Each March, in celebration of women’s month I do a post related in some way to feminism or the women’s movement. As with the last post (the #AboutmyFaith post made on 1st of April 2019), this one was to go up in March but for reasons beyond my control, it’s coming a bit late. So here’s March’s 2nd missing Musing post. *** For as long as I can recall, I’ve been forced to dispel stereotypes attached to my feminism. Just as Chimamanda recounts dispelling stereotypes in her renowned TED Talk, I often find myself saying ‘yes I’m feminist. Yes, I also like fashion,. Yes, I also read romance novels. No, I am not an ‘angry feminist’. For those who have familiarized themselves with feminist thought (particularly in the writings of Audre Lorde), anger can be understood as an appropriate reaction and a useful tool for social change. Very different from hate. Yet, between those who would like nothing but to undermine the idea of feminism by bastardizing its concepts and capitalist media’s butchering of feminist thought for commodification, one has a lot of stereotypes to dispel. Too often we are put in the position of defining what we are by rejecting what we are not. And each time I have been put in that position, I have felt that in refuting certain caricature ideas of what feminism is, I would be educating people who could then see that it is something they too should identify as, something they should stand for. Yet, recently I’ve had a slight change of heart on this matter. As the Anglophone crisis in my country has progressed, I have observed Anglophones (rightfully upset at the state of affairs, the government’s abuses, and the minimal support/understanding from the rest of the country) forced to refute stereotypes attached to their stance. Just as I have to with feminism. Those who identify as Anglophone now have to place conjunctions after asserting their stance, like saying: Yes, I’m Anglophone, no I don’t support the attack on the francophones posted in our regions for work. Or Yes, I believe there is an anglophone problem and we need change; no that doesn’t make me an ‘Amba Boy’ nor does it mean I support keeping children from going to school. To not add that ‘but’ or ‘also’ is to allow for someone with prejudice (whether intentional or not) to foist the stereotypes on you. And just as I would shun the ‘Angry Feminist’ label, so too, I have observed many try to shun the ‘violent/irrational Anglophone label’. This observation has made me question why? Why do we, who are standing up for something right, have to ensure that we are not wrongly perceived. Why is the onus on us to dispel stereotypes people wouldn’t have in the first place if they cared enough to educate themselves if they examined their own selves and dispelled their own biases? Yes, as I mention above, I feel the need to explain so to correct the false perceptions but if I’m completely honest, I also have a vested interest. I do not want to be seen as ‘the angry feminist’ for the same reason the average Anglophone doesn’t want to be seen as a ‘violent Anglophone’, because it is not a good look. We want to be liked, we want to be seen as ‘good’ and even if we are not seen as ‘good’ we want the fact that we are ‘bad’ to be understood as a reaction to something else far worse- gender inequality, socio-political oppression, etc. So we explain, and use ‘but’ and ‘also’. Unfortunately, in explaining, and exempting ourselves, we enable those who would undermine the movements (be the feminist movement or the movement against Anglophone marginalization) to further dismiss those who we have exempted ourselves from- the angry, the violent. By saying ‘I am not like those ones…’ we inadvertently say ‘Feel free to rant but exempt me’. But this isn’t what we want nor need. What is needed is understanding and empathy. My not being an ‘a violent Anglophone’ doesn’t mean I cannot understand/empathize with those who are. Similarly, I should not fear being identified as an ‘Angry feminist’ so much I lose the opportunity to explain that the anger – even if I don’t have it- is understandable, even to be expected. My not being angry or violent does not negate the right of those feelings/actions in other people. If I do not walk around in a bundle of angry energy it is because I am lacking in consistency and strength needed to keep that up. It is not because I lack the reason to be angry/violent. Everyday sexism, like every additional wrong move made in reaction to the Anglophone crisis, lends credence to the anger and violence of feminists and Anglophone separatists. The absence of my anger, therefore, is a boon that should be appreciated, angry is what we should be in the face of injustices and oppression. So here is an ode to the ‘angry feminists’: You are seen, understood, Your anger is valid. And even though I will not always feel with your fervor, The fervor is appreciated. Thank you
“How is Home?” You Ask
