Nate and Joanna Michael

After going through my usual routine yesterday, I went outside to see what several people from the local church were doing. I saw many of the church members walking up to a partially dug out foundation and dropping large stones, precariously perched on their heads to the ground. When I asked someone what was going on, he said, ‘You didn’t hear me this morning? I was yelling at 6 am for people to come and help carry stones for the new pastor’s house.’

To build a house with a good foundation in our village, people have to carry stones from in the forest to the house’s construction site. So, not wanting to be the lazy white man, I said, ‘Let me go carry stones too!’ This was a bit of a shock to the man, but more of a shock to every passerby who was already carrying. Upon arriving at the quarry, a man tried to convince me to carry a stone that was smaller than what the women were carrying. Without feeling too offended, I pointed at a reasonable sized stone and said that it was the one I wanted. With a little disbelief, the man helped me to hoist is on my shoulder. (As opposed to balancing on my head, which I am unable to do after being raised for years in the Western world) I ended up making 3 trips that morning and 3 the next and it was great seeing the reaction of others.

I derived a slight satisfaction out of proving wrong the stereotype they had of me. But at the same time, I realized 2 key facts about the situation. One was that the people really cared about my safety. A few times, they tried to dissuade me from continuing, fearing my awkward 6’7” frame would slip under the weight of a stone. They took ownership in keeping me safe. The second fact is that they were stronger than me. I saw men twice my age balancing stones on their heads larger than I could carry. They have grown up in a hard, manual labor environment where if you don’t use your muscles to work the ground, you don’t eat. I myself, have never had to hike several kilometers each way to my farm to make sure food is on my family’s plates. So in the end, I could understand their apprehension and genuine concern against letting me carry the stones.

There is something here called a ‘cry die’. From what I can tell, it would be comparable to the visitation in the States. Well, today I went to my first one. It is customary for many of the people in the neighborhood to come by and say they are sorry for the loss of the family. Now there are many things I could write about this experience, but one stuck out above the rest.

The new pastor at the local church was also at the ‘cry die’ and he interrupted the mourning, which consists of loud wailing of many of the female members. After getting everyone’s attention, he proceeded to tell everyone not to cry. That the woman’s soul is not going to come back because of their crying, but that it is going to heaven to be with God. And that all of us will die one day, facing heaven or judgment. Then he prayed.

Now the thing that strikes me about that interaction is how culturally poignant it was. From what little I know about the culture surrounding death, the crying is meant to show the departed soul that they miss them and not to come back later to haunt them. This is what I have heard from others and will, no doubt, learn more about their beliefs in the future. So what he was actually telling the people is, ‘The spirit doesn’t linger. You don’t have to be afraid of the spirit to come back and haunt you. We all will die and either pass into heaven or judgment, but either way, it is final.’ In his short little mini-sermon he spoke directly to the cultural belief and brought truth to the situation.

Sometimes there isn’t much to write about, or at least nothing is coming to mind as I sit here at the computer, so I will simply weigh in on something that few of you probably care about and out of which nothing will actually change.

Did you know that in 1992 Ross Perot ran as an Independent candidate for the Presidency and received 18.9% of the vote? I mean, seriously. You could, without stretching it too far, say that 1 in 5 Americans who turned out voted for him. But do you know how many electoral votes he received? Zero, nada, zilch. So in the same breath, you can say that 1 in 5 Americans’ voices were summarily dismissed and removed from the actual deciding of who is the President. Do you get that? All those millions of people who showed up at the polls could have stayed home and flushed their vote down the toilet. Can’t we at least break up the electoral votes for each state. That way all of the votes of Illinois aren’t given to the Democrats each election despite the fact that every part of the state is red besides Chicago.

I will openly admit that in the last election I voted for my Dad (2012, Doug Michael anyone?) because I knew Tennessee would go to McCain and I didn’t really believe in either candidate. And, wouldn’t you know, it did go Republican. I also voted for my Dad because I knew I could trust him and he would probably have given me a sweet cabinet position. So what if it is nepotism? I am sure those positions have been given away to other people for support before.

All I am saying is, shouldn’t there be some election reform when millions of voices are discarded and the election is called before the votes are even counted? Thanks for listening.

Some of you know I am studying for the GRE, which I will be taking in Yaounde at the end of October. This is so that when we are back in the States on furlough, I can attend grad school. Please don’t ask what I am studying yet or where because that has yet to be decided concretely. One thing that is for sure is I am relearning a lot of math I never thought I would have to use again and discovering that the English language has a much broader vocabulary than my own. (shocking, I know) So to show you some of the words I am being forced to integrate into my already dizzying intellect (I was being facetious) I will be telling you a completely false story with some of my new vocab. Here goes.

The wizened old man who was considered by many a recalcitrant member of society, stated in a vociferous manner his self-idealized esoteric knowledge. The recipient of said statement heard the churlish gentleman’s remarks and responded with aplomb. He stated that the man spoke pure sophistry and his ersatz and spurious motives were a cover to deliver his own personal vitriol, chicanery, and stratagem to assuage his compunction. The older gentleman found his response untenable and shifted restively and pedanticly in his chair before leaping with indolence to his feet and declaring he would not be placated, probated or exculpated. His bucolic, paroxysm would conflate the shambolic, acerbic, but also verdant synergy which bifurcates and obfuscates the munificently nefarious diffidence of his well delivered erudite aphorism. The End

Hope you all enjoyed my story. And when you figure out what I wrote, please let me know.

