Cameroon with Egbert

by Dervla Murphy

  ‘I fought – that’s past tense – in World War Two. But you don’t know English – that’s present tense – so you can’t – present tense – understand me. Somebody told me – past tense – that all Europeans know English but that is not – present tense – true.’

  This character caused much amusement, not least to the Fon, before the elders removed him; our host was agreeably laid back. Yet we had realised, by the end of an eventful evening, that this young Fon (aged thirty at most) retained more real power than any other chief we had met – even the apparently potent Lamido of Tignere.

  Supper consisted of rice and fresh fish, netted a few hours earlier in the stream at the foot of the mountain. A jolly young man with a torch escorted the meal, bearing his own bamboo stool on which he sat close to the Fon; their relationship seemed ‘special’. Whenever we obeyed orders to help ourselves – yet again – the torch-bearer kindly illuminated the dishes on the floor. (‘Greed highlighted!’, Rachel noted in her diary.)

  At 9.30 p.m. four supplicants arrived to palaver about the use of land; soon they were followed by two more ‘special buddies’. Normally in Cameroon our own sleeping habits and our hosts’ coincided; here it seemed things were only hotting up at Murphy bedtime. We unrolled our bags and slid into them without causing comment. The esoteric clan language proved an effective lullaby and we don’t know when palavering ended.

  Hours later Nature called me and I discovered that the ‘lock’ on the door consisted of two adjustable nails a few inches long. A lantern had been left alight in our room, turned low; another was alight in the bedroom. Darkness is dreaded.

  The Fon and his wife deplored our dawn start. ‘You go plenty hungry,’ warned Mrs Fon, presenting me with a gigantic hand of bananas. (Everything growing on that ledge seemed gigantic.) Only then did we realise that she spoke some English.

  From the palace a narrow path wound through well grown maize ‘ no drought had afflicted this area – to the village proper. We saw then that the Fon’s ‘ledge’ was part of a long valley enclosed on three sides by forested slopes. Many smiles greeted us as we passed between huts where men were standing outside their doors vigorously brushing their teeth with twigs. All those enviable African teeth don’t happen by accident.

  The path crossed a mile or so of flat land where we were saturated while pushing through coarse, golden-brown, rain-laden grass as tall as ourselves. On the edge of a river-noisy ravine we were about to go astray when a quick-witted young hunter came towards us out of the grass. ‘ Aghem?’ we checked. He pointed away from the path, into the ravine – then up to a series of high forested ridges. He was the only person we met all morning; it was uncanny how often, in unpopulated regions, a guide materialised when most needed.

  That climb was long but not unduly severe; usually the path zigzagged sensibly. This was a main route when Aghem men hunted the Metchum valley and rich traders organised long human caravans to carry the valley’s abundant palm oil to Wum, returning with hoes, machetes, spear-heads, tobacco, salt, tree-bark oil-drums, and sometimes goats, sheep and poultry, none of which do well at river level. Now sections of the path are in a mildly perilous state of disrepair and it is much overgrown. But most of the undergrowth is benign, though a barbed thorn on a dead palm frond deeply embedded itself in Rachel’s right ear and was not easy to remove.

  This forest was no less exciting than Mukuru’s though quite different in composition. Many palms grew in deep ravines but all the giants were majestic hardwoods. Often their complicated root-systems provided steps; on other difficult gradients the rock beneath the forest cloak offered footholds. Most of the smooth pale grey trunks were superbly fluted to a height of five or six feet. And some were of a girth that Rachel and I, with hands joined, could not encircle. But even here greedy loggers had been tempted – though their over-ambitious scheme had, not surprisingly, gone phut. Several felled giants had been electric-sawn into planks which were then abandoned. One 200-foot-long victim lay across our path, forcing me to remove the rucksack before surmounting its vast bulk.

  Fortunately we were almost out of the trees when driver ants struck. I had unwittingly walked on a column (they were locally numerous) and within seconds my ‘attack’ provoked theirs. As they invaded under my slacks I fled – to the extent that one can flee, with a rucksack, up an escarpment. Out on the sunny grassland I stripped; by then the enemy were all over me, causing agony. It took time to remove them from every crevice of shirt, slacks, briefs and socks.

