Oh, God.

The guy at the computer next to me is looking at porn. White women sucking black dicks.

I don't even know where to start, except to say that if that's the standard of sex appeal, no wonder we get harassed so badly in the street.

Africa, Made in China

You know how they make "Best Of" DVDs for famous people? Best of Seinfeld, Best of Bob Dylan, that sort of thing?

I'm no celebrity, but I think my life will deserve a commemorative Best Of DVD nonetheless, so my current project is to compile moments for the Best Of EJ.

Two such moments occurred today.

Natalie, the other Emily and I went to Marché Mokolo in search of jeans. This is no easy task, because African markets are extremely stressful--people hollering at you, sweat pouring down your face and back, disorganized piles of items that would make an American shopping mall employee shit a motherfuckin' brick.

Moment #1: I found a pair of jeans that I liked and began to haggle with the vendor. (This is a standard part of the shopping process here in Cameroon.) He asked for 25,000F (about $50)--yeah, right!--so I offered 3,000. He said, "Look at the quality! Look at all the work that went into these jeans!"

So I pulled out the tag that says "MADE IN CHINA," shoved it in his face and said, "A little girl in China made these jeans! Don't you tell me about the work that into them!"

I talked him down to 5,000F.

Moment #2: We had a field trip to the Cameroon breweries today, which meant getting all 15 of us into a little bus, which we have taken to calling "Whitey Bus." It's incredibly uncomfortable, because it demands so much attention. To quote Claire, it's like being the lion being pulled around in a cage at the circus.

We got stuck in traffic in a crowded market area, and a number of men approached the bus to stick their hands in the window. We slammed the windows shut, but they contined to sexually harass us, making lewd gestures, offering money--ew ew ew! Needless to say, I was filled with rage.

So I played Whack-A-Mole. Every time a guy kissed the window--which at least four of them did--I punched the window in front of their face.

It wasn't as satisfying as smacking the fuck out of a sexist pig, but it was pretty fun to startle them. You catch them off guard, because clearly, as a woman, God intended me to sit and endure harassment.

Other moments that will go on the Best of EJ DVD include (for those of you who remember them) falling in front of Mr. Burgess's class, the infamous Crotch Nips ride through Yellowstone, and throwing Pop-Its out of my apartment window.

Africa: not an apartheid party, unless you're talking about men and women

Yesterday, Natalie went to the village of Womkoa for our internship with African Action on AIDS.

We were supposed to help install sanitary toilets, but clearly we are unfit for manual labor and, silly me, how could I ever have thought that women could wield a paint brush? So instead, we stood around all day. We watched some villagers make palm oil, ate lots and lots of mangoes, fresh from the tree, and had lunch in the village chief's house.

The highlight of the day may have been when a little girl saw us and immediately burst into tears. She had never seen a white person before, and she was terrified of us. Natalie tried bribing her to be our friend by giving her a cookie, which she took and then ran away screaming. It was sad...but mostly hilarious, I'm not gonna lie.

When we got back last night, we went to Steve's house. His host parents were having a party in honor of the members of our program.

We Americans were sitting in one corner, and the Cameroonian guests were sitting on the other side of the room. I was thinking of a junior high dance--boys on one side of the gym, girls on the other--but Steve's dad had something else in mind.

"But this is not an apartheid party!" he said in his welcoming speech.

Dinner was delicious and was followed by really fun dancing. Unfortunately, the night ended very poorly.

You've heard me mention my arrogant, self-aggrandizing, inconsiderate asshole of a host brother, Giovanni. Yes, the one who claims to be in love with me.

Giovanni comes over every night to make his mother feed him dinner, and this week, we fought every single night.

On Monday, he said that he wanted some of my bottled water. He always wants to drink my bottled water, even though he can drink the tap water. The tap water gives me diarrhea; he just thinks he's too good for it.

Not, "May I please have some of your bottled water?" or even, "Emily, would you mind sharing your bottled water?" No, just, "Give me some water." Then he stared at me until I realized what he was asking.

I gave him a Look and said, "Do you really think I'm going to get up out of my seat to walk across the room to give you my bottled water?"

He said, in all earnesty, Yes, that's what women do.

You see, Cameroonian men come home from work, sit down in front of the television, and don't get up again until they go to bed. They yell at their wives and children to bring them dinner, turn on the light, convert their oxygen into carbon dioxide, scratch their dandruff.

So I told Giovanni that maybe Cameroonian women fall for that shit, but that I am no one's servant and will never do anything he asks me to do.

The next night, in the kitchen, he told me to wash his plate, so I picked up a carving knife, held it up to his face, and asked, "What did you ask me to do?"

Last night, he was supposed to pick up Natalie and me at 10:45. I had told him 10:45 because we planned to leave at 11:00, and Giovanni makes even African time look speedy. True to form, he didn't even get there until 11:40.

