Return to Cameroon

I'm here again. This place has haunted me more than any other country in Africa. I dream about it sometimes. It is a strange remembrance, though, because I feel everything I have ever felt here, instead of thinking of the individual images or discrete events. I feel the hot early-morning run on Palm Sunday years ago, on the hard packed red dirt road in Limbe, and I feel the onslaught of rain that followed, chasing us back to the ship. I remember the sound of the churchgoers singing, their voices echoing through the hills and the banana and palm farms. I remember a little girl in a pink dress, holding a palm frond over her head to protect her from the rain and the splashes she made in the widening puddles. I remember walking on the chocolate colored beach with Daniel, and working on my laptop while he slept on a bench, his cap set across his face, and the lizards that stopped by to say hello to us, running along the hot cement walls.
Last year, I remember the fish market, and eating fresh Barracuda with my fingers the way that Ombala showed me. I remember Ombala telling me that he would have a daughter and give her to me to raise. I still wonder whether he was serious or not. Will I have a beautiful little girl to raise someday? I remember driving the dangerous road between Douala and Yaounde where the timber companies extract more old-growth timber than my mind can fathom and where the timber trucks kill busloads of people all the time (as they did last week). I remember that Clement told me about his girlfriend, that he was saving money to marry her - saving enough so he could buy a cow. It would take him five more years.
Through all of these experiences, there was always Hans, waiting for me, waiting to hear my stories, waiting for me to come back safely and kiss him. In Cameroon, before, I always felt Hans.
And this year, I am in Cameroon, the country that has stolen my heart, and I find that the heart I share with it is a broken one. I am more broken than I have ever been. I am more alone than I have ever been.
Today, I learned that some of the locals bury their loved ones in front of their homes; when the time is right, they exhume the skulls and bring them indoors. They have conversations with the skull, ask it for advice. I feel that I understand this now. The memory of someone beloved is better than nothing at all.