by Sheri Speede
Kenneth drove me, armed with my camera, holding my head out the window to follow the growl of the chain saw. I strained to listen and gauge the distance and direction of the sound, and as it grew louder, I soon knew that the chain saw was indeed operating within our boundaries. Finally, when Kenneth and I were as close as we could get with the truck, we got out and continued through the forest on foot. The two men didn’t notice our approach. One of them stood atop the large trunk of a downed tree, bending over as he worked the chain saw to cut the trunk in half. Just as he looked up at us, I snapped a photo. Quickly I turned the camera on the other man and snapped again—another good face shot. Whether or not they knew about my agreement with the village community, these chain saw guys had to know that it was illegal to log on government land without a formal concession. Even before the man turned off the chain saw and I could hear the words he shouted, I understood from disgruntled faces and pointing fingers that neither man was happy about the photos. When the noise died and we could hear their loud complaints, Kenneth didn’t bother to translate, as he would have if he had questioned my ability to understand.
I held up my hand to ask for silence and confronted their anger with a quiet and polite question. “Can you please tell me for whom you are working?” Kenneth smiled casually as he translated.
Clearly surprised by this weird confrontation in the middle of the forest, they looked at each other, unsure whether to answer.
“Who sent you here?” I asked more directly, in simple French.
“The chief of Mbinang,” the man with the chain saw finally responded.
Now I was the one who was surprised. As Kenneth and I had tracked the sound of the chain saw, I had played a scenario in my head where I would go immediately to Chief Ibrahim of Mbinang to enlist his help in putting an end to the illegal logging. To hear that he was responsible for it was unsettling. The chief had signed an agreement with me, formalized by a representative of the national government, promising not to log on our small part of the forest. I had enjoyed a glass of wine with him a few days earlier. I tried not to look as surprised as I felt.
“Okay, merci,” I said, and to Kenneth, “Let’s go!” I wasn’t sure how strongly these men felt about the pictures in my camera. I didn’t want to lose my beloved camera, but neither Kenneth nor I would have fought the guy with the chain saw over it. We hurried back to the truck before they had a chance to weigh their options and drove back to camp, where I could consider mine.
The next morning we drove to Mbinang. Chief Ibrahim sat on a bamboo bench in the meeting area, which was covered by a raffia roof in front of his house. With him were his nephew Alain, visiting from the town of Mbandjock where he worked as an administrator for a sugarcane plantation, and the two chain saw guys we had gone out of our way to meet the day before. After Kenneth and I had shaken everyone’s hand, the chief gestured toward a vacant bench. While we beat around the bush with irrelevant conversation, as is customary and required before getting to any serious issues, other villagers wandered over. They shook our hands and then lined up around the periphery of the meeting area to listen in on what promised to be a confrontation.
Finally, I veered sharply toward the point. “Chief, we have a big problem!”
“Yes,” the chief agreed.
“Yesterday, I found these men cutting a tree on sanctuary land! They said they were working for you!” I cut to the chase.
“Yes,” Chief Ibrahim confirmed and proceeded to explain calmly. “I am not cutting wood to sell, as that would be illegal. I am taking trees only to make furniture in my house, which is my traditional right.” He had been coached what to say, I felt sure, and I knew it was a lie. The chief’s house was not in need of furniture. “But you signed a legal agreement, a promise, that you would not encroach on the sanctuary land for anything.”
“It’s my land,” he said simply.
“Does your word, your promise, which you gave me in writing, mean anything at all to you?” I spoke in English with Kenneth translating, as I couldn’t afford to be misunderstood. My words were direct, but my tone was respectful and calm.
Alain, who was a very large, relatively well-educated man to whom I had barely ever spoken, jumped into the conversation with a confrontational, angry tone. “The chief can do whatever he wants on his land. You have disrespected him and stolen his land!”
“The land is Cameroon government land, and the government sent me here.” I was suddenly furious and my heart was pounding madly, but I struggled to maintain a calm tone.
“Look around you. Where are your government friends? You are here in the bush with us!” Alain spat at me. I had to admit, to myself at least, that he made a good point, but I was taken aback by how much this man I barely knew seemed to dislike me. When I didn’t say anything, he pushed his point a bit too far, “The divisional officer and the national government in Yaoundé don’t matter at all here.”
“Well, I expect they’ll be very interested to hear that you feel that way,” I informed him.
“The chief is the only authority here!” Alain was animated and loud now.
“Well, if that’s the case, it should be no problem for me, because your uncle, the chief, is the one who signed a legal agreement with me!”
“Taking photos of people without their permission is illegal in my country. You are the one who can go to jail.” Apparently remembering he needed to address the grievances of the chain saw guys, Alain glanced at them, still scowling from their corner bench, as he spoke to me.
“They were trespassing. It’s legal to take photographs of trespassers.” I was making it up as I went along.
“It’s the chief’s land! You are the trespasser!”
“What do you know anyway? You don’t even live here,” I said, and I noticed that some of the villagers around us were nodding their heads a little as I was talking. Taking this as evidence that Alain wasn’t universally liked in the village and empowered slightly by the subtle support, I went on. “I live here with the people and do many things to help this community. I’m part of this community. What do you do to help the people here? Nothing, that’s what!” I really had no idea about his role in the community, but I was on a roll. “You live in Mbandjock!” I placed a derogatory emphasis on Mbandjock like it was the most ridiculous place in the world that a person could live, and people laughed, even before the translation.
Alain was so angry he couldn’t stay seated. Standing added the emphasis of his large size to his shouting, both obviously intended to intimidate me. “You are kicked out of the chief’s territory. Leave now!” He pointed to the road. “Now!”
“Who are you to kick me out?” I remained seated. As his voice had gotten louder, I made mine softer.
