Firstly, apologies for the lack of posting – the start button on my laptop stopped working, thereby rendering both blog writing/posting and photo uploading impossible for the time being. The past month has easily been the busiest of my time spent in Cameroon, with lots of amazing experiences. In thinking about my last posts, I realized that they were relatively introspective, which could easily be interpreted as melancholy, which wasn’t meant to be the case. After getting over med hold for my two cases of malaria in a month-ish, I’m feeling significantly more comfortable with my place in Kembong, my role as a PCV, and just life in general, and have had some incredible experiences over the past month. Also, as a side note, when I’m in Kembong, or in the Anglophone regions in general, I speak Pidgin and a form of “special English,” meaning that if my expressions/writing in these posts seems strange/slightly off, it’s because English fails me at times, so as they say here, ‘ashia’ (sorry).
The title of this blog post is from an experience awhile ago, and was said by one of the kids who comes to visit me on a daily basis, Junior. I think I may have mentioned that after giving the initial HIV/AIDS talks at GHS that the chief of the health center and I decided that, in order to promote family planning/combat teen pregnancy, that I would dispense condoms from my house, at the request of males and females, in an attempt to eliminate the discomfort/stigma that teens may feel in going to the health center to acquire condoms, even though they’re free. One day, several teenage boys came to my house in the late afternoon saying that they had heard that I had condoms, and asking if they could have some. After getting some, I discretely gave the boys the condoms, which happened to be in front of several young kids – wouldn’t necessarily have been my first choice of situations in which to promote sexual health/family planning, but I realized that these children will eventually be adults, and if I make it not a big deal to access condoms, maybe I can help alleviate the stigma. Anyway, the children, curious as they are, immediately asked me, “Aunty, what are those?!” to which I responded that they were condoms, and that I would explain what they are/their usage at a later date (aka, when it actually comes time for these kids to need condoms). I did, however, tell the kids that they were used when having sex, and that they helped prevent pregnancy, transmission of STIs and HIV/AIDS. The kids immediately started speculating the uses of condoms, and after several failed attempts to determine the exact usage, Junior spoke up in an authoritative tone and haughtily responded to his peers saying “No, no, Aunty, I know what a condom is…(dramatic pause) you wear it around your waist, like a belt!” Feeling very satisfied with himself, and with me making several snorts in an attempt to cover my highly amused state, I responded “not quite” and then promptly changed the subject.
After convincing the PCMO nurse that I did not need to go to Yaoundé for further tests, instead feeling much better and wanting to return to my house/the familiar, I returned to Kembong for Pauline’s wedding. The ceremonies started on Thursday with the traditional wedding. After going bright and early to Pauline’s house, which resembled a beehive with all the flurry of activity and people running around, I went back to my house to wait for the actual wedding to start. Three hours after the proposed start time, and in the hottest part of the day, we all gathered at Pauline’s mother’s family’s house for the first half of the festivities. After one man served palm wine in a huge communal glass from a huge container to all gathered guests, the groom’s family left to convene with the bride’s family to pay the agreed-upon bride price. Pauline’s bride price was roughly 260,000 CFA for one side of her family, meaning that the total paid to both mother’s and father’s families was well over 500,000 CFA when it was all said and done. It’s also the groom’s responsibility to buy the additional alcohol consumed at these proceedings. After all had drank of the palm wine, people proceeded to engage in mock guessing to determine why we were all gathered at the proceedings; it’s more the ritual of the proceedings rather than an actual guessing. From there, Pauline processed in with several other women, and members of Rafael’s family had to fake guess who the bride was. After that, there was much celebrating, and the same procedure was replicated at Pauline’s father’s family’s compound, except with food and lots more palm wine and alcohol. After paying the other bride price, there was another ceremony (all in Ejagham, so I have absolutely no idea what was said) where Pauline and Rafael sat in front of their family and, from what I can guess from the proceedings, were traditionally married. Overall, it was a cool experience, and people seemed to enjoy that I was there, as they took every opportunity to tell me about what was happening.
The wedding saga continued the next day with the court wedding by the Mayor/judge of Mamfe. My morning started out bright and early at the ‘saloon’ (the hair salon) where Stella, one of the nicest women in town, braided my hair in a cinnamon bun style (braids encircling my head, close to the scalp, in a circular pattern) with black mesh, and then taking curly weave and sewing it into my hair. Needless to say, the end result was not drastically different than if they had used my real hair, pulled it back with a bandeau/headband and curled it. However, with the bandeau and mesh look, I truly resembled a Cabbage Patch doll…much to my dismay. Being the type of person with the mentality of ‘if the bride wants me to do/wear something, I’ll do it, within reason of course, since it’s her special day and not mine.’ With that in mind, and my attitude to just go with this wedding flow, I decided to embrace what would no doubt be the first of many outlandish wedding looks. From there, the honored guests and close family members all caravanned to Mamfe, me sandwiched in between Pauline and Rafael in the back of a car, as they bickered about having their documents and I tried to wipe the magenta lipstick that Pauline favors from the areas all around her mouth (she enjoys putting on lipstick without a mirror, much to the detriment of the skin around her lips, since she often has lipstick in a 1-inch radius on the skin surrounding her lips…). Once at the council/court, we all filed into a room and waited for the judge. Once he arrived, he wasted no time in grilling Pauline and Rafael about their reasons for wanting to get married, their personal lives, what they liked about one another, etc. Needless to say, it was very interesting to witness, especially since it seemed like an interrogation of sorts. For instance, I learned that Rafael was previously engaged to be married to the mother of his two sons, but after having left to prepare his home in Kembong for a year or so, and returning to the town where his fiancé lived, discovered that she was pregnant with another man’s child. After the judge was satisfied with their answers, the marriage proceeded much like a court ceremony in the U.S. From the court ceremony, we stopped to pick up several things for the ‘coup de gras’ church wedding ceremony the next day. After taking a much-deserved rest, I went back to Pauline’s house to see what else she needed to do for the ceremony, and hope that we were going to, at some point before the wedding, rehearse what I, as chief bridesmaid was supposed to do. Since the electricity went out, Pauline’s daughter, Teckla, and I found ourselves decorating the hall for the wedding reception in the pitch black with only our measly cellphone flashlights for guide. The other bridesmaids, who I had quickly come to regard as lazy piles, after their unwillingness to lift a finger to help prepare anything for the wedding, let alone assist Pauline, decided that they would shirk wedding duties in order to get their hair done…blargh. But despite no electricity and apathetic bridesmaids, we got the hall decorated and prepared for the next day’s festivities.