And of course he expected us to wait on him. He wanted to dance and have a beer. I told him that we had already been waiting almost an hour, and that if he wanted to dance, he should take Natalie and me home and then go back to the party.

Oh but wait! If he did that, he would have been doing what a woman told him to do! And what sort of man would ever be considerate of a woman's feelings?

So he told us to give him fifteen minutes to have a beer.

Thirty minutes later... "I haven't finished my beer! Give me fifteen more minutes."

I screamed at him that we had already been waiting for well over an hour, that we were tired, and that he had to take us home.

Giovanni laughed.

If there is one single male behavior that I can't stand, it's when men belittle women's feelings. So, I got up in his face and screamed a long chain of nasty words at him, none of which he understands because he doesn't speak English.

Steve's dad had to intervene. He told me not to be angry. I don't give a fuck that he hosted me and fed me (and that, incidentally, he's my host uncle), he has no right to tell me not to be angry. And I told him so.

All in all, Giovanni refused to take us home until I started crying at 12:15.

I don't remember the last time I was so angry, and the gender politics of it all were disgusting. Giovanni couldn't care less that he was being inconsiderate--oh but when I finally cried, he really had to deal with emotions, so he had to shut me up by taking me home.


You're not supposed to make generalizations like I hate Cameroonian men, but, I hate Cameroonian men.

You say "play," I think happy; you say "orphans," I think sad.

The title of this post is a reference to my dear Jonny G.'s comment on

a recent post, in which I said I was going to go play with orphans. I guess it was unfair to drop a word like that without any explanation, so I thought I should update you all on my good Christian efforts to tame the savage tribes of Africa.

(That was sarcastic, in case you couldn't tell.)

A component of this study abroad program is an optional internship. You don't get any money for it or even academic credit, but since our only time commitment here is eight hours per week of class--that's it!--why not volunteer away some time? At Macalester, I often wish I could volunteer, but at Macalester, I don't have time to sleep, much less to give away. (I often consider The Mac Weekly my civic contribution.)

So, Sara and I are volunteering at an orphanage called The Fact Foundation.

There are at least 50 kids there (I'm not sure how many precisely), ranging in age from toddlers to near adults. Generally, the foundation's policy is that the kids are on their own as of age 16, but one 25-year-old is allowed to stay because he suffered from spinal meningitis and has been mentally handicapped ever since. (They call him autistic, but I think that may just be their general word for mental handicaps, as opposed to referring specifically to autism.)

The younger kids sleep three to a bed, the older kids two. The beds aren't even twin beds--they're the size of summer camp bunks.

Their diet consists of two bowls of rice per day and bananas. Other sources of nutrition are sporadic: a social worker brings dates from time to time, and there are trees on the property that provide the occassional avocado or papaya. Generally, though, it's just white rice. Not enough protein for a growing kid, and I don't even want to know how constipated they must be...

Some of the kids attend school; others don't. I'm not sure why. The foundation pays for their tuition and uniforms (it's not a private school; that's just how it works here), so it's probably just that they can't afford to send them all to school. The kids brought home their report cards while I was there last week. Their grades were abysmal. I don't think anyone helps them with their homework.

Generally, the orphanage is a happier place than it is sad. Of course it's sad that these kids were abandoned, abused or just plain orphaned, but what's great about their atmosphere is that they have lots of brothers and sisters. I think it would be neat to grow up around that many kids. And no matter what, they're better off there than abused or on the street.

When we walk in, the younger kids run up to give us hugs. They call us both "Tantine" (Auntie). Some of them just want to hold our hands, others have lots of questions about the United States, and the older girls like to play with our hair.

(Women stroke my head here all the time. They admire white people's hair. If only they could see me when I'm not there's-no-running-water-to-shower greasy, holy-hell-this-humidity frizzy, and no-one-here-knows-how-to-cut-white-people's-hair split ends. And of course, it breaks my heart that the global standard of beauty has never embraced these girls, who tell me they wish they had hair like mine. I tell them that they're beautiful, but I'm no match for the global media industry.)

Here I am getting cornrows, which of course looked ridiculous. Today they gave me hanging braids, which also look ridiculous. (But thanks to Sara for the photo!)


So, generally, it's fun to visit the kids. It gets a little depressing when I notice how tattered the kids' clothes are, how thin they are and how beat up their (very few) toys are.

What's really depressing, though, is how much I hate the administrators. There are four men who run the orphanage, but a handful of women are there every day to wash the kids' clothes and prepare the daily rice. I think the women are volunteers from a local church, but no one's really explained that situation to me.

Since it's all Cameroonian men are capable and willing to do, the men sit around all day. If, hypothetically, children had no needs, it would be acceptable for these men to sit around all day. Oh but wait...there's something wrong with that picture. And speaking of pictures, here's evidence of what we're up against:


An administrator, sleeping soundly enough in his office that I was able to go retrieve my bag from a cabinet that doesn't open without a loud scraping noise.

