Away from Africa

My husband's maternal grandma never learned English or French. She spoke Abo (her mother tongue), Duala, and Pidgin English (similar to Creole, but English instead of French). We had trouble communicating, and it was mainly for her that I went to class to learn some Duala. (My husband's paternal grandmother died when he was a teenager.) One morning, Grandma came by our kitchen and said something I couldn't understand. She repeated several times and I still couldn't get it. Finally I realized she was saying "Good morning," but it sounded like "moni"! Many English words made their way into the Duala language. The English Bible was the first to be translated into Duala. English words were used for items that did not exist prior to European settlers arriving in Cameroon.* Some examples: Furniture/home: kobati = cupboard tebedi = table frypan = frying pan pan = pan mattrassi = mattress Building: winda = window briki = brick Clothing: drosee = draw

One day a new American woman appeared in Douala, Tilda*. She did not arrive with a Cameroonian spouse, nor was she with the Consulate or the Cultural Center. From what I was able to gather, she had left corporate life in the United States to come live in Africa. Hearsay was that she had been swindled out of her savings by an African man (not a Cameroonian, but I don't want to sully any national reputation by saying which country he was from). She created a (in our eyes) modern chicken farm: sheds with many chickens living in them, across the river in Bonabéri. She delivered to our homes, minimum order: 5 chickens; she also sold eggs. After several years eating what we called "Bicycle Chicken," i.e. chicken that has lived its life running around and pecking earth, with muscles as hard as the winner of the Tour de France, we were quite grateful to have tender, albeit small and more expensive, chickens. I perceived that Tilda was struggling financially. She certainly d

Recently, thanks to @ Design_Junkies on Twitter, I discovered Skyler Vander Molen's graphics for an "Africa" T-shirt. I loved the creative, and found Skyler's website, to email him that I'd like to share the graphics with readers of this blog. This is the link to the graphics. Skyler explained that he had created the T-shirt to raise funds for a humanitarian trip to Rwanda. From the website: "Global Peace Exchange is a student founded and run non-profit begun at Florida State University. In 2008, GPE took a team of 20 volunteers to Rwanda to help build an IT school and teach English. As a volunteer, it was our duty to raise money for the trip. As part of my contribution, I designed a t-shirt to raise awareness about Africa as well as raise money."

The dead are not dead. In many African cultures, the dead are not dead—they have just gone somewhere else, not too far, but invisible to us, the “living.” In Duala culture, before colonization, and still the case in many families, every person had a given name that was followed by the father’s name. For example, Ebélé Billé is Ebélé, son of Billé. However, nobody ever calls the person out loud by their name. As most probably a forebear held that name previously, to call that name out would unnecessarily disturb the deceased forebear. Instead, he’ll be called by a series of nicknames: “ Tété ” (ancestor), or the sound of the name on the horizontal wooden log (“ Elimbi ”) used as a local telegraph. For example, my husband’s telegraphic name was Koloto. Other Elimbi names: Dimbion, Toki, Tékélé...

On any given day, a “regular” stew is prepared. There is no individual portion in Cameroonian food, because you never know who may pop over for a meal; you have to be prepared to share whatever is in the kitchen. You don’t prepare 3 steaks (not that steaks exist traditionally, anyway) for your spouse, child and yourself; you may have not seen a guest for a month, but on the day you make individual portions, that’s when someone comes over unexpectedly, and try sharing 3 steaks between 4 people. (I have tried; it isn’t pretty.) The usual everyday stew might be: - Groundnut (peanut) sauce with either meat, chicken, or fried fish cut in pieces; - Ground pumpkin seed sauce, same as above; - A dense tomato and onion sauce, same as above; - Okra stew with smoked fish or beef… The stew is served along with a starch, such as boiled rice, boiled plantains (green or yellow), miondo, yam… A less common stew is made with kiling-kiling – a slightly slimy leaf, chopped, and cooked with cra

