"DRINK THE SAUCE:” How I Came to Know Myself and the Important Things in Life while Studying Abroad in Cameroon

***warning: This is my 11-page end-of-semester paper for my creative writing class. The format is kind of off, but you'll get the point! I think it sums up my time here in Cameroon really well, and I didn't want to cut any of it out - so read at your own pace, skip what you want, and above all, enjoy!

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“Abroad is the place where we stay up late, follow impulse and find ourselves as wide open as when we are in love.” (Pico Iyer)
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Sitting in a tiny eating house in Nara, Japan, I came face-to-face with one of my greatest culinary fears: food of strange textures, florescent colors, and unknown tastes. My three-week, once-in-a-lifetime trip to the land of temples, karaoke and food unlike anything I’d seen or tasted ever before was definitely living up to the culture shock our group of twenty-six high-schoolers had been warned about during orientation in Washington, D.C. In an attempt to prepare us, mentioning how it would be wildly different from what we knew and urging us to keep open minds and try new things, our counselors had suggested we “drink the sauce.” That food unlike anything I’d had before is nothing without its sauce: okonomiyaki sauce, shabu shabu sauce, teriyaki sauce - the list goes on and on and it is all delicious, once you get past the look and texture! Taking those three words to heart, I quickly dispelled my fears and grabbed my wooden chopsticks and on the count of three, plunged bright pink, raw fish wrapped in seaweed and dripping with its special sauce into my mouth.
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“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)
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Four years later in the January before my senior year of college, with those three words still resonating in my head, I embarked on my biggest adventure and dose of culture shock to date: five months of study abroad in Cameroon, Africa. I had every intention of trying as many new things as possible and the potential of making many discoveries along the way. Following Emerson’s famous advice, I pursued that path less travelled, and chose the little-known country in West Africa said to showcase “Africa in miniature,” offering savannah, rainforest, wild animals, remote villages and crowded cities. Fruits of any kind imaginable, food so fresh it was running around that morning, and people as generous as they are poor.

Sure, I could have settled on the well-blazed transatlantic flight route and joined close friends for a semester of studying and backpacking in any number of European countries, but no; instead I had chosen Africa. Africa, a dream of mine ever since I had received Zoobooks featuring giraffes in the mail and watched The Lion King on repeat as a child. More specifically, Cameroon, much to the combined worry and excitement of my parents, family, friends, and the nurse who gave me my vaccinations. Cameroon, situated in a tropical zone near the equator, where I would be forced to remember to take a daily Malarone pill or for sure suffer the effects of malaria, which worried even me since I have a tendency to forget such things. Where I would brush my teeth using bottled water morning and night and buy six-packs of bottled water each week to stay hydrated and avoid typhoid. Where a cold shower would greet me at the end of each day and huge cockroaches and translucent geckos would be my shower buddies.

Despite all of this, I made the decision. It was what I wanted, needed even. The adventure, the extreme culture shock, the experience. The opportunity to escape the pressures of American adolescence and form my own opinions and gain new perspective. The break from routines, daily planners and the colorful array of Post-It notes that usually covered my desk at school, outlining each day hour-by-hour. Spontaneity, room to breathe, the chance to live on the edge. I had waited for this since first glancing through Dickinson College’s study abroad brochures during my junior year of high school, vowing to myself that if I got accepted, I’d enroll there so that I could travel to Cameroon. I knew it would be a challenge, undoubtedly the biggest yet in my twenty years, but that in itself was a huge part of the appeal. This challenge of spending five months in a developing country drove me to go all out, opting for other challenges including living with a Francophone host-family. Hopefully, the classroom French I’d been learning since the eighth grade would finally pay off or at least get me water and beignets so I wouldn’t starve!
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“I sought to see the amazing as normal, and the daily as unique, and in that swirling paradox I found the joy of travel.” (Mary Poxon)
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Arriving in Cameroon late at night after twenty-four hours of air travel with the other students I would be spending five months with, I remember being completely overwhelmed by my surroundings. The airport was packed with people rushing to find their bags, and I recall saying a quick prayer that both of mine had arrived intact. The sights, sounds and smells overwhelmed me from the time we met the incredible Mr. Teku (our program director) to the blur of a bus ride through the lush-scented night air en route to the apartment we would soon call homebase. Culture shock set in quickly as I attempted to adjust to African time, surcharging in taxis, and the constant hisses accompanying cries of “la blanche, viens!” I remember being utterly confounded by the vast and crowded Mokolo and Acacia markets and the explosions of strange textures and flavors, though entirely different from Japanese cuisine, that filled my mouth when trying sauce des arachides, gumbo and fufu. I struggled to form a coherent simple sentence in French, hoping above all that my verb tense was conjugated correctly. I was shocked by the man who offered me a live chicken as a gift on my way to class and the fact that I could buy a whole pineapple on the street corner for the equivalent of seventy-five cents.

