"Look at de Chinese woman!"

It's blatantly racist for white people say things like, "All black people look alike," but I'm not gonna lie, I find the same problem in reverse--black people thinking that all white people look alike--hilarious. If it would save their lives, Cameroonians cannot distinguish among white people.

My French teacher called me blonde. I corrected him, and he said, "But you have blue eyes!" I had to explain that that's not how blonde works.

Every time we go anywhere, people refer to the group of us as sisters. Yes, I say and roll my eyes, our mother had all 14 of us within two years.

Cameroonians also assume that I know every other white person in Yaoundé. My host brothers feel the need to inform me any time they see another white person in this city. I have told them more than once that, believe or not, there are more than 15 white people in this city and I don't know them all personally.

When we walk around in public, most people assume that we are French and shout "Sarko!" It's an insult (Sarkozy has given francophone Africans no reason to like him...nor anyone else in the world, for that matter) but still, I would rather them assume that I'm French than American. At least the French aren't going around blowing shit up and ruining lives for no good reason.

I've also been called English, German, Belgian, and Australian. One group of kids in my neighborhood consistently shouted "Bon giourno!" until I explained to them that I am not Italian.

The most amusing of all, however, is when people think I'm Chinese.

The Cameroonian stereotype of the Chinese is to make a hand gesture kind of like you would make for a shadow puppet mouth--a simple open and shut of the fingers and opposing thumb--and to say "Hee ho, hee ho." This is, of course, racist. It's along the lines of when, after watching Disney's Peter Pan but before knowing better, we ran around flapping our hands over our mouths and whooping to play "Indians."

Perhaps it's because whiteness is so associated with blonde hair. Someone with pale skin and dark hair must be Asian, according to that logic, and the only sorts of Asian they consider are Chinese and Japanese. (When she showed a picture of a Korean friend to her host mom, Lacy had a very difficult time explaining that the friend was neither Chinese nor Japanese.)

When adult men shout "La blanche!" at me, I scowl or ignore them. On one occasion, I took a page from Cassie's book and started barking at them. Little kids, however, are totally forgiven, because they're just genuinely curious about what the hell a white person is doing in their part of town.

A few days ago, my favorite of all such interactions occurred. I was walking home through my neighborhood, which is kind of an anglophone ghetto. It's not unusual for me to hear English (though it's often Pidgin, which is utterly incomprehensible to my untrained ear).

I came upon some little kids playing in the street, and one stopped, right at my feet, looked up at me and said to her friend, "Look at the Chinese woman!" (Pronounced: Look at de Shy-nese woman.)

Her friend looked me up and down, and said in a breathy voice that suggested genuine surprise, "Wow."

They clearly assumed that I couldn't speak English because they said this literally inches from me and didn't whisper.

Fuck-a-doodle youuuu, roosters!

The first time I had malaria, I recovered by sleeping an inordinate amount of time over the course the next week. This time, I recovered from malaria only to suffer from an unprecedented bout of insomnia.

In my real life, I am chronically fatigued, but this semester, 10 hours per night has been pretty standard. For the first time, I have nothing better to do; I don't have homework and I usually can't go out at night.

Wah, wah, one little week of poor sleep--I know, you're probably all thinking I shouldn't complain. But there's an inertia to sleep. If you're in the habit of undersleeping, your body adjusts; if you're in the habit of sleeping a lot, a bad night makes the following day miserable. I really needed to work on a paper last week, but instead, I spent the whole week feeling like baggy-eyed shit, wondering how I've survived so many semesters at Macalester.

The most important conclusion I reached is that roosters should be made extinct. Seriously. I think it would make the quality of life better all over the world. So I'm advocating that scientists devote more time figuring out how to make chickens capable of reproducing asexually so that the world no longer needs roosters.

I had always believed that roosters crow at dawn; the alarm that predates clocks. If that's not total urban myth, then it's at least only true of North American roosters.

African roosters start crowing at precisely 1:30 a.m. and don't shut up all day. It's fucking obnoxious.

Oh, and the whole cock-a-doodle doo thing? Bullshit. Roosters sound like broken car horns crying for help.

***

On the bright side, because I knew that I wouldn't sleep anyway, I stayed out later on Saturday night than I've stayed up since leaving the United States.

A few of us went to a party at the Marines' house. My friends thought it was awkward, but I had fun because I looked hotter than I've looked in months (I never make an effort here, and had to borrow a hot little dress from Natalie to pull myself together for one special occasion), met some guys with southern accents, (I have been so homesick for southern accents that I watched NASCAR on ESPN recently. NASCAR!) and a gay guy with whom I geeked out about journalism, ate Doritos, and drank (a lot) for free.

Men have paid more attention to me in the past five months they had in 20 years, but it's been an unwelcome sort of attention. The sort that United States law calls sexual harassment. In the same five-month span, I have missed male company like fat kids miss Ephedra. So I'm not gonna lie, going out and getting "your dress is pretty, so let me tell you about my motorcycle while you drink something I pay for" sort of attention felt like Christmas and a birthday and chocolate ice cream combined.

