Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Fêtetastic

I will just post one update for both the Fête du travaille and the Vingt Mai. All of the national holidays are celebrated in pretty much the same manner. The teachers, or young people, or workers, or women, or whoever the day is honoring march in the town center, then everyone goes to the bar. All of the government officials in the town show up for the marching, and I have learned from experience it is better to greet them at the beginning and then duck out as soon as the parade is over. This after ending up a little too drunk for the middle of the afternoon after the Fête du travaille. The problem is that as a sub-divisional capital Lolodorf has quite a few government officials, all of whom like to buy you a drink or two, and in Cameroon it is considered extremely rude to refuse a drink when some one offers to buy.

Religious holidays are about the same with church instead of marching before the bar. On Easter everyone was kind of confused by my questioning this, “so everyone gets drunk and dances all night... because its Easter?” I guess it makes about as much sense as chocolate bunnies and Easter egg hunts though.

The Fête du travaille is pretty much labor day, except all of the large employers, and businesses in Lolodorf made their employee's march. This was a lot more interesting than the other marches I have seen, some community forest drove logging equipment, another marched while loudly revving chainsaws, a cacao organization did a little demonstration of applying chemicals to a cacao seedling, and Butran (the bus agency here) drove some of their buses. Then of course there was the rolling sound system which I ended up marching with. Earlier in the morning Auguste asked me if I would be marching, I assumed that he meant with the community forest (which did not march for some reason) so I of course said yes. I was told to show up in Lolodorf and they would give me a shirt. When I did show up it turned out I was marching with the local bar, Ampoule Rouge. Apparently Ampoule Rouge has a side business, renting out large sound systems, so I marched along main street in Lolodorf next to an old Toyota with four huge speakers strapped to the roof, and a generator in the trunk blaring “Lady Ponce.”

Notice the use of safety goggles.

I wish I could say they did not get drunk and drive these through town way too fast afterwards
  
At least they took off the dangerous part.
I loaned my camera to some one who got a lot of good pictures, but unfortunately not of me.

Sometimes when shit gets really weird its best to just roll with it

Le Vingt Mai (May 20th) is National Unification Day. It commemorates the unification of the Anglophone provinces with the Francophone provinces in 1961. Pretty much anyone in a uniform marches, but unfortunately there are only a couple of policemen, and a couple boy scouts in mismatched, incomplete uniforms who came from God knows where. I can only assume it is because of this that all of the schools in the surrounding area had to march.  There where also several political parties, and associations who marched, but it was all topped off with a demonstration from the Karate school (you can't make this crap up).  

Fierce.
The Vingt Mai is considered the end of  Fête season, so it is looking to be a long paradeless summer. I will throw up some pictures of the tree nursery I have been working on tomorrow, and then my trip to Bangem at some point after that. 

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