On our way back we stopped off at a small bar, opposite Le Metro, belonging to a ‘special friend’ of Tikela – a plump garrulous prostitute wearing a flouncey high-collared blouse of delicate white lace and a billowing ankle-length purple skirt. Her slim colleague – they both worked from Le Metro – favoured skin-tight denim jeans, a scarlet brassiere and high-heeled shiny black boots.
‘These are very rich women,’ said Tikela respectfully. ‘They play only with officers and are very clean.’
By this stage I was, it pains me to admit, hopelessly drunk. Oddly enough, given the prevalence of ‘33’ along our route, and the social pressures to consume immoderate quantities of it, Tignere caused my only Cameroonian descent into clinical intoxication. My diary omits our visit to Le Metro, an evidently exciting experience of which I have absolutely no recollection. So I quote from Rachel’s diary:
In the small bar we met another policeman and a Bamenda truck-driver (truck bust) who took us to Le Metro – a sort of nightclub. We sat outside on the terrace and drank beer glacee. I danced a few times inside where the lighting was psychedelic. Eventually the truck-driver decided, because he was drunk, that he was in love with me. Our very congenial policeman friend got rid of him and all the chairs on the verandah were moved round so that he couldn’t reach me. Mummy was drunk too.
8
Spooked in the Tchabal Gangdaba
I WOKE WITH an undeservedly clear head – which says a lot for ‘33’ – and by 6.30 a.m. we were following our guides through Tignere’s fissured and attenuated ‘suburbs’. Both youths seemed in awe of us. They were well meaning but dim-witted; twice they led us to cut-shorts across chasms not negotiable by a horse. According to Sama they belonged to a Mana tribe ‘converted’ during the razzias. He had added disparagingly, ‘Those are good honest boys, but very tribal.’
We were becoming increasingly confused by the Cameroonian usage of ‘tribe’ and ‘tribal’. The concept of African tribes so obsessed generations of Europeans that they used the word indiscriminately and by now the Africans themselves often misapply it, when it makes little more sense than if Europeans were to refer to people in the next village as members of another tribe. True, many mutually incomprehensible languages are spoken throughout Western Cameroon and one notices several distinct physical types, apart from the Fulanis. Yet a shared culture, reinforced by centuries of intermarriage, makes it ridiculous to describe the Kunabe or Fang or Nyos or Oku as ‘tribes’. These and hundreds of other groups have a strong common identity. On many minor and some major points their customs and beliefs differ, but even casual passers-by can see that by now they are more united than divided. The appropriate word for each group would seem to be ‘chiefdom’ – or perhaps, nowadays, ‘clan’.
On the edge of Tignere, in a ‘suburb’ of neat traditional compounds, we had a long wait for the other members of our party. Those four lean, dark-skinned Fulanis seemed to regard us with some suspicion and ignored our tentative attempts to communicate. Oddly, Mana being far from any town, nobody was loaded with merchandise.
Our faint – sometimes invisible – path twisted illogically through dusty, scrubby hills. At the base of the Tchabal Gangdaba water appeared – a trickle in a rocky stream-bed – and while our companions washed and prayed we nut-munched in preparation for a 1,500-foot climb on an unremittingly severe gradient.
Emerging from dense forest onto a level crest, our harmattan frustration became acute. Views that should have been spectacular were non-existent. To the east a nearby line of slightly lower mountains was dimly visible; to the west a grey haze obliterated everything. For an hour we continued with our guides. Here the path was clear, following the crest through a harsh dry landscape of stony pale brown earth and low scrub – the only colour provided by occasional clusters of red or orange berries. Then came a mild descent to a not-quite-dried-up river with luxuriant green grass on its banks. Unloading, we dashed the youths and signed to all our companions to continue without us. This they seemed reluctant to do – even the hitherto indifferent Fulanis. They too rested by the water for a little time, then went on their way, looking uneasy. Not knowing when we might next find grass, we gave Egbert a ninety-minute meal.
