A brilliant moon had quenched all but the brightest stars and the deep stillness of the bush was emphasised at intervals by companionable Egbert-noises. Although it had been an exceptionally strenuous day sleep continued to elude me and, when no Egbert-noises had been heard for some time, I pulled on my boots and went to investigate. In fact he was nearby, merely snoozing between courses, but finding myself soothed by the austere black and silver beauty of the moonlit bush I mooched further along the ridge. Would it, I wondered, be worth while returning to the bridge at dawn? If I didn’t, would I always feel that I should have?
Suddenly there was a precipice ahead and soon after turning back I began to feel doubtful about our camp’s position. However, this was only a mini-crisis; at dawn Rachel could rescue me by whistle. The only snag, apart from missing a night’s sleep, was that other people might then be around. That, I suppose, is how folk-legends start – when a white female wearing only boots is glimpsed in the bush at sunrise.
Half an hour later I accidentally wandered onto the path, which eventually took me back to where Rachel lay asleep beneath the moon. By then I had made my decision: I would return to the bridge.
That dawn journey was, in a limited sense, worthwhile. During the whole river-ritual/nomad episode we had been watched by several men in a nearby ailing truck. One had found the binoculars and taken them to the nearest compound on the assumption that we would be back to search for them. But the Fulanis refused, literally, to touch them. Possibly they feared this weirdly shaped White man’s fetish, possibly they imagined we might accuse them of theft. So the binoculars were taken to Bamenda where, their finder told the Fulanis, they would be deposited at the Catholic Mission. All this I discovered through an odd coincidence: as I reached the bridge two Anglophone soldiers, returning to Bamenda on leave, stopped to wash in the river and volunteered to be my interpreters.
Banyo lies in a sun-trap saucer half-encircled by rugged blue hills. Although bigger than Mayo Darle, and an administrative centre, it is not very big. We arrived at ten o’clock and sat outside a friendly bar while Egbert grazed nearby amidst the rusting corpses of jeeps. When two passing gendarmes paused to investigate us my assertion of femininity paid off; once my womanhood had been accepted, slight suspicion became astonished cordiality.
On Banyo’s colonial-flavoured northern outskirts, we met a young Anglophone woman doctor riding a mo-ped and wearing a leather jacket over a pretty frock. Being a scientist she didn’t misgender me but noted, ‘The daughter is very like the mother!’ – causing the daughter, naturally enough, to scowl. As we went on our way towards Sambolabbo she turned to follow us, looking slightly anxious.
‘Where can you sleep tonight?’ she asked. ‘Do you know you are walking into the bush? There are no towns this way, you will find no hotel – maybe no house, no compound!’
We explained that we had a tent and could sleep out.
‘You are not afraid?’ marvelled the doctor.
‘Afraid of what?’ I asked.
Her laugh was rich, musical, expressive. ‘Wah! You White people! This is why you people conquered all the world! No fear, all confidence! I will not sleep in the bush and I am educated, they say “Westernised”. But no, something would make me too much afraid … Not dangerous spirits – I don’t believe in them. Not dangerous animals – we have none here, only snakes. But the loneliness I would fear – you are brave, brave people!’ She shook hands again and zoomed off, shouting a last ‘ Wonder-full’ over her shoulder.
Fifteen minutes later the brave people collapsed under a crop-guard’s shelter of two loose tin sheets laid across four uneven poles. By then a strong wind was blowing – hot, dusty, gusty – and I remember that as our noisiest siesta. From here the Tchabal Mbabo, twenty-five miles ahead, was a faint but massive blur blocking the northern horizon. The Banyo-Sambolabbo motor-track ends at the base of the range and is virtually traffic free, even in the dry season.
Four long, hot hours, climbing gradually through arid, silent, uninhabited bush, brought us to a campsite where the grazing was so poor that Egbert had to be tethered. And the rock-hard ground left no alternative to tree-tethering, which meant my having to move him every hour or so during the night.
Before sunrise we were striding through the blessedly cool blue-grey dawn, breakfasting as we went. By nine o’clock the heat was brutal and all morning the broken scrubby terrain remained desolate, dessicated and, in Rachel’s view, dreary. I, being of another temperament, enjoyed it despite the heat. Baboons abounded and our track was littered with their left-overs – deleaved branches and gigantic empty pods. Also, in one of the few remaining patches of forest, we saw five colobus monkeys – compensation enough for any amount of desolate dessication.
