Ironic

February 1, 2014

My host “mom” is early thirties, a journalist, with impeccable English and impeccable fashion sense.  Quite frankly she is intimidatingly fabulous. My first day with my host family was basically a continued subversion of so many stereotypes about Africa and America.

My host mom is determined to help me taste Cameroonian culture, today she made me koki, a traditional dish, and she also plans on bringing me to her favorite nightclub. It’s not the first thing that came to mind when I thought “African culture.” I’ve been a college student near Albany, an ok sized city, for three years, but never in my life have I been to a nightclub.

There was this dude last semester who kept telling me that I needed to let my hair down and have some fun, and that we should go dancing, and I was like “Nightclubs are not my scene.” “What is your scene then,” he demanded, and I said Africa.

And now, because I am obsessed and focused on understanding and integrating into African culture as best I can (and also because I DO like to have fun, and occasionally my definition of fun and other people’s definition overlap) I am going to go clubbing, African style. It’s pretty ironic and I think it’s fabulous.

I’m loving the fact that my own expectations about Africa are being contradicted by Cameroon; the vibrancy and red dirt and warm smiles of Cameroon are very familiar from Mali, but the main difference I’ve noticed so far is how metropolitan Cameroon, (or Yaoundé at least) is. I first noticed it in the slightly superior tone of a Cameroonian ex-pat (we were best friends for ten minutes in the customs line at the airport) when we discussed the differences between Cameroon and Mali. The “big city” impression has grown since then, largely because, well, Yaoundé is a big city. With a population around 1.5 million, Yaoundé dwarfs anywhere I have ever lived (primarily Hoosick Falls and Siena, each at a solid 3 thousand population).

I am a small town girl in the big city and the unique flavor of this African city just makes that even cooler/stranger/more contradictory and interesting.  I frequently feel like a country bumpkin, particularly because we were instructed to bring very conservative clothes, and the incredible fashion sense of Cameroonians puts me to shame. Whether it’s traditional, elaborate embroidered dresses or Western jeans and heels, Cameroonian women rock the fashion world. I’ve never been super self-conscious about being fashionable, but walking around in a frumpy skirt and men’s t-shirt, I have clothing envy all the time.

And the education level of most of the Cameroonians I have interacted with so far puts me to shame. My host mom rattles on in the perfect English that is necessary for her job, and I feel like an idiot with my stumbling French.

But as out of place as I sometimes feel, at the back of my mind I love it for the ironic contradiction of so many American stereotypes of Africa. As far as normal Americans go, I am a little bit less clueless about Africa after going to Mali when I was 16 and being obsessed with Africa since 12.
But even so, I know nothing, and have everything to learn.

*Note: I did actually go to a nightclub. Maybe it's just Africa, but it could occasionally be my scene. 

la feminism and dinner table french

January 28^th.

Today is technically the first day of orientation, and I had an in depth conversation about feminism EN FRANCAIS. I’m pretty ecstatic about it. My French is terrible, the three A’s I’ve gotten in all my French classes lied because my listening comprehension and oral skills are shit. Throughout the last three days, I’ve already gotten used to the blank panicked feeling as people rattle on in French and I understand about 15%. But I think a big part of the problem is the blank panicked feeling. Tonight over dinner all seven of us SIT kids made a pact that we are going to only speak in French during meal-times, we can use English while hanging out but if we want to improve we need to practice together. I was like “oh dear” but agreed, and as we sat and laughed and each stumbled through French occasionally, I started to relax a little and have fun instead of viewing each French sentence as a test. At one point, Jeff (who is the only guy in the program) said something jokingly that had a tinge of sexism, and I laughed and said “Careful, I’m a feminist” (but in French as per the new dinner table rules). 

Suddenly that turned into an in depth discussion of “La Feminism” which mostly involved Serge (our program assistant, who incidentally studied minority and women’s studies at university), and Brittany and Jeff, who both have adequate (ie really good) French for the subject. I was really frustrated, because it was such a fascinating topic and I wanted desperately to hear Serge’s voluble Cameroonian perspective, and felt I was missing it all. But when they recapped in English for me, I found I’d already gathered many of the key points: that in Cameroon the role of mother is highly valued, that he thinks feminism means that for American women there are more roles that are considered valuable (ie are open to women), that there are some types of feminism that are radical:  "la femme la femme la femme!” and that feminism in the U.S., France and Cameroon are very different because culture influences what feminism is, and what types of feminist there are. I responded in broken French, and with some help, that I agreed, but that there are different types of feminist in the U.S. as well, and that  “A mon avis, la feminism ne signifie pas la femme est mieux l’homme, mais la feminism est égalité” (or something like that. My written French is worse than my spoken, and that’s saying a lot). “D’accord.” 

And then I couldn’t stop smiling from then until now because I was having a philosophical discussion (one of my favorite things) about feminism (one of my favorite things) with new friends in Africa (clearly one of my favorite things) all EN FRANCAIS.

