Allons-y Alonso!

Before coming to Cameroon, the only French words I knew were “Bonjour,” “merci,” “sacre-bleu,” and “allons-y”—the former two from Beauty and the Beast and Doctor Who respectively.  But I feel like I should speak French.  I mean, on the six degree of separation scale, I am definitely only one degree away from speaking French. 

One of my best friends and roommates for two years in undergrad was a French major; surely some French should have rubbed off on me just by breathing the same air, right?  Diffusion?  I guess I should know better having once been informed by one of my friends that it’s impossible to learn a language through osmosis. 

My Spanish professor in undergrad thought I spoke French.  I later concluded that she must have had me confused with someone else, but after failing to correct her the first time, I simply had to smile and nod every time she said “Oh Allison, this [insert tense or grammar or vocabulary topic here] should be very straightforward for you!  It’s similar to French!”

For some reason I’ve had multiple Europeans assume that I’m French (obviously before I open my mouth).  One even went as far as to ask if I was a French ballerina.  He claimed he could tell by the way I walked across the square—though I think it was part of a larger ploy to get my number. 

But despite hovering so close to the language for so long, I had very little to go on after arriving in Cameroon.  I figured that since I already (sort-of) spoke a Romance Language, how hard could it be?  Difficult.  Or difficile.  (Don’t be too impressed, I just looked that up right now.  And then felt dumb because it was so close to Spanish.)

I am not an auditory learner, so when for the first few weeks other members of the field team would try to teach me helpful French phrases while we walked from one field site to the next, they would in one ear and out the other.  To remedy this, a couple of weeks ago I decided to sit down with our French at a Glance book, inherited from Chris, who had inherited it from his advisor when he first came here ten years ago.  It was at dinner so our Cameroonian field assistant was helpfully sitting mere feet away and couldn’t escape my onslaught of questions.  Our conversation went like this:

Me (in the most horrid French accent imaginable):           “So it’s je parle, tu parles, elle parle, nous parlons, vous parlez, elles parlent?”  (pronouncing the words as I would in Spanish, aka “parle” as “parlay”)

Jean Bernard:    Laughs. “Non, je parle, tu parles, elle parle, nous parlons, vous parlez, elles parlent?” (except it sounded like je parl, tu parl, el parl, nou parlon, vou parl, el parl)

Me:        Wait, what happened to the ends of the words!

JB:          Laughs.

Me:        No seriously, I speak, You speak, She speaks, You all speak, and They speak all sound the exact same??

JB:          Laughs.

So apparently, unlike Spanish, French is not phonetic. 

Me (debating banging my head against the table):           Hmmmmm

But after the first few weeks of giving the deer-in-headlights look to everyone who addressed me, I have finally mastered enough phrases to have a (very simple and stilted, mostly one-sided) conversation.  Every conversation I have goes a little like this:

Me:        Bonjour (Hello)

Cameroonian:   Merci, bonjour.  Comment ça va?  (Thanks, hello.  How is everything?)

Me:        Ça va bien.  (Everything is good)

Cameroonian:   [undecipherable French words that I take to mean “What are you doing wandering around the African bush in such ridiculously attractive jungle pants?]

Me:        Je regarde les oiseau.  (I look at the birds)

Cameroonian now with an incredulous smirk:     Les oiseau?  (The….birds?)

Me:        Oui, les petite oiseau.  Pour la science.  Je suis étudiante biologie.  (Yes, baby birds.  For science.  I am a biology student.)

Cameroonian:   [undecipherable French words]

Me:        Je suis désole.  Je ne parle pas bien le Français.  (I’m sorry.  I don’t speak French well.)

The conversations go either one of two ways at this point, either:

Cameroonian:   [undecipherable French words]

Me (having fully exhausted all my French):          [blink and smile as the awkward seconds tick by until…]

Cameroonian:   Ça va, Ça va.  Au revoir!  (It’s fine, it’s fine.  Bye!)

Or they make the switch into English which it turns out they speak much more fluently than I speak French.

But at least I am learning.  Slowly.  And I plan to continue practicing.  Just as I will continue my search for someone named Alonso so I too can say “Allons-y Alonso!”

Fish Heads Fish Heads Roly Poly Fish Heads

Before starting in on the fish heads, I’d like to say sorry for the radio silence on my end for the last two and a half weeks.  In a series of unfortunate events, my computer (and various other items from our house) wandered off into the African bush.  There is little chance that these items will be retrieved—especially considering that the first course of action in the investigation of this theft was to consult some seers and sacrifice a goat.  And so I can only say that I hope that the thieves enjoyed the one hour of Disney music that they were able to listen to on my iPod before it died for good (in a country where Apple products are extremely scarce, it probably would have been a smart idea to take the charger as well.  Dummies.).  Now they have a very expensive paper weight. 

