So being the half functional, partially retarded adult that I am there is a bus that runs from my apartment complex to the nearest metro station but I don’t know quite how to read the bus schedule and I am running late (it’s a 20 minute walk) so I was asked the guy standing there. A quelle heure le bus arrive?
He looks at me confused (as most people do when I speak French) and I repeat myself only this time with monkey gestures that I hope illustrate “What time is the bus coming.” This works and he tells me “9:30”. So we stand there and wait and the bus still does not arrive at 9:45. He invites me to walk with him to the bus station.
His name is Moisse (pronounced like Maurice but with no ‘r’) and he’s from Cameroon, Africa (so he speaks French fluently and a little English) and it’s his first year at the engineering school. He has a very kind way about him and an infectious laugh so we continuing chatting on the metro. Before he departs he asks me if I had plans later on that night. I told him I did not and we make plans to meet in my apartment later that evening.
I’m running really late that night but I make it back to my apartment at 7:30 so I have just enough time to make a small dinner and eat before he arrives.
During our conversation earlier in the day I thought he told me he was making me dinner but the problem with conversing with someone of a different native tongue is that you never know if you have mis-understood them so it’s never wise to bank on important things like dinner. I wanted to have a little something in my stomach in the case he wasn’t making me dinner but I also didn’t want him to come and see me eating dinner if he has made me something. C’est difficile.
Anywho I rush and finish dinner before he comes by and we sit and chat for a while about our day and about the difficulties of French and English. And then a very odd thing happens. I teach him French.
We are talking about liaisons. See the French are really lazy and don’t pronounce the last letter of words. Like in the word ‘et’ you don’t pronounce the ‘t’. But there is an exception. You pronounce the t if the first letter of the next word is a vowel. The example I use is vingt et un (21). Because of the ‘u’ in ‘un’ you pronounce the ‘t’ in et. So actually it sounds like vin(gt) e tun. So I tell him this and he looks at me like I’m on crack.
Moisee: It’s vingt un, not vingt et un. No ‘et’.
Now I know I don’t now French from Adam but I remember that French numbers are funny. I remember you have to do a little math with them (80 is quatre vingt – 4 x 20 and 90 is quatre vingt dix – 4 x 20 + 10) and that the first number of each set (21, 31, 41, etc.) has ‘and’ in it (20 and 1 –vingt et un, 30 and 1, trente et un).
He looks at me like I am silly American girl and that he comes from a French speaking province in Africa and it's vingt un but I remain confident. so we look it up in his dictionary. Voila. Vingt et un.
Moisee: [laughs] I really did not know. I will ask the other people from my town if they know. And I will tell them I have a new French teacher. Her name is Kelly.
So we have a good laugh about and he tells me he has food waiting for me in his apartment.
We move to his apartment and I have my first authentic African meal of chicken in a bean/carrot sauce and potatoes. It was really good (J’ai tres bien mange). He tells me he learned from his mom who is a home economics teacher in Cameroon. He asks me if I want to see her picture and he takes out numerous pictures of his life in Cameroon.
So he shows me pictures of his father, his mother, his cousins, and his grandfather, the chef of his village. So I jokingly ask: So does this mean you will be chef?
He replies with all seriousness: It’s very possible.
Turns out the guy who just made me dinner in a dormitory in France could very well be the future chef of his village back in Africa. The way it works is that when the chef dies he can leave an attestation paper stating who he wants to be the new chef or a recommendation. In the case of no attestation or a recommendation the village than votes on who will be the new chef. Generally they vote for someone who is very educated (which he is) and the new chef has to be in the same family as chefs before him (which he also is). Currently his uncle is the chef but when his grandfather died people from his village started calling him chef because they knew in about a decade’s time he will be the new chef.
I ask him if he wants to be chef. He responds no. I ask him why not and he tells me he wants to be free.
The chef has a lot of power and money but he is bond to the village and its people. The chef has to marry a girl from the village and has to have a minimum of 3 wives (polygamy is widely practiced throughout the village). When the chef eats he finishes his meal first before anyone else can eat. When his wife serves him food she must place the plate down and then back out of the room backwards with her head bowed down. When someone comes to talk to the chef they must stand a distance away from the house and clap their hands where someone will then greet them (not the chef) and they must present their case for the chef’s time. Before someone becomes chef they are taken into “the bush” with the village elders and have some sort of an inauguration with spirits of dead chefs.
I find this all really wild. It’s so far removed from anything I’ve ever known that I’m hugely fascinated with it.
So as he is talking about life in Africa and how I couldn’t image such poverty, that I realize. This man is African.
A little background. During my travels my friends and I had a game in which we called the Around the World Race. Basically whoever kissed someone from all continents (excluding Antarctica), wins.
So far nobody has gotten all 5 (two of the girls got 4/5 each missing either African or South America) and I’m down by 2 (Africa and South America). I could put the race into a 3 way tie if in kiss this man. A man who could be potential chef of his village. And that’s gotta count for extra bonus points or something.
But alas I don’t play to win and decide to be culturally sensitive and refrain for exploiting my new friend. We ended the evening with Bises.
A very lovely and bizarre evening where I taught a potential future chef of a village in Cameroon French.
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