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How I lost my man in Cameroon
In New York, he was a failure. But here, he was a king.

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By Shana Liebman

March 17, 2000 | I wake up panicked. J. is snoring, soft and even as always. It takes a minute to remember where I am: visiting my boyfriend, in a hotel room, in Cameroon.

My eyes adjust to the darkness and I realize that the halo around the thick blue curtains is not the sun, but tall lights reflecting off the pool. It must be 3 or 4 in the morning and a million thoughts are running through my head. J. has been here for two months and I for only four days, but already the past three years feels like a good movie that has ended too soon.

I tiptoe into the bathroom and sit on top of the toilet seat. My sallow reflection under the fluorescent lighting reminds me how disappointed I am, in everything. I watch my own face crinkle into a sob. To calm myself down, I start mentally scripting my travel article on Cameroon. So far I know little about Cameroon, except that it is a French-speaking country in West Africa, and that Yaounde, its capital city, which we're in, is a dusty, urban mess.

"Despite the heavy French colonization, Yaounde is a far cry from Paris." I laugh at this attempt to compare the land of lovers to a city so in need of romance. How ironic that this is where J. and I should come apart.

It's true what they say: Africa requires a heavy dose of disbelief. Perhaps this was why I couldn't quite fathom what was happening. The day after I arrived in Yaounde, J. left for work at 7 a.m. and I sat on the hotel balcony and watched the rain -- rain like I'd never seen before. From the top of Mont Febe, the sprawling city was completely hidden by a dense gray cloud. Everything was instantly and thoroughly drenched. Five minutes later, the sky started to lighten and the city bled through as if it were emerging from a dream. I had thought it was the dry season, my first of many misconceptions about Cameroon.

After the rain, I watched five African men convene in the shade near the pool. All the guidebooks warn female travelers: "Wear baggy clothing," and "Do not go out alone." This seemed and still seems a ridiculous remnant of the "black men are rapists" myth. Still, there is something about Africa that seems to legitimize otherwise irrational fear. With malaria, yellow fever, polio and typhoid in the air, how can you be sure that there aren't also outdated forms of terrorism still lurking?

So, much as I hated myself for it, I was nervous to go down to the pool and expose my skin. Instead I put on baggy pants and a long-sleeve shirt and attempted a jog down the hotel's hill. The few beeps and cheers from jeeps full of men set me on guard, but I didn't feel unsafe until a stream of boys emerged from a school and headed in my direction. One of the boys spotted me, crossed to my side of the street and as I approached him, unzipped his pants. Before I found the motivation to look away, he pulled out his penis. Regrettably, I didn't do anything cool like shake my head at his member's inadequacy. Instead, I headed back to the hotel fast, stopping only when I heard a beep that I thought might be J. returning home. I turned and saw one of the boys following me. I ran.

Safely secluded in our too-blue hotel room, I wondered if I had overreacted. Nothing like this had ever happened to me, and if I was really in danger, wouldn't I have taken a more aggressive approach? I decided not to tell J. for fear that the episode was minor and he would feel guilty or worse, regret having invited me to visit. After work, we drove into town, parked the car and walked through bustling streets. In Yaounde, everyone's selling something: food, discarded electrical appliances, clothes, stamps, Xeroxes, license plates. It is an amazingly energetic city where people wake at dawn and everyone is either walking with large loads on their heads or jogging around the circular streets. The exercise club hits the roads at 5 a.m. One of J.'s co-workers admitted that sometimes he gets up at 4 a.m. and just waits for the day to begin.

As we walked, I ignored stares, thinking that this is how African-Americans must have felt, and still feel, as the minority in America. My discomfort was a lesson, the small price of my privileged whiteness. "I like your woman," one man shouted at J. A moment later, a hand reached out and pinched my ass. I gripped J.'s hand, whispered what had happened and we headed back to the car, where I confessed the day's earlier incident. "I'm so sorry," J. kept repeating, but it wasn't his fault, or my fault. And how do you blame a country?

Next page | Romance rekindled in the extreme north