Cameroon with Egbert

by Dervla Murphy

  By then we had been joined by a young man working in Douala as an accountant but home in We for a wedding. He held strong views on Africa’s rapidly expanding army of Western ‘aid’ workers. ‘We must throw out these parasites,’ said he. ‘They know nothing about our real needs, or how to use traditional talents and experience. They’re on a beautiful gravy-train for themselves but there’s nothing in it for us. Now Africa’s got to seem to go backwards and forget the goodies – that’s the only way out of this debt mess. We need some cash aid, but in my job I see the bare minimum is best. Then we must learn how to manage it, for ourselves, by ourselves.’

  ‘But nobody wants to forget the goodies!’ objected Louis.

  ‘And that,’ said I, ‘is surely the worst colonial legacy – the illusion that to be “civilised” and “successful” you must imitate Whites. Even though there’s nothing in your traditions to form a foundation for our sort of consumer society.’

  The accountant beamed at me approvingly but Louis argued back. ‘Why shouldn’t we have goodies, if we can learn to make them for ourselves? Do you think Africans should still be living like savages in the twenty-first century? Being modernised is our reward for being colonised. We had to have colonisers, we couldn’t have gone through the past two hundred years without being developed. And nobody was going to do it for love, so we had to be turned into consumers of Western goodies. And we wanted them, right from the start, when the first traders arrived on the coast hundreds and hundreds of years ago.’

  ‘Ok,’ said the accountant, ‘you’re telling the truth, you’re facing the facts. But now we needn’t remain consumers, except as much as suits US.'

  Our debate became untidier, in proportion to our accumulating empties, and it seemed most of those present were finding my antipathy to colonialism irritating. To them the argument that, on balance, Europeans did more harm than good in Africa was, quite simply, unrealistic. Essentially they agreed with Mr Itoe: ‘You can’t always keep the baby.’ I often wondered how different our impressions might have been had we spent three months in Douala and Yaounde, talking with Cameroonians who read books and newspapers and are aware of a world in which ‘colonialism’ has become a filthy word.

  ‘We needed Christianity,’ said Louis flatly – and nobody disputed this. ‘Before the missionaries came we had too much fighting and too many cruel customs.’

  I gave up at that point. But was pre-colonial Africa really worse off than modern messed-up Africa, adrift without a cultural rudder on a choppy sea of materialism?

  At intervals during the afternoon We’s medicine-man wandered in for a beer and a chat, then was off about his arcane business, then was back again. Dr Onambele – tall, portly, affable and clad in a long white gown – seemed rather too aware of being no ordinary village medicine-man. An internationally renowned figure, he is often called on by West African governments for assistance during all sorts of crises. He had just returned from giving advice in Gabon and was soon to leave for a week in Nigeria. Like many Cameroonian medicine-men, he was registered as what we would call a homeopathic doctor and cooperated with Western-trained staff at local hospitals. When he invited us to breakfast Bassong said, ‘You must go, this will be good for his reputation when you are seen as his guests. I will lead you, at half an hour after sunrise.’

  Before saying goodnight Dr Onambele read our palms, an embarrassingly phoney exercise of his powers. Then he and his apprentice performed a stylised, complicated ‘magical’ dance for our delectation. Given the amount of beer by then consumed, this was surprisingly graceful. It involved their sharing another ‘33’ and ritualistically grabbing each other’s leather pouches, worn round the neck and containing, Bassong said, ‘powerful magic herbs’.

  Behind the off-licence, in a storeroom-cum-chop-house, we enjoyed excellent fufu and jammu-jammu, with tender goatmeat, for only 300 CFA each. As Bassong escorted us to the lampless guest house he confided that his father hated him, which made him sad, but maybe it was because he so much didn’t want to be the next Fon … Also he was determined not to have more than one wife and five children (he had three already). ‘There are jealousy and expense problems in our traditional families. And we Catholic people cannot take Communion with more than one wife.’