Towards noon a turn of the track revealed an improbable green hill surmounted by a wide-spreading tree. When we had unloaded in that merciful shade Egbert sniffed disdainfully at the lush clover-type greenery, then perversely headed off into the bleached scrub far below. We struggled to write our diaries but the unparalleled blood-lust of the local flies made concentration impossible. We tried to Scrabble but our minds were too heat-clogged. We drank a lot of water and ate a lot of salt and took off all our clothes which made it much easier to combat the ants. As we were reloading, at two o’clock, the day’s only vehicle passed. It was, cheeringly, a small beer-truck with some thirty passengers perched on the swaying load of crates.
Within an hour we were in Mba, a friendly Muslim village, neat and clean. It has no overt bar but a kindly old man wearing a frilly yellow nightgown (bequeathed by a female missionary?) led us far off the track to an isolated thatched hut where full crates of ‘33’ and Top witnessed to the truck’s passing. The ex-nomad sisters who entertained us had heavily tattooed faces – elaborate blue patterns on foreheads, noses, cheekbones – and wore many malloum’s amulets. All protective devices are appreciated by the eclectic Cameroonians and it is not uncommon to see one person wearing a malloum’s amulet, a medicine-man’s charm and a Catholic priest’s ‘Miraculous Medal’.
The grazing was so good and the bar-hut so seductively cool that we lingered until four o’clock. One young woman was trying to remove a large thorn deeply embedded in her muscular forearm. She dug into the flesh first with a broken matchstick, then with the point of a rusty knife taken from a cavity in the wall, finally and successfully with a needle brought by her sister. She seemed indifferent to her self-inflicted agony though merely watching made us feel sore.
Outside, three naked pickins sat on tattered goat-skins in the shade, playing intently with identical-sized stones. Mba has no school and many older children wandered to and fro, pausing to gaze in wonder at Egbert’s load. They were clad in rags but looked cheerful, healthy and undeprived. Their futures may be all the more satisfying because they have escaped that personality-fracturing process which passes for education in most Cameroonian rural schools.
North of Mba aridity again prevailed. From a deep forested chasm on our left came bursts of fractious monkey noises and the rugged scrubland on our right was implacably hostile to campers. The sun had almost set when at last we came to smoothness: an expanse of hard red earth amidst scattered, gnarled bushes. Happily an Egbert-delicacy grew here in abundance, a low dark green plant with tiny white flowers. Knowing this to be his asparagus-equivalent, we turned him loose with an easy mind. Then, going to pee, I startled a two-foot-long black and green snake which slid swiftly under a rock.
There had been no food for sale in Mba and our own supper was meagre: a soup cube and stale Banyo bread for Rachel, mint-cake for me, nuts for both. We Scrabbled by moonlight, then unrolled our bags. The snake had prompted me to consider ‘sleeping in’ but Rachel protested that in such heat our cramped tent would be intolerable. As I lay scratching my fly-bites a few high wispy clouds drifted gently past the moon, seeming not like clouds but elegant silver ghosts.
Asparagus is more palatable than sustaining so Egbert was to have a day off in Sambolabbo,
before our ascent to 7,000 feet. A non-stop three-and-a-half hour march got us there before brutal heat time.
Sambolabbo, a large Fulani village, stands above the wide Mayo Mbamti and directly below the Tchabal Mbabo. We came first to a terraced row of newish houses and shops, with wide verandahs, where we consulted a youth about lodgings and grazing. He was an excellent sign-linguist who at once led us to his father’s nearby house. There we were graciously welcomed and shown straight into a disconcertingly affluent guest room. Our disgusting boots had been removed on the verandah; then, seeing a brand-new wall-to-wall nylon carpet, we hastily removed our no less disgusting socks. A double bed, with ironed cotton pillow-cases and an intricately woven counterpane, took up half the floor space. A low, plastic-topped table stood between two easy-chairs. The mud walls were white-washed and the wooden shutters of the unglazed window fitted perfectly. Our elderly host, Ibrahim Ali, was obviously a man of substance. Yet he spoke not a word of French, which puzzled us, given his man-of-the-world air. Later we heard that he speaks five African languages, apart from his native Foulfoulde, and it was hinted that his not learning French had been an anti-colonial gesture.
