Cameroon with Egbert

by Dervla Murphy

  At midnight the entrepreneur, now very drunk, bashed on our door and yelled frenziedly, ‘Are you people asleep! Do you sleep? Have you problem? Let me in! I have no problem!’

  I did indeed have a problem, which continued until about 4 a.m. In several nearby huts throngs of men – certainly scores and perhaps hundreds – were drumming, chanting, clapping, semi-hysterically laughing and whooping what sounded like war-cries. I lay thinking positive: at least the disturbance was aurally inoffensive, unlike disco noises or the amplified Hindi film music that so often keeps one awake in India.

  Although we hadn’t expected to like Wum, an ‘administrative capital’ on a motor-road, we fell in love with the town at first sight – fortunately, as we were destined to see much more of it than we ever intended.

  Here our passports were confiscated and our visa problem ran out of control, becoming inextricably entangled with Rachel’s magnetism for the lower ranks of the gendarmerie. The details would be tedious, but we spent many hours persuading the more frankly virile policemen that a) our visas had been cleared by a senior Immigration Officer and b) Rachel was not willing to copulate with anyone in exchange for our passports. I felt genuinely sorry for a warm-hearted and undevious Francophone officer who repeatedly begged Rachel to go to bed with him, as the three of us sat beer-swilling in a bar-brothel. He couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t, since she (and her mother) obviously liked him. When he had resigned himself to his inexplicable fate he continued to be helpful and friendly, with no ulterior motive.

  One morning was spent sitting on the verandah of a congenial senior officer named Basil. He had asked us to call to his home on the outskirts of Wum at 8 a.m., to discuss our visa problem – forgetting that the morrow was Sunday, when he always played football with his men from 6 to 10 a.m. His wife was away in Bamenda for the weekend but two of his younger sisters entertained us; one longed to study science at an English university, the other thought an American university would be more fun. Basil’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter sat on my lap reading aloud, unaided, from her Ladybird book – one young Cameroonian who is unlikely to have academic problems.

  Remarkably, that Ladybird Reader and the We gendarme’s eccentric Nigerian dictionary were the only two books we saw in Cameroon, outside of the cities – and this despite our having stayed in several teachers’ homes. Nor did we once see, in the possession of a Cameroonian, any newspaper however rudimentary (most Cameroonian newspapers are very rudimentary), or any pamphlet, magazine or even comic. For all practical purposes rural Cameroon remains a pre-literate society, though a percentage of the younger generation is able, after a fashion, to read and write. This must partly explain the frequency with which Mungo Park’s comments could be applied to our own experiences and observations, almost two hundred years later. On one level those two centuries have utterly transformed Africa, on another level they have made astonishingly little difference. The continent’s veneer of modernity – national airlines and universities, architecturally pretentious capital cities, armed forces equipped with the latest weaponry and jet-fighters – can cause people to forget that many Africans are no better informed, and have no wider a world-view, than their pre-colonial ancestors. Certainly we overestimate the educational potential of the ubiquitous transistor radio. Our young friend under the tree by Lake Wum cherished his trannie but it had manifestly failed to enhance his knowledge of the outside world. For the illiterate (or semi-literate), it is not educational to listen to good news reports on China’s changing political scene, or astute analyses of conflicts in Central America or the Middle East, or panel discussions on the expansion of Japanese industry. Many Cameroonians have not the faintest notion where these places are. They cannot visualise or comprehend things or concepts outside their own experience. They cannot distinguish between a republic and a monarchy, democracy and dictatorship, capitalism and communism, an Arab desert and an American wheat prairie. For us it is hard to grasp the intellectual inflexibility and isolation of a society indifferent to the printed word.

