Cameroon with Egbert

by Dervla Murphy

  Being a female Fulani does however have some compensations. Unlike their Bantu sisters they are not, usually, expected to do field-work. The Fulanis scorn agricultural labour and, despite having many strapping sons, Mohamadou Ali employed three men at this season – two from the plains and a young Nigerian, Kojo, who joined us after supper.

  This was Kojo’s fourth year to work in Cameroon during the planting season. ‘One month is enough because the work is very hard – all daylight hours seven days a week.’ He echoed what other Nigerians had told us; his five-day walk across the border was well rewarded by 3,000 CFA (nearly £7) per day. ‘But twice on my journey I must sleep in the bush because there are no compounds. Then I walk all night and sleep in sunlight when I am not so afraid.’ Kojo despised all Nigerian politicians. ‘They are always, always fighting among themselves – who can have most power to make money! Why not leave one man in control for ten years and see what he could make of our country? We are bitter about taxes – all ordinary people are bitter. We pay taxes on man, wife, huts, gardens – I’m only a poor bush boy but I know it’s wrong!’

  As we talked countless pickins were peering around corners, eyes wide and fingers in mouths.

  Kojo remarked, ‘These Fulanis, they live like cattly (sic)!’ But his tone was merely condescending, not jeering as that of Moses had been. ‘They are honest but foolish people. Here in Adamawa they have so many thousands of cattly, worth millions and millions of francs. If they sold half they could build good schools and hospitals and then their government would help them. But no, they will be sad about selling one or two cattly if they must – it is crazy!’

  Before retiring we distributed gaudy postcards of London among the children, who, being unused to seeing pictures, couldn’t work out how to look at them. If you live in Djem, Big Ben must seem equally baffling whichever way round you view him. Then, noting adult covetousness, we continued our distribution and these exotic gifts excited Kojo and Moses no less than the pickins. Our host arrived then, to say goodnight and goodbye; he would have left for Banyo even before the Murphies swung into action. To dash such a man would be worse than inappropriate; so we dashed some of his sons instead, next morning.

  From Djem two sons escorted us for about three miles, the musical boy all the time playing a thin, sweet melody on his reed pipe – a fitting farewell to a place I shall always remember. On the crest of a high ridge, below a pyramidal rock-summit, our guides pointed out the main path without mentioning its destination. ‘It’s certainly the road to somewhere,’ said Rachel. And it did look important: a broad red cattle-track, visible for miles as it crossed the opposite golden-grassed ridge beyond a shallow tree-filled valley. That grass was beautiful but ominous; here the rains were three weeks late.

  One of the trek’s two serious quarrels marred that forenoon. As we agreed while flying home, two quarrels in three months of twenty-four-hours-a-day proximity was not a bad record. But, being unused to mother-daughter dissension, both clashes at the time felt catastrophic. On this first occasion we were equally to blame and I intuited that an important ingredient was Rachel’s post-malarial state. The Tchabal Mbabo, though akin to Paradise, is exceptionally tough going – not at all the sort of terrain Mungo Park would recommend to someone recovering from ‘the fever’. So we decided, when we had stopped sulking and were again amiably communicating, to descend sooner than planned and return from the eastern end of the range when Rachel felt stronger.

  This momentous decision was taken during siesta-time, by which stage ‘the road to somewhere’ had long since disintegrated into a selection of equally important-looking tracks. We were close to a dejected, one-hut compound from which two ill-nourished toddlers peeped nervously while we lay in the sun chewing raw cassava. As we were about to move off their mother, clad in rags, returned from the fields, beckoned me to the stake-fence and offered milk by miming cow-horns and the act of milking. She signed us to sit and wait and a moment later we saw smoke and realised that a fire had been lit for our benefit. (Normally fires don’t happen until sunset.) The dish of boiled milk must have held at least three pints but our benefactress indignantly refused any payment: her eyes flashed with temper at the very idea.

  As we went on our way Rachel said gloomily, ‘That’s those hungry toddlers’ lunch gone down our well-fed gullets!’

  ‘Don’t!’ I groaned. ‘I wouldn’t have accepted if I’d known – I was going to give her 500 CFA. Why are the poorest so often the most generous?’

