WaBAM
Some words or phrases I purposely and consciously add into my vocabulary. They remind me of my friends that use them most. Shitson. Shitshow. Pajamas. Oh dear. Mna mna. meh. Mehr. Shmer. Eeeep! Life is hard for one so young. Boopidee Boo-pi-di-dee-doo, shub-i-dy-shub shub. I’m paritial to the onimonipea of colorful language.
Wa-BAM simply added itself. And although it lacks a certain class, it is full of pizazz. Its simplicity lends elegance to the intense moments in our lives when we loose direction, hope, love, when life gives us more smacks than kisses, and we find ourself far from the point we were striving for.
Of course my own wa-BAM was my evacuation from Cameroon. And each subsequent moment until I woke up and wasn’t questioning myself or the world anymore.
My current transition is not wa-bamming me. It’s lack of wa-bamming is a wa-bam within itself. It’s like those birthdays when one day later you are one full year older–and everyone is asking how it feels. How does it feel to be ten years old? Sweet sixteen? How does it feel to be an adult, eighteen year old? No longer a teenager! I always remember thinking-it doesn’t feel any different than it did yesterday.
Having a degree feels no different than it did when I had no degree. Four years ago I saw the world through different eyes. But since the 9th–that surreal freezing day when we suffered through hours of rain, wind, and words of wisdom from a Holocaust survivor and the CEO of Dominos–I have not felt any difference. That is the Wa-Bam.
In honor of this wa-bam, perhaps bigger than all the others–I’m signing off on this blog, and honoring the future wa-bams and the wa-bams that made me who I am today. Thanks for sharing your funky words and phrases with me the past few years 
http://www.wabam.wordpress.com.
on est ensemble,
Alex
Derailed.
I have trouble talking about this. But I have to keep processing. So this is an extension of my train metaphor. There is repetition from other posts. I’m trying to emphasize a different aspect of how it happened and how it affects my life now. The ripple effect has been coloring and shading my life ever since. I’m trying to see the whole picture; here’s one more piece.
I close my eyes and I’m back on the train, in the middle of the desert, tracks disappearing into the horizon. I can feel the wind, so strong it feels like a tangible force that is keeping my body plastered to the front platform, immobile as I am propelled forward at a terrifying speed. I fed the flames. I picked the destination. Point of no return was several months ago when I received my acceptence to the program in Cameroun. It was a year ago when I became President of my own non-profit organization which I founded with my friends. It was two years ago when I spent two hours in the unforgiving equitorial sun to hold hands with children that didn’t speak the same language, in front of their dilapidated school. Looking back, I cannot see any decisions I’ve made that could have happened differently.
And so as I hold on tight to the railing, exhilarated and terrified, it feels like destiny is pushing me forward as much as my own ambition and hard work. As an amateur, unused to overwhelming personal success and life changing passion for a cause, it is a powerful and addicting feeling to move that fast. I leaned into the wind just to feel the strength of my momentum, drunk on my own accomplishment.
Sun on my face, the wind blowing. I remember walking to school that monday. I’d finally figured out the short cut across the bridge and around the dirt football field, and that was good because I was late and it cut off a good ten minutes to school. It meant I had time to grab a few beignets. I understood the exchange now, you didn’t have to bargain for each delicious greasy dough ball. It was a set price in the morning when everyone was in a rush, and you just handed the vender a 500 CFA coin and he’d hand me several. My white hand taking the beignets still made a stark contrast with the dark hands of little boys around me that were hurriedly helping themselves.
The glances and calculating glances didn’t make me uncomfortable anymore. I was used to spectacle I would make every time I walked into the market, calls of le blanc le blanc that would emerge vocally or through facial expressions. The marriage proposals gave me regular cause for entertainment. Yesterday I did start feeling bad when I mocked the gentleman that shouted out, “Ca va, mon coeur?” The man looked affronted by my guffaw, and questioned why I laughed. I didn’t have the words to explain that in english, we don’t even address those we love as our heart. I still noticed that I was usually the only blonde, white girl in sight. But it was to be expected. It felt normal. D’habitude.
Today’s lecture wasn’t very interesting despite the topic of witchcraft. As I dipped my beignet into my coffee, I let the professors french wash over me, comprehending every other word. I was content to absorb the world around me in daily doses. At the moment I was full of speculation concerning the lecture from last week. A professor that knew Manny, Monsieur Noupa, who spent three hours talking about the Bamileke people. This was the ethnic group in Cameroun that lived in Batchingou, the village where the school was going to be built. It was my village. I looked again at the ivory bracelet on my arm, remembering the Chief gifting it as a symbol of our relationship with Batchingou. He named us members of his family.
Eventually the lecturer’s droning came to an end, early thankfully, and class ended a few minutes early. Christiane called us forward, and I noticed again her beautiful dress and her tressed hair which trailed down past her golden scarf. The strike we’d heard about before class, the one she had called me about on my way to school to warn me about, was evidently going to prevent my lunch plans. Well that sucks, I remember thinking. There was a delicious restaurant ten minutes past the small market in front of the university and the opposite direction of my house. The lady there cooked a feast for us each time we arrived; it took time, as a well prepared meal should, but when it arrived we had green beans and carrots, couscous and tangy chicken. Usually we arrived to afternoon classes a half hour late, our stomachs full and our minds drifting. No slow and delicious meal today, Christiane explained. As Academic Director she often treated us as her children; we even had an enforced curfew of 6:30 pm each night because of the dangerous crime that took place after dark. Thus it felt like being sent to our rooms instead of being allowed to go out to lunch, just because of the price of gas rising and a strike from the transporters. I recall my friend Fiona, describing how her brother experienced a protest against communism in some fabulous foreign place. It sounded like Hollywood; something incredible to be a part of, to witness. I was frustrated I couldn’t witness the strike.
