Egbert had as usual refused to drink at breakfast-time and while Rachel gulped Top I took his bucket to Galim’s only well, which marks the town centre. It is, we learned later, 180 feet deep – and it feels like it. For fifteen minutes I toiled in the hot sun, watched by those expressionless men. Time after time I dragged the well bucket up, hand over hand, each effort winning only a pint or so of foul, cloudy water. When Egbert’s bucket was about two-thirds full I presented it to him. He gulped once, then turned away in disgust.
Seriously worried, we decided to seek advice from the Norwegian Lutheran Mission. As we approached their shady hilltop compound, on the far side of Galim, many jerry-cans were being unloaded from a Land Rover. The harrassed-looking missionaries directed us to a newly dug well in a field some two miles away; until the rains came it would be Galim’s only source of drinkable water. Egbert didn’t think much of that bar, either, but drank enough to lower our anxiety level.
As we returned to Galim the sky was suddenly full of low dark clouds and at 5.30 p.m. the town centre seemed no livelier, perhaps because a gusty gale was filling the air with choking gritty dust that stung the eyes and scourged the face. Litter whirled high – an astonishing amount of it, despite most of the shops being shut all the time.
‘What a godawful dump!’ I muttered.
When Rachel spotted a ‘33’ crate outside a shuttered shop I banged desperately on the door of the adjacent hovel. A young man half-opened it, then dismissed me in English. ‘No beer! Beer all finished and no motor – not plenty motor this town!’
Thus Galim achieved a double distinction, as the only Cameroonian town in which we failed to find beer and felt positively unwelcome. Its sullen Islamic heaviness reminded me of Meshed. Nicodemus had attributed this sullenness to the long-established Mission: ‘They’ve set up aggro, they’ve tried to block funding for the new mosque.’ That evening we again met the missionaries, who seemed warm-hearted, well-meaning folk, but rigidly unimaginative. Opposed to an equally narrow Islamic Establishment, they may well have set up aggro. In Cameroon, as in several other countries, we noticed that the modern Roman Catholic Church seems wiser and kinder than most others in its everyday dealings with non-Christians.
It wasn’t easy to find lodgings; ‘not plenty motor’ means no ‘Africa hotel’. At last a filthy room – hastily vacated when we appeared – was offered by a tall, thuggish Christian who demanded 5,000 CFA. After a prolonged and unpleasant hassle we beat him down to 2,000, the standard doss-house rate. He then proposed locking Egbert in his empty garage, without fodder, and looked scornfully disbelieving when informed that horses need to eat throughout the night.
When Rachel had taken Egbert to a distant patch of jungle, with alarmingly sparse grazing, we discovered that our own food prospects were no better. Galim doesn’t have an eating house, or if it does no one would tell the infidels. The two open shops sold nothing edible. We ended up sitting on the steps outside our room watching a very beautiful pyrotechnic display over the Tchabal Mbabo and faintly hoping our ‘host’ might send fufu. He didn’t.
No rain fell during the night. This was typical of the region’s current tantalising weather pattern: much promising cloud every afternoon, but always that promise was broken.
I slept even less than in the stubble-field. Our room was stifling and sweat streamed off me in tickling runnels. The bed reeked of its usual occupant whose dirty garments hung above it. (As Rachel sympathetically remarked, ‘Africans are so clean it must be torture not having washing water!’) Hyperactive cockroaches made quite a din, thudding off the walls when they fought and audibly rummaging through our gear. Mosquitoes whined and bit incessantly. Rachel was evidently having nightmares; she talked loudly in her sleep, using bad language, and kicked me frequently. (Possibly this is what she often longed to do when awake but didn’t dare.) My stomach was hideously distended and I vaguely wanted to vomit: the result of no food, and pints of Top instead of water and ‘33’. In the light of dawn we made an interesting scientific observation. Our smaller plastic water-bottle had been filled with Top and during the night it too became distended. Ever since it has been round instead of square. ‘That,’ said Rachel, ‘tells us all we need to know about Top!’
At 4.30 a.m. we fetched Egbert by moonlight. He was, predictably, in poor form and as we left Galim Rachel had angst about the ethics of travelling with a pack-animal. She sounded just like those letter-writers who for years have been accusing me of cruelty to my ‘four-footed slaves’.
