Intimate Strangers

B. Nyamnjoh

Description

Intimate Strangers tells the story of the everyday tensions of maids and madams in ways that bring together different worlds and explore various dimensions of servitude and mobility. Immaculate travels to a foreign land only to find her fianc� refusing to marry her. Operating from the margins of society, through her own ingenuity and an encounter with researcher Dr Winter-Bottom Nanny, she is able to earn some money. Will she remain at the margins or graduate into DUST - Diamond University of Science and Technology? Immaculate learns how maids struggle to make ends meet and madams wrestle to keep them in their employ. Resolved to make her disappointments blessings, she perseveres until she can take no more.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789956715091
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Intimate Strangers

Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Langaa Research & Publishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookcollective.com ISBN: 9956-616-06-0 ©Francis B. Nyamnjoh 2010 DISCLAIMER All views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Langaa RPCIG.

Table of Contents Chapter One……………………………………………….. 1 Chapter Two…………………………………………..…... 7 Chapter Three……………………………………….……. 9 Chapter Four…………………………………...………..... 13 Chapter Five……………………………………………….. 19 Chapter Six…………………………………………..……. 29 Chapter Seven………………………………....…………... 43 Chapter Eight…………………………..…………………. 51 Chapter Nine……………………………………..……….. 65 Chapter Ten…………………………………………..…… 73 *Chapter Eleven……………………………...……………. 75 Chapter Twelve……………………………….…………… 87 Chapter Thirteen…………………………………………. 97 *Chapter Fourteen…………………………………………111 Chapter Fifteen…………………………………...……….. 125 Chapter Sixteen………………………………..…………... 135 Chapter Seventeen…………………….…………..……… 141 iii

Chapter Eighteen………………………………………… 157 Chapter Nineteen………………..……………………….. 167 Chapter Twenty………………………...…………………. 179 Chapter Twenty One………………..……………………. 197 Chapter Twenty Two……………………………………. 209 Chapter Twenty Three………………………………….. 219 Chapter Twenty Four…………………………………….. 231 Chapter Twenty Five……………………………………… 247 Chapter Twenty Six………………………………………. 255 Chapter Twenty Seven……………………………………. 271 Chapter Twenty Eight……………………………………. 281 Chapter Twenty Nine…………………………………….. 291 Chapter Thirty……………………………………………. 301 Chapter Thirty One……………………………………….. 317 Chapter Thirty Two………………………………………. 329 Chapter Thirty Three…………………………………….. 339 Chapter Thirty Four………………………………………. 349 Chapter Thirty Five……………………………………….. 361

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Chapter Thirty Six………………………………………… 375 Chapter Thirty Seven……………………………………... 385 Chapter Thirty Eight……………………………………... 389

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Chapter One oday, I am thirteen years in Botswana. I left Mimboland on T Thursday, June 10, 1997. It was probably 8 o’clock in the evening when I arrived at Gaborone by Air Botswana, but I couldn’t tell exactly because I didn’t know there were time differences between Botswana and Mimboland. The person who was supposed to pick me up at the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport never turned up. By God’s grace, some kind officials gave me their phone – the first time ever I was seeing or using a cell phone – to make a call. Luckily I had the phone number, so I called this person. He was not at home. His stepmother came and collected me from the airport. It was winter, and I didn’t know there was winter in Botswana. No one had told me there could be winter in Africa, so I had not prepared for anything other than the rain and sun as we knew them in the tropical forests and savannahs of Mimboland. When I was coming, I knew I was going to a foreign land, but I didn’t know much about Botswana. I didn’t have winter clothes, so I had a very bitter experience because winter in ‘97 was very severe. There was one of my homeboys who made fun of me, saying I was dressing like a night watchman, because of the way I used to pile clothes upon clothes on me to keep warm. When I came to Botswana, I came with the intention of doing business, the reason I gave to obtain my visa. While preparing papers for the business, I had a piece job with Sun Power, the biggest horticulturalist in Botswana. Planting plants is a lucrative business in this country, which is mostly desert and extremely hot in summer and where people always need shade trees in their yards and plants in their gardens.- Until I joined Sun Power, I didn’t know that an African could be different from another African. But I soon realised I was seen and treated as different. The Batswana would come and ask me, “Why do you speak like this?”

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“Where did you study?” And the first word I learnt was, “She’s a Mokwerekwere.” When I asked, ‘What do you mean?’ I was told, ‘You speak Makwerekwere-like.” During lunchtime, no Batswana would sit with me. I had two friends, boys, Zimbabweans. One was 22 years old, the other 23 and a half, and I was 24. These were the only people I could talk with. The only people I could share food with. If I tried to greet Batswana, they would speak to me in Setswana. I didn’t know there was any African who could not at least speak and understand a bit of English. At 10 o’clock, teatime, the tea girls would say, “Ah! Let that Mokwerekwere come and make her own tea.” I would say, “No problem. Ok. I’ll come and make my own tea.” When I got there to make tea, they would say, “Don’t put too much sugar.” I was like, “Are you the one buying the sugar?” We had this conflict because of my being a foreigner. I worked there for a couple of months, after which I left. Mr Quitdoqu, the person who brought me here, was staying in G-North, where life wasn’t at all easy for us. He wasn’t yet married, and we were staying three of us, with the would-be-wife’s sister. His house was a very funny house, like a camp, and at the same time a dumping ground for Sun Power, which mostly recruited hyper- cheap labour directly from Zimbabwe and Zambia through him, and for which he was paid a commission. He made us work hard and there was a day I even said, “I think my home is better than to be in Botswana.” The sister-in-law and I cleaned the house, did the plastering, did the painting, built the bathroom, and carried the burden of life in the house from day-to-day entirely on our shoulders, unassisted. When Quitdoqu finally got married, his wife did not realise that we were the ones who had constructed the house where she was coming to stay. She would say, “I don’t want noise as long as you are staying under my roof.” I’d cry. The cousin and I had more similarities than with this girl he married, who grew up in the United States and who lived her life

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like someone on TV. There was a great difference with us. The two of us reasoned differently from her. She would say, “You people from Africa, you are just so dull. You say you have A Levels. What is A Levels? It’s nothing! In America, from 11th Grade, we go to university, which means we are cleverer than Africans.” There was always an argument in the house, even though she was the youngest. She was really like a bitter African slave master. The treatment she used to give us I always attributed to the treatment of the African slaves in America in the olden days. She would remove her underwear and demand we wash it. If we were at table, she would say we should not take meat until she had had enough. “It’s my food and my money.” If you are going out, she would ask, “Immaculate, what business are you going for?” But when we asked her, “Kathleen, where are you going?” she would retort, “It’s my business.” When I think of Batswana having negative attitudes towards other Africans, on the other hand, I think, no matter where you come from, what God has created you to be is what you are. This girl who was not a Motswana was treating me like the Batswana of Sun Power did. So a good person is a good person, and a bad person is a bad person, no matter where you come from. I was engaged while staying with them, as I was making my visa to meet my fiancé, George Tsenchwaka, in the United States. But he changed his mind for no good reason. This was a bitter experience. I went through difficulties, not because my parents were not able to feed me back home, not because they were not able to further my education, but because they knew I was heading for somebody I knew well, somebody who had convinced them he wanted their daughter in marriage. When I informed him that I didn’t manage to obtain a visa, he said we should call off the engagement. Just like that. There was no conflict and no misunderstanding, just failure to get the visa. I don’t know whether or not he was economical with the truth of his real circumstances out there in the USA, but I was really hurt. How could George Tsenchwaka ever have claimed he loved me? To crumble without effort at the first hurdle is hardly a sign of love, is it?

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