June 20, 2008

White man on black sands, road construction, black pants

The white man price, something I have yet to cover. Oh the qualms of being a white man in Africa. It has its perks, though some that I’d rather not claim. Though it is nice to get a seat in the shade at big events, the first drink at parties, and respect. Though the last one is rather tricky. Not all people, though the majority of people believe the white man is rich, intelligent, and oblivious. Bargaining is a large part of life here. Paying for cabs and buying food/other goods. White people are expected to have oodles of money. We are taken care a volunteers in terms of finances but we also don’t have the means to be ripped off blindly.

Last week at the beach, I ran into the highest white mans price I’ve ever experienced. Black sand beaches tend to be distracting. After enjoying a meal of calamari, burning fish (whole fish grilled), and baton de manioc we were given the bill. It was outrageous! The bill being about 3 times the normal price. 200 francs charged up our drinks and the fish were 6,000 franks, a really good fish actually being about 1,500 or 2,000. I told him my fish cost almost half my rent in Bafut. The look on his face was amazing! Overcharging silly tourists works most of the time. We ended flipping the bill over, writing our own prices down, left the money, and went for a swim. I still can’t get over how folks will make attempts to cheat folks. Though its just part of life here. I can’t blame them for trying, but please, lets try and be a bit less obvious.

The rainy season has truly hit in village. Most days it will be sunny in the morning though the afternoon is quite different. It rains so hard on the tin roof that listening to music is nearly impossible. Though its quite wonderful then the water is out, just set out the buckets and their full in minutes. The thunder and lightening is pretty amazing too.

Aside from dodging the white man price and rain I’ve been planning a summer camp. Most children here don’t have much to do when school is out from June till September. So in July some volunteers are coming up to help run the camp. We have 21 girls so far. If the rain holds, Frisbee will be played! We want to focus on girls empowerment since most priority is placed on boys, especially in village. Art and crafts, health talks, environmental education, and community service will keep us busy each day. This is the first camp to be run in my village so it’ll be interesting though I’m looking forward to it.

Each week I catch a taxi to Bamenda, which on a good day is about 30 minutes away….depending on stops and possible breakdowns. Sometimes the police step up the road blocks, which means more money for the driver to pay out. In order to avoid this mud back roads are taken instead of the paved ones. It was going well, until we bumped into a bit of road construction. By road construction in Cameroon I mean about 20 villagers with hoes on the road. They wouldn’t let us pass. The solution: all passengers in the taxi get out, grab a hoe and get to work. We all grabbed hoes and started filling in the potholes. Though when I started working most of the children went into respiratory shock from laughter. Amazing.

For May 20th, the National Day, much marching is done. Mostly by students march, political parties, along with community groups. The Compassion Campaign group I work with decdied to march. They are a group of outreach health workers for the village. The night before the 20th we had a meeting. I was wrapping up the meeting, just reminding folks what to wear in the morning. It went something like this: “So tomorrow we’ll put on our ironed white shirts, black pants, and black shoes”. Utter confusion and blank stares is mostly what I saw from members. “Come on guys, white tops and black tops just like we talked about”. Mr. Sam the President of the group raised his hand and said, “But Kate, I don’t have black pants to wear”. With my own confusion I replied, “Mr. Sam, I saw you wearing them the other day!”. It got quiet, uncomfortably quiet. My good friend Prescaline whispered in my ear, “Can’t we just choose our color of pants?”…..then I realized what I had done.

I’d just told a wonderful group of folks to march in ironed white shirts, wearing black shoes, and black UNDERPANTS. People refer to underwear as pants, and trousers for long dress pants. When it finally occurred to me what I’d done much laughter followed, thankfully. Now I’m just the crazy white girl in village going around checking the color of people’s underpants.