  We sympathised with Bassong’s dread of being selected as Fon. Once selected, most (all?) men, however reluctant, feel compelled to accede. We heard of one reigning Fon whose successful academic career in Germany was abruptly ended when, in defiance of his strongly stated wishes, he received the summons to be ‘enstooled’. He was shattered, if not quite as shattered as his German wife. Yet at once he returned to the Grassfields with wife and children, for whom he built a suitably palatial bungalow on the outskirts of Bamenda. He himself felt constrained to settle in the non-palatial palace and acquire more wives.

  Some Cameroonians are prone to ‘Dutch hospitality’ (Rachel’s phrase) and at the end of beery evenings issue breakfast invitations not always remembered next morning. So we had a precautionary 6 a.m. meal in the chop-house: a square meal of six golden buns each, with bowls of scalding pap. Already the off-licence was in business. Two teachers were having beer for breakfast, to fortify themselves against eighty-pupil classes. And on the street a jolly character was bouncing up and down, wearing around his neck a drum of nailed-together sardine tins and beating it with an old shoe while talking animatedly to himself between swigs of ‘33’.

  ‘To err is human,’ commented one of the teachers, sombrely gazing out at the drummer.

  When Bassong arrived we walked beneath spreading mango trees past rich compounds. Sheep were tethered on the wayside grass and Bassong told us that an ancient taboo prevented his family from either keeping sheep or eating mutton. ‘These are stupid animals who have no horns. And at night they act like men, standing on back legs and knocking on doors with front legs and casting spells.’

  ‘What kind of spells?’ I asked.

  Bassong looked embarrassed and giggled. ‘Bad spells – very bad! Only old men with many children should keep sheep. These animals have so many children they take a man’s power.’ Then he added, as an unimportant footnote, ‘When my grandfather was Fon he often became a sheep at night to discover what was going on all over the village.’

  Dr Onambele’s compound was unattractive. At the entrance a conspicuous signboard boasted of his qualifications, prowess and reputation. Outside his quasi-bungalow stood a long, well-polished limousine, the first motor-car we had seen in a compound since leaving Doi’s. This morning the doctor was pin-stripe suited and homburg-hatted in preparation for a journey to Bamenda. Although we were enthusiastically welcomed our guide was ignored. Bassong plainly regarded Dr Onambele with a mixture of fear and respect. Equally plain was Dr Onambele’s contempt for the Fon’s eldest son.

  Our host’s unmade bed occupied one side of a small, Western-furnished living-room. Hanging low above the statutory oblong coffee-table were two huge gaudy balloons advertising Sprite and Honda. Over the bed hung an enormous curled-up shocking-green inflatable rubber python. From the ceiling hung symmetrically spaced paper frills, foot-long strips of yellowed newspapers. (The only newspapers, incidentally, that we saw anywhere in Cameroon outside of the cities.)

  As we struggled to adapt to the decor our host jumped up: ‘Come! Before breakfast let me show you my wives!’ Pacing pompously, he led us to a row of eight identical grey mud rooms on the far side of the compound. All the doors were open and in each room squatted a smiling wife. Dr Onambele strolled along, naming each and making comments which I didn’t take in. Had the wives been told to put themselves on display for the White visitors? The distressing overall effect was of being shown around a private zoo. Yet these women may be as happy as they looked; it must be prestigious to belong to an internationally famous medicine-man.

  ‘I have twenty-eight children,’ said Dr Onambele at the end of this tour. ‘And much rich land.’

  Breakfast happened then, a meal of steamed planta
in, six-egg omelettes sodden in palm oil, pint mugs of Ovaltine and what can only be described as a meaty goo. We regretted our precautionary meal.

  Having closely questioned me about my work, Dr Onambele foretold, ‘When you write your next book you will be swindled. Other people will make much money from it but will give you little – beware! It is easy to swindle you!’

  I made no reply, being weak on the social formulae required for such situations.

  A few silent moments later our host said abruptly, ‘Someone very close to you who is dead returns sometimes in dreams and is with you you are together again. But this does not happen often. This person is dead many years and there are long gaps.’

  All this is so true that for a moment I was startled, especially by the emphasis on is with you, which is exactly how it feels in those rare dreams. Then I reminded myself that such experiences must be common – and useful to a medicine-man as ‘proof’ that he can divine people’s ‘secrets’.

