#17 - February 2010 - Dealing with Life Experiences (DEATH)...

  It’s my brother’s (Bonny's) comment on facebook yesterday that made me decide to put up this post on my blog. He’s right, it’s been a while. And He’s also right, that there are cobwebs lingering all over the blog. Lol. I know I say this all the time, but this time, these days, busy-ness has invaded my life. So much to do, so little time, and many self-imposed deadlines to respect. I thought I was liberated from all that after college. You know, the day I put the final full stop on my thesis paper, (which was the last work I submitted in my college years), I thought the stress of Crunch time, and Deadlines, and too Little time for too much work, would not catch me again in the very near future… but I was wrong. Here I am today, still crunched by time and too much work.

What’s happening in my life now is that I’m planning the First Social Entrepreneurship Competition in Cameroon!!!! It’s Exciting. It’s 72hrs away – Friday, March 5^th (which happens to also be St Olivia’s day :) So I’m even more convinced all the forces of heaven will be on our side!). The lowlight is that we are still 400dollars short on logistics and stuff (mics, projector, transportation, communication costs, per diems, etc), yet the HIGHlight is that we have 30 qualified, dynamic and extremely interesting students selected in a pool of 95 students in Yaounde, coming from 8 out of 10 regions of Cameroon, representing 11 Universities in Yaounde, ranging from 18 years old to 35 years old… In short, they are representative of Cameroon’s youth, sooo… The game is on! The best shall win! Oh, and the second Highlight of course, is that the US embassy is sponsoring the prizes for the Top-4 contestants. That’s a double-YAYYY!!!

Anyhow, I will speak more about this upcoming event in the next blogpost. I’ll have a “Harambe-Cameroon First Social Entrepreneurship Competition (Elevator Pitch Contest) in Cameroon.” That will make more sense when I break it down later.

For now though, I’d like to share this journal entry, I jotted down on my laptop 2 weeks ago, after a series of events in my life that got me reflecting on life. At first, I was hesitant to share this gloomy post on the blog, especially after getting more feedback from friends saying they are so inspired by my experiences and reflections. I thought, I shouldn’t depress people with this post. But, come to think of it, in my attempt to be absolutely genuine – with my Kmer Thoughts, Reflections and Experiences, whether good or bad, happy or sad – I will share this post I wrote 2 weeks ago on a major life learning experience I went through - Dealing with death.

Sunday, February 14^th, 2010

You know, we take life sooo much for granted!

Until you witness a friend who is devastatingly saddened and physically withered by the death of her father, until  you see your cousin in a hospital bed sick to the bones, literally, sick-to-the-bones, that you realize that this life, this life man, that we often take as given, is truly a gift.

Today I witnessed, within the span of 3 hours, 3 life experiences that got me deeply thinking- From death, to birth, to critical sickness. It really got me thinking because I witnessed all three experiences back-to-back within such a short period of time.

First, my older sister (who just came back from Paris, for just 2 weeks), my 3 cousins (Yannick, Yvan, Armand) and myself went to visit my sister’s childhood friend, who had lost her dad 4-5 days before. As we entered her house, it was graveyard quiet. We walked passed the front yard, went through the back yard, and got to the back door,  and shouted if “anyone was there?” no response. My sister went in the house, and met her friend’s mom. She was in a prayer group. They called out for my sister’s friend, and 10 mins later she was sitting with us on the white chairs placed in the backyard (for friends and family coming over to bid their condolences). She told us how everything happened.  It was so sad, I tell u, especially to hear her speak, so softly and with profound pain about how unexpected the death of her dad happened. I remember her constantly saying “Papa voulait toujours qu’on …”/ “Papa essayait toujours de nous unir”… She kept calling her dad « daddy. » For me, that endearing word summarized the love there was amongst her Daddy and his daughters. She tried to describe how downhearted she felt, but we could only imagine; while dreading the same experience happens to us, in the near future. It will happen eventually, God-willing, in a couple of decades!

Right after that, we went to visit another friend of my sister’s, who happened to have delivered twins a week or so before. As we entered the house, the atmosphere was clearly much different than in the previous house.  We could hear the sound of TV upstairs tuned on DisneyChannel or Manga, and her 3 older boys shouting while watching. My sister’s friend came down stairs with the two adorable twins – a boy and a girl. We spent most of out time contemplating those beautiful tiny human beings. They were whaow! It’s always a mystery to see how such a gorgeous creature comes out of that woman’s bele. It’s such a beautiful and divine phenomenon.

