walk alone at night but I think she actually just wanted to investigate our life because she’s incredibly nosy. She talked all about the two times that she told me the Chief wanted to see me, forgetting that I didn’t come because she never called in the evening to tell me to. She said I’m not social and don’t go out. All this she primarily thinks because she personally gets on my nerves and thus I avoid her. She is the type of person that has absolutely no qualms about asking all variety of personal questions, even in front of strangers, ranging from how much money do I make to what does my boyfriend do all day. She also loves to ask me to buy her a drink when she catches me out, something she’s done since the very first time I ever saw her. She has never once bought me a drink and she is married to the Chief! She constantly asks me to buy her a wig of real hair the next time I’m in the States as though there are myriad wig stores on the streets of America and they are practically giving away wigs of real human hair. She also stabbed her own friend in the back because I was always buying my phone credit from her and she came and tried to convince me to buy it from her sister instead. The lady is obsessed with her moderate celebrity or something and I can tell it just drives her crazy that it doesn’t impress me.

Next week is mid-service and pretty much my break is already half over. Before I know it the school loop will re-run, and I hope this year will run much more smoothly than the last. In the meantime, je suis la, I’m living life and taking a breather. Regardless of what the rest of the village seems to think, I think I deserve it and, whether I’m inside or outside, nothing I’m doing is all that much different from what they are.