Bake a Cameroonian event in twenty easy steps
on Tales from a Mud Hut (Cameroon), 10/Mar/2009 14:51, 34 days ago
1. Take one apparently simple idea and spread across a group of colleagues. For example: a human rights letter-writing contest for high school students, with a prize-giving ceremony where the winning letters are honoured before being sent to the authorities.2. Sprinkle colleagues liberally across Maroua, contest rules in hand, to speak to school directors and large, intimidating classes of teenagers.3. Choose a day by which your event shall be ready. Change the date a minimum of three times.4. Prepare the different layers of your event: a speech for the President (he cannot be expected to write it himself); awareness-raising talks and activities; a theatre group; an ensemble of young men who claim to be able to rap; a group of girl dancers who cannot be more than fifteen but who dance as if they were on stage at Spearmint Rhino.5. Scour the city in search of prizes, using liberal amounts of emotional blackmail.6. Pour in a large bottle of logistical problems: chairs, lighting, sound systems, refreshments, security, scheduling etc. Mix well until nobody is quite sure of what he or she is supposed to be doing.7. Request permission from the sous-préfet well in advance of the event.8. At midday on the day of the event, receive notice from the sous-préfet that the event cannot possibly take place as high school students (most of whom are over twenty, despite what their ID cards say) should not be allowed out after 6pm, when your event is scheduled to commence.9. Organise the event for a different day/time, return to the sous-préfet and receive a lecture on how better to do your job. Resist the urge to smack the sneering, whiny, backstabbing, hypocritical little bureaucrat in his sneering, ugly little face by staring fixedly at the photo of Paul Biya (taken at least twenty-five years ago) framed on the wall beside him.10. Submit seven copies of each required form to the sous-préfet’s office, only to be told that the form (of which you were given a hard, not an electronic, copy) ought to have been typed. Laboriously copy the entire form into a Word document, taking care to use the same font and spacing between lines. Argue with colleagues over whether the slightly faded letter in the corner of the original form is a C or an O.11. Call the DJ to make sure the sound equipment is ready and working. Receive assurances that it is.12. Prepare your inspirational, educational speech to the high-school students. Adjust the speech when a Cameroonian colleague informs you that your welcoming words to the invited authorities are in the wrong order– it’s the délégué and then the proviseur, duh.13. Arrive on the day of the event to find that none of the authorities have shown up and the microphone isn’t working. Send colleagues on fruitless expedition to locate operational microphones.14. Bake high school students in forty-degree heat for two hours while microphones are sought. Resign yourself finally to the fact that you will simply have to shout.15. Cringe in horror as the President reads out his opening speech in a barely audible whisper with his back to the audience.16. Improvise an entirely new schedule on the spot to account for missing microphone. Cue much chair swivelling, self-consciously over-enunciated speeches, and the sound of“what should we do next?” echoing across the compound at the end of each activity.17. Dazzle high school students with succession of sketch shows, dance troupes and games, originally intended as awareness raising activities but now serving the higher purpose of distracting students from the heat, the lack of refreshments and the fact that prizes have yet to be given or even mentioned.18. When presenting inspirational, educational speech to increasingly apathetic high school students, try to ignore the fact that the local drunk, who has somehow slipped past security, is busily constructing a fort behind you out of tables used in the game show.19. Due to lack of genuine authorities, when awarding prizes, pounce upon random members of the audience, give them inflated titles and insist that they hand out awards instead.20. As the ceremony draws to a close, flee with the high school students to ensure that you will not be part of the clearing-up committee. Congratulate yourself on an event well organised and pray that you will never have to organise another.