A Christmas Update

[note: i wrote this blog yesterday but was only able to post it today]

Belated Merry Christmas to everyone! Sadie and I are still pushing along here in Bamenda. The research is going pretty well, though we're now in a bit of a lull with the holiday season, which in Cameroon this year also includes the Muslim holy day, the Feast of the Ram.

Last weekend was quite an eventful one for Sadie and me, though. It started off on Friday with a visit to our home by Usuman (the friend we stayed with in Yaoundé) and my former SIT director, David Benson. SIT Cameroon was the study abroad program that took me to Cameroon over seven years ago, and we hadn't seen David in at least 6 years. It was a short but happy reunion. [See pic: Thomas (SIT driver and host father), Usuman, Sadie, me and David].

On Saturday, Sadie and I hiked up one of the mountains at Sabga village to see Usuman and his mother, Hajja. We made it back to our home in Bamenda in the late afternoon, took nice long showers, and curled up in front of the computer with mugs of Horlicks and hot milk to watch our Christmas movie of choice this year: “Love Actually” (which our dad sent to us nearly two months back). It's about the only thing we had here to put us into the Christmas mood, and it definitely did that...if only for that one evening. We then fell asleep in our bedroom listening to the BBC broadcast of "King Lear."

On Sunday, Christmas Eve, Sadie and I made our way to Hadija's house. We've been spending on average about one night every ten days or so at her place. Her husband (Usuman's brother) and children are in the US, and she's been waiting for a visa for over a year now. She's been helping me a lot with my research, making contacts and translating from time to time. She's just an overall wonderful person...we really don't know what we'd do without her.

We didn't do much on Christmas Eve, just relaxed. Our mom called us as well, which was definitely the highlight of our evening. Sadie thought it was probably best that we didn't do much actual celebrating as it would make us miss home that much more. Hanging out with our Muslim friends definitely made sure that happened...though so many of them called us to wish us a happy Christmas anyway.

Christmas Day itself was a bit more eventful. I was supposed to have interviews with a bunch of old Hausa mothers that morning, but the meeting was postponed till the following day. So we relaxed a bit more, just chatting, playing with Hadija's cat. Hadija's landlord/neighbor invited us over to have the Christmas dinner with them, which they said would start at 2pm. Neither of us really wanted to go, as we don't know the family well at all and wanted to simply be with our close friends on that day. But an invitation is an invitation, and there was really no way we could refuse: they're right next door. However, 2pm became 3pm, and Sadie and I had a date with the internet phone service at 3:30, so we just upped and left. The neighbors' other guests hadn't arrived, and we figured it was more important to call our own family back home (calls that we had planned for some time) than to make nicey nice with people we don't even know. So off we went to the MTN center, where we stayed for two hours. We got to talk to our mom, brother, father, grandmother, my hubby, and Sadie's friends.

When we got back to Hadija's, we knew we had to go to the landlord's house to make an appearance. Here's a part of my email to Ivan that explains what happened next:

"when we went to their place finally, they seemed a bit put out, even after we explained why we had to go. ugh. sadie and i really hate when people kind of just want a piece of us. we don't even know them very well, you know? and to top it off, hadija got food poisoning from their food! And though Sades and i shared the same dish (a local dish called achoo), i've been sick all day with diarrhea ... though she has been fine. we also haven't had electricity all day today, so i've had two excuses to just lay around. the stomach cramps are actually pretty painful...didn't sleep that well at all last night...b/c of that, but also b/c our new neighbors got a g*d d*mn rooster! oh my god...before 5am it started crowing. i've never wanted an animal to die so badly before."

But today is another day, and I'm feeling much better. We also spent the better part of the afternoon with Rukayatu, our Bamenda mother and neighbor (and also mother of Dairou, our old driver and now basically our brother). She's an incredible woman who has and is putting eight children through school, four of which are not hers but were orphaned when Rukayatu's sister and brother-in-law died 16 years ago.

So all in all, we had a nice and relaxing couple of days...with just a few up-and-down moments scattered in the middle. But isn't that what the holidays usually turn out to be anyway?