African chronicles
Preamble
Last summer I have had the occasion to spend three weeks in Cameroon, with a group of fellow boy scouts from Italy (Saronno, which some of you might know because of the Amaretto, which is a great almond-flavoured alcoholic drink...). This is a diary that I kept during my journey and ended right after coming back home.
A short warning: I have not made any attempt to reorganize the content of this diary at the end of my journey and while translating it. I only added a few clarifications (they are in italics and in brackets) and corrections (for example the original 26/8/2001 item said "flying over Mali" but only because I misinterpreted the map that the plane displayed); parts of it embarrassed me even a few days after I wrote them, but I feel it right to leave them as they are because indeed they represented my true emotional state. Some things I wrote must really look silly or dumb, but who cares.
Saturday, August 4th - Nkolbisson
Landing in Yaounde. It's cloudy (as I understood it, the opposite is rare in this season) and as soon as Cameroon Airlines' 767 gets out of the gray I face the really indescribable scenery of the forest, with its ten-meters-high trees, only sporadically interrupted by a red street, a small group of houses or the railway.
At six o'clock PM it's already getting dark... another sign that after a year of work and fund-raising our dream has finally come true. A van takes us to the house that will host us until Tuesday; along the road there are very small houses and shops that I still cannot identify well as I write this lines. On both sides of the road, the houses and the forest alternate as I had seen from my plane.
The traffic is complete anarchy, but everything seems to work the way it is supposed to. As father Sergio had explained us, in Africa one learns to "get by": many cars are visibly damaged, but it's only because if one has a crash he only spends the money necessary to make the car hit the road again and keeps the rest of the insurance for himself.
In the evening the climate is very nice, sometimes a bit cool because of a calm but constant wind. Sometimes we find butterflies and cockroaches walking in the house, and our reaction is notably different than the one we would have in Italy. [This observation sounds ironic to me now, after I unpacked my sack and found an unanticipated African souvenir -- a three-inch spider which I immediately expelled from my house...]
This photo includes most of the people who came with
me to Cameroon. The ones that I cite in the diary are the yawning one
to the left, he is our artist (Stefano), the girl looking to her left
(Elisa) and the rightmost one (Davide). I am to the left of the
curly-haired girl, but I am only partially visible.
Sunday, August 5th - Nkolbisson
I wake up at nine o'clock. Before having breakfast (coffee and a wonderful peanut-flavoured chocolate cream...) I take the first photos outside the house. At 10 o'clock we attend the Mass in a spartan yet beautiful church annexed to the house; the hymns, sung with a simple bongo accompaniment, bring some peace into the hurricane of feelings I have inside me (enthusiasm, uneasiness, sheer surprise, and anything else you can name)... I guess I have to be back in Italy to really metabolize these 22 days.
In the afternoon we visited other parts of Yaounde. First we visited a couple of the friars' projects here in Yaounde (they have many all around Cameroon): a school that they are building and a professional training institute for handicapped people (especially poliomyelitics). Very interesting stuff, the problem is that all the funds come from the western world (Cameroon does not even have a decent public sanitary service, and it's among the richest African countries) and, what's worse, the bosses are all white. Most of the times, when things were left to the Cameroonians they all fell down sooner or later.
This has two main explanations. First of all, the corruption of the government (Cameroon used to set world records in this field...) has permeated the whole culture of the country; at times, guardians want to be paid to give the workers the materials that they are guarding such as cement. This is entirely the fault of the western world, since the government is little more than a puppet in the hand of the former colonizers.
Also, using a metaphor from Aesopus, one can compare Europe to the ant and Africa to the balm-cricket. The climate here is much more friendly: there's no need to conserve fruit and vegetables because usually you can harvest twice a year; a lot of useful trees are domestic here (coconuts, bananas, papayas, watermelons, manioca, and so on) while most of the food we eat in Europe was imported from other continents. Nobody is guilty in this respect: it's not a matter of a culture being better or worse than another, it's just that environmental differences prompted different directions.
Anyway, back to our visit. The third place we visited was a very different experience, and a very shocking one. We visited some children from one of the poorest areas of the city, that were babysitted by some voluntary girls (they were paid, but father Sergio ensured that it is not a kind of work one would bear if they did it only for the money). These girls, to put it shortly, went through that area and looked for children whose families could not afford adequate instruction or health caring; they acted as baby-sitters and as intermediaries for buying books and medicines, and for paying school taxes -- they asked for fewer money than it was actually needed, thus giving economical aid but at the same time keeping finer control over how the money is spent.