One by one, her 3 sons came down stairs, probably curious to see who the visitors were. Before we left the house, they were jumping, screaming, playing, and fighting against each other. Little boys!  We left the house feeling merry and jolly and .lively!

The next and final stop of the night was to visit my cousin at the Clinic not far from my house. Mom told us our cousin was gravely sick in the clinic. She insisted we pay him a visit ASAP. Borel, aka bebebo, my cousin at the clinic, had just come back from Tunisia on Saturday morning (It is Sunday evening). As we got to the clinic, the guard first told us the visiting hours are over; we should come back the next day. I insisted we were close family, and reminded him that I was a patient in that Clinic a couple months ago. He let us in. We were still the 5 of us – My sister, my 3 cousins, and myself. We lined up to enter the room. I was at the front of our queue. I opened the door of the room, stepped inside, and my heart tightened… That first sight I had of him in bed will for a long time be engraved in my memory. For those few seconds glimpse, I could not believe my eyes – he was sitting up on his bed with his green shirt on,  his  face – pale and diminished to the bones, his lips white and dried up, his beard and hair pitch black,  while his skin tone had become yellowish...It took me a second to instantly remove the shock on my face. I could sense the shock in everyone’s eyes, but we had to play cool –All I could utter was “gars, c how?”/”yo how u doin?” Which with retrospect was a very clumsy question, given the state he was in… but he acted cool, and what stroke me was that, despite his physical weakness, his eyes were glowing, and he welcomed us with a radiant smile. As we all (the 5 of us) found a sitting area next to his bed, with his brother present, we started talking, chatting, laughing. Yet still wondering, “how could he have lost so much weight in the span of 5months?”  Someone I remember seeing 3 years ago, looking like a 90kg college kid, today was comparable to the men they often show survived the Holocaust camps, weighing about 45kg. Don’t know if you can imagine the drastic physical change! Again, his physical body was diminished, but his spirit was larger than life. He kept making jokes, sweet-talking to the nurse (calling one honey, the other darling, lol). He really made us forget he was sick and in pain. We had a great time. Before leaving the room, we all held our hands together, and prayed together for his recovery. As we left the room, we told him “see you tomorrow, sweet dreams”, and he smiled and said “bye.”

I got back home with a crowding (in lack of a better adjective) feeling of discomfort, and anxiety. It was too many experiences at once. Very hard to digest in a short period of time.  It got me thinking… really thinking about this life we are living. You stress about extra pounds while there’s someone painfully skinny in the Clinic, trying to gain weight… you get mad at your father when there’s someone crying her for one extra day with her dad…., you complain about things not working as planned for the next weeks and months to come, while there’s someone in the hospital, praying, begging the Lord Almighty to give him the strength to see just one more day, an extra day with his loved ones… This Life we take so much for granted, is a gift! Be conscious of that, and be grateful for that.

We are all hanging by a Breadth! The Breadth of Life. And as God gives, so He takes. While one of my sister’s friend was rejoicing over the two breathing creatures she has at home, the other friend was crying the end of breadth of her dad, and my cousin was fighting in the clinic for that very breadth of life.  The BREADTH of life.

Unfortunately, it’s usually tragic events that hit home, and bring us back into perspective. Today I have learned vicariously through these people’s experiences. I’m still feeling so anxious. I feel like I have some hot air in my throat, and something blocking my chest from breathing freely. I might just be introspecting too much and stuffing myself with emotions and feelings. That’s the word, I feel stuffed with emotions inside. I’m in between disgusted and anxious.

Everyone has their way to deal with different shocks in life. Some drink. Others smoke. Some get high and evade in another world. Some go partying, others have sex… at the end of the day, we try to deal with it, usually by avoiding it. I mean, we try not to confront the problem, we prefer finding refuge in other things that would help us evade the circumstance we are facing.

