Accidental Zen

This is the sub woofer in my trunk.  This is the pool of laun­dry deter­gent in which the sub woofer now lies.  Some­one does not do a very good job of clos­ing lids.

So today… I was en route to Colum­bus, when my car began this thump­ing noise… a noise fit to split ear drums.  At first I attrib­uted it to the White Stripes’ “The Hard­est But­ton to But­ton”,  jacked up the vol­ume and stepped on the gas (what would you do?).  But… as I con­tin­ued to careen up Route 33 in my Civic (late for an appoint­ment, as usual) I started to become sus­pi­cious and rest­less.  Some­thing was amiss… I could feel it.  And hear it.  Was I finally and cer­ti­fi­ably los­ing my mind?  I pulled over to inspect.  Imag­ine my shock and con­fu­sion when I cut the engine… and the infer­nal racket con­tin­ued.  An untold num­ber of sce­nar­ios flooded my mind, each and every one of them cul­mi­nat­ing in the spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion of the vehicle.

I got out of the car… then climbed back in.  “What if it blows up?” I asked myself,  clam­ber­ing quickly back out of the car.  As I paced the side of the road, an idea occurred to me.  The noise seemed to be com­ing from my trunk.  And there is some­thing in my trunk that makes noise.  I’ve seen it on rare occa­sions when I have cleaned back there.  And I’ve heard it.  I popped the trunk and laid my eyes upon the sub woofer, rever­ber­at­ing like crazy and lying in a pool of bril­liantly blue laun­dry deter­gent.  “Ohhh nooo.  This can’t be good.”  I mut­tered.  I tele­phoned my auto repair con­sul­tant (coin­ci­den­tally enough my tech sup­port) and alerted him of the issue.  After a brief con­sul­ta­tion (His astute obser­va­tion:  “You never close lids tight enough.”  My artic­u­late reply: “Shut up.”), I employed a triple threat attack strat­egy of curs­ing, ran­dom wire yank­ing and more curs­ing.  This ulti­mately proved to be suc­cess­ful in solv­ing the prob­lem and soon enough I was on my way.  Now to find some­one to clean out the trunk and fix the sub woofer…  At least it smells good.

Home at last!

We started our jour­ney from Yaoundé to Douala on Wednes­day morn­ing around 8:00 a.m.  All 14 of us plus Nestor, Cameroon­ian dri­ver extra­or­di­naire, crammed our­selves into our mini-bus for our last long jour­ney.  My friends and I chose to sit in the back because despite the lack of leg room and the exag­ger­ated effect of the bumpy roads, we all know that the cool kids sit in the back of the bus.  As it turns out, tucked back in my lit­tle cor­ner I became some­what of a lia­bil­ity for the group.  We were not even out of Yaoundé when I was grabbed through the win­dow by an appar­ently angry man on the street.  It may have had some­thing to do with the group mem­bers tak­ing unwanted pic­tures out the win­dow… we’re not quite sure.  As it stands, I was sit­ting there mind­ing my own busi­ness, cam­era inno­cently tucked away in my bag when all of the sud­den this man reached through the win­dow and force­fully grabbed my arm.  For­tu­nately I was able to hold it together and not go ‘Amer­i­can’ on him but need­less to say I was not pleased with this turn of events.  Press­ing on, we arrived in Douala around noon after sev­eral con­trol stops along the way where we would hear this sort of con­ver­sa­tion (in French of course):

Police offi­cer: “Where are you going with all these white women?”

Nestor: “To the airport.”

Police offi­cer: “Ok.”

After some chest puff­ing and semi-automatic gun wav­ing on the part of the police offi­cers, off we would go.  Except once… where one of the offi­cers took a great inter­est in me.  Like a great white, he cir­cled the van and came to a halt at the win­dow where I was sit­ting.  He pushed it wide open and greeted me with a grin:   “Bon­jour!”  After a bit of small talk, he men­tioned the name of his vil­lage, which hap­pened to be one that we had vis­ited.  It was at this point that I unwit­tingly stum­bled upon yet another trick to get­ting out of these stops (if claim­ing to be a per­sonal ambas­sador of Obama is unsuc­cess­ful… and since brib­ing them is frowned upon by the Amer­i­can embassy)… I asked the man if he is from the Bamiléké tribe (apply­ing pre­vi­ous knowl­edge gained about that par­tic­u­lar region… my teacher friends will be proud).  Bingo!  He laughed, cheered and gave me a con­grat­u­la­tory clap on the shoul­der (again through the win­dow).  Soon enough, we were once again en route to Douala as the occu­pants of the mini-bus cheered my adept if some­what acci­den­tal han­dling of the police officer.

We arrived in Douala around noon, had our cel­e­bra­tory lun­cheon where Amanda and I pre­sented our re-acclimation tips to the group, cleaned up and rested.  Around 7:00 p.m. we made our way over to the air­port where we were has­sled by porters, pointed at, called “Les Blancs!” and mobbed by ven­dors for the last time.  The Douala air­port was again a har­row­ing expe­ri­ence and as I shoved my way through, I ached for the good old days of form­ing and adher­ing to lines, which we do so well in the states.  (As Ryan poignantly stated, Amer­i­cans are so square.)

