Chez Moi

For those of you still envisioning me crouching in a mud hut, cooking over a fire, allow me to put your minds at ease: I’m living in the (relative) lap of luxury! I love my house. With a solid home base, it has been easier to handle the newness of everything outside.

Because I am opening a new volunteer post (I’m the first agroforestry volunteer to work in Mora) my house was completely empty when I arrived. I am currently in the process of furnishing it and making it my own. It is a small concrete dwelling, with a decent-sized bedroom, tiny kitchen and spacious living room, overall the perfect size for one person. I have regular electricity and (irregularly) running water, and my own bathroom (no toilet, it’s an indoor latrine) with a shower! Heck, it doesn’t even sound like Africa! Until you add in the spiders, lizards, termites, toads, cockroaches, rats wrestling in my ceiling, and the essential herd of goats that like to poop all over my porch, of course.

What makes my new home unique, though, is that I’m not alone. While most of my fellow PCVs have their own private compounds, I share mine with 12-plus people. Two elderly women (Grandmere and Adda, the mother and aunt of my landlord), a widow (Tata) and her three kids (Aicha 19, Papi 14, Youssoufa 11), their stepbrother (Baba 18), a high school teacher, his wife (Amina), their two kids (baby girl Abé and 3 year old girl Dabadé), his younger sister (Rabi 16), and the assorted relatives and friends who frequently come to spend the night. Plus Tata’s herd of goats.

We live in close quarters. In fact, the way our compound is laid out, it’s almost like we are in one big circular house together. Their houses are built in a continuous L-shape around mine. My front door is about six feet from the front doors of Baba and the two grandmothers, and my side door opens literally into the middle of the outdoor space where the women and kids do all their cooking and eating and socializing. They can hear everything I am doing, I can hear everything they are doing.

Privacy, therefore, is hard to come by. The first couple weeks, before I put up curtains, I felt like I was in a fishbowl. Even now that I have curtains, I still sometimes feel like I am in a fishbowl. I had to get used to the sounds of twelve people going about their daily chores, often beginning before 6am. Almost every time I leave or enter my house, I have several people ask me where I’m going or where I’m coming from or how I’m doing. When I am home, there are few uninterrupted intervals when I don’t have someone knocking on my door to see what I’m up to. This definitely took some getting used to.

Thankfully, though, my neighbors are the kind of people I want to see every day. I get along really well with (almost) everyone in my compound. I’m glad I don’t have my own private concession, because I already feel close to my neighbors in a way that I don’t think would have been possible if we weren’t living together.

I got to know the kids and teenagers first, thanks to my deck of cards. On one of my first nights in Mora, Baba and his friends invited me to play cards with them. After learning their games, I started showing them American games- Spoons, War, Spit, and Kemps. They loved them, especially Spoons. Word spread and soon I had a large group of teenagers and kids playing cards for hours in my living room every night. Cards turned out to be the perfect icebreaker.

That went on for a solid month. Since then, we’ve moved on to hand games, taking photos with my camera, looking at my computer, flipping through magazines, and listening to my Ipod. We have even had several dance parties in my living room. They taught me Cameroonian moves, and I taught them a few classic American moves (mostly borrowed from the movie Hitch hehe). They were disappointed by my lack of breakdancing skills, however.

Other nights we just sit around talking. The conversations I’ve had with them about life in the US have been pretty entertaining. A lot of their questions reflect a stereotypical image of Americans, pieced together from the few American films they’ve seen and the music they listen to, since Western music is constantly playing in my neighborhood. All the teenagers have music on their cell phones and walk around with their own personal soundtracks. American music is really popular; Chris Brown’s “No Air,” Iyaz’s “Replay,” Eminem’s “Not Afraid,” Jason Derulo’s “Ridin’ Solo,” and, unfortunately, Justin Bieber’s “Baby” are played ad nauseam. Akon, Lil’ Wayne, Westlife, Lil’ Bowwow and 50 Cent are also popular, as are sappy balladeers like Celine Dion.