  Meanwhile Rachel was working her way through the Fon’s bananas. ‘Let’s hope,’ she said indistinctly, ‘no hunter or herd comes by.’

  Clad again, I sat on a boulder and wolfed my share of bananas. Within yards – moments – we had moved from one world to another, from the dim, damp, enclosed forest onto bright, breezy, expansive pasture-cum-jungle. And the Aghem highland stretched ahead for many, many miles.

  ‘D’you realise,’ said Rachel, ‘that with Egbert we couldn’t have used any of these forest paths?’

  I had indeed begun to realise that in Cameroon there were advantages to trekking without a horse, though I could not subdue my post-Egbert heartache. Now we could over-exert ourselves, when necessary, without angst about cruelty to Egbert. Also, being able to use footbridges, and not being constrained by grazing requirements, greatly enhanced both our freedom of movement and our speed. When we did our statistics in Douala, it emerged that post-Egbert our average daily mileage went from eighteen to twenty-four. But of course the price to be paid for this increased mobility was book-starvation.

  ‘So really,’ said Rachel with irritating logic, ‘we invested £250 in a pack-horse so that we could have plenty to read!’

  11

  Wandering Towards Wum

  WHY IS THE Aghem highland so sparsely populated? The experts have no satisfactory answer. Apart from internal dissension and Bafut ‘kidnappings’, this whole Metchum-Aghem region remained undisturbed throughout most of the nineteenth century, protected from both Chamba and Fulani raiders by the Ocu mountains and its own ruggedness. Moreover, the Aghem highland is rich in iron ore, firewood, water, raffia-palms, oil-palms; and, before recent population increases in the surrounding areas, it was rich in game. The fertile volcanic soil could support many large villages, yet we found only scattered compounds and hamlets, and of course cattle beyond reckoning. Since the turn of the century this has been a Fulani stronghold, an area the newcomers were able to take over without displacing Bantus.

  For days we roamed happily through these unpredictable but always beautiful mountains, sometimes camping, sometimes staying in compounds, occasionally being drenched by violent afternoon storms but only once being soaked in our tent. Campsites were not as easy to find as in the Tchabal Mbabo. This terrain is more broken and jungly, the ground is stonier, the climbs are often as severe though usually shorter – and there are none of those immense expanses of pasture so characteristic of the Tchabal Mbabo. Yet we saw many more cattle here – plump beasts who made their drought-lean Adamawa cousins seem like poor relations. Once, sitting by a stream in a valley, we counted seven enormous herds grazing on the slopes all around. Most were white or dappled grey, the popular local colours; different clans favour different colours.

  Aghem’s Fulani compounds are bigger and more sophisticated than Adamawa’s, with lines of attached, though not interconnected, rooms rather than separate huts. Grandest of all was a milk-bar where we stopped one noon, a compound the size of a football pitch with rows of rooms on three sides and a kitchen-hut bigger than our nameless Fon’s palace. Open doors allowed glimpses of expansive (and expensive) displays of enamelware. Only women and children were visible, the former all young, elegantly robed and extraordinarily good-looking. They were reclining on verandahs playing with babies or dressing each other’s hair in a variety of tortuously complicated styles – a Cameroonian version of young Victorian ladies with nothing much to do and all day to do it.

  Bantu servants of both s
exes flitted in the background and when we arrived one hurried forward with a Nigerian mat which he unrolled for us on the men’s verandah. Ten minutes later another came from the kitchen with a silver-plated tray holding about five pints of hot milk, pyrex cups and saucers, plastic teaspoons and lump sugar in a covered bowl.

  We were about to move off, having dashed the boy who served us, when one woman called, ‘Wait small time!’ – the first intimation that anyone spoke any English. We sat back and attempted unsuccessfully to get a conversation going. Then, after a very small time, the Big Man appeared, aged about thirty-five and as good-looking as his womenfolk. He wore knife-creased khaki slacks and an aquamarine pure silk shirt, heavily embroidered with gold thread – no nasty synthetics for him! ‘A charming tycoon of Aghem’, I noted in my diary. His English was fluent though ungrammatical and when the women’s curiosity had been satisfied he escorted us towards the path for Essu.