  In The Mind of Man in Africa Dr J. C. Carothers, an ex-colonial medical officer who specialised in psychiatry, considers some of the implications of belonging to a pre-literate culture. And he makes the point that:

  The written word has probably only been invented a few times in this world’s history. Yet in other large agricultural populations its impact has been vital for many centuries. It is sometimes argued that its absence from sub-Saharan Africa is to be accounted for by isolation from outside influences … Yet it has been introduced, in its Arabic form, both through the Sudan and from the East Coast, frequently enough. It has even been invented, on two occasions in the nineteenth century, by gifted individuals in Sierra Leone and the Cameroons. Yet it failed to implant itself and grow, and this is the more surprising in view of the high level of organisation and stability achieved by several West African kingdoms in other respects. Nor can this failure be attributed to the disruption of organized life in Africa by the Atlantic slave trade since Arabic literacy in the Western Sudan goes back at least 850 years, about 450 years before the beginning of that trade.

  Dr Carothers, having worked for many years in East and West Africa, concluded that because the written word had not brought about the division in people’s minds between verbal thought and action, independent thinking was felt to be extremely dangerous.

  Perhaps the most resented colonial criticism of Blacks was: ‘They’re like children!’ Dr Carothers has an interesting theory about the basis for that misjudgement:

  J. Piaget’s studies of European children are highly relevant to the problem of the mental development of the child in Africa. About the age of seven or eight years, European children move from a stage in which thinking is essentially egocentric to one of an increasing objectivity … There is a conscious recognition of the need to ask the question ‘How?’ In the conception of causality, the need is seen for continuity and contact, for things to derive from other things, for the birth of new events by reassortment of parts or qualities and, at last, for explanation by spatial and temporal relations and for logical deductions … It has to be noted that the ‘magical’ and ‘animistic’ elements of the first egocentric stage, which gradually disappear from the thinking of the European child after the age of seven or eight years, remain prominent in the thinking of adults in rural Africa [my italics].

  Dr Carothers then wonders if ‘it is mere coincidence that at about the age of seven or eight European children have fully acquired the art of reading …’ My own footnote here is that many illiterate young White adults, in present-day British inner-cities, also suffer from an inability to visualise things or comprehend concepts outside their own experience.

  Dr Carothers worked in Africa a generation and more ago. Now his theories are often dismissed as irrelevant because ‘things are changing’ and Africans are being educated Western-style. Even if this were true, which it isn’t, there is something ropey here. The implication is that Africans are ‘backward’ because under-exposed to post-Renaissance thinking, that the differences between Blacks and Whites – intellectual, physical, emotional, spiritual, temperamental – are entirely a result of Black Africa’s culture being pre-literate. But what about millennia of evolution in a different climate, exposed to different diseases, eating different foods, required to exert different skills, holding different religious beliefs? When these differences are not ignored, it seems daft to expect Africans to adapt to Western culture within a few generations and proceed into future millennia with White minds in Black bodies. This of course is what too many Africans seem to want for themselves. But even if a sound Western education really were the answer to Africa’s problems, it cannot be provided with the resources at present available. And, as two Kenya sociologists (Diane Kayongo-Male and Philista Onyango) have pointed out, ‘The partial education that most Africans receive tends not only to prepare them inadequately but also instils in them unfounded self-confidence. They may … for a very long t
ime reject any employment that may be available as they consider themselves suitable for superior jobs.’

  For decades Whites have avoided openly discussing the ‘mind-set’ aspects of some African problems. The post-colonial mood was of guilt and repentance and ‘taking the blame’, but now that taboo is weakening. After quarter of a century of increasingly shambolic Independence it no longer makes sense to pretend that all Africa’s problems are ‘our fault’. And it helps that the emotionally crucial matter of the slave-trade is beginning to be viewed more dispassionately. Britain’s ‘greatness’ was firmly based on its revolting cruelties and enduring miseries, which are associated with still-familiar names. Barclays Bank was founded by David and Alexander Barclay on their profits as ‘slavers’; Lloyds first flourished as slave-traders and soon needed bigger premises than a coffee-house; the development of James Watt’s steam engine was financed by West Indian slave-owners and traders. Yet Black slave merchants also benefited, as J. D. Fage points out in A History of West Africa:

  The European slave-traders were traders, who bought their slaves from coastal African merchants. In return they provided textiles; all kinds of firearms, gunpowder and shot; knives and cutlasses; ironmongery and hardware; iron, copper, brass and lead in bar form; beads and trinkets; spirits (rum, brandy, gin) and many kinds of provisions. These imports clearly had value to the West Africans, for otherwise they would not have been willing to exchange slaves for them … In the eighteenth century West Africa’s involvement in the slave trade was big business, contributing substantially to the growth of her trade. The slaves had to be fed and cared for while still in African hands, thus providing new markets for local production. The European slave-traders brought considerable new business to African merchants and producers, since they had to buy provisions for the slaves on the voyage across the Atlantic. The slave trade brought increasing numbers of Europeans to the shores of West Africa, so that there was a growing number of buyers for her gold, ivory, gums, woods, palm-oil and many other things besides the slaves and their provisions … Buying and selling slaves necessitated more professional merchants. These, and the officials who were increasingly needed to regulate trade in each state, and the soldiers in the armies who captured the slaves … had less time to grow their own food, to make houses or clothing, and so stimulated other people’s production for exchange. West Africa indeed became a land renowned for its markets.

  Given the viciousness of the slave-trade, good race relations need an admission that both races rode on that gravy-train. Although fuelled by White demand, it could not possibly have rolled without the enthusiastic co-operation of Blacks. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, Europeans lacked the military resources and preventive medicines to invade Africa’s interior and enslave the estimated eleven million young men and women who were shipped off to the plantations. Nor did African merchants have to be bullied or coerced; they knew a profitable line in trades goods when they saw it. They were of course corrupted – dazzled by goodies – but they never had any scruples about selling fellow-Africans into slavery. Moreover, if those awaiting shipment on the coast, and costing quite a lot to feed, were not bought because of some unexpected drop in demand, they might be used instead as human sacrifices. Human rights were not a big deal, on any continent, during the centuries under consideration.

  And what of human rights now? The subject came up when Basil arrived at 11.20 a.m., still in his football togs and accompanied by a follower. He apologised profusely for ‘this silly muddle of days’ and beer happened and we settled down to discuss everything except passports and visas.

  Basil’s follower greatly admired Mrs Thatcher because she wants to bring back hanging. ‘It is necessary,’ he declared, ‘and not only for murder. Here we also kill robbers. We execute them by military firing squad if they break into houses. Even if you steal a door-key, or your friend steals it for you, and you enter by door, this is also robbery and you will die if caught. This is a good law. If I work hard and buy nice things no one has a right to steal them and live to enjoy them after prison.’

  When I made shocked noises the Thatcher fan protested that priority must be given to a man’s right to retain his own property. By depriving someone of property, the criminal forfeits the right to retain his own life. Basil – one of our favourite Cameroonians – obviously disagreed with all this but was cornered. As a senior police officer, responsible for upholding law and order, he could not openly condemn one of his country’s laws. But he was subtle enough to convey condemnation without being overtly subversive.

  As we stood up to leave Basil exclaimed, ‘Your passports! My men are being so stupid! Tomorrow is Monday, you go and collect them in the morning – I will give the order.’

  I wondered then if he realised that his men were being not stupid but randy. Their many ingenious stratagems to separate Rachel from Mamma had suggested a high level of enterprising intelligence.

  On our way to the town centre I brooded over human rights and White double-think and subconscious or disguised racialism. How would the White liberal world react if the South African government imposed the death penalty on Black robbers? Why does the White liberal world not react when a Black government imposes the death penalty on Black robbers? Is this racialism rampant within White liberals? Do we reason, without admitting it, that a death-sentence for robbery is ‘only what you’d expect’ of a Black government so there’s no point in making a fuss? Do we get steamed up about apartheid mainly because Whites are the criminals and so are letting ‘our side’ down? Or do we feel we’re not entitled to interfere in Black Africa because ‘that’s how Blacks want to run their own show and we’ve meddled enough already’? But that would be racialism gone over the edge – the human rights principle sacrificed to race – Blacks killing Blacks is OK, though Whites killing Blacks is wrong … Surely Blacks under a Black government are no less entitled to human rights than Blacks under a White government?

