A Year Unlike Any Other

            January may not bring snow or tundra-appropriate temperatures to Cameroon, but it does allow for the same kinds of self-reflection and hopes for change that it does back home. It’s quite hard to believe that the holiday (and in Cameroon, I just mean Christmas) season is already behind us and that we’ve flipped the page to a new calendar year.

            Crossing into 2015 led to a different set of emotions than I (and likely many of my stagemates) felt last year. 2014 was the only full calendar year that we’ll all spend in Cameroon, as well as a year of many firsts. I spent this New Year’s with some of my American friends, and one of the highlights of the evening (other than the low quality fireworks that seemed to go off all night long) was sitting around sharing our favorite moments of the past year. Maybe it was just the mood of the moment, but no one shared any major accomplishments or major vacations (at least not in the first round…). The overriding trend were those smaller moments, the ones that solidified our feeling of belonging in our respective communities.

            I had to think for a bit about my best moment of 2014. It was certainly a year unlike any other, and was filled with a wide range of both experiences and emotions. I thought about the beach trip I took when my brother visited, and when I learned that my next-door neighbor and good friend had finally “put to birth”. It was tempting to offer up one of the moments from my trip home and the time spent with much-missed friends and family. But in the end I decided on a short walk I took with my neighbor, Mohammed.

            When I moved to Bamenda, Mohammed was not shy about expressing his dislike for me. At the age of one and half, this was still socially acceptable. But given that I moved in next-door to his family, our paths crossed more often than he might have liked. His sisters were quick to welcome me to the neighborhood and I quickly began stopping by on a daily basis. If I timed it right, I was welcomed in for a bowl of whatever was for dinner. Aisha, his mom, became the one I came to when I had any questions about life in Cameroon or logistical issues regarding Bamenda. We even shared an electricity bill and landlady, which could have been a divisive issue but somehow(!) drew us closer.

            I knew that I had to take things slowly with Mohammed. He had no obvious reason to like me, and every reason to distrust me. After all, I was a complete stranger who had entered his life all of the sudden and looked unlike everyone else he knew. After a few weeks (or was it months?) I started to gain some ground. No longer would he begin running from the room upon my entry, and sometimes not even after I greeted him. The day that he called out good-bye to me as I left their apartment was one I should have marked on the calendar.

            As the months passed, I slowly made some headway with Mohammed and he became my friend in the way that only a three year-old can. He stole my keys, ate my cake, and willingly participated in a game of hide-and-seek with me. But the moment that sticks out and the moment that I shared with my friends on NYE came only a few weeks ago, when I ran into him and his brother at the little store around the corner from my house.

Getting a Cameroonian to smile can be a tough endeavor.
Some habits start young.

            I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but one day Mohammed’s brother asked me to walk him back to the house while he took care of some things at the store. The minutes that followed were anything but exemplary-Mohammed took my hand in his much smaller one and the two of us walked the three minutes back to his house. I don’t even remember if we talked about anything, and if we did it certainly wasn’t of any significance. All I remember is feeling that I had finally earned his trust and was seen as a regular figure in his life.

            I guess what I’m driving at here is that this moment more than maybe any other made me aware of the extent to which this place felt like home, and these neighbors felt like my neighbors. In the past year I’ve often received more attention or welcome than I probably deserved, most likely because of my visible status as an outsider. But Mohammed is too young to register any kinds of societal expectations with respect to race. He just walked home with me because I was someone that he knew and felt comfortable with. And more than any of the other acceptances, that one made me feel at home.