Sachets and Tears: A Very Cameroonian Xmas

Sachets and Tears: A Very Cameroonian Xmas – December 27, 2012

Well, I just had probably the weirdest/kind of fun/kind of depressing xmas that I’ve ever had.  I had it in a town on a lake called Lagdo with a couple of my friends from stage.  In order to get there, I took the bus to Garoua first, which was, as usual, pretty crowded.  After that, I took a moto to ‘by the bridge’, where the cars going south are.  From there I got in a bush taxi – a small Toyota that they packed ten people in to.  There were four people in the front, including me.  Since it was a stick shift, the guy literally had to shift between another guy’s legs.  After four or five hours of travel, I finally made it to Lagdo. 

When I got there, one buddy and I went to get some food, while our other friend went to do some shopping.  She had been feeling sick, and probably wasn’t going to drink with us that night.  She went to the bakery first, and ended up fainting, taking out the glass and falling to the floor.  Luckily the people there helped her get a moto and bring her home.  She was probably just dehydrated; luckily she’s ok now. 

We left her lying on her floor (because we are that good of friends, don’t worry, we made her drink some water) and hit up a bar on xmas eve to did a bit of drinking.  While at the bar, a drunken guy came up to us and, as happens a lot, wouldn’t leave us alone.  Every time we tried to just continue talking to each other, he would interrupt again, but he really didn’t have anything to say except “hello, you are American, happy festival.”  We thought we were doomed to have this companion for the rest of the night, but all of a sudden my buddy broke him.  He said, “we both have two eyes, one nose, one mouth, ten fingers – we are the same.”  The guy said, “Yes, yes we are,” and then walked away.  It was awesome. 

We headed back to check on our friend, before going out again to meet up with her counterpart and a couple of other Cameroonians.  We got back to the bar and it was crazy – a huge party with tons of people.  There was a line of maybe ten people outside trying to get in with a bouncer, the first time I’ve seen that in Cameroon.  When we walked up, the bouncers started yelling at everyone to move out of the way, because there was white people coming, and immediately let us go in front of everyone else.  It’s really weird being treated like a VIP everywhere you go, definitely a first for me. 

The VIP treatment continued that night at the bar.  At one point, I had to go to the bathroom, so I made my way towards the latrines that had room for maybe 8 people.  One of the guys who worked at the bar saw me walking towards them and rushed ahead of me, telling me to wait.  He went inside and after about 15 seconds, everyone in there was cleared out.  He then told me to go in, while he guarded the door.  I had the entire bathroom to myself, which was even weirder. 

The next morning involved a hangover for both of us – of course my sick friend didn’t drink and was still nursing her oral-rehydration salted pineapple-flavored water.  All of a sudden, half a dozen kids showed up, which apparently happens a lot.  They stayed there for a while, until my buddy started yelling in English, and I walked out of the bedroom shirtless.  Until we left, we spent most of the morning chasing chickens and kids out of the house.  I’m a great youth development volunteer. 

Of course, we had to have breakfast too.  My friend brought a papaya… unfortunately it had already started rotting.  We cut off the worst parts and ate the rest.  My other friend made pancakes, and managed to burn all of them, even burning the honey we put on top of them.  Of course, we had cinnamon and sugar and a really weird tasting ‘butter’ to go with it. 

That morning in Lagdo was incredibly dusty and hazy.  Between the trash everywhere, the weird rock formations, the used sachets on the ground (small bags of liquor), and how dry it was, it looked like the apocalypse.  As one of my friends said, “the ground is covered in tears and sachets… it just looks bright, dusty, and sad.”  I think it’s safe to say we were all a bit depressed about our first xmas in Africa, though glad we were spending it together. 

That day we went to the village of my friend’s counterpart.  He claimed that they would be killing a whole cow for a feast, which turned out to be a gross exaggeration.  We didn’t get to eat that much, but we did drink quite a bit of beer, folere wine, and scotch with a bunch of Cameroonians.  While we were sitting there, my friend turned to me and said “if I could have seen last xmas what I would be doing this xmas… oh, oh boy.” 

The moto ride back was a bit worrisome, but I past the time by telling my friend in front of me to ‘look left, we’re in Africa, look right, we’re in Africa,” over and over again.  May have been a bit repetitive, but I was trying to get us both in the moment.  Several times I said “I’m gonna fall right off this moto,” probably because I kept shifting my body right and left each time I told her to look.  It didn’t help that we were driving on deep sand.  Luckily, I didn’t. 

The next morning, I came up with a great DJ name for myself: DJ Caution Hippo.  We’re going to make t-shirts that say “DJ Caution Hippo is the Fucking Man” with one of the hungry-hungry hippos on the front with his arms crossed. 

Definitely a strange xmas, but could have been a lot worse.