Since returning home early last month, nearly all my conversations begin with the same recurrent question; how is Cameroon/home? Roughly eight weeks later, I still haven’t found a suitable way to reply. I say: “It’s just there”. It’s just there as in; it is how I left it, except where it’s worse As in: home is surviving – barely living, As in: Cameroon has managed to retain just the bare minimum of what makes it home- the familiarity of those who are yet to leave, the humid weather which in turn envelopes you like a sweat-inducing fog and reassures your skin that it will not crack here. I say ‘it’s just there’ because to answer ‘how is home?’ would require several contradictory descriptions: Like the security of never doubting where your next meal will come from because there is an endless list of people waiting for me to stop by for a meal since I returned, but also like the hesitation and insecurity I feel at the thought of leaving home to do any visiting because leaving home means passing through a terrifying military checkpoint akin to what stands at the US/Mexico border. And if I were to describe home what would I share? The laughter of the children in our compound; the toddler next door who calls me ‘Nica’ and giggles like it’s the soundtrack for a Disney classic yet to be made, the preteens playing games like ‘dodging’ and assorted versions of hopscotch after their morning chores on ghost-town days… Or do I tell of this air of apprehension which hangs over us all and leaves me feeling like I’m paranoid in my inability to properly describe it? But I’m not paranoid, it is real. Our laughter, our noisy nature is now somewhat muted. We who used to advertise nearly everything with ‘Papa Promo’ a car with massive speakers attached on its roof, blasting Pidgin-English adverts into the eardrums of pedestrians. That car seems to have stopped going around. And Mutengene which was always busy and loud. A distracting hub to pass through, not stop in with its shops and bars blaring music from loudspeakers competing with each other for the attention of customers…. even here the music is not as loud any longer; only one shopkeeper with a speaker has yet to close down and move away, no more competition. And of course, one can’t play music so loud that they don’t hear if gunshots go off and they need to run. If I were to answer ‘how is home’? Which of the homes shall I speak of? Home feels different depending on the neighborhood. That apprehension that cannot be explained is experienced in varying degrees from one quarter to the next. In Mile 16 and Muea it is heavy in the air with closed shops, vacant businesses and the desolation that is breathed in and out by all who invested in the area, by the few who have stayed despite the very real threat to life. From Mile 17 upward to Molyko the apprehension is a crescendo of feeling; with very little felt between 8am and 5pm- just people on their guard for any sudden alarm. Then the crescendo peaking at dusk as we all rush to go home, grown or not, afraid of the dark. Finally, in Sandpit upwards; here there is life, the shops are all open, and people still sit at makeshift bars to eat and drink. But there is also an awareness that the girls selling akara and beans with that old mami by the roadside are not going to school, they have come to Buea to stay with their aunt because their village was burned by the military. That apprehension here is a shadow at the edges of life, like a silhouette. And in the telling of home do I count even the other regions East of the Mungo where in place of apprehension it is a resignation that hangs in the air along with the weight of dust? *** To properly respond to ‘how is Cameroon’ would demand I tell several stories of Cameroonians: The story of how my godmother’s father who suffered kidney failure would have died because his urologist couldn’t come to work on Monday because of Ghost-town and the general practitioner had more than his share of patients to deal with. Similar to the story of expectant mothers who now have an additional fear of going into labor on the wrong day of the week. To respond properly would entail I tell of the number of families split up, with parents having to send kids off to other regions for school possibly with one spouse going as well and how managing two households has made already the lives of people who were already struggling much more difficult. It would require I tell of the loans my neighbors are paying with bitterness every month because the house they took the loan for is complete but they can’t move into it- the area is now a no-go zone. The bushes not too far from there has a shrine where the Amba Boys are said to congregate so it is regularly attacked by the military. The last time the neighbor visited this house, he remarked with palpable frustration on how a house he had yet to sleep in had already seen bullet holes in the walls, need for repair. I would need to tell of the Faculty of Science lecturer who I used to admire for her fashion sense and how she jumped a foot when I greeted her from behind… I was later told that she had been kidnapped and her family had to pay 5.5 million in ransom… she is still traumatized… And she is not alone. Enjema, the younger sister of my neighbor-friend has nightmares periodically now- since witnessing a man being shot in front of her by gendarmes last September. She recounts that the man had been the driver
The Police Are Not Your Friend, Not Here, Not There, Not Anywhere.
