A Saturday's Errands in Yaounde

Yesterday's errands.  (Nothing earth-shattering here - offered solely as an example of what we do because Tysons is too far.)

Love.  Girl One has agreed to take tennis lessons at French-speaking center.  We hope she'll enjoying playing with children and communicating in French, an opportunity we haven't taken advantage of much in our first year.  We also hope she'll develop a better backhand than Steve's. The center's closed until Monday, when she'll have her first lesson.  We'll try again and hope there's a spot on the court for her.

Shave and a Haircut:  3 mille. Fatimah may have cut her hair short, but it still grows, and managing her natural cut has proven a problem.  Ah, the irony:  who would think the Black woman hair care issue would surface in a country full of Black women?  But after several ageometric haircut where a hapless coiffure tried to use scissors to shape up her Afro, Steve took her to his barber.  

Do not smirk.  Twice since accepting his hair challenges, Steve has grown his hair enough to require a visit to the barber, usually after a vacation during which he hasn't shaved his head enough to keep his scalp clean. 

Sakoto'o, a barber in the Bastos neighborhood, is about 2 km from our house.  The Girls and I escorted her to the shop, and we explained in broken French what she wanted:  "Plus court."  He took out the trusted, if aged, electric clippers and sheared layer upon layer from Fatimah's head.  The barber tamed her hair into a sphere, salted with experience and the time since her last touch-up! The haircut took about 15 minutes -- no waiting -- and cost 3,000 francs - six bucks. (Tell them about that at the salon!)

Does this make my butt look fat?  Tailors and seamstresses throughout Cameroon design and construct regal and vibrant run a vibrant business here, designing and constructing regal costumes.  The country's third-largest industry is textile production, and many of the pagnes that are cut and sewn into outfits are domestically spun.  One of the things to do here is to acquire a few outfits of your own - though they will stand out on Washington's Metro, they are quite normal and well-received here. 

A friend at work recommended Couterie Ibrahim, her tailor, and after the haircut we ordered a few outfits--but first we had to find his shop.  A few streets in Cameroon have official names (or numbers) but no one uses them.  Instead, every trip is described in relation to its surroundings.  When she started to tell us where the place was, Steve joked that it was "down that road, past the Texaco, and next to a quincaillerie."  He was just making this up--this could describe nearly any location in the capital, but she nodded, clarifying that it was really a few storefronts down from the hardware store.  

She drew us a map.

But Steve knew a shortcut and turned a 10-minute drive into a half-hour struggle through the city's main market on a Saturday.  We jostled alongside, around and over taxis, streetside vendors, wheelbarrows, a pig, and pedestrians.  We hit an epic African logjam, an intersection where cars ignored not only the traffic signals but the other cars already gridlocked in the intersection to create an impasse.  

In Ibrahim's shop we looked through stacks of photos of his past creations, and several Afro-European fashion mags.  We had bought our own fabric, so our challenge was find a style for him.  Fatimah was sized for an ensemble, a two-piece top and skirt that is standard Cameroonian wear, and a full dress.  Ibrahim was especially taken with the fabric she'd brought for the dress.  Steve asked for a tunic-and-trousers combination much like what Ibrahim himself was wearing.  While he sized Steve, Ibrahim said he reminded him of the president of Senegal, which seems like a non sequitur until we realized that our tailor was from Dakar, which with Abidjan is the hub of the African fashion.  The outfits will be ready on January 19, and we'll show the results.  

February update

Hello, and happy March (almost). As most of the US is digging out from the snow, or has just stopped trying, we're happier here in Cameroon, because the dry season is finally coming to an end. Oh, mind you, even when the rains start, it will still be hot, but at least we'll get a break from the drilling sun and blazing, arid air. Yes, there's a downside: yesterday, Fatimah's tennis tournament was canceled. But if ever there was a city that needs a cleansing purge, its name is Yaounde. Also, there's a crippling water shortage, and while we're ok, up to 75% of the city doesn't have running water.

