America, the beautiful

I have been lacking in updating my blog lately. I think part of this is that I am trying to keep myself busy with work, not reflect too much, not think about time.

I have been back in Cameroon for nearly a month after having spent my month of home leave. I left Cameroon in a different place than I returned to Cameroon, and I’m not really sure why that is. My trip to the Airport in Yaounde was scary for me. I remember thinking that I hadn’t left Cameroon for nearly two years! How could I even remember how to navigate the airport? And after messing up with the protocol several times (forgetting to pay my exit tax, almost getting tricked into wrapping my bags in plastic, etc.), I finally made it to my gate to find, fortunately and coincidentally, my friend, a former Bangladesh PCV making music in Yaounde, taking the same flight as me to Brussels. It calmed my nerves to talk to her about the return to America. She had, after all, spent a long time outside of America, living in India, studying in Europe, and now a year and a half making music in Cameroon. My panic did not really set in until my connection flight left, and I realized my return to America was not, in fact, a dream.

When I arrived in the airport, my newly acquired line-cutting skills came in handy to get me through customs and out of the terminal faster than the others. I remember having a sense of paranoia, that the government is watching me, that they are filming me on CCTV, and that the drug sniffing dogs will find something on the bags I brought back, packed by other people. But I made it, and the millions of cars at the airport, the lack of pedestrians, the rules… the rules… it was all so shocking to me, like I had been on a distant planet for so long that I had lost my old sense of time, and watching my watch tick away the seconds made me remember something from a memory.

And then my month started. Driving through the suburbs with all the neat little houses and sidewalks and stay-at-home moms pushing their babies in strollers; going to the grocery store and seeing a million different kinds of bread, of cereal, of off-season fruits; going shopping for Cameroonians, because god knows the last thing you want to deal with is explaining to someone why you didn’t bring them something back (because you’re insignificant to me, you insult me, you just called me fat, and because you have done nothing nice for me ever!); hot yoga classes with people who can take a few hours from work to take care of their mental and spiritual health; loneliness sitting on a bus, listening to your ipod, not wanting to talk to anyone knowing that no one wants to talk to you (which is the exact opposite of Cameroonian bus rides where joking and making small talk with your neighbors, or listening to the guy trying to sell some Chinese gonorrhea medicine is the only way to pass the time)… Those moments felt so empty in a lot of ways. Yes, it’s nice to eat cheez-its after two years, but the lack of human interaction required to do so, the facility with which we can engage ourselves in self-destructive behavior (like eating an entire box by myself in one sitting) is alarming after living in Cameroon where you’re responsible for yourself, your neighbors, your family all at the same time.

But I think being back and being with my friends and family was what made it hard to return. These interactions are much easier than here in Cameroon. And it is in coming back to Cameroon that I feel such a weight everytime I have to leave my house and interact with most people, even the ones I consider my friends. I thought, before I had left, that I had reached a good place with Cameroon and Cameroonians, but upon returning, I realized how loaded my interactions are with most people. I thought I could spend forever being the only Westerner I know in village, but it gets tiring. I miss easy interactions, ones where I feel like I’m home, not ones that remind me constantly of who people think I am (mostly limited to white, rich, a woman).

I remember thinking that volunteers who extend have to be a certain kind of selfish- a self-absorbed, self-centered sort of outlook. And I think that is how I feel about ex-pats living in Africa in general. We all came here to do good, but after a certain period of time, I think some of us stay because we like being thought of as a savior, we like being self-righteous… we like being stared at, called pretty not because we’re pretty but because we’re white. I see myself falling back into it. My presence in America is relatively insignificant. There are thousands of young white women, just like me. But here, there is only me. People come to me with all of their problems in the world, expecting me to solve them. I often say that I can try to help by looking up information, but they are usually looking for more than that, which I know I am incapable of giving.

I will be ready to move on at the end of the year. I will be ready to have some of the luxuries that come with life as a Westerner, not as a poorly paid Peace Corps volunteer. I don’t want to embrace all of the lifestyle- I want to be a pedestrian, I want to have flexibility in work and be told at the end of the day, “Thank you for your hard work, Lauren”, I want to eat good food and know who grew it or who cooked it, I want to drink gallons and gallons of tap water each day, I want to be able to buy a cappuccino and sit at a café and pretend that I’m a nobody. I’m ready to be socially active, to speak out and not have my opinion sound so far-out-there (What?!?! Gay rights? Animal rights? Human rights?), rather than the drudging through of speaking with officials as though you’re communicating with god herself. Mostly, I want to be a participating member of society, where it is not contested whether or not my voice counts since I’m not “from here”. Long live “les etrangers”! Long live perspective, travel, personal growth, and working for something better.