le chefferie!!

Sometimes its good to be le chef (chief) and sometimes its even better to be the chef's guests. The last couple days I have been staying in a traditional rural Cameroonian setting as the guest of the chief of Meteu, just outside of Dschang. I stayed with one other student, Hannah, and we discovered that live au village is quite different from life en ville.

When we first arrived we witnessed a number of small children running around and a couple women. Since many chefs display their power by the number of wives they have, we were curious of actually how many of the women were his wives. It took a while to figure out that he only had two wives and the first one was actually somewhere else at the time, but was good friends with the second wife. Many of the small children running around where actually one of the chef's younger brother's kids but were just chillin au village for the time while papa was working en ville. After we had our first meal of eggs, peppers, fish, onions, and a pound of palm oil along with king sized '33s' -- a Cameroonian beer, Hannah and I went off exploring about the village. It wasn't long until we ran into Norbert, the chef's younger brother, who was incredibly enthusiastic to show us around. We thought he was just going to direct us to the school and things to see, but instead he walked us to the local boutiques where he bought a bottle of Rafia -- the white palm Cameroonian wine, which I was not a fan of the first time I tried it -- and a bottle of Guinness. Together, this mixture is quite tasty, so tasty that we drank it all and had to stop and have another bottle before arriving back to the chefferie two hours later. We also witnessed Norbert bargain for a giant rat, that he carried around by the tail as he tried to convince us that you could walk to Nigeria in a day (completely not true) and we took our little tour of the village. I believe he ate the rat for dinner later that night. By the time we got back to the chefferie Hannah and I were pretty full from all the beer, wine, and eggs and yet it happened to be time for lunch aka -- burn my mouth off with a pepper sauce served on fish and rice. The chef told us its better to just eat it really fast and the burning doesn't last as long ---- riiiiiiight.

Later on our 'sisters' -- other SIT students -- who lived not far from us came to visit with their chef, who turned out to have an amusing Hitler moustache, a slight lisp, and narcolepsy. It was nice to see some familiar faces again. It turned out that our chefs were really good friends so they took us to see Mami Wata – the famous waterfall in Fongo-Tongo, a funeral / party in a neighbouring village, and our chef invited them to a Tatine/dance party one night. A Tatine is the most traditional way of ‘banking’ in the village. Everyone month x many members of the Tatine give a sum of money and then they auction the pot off. The night finishes with music and dancing to wish their brother good luck and prosperity with his earnings. The men play traditional instruments of drums and rattles while the women dance around. Naturally, the four white girls were pulled into dancing and everyone got a pretty good kick out our phenomenal moves.

Our last day we were treated with a feast of ‘le lapin avec les pommes de terre’ – Rabbit and potatoes. Our chef raised rabbit and they are really expensive for the area, so it was an amazing gesture; although I could have gone without seeing the bunny before we ate it. It tastes just like chicken, only more tender and quite chewy. Later, we made plantain chips with our host mother and were each sent home with a large bag full of them mmmmmm…… Upon departing the sweet grandmother of the chefferie, who only speaks Yambe and mainly spent the week laughing at us, gave us a couple yams to take back – kinda gross, but still nice.

In a few days we will depart on our grand voyage up north. Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep you posted. Thinking of you all the time. Much love from Africa!