Ibrahim Ali was tall, slim, dignified, quiet-spoken. When our smelly dusty gear had been stacked in a corner of his guest room (where it looked very lower class) he handed me the door key. Impulsively I handed it back and to my relief he accepted the compliment. One never quite knows how to react on such occasions; he might have preferred not to be responsible for our possessions. But usually acting on impulse seems to work. And his never bothering to lock the door during our absence suggested that theft from a guest is unthinkable in Sambolabbo.
By ten o’clock Egbert was enjoying the riverside grass and we were thirsty. A small boy led us to the only bar, along a narrow path between compounds of various sizes, comprising two to six huts – mostly thatched, some tin-roofed. All were neat and clean, many had decorative shrubs or saplings. Some were enclosed by mud walls, others by high fences of woven grass or bamboo. Each had its prayer-space – raised circles of pebbles, six to eight feet across. In the more prosperous compounds these were edged with upturned bottles embedded in the ground, or with empty tomato puree tins, or whitened stones. Everywhere cocks strutted and crowed and hens and chicks scratched and clucked and cheeped. Outsize ducks waddled and quacked and we worried about their water supply. Invisible lambs bleated. Several elaborately caparisoned horses stood in the shade of mango or avocado trees while their riders did business in the market. ‘Not tethered,’ noted Rachel. Most Fulani horses, though whole, are extraordinarily docile and dependable. It was already very hot and few adults were about. Numerous small children stared at us, mesmerised, before rushing into their huts. Here, for the first time, we noticed significant numbers of unhealthy-looking youngsters: malnourished, with trachoma, jungle-sores and severely worm-distended bellies.
Sambolabbo’s only sink of iniquity was run by Andrew, a fat exuberant Bamenda man who had many other irons in the Banyo-Sambolabbo fire – and needed them, for the local bar trade is sluggish. He greeted us rapturously, rejoicing to meet two Irish topers with whom he – an urbane Bamenda Christian – could deplore the savagery of bush life in general and Fulani society in particular. (Most of the village’s few White visitors are teetotal missionaries.) He repeatedly emphasised his Christianity, and also his wealth of wives: a senior wife in Bamenda, a middle wife in Banyo, a junior wife in Sambolabbo. When he took Rachel to be my junior wife I explained, ‘Pickin for me’ and to short-circuit the gender argument unbuttoned my shirt.
‘Won-der full’ exclaimed Andrew, crashing his fist on the counter. ‘Hah! You White people! The women as strong as men!’ He glanced at Rachel, sitting in a corner pointedly dissociating herself from this scene of indecent exposure. ‘Pickin for you? But she is bigger than you! Won-der-ful! Where is your husband?’ He looked expectantly towards the door.
‘We’re travelling on our own,’ I explained. ‘I have no husband.’
Andrew wrinkled his face sympathetically. ‘Gone to God?’ he whispered.
‘I’ve never been married,’ I said.
‘Why?’ shouted Andrew, again crashing his fist on the counter. ‘Why no husband? Now you are old, worn out, grey and finished. But when you are young you must be like this fine pickin – you must have husband paying so much brideprice!’ He paused and narrowed his eyes. ‘Your family ask too much brideprice?’
‘It’s not like that,’ I said, ‘in Europe. Lots of women don’t marry. And a few who have no husband do have pickin.’
‘How many pickins you have?’ asked Andrew.
‘Only one,’ I admitted.
‘One?’ yelled Andrew, ‘Only one? Why only one? You have no son? Why no son?’
I began to wilt. Another short-circuit was indicated. ‘After this pickin,’ I said, ‘I am barren.’
‘Barren?’ Andrew whispered hoarsely. ‘Wah!’ As he covered his face with his hands I seized my beer and retreated.
Andrew stocked no Top so Rachel decided that the teetotal phase of her convalescence was over, which caused a sharp rise in our cost-of-living. Given a calculator and the inclination, it would be easy to outdo the USAF and produce a reliable map of Cameroon based on the price of beer. In Bamenda 100 CFA (about 22p) per half-litre, in Sambolabbo 275 CFA (about 60p) – and all along our route gradations that precisely indicated ‘distance from nearest city’ and ‘state of local roads’. When I exclaimed at the Sambolabbo price Andrew retorted huffily, ‘You have walked on this terrible way from Banyo, you should understand!’ Then we did; considering the wear and tear on the beer-truck, Sambolabbo’s ‘33’ was cheap at the price.
