Men Holding Hands

Northern Cameroon is a very macho society, your run-of-the-mill male-dominated kinda place.  Men sitting under trees while women are in the fields, men searching for those elusive four wives (Mohammed had four, so you can have four), that kinda thing.  Women are expected to do all the cooking, cleaning, and raising of the kids.  Peace Corps also told us during training that Cameroon is a very homophobic country.  The old country director, who liked to only tell us trainees PC horror stories like Aesop's fables that end in violence and tricky domestic situations, told us one incident where a gay volunteer had to switch posts and leave his province because he came out to the wrong person.  He didn't tell us, however, how much men love each other here and aren't afraid to show it.

 

Men walk around holding each other hands.  Like all the time.  It's to show how much they like each other, I guess.  Two men will get up from sitting under a tree and then walk hand-in-hand to their next destination (possibly another tree).  One time on a bush taxi, the "porter" (guy that opens the door and collects money from people) was sitting next to a good buddy of his, and they were laughing, holding hands, touching each others' legs, like they were on a date for a good 45 minutes straight.  It's the strangest thing seeing a group three high school dudes going back home after class draped all over each other.

 

Here's something I'd never thought I'd say a year ago: Guys have tried to hold my hand, and I have to shake them off.  It all starts with a handshake and then if you start walking in the same direction, the guy goes for the hold, and then I have try to politely get my hand away from his as fast as possible.  Sometimes it's tricky because they hold my hand and I'm only walking maybe 10 or 15 feet somewhere, so do I recoil in horror or just go with it? (I recoil in action-adventure.)

 

You never see a man and a woman holding hands or show any sort of PDA walking around town.  It's like guys got so macho here, and maybe homophobic, that they can hold hands and be all lovey-dovey, almost like athletes and rappers wearing jewelry or grown men watching professional wrestling, except you'd probably get beat up if you touched 50 Cent.