COREY BALLANTYNE In Cameroon, obey male-based cultural rules

SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR
"Volunteers in Asia come back Buddhists," the joke goes. "Volunteers in Latin America come back revolutionaries. Volunteers in Cameroon come back alcoholics."
Some Cameroonians say, why can't you have your first beer in the morning and drink all day at work?
Alcohol is not a requirement, however, to excuse men for what Americans would consider very bad behavior.
One time at the market, a man shouted to the guy I happened to be with, an offer to trade me for the man's own girlfriend.
Another time there, a guy reached to grab my rear. Let's just say I decided that the situation warranted my trying out a famous way of inflicting pain. I would like to think he learned something from what happened to him.
At what I call the "loser corner," a bunch of young men hang out who know my name and think that if they yell it enough times, I will stop and that they will talk me into giving them my phone number and inviting them home with me and so forth. The loser corner is between my house and the rest of town. "Persistence overcomes resistance," is a Cameroonian man's motto.
At the dinner table, "le pere" -- the father or eldest male of the household -- is the first one to start eating and to start the conversation, choosing the topic.
He gets the honor of eating the gizzard of a chicken. Women are expected not to take the biggest or last portions because, it is assumed, the women are able to cook more for themselves later whereas men are not.
During Peace Corps orientation, male trainees were told not to attempt to help clear the table but to be prepared to insist on learning to cook.
Women's movement
There is some kind of women's empowerment movement under way. I have just met with the director of the Centre de Promotion de la Femme, who wants me to teach health classes at the center.
The center takes aim at women's economic situation by training them as tailors, cooks and soap makers. I learned the dismal fact that academic activities I could easily carry out with high school girls are not needed because so very few women stay in school that long.
You can't spend half a day in town without spotting one to several women wearing something made of the International Women's Day fabric, whether it's the red, the green, or a previous year's.
The six-yard bundles of fabric sold here are used for advertising just like T-shirts are in the United States. I coveted the red version of the now out-of-print fabric for three months before finding one last unit at a large store in Bertoua.
Granted, it looks best in a baggy cabard (like a baby doll dress), which looks cool only on larger women.
People like fat people here, or so we were told. Traditionally at least, it was proof of prosperity. (To my understanding, European society thought the same way throughout most of history.)
So an experienced volunteer says she knew it was meant as a compliment, albeit an unwelcome one, when she returned from a U.S. vacation and a Cameroonian acquaintance said in admiration, "You are so fat! You look like a cow! How do you walk?"
What's taboo
What the gender situation here prevents me from wearing, though, is pants. I could, but it's not worth it, except when I ride my bike.
Often you only win battles by having the strength to lose them; to be an effective volunteer, you have to conform in enough ways that people will listen to you. This was one of the easy battles to lose.
Cameroonian fashion can be a lot of fun, but first you have to lighten up. You can commit more crimes of fashion than a 7-year-old.
Americans not accustomed to African aesthetics sometimes think that "these people just don't know any better." Nonsense. Their rules are just different.
First, bright colors are welcome. Cameroonian dust and the white man's white dress shirt don't mix favorably, and brown skin just looks better in colors than blinding white skin does.
There's also nothing out of the ordinary about when Cameroonian men wear pink shirts. If you want patterned fabric, we've got patterns of wind-up toy cars, President Paul Biya, the Nativity scene (repeatedly) bursting with primary colors, sardine cans (apparently a promotional fabric from a sardine company), Orange brand cell phones on orange background, birds, Cameroon's agricultural staples grouped by province, Castel beer bottles, tye dye, or any number of other drawings or abstract patterns.
Ladies are commonly covered from neck to ankle and on scarved heads with any of these prints. Men occasionally make them into sport coats, shirts or pants though more often they imitate whites.
Tradition
As long as you look like a million dollars, you can smell like you haven't bathed in a week. (Of course. In Bertoua, it is not difficult to sweat liters every day.)
And there's the custom that you don't hand someone anything with your left hand. The explanation handed down by older Peace Corps volunteers, which may or may not be a joke, is that there is a consensus that everyone uses the left hand to hold the toilet paper or the leaf, as the case may be.
The pace of life is slow in Cameroon. Cameroonians are so used to not getting anything done because of things like corruption, amazing downpours of rain, sporadic phone service and the decrepit condition of everything else, that being efficient or productive is not a concept here.
Hence, there's Cameroonian time, in which 8 o'clock means any time after 8 a.m. Cameroonians understand "British time" but only use it for a few things, such as the school day.
It's good to show up at school staff meetings at the nominal time (a) just in case and (b) to set a different example, but bring enough reading material to kill several hours.
You can't explain to Cameroonians some Americans' disdain for (most) TV because there is no such concept as "wasting time." It's hard to explain that if I study French harder, write for The Vindicator, plan clearer and more fun science lessons and read the news instead of watching soap operas, I might actually improve something for myself and others.
It's not rational for Cameroonians to work for anything because, besides hindrance from the above-named circumstances, their family would take anything they earn away from them.
It's what's called a "collectivist" society -- a sharing society.
Celebrations
No one I know celebrates like Cameroonians. You probably haven't lived until you've seen and heard a West African choir and seen church dissolve into a party where the pastor dances with the newly baptized. In mainly Christian Bandjoun, all anyone sang about was Jesus even at secular events like graduation. I haven't yet been to a celebration in Bertoua, where there also is a large Muslim population.
There's no escaping exposure to God in this country. People are named anything from Adasa to, "Simon, like the apostle," to Divine or Godswill or Theophile.
The Ministry of Education local delegate is gone from the office at midday for Muslim prayer break. Christian church lasts two to five hours.
At the bus station, a simple concrete square with a wooden railing turns out to be not a parking space but a humble "mosque" for travelers. Two young people seeking to improve their English want not an English literature club but an English Bible club.
The tradition of song itself has been in this country since long before Christianity or Islam was superimposed on it. When Cameroonians blast "a joyful noise unto the Lord," it'll shake your soul.