  Not long after we saw an extraordinary sight – so extraordinary that we stopped to stare. A tall, slim young man, wearing a natty lounge suit, collar and tie, polished shoes and a grey homburg hat, was emerging from another wretchedly poor compound. His barefooted attendant, wearing a TEXAS IS BIG! T-shirt, carried a black and gold brief-case in one hand and a palpitating cock in the other. Seeing us, the natty character also stopped to stare and we read the label on his lapel: CENSUS OFFICER.

  Recovering his poise, the officer advanced on us predatorially. ‘You have not been enumerated,’ he asserted.

  ‘Oh yes we have,’ I said hurriedly, before Rachel could say ‘No’. I felt disinclined to sit in the bush for two hours filling out forms in sextuplicate. And I wasn’t far wrong; when eventually we were ‘enumerated’ the process took one hour and fifty minutes. The questions included, ‘Where were you on 1 March 1975?’ I replied precisely, ‘Skardu, Baltistan, Karakorams, Western Himalayas, Northern Territories, Pakistan.’ When Cameroon’s 1987 Census is published in 1995 – the earliest date mentioned – I look forward to seeing a special column devoted to the Murphies.

  Thwarted of his prey, the officer lost interest in us and headed for the next miserable compound; this scrubby area seemed to have been taken over fairly recently by nomad Fulanis who have abandoned nomadism.

  Our new goal, after consultation with the USAF, was the little town of Galim which, according to the census officer, could be reached before sunset. From there we planned to go by easy bush-paths to the slightly bigger town of Tignere, en route for the Tchabal Gangdaba – a lower mountain range where I supposed the climate would be tolerable and the going easier for Rachel.

  By 4 p.m. we were on the edge of the Tchabal Mbabo, overlooking many miles of hilly jungle. A distant glint of tin roofs suggested Galim and sections of an undulating red track were visible far below – but we could see no way down. And when at last we found a way we almost wished we hadn’t.

  This faint path involved us in – among other difficulties – a 2,000-foot descent, of ladder-like steepness, through coarse, waist-high grass which concealed many rough boulders and made it impossible to judge where next one might safely place one’s feet. A lesser horse than Egbert would have taken industrial action and even his sang-froid had been diminished by the time we reached level ground.

  The ground did not long remain level. Soon we were entrapped in a maze of gullies and deep ditches full of stagnant water: ‘Bilharzia!’ thought I. Here grew six-foot-high elephant grass and a thorny bramble-like plant which did grievous bodily harm. Eventually Rachel discerned a way out, Egbert was persuaded to jump a wide ditch and we scrambled up a red cliff onto a new-dug field. Then, without warning, black clouds surged across the tranquil blue evening sky and a wall of rain came rushing towards us. Naïvely, we made for a crop-guard’s straw hut and tethered Egbert to a convenient fallen tree before cramming ourselves and the load into that tiny shelter, mere seconds before the rain arrived. During the next ten lightning-brilliant minutes we had to shout above continuous thunder.

  Hunger prompted us to unpack, in search of sardines, but the first tin was only half-open when a gale drove the rain through our straw walls as though they were tissue-paper. Simultaneously a wide torrent rushed across the floor, transforming it into a lake of liquid manure; animals also use these huts.

  As the sky cleared we decided to try to reach Galim, our gear and the countryside being equally sodden. But progress was slow across wet ploughed fields,
swollen streams and overgrown irrigation channels. When a narrow track at last appeared the sun had just set and we switched on our torches – only to discover that Rachel’s was waterlogged and my brand-new battery a dud.

  ‘Things like this,’ observed Rachel, ‘never happen to people in travel books. Everyone seems better organised than we are.’

  Humbly I agreed and slowly we continued by starlight. Soon after came the sound of distant, rapid drumming.

  ‘A compound!’ I exclaimed. ‘Shelter!’

  ‘And maybe fufu!’ gloated Rachel, audibly salivating.

  But alas! the drums were approaching and now we could also hear singing and see dim lights bobbing through the bush. When we met four loaded men, returning from market, they hastily scrambled off the narrow path and their nervous anti-spirit drumming and singing became much louder. It would have been futile – even unkind – to ask ‘Galim?’