  Leading us along the crest of a sunny, jungly ridge, our companion delivered his potted autobiography. He had never been to school, Koranic or otherwise, and was illiterate in every script. But he spoke English, French, Foulfoulde and six other African languages. (This was not a boast: I had asked.) After fifteen years in Nigeria, training the polo ponies his family exported, he had returned home when his father died. He was the eldest of three sons, all living in the compound, and three of the women and eight of the children were his. (‘I won’t take my fourth wife until all these are old!’) The family herd of more than nine hundred was dispersed for many miles around, only twenty-five milking cows being kept near the compound. Many Grassfields Fulanis, he said, owned as big or bigger herds. These however are always split up into sub-herds of 120 or so, the maximum number that may be conveniently watered in a given area and for which one herdsman can reasonably be held responsible. (So perhaps the seven herds we counted was one dispersed.)

  When we parted, our guide pointed into a wooded cleft far below and said, ‘Strange people live there – they eat only fish and fruit from the forest. They do not belong to any local tribe, they are on their own.’ Later, as we scrambled through that difficult ravine, we saw no one. But the few small grass huts by the river were peculiar – on high stilts.

  Less sophisticated was another Fulani compound to which we were invited by the fourteen-year-old ‘adopted’ Bantu son of the family. He met us as we were gloomily surveying an unpromising array of rugged mountains, with a view to sleeping on the least rugged. His English was poor but his message clear – and backed up by his ‘adoptive’ Fulani brother of the same age. This lad was carrying a compound-blaster which he switched on and off at intervals, as though to reassure himself that it was still working. There was something in Nigerian English about a German youth flying into Red Square, which I took to be the Nigerian version of ‘Next Week’s News’. Both boys worried about us because ‘these hills are strong’. They offered to carry the rucksack but Rachel very properly continued to shoulder her White Woman’s Burden. The final two hills were indeed ‘strong’ – almost vertical. On those rocky, scrubby slopes the boys admitted to feeling the effect of Ramadan.

  I reached level ground a little ahead of the others and found myself overlooking many miles of ridges and valleys, already shadowed dark blue. Above them stretched a delicate pastel sunset of pinks, greys, yellows – seen through an intricate pattern of palm and plantain fronds. Behind the compound, on lush grassland sloping gently to the summit, there grazed a white milking herd, a dozen fine bay horses and a small flock of less-ugly-than-usual sheep. This compound was built so close to the edge of its ledge that the kitchen-hut overhung the precipice.

  Our tall, lean host – Fulani-featured but ebony-skinned – registered extreme astonishment on seeing us. Yet his welcome was warm and his interest in our doings keen. Meanwhile four wives had dived behind the screen of bamboo poles and palm fronds fencing off the kitchen area. In the fading light I approached them, unbuttoning my shirt, as Rachel explained, ‘That is madame, my Mamma’ to our amused host and those of his ten children old enough to take an interest. The wives, peeping through the palm fronds, could not deny the evidence of their eyes and at once emerged to shake my hand. Whereupon our host called, ‘Me see too!’ His womenfolk fell about when I obliged.

  By now the sun, indisputably, had set, so we were temporarily ignored. Cameroon’s rural Muslims take Ramadan seriously, to the extent of fasting on afterwards, should they for any reason have broken the fast on one or more days. From the verandah we watched a great rushing about of little boys with bottles and kettles of water. There was much ritual washing, including three rinsings out of the mouth, and then came the bliss of drinking water after a hot fourteen-hour fast. According to the rule-book, prayers should follow, before eating. But if prayers are also taken seriously it makes more sense first to fill distractingly empty bellies and then to pray, when Allah can be given one’s full attention. Which is what this family did, and most others observed en route. Pap was quickly served, that thick, sour-sweet gruel to which we became so addicted in Adamawa – a soothing food with which to break a long fast. Fufu and jammu-jammu came half an hour later and we ate on the verandah while the family gorged and talked and laughed in a nearby room. During Ramadan there is a festive feeling about every evening meal.