The children's behavior is deplorable. They hit each other constantly.

Granted, Cameroonian people are more physical than Americans--they touch each other a lot more than we do, in general, and corporal punishment, specifically, is not frowned upon here as it is in the states. But seriously, I am the first person who has ever given these kids the use your words, not your hands lecture. (It's a Christian foundation, so I asked them if they thought Jesus would hit others. How preposterous is it that I, of all Bible Belt residents, would say that?)

They run around with knives, and there's an ax lying around. Little boys pick it up and hack at pieces of 2 x 4's, and no one tells them not to.

When I tried to give an English lesson, as I'm supposed to do to make my time there productive, the kids did not shut up the whole time and the administrator guy who stood and watched didn't help me quiet them. He just watched me struggle to get their attention. What, then, was the point of his standing there?

Oh! And, two weeks in a row I've witnessed animal abuse. Well, actually, they don't care about animals in this country, so that term would fall upon deaf ears. Suffice it to say, things that would make a vegetarian flip a shit. Good thing I'm a recovered vegetarian.

One time, a boy (nine? ten years old?) caught a little duck. Not a duckling, but not an adult either. He tied its leg to a string with which he then carried it around, swinging it in circles and poking it. He then put it out of its misery by hacking off its head with a dull knife.

(Why is he allowed to play with knives? Granted, my mother dealt with 48 fewer children, but knives, like dangerous chemical and matches, were stored out of children's reach. That is common sense--something, I have discovered, Cameroonians lack.)

Yesterday, a little boy caught a baby bird, and, I think, squished it to death. However it died, its bled on his hands. And of course he thought it was hilarious to try to touch Sara and me with said hands.


I'm pretty confident that you can get bird flu that way, so I may start foaming at the mouth or something any second now. I would WebMD it if I thought the internet would cooperate.

In other words, playing with the orphans might kill me, and like any good colonizer, I am frustrated and throwing up my hands at the futility of my efforts.

But, oh, for the good moments:

On the planet, and soap.

One of the great things about this semester is that I am so much better for the planet--rather, less horrid for it--here in Cameroon than I am in the United States.

You can't open a paper these days without reading something about carbon emissions and global warming and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad consequences that our lifestyle has for Mother Earth. The article often includes a token list of ways to reduce your eco footprint, many of which miss the point. Sure, you should buy a hybrid car if you're replacing your current one anyway, but hello? Consumerism is no solution for carbon emissions. But, that's the United States for you.

Here's a novel idea for reducing your carbon emissions: move to an undeveloped country!

Living in Cameroon has made me realize how much superfluous stuff we have in the U.S., and that all of it harms the planet (and me) to at least a small extent.

Here is a list of the electrical appliances that I use daily, or at least regularly, in my real life in the U.S. Bold denotes the appliances that I know to be particularly coal-consuming.

• Alarm clock + radio
• Hair dryer
• Straight iron/curling iron
• Coffee maker
• Toaster
• Microwave
• Electric stove/oven
• TV + DVD player
• Laptop
• Printers
  
• Speakers
• Cell phone charger
• Camera charger
• iPod charger
• Overhead lights
  
• Lamps
• Iron
• Space heaters
• Water heater
• Washer
• Dryer
• Central heat/air conditioning
• Elevators/escalators
• Automatic doors
• Stop lights
• Street lights
  

I could probably go on, and I could probably also make a list of all the plastics, non-recyclables and styrofoam I use.

In Cameroon, I use:

• Flourescent overhead lights (no lamps, no incandescent bulbs)
• TV
• Electric kettle
• Cell phone charger
• Camera charger
• iPod charger
• Iron
• Fans

And I don't really miss the others. My happiness would benefit from air conditioning and a washing machine, and I prefer lamp light to overhead lights, and I do wish that Yaoundé had street lights to prevent disasters such as falling in ditches...But the point is, I can totally live without all the electric shit we think we need in America.

In Cameroon, I never drive, and to get anywhere, I use a share taxi. Granted, the air quality in Yaoundé sucks because the cars have no Clean Air Act emission standards, but at least there are wayyy fewer cars on the road. Rather than driving myself alone, I share a ride with strangers. This is less efficient than buses, I suppose, but far less heinous than the American phenomenon of sitting in traffic by yourself.

In Cameroon, nearly everything I eat is locally grown. I buy a few packaged foods (corn flakes, oatmeal, Nescafé) that are shipped to Cameroon, but eggs, fruits and vegetables, and meats are all grown here in Cameroon. (Cameroon is supposedly about the size of California, to give you an idea of scale. That's not very far for food to travel.)

