Dave is…
Pretty sure he made the right choice not doing firm work.
The morning started pretty early for me on a Sunday morning. Chris invited me to go to church with him and was showing up around 9 to escort me Hannah and Karen. The other girls were off at church with our neighbor Mabel.
Ah yes Karen. Karen is the newest of our ever expanding circle. Ebeney brought her back from Douala last night. She just finished her Two-L year at Seaton Hall so she is definitely gonna be a lot smarter than me. That grievous sin aside she seems really cool.
Chris is Roman Catholic a creed represented by three churches in Kumba. Kumba, and Cameroon as a whole, is a very religious country. Belief in god is one of the firs questions you can expect to be asked when you meet someone and there seem to be almost as many churches as bike cabs. Catholic, Baptist, Protestant, Presbyterian, Church of God, Methodist, Pentecostal even one mosque. They have it all here, cept, cept LDS. There are no Mormons here. I personally find that astonishing. Dunno who in Salt Lake City is sleeping on that one.
Our house, as well as Chris’ are just down the road from a huge Catholic church, St. Anthony’s, but Christ attends church in the Kumba neighborhood of Fiango where he grew up so that’s where we went.
Me and Chris outside the church
We were a little late, walking in just after 930 which wasn’t much of a problem even the rigid catholic traditions are infected by an African sense of time. The Church is really large for a building here with large open doors at the back and sides, incredibly high ceilings dotted with fans hanging way down and rough hewn pews with kneelers. Despite being late we snagged seats under one of the fans in the back. Chris say that the church wasn’t full because most people attend the 630 am service (that just got out at 9am) cause they have meetings and things to do afterwards. The crowd was none too shabby though. Large, of all ages with lots more kids and young people than I remember seeing at St. Joes back in my parochial school days and all wearing a wide variety of styles. Many went Chris’s route and were in spotless three piece suits, others went for traditional African dress and some, and mainly the young went for hip fashions that would probably get them in the hip but not too hip bars of NYC. And of course I saw a John Cena t-shirt. That dude is everywhere.
I was a little nervous about the length of the service when I heard the early one goes 2.5 hrs but this one only clocked in at an hour and a half. It was in English and even from a distance through the old sound system I remembered enough to follow along with no problem. The announcements read off in pidgin were a mystery though as was much of the music which was beautiful but apparently from Zambia or something.
Really though the craziest thing was the ushers. I remember them from back in the day too. They were generally old guys (cept for the guy who looked to be in his thirties and had the thick brown mustache. He stood out so much I was always fascinated) whose only real task was to shove the long wicker stick basket in our faces to collect tithes. Here though they wore sashes of state and functioned like religious brown shirts walking the aisles smacking people (gently) who were sleeping in the pews. They kept fairly busy.
After the mass Christ took us around Fiango for a little while introducing us to boiled unshelled peanuts (not a fan) and taking us through the market and introducing us to friends. We then cabbed it (real car mom, though probably not much safer) back to his house so he could change out of the suit. Chris rents a small nicely set up room in a row of one floor apartments (I think many of them are for students at the college next door). Chris, like Ebeney and the other volunteers at GCI get no remuneration. It’s their full time job and they work really hard but have to support themselves some other way. The commitment and sacrifice that requires is amazing and I couldn’t have more respect for them.
Especially cause they don’t work normal hours they get up earlier than we do and hang out with us till the wee hours a mixture of guardian angels tour guides and fast friends. Personally I wouldn’t want to hang out with me this much but maybe they just don’t know me well enough yet. So after church we met up with the other girls and Chris took us all to the lake.
Ill quote Cameroon’s one travel guide, “Beautifully lush, thick, pristine rainforest with massive ancient tropical trees grows right inside the crater to the lake edge. Measuring 2.5km across and over 100m deep, Barombi Mbo is one of the largest crater lakes in Cameroon. It is overwhelmingly peaceful.”
They are pretty on the money but like everything else in the book they are too negative. This is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Accessible only by motorbike (more or less ours got stuck in the mud necessitating an abrupt leap to avoid going face first into the muck) it seems a million miles from civilization, like what the Garden of Eden’s lake would look like. Huge soaring trees, hanging vines, and beautiful pristine water. There’s even a huge flat rock sticking out into it like a perfectly made diving board.
Now I know some of my (my mom, my aunt, doctors) can see what’s coming and are screaming at their screens right now, but you don’t find yourself in paradise and then decide you don’t want to take advantage of it. So I jumped in. Now all the guide books and the aforementioned individuals and even a couple engineering students from the University of Dayton who are doing their third tour out her all told me I shouldn’t swim in freshwater here but the girls did last week and have yet to die, and that parasite that burrows through your foot is easily cured once it shows up so fuck it.
And the swimming was great. The water was a lot warmer than expected and I have a nice little bruise on my knee where I didn’t pull up enough when cannonballing off the rock but man it was awesome just floating around in paradise. Fuck the expensive dinners and third base line Yankee tickets Wall Street firm life can’t touch this shit. We even got Chris in the water though he didn’t go out past where he could touch as he’s never learned to swim. He contented himself with singing the first few verses of some ridiculous ballad that is strangely popular out here. At one point all of us in the water acted as backup dancers for him. Good times.
Our solitude ended after a little while though as a whole crew began rolling into to shoot their own low low low budget rap video. It started with a jacked guy in designer jeans, dolce and gabana belt buckle, cowboy hat and snakeskin cowboy boots and quickly multiplied to about 20 young presumably aspiring artists who, while waiting for their little digital video camera ready, practiced dance moves posed for the girls and, um eye raped them repeatedly.
