the crab sorceror and the human zoo

Bamenda, Cameroon - Greetings from Bamenda, the heart of Anglophone Cameroon. This town is referred to as "America" by Cameroon's Peace Corps volunteers, much to the chagrin of Courtney, the PCV who is posted here. Bamenda won this moniker thanks to its relatively high level of development and the abundance of businesses named after American cities and places. There was one spot named after Boston just a few steps away from a hair "saloon" (as they call them here- no whiskey or shootouts as far as I know) called "Yankee New Look." I think the significance of that combination is probably lost on most Cameroonians. It has been quite a transition in just a few days from the desert north to the busy francophone capital city to the red-earthed, grassy, English-speaking northwest.

But for now I'm going to rewind the clock back to our time in the North, since I have quite the backlog of things to write about. During our time in Kate's town, we took an overnight side trip to Rhumsiki, a town near the Nigerian border with some gorgeous mountains. Our guide brought us in to see the Crab Sorceror, a local spiritual leader believed to have power to foretell the future. In addition to predicting the quality of the harvest for the community, he offers his services to visitors for 1,000 CFA per question. His method is as follows: he speaks to a crab in the local language, asking it to do a good job for his guests, and then poses the first question (as translated by our guide) to the crab. He places the crab in a clay pot filled with water, sand, and pieces of wood that represent the different locations of the visitors' life. The crab gets a few moments to do its thing beneath a lid, and then the crab sorceror reads off the answer from whatever the crab is up to in the pot when the lid is lifted. We didn't ask, but the crab sorceror provided enough information for us to conclude that Kate and I are going to be married, that the matter will be settled in a year and a half to two years, and that we will have a daughter, a son, and a daughter. (P.S. - Kate is not particularly eager to have kids. P.P.S. - The crab sorceror only gives out good news.)

I found our encounter with the crab sorceror noteworthy not so much for what he predicted, but for how the whole experience felt... or how it didn't feel. In my Philippines blog I complained about the tourism in some of the poorer regions of the country being a kind of "human zoo." I often encountered situations that felt undignified and degrading to the local people and cultures, driven by sheer economic desperation and the need for tourist cash. But the crab sorceror experience did not have that "human zoo" feeling to it, nor did our visit to the chief with 50 wives, even though my blog about it may have been a bit sensationalistic.

I thought about why that might be and discussed it with Kate, and she made a really good point: the local people are more in charge of their destiny here. We really are their guests, and we play by their rules. The morning after our meeting with the crab sorceror, Kate and I went on a hike around Rhumsiki, and as we were descending a woman was climbing the trail with a bundle of wood on her head. Our guide promptly ordered us to get off the trail and let her pass. We would have done it anyway, of course, but I was impressed because I would have expected/feared that we, the rich white people, would have been allowed/expected just to steamroll right over the daily life of our hosts. That's the kind of mentality that human zoos are made of, and it has been refreshingly absent during my time in Cameroon.

technicql [sic] difficulties

Ngaoundere, Cameroon - Just a quick post to let everyone know I am alive and well, but the blogging is proving to be more difficult than anticipated. The internet is pretty slow most places, sometimes blogspot wont even load, and the keyboards are arranged a bit differently than old QWERTY. So I cant promise much of anything before I get back to the states on April 13- but there will be lots to share then. Everything so far is going great- and I got a boubou for my birthday!

marshmallow peeps, nassaras, sacred poop, and the man with 50 wives

“Marshmallow peeps? Are you serious?” I was in my parents’ house in Danvers for a brief stopover en route to Africa, and I had to sort through and repack several boxes of stuff that I was ferrying to Kate and a Peace Corps friend who works in the same town as her. (I know, Danvers isn’t exactly on the way, but the insane rules of my frequent flier program required me to tag the US before my free flight to Africa.) Apparently living in the Sahel can make you crave weird things, because Kate’s friend’s parents had sent along several boxes of marshmallow Peeps. Knowing that the fragile sweets would be demolished in my checked luggage, I saw no better option than putting them in my carry-on bag, even though that would require me to handle my backpack with kid gloves for all of my 13 hours of flying and my 10-hour layover in Paris. Kate got an embarrassing goodie too, but I feel too much loyalty to her to divulge what it was here. Mysteriously, the peeps arrived in Africa completely intact, but the British chocolate bars that I brought along for Kate got warped during the journey.