  We had a luncheon appointment with Gussie at a town centre Achu House. (There are chop-houses which specialise in this dire dish.) Gussie – full brother to the Fon of Mukuru – was one of the first people we met in Wum. Now he invited us home to meet his wife, a teacher, and we were arranging a sunset rendezvous when another medicineman intervened, urging us to stay the night in his compound ‘on the edge of the town’. (It was in fact five miles away down a bush-path.)

  ‘You go,’ advised Gussie. ‘For you people it will be interesting.’ I would have preferred to talk to his wife about education but he seemed reluctant to thwart the medicine-man’s ambition.

  This character, known locally as ‘the Doctor’, was regarded with mingled derision and unease by most of our Wum acquaintances. He told us to call him Papa, so we did – and never discovered his real name. At first we assumed that our status symbol value had inspired his invitation but it later transpired that he quite fancied Rachel as his sixth wife. He offered her a lift on the back of his motor-bicycle and this was the occasion when I most regretted our camera’s salination. I yearned for a pictorial record of Rachel, plus huge rucksack, perched on the pillion clutching the medicine-man’s waist as they bounded over Wum’s rutted road with a cardboard placard inscribed ‘DOCTOR’ tied to the back mudguard and wagging like a dog’s tail.

  One of Papa’s twenty-seven children – a barefooted small boy, carrying a big basket of rice – guided me through rough but fertile country. The compound’s two long shed-like dwellings were unworthy of their very lovely setting on the brink of a tree-filled valley, but Papa was extremely proud of their sheer size. Not since leaving the Lamidat in Tignere had we seen anything as large as his living-room – some thirty feet by fifteen, with a sofa and four armchairs at one end, a small dining-table at the other and nothing in between. Papa was a Fon’s son and sixteen Chief’s caps decorated one wall, each with a different feather of ‘secret’ significance and to be worn on the appropriate occasion only. On the opposite wall hung a chief’s drum – ‘Worth 100,000 CFA
(about £225) because these are not made any more and have a lost magic.’ Below the drum were a shooting-stick left over from the Raj and a locally made gun, brass-studded, ‘for shooting monkeys’. It looked as though it might be equally likely to shoot the shooter. A six-foot python skin nailed to the wall (the snake had been killed in the garden) seemed a great improvement on Dr Onambele’s inflatable reptile. By the unglazed window hung a Fatman poster, a Papal Visit poster and an electric cuckoo-clock varnished pale yellow and of decorative value only; Papa’s generator worked so irregularly that a supplementary lantern was kept alight all evening.

  A dozen juicy mangoes were brought to keep us going and Papa produced a quarter bottle of duty-free Scotch for my benefit, saying that he himself never touched the stuff. After a polite half-finger, I admitted to preferring beer in the tropics. His two youngest, a seven-month-old son and two-year-old daughter, also had their share of ‘33’. Basil later told us that drunkenness is relatively uncommon in Cameroon, despite beer for breakfast, because heads are made in infancy. And it helps that spirits are virtually unknown outside the cities. Only in Cameroon was I never once offered a home-distilled hooch, though presumably some is occasionally made.

  The children’s mothers – the two youngest of Papa’s five wives – were told to sit down and help themselves to beers. They were good-looking in different styles (fat and thin) and seemed on excellent terms with their husband and each other. The recently-acquired fifth was Rachel’s age; Papa was ‘about sixty’. He had never been to school and admitted to being illiterate: ‘Reading is not necessary for my business.’ As the evening progressed I warmed to him. His attitude to his women and children was kindly and he seemed a more genuine medicine-man than the celebrated Dr Onambele. Despite his polygamous compound he considered himself a good Catholic and devoutly said grace not only before each meal but even before eating a mango.