My friends were ready to go around 11, but rather than inevitably lie in bed growling curses at roosters for several hours, I went with the Marines to Club Safari.

Yes, the same club where I was dance-raped by a terrorist in the midst of icky old white male sex tourists. (See post titled "Sex Tourism is Vile.") But this time, I had a blast.

The fact that my program consists of 14 girls and just one boy has profoundly (read: miserably) affected my experience in Cameroon, so it was a treat to go out with guys for a change--and nice boys who are good dancers at that! I was in public, at night, dancing, and having fun--all at the same time--without fending off harassment.

In real life, the Marines and I wouldn't have enough in common to be friends--for starters, they use the word "fag" and I read queer theory for fun--but in this life, they're a very welcome change in company for me. And for them, Natalie and I are girls who they can get in their hot tub. I'd say it's a fair trade.

Infectious Disease: 2, Emalaria Jones: 0

I have malaria again.

Yesterday I lay on the couch, thinking I would die of body ache and fever/chills. I watched two reruns of Oprah, which made me feel even more like dying.

I feel a little better today, but still have a fever. I lay on the couch, sweating and watching the 2006 World's Strongest Man competition, then Titanic in French, then yesterday's Twins game.

Luckily I had comfort food. The birthday package my parents sent included packets of cheese sauce mix, so I made four cheese pasta yesterday and parma rosa pasta today. I promptly 'rhea-ed them out, but at least they tasted dee-lish.

Dude, fuck malaria.

Africa taking its toll on my digestive system

A few nights ago, I ate porcupine. It made my stomach hurt.

The next night, a Marine took Natalie and me to a very posh restaurant where I was ecstatic to find Four Cheese Penne on the menu. (I have missed cheese so, so much.) Unfortunately, after four months of cheese deprivation, four at once was more than my poor stomach could handle, and I had to call it a night after just a few bites. It made me worry about what I had in mind for my triumphant first dinner back in the United States: sausage, pepperoni and extra cheese pizza.

Yesterday, I learned that they in red light districts are called hot districts here in Cameroon.

The world is fucked up, Exhibit #349:

There are no black dolls in Africa.

Cameroonian children don't have many toys to begin with, but I've seen a number of dolls either for sale or in little girls' hands, and I have yet to see one with dark skin or even dark hair. They are all cheap, plastic, made in China dolls with blonde curls and painted-on blue eyes.

(The made-in-China part raises the question of whether there are Asian dolls in Asia. Do Asian girls play with white dolls, too?)

I noticed one that one of the little girls in my neighborhood had replaced her doll's clothing with a swatch of African fabric, and had braided black yarn into its hair. It broke my heart, and if I could have, I would have handed her my Addy doll right then and there.

Counterpoint: at least they're not playing with Barbies, which are hyper-sexualized and idealize an unrealistic body type.

But the point remains. No one is safe from the global standard of whiteness-as-beauty; The push for multiculturalism that has taken root over the past two or three decades has yet to benefit African girls, whose dolls don't look like them or reflect their cultures. And before they even outgrow their dolls, they're subject to ads for skin-whitening creams.

The really scary part is that the ideology of whiteness is so effective: Africans--or at least Cameroonians--totally buy it.

Yesterday, I had a really enlightening/infuriating conversation with the man who owns the bar on my street.

We got to talking because he said that he sees me pass every day, but that I'm always looking straight forward and walking quickly. I explained to him that I don't mean to be unfriendly, but that when I pass by a bar full of men, they call out to me--"Come sit with us, white girl! You so fine!"

He said (and he's not the first person to say so) that they're just being friendly and trying to honor me, so I explained that, no, "Welcome to Cameroon" would be an honor; "Hey pretty white girl," however, is sexual harassment.

He seemed to understand, which was really satisfying, because it's very difficult to explain to Cameroonians why it is so difficult to be a white woman here.

Then the conversation got really interesting. "I've never been to the United States, so I don't know what it feels like to be the only black person."

I told him that it's completely different in the U.S., because in the U.S., he wouldn't be the only black person, and that if he were, no one would shout, "Hey black man!," and if they did, he could sue them.

To that, he said something about the legacy of slavery, but, he said, "Your next president will be black. Doesn't that mean that there's no more racism in the United States?"

My entire soul cringed. No, no, no, I told him. I tried to explain that while legal segregation ended decades ago, discrimination is still rampant; that racism may not take the specific, overt form of calling someone Black Man on the street, but the U.S. is still an extremely racist society.

I named the example of prisons, which are overwhelmingly black.

"But black people do more bad things," he said. "Like drugs."

My entire soul cringed even harder. No, no, no, I told him. That's a stereotype. A stereotype that's so engrained and so prevalent in American thought that black people are just more likely to be caught--or worse, more likely to be jailed unfairly.

He was perplexed. His idea of the United States and its streets paved with gold had just come crashing down, but he also seemed sort of pleasantly surprised to know better.

I walked away, head in hands, aghast that he, and so much more of the world, believe what they're told about the United States.

I see it as a mission here to dispell all the rumors, but I'm one woman against a global ideological machine.