Saturday December 27th, 2003
Saturday December 27th, 2003
Today was my first funeral. It wasn’t a real funeral. I was a remembrance ceremony, so I still haven’t seen a deuil… the ashes on the face kind of funeral. The patriarch of Brigittes family (I work with her) died last year, and there was a ceremony with lots of speeches, and a very catholic mass. To be perfectly honest, it was kind of boring. The best thing about it was some footage I got of kids singing, and the few minutes of women preparing the food... Other than that…whew organized religion is boring. Oh, I did get to spend some quality time with some of the Camerounian elite. That wasn’t very interesting either. Don’t get me wrong, everyone was very nice, the food was good, and the conversation interesting at times… but it was a bunch of people who are hellbent on having what I am walking away from. So, basically, it was polite conversation. The only part that got intersting is when I asked them why they keep looking to outsiders to build their country? I used the specific example of geovic… why did it have to be an american company doing this. Couldn’t some Camerounian hire the specialists needed to run this? There was vociferous agreement from a few, and a notable lack of comment from some of the most –everything european is great- folks. I realised that for some here, dropping the europe card is like quoting Shakespeare. It is a weapon of elitism… not that Shakespeare isn’t great (just like Europe), but it is certainly a tool for intimidation.
Oh, and Alex, who got a lecture from me the night before on working the funeral with me, didn’t show up in the morning as I has requested. So I took off without him… and we passed him on the way… much to his surprise.. and even more so when he waived and expected to be picked up, I told the person driving to just keep going. Not surprisingly, he found a way to get to the village where the funeral was (oh, did I forget to mention that? It wasn’t in Lomié, it was in a village about 15km away). He wanted to help, and I told him, when he shows up when I need the help, then he can help, he wasn’t going to help when it was convenient to him. Oh, and he has been pretty much drunk for 4 days straight now.