Reluctantly I entered the cafeteria, paid for my tray of unappetizing chicken and rice with peanut sauce, and sat down with my other white American friends. No silverware; again we are the exotic foreign students, sitting together while everyone else watches. But we hardly notice now, simply trying to figure out how to eat our lunch. Which is when it started.
The train gives a sudden jerk, and I grab the railing, my eyes widening for a moment as I grasp more fully how fast I am hurtling forward. Only a touch of fear tingles up my back, but it is superficial; I know nothing bad will happen. It’s an instinctual confidence; you either have it or you don’t. At that moment, I had twenty years to substantiate that I had no reason to be afraid. It’s the invincible quality the youth believe they possess; I took my life for granted. I assumed that I would be here for the next moment, the next meal, the next day and years after. It’s an assumption that I didn’t realize I had, until it was taken away.
That moment. It’s like flinching, your entire body tensing in anticipation of the blow, but then it’s over. Stretch the flinch over fifteen minutes of numbness while rioters break into the cafeteria and then you walk into the center of their mob. The anticipation and tensed body, painfully pulling air in while your lungs contract, you can’t breath that feeling of helplessness, of complete frozen body and mind and body, of complete vulnerability- lasts. The time between safety and normalcy, holding onto the railing and looking ahead to when I am flying through the air and all I can see is the sky and people rushing toward me, dark brows over glittering angry eyes, the whites around the pupils almost glowing and the snarl as he comes closer hand gripping the weapon, squeeze eyes shut as his hand hurtles the bottle toward the ground almost in slow motion and listen to the shards crackle and tinkle over the shouting and complete ransacking of the entire cafeteria, pushing backward away from it all but this is a corner there is no way out he is coming this way where did this baby in a pink shirt in front of me come from lift head up to see legs of bystanders fleeing upstairs don’t leave me here alone! but STAY HERE-no its safer to go outside-THERE ARE MORE OUTSIDE-where are my friends-I am not safe-White-Different-don’t look at me-take my hand-don’t go that way-we are surrounded-there are so many-what do I do what do I do what do I do?
I can hear the labored breathing of a panic attack in my head, rhythmic and in time with that moment of the train crash, but my breathing is actually calm. Holding a flinch for that long is exhausting. Also once I stopped flinching, which wasn’t automatic, I had to consciously restart my breathing and my thinking and my movements, it was as if I’d been asleep. I couldn’t grasp exactly what happened. And it wasn’t real. It was actually quite hilarious. I remember laughing a lot, though I can’t remember what was so funny. I think it was that I couldn’t cry.
And then time stopped. Blackness. Thrown from the train, lying on the ground. Four days locked in a hotel while the rest of the world kept going. I even wore the same clothes. It was like one of those dreams you have that you can’t even really believe even during the dream, and then you wake up afterward and it’s even more disconnected than before. But I couldn’t wake up just like I couldn’t cry. And it was a scripted play with parts that we were all following. The president is antagonizing the protestors? Of course he is, the conflict needs to continue building, it hasn’t reached it’s peak yet. Five minutes to leave this place we’ve been trapped in. Riding in the car with the tense paranoid mayor. Oh the program has decided that we are going to be evacuated. Yes, well it’s time to join the military convoy now. No where for us to fit of course, lets squeeze into this bus here. Wave goodbye. Call friends and family, explain that no I won’t be coming to stay for a month. I’m sorry, I probably will never see you again. I’m glad that the strike didn’t hurt you or your family. Best wishes with your life and the dictator and the police state.
The American Embassy, grilled cheese, and a photo with the ambassador. Two days in the Hilton on the ninth floor. Why not shop like tourists in the market that was destroyed two days ago but was rebuilt already? We will be going to France. I’m not sure why. Or what we will do. or why. and then it rains. the end of the rainy season. and the mangos are in season. And we are at the airport, he really is stamping my passport. I have evidence that I left three months before I was supposed to.
The headache is what registers first. Then the feeling of gravel in my face. Opening my eyes, a sideways view of the smoking train. Lifting my head. Looking at the unfamiliar surroundings. Trying to stand, stumbling, looking around, and down at my torn clothes and bruised body. Then sound comes back. And pain. Wiping my mouth with my hand, pulling back and seeing blood. Tasting it. Testing it. Is it real? Is this actually happening right now to me?
I can answer that now, ten months later. Yes. It happened to me. February of last year I ended up in the middle of a riot in Cameroun. I stayed sequestered in a hotel for four days. I left the city in a military convoy, met the ambassador, and stayed in the Hilton hotel for two days. I went to France. Technically I spent more time in France than I did in Cameroun. I spent most of my time in France disconnectedly daydreaming about Cameroun.
