No Longer a Yovo

Here in the north, I'm not a yovo anymore. The local term for white person is 'batoure' (bah-TWO-ray). Children and adults alike call me "batoure" as I pass through the village. However, those in the know call me "Bake" (Bah-KAY), my local name, meaning 'third daughter'. Only three people in the village actually know my real name, but they call me Bake as well. Today, humorously, my colleague yelled at some children who had addressed me as Bake and told them to call me Batoure instead. She had assumed I was offended at being call by my first name by children.

Since the youngest children in the village have never seen a batoure before, many of them are scared of me. This includes all of the neighbor children who live in houses around my courtyard. Their mothers take a perverse delight in dragging their children towards the scary batoure, knowing the children will run away screaming in fear. I don't think they've considered that I am perhaps not particularly flattered at being the local monster who terrorizes the children.

Today, one neighbor mother was chasing a child around with a live bat on the end of a stick, enjoying watching him scream in fear. Then she saw me walking by and told the child about the scary batoure who was near, forcing the child to choose to run from either the bat or the batoure. Which is more frightening?

All things considered, I suppose my blog title would be more accurate as "Two Months as a Yovo, Two Years as a Batoure". Yesterday, however, I did hear a child call me "Yovo". It turns out it was the shopkeeper's daughter, who knows the term because her father is from the south. There is something comforting about being a yovo again, if only for a moment.