Malarba

On Sunday, we came back to Banyo with two guests. Wynona and Rachel are a mom and daughter from Canada seeking to do long term missionary work in Cameroon. They got into Bamenda on Friday, went souvenir shopping with me on Commercial Avenue in Bamenda on Saturday, and have been in Banyo with us for this past week.

When we got back, we found out that the doctor’s home had been broken into while they were at church in the morning. The thieves took two brand new laptops still in the box, one new laptop that the doctor had been using and $4,000 that they had in emergency money. Nothing like this has ever happened before in Wouram and it really is a shame. The doctor, Jim, and his wife, Ina, said that their dog, Cody, had been barking all night the previous night which leads everyone to believe the thieves hid in the night and waited until the two left for church. They could hear Cody barking from church, only about a few hundred yards from their home, but didn’t think much of it.

The thieves did not take the other two laptops in the house, which were older and slower which also leads everyone to believe it could have possibly been an inside job, someone in the hospital, or someone who overheard someone talking about the doctor bringing new computers back from the States. Either way, it’s very unnerving and unfortunate. Jim and Ina were still very happy to have us over for dinner the night we got back from Bamenda, like we had planned, which was very kind of them. They seem to be in good spirits despite everything and hopefully nothing like this will happen again.

On Wednesday morning, Bob, Sulemanu, Dayyibu, Wynona, Rachel and I left to go to the small town of Malarba to meet the people there, bring tables and benches, and to hand out small care packages. On Tuesday, Dayyibu, Wynona, Rachel and I went into town to gather stuff to make the care packages. They consisted of soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, scrub brushes, Vaseline and matches. Wynona and Rachel also brought with them some candy from Canada, such as candy necklaces and Skittles. The seven hour trip to Malarba was a pretty bumpy and uncomfortable one but not too bad.

We stopped in a little town along the way called Tibati and I was able to try two new chocolate bars and a drink I hadn’t seen yet. One chocolate bar was called Rigardo (I can’t remember if that was it exactly) and the other was called Pluto. Rigardo was chocolate with caramel, nougat and peanuts inside. At first I thought it might be like a Snickers but it was a bit different. The Pluto was similar to Kinder bars from Europe but with less truffle filling. It has a hazelnut truffle filling, covered in wafers, covered in chocolate. The drink, Vimto, was a grape-raspberry soda. I’m not usually a fan of grape soda but it was really good. I think the raspberry helped. I haven’t seen it in Banyo but I was told you can get it here. I’ll have to look for it now.

Anyway, enough with food – onto the more important details. When we got to Malarba, we were first mobbed by swarms of kids and several adults. There are about 32 families in Malarba, each with like 8-15 kids. Lots of kids! After greeting many of the adults, Wynona, Rachel and Sulemanu pretty quickly started handing candy out to the children. We had a drink called gaari which is basically ground up corn kernels, with milk and a little bit of sugar. It was pretty good and pretty thick.

We then more or less played with the children, holding them, shaking hands, etc. for little bit. Many of the kids seemed to be sick with a cough and runny noses. They were all pretty dirty and definitely didn’t wash hands. I remember shaking one child’s hands and I could just feel a layer of residual dirt being transferred from his hand to mine. I definitely washed my hands after that.

We then had dinner which consisted of rice with a sauce and a hickory/chicory tea with sweet, condensed milk and sugar. It was pretty good and pretty sweet. After dinner we went to the prayer room for praying and singing. Malarba is a mostly Christian town that consists of refugee Fulbe from the Central African Republic. They’ve lived here in Cameroon for about the past ten years or so, ever since they left the C.A.R. Bob and Sulemanu have been to Malarba many times before discipling and being there for the people.

After the prayer room, I got ready for bed. Bob and I slept in a man’s room who gave it up for the night we were there. I was very thankful to him for that. I slept on the bed and Bob slept on a foam mattress on the ground. I didn’t sleep very well, mostly because of a moth that would sometimes fly on top of me but it’s nothing compared to Wynona and Rachel’s experience, who were in the room right next to Bob and I. Two cockroaches crawled onto Wynona’s head in the night. Mice (or possibly lizards) were scurrying around in the night. Bob said he heard the mice but I guess I was asleep at that point. We woke up pretty early, had some breakfast which consisted of rice and fish. Bob led a devotion, then we went around to the different people’s homes and passed out the care packages. I carried the box full of soap while Dayyibu carried all the bags filled with the other products, and Wynona and Rachel passed them out.

Overall, the people there were very happy to have us and very welcoming. It’s amazing to see how little some people have but how blissfully happy they can be. The children seemed very intrigued by us. In the hours before we left on Thursday, while Wynona and Rachel were getting their hair braided by the Fulbe women, a few kids clamored around me holding my hands, stroking my white arms. They were also fascinated with the cameras and loved it when we would take a picture of them, and show them afterwards what it looked like. Dayyibu stayed in Malarba for an extra day to nail benches and tables together that we had transported as pieces of pre-cut wood.

Today, Sulemanu invited Wynona, Rachel and I to his house so his wife could teach us how to make fufu and jamajama. It’s a very common dish around here. Fufu is made by taking corn flour and mixing it with boiling water. You allow it to bowl for awhile until the water mostly evaporates. You’re left with a large white clump of moist, sticky food. The jamajama is made by first frying a few onions and tomatoes with oil in a pan. You then take chopped green plants, mash them, boil them with the tomatoes and onions, and continue mash it all together. You then eat it all with your hands by scooping a little bit of fufu up and then scooping some jamajama with it and eating it. It’s filling and fairly good but definitely lacking in substance.

Wynona and Rachel will leave Banyo tonight to visit another area of Cameroon for a couple days before heading back to Canada on Tuesday. The Lokkers and I will be leaving on either Monday or Tuesday to go to Kribi on the Atlantic Ocean for the World Team missions conference for two weeks.