The camera was occupied trying to pretty blatantly just film the five white girls in swimsuits but that still wasn’t half so invasive as the intense ogling most of the guys were doing. It was almost like that wolf from the Warner Brothers cartoon come alive. I mean if I were one of the girls I would definitely feel like I was being brutally violated with their eyes.
But since I’m not a chick and my albino and flabby gut drew me no particular attention I got distracted by the dude in the Illini jersey. How awesome is that to come to the backyard of Bumblefuck and find an Illini jersey. I insisted on a photo. I think he tolerated me cause I was with girls.
Finally we had had enough swimming and the girls enough eye raping and decided to go which is when a couple of them approached and asked me if we would be in their rap video. I was all for it but then I wasn’t the one getting molested so I was also probably the one they were least interested in, and the ones they were had had enough rape to not want to put more of it down on film. So we declined and headed out (destroying my dreams of becoming Cameroonian rap royalty. I saw myself in the role of blinged out, pimp cup carrying spiritual advisor like that dude who follows Snoop Dogg around)
That’s not to say we didn’t dance today. Home from the lake I anticipated a quiet night in maybe some laundry at most in prep for the coming work week. That was not to be. Ebeney called us and sent a car to come take us out to a bar.
Well we thought we were going to a bar in actuality we walked right into the middle of a cry day party. Cry days as we learned later are parties celebrating the one year anniversary of a loved one’s death and banishing sadness over the loss. A cool concept but didn’t make us any less confused or ease or sense of guilt for crashing this kind of party even though Ebeney invited us and all the party goers (as surprised at our appearance as we were) were wildly excited to have us. They cleared out a whole section of the couches in the very middle of the party for us and pushed food and beer on us.
I was just getting comfortable with the whole situation (its amazing what free beer can do) when Ebeney started helping the emcee with the girls names. Apparently as part of the party all the girls were gonna be paired up with dancing partners to start off the boogying section of the evening. I found this hysterical and was ready to enjoy their poor dancing and uncomfortable looks when the emcee, after getting everyone’s attention called my name first.
What the fuck! Turns out instead of ducking this duty cause I am not a highly objectifiable white woman I was put center stage cause the host was a young lady. Uh oh. So there I was in faded cargo shorts, sports sandals and an Illinois State Fair purple Restroom maintenance shirt about to dance Makossa with a pretty young mourner in traditional African dress in front of a roomful of people I’ve never met who all are staring at me.
You would think this couldn’t possibly end well. But that’s either cause you underestimate the tolerance of the African people or my badass dancing skills. I’m gonna lean towards the latter cause unless you’ve been to weddings with me you just don’t know the moves I am capable of. When the music started I wasted no time in busting out the jams that pulled me some crazy drunk wedding crasher two weeks ago and from that moment on I owned the room.
I have rarely seen more people laughing harder or enjoying themselves more than the people watching me (and in fairness the girls) dance. Honestly I though Ebeney and his friend were going to bust a gut. Everyone in the damn place was rolling, even the girls I came with. Losing it. But what was I supposed to do? I’m a ridiculous (not in the good sense) dancer and was terrified of offending our gracious host. So I shucked, I jived, I got jiggy with it. As the music switched between Makossa and random things like shakira and back I danced like a crazy white man, following whatever instructions the crowd tossed at me, generally it was dance closer…closer…CLOSER! I did my best but it’s a packed poorly ventilated room in Africa and I was melting. My shirt was soaked; I didn’t want to touch me if I didn’t have to. Still I must say my partner did seem to really be enjoying herself and even if it was just to be polite she complimented my skills frequently and that was gratifying.
But as song after song came and went I found myself more and more focused on the half full beer I had been forced to abandon on the table when my number was unexpectedly up. But the farthest I managed to get from this girl in about an hour was arms length during a spin. Seriously she kept it close. It was all I could do to steer us near Ebony at the table and snag my beer off it and slam it while dancing in place, which isnt as easy as I made it look.
I was really beginning to struggle and wonder how the hell I could get out of this and drink a beer without causing offense when I thought I saw salvation. The older lady who had been one of the main instigators of closer closer and who I presumed was a close relation to this girl came over and began making new and incomprehensible gestures and commands. I couldn’t tell if she wanted me to stop dancing, dance more or what. I was mildly concerned she wanted me to kiss her but eventually I discerned the universal drinking sign and took that o mean I should buy my partner a drink. Ok I owe her that much, id been drinking hers and maybe this was how I bow out. So I go with the old lady to the bar which is protected by chicken wire and looks a lot like the country bar in Blues Brothers and I hand the bartender a 1000 franc note and she gives me a beer and the old lady who accompanied me over there to make sure the idiot white guy didn’t fuck this up starts making chugging motions. Not this is a bottle, a 22 oz bottle but I did what I was told, chugging about half of it, getting some more on my shirt though it was already so drenched in sweat you couldn’t tell, and then she gestured to hand it to her so I did and she drank the rest of it. And then I had to dance with her. I had absolutely no fucking clue what was going on. I do know that I never got any fucking change for that beer though. There’s no way this joint charges twice the going rate but what can you do y’know.
Lucky this lady lacked her daughter’s stamina and after another brief detour where I got in some kind of dance off with some dude (it was a little weird seeing who could go lower with a guy but I sure as shit wasn’t gonna let him win) I managed to finally throw myself down and sit dripping in sweat and spilled beer and sipping on a “cold” one while Ebony laughed at me and shook my hand. We were wrapping it up anyway. It was no like 1030, early for any night but a Sunday when you have work the next day and started dancing like a lunatic and drinking like a Cameroon at 730. Ebony’s buddy gave us a ride back home, saving us a trip swaying drunkenly on the back of a bike and I changed out of my wet wear and passed the hell out.
Hell of a country Cameroon.