Mom and Mike Visit Cameroon: Part 2 (finally!)

I haven’t blogged in a while, partly because I’m content and comfortable and at the end of the day I want nothing more than to settle down with my sketchbook or a good read, and partly because I feel that I cant write anything until I write the several episodes of “Mom and Mike Visit Cameroon”.  Yet I can’t seem to write about that either, because while it was incredibly special to have them here, they were just seeing what I see every day, experiencing “my normal” – and how does one write about “normal”?

Sure, we hiked Mount Cameroon.  That was a blast.  But mountains are mountains – you’ve all hiked them, or heard or read tales of people hiking them.  This was no different (aside from the fact that it started pouring rain halfway up, our clothes got soaked through, and at the summit we were stuck in a cloud so thick that my camera lens could hardly make out an object 4 feet away).  We did enjoy camping in tents, listening to our porters banter in Pidgin English and joking around with remixes of children’s songs (Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes – with a twist!).  I enjoyed waking up Mike in the morning first-day-of-school style, and our fellow hiker, Annelise, never complained about the racket in the tent next door.

But that’s a mountain.  And then after that, we went to a beach.  Typical tourism, typical life, ya know?

So what is there to write about?  While climbing to the highest point in West/Central Africa and playing in the waves in Limbe were no doubt exciting adventures, the best part of Mom and Mike’s visit to Cameroon (in my opinion), was having them experience what I experience on a daily basis: negotiating at the market, buying random street food just because it looks interesting, *super comfy* transportation, chitchat with complete strangers, constant marriage proposals, breakfast beers, hanging out with friends in village, etc.

These are the things that have become my “normal,” and consequently I probably don’t mention them very much in my blog.  But I guess now I’ll try to address them, so that the rest of you will have an idea of the experiences that I got to share with Mom and Mike.

And thus it continues – the adventures of Mom and Mike in Cameroon!