Aaliyah's continuing with school, and learning more and more. Each  week the teacher leads the class through a series of drills based on a series of something. We started the year with colors, and now we're up to W in the alphabet, and discussing a lot about recycling. Which, as Aly would explain, is when you use something more than once. Her swimming lessons are continuing, and she's making her way across the pool without anything to support her. It's a little scary to watch, actually, but so impressive.

Fatimah, as I mentioned, is taking tennis lessons -- the first time she's ever played! She and I have played a few times and we're about even at this point. But I played 30 years ago on the courts in back of the Burke estate, while she's learning and getting better every time. She's also taking aerobics twice a week, working more than part-time advising students on how to study in America, and in the thick of the play group rotations in the expatriate community. Oh, and she has a family. Whew! Fatimah took us on a work trip to Rwanda last month.

Zana is her own person now. She wants to do everything Aaliyah does, of course, but she also has her own defined likes and needs. One of her favorite things to do is to hop up from bed and roam the house at 9 pm, looking for someone to play with. She laughs, tells funny stories, and knows how to put crayon to construction paper. She's more  of a Dora the Exploradora girl in a Backyardigans household.

As for Steve, the struggles continue with the French: As Steve Martin said decades ago, it's like they have a different word for everything. The job is going well, and I have a niche in the Embassy that I'm trying to broaden to the American community here. I took us all on a work trip to Equatorial Guinea last month, a tiny republic off the coast of Cameroon. That's a passport stamp you don't see that often. Last week I ran 20 miles in a race. It took me 8 hours, but that's because the Race of Hope runs up and down Mt. Cameroon, the tallest volcano in the region!

We've joined the Skypeverse (FAMSBRAbroad), and we're continuing with our blog at http://famstecam.blogspot.com, though we're not updating as often as we'd like. Hope you can follow us there, or drop us a line. Look for Roysters and Mateen coming to country near you in May.

Steve, Fatimah, Aalilyah & Zana

Racing Hopefully

Tomorrow we depart for the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Cameroon_Race_of_Hope. I'm going with Brad and Pedro, and while we're all in it for the adventure, fairly put, none of us is ready for this kind of challenge. And yet we try.

It's really hard to find out about the Race of Hope. It definitely starts and ends in Buea, in the shadow of Mt. Cameroon, the highest peak in Central Africa. And there's definitely a change in elevation, since the course runs an unimproved trail from the town to the summit at 4095 meters. (The current exchange rate is about 3.1 feet to the meter.) But reports differ on how long the race is: anywhere between 38 and 42 km (the standard length for a marathon). I also hear that while the race for the seniors (age 18-40) definitely goes to the top, the veterans (that's me, folks) and the juniors sometimes do, and sometimes don't.

For example, in the 2006 edition, documented in Volcanic Sprint, it was only at the start that the juniors were told their race would only go halfway up the mountain and back. That has to affect your training... but it's better than learning the opposite: that your race is twice as long as you'd planned!

My goal is to get to the top. Unfortunately, my longest training run has only been 18 miles, with nowhere near the grade change. Time is irrelevant here: the course record is about 4:15, testament to the hellish rise to the peak, even if the race is a full marathon length. And with such a change in altitude, the temperature can vary up to 25C from start to the midpoint. And yet we try. After all, this could be the last time the race reaches all the way to the sky...

First, though, we have to get there. We will leave Yaounde at midday, and drive like a collective bat out of hell across Cameroon, hoping to arrive by nightfall. This not only gets us there before roadways go truly insane, but also gives us time to find the race officials who have promised to hold our shirts and race bibs for us. Not to jinx anything, but organization has not always been one of the event's high points.  We're taking an American flag, since our very presence only to the international flavor of the event. Unfortunately, we couldn't be in town earlier for the week long Festival of Hope, but with any luck we'll have enough left that we can celebrate a little after we cross the finish line.

It will be a glorious run, though the first time I've lined up for a race that I wasn't positive I would finish. It will hurt, stories will be told, legends made. What's the worst that could happen?