A Conversation With Mama Lendo

We are safely back home, in the rainforest (for the last 2 weeks now). We were sitting outside under the cooking shelter (mbanjo) with some of our Baka neighbors. Our kids were chasing our rooster and Mama Lendo was cracking up about it. They would yell at their kids if they were chasing chickens (unless they were trying to catch it to eat it), “Muffff!” But, for some reason it’s funny when our kids chase chickens. Here’s the conversation that followed:

Mama Lendo: Nathan, your rooster speaks Baka, I heard him while you were gone, he said, “Where’d Nathan go?” I answered him, “He’s in Yaounde”.
Us: What???
Mama Lendo (laughing a lot): You hear him? Now he’s saying, “Nathan’s come back home”.

All of us were laughing by then, and as we listened to the rooster crow “ir-rr-rr-ir” or as we say in English “cock-a-doodle doo”, we could “hear” him saying “Natan go aka-e?” and “Natan du a nda-o-e”. At that point, our cat walked by.

Me: Mama Lendo, does our cat speak Baka?
Mama Lendo: No, I haven’t heard her say anything…yet.