Thanks to Chris and JB though, we now have a replacement computer to use for the rest of our time here, which I much appreciate.  It arrived this morning along with JB back from Yaoundé.  Though it will work perfectly adequately, whoever manufactured this computer deserves to be smacked upside the head:  half of the key board is in the French arrangement and half of it is in the America.  Major fail.  Luckily I don’t have to look at the keys when I type so once we changed the settings to function as an American keyboard it works just fine.  It just gets a little confusing if I glance down and the “Q” is where the “A” should be, the “M” is where the “;” should be, etc. etc. (the time it took me to type the previous sentence was a testament to the difficulties of looking while I type).  But, as I said, as long as I don’t look down, it’s business as usual. 

The blog entry that I had started before this whole debacle was about food, so I will try to recreate it—though I’m sure it will pale in comparison to the original on my pilfered computer.

So.  Fish heads. I’ve never considered myself to be a particularly picky eater, though I’m sure that others would classify me as such, and I’ll pretty much try anything once (well maybe not the sardines they “prepare” here by setting them out in the sun on a tarp—the fly to fish ratio is just a little too high for me to stomach), but something that I’ve had to get over is my aversion to having my food look at me while I’m eating it.  Somehow if my 24 years of eating fish (which, thanks to the many fly-fisher friends and family members, has not been infrequent) I have always been served fish sans head.  This is not the case in Cameroon.  On nearly our first evening in the country we were invited over to JB’s family’s house for dinner.  When the plate was brought out and there was an eye staring back at me, I wasn’t entirely surprised but it was a tad unnerving.  My first thought was of the silly kids’ song that my good friend Allison Young used to always sing:  “Fish heads fish heads, roly poly fish head.  Fish heads fish heads eat them up, yum.  In the morning, happy smiling fish heads, in the evening, floating in your soup.”  Come to think about it, I’ve never heard anyone else sing that particular ditty and I guess that it’s entirely possible—knowing Alli—that she made it up.  So the lyrics went round and round my head as I ate that delicious fish.  All except the bones and the eyes, though my field assistant Eric helpfully informed me that eyes are especially delicious (fish eyes go in the same category as street sardines).

As it turns out, fish heads are not the most unsettling food that I’ve encountered (again, see street sardines).  One of the most common dishes that you encounter on the side of the road is the classic newspaper full of mystery meat.  I think it used to be a cow.  Though it might be goat.  There are a lot of those running around…no one would miss one or two.  It’s rather gamey but I’d rather that than medium rare a la parasites.  Then there’s the couscous—not real couscous—that I have yet to try.  But all in all we’ve been eating rather well:  JB fries up a mean omelet (egg friation, he calls it) and makes delicious peanut sauce over sweet potatoes, Justin and Eric both got ambitious and made plantain chips and French fries respectively, and Chris made homemade bean burgers that I insist were restaurant quality.  And there’s always plenty of pasta and sauce and vegetables when it’s my turn to cook (I find that my creativity in the kitchen is severely hampered by the lack of an oven). 

Those of you who know me know that though I love to eat, I only get in the mood for serious cooking about once every couple of weeks so it was nice to have five potential chefs for the first month of being here.  My turn in the cooking rotation will come up much more frequently, unfortunately, now that we are down to only three people.  I guess I can count myself lucky however, that we are following the American way in deciding who cooks and taking turns.  After a recent conversation I had, I realized that things could be very different. 

Last week when Eric and I were staying at the Wildlife Conservation Center in a neighboring town while JB took Justin and Chris back to catch their flights from Yaoundé, two of the staff members—both male—were surprised that Eric was cooking one of the evenings.  I thought I had caught hints of that the evening before when they walked us into town to buy some supplies when all the questions about cooking were addressed to me.  (They were especially curious if I could cook over a wood fire.)  The next day when they asked if I had used the kitchen yet and I replied that I hadn’t but Eric had, there surprise was evident.  “Were you not around?” one of them asked in confusion.  I replied yes, equally confused.  “In Cameroon if a woman is around she does the cooking,” he continued.  Ah.  So that explained the pointed questions about cooking over a wood fire.  I explained that in the US whoever wants to cook does the cooking.  They both still looked incredulous and rather amused at the point.  “So if you and I were together, I would have to cook?” he asked.  Trying to remain polite and respect cultural differences I refrained from the “uh yeah, buddy” that I would have preferred and went with “we would probably take turns!”  They both laughed at this and commented that they preferred it the Cameroonian way to which I replied “well I prefer it the American way if that means that I don’t have to spend all my time in the kitchen.”  Both chuckled at that, but I don’t think the take home message of gender equality was fully computing because one asked “can you even cook?”  Yes, yes I can.  Just not fish heads or sundried sardines.