Some Notes on Funerals

I'm sure I've probably mentioned that funerals are THE event in Cameroon (and if you've talked to my mother, I'm sure she has mentioned those "CRY-DIES" that they have there... caps intended to denote a Michigander accent). The older you are when you die, the bigger the party, it seems. People spend years planning the events sometimes (my landlord and his family have held numerous family meetings over the last year and a half to plan "Pa's die") and spend ridiculous amounts of their dispensible income on beer, tents, plastic chairs and fowls... lots and lots of fowls.

Actually, at times the money spent is not all that dispensible. It seems that Bafut once had a number of people raising cane rats... a profitable business after the start-up costs have been offset... but they sold off the entire lot of animals to pay for booze at Pa or Ma's big celebration. It's not the kind of spending that thrills development workers (even the Rodney Dangerfield type).

What else can you see at a cry die?

Typically at these events people will try to get all matching african material and make matching shirts and skirts.... sometimes whole pantsuits depending on your importance (after that, you can determine who is in who's family from seeing the matching material all over the country).

They set up sometimes hundreds of rented plastic chairs under rented tents. Normally this is in the front yard of the dead person's house... even if their house was an apartment on commercial avenue in Bamenda....... in which case they set up the tent and chairs on the sidewalks and in the streets. Often traffic is blocked. In the francaphone zones, people dance in a circle holding peace plant sprigs and the headshot of the dead individual. Traffic in Bafoussam is typically blocked by a die circle or two when i come through.

The star of the show is really the corpse, a word that the african people use freely and often. Bringing the corpse, presentation of the corpse, burying the corpse, dancing on the corpse to pack the dirt down on the corpse. It's something we shy away from in the states, but it is really in your face here. The carrying of the corpse from the mortuary to the burial site is a big to-do. And I mean big. During your living years you will ride 4 to a seat on a 4 hour trip from Bamenda to Kumbo on a crappy dirt road in the crappiest hatchback you can imagine... but when you die, they rent you an entire land cruiser with flashing police lights and sweet, sweet Backstreet Boys playing out of bullhorns on the top. Bazor funerals in Bamenda has a whole fleet of these classy "last ride" cruisers. The competitor down the street is "Master P" Funerals.

They make t-shirts with the mommie or papa dem's picture on the front. Buttons, too.

So, for awhile I thought that this was all kind of lame (and I still don't approve of the spending when you've not money to spend)... but I think I am undergoing a slow conversion to celebration of death. What else will you defininately get to celebrate but your birth and your death? You might not get married, have kids, anniversaries, big promotions... but you definitely get to die.

I'm proposing that for my funeral, I'm buried in the front yard (somebody's front yard, don't care much who). It will probably be a block party... I would like my face to be screen printed on t-shirts and the butt of sweatpants. Lot's of margaritas... and I demand that my corpse be covered in streamers and tied to the roof of an fallafel truck with the music blaring. People can eat pitas after. Tears and wailing are welcome, as long as followed by dancing, margaritas and debauchery. It's just the way it should be.

Some kine grass where he de cure some kine sick dem

This week I had the privilege of hosting around 20 folks from Mambu, the village that is about 500meters in elevation from me, at a medicinal plants training. The week holds some of the most boring, interesting and most amusing events of my Peace Corps career. For the most part, participants were chosen based on their previous involvement with medicinal plants or their need to learn for medical reasons. More than half of the group was made of up traditional (or native) doctors (or healers).

I didn’t really know too many native doctors before this week… mainly because they kind of freaked me out. If you look around (ha… next time you are in a taxi in the NW of Cameroon) at the backs of other passenger’s necks, you will see a series of º inch long scars closely packed together. One of the more typical procedures at the traditional doctor’s office is to make these tiny incisions and then pack a poultice of herbs over the top (I learned this week that these are sometimes chewed by the doctor first. Ew.). One volunteer in NW is working closely with the traditional doctor to see how HIV/AIDS might be spreading through unhygienic methods (i.e. lots of Czech-made razor blades). So, there’s the cutting… and then the fact that the doctors are often spiritually oriented… they have been known to make black magic charms to kill people, or to force unruly white women into marriage, or to give an enemy a bad sick. So, yea… I have just kept my distance until this week.

The first day made me a little nervous. Around 5 of the participants were wrinkled old men in traditional black caps with decorated with Big Man tokens (red feathers and porcupine quills)… they were mostly reserved, some of them looking suspiciously at other participants. We started the training by having them write their expectations and fears for the training program. Three explained that they didn’t have any fears, but if the rest of the group wanted to learn something from them, they would have to pay. Of course, the men who felt so strongly didn’t have the ability to write for themselves, so I copied down their remarks. Well, that was it for the intimidation. This is not to underestimate the traditional doctor’s wealth of knowledge on local concoctions, but I have a feeling that they would need to write my name on the charm for it to work.

We kindly explained that they didn’t need to share anything, but the protection of their intellectual property was going to hinder development of Cameroon… and shortly thereafter, the group discovered the traditional doctors to be nothing more than a group of Old Pas (and one nutty Old Ma) who want to eat their achu and laugh and yell at each other and be crazy. One Old Pa explained that he had been to South Africa, Gabon, Nigeria and Ghana to sell and teach about his medicines. He was a really funny little man. I’m pretty sure he’s never left the NW province, and his trips to Bamenda are probably not all that regular. He really liked me, and suggested that I marry here. We tried to squelch the idea that there is a cure for AIDS (many of them advertise that they have the power), and we clarified what typhoid really is (has nothing to do with your nervous system, Pa). Black magic stayed out of most of the conversation, and we tried to promote safe and effective means of treating people with herbs (teas, tinctures, rubs and such). I doubt that they will give up the slashing or the black magic, but they seemed to take our straightforward training really seriously. It’s a start.

Other than that the week was marked by a good deal of discussion on suppositories, diarrhea and piles (I just kept hearing the work “anus” and “shit” within the garbled pidgin… over and over and over), huge pots of herb water, burnt bones called “black stone” that suck out pus or something, Old Pa gas, and heaps of green that I saw as… well just green… and they all saw as “grass where he de cure some kine a sick.” And it rained every day no later than 2pm, just as we would finish and I had to ride my bike back down the hill.