About 60 hours after I left Cambridge for Heathrow, I landed in N’Djamena. The capital and largest city in Chad has a single runway, which is used for both civilian and military flights. As the plane descended, I was struck by how little artificial light I could see. It reminded me of the description for one of my development courses at Williams, which reflected on the image of those world-at-night maps and the contrast between the brightly lit and dark regions of the world. All of the thirty-odd passengers from my flight crowded onto a small bus on the runway, which failed to start, so a second bus showed up to bring us to the terminal. “Salut, chef” (hi, chief) said the man who checked my yellow fever vaccination certificate. The lights in the terminal flickered as I waited in line at passport control. Welcome to Africa. As promised, Kate wore her loud green pagne from International Women’s Day for my arrival. It was quite possibly the best airport reunion ever.

The following day we had a brief tour of N’Djamena with the car and driver Kate had hired, and around noon we headed for the nearby border with Cameroon. The exit process from Chad was needlessly elaborate—we were shuffled through three separate rooms and subjected to three rounds of friendly but repetitious questioning—while the lone Cameroonian official we dealt with seemed peevish. I was worried for a moment that he thought something was wrong with my visa, and then it slowly dawned on us that he just couldn’t make sense of our passports. We ended up pointing out our names, passport numbers, expiration dates, and everything else he needed to know. He recorded the information by hand in the wrinkled pages of an enormous notebook—there was nary a computer to be seen on either side of the border—and we were on our way.

Our first stop in Cameroon was Parc National de Waza, the star of Cameroon’s relatively decent national park system. With the car, driver and a local guide, we got off to an early start and looked for animals in the dusty landscape. We got a great up-close view of giraffes, damalisks, enormous pelicans and all manner of birds, and a very distant view of some elephants—not in camera range, unfortunately. During the drive back to Kate’s town, we stopped in to visit a rather unusual tourist attraction: the compound of a local chief who has 50 wives and 113 children. For a modest fee of 5,000 CFA francs (a little less than $10), one of the chief’s sons gave us a tour, and at the end we got a picture with the chief himself. Having never seen polygamy firsthand, I felt very strange shaking the hand of a man with 50 wives. In Cameroon’s mostly Muslim and animist North, polygamy is fairly commonly practiced. As the chief’s son explained, each of the fifty wives gets four “rooms”—which are really more like small, freestanding huts—including a kitchen, a bedroom, and two rooms for storing millet. In a ritual that I didn’t completely understand, even with Kate’s help filling the gaps in my French, they keep a sacred cow on the grounds whose blood and feces are smeared on 14 jars representing each of the current chief’s predecessors. Our tour guide also explained that the rules of succession dictate that the second son of the first wife take over upon the chief’s death, since custom regards the firstborn son as insufficiently intelligent for the job. (Naturally, Kate enjoys reminding me of that one.) Our driver later told us that the tour guide, being a modest and discreet man, never told us that he himself the heir apparent. The guide was clearly accustomed to foreign visitors, acknowledging the conflict between le modernisme and his way of life and also hinting that things are gradually beginning to change.

The warmth and friendliness of Africans is a well-worn stereotype and a staple of travel literature, but I have indeed found Cameroonians to be incredibly welcoming. The term for white people/foreigners here is “nassara,” and when we walk around Kate’s town we reliably hear little children shouting “Nassara! Nassara! Bonsoir!” (good evening). I sometimes refer to myself as the super-nassara to distinguish myself—unfavorably, of course—from Kate, who actually lives here, speaks the language and wears the clothes. Kate brought me around and introduced me to some of her favorite locals, including Bouba, the energetic and incredibly motivated secretary-treasurer of the microfinance institution she works with; and her tailor, who vociferously praised Kate’s virtues and promised to make the outfits for our wedding.

It was neither the first nor the last time the questions and assumptions about me and Kate were flying. I watched with fascination as Kate explained to one of her female neighbors, who is part of a polygamous household, how marriage and household affairs are different in the United States. Among other things, she described how she would choose her own husband, how there would be no dowry and both families would contribute to the wedding, and how the husband would help with shopping and chores around the house. Kate also had a bunch of Cameroonian friends over for dinner, and I appreciated the chance to be part of a small and unobtrusive object lesson in how things can be different by helping her with the cooking and cleaning.