For the rest of the day our rough path rose and fell steeply. Sometimes it consisted of large, loose, thin ‘plates’ of rock which Egbert found trying; sometimes it was a dried-up watercourse of large, loose, round stones which we all found trying. For a few miles it wound through a strange, weirdly beautiful bamboo forest – strange because one associates bamboo with dampness and this whole region looked like semi-desert. It seemed completely lifeless, not only uninhabited but without birds or animals. And the harmattan, obscuring the rest of the world, reinforced our sense of extreme isolation.
Not until the late afternoon did grassland appear: an expanse of curving green hills, on one of which grazed cattle. ‘Fufu!’ anticipated Rachel.
Soon we were standing on a summit, overlooking four large compounds spread across a semicircular ledge far below. By local standards this was a metropolis. ‘Lots of fufu!’ gloated Rachel. We hastened down.
Our guides must have mentioned us en passant; the elderly Fulani Chief (quarterchief?) hurried to welcome us – smiling delightedly, both hands outstretched, eyes twinkling. He was barefooted, wearing a threadbare shift, tall and very thin with two fingers missing on his right hand. Having led us to his guest hut – as usual on the edge of the compound – he rushed off to organise sustenance.
At last we were beyond chair-territory. Sitting on the hut’s threshold, we communicated wordlessly but quite effectively with numerous women and children, none of whom would come close but all of whom were riveted by our presence. Then Abdulla, our host, came half-running towards us with four hot hard-boiled eggs and a battered kettle of drinking water. ‘We must look very hungry!’ said Rachel.
I longed to explore the compounds but that would have been impolite. The huts were of a new (to us) design, the top half of the walls being wickerwork – which meant rather untidy thatches. We got the impression that this village consisted of one very extended family. Three of the compounds were unenclosed and almost merged into one another. But the few small fields of alarmingly shrivelled young maize had been securely fenced with rough-hewn stakes, as had the large corral for the cattle.
A little boy approached slowly with a bucket of cold washing water –then his nerve broke, some yards from our hut. Leaving the bucket, he scampered away. That water was kept for Egbert. As we were shown no latrine, we assumed this family used the bush: a sensible habit in such an unpeopled area. Meanwhile the return home of a donkey herd (eight adults and a foal) was distracting Egbert from his grazing and causing him to behave with unseemly skittishness, kicking up his heels and whinnying coyly.
Our second course soon arrived: an enormous dish of perfectly cooked rice (luxury food in these parts), accompanied by the fried breasts (only) of several chickens, tender, juicy and gently spiced. While eating we watched the sunset routine. Small children rounded up scores of hens, ducks and guinea-fowl. Slightly larger children pursued the donkey herd and tethered them. A youth drove the cattle home from the hills and corralled them, separating the calves from their mothers and fondly stroking the two magnificent bulls before he shut the gate. Abdulla lay near our hut on his cow-hide, head propped on elbow, amiably shouting advice to the younger generation whenever they had problems.
Suddenly, as the light was fading, a tumult of excitement swept the ledge; yells of joy, squeals of laughter, cheers of triumph. Bewildered, we watched all the younger generation streaming from each compound and racing across the grass to converge on the steep cliff-path from Tignere. Then, looking up, we saw a tall young woman descending with a little cloth-wrapped bundle on her head. The youngsters surged up the cliff and surrounded her, shrieking and singing, jumping up and down, clapping their hands over their heads, hanging from her arms and legs and generally registering twenty on the Richter scale of happiness.
‘Maybe she’s been away in hospital,’ I speculated. ‘They seem to be not only welcoming but celebrating.’
‘We’re missing Our Man from Bamenda!’ said Rachel. ‘Or from Nigeria.’
Abdulla did have two Bantu workmen, presumably seasonal, with whom he was now dining on the cow-hide; but neither was Nigerian. In Muslim circles eating with your servants is fine but eating with your womenfolk is out; even Mr Kami didn’t sup with his obviously much-loved Mrs Kami. At intervals bones were thrown to a large shaggy dog who sat waiting at a respectful distance. The Islamic anti-dog bias seems not to operate in Cameroon.
Our host had been over-zealous in his organisation of sustenance and meals were coming from every angle. The third is hard to describe but was easy to eat: a big bowl of something semi-solid like a cross between porridge and rice pudding, which sounds unpromising but tasted scrumptious. Having finished that we were about to retire when a fourth supper arrived from another compound: the best fufu we ate in Cameroon, with top quality jammu-jammu and a memorable sauce of fried clarified butter. Half-way through that cordon bleu offering we had to give up. Luckily Abdulla was then absorbed in conversation with his workmen and it was dark, this being a lampless village. Deftly we secreted the left-overs in another Heathrow bag and had them for breakfast, thus discovering the demerits of cold fufu.