First World attitudes towards animals are becoming increasingly neurotic/sentimental, perhaps because human-animal working partnerships are virtually unknown in a mechanised society. Thus travellers who use pack-animals (not too many nowadays) are regularly berated by people sitting in cosy urban homes – the sort of people whose dogs wear overcoats and whose cats wear bells. ‘How,’ they demand shrilly, ‘could So-and-So be so dreadfully cruel to his (or her) camel/ donkey/pony/yak/mule?’ They forget that by cosy standards So-and-So is being equally cruel to him- (or her-)self. And when reminded of this they argue that humans bent enough to choose hardship have no right to impose it on defenceless dumb creatures. The normal lifestyle of said dumb creatures is never taken into account. What would their working day be like if they were not accompanying White travellers? I put this point to Rachel but she retorted, ‘There was nothing wrong with Egbert’s lifestyle! Remember how Danieli adored him? And most Fulani horses are ladies and gentlemen of leisure. We’ve passed hundreds who never work – they’re just status symbols!’
Our bush-path to Garbaia climbed gradually through the jungly foothills of the Tchabal Mbabo. We saw only one compound, memorable for its equine status symbols. While two pretty mares looked on admiringly, an aggressive stallion tried all he knew to attack Egbert. He was a splendid creature, in peak condition despite the drought, and he pursued us for thirty minutes, seeing the intruder off his territory. I had to defend Egbert by non-stop stone-throwing, shouting and stick-waving; yet he several times defied me, approaching almost to within kicking distance. Meanwhile his unwitting rival, stoical as ever, was sedately following Rachel, ignoring this unseemly and uncalled for hostility.
1. Girl with sister
From the Kwondja tribe, in ‘the hot plain’.
2. Ngah Bouba, traditional doctor
The claim to re-establish ‘competence’ in ‘unproductive’ women illustrates a woman’s main role in African society.
3. Opposite: Village chief with wives, Ngybe, near Mayo Darle
The people of this tribe, the Kwondja, were not so long ago (1950s) slaves of the Muslim tribes who surrounded them.
4. Above: Koranic school, N’gaoundere
Fulani children reciting verses from the Koran, inscribed on their tablets.
5. Opposite: Hairdressing session
Many Cameroonian women find their chief relaxation in conversation and dressing each other’s hair.
6. Opposite: Mamba women working their ground-nut fields
Ground-nuts are an important subsistence food as well as a cash crop.
7. Above: Mbororo girls returning from the river, near Mayo Darle
Mbororos are Fulanis who still lead a nomadic or semi-nomadic life.
8. Opposite: Yamba man trimming palm-tree
This man is dislodging nests of palm nuts, which contain the oil widely used in local cooking.
9. Above: Yamba woman and child harvesting sweet potatoes
10. Above: Jacqueline’s friend Dijja, with her youngest child
11. Left: Dijja’s daughter, Fatah
12. Opposite: Yaya Moctar, who ‘adopted’ Egbert, with his son Ibrahim to whom he is teaching the Koran
13. Left: Egbert and his new owner
14. Below: Rachel’s one day in the saddle
We passed through Garbaia without noticing it; only a butcher’s unattended wayside stall suggested a village. The meat was black, shrivelled, stinking and covered in flies.
At noon w
e nut-munched on a high ridge overlooking a long cultivated valley some four or five miles wide. An hour later clouds made it possible to walk on and throughout the afternoon we followed that valley. It was infested by large vicious flies exclusively interested in Egbert. He suffered greatly, though uncomplainingly, and Rachel had a revival of the morning’s angst.
Our nut supply was being conserved for the Tchabal Gangdaba and we soon felt hungry again. This area offers no food for sale. Bananas and avocados are rare and sensible eating habits mean that compounds have no left-overs that might be bought by passers-by. Only enough food is prepared for each meal and apart from the occasional egg, or milk in cattle areas, the average cupboard is bare from sunrise to sunset. Nor are there any tasty titbits for sale, as in Indian villages.