Maybe I am actually smarter than I seem, and stronger than I think. 

embarrassment: get used to it

Within five minutes of starting my grand solo Africa adventure, I managed to completely humiliate myself, before I'd even gotten past customs at the Albany airport. Honestly, it was the perfect start to the trip though.
So I was of course really nervous about keeping my passport and tickets safe, and decided to lace the strap of my little passport bag under my shirt, “because,” I thought “no one will be able to get to it there.” I should have thought of the fact that “no one” included me. But of course I didn’t until 3 minutes into my adventure when the lady in customs said “I’ll need to see that, dear” and I realized that “that” was my passport bag, securely tucked away from all access under my shirt. I tried at first to switch the strap over my head and out through my shirt sleeve, trying desperately to be both quick and inconspicuous while my arms flailed around under my shirt. But that of course just made everything worse while the bag-strap got hopelessly tangled with my bra strap. Finally I sighed, and, right in the middle of the security line, took my shirt off.

Thank God I’d listened to the advice to layer while flying, and had a tank top on underneath (yeah, that mental image was getting too vivid). Tank top or no, I was still sufficiently flustered as I handed her my passport and they did the magic electronic scan of my body. After a few moments, she handed back my passport and reminded me gently “you can put your shirt back on.”
Oh, yeah.

I was pretty embarrassed, but honestly mostly just completely amused. I mean, can you see me? I can see me. It was like I was a spectator to my own…well, spectacle, and despite embarrassment I could recognize that it was freaking hilarious. In fact, I was rather glad that my parents, who’d stayed to wave to me one last time when I was through the customs barrier, had witnessed the whole thing.

Somehow it made me so much less nervous about the upcoming international flights, the next four months of living in a culture and speaking a language I am unfamiliar with. All of these unknowns that I have no experience with…of course I am going to royally and spectacularly fudge things up, frequently. It will be embarrassing. It will be hysterical. But making mistakes means you are doing something deeply and truly right, because you are doing something new, something challenging, something that will grow you.

The key is the ability to watch your own mistakes and laugh and love it.

 It's a skill I will be needing often. 

2014-2015 Life List

Life Lists: They're like bucket lists, but less morbid and more doable, because you give it a specific time-frame. Scribbled with my sisters while drinking tea a week ago, this year's is pretty exciting.

• go to Africa
• have red West African dirt caked to my feet again
• travel internationally, on my lonesome (the international part comes in 2 hours. WHAT)
• speak only French for a full day
• go to an African dance party
• find an African church to go to
• make dinner with my host mom(s)
• buy something in a Cameroonian marketplace on my own, without a translator 
• take a taxi for the first time (location optional: Africa, Paris, USA) 
• ...swim in the Mediterranean 
• order Cafe au Lait...in a cafe in Paris
• also, eat baguettes and pain au chocolat in Paris
• did I mention, see Paris? 
• buy a scarf of a summer dress..something so I can say casually "oh yeah, I got it in Paris" 
• play soccer with African kiddos every chance I get
• learn to take good photos...aka at least one I am very proud/vain of, because good is subjective and I have too many photographer friends
• make fabulous French press coffee, without having to call for Mom's help
• have a real grown-up internship
• perks if it's anti-trafficking 
• buy a silver (African) ring that fits my lonely, too fat for all my rings, pointer finger
•  dance at midnight to 22 as I turn 22
• throw a 12 dancing princesses evening party, and dance in flow-y dresses with a bonfire and flowers in my hair
• have a townhouse (hopefully) with a KITCHEN 
• bake challah and make all my friends delightfully and happily fat, but mostly me
• dance rave in my kitchen all the time
• focus on joy senior year...and people 

leaving

It's funny how the thing you want most in the world can also be what terrifies you most.

And it's funny because it's been this way since I was 12, and you'd think I would be used to it by now. I've desperately want to move to Africa since I was 12 and I've dreaded it every second. The downside of knowing that I wanted to move across the world was living with a bunch of goodbyes over my head, looming on the horizon. I fly out to study abroad in Cameroon in 12 days; I'm not ready for the goodbye. And for a girl in love with her family, who wants nothing more than to bake cookies with her mom and stay right here, four months on a different continent is a long time. But relatively, it's a little taste-test to see if this, Africa, is really truly it. After my two week trip to Mali when I was sixteen, I'm still hungry for red dirt, barefoot soccer and the beauty of people who laugh in the face of hellish poverty and suffering. Mali broke my heart and stole it too, and I'm hungry for that again, but frankly I'm terrified too.

 Part of the nerves are familiar from before Mali- I've wanted it for so long, that one of the biggest fears is getting there and realizing it isn't for me, that I was wrong about my life calling. Being known as the social justice girl who's obsessed with Africa is sort of like an overly showy relationship--what if it doesn't work out? There's a certain social expectation entailed by being openly in love, before you've really proved the relationship. I was terrified that it wasn't the "real deal" before going to Mali, and in answer just fell in love with the country and the people. But Cameroon's for a lot longer, and this time I won't be with family. I didn't really experience culture shock when I went to Mali, I loved every second of it (my culture shock coming back to the U.S. was much worse). Having my dad travel to Mali with me was a big part of that, I wasn't homesick because Dad brought home with him, I was safe.