We often had to make business trips out of town to visit sites. One of our clients wanted to revise the layout of a home he had already started building, in Ndom, about 128 km from Douala, towards the northeast. Part of the road was highway, and the other part was on dirt roads, the infamous red laterite,* otherwise known as “tôle ondulée,” i.e. “wavy metal roofing”: very, very bumpy. It took six hours to reach our destination, by which time I felt like I had been shaken around in a salad wringer for several hours. We were to stay overnight at the client’s brother’s home, a more rudimentary style of housing, with no inside plumbing. There were only 2 rooms, so as we were a large group, the men slept in one room and the women in another. In the middle of the night I felt like going to the restroom: however, I was scared stiff of going to the outhouse, which was located several yards behind the house. I was convinced that a pack of wild animals would find me. I preferred to wait till mor

"It takes a village to raise a child." As hopefully most people know, this is originally an African saying. It certainly was true when my husband was growing up. The village in those days was still very close-knit, and many inhabitants were related to each other, either through blood or through marriage. Late one evening, my husband and I were returning from a stroll in the neighborhood, and noticed a teenager still outside. My husband told him to go home immediately to his parents, and kept an eye on him till he was sure he was on his way home. I was surprised; in Europe and in the United States, other people's children are none of our business. However, this was, and still is, not the case in many areas of Africa. If you saw someone’s child, even if that child was already 6 feet tall, doing something he/she shouldn’t be doing, you had the duty and the right to scold the child. The parents’ child wouldn’t think of telling you off for it (and there was a good chance the c

Some dishes are steamed wrapped in banana leaves—the old-fashioned, eco-friendly, and tasty version of aluminum foil—the Dualas make Ekoki (from the sound of the pestle -  Mboloki - pounding in the mortar - Eboki ) The basic Duala Ekoki is made from ground beans similar to black-eyed peas, mixed with red palm oil. Another version is made with ground corn with Mbaa leaves. Another banana-leaf-wrapped loaf is Ngondo nya Mukon (pronounced Ngonda’Mukon), most often made around the holiday season at year’s end. It is a cake made of ground pumpkin seeds, ground dried shrimp ( Dibanga ), and filled with beef or shrimp, sometimes smoked fish. Wrapped Bekwang with Kiling-Kiling sauce  at Madame Njoh restaurant in Akwa-Nord A Duala leaf-wrapped stew is Suwé nya Dibomba – fish in banana leaves. My personal favorite is Bekwang , ground Makabo (similar to a dense potato) wrapped in leaves, served with a Kiling-Kiling leaf   sauce (slightly slimy, similar to okra). The Béti make a st

Before moving to Cameroon, I thought I knew all about the world’s foods. I was raised on American and Middle Eastern food, and was later introduced to a variety of European, Asian and North African cuisines. At the beginning of my life in Cameroon, I’d often have lunch at my in-laws, who lived next door (we shared the same compound). One day, there was a heaping dish of light orange-colored sliced plantains. I thought to myself, “I didn’t know they used curry here!” and helped myself to a plateful. At the first bite, however, I realized my error: these plantains had nothing to do with curry. The orange-colored seasoning was red palm oil, and it tasted unlike anything I had ever eaten before. At that point, I really didn’t like it, and I thought I was not a fussy person! The dish is called Miellé ma Sésé . The plantains are boiled and then mixed with the palm oil, and shaken till the oil has coated everything.

Ndolé with fried plantains Food in tropical Africa, as everywhere in the world, is mainly made with local products. Notable exceptions: tomatoes have become a staple, after being imported by the Europeans who had themselves imported them from South America. Tomatoes are not quite as ubiquitous as in southern Italy, but are the go-to item for sauces when a cook is in a crunch. Another import is salt cod, also known in the Americas as Bacalao . Cooked with what else... tomato sauce! Onions are also very popular, and I don’t think they are originally from the African continent. Ndolé plant Food, traditionally, is cooked. Well cooked. Salads used to be an unknown entity, and older people still call it “goat’s food.” Raw, or insufficiently cooked, would have been—and may still be—dangerous, in the hot and humid equatorial climate, where bacteria thrive, as it is never cold. Snow is a completely unknown entity. Even after a third of his life spent in temperate climates, my hus