4 more images evoked by the word“restaurant”
on Notes from Quite Far (Cameroon), 28/Feb/2009 11:09, 34 days ago
1. Elegant décor2. Maybe the odd candle3. Smart waiters bustling about4. Food. From a menu.Today we went to the Cockatier, and if you're as childish as me you'll find that funny. Normally the place makes its money as a bar (selling, like all bars, 2 types of beer, 4 types of pop, and possibly whiskey in sachets) but it occasionally ventures into doing food, given 2 days’ warning. Tables are outside on the sand under straw shelters. And our smart waiter? He was about 14, wearing a ripped shell suit, and at no point, by any stretch of the imagination, did he bustle. Two types of meal had been prepared - goat offal soup and cow offal soup - and the dishes were distributed completely at random, so we didn’t choose so much as guess what we were eating. I got cow. Hoof, and other non-identifiable body parts. Sludgy, fatty, white nondescript globules of who-knows-what, full of sand, in a runny brown liquid with a dishwater aftertaste. (This is not just food…)Frankly, I can say with absolute confidence that today’s meal was the least pleasant thing I’ve ever eaten on purpose.But there are people starving in Africa. And if that fact is enough to guilt-trip you into eating soggy mash back in England, imagine what it’s like when you’re actuallyinAfrica. Plus, according to Mamoudou in Yaounde, a meal is like a gift. If you don’t want to insult anyone, you have to eat it. (The meal that is. I don’t want you thinking Cameroonians go around eating gifts.) Luckily my parents, and the dinner ladies at Lambwath Primary, taught me to eat things even if I didn’t like the idea (or indeed, the taste) of them. Where I’ve written “teaching”, some people may prefer to substitute the identical word “forcing”. It’s your call. At any rate, I learned a trick at Lambwath for situations like this: Pretend you’re eating pizza. Pretend it’s the nicest pizza ever, and don’t look up until your plate is clean. Works every time. You may feel a little ill afterwards but that’s okay, it’s a small price to pay to get the dinner ladies off your back. (Or in this more recent grown-up case, not offend anyone.) So, back to the restaurant, and having forced down my cow offal pizza, followed by an awful lot of grapefruit pop, I allowed myself to look up.And what did I see? Satisfied smiles? Full bellies? Er… Try 23 disgruntled Cameroonians, grimacing and pushing offal round a plate. Comments were flying around such as “What are you trying to do, poison us?” “I’d swear she fished this stuff out of the bin” and “My dog wouldn’t eat this crap”. Further criticisms pertained to the woman’s marital status. In Cameroon, a man is entitled to send his wife back if she can’t cook. He forfeits whatever “bride price” he paid for her, but at least he doesn’t have to eat her food. It’s pretty much the biggest insult you can pay a woman and reduces her social standing. So lots of the comments implied that this should, would, or already did happen to the cook in question. Basically, the general and quite forcefully expressed consensus was that this was a rubbish meal. And then I heard my name at the start of a sentence. And that sentence went like this: “Elizabeth, you have already eaten your food.” It was Mme Fongang, studying, in turn, me and my empty plate, and she did not look impressed.I replied“Yes I have”, feeling a bit embarrassed.Mme Fongang: But it’s horrible!Did you like it? (said with an incredulous and disdainful look)I didn’t know how to respond to this. To say I liked the food would definitely go against the grain, and make me look odd. It would also be a lie. But to say I didn’t like it would make me look like someone who goes around eating food they don’t like, and therefore odd. It’s catch 22. Should I explain about the pizza trick? The starving Africans? My fear of dinner ladies?I settled on“I’ve never eaten hoof before and I thought it would be different” Not exactly a lie so far as I’m aware, and it conveniently sidesteps the question of whether I think the food is horrible.Mme Fongang: But don’t you think the food is horrible?Damn.Me: YesWhat happened to a meal being like a gift? (Mamoudou you have a lot to answer for.)Had it been a restaurant back home the waiter would have turned up to ask if we were enjoying our meal, and we would have replied in unison that it was lovely. However, it wasn’t a restaurant back home, and the waiter wasn’t remotely interested in our dining experience. To be fair, neither are most English waiters, but at least they have the decency to fake it. His lack of feigned concern didn’t stop him getting a tirade of abuse from everyone present, however, andI couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, despite his churlish refusal to bustle.Here we all are, looking decidedly chirpy. Little did we know…But today wasn’t really about restaurants. Or offal. Today we were at the sport stadium. Today was National Youth Day. The day the whole of Cameroon has had another 3 days off school for. A day to celebrate the nation’s young people in general, and their ability to march in particular. It started, as most things do, with the raising of the flag and the singing of the national anthem. There followed a recorded speech by Cameroon’s leader Paul Biya. It was an optimistic message explaining all the developments taking place in Cameroon right now, particularly the new facilities in all the schools. (We arelooking forward to seeing those.) After that there were dance competitions, then wrestling competitions, between the schools, and then every school and club in the entire Yagoua district marched past the stands. They looked dazzling in their bright, clean uniforms, and they had clearly been practising marching. A lot. The spectators would applaud if a school was particularly good at marching, and remained politely silent if it wasn’t. I’m proud to say the ENIEG got an impressive 5 rounds of applause. Grahame took a picture of some majorettes who were wearing outfits with Paul Biya’s face printed onto them. In the background you can make out a local school.More pictures of Youth Day.The ENIEG marched brilliantly. They won a marching prize.(Reservoir Dogs, the musical…)This school was quite good at marchingThe students are good, patriotic students who have made their school and their families proud.These children were really rubbish at marching.Their eyes have been obscured to protect their identity.As an ENIEG teacher, I got to sit in the stands, on a chair with my name on it. I didn’t realise this til after the ceremonies were over, however, and instead sat at the back squeezed up on a bench. Looking at the seating labels later, I saw that I would have been in front of a man who used to rank highly in the army, and who has since gone insane. He still gets invited to things,due to his high rank, but people do their best to ignore him when he’s there, due to his insanity. It’s a system that seems to work.Other people in the stands were ENIEG bosses, local politicians and people wandering round wearing“protocol” badges, telling people where to sit and wiping their seats clean with tissues. (I used the word “seats” instead of “chairs” due to the ambiguity inherent in the word “seats”. Can’t seem to make a proper joke out of it, though. What a waste.)And that’s it for National Youth Day. If I was better at writing, and this was a book, I’d remember that from your perspective it’s probably more interesting to read about a national day full of festivities than about a crap meal in a restaurant. But I’m not and it’s not, and I’ve been to so many ceremonies I don’t want to write about them any more. On the other hand, the last time I had hoof in a restaurant was - well, probably McDonalds at Christmas. But you get my point.