Basically, they are under the impression that everyone in the US is rich and famous and life is good. Some excerpts: “Have you met Rihanna or Akon?” “Are you sure your cousin wasn’t in a film?” “Have you acted in a film?” “Why aren’t you a music star?” “Aren’t you an actress?” “Do you know how to drive a car?” “What kind of car do you have? A Mercedes Benz?” “Do you have servants?” New York, Hollywood, and Las Vegas are the only American cities they have heard of. They love Prison Break and 24, and think Michael Scofield and Jack Bauer are the two biggest American actors. (Clearly our music and films give us considerable soft power/cultural influence abroad!) They are very curious about my income and the average American’s income: “How much is a dollar in CFA (Cameroonian currency)?” “How much does it cost to call the US?” “How much did that cost?” “How much did this cost?” “How much is that in CFA?” “Do you have to pay electricity bills in the US?”

Other questions brought up cultural differences: “Why aren’t you married yet?” “Would you marry a Cameroonian?” “Are there black people in the US?” “Are there any Muslims in the US?” “Why do American children always talk back to their parents?” “Why are you only allowed one wife in the US?”

[Some other excerpts: “Is everywhere in the US beautiful?” “Is there sand in the US like there is here?” “I have seen your snow on the television- your cars are all snowed in!” “You have gardens and pools!” (Growing up in a desert, they have never seen snow, and do not know how to swim) “What does “Fuck you?” mean?” “What does “I want to make love right now” mean?” “Why do you go to a room all covered in oil to “chauffer votre coeur?” (I think she meant a spa/massage??) “You have machines that wash your dishes?!!!”]

They have all expressed a desire to go to the US as well: “I want to go to America.” “How can I get there? Is it hard to get citizenship?” “Take me back to the US with you.” “I will go back to the US as your servant.” “I’ll turn my skin white like Michael Jackson and come marry your sister.” I have gained a lot of insight into the image of the US abroad by talking to them, and also a realization of the things that are commonplace in the US but luxuries elsewhere. Not just the kids in my neighborhood but seemingly everyone I have talked to in Cameroon wants to move to the US or at least visit or study there.

Because I had a wide-open-door policy during the initial card-playing period, my neighbors now feel comfortable visiting me at any time. At points, it has gotten to be a bit much having multiple people visiting me every day. I have had to set limits, especially in terms of how late they stay. But if I wanted to enforce the level of privacy I have in the US, I would be fighting a losing battle. First, the layout of my compound really isn’t conducive to keeping people out. Second, having closed doors or seeking “alone time” or doing things independently without asking for help is contrary to the culture of my neighborhood. Concepts of personal space and privacy here are very different from the US! On the days that I have locked my door to get serious work done, my neighbors looked at me like I was a hermit. I have to be very blunt when I want my Cameroonian friends to leave. Subtler signals, which an American would have understood and respected immediately, are lost on them.

This probably results from the fact that Cameroonians are used to living in large families in very close quarters, and sharing a few possessions with a lot of family members. My compound isn’t the only one with a lot of people. In our middle-class Muslim neighborhood, all the families are huge by American standards. Most of my neighbors have at least five children. Polygamy is officially recognized in Cameroon (under Cameroonian law you are allowed up to four wives) and is much more frequent in the North. Women marry early, and stating publicly the number of children you have is a source of pride, especially if you have a lot. Divorce is also common, which makes for large complicated networks of relatives.

For instance, Tata (the widow in my compound) was married four times and has 6 kids, but also looks after the kids of her late husband’s second wife. Tata’s niece Arkoya, who is two years older than me, is one of four wives and has six kids. Her husband, a rich merchant, lives in a huge house with a courtyard and garage, and his wives and children live in four small rowhouses behind the main house. He has 26 children! My friend Rabi is one of 35. When I tell Cameroonians that I only have one sister, they shake their heads and wonder what my parents were thinking.

