Palatial Confusion, Nseh
“If you kids don’t quiet down, we won’t bring back the sun.” –PCV Reese, on the 4th of July to a group of extremely excited Cameroonian kids experiencing their first firework display
The Fon of Nseh had a palace stooge stuff a note under Reese’s door around 6:30 in the morning on Wednesday. The enveloped note was addressed to “Nformi” Reese and stamped multiple times. Cameroonians are obsessed with the rubber stamp. For 3000 francs, or six US dollars, someone will meticulously carve anything you want backwards into a piece of old tire the size of a ritz cracker. For 3000 francs, you create absolute authenticity. Contrastingly, if you don’t have something stamped, there is a good chance it ain’t real. For instance, my friend Ally in Ndu received a stack of certificates for completing a series of health seminars (Cameroonians also love certificates… whether its for spending eight years in nursing school or for touring the local Guiness factory, they’re framed and propped up somewhere prominent). When the certificates arrived unstamped from the Peace Corps office, a coworker refused to accept them as more than just a meaningless piece of paper, despite the fact that they were signed by PC administrators.
The note under the door was an invitation to the Saturday graduation of three queens from the palace. In Nseh, there are multiple queens. However, the queens are not the wives of the Fon (there are also multiple wives). As I understand it, they are the daughters of the royal family who are chosen at a very young age to serve in place if the Fon should die or become busy with major village matters… like goats-gone-rampant or infiltration of petit sized beers. Or the World Cup. We weren’t quite sure what the graduation was to entail. I don’t think we ever found out, but it ended up being quite a Saturday.
The invitation had not included a time (though it was not forgotten that any financial gift would be welcome), so we figured 9am. Also invited was the Al-hajji from Reese’s quarter, and he suggested 10 (he also has a truck), so we decided that was better. We packed into the front seat of truck with five or so Muslims smashed into the seat behind around 11. On the road, Reese was able to pick through a Lamso’ conversation enough to understand that someone went at 8am and ate at the palace and that we might be absurdly late. But when we arrived at the palace, someone said we were early. Really, it’s almost always like this.
We started in one dilapidated room next to the main palace courtyard. There is a small stage in the room that is royally adorned with shiny Korean-made Christmas decorations and a plastic lawn chair covered in brown tapestry. Above the throne are framed pictures of the half-naked, traditionally dressed Fon, President Paul Biya and Micheal Bolton (okay, not MB, but it would be so funny and it’s not completely out of the question!). There are benches around the perimeter of the room where various members of the Fondom sit, somewhat ordered by rank. When you enter the room, clan members greet the empty throne with the standard three claps in prostration, then the declaration of “Mbe” into their clasped hands.
They brought in a huge clay jar and put it in the middle of the room. I’ve been to the Nseh palace some four times now, and so I’m quite familiar with the routine. Reese pulls out his special horn-shaped cup in perfect synchronicity with the other Old Farts while raffia wine is poured into the huge jar. I guess women are not supposed to drink from anything phallus-shaped… we instead drink from bulbous calabashes (or in my case, plastic cups of varying colors and cleanliness). Then anyone with a drinking vessel (who isn’t Muslim) waits his or her turn to take the white stuff (or the white-ish stuff, in the case of gritty corn beer). They pull the wine from the jar with a two-holed calabash. The men are expected to take and take and take. The wine-pourer will stand in front of Reese, fill the horn held in his right hand (that he respectfully supports with his left), he drinks the whole horn quickly (still supporting his right with his left), then places the cup out again (and breathes). It is refilled, and the act is repeated. Two or three times he drinks like this, before waving off the stooge and resting with a horn full of wine. If you don’t do it like this, I guess you’re some kind of wuss, not fit to have two spears or something like that. I guess I’ll never really understand. I knew it was a big day when the two boxes of Baron de Madrid were brought out. Baron is the grape-juice tasting wine beverage that is often mixed with orange Fanta. It’s really awful, but it means big things when you see the yellow box.
