Starting and Finishing
In the past, I am sure people have held certain stereotypes about me, but have voiced very few of them. However, in Cameroon I hear people say stuff like, ‘We know the whites do this or believe this or don’t eat this.’ And depending on the day, I react in different ways. Most of the time, I laugh about it because their assumptions are so absurd. My favorite is that many people in the village believe I print money in my house. But every now and then, I take it upon myself to prove them wrong or point out their misdirected assumption.
Today I took on one of their preconceived notions by going out and doing some manual labor. You see, many people in the village do not believe that ‘the whites’ can do manual labor. And though we have not been raised on it like the villagers we live around, I feel like I have enough strength in me to move some dirt around or cut down a tree with a machete. Well today I decided I was going to go up and do about a half hour work at the site of our house that we are building. What started as just a short little exercise in manual labor, turned into several hours of digging. I started myself and, upon seeing my plight, others joined in. After a short time, it became a full-blown job site with 3 people on shovels and 1 on the wheelbarrow and I couldn’t just stop working. By the time I came in for lunch, I was happy to be done for the day. Lesson learned: Don’t start something around here that you can’t finish.