  At first this mud-treacherous path ran level through low bush. Then came broken terrain, just as clouds reassembled, leaving us to blunder up and down eroded slopes and grope around baffling corners in total darkness. After a mile or so I suggested, in my boring middle-aged way, that we should admit defeat, before bones were broken, and camp on the path. But eighteen-year-olds are not so easily daunted and Rachel cunningly egged me on with references to the ‘33’ that must surely be available in Galim. Not long after, moonlight began to filter through the long cloud-banks above the horizon and my taut nerves relaxed slightly.

  Then came an obstacle not, in my view, negotiable before dawn: a humans-only tree-trunk bridge above a fast river. ‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘Here we camp!’

  ‘We can’t!’ protested Rachel. ‘The track’s too rocky, there’s nowhere to stretch out. And there has to be an animal-ford somewhere, like down there’ – she pointed to a barely discernible path on our left. ‘You stay with Egbert,’ she ordered briskly, ‘while I investigate.’

  Half of me liked this attitude, reckless though it was. But I insisted on going down first – tripping and swearing over tree-roots – to do a recce. That path obviously led to a ford, yet I could find no way through the thick jungle on the far side. With difficulty I scrambled back up the muddy slope and declared, ‘It’s hopeless! Let’s unload right here.’

  By then however Rachel was in bulldog mood. ‘I’ll look,’ she said, and disappeared for fifteen minutes, during which I could hear faint splashings and squelchings and the breaking of branches coming from the inky depths.

  ‘I’m an irresponsible mother,’ I confided to Egbert, who was philosophically grazing as he awaited the Murphies’ next unreasonable demand. Then I reflected that eighteen-year-olds are adults, no longer bound to obey parental orders, which soothed my conscience though not my anxiety.

  There was an understandable ring of triumph in Rachel’s voice when she yelled, ‘Come down! I’ve found it!’

  ‘This is crazy!’ I muttered to Egbert, picking up his rope. No doubt he agreed as, still munching, he slithered after me into the blackness where Rachel was awaiting us at the water’s edge. We followed her through the racing knee-deep stream and came to a narrow, precipitous, slippery corridor hewn out of the thirty-foot-high bank. Rachel couldn’t make it without borrowing my stick. When she had thrown it back I struggled up, wedging my feet in the side-crevices and letting Egbert’s rope run to its full length. At the top I turned to encourage him – needlessly, for already he was making heroic efforts to join us. Various bits of extraneous gear were ripped off en route: the picket, a water-bottle, both mugs. Having hugged our hero, I retrieved all but one mug.

  Tentatively we continued, our way now erratically lit by sheet lightning. Back at the footbridge a loaded man and youth, crossing by torchlight, were so terrified by our appearing that they wavered, clutched each other and for a nightmare moment seemed about to fall.

  ‘We’re becoming a public menace,’ I said. ‘We’d better stop soon.’

  All three of us were beginning to wilt when suddenly the path was no longer muddy. Then the moon escaped from the clouds, revealing a flat stubble-field on one side and rough grazing on the other. This time Rachel didn’t object when I suggested sleeping in the field, using space-blankets instead of damp bags.

  Stubble fields do not make comfortable beds and we slept unsoundly. During the small hours I watched nine loaded donkeys trotting past in the moonlight, going towards the mountains. Their accompanying couple didn’t notice us but stared in bewilderment at our gear, strewn over the track.

  At dawn we reached a natural bridge across a wide, swift river – one massive sheet of rock, elaborately water-sculpted, extending from bank to bank. As we washed, the fragile morning clouds – covering the sky, but with lines of pale blue between their ridges – caught the rising sun and briefly became a canopy of gold. So lovely was this place that we lingered, sitting with the slanting sun warm on our backs and our legs in the rushing, sparkling water.

  The bridge seemed risky for Egbert and we were about to seek a ford when an old man with a machete materialised on the far bank. He had a slight limp, sunken cheeks and only two teeth. Smiling benignly, but making no other attempt to communicate, he led Egbert downstream, through thick bush, to a ford so obscure that we might never have found it.