Sometimes they have snacks. Old men crunch on bitter pink kola nuts (apparently, some old guys have so few teeth that they have to grate the kola first) and one time there was a bucket of steaming corn kernels (you only get corn when somebody dies, though). The last time we sat in that room, a crazy old francophone came over and gave Reese and I a piece of folded-up banana leaf tied with some brown twine. He told us we could share it’s contents and mumbled some other things. We didn’t open it until we got back to Reese’s house, but when we did, it was empty. Like I said, craaazy.
On my second cup of Baron, the Fon came out and sat in the plastic chair. We all stood, clapped and “Mbe’d” while he sat down. He said some stuff, then there was awkward royal silence, and then he got up and left. Alllright.
So, we continued to drink. After a while, we were brought down into the main palace courtyard, where the council meets and the Fon has a bigger throne. A big, painted rocking chair and a strew of wooden statues, stools, tables and pillars decorate this throne (far less chintzy than the other). The courtyard has a sort of veranda that goes all the way around. In the middle of the courtyard are two stones I figured were for decapitations… this was not a correct assumption, I was told. The part of the veranda closest to the Fon’s throne is lined with around twenty semi-flat, stout stones where the council members are supposed to sit. In a country with (I have heard) a good deal of hemorrhoid problems, this doesn’t seem like the best arrangement for old guys. Ah, tradition! We sat farther back in the courtyard on a wooden bench. I thought the “graduation” would be commencing, but a side door opened and fufu and cow meat appeared and we ate from Christmas plates. When we finished eating with our right hands, we washed them (while Reese has perfected his fufu eating and upon finishing has the stuff sticking only to the tips of his fingers, I tend to get it all over my hand and halfway up my arm… but I am a formidable opponent when it comes to the single-fingered achu eating) and were ushered back to the other room. Back and forth and back and forth. Just relax, go with it.
So, we continued to drink. After a number of glasses of Baron, I went to find a place to “ease myself”. I cut through a neighboring courtyard, this one bordered by blackened doorways. I had found the quarters where the palace-women sleep and cook. Innumerable children with faces very similar to the Fon’s watched me cross the dusty square and cut through a muddy alley (wearing strappy orange stilettos, mind you) to the path leading to some royal latrines. When I popped out of the injurious alleyway, a naked granny, squatting and washing herself among the stalks of corn, greeted me. “Wi ka ju! Wi ka ju, ohhhhh! Beri! Beri! Beri!” she yelled, cocking her head and pressing her hands together, then placing them against her floppy chest, then together again. I squint, smile broadly and nod. “Heeey, ho… ha. Thanks, mama. Thanks. Yep,” I said, my heels erratically sinking into the soft pathway. She was not just buck naked, but also toothlessly grinning… as were the other three Old Mommys lining the path to the latrine. I was bombarded by thank yous and enthusiasm… “Beri! Beri! Way-ohhhhhh! Wha! Wha! Wha!” Seeing naked old women is nothing new (I used to go to the YMCA), but I can’t say it’s a preference. But they were just so damned excited that I forced myself to exhibit nothing put contentment (while nearly wetting myself). I reached the latrines in my orange stilettos, peed and turned back. They were still there... still naked and toothless… still incredibly happy to see me. What did I even do? Laughing and shaking my head, I walked back to the courtyard.
We were moved back to the chintzy throne room, and there was more Baron, raffia wine and corn beer to be had. It was nearly two o’clock now, and it didn’t seem like anything was going to happen. Al-hajji was sleeping, his head bent backward and mouth gaping open. It was bustling outside… it seemed locals were arriving in droves for this graduation (we still have no idea exactly what the graduation is). We were ushered again, this time into the black door courtyard. A few hundred of the Nseh population were lining the perimeter. We were asked to squat down… and after the masses got low, a queen entered carrying a calabash of white wine and a handful of green leaves. She plunged the leaves in the wine, and proceeded to hurl them sideways, forcefully flinging a deluge of starchy wine onto the squatters. She went all the way around…I received a refreshing blow of wine to the ear, and then a good quantity of the next guy’s “cleansing” along my right side, leaving a Aquanet like stickiness in my hair for the remainder of the event. Reese caught a piece of magic wine-heaving leaf… which caused everyone around to “ooo” at Nformi Reese’s good fortune. Means something great is going to happen. I saw another guy with a piece of leaf limply hanging out of his ear. I thought it looked gross… and wondered if gross-looking luck held the same value.
