Ugly fabric, stilted slogans, and a haphazard parade- it could only be a Cameroonian fete…
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 17/Oct/2010 08:56, 34 days ago
The first of two crucial mistakes I made at the fete for international teachers day on the 5thOctober was turning up half an hour late. There is a finely attuned Cameroonian art to knowing how late one should be for a certain occasion, and in this case I’d completely misjudged. When I arrived there was no one there except for the organising committee, who were still setting up chairs. If I’d come one and a half hours late I would have been just on time. Conversely, when I turned up ten minutes late to a teacher training last week I found everyone already hard at work.My second crucial mistake was wearing wellies (under my best dress, for the occasion). Despite the fact that it had rained the night before and I’d had to wade through mud to get to the parade ground it turned out that everyone else was wearing polished leather shoes. Shoes are very important in Cameroon and the Inspector thought my wellies (with stars on, imported from England) were hilarious, and lost no time in pointing them out to allthe invited guests.Teachers line up in their outfits to sing the national anthemI also hadn’t got myself an outfit made in teachers’ day fabric. My official excuse for this was ‘I’m not a teacher, I’m a co-ordinator’, but actually despite giving in forwomen’s day last yearI couldn’t quite bring myself to dress up from head to toe in the official festival fabric. This was covered in little blackboards with writing on saying ‘No to corruption, No to drugs, No to alcoholism, No to smoking, No to HIV/AIDS’ interspersed with ‘Teaching is a vocation, an engagement, not a simple job’.I was conducted to a seat of honour on the tribune platform to watch the festivities, where I was the only woman and where everyone could see my wellies (I was trying to get the mud off them without anyone noticing). After the teachers had sung the national anthem and the deputy head of the lycee had treated us to an excruciating song about corruption they all lined up to parade past the dignitaries.As they lined up a slight drizzle started to fall, and by the time they’d walked past two minutes later it had developed into a fully fledged rainstorm. The parade ended abruptly with the teachers breaking out of line and sprinting for shelter, those who lived nearby running home and the others running to the covered tribune. The party that night almost ended just assuddenly when the generator stopped working (there has been no electricity in Maga for a really long time). We all sat in the dark for an hour until it was fixed, and then carried on with the party.The mothers association of Sirlawe doing a crop planting danceTeachers’ day was far surpassed by the ‘international day of the rural woman’ which we celebrated last week (Cameroonians take official daysveryseriously). Two of my mothers groups were chosen to host the event as the most active women’s groups in the area and a car full of dignitaries descended on the tiny hamlet of Simatou for the occasion. About four hundred people, including all the village elders, turned out to watch as the women gave speeches about their work, danced whilst waving their mattocks and balancing platters ofcrops on their heads and gave a demonstration of their new literacy skills (VSO funded a series of classes).For women to take centre stage in a conservative community like Simatou is new, and it’s exciting to see them get praise and recognition for their work from the male elites. In their speeches they said what they wanted most in the coming year was more money for literacy classes and funding for fertilisers for the rice fields they’re growing to raise income from the school. The women of Sirlawe have even reserved a part of their rice fields to be worked by the schoolgirls so they can earn money to buy themselves schoolbooks.And one of the best bits about the‘day of the rural woman’? We didn’t organise it far enough in advance for anyone to have time to order the official fabric. The women of Simatou show off their new literacy skills