4 more things Cameroonian men say when they’re chatting up a white woman
on Notes from Quite Far (Cameroon), 13/Jul/2010 16:56, 34 days ago
I’m friends with lots of white people – I’m good friends with (name of white person), do you know him/her?My brother married a French/Canadian/American etc woman. He lives there now. (NB“brother” can mean anything from “has the same mum and dad as I do” to “met a friend of mine once in a bar”)I earn 10 million CFA a month (around 10K sterling)What’s your number? I just want to keep in touch that’s all.On Friday evening, at about 5:30, I got chatted up under the most unusual circumstances of my life so far. First, the guy in question used asking for condoms as a pretext for talking to me, which is an interesting angle. Second, he was under 4ft tall, so that was also a first. Third, he asked me a lot of awkwardly graphic questions about femidoms. Fourth, he was very drunk (ok not so unusual, but at 5pm in my office?). And fifth, he was quite possibly the most persistent man I’ve ever encountered. He spent over 30 minutes doing his spiel – I’ve been to France, my brother married a French girl, give me your number, I earn 60k a year (as above)… He was very pushy and in the end I insisted he leave. However, he refused point blank to go anywhere unless I promised tohave a drink with him, and I ended up so exasperated that I left the office myself and started to lock him in. At this point he panicked slightly and relented and so I opened the door and let him go. (This was lucky since I was bluffing and had no clue what I was going to do next). His parting words to me were a very cheerful “Ok so I’ll see you here next week then”.Perhaps I should have been a lot less polite from the beginning, I don’t know. I’ve been told many times by now that white women are extremely snooty and rude. They don’t say hello, they don’t answer your questions if you talk to them, etc. I invariably apologise on behalf of white women everywhere and promise to put it on the agenda at our next big meeting. However I’m becoming ever more the snooty white woman myself, because about nine out of ten conversations I engage in with men escalate within minutes from “what’s your name and where are you from?” to “I want to live in England and what’s your number?” (via “I’ve been to France, I’m friends with Americans, I have lots of money”). In order to avoid both the “give me your number” conversation and accusations of snootiness, I have begun to employ what I call “dialogue avoidance tactics”. Techniques include: talking to an imaginary person on the telephone; pretending I’ve suddenly remembered I’m late for something; pretending I can’t speak French; and (my favourite) pretending to be asleep. My record for pretending to be asleep was four hours, on a bus from Yagoua, which I think is quite impressive.(Although to digress slightly, a friend of a friend pretended to be asleep on a train in the UK in order to avoid paying his fare. Unfortunately for him, the train guard wasn’t the least bit shy and started prodding him. He carried on pretending, the train guard prodded him ever harder, the whole thing went too far and the train guard ended up calling an ambulance. I think the “pretending to be asleep” prize has to go to him.)I left at dusk - when the adolescent males would be busy praying. When it’s not prayer time, they tend to shout “darling” a lot, make kissing noises, and ask me if I want them to “accompany” me. I wonder whether that approach has ever worked for them. (“Oy white woman, sweetheart, do you want me to come with you?” “Oooh yes please that would be splendid.”) Going home during prayer was quieter, although while the men are away, the small boys will play. (Cat-calls from a 20-yr-old are one thing. Cat-calls from an 8-yr old are quite another.) They were just little, innocent boys parroting their older role models of course. But that in itself is quite sad really.All of which serves to illustrate that there’s quite a lot of sexism here in the Far North.I do love it here, but it doesn’t hurt to highlight a few problems now and then.I should add for balance that the UK is not a paradise of equality and mutual respect either. But there comes a moment when you have to admit the problem is a bit more endemic over here. For me that moment came when I locked a tiny over-zealous man in my office and then a group of little boys made kissy noises at me and told me I was pretty.Frankly I don’t know what the answer is. Other than teaching all the women to kick-box, I’m out of ideas.I suppose one last thing to say is that sexism used to be a much bigger problem in the UK too, and a lot of women not so long ago had to battle extremely hard so that their daughters and granddaughters (me included) wouldn’t have to put up with it. And the more I understand what it feels like to be a woman in an oppressively sexist environment, the more I appreciate what those women did, and the more grateful I am to them.Right, that's quite enough of that. I’m off to wax my legs and put my corset on.