Celebrity Status

Have you seen my new movie? I haven’t either, but apparently the people of Cameroon have, and I’m the leading role! Every missionary has had to cope with not exactly “fitting in” in their new culture, and we are no strangers. We have white skin, weird clothes, a funny language and “lots of money”. At times the pointing and staring and hollering and laughing gets on my nerves. But last week I started thinking of it a bit differently. I looked at the faces of the little kids chasing after our truck as we drove by, hands waving wildly, bright smiling faces, and thought, they don’t mean any harm. Somehow they are filled with extreme joy every time we cross their path. It doesn’t matter if we walk or drive by 50 times in one day. As soon as they see us, they call out to us, “Nassara, nassara” (white man, white man) and laugh and wave, and they won’t stop until you wave back or at least throw a smile their way. For a while, I couldn’t understand how we could possibly be so interesting every single time. Won’t we eventually get boring? So then everything changed.

Now I think of myself as a celebrity. I am your favorite movie star walking down Hollywood Boulevard. Rob is your heartthrob of the silver screen. Hey, what the heck, our team is the whole cast of Friends! And you just saw us walking past you on the street! Aren’t you going to say hi? Think about it, we are different, we are seen as having tons of money (at least in comparison to them), we are a novelty, they wonder what our lives are like behind those “mansion” doors. No one actually knows our real name, so instead they yell out, “Nassara!” just like we might yellow out “Rachel!” instead of “Jennifer Aniston”. It makes the walks and rides oh so much more pleasurable. Now, instead of being annoyed by the constant attention from the onlookers, being annoyed at looking different and not fitting in, having to wave to every person we pass on the street; now I think, I am a celebrity, and I owe it to my fans! I wave with pride (they love me!), give the biggest smiles to the shyest and littlest ones on the side of the road, just to see their big grin appear. I stop in front of my gate, before opening the door to greet each one of the fans who have been anxiously waiting outside the door just waiting for the “Nassara” to come home. I gladly wear my head covering and clothes that they can respect so that I don’t lose favor in the eyes of my loyal fans. You have to be a good influence for the youngsters, you know?
This comparison gets even funnier as the days go by and I find new ways to identify myself as a celebrity (so much nicer than being annoyed all the time by the “lack of privacy”. On Friday night, Rob took me on a date to “Porte Mayo”. Porte Mayo is a nice little hotel here in town that is made up of several little bungalows, with a giant courtyard, beautifully decorated in “African Jungle” style with grass huts, hanging lanterns, African print tablecloths and bamboo furniture. It would certainly fly as an upscale romantic restaurant in the states if they would throw in a little AC! Owned by a Frenchman, the food is delicious (and no doubt imported, since I had pork on my pizza!). We were amazed as we sat there at this great little find in the middle of a small African town, eating delicious food and enjoying the stars (and Norah Jones playing over the speakers), that almost every patron at the restaurant was white! Maybe not that amazing to you, but when you are the minority the whole day long every day, it is a bizarre sight to be sitting at a restaurant with all white people. Now, any one of you who saw this restaurant would call it “cute” “quaint” “authenticly African”, but let me tell you, sitting there that night, I felt my “celebrity status” more than ever. This must be what it is like to be a star: dining at the finest restaurants, owning the nicest cars, being adored by your fans. Lovely! Who said it’s so bad being a missionary! …Now if only we could speak their language…

Week 2

It’s a nice Saturday morning here in Meskine. The sun is covered at the moment by a cloud cover. Very nice as it’s nearing the hot part of the day. We are extremely excited because, thanks I’m sure to many prayers, the electricity came back on after 4 days of hot, powerless days and nights, and it came on earlier than expected! That is somewhat unheard of around here. People had been saying to not expect it back on for possibly weeks. While we did end up having to throw out a lot of rotting food from the refrigerator, we were also able to salvage a lot.

