International Women's Day!

So, I've heard of International Women's Day, but I've never officially celebrated it. I was fully introduced to the Cameroonian way of celebrating this year and I can't think of any better way to celebrate. It's actually a really big day here and for weeks leading up to the celebration the tailor shops sell the dresses and fabric specially made for this day. There is one pattern that comes in two colors, bright pink and bright green. For as many women there are in Douala there were equally as many styles of dresses. It was really cool to see how many different styles could be made with this one pattern. Of course I had to get a dress, pink, naturally. Women get the day off work, but no one informed me of this, so I went to work, damn not understanding French well enough.

I celebrated the night with about 14 other women that are friends with my roommate. We started the night off in our matching dresses at the local fish restaurant and ate some delicious grilled fish and drank beer. I listened to their debates about women's rights and how women need to have more equality in education and their reasonings. All the women cheered and toasted!

Afterwards we headed to the local night club where we had our own table and bottle service reserved. We drank lots of whisky and shook our booties like crazy. My favorite part of the night is when they had my walk up to the male singer and make it rain!!!hahaha okay not really, but they did have me take a dollar bill and flash it around his face and then drop it over his head! Which he replied with, "Il y a une chinoise dans la maison ce soir!" (There is a Chinese in the house tonight!) and everyone cheered and then he asked "Comment elle s'appelle....?" And the group of ladies I came with yelled, "JESSICA!" for him, but he had my say my name into the microphone again and the whole club got a hoot out of it! I can't think of a better way to celebrate being a woman!