It happened. And sometimes the pain is all I have to prove to myself how real it was. But as that slowly ebbs away, how will I remember anymore? How can I remember if it doesn’t hurt?
And also, where does all this leave me now? So my last train crashed and burned. I need to start another one. With what dreams? what passion? what motivation? Should I start anew or try again, just lay the tracks differently? How do I even begin?
At some level, it still feels like I am the survivor of a crash. And that I am wandering around, dazed and confused, lost and I don’t even remember my name because I hit my head on the way down. And now I’m afraid of trains. and speed. that’s why I didn’t apply for that job. I don’t know if I’m up to it anymore.
This is long overdue. It’s nice to meet you.
This is something that I’ve needed to do for quite a while. I’m here now. Why is it when you get from here to there, you’re still here and not there? This appeared in a little box titled “Things to Ponder,” a widget in my newly personalized google homepage. Until today it has left me pondering why I have left it in my profile, as typically it asks me to ponder inane things such as “Is atheism a non-prophet organization?” or “If a pig looses its voice, is it disgruntled?” Of course, as I signed onto the internet feverishly typing in my blog’s html this evening, trying to hold onto this fleeting feeling of urgency to introspect, this little box finally produced a tidbit worthwhile of pondering. More specifically, it added a distracting layer on top of the teeming swarm of thoughts that have been left to breed, congeal and ooze around with me as I walk from here to there and talk to you and them.
But here we go. I’m daring to open this can of worms and brave the conclusions of discarded, ignored and suppressed thoughts and emotions. Put on your rubber gloves ladies and gentlemen, its time to submerge ourselves. Let’s see what we can dig up today, shall we?
As I begin I’m not sure where to start. Sifting through I am finding equal amounts of un-examined moments and realizations which would fill this blog with entries for the next year. Mostly I’m not quite sure how I got here. I found a journal that my brother’s girlfriend gave me last christmas, to use while I was abroad. I graciously thanked her, but set it aside later, disdainful of the unoriginal barnes&noble book that many others had compared to my individually international leatherbound journal from london. But as I picked it up, all I could feel was how far from that girl I was now. So completely removed from where I thought I was headed. I was so full of direction and passion, last christmas. Even standing still I could feel the motion of the events I had organized and worked for taking me full-speed ahead. Standing still made me uncomfortable last year at this time, because the inertia left me off-balance, rocking back and forth trying to take a moment to look around. Ever since I’ve been wrenched off that train, that train that derailed, crashed and burned, all I can see when I open my eyes is the track I laid and where I would have been if I hadn’t fallen off it. Looking at my bruises, wiping the blood off my cut lips and looking at the stained red on my fingers, tasting it with my tongue. Thinking the entire time that it isn’t real, that I’m still on that train. Trying to convince myself it’s true. That it happened to someone else.
Dammit. Damn it. It’s too easy to forget how much the evacuation stays with me. Too easy to wake up each morning and zoom in on the distractions of each day. Like this boy for instance. Where the hell did he come from? Looking back over this semester it feels like this undefined whatever wa-bammed me out of nowhere. And it has been a lovely distraction; one that has left me pulling my hair out in girlish fits, crunching it and shaving and lotioning my legs in preperations, and caused painful moments when I am forced to admit I care and take steps to open myself up to his sweet attentions. Like two nights ago, when I lifted his arm and snuggled into him to watch A White Christmas, and he kissed my hair. Moments like that when it feels like my heart tenses and my entire body smiles into him.
You see how easy it is to forget? When I’m waiting for him to call me back, who can think of anything else but the fact that he is such a flake and how frustrating it is that he doesn’t communicate well despite the plethora of options available today. Let me expand on that, I mean cellular phones, texting, facebook, email, skype etc, this boy still manages to remain aloof and mysterious when he is not looking me in the face. I am also aware that he enjoys his enigmatic quality, at whatever level he is conscious of it.
Obsessing over things such as this leave little time to remember I am still feeling the ripples of the strike in February. Echoes in my restless slumbers. But I’m going to stop circumnavigating what I really need to be processing here.
It hurts. Still. enough that tears squeeze themselves out each time I actually let myself feel it. And I’m trying to pick it apart, find out exactly what makes it hurt. Why it hurts. Because guess what folks there is no treatment for post traumatic stress disorder. Just talking about it until there is nothing left to talk about. When have I been able to stop talking about something? How will I know when I don’t need to talk anymore? Where is the line between disconnecting while I tell my story, and inner peace with la greve? Questions that only I have the answers to.
I’ve been dependent on others for a long time. I’m ready to lean on myself. I’m learning to stop reaching for my phone, scrolling through my contact list when I’m upset. It’s ok to talk it through with you all sometimes; but its time I learned to listen to myself. Forgive myself. Get over myself. Love myself, unconditionally. Even those ridiculous awkward moments. That’s me too. And I love it when I do that too. It’s all me.
I don’t need you to figure me out in order to move on. I’d like it if you understood me, but its more important that I get there on my own. Let me take this moment to tell you that it fucking sucks, but I believe I have to believe I can do it. Faith in myself is the only faith I have. I’ve lost my faith in the goodness of people; the goodness of the world; the existence of a higher power. And organized religion frightens me; a reaction my mother instilled in me as a child. So as far as I can see, its me and the world. And I need to be up to the challenge, because it’s a big one.
