First Half

I am the treasurer and the commissaire de match for the Lagdo soccer tournament, which is the most responsibility I've had since I manned the fryers at the Zaxby's on the corner of Old 41 and Barrett Parkway two years ago.

This bizarre situation started a whole year ago, at least the germination of the idea. When my APCD, my boss, came to Lagdo for a site visit last July, we met with the local doctor to talk about possible work collaborations. The doctor has since gone to Belgium to work on some other degree, but one idea he had was to do something for the summer soccer tournament, which I didn't even know existed. By that time, it was too late to get something off the ground, especially because I had only been at post for eight months and didn't know up from down outside of the CARE bubble, but I kept the tournament in the back of my mind for rainy season '08 work possibilities.

This time around, sometime in May, I asked Yotti if he knew who organized the soccer tournament because I had the idea that I would find out the teams and do animations with them during their practices. Yotti eventually got me in touch with the main organizer, a guy named Jules who I recognized as a Lagdo political insider, and asked if it was okay to do animations with the teams and if I could get the names of the coaches. He told me he was d'accord with the idea, except that he didn't know the teams and coaches because the tournament hadn't been announced yet. Jules said that they get the teams through a bunch of radio announcements and they wouldn't go out for another couple weeks.

It started creeping into June and I knew the tournament would start in a few weeks time, but still no word from Jules. Eventually, he found me at a friend's call box and told me to come to his office, which is at the sous-prefecture. I went there, and I was surprised by two things: First, he asked me to give a signed letter from him and the mayor to my post mate, who, I saw by reading the letter (it wasn't in an envelope or folded or anything… Gotta love it sometimes, le Cameroun.), was donating some books to the library that the mayor's office runs, including a book I let her borrow months before. I'll give anyone in Lagdo $500 if they read Underworld by Don DeLillo and can explain it to me. (Peace Corps Volunteers are exempt from this offer, and I have half a mind to just steal it back. What was my post mate thinking? Old Newsweek's are one thing, but a Don DeLillo novel?)

The second thing that surprised me was that after I gave Jules my spiel again about wanting to do animations with the soccer teams, he just ignored that and asked me to become the commissaire de match for the soccer tournament. Not really knowing what in the world he was talking about, he explained that it would entail going to the soccer matches, signing some papers, and basically overseeing that some aspect of the tournament was in order. As you can see, I still didn't know what the position was, but I was actually kind of honored because I know how serious people take soccer here. People take it so seriously that even if a bunch of guys are playing a pick-up game, fans on the sidelines will still ridicule players if they mess up. They're like SEC football fans in that way.

So, the whole "I'm here to do health work" thing didn't really sink in for Jules, and I figured I would have to go about working with the teams myself. Ça va. I waited again for the next step, the radio announcements, even though I try not to listen to CRTV when I can help it. (CRTV is Cameroon Radio and Television, the state TV and radio stations. What I really like about it is the news theme music. It's really catchy.) Jules eventually found me again one morning, this time in front of Yotti's (I've become bien integré in the sitting around and watching the world pass by aspect of Cameroon), and asked to meet me to talk about the tournament later in the day, so we decided to meet at 17h (5 PM) at the boutique. When he came up to the boutique later at the designated time (well, around that time), he told me to go to a bar a little farther down the street. I hopped on my bike and came to the bar, which wasn't really a bar at all, just a sand pit with a lone table with three chairs, two occupied by Jules and another politically connected guy, with the third one obviously designated for me. I felt like I was being wooed by someone trying to recruit me for something, which I guess I was. When I sat down, it felt appropriate to say, "I want a fifth year with a no-trade clause or else I'm going to the Yankees."

We got down to business by filling in the organizing commission bureau (cabinet). (I shouldn't say "we," it was Jules and Hayatou, the other guy, naming people they knew. This whole exercise made me realize how out of touch I am with most of the RDPC folks in the 30-40 age range in town.) I counted twelve positions on the cabinet – for a six-week soccer tournament, mind you – and we went through them: President, First Vice President, Second Vice President, Secretary General, Adjunct Secretary General, Treasurer… When we got to treasurer, though, Jules put my name down.

"You want me to be treasurer?"

I wasn't prepared at all for this. Before I had an idea of just showing up to the matches and timekeeping, which is what the commissaire de match essentially does, but now they wanted me to have actual responsibility with an important position like Treasurer. I agreed and laughed to myself, "Of course they want the white guy to be in charge of the money."