My (Brief) Encounter With Teaching Chrambo

Our family had four kids, and a live-in babysitter, so there were always around 14 kids hanging around our house. Usually we had fun, played games, taught them some songs. Some times they taught us songs. And they were our language teachers, so we would ask them what something was and they would tell us in their native language.

One day we were doing a bunch of crazy things, like hopping around in circles and having kids hang off us, so I wanted to calm them down a bit. I asked if any of them knew how to read or write in Chrambo. They said no, so I gave them a mini lesson. I taught them the vowels of Chrambo, because they have eight vowels and only some of them are represented in the same way as English. So I taught them how to read those. A lot of the kids weren't interested, but the young girls were. It was so cool to see, because they were totally enthralled and thought it was so strange to have Chrambo written down. There they were with their little siblings on their backs, because if they are older they have to take care of their younger siblings, and bending over my scribblings on the ground, discussing, in Chrambo, how to say the different letters I had written.

It was really encouraging to me and I loved being able to share that with them, although it also broke my heart that I couldn't speak their language but I was teaching them their alphabet. I felt so torn, like I wanted to share this with them, but also like I was encouraging the white man stereotype. Just because I was there learning their language, I didn't feel like I had the right to teach them their alphabet. But I also didn't want to leave these young girls without them knowing that their language was being written down. I was torn between a chance to open the door to Chrambo literacy for them and a feeling of guilt  for being white and teaching them. I don't know if I'm explaining that well, but that's how I felt. I really wanted to get them interested in learning to read and write in Chrambo, but I felt guilty that it was me teaching them.

This happened a few days before we left the village, so I had promised them that if they came back I'd give them the full alphabet, but I never got a chance to. If you could pray for those children who showed a real interest in learning to read and write Chrambo, I would really appreciate it. They are the next generation, of Christians and of villagers, so if a fire for Chrambo literacy can be built in them now, how much stronger will mother-tongue language work be in the future. (By the way, I am working to rectify my leaving them without giving them an alphabet, so please don't write me off as someone who doesn't keep their promises.)

An Adventure in Food

On our last Wednesday there, were were on our way back to the capital city, Yaounde. We hired out a bus to take us, and we had lots of ups and downs on that trip, but one of our ups was when we passed through one check-point. There are various places along the road where the army checks your papers and takes a traveling fee. Also at these check-points are people selling food, so you open the window, give them money, and they give you a bag of peanuts, or whatever they are selling. At one check-point we saw these things that looked like raisins, and we were curious, because they don't have grapes there. So we bought some.

We started eating them, and they were like nuts, but didn't really have any flavor. They were a little bitter and not good, but not inedible (like kola nut). So we pass them around the bus and no one is really impressed. Then we give them to our teammate sitting by the driver. The driver looks over and goes, "No! No! You don't eat that! Who bought that?!" It turns out we had bought a spice. People cook them and put them in their food, but nobody eats them raw. 

Later on we were telling our driver to the airport about what we had done, and he could not stop laughing. He thought it was the funniest thing that these white people had come in and just tried everything. He said, "I'm impressed by missionaries because they aren't afraid to eat things. They just come in and eat whatever they think the locals are eating, and sometimes they eat the funniest things!"
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We never got into serious trouble as a team, we never offended the king or anything, but we were always doing something not quite right and having other people laugh with us.

A Surprising Encounter With Cameroonian Hospitality

Hospitality is super important to Cameroonians, because sharing time with someone means sharing part of your life with them and building relationships. We walk up to her house, and she's expecting us because she had seen us in church the day before, but this man comes up and starts talking to us. To this day I'm not sure who he is, but he had the same last name as her, so I think he was her brother-in-law. But he comes up and starts chatting with us, and he offers us a kola nut. Now, they have a saying in Cameroon, "He who brings kola, brings life." They love the kola nut and it symbolizes life to them. But it has a very... distinct taste and is not something easily swallowed. He offers each one of us a whole kola nut. We accept it and we break it into sections (it has natural cracks in it which allow it to be broken up and shared), and both start nibbling on a section each. Then we pass some around to the other people around, because that's a polite thing to do and a great way to get rid of it. So we had that to nibble on the whole time we were there. So we could already tell they were really excited we were there, which was nice, but completely unexpected. The tailor shows up a little bit later, but we still are talking to the man about his children, who are all working in Europe, by the way. Then the tailor asks what we want made, so we give her our order. I start to kind of gather my stuff and prepare to leave, but she goes, "Oh no! You can't leave yet! We made food for you." Which we, as good guests, didn't turn down. She serves us a typical dish, fufu with enjamajama. Fufu is ground corn which is then boiled and steam into a ball-shape. You pinch pieces off and eat it with whatever it is served with. It's pretty bland, but filling. Enjamajama is a vegetable leaf similar to spinach, but with none of the flavor. It is also called bitter leaf. It's boiled and served like that, and usually has different spices added to it, depending on who cooked it. The tailor had made her's with lots of spicy pepper, so that was fun. :) We enjoyed the meal and joked about how we had weak white stomachs, so the pepper was hard to eat. After we finished the meal we spent a few more minutes talking, but we left soon after.

