With Jupiter in Sagittarius my longstanding friendship with gym pal, Denis from Cameroon has expanded. We now talk on the phone…

Briiinnng! Briinng!”

“Hello?”

“Ilsa, this is Denis.” He has an accent. I like how he says my name.

“Hey. How are you, Denis?”

“I called to find out what you’re doing today. Me? I’m going to a baby shower.”

I laughed.

“Why are you laughing, Ilsa?” he asked. He is a very elegant way of speaking.

“I… I guess I didn’t know men went to baby showers,” I said.

I found it hard to picture. Denis is rugged sort of man, except for his clothing which is always interesting. He favors yellow for example. He has yellow shoes, etc and says when he can’t find yellow, he buys purple. His clothing is always striking and immaculate. Bright yellow in combination with white, or solid purple.

“Well they do,” he explained. “I am going to one today.”

“I see.”

“We have a support group,” he said.

“Support?”

“Yes. It’s a support group for people in the metroplex who are from Cameroon.”

I didn’t know what a metroplex was. I figured he meant “metro area”. “Oh.”

“Yes, one of the girls, she is pregnant. She is with child, so when that happens, this what we do. We all get together to support the family. It is very expensive to have a child here.”

“Yeah.”

“So one of the other families will host the party and we all show up.”

“Nice.”

“It is nice, Ilsa. When I had my two daughters (they are grown) we didn’t know anyone here and it was very hard.”

“I bet. So is this what they do in Cameroon? Do the neighbors come out and help when someone has a baby.”

“Not so much,” he said. “Not like they do here.”

“Oh. I thought it might be your culture. No… just the food. The food there will be culturally-based. We will have food from my part of Africa but the rest of it is here.”

“Sounds good, Denis. Sounds good.”

Do you belong to any culturally-based groups?