Andrew, having business elsewhere, soon left us alone but took the precaution of locking the counter opening. We wondered why; a thief could easily have surmounted that four-foot barrier. Perhaps because Sambolabbo is almost entirely Muslim, all beer crates lay under the counter and no bottles were displayed. The bar consisted of a semidetached mud shack enlivened by a catholic selection of technicoloured posters, printed in Nigeria. From left to right as one entered these were:
We had already seen most of these posters singly in other bars but the cumulative effect was particularly memorable – and, somehow, sad.
Andrew was now hammering tin sheets onto the roof beams of a new hut opposite the bar. When I proposed calling him to serve a second round Rachel said, ‘Isn’t it lunch-time? D’you realise we haven’t had a square meal since leaving Mayo Darlé?’
‘What,’ I speculated, ‘do round meals taste like?’
‘Soup cubes and nuts!’ replied Rachel.
Sambolabbo’s shopping-precinct – a rough-surfaced open space, overlooked by short rows of merchants’ stalls – has the atmosphere though not the shape of a town square. By far the biggest mud hut is a whitewashed mosque with an embryonic dome – a slight swelling on the roof. Opposite the mosque, appetising things were happening on a raised platform, under a tin roof. Charcoal glowed beneath half a tar-barrel, on top was a grid and on the grid were bits of what might loosely be termed ‘meat’. Sniffing like Bisto kids (an advertising allusion that dates me) we advanced on this gastronomically promising scene, ordered in sign-language and were invited to sit on greasy logs of wood. We realised then that we had queue-jumped; several hungry men were standing around nearby and very properly we had to await our turn. The log-stools were a concession to the visitors, but White queue-jumping isn’t on in Cameroon.
Fraternisation would have prospered had we been able to speak Foulfouldé. There were no women in sight but most men looked friendly, curious, amused – though a few closed, hard faces among the older generation suggested some anti-White (or anti-Christian?) bias. We did of course achieve a certain amount of communication: ‘From Bamenda – with horse – to N’gaoundere.’
No merchants operate in the Mbabo mountains and as we peered into a succession of shadowy shops, seeking supplies, the gender issue surfaced yet again. Sign-language was
then taken to its (bio)logical conclusion. After much unproductive argument I stood in the middle of the shopping-precinct and bared my bosom to the sceptical crowd, causing a hurricane of hilarity. This ploy would be worse than tasteless among Asian Muslims, but by then I had got the very different flavour of Cameroonian Islam.
Little food is sold in small towns or villages, where most families are self-sufficient. At last our increasing desperation was noticed by a kind young man – small, wiry, vivacious, with a few phrases of French. He led us to a tiny shop where three rock-hard loaves of bread, transported in times past from Banyo, lay on the counter under a strip of sacking. Gleefully we bought them. Elsewhere we collected two rusty tins of sardines, one expensive onion (25 CFA, about 5p) and five small bananas for the exorbitant sum of 50 CFA – bananas don’t thrive around Sambolabbo. Without our Somie supply of nuts the nutritional outlook would have been alarming.
While Rachel slept off her injudicious intake of beer, I relocated Egbert in his riverside field. Annoyingly, he seemed less interested in grazing than in a nearby herd of donkeys, including a pretty mare with a gladsome eye. We had already noticed that a donkey mare excited him like nothing else.
Several teenage boys, on their way home from school, greeted me, ‘Good mor-en-ing Sir!’
I was beginning to feel the strain of being habitually misgendered, an error only funny when occasional. Having talked to somebody (male or female) for half an hour, it is confusing suddenly to realise that the conversation might have developed entirely differently had the other party known the gender score. Given the low status of village women, this error may sometimes have been to my advantage, yet I always felt an impulse to correct it. Most White women of the late twentieth century don’t ‘think sexist’. One is simply an individual who happens to be female; not until one’s femininity is repeatedly questioned, and frequently disbelieved, does it become important. By the time we reached Sambolabbo I had decided that human relationships, everywhere, are quite complex enough without the Orlando factor.
Cameroon with Egbert Page 17