flying coyote

Today was a blessed day of nothing, much needed. Work has an ability to simultaneously depress me and buoy my spirits, a balance which is, despite its inherent ambiguity, definitely exhausting. Therefore, it was a wonderful feeling to wake up this morning to face a day, or rather a morning, unburdened by the necessity to head to CAPJ, at least not til the afternoon. It gave me needed time to rest (well…after drawing water, which still stresses me out). I spent most of my day reading an entire book, after which I spent some time pondering why, when I have enough time in one day to read the entirety of a book, I can possibly be so exhausted?
I came to the following conclusion: You know those cartoons with the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote always chasing and trying to catch him? I have a distinct memory of one of those episodes where the Road Runner heads towards a cliff, but in his stealth stops short, so as not to fall. Predictably, the coyote (not as wiley as his name might suggest) doesn’t stop in time, but keeps going, right over the edge of the cliff. There’s a moment where, hanging suspended in mid air, he realizes he’s going to fall a quite far distance before he splats on the canyon floor below him. He feebly holds up a sign declaring “uh-oh…” (or something like that) before gravity grabs him a throws him to the canyon floor the way a penny supposedly rockets to the earth when thrown from a skyscraper. Further, as salt in the wounds, the lightning-fast Road Runner inevitably reaches the canyon floor before the coyote and hangs around just long enough to rub in how badly the coyote has failed to catch him, before he “meep meep”s and jets off again.
Here in Cameroon, in this context that is so unfamiliar, I feel completely like the coyote, like the ground has completely been swept out from under me. However, in some sick, twist of fate, I’m not falling down, but falling up, sideways, and every which way except what I’d expect. To my horror, the one rule I’d expect – gravity - is not even operating. To be honest, even a mile-long drop would be welcome at this point, because at least I’d know to grimace as my body slammed into the ungiving Earth.
Instead, everyday I struggle simply to understand my context, to understand the priniciples under which Cameroonians operate (ie that gravitational principle). I’ll give you an example. Beginning this week, Magloire has been mentioning how he’s needed to make mud bricks. When I ask what he’s building, he says a house. For him? Yes.
Now, Magloire already has a house, a pretty nice one at that, and I’ve noticed several improvements over the three or four months since I first saw it (ie ceiling installed, walls painted, curtains hung, etc), which would indicate to me that he has no intention of moving (why invest all that time and especially money improving a current home just to move?) so naturally I inquired why he’s building a new house. His answer was basically, “because.” Well, if there’s anything I’ve learned the hard way, it’s that when you ask a question here and get an answer that does not answer your question (which happens more often than I’d like), you probably didn’t ask your question right (ie there’s something that goes unsaid and understood in the Cameroonian response which is not immediately apparent to you). So I tried again, “But… you already have a house. Why are you building another one?” Again, the response is something along the lines of “why not?” Okay. Fuck. I guess I’m the idiot. I give it up for the moment.
But today, as we left the CAPJ, we passed the site where he’s building the new house and I said again, emphatically “I still don’t understand why you’re building it.” He laughed, as he often does at my incessant questions, chuckling “you still don’t understand?” And then explained that his father had bought the land and if he didn’t build on it then the people who live around that site would slowly parcel it off. Building on it is a way to protect it from encroaching neighbors. And when the house is built, he can rent it out and make a little money.
Okay! Now there’s an explanation to the question I asked. Why was that supposed to be obvious to me? Why did I let him make me feel so stupid for asking about it in the first place? Afterwards he tells me that my questions surprise him. Who owns land in America? Anyone can. And how do they keep others from encroaching on it, he asks? I try to explain that a person can do whatever he wants with the land and the “contract” he has to the land is what keeps people off (and of course, the government and judicial system, which, in contrast to Cameroon, actually work) – a person doesn’t have to build on it to keep people off. But dimly, I see that here is another fundamental difference between how America works and how Cameroon works (or doesn’t, as the case often is), and probably the root of our mutual lack of understanding.
But this entire process, just to uncover this tiny morsel of a new understanding took a whole week from when I first encountered something I didn’t understand to when I began to understand it. And I’d say that’s a fast turn-around, because most people are not as cued into my utter confusion as Magloire is.
The entire process is positively maddening, exhausting, frustrating, and at times, rewarding. Imagine walking into your kitchen, and opening your fridge to discover that instead of keeping foods chilled, it cooked them, and finding that your oven instantly froze foods – now your butter’s melted, milk’s spoiled and your chicken that you were preparing for dinner is a frozen chunk. But then, adding insult to injury, when you call the landlord/repairman/anyone to ask “what gives?” they look at your sideways, as if you’ve asked why 2 plus 2 makes four, and say simply “because.” What you need is someone to explain that math for you, but it’s so evident to them, they can’t imagine having to explain it to anyone. It just is.
But not to you.
That’s what my everyday is like. Spoiled milk and frozen chicken and meanwhile I’m floating in space like a coyote on a wayward mission to the moon, gravity having taken a raincheck. If that picture is totally nonsensical and non sequitor for you, then congratulations. You understand just a sliver of what I’m facing every-god-damn-fucking day.
In this context, I have plenty of time to doubt myself, whether I’m doing any good, and whether I’m “measuring up” (to what, exactly, is a whole new question – the very lack of any measures, objective or otherwise, makes self-analysis extremely difficult). More often than not, I’ll cling to a recent event as proof of how well I’m succeeding or how miserably I’m failing in this whole experience. Lately, it’s been a bit more of the latter than the former.
So today, while Magloire and I were sharing a drink (at the only bar in town with refrigerated drinks), I was already in a fragile state when he mentioned that Stacy, the volunteer who prospected my post, and was good friends with Magloire, adapted uber-quickly and seemingly without problems. Now, I know enough to know that the average American does not adapt that quickly here and certainly not without more than a few hitches. Furthermore, I know Stacy (she’s still in Cameroon), and I could probably ask her about her specific problems if I really wanted to. The rational part of me was telling me, “ don’t compare yourself to her - Magloire surely doesn’t have the whole story and plus you are doing a good job adapting too.” But the emotionally vulnerable, judgmental, and already slightly depressed part of me gained the upper hand and I was pretty much a party pooper for the rest of the evening.
I know Magloire was concerned by my turn to a depressed state, and furthermore, one of the things that’s been getting me down lately is the lack of a real close friend, someone to confide in here. So I told myself, “Becca, if you want to develop your friendship with Magloire, you have to open up to him,” so in what was my most courageous moment of the eveing, I confessed that his comment about Stacy had made me feel like a failure in some sense. He had no idea, and felt terrible and assured me that was not at all what he meant and could I forgive him. And that made me feel a little better. Only slightly, but it was certainly an improvement over the Negative Nancy that I had been ever since he first made the comment.
Meanwhile, I’m still a floating coyote, frustrated, sometimes-depressed, emotionally-exhausted, with spoiled milk, and throwing frozen chicken bricks, and asking people to explain basic math.