Eid

Friday was Eid, the festival that marks the end of Ramadan for Cameroon's Muslims. (Come to think of it, it marks the end of Ramadan for Muslims everywhere doesn't it?). Here they call it "aladji" which I think comes from "el hadji" - one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. So anyone here who has gone to Mecca is referred to as "aladji."

Since Cameroonians of all religions love to party, Christians look forward to Muslim holidays and vice-versa. If you have friends from another religion it's normal to invite them to celebrate with you. So, Muslims go to Christians' houses for Christmas dinner, Christians break the Ramadan fast with Muslims, etc. A party is a party after all. Free food! Usually the only difference between parties here thrown by Christians and parties thrown by Muslims is that at the Muslim parties you drink soda instead of beer.

So, Friday night I was invited along with my friends Souaibou, Issa, Adamou, and Mr. Ndaki (all Christians) to the home of a Muslim friend in town to celebrate. He and his wife welcomed us with an enormous spread of food. We spent about two hours stuffing ourselves before heading home, and a good time was had by all.

Religiously, Cameroon is a mixed country. The majority are Christian (Catholic and Protestant) but there is a large Muslim minority which is concentrated in the north of the country with Muslim communities scattered throughout the rest of the nation. So, the two faiths are mixed. Every decent sized town in the country has both Christians and Muslims living next to each other. This is complicated by the persistence of many traditional (non-Christian and non-Muslim) religions as well. Many traditional religious practices are also blended with those Christianity and Islam as well, so if you go to a Christian church, you may well encounter rituals or customs that were part of the area's traditional belief system that have been incorporated into modern practices. So, religious lines can get pretty blurry here.

(A side note: there is a Jewish synagogue in Yaoundé near the Peace Corps office. I had had no idea there was a Jewish community in Cameroon until one night I saw a bunch of Cameroonians come out of the building all wearing yarmulkes. Blew my mind.)

The government here is officially secular, no religion is favored by the state, and all Cameroonian citizens enjoy freedom of conscience. On TV the news shows Muslims going to pray on their holidays and Christians going to pray on theirs. Polygamy is legal here, not just to accommodate Muslims but also those who practice traditional religions that are (usually) polygamous.

In general, there doesn't seem to be too much sectarian tension in Cameroon. I've run into a few Christians who say disparaging things about Muslims in general, and though I don't know too many Muslims I imagine there are those who say the same kinds of things about Christians. But, by and large people here seem to have a live-and-let-live attitude towards matters of faith.

My friends here at the University (which is a religious school) are quite proud of that. When I asked them once if there was a lot of religiously motivated violence in Cameroon, they scoffed at the idea. "What, kill someone because he is of a different faith? That would be stupid."

Yes, yes it would.