Monday, May 16, 2011

The Funny Side Of Life

A RPCV who was back visiting Cameroon just recently told me, “You know Kate if you have the right sense of humor Cameroon is a pretty funny place to live”. I agree with this statement 100%. Some of the situations I’ve found myself in over the past 17 months can only be described in degrees of hilarity. Let me paint you a picture…

A few weeks ago I went into the “Big City” to do some banking and run a few errands. Everything was going great, I got in at a good hour, was able to get everything I needed done quickly, but it was the return home that proved to be the real challenge. I got to the car depot only to find out that I had missed my bus by, I kid you not, less then 10 min. I should back up a bit and explain something about public transport in Cameroon. No vehicle, be it car, bush taxi, bus, ect… leaves until it’s full, and by that I mean 8 people in a 5 person car and 20+ people in a 15 passenger mini bus. So what this actually means if you are the poor unfortunate soul who is the first to buy your ticket, is that you then have to wait for 19 other people going the same direction as you before the bus will leave… this can take hours… HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS, and on this particular occasion good old Cameroon, she didn’t let me down. In the end I wound up waiting about 5 hours, leaving me tired, cranky, but with a bag full of goodies I had bought from mobile street venders.

Now as boring as sitting in a bus station all day is the shopping is a major perk (possibly the only perk). The nice thing about Cameroon is that if you stand still long enough people will just come to you. If you’re hungry, give it a few moments and someone will be along asking you to buy their bread or beignets or cookies, or carrots, or pineapple, or oranges, or bananas and the list goes on and on. If someone can carry it on their head then chances are they’ll try to sell it to you in the streets. And it’s not just food either; you can by shoelaces, cell phone charges, scales, underwear, wallets, toothpaste and again the list goes on and on. It’s kind of like the checkout line in the grocery store. You think you’ve got everything you need until you see a piece of candy or a tube of chap stick that you just have to have and so you end up leaving the store with the stuff you went in for and a handful random stuff you didn’t even know you needed (and chances are you probably didn’t). Some of the volunteers (not ashamed to say myself included) have even gone so far as to make a bar game out of it. If everyone one is sitting around a table and someone approaches to try and sell something everyone will look to see what he’s got, and depending on how interesting it is determines the number swigs everyone will take

Food of any kind, tissues, chap stick, candy, and pens
1 swig

Winter jackets, high-healed shoes, cell phones, sunglasses, belts and underwear
2 swigs

Rats on a string, bathroom scales, 80’s inspired infomercial workout machines, and “the cure” for cancer, HIV/AIDS, and all other incurable diseases
3 swigs

A silly game I know but such is life in Cameroon ☺ On this particular day of waiting at the bus station my loot ended up including a new pair of sunglasses, a two egg spaghetti omelet on a baguette, a piece of pineapple, some fired plantain chips, a roll of toilet paper, phone credit, a page of Hanna Montana stickers for the neighbor kids and a few sticks of questionable looking street meat. Not to shabby if I do say so myself ☺

Alrighty back to the story, so the minibus finally fills up and everything has been tied down on the roof. The guy collects the tickets and everyone plies in only to find out that the driver as disappeared. So then search for the chauffer commenced and by the time someone managed to track him down the Al hajjis (Muslim big men) in the car had decided we couldn’t leave until after prayer time. Fast-forward and hour and were finally pulling out of the station.

Needless to say people were a little tense and a good old fashion game of passengers versus driver had officially commenced. Thankfully though, I find Cameroonians to have a pretty short-term memory and they don’t really hold grudges, so after about 10 min of smack talking the driver bygones were bygones and everyone was asleep. Side note: It never ceases to amaze me how Cameroonians can squeeze and contort themselves into truly uncomfortable positions and still fall asleep almost as soon as the car starts moving (and on bumpy dirt roads no less)… it’s pretty incredible!

We’d been going for about an hour when all of a sudden the driver got a phone call and the car stopped. And just as quickly as everyone had fallen asleep, they were all awake. However, there was still complete silence so that everyone could eves drop on the phone call (not that it was difficult because people yell through the phone… sadly I do this too now… sorry if you ever find yourself on the receiving end). It turns out it was the boss of the bus depot telling us his wife needed to go to Banyo so he wanted us to stop to wait for her to come from Bafoussaum on a moto and catch up with us (which ended up taking about an hour). The silence turned into shouts of anger almost instantaneously. The only thing missing from the angry mob were the torches and pitch forks. Everyone was yelling at the driver until the guy sitting next to me decided to take control of the situation by grabbing the drivers phone right out of his hand and started giving the boss on the other end a piece of his mind. The phone was then passed around the car until everyone who wanted to yell at the guy got a chance. On the phone’s way back up front somebody shoved it in my hand and I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to bust out my angry white girl Pigeon French so I gave him a small tongue lashing too ;) In the end the boss said stop, so we had to stop, but the whole thing was a hoot. Just imagine if you were in the states and everyone was taking turns to pass a cell phone around and holler at a complete stranger on the other end!

After the wife on the moto caught up to us everyone piled back in the bus, shot the women their very best stink eye, and we were on the road again. Just like before everyone was asleep in t-minus takeoff and I thought we’d have a pretty quite ride the rest of the way… oh how wrong I was!

We’d been going for a few more hours when all of a sudden I was awoken by the women sitting behind me who happened to be a very large, very sassy market mommy (actually a friend of mine but I would never want to be on her bad side cause I’m pretty sure she could take me down without breaking a sweat). She was yelling at the driver because he was tried and swerving (although in the drivers defense he could have just been avoiding potholes) Mommy was worried we’d go off the road so she was yelling. The driver was appalled that any women would dare talk to him that way and with that tone of voice no less. One thing led to another, and the driver called her a sorceress, she yelled something back in the local language and the car came to a screeching halt. Apparently whatever the mommy had said MIGHT have been a spell. So then everyone in the car spent the next 10 minuets yelling over each other trying to figure out whether or not our driver had in fact been cursed. Ultimately we switched drivers, but whether this was due to witchcraft or exhaustion… the world may never know ;)

So there you have it, my simple trip to the bank turned into a day of shopping off people’s heads without having to move an inch from my seat, 20 people taking turns to yell at a complete stranger over the phone, and what might or might not have been an act of sorcery. Really… REALLY… how could someone not think this was funny ☺