One year ago the world was my oyster. I held convictions that I could accomplish whatever, that the world was full of surprises and wonders. I was on a thrilling roller coaster ride. Those first two months in Cameroon, though intimidating, overwhelming and isolating, were exhilarating. I remember feeling like the world was full of delightful surprises around each corner, waiting for me to discover them. I used to be afraid that I wouldn’t have enough time to experience enough of them. Or that I would mess up along the way, or wouldn’t be smart enough or fast enough to experience them. I was worried that I wouldn’t measure up. It never occurred to me that that the world wouldn’t. It was inconceivable that if I put in two years worth of passion, sweat, tears and hours spent on one goal, that the world would take it all away. That I would literally be unable to control whether or not I could walk outside. That I would have to trust others that my life wasn’t in danger. That I would have to choose between home and fucking France, in the space of 24 hours after a traumatizing week. That I would have to fly away from my dreams, and spend two and a half months mourning what I was supposed to have been doing. That I was not in control of my own life. Oh, wait, you had a plan? JUST KIDDING. You have to do this instead, I don’t care how much you cared about it. I don’t care how much it defined who you were. It doesn’t matter. Life happens. Go with it. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t in control of my own destiny. It never occurred to me that I didn’t have control over where my physical body was. My personal safety. My worldview simply didn’t include the possibility that anything like that could happen to me.
Now I look around me with tired eyes with no more tears left to cry, unconvinced that I have the power to change any of what I see for the better. And uncertain of where to go from here. Simultaneously trying to fake that it will make a difference in the dispirited hope that I will be proven wrong.
What I need is to learn to live in this world that I am now better acquainted with. To separate the troubles of others from my own. More to stop trying to shoulder the troubles of the world on my own shoulders. I’m not quite sure how I decided that I am responsible for the state of the world today. I am really very aware of how small I am in this infinite universe and what a tiny blip of an impact I make as the globe spins on its axis. I need to understand why the plight of those millions of miles away from me, those who speak a different language and believe in different things, see the world from different eyes, has become my personal plight.
And maybe all of this is a moot point anyway. Really, what is the point? Why have I been striving to get from here to there? When I get there, it becomes here. Nothing changes. I’m always going to be here. Never there. This is when a tiny voice inside me pipes up, pointing out that the journey is the point. Not that I get there.
Really all I can see now is that loving you is all that’s worth it. And loving myself. So I am investing in myself. Redefining, trying to shade in what I have left fluid, flexible and constantly changing colors for so long. I choose to be myself and no one else. I am committing to my tawny golden brown soul. It brightens in the sun and has shades of copper. Sometimes it is so bright you see the sun shine. It is strong and beautiful like the tawny fur of a lioness on the savanna. It is joyful, gorgeous, funky and curly like my hair. My soul is wild and free. It is like my hippie boots with the tassels on the side, that let me wander from here to there, on three different continents, during all four seasons and a million different moments. It is the color of the scarf I bought in Barcelona that I sling across my shoulders. I wear it proudly.
This is me. Nice to meet you. I love you. And me. I don’t know where I’m going. I’m not sure where I’ve been. I’m not going to let my surroundings or my friends define me. You are all a part of me, my roots, my childhood, my teen years, my hopes my dreams. But I am me no matter where I am. I am me without you all. I take you with me where I go. I don’t loose pieces of myself in you. I give them freely. I am going to love myself and you.
I’m gonna start the day early
Maybe like a rocket on fire
Then I’m gonna write me a thousand songs
And I am never, ever, ever gonna tire
You bring the cup and I’ll bring the moonshine
I wanna fill you up, babe won’t you be mine?
I’m gonna knock em’ all down
Maybe till I can’t see straight
Then I’m gonna wake up at dawn
And I’m gonna feel great
You bring the cup and I’ll bring the moonshine
I wanna fill you up, babe won’t you be mine?
-Start The Day Early, by Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers.
[I love this song. I found it myself. Check it out sometime, it's pretty great.]
Disconnect
The pull is strong
and they wait just behind the surface
roiling and flexing, streaked with passion, loss, bruised joy and jagged paradoxes
clouding every moment spent
here
those leaves I know the trees know me
dancing with familiar waves on the beach
lakes I cannot see across,
threatening to overflow
seizing a careless break in a thought train this tuesday afternoon
enveloping me, taking me back
leaving me there l o s t
piercing gaze, right pupil bleeding blackness into the blue-
tangible heat of throbbing bodies and music-
force of the bottle hurtling towards the floor, FLINCH from the shards and so many angry eyes, puissant through the unity of outrage and numbers of the oppressed-
splintered pupil from the broken shards of the light overhead–
drops of rain on my dust covered skin, the first in many months, standing on the manicured lawn-
wait I don’t I can’t see
friend sister on this side and that, share my pillow, warm this cold place tonight
dawn bringing solitude. breaking that temporary sanctuary forged by solidarity of broken dreams and exhaustion of eyes unwilling to shed more tears—-
swirl and back, sitting on my couch, staring out the window, french notes in hand…
where was I
not here.
