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May Celebrations

One of the best ways to learn about another culture is to experience their big holidays. It’s not really possible to experience American culture without eating turkey on Thanksgiving (or stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce for vegetarians), or watching fireworks on Fourth of July. Well here in Cameroon, May is a month full of celebrating. May 1st, 14th, and 20th are all holidays. May 1st is International Labour Day (who knew there was an International Labour Day? And it’s not a Monday in September that marks the beginning of the school year…). May 14th is Ascension Day, which is basically just another day where people go to church (Church here stresses me out, so I might have skipped church and made chocolate chip banana bread instead). Finally, May 20th is National Day. Not Independence Day, as I’ve heard other people call it on accident. Fun fact about Cameroonian history, since Cameroon was colonized by France and Great Britain, the Francophone and Anglophone regions gained independence on different days (January 1st, 1960 and October 1st, 1961 respectively). National Day celebrates May 20th, 1972, when the federal system was abolished and a unitary state was created. Anyway, now that you’ve had your Cameroonian history lesson of the day, I’ll tell you about the actual celebrations:

Labour Day

On certain holidays in Cameroon (Labour Day, National Day, Youth Day, Women’s Day), people celebrate with what they call “march pass”. Different NGOs, associations, schools, etc, march together (usually in matching uniforms) in front of the grand stand. My host organization, Haven of Hope, decided to march together for Labour Day. We were told that March Pass would start at 10am, so we decided to plan on meeting at 10:30, since nothing ever starts on time, but also nobody shows up on time, so we figured everyone would arrive 11:30 and we’d still have about an hour until it was time to march. It turns out that before the marching even started, a bunch of people had to give speeches, so we didn’t end up marching until around 2:30 (but on the plus side, everyone made it there in time). Although it’s rainy season, it happened to be a ridiculously hot day, and we were all standing around waiting in the sun. At one point, when I standing in the shade with some of the teenage mothers, I started feeling really light headed, but luckily there was a total about a block away, so I went there, bought water, and rested for about 15 minutes. By the way, total is a magical, wonderful gas station that always has ice cream and olives and cold water and soda and the most amazing air conditioning. Finally we got to march, and everyone was really serious about their marching; everyone should be marching on the same foot, and your arms should be swinging (but not too much), and you have to stay in line with the people next to you (I definitely was not doing all those things correctly). After marching, we took a bunch of pictures, and then we went to eat my favorite Cameroonian food: fufu corn (kind of the consistency of polenta, made from corn flour), njama njama (huckleberry), and kati kati (chicken). Even though I nearly passed out, it was great to spend time with all the teenage mothers outside of our monthly meeting and relax.

Teenage mothers and support staff after marching

With one of the teen moms

National Day

For National Day, my counterpart and I went up to Santa, a town about an hour away from Bamenda, to march with a group of Fulani teenage mothers that Haven of Hope sponsors in adult literacy classes. We were told that march pass would start at 8am, so my counterpart planned to pick me up at 7:15. He ended up arriving at the junction near my house at 8am, telling me that there was no possible way the marching would start at 8am in Cameroon. Of course he was correct, when we arrived at 9am, the grandstand was still empty. Since we were one of the first groups to march, we marched at around 10:30 or 11 (somehow I still managed to get sunburned, sorry mom!). After marching, we went to the Ministry of Basic Education to have a snack of soda and puff puff (deep fried balls of dough). Then we headed back towards Bamenda, but we stopped to visit one of the teenage mothers on the way, because naturally it would be rude of us to pass by without saying hello. And then they fed us, because naturally it would be rude of them to not feed us. Arriving back in Bamenda, the bars and restaurants were crowded with large groups of people in matching uniforms, and not wanting to be too deranged, I went to hide in my house and hang out a little with my neighbors. Cameroon does fireworks too, I didn’t actually see any but I heard them going off (luckily, since I’ve already celebrated Christmas and New Year’s here, I didn’t think they were gun shots this time). Overall, a pretty good holiday! Today also marks 6 months at post, and 3 months until my parents and little sister in South Africa (not that I’m counting down or anything…)

Fulani teenage mothers waiting to march

#Holidays #Cameroon #Nationalday #Marchpass #peacecorps #Labourday #celebrate