No illnesses or serious problems with the heat to report yet—so far, so good. I find the main difficulty is that my stomach doesn’t enjoy absorbing the volume of water my body requires to stay hydrated. We have a few more days in the North before the long trip to Yaoundé, so hopefully I will have a chance to post again before then.

cambridge to cameroon

“Given your travel schedule during term, you must have something really intense planned for the break,” a fellow Gates Scholar said to me the other night. Indeed I do. Friday night begins my first trip to Africa, which will include a very brief stay in Chad followed by three weeks in Cameroon. It’s a little embarrassing to admit around here, but I’m not going for any concrete academic, research, or professional reason—though I’d like to think it’s about something more meaningful than vacation. It will be interesting to see how the things I see will react with all the academic stuff that has been sloshing around in my brain for six months.

I have been dying to go to Africa for years. Quite coincidentally, Cameroon was my intended country for study abroad my junior year in college until my plans ran up against a parental veto. This time, it’s a confluence of opportunities that is bringing me there: lots of saved frequent flier miles from Alaska, a long break between Lent and Easter terms (someday I will share my theory about why the breaks are so long here), and the chance to travel, not with a local, but with the next best thing. Which brings us to…

Dramatis Personae. My personal Virgil—no, better make that Beatrice—for my Cameroonian adventure is Kate, a friend I met in DC a couple years ago through my former hunger fellow housemates. She is now about seven months into a Peace Corps posting in l’Extreme Nord, the northernmost region of Cameroon. Kate has been keeping a blog about her experiences, which you can check out here: http://katewithdreadlocks.blogspot.com/. I don’t know if she’s planning on posting or staying unplugged while we travel around, but perhaps if she does write you will be able to get a second (read: better-informed!) perspective on what I’m writing about.

It’s also possible that I may meet up with Will, a hunger fellow friend and my roommate/co-worker during my first stint in Alaska. He’s now a freelance writer and journalist working in Lagos, Nigeria. Depending on his work schedule he may come southeast to Cameroon and join us for the climb up Mt. Cameroon. And while I’m plugging friends’ blogs, here is Will’s: http://willconnors.com/.

The Country. Most of you have probably never given much thought to Cameroon, so here’s a really quick primer. Cameroon is located in West Africa, right near the Equator and the Atlantic Ocean. Here’s a map courtesy of Wikipedia (hint—it’s the red one):



Cameroon is often described as “Africa in Miniature” because it has a nice cross-section of the climates and peoples of the continent. The far north is semi-desert, the southeast has rainforest, the northwest is grassland, and the coast is crowned with the highest peak in West Africa, the unimaginatively named Mt. Cameroon. Cameroonians practice Christianity, Islam, and traditional religions; they work mostly as farmers, in the oil and mining industries, and in the informal sector. Cameroon has gotten more than its share of colonial oppression, having been colonized in whole or in part by Germany, the UK, and France. The French influence predominates in most of the country, two of the regions bordering Nigeria are anglophone.

The Itinerary. Lots of details will be forthcoming, of course, but here’s a general sketch of what I’m doing. I will be landing in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, which is right on the border with Cameroon. (Coincidence #2: in my 7th grade French class we were all assigned a report on a francophone country, and mine was Chad. I remember that experience primarily for introducing me to the existence of millet.) My reason for flying into N’Djamena is practical: despite being in a foreign country, it’s a whole day’s journey closer to Kate’s PC post than any international airport in Cameroon.

After crossing the border, we’re basically working our way south. Here’s a map with some placenames on it, courtesy of French wikipedia:



In the extreme north—or Cameroon’s chimney, as I occasionally think of it—we’ll visit a national park with big animals, see Kate’s town, go hiking among some freaky landforms near the Nigerian border, and celebrate my birthday in the bustling metropolis of Maroua. From there we will travel south to Ngaoundéré, briefly check out the sights there, and commence a 12-plus-hour overnight trip on a rattling train to Yaoundé, the capital. I am told that Yaoundé, owing to its altitude, enjoys relatively pleasant temperatures.

