STORY TIME: History of the Bali People

... not to be confused with the Bapi people. 

This story starts with Kate, Colleen, and I walking down a road in Bamenda, feeling cooped up after a week and a half in the same hotel with the same people doing 8 hours a day of training. Even though it was a nice hotel with good food and hot, running water showers, we could only spend so much time sitting in one place without getting a bit stir-crazy. I suspect this is the case with most Peace Corps Volunteers. We see a bar marked MOONLIGHT HOTSPOT, so of course we wander right in. 

Kate & Colleen admiring the moonlight.

- Do you have cold drinks?

- Yes, we have all these drinks, very cold! replies the bartender, gesturing towards a wall lined with different beers and sodas.

Well sign us right up! We each got a beer and sat down on the bench outside. Well, Kate and Colleen sat on the bench and I sat on the table so I could see them while I talked to them, instead of staring at cars and motorcycles zipping by. After 40 minutes of sitting in a new place and chatting, a very tall, fit and well-dressed man walks up. 

- Do you know what my people believe?! he asked me while walking up the stairs into the bar.

- ...What? I asked cautiously, knowing this could well be something I don't want to hear.

- If you sit on the table you will not grow tall like me! 

- That's okay, I don't want to be any taller, I shrugged. 

- But in my culture, it is good to be very tall. Men should be very tall and strong!

And then he bought us all beers. Turns out, this man - this man in a sailor cap and navy blue suit jacket and sparkly white and silver tshirt and dapper black dress shoes - is a FON (the equivalent of a chief in the West or a lamido in the Grand North). His uncle (or maybe his wife Morine's uncle, family connections can be very confusing here) owns the bar and that white car is his and we should come see the Palace of the Fon in Bali.

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

I have gotten many questions about the holiday season here in Cameroon, so I'm going to try to give you, my wonderful wonderful readers, a picture of what it is like here. 

Cameroon is very religiously diverse, being primarily Christian (including Presbyterian, Catholic, and other some other denominations) and Muslim. Religion here isn't quite the same as in the US, because those beliefs are held simultaneously with traditional "animist" beliefs about sorcery, vampires, ancestors, etc. But nevertheless, people are pretty religious and, at least in my experience, the religious diversity makes people pretty tolerant of other religions and beliefs (although they are NOT tolerant of a lack of belief). I knew ahead of time that my post and more generally my region is primarily Catholic, so I knew they would celebrate Christmas. I just didn't know how.