Yesterday afternoon, after Arabic tutoring, the Carters and we decided that we needed something fun to look forward to at night, since we knew there’d still be no electricity, it would be hot and we weren’t sure what we’d eat for dinner. So, I suggested that I try and make a yummy dessert and we’d watch a movie on one of computers whose battery was still fully charged. It definitely worked out great. Despite the lack of electricity and refrigeration, I was able to come home and re-heat some leftovers that I’d been storing in the hospital’s freezer (shredded beef tacos), make tortillas (actually rob made them this time and they were fabulous!), and I found a recipe for pineapple upside down cake in the Wycliffe cookbook, and I had all the ingredients! All of it turned out deliciously…of course, we had to go through about 5 eggs before we found 2 that were not rotten, but in the end the cake was delicious. I thought it was funny as we sat with our measly little solar bulb, in the middle of West Africa munching down on tacos and pineapple upside down cake, and watching “We are Marshall”. It’s amazing what you can accomplish (and how God provides good things for us) It got even better when suddenly in the middle of the movie all the lights came on in the whole house and the fans started whirring and fridge light came on! We were all cheering! We couldn’t believe that it had come on. We turned some lights on just for the sake of having the light again, shut the fridge and freezer doors to start trapping some cool, put the leftovers from that dinner, which were going to be thrown out, into the freezer. It was great! We finished watching our movie with nice air blowing all around us from the fans.

We also had a fun afternoon at Madeleine’s house. Our house helper had asked me the other day when we were going to come visit her and I said, “How about Friday?” So, after we left the hospital from tutoring, we started on the 30 minute walk back towards our house. Being 2:30 in the afternoon, you can imagine it was quite toasty out, and there is a large portion of the walk that cuts through a dried up field, thus there are no trees and you walk through direct sun for about 10 minutes. Luckily, I had my white head covering on, and had remembered to soak it in water before we left, so it kept me pretty cool. Well, despite the detailed directions she had given us (“about half-way through the field, when you see the big tree that is buy a big burn pile, then turn right, you will see a metal corrugated steel door, go in there and that is our house…right!), we were unable to locate her house. We stopped and asked people if they knew her and where she lived, but they didn’t, in fact they didn’t really even know what we were asking because they didn’t really speak French. We greeted them in Fulfulde first and then they would just keep answering us in Fulfulde as well, even though we were speaking French, it was great fun. In the end, the answer was that they didn’t know who she was. Finally, I found some shade to wait in while Rob retraced our steps to see if he could find her. Eventually, she found him, they came and got me, and we made it to her house, about 45 minutes late. But that’s Africa time, right? We had a great time sitting and talking with Madeleine and Musa (her husband) in their house. Musa is a nurse at the Meskine hospital here. It was actually a very nice house for African standards. It was built out of mud bricks, with curtains in the windows and doorways. It was very clean with big plastic woven mats on the floor and plastic patio chairs to sit in. One of the rooms in the house was full to the ceiling with onions. The women stockpile them during the hot season, and then sell them for a lot during the rainy season when they aren’t as prevalent. So they store them in their homes. We met their four children; three girls and one boy…they said they are still hoping for 8 more and thought it extremely hilarious and unbelievable that Rob and I both came from a family of “only one other child!” I’d never seen them laugh so hard. It was a nice time and it was actually cooler in their house than it was in ours once we got home. I guess they’re better at planning out their homes for the best breezes.

I had asked another missionary who has worked here for a long time, how we should properly take our leave when we were ready to go. We found out that we needed to say that we needed to go, and then sit and talk for about 20 more minutes. I was glad that we asked, and it worked like a charm. We said we needed to go and nobody budged. In fact, we started a brand new topic of conversation. After a while, we announced that we were leaving. I gave them a giant ripe avocado as a gift, and I think they really liked it (she told me avocados are her favorite “fruit”, but to buy just one avocado, would be about 1 days wages for her, as she would have to take a taxi into the town, and then the avocado itself is what she gets paid for about 2 hours of work). Musa and Madeleine then proceeded to walk us out of their yard and they kept walking with us. Apparently, they told us that it is polite to walk your guests halfway home, and that they did. It was kind of nice because they knew everyone that we passed on the way and stopped and said hi, and introduced us to some. For the first time walking down the road, people (children) weren’t yelling (white man, white man!) at us, we finally fit in a little, because we were walking with some insiders. It was a nice feeling (see, we’re normal, we have friends just like you!).

Time to go prepare some lunch. We’re meeting up with Carters in a bit to go refill our fridges with some mangos and bananas for the weekend, to go search for an alleged ice cream shop in Maroua, and to check some email at the hospital. They’re going on a date tonight, so we are going to have fun playing with Ben (and seeing if we can find the French National Soccer Championship game on the short-wave radio!!)

