This is a reflective essay I wrote while watching English Club students write letters to their penpals

I During my second year of service as a TEFL Volunteer in Bokito, Cameroon, I participated in the Peace Corps’ World Wise Schools program. Over the summer a college friend contacted me to arrange a correspondence between English Club members at GHS Bokito and her own 7th and 8th graders Texas.

The experience opened my eyes to another facet of Cameroonian psychology and also the incredible cultural gap that I, despite impossible odds, had begun to bridge.

First, the expectations of my Cameroonian students differed so greatly from that of Katherine and her pupils, I was afraid to mail the first batch of letters. As I read the letters from 12 year old American children, I noticed girls who wanted to make a new pen pal friend and boys who inquired about sports and hoped to share with a fellow athlete. They were innocent.

My male Cameroonian students only wanted to write to girls, searching for an Angelina Jolie-type who would bring them to America. My girls were confused as to why all the boys had requested to write to other boys. They refused to believe preteen American boys were afraid of girls’ cooties. (Indeed, almost 100% of them requested another boy as a pen pal, whereas the majority of girls didn’t care.) Cameroonian girls had little interest in talking about shopping malls and sleepovers.

Second, I grimaced when the Americans asked their naïve, childish questions. How many pets do you have? What are their names? The concept of raising and feeding an animal for any purpose besides as a food source (or, in the case of dogs and cats, to guard the home and chase mice) is foreign to Cameroonian villagers. I had difficulty even translating the word “pet” into Central African French. I could only point to my cat and say “My cat Fred is my pet.” Africans don’t have house pets or a favorite book. In an oral culture, books are rare and even more rarely read for pleasure. School textbooks are often the only book a Cameroonian will ever buy in his lifetime.

On the other hand, several of my students asked their new pen pals of their religious beliefs. I corrected the English of inquiries like, “Are you a child of God? Are you giving your life to Lord Jesus Christ?” and “Do you love Jesus? Why?” For us, such a blunt question would be rude and quite unexpected. To a Cameroonian “atheist” or “nonreligious” doesn’t compute. Everyone constantly evokes God in their daily life.

As I approach my COS date, I find myself full of words. I’m struggling to explain, at the least to understand myself, what I’ve learned here and communicate the reality of my life in Bokito to the other reality of my life in the US. You can’t simply translate my experience word for word and expect to make sense of it. The cultural context makes such direct translation impossible. Here I am, immersed in Central African Francophone culture, trying to explain my life to my parents every Sunday afternoon when they call.

There are events I find funny or sad but can’t explain to an American because they don’t understand the culture here. And Cameroonians are, by their very nature, ignorant of their own amusing cultural quirks so I can’t tell them why I laugh when they ask me what “pet” means.

For example, I nearly cried when Dezo misread an African-American girl’s name, ShaTarra, as Dha Yarra because of her handwriting style. I laughed because Dezo is the P.Diddy of GHS Bokito. It’s the gap between “African”-American culture and what gets translated as it comes back across the ocean to the African continent. Africans do not consider black Americans as distant relatives, united with them in a struggle against the oppressive white culture of the Occident. Black PCVs are taunted as “whiteman” and “le blanc” just like their white skinned peers.

I’m standing on thin air between the two sides of a canyon, one labeled US and the other Cameroon. I don’t know if I’m walking forwards, backwards or falling into the empty space below. Where do I fit in? I’m in Cameroon but I can’t forget all I know about America or ignore the way it formed me. When I return to Tennessee in June 2008, I’ll occasionally wear the brightly colored ensembles favored by African women and grieve for the mangoes I used to eat, freshly fallen from the tree in the front yard of my house in Bokito.

I won’t quickly forget the two years here. But it will happen. As soon as I step off the plane, I’ll begin to shed my African identity. The red dirt will wash out of my clothes, the distinct smell well water leaves on the skin will fade, and I’ll forget the taste of ripe pineapple.