Despite the language barrier, that was a particularly happy ‘compound evening’. The wide ledge, protected on three sides by high, steep green slopes, had a rare beauty and tranquillity. Also, Abdulla was a perfect host who took us on our own terms and was attentive without fussing – at bedtime he suggested a fire in our hut! But beyond all that there was a special atmosphere of contentment, serenity, timelessness. Apart from Nigerian enamelware, Mungo Park would have found nothing unfamiliar in Abdulla’s ‘village’.
It is easy, before the journey, to see oneself as a seasoned, prudent, responsible traveller. Patiently one queues for the relevant boosters; diligently one seeks out the appropriate malaria prophylactics for the region in question; extravagantly one buys hundreds of water-purifying tablets, dozens of multivitamin capsules, a few pain-killers and a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics – ‘just in case’ … One’s rational European persona is then dominant, yet within weeks it can seem to belong to someone else.
Thus I reflected beside a six-inch-deep river, thirty hours after leaving Abdulla’s compound. We had just drunk a few litres each, before allowing Egbert to muddy the issue, and it occurred to me that for days we had been neglecting to use Puritabs. ‘We must be mad!’ I exclaimed, more for Rachel’s benefit than because I felt any genuine alarm.
Rachel shrugged, peered into her mug and said, ‘It looks fairly clear.’ I peered into mine, where only one tiny thing wriggled near the bottom; the other foreign matter seemed to consist of minute and presumably innocuous grains of sand.
‘We’d be madder,’ observed Rachel, ‘to make perfectly good water taste like a swimming-pool. Anyway, we’ve seen precisely one human being in the past thirty hours – how could this river be contaminated?’
I looked at the dense green growth along the banks. Giant vine-swathed trees supported a colourful abundance of bird-life. Overhanging the water, exposed by erosion, were ancient, interwoven root-systems, their convolutions seeming macabre in the shadows. Beyond this precious shade stretched flat miles of hot, dry, monochrome scrubland dotted with thousands (millions?) of tall termite dwellings. Already the high mountain on which we had camped the night before was lost in the harmattan haze. At noon this landscape looked deserted, but we knew it wasn’t.
‘Birds and animals?’ I suggested morbidly. ‘What about all those baboons? Can’t they spread dire diseases?’
‘Now you’re being neurotic!’ said Rachel. And, having successfully escaped from my European persona, I was content to accept this diagnosis.
After that we became increasingly reckless, only sterilising when close to towns. Yet in Cameroon neither of us suffered even a minor intestinal disorder. Although we were to be afflicted by other health problems, our guts flourished on neat river water.
The previous day had been marred by our second quarrel, for which Rachel was entirely to blame. We ended up totally lost, sleeping (or not sleeping) on a sloping sheet of corrugated rock in a dismal drought-stricken forest. That was the only occasion on which we ran out of water, which didn’t improve our tempers; since morning we had lost gallons of sweat. When darkness forced us to stop, high on that inhospitable mountain, poor Egbert was too exhausted – or perhaps too thirsty – to eat. Having considered what little grazing there was, he returned to our sheet of rock and stood beside us looking pathetic.
By then Rachel and I had been non-speakers for a record four hours. To dispel this emotional harmattan I told her exactly what I thought of her behaviour during the afternoon. Instantly she apologised and we settled down to be companionably miserable throughout that long, dehydrated night.
Later I reproved myself for having over-reacted; Rachel’s uncharacteristic behaviour may have been triggered by her considerable sensitivity to atmosphere. We found ourselves, that day, in an area of uniquely bad vibes. Near Sambolabbo, I had been wondering if Africa’s people-Nature relationship contributes something to White travellers’ deep-down reactions to the landscape. Then I was thinking only of enjoyment, but if that relationship is significant it must work both ways. And in the heart of the Tchabal Gangdaba something had gone very wrong.