  After breakfast Bassong hung back while we were taken to the spirits’ shrine, a round wickerwork thatched but in a secluded corner of the compound. Dr Onambele explained that some of the spirits who come to him in the night feel trapped under a tin roof and others are scared off in the rains by the noise overhead.

  ‘Sensible spirits!’ I murmured flippantly to Rachel. But the wider implications of this preference are convoluted.

  From the moment of our meeting, Dr Onambele had baffled me. Clearly he was a sharp operator, with an eye to the main chance when Whites appeared. Yet it would be both unfair and obtuse to dismiss him as a cynical charlatan. Sitting with him in that hut, surrounded by the standard implements of his magical trade, it was beyond dispute that he believed in his own powers. And I had an open mind on his dealings with spirits, which in my view may or may not exist.

  Our attention was drawn to two crudely carved wooden figures, male and female, some eighteen inches high and very old. Through these the spirits talk to Dr Onambele. A small complete termite-hill, its base wrapped in black plastic, is used to counteract epidemics. One of the three monkey skulls on display ensures that hunters will have success; the uses of the other two were not divulged. Water that has been left overnight in an oddly-shaped bowl – apparently a human skull encased in mud – will cure blindness. A long black antelope horn banishes barrenness, when pointed at the womb, and this is the magic most in demand.

  We watched Dr Onambele half-filling a wide tin basin with water from an iron cauldron. Then he asked us to spit on a lump of sugar; we obeyed and it was floated on the water. Next we spat on a match, used to ignite the sugar-lump. It burned steadily while we were being given two powders, one to cure stomach upsets, the other as ‘general protection’. (The latter, in the weeks ahead, didn’t work too well.) When the sugar had burned out Bassong was summoned and told to fetch an empty bottle which was filled with water from the basin ‘to protect you at night in the bush from direct attacks by bad spirits’. (That worked fine.) We were also given a small gourd from which the enspelled water must be drunk. Afterwards Rachel looked slightly uneasy when I abandoned our magic bottle at the first opportunity, hiding it in a hollow tree. But we still have the powders and the gourd, our only tangible souvenirs from Cameroon.

  As we returned to the bungalow Rachel whispered, ‘Dash?’

  ‘No way!’ I whispered back.

  Our bush-path from We to Wum was a cut-long; the ring-road takes the shortest route – a mere eight miles. On the way, while crossing a high grassy ridge, the ground seemed suddenly to be moving. We stopped, staring down, then exclaimed in unison ‘A plague of caterpillars!’ These however were not fat, black and hairy, like the source of Nigel Barley’s’ frustration further north in Cameroon. They were thin, short haired, black and green – but equally destructive. At a nearby milk-bar we heard that for miles around the mountains had been stripped; soon there would be no grazing left.

  The ladies of that compound were engaged in hair-styling their small daughters’ curls. We were given mini-stools to sit on, in the shade of a mango tree, while enjoying a large bowl of curds; then I caused great offence by leaving 200 CFA in the empty bowl. It was rejected by a furious young woman with a thin face and a hooked nose. ‘Me dash you!’ she said witheringly.

  The gradual descent to Wum took us through many fields being devastated by caterpillars. One woman, mistaking us from afar for MIDENO anti-pest experts, came sprinting to greet us. Her expression, when disillusioned, would have taken a tear from a stone. She pointed to the surrounding acres of baby maize – a second planting, because the first had been eaten. Now this too was vanishing, even as we watched. And there could be no third planting …

  As Wum and its volcanic lake came into view – still several miles away – we were joined by a young man carrying an outsize oil-stove on his head. He informed us that the local ‘rich men’ were leaving some fields fallow, seeing no point in wasting seeds on feeding caterpillars.

  ‘But what about the poor men?’ I asked. ‘What can they do?’

  The young man laughed merrily. ‘Hah! There is nothing for them to do! This year no chop for poor men!’ From which we deduced that he was not a poor man.