Reese’s neighbor convinced us there was an intermission and that we should go to a bar up the road. There we shared an enormous bottle of corn beer while it rained, then headed back to (probably) wait some more. But we could hear the drums and singing as we approached. I was mildly angry that we had listened to Godlove, and maybe missed the party, but we entered the black door courtyard in a flurry of activity. And when I say flurry, I mean they were holding chickens by the legs and whipping them around over their heads. It was like chicken shot-put without letting go. There were others flailing horse tail brooms, beating drums, the green-feathered-headed jujus out doing their thing, women circling and thrusting decorated spears into the air. I leaned against the wall and watched quietly… trying not to look interested enough that I would be dragged into the dance and be the token foolish looking white man. Reese, who has danced with the jujus on multiple occasions, moved fearlessly around the periphery in his red bubu, taking “snaps” and fighting the urge get down with the jujus.
There was more palm wine with other toothless old women before we left in Al-hajji’s truck. We didn’t go back directly, though… we passed to what I can only call an “afterparty,” held at the Queen Mothers house. This included more palm wine, fufu corn and njama njama. After they filled my plate with the fufu stuff, they brought us our own special dish of baby potatoes and cooked cabbage. Luckily I didn’t have to try and sneak cabbage into my purse or throw it under a bed while no one was looking… we were given a to-go wrapper. No one talked much in a language I understood, so I spent my time at the house pondering exactly what was just celebrated and inspecting Old One-Eyed Pa’s wood carved cane. Doesn’t take much to have a party, I guess… or maybe it was a really big deal. I don’t know if I’ll ever have an inner gauge to tell me what the heck is going on in Cameroon.
Again, not really having any idea what was happening, we were shuffled back in the truck with Al-hajji and (finally) driven back to Mbogwem in the rain. Back in the fairly predictable respite of Reese’s Little America, we played Louis Armstrong on the iPod, added Oscar Meyer bacon bits to the cabbage and potatoes and ate them with Tabasco sauce.
The Fon of Nseh had a palace stooge stuff a note under Reese’s door around 6:30 in the morning on Wednesday. The enveloped note was addressed to “Nformi” Reese and stamped multiple times. Cameroonians are obsessed with the rubber stamp. For 3000 francs, or six US dollars, someone will meticulously carve anything you want backwards into a piece of old tire the size of a ritz cracker. For 3000 francs, you create absolute authenticity. Contrastingly, if you don’t have something stamped, there is a good chance it ain’t real. For instance, my friend Ally in Ndu received a stack of certificates for completing a series of health seminars (Cameroonians also love certificates… whether its for spending eight years in nursing school or for touring the local Guiness factory, they’re framed and propped up somewhere prominent). When the certificates arrived unstamped from the Peace Corps office, a coworker refused to accept them as more than just a meaningless piece of paper, despite the fact that they were signed by PC administrators.
The note under the door was an invitation to the Saturday graduation of three queens from the palace. In Nseh, there are multiple queens. However, the queens are not the wives of the Fon (there are also multiple wives). As I understand it, they are the daughters of the royal family who are chosen at a very young age to serve in place if the Fon should die or become busy with major village matters… like goats-gone-rampant or infiltration of petit sized beers. Or the World Cup. We weren’t quite sure what the graduation was to entail. I don’t think we ever found out, but it ended up being quite a Saturday.
The invitation had not included a time (though it was not forgotten that any financial gift would be welcome), so we figured 9am. Also invited was the Al-hajji from Reese’s quarter, and he suggested 10 (he also has a truck), so we decided that was better. We packed into the front seat of truck with five or so Muslims smashed into the seat behind around 11. On the road, Reese was able to pick through a Lamso’ conversation enough to understand that someone went at 8am and ate at the palace and that we might be absurdly late. But when we arrived at the palace, someone said we were early. Really, it’s almost always like this.