Vague musings from Western Africa
I don’t really have a direction right now. No great lesson learned or overarching metaphor that can give you a snapshot of where I am. I really am just wandering. Just bumming around for another two weeks. Mostly because I can’t have a direction… because if I did it would be pointing straight into the sun, across the shallows clear enough to show the rocks, over the blue the cerulean waves and through that door, back to you, all of you.
Perspective from over here lets me sit back and relax, every once in a while letting me sit up and take it in as I please, and when I’m ready. I think it’s been good. From here I can see all around in lots of ways, I can look south and think of those few months I spent in that country that became home. I shiver as I look northward at that other place that left me cold, colder inside than outside. And then the little dip I took back in that direction before heading west. Home. Say it. I like the way my mouth moves, the feel of the word on my lips. It feels good. Feels like home. Sometimes as my gaze shifts that direction I can feel myself slip back into that afternoon, sitting with sisters I take for granted, laughing the hours away. And no need to question anything. Staring at the ceiling, holding hands with Mom on my left, and Dad on my right. Giving the brother a hug.
But I can tell you that these people I have met are worth it. And in watching them go through this, so similar and different to what I went through, in a country with a flag with all the same colors, it makes more sense. And Yes it makes so much more sense now. And through it all I’ve been getting what I never got in the first place—-closure.
And I knew how to do it this time. Some things that changed. Some things it didn’t. I’m doing it differently this time, all the way.
Right now the light is amber, almost pink. Sky darkens, he comes in and points up. ”It is going to rain.” We move inside. And the call for prayer echoes eerily in the light. Light I would never had seen if I hadn’t been learning photography. Never learned to appreciate how beautiful it is. What it means to focus, and frame a picture. To ask yourself what you want this photo to say.
I think if I took a picture of myself right now I’d want you to see me, hair curling over the shoulders again, bleached by the sun. Hopefully slightly tan. You’d see the henna given to me in the village, that creates little mittens for the end of finger, and circles on my palms, the color of barbecue sauce. Thong bracelet encircling my left hand, two glass blown beads sliding to the side, a flower with cursive on inner arm. And my face, rosy and moistened from the humidity here that is better than lotion. Tired, but peaceful. Relaxing my shoulders, accepting the enormity of the past few months. Acknowledging the scar that I have been nursing, picking at, and desperately trying to ignore and unable to tear my eyes off of it, all at the same time. Yes it there. Yes it still hurts. But with time it will be ok. Finally letting it be ok. And it feels good to feel it finally.
This is all very well; I’m sorry I’m being so vague. It’s all I can do on this moroccan hash.
Two more weeks of just sitting and relaxing. And then take me home. But something I should let you in on. I think something I have finally started to realize, is that everyday, after all the craziness, and no matter where you are, who you’ve been, the people you’ve been talking to or whose lives you’ve been touching or lives touching yours–and the end of each day, you come home to yourself.
To think I had to do all that to figure that out.
Snapshot: slight curve of lips. Looks like a smile. One from so deep inside it fills each part of her body, slightly curling the edge of each nerve in a smile.
I’ll be there with you in two weeks. Until then, you’re here with me.
~on est ensemble
Alex
Lost and Found
I haven’t written because I’m pretty sure I’m just going to get lost along the way. And for one who is accustomed to being lost most of her life, I’m getting tired of it. I really do enjoy wandering around a city, getting lost, finding that kooky little shop with so much character and the friendly if extremely odd cashier. Driving around the suburbs realizing yet again that my faultless logic eventually I will end up where I need to be sometimes includes backtracking–one part of being lost I do not enjoy. It is somewhat of an adventure each time I breeze through the beaded doorway of my room, wall murals of the jungle appropriately creating a havoc that matches the strewn clean and dirty clothes across the bed, desk and floor, the closet that has regurgitated half of what used to be hung up or folded neatly, the shelves that carry old knick-knacks and pictures from another life, and oh so much dust. If I am searching for something, keys, wallet, cellphone, bra, it is found in the mean time of ten minutes. It can also be highly hilarious when I am looking for something, late again, and stumble upon something I forgot existed. Remember that time when I bought those hippie orange sparkling pants in Granada? hee hee. Now I do! And I am proud of this, oddly enough. I take it as a sign that I am complicated, have better things to do than straighten up, a reflection of the interesting and discombobulated thoughts zooming through my head at each given moment.
But last semester, I left this all my ridiculous material goods behind, all my ties to friends and family, and dove deep into another culture. And for the first few weeks I was in over my head. But eventually I learned, oh j’ai appris, how to live on the other side of the world. I let go of everything to find a new me that could get up every morning and get by with french instead of english. Wear skirts most of the time and not be bothered when everyone is aware of your skin color before they realize if it’s raining or not (which it never was, it was the dry season). Ask permission to go out at night or not be home for dinner. I was part of a family again. I was a child again. I was making new friends again, something I am out of practice at doing.
And then I got lost. More lost than I have ever been since I’ve found myself. Lost to the point that I couldn’t remember why those things that I get up for every morning, are so important to me. I forgot about this place I’ve called home for twenty years. All I could remember, was how good it had felt, to live there. And how cold it was. How it was impossible to get warm.
“I think you might have post traumatic stress disorder” says Linda, my psychologist from high school.