A few incinerated compounds proved that the area had been populated before being recently devastated by out-of-control bush-fires. No vegetation had survived. The ashen monotony was broken only by macabre giant tree-corpses, still standing though lacking all but their central branches. The blackened mountains and valleys and tiny fields felt uncannily spiritually oppressive – an odd phrase, but I can think of none other to convey the atmosphere of that abandoned place. Partly as a result of fire-damage, the terrain was even more gruelling than in the Tchabal Mbabo. Its friable charcoal-grey soil afforded hideously insecure footholds on pathless, near-vertical slopes, from which it too often seemed that one or all of us might slip five or six hundred feet into an inaccessible ravine. That morning we had been conscious of escaping as we descended the Tchabal Gangdaba’s eastern flank to cross the flattest land of the whole trek.
For hours this plain recalled childhood images of Africa; tall clumps of dry red grass, wizened dusty-green scrub and misshapen flat-topped dwarf trees stretched as far as the eye could see – which of course wasn’t all that far. The harmattan was the main cause of our being so utterly lost. Our USAF chart was strong on relief but that doesn’t help when one can’t see the surrounding mountains; we were now relying on Rachel’s sense of direction to get us back to Tignere.
By 5 p.m. forested hills, lowish but steep, had replaced the plain. Then suddenly our path joined a puzzlingly wide track that might once have been a colonial Piste praticable pour les vehicules tout terrain. Given a built-in compass, one doesn’t have to hesitate; Rachel immediately decided that here we should turn right. Personally I would have turned left – and might never have been heard of again.
At sunset we camped on this track, surrounded by immense trees, and freed Egbert to make what he could of scattered clumps of tall grass – spiky and juiceless. The soil was bizarre, as it had been for much of the past two days: hard blackish loose lumps about the size of a golf-ball – difficult to walk on and impossible to sleep on. I have seen nothing else like it, in Cameroon or elsewhere. Happily the track, once we had adjusted our bones to avoid embedded stones, was much less uncomfortable than the previous night’s corrugated rock. Yet I slept little; scores of Tignere mosquito bites were torturing me. Invariably, a few days after being bitten, I suffer about forty-eight hours of that painful and persistent itching which at night can reduce one almost to tears. There may be some truth in the old wives’ tale that people tormented by mosquito itch are immune to malaria. I have never had malaria and Rach
el’s (equally numerous) bites have never itched.
At 7.45 next morning, after a two-hour descent, Rachel exclaimed, ‘Stop! Listen!’ A distant cock was crowing. We were unlost – or at least within reach of guidance, though it might be incomprehensible.
Soon we were approaching a few dishevelled grass huts. As the White Devils advanced out of No-Man’s-Land everyone fled, leaving a quiverful of arrows scattered by the path. We stood and questioningly called, ‘Tignere?’
Cautiously a man peered from behind a hut. We beamed ingratiatingly and repeated, ‘Tignere?’ He pointed into the sky and vanished.
‘Never mind,’ said Rachel cheerfully, ‘we can’t go wrong on this path.’ But round the next corner our track, hitherto so colonial-decisive, ended as abruptly as it had begun.
We stared across miles of semi-desert; on the pale grey earth, baked hard and smooth, the only vegetation was a stunted, leafless, thorny bush. And then (Cameroon is full of surprises) a cyclist overtook us – ebullient, ebony black, with high cheekbones and a high IQ. He dismounted and offered us water, then pointed to his cycle tyres, pointed to the ground, pointed to himself and said, ‘Tignere! Tignerer!’ Watching him pedalling off across that pathless waste, weaving his way between the thorn-bushes, we hoped our gratitude had got through to him.
A very hot hour later we lost the tyre prints on a stony slope which marked the beginning of a tangle of ridges and ravines, valleys and plateaux. In such broken terrain you may know where your destination is, but not even the best sense of direction can tell you which route is feasible.
Two even hotter hours later we collapsed on a gloomy ridge-top where the trees were ugly (trees are not often ugly) and the biting flies came in four varieties. Everywhere in sight seemed to have been rainless since the flood. Baboons stared scornfully at us from the undergrowth. Egbert tried chewing brown leaves, spat them out and looked hard-done-by.
Cameroon with Egbert Page 23