La sobre et la sotte (the wise girl and her idiot sister)
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 11/Aug/2010 12:11, 34 days ago
“My sister’s coming to visit me in Cameroon in September” I told the Sultan of Pouss in June.“Excellent,” he replied. “My son rang me up today to tell me he is thinking of looking for a wife. He can marry your sister.”“My sister’s coming to visit me in September” I told a group of teachers.“Can you tell her that I am willing to marry her,” said the headmaster of one of my schools. “Make sure she knows I am a headmaster.”“My sister’s coming here in September,” I told a couple of friends in the market.“I am a very great mechanic and I am looking for a white wife,” one of them told me. “Can I marry her?”The only person who was disappointed by my news wasmy friend the baker, who would much rather meet my brother (who is also nineteen and also loves films).“Tell your sister that although I will be nice to her when she comes, if your brother had come I would have taken him on a weekend trip to my village on a motorbike,” he told me.My sister Imogen (illustrator and lexicographer extraordinaire) is coming to Cameroon for a visit, in no small parts thanks toLizzy Gurevitch’smega-efforts to make sure she had a letter of invitation from two NGOs and the police so she could get a visa (if anyone tells you Cameroon is a tourist friendly country they are lying through their teeth).Below you can see Imogen’s illustrations of one of the stories written for ourtraditional story competition. The story is my translation of Goggo Abouhar’s orginal- Goggo is about ten years old and is in year four at Maga primary school.ReadLa Sobre et la Sotte (the story)