Journée des Femmes

Bonjour Tout le Monde!

So, I've had a couple intense cultural days lately, particularly yesterday. March 8 is "International Womens' Day," a day of parades, beautiful fabric, and all-night partying for women. Sounds great, right? Let's put it this way instead: it is basically a weak band-aid; an invitation for women to forget, for just one day, that they basically have no rights in this country,and that they are just as oppressed as ever. It's similar in concept to the United States' "Black History Month": So what, we've got one month for black history (the shortest month, furthermore), and the other 11 months is all white history? Same shit.

People have asked me if we celebrate Womens' Day in the United States. Naturally, I always say no, explaining that, in my opinion, half the population shouldn't be relegated to celebrate who they are only one day a year; ideally, every day is Womens' Day (or more appropriated "People's Day") to which many Cameroonians scoffed, particularly the men. It is interesting: in our group, two out of the three guys (myself included), as well as all of the women, has clothes made for the day. However, when we got downtown, I counted, altogether, 10 other Cameroonian men who were sporting the clothing. TEN! The patriarchy here is so ingrained that men really believe that it is a day ONLY for women, and that they have no part in it, except to reinforce the original system once they get home from partying. There are even men who think it is a ridiculous holiday which only gives women the excuse to cheat on their husbands, which is altogether crazy. Even young boys would walk past me and Eli and yell "It's not Men's day! It's not Men's day!" There's just no gender sensitivity here, and it really gets to me sometimes.

Yesterday was an interesting day for me for other reasons. While we were downtown, we were walking through a crowd and I felt my camera slip out of my pants pocket by the strap. Without thinking, I turned around, spotted the person who I knew had to have taken my camera, spit a few lines of angry English swearwords at him, and he gave me back my camera. Little shit. Granted, I was very lucky not to have been successfully pick-pocketed, but it still kind of shook me up a bit.

However, the rest of the day and night were great! We had dance class from 7-8, but since it was raining really hard, we had to stay at the studio for another 45 minutes until I got fed up and got some people to come back to the apartment with me, where I had decided to stay the night, on account of the late hour. I just hung out with a few friends and joined in the festivities for a bit before I crashed. While I consider "International" Women's Day a bit of a sham holiday, it was pretty cool to see all those women out, dancing, and having a good time without a care in the world.

Well, I have to do some of my homework, believe it or not.
Until next time!
Andrew