A Quick Trip to Lyon, France

This is the beautiful French city of Lyon.  Let me tell you what I was doing there.  

When I was living in Cameroon, lo these 26 years ago, I took in a smart, sweet kid who had a very bad home situation.  He just needed a place to live...regular meals...and someone to care about him. 

This is the basilica on the high hilltop above Lyon.  It's much more ornate than the cathedral down below.

When this kid asked to convert to Christianity, which I did not pressure him to do, I "stood godfather" for him.  He's my godson, but he calls me his father...

That child is all grown up now, just like my biological children, but we still see each other as often as possible.  He lives in Cameroon, and I go there from time to time, and he's come to the US on two separate occasions. 

Here's one of the Protestant churches in Lyon.  The French Reformed Church is essentially Presbyterian, the "Huguenots," and they were severely persecuted for centuries.  

But the Trump administration has banned all travel from 70 countries, Cameroon included.  Not surprisingly, the countries whose citizens can no longer visit the States all have populations where blacks or Muslims are the majority.  Which is to say, my adopted son can no longer come here to see me.

And this is the cathedral church of Lyon, where the bishop has his throne.

And so, we came up with a solution.  We would start meeting halfway between Cameroon and the US, in France.  This was especially ideal because my former housekeeper is now living in France and has been for the past 20 years.  (This "housekeeper" was really more a part of the family than a servant, kind of like Alice on The Brady Bunch.)  I hadn't seen her in 26 years.

I left Cameroon for good in July, 2000--well before social media and WhatsApp.  I lost touch with her and never knew what became of her.  On one trip back to Cameroon, someone told me she'd emigrated to Switzerland.  On a trip to that country in 2006, I looked for her but never found her.

I assumed--with great sadness--that I'd never see her again...until I made another trip back to Cameroon, and found that her aunt was still alive.  She gave me her telephone number.  We've corresponded on WhatsApp, but last week was the first time I'd seen her since the dark days when I got my sad drunken self deported back to America, two and a half decades (and a whole lifetime) prior...

So my godson and I met up at her place.  It was truly a joyous family reunion.  And Lyon is a really lovely place.

I mean, just look at this hotel room.  It has a bedroom and a separate sitting room with a view out over those quaint French streets.

The architecture there is so glorious and old.

The same sitting room by light of day.  It's so...French.

As a fan of sacred spaces, I could spend the rest of my life exploring Europe...

Of course, the churches get a lot more tourists than worshipers.

But there were actually 20 or 30 people just sitting or kneeling in the cathedral--pictured here--praying.  I've never seen so many people praying in a church in France.

There was a mass going on when we went to the top of the hill to visit the basilica on a Saturday evening.  The priest was preaching about the great need to love each other in these times.  

See the basilica high above, presiding over the city streets, just as St. Joseph's presides over my humbler hometown of Oil City?

I HATE it when people put photos of their food on Facebook.  But this fruit here?  It's savory, not sweet, and it's called a safout.  I loved safout.  It tastes kind of like green olives.  It's a common street food in Cameroon, but I hadn't had it in--again--26 years.  Due to the large immigrant population of Lyon, you can buy safouts in the open-air produce markets there.

Another woman I knew in Cameroon many years ago--one of my former housekeeper's closest relatives--spends her time between Lyon and Cameroon.  I saw her last time I went to Cameroon; she's the one dancing in the video below that I took in Ako'akas.  She was the wife of the principal at the school where I worked, now in her 80s.  She gave me this smart outfit to give to my wife...

It did my heart good to see my old Alice-character ("housekeeper") in Lyon--older than when I last saw her, but so, so happy.  She's married to a retired French plumber now, and he's perfect for her.  They're so affectionate with each other.

And here she is with her relative, mentioned above, weeping a little as they bid us goodbye.

It's strange.  I once believed that "relative" to be an evil person.  In my old Cameroon journals I consistently referred to her as "The Wicked and Powerful Madame ****."  (I'm not comfortable sharing her real name here.)  I didn't realize at the time that I was being used as a pawn in a power struggle that predated my arrival in that country.  A certain alcoholic pastor--who hated that woman and her family--happened to speak English.  He had lived in Atlanta in the 1970s and sometimes called me a "Jive Turkey."  Upon arrival in Cameroon, my French was still limited, and so I relied on this guy and ended up falling under his influence.  I should have known better.  He once officiated at a funeral so drunk that he fell into the grave, right on top of the coffin.  But it's strange, the things you'll turn to in a foreign land.  He poisoned my mind against a very sweet, gentle, kind human being...and it took me all these years to realize it.

Oh, the joy of this reunion--my little family from The House Behind the Mango Tree.

I need to spend way more time in France...