In these circumstances, few activities are done individually. If one kid is playing a game on his cell phone, he usually has two or three of his friends sitting cheek to cheek with him just watching him play. My Fulfulde tutor has a TV and on any given night there are 20+ kids snacking on her carpet, especially when the Brazilian soap opera “El Diablo” is on. At the market, I’ve seen about forty guys clustered around one boutique’s TV. Studying for school is often a group activity; multiple kids work on math problems together using chalk on their compound wall. Several times, the girls in my compound have asked if they can sleep with me, because usually several family members sleep together in one room. Eating is also a very communal activity. The Cameroonian diet in the North consists of couscous made with boiled corn or millet flour and various green sauces, with occasional chunks of grisly meat. The greens they cook with remind me of the weeds I pull out of my lawn back home, but they make surprisingly good sauces. Families eat together off of the same platter. Everyone pulls hunks from big steaming boules of couscous and wipes up the sauce.

Even if you try, it’s hard to do something alone. There are always plenty of people around to help you if you have a problem. Every time I try to fix my bike I’ve got three guys offering to help and they end up doing it for me, or if I’m learning to cook a dish different women will come over to help chop vegetables and they end up doing most of it for me! When I lost my house key and was stuck outside my house at 8:30 at night, I had about nine people consulting with one another on what to do about it.

In keeping with the big-family-no-personal-space-communal spirit of Cameroon, then, I have tried to keep my door open as much as possible. I love it, especially when I think back to this time last year, when I was spending the majority of my time in a quiet, lonely corner of the Williams library writing my thesis. It has kept me from dwelling too much on being homesick. The novelty of my arrival has worn off, too, so now I have some nights to myself.

As I have opened my door to my neighbors, they’ve opened their doors to me. I have been accepted by my compound to the point that I feel like I definitely have a support system here. My neighbors are looking out for me; if I come home late unexpectedly, they scold me for not telling them where I was or when I would be back. Aicha is in my house so much I’ve started calling her “mon mari” or “my husband.” I give English lessons to Aicha, Rabi, and their friends. I frequently share meals with Tata and her kids. The women are always showing me easier ways to do household chores, and have been teaching me traditional Cameroonian cooking [It’s a lot of fun making couscous. You boil flour in a big pot and when it starts to congeal you quickly turn it with a carved wooden stirrer until it thickens. If you’re cooking for a lot of people, stirring can be a full body workout!]. Tata was my escort to the market last Sunday- she helped me buy the ingredients for a gumbo sauce, haggle for pots, and learn the names of vegetables I didn’t recognize. I have introduced them to caramel popcorn, pizza, and pancakes. Last weekend, I went on a hike with Baba, Aicha, and three of their friends.

My social circle has been steadily expanding outside my concession as well. In the evenings, everyone in our cartier sits outside on mats along the street. The women sell candy, beignets, and peanuts, braid each other’s hair, or play a version of mancala where they scoop out holes in the sand and drop a pile of fruit pits into each. Large groups of little kids are playing on every corner with toys made from recycled trash. They race bike tires down the street, fly kites made from plastic bags, or push cars constructed of pieces of pipe and wire on a rod. I’ve seen a big group of little boys galloping around the neighborhood with makeshift horses(sticks with cardboard heads on the end). I started playing Frisbee with them, which is a lot of fun. Simply sitting outside with my neighbors has been a good way for me to meet new people.

Every evening there is also a soccer game on the sand lot next to my house. Sometimes teams from different neighborhoods play each other, the players arriving in gangs on their motorcycles and zigzagging around the neighborhood like an African version of West Side Story or Grease. It’s mostly boys, but my friend Aicha plays with them frequently, and I have joined them several times (and been destroyed, but I give myself an A for effort….).

