Commercialism, food and religion; Christmas in Cameroon
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 27/Dec/2010 09:12, 34 days ago
I'm currently spending my Christmas holidays in the South of Cameroon, splitting my time between volunteer and Cameroonian friends. I'm also using an old computer in a little shack by the sea, and I can't find all the punctuation marks. A couple of days before I left I went to Pouss to say an early happy new year to the Sultan and his wives and Dandalou and Mamah Tchiti (wives two and three) took the opportunity to interrogate me about my Christmas plans.'What have you bought?' was the first question. Despite being Muslim they have a lot of Christian neighbours, so they know what behaviour is expected at Christmas time.'Nothing.''You haven't bought yourself a piece of cloth to have a new outfit made?''No.''And you haven't bought yourself new shoes?''No, I'm going to be on the beach so I'll wear my flipflops.'By this point everyone is looking at me in horror.They try asking about food.'So what cakes have you made?''I have made no cakes. I don't know how make cakes on my gas stove.'Highly shocked and very amused by my unorthodox Christmas plans Mamah Tchiti tells me that I am very strange, 'You don't buy new clothes, you don't buy new shoes, but you waste your money on travelling!''So what should I spend my money on?''Pans, of course,' she tells me. When a woman in the Extreme North gets married her new husband and her friends buy her hundreds of pans which she then keeps in huge stacks in a special wall sized cupboard in her bedroom (the first time I went into a neighbour's bedroom I asked if she owned a pan shop!). If she falls on hard times the woman can then sell off her pans. Pans are considered a triple A gold standard investment for any Northern woman. Over the border in Chad where it is much less stable and the risk of displacement is high women insist on gold earrings instead. The fact that I only own two pans and no gold earrings is further convincing proof of my foreignness.'But what would I do with my pans when I leave?' I ask Mamah Tchiti.'You would give them to your mother in Cameroon of course,' she answered. 'Me!'Our Christmas discussion eventually arrived at religion: 'Why are you going to the beach and not the mission on Christmas day?' the wives wanted to know. 'And why did you only go to church once in Maga?' I'm not sure how they know about the one time I went to the Catholic service in Maga because I wanted to see what it was like (it was interminably dull, and I almost sank through the floor in embarrassement when the priest, spotting a white face in his congregation, made me stand up in front of everyone so they could welcome their new sister in Christ).'I'm not really a Christian,' I confessed, 'my father's family is Christian and my mother's family is Jewish, so it's very complicated at my house'.'So are you Jewish?' they asked.'No, not really.''Aha,' exclaimed Dandalou, 'you must be a pagan!'I decide that this is probably the closest we're going to get to my religious condition so I agree, 'Yes. I'm a pagan.''And you don't pray? Ever?''I think if there is a god he doesn't find praying important. He prefers that people try and live a good life and help each other.'Dandalou and Mamah Tchiti can no longer keep straight faces in the face of such sacriligious absurdity and collapse onto the floor with laughter. So do several of the teenage girls who live with them. They call Danda, the first wife, over so that she can share in the joke. They keep on laughing for at least five minutes.Although there wasn't much Christmas build up in Maga it has been seasonably chilly and I get asked how I'm finding the cold at least five times a day. I would take this question more seriously if the cold season in Maga didn't mean that the temperature drops to 20 degrees celcius in the night and only rises to about 38 degrees every afternoon!Merry Christmas and loads of love to everyone all over the world. For those of you in the UK I wish I was there in the snow with you.