Cameroon...or the Moon?

Stepping off on the plane into an airport lacking the air-conditioning that I have grown accustomed to was the first sign of the new world that I had entered for the next two weeks. While this was my third trip to Africa in three years, I never seem to be quite prepared for the humidity and heat that hits you in the face like a wall of sweat and dirt each time you arrive.

They call Cameroon “Africa in miniature” because of how diverse the population and environment is. However, despite its similarities to many other parts of Africa, there are few similarities to the United States outside of the capitalistic culture and mass marketing that the West has tried to infuse into Cameroonian culture. I can’t say that is hasn’t worked, as much of the youth can be found wearing the same Kobe Bryant jerseys and drinking the same imported beer that any young American would be wearing and drinking these days. However, the culture itself is so different that oftentimes I would not even feel as if I was on the same planet.

Everyone greets you as family, even if they have just met you for the first time. And at first, you might be dubious of this - thinking that this is just their sly way of earning your trust just to ask you for money later. But after two weeks of sharing meals and being invited into their homes, it is clear to see that this is just how people are in Cameroon. The cynicism that I may have had in thinking that these people would be out to get me was simply part of my western indoctrination for the past 24 years to be paranoid that those with less may actually be coming back for what they deserve from their western counterparts - whose empire has been built on the lives of Africa's (though, in actuality all of our) ancestors.

At each NGO, governmental or cultural official, or random place, I cannot even tell you how many times we were asked to take a “family picture” with us, Americans, as part of it. If I was to call all the pictures I took in the US, a “family picture,” I would probably be getting funny looks from people who are thinking to themselves, “I hope to God that he’s not part of my family.” However, in Cameroon, we are all family, despite our differing cultural background or how much money we may have in our pockets.

Another way to see how important family is in Cameroon is through food. On my first full day in Cameroon, I went to the US Embassy with the group I was traveling with for a security and cultural briefing. The cultural attaché of the Embassy, known affectionately as “Ya” (meaning respected mother), asked each of us to introduce ourselves by sharing with her something that we liked to celebrate. Most of the Americans I was with talked about insightful and poignant things like peace, progress, family, holidays, etc.

When it came to me, I ashamedly uttered: food. I celebrate food because I think it tells you a lot about the people and culture you are with. Not only the type of food, but where they got it from, how they chose to prepare it, how much time they put into making it, and most importantly to me, how it is eaten. Is it eaten with your hands? Do you sit around a round table to eat where you share food or does everyone get their own unique dish? Who gets to eat first? Do you have to wait for everyone else to get their food before you eat? There is so much to learn about a culture through their food and how they choose to eat it. And I must say that I learned a lot about Cameroon through their food, even as a vegan who couldn’t enjoy much of the fish and meat that Cameroon has to offer.

For one, much alike the Native Americans of the West, Cameroonians are known to eat just about anything (including the “street meat” – or as we are more familiar with road kill) and to eat the entire part of everything they eat, down to the skins of their meat and the eye of the fish. There is no wastefulness in their food. Another thing I appreciated was that all the food we were eating was local. Most of the vegetables and fruits that we were eating could be found growing in a field not far from where we were staying - unlike the overly processed, pre-packaged foods that we are used to in the US that come from across the country in huge trucks littering the air with absurd amounts of CO2 just so we can enjoy a pineapple.

However, the most profound thing about Cameroon that I learned about food came from our Cameroonian friend Synthia, who told me once over a paltry looking dinner, that “there’s always enough food.” In a country where most of the people seem to be living in extreme poverty, there is always enough food. Synthia would tell me that communities and families are always willing to feed each other in the villages despite not having much food because as she so eloquently and simply put it, there is always enough. This couldn’t be more true, yet in the cities in America, we never seem to have enough for the starving or homeless despite all the waste restaurants pour out at the end of every night or the insane amount of grain that the US government simply dumps out in the ocean after subsidizing our farming industry. It is a bitter irony that in a place that has such a higher rate of poverty that people seem much more willing to share their food with a wealthy American, even if it seems as if they don’t have enough for themselves.

While Cameroon is considered a developing country, I sometimes wondered if they are actually much more developed than we, Westerners, are. Cameroonians and Sub-Saharan Africans, in general, are much more developed than Americans when it comes to things like family, community, environment, survival skills, etc. There is a laundry list of inexhaustible, un-measurable social capital in Cameroon. Just because we cannot put a monetary value on it or count it like we would material goods or square feet doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The people in Cameroon work at what we in the West would consider a snail’s pace, but oftentimes with good reason. Generally speaking, Cameroonians seek to develop their relationships with each other first before they worry about developing their economy. Therefore, while Americans may want to brag about how developed we are because we can fit 250 songs into an i-pod the size of my fingernail, Cameroonians can brag that their community structure is so developed that if a thief strikes in a market, all the shop owners will hold him to justice before any policeman ever could; or that their family structures are so developed that any stranger coming into their home will have a enough to eat and a place to stay for the night; or that no matter who you are, Cameroonians have the time of day for you, even if they have to miss a meeting or a TPS report for you.

Moreover the weight of the ecological footprint of a Cameroonian must be at least ten times less than that of an average American, much like how our weight is much less if we were on the moon. A Cameroonian uses a tenth of the amount of water we would use in a single shower by only using enough cold water to rise, lather, and re-rinse, whereas we are used to long hot showers. Not to mention that they save their water to either fill their toilets or to wash their clothes. Another area where Cameroonians make much less of an ecological impact is in plastic and glass. The soda and beer industry in Cameroon reuses its glass bottles in the same way Americans used to with the milkman. However, whereas the days of milkmen have given way to convenience and wastefulness in the US, Cameroonians are still used to reusing the same bottle over and over again. Not to mention that any spare bottles are usually taken in to be cleaned and filled with homemade juices, spices, or collected peanuts to be resold on the street. At first glance, the streets of Cameroon may appear dirty, but given the amount of people who live there and that people generally simply throw their trash out on the street, it is much cleaner than the US would be if people had to do the same. Rather, there is very little trash created in Cameroon because everything can be reused for a different purpose.

In living up to my “leave no trace” principles, I even brought my trash back to the US with me: a few empty water bottles and mostly trash I had brought into Cameroon to begin with: Luna Bar wrappers, empty plastic bags and a broken pair of sunglasses. Everything else I had bought in Cameroon didn’t come with packaging or has already found a new owner and a new use.

What is sad, however, is despite how resourceful Cameroonians seem to be, that much of their resourcefulness is in using products that are not Cameroonian. Rather, much of what Cameroonians spend their money on goes to industries owned by the West. Cell phones, Coke and foreign beer bottles, and Western fashion dominate the Cameroonian landscape and economy by freezing out local producers. Moreover, it is not uncommon for these foreign businesses to extract the natural resources of Cameroon, ship them away to be processed, and then back into Cameroon to be sold. So despite the efforts of locals being resourceful, they are fighting an uphill economic battle against emotionless, profiteering giants living oceans away from them.

I found myself still sweating as I stepped back into the comfortable, air-conditioned lobby of the JFK airport. Perhaps I was sweating not so much because of the heat, rather because I was a guilty American who had made more of an ecological impact in my 24 years of begin an American than any Cameroonian would in a lifetime. Moreover, on top of my 50lb back pack, I could feel the weight of the world on my shoulders to actually do something about what I now could see more clearly about the world I was living in.

I take a deep breath and look around at the hurried people with their soon to be thrown out soda bottles and fast food scurrying around in fast forward motion through the airport. It seems to me that everyone here could use a trip to the moon.