We started in one dilapidated room next to the main palace courtyard. There is a small stage in the room that is royally adorned with shiny Korean-made Christmas decorations and a plastic lawn chair covered in brown tapestry. Above the throne are framed pictures of the half-naked, traditionally dressed Fon, President Paul Biya and Micheal Bolton (okay, not MB, but it would be so funny and it’s not completely out of the question!). There are benches around the perimeter of the room where various members of the Fondom sit, somewhat ordered by rank. When you enter the room, clan members greet the empty throne with the standard three claps in prostration, then the declaration of “Mbe” into their clasped hands.
They brought in a huge clay jar and put it in the middle of the room. I’ve been to the Nseh palace some four times now, and so I’m quite familiar with the routine. Reese pulls out his special horn-shaped cup in perfect synchronicity with the other Old Farts while raffia wine is poured into the huge jar. I guess women are not supposed to drink from anything phallus-shaped… we instead drink from bulbous calabashes (or in my case, plastic cups of varying colors and cleanliness). Then anyone with a drinking vessel (who isn’t Muslim) waits his or her turn to take the white stuff (or the white-ish stuff, in the case of gritty corn beer). They pull the wine from the jar with a two-holed calabash. The men are expected to take and take and take. The wine-pourer will stand in front of Reese, fill the horn held in his right hand (that he respectfully supports with his left), he drinks the whole horn quickly (still supporting his right with his left), then places the cup out again (and breathes). It is refilled, and the act is repeated. Two or three times he drinks like this, before waving off the stooge and resting with a horn full of wine. If you don’t do it like this, I guess you’re some kind of wuss, not fit to have two spears or something like that. I guess I’ll never really understand. I knew it was a big day when the two boxes of Baron de Madrid were brought out. Baron is the grape-juice tasting wine beverage that is often mixed with orange Fanta. It’s really awful, but it means big things when you see the yellow box.
Sometimes they have snacks. Old men crunch on bitter pink kola nuts (apparently, some old guys have so few teeth that they have to grate the kola first) and one time there was a bucket of steaming corn kernels (you only get corn when somebody dies, though). The last time we sat in that room, a crazy old francophone came over and gave Reese and I a piece of folded-up banana leaf tied with some brown twine. He told us we could share it’s contents and mumbled some other things. We didn’t open it until we got back to Reese’s house, but when we did, it was empty. Like I said, craaazy.
On my second cup of Baron, the Fon came out and sat in the plastic chair. We all stood, clapped and “Mbe’d” while he sat down. He said some stuff, then there was awkward royal silence, and then he got up and left. Alllright.
So, we continued to drink. After a while, we were brought down into the main palace courtyard, where the council meets and the Fon has a bigger throne. A big, painted rocking chair and a strew of wooden statues, stools, tables and pillars decorate this throne (far less chintzy than the other). The courtyard has a sort of veranda that goes all the way around. In the middle of the courtyard are two stones I figured were for decapitations… this was not a correct assumption, I was told. The part of the veranda closest to the Fon’s throne is lined with around twenty semi-flat, stout stones where the council members are supposed to sit. In a country with (I have heard) a good deal of hemorrhoid problems, this doesn’t seem like the best arrangement for old guys. Ah, tradition! We sat farther back in the courtyard on a wooden bench. I thought the “graduation” would be commencing, but a side door opened and fufu and cow meat appeared and we ate from Christmas plates. When we finished eating with our right hands, we washed them (while Reese has perfected his fufu eating and upon finishing has the stuff sticking only to the tips of his fingers, I tend to get it all over my hand and halfway up my arm… but I am a formidable opponent when it comes to the single-fingered achu eating) and were ushered back to the other room. Back and forth and back and forth. Just relax, go with it.