Death is a subject most people love procrastinating on. It’s very discomforting to start thinking about it. Yet it’s inevitable, we – and our loved ones – will all go through it. Hence, we better start thinking about it, and coming to terms with it. I’ve noticed, a lot of people I know see death as a punishment. Like, when someone dies, people wonder “what did he do wrong?” “did he die because he deserved it?”, or if it’s someone losing a brother/sister or a parent, people I know often act like it’s a punishment on the person. People often become stigmatized because they are orphans. Like it was their fault. Like we all wouldn’t become orphans one day (and God forbid, you die before your parents, that’s just the worse scenario… a parent shouldn’t bury their child!). I don’t know if you kinda get my point… and I don’t know if you have made similar observations too… try to see, usually, I have seen, when a friend loses his/her dad, his/her mom, people react kinda as if the person had a contagious disease, or as if the person got punished. But if death is our inevitable destination to another life; then we should stop mystifying it, and seeing it as a punishment, or as baduck, or as an unfortunate thing, but rather as the natural process/cycle of life.

That’s why for me,  I try to make the best of situations, to be at peace with everyone in my life, not only because I have forged my character to be automatically attracted to those emotions, but also because deep inside I’m conscious that, we all hang by a breadth of life, and from one second to the next, that person might lose his breadth of life. It’s a thought I always keep in mind, when parting with people, or when I have a fight with someone, that from one minute to the next I might hear that the person passed away.  Imagine! Imagine you had a nasty fight with the person, and parted on bad terms, That’d just be horrible! You have a fight with the person, you leave on bad terms, and the next thing you know the person has died. Hmmmmm…. You will live with guilt all your life, just because you were ego-tripping. For me, my philosophy, and the way I chose to live my life, is to try to be at peace with everyone at all times, or at the very least never leave an unfinished relationship in the negative tone. I tell u, it would bite me up insiiiiiide! I rather be at peace with my inner myself than at fake-peace with my outer self. So, sometimes when things don’t work out my way, or I have a fight with someone, there’s that thing in me that tries its best to mend the situation, cuz you never know…and I won’t leave chance to chance, I would rather prevent a broken heart than cure it.

One of my friends told me I over think. I think too much about these issues and it might paralyse me. Actually, thinking about these matters of life awakens my conscience, and it allows me to live more freely and intensely. Because, I realize each and everyday that life is simple, life is fragile and life is precious. And so, I avoid stressing, I try not to make problems, I try not to absorb things on me, and victimize myself infront of situations…  I embrace life, I try to collaborate rather than confront, and I wake up in the morning always ready to shine! (This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shiiiine… this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shiiiine… (u know the rest of the song!)).  I seek to have a constant (or predominant) state of joy in my heart. No matter if I get stabbed in the back, if I don’t deliver things on time, if my expectations of someone or myself deceive me… I honestly try to not take it personally. I would say “such is life!” and move on. By the way, that statement has caused me trouble before, lol. Because, as I tried to rationalize a situation my friends and myself were in and move on to make the best of the night,  one of my friends got offended. She got mad at me cause I said “such is life!” She was mad because I didn’t want to dwell on the problem. It’s funny with retrospect. But that night, aie aie aie, I was like the number one criminal accused at a tribunal! Loool. But man, I don’t dwell, I just don’t dwell on problems. That’s not me. Solutions are my portion.

I just want to live naturally, without calculating, without manipulating, fearlessly, genuinely, intensely, lovingly, I just want to Be, Be me. I just want to Be. I don’t want to play games, I don’t want to be fake, I want to love, I want to give, I want my words to have much weigh, that what I say I should always mean. I think there’s too much game playing, too much acting, people speaking empty words, people trying to be who they are not, self-protecting, war-making instead of love-making … Why can’t we just BE, Be who we are without playing, joggling, cheating???

(I just stopped typing to reread what I wrote from the beginning), and rereading what I write, I kinda sound like a psychic-evangelist-kumbaya-young-and-naïve woman wishing for the world to be a “better place for you and for me” , hahah. I can imagine some people thinking “she needs to come back to earth”, or another saying “another kumbaya-woman”, lol… I know I know! That’s me. I’m not fake. I write what I feel and what I think. Matter of fact, I don’t even know who reads this. Lol.  I’m sure not more than 5 people would even read what I’ve written in this paragraph.