The day of the wedding dawned bright and hot, and at 7 am, I went to see how I could help Pauline on her big day. We spent the large part of the morning at Stella’s saloon where she busily pasted on the other bridesmaid’s fake eyelashes with acrylic nail glue (eek, and I’ve never been more thankful for mascara and my long eyelashes) and applied Pepto Bismal-colored hair oil to each of our hair weaves. Other members of my cluster arrived in time for the advertised start time of the wedding, and staked out spots in the Catholic church (Pauline’s Presbyterian, but Rafael’s Catholic, so they had a Catholic ceremony – as a side note, I feel like inter-faith marriages are made into much bigger of a deal than they are in Cameroon – it was interesting seeing the differences in priorities with marriages between the U.S. and here). In my bridesmaid attire, I felt like ‘80’s prom queen meets Africa, meets Michael Jackson (just a recap, my outfit was a one-shouldered, three quarter-length sleeved dress with electric blue lace over traditional African material, complete with an electric blue satin flower positioned directly over my left boob – the outfit was tied together with a single lacy, sparkly white glove on my right hand – never have I wanted to bust out my “Thriller” dance moves more…) While at Stella’s place, a bossy woman showed up (one of Pauline’s friends) and tried to completely change the way that the wedding was structure – how everyone processes in, the order of the wedding events, etc. I could tell Pauline was getting anxious with this, and after trying to more quietly subvert her efforts to change everything less than an hour before the ceremony, I decided to politely, but firmly tell her that we had everything well in hand and to not worry. Stella and the other Kembong women also stood up with me, which helped to ease Pauline’s stress, but therefore served to make myself an enemy of this pig-headed, know-it-all woman. Welp, as I’ve learned here time and again, can’t win ‘em all. After we were all ready, we proceeded to drive up and down the roads of Kembong, incessantly honking the horn of the car in which all five bridesmaids were squeezed, in order to tell the villagers that yes, in fact, there is a wedding going on – as if they could forget. Three hours after the intended start time, everyone was attired and waiting outside the church to process in. The other bridesmaids then decided to tell me that we would be singing a song, IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE DAMN CONGREGATION, and they wondered if I knew it. Since I’m obviously a mind-reader and incredibly familiar with little details of Cameroonian culture, like songs, why wouldn’t I know this song?! Not. After making it clear that my embarrassment/willingness to make a fool of myself had its limits, I told them that I would dance with them in front of the entire congregation, and smile while they sang the song. Thankfully, the song didn’t end up happening – yay! Additionally, one of the groomsmen didn’t show up, so the bridesmaids decided that since I was already putting the phrase ‘one of these things is not like the others’ into real-life practice simply by my different looks, I should dance alone down the aisle in front of the rest of the bridesmaids…oh joy of joys. But in reality, their plan actually backfired when everyone started clapping and cheering more loudly as I shook and shimmied my way down the aisle…in a church. The wedding itself took a full four hours, and by the time it was done, I decided that I was long overdue for a beer (conveniently, there was a bar not 50 feet from the door of the church), and very ready to be done with the whole wedding business. Two beers later, my clustermates and I headed over to the reception, just in time for the gift reception: the bride and groom stand up at the front of the hall and people, as called by the MC, process (rather, dance) up and give the gifts. From there, we got food from the buffet line and, of course, another beer to prepare us for the imminent dancing. The reception was by far my favorite part of the whole proceedings – not in the least of which due to the fact that the weddings were over. But it was genuinely a great time. We danced nearly every song, got super sweaty, and laughed with the absurdity of our dance moves and the fun that we were having. It was at the wedding reception that I felt an overwhelming sense of rightness, the feeling that ‘yeah, this is where I’m meant to be in this moment in time’ – that’s an amazing feeling. All in all, although the wedding was a fantastic, frustrating, stressful, and satisfying experience, it was something I wouldn’t have traded doing/being a part of for the world.
To continue with the marriage themes, this week has been my record for marriage proposals, having received three in one day alone…oof. Apart from the marriage proposals, the rest of the week passed relatively uneventfully, as I participated in my third vaccination campaign for polio and visited Julia in Afab. During the vaccination campaign, I practically had to fight with an idiotic, ignorant man who, after at least five minutes of explaining why his baby needed to be vaccinated and how this vaccination was different than those normally received as a child, decided that he was going to ignore everything I just said, and insisted that he knew more than me about vaccinations. With steam practically coming out of my ears in frustration, I calmly explained, yet again, the need to vaccinate his child, and after which, he decided we could vaccinate his child. Needless to say, the whole experience reaffirmed the need for health education in Kembong. On the plus side of health activities, I had a great time visiting Julia’s post, where we helped at the health center, assisting in wound care and paperwork while bonding with her staff friends. I also gathered water for the second time since living in Cameroon (I am so, so happy that the water supply in Kembong is practically endless and always flowing). It was a cool experience, particularly I got a chance to bond with Julia’s children friends in the village. In sum, it was definitely a fun, event-filled week.
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