Stories from Cameroon or the mysterious freak: Part I

Met him the first day there, at the hotel lift. I didn’t even know we were going to work together. You know how these lift rides are, kind of embarrassing. Two unknown people so close in such a tiny box. We said hi, and I wondered where was he from, because he didn’t sound French...I thought he was cute, good looking … there was definitely something about him.
At lunch time he happened to be inside our car with my colleagues…. Just as easy. We were all working for the same company there, so from then on, he joined us for everything, and we spend together all our time in Douala.
Thin, nervous… couldn’t stand still, beautiful sensitive hands, not very talkative although maybe compared to us, Spaniards nobody talks much…. And it’s also true that the guys, rude as usual, tended to speak in Spanish, so even if I tried to translate for him it was pretty difficult. I liked his accent though, very British.
When he mentioned that it was full moon I felt a kind of connection with him. I’ve always been touched by the beauty of the moon, or a sunset, or a view from a mountain top. I used to tell L. about it but he never understood me. He used to say, yeah… moon is huge tonight, so what??? . It’s nice to find people who share that feeling, who can vibrate with the same emotions … makes you feel much closer to them.
The first days A. was a bit disconcerting to me. I wasn’t particularly interested on him, but I caught him staring at me many times. Apparently I wasn’t the only one to notice that, since my colleagues started to tease me about him.… He took me by the hand to dance, pulling my arm and insisting when I said no, making me feel really embarrassed of being so close to him while everybody else was looking at us. I politely got rid of him as soon as I could. The thing is he wasn’t acting like a shy guy at all, until we he happened to be alone for the first time. I was having a drink with one of the guys and A. joined us. My colleague had to go unexpectedly and A. must have noticed the look I gave him begging him not to leave me alone. Not even 5 minutes after that, and even when we had barely sipped our drinks, he said… ok, lets go… I need to swim (btw it must have been like 1a.m.). Gosh… I was thinking… this guy’s a freak.
The first weeks we were really busy at work, so there wasn’t much time for fun and in the mean time L. was giving me such a crap time. By the time we finally finish job and started to chill out I was feeling so blue that I didn’t even feel like going out. While we were in that place with half-naked chicks (that’s what you get if you go out with 9 guys) I called L. telling him how sad I was and how much I was missing him, and all he told me was “Hakuna Matata”, don’t be sad and enjoy. When I came back I was on the verge of tears. A. was sitting opposite me… and he got up and came by my side, just to ask me if everything was OK. I was puzzled… were you calling home? He asked. Well, not really… but do you have any problem?... mmm…sort of. Don’t worry, you’ll be OK. I was so sincerely touched by his gesture that I had to go to the toilet to cry at ease. That was an inflection point. He won me that night. We were exchanging glances the whole night…I could see that he wanted to talk to me but I didn’t want to show any interest in front of my colleagues. I was avoiding him all the time… but when he said he wanted to go to bed I begged him to stay. And he did. We went to that dance club and he took me by the hand and moved away from my colleagues. Like 30 secs. after that he said let’s go back with them, and right after that he went to sleep. I didn’t dare to insist again and by then I was thinking he was a psycho.

Next day the guys told me that A. had been asking them separately if I was married and if I had a boyfriend. I was pissed. I mean, I asked him openly if he was married. Why that crap then, couldn’t he just ask me directly?. I was so puzzled. I was starting to have feelings for A. but I was totally confused.
Since we had finished the main part of the job the remaining days there were going to be relaxed… braais by the pool, trips to the beach…and I could feel that I was starting to loose control of the situation. To be continued…