Next we make a beeline for Bamenda, in the grassy, western, English-speaking part of Cameroon, which is the jumping off point for a multi-day bike trip. We’ll be pedaling along a Ring Road from village to village, including some with great names like Wum and Bum, and crashing with Kate’s Peace Corps friends who are stationed along the way. Following that, we’ll rest our rubber legs in the beach town of Limbe, and maybe connect with Will if he makes it down, before mounting an expedition up Mt. Cameroon. I’ll wind up in Douala, Cameroon’s largest city (and by all accounts a hot, sweaty, godforsaken place) for my flight out.

Needless to say, this itinerary is subject to change.

The Weather. I haven’t spent much time in hot climates lately, so I’m a wee bit apprehensive about how my body will react. Kate informed me of her plan to bring to bring along extra Oral Rehydration Salts for my benefit. This was about as reassuring as hearing somebody say “don’t worry, there will be ambulances waiting, and the hospital is nearby!” I have also been checking in with weather.com from time to time, and one day the conditions for N’Djamena were as follows:



Can’t say I have ever seen “sand” in the forecast before.

The Mom Worry-O-Meter. I was pleased to learn that this trip actually rates lower on the Worry-O-Meter than my Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia trip. I, however, believe the travel gods are smiling on my trip, mostly because "Africa" by Toto was (rather incongrously) played at the bop after our St. Patrick's Day themed formal at Emma last night.

I don't know when my next opportunity to post will be, but it wouldn't be surprising if it's not for a week or longer. However, I'll be back with a report on the first leg of my trip as soon as I am able!

"keen" on the uk

Occasionally I need to remind myself that here at Cambridge I am living in a fantasy world. To paraphrase/possibly butcher an old cliché, these are the good old days that I'm going to miss later on. It's like I get to relive the best features of college life, but as a full-fledged adult with a few years in the "real world" under my belt and all of the increased confidence and self-possession that comes with that.

For the most part, my preemptive nostalgia hasn't had much to do with the fact of being in England. As I have observed before, cross-cultural immersion is not the point of my being here, and it's hard to imagine myself feeling wistful at the prospect of leaving this country, in contrast to the way I felt as the end of my time in the Philippines drew near. But at a restaurant during my weekend in Seville, something strange happened. After a couple days of not hearing any British accents, I overheard a group of British tourists talking at a nearby table, and I felt a completely unexpected surge of fondness. Despite being in the Cambridge bubble, I think a little bit of this island has been seeping into me after all.

Another funny moment came a few weeks ago when I spent the day in London to get a visa for my upcoming trip to Cameroon. In the middle of a long walk to meet a friend for dinner, I had a lip-bitingly full bladder, so I stepped into a Starbucks for relief. At the back of the shop a man was waiting outside the entrance to the men's room, and I asked him, completely un-self-consciously, "Is this the queue for the toilet?" It was remarkable not just for how easily the British idiom spilled out, but also because "toilet" -- as the preferred term for restroom -- was one of the British English terms I have most vehemently resisted. (It just sounds too graphic to my American ears.) I've also become an ardent user of the word "keen," which can refer to both a state of mind ("I'm keen to go to the formal") and a personality characteristic. ("She's really keen" conjures up a generally overenthusiastic person.) Still, there are still a few areas of language where I refuse to budge; I don't think I can ever refer to the 26th letter of the alphabet as "zed," for instance.

My interactions with Brits have been almost entirely smooth, but occasionally there have been reminders that this is a different culture. Lots of these experiences have revolved around the different definitions of politeness and courtesy that operate here. To take a small example: I was at the women's rugby match versus Oxford, and I was standing at the railing in the upper stands. A woman behind me asked, "excuse me, would you like to sit down, please?" A very civilized and quintessentially British way of making such a request, and I promptly complied, but to my ears it sounded, well, passive-aggressive. Another time I had a study group meeting with some classmates in the seminar room where our class is held. One of the administrative assistants came in and said something along the lines of, "some political science people want to use this room, heh?" Again, I knew she was being polite (by not phrasing the request as a command, or even as a request for that matter), but it just rubbed me the wrong way. Why can't you just come out and say it, I wanted to ask.

I'm down to my last few days and my last essay before I check out of here for a while. Stay tuned for a preview of my upcoming Africa travels!

in (limited) praise of british food

As my consistent readers have probably noticed, I've been really mean to the Brits on the subject of food. But in the interest of fairness, and in looking on the bright side of things, I thought I would present a few of this island's culinary strengths. Or failing that, things that they do better than Americans.

