Day Of Small Beginnings

I sat on board Air France’s Monday night Yaoundé to Paris flight in seat 43C and watched the endless stream of latecomers boarding like they were running to catch a bus – not a transatlantic flight. I had thought I was one to frequently get called over the airport intercoms – but these Central / West Africans were giving me a run for my money.

At just shy of midnight I prayed the two seats between mine and the window would remain free so I could enjoy an Advil PM-induced sleep on my way home to London. But there were other plans for my journey.

The plans came into view with the advent of two pre-adolescent Cameroonian girls wearing giant Unaccompanied Minor folders hung around their necks. They looked shell-shocked and utterly overwhelmed into silence. The air stewardess who led them to 43 A and B uncovered that this was their first ever flight and began to explain the basics to them – where the call button was and how to push it if an adult touched them.

I began to have visions of Advil PM making me pass out onto one of the Cameroonian children and then a call leading to an online arrest for violation of the children. Now it was me who looked shell-shocked and nearly overwhelmed into silence. But I overcame my ironic trepidation at frightening the children and began to engage them in bits of conversation here and there.

As the plane accelerated down the runway I watched the girls experience this thrill for the very first time. I was struck by the fact that my first flight was at so young an age that I have absolutely no recollection of it. Fortunately, the thrill has somehow remained fresh for me over the last three decades. As we took off, the little one next to me crossed herself – all the while sniffing away tears – her older sister gave her a tissue and rested her hand on her leg in solidarity – or perhaps a little fear of her own.

When some stellar turbulence hit early on, the girls giggled in absolute terror. The plane bumped downwards a sudden few meters and little one grabbed my arm and laughed through the tears.

Things calmed down and I watched their excitement at the myriad choices on the touch screens in front of us, the meal, and the 1970s shade of beige eye visors. I found my own excitement at the same being rekindled by my young and fresh neighbors. The verse in Zechariah came to mind, ‘do not despise the day of small beginnings.’

My first flight had taken off over 30 years ago, but for these two girls from Yaoundé – headed to a new home in Paris to meet their mother – this was a big day of small beginnings. It was just a flight, but it was a turned page and a new chapter and a big deal. And it was terrifying, and tear-inducing, and wonderful all at once. The good thing about Economy Class is that it’s all in such close proximity – I got enveloped in the wonder and the terror of it all. The allure of three seats to myself had quickly faded.

It made me think of another point this week at which I thought of big days and small beginnings. On Saturday – as I stood animating the coffee cupping experience for dozens of Yaoundé’s Festicoffee visitors – my partner-in-crime, Mbula, was back at La Maison du Café running barista training for the new and very first Yaoundé coffee shop. The barista tools were still wanting – there was but one proper cappuccino cup, no real tamper, no brush – it was small beginnings. The banner proclaiming that La Maison du Café was now open stretched across the street triumphantly, marking this big day of small beginnings.

The graceful tour-de-force woman behind this dream is the Honorable Madame Patricia Ndam Njoya of Foumban. She’s royal by marriage and carries herself like a queen. She responds to crisis like a pond to a pebble – integrating an onslaught as quickly, smoothly and as beautifully as the water swallows the stone. I had watched her gather the women in coffee of Cameroon at our Thursday workshop with such authority, competence, and knowledge, that I was beginning to wonder where her skills and talents ended.

It was when I watched her slurp and spit the samples we cupped on my final day in Cameroon that I concluded that her skills and talents were indeed without conclusion – unending.

Saturday, as she welcomed the Minister of Trade to La Maison – with all the fanfare and press that Cameroonians love – she did more than to add a feather to her cap. L’Honorable – member of the African Parliament, minister of the legislative congress of the Cameroon National Assembly, mobilizer of women in the coffee sector, beloved wife of the King Ndam Njoya of Foumban, devoted mother to her three delightful children – was waking up to see her dream of a lifetime manifest itself in waking reality.

Mbula watched the weight of this historic moment playing out in her midst as she ground and tamped and steamed and poured cappuccino after cappuccino. This Kenyan had witnessed and played a part in the evolution of coffee in Africa over the last decade – Mbula was easily able to imagine what was going to unfold in Cameroon’s coffee sector and coffee culture in years to come. She was able to recognize this as a big day of small beginnings.

The press and Minister and entourage crowded and filled up the tiny coffee shop and in this close proximity, Mbula found herself enveloped in Patricia Ndam Njoya’s wonder and excitement. It was almost more than she could bear. The obstacles and nuisance of limited barista equipment quickly faded. So much more can be borne when you’re in a day of small beginnings.