It was bound to happen sometime
Holy crap I got robbed day before yesterday. Let me back up a ways and give you an update on my last couple weeks.
Last week I started driving by myself. Several times my host father, Georges, just told me to drop him off, or take the car somewhere. The furthest I drove was home one day from work. I made it ok. I ask God for safety driving around each time. The third day I had been driving by myself, I was going with some coworkers to ‘prospect’ for new clients at the local milk company, Camlait, when we drove past a plain-clothes bunch of dudes on the side of the road that tried to flag us down. I had been with my host family before when we passed groups of people like this and I observed that we would always just keep going. So I sped up, but they had a well placed guy ahead with metal spikes. So I stopped. They explained that they ‘worked for the government’ and were inspecting papers. I gave them the papers for the car and they looked over them. They then told us that since the car was registered to the travel agency, Aigle Voyages, that we were supposed to have public transportation papers. They were almost certainly looking for a bribe. We called my host dad, Georges. I knew he’d give it to him good.
He pulled up in a taxi, hopped out, and walked hurriedly over to the man who had taken the papers and started to make a scene. He then crossed the street over to the only somewhat official looking guy of the group, who was dressed in army garb. Georges’s yelling gathered a crowd of about 20 people that just watched. After about 15 minutes the my host dad , the guy in charge, and the crowd of 20 people crossed the street back to the car. The guy in charge was apologizing and my host dad was yelling ‘Arrest me then—If there’s something wrong, just arrest me’ (I think). They let us go and when we drove by later, they didn’t bother us at all. My host father says it’s ok if I drive even though I only have an American license; praise the Lord because what they should have gotten me on is not having a license.
This culture is very social. People aren’t afraid to meet other people and make friends. Strangers call each other father, mother, brother. But also, people sure aren’t afraid of confrontations; I daily see people yelling at each other in the street; my travel book calls the inhabitants of Douala ‘pushy’. Confrontation is probably a better means of conflict than the passive aggression of the US, but it’s very different for me. In any cases, I was very glad to have my host father there.
That same day, I was headed home from our minimally successful prospecting at Camlait when I saw a white girl about my age just sitting on the side of the road in my neighborhood. I went ahead home, changed out of my wool suit pants and tie, then headed back to to say hello. She was the only white person I have ever seen in my neighborhood and one of the very few white people about my age I have seen in Douala. Her name is Louis, she is German, and she is here for 6 weeks. She lives with her boyfriend’s father’s family and works in an orphanage where she gets frustrated because of the poor treatment of the kids. She mentioned that she used to think it was kinda weird when black people who didn’t know eachother would greet each other in the street; her African friends told her to wait ‘til she goes to Africa. Now she understands, and so do I. We sat around with her boyfriend’s little half-brother Thomas and drank frozen yogurt from a bag. It was nice to talk to someone who considered being here a pretty crazy experience also.
Last Saturday I went to a traditional funeral ceremony called a deuil (literally translated as: mourning/grief/death/bereavement). The father of one of the employees of Aigle Voyages (who was also a distant relative of my family here) had died. Deuils are normally 3 days. The first two days were in my neighborhood Ndogbong here in Douala. The chairs, tents, and people in and beside the road here in Ndogbong had caused us some traffic disruptions but I didn’t realize it was for anyone connected to us until Saturday. The final day, the burial, was Saturday about 4 hours away from Douala in a village about an hour down a dirt road from Bafang, where I had gone on my trip to the west province. We first went to a mass set up in the middle of the village.
Later we followed a 5 piece band and the hurse up the hill to the deceased’s house. They then buried the man under the house. I also thought it was interesting that the guy had died 3 weeks prior and it was still an open casket funeral. In the house of the deceased there there was wailing which I think was mostly ceremonial although several people also had some genuine tears. There was one older woman who also did a dance while wailing which mostly involved her turning her hips as much as her old body would let her. After that we drove some juice and wine to the funeral lunch where there were probably a couple hundred people seated under a tent.
We ate then went back up the hill where the little brass band played joyous praise songs (from the ones I recognized) and the women had a spontaneous dance party centered around the widow who was seated in the middle.
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This was really interesting. I didn’t take a lot of pictures but instead video because I wanted to capture the sounds and the motion. I hope to edit this up, but realistically that won’t be until this summer.
Day before yesterday, I was robbed. Really with all my third world travels that I’ve done and still plan to do, I was bound to get robbed sometime. It actually went really well. Here’s the story: I was meeting with Louis at 1pm to eat chocolate and drink milk but I had gotten there a little early so I was waiting on the corner of a pretty busy intersection. I leaned up against the building to get out of the sun when three dudes walked up to me and said hello. I’m not really good at reading people here yet and sometimes people just genuinely want to say hello to the white dude so I greeted them. One dude asked for some money for lunch so I pulled out all the coins I had in my pocket and gave them to him. He then told me no that’s not enough. That’s when I sensed things were out of my control. One dude then got closer and told me “Donne-moi l’argent ou je vais te blesser” (Give me the money or I will wound you). In disbelief and looking to buy a little time to think I repeated what he said a couple times. I looked over to the other people on the street corner that watched passively then I looked back at the dude. He put his hand in his pocket, I think as an afterthought to make me think he had a knife. I don’t think he had a knife, but I wasn’t looking to find out. I pulled out my wallet and he grabbed it, opened it, took out the money (including the $1 USD that had been floating around in my wallet) then gave my wallet back and hurried away. I had 6500CFA and $1USD ($14.50 total) which wasn’t a huge deal; I also appreciated that he didn’t steal my cellphone. I stood there dazed on the street corner for no more than 10 seconds, not knowing what to do when this guy in a suit and a big ol’ fancy Mercedes SUV swung out of the traffic and asked if they stole my money. He beckoned me to hop in and my instincts (and his car / clothes) told me this guy was legit. We followed the dudes a little way and he hollered at them a bunch but they got away through traffic. We swung around the block and picked up his friend, he gave me some tips like to talk to street vendors when I’m waiting for someone, and then dropped me off back close to where I was going to meet Louis. As I was getting out of the car he insisted on giving me 5000CFA (~$11). I think his name was Mamadou (though I was frazzled and don’t remember very well); he told me that not all Cameroonians were mean.
I met up with Louis and we bought chocolate and ‘milk’ which ended up being more similar in both taste and consistency to yogurt. That night Marius shared stories of a few times when he has gotten robbed. Really, if I had to be robbed, it couldn’t of gone much better. I kept my wallet including my three remaining tennis lesson tickets that cost $4 each and my driver’s license. I kept my cellphone and some random guy in the ‘Mercedes of Justice’ (as Catie J named it) gave me back $11 of the $14 I lost.
I’m almost done with the web projects I’m working on. The microfinance page is online at http://cefabank.com
All that I have left is to proofread the French version; the English version is done. I don’t feel like my design is spectacular but it works. If you find errors, let me know. The travel agency site is almost done also. I hope to be able to travel more soon. If you are (still) reading this, thank you for being patient and checking back. I really appreciate that so many people that I didn’t expect are reading! I’ve only taken a handful of new photos since last time; they are at the end of my Douala album which I have now put as a link on the right sidebar of this page. Also for you technology people that use rss based news readers such as Google Reader you can now add johnboiles.com as a feed. As always, comment to let me know you are still with me.
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