Sitting at a bar not too long ago, my friends and I were approached by a man with a foot and a half high stack of cd’s in his hands. His backpack, I’m sure, was also full. This gentleman is a part of an enormous network of other gents and boys in Cameroon who sell things off of their bodies. Blankets, machetes, light bulbs, cheap watches, Scotch eggs, pagne, leather flip flops with pink-and-green-dyed cowhide accents are among the goods that one can purchase (not without a fight) while “street shopping.”
The guy begins laying out cd’s that he thinks I’d probably be interested in. They know not to push the Cameroonian makossa or anything from Cote d’Ivoire. They have us pegged. They know what westerners like. Pirated Backstreet Boys and Don Williams cd’s litter the tabletop. No, no, no… Westlife? No. I probably laughed at that point. The seller has an “ah-ha!” moment and he coaxes a disk out from the center of his stack. Something he knows I’ll buy. “How for Shakira?”
Shakira, obviously not. I can think of one sorority roommate that I had that might have liked Shakira… but she seemed to have a twisted taste in music (also a foaming-at-the-mouth-fan of Hillary Duff, Christina Aigulara and Jessica Simpson). Other than short little Amy Schneider, Shakira’s fans are limited to girls in their tweens and the occasional gay man. How does America’s pop culture become so skewed in the flight to Africa that individuals believe that we really adore Celine Dion?
This is not limited to music, of course. What’s hot in Cameroon is what they believe the “white man country” lives on. White bread, for example. After whining to another volunteer about the overabundance of Cameroonian bread containing less nutritive value than a Kleenex, she provided a theory. The picturesque bread of the USA has long been WonderBread, though this is not what people typically choose to eat (that is, people who are not my 21 year-old brother). However, through some Norman Rockwell-like catalog, the idea somehow got here. Despite the fact that the bread is terrible, people buy it because it might be representative of Western “hotness”. Just a theory.
There are other, more obscure examples. Fiber-optic-light flower arrangements, for example. Very popular among the well-to-do crowds. Cameroon might be the capital of in-no-way-natural-colored silk flowers. For some strange reason that may not have any connection to this topic, motorcycle taxis like to hang shoe horns all over the bikes. Young men believe that tight-in-the-thigh, low-rise women’s jeans are all the rage (I mean on them… accompanied with a very tight, sometimes mesh top). Stuffed animals adorn dashboards. Axe body spray abounds… in overpowering quantities. Movies are often ridiculous displays of guns, money and weeping…. I actually like these sometimes (a copy of “Black Vampire” starring Reese Baird and Kelsey Cornelius as “victims” will be coming back to the states in about a week). Romance novels are the primary selection for those who read books for pleasure. I shouldn’t get into Christianity… I wont, really. But it doesn’t quite “come over” in one piece.
The tackiness of it all isn’t really very sad… to us, its hilarious. To be reminded on a daily basis that, for the most part, this is what Africa thinks we’re all about… it makes me glad to have to opportunity to illustrate what Westerners are more often like. But for them, there is a genuine fondness of these (often chintzy) things…and I respect that (unless I get to know someone… they I argue why Westlife isn’t a real band).
The sadness of it sets in only when the rich local culture or beautiful native product is displaced by a poorly manufactured, wrongly assumed Western one. Silk flowers? People can run outside and find beautiful hydrangeas, pointsettias and hibiscus growing at any time of the year. Coca-cola? Pick up a fresh passion fruit (or go to the juice store on commercial ave and drink heaven). How for Shakira? Shakira no fine. Give me some nicely recorded ballophone or an old pa playing the mouth violin. That’s something worth one dollar.