If you are famil­iar with the idea of “the luck of the Irish” then you may find it sim­ple to under­stand the con­cept of “the luck of amy”.  You need just con­sider the for­mer, then reverse it and turn it upside down on its head to com­pre­hend the latter.

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We are cur­rently hang­ing out at a hotel in Douala. We’re leav­ing shortly to pick up din­ner items at a boulan­gerie so that we can pic­nic at the air­port. We will leave Douala at mid­night and land in Brus­sels at 7 am tomor­row morn­ing. Our sec­ond flight leaves Brus­sels at 11 and we will land in Chicago at 12:50 pm tomor­row. My flight is sched­uled to leave Chicago at 4:45 and I should land in Colum­bus at 7:00 pm. Cross your fin­gers for me that all flights take off and land in a timely (and safe) man­ner!!

I will def­i­nitely update my blog a few times when I get back, espe­cially as I sort through my pic­tures and col­lect oth­ers from my group, so check back in a few days… I have some great pics that I have not yet posted! I can’t wait for you to see the pic­tures of the palace that was the home of my sec­ond host fam­ily… Let’s just say that when the fam­ily left Amanda and I home alone on Sun­day, we took the oppor­tu­nity to take “senior pic­tures” on the grounds. Fun fun!!

And so I shall leave you by telling you that I can’t wait to see and talk to you all. Thank you so much for your love, friend­ship and sup­port… and check back soon!

Love,
amy

Remem­ber that…

• point­ing and call­ing oth­ers “whitey” may not be appre­ci­ated by every­one.

• throw­ing empty water bot­tles out the car win­dow at small chil­dren by the side of the road will not likely earn squeals of delight. Unless the chil­dren are stand­ing in recy­cling bins, this is called lit­ter­ing.

• hiss­ing at peo­ple to get their atten­tion is just plain rude.

• attempt­ing to save time by wash­ing your under­wear in the shower will prob­a­bly no longer be nec­es­sary. Hope­fully you have other avail­able means for doing laun­dry.

• say­ing “I’m slip­ping into some­thing more com­fort­able”, crawl­ing into your sleep sack and whis­per­ing “Good night, Linda” might con­fuse your spouse… unless his name is Linda.

• the check­out lady at Tar­get is not your sis­ter, the first black man you see is not Zacharie’s brother and yes, that really IS the price.

• the pants you pur­chased at REI can not be passed off as “Amer­i­tude”.

• if you are being fol­lowed by men in camo car­ry­ing semi-automatic weapons you should be con­cerned. If they spent the last hour drink­ing beer while you were con­sult­ing a sor­ceror crab about your future then you should be REALLY con­cerned.

• steal­ing toi­let paper from every estab­lish­ment you visit will be frowned upon. Chances are good that the next bath­room in which you find your­self will have some any­way.

• no mat­ter how long you stand on your porch, a smil­ing Mon­sieur N’Importe Qui will not show up to take your dirty laun­dry for you.

• killing goats and sac­ri­fic­ing chick­ens just makes you weird… not a doc­tor.

• when stopped by a police offi­cer claim­ing that you are a per­sonal ambas­sador of Barack Obama will not get you out of a ticket… nor will ask­ing “Do you know who I am?”

• although it may seem awk­ward, leave the toi­let seat attached to the toi­let… it is not a wall dec­o­ra­tion.

• if the water in your shower is cold try turn­ing the red han­dle marked with a H. They both might just work.

• rid­ing in a car does not usu­ally con­sti­tute a core work­out… nor does walk­ing from the van to the restau­rant.

• les taches are not dec­o­ra­tive. When you spill some­thing on your­self a splash of water does not make it clean.

• you may need to get out of your car to do your shop­ping… not every­thing will come to you perched atop someone’s head.

• you should not be sad­dened when call­ing your­self a daugh­ter of Barack Obama does not get you a bet­ter deal at the mar­ket… you should also not be sur­prised if it lands you in the office of a psy­chi­atric pro­fes­sional.

~ amanda, amy, caitlin and linda

I talked to Amy on the phone today and, at one point, she said, clearly dis­turbed, “There are goats walk­ing towards me. No, wait, they all turned left. Whew.”  Later, she was talk­ing and then “yelped”, star­tled — a goat had sur­prised her.  I dis­tinctly heard the goat, over the phone, “baa-aa-aa”, even with the baaa-aad con­nec­tion (sorry).  It was quite vocal and had no respect for our pri­vate conversation.

I’ll let her pro­vide more details and descrip­tion when she gets a chance.  I’ll also let her write about the chick­ens, except I’ll men­tion that she was not at all happy when I told her that I had heard a rooster crow­ing down the alley the other day (I heard it again today). In Amy’s per­fect world, there would be no birds.