At 5.15 p.m. Rachel remarked, ‘We’d better try to stay in a compound – we need more than pseudo-soup.’ By then our path was curving around the lower slopes of a long, steep ridge – rocky and jungly towards the crest, grassy below. The wide Garbaia River meandered along the valley floor between high red banks, with miles of level fields on either side. In the mellow evening light this was a tranquil scene – yet worrying, for the fields were bare, not green with young maize.
Around the next corner a lone compound appeared above the track. Nearby grazed a small herd and by the entrance a ragged figure stood under a tree, gazing towards us. As we drew closer he hurried down the slope to offer milk in fluent sign language. He was small, wiry, middle-aged, dark-skinned; broken discoloured teeth detracted nothing from the charm of his smile. We sat under the tree while he fetched a large bowlful of thick liquid. This was whisked briskly for a few moments, with a special wooden implement not unlike a salad fork, before our host filled our mugs. The slightly smoke-flavoured, slightly tangy drink tasted like a mixture of the finest yoghurt and the richest cream. It seemed a food of the gods. We lost all self-control and each had three brimming mugs while Kamga Kima beamed with joy.
As we guzzled, his (only) wife was slowly ascending from the distant river, carrying a giant cauldron piled with saucepans, gourds, plates, bowls, ladles. She too was ragged, dark-skinned, warm-hearted. As Kamga Kima shouted excitedly to her Rachel muttered, ‘They look awfully poor – we can’t ask them to feed and shelter us!’ But we didn’t have to ask; Kamga Kima was already resolved to do just that.
Soon Egbert was grazing with the cattle and we were bending low to enter a thatched hut, some thirty feet in diameter, furnished only by a pallet covered with a nylon mat and a wooden double-bed beneath a wicker canopy on carved posts. From the roof poles hung many little leather pouches holding – among other more mysterious things – beans, dried meat, herbs, salt. An ancient Fulani sword in a wooden scabbard hung opposite the entrance and there was a depression lined with ashes on the floor – by local standards the Garbaia valley nights are cold. Wood smoke pleasantly permeated the whole hut and had varnished the bamboo poles supporting the neat thatch.
Only our electric-blue tin folding-chairs struck a discordant note in that spacious compound. Its outer ‘walls’ were of golden straw matting, and matting screens created secluded corners between the three huts. Opposite us, on a tall stand, firewood had been tidily stacked. Near the entrance a miniature straw hut, like a doll’s house, stood on three high legs – and into it a brilliantly plumaged cock led his six wives at sunset.
Those who live in mud huts have little scope for being house-proud but they can be, and usually are, compound-proud. Kamga Kima’s garden contained a baby palm-tree, several dwarf ornamental shrubs and a much taller shrub shaped like a Christmas tree and laden with bell-like dark blue blossoms. A pink-blossomed tree was rooted in a pile of round stones and beneath it herbs flourished in an enormous earthenware cauldron, glazed grey and black and pink. The fence was lined with slim, elegant trees, their feathery foliage stirring in a faint breeze against gold and plum sunset clouds.
Around the main cooking fire, Mrs Kima and three daughters (married but living close by) were gossiping and giggling while chopping and stirring by a circular kitchen ‘table’ – a pile of large stones on which everything to do with the meal was laid. Most daytime cooking is done outside, weather permitting, but nothing is put on the dusty ground although most compounds are so well swept that they look a great deal cleaner than my own kitchen.
As the light faded our host beckoned us to the bathroom corner, behind our hut. The two big basins of hot water dreadfully bothered Rachel who was having a day of chronic angst. ‘Just think,’ she said, ‘of dragging all this water up from the river! And how long did it take to collect enough wood to make so much water so hot?’
Soap was also provided, and two small towels, threadbare but clean. The latrine was another of those mysteriously smell-less holes on top of a low earth mound, covered with an old enamel dish-lid. Most rural Cameroonians are acutely fly-conscious. Latrines are never left exposed and food and drink are always kept covered – even during a meal, should there be flies about.
In our absence Kamga Kima had tactfully rearranged what was obviously his own hut; his few garments had been removed and clean covers put on two little foam-rubber pillows. Leaving our wash-bag in the hut, I was disquieted to notice him rummaging in a pouch on the wall; the aroma from that direction too keenly reminded me of the butcher’s stall we had passed at noon.
