How do you day?

While most people might think of Cameroon as a francophone country, tucked between the Nigerian border and its French counterparts rest twin Anglophone provinces. Although I am not far from the border, I have yet to cross into the English speaking Southwest, home to volcanic mountains and a coastline of black sand beaches, I have however, had the pleasure of spending several days in the rolling highlands of the Northwest Province. After several months of French integration it was startling to be able to converse with strangers. Although the rhythm isn’t quite the same, the lyrical English of anglophone Cameroonians is still more comprehensible for me than French.
As a training field trip, we visited an agroforestry center, a 45-minute ascending drive from Kumbo where they farm typical staples such as corn and greens and raise sheep in elevated pens. The dry grassy highlands, clotted with dense stands of eucalyptus provide ideal pastures for sheparding in its truest biblical sense. A circuitous, torrential road follows the elevated ridge, arriving, broken, in the provincial capital of Bamenda. Here is a place where one can dine in the presence of European tourists and pay outrageous sums for scanty excuses for cheeseburgers.
The radiating villages maintain an elevated pretext for traditional hierarchy and local customs. On a recent trip to visit a fellow agroforestry volunteer, we stopped by the palace to celebrate the New Year. In a single sitting, I managed to provoke an uproar of giggles by committing every tasteless felony, from crossing my legs in front of the chief to accepting a beverage with my left hand. The conversation drifted between “proper” English, native dialect, and pidgin English, accompanied by protracted silences. The wives of the chief took turns sitting next to him and asking me, in the next most revered seat, “How do you find Cameroon?” We stared at each other until the obscurity took over and the chief excused us all, but not before giving an invitation to return for a dance party, scheduled to commence later in the evening.
I think I prefer my own situation, where village chiefs are covered in dirt and grime from working all day in the fields and too poor to have more than one wife. Still the Northwest has plenty of charm, Anglophones are generally sweeter and seem to put genuine emphasis into their salutations, nights and mornings are refreshingly cool enough to see one’s breathe and I only have to travel through three provinces to get there to see some of my favorite volunteers.