Three months later, stepping back into this house I grew up in, into the arms of my parents, it felt like I had never left. Except for the voices in my head of those I had learned to count on everyday. The tattoo on my wrist. The clothes, I had left along the way. Some in Cameroon. Some in France. Some in Spain. These I knew I had lost. And returning to my room, looking at those old photographs, I remembered. But lying down on my bed, the world didn’t look the same anymore. I had always thought the world was a good place. I knew there were bad people in it. But I somehow thought that good prevailed over the bad. But that naivity, that innocence, I lost, somewhere between the mob in Dschang and the winding cobblestone of Toulouse. What I’m struggling to find now, reuniting with old friends, swinging at my elementary school playground, is a new conviction, faith that the world can become a better place.
Only three weeks here. Not enough time before I leave this country again. And I’m fighting this urge that I know is irrational to see everyone as much as possible before I leave. Just in case. Because just in case has been my life for the past few months. Hard to shake that habit.
“I think you should admit,” my father said last night, “that you are under stress.”
It’s ok that I’m leaving. Because I know that I will be coming back soon. But I don’t want to loose myself again.
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” -Arundhati Roy
You finally got to me.
It’s been fine up until now. Somehow I was able to turn on my music, take my labtop outside to appreciate the weather, swing my legs back and forth and write up the history of this country. Even as I realized how naive I have been, realizing it isn’t the world that has changed around me, it is my ability to see the world for what it is. It was still ok.
It was ok when I was learning the depth of his evil regime. It was ok as I learned more and more about the crimes he has committed against his own people, the ways in which they have protested, the ways in which he has created a system that not only is leading to the internal destruction of a beautiful people and country, but makes everyone get up everyday as if everything is normal. Even if they don’t buy into the lies that you have fed them, they have to follow their scripts. If they don’t, yes, what happens in a police state? Thats right. People die. Or go to jail. Or get tortured. And somehow it was still ok and I was able to focus on myself and how it was a pain in the ass to have to write a twenty-five page paper.
But then today I woke up and I was sad. As if I’d woken up from a dream that was sad. And then I opened the curtains and it was raining. And suddenly it wasn’t ok anymore.
After he announced the change in the constitution, he deployed his military all across the country. No one could react because they had a gun pointed at their head. And he awarded politicians more salaries the next few days. And, he has the power to just get rid of the National Assembly if he feels like it (but really, why would he? It gives him that APPEARANCE of democracy. Of stability.) Seriously.
I hate this man. He cannot even be a man. He is an evil evil thing. He is 75 years old! For goodness sakes, what the hell are you going to do in the next ten years? What is even the point of being president again? You haven’t done SHIT since you’ve been in office except try to make everything seem like something is happening. How dare you. How dare you?
You have already swallowing the entire history of your country. Now you are taking the future as well. Are you really that greedy? Why do you do this? I just don’t understand.
You are evil. Mauvaise. If I believe in hell and satan, damn if you aren’t good friends. I cannot imagine how twisted your soul is. I cannot even describe my contempt and loathing for you. There are no words.
I believe this is what they call being homesick,
Here we go again. It was supposed to be a weekend getaway. At least some sort of distraction, staying the night was not foreseen, but in hindsight perhaps should have been. At the end of the day, Saturday was almost perfect, minus the fight I had with my homestay mom. Somehow, once again, I had been transplanted into a romantic outing with two of my good friends and three flirtatious and attractive french boys. We rode motorcycles, were introduced to the mother, had fun playing with all the toys in the garage slash bathroom, and had a picnic in a park by a lake. Dinner was barbecue, or the French version, which means delicious duck. And even though it was six twenty-somethings, because we were in France we had a several course meal complete with salad, pasta, duck, and strawberries. We drank the beer while smoking cigars and keeping the fire small. Laughed at each others accent, ‘really?’ and ‘VIOLA’. Wine with dinner, but we never made it to the strawberries. We each had different soundtracks, miss french dictionary had jack johnson, miss wacky had forest gump, and I had club music.
After a disappointing revelation we went for a drive. And despite the cobblestone streets, the canal, and the picturesque churches, I could feel ben folds words as we listened to red hot chili peppers (even though he understood nothing). I was rocking the suburbs again. Better watch out because I’m going to say FUCK-Why is it I always end up in the suburbs?
Driving just to drive. Complaining how there is nothing to do. Going to school to get a degree in a domain we don’t care about to make lots of money to have a house, a car, a moto, and a wife to give you two point five kids that like foi groi. What did we do in the morning? Play videogames-Grand Theft Auto to be exact. Wonder what to do. Go to MacDonalds. Bowling, foozball and arcade games. And as he pulled out a magazine just to look at car prices, not because he needs another car (he has a moto as well), but just to know, I realized I had found myself the equivilant to a bloomfield boy in France. And tried not to grind my teeth.
Ironies aside, again I ask, why am I here? And I still can look back and follow the progression of events and wonder how the hell I ended up here. This place is too close to home to be empty of all the people I love.
Taking the metro home after they drove us back in today, having become one of the endless people wearing black and wearing headphones. I heard her say ‘here we go’ as Mark hot damned he was swimming in a sea of soul, and could feel my future roommate dancing beside me, and then OAR telling me that home to me is reality, and all I need is something real. And as I am all alone here in this parallel universe of everything about home that I hate except for the people I love, my eyes swallowed the tears as I got on the bus from centreville to my homestay house in the outskirts of town, a thirty minute ride to more suburbs. And damn if I am not stuck in the middle of nowhere all alone.
