Parents' Visit

My Cameroonian foster parents from Bandjoun decided they wanted to make one more visit to Edéa to see how I was doing. So, the morning after the Rallye, they arrived, baby Katie in tow, after taking the overnight bus from Baffoussam (left at 1am and changed buses in Douala) at 9am. After having been up a good portion of the night and the house not in its best shape, I was a little less than thrilled at the timing, but wanted to "receive" them as best I could.

I had given money to my friend Sylvie several days before to buy and prepare a meal for us. She arrived several hours after they did, and began to make ndolé and fish in spicy tomato sauce. One thing Cameroonians like to do is to prepare massive amounts of food, just in case extra guests arrive or someone is particularly hungry. Since neither of those things happened, we ended up with a LOT of leftovers. The food was quite tasty though (Mama gave Sylvie a hard time for making the sauce too spicy, since she knows I don't like my food too hot), and after cleaning up, we retired to rest for a bit.

Over the next two days, we played games, listened to music, ate (again and again), visited the office and the market, and even made a tour to the aluminum factory and power plant (they were sufficiently impressed). Edéa is MUCH more industrial and cosmopolitan than Bandjoun, so it was a bit like the country mouse going to visit the city mouse.

Sylvie was a tremendous help, since she stuck around for almost all of their visit, helping with the cooking and cleaning (culturally, it would look very bad for me, as an adult male, to be cooking for my parents), and with the conversation. I was happy she could be there. At last, Tuesday morning came, and they returned to Bandjoun with a large 22-liter container of fresh palm oil (made by George, my counterpart) as a gift from the visit.