Tu vas me garder quoi?

In a country where it is more common to have seven children than three, groups of mischevious children lurk predictabley around every corner, fighting boredom and avoiding homework by soliciting strangers and devising new distractions. I would argue that kids are basically entertained by similar themes on all habitable continents, ( i.e. pop stars, bonbons, and round things that bounce), still there are inevitably noticeable differences.
While the youth of America might be occupied electronically with everything from realistic gaming systems to motorized scooters, Cameroonian children are capable of utilizing their imaginations more freely. Trash piles are picked through to salvage such treasures as discarded sardine cans and rusty kitchenware. From this and a bit of string, a tumbling and often noise making simple machine can be formed. Old tires, guided by machetes are splendid for rolling and running alongside, especially on muddy descents. Bottle caps serve as jacks and empty wine boxes inflate like balloons. `
Monday, February 11th was La Fete de la Jeunesse, or national Youth Day. All across the country, preschool through highschool age students performed skits and marched in front of local nobilities and bureaucrats. The skits were something similar to what one might see in the states, inaudible and childish mimicry of adult situations, followed by highschoolers dancing coquettishly to modern hits. Everywhere you go it seems post adolescents like to dress sluttily and dance scandalously in front of uncomfortable audiences, only in Cameroon it is usually the boys performing the more seductive hip undulations. The most pleasing skits received small monetary motivations from the audience; in the same manner one salutes an exotic dancer. Cleaning supplies were awarded to select schools at the end of the ceremony, as it is the students who scrub and polish the classrooms on a weekly basis. And by cleaning supplies I mean buckets, and jugs to fill with water from the river or adjacent wells and new machetes to cut back the ensuing jungle, no such extravagances as mops, Comet or sponges exist to the masses here.
Cameroonian children work hard and often freely. Employing petits to carry out small errands, such as waiting in line for beignets or selling avocados is just the start of it, and there is absolutely no whining or sulking upon assignment of even more arduous tasks, for minimal compensation. I have a few students who will stop by to pass the time and if I happen to be in the process of washing dishes or pulling water from the well, they automatically push me out of the way and efficiently finish my chores. I can only offer such small condolences as bananas or flavored water.
People may not have much money to spare, but most of them have land on which they cultivate corn and root crops to transform into balls of couscous topped with palm oil based sauces, infused with dried fish. At least in this part of the country, I have not seen that people go hungry, still the lack of nutrition is evident in the often small stature and disproportionate, inflated bellies of its youth. In the classroom and formal settings, children are spic and span, personal hygiene is highly revered, but otherwise they generally sport well worn, if not filthy second hand clothes, in a manner most children would relish.
All that said, it is important to note kids here do their fair share of deranging, at least if they think you have something that might be of interest to them. Toddlers giggle and scream la blanche, or the equivalent in their native dialect when I pass them, never tiring of the humorous nature of my lack of melanin, though I have accumulated quite a few more freckles. Teenage boys call me cherie and beckon me from a distance, to approach would mean being asked for my phone number or money for food, I just wag my finger and tell them sternly “Je suis ta grande soeur.” I think everyone can laugh at that. “Tu vas me garder quoi” and “tu as rien pour moi?” are some of the most recurrent questions I hear from adults and children alike. They both basically mean, what are you going to give me? And while a simple presentation of a bon-bon or kola nut would not go refused, there is really no obligation to give anything but a witty retort, but sometimes they are hard to find, so I have started preempting and asking this question myself, especially to small children. So far I haven’t received anything, but a few invitations to eat starchy meals at their mother’s expenses and the promise of a sleek pair of sunglasses, but it can’t hurt to try, n’est ce pas?