"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.