La Fête de Femme

International Woman’s Day (La Fête de Femme) is every March 8^th. I have to admit I was completely unaware of this fact until I moved to Cameroon, but it is kind of a big deal here. Think mothers day, only its for all women, and there is a parade, and lots of drinking, so really not like mothers day, or at least not mothers day at my house. Basically women aren't expected to do any work that day, and they all dress up in special woman's day pange and march through the center of town. After that everyone gets drunk. It would be nice to see more women doing something that was a little more productive given the venue, but mostly they just use it as an excuse to go to the bar. Not to say that its a bad thing, the men are busy doing the same thing the other 364 days a year and “respectable” women aren’t supposed to be hanging around in bars so I guess its deserved.

Afterwards, some women from Bibondi at the bar.

I didn't notice it when I took the picture, but this is a little bit scary.

Florence, the wife of my community host, is the woman in glasses.

The aftermath, every bar in Lolodorf was full.

Fortunately for me I got to help out a woman's group that my post mate Amanda works with so I felt productive. She does a lot of work with the preparation of soy as a supplement to the traditional diet, and generally healthy food in the form of soy milk, soy yogurt, and tofu. The day before the Fête Madame Bobo, the president of the group, got everyone together to prepare the milk, yogurt, and tofu and teach all the women the recipe's. Unfortunately the power was out that day so all of the soy had to be ground by hand which took the better part of two hours, and wasn’t exactly easy with the tiny little hand cranked machines. Once the actual cooking started we left, because the kitchen was small, hot, and cramped, and we where taking space from people who where there to learn.

The women washing the soy before grinding it

Grinding

Greg (Amanda's boyfriend) taking a turn at grinding

The day of the Fête we set up at the end of the parade route to sell the products in order to raise money for the woman’s group, and to teach people about soy. I mostly talked to people about soy cultivation, and got a list of people that put in orders for a few kilo's, and told them I would be able to come out to their farms to help them plant. There was a lot of interest which was great, and it was great to be able to just kind of tag along and help with a project that was already set up, so that I didn't have to do all the legwork myself.

Setting up

Like I said there was a lot of interest.

This will probably be my last update for a while, because I will be heading up to Ngaoundéré for “In Service Training” in less than a week. After IST, which lasts a week, some other volunteers and I plan on doing some traveling to visit other volunteers posts around the Grand North for a while, so I will be gone for a good 3 weeks. Hopefully my next post will have pictures of me riding a hippo (no joke).