kar0ling

(I can't believe a year has passed since I've returned to Canada. I've now been back for longer than I was out there. But Cameroon has left an indelible mark on my memory, and I still have some stories to share, though I suppose they've gotten rusty, lost some details, and accrued others, in the interim. Not going to stop just yet, though.) Cameroon roadside fast food beats North American drive-thru flat. Suya, affectionately known as "typhoid-on-a-stick, is sliced meat (usually beef or chicken, but it's perhaps best not to ask) doused in spicy sauce, roasted on a spit over a roadside flame. Mmmm. Depending on the location and the vendor, consuming suya may produce anything from a warm glow to fire in the mouth. The typhoid moniker refers to the fact that these tasty treats may have been roasted hours earlier, then loosely wrapped in a dirty piece of stiff paper, and waved under the noses of every passerby in the dusty street, and made available for inspection ...

A personal hypothesis: When a person returns from a short-term cross-cultural exposure (days, weeks, up to three months), they tend to glow with the bright-eyed observation that "people are the same everywhere you go! Isn't it lovely." When a person returns from a longer-stint cultural immersion (year or two), they tend to harbour some frustrations, and think, "good gracious, those people are so different in their thinking! How aggravating." And when you spend a lifetime together, learning and growing, the response is probably more measured. It's not "those" people anymore. We're all the same, yes,.... but, boy, are we ever different. And there's a richness to that.

One of my first nights in the village, trying to fall asleep long after dark, I heard a loud call echoing across the rainforest, a sort of cross between a croak and a trill. A bird seemed like a logical producer of this sound; a large carnivorous bird. I was sure there was a vulture of some sort perched outside my window at the back of the house, screaming into the night. One of the fortunate things about my irrational fears of all things avian is that I'm fairly adept at self-delusion, so, heart in my throat, I convinced myself it was only a...well,....an oversized grasshopper, or crazed frog, or something -- anything -- other than a bird. You can well imagine my relief one morning when Becky asked if I'd heard the hyraxes. "Is that the creature that makes that trilling call?" I asked warily, unsure if I wanted to know. "What is it?" "It's the most interesting creature," she said. "It looks like kind of like a rabbit, but it lives up in a...