The other day, I had what can only be characterized as a hedonistic, olfactory experience with a flower. The aforementioned flower was found in our front yard courtesy of a sweet little 2-year old, flower-loving girl. It is yellow, has about 7 petals and is often the victim of my daughter’s love of flower-picking.  After happily snapping its stem in half, she brought it over to me and, with due caution, I took a sniff, unsure as to what aroma awaited me. But then it hit me, a vivid and enjoyable memory. I had to get more, so I followed the initial sniff with one that might be confused for trying to inhale the flower up one of my nostrils.

You know how some smells can take you back to a specific time and place? In fact, I have heard that our sense of smell is the sense most strongly attached to subconscious memories. This particular smell brought me back to the times during college when Jo and I would drive from Jackson to her parents house in Franklin. It was on highway 100, after exiting the interstate on a downhill, windy road with a forest all around and, given the right time of the year, saturated with the scent of honeysuckle. And that is right where the scent took me, driving down TN-100 with the windows rolled down and honeysuckle in the air.

I climbed a tree the other day. I honestly can’t remember the last time I did that. I vaguely remember climbing the tree in our front lawn when I lived in town as a kid, but that was before the 3rd grade and since then I can’t remember ever being an avid tree-climber. But the other day (and this morning for that matter), motivated by my daughter’s desire to munch on some guava, I scurried a few steps up the tree before the thinning branches and my substantial weight dissuaded me from climbing any higher. And though I was under 10 feet off the ground I felt like a freckle-faced kid in overalls and bare feet (Huck Finn, anyone?) except replace bare feet with sandals, overalls with khakis and a t-shirt and freckles with, well, nothing. So maybe I wasn’t like that kid at all, but the long and the short of it is it felt good to act like a kid again.

There are certain tasks which are difficult to accomplish in the village. One of those tasks is typing up our cultural data into the computer program we use. So while in the village, each day, we try to write down some cultural notes in our cultural notebooks. Sometimes all we can squeeze out is 5 minutes to write down the myriad of thoughts running through our heads. But while we are out of the village, we are able to type them up, clarify our thoughts and codify them with anthropological categories to make for an easy search later on.

Though at times, the job of typing up our notes seems like busy work, it is going to pay off huge dividends when I have to track down all the information I have on how visiting and hospitality interact with the overall idea of interpersonal relationships or the different types of adornment including how body alterations factor into the historical perspective of beauty. Riveting stuff, I know.

Okay, so maybe it isn’t the most glamorous part of what we do, but like everything, there are things we do because we love doing them and other things we do because that is what needs to be done.

Here is a quick recap of some of the highlights from our trip.

• Connecting with our boss, friends and colleagues.
• Purchasing butter, cheese and sausage, all of which we can’t get in Banso or the village.
• Experiencing the ‘interesting’ road system of the Northwest of Cameroon.
• Eating at a cafe.
• Taking part in a pig slaughter.
• Watching Ayla play with another kid her age.
• Josiah learning how to sit-up on his own.

These are just a few of the highlights, but we enjoyed our time very much and are now now in Banso, getting back to work and already preparing for going back to the village. Hope everyone is doing well.

We have taken a little time to travel this last week. After being in Banso for a while, we decided to travel to the town of Bamenda to meet with our boss and spend some time with dear friends and colleagues. Sounds like fun, except for the road in between Banso and Bamenda. To say it is rough would be a gross understatement. Imagine a road over hills and mountains, only paved in the steepest portions and extra muddy due to the fact that we are in the rainy season. Then imagine that instead of a 4x4 vehicle which is made for this sort of travel, you hop into a 2-door Toyota Corolla. Getting the picture?

I don’t want to make it sound like I hated the trip, but I should say that the highlight was when Ayla threw-up after being jostled so much for several hours straight. I have never seen her so white. But luckily her little act of regurgitation made her feel better and the rest of the trip went swimmingly.

In the end, we made it to our destination safely and have been enjoying our time in Bamenda. The drive was worth it.

There are many things that we are having to pick up along the way here in Cameroon: culture, language, living in a village, bad roads, but one of the most daunting (and that is saying something) has been learning about solar powered systems for our house.

At one point, I had learned the basic equations for electricity involving ohms, volts, watts, and amps, but that knowledge is long gone and getting it back is not like hopping back on a bicycle. So over the last couple months, I have been investigating inverters, charge controllers, meters, high-energy efficient freezers, deep-cycle batteries, solar panels and a myriad of other components to educate myself on our future electrical life-line.

Now without giving you a complete drawn out picture of all the technical aspects (which I am still learning about), I will give a simple list of some of the components for those who might be interested.

- 135W Kyocera solar panels

- Universal 110-amp hour deep-cycle batteries

- Xantrex charge controller and digital meter

These are the 3 major components I have settled on so far and the fourth, an inverter, is yet to be purchased. Hope this interests some of the nerdier ones out there. The last thing I want to say is that if you have ever considered solar power at your home, now is the time to use it. They now have grid tie panels with built in connectors, so the technical aspect has never been easier and if you don’t want to have to deal with your own charge controller/battery bank, you can just sell your power to the electric company in many areas. Just food for thought.