But this time, the goodbye is a lot more real, and the real taste-test of (hopefully) the rest of my life in Africa, away from my family, is about to begin.

I don't really know how to live without these people. I count myself lucky that I have great friends and people who like me at college, only an hour away from home, because I have yet to fully figure out how to be myself without my family, without kitchen floor conversations about feminism and our souls, perpetual eating, bedtime stories with the littles, Sabbath dinners and challah dough between my hands. I'm only me when I'm with you at the top of my lungs dancing with my sisters in our living room, and it's our song because it's quite simply truth.

I guess I am praying that I will forgive myself for leaving, not just for this four months, but another two after that (another story), and eventually for as much of my life as God decides and clues me in on.

I'm praying that everything my family is, security, anger at injustice, passion and hope and dog-eared Bibles and a burning desire to love people and love God, that these people and these things that have shaped me are so well and truly in me that I will carry them with me as I hurtle into my future.

names we're given: beloved

Fall torches the hills 

orange and gold

speed shakes up through my feet

creation shouts 

with the voice of glory

"beloved." 

Curled up in the back seat, speeding home from my cousin's wedding, nose pressed against the glass drinking in the beauty.  "Holy Baptism and Contemporary Theology" by Herbert Vorgrimler, due for the class I didn't actually want to get back in time for, lay open on my lap, and I'm nerding out scrawling poems in the margins of my religious studies readings. 

For some reason, I really love this moment. I think I'm embracing the fact that I'm that nerd girl, scribbling fragmented sentences left over from the poems that occasionally hit me in the margins of my theology readings, teary eyed because God is just that beautiful. Also because I love roadtrips and speed and being with people I love, the coffee cup in my hand and the sweater cozy as I curled up. 

But the thing I truly love about that moment is that fact that I am learning to think of myself as beloved. I have struggled so much with my self-understanding, with how I identified at the core of who I am. And it is a beautiful miracle and I want to sing when I see what God has done, the change he's making in my heart. For so long the names I identified as were inadequate, flawed, unlovable, these whispers of hate and fear that I listened to over God's life shout of love. And I finally just begged him, around two years ago, to fight for my heart. 

And he did. And slowly and surely I have come to hear, see and touch his love, poured out in sunlight on water, in coffee cups and conversations with people who know my soul, in their love and their words of grace speaking God's great grace into my hungry heart, in fall leaves blazing scarlet and 730 graces counted, the mundane miraculous gifts that scream his love. And counting and hunting for these instances of his love has opened my eyes, and I count and count and how could all this love be for me? And how can I deny or talk down the power of this love? 

This love is redefining me. And I love that moment, the nerd girl curled up scribbling poetry, because her heart was singing with the love of God. Because this miracle where I'm not listening to the lies anymore, and I can finally hear behind all the grace and beauty God's voice, calling me, naming me, defining me.  Beloved. 

Daily bread

Sometimes I wish there was a way to store joy, so I could hide away the smell of fall leaves, wind in my hair rushing through the countryside, dancing in my kitchen, the feeling of being known and loved anyway, save all this abundance of joy for days when it's harder to find. I'm home again, for a brief stint of grace-filled, grace abundant days and it's too short. And I'm back to school tomorrow, which I love but which wears me down with busy-ness, with too little room in my calendar and too much caring, too many causes. But the thing about this semester, which is somehow the hardest and the best I've had, is that I'm slowly learning the meaning of daily bread, that grace is for today, enough for today and not tomorrow.
I keep chanting "give us today our daily bread." And that bread is the daily grace that gets me through, the long list of everyday kindnesses showered on me, the pages and pages of numbered gifts in my gratitude journal, the fact that I fall into bed exhausted but fulfilled each night. Daily bread, Jesus' reminder of God's faithfulness in the desert wandering. Bread from heaven every morning, and Friday's enough for two, gathering for Sabbath. But most days we're forbidden to gather double, and I don't think that's because God likes rules, but because that is how grace works. Enough for today, and not tomorrow.
And worry is wormy manna, the sour taste of fear, hands clutching for control. When I try to gather for tomorrow, store up joys in fear of dry seasons I know will come, they turn wormy in my hands and I clutch at memories and compare the now to the past, which is always rosier in remembering. I cannot taste tomorrow's grace because it is today.  
And this is the character of God, and this is learning trust. I'll number my overflowing list of graces tonight, and without fail there will be more tomorrow morning, enough to get me through. And more than just through, enough to give me joy. Because that is God and God is good. I'll taste tonight's graces, full to bursting with joy (literally full to bursting with home-cooked goodness) and know that tomorrow I will taste the goodness of the Lord again.