As you might anticipate from what I have said, most of the children are ill, sentenced to death the moment they are born by AIDS or contaminated water. We made a small tour near the foyer (that's French for hearth, and the word is used for structures that host children), keeping our head low for the shame and for lack of courage. The houses do not look so poor (after all they are in concrete and all have some kind of furniture) but it doesn't matter. As we walk by some children who were playing soccer shout "regardez les blancs!" ("look, the white!").
What am I doing here? I feel myself observed, but at the same time cannot understand what they feel, what they think of me... I feel uneasy and it's hard to speak about it with the others. But I guess they share my feelings because as we drive home we don't shout and laugh like we did yesterday. And that's when I notice I still have to see a single white apart from us.
Sunday, August 6th - Nkolbisson
Today a Cameroonian scout [more on him later...] toured us around Yaounde. Very boring and also quite hypocritical, since he brought us to the highest and most luxurious areas of a city where drinkable water is not for everybody.
In the end we were all so tired that we stole a couple of really tasty jackfruits from the Vatican embassy's garden... The Apostolic Delegate (that is, the ambassador) was very happy that we visited Cameroon, etc. etc., in practice he had not even understood that we were there to work as volunteers.
We had lunch with some girl guides from Yaounde [women scouts call themselves guides]. Their educational duties are different than in Italy, since they hosted orphaned children in their seat, which is actually little more than a small hut without enough space for both Italian and Cameroonian scouts... Like yesterday, it was not an easy experience, except when we shared some dances with them, because I could not help worrying about what they felt about our visit and about sharing our food with them.
Back home I took a refreshing shower and washed a couple T-shirts (I guess it's the first time in my life I have done the washing...). Then I chatted with a 22-year-old girl that is a nun here in Nkolbisson; actually I don't speak French, so I just tried to improvise. She was carrying a 2-year-old baby that she was taking care of after her mother had died. Trying to share with her the feelings I had developed during the last two days was quite a relief, because I felt comprehension from somebody who lived those situations in her daily life.
Tomorrow we will leave for Kribi. I look forward to being there, being here in Yaounde is one of the most uneasy experiences I ever had.
Tuesday, August 7th - Kribi
Today we traveled from Yaounde to Kribi. It has been a pleasant and relatively short journey (around 300 km), apart from a dozen or so road blocks in all of which we had to explain who we were and what we were carrying (I made the journey on the pickup with all of our baggage).
We are staying in a school where we'll have to work from Thursday on. Another group of Italians from Rome is staying here until Friday, and before leaving they will inform us on what has been done and what we'll have to do. The city is small and relatively calm, but we are less "protected" than in Yaounde. Children are always around, probably seeking for something that they have not yet asked for.
Kribi has much less poverty than Yaounde, because in the capital the only way to get by without a work is through theft, while in Kribi it's easier to put together something to eat, or to try to sell something as pedlars.
One of the things I have learnt is that selling stuff around the streets is common here -- it is not strange to see trolleys selling sweets or people carrying peanuts or coconuts over their head. That's probably one of the least understood things in Italy (where black people are often called "vu'cumprà", which could be translated as "wannabuyit") and it's sad that cultural misunderstandings are a primary source of racism.
Wednesday, August 8th - Kribi
This morning we went to the sea and brought a volleyball with us. Those who were not swimming played with two guys who later insisted on carrying it until we got back to the street, and walked fast along the beach with an evident intent of stealing it. Emotionally, it's not easy to be harsh in such cases; however, I sometimes feel it is necessary and I don't want to be considered a fool only because I am white.
[Indeed, I learnt later that this is exactly the case in the former French Africa: colonization has been particularly hard in these areas so a kind of "reversed" racism has developed and white people are not exactly held in high consideration.]
I still am not really serene. I still have to find a role, since I am here as a scout master but I am only one year older than some of the rovers (that's the name that scouts get just before becoming masters). I also have not had an occasion to speak with them and to share or compare our moods.
Friday, August 10th - Kribi
We spent the last two days here in the school, finally starting our work. Staying here is very different than when we were in Yaounde; and rereading the last pages of this diary I notice that my style varies a lot according to what we do and experience.
I learnt doing a few manual works that I never thought I would learn: yesterday we repaired a shower's sewer, while today I have learnt something about masonry; other of us are repairing or painting tables, benches and schooldesks. I like it a lot, even though I still miss an occasion to speak with somebody else.
Tonight we took our weekly pill of Lariam -- that's to prevent malaria. It means we have been here for seven days... every single day seems never-ending and I have countless memories, yet time has been passing so quickly. The pill has a special significance to us because you have to start the prophylaxis one week before you leave, thus taking the first one was a kind of "point of no return"; tonight we also composed a song inspired by this medicine and by the intestinal problems that are afflicting some of us. [In the end, only 3 of us were immune to them... I leave to your imagination to understand what they were.]