Our host apologised for not having a good lamp; the family’s only lantern was cracked and smoked fiendishly. But we were content to sit in the dark, watching the scene by the fire. Kamga Kima was a domesticated fellow, the only Cameroonian husband we witnessed helping his wife with household chores. When the daughters had gone to feed their own families he set about cooking cassava amidst much merriment, caused by the ingenuity of our sign language. That was a happy compound; parents and children clearly enjoyed each other’s company.
Having firmly declined our host’s offer to kill and roast a hen, we were much relieved when he served eight hard-boiled eggs, a mountain of boiled cassava (which he taught us how to peel) and a cup of palm oil and salt as ‘dressing’. That combination was both palatable and sustaining – a welcome change from fufu.
Then the valley’s stillness was desecrated by the snarling roar of a motor-bicycle: the day’s first vehicle. Kamga Kima dashed out and could be heard shouting down the slope. He returned with two Nigerians, a migrant worker and Mohamed Mechanic, who had settled a few years previously in the next village, Tourak. Eagerly our host squatted on his goat-skin, close to our chairs, and asked all the questions he had been longing to ask since we appeared. The answers were at once shouted to his wife, still busy around the cooking-fire. By then it had been moved into the kitchen-hut, by the simple expedient of picking up all the burning wood on a broad shovel and putting it down again on the hut floor. Unfortunately the Nigerians were in a hurry (an uncommon West African condition) so we had no opportunity to question Kamga Kima. But Mohamed Mechanic urged us to contact him next day on our way through Tourak.
Our host then fetched his own supper, a great bowl of scalding soup. He sat cross-legged, holding a feeble torch in one hand and cooling the liquid by repeatedly pouring large ladlefuls from a height – spilling not a drop.
Before retiring we took our dishes to Mrs Kima and said goodnight. Moments later, as we were beginning to undress, our host knocked on the door, entered triumphantly and laid a tray on one of the chairs; that mountain of cassava and eggs had been our hors-d’oeuvre.
With a flourish Kamga Kima unlidded a dish holding kilos of fufu, and then a dish of jammu-jammu, and finally a dish that released lethal fumes. Rotten meat cooked makes an even more powerful olfactory impact than rotten meat raw. We prayed he wouldn’t stay to enjoy the spectacle of us relishing our supper. As he placed the re-lit smoking lantern on the tray, and seemed about to settle down on the pallet, his wife – most mercifully – called him.
I moved fast; within thirty seconds the stew was under the bed in a Heathrow duty-free bag. I am famously paranoid about
not wasting food but every principle meets its Waterloo.
As Rachel observed, ‘It’s all in the conditioning.’ Most Africans couldn’t eat Danish blue or ripe Stilton, even if they were starving.
Next morning we furtively deposited our stew in a stream. We had got off to a late (7.40 a.m.) start because Kamga Kima insisted on our waiting for breakfast – pints of new milk and a delicious maize-gruel, popular in this area, to which we soon became addicted.
In Tourak – a charming village of many compounds, overlooking the Garbaia River – Mohamed Mechanic was repairing bicycles under a mango tree. All the three shops were shut. ‘They open only every eight days, for the weekly market,’ Mohamed explained apologetically. (The traditional Cameroonian week was eight days, for reasons we never understood though they were several times explained to us.)‘You will pass no compounds,’ he continued, ‘between here and the motor-road. So you must take chop with you. To walk all day without eating will give you pains in the stomach.’ Whereupon he went bounding off on his motor-bike, through steep rough laneways, in search of chop – like a gallant knight on his charger. Returning with two tins of fizzy Nigerian ‘orange juice’ and half a dozen eggs, he adamantly refused payment. ‘You are guests, it is my honour to facilitate you.’ He then insisted that the eggs must be hard-boiled and while someone was lighting a fire he deplored the Cameroonians’ treatment of their bicycles. ‘These people are not used to machinery – they try to mend something, they destroy it forever! This is good to give me work, but for them it is bad because I must charge a lot to help my family pay their taxes in Nigeria.’
Cameroon with Egbert Page 21