I want to go home. I want family and friends to be here. And I want it to stop raining.
Just so you know…
Sometimes I realize how amazing this experience is. Sometimes I can appreciate being here. I miss Cameroun, but in a way I miss it so much that I carry it with me always. I have on est ensemble on my wrist forever. I get that email from my sister in Dschang, understanding I can’t come back this summer. She understands better than I do what it means to listen to and respect your parents.
And after a while, when you keep forcing yourself to go out with everyone even if you don’t feel like it, sometimes you catch yourself having fun. Sometimes I catch myself having a lot of fun. Last Friday, the plan was to go to a hookah bar. As usual, I arrived and met D and E, and we realized we were missing half the group and that the plan had changed and no one had been told. So we got on the metro and headed over to our regular place, Cafe Populaire, to have a beer or two. That was when four cute french boys invited themselves to our table. And then to hookah afterward.
I learned a lot of new vocabulary that night. And promptly forgot how to say all those swear words, and shotgun hit, and marijuana, and hookah. I do remember the taste of apple and cherry hookah, and of my rouge tea. All delicious. And that I wasn’t very good at giving him a shotgun hit. Because it wasn’t about that anyways.
The next night we found ourself in Cafe Pop again. And I finally had a french intercultural experience. I learned how to flirt with a frenchman, and their normal way of expressing themselves when they like someone. You kiss. When you walk on the sidewalk they take your hand and lead you everywhere, spin you round, give you lots of hugs and of course, lots of kisses.
Sunday we went to the end of the metro, where our new friends picked ups and drove us to play laser tag. My team won, but he was the third best player. Then we went to a park with a great view of Toulouse, and laid down in the sun on a hill covered with daisies. Tried to learn to make daisy chains. Rolled down the hill. Took a look at Toulouse, and marveled that it actually is a beautiful city. That most of the time I cannot see it. Watched the clouds come down over the city, could see the dark stains that meant it was raining. Got dropped off in the city just before it started to downpour.
Maybe this city isn’t as bad as I thought. I suppose the French do have something to offer-cute French boys with manners that are too much fun to flirt with. And its times like these that I forgot how much I miss it. And I can pretend to just let it go, and move on for a little. I’m not sure where I go from here. But I’m hoping I know what I’m doing.
Four Days later
I’ve always been incredibly good at bottling my emotions, but this semester I really think I’ve outdone myself. Granted a semester abroad really is supposed to test your limits, challenge you, have you take a step outside your comfort zone. These expectations I can at least attest have been fulfilled. I don’t think I’ve been comfortable, really comfortable enough to let down my shields and just be myself in months. And that is something that has been a huge challenge and is testing my limits.
I can honestly say I think I miss Albion right now. I didn’t think I would. I’ve also been convinced that returning to Albion, a place I would most definitely describe as petite after this experience, will be nothing but difficult. But thinking about it now… it is the place where I will be closest to most of my friends that I love most. So thank goodness I have a year left to whine about how petite Albion is with you. And to love what Albion has given us. And to spend time together and give us a moment to think before we have to start the rest of our lives. You know I’d give a lot to see you guys right now. Because honestly I don’t know what to do with everything thats going on. But the thing is that this is my life now. This isn’t something I can just weather and it will pass.
I’m trying to write about all this without putting down specifically whats going on because I am still avoiding it. If I start to let myself feel what is going on inside I don’t konw what will happen. But the thing is I can’t keep it in here anymore so here it comes.
I really just need somone to hold me and say its going to be ok. And I think I’ve needed it since that day I was in a mob. Because I kept my calm the entire time, and shoved down the panic and fear with rationality that I needed to be calm. After staying in the classroom all day I thought I felt claustrophibic. I didn’t really know what that meant. We walked together, out the road where several hours earlier the mob had run by while we lay in the classroom listening to them yell. Instead of going out the gates of the university (with armed guards that let in the mob because they couldn’t have stopped them and would have been hurt), we took a left into the field. Walked through someone’s farm land, jumping over a few small creeks and passing by a goat and one man until we came to a back road.
That walk took about twenty minutes. Walking down the road looking at people sitting in front of their house and talking about the strike, passing by some friends we had made that came and walked with us. One man that was anglophone that I had spoken with Saturday night at the club to in French for ten minutes before I remembered his first language was English and he put his hand on my shoulder and said “You are so in the system!!” Enough time for less than ten children to see us, their faces lighting up as they watch the parade of les blanches pass and to chase after us yelling ‘Les Blanches Les Blanches!’
