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.