Whenever I struggle to come up with something to write about life in Cameroon it usually means that the Cameroonian everyday has become somewhat mundane, and I’ve ceased to notice the things that are out of my ordinary. So, every once and I while, I need to remind myself to put on the Nassara goggles, look around and tell myself “that’s not normal!”
Take yesterday evening. I was in town sitting outside Hamidou’s boutique near the carrefour Totale just watching the world go by and I noticed a sand truck. Now before I paint my cultural snapshot I need to make the distinction between which Hamidou I was visiting as there are two Hamidous that have boutiques.
It was, as Lizzie christened him, “John Lennon” Hamidou’s shop as opposed to “The Other” Hamidou’s shop that I was chilling outside. He’s known as “John Lennon” Hamidou because he’s tall, wears roundish glasses and look like a shaven headed Beatle…well kinda!
Evening is the best time to sit outside Hamidou’s as the front of his shop is in shade and the town comes alive as the evening temperatures drop a little. Yesterday evening there was no shortage of the Cameroonian ordinary. A pig fell off the back of a moto; the guy in the shop next door was busy painting signs for next Monday’s International Women’s Day; a blind man was been led around by his son looking for some spare change; kids were on their way home from school; the crazy guy was in his usual spot on the roundabout (Yagoua has two…roundabouts that is!); a women stopped to buy Chadian phone credit from Hamidou; someone else was on the search for the change of a 5,000 CFA note…
In the middle of it all the big old sand truck pulled up. The truck was blue, the cab had a bonnet like the type Kris Kristofferson drove in the 1970’s film “Convoy” and sitting on top of the sand was a young women and her toddler.
As soon as the truck pulled up, a guy in the cab jumped down in time to catch the kid as he was practically thrown down by his mother. She then hoisted her bag to a second crew member who materialised from the cab before leaping about 10ft to the ground. The guys threw the kid and the bag back at her, jumped into the cab and were gone.
In the length of time it took the driver to put the truck into 2nd gear, the mother had dusted herself down, re-adjusted her pagne, strapped the kid to her back, grabbed her bag, placed it on her head and was off about her business.
Ok, maybe it’s not an image worthy of National Geographic, yet when was the last time you saw a ROADSTONE lorry do the job of a Bús Eiréann bus?
Not the ordinary, not the mundane, just the everyday.
A few thoughts struck me as the mother strode off into the haze of the fumes from the truck’s exhaust pipe. I reckoned that the woman probably had come quite a distance as most people in the surrounding villages usually walk or ride a bike to town. Secondly, the three guys sitting in the cab would have probably spelt chivalry “Me”. I also couldn’t help wondering what the kid thought sitting atop the coolest sandpit in history. And what was the sand being used for? Well I’d like to think a crèche, but answers on a postcard please.