(the pictures are [top to bottom]: homemade vanilla ice cream that was a welcome success!, a picture outside our window of the sandstorm last week, Karen washing veggies the first week we were here.)

Official First Week

It’s officially one week today that we have been in Meskine. It seems amazingly longer than that! Right now I’m sitting at my dining table. All the curtains in the house are closed right now, because although it is only 88 this morning (a new low!), it feels like it’s 100 because of the humidity today. Cameroon is different than where we will be in Chad, because it’s a bit more tropical. The sun was pouring in when we woke up, meaning the alarm that was still to wake us up, was a bit useless. We rushed around the house closing up the curtains to block out the blazing sun, and started a pot of oatmeal. We haven’t yet found a good cold alternative to our normal breakfast choice. I suggested frozen oat pops, but Rob didn’t go for that. My house helper, Madeleine knocked on the front gate around 8:10am. We scurried around the house trying to find our clothes (to them, wearing shorts and a tank top is like walking around in our underwear.). We greeted each other, and she started on all the dishes from yesterday. A big help here, where we basically have to wash all of the dishes three times in order to sterilize them. Today she will also wash our laundry for me an cut up all the veggies for dinner. Usually people have the house helpers cook all their meals, but for now, I love cooking so much, I am just letting her prepare all the food and then I will cook it.

I’m sure it seems very weird to hear about having a helper in the house, but it’s actually very necessary here. The days before I had her, I spent the entire day either cooking, cleaning, sterilizing, disinfecting, etc. This left no time to actually do the work that we are here to do. This way, we are able to study our Arabic books, go to tutoring lessons and meet people in the village with whom we can speak Arabic. We are so thankful to have this help. It is also nice just to have someone around to talk to in the mornings and to teach us a few Fulfulde phrases that we can use with the village children and people we pass on the streets. “Jam Jam” is the new phrase that we learned today. It basically means both “how are you doing?” and “I’m doing fine”. (Similar to the French “ca va?”.).

So now, after giving all the instructions to Madeleine, we are preparing for the 30 minute walk over to the hospital compound. There we will send some email (and post this blog!), and meet Habiba, the Arabic language tutor. Then we will try to bum a ride home from someone so we can eat lunch before the heat of the day. We’re having shredded beef tacos! I made them last night, even the tortillas! Forget store bought, these things were yummy! We also made some great guacamole from the avocado that Jane bought us on Saturday. Well, off to work! Enjoy the AC for us!