That walk was the last I took in Dschang. After I entered the hotel, Le Hotel T’Claire, I didn’t leave for four days. Four days of sleeping three to a bed, with only the clothes you wore to school that day and the books you brought for class. Four days of watching Cameroonian news, which means watching fifty minutes of Bicoutsi and Makossa dance videos (i.e. cameras focusing on women shaking their butts) and then hearing the same announcer who never changes his suit because he is always on the job report how many deaths are going on in Douala, where I know Rose, Prisca, Paul, Luc Gervais and Augustan and his family all live. Four days of trying to take everything in stride and pretending everything is fine when I hear a boy was shot in front of the same cafeteria we were in the day after we were there. Four days of not being allowed to peek out the windows but peering through curtains and slotted blinds as the mob goes by, looting and yelling, the first night singing to the Gendarme station across the road that John Fru Ndi, the opposition party leader, is their president. Four days of expecting to return home and things to return to normal, and hoping to hear more news about how soon I can go back to my family, and fear constricting in my chest when I hard the situation has gotten worse. Four days of having delicious meals brought to us only after we took a hot towel as we listen to our news anchor talk of how much bread costs and watch footage of the lines to buy bread and the station interviews Cameroonians waiting in line, explaining to the camera that they cannot feed their children. Four days of realizing that the strike is growing beyond just the raise in fuel prices, but also people’s feelings about the economic crisis and how Biya wants the change the consititution so he can be President forever. Four days of chastising myself for not having a change of clothes with me at all times in my bag and contact solution and tooth brush and tooth paste. Four days of trying to keep my phone charged and with me at all times and with enough credit to call someone in the event of an emergency. Four days of the same fifteen people. Four days of trying to fill the days with something rather than nothing. Saving my money to buy phone credit but using the rest of it to buy drinks at the bar the first night, and getting high the second night (in my bathroom with a broken light, wearing a head lamp using a water bong fashioned from a water bottle and tin foil).
The third night straining to understand french and watching the faces of my friends and Christiane crease in disbelief and anger, and then trying to understand the english version the presidents address. His jowels blending in with the yellow background, his voice chastising his country for giving in to witchcraft and being ungrateful. Sitting and wondering if I am about to be in the middle of a revolution. Running upstairs and looking outside, waiting for a roar of Cameroonians fed up with their dictator of twenty-five years ready to take on the gendarmes. All I could see was burning, a light in centreville, after much searching. Dschang was quiet. We were able to surmise the fire was from a striker burning a tire, a common way of the strike members to express their frustration with fuel prices.
After that Christiane called us to the second floor where we had tried to hold classes twice. After giving out the phone numbers of all the chief of police in Dschang, Biya’s contact in Dschang, embassy contacts, and other important people that we could call in the event of an emergency, we prepared for an emergency. We brought all of our bottles of water into the classroom, had a countoff, found out that we could pull down a metal grate and lock the door if the hotel was broken into, and all fifteen of us fit into the two bathroom stalls if that grate was breached. In the event that they got in and we needed to get out, we found a shaft that led to the roof. Then we took all the rooms that had windows and faced the street, and moved across the hall. Christiane moved her room to our floor to be near us. If something happened we were to try and get to the classroom, but if we somehow ended up in our room to hide there, turn of the lights and close the door and pretend it was unoccupied.
At that point I started carrying everything aroudn with me at all times in my purse. The next day, Thursday, my homestay family came to visit me. They packed up all of my things into my huge suitcase and backpack and walked for at least forty five minutes up and down hills to the hotel. My sister, Dorvale, had stopped by the day before to drop off a change of clothes on the way to a party, and the later my cousin, Yanick, stopped by to see me and chat for an hour. Thursday my mother, Dorvale, Yanick and Yvonne came, and Papa, Loic and Christelle sent their salutations. Dorvale had been my roommate and bedmate for a week. She is twenty three and incredibly hip and beautiful. Yanick, is incredibly gorgeous also. Saturday night we all went to the boite and had a great time, and Yanick and I danced together and in the heat of the moment-this phrase works really well here-started kissing. Thursday, after Mama left, he tried to convince me to marry him. For two hours. In between proposals I got everyone’s perspective on the strike. Everyone thought it was fine now. Though I did ask Yanick what he thought would happen if Biya changed the constitution. “La Guerre,” he replied. War. I asked him if he thought Biya was going to change the constitution, and he pushed out his lips and frowned, nodding. Of course he will change it. (Last Thursday, the 10th of April, Biya successfully changed the consititution. He can now be president until he dies)
That evening I sat at dinner, belly full, shaking my head at Yanicks proposals and how many clothes I had after making do with one set for three days, Christiane ran into the room, out of breath, for the first time not calm since we had been in the mob. “I can’t tell you why but I need to go upstairs and in five minutes take only what is necessary and come down again.” We all stared at her, the ripples of her words echoing in our heads. She looked at us in bewilderment. “Do you trust me?” We nodded. “Then GO!!!”
Scared, I ran upstairs and in five minutes tried to take only what I needed from two suitcases that had been packed by my family. I filled my backpack with clothes and I don’t even remember what else, at one point seeing my plastic ziplock bag full of pens and thinking how I might need them and stuffing them inside then running out, leaving things thrown across the bed, on the dresser, in the bathroom. By the time I got downstairs cars had already taken almost everyone except for five. I kept thinking of things I had wished I’d packed. I remember seeing Christiane, her chest heaving, hands on her hips, saying to herself, I found out, I told everyone, I did what I could.
I piled into the backseat of a car with five friends and the necessary things we had brought. It was the first time I’d been out of the hotel in four days.
Looking back I started this entry trying to juggle everything thats going on but all I can do is tell the story, piece by piece, and hope it sheds some light on why I can’t sleep because I am thinking. Why I have this numb thing in my chest that I can’t pay attention to because then I’ll start to feel it. The thing is there is so much left to tell and I don’t have the time to tell it. What now?
