Oh me, ohm ayo

Since I’ve moved to Campo, there has been one person who’s looked after my dog probably more than me. His name is Ayo and he has some sort of mental disorder. Some days he’s more lucid than others, and some days he’s just strange. He walks faster than a New Yorker rushing to catch a train and he is always wearing his Paul Biya (our beloved president) t-shirt and hat. The first time I met him was after a big dry season rain. He used to clear the grasses in front of my house, said my landlord, but because he was incapable of distinguishing between plantain trees and weeds, his machete devastated everything and my landlord had to find a responsible teenage boy who’s obsession with clearing the land has left me crying over ruined squash plants.

That first day I met Ayo, he had just come to tell my landlord that people had been burying Paul Biya. Because the elections had come and gone, life-size Paul Biya posters had been left hanging on all of the houses. Now, several months after the victory, and with the first heavy rain of the new year, Ayo finds posters ripped from their walls by strong winds, strewn on the ground, and covered by dirt from the erosive droplets hitting bare earth. To Ayo, this “burial” is an attack on the president himself, may his soul always be elected in eternity, and must be spoken of to someone who can do something about it.

While sometimes the things he says are strange, sometimes he is painfully honest (probably because people underestimate his capacities). The former doctor in the Campo Hospital used to pay him to clear the grasses. One day, the doctor decided to “borrow” the generator to bring to his village for the funeral of a family member. I don’t think it would have been a big deal had the generator returned to Campo immediately after use, but of course it stayed in this other village for quite some time. It was Ayo, who somehow knew the whole story, who told everyone he met in town the story of how the doctor stole the generator. This resulted in a) the generator being returned to Campo, and b) Ayo losing his work with the hospital (at least until the new doctor arrived).

Ayo also happens to be in love with my dog. He comes by my house sometimes at 6 am and whistles in the windows so that he can talk to Owondo. Sometimes he comes by and calls my name, circling the house to see if maybe I’m out back. When I don’t respond (I’m usually in bed), he eventually leaves, probably disappointed. Owondo will see Ayo from a distance and run up and greet him, and sometimes Ayo leads Owondo away with him, either to the beach or to town, and then always returns him to me. One time, I left Owondo with a co-worker’s children when I went away for work. When I came back a few days later, I found Owondo outside their house, but there is no chain! The kids said that when they went to bed he was chained up, and when they woke up he was gone (and so was the chain). The next morning, like clockwork, at 6 am, there is a knock on the door. It is Ayo returning the chain. Here’s where reality and Ayo reality sometimes get confused- he said that Owondo hadn’t been fed and it wasn’t good that he was chained up there. I know they had been feeding Owondo, and I can’t figure out why the kids were deemed unfit parents according to Ayo law.

When Ayo visits me at my house, I never know what to expect. One time he made a throat slicing motion to me when we crossed paths and was telling me a story about a girl getting killed. I didn’t completely follow the story (as I never really do), until he came to my house with two heads of white dolls. One was a life-size doll and one was small, they were both blondes, and they both came with upper thigh pieces, too. So, there’s Ayo standing outside my house holding a large white doll head and telling me a story I can’t understand, and then he starts to leave (and leave me with the dolls appendages). Even though I’m not a believer in sorcery or black magic, this freaks me out and I make him take the doll pieces away. Apparently he had taken the doll pieces to the mayor and said it was me. Mike, an RPCV who stayed in my house while I was gone for a few weeks, said he had come to the house, again, with the doll pieces.

Ayo’s always a little more lucid when he’s being looked after, and everytime I see Ayo, I’m reminded of how important it is to look after mental health. In a society like Cameroon where people are often undernourished, where physical health comes only as an afterthought, mental health doesn’t even have a standing. Here, there’s really only one word for mental disorder: “Fou”, which means crazy. Vocabulary is essential for humans to be able to better understand and describe what we see, and I hate that when people don’t know his name, I’m forced to use the word “fou” to describe him. I know that when people don’t know my name, I’m described as “la blanche.” Or maybe they just pick up the decapitated head of the life-sized Arian doll.