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.