Non so cos'è I don't know what it is
è un impulso dentro di me It's an impulse inside me
So solo che I only know that
lui vale sai per tre It is worth three usual ones
Spinge spinge It pushes, pushes
ma che cos'è What could it be?
E' lo stronzo che veleggia It's shit sailing inside me
dentro di me
Chorus: Lariam Lariam Lariam Lariam
questa è la canzone del Lariam this is Lariam's song
Lariam Lariam Lariam Lariam
ti pigli la maLariam you're going to get maLariam
Niente alcolici, niente salassi No alcohol, no blood sucking
tutta colpa della profilassi all because of the prophylaxis
sotto la pioggia dell'Equatore under the rain, under the Equator
l'intestino bolle come un reattore my intestine boils like a reactor
Chorus: Lariam Lariam Lariam Lariam
questa è la canzone del Lariam this is Lariam's song
Lariam Lariam Lariam Lariam
ti pigli la maLariam you're going to get maLariam
Otto compresse di meflochina Eight pills of mephloquine
Cinque litri di amuchina Five liters of chlorine
Questa è la dieta del campo a Kribi We're following this diet in Kribi
ma cosa ci faccio ancora qui? Why the heck am I still here?
<SOLO>
Bridge: L-A-R-IAM L-A-R-IAM (pronounced L-A-R-E-AM)
I speak English very well I speak English very well
L-A-R-IAM L-A-R-IAM (same as above)
Tell me "Commant tu t'appelle?" Tell me "What's your name?"
Chorus: Lariam Lariam Lariam Lariam
questa è la canzone del Lariam this is Lariam's song
Lariam Lariam Lariam Lariam
ti pigli la maLariam you're going to get maLariam
Chorus: Lariam Lariam Lariam Lariam
dammi un po' di Lariam give me some more Lariam
Lariam Lariam Lariam Lariam
ti pigli la maLariam you're going to get maLariam
[To understand the lyrics, you should know that after taking it you cannot booze for two months and you cannot donate your blood. Also, mephloquine is Lariam's scientific name and chlorine is what we were using to make water drinkable (at the same time, it tasted like swimming pool water). The bridge's lyrics don't mean anything, we just wanted to put some French in because in Kribi they speak French...]
Saturday, August 11th - Kribi
This morning we continued our work; I'm starting to be able to do it on my own, without having somebody that supervises and teaches me. This afternoon, instead, we visited the forest and it has been as interesting as enjoyable (we climbed lianas). Nevertheless, it was also kind of bitter to see these people transforming themselves into tourist attractions (without us asking them), for example improvising dances.
Our guides were Pygmies and they undoubtedly knew their stuff. Their familiarity with the nature is absurd for us so-called "civilized" people. By the time we were ready to start climbing, they were already five meters above us... The Pygmies have a particular relationship with the other ethnic groups living in Cameroon: on one hand, they don't know how to extract iron (which they need for their lances) and hence make themselves servants of the other groups; yet, they are respected because they are the original inhabitants of the country and are the only ones who can survive and travel through the forest without a marked trace.
Tuesday, August 14th (morning) - Kribi
I have not written anything on Sunday and yesterday. These two days were very intense, it took me a moment to link everything I wanted to relate with the day when it happened.
On Sunday we went to the ocean, on the Lobè river's estuary. It is spectacular because there is a waterfall just a hundred meters before the river reaches the sea; also you can swim in the river because it is about as warm as the Mediterranean sea. We also ate the shrimps which gave the name to Cameroon (river shrimps were discovered for the first time here, and shrimps are called "camaroes" in Portuguese). A day of pleasing and hard-earned rest...
Yesterday I worked quite hard and finally found a moment to talk with Davide, another scout master who's here with us. He has already been in Africa a few years ago, in Kenya; he asked me how I feel and how I am living this camp. Even though we only talked for a few minutes, I was really relieved; I think it's normal for an experience as total and peculiar as this to feel the need to share your thoughts with someone else.
This is the Lobè falls. Sorry, the Lobè is not on
most maps (at least on the atlas I have at home); it is on the Atlantic
coast of Africa, about 30' north of the Equator.
Wednesday, August 15th -- Kribi
I've been sick since yesterday evening, sometimes it's quite painful. However, yesterday I spent a fantastic half an hour improvising with Stefano; he played the guitar, I played a kind of wind keyboards whose English name I don't know. I completely forgot my sickness and, as I played, I recognized feelings that the ache had hidden and that emerged from the notes I was playing. [Probably that's something that only the composers among you will appreciate. Nevertheless, when I came home I found out that I'm really better at improvising than I was before leaving, and I don't think that's only a matter of practice.]
