The Tontine

One day last week, Gramps told me that we would be drinking a lot of palm wine at Monsignor Mature’s house the following Sunday for some type of event. I had no idea what he was talking about and thought I must be misunderstanding him. However, I waited in anticipation for whatever this event would be. So Sunday rolled around and Gramps had me follow him deep into the forest in front of our house. After about a 20 minute walk, we finally arrive at very remote house that sat among some of the tallest and thickest palm trees I have ever seen. When I walked into the house, there were a large group of men sitting, maybe 20 or 25, and staring at the only white man in the room, me. I only knew a few of them but those I did know I slapped and snapped, which is a Lable greeting where one guy slaps another guy’s hand and then snaps his fingers with the other guys (I would be way too white to do this in America but I definitely get away with it here). Anyways, I sat down and before I knew it, money was being thrown on a table by all in the room. One guy pulled out 5000 CFA, another probably 15000 and then what looked lik the oldest guy in the room pulled out a giant wad of cash probably worth around 100,000 CFA. All of this was going into a huge pile on a table in front of me for some reason I didn’t know. A little bit of a side note: In Cameroon, there is no such thing as welfare, social security, or loans, for that matter. Therefore, each village has to come up with a way to produce money for those in need. In Lable, this comes in the form of something called a Tontine and this was the event Gramps had taken me to. All the men of the village had gathered to help out those most in need. In the end, three men were given relatively equal amounts of the all the money. Then, a gigantic gas can and thirty or so cups were brought out. All celebrated with a large amount of palm wine that was in the gas can, which is probably why the palm wine tasted like gasoline. A la santé!!