But I wanted to share this story because we went to her house on business and left with a bunch of new friends. Her kids were there too, so we chatted with them, and we talked with the old man, and her. Life there is just way different, in this respect. They appreciate friendships over jobs. Even though we were bringing her money, she still wanted to get to know us, and her neighbors came to visit us. It was a great reminder that although our work was important, we were there to build relationships and meet people as well.

All About Niya (pictures to come)

So, I know it would make more sense to start by setting the scene by telling y'all all about the scenery and the town, but I really love this little girl. I wanted to write about her as soon as I could because 1) I knew it would be fun and 2) because I didn't want to forget anything about her. This is all about the smallest child who lived in our (mine and Serena's) family home.

Niya is two and a bit years old. She's turning three in July. She has no sense of privacy and loves getting into everything. The first time we met her, on Thursday, may 22^nd, we didn't think anything remarkable of her. She was just like every other toddler – absolutely adorable, loud, and playful. She was also introduced to us with her Christian name, Ruth, but we soon learned that everyone calls her by her Chrambo name. That was very confusing at first and I thought maybe there were two little girls in our house, but we cleared it up pretty quickly.

After a few days spent with her and playing with her we learned how very... loving she really is. She loves everything everyone else has. We learned the value of knowing “nga!” as compared to “no”. Because she is only three, she doesn't know any English, so even just saying “no” in Chrambo helped us with her. One day we came home and we realized we had forgotten to lock the door. Niya had come in and played with my toothpaste (luckily there was still some left) and lost the cap to my After Bite.

But I don't want to just tell the negatives. When we left she was the hardest one to leave and she started to follow us to the truck, but unfortunately we couldn't take her with us.

Niya is adorable. The first time we did laundry, we asked the “babysitter”, Adela, to help us. She taught us how to scrub clothes by hand and how to rinse them. And then Niya came up. Naturally, she already knew how to wash clothes, so she just reached into the bucket, grabbed a sock and went to work. And so it went, every time we did laundry she would end up washing socks. It was probably the cutest thing in the world. Until she put clean clothes back in the dirty clothes bucket. Then we had to pull out our “nga”, again.

In our last week there Niya greeted us at our door every morning, often with loud bangs and cries to be let in. Who needs an alarm clock when you have a toddler? She followed us around everywhere, including to the bathroom. There were some holes in the tin door, and I saw little eyes peeking in once or twice. One time she wanted to open the door on Serena, but I helped her out by picking up Niya and carrying her to the front of the house.

She knew our names pretty well, but she didn't know us separately. All she knew was that the two white girls in her home were named Karima and Serena and she that's what she said anytime she wanted us. “Karima and Serena. Karima and Serena. Karima and Serena.” It was fun to quiz her and see if she could get our names right, but she usually didn't.

Apparently by the end of our time she didn't want us to leave. She didn't want to come with us, either, but she wanted us to stay with her. We told her she could come in our suitcase, but she said no. She also said all this in Chrambo, and her mom and brothers translated for us.

What was especially cool for me to see, and this is the Linguist in me really coming out, was how much English she started mimicking while we were there. She doesn't speak English, even though she was going to pre-nursery (I'll talk about the school system in another post), and she never knew what we were saying, but at the beginning she would only say a few phrases in English. Before we left, she was saying so many things in English, and with our accents. Don't get me wrong, I love the Cameroonian accent, but it was so cool that she was copying our accents. I was touched.

That's Niya in a nutshell. I hope you get a good feeling of her and you can understand why I teared up having to leave her behind. When she wasn't getting into our things she was the funniest, most energetic little girl, and she wormed her way very deeply into my heart.