My Moto Ride into Work

My daily routine usually involves getting up sometime around 6am. Cleaning the kitchen and all the dishes, cleaning the living room, sometimes doing laundry, sometimes doing some sort of exercise (either jogging or yoga), hailing the guy for water, eating breakfast, taking a shower, and finally leaving for work around 8:45. Today I was running a little late, you know trying to get everything done in less then three hours can sometimes be challenging. But going to work a little late allowed me to view a different perspective.

As I was walking down my little side street, which I have to say, is one of my favorite activities of the day. There are usually some kids playing who love to practice either their French or English on me by greeting me (they now call me Christine rather than Nasarah- the foreigner or white person. Big Accomplishment). Then there are the regular women who set up booth alongside the street with their peanuts, onions, garlic, and sweet potatoes. They love to talk to me in Fulfulde despite the fact that I don’t understand a word. I reply Djam to just about everything, which is a word you can use to respond to just about everything, until they ask me something that can’t be replied with Djam and then I just stand there and look confuse. This seems to amuse them to no end and they usually end up laughing at me. Along the way, there is usually a mother or two who thinks it’s funny to point me out to their small toddler who is instantly scared of the ‘white monster’- although by now most of the toddlers are getting use to me and no longer start to cry or have an adverse reaction. The point of this is basicially to say that I love my neighborhood. I living in middle-lower income area where a lot of the men are hard-working moto taxi drivers. They often start at 5am and work till 8pm. For the most part children go to school, and women stay at home. The streets are kept clean and it is completely safe for me to walk down this road after dusk.

Anyways back to this morning, it’s as if I could smell the sent of development in the air; there were bags of garbage being placed at the side of the street for garbage disposal… that’s right, Garbage Disposal. I swear there was not an organized system of garbage disposal last year. Everyone (even in Maroua) would through their garbage at the side of the street and /burn as much as possible. But no, sure enough, I saw a large truck picking up the garbage. This may not seem quite as exciting for you, but for me I see it as a step towards taking pride in your city and a huge step in terms of hygiene. A little further long down the road, I noticed several men working on building a two story building. They were passing cement blogs up to one another. Anyone in working in the safety field back home would have a heart attack watching these men in sandals with no safety cap passing blogs of cement across sketchy makeshift ramps made of wood up to more people working on edges with no railings. Despite the fact that it creates in me a little moment of panic, I was so excited to see people working, and building.

Just a little further along, on the opposite side of the road I saw a huge gathering of people, maybe 150 or so. There were cars, trucks and motos stopped to see what was happening. Needless to say that my moto slowed considerably and the driver asked what was happening. It turns out that a thief was killed. That was enough for my moto driver and he continued on. I have to admit that my curiousity was a little deeper but didn’t quite warrant getting off the moto to find out more. When I got to work I couldn’t believe what I had seen so I talked to people to find out more. I got very little more information, but learned that it was the gendarmes that had killed him.
This incident really surprises me because I have never sense the undertone of violence here. The gendarmes are always a bit sketchy but usually in the sense that they are looking for problems so that they can get a bribe.

That was my morning, not necessarily my normal morning.