Now, after five months here, the once seemingly-crazy, little things that used to make my culture shock level shoot through the tin roof, don’t phase me anymore. Alright, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, as I am still shocked by taxi drivers asking flat out for my phone number, but not as much as the first time it happened. This is not to say that these things don’t amaze me, it just shows that in a slight way, I have succeeded in “drinking the sauce,” in trying new things, in becoming a tiny bit Cameroonian. Everyday is an adventure and a blessing, filled with moments that seem so quotidienne but yet are incredible in themselves.

You don’t need to go on a safari in search of elephants to find the awe-inspiring. A taxi filled with six people and three headless pigs complete with dripping blood hanging out the trunk in the center of Yaoundé? Just a day in the life. Women walking miles with calabashes of water balanced on their heads in Rhumsiki? Incredible, but commonplace in this culture. Meeting an English-speaking woman who studied at the University of Georgia on a taxi ride to the fabric store? Just more proof that the world is small. I have learned that once you get past the initial culture shock, you’ll find an abundance of similarities to go along with those differences – people are generous, having a roof over your head and food to eat means success, family is invaluable. While each country has its own uniqueness, there are universals that stretch worldwide.
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“One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles
upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world’s end somewhere.” (Willa Cather)
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Several weeks ago now, my host grandmother and I were discussing in French my time spent here in Cameroon while at my host brothers First Communion party. She raised an excellent point while praising me for opting to live with a Cameroonian family: “En Afrique, c’est la famille” (In Africa, it is the family). Choosing that challenge of living with a host family, I have spent the last few months completely immersed in Cameroonian family life, complete with two rambunctious younger brothers and huge family meetings the first Sunday of every month. I have been adopted into a close-knit community where, even though my skin is clearly an entirely different color, I am treated as a blood relative.

When I think about my happiest times in Cameroon (perhaps even some of the happiest of my life), I always find myself reminiscing about Saturday mornings spent watching Maman Solange sew a kaba, or the sheer joy in Papa Ferrnand’s eyes when surrounded by thirty adoring nieces and nephews on the dancefloor at his older sister’s daughter’s marriage. I revel in the memories of teaching my brothers to cook cheeseburgers and learning from them how to play any number of card games, calling the suits of cards different names, all derived from food items like arachides and macabos. At the end of every day, I find myself excited to descend the hill of Montée Jouvance to get to my house and eat delicious food with my family, rather than dreading the switch to speaking solely French for the rest of the night, something I had thought would be horrible!

This time spent with my Cameroonian family has given me the chance to reflect upon and appreciate my American family. Ever since I started college in the States, I am only ever home with my family for a maximum of five weeks at a time. During these breaks, while it is always nice to be home, tensions tend to rise as I have to inform my parents of my every move and ultimately give up a bit of my university independence. It’s funny how living on the other side of the world with a new family has brought me closer to my own and taught me to appreciate family and the unconditional love and support that accompanies it. There is nothing as beautiful as the emails, letters, care packages and unconditional love from my American family, and no greater happiness than the simple knowledge of all of this, one of the greatest discoveries I have made in Cameroon.
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“Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived.” (anonymous)
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The importance of family is not the only lesson I have learned during my days in Cameroon. I have also learned to take time to breathe, to recognize and appreciate the simple and important things in life. Lack of patience has forever been my downfall, and I think part of this comes from living in a culture of schedules and growing up in a home where everything was structured and planned far in advance. Before Cameroon, I used to get annoyed when the slightest little appointment time was suddenly changed or my food at Wendy’s took more than five minutes of waiting at the drive-up window. I think that African time has been both the hardest and best learning experience for me. It was beyond difficult to get used to meetings that were supposed to start at one starting at three, food taking over an hour to cook at tiny restaurants, wedding receptions that say they will begin “promptly” at seven not commencing until ten.

But in the grand scheme of things, although it does not work on the business level, I think it is a better system. Cameroonians know how to live. People don’t blow you off because they are in a rush – time can always be made to eat or nap or help a friend in need. Sure, I still get annoyed when things don’t go as planned and I will be relieved to return to the land of scheduled days, but at the same time, I know that I will miss the relaxed lifestyle I’ve grown accustomed to here. I hope that the patience I’ve learned from living on African time and being constantly surrounded by hyper brothers will accompany me home, and that that I’ll continue to take time to follow the simple and yet most important things.
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“The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera. “ (W. Eugene Smith)
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When I came to Cameroon, I was determined not to be a tourist, to be a student and traveller above all. The concept of time and schedules is a huge part of being a tourist in another country, with an agenda and an idea of the types of pictures that needed to be taken. At the beginning of my time abroad, I used to get really bummed when what I like to think of as my “photographer’s eye” would see a perfect subject for a 4x6, and then I would realize I did not pack my camera in my bag. I used to kick myself for picking that one day to leave my camera locked in the suitcase at my host family’s house. I still get upset about it, but I have learned to unglue my eye from the viewfinder of my camera, letting go of that perfect shot saved on my camera’s memory card, exchanging it for a spot in my own memory and praying that it’ll hold up.

