Due to security concerns in the Far North region, I was
promptly and unceremoniously uprooted from my home and family in Meskine. My
final days in my village are a blur of storms: a storm of heaving sobs, the
storm that was attempting to consolidate my pack rat collection of possessions
into a few suitcases, and a hailstorm. No seriously. When the car came to get
my bags and me on my final morning, golf ball-sized chunks of ice came pelting
from the normally cloudless sky. Lucie said that it was the Far North region
forbidding its Peace Corps Volunteers to leave. And yet leave we did.
We left by Danay Express coaster bus, with all of our
worldly possessions piled high and strapped to the roof, and crammed into the
empty back seats. The Maroua cluster left our case (travel house) in Maroua
teary-eyed and somber, after having just said our goodbyes to our dear guardian
and his family. We arrived in Kaele soon thereafter, where we found a band of
monsters in sombreros letting the wild rumpus begin at nine o’clock in the
effing morning. Once it had been established that there was no way in hell that
we were going to be able to fit Ricky’s four suitcases, three footlockers, two
mattresses, refrigerator, water filter, bike, gas tank, stove, television,
satellite dish AND HIS DOG (oh and the rest of Kaele cluster’s belongings) all
onto our one coaster bus, we made arrangements for another bus to follow us to
Ngaoundere with their things, and the whole Xtreme gang piled in and hit the
road.
I can only describe the eight hours that followed from my
perspective in the second row window seat, where my personal space was more
often than not being assailed with hostile sing-along/ dance combinations from
Josh, of the Kaele wildling clan. The Maroua cluster, in their sorrowful and
unsociable state, had all chosen window seats, leaving only a column down the
center for the Kaele wild things, which led to a lot of sloshing of their
shared boxed wine grape juice-flavored ethyl alcohol down the line, and
completely-unreasonable-and-not-at-all-sensible-or-acceptable acoustics of
their Disney Classic sing-alongs, which lasted the entirety of the eight hour
bus ride. Around hour four, Earl could [not not] be heard from the back row singing-screaming
along to “Under the Sea,” interjecting with a running commentary on his clearly
irrepressible love for The Little Mermaid, with shouts of “THIS IS THE PART
WHERE THE TURTLES DRUM!” then erupting in his own display of air drumming on
his own imagined turtle shell, and “GOD THIS MOVIE IS THE BEST! ISN’T THE
LITTLE MERMAID THE BEST??” and so on and so forth. When it would grow quiet in
the back row, I would turn around from my seat out of curiosity to find Earl, a
pair of gas tanks affixed just behind his obtrusive ginger head, leaning across
Joanna, smoking a cigarette, and I’d just turn right back around because surely this was not real life. Meanwhile, Aloyicious kept
nervously glancing my way from two seats over and mouthing to me that “We shouldn’t
be on this road. We are not safe,” as he broke out into his distinctive Gigi
sweats, only further contributing to my unwavering conclusion that this was,
indeed, not real life. We were all functioning at hazardously high levels of
absurdity, as I suppose one must do to survive an ad hoc exodus, and I maintain
that none of it was real life.
However, here I am, in my manse upon a mountain in Bafang in
the wild wild West region, with only excessive viewings of Pitch Perfect as a
coping mechanism for my sudden and unexpected loss. My life here is entirely
different from what it was in the Xtreme:
Meskine, Xtreme :
Bafang, West ::
Heat and heat rash :
coldness and a constant state of swamp ass ::
Bathing…on the odd
occasion : VERY noticeable if I skip a day of bathing, as I did today (see
“Constant State of Swamp Ass”) ::
50-yard dash to my outdoor latrine : Two (COUNT EM!) flushing toilets in my house ::
Sleeping naked over
[very temporarily] soaking wet sheets : Sleeping under wool blankets in a
long-sleeve robe, leggings and socks ::
Waking up in the
middle of the night to chug water and/ or dump water over my head : Cannot get
up in the mornings because I do not want to get out from under the covers ::
Full pagne ensembles, complete with head wraps so that villagers don't call me "gorko" (dude) : Wearing whatever the hell I want to (read: lots and lots of leggings as pants) ::
Dry, dry, arid, dry,
dry, dry, dry, dry, dry, dry : Wet, damp, dripping, moist, rainy, sodden,
soggy, sopping, oily, moldy- oh so very, very moldy ::
Sand : Mud ::
Flipping my shit over
the month of carrot season : Carrots every. freaking. day. (along with all
other imaginable produce) in the cobblestone-paved market ::
Keeping bottles of
water in the refrigerator in an effort to consume tepid water instead of nearly
boiling water : Keeping my tomatoes out of the refrigerator because they keep
freezing ::
“Speaking” broken
Fulfulde- sometimes French : Speaking English- sometimes French ::
Nights at the bilbil
cabaret with intermittent electricity fueling the obnoxiously loud music :
Nights at Leonard and Carine’s watching the news, playing scrabble and
splitting a bottle of wine ::
Working in the shade
of Lucie’s overhang on a plastic mat on the sand, occasionally dozing off or
stopping to eat : Working in a fully furnished library (!!), cataloguing books
(!!) using electricity (!!)- working 6 hour shifts with no naps and no lunch
breaks ::
My village fam, my
hearts : New friends ::
Getting weird in
Maroua with the Xtremies : ??
I am still happy- just a different sort of happy. Pouring
one out for the Xtreme. Sey yesso, wuro am. Mi yidi ma.
peace love and THIS IS THE PART WHERE THE TURTLES DRUM
