Cultural Explorations

One of my colleagues is getting married in Bamenda in a few weeks and that prompted a discussion of marriage in Cameroon between myself and the other teachers. I asked what the average age was that people get married here in Lewoh and found that most women get married by the time they are 18 and for men by 22 or 24. These are actually relatively old ages by Cameroonian standards where in some places it is normal for a 14 year old girl to be married, but compared to America it is still pretty young. Polygamy also still exists here, although it is becoming more rare. Usually only the chiefs and more well off families have multiple wives because obviously, it is more expensive to have a very large family. My host family in Bangangte were polygamists (my host dad was a chief) and there were two wives. The wives lived in 2 separate houses and all together there were 11 kids. It seemed to work for them and the wives appeared to get along just fine. This is not always the case though and I have heard many stories about the wives trying to poison each other or get together and try to poison the husband. However, like I said, polygamy is becoming less popular and more frowned upon. Before a couple gets married, they have to sign a document saying they either plan to be polygamists or promise to just be faithful to each other. I think the purpose of this is to promote discussion of polygamy between the couple before a marriage takes place so there aren’t any surprises after they are married. Naturally, our discussion of marriage also led to a discussion of divorce. Divorce is VERY rare here and the rate is very low. I asked if they could tell me if there are any situations in which a couple would get divorced and I received an interesting response. One of my male colleagues said that some couples get divorced if the wife puts a charm (spell) over the husband and gets him to do everything for her like make dinner, go to the market, do the housework, take care of the kids. Of course if the man starts doing these things he must be the victim of some type of sorcery and the woman is trying to control him. My response to this was, well what if the man just sees how much work the woman is doing and wants to help her out? I was answered with laughter. Anyways, it was a very enlightening day.
So, last week I experienced my first Thanksgiving living outside of the US and it was definitely sad and weird to not be with family eating turkey, but us Peace Corps volunteers know how to make do pretty well. A few volunteers met in a town called Foumbot and made up a truly delicious Thanksgiving feast from scratch. We ate green bean casserole, pineapple casserole, mashed potatoes, creamed onions, chicken (turkey was unavailable), and a wannabe apple pie. I was in charge of the apple pie and making it from scratch is definitely not easy. It ended up coming out something like a cobbler, crumb cake, stroudel of some sort…but it was still tasty. All and all, I felt stuffed and didn’t want to move after dinner so I think that means it was a successful Thanksgiving.
In Service Training (IST) is just around the corner and I can’t wait! All of the volunteers meet in this beach town named Kribi with our counterparts and we have conferences and more training sessions…but we also get to see all the other volunteers again and go to the beach. I am so pumped! It will be great to get a little break from teaching and to see friends again.