The one thing I do regularly in the U.S. that I can't do in Cameroon is to recycle. Yaoundé's municipal trash system is worthless, so recycling is clearly not a priority. It really bothers me to throw away paper, and it bothers me how wasteful it is that I have to drink bottled water.

Also, Cameroonians are all about superfluous bagging. At the bakery, for example, each item receives a small baggie, all of which are put into one big plastic bag. Not necessary. And they always tie the tops so tight that you have to tear the bag open and can't reuse it, as we do for trash and dog poop in the U.S.

But, plastic bottles are recycled on a micro-level: people refill them with palm oil to sell in the markets, among other things. And, most beverages come only in glass bottles, almost all of which get returned to the brasserie, washed out and refilled. The United States really needs this system, which is even more efficient than recycling.

Since the water is ice-cold, my showers rarely last more than about four minutes. I use multiple buckets full of water to hand-wash all of my laundry, but I could use much less if I could get over being so obsessive compulsive about a clean rinse.

Living in Cameroon has also made me think the superfluous substances we use.

By "substances," I mean food--I'm going to freak out about the proponderance of salad dressings, cereals and teas the first time I go to an American supermarket--but mainly to the feats of chemical engineering that we take for granted.

In the U.S., I use different soaps for my hair, body, hands, dishes, clothes, and household. In Cameroon, these soaps are availible, but people generally use a basic bar of soap (that's an icky color and kind of smells like a urinal cake...) for their bodies, dishes and housecleaning.

Now, I wouldn't want to use color-safe bleach on my body, nor moisturizing soap on my dishes, but it makes me wonder: how many potentially cancerous, water supply-damaging substances do I use every single day? And how many of them do I really need? Zero.

Don't even get me started on artificial flavorings.

Today I woke up sucking on lemon.

As I walked down the street this morning, I realized that I was scowling so hard that my face hurt.

I couldn't walk a single block without hearing "Eh! La blanche!" (Hey white girl!) or "Ma chérie! Que tu es belle!" (Baby, you're so fine!).

Here in Yaoundé, I have to be on edge every time I leave the house. I am (necessarily) very defensive, which is tiring for someone who is generally good-natured (I hope...) and who attempts to be non-judgmental.

I couldn't help but look forward to going home, where I can walk down the street without being harassed.

Whence commenced the following internal dialogue:

Macalester lobe: You mean, you can't wait to go the United States where white privilege is just that? Where you don't have to be aware of your race every minute of every day? That's fucked up, Emily, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Cameroon lobe: Well, yeah! Yeah! Shut up, Macalester! You've never been a white woman in Africa. You have no idea what I'm going through.

Macalester lobe: That shows a fucking lot of character, Emily. For the first time in your life, you're a minority, and it's rough, so you're just going to hide in the comfort of American white privilege.

Cameroon lobe: No. No. You don't get it. I'm not even a minority here--I'm an anomaly! I still don't know what it's like to be a minority--I know what it's like to be a celebrity! You can't alk about race in the African context in the same terms of the American context. But while we're on the topic, let's talk about the comfort of a country where feminism has accomplished something! In the U.S. I can walk a few blocks without being sexually harassed. That's what I miss! Not being in the privileged majority, but living in a country whose LAWS prohibit people from talking to me the way they talk to me every single day in Cameroon.

So anyway, I had a big think stink this morning and no satisfyingly unproblematic conclusion. Am I wretched?

On a completely different note, I'm planning to exploit the brother who said that he's falling in love with me. He's going to wash my clothes soon, and on Saturday he's taking me to a bougie restaurant frequented by the few white people in this town. I don't feel bad about exploiting him; he's a jerk.

Oh, and the orphans cornrowed my hair this morning. It's good that I was wearing Western clothes and not a kabbah, or I would have looked like a total tool. As it was, I just looked ridiculous. I'll post a picture sometime if the 'net will cooperate.

Incest?

Cameroonian men have often declared their love for us, but it's usually been in the context of a taxi or a bar, so their oh-so-sincere advances are easily escaped.

I would normally ignore the text message I received last week--I just to tell you that i alway think about you and to let you know that i want something serious between us i mean more than a simple relationship because i am falling in love--except that this particular admirer is my host brother.

This is problematic because, a, duh, and b, I despise him. This is the guy who was a jerk the whole weekend we went to the beach (see "A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Weekend at the Beach").

Luckily he doesn't live with us, but he comes over all the time to make his mother feed him and to vex me. Normally I can't blame anyone for falling in love with me--who doesn't love hystrionics, sarcasm and a penchant for the absurd?--but I have never been such a bitch to anyone in my life.

(For example, last night he knocked on my door to ask me for batteries for the remote control, which is annoying to begin with, but when he saw that I was drinking a mug of tea, he asked, You're not going to invite me to join you? I said no and closed the door in his face.)

The only reason I can fathom that he would want anything to do with me is that in Cameroon, it's a status symbol to walk around with a white person. I feel used.