  Orthodox Muslims do not ‘adopt’ – the practice is condemned – but during a post-prandial chat with our host we learned that his three Bantu ‘sons’ had been acquired, as babies, to strengthen the family’s work-force. I wondered what echo was here. Although domestic slavery was part of the West African way of life for centuries, most slaves were not acquired violently through wars or raids. They lost their freedom as a punishment, being enslaved instead of imprisoned, or they were sold as small children by families seriously in debt – a common problem in a society of traders. There was no humiliation associated with slavery as such. Some slaves eventually became important officials of the local chief, many married into their owners’ families, many were in due course set free. It was clear that our host’s three ‘adopted’ Bantus were much-loved. Even today, a very poor family might be tempted to sell surplus children to rich Fulanis, thus assuring their future prosperity.

  Our large, clean room had three home-made beds of bamboo poles and palm fronds – versatile materials, much used in this area. We explained that we could sleep on the floor, leaving the children in their beds, but the little boys were too frightened of us to share. That evening’s lullaby was the fervent chanting of prayers in the next room, partitioned from ours by a matting-screen that didn’t reach the ceiling. And by 4 a.m. the lengthy morning prayers had started, while much chattering of wives and clattering of pots signalled the cooking of an enormous pre-dawn banquet. During Ramadan Muslims are encouraged to say many extra prayers and in the towns some Fulani elders spend all day in the mosque, praying incessantly.

  At We we again met the ring-road. A motorist might pass the real We, hidden amidst tall trees, and imagine this to be one more unprepossessing shack-sprawl. In fact it is one of the Grassfields’ most important and attractive ‘pre-motor’ trading centres. Approaching from the eastern mountains, we were walking through the village for an hour before coming out on the ring-road. A network of steep, shady, red tracks connects scores of prosperous compounds built in a variety of architectural styles: round, square, oblong, straw-thatched, palm-thatched, tin-roofed – all surrounded by tall mango and kola trees, flowering bushes, graceful palms and groves of bananas and plantains.

  Long before reaching the village we realised that someone of consequence had just died. Frequent gunshots reverberated from slope to slope and spasms of drumming were followed by the wailing of pipes and the strumming of ndengi. Then we met an elderly man pushing an ancient punctured bicycle with gallons of mimbu on the carrier. He was going to the wake and insisted that we, too, would be warmly welcomed. I longed to accompany him but felt it would be crass for two strangers to intrude on death ceremonies as though these were a tourist ente
rtainment. Later the Fon’s eldest son – Bassong – said such diffidence was unnecessary. The arrival of two Whites would have helped the bereaved family by giving them valuable and enduring kudos throughout the chiefdom.

  Bassong, aged twenty-five, was warm hearted, good-looking and a fluent English speaker. Meeting us in the off-licence, soon after our early afternoon arrival, he invited us to stay in his father’s ‘guest house’ and we pictured a comfortable but in the spacious palace compound. Instead, we were eventually led across the ring-road to a hideous quasi-bungalow with concrete floors – much less comfortable to sleep on than earth. The furniture consisted of two battered easy chairs in the sitting-room. The bathroom did have a bath, lavatory and handbasin, all stained dark brown, but after ten years the expected piped water had not yet arrived.

  Among our other drinking-companions was a Francophone gendarme, recently posted to Anglophone We and closely studying a Nigerian publication – Dictionary for Foreigner’s English: Colloquial and Offensive Language. I was tempted to ask whether he wished to avoid or acquire offensive language. Beside him sat a trilingual Francophone teacher, also a newcomer; the children of each linguistic area are, in theory, taught the language of the other. Louis was an interesting character with whom we had an impassioned argument about colonialism. It was one of several that followed similar lines; many of our Cameroonian acquaintances expressed opinions that would enrage British anti-racists.

  Louis said, ‘It’s a big problem in Africa that we want all the Western goodies but we can’t make them for ourselves. Then some of us get miserable and angry about depending on Western loans and advisers – and getting into debt so we’re trapped by the West. But isn’t it our own fault? Now we’re supposed to be independent but we’re not behaving that way. We’re still depending on Western capitalists and letting them exploit us because we’re greedy for their goodies. Why don’t we have the know-how to get manufacturing organised the way Asian countries do?’