How would you identify a good country? This question or something similar to it has come up in several conversations with friends recently. In the wake of yet another farce of an election in Cameroon coupled with a crisis which grows more violent and erratic by the day, friends and acquaintances I have spoken with have expressed their disdain at having been born Cameroonian. Some have mentioned wishing they could belong to another nation, or at least be resident there. While I understand that these feelings are a product of frustration, I have found myself responding to their declarations with the question: so what country do you think is better and why? Their responses always expose what they prioritize at the said time as well as what they feel Cameroon fails at the most. After the most recent of such a conversation, I turned the question on myself. What would be evidence of a good country for me? Free and fair elections? Leaders that are changed with regularity? Equitable participation/representation of genders, ages, faiths, and abilities? All of those came to mind, but none stood out as much as the state of law enforcement. *** For a brief period of my childhood, I lived with my immigrant single mother in the United States. It was the mid-1990s and after school, I would be cared for by neighbours who were immigrants themselves but relatively better ‘established’ having lived in the US for longer. It was in those spaces that I learned what I needed to fit in, from the first generation children who had come before me, I would learn of games like UNO, Dominoes and Cops and Robbers. During parties and meetings when the adults had their fun upstairs, we kids would be sent to a basement or backyard to play with each other. If it were a backyard, a game of Cops and Robbers would typically be on the program and it all began with picking those who would be the cops and who would be the robbers; this equalled who would be the good guy and who would be the bad guy. That’s what American culture first taught me of police. They were the good guys, who caught bad guys and saved the day. Even at school, when asked the oft-repeated “what do you want to be when you grow up?” question, several classmates had said they wanted to be policemen. And why not? Back then we watched COPS (if we managed to stay up past bedtimes), we sang the show’s jingle with glee “Bad boys, bad boys whatchu you gonna do, whatchu gonna do when they come for you?” and we believed as we repeated the tune that bad boys got caught by the police, the ‘good guys’ and that it was always best to call 911 so the police come rescue you. By the time I was 11, that idea of who the police are had become a bit tarnished. Only slightly, but still. An African-American classmate had recounted her fear of the cops discovering that she was at home alone most days and in charge of watching over her siblings because her mother worked multiple jobs and her dad was in jail. She warned me after I had received a particularly brutal whooping from my mom, not to let anyone know; because the police could take you away from your family altogether and foster-care was hell, she said. She had been there for some time herself. I took the lesson to heart and soon began noting the fear and apprehensiveness displayed by adults when police passed by. I began noting how my mom and other adults spoke to these men in uniform the way I would speak to adults when weary of stepping on the wrong toe. Nonetheless, at that age the police were still people to be respected, still people I believed one ought to call for help. I returned home at age 12, the first thing I would note about police in Cameroon would be their standing on the roadside. They didn’t always have cars nearby and back then most just held batons and a stick with nails which would be extended out on the road as a threat to drivers: stop or puncture your tires. I recall asking during one trip from Bamenda to Yaoundé what would happen if the driver drove on, what if the driver saw the police ahead and dodged the stick with nails? What could they do without a patrol car and gun? Obviously, Cameroon didn’t have a sophisticated license plate tracking system. The adults I asked just told me it was a bad idea, the policeman would remember you they claimed, or warn the group of police at the next checkpoint to watch out for your vehicle. It seemed lame to me. A lot of things seemed lame to me back then as I compared the country I now call home to the one I had spent some six childhood years in. But the police, in particular, were very lame; all those I came in contact with spoke French, which I couldn’t understand nor speak. They were forever scowling and didn’t even give the impression of being at your service. Rather they were to be served. People would give up their treasured front seats at the bus for the gender me, often at the beckoning of the driver who hoped this ‘esteemed’ passenger would be recognized through the windscreen when the bus was stopped at checkpoints and the driver given less hassle. Those who gave up seats did so for the greater good I suppose. Police in Cameroon as I would come to learn were not those to be called upon for help. At no time have I been taught the emergency number for the Cameroon police, and I bet a vox pop would prove very few know it. The average man won’t even want to know the number; what would they use it for? If
Faith Journey Lessons Inspired by Thoughts of Death