My Afternoon in Meskine

After several hours at a hotel pool in nearby Maroua, with friends from the hospital, a great meal of beef kebabs and french fries for me and Tilapia kebabs and plantains for Rob, a nice cold orange Fanta (soda), and a bit of a break from the sweltering heat, the afternoon changed pace. Sheltered from our normal daily routine and the busy crowded streets of Maroua, we reluctantly pulled ourselves from the cool blue pool, changed out of our would be “revealing” bathing suits and into skirts that sweep the top of our dusty sandals, a t-shirt, hot from the sun, and wrap up our hair and heads to be properly covered. It’s amazing how quickly the coolness of the pool faded away. We gathered our things, payed for our stay, and opened the doors to the outside world. Motorbikes rushed by, all sorts of sounds and languages that I didn’t understand whisked around me. We got into the steamy truck and bounced along down the street. We had a few stops to make before we headed home. No big deal, I thought, it has been such a nice cool and relaxing day. The first stop left us on the side of a very loud and crowded market. Rob negotiated the prices of three trash bins with people who knew only broken French (they speak the local language, Fulfulde, in the markets). After about 20 minutes. Success, three dusty trash cans with lids (important!) got placed next to me in the back of the truck. While waiting for Rob, Rachael and I had hopped out and gone into a bakery (boulangerie) to look for some bread so we wouldn’t have to bake any that night. After surveying the large mass of flies that had taken up residents on the baguettes we decided that we weren’t really craving bread anymore. So our journey continued. Bouncing along, honking at passing goats, zooming around motorbikes. Stop! Rachael spotted a food store, the kind that might sell flour. I had purchased flour the day before only to find out that even after sifting it, it still had some mysterious brown specs all throughout. So, we entered the store, which was probably nearing 100 degrees inside. Some great finds! We got two kilos (4lbs.) of flour (I tried to peek in and check for the mysterious brown specs, but wasn’t given the privilege), a small notebook, tomato paste, a bottle of imported vanilla (from France), and a bottle of very dusty shampoo. As we stood to pay, not realizing that Rachael understood Arabic, the lady next to us commented to her friend that we were very rich (we were paying with the equivalent of a $10 bill).
Back in the truck and off to drop off some mail at a friend’s house in town. Not being on the main paved road, we bounced along a bit slower and a bit bouncier to get to their place. At the end, they weren’t there, but we left the mail with the guards. By the time we waited in the hot car to see if our friends were there, said goodbye to the guards, and got back to the paved road, I thought about how nice it would be to have been magically transported from the cool pool to my couch…Maybe next century! We stopped at the hospital compound (yeah, still driving, this is now back in Meskine, the suburb where we live, no paved roads here…lots of bouncing). We were stopping here to pick up a bag of beef that Roy and Jane, a British doctor and his wife, had picked up for me at the market that morning. You have to buy the meat in the morning so that it hasn’t sat out in the sun all day long. The meat market in Meskine is only open once a week and I had come in after it, so this meat delivery was very much appreciated. We bounced along home and unloaded all our goods. Memories from the cool clean pool had long faded. Children gathered all around as the “nasara” (the white people) unloaded their strange goods from the car. They attempted to talk to us, but we don’t their language. I just shrugged my shoulders, said “How are you?” in French and we entered our gates. Ah, home.
I opened the bag of meat, which turned out to be meat, veggies and fruit! I was ecstatic. I hadn’t bought any fresh produce since I’d been here, so I’d been rationing our canned green beans and corn until market day in Meskine. But here in my hands I had things I didn’t even know you could buy here: Green Peppers, Leaks, Carrots, Green Beans, Potatoes, Bananas, tomatoes, cabbage and what…an avocado!!! I was jumping around the house! Rob, I’m going to make us a real meal tonight! Not just bread and jam with canned green beans! Then the real fun began. Oh yes, I need to wash the produce before I put it away. The process: Fill a bin with well water and dish soap, scrub each veggie to get of dirt and any critters (I didn’t find any this time!). Then transfer the produce to a clean bucket that I filled with 1 gallon of filtered water and a capful of bleach. These need to soak for at least 20 minutes. The cabbage didn’t fit, so I had to put it in its own bucket. Sadly, though, we ran out of filtered water after filling up the cabbage bucket about half way…hmmm, this isn’t good. Well, I’ll just flip it over and soak it for 40 minutes…that’s okay, right? Oh, and is it okay that the peppers are floating and not actually submerged? Like I know!?
Well, it’s getting late, so I need to start dinner. Rob goes outside to see if the well tank has dried up but the ladder is missing. Eventually he finds out that there is still water, it’s just the filter that has dried up and we have to wait for it to refill until tomorrow. Dinner was going to be Tuna Casserole. Although I had decided I wouldn’t bake it because it was 95 degrees in the kitchen and the thought of raising the temp via the oven to 350 was not appealing. I open the can of tuna, Rob chops the onions. Oh, there’s no pan left for me to use, we haven’t washed them from breakfast…That’s a process to (washing, filtered water, boiling, I won’t go into details). Okay, a clean pot! Now, I need some milk for the recipe. Oh, no milk. But here’s milk powder! Three spoonfuls to one glass? Okay…alright, now what? Finally, the recipe is finished. I planned to have leftover green beans for dinner, but they were in the fridge. With no microwave, I needed to heat them on the stove, but I had no will left. So we sat down with sort-of tuna casserole and cold green beans. We washed it down with our malaria medicine that we had forgotten to take at lunch. We sat looking at each other at dinner…I guess we still have to rinse the bleached veggies, but there’s no filtered water. We decided to use our drinking water from the fridge, because the veggies couldn’t sit out all night, and hoped the filter would refill by morning.
At 10 o’clock, after all the cleaning, spraying the ants that had surrounded the food trash bin, watching an episode of Cosby on the computer, turned off all the fans, killed a roach, 2 crickets and a centipede, the thermometer said 92, and I crawled underneath the mosquito net of our bed, and closed my eyes…dreaming of that far away time when I was laying in the pool…ah!