“Si’a beri,” Cameroon

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. There was a time for us to travel to Cameroon; there was a time for us to leave Cameroon; and there most certainly is a time for us to blog about the start of our homecoming. That is the introduction, as I have just informed Wesley, who is crashed in the German-constructed Ikea bed next to me.
We spent our remaining days in Cameroon enjoying the simple, slow-paced life that paradoxically came to fill our schedules to the brim. We all felt, quite honestly, a bit guilty as our days thinned out. What to do with our last few days, and what to do when we had done everything else imaginable, proved to be wearisome. But our parting was sweet. When we left the house, we had numerous students down to see us off. The last hand that I hit was Emma the tailor—a short, grinning, well dressed young man. When I looked at him, my throat closed up. You know that feeling? It’s a hard one to fight. Emotions were short lived, though, as Pa called out, “Enter the vehicle.” Meaning, I presume, get out of here because I want to go home.
We arrived in Douala, where we ate substantial meals and tried to soak in as much of this country as we could prior to our departure. One day for lunch we actually went to this somewhat-hokey African restaurant, where our waitress spilled her life story (including her baptism into the Catholic Church) onto us. Mais elle a parle seulement en Francais. You probably understood as much of the last sentence as I understood of her story. But she was nice, and she gave us a final glance at the openness of many Cameroonians—an ingredient here that makes relationships so easy to form and so hard to leave.
When we got on the plane, after jumping through the somewhat excessive security hoops (did they really need to look at our boarding passes four times?!), I found that something very interesting happened. I had not expected to see so many white people. I mean, it makes sense that nearly everyone on the flight was white, but it had been quite some time since we had seen so many similarly-colored people. In fact, I found myself gawking at whole families of white people as they flanked my airplane seat on both sides. The way they talked and walked, the way they kept their noses lifted high (as though smelling something directly in front of them), the way they moved about the airplane’s cabin (as though it were a summer home or something)—all of these firmly held my attention for the thirty minutes prior to takeoff. Unflinchingly so. And the verdict, after watching these people file in? Different. And strange. I wanted to poke at them, and see how they would respond. No, I really wanted to shake their hand and try to snap them as Cameroonians do, and see if they knew how to do it. Were they initiated into this culture as I thought we had been? Would they get me if I said something like, “You done come for airplane for walka for white man country?”
The flights, I am happy to say, were uneventful. After storing most of our luggage in the Zurich airport, we hopped a train for Munich, and have been here since. On Wednesday we will head back to Zurich, and after a day there, on the 22nd, it’s au revoir to this half of the world, and bonjour to the other half. I will bypass commenting on our feelings as we return home. I know that all three of us have had very different experiences, and so will reflect differently on it. Questions will help us to reflect, so ask away.
We are excited to return home. You all are in our prayers, and we would ask that you remember us in the days ahead.

Grace,

Charlie, for the team