Last week I thought about dying. No, not as in suicide. But as in being killed. You see, I’m returning home soon and though I have looked forward to returning home from every trip/stay abroad, this time I am more apprehensive than excited. The crisis in the Anglophone regions which I call home has escalated to the point of guerrilla warfare. On one hand, we have the military shooting indiscriminately, burning villages, and government-ordered arbitrary arrests on the rise; on the other hand, we have the advocates for secessionism proving to be another extreme of evil with kidnappings, butchering and a general ruling by terror. I am returning home to this, both for professional and personal reasons, willingly returning because this is still home. Yet, I have questioned my sanity for desiring to walk into what many are trying to flee from. I have questioned my purpose, what I feel called to do, I have questioned God’s direction, and I have questioned myself in a hundred different ways. I am an over-thinker, I can create something to be anxious about out of thin air, and as this is a very real worry I have magnified it, worrying at an even larger scale. So I didn’t think only of the possibility of physical death (that would be relatively easy), I thought of all the ways I could die emotionally, spiritually, and mentally if hurt in a particular way. For days I thought of home and cried feeling like some foolish character in a horror movie who goes outside in the dark to check for what is making that eerie sound. You might think I’m exaggerating- and perhaps I am given that I’m thinking all this based on reports from home- but please put yourself in my place. Consider yourself someone already prone to worrying and imagine receiving news of shootings every day, a kidnapping for a ransom of 5 million, or teacher from a school 15 mins from your home having their fingers cut off. The truth is reported on the news often enough that I do not need to exaggerate. But this post isn’t about the crisis back home. It’s about what this time, living with this fear and constantly receiving news like this, has taught me about my faith, and my position on my Christian journey. This period, particularly the over-thinking I’ve done this past week has left me with two lessons I’ll be sharing here: On a particularly bad day last week the thoughts of dying hit peak while I was talking with a cherished friend who unknowingly said something hurtful, something that killed some hope I’d had in our relationship. That night I cried thinking of a different type of dying- dying hope. I learned an important lesson then, untimely death scares a lot of us not for what it is (we don’t feel the impact of our death ourselves) but for what it means. It often means the end of hopes enjoy fruits of our labor, feeling some success and some modicum of happiness at the end of the struggle. Christians are often thought to think of this world as a temporary place, we’re passing through. While the ideology is foundational of our faith, I think it’s simplistic to say ‘don’t think of the here and now’. I have learned from this time that we must be more honest, yes we have hope in a life after death, but I also have hope in God bringing about a future I hope for. We invest a lot in that hope of a future we hope for, we work hard in the here and now, to be good disciples while on earth, to have good relationships to live fulfilled lives. So let’s not sum up fear of death and bodily harm to an unwillingness to pass on physically. To me, it’s sometimes an unwillingness to believe God would let all the effort, the dreams sown in your heart be fruitless. Living unhappily, with no hope for the here and now is in itself another type of dying we rarely speak of. Suffice it to say, that as I overanalyzed everything last week I felt like the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, wondering why we all try so hard and whether it was even worth it. As I was leaving one WhatsApp chat to another discussing my anxiety, plans, questions etc. a friend brought something to my attention which would be my 2nd lesson in this period. She had noted that when I have a decision to make, or some issue on my plate, I repeat the same pattern for dealing it. I say I’m praying over that thing- and I do- but then I carry whatever it is to whoever I can, flesh out the worry, analyze the issue several times with 20 different people, collecting all their opinions till I’ve talked more than I’ve prayed. Debated and questioned more than I could ever hope. At the end of this- the end comes when I’m just plain tired and or have run out of people I like enough to share the issue with- I resign to whatever would be. Such that my trust in God’s will is more out of resignation than actual faith. The friend who brought this pattern to my attention also encouraged me to re-read the book of James. Shortly after I started it, I found verses which summed my actions up exactly James 1:6-7). I meditated on that verse had a heart to heart with another Christian sister-friend and in the course of conversation came up with the term ‘prayer/worry hoarder’ describing my habit for needing other people to help me worry, asking them to pray for what I’ve prayed for and worry about what I’m worrying over- rather than trusting. The revelation into this habit hasn’t resolved anything, I’m still anxious. Yet now I’m conscious of this pattern of mine and taking steps to curb my doubt-based behavior. For instance, knowing