I’ve learned that there is no possible way, even with the technology of digital cameras and video-recorders, to capture the beauty and sense of spirituality I have felt when suddenly stuck in the midst of the Muslim call-to-prayer across from a vibrant yellow mosque in the Briqueterie of Yaoundé or the utter majesty of giraffes gracefully walking in search of that rare watering hole in Waza Park. When I return to the United States, I will not only take with me several gigabytes of pictures, but also the knowledge that a picture, though perhaps worth a thousand words according to the age-old saying, is not what matters most. It is the experience, the overall picture, that means the most in the end and will endure long after the suitcase is unpacked.
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“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.” (Martin Buber)
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While learning all these life lessons and surviving all the little bits of culture shock, I have discovered me – what it is like to feel good in my skin. An entirely unintentional discovery, this realization has not just come from the constant attention to my blatantly white skin here in Cameroon or the seemingly millions of marriage proposals I have received in my days here, although that probably hasn’t hurt! When I started college, I remember the feeling of freedom in knowing that I had a fresh start, that I could reinvent myself or, even better, be true to myself. I had escaped from high school stigmas; all of a sudden I was no longer the valedictorian. I could just be me, and I had the opportunity to figure out what that meant away from familiar faces and settings.

Coming to Cameroon was like that multiplied by a hundred, which is funny because I came to Cameroon with several of my closest friends from school, who knew me as the self I had developed in college. In venturing to Africa, I escaped the mainstream American college culture for five months, bypassed the pressures of party life, resumé-building, and schoolwork. In a place not ruled by time, deadlines or designer clothes, I have been able to discover me, and along with that the simple things that are most important in life and happiness.

Part of this discovery, I believe, comes from my newfound interpretation of beauty, a concept that differs from culture to culture. Unlike in the United States, thin girls in Cameroon are told to eat more, and beauty is interpreted as a woman having curves and not a tiny jeans size. My straight, brown, impossible-to-curl hair is coveted by the women here, who are quick to demand why on earth I would want it braided like theirs when they would kill for easy hair like mine (rather than spending hours in salons at least once a month having mesh sewn into their braids). Additionally, my idea of beauty has shifted. I find it in the strong and striking women of Cameroon, including my gorgeous and intelligent mother, who is in my opinion in all her glory when wearing a hand-made kaba.

Kabas have also brought me to my new feeling of freedom – the magnificent designs and bright colors are the prettiest things I have ever seen. Nevermind that they are not tight like popular American dresses; when I slip into one of the kabas Maman Solange has sewn for me, I feel like a princess, and nothing can get me down. And regardless of what people think of them when I return to the U.S., I am going to rock my kabas with pride and self-confidence, remembering the love that my Cameroonian mom put into them and that sense of discovery I gained when wearing them here!
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“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of the living.” (Miriam Beard)
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I have had the time of my life (to date!) in Cameroon. It has brought to fruition every dream from my days of watching The Lion King and then many, many more. It has been absolutely worth every single Malarone pill, every 1.5-litre bottle of Semme water, every cold shower with every huge cockroach and translucent gecko. I dare say I have learned more about life, love, the world, and the little things that matter in my five months here than I have in the past twenty years of my life. Above all, I’ve learned to cherish the simple things – family, a bar of chocolate from home, that coveted letter received two months after it was sent, a stack of fresh mangoes, water, electricity, love. Even if I spend an entire day with my brothers playing cards and eating the above-mentioned mangoes, something seemingly boring and dull to anyone else, there is nothing better than the spark of energy that ignites when the game is won or the perfect yellow-orange fruit without any brown spots is unwrapped from its green coat.

Now, nearing the end of my five months living in “Africa in miniature,” it is hard to remember life before. You know how they always say travel changes you? My five months in Cameroon have, without a doubt, irrevocably altered my life. But I don’t necessarily think it is a change; rather I think it was a realization, giving me a chance to have time to think, discover and explore not only a different culture but myself. Looking back, I probably could have done this whole growing-up/realizing-who-I-am thing on the side of the Atlantic that I call home, but I am confident it would have taken me many more years and definitely would not be nearly as exciting and filled with so many unique anecdotes.

As I count down the days of my last week in Cameroon, a place I have grown to know and love for its unique culture and extreme impact on my life, I only hope that I have fulfilled the advice I first heard before my trip to Japan, this time, “drinking the sauce,” made of tomatoes and peanuts, on an entirely different continent. I hope that I have made the most of my time here, learned as much as I could have, experienced even more and created friendships and memories that will last long beyond my stay. I hope I have grown to truly appreciate the simple things, and that this appreciation will not stay here in Cameroon with my family when I board the plane, that it will come with me in my suitcases along with all the kabas and pervade my American life for years to come. I hope that the Post-It notes outlining my daily schedule will not automatically return to my desk, that I will continue to live a bit (though not entirely) in African time, taking moments here and there to breathe, grab a cold soda and stop in to visit a friend unexpectedly. I hope that I will continue to “drink the sauce” for many years to come.

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Love from the land of adventures and self-discovery,

Kait

(This time in 2 days, I'll be on my way home!! Hope all is well in your corner of the world!)