  Those tin roofs we had imagined to be Galim were in fact Wogomdou, which would probably be renamed by Brent Council if within their sphere of influence. At 7.50 a.m. I was shamelessly lusting for beer – it had after all been a hard yesterday and an unrestoring night – but Muslim Wogomdou is barless. However, it is also, like Sambolabbo, at the end of a semi-motorable track. ‘Cheer up,’ said Rachel. ‘In Cameroon beer gets to wherever vehicles get to.’

  Soon we were adopted by Ebenki, a slow-witted but sweet-natured Banyo man who laboured for the Chief and said we must meet all the local Big Men. We arrived at the palace just as Wogomdou’s school – a small rectangular mud hut – was about to open; but on seeing us the teacher left it closed. Instead his pupils gathered before the palace to broaden their minds by observing White behaviour, which soon became unedifying.

  The obese Chief welcomed us amiably and dispatched an aged retainer to fetch beer. Two camp-chairs were unfolded under the palace ‘verandah’ – several sheets of rusty tin tied to the thatch and looking as though a zephyr might bring them crashing. When a crate of ‘33’ appeared Ebenki stepped forward and quickly opened several bottles with his teeth. (This enviable knack is common in Cameroon.) The Chief couldn’t drink alcohol publicly but seemed anxious not to be excluded from any round; at regular intervals bottles slid surreptitiously into the palace. Doing my daily accounts, it shook me to discover that our Wogomdou beer bill came to 7,200 CFA (£l6). All the local non-teetotallers had hastened to welcome us – including two gendarmes, wearing crumpled tunics over pyjamas, who while gulping ‘33’ frowningly studied our passports.

  Then Nicodemus Ngonba arrived – ‘Our Man from Bamenda’, a figure we were coming to regard as inevitable whenever the news spread that English-speakers were around. Nicodemus – jovial, overweight, middle-aged – wore a soiled torn shirt and frayed jeans. A World Service addict, he discoursed eloquently on global drug problems, African educational problems, AIDS, Third World debts, the medical pros and cons of various forms of birth-control and what he called the ‘philosophy and psychology’ of our journey. At no stage did he mistake me for a man and he was the only Cameroonian we met who not only understood what it means to be an author but took an intelligent interest in that career. Naturally we were curious about his own career but he wasn’t telling – though a few oblique remarks suggested large-scale cross-border trading on routes without customs’ posts.

  Meanwhile Rachel was engaged in animated conversation with a poised, courteous nineteen-year-old Fulani who spoke fluent French. Amadou wore a spotless, heavily embroidered cream gown and was so extraordinarily handsome that I found it hard not to stare at him. He lived in N’gaoundere but had ‘cattle interests’ in the Tchabal Mba
bo. Had I been Rachel, I would have felt very tempted to ditch Mamma and hang around with Amadou.

  At 9.45 a.m. we were escorted to the edge of the village by Nicodemus. When I remarked that we had seen no Wogomdou women he explained in his mysteriously academic way, ‘This is typical of the conquered and converted village. You can notice the people are not Fulani though they are Muslim. This means the women have the worst of both worlds – working in the fields and restricted by Islam. You know why tribes all over Adamawa became Muslim? To avoid being enslaved! The Fulani could not enslave fellow-Muslims, so to embrace Islam was to escape the razzias.’

  Nicodemus warned us about drought. ‘Maize that should have been planted three weeks ago is not yet in the ground. And migrating nomads, expecting full streams, may lose many animals. You too may have problems on the way to N’gaoundere – you must check on this in Tignere.’

  For two hours our track undulated through thin jungle, before plunging down baboon-crowded slopes. Here all the long mountain crests are decorated with colossal free-standing boulders, their angles smoothed by aeons of erosion. The variety of shapes seems infinite and often two, three or four boulders are balanced on each other like the playthings of some giant’s child. Nowhere else have I seen this phenomenon on such a scale.

  Galim is long, narrow, hot, dusty – a town of grey-brown mud dwellings and tight-lipped people. On the outskirts we passed an imposing new mosque, but it was only half built and looked as though construction had been halted for some time. Close by was the massively fortified Chief’s palace, a forbidding-looking, blank-walled edifice which did not invite passing infidels to call. At 3.30 p.m. no one was moving in the silent town centre. A few men, squatting in the shade of doorways, stared at us unsmilingly. All but two of the little shops were shuttered and padlocked.