If what they say about black people is true, i.e if you want to hide a secret from a black man place it in a book, then this blog/journal might be a safe haven for my thoughts, reflections and experiences. Lol. But obviously I don’t believe that joke on black people. I have friends who surprisingly have commented on some of my posts.  I  kinda have drifted from my original plan to narrate my experiences in Kmer – to narrate more on experiences, than “philosophize” on life and my beliefs. But who cares? This is my blog anyways, and I can’t dissociate the thinker in me, with the narrator in me!

Thought is discomforting. It is. When you think through things, with a certain degree of depth, you often feel uncomfortable. It’s kinda like what that documentary calls “going down the rabbit whole”, you go down and down and down, in depth, what Satre called la descente d’orphee (If I recall well), in Orphée Noire… You have to go deep down to find the real you, to find some truths within, in order to come out as a new being. As we go deep, and start questioning our believes, prejudices, and presumptions, we kinda lose our balance since we are drifting away from our comfort zone...  It’s that feeling of discomfort that we often run away from, and so, we procrastinate on thought. As one scholar (I don’t remember) said, “we choose to enjoy the comfort of opinion over the discomfort of thought."

Monday, February 15^th, 2010

It’s 7:32am in the morning, my aunt just called my mom to tell her my cousin passed away in the night.  Oh God! Hmmmmmmmmmm…..what can I say? Hmmmmm…. I just want to keep typing, to get off all these emotions running in my mind. But I can’t even start explaining how I feel inside. I can’t cry. Deep down I feel troubled. Seems like I felt this was coming yesterday. I had the same feeling yesterday evening as I had 6 years ago, when we went to visit my mom’s friend in the hospital and she died the next morning, I felt the same way as I felt 3 years ago when my 2 year-old half-sister fell in a coma and we started praying for her soul. It’s that fear of fatality that was crowding me yesterday night. That subconscious awareness of the death-to-be of someone I just saw. I felt those emotions heating up inside... and now I’m mixed up inside.  

Everyone deals with death in different ways. My sister is sitting on my mom’s bed, thinking, meditating or praying. My mom placed her hands on her head and kept weeping. My cousin Yannick stopped what he was doing for about 5 minutes, then left for work. I am here, typing up my emotions, trying to spill it out so I don’t have it bottled in me. I still can’t find the right words to express it. But I just want to keep typing...

My cousin died of a Liver Cancer. His liver and his lungs were totally destroyed. That’s why he had a yellowish tint to him, because the bile in your liver is not automatically regulated anymore, and so it spreads in the body (doctors, please correct me, but that’s what I can remember my doctor-friend telling me). My friend, who is in her 6^th year of medical school, explained that cancer can make you lose 20kg in a couple of weeks. It’s crayzy!!!

I have to go now though, we have to go down to my aunts place to mourn together. Honestly, I dread burials. I  dread that atmosphere that welcomes you when you enter a house of mourning. I dislike seeing mothers and aunties crying and rolling themselves on the floor. I don’t like seeing the dead bodies, I rather preserve the last image I had of the person alive (‘cause that last sight in the coffin always always stays in my head, not in a positive way). I try to avoid to the best I can, being physically present at burials. It actually surprises  how curious people are here, to wanna see the dead body at the Morgue, then at home. You hear people speak, and they are “looking forward” to seeing the corpse at the morgue. Hmmm…. I do not understand that. Despite how I feel about burials though, I feel I need to deal with it and go through it with everyone else. I need to let go of what ‘I’ feel, and try to be there, present with the family. 

It’s craayyyyyzyyyy though! I still can’t believe it. Bebebo. Hmmm…. He is present in practically all our childhood memories. And his momma… I cannot even start comprehending the pain she has in her heart right now. This is her second son she loses at the age of 26. Nine and a half years ago it was Armel. It’s sooo sad. sooo sad! I wanna say “such is life”, but I feel it’s not yet time to say that. For the moment, I’ll just stop typing, and try to digest (if it’s at all digestible) with my family this tragic news.

Borel, Bebebo, mon grand frère I will miss you. Till the end you got us laughing, you kept our spirits up, you kept us hoping. We will always love you. We will always cherish the wonderful memories we have been blessed to share with you on this earth. Just thinking of you now I have a smile on my face despite the sadness that’s in my heart. You fought like a soldier, but you had to go now. I know you are in a better place. And until we meet again, May your soul rest in perfect peace.