The Day I Almost Died

Okay I did not almost die today, nor did I even come close to it. But I did almost punch some kids in the face, but considering the fact that I do not know how to punch, and they were children, I restrained myself.

For those of you who do not know, yesterday was a holiday called “Youth Day”. You might think to yourself, “Youth day? Why would there be a holiday for the youth?” Well, this is Cameroon where nothing makes sense.

So on this youth day, EVERY single school from Bamenda, which is my guess about 100 plus schools, go down town to march and show their school pride. The kids are all in their uniforms, they practice days in advance, and they march down Commercial Avenue.  

Sounds kind of interesting, right?

Right, so I wanted to go experience this. I am leaving in a few months, so I want to soak in as much of the culture as possible. So off went Kathleen, me, and Maimu for Youth day. (Maimu is too young to march.) We walk down the steep, steep driveway and onto the main road to get a taxi. At this point, I noticed that there were a lot of people waiting to get a taxi. Then, I noticed that every single taxi that was coming down the road had about 50 plus people inside of them. Then, I noticed this massive pile of stinky garbage behind us. (So the garbage has nothing to do with anything, but I just wanted to point that out.) We stood there for a good half hour, waiting for that magical flying car from Harry Potter to pick us up and take us to this event. Sadly, that did not happen.

Maimu, Kathleen, and I trekked back up the steep, steep driveway, where we eventually talked Chris into driving us and dropping us off at Commercial Avenue. The roads were all blocked off, so he gets us as close to the street as possible and drops us off. We get out and start walking.

Sea of People

When I describe the following, I promise you, I am not exaggerating one bit. We get out of the car and begin to walk into Commercial Avenue. I see a sea, I repeat a SEA of Cameroonians. Never in my life have I seen so many people before. I have been to Disneyland, I have been to American Idol auditions, and I have been to some crazy concerts, but NEVER EVER in my life have I seen so many people in one small area before. I honestly do not mind crowds, they excite me, but this one was a different story.

Coming up on month seven in Cameroon, there are moments that I forget that I am a white person. Sometimes I just think we all look the same, and I forget that we have totally different skin colors. Well, at this moment in time, I was reminded how white my skin is. The sea of people began to part for us. People were staring, pointing, and shouting at us.

Usually when we are in town, there are not so many children, so we do not get hassled too much. But when you are in sea of Cameroonian children, it is a different story. We eventually are able to find an open patch on the road to watch the parade of children. So we are standing there and watching, but the people all around us who should be watching the parade, have turned around and are now watching us, watch the parade. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do not mind if people look at us, we all do it to one another. Especially in Cameroon, people like to look at the color of our eyes, and they like to look at the color of our hair. It is so different, they like to look. I do not mind it, I understand because I do the same thing, but when people look at us for fifteen minutes straight… and they start pointing, laughing, and talking to one another..that is when I become a little….well, I just want it to stop. So, we told the kids to stop staring at us, and to watch the parade. We made the kids a little mad, so they began to mock us. Alright, we just took it, it was fine.  

So we stood there watching for some time, when Kathleen and I were tired of standing and tired from being cooked by the burning sun rays of death (first encounter to death), when we decided to sit down. Maimu, who was enjoying, did not want to go with us, so we showed her where we would be sitting, and we told her not to go anywhere. About an hour later, when the parade came to an end, she was not there. Kathleen and I began to have a panic attack.

There were literally thousands of people all around, young kids at that, and we were looking for a little kid.

To make this even better, the kids from the parade were wearing their school uniforms, which are a blue skirt, blue shirt, and braids.

Maimu was wearing: a blue dress with braids.

So it is not like we can ask adults: “Hi, have you seen a girl in a blue dress with braids?” Because that was what every child there was wearing.

Oh No.(Second encounter to death.)

We began to pace back and forth just looking everywhere for her. I felt like a mother who lost her baby. I now understand that panic feeling of losing a child. (sorry mom for walking away so many times as a kid!)

Maimu had no money, she had no cell phone, she had nothing, and we lost her. To make matters even better, when we were getting out of the car, Chris yelled to us “Make sure you do NOT lose Maimu!” Well, we did just that.

“Hi Chris, yeah we did the one thing you told us not to do, we lost Maimu in a sea of children.”

About ten or so minutes went by, no sign of Maimu anywhere.

Then, out of the corner of Kathleen’s magical eyes, she spotted Maimu standing on a wall. We ran and yelled to her.

And like any other kid, she had no idea how worried we were.

So we found Maimu, it was time to go.

Next task was to find a taxi…

Yeah, good luck at that one.

There were no taxis! Everyone was light years ahead of us at getting their taxi. Everywhere was full. So, we just started trekking home. As we were trekking home, a slew of school children came behind us and began to yell at us. They began to jump up and grab our hair; they began to grab us EVERYWHERE. At that moment, I had had it. (Can you tell, I am not in an I love kids stage of life…)

Kathleen turned around and told the kids to not grab us, but the kids continued anyway.

I had hit my boiling point.(At this point, this is where the fists and punching thought began to happen...)

Now, we are not sure how long the trek is to the house, but it took us about 2.5 hours to get home. So it was a nice hike.

We were walking and there were car accidents left and right, there were people on bikes driving everywhere, people getting out of their cars and walking everywhere, It was CHAOS.

And to highlight the day, everyone we know out here in Cameroon, were out driving and on bikes, and they just waved at us and laughed as we continued trekking home.

It was pretty funny do not get me wrong, just…sweaty.

So we made it home in the late, late afternoon.

I came home, ate some dinner, and pretty much passed out.

I have a sunburn, some missing hair, okay not missing hair, but a sunburn.

I also got some pictures of the craziness of what we call, Youth Day.

Never. Again.
(Made it out alive.) 
-Sarah