Changes in Perspective

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, or ambiguous multiple days of happiness, as the case may be. I have returned from the village, but have many more things to say first so I'll leave that for my next post.

I am beginning with the trip I took with my papa for the weekend before going to the village. Our first event was an event officializing money received from a French-based agency to construct a university campus. The French ambassador was there, and it was all very official, with lots of titles and photographs. Cameroonians seem to be obsessed with these things, always "Thank you Monsieur the Ministre of This, Monsieur the Ministre of That..." I've noticed this phenomenon at other conferences too, I don't know if I've mentioned it to you before. Seems like rather a waste of time to me, and detracts from points which could otherwise be interesting in someone's speech. I also had a random attendee ask to take my photograph. It reminded me of a time when Chelsey, the other white girl on the program, was approached by a mother in her neighborhood (who she knows a bit, but not well) who wanted a photo of her baby and Chelsey. I'm sure it was pretty much because she is white. I don't find it weird these days when someone calls me "la blanche," but I think it's strange when there are gorgeous women with smooth ebony skin who say "I want skin like yours," and there are products advertised everywhere to "clarify" the skin. On the contrary, in the U.S. many people go to tanning booths or use cremes to become darker. What are we looking for? Someday in the Future, I suppose, we will all be a métissage, mixed race with medium skin tones. Are we looking to hurry that process for some sort of misguided ideal? Here, anyway, being white is associated with power, money, prestige. The West is the white world, the Christian world, and those adjectives generally apply to everyone that lives in the U.S. or Europe. Also, most people in elevated positions, or with a higher level of education, spent time studying in France or occasionally Germany before returning to Cameroon. Vestiges of colonialism are everywhere.

In other news (bit of a tangent there), after the conference, Papa and I went to the funeraille (funeral, like I mentioned before, but not too sad) that was planned. The evening portion consisted of eating, drinking, and chatting, with more dancing traditions the next day, which we missed to go to a different funeraille in a village elsewhere. Then we headed back to the house we were staying. I found myself giving a shrug when I realized I was sharing a bunk bed with 5 children, and rather more of a sigh of resignation when the sheets were filled with sand. I don't know if I would have had the same reaction at the beginning of my semester.

We went to Bamenda in the morning, to visit a woman my papa knew. She was taking care of her son, who had been a good student before apparently working too hard and mentally cracking. They tried to heal him with prayer first, which didn't work, and now he is in a colony of sorts to be healed by traditional magic. He was listless, didn't speak much, and wore handcuffs on his hands and feet to prevent him from running away into nature again. I had no idea what to say, and we only spent a few minutes before continuing on our way.

We also visited a waterfall, which used to be a place where colonizers would drop bodies they wanted to get rid of, and is now a place of sacrifice, so there were little shrines and pieces of food everywhere.

On a final note, I will tell you that I have fallen in love with the trees here. I admit I have always loved trees, the soft, infinitely green forests of New Zealand and the majestic pines of Montana. Here they are familiar and foreign at the same time, a world apart and somehow entirely together. They have such variety and timelessness. We pass in the car (only minor car problems this time) and I want to stare at each one for at least three minutes like a piece of art. I've talked about my pain at seeing the trucks carrying enormous trunks; I get a similar achy, upset feeling seeing them as when I think of all the people I love and miss back home. Love, indeed.

This is not a great photo, there are many worse that I've seen...

Peace.