  Lake Wum, semi-encircled by smooth, low, grassy hills, was easily accessible. The oval of cool jade-green water, immensely deep and about a mile long, is fringed by palms, flowering shrubs and tall graceful trees bearing a strange yellow fruit. There we laundered clothes and swam lengthily and talked with a youth sitting alone under a tree reflecting on his future. He had just finished his seventh grade examinations and was now in a state of high tension, awaiting results. If these were satisfactory he hoped to go to Yaounde University, after two years at a Yaounde boarding-school to improve his French, and then to become a teacher. His father was the local quarterchief (a Wum quarterchief is a VIP) and, he said, owned the lake. He apologised for the lack of a tourist hotel, once discussed but not mentioned recently. It was rumoured that a powerful group of elders had opposed this development, arguing that it would dangerously offend the spirits who dwell in Lake Wum.

  This youth’s curiosity about Europe was unusual. How was our transport, did we have bush-taxis? Did all Big Men have automobiles? How were our houses built? Did everyone have tin roofs? Did we have dwarf cattle or zebu? How many wives did Big Men have? To him the notion of polygamy being illegal was not only absurd but threatening, a direct attack on male supremacy. ‘Then how,’ he asked, ‘do Big Men show they are important? And how is their land planted? Who weeds their fields? They must have so much servants! Or is it how they can still buy slaves?’ Clearly he thought anything possible in countries where polygamy is prohibited. Next he asked, gazing at Rachel’s head, bobbing in mid-lake, ‘How old is this daughter?’ And then, ‘You will soon arrange brideprice? If girls don’t marry by nineteen latest they run around and become harlots. After marriage it is OK if they have jobs, if they want to work to make money. But first they must have a husband to control them, to keep them living quietly.’

  Beyond the lake we climbed through a mature eucalyptus wood, then found ourselves in the quarterchief’s spacious compound – witness to the Aghem Federation’s pre-colonial wealth. Four imposing thatched mud houses – definitely not huts – had weather-worn, but still sharply detailed carvings on their window-frames and doors. There was no one around, apart from a sow giantess with eight minute piebald bonhams. And of course the chiefly ancestors lay in their communal grave in one corner, covered by a massive slab that could be shifted whenever it seemed expedient to pour libations to (and onto) the great-grandads, whose spirits dwell in Lake Wum.

  In the nearest off-licence a local government official said, ‘Debts are strangling me!’ Five of his seven children were of boarding-school age and if you didn’t send them to a good Mission school what chance would they have? For years he had been trying to persuade White priests and nuns to start a day-school in Wum. ‘We have now about 10,000 people in this town, we need good education.’ He despise
d all government schools.

  We were alone in the bar when a stately, well-robed, middle-aged gentleman entered quietly and ordered a Beaufort. By then we had developed a nose for Chiefs, Fons, Lamidos and suchlike. I whispered to Rachel, ‘The quarterchief!’ And so he proved to be, a most delightful character with whom we talked for the next hour. His main concern was the caterpillar plague. ‘For me it doesn’t matter, I have many fields in different places. But for my poor people who have only a few small fields it is a sad, sad tragedy!’

  This quarterchief had an unusual (in Cameroon) hobby: local history. He told us that when the Germans arrived at the end of the nineteenth century Aghem’s population was about 5,000 and most men were part-time traders. In 1904 the notorious Captain Glauning led his German troops into the area, burned Wum and flogged to death a local Batum (hereditary ruler of a section of the Aghem Federation). Another Batum, our friend’s great-grandfather, was arrested with two of his elders and gaoled in Bamenda where all three soon died. The Batum of Waindo, wishing to become Paramount Chief, had intrigued to bring about this invasion. Only his people were not attacked and he became, briefly, the Germans’ ally and administrator. ‘But the Germans also did good things,’ concluded the quarterchief. ‘They gave us our first roads, schools, medical centres, telegraph service – and scripts for languages we couldn’t write before. Colonialism is like the zebra. Some say it is a black animal, some say it is a white animal and those whose sight is good, they know it is a striped animal!’

  This was Wum’s oldest and most attractive quarter, where we spent our first night. An unpleasant entrepreneur tried to over-charge us for a room in a newish shack built on wasteland. It had a loose roof, a dangerous hole in the floor, a grubby mattress and a defective lock. No latrine was indicated and no washing water or lantern provided. Life is much more civilised in the bush.