Berkley Center

Last night, I could tell that my host mother was in a depressed mood. She wasn't playing with her grandson or humming a song like she usually does in the evenings, filling our house with a sense of home. Last night, she was simply sitting quietly staring at the small dark space under the cabinet where we keep our dishes, pursing her lips. I asked her if she was tired, and she explained that fatigue was only part of it, and the rest was just problems with money. After three weeks of living in the three-room house with my family of nine, I'm used to the uncomfortable issue of money coming up, and no longer let the guilt of my relative American wealth overwhelm me.

My mom went on to explain that my host father was not giving her any money, saying that she should work like him to make a living and not rely on his paycheck. My siblings had told me similar stories about my host father being very tight with his money, preferring them to find their own funding sources through odd jobs, but I didn't know that this applied to my mother as well.

My mother's daily life consists of getting up with the children and preparing them for school: clean faces, clean shoes, uniforms, breakfast, and school books. She then cleans the entire house, stooped over with a hand broom sweeping the floor, and then mopping by hand with a rag. She does the laundry by hand for the entire house, a long and tedious process involving a three-bucket wash and rinse system, a bar of soap, and rubbing clothes together until every stain is removed. She then hangs the clothes to dry on a wire outside, and commences preparing dinner. For a brief summary of what it is like to do shopping and cooking in Kribi, read point number 2 of the previous post. In brief, it takes several hours and is exhausting. Throughout the day as well, my host mother cares for her baby grandson while his mother is at work, feeding him, changing him, washing him, and dealing with his turbulent mood swings. By the time the family comes home, the house is spotless, the dinner is ready, and my mother is completely wiped out. But, she still finds time to make it to church functions, chat with her neighbors and friends, and sometimes even brings home fruit for the family as a treat. In the evenings, we eat the food, walk on the clean floor, dirty the clean clothes, and the next day her work starts all over again. With this type of daily life, she has no time to go out searching for a job, let alone work during the day.

Jobs are extremely hard to find in Cameroon in general, and the jobs that people do find tend to yield a profit of between 500 to 700 francs CFA per day, which is between one and two dollars, enough to buy a bar of soap or a beer. My host father, for compensation for accommodating me at his house, was given a stipend of roughly $250 for the month. This money is to be used for food, soap, transport, etc. for me at their house, all falling under the jurisdiction of my mother. However, she confessed to me last night that she has not been given even five francs from my father. As my mother stared listlessly across the dusty room, my father was out drinking beer with his friends at his favorite bar by the beach. He comes home each night late on his motorcycle, eats his dinner, and goes to sleep. Unable to earn her own income with the poor Cameroonian economy and without any support from my father, my mother lives on the bare minimum. She receives just enough to buy the basics for the household, and the occasional bag of oranges for all of us to enjoy, but does not have enough money to leave the house and live a life of her own.

Her situation highlights the merits of micro-loans and entrepreneurship programs targeting women as a means of gaining financial independence from their husbands. However, this does not address the problem of the lack of time, energy, and lack of respect from her husband that my host mother encounters. He sees her situation as resulting from a lack of initiative, but she told me earnestly that if she could work she would; she wants to be independent but there is nothing to be done. The best she can do is going to her family's village every few weeks to harvest macabo (elephant's ear) to sell in the market in town.

I didn't know what to say to her, and I still have not decided whether it is my place to confront my host father about being more generous with his salary to support his family. The fact that he refuses to share even the stipend from my program demonstrates that this problem goes beyond the fact that my mother does not work, but also that he views every cent he earns as his own to do with what he pleases. Stepping in and saying something to him could cause conflict between him and my mother, and it might make the situation worse. It's tempting to take charge of the situation and campaign for my mother's case, but at the same time I have to be careful about imposing my culture and my own opinions on my family.