Earlier this week I went to Bertua, the capital of the east. I went for another SNV type of event, and I'll spare you the details. It was their office opening, and office openings are pretty much the same everywhere, except here, there is more protocol, and all the speeches are read. Anyway, Bertua is about 200kms away, and it took about 12 hours to get there. Bertua is actually a city. I wasn't expecting that, but it definitely hit that critial mass that you need to achieve cityhood. It was bustling, and clearly growing fast. There are also a lot more white people there, and I think that they are timber industry people, and the like, for the most part. I say this because I was approached several times in the few minutes I was in public by women who were, um.. very forward. Clearly being sexually aggressive to white men pays off in enough cases that it is normal. Very different from Lomié. All in all, I don't think I'll be spending a whole lot of time in Bertua.
The ride back was as usual, brutal and long. Two things of note. There is a category of clothing that, for lack of a better term I'll call 'ironic' clothing. I first noted this when I was with Gwinn in NY years ago, and we saw a bum (and I distinguish that from a homeless person) wearing a shirt that said: 'Expect the unexpected". Apparently he didn't read his shirt... or maybe he did. Anyway, I saw some ironic clothing here recently. On the ride back, when I got out to push the van out of the mud, a villager... and I mean deep village inhabitant... was wearing a baseball cap, the kind that a generic tech company from the late 90's made in support of their PR efforts. This one said "building a better tomorrow" with a super slick, and ultimately generic logo. This villager is sporting a fancy cap (fancy by Cameroonian standards), that he probably counts as one of his more valuable possesions. I wonder if this ranks up as one of the more usefull things this company did.
The other piece of ironic clothing was a pair of pants that a Baka was wearing when he was selling me the baby porcupine. They were those purposely ripped jeans, with the heavy fraying. Now people here all wear clothes that are ripped (except the elite), but they spend a lot of time and energy trying to avoid that. It never occured to the Baka that the pants were torn on purpose, he thought... well of course that is why they sent them down here. So, he was happy to be wearing these torn pants, not because he thought they were fancy, but that it was ok, as most of the clothing worn here is torn...so these fit right in.
By the way, there is a lot of used European clothing here. Most of it Dutch. Apparently, much of it is gathered as donations, shipped down here, and then sold to the local inhabitants for a profit to the middle man. Nice.
Yesterday was 'labor day'. Here, it is a bit different. Only the elite have jobs, so labor day is a celebration of superiority of those who have jobs, over those who just work the field... which isn't considered work. It was, of course, celebrated with a large amount of drinking. Today is quiet though. Most people are really really hung over.
Posted by mrsclean at May 2, 2004 03:47 PM