I also chatted a bit with Elisa, she's so clever and unpredictable. I was lying on a bench, contemplating the ceiling as fierce battles took place between my guts, and she asked what was the matter. To my obvious answer, "I'm still sick", after a moment she replied: "Is there anything else? If you need it, you know I am here..." Indeed there was not anything else but it was very nice on her part... she really surprised me.
Then we all went to the beach, but only for an hour or so and of course I was not in the perfect shape to enjoy it...
Thursday, August 16th -- Kribi
Today I visited the market. It is a very strange place, a labyrinth of booths and smells quickly turning from the most nauseating stink to tempting spicy fragrances... They sell fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, but also slippers, cloth and baskets.
From time to time, you can see people that offer to load your shoppings on their cart and help you back to your car (of course you must pay them). Or some kind of itinerant fast foods selling boiled eggs with various sauces, which they prepare without unloading anything from their head -- that's folkloristic to say the least...
Since I'm still not very well, I did not work today; instead I helped with the cooking -- it is a nice work even though you have to start at five o'clock in the afternoon (for some strange chemical reason, it takes more than two hours to boil ten liters of water, and the oven has similar performance).
Friday, August 17th -- Kribi
Today we visited another Pygmy village which we reached on a pirogue. Luckily (for them) they were less of a tourist attraction than the others. They guided us in a small tour through the forest, longer than Saturday's and absolutely disorienting: after a couple of minutes I had stopped trying to understand where we were.
We asked the guys that rowed the pirogue if they could come and visit us, to have a short chat. They agreed, not without some surprise because nobody had ever asked such a thing.
I don't have much more to say on today.
This is yours truly. Of course I did not take the
photo, so I am not the one to blame if my right hand is outside of
the picture...
Monday, August 20th -- Kribi
This is our last day here in Kribi. Saturday night I could not sleep because of the antimalaric pill (it has a lot of collateral effects including insomnia [which helped a lot for Hugi Size Coding Compo 15...]) and also because I was again sick; yesterday and today we continued and finished the work.
In the end, we scraped off the old painting from three schoolrooms, and painted a total of six rooms (the three schoolrooms, a nursery school, the refectory and a bedroom), and some maintenance on the buildings, mostly masonry work.
On Saturday evening we received the five tourist guides. It was interesting because we finally have had an occasion to compare our culture and the African one. It's quite strange. They are all 20 to 25 years old; they all have children, but none of them are married because they dream to come and live in Europe (one of them has a brother in France where, he says, "you have to work harder but you live better" than in Cameroon). They also confirmed us a lot of things on the African culture that I had already realized during these fifteen days.
Yesterday and today, finally free from the fear of having ten times more children buzzing around the next day, we spent more time with the children and some of them ate lunch with us (the smallest two and those that helped us painting the nursery school). We brought one of them to the market; since he says he wants to go to university we bought him a sack to put his schoolbooks in. His mother wrote us to express her thanks and sent it to us together with two coconuts.
The girls in our group had their hair dressed in typical African haircuts. We also went to the sea with the kids and with the guys against who we had played soccer a few days ago. By the way, we had lost 7-6 after the penalties; it is always destiny that Italians lose their matches after the penalties...
It is much nicer to stay with them the way we did on these last few days, and now we feel a little guilt. Who knows, maybe we only needed to use some caution rather than suspicion.
Our little friend Jo-Jo (6 years old), peacefully
resting over a hammock.
Tuesday, August 21th -- on the road to Bafoussam
Yesterday we had another occasion to speak with a group of Cameroonians, this time some guys from the local parish. This was also quite interesting, though much more formal than the one with the tourist guides.
We spent today travelling around Cameroon. We passed through Douala which doesn't look like the classic stereotype of the African city; it is actually a lot different from Yaounde.
It has been quite exhausting: we only did 430 km in 12 hours because the van has a problem with the brakes (it is always braked). The road is quite wide and one could go much faster than this: we had anticipated that we would have arrived in Foumbam at 3 o'clock, now it's eight PM and we just decided to shorten our journey because we are still 100 kilometers far from our intended destination.
Among the jolliest moments of the trip, we spent half an hour playing the guitar (with the neck outside the window to be more comfortable...) and singing songs from our earliest teens. Shajan is driving and says "Am doing all climbs in first gear", referring to more than 100 km of ups and downs... [Shajan is an Indian friar who lives in Italy and came with us to Cameroon; of course he speaks English much better than this but I'm trying to emulate his peculiar Italian accent.]