So, we continued to drink. After a number of glasses of Baron, I went to find a place to “ease myself”. I cut through a neighboring courtyard, this one bordered by blackened doorways. I had found the quarters where the palace-women sleep and cook. Innumerable children with faces very similar to the Fon’s watched me cross the dusty square and cut through a muddy alley (wearing strappy orange stilettos, mind you) to the path leading to some royal latrines. When I popped out of the injurious alleyway, a naked granny, squatting and washing herself among the stalks of corn, greeted me. “Wi ka ju! Wi ka ju, ohhhhh! Beri! Beri! Beri!” she yelled, cocking her head and pressing her hands together, then placing them against her floppy chest, then together again. I squint, smile broadly and nod. “Heeey, ho… ha. Thanks, mama. Thanks. Yep,” I said, my heels erratically sinking into the soft pathway. She was not just buck naked, but also toothlessly grinning… as were the other three Old Mommys lining the path to the latrine. I was bombarded by thank yous and enthusiasm… “Beri! Beri! Way-ohhhhhh! Wha! Wha! Wha!” Seeing naked old women is nothing new (I used to go to the YMCA), but I can’t say it’s a preference. But they were just so damned excited that I forced myself to exhibit nothing put contentment (while nearly wetting myself). I reached the latrines in my orange stilettos, peed and turned back. They were still there... still naked and toothless… still incredibly happy to see me. What did I even do? Laughing and shaking my head, I walked back to the courtyard.
We were moved back to the chintzy throne room, and there was more Baron, raffia wine and corn beer to be had. It was nearly two o’clock now, and it didn’t seem like anything was going to happen. Al-hajji was sleeping, his head bent backward and mouth gaping open. It was bustling outside… it seemed locals were arriving in droves for this graduation (we still have no idea exactly what the graduation is). We were ushered again, this time into the black door courtyard. A few hundred of the Nseh population were lining the perimeter. We were asked to squat down… and after the masses got low, a queen entered carrying a calabash of white wine and a handful of green leaves. She plunged the leaves in the wine, and proceeded to hurl them sideways, forcefully flinging a deluge of starchy wine onto the squatters. She went all the way around…I received a refreshing blow of wine to the ear, and then a good quantity of the next guy’s “cleansing” along my right side, leaving a Aquanet like stickiness in my hair for the remainder of the event. Reese caught a piece of magic wine-heaving leaf… which caused everyone around to “ooo” at Nformi Reese’s good fortune. Means something great is going to happen. I saw another guy with a piece of leaf limply hanging out of his ear. I thought it looked gross… and wondered if gross-looking luck held the same value.
Reese’s neighbor convinced us there was an intermission and that we should go to a bar up the road. There we shared an enormous bottle of corn beer while it rained, then headed back to (probably) wait some more. But we could hear the drums and singing as we approached. I was mildly angry that we had listened to Godlove, and maybe missed the party, but we entered the black door courtyard in a flurry of activity. And when I say flurry, I mean they were holding chickens by the legs and whipping them around over their heads. It was like chicken shot-put without letting go. There were others flailing horse tail brooms, beating drums, the green-feathered-headed jujus out doing their thing, women circling and thrusting decorated spears into the air. I leaned against the wall and watched quietly… trying not to look interested enough that I would be dragged into the dance and be the token foolish looking white man. Reese, who has danced with the jujus on multiple occasions, moved fearlessly around the periphery in his red bubu, taking “snaps” and fighting the urge get down with the jujus.
There was more palm wine with other toothless old women before we left in Al-hajji’s truck. We didn’t go back directly, though… we passed to what I can only call an “afterparty,” held at the Queen Mothers house. This included more palm wine, fufu corn and njama njama. After they filled my plate with the fufu stuff, they brought us our own special dish of baby potatoes and cooked cabbage. Luckily I didn’t have to try and sneak cabbage into my purse or throw it under a bed while no one was looking… we were given a to-go wrapper. No one talked much in a language I understood, so I spent my time at the house pondering exactly what was just celebrated and inspecting Old One-Eyed Pa’s wood carved cane. Doesn’t take much to have a party, I guess… or maybe it was a really big deal. I don’t know if I’ll ever have an inner gauge to tell me what the heck is going on in Cameroon.
Again, not really having any idea what was happening, we were shuffled back in the truck with Al-hajji and (finally) driven back to Mbogwem in the rain. Back in the fairly predictable respite of Reese’s Little America, we played Louis Armstrong on the iPod, added Oscar Meyer bacon bits to the cabbage and potatoes and ate them with Tabasco sauce.
posted by K at 10:11 AM
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