4 more helpful translations
on Notes from Quite Far (Cameroon), 03/Dec/2009 17:51, 34 days ago
“J’arrive.”Should mean“I’m on my way” Actually means: “Don’t hold your breath”08h00.Should mean 08:00. Actually means: somewhere between 9 and 11. Possibly later. At any rate, before midday most probably.“On va faire comment?”.Should mean:“What shall we do (about this situation)?” Actually means: “I will require money”.“Ça ne va pas durer.”Should mean :“It won’t take long.” Actually means: “Don’t hold your breath.”Things have dried up a bit recently– both climate-wise and blog-wise. On the weather front, we’ve seen the last of the rain, and I’m unlikely to see the stuff again before I get back to the UK next summer. On the blog-front, I’ve been travelling around more than ever. To say it’s been a whirlwind is both a cliché and an exaggeration. However I like both clichés and exaggeration.So yeah, it’s been a real whirlwind.Some highlights:There was a 5-hour bus journey to Maroua spent sitting next to a“fou” (definition: man with senile dementia; loony). He was completely fixated with me throughout the journey. Each time I fell asleep he would nudge me awake, press his hands together and put them to the side of his head in order to demonstrate to me that I had just been sleeping. When I handedhim a stick of bread, he ate half and proceeded to tear the rest into pieces and share it with his fellow passengers – myself included. Nothing about this man suggested that he was overly concerned with personal hygiene, and so while the people around him accepted his kind offer, none of them actually ate it. Later we stopped at a roadblock where I bought a bag of peanuts through the bus window. Peanuts, I reasoned, come in shells. Therefore, if I give the guy a bag of peanuts and he gives me some back, they will still be edible. So this is what I did. And what he did was sit shelling thembefore giving them back to me. I tried unsuccessfully to hide them, for some reason believing that a man with no obvious grip on reality might get offended if I didn’t eat the food which I myself had offered to him. But I needn’t have worried. He was quite happy to spend the next hour shelling peanuts and putting them straight into my bag.There was Tabaski, the sheep festival in which each family slaughters a sheep or a goat and has a feast. Having spent Tabaski last year on a bus, I was resolved to stay in Yagoua this year and visit my neighbours, as is the custom. However, having been called to a last-minute conference in Maroua I ended up spending the weekend either in meetings, at volunteers’ houses, or indeed, on a bus. Grahame and Bronwyn stayed in Yagoua. They visited several people, who all fed them goat.There was a recent training day in Yagoua, which was disturbed intermittently by:· children crowding round the door in order to shout “nassara” or “Eliza” or “Grahame” or “Hokkam nogass” (Give me 20p).· another “fou” who walked into the classroom muttering to himself in a language no-one could understand;· a deaf-mute man wondering if we’d like to buy something;· a violent fight between two of the teachers. I kid you not.There was a birthday party in a remote village called Manguirla. 20 of us travelled there for an hour over dirt roads on the back of a pick-up truck. It’s a beautiful village complete with hills, valleys, orange groves, and a sorcerer who will tell your fortune for 50p by dropping a handful of rocks and seeing where they fall.Finally there was a training day in an even more remote village called Roua. Two and a half hours over rocky tracks this time, on the back of a motorbike. Roua, like Manguirla, is exceptionally pretty and has no electricity or running water. Both villages, being so remote, boast the most amazing night skies I have seen in my life. Nothing I could write here could do justice to the experience, so I’m not even going to try. Roua doesn’t have anything so interesting as orange groves or a sorcerer. It does, however, have thousands of mosquitoes who like to hang out by the outdoor hole-in-the-ground-style toilet, hoping for visitors.I have come to the conclusion that I really have it quite cushy here in Yagoua.