After these 100 kms I receive a small driving lesson: "If van cannot do 40 [km/h], use second gear, if cannot do 25, use first gear" and take the wheel for about an hour. The thermometer does not work and I have a constant fear of seizing the engine; indeed I must get very close to it and the van seems to have breathed its last. Luckily, it's enough to change the water and we can restart. I let another one of us drive and start writing...
Wednesday, August 22th -- Bamenda
Bafoussam and Bamenda are a lot more developed than Yaounde and Kribi, also because the ethnic group to which their inhabitants belong (the Bamileke) is quite devoted to commerce, much more than the Bantu that live in the south.
This morning we had a rest here in the parish that had hosted us in Bafoussam, because most of us have had stomach-ache or fever and we are quite weak. Also, the van was taken to the mechanic who repaired the brakes, and replaced the gas-oil filter (exhausted), the oil (burnt), cleaned the fuel injectors and corrected the wheels' convergence. All this for 420 FF (I doubt one would spend less than 1200 FF in Europe).
After the van returns, we leave for Bamenda, which is about 70 km away. The city is in the mountains, so the plants are lower and the climate a bit cooler than in Kribi (actually, this is the rainy season so the temperature was usually around 25-30 degrees -- not exactly hot). We will stay here two days -- on Friday we'll go back to Yaounde and our plane will leave on Sunday. I feel quite worn out, but I'm quite sad that it's going to end...
Sunday, August 26th -- flying over Niger
Well, it's over. We spent the last few days in Bafoussam and Yaounde as tourists. In Yaounde, some of us went to the market, others (including me) went by night to the highest hill of the city, Mont Fèbè. It is extraordinary to see the lights of this city; you can see life pulsing but at the same time you can see that its life is different from what we are accustomed to, different from Milan's life as I will see it in a few hours... there are no big buildings whose shape you can deduce from thousands of shining lights, only a herd of lit bulbs apparently without an order, or maybe whose order is not artificial enough for my western mind.
In Bamenda we had met a group of Scouts of Cameroon. I received a good impression from them, even though I probably wouldn't like the kind of almost military discipline that they impose; during a discussion we had with them they made an interesting analysis of Cameroon's political and social situation. They had a great hope for the future of this nation, thinking that education can not only improve it, but also transform it. Most of the European people I met here don't share this enthusiasm after they have lived here for years, but I guess hoping for the best is necessary to achieve it.
Yesterday instead we met the scout that had toured us in Yaounde during our first African days. He must be one of the most snob and slimy people I have ever met. If scouts were all like Yaounde's I would not be so proud of being one. He came to visit us with three cubs (they are the youngest scouts, up to 11 years in Italy) dressed in white Nike shoes and socks; you should have heard him... "scouts from different parts of Cameroon are different, but scouts from Yaounde are the best. They are intellectual, we have sons of ministers among us -- you must attend high classes to become a scout master, because parents must be sure they can trust the master. I saw when we visited the Vatican embassy that Italian scouts are not as disciplined as us." If it were to me I would not trust him as my son's master (and I say that as an Italian scout master), but so it goes...
I spent the last night awake with a few other boys and girls from the group. I just wanted morning to come and definitely take me away from this place, since I could not stand any longer counting the hours to our departure, yet I did not want to sleep and instead sat in front of a fire tasting every moment of the night.
Dah, Cameroon Airlines' shiny 767 took off from Yaounde-Nsimalen International Airport an hour ago, and the forest disappeared under the clouds as suddenly as it had appeared 22 days ago. Several minutes after, I was still looking outside the window, seeking a stamp of forest that was not covered by the clouds. Now the clouds finally ended, but below me there's only the Sahara's sand as we're heading for Algeria and then for France...
Monday, August 27th - Italy
Finally back home, I write this last entry directly in front of my PC (and directly in English). It's damned hot and wet here, I just can't stand it as I could not stand the heat of Paris' airport after we had landed. I phoned all my relatives to inform them I'm back. As I write I remember I forgot an aunt, I'll call her tomorrow.
It's strange to be back here. I finally managed to phone my girlfriend [she was in Ecuador at the time of the writing] and answer the e-mails she had sent during my absence; I had really missed her during the last few days, thinking she would still be far when I came home. This afternoon I went to the local supermarket to have my photos developed and I saw a girl with an Afro haircut which I immediately recognized to be Elisa who was buying stuff for the barbecue we'd be having tomorrow at hers.
Just a few days ago I had noticed that finally I had got accustomed to the sun going down at 6:30... and now the strangest thing of all, as I look out of the window, is seeing that after dinner the sky is still light.
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