“I no know me.” This has always been one of my favorite Pidgin English phrases meaning, I don’t know. Recently I have said that phrase often. For the past five weeks I have been hosting visitors in Cameroon. My dad was here for one week, my mom for three weeks, and my professor and her daughter for two weeks. Whenever I host visitors I realize how much I don’t know about Cameroon and its culture and perhaps have given up trying to understand. Cameroon is so different from America that it evokes all kinds of questions and ponderings. Many questions for which I cannot provide answers and simply respond, “I don’t know.” A popular phrase amongst Peace Corps Volunteers and one I adopted long ago is “Why ask why?” This means sometimes there is little use in asking why things are the way they are because either host country nationals don’t know or even if they do know, you won’t be able to understand. One of my favorite examples of the former is when I was hiking Mt Cameroon and came to the campsite the second evening. The place was swarming with bees and one of my friends asked a Cameroonian why there were so many bees. His answer was, “Yes, there are many bees here.” So to prevent receiving answers that only restate my question, I have stopped asking many questions and prefer to live life in a state of ambiguity and relying on my observations.
The questions have reminded me of the complexity of culture and how it shapes our values and behaviors without necessarily logical reasons. My mom had many questions in particular about the ju-jus (people wearing traditional masks who appear for important events in the community) and when she asked some of my Cameroonian friends what the masks symbolized, who was wearing the masks, and what they did at the ceremonies the Cameroonians couldn’t answer. They just see ju-jus as a part of their life who randomly appear, scare children, and then disappear.
Similarly, while my professor was here we talked about the cultural beliefs that influence breastfeeding. When we asked Cameroonians were the beliefs that women can’t have sex while breastfeeding or that babies need to eat cricket and weaver bird in order to develop their voice came from, they too couldn’t answer our questions. As a result of these discussions and analyzing our qualitative data we have developed a conceptual model to describe what factors we believe influence exclusive breastfeeding in the health district. Unlike other health behavior models at the center of this model is culture for we believe that the cultural beliefs greatly influence breastfeeding behavior. Exactly how, “I no know” but we hope to determine this in the next phase of our research project. Of course this will require asking lots of questions, but hopefully we can ask the questions in a way that are answers simply don't restate the question.
Here are some pictures from the recent visits:
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| My American and Kumbo Families |
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| Cameroon and American Project Staff |
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| Papa Jerry and Baby Kate |
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| Mom and I on a motorbike in Kumbo |
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