Gradually, I have been invited to visit other compounds. Before you enter the house, you always take your shoes off. Muslims are very aware of feet cleanliness. Each living room is the same: there is a large open space covered by cheap oriental rugs, with a perimeter of armchairs covered in tacky brown velvet cloth. Cameroonians in the North spend more time on mats and rugs than on chairs. Furniture in my house is still pretty sparse, but my Cameroonian guests don’t mind because they are used to lounging on carpets when they visit friends. There is also always a large cupboard full of dishes. Cameroonians in the North love their dishes. In my first week here I asked my neighbor if I could buy dishes from her (I assumed that the only reason she would keep that many identical sets of unused dishes would be to sell them) and was surprised when she refused to part with even one. Apparently they are part of dowries- the bride’s father gives the groom a large quantity of dishes that are displayed in dusty cabinets in each house.

My social circle has been steadily expanding, but language has been a barrier in getting to know people, even within my own compound. So far I have gotten to know the teenagers and kids better than the adults, because many of the women do not speak French very well. Both Mandara and Fulfulde are widely spoken in my neighborhood. At first I was very confused as to whether I should learn Mandara (the local, tribe-specific tongue) or Fulfulde (the regional language) during my time here. At home or in small groups, the women speak Mandara, but on the street or in bigger groups everyone speaks Fulfulde. It seems they are most comfortable with Mandara, but prefer Fulfulde to French.

I have compromised by learning basic salutations and useful phrases in Mandara, but studying Fulfulde in depth instead of Mandara. Mandara is really difficult. According to a fellow PCV who majored in linguistics, there are sounds in Mandara that are unique to only a handful of languages worldwide. Very rare. For instance, “thank you” is “Athlafawaroua”- you have to make a very particular “thl” sound where you put your tongue behind your teeth and let air hiss out the sides of your mouth. I spent several days spluttering around trying to get it right. Mandara is also not written down. In contrast, most of the words in Fulfulde are pronounced the way an English speaker would read them, and I have a dictionary as well as a Peace Corps workbook to help me. Fulfulde is more useful in my work as well, since many villages around Mora do not speak Mandara but understand Fulfulde.

Peace Corps pays for language tutors, so I’ve been taking lessons with Aissatou, the wife of my landlord. She’s a great teacher, but it’s been slow going, in part because the plural forms of nouns in Fulfulde are really irregular and often don’t resemble their singular forms at all. It’s also hard learning another language in a language I still haven’t fully mastered! As in I memorize the meanings of Fulfulde words in French. Gives me a headache, feeling the layers of language blending together in my head!

Meanwhile, I’ve progressed a lot in French. My immersion has reached the point that when kids in my neighborhood want to practice their English, I have to work hard not to answer them in French, and the English sounds jarring to me. I still surprise myself with how much my conversational French has improved, how natural it feels now. It’s very strange when I catch myself not thinking before I say something in French. If I look up quickly and rattle off a whole paragraph, afterwards I think whoa! Where did that come from? How did I know that? I go back through what I said and realize there were no mistakes, and it feels good. Sometimes I think back over the day and congratulate myself: “Hey Jess, you’re not speaking any English at all. You’re doing everything in another language! That’s pretty darn good.” It feels natural, so I have to remind myself that I couldn’t do this five months ago.

That said, I still want to get a lot better. My accent and vocabulary knowledge are good enough that people understand what I’m saying in spite of my grammatical errors. In conversational French you can take a lot of shortcuts with grammar, especially because Cameroonians often botch up French themselves since it’s not their first language. There are whole verb tenses I’m not using, because using just past, present, and future can go a long way. So I hope to return to perfecting my French after I have gained a workable knowledge of Fulfulde. It’s really rewarding learning Fulfulde and Mandara, because people here are so thrilled to hear even the simplest phrases of their own language coming from the mouth of a foreigner. They get such a kick out of it. Just me saying “Ca va balayay!” (Good morning!) in Mandara sends them into fits of delight, and that’s motivation enough for me to keep learning as much as I can.

So, in short, I’m in good company here in Cameroon so far.