Beer. It's not exactly food, but beer is as good a place as any to start. I have to admit that before I came here, the thought of drinking room-temperature, minimally carbonated beer was mildly repulsive. But now I would consider it sacreligious to chill Old Speckled Hen or another fine English ale, because that would destroy the more subtle flavors that come out at warmer temperatures. For the sake of international comparison, I should note that I never caught on to the Filipino custom of drinking beer with ice, so score one for the Brits.

Cheese. The UK does not have quite the cornucopia of cheeses offered by its neighbor on the other side of the Channel, but it does have some great homegrown varieties. My favorite is Stilton, an English blue cheese that has taken up permanent residence on my refrigerator shelf. One of the things I love about formal hall at Emma is that there is always a cheese course after dessert. When we go to formal swaps at other colleges and there isn't a cheese course, it just confirms that Emma is the best college ever and the rest are all second-rate. Why do Americans eat so much of this "pasteurized processed cheese food" crap when there is so much of the delicious real stuff to go around?

Potatoes. The humble spud is such an essential part of the British diet that it's not surprising that Brits have seen more possibilities hiding inside the homely tuber. One concept I will certainly bring home with me is the "jacket potato" (or simply "jacket"), which is really just a baked potato freed from the tired old formula of butter, sour cream, and occasionally bacon. The baked potato is a great canvas for so many other kinds of protein: chili, tuna salad, baked beans, Stilton and grapes. One of my American friends here was a devotee of the jacket potato stand in the market square for all of Michaelmas Term; he was on a first-name basis with the owner and measured time during his day with reference to his potato break. Apparently, though, you can get too much of a good thing... he has switched to soup during Lent Term.

Really huge breakfasts. You may have thought the US had a lock on conspicuous overeating. You thought wrong. Because really, are two eggs, sausage, hash browns, and coffee an adequate breakfast? No sir, that's just the beginning: add a grilled tomato half, some bacon, a big scoop of sauteed mushrooms, baked beans, and two pieces of toast, and then you're getting a proper English breakfast.

Fish and Chips. If nothing else, a country better be good at making its own national dish, and on this front the Brits deliver. Fish and chips are reliably edible no matter what back-alley pub you find yourself in. I've also developed a taste for fries with a healthy sprinkling of malt vinegar. According to my brother, it seems that Rhode Island is the only one of the old colonies to have adopted that fine practice, but I will be taking this one back with me too.

Less-loved animal parts. I ate a dish consisting mostly of oatmeal and sheep organs, and I liked it, and I've deliberately eaten it again. 'Nuff said.

seville pictures

A few pictures from the long weekend in Spain:

¡TeamSevilla! members Stella and Matt in front of the Giralda, one of Seville's most famous landmarks. The lower two-thirds of this tower was once a minaret. When Seville came under Christian control, the attached mosque was torn down and Seville's Cathedral built over it, but the minaret was incorporated-- over Muslim protests-- into the new structure. The omnipresence of the Giralda in the skyline became sort of a running gag during the trip; we even spotted it from the Roman ruins in Santiponce (see below) and from the window of the plane as we took off on our flight back to England.


The Alcázar.


Me in the Alcázar. I'm facing into the room where Pedro El Cruel/Pedro El Justiciero threw that dinner party for the rival of his ally Sultan Mohammed V, which ended in the dinner guest's beheading.


More Alcázar awesomeness. I warned you, I took lots of pictures of this place.


Yet more Alcázar awesomeness.


¡TeamSevilla! at the Plaza España.


Seville's bullfighting ring. We were out of season for el toreo, so we had to settle for a tour of the ring. This lady had a very endearing Spanish lisp and equally endearing bad English. I came away understanding a little better why bullfighting is a target of the animal rights crowd--whatever you can say about its cultural value, it's a pretty cruel practice. At some point I should probably also mention that we enjoyed some lovely flamenco dancing, though the venue was a little too dark so my pictures didn't come out.


Tile work at the Roman ruins in Santiponce, 8 km northwest of Seville. It's amazing to contemplate all of the layers of history that can exist in one place. It reminded me a little bit of what it felt like to be in Jerusalem, though unlike Jerusalem the major currents of history no longer pass through Seville in the 21st century.


Another running gag: my alleged obsession with Cruzcampo beer. I will admit, it's not bad and very drinkable, but somehow my love for Cruzcampo became a recurring theme that took on a life of its own.