“I speak for the chief!” He still stood over me, and I tried to appear as relaxed as I could while I hoped he wouldn’t try to physically throw me out in the road.
I looked at the chief. “Does he speak for you, Chief?”
The chief was silent, looking straight ahead, neither at Alain nor at me.
“Leave!” Alain commanded me, apparently interpreting the chief’s silence as support for his position.
“Chief, does Alain speak for you?” I asked, a little more urgently.
Finally, the chief groaned uncomfortably and tilted the top of his head to one side and then the other. He obviously didn’t like where this discussion had gone. “I’m adjourning this meeting.” It was the first thing the chief had said in a few minutes. “Can you come back tomorrow at 10:00 A.M.?” he asked me. He had found a way to diffuse the situation.
After I agreed to come back, Kenneth and I quickly departed from the village, leaving without the customary good-bye handshakes. Back at Sanaga-Yong Center, I barely slept that night, worrying about the outcome of the meeting that would take place the next morning.
However, at 10:00 A.M. we arrived in Mbinang to a completely different atmosphere. As I approached the outdoor meeting place, Alain stood to shake my h
and and addressed me solemnly as “Doctor.” Before sitting, Kenneth and I shook the hands of Chief Ibrahim, the chain saw guys, and several onlookers who had gathered for the scheduled meeting.
Immediately after we sat down, Chief Ibrahim jumped to the point, “Can I finish cutting the one tree into planks?”
“Yes,” I said, a bit reluctantly but in the spirit of compromise.
“Okay, then. I won’t cut any other trees within your project boundaries.” The chief settled it. I suddenly realized that he probably didn’t intend to cut any more anyway, at least not in the immediate future, so it was an easy compromise for him, in principle only.
“Can we have the film from your camera with the pictures of these men?” Alain asked me with exaggerated politeness.
“It’s a digital camera and doesn’t use film,” I explained, in an equally polite tone. “I will erase the photos.”
“How will we know that you erased them?” Alain asked, staying respectful.
“You’ll have to take my word for it, like I have to take the chief’s word that he won’t cut more trees on sanctuary land,” I said. Alain and the chain saw guys were stuck with it.
There wasn’t much more to say. The meeting was short. Before I could rise to leave, the chief asked if I would do him the favor of giving him a ride to a big meeting in the village of Mbargue (an hour away because the road was bad) the following day. It was hard to say no in that current context of reconciliation.
“Okay,” I agreed, hiding my annoyance. I would send Kenneth to drive him, using our fuel.
Thus, the drama that had sucked my attention for two days ended anticlimactically. I had made the point that I would notice them logging on sanctuary land, but beyond that I hadn’t gained anything. It was like many other experiences that defined my relationship with the people of the village; they were melodramas that demanded my attention and sometimes upset me, but generally ended okay. A few weeks later, a more serious incident in Bélabo traumatized me much more.
One night in September, I drove to Bélabo to pick up Estelle and two volunteers who would be arriving on the train from Yaoundé, leaving Kenneth and one other volunteer in camp. Kenneth and I might both have gone to Bélabo, but I didn’t want to leave one volunteer alone. I might have sent Kenneth to pick up the two volunteers, but because I was excited that Estelle was coming for a short visit—her first in a long time—and because I hadn’t been out of camp in a few weeks, I decided to drive to Bélabo myself, alone.
Two identical passenger trains operated each day on the railways running through our small town of Bélabo. One passed through on its twelve- to eighteen-hour route from Yaoundé to the town of Ngaoundéré in North Cameroon. The other followed the exact route in reverse, passing from Ngaoundéré to Yaoundé. The crowded trains, which traveled at night to avoid the heat, were both scheduled to arrive in Bélabo around 12:30 A.M., but one or both were often late. After checking at the train station and learning that the train coming from Yaoundé would be several hours late, I decided to rest in the small, sparse chamber of the Est Hotel that we rented for the equivalent of $16 per month. Renting a room by the month, we could keep our own clean sheets on the bed and our mosquito netting hanging above it.
Before going to the hotel, I visited a small kiosk near the train station to buy candles, matches, drinking water, some cookies, and a premixed bottle of gin and tonic. I figured I might as well relax and enjoy myself while I waited. When I pulled up to park across the street from the hotel, the attendant was standing outside the front door of the reception area under a dimly burning incandescent bulb. It was the only light source in the otherwise dark alley. Bélabo had electricity about half the time and rarely late at night, so I was surprised to see the bulb burning.
I climbed out of the truck with my hands full of keys, flashlight, and the plastic bag of items I had just bought at the store. I had taken no more than three steps toward the attendant when a hard blow on my back sent me sprawling painfully across the gravel. When I rolled over and tried to sit up, a man in shadow hit me across the top of the head with something he held in his fist, knocking me back down. I saw the flicker of stainless steel and realized he had hit me with the handle of a big knife.
He pulled the punch was my first thought. I realized immediately that he could have hit me harder or cut me with the knife, and it provided me with a reason to believe I might survive whatever was about to happen. Faceup, prostrate on the dirt, I opened my mouth to yell and was silenced by the sharp point of the long triangular knife blade on the base of my throat. The large blade rose up diagonally under my chin and connected to the hand of an African man who straddled me. In the darkness, I couldn’t see his face or the faces of the other two men who stood on either side of me. The shiny metal of their knives was the only thing I could see clearly. A few yards away, under the aura of the dim bulb, I saw the hotel attendant go inside and close the door. I was on my own.
Without options to defend myself, at the mercy of these men whose faces I couldn’t see, one thought ran through my mind like a mantra, Stay alive, stay alive, stay alive, stay alive . . . While their hands ripped off my money belt and my watch and searched my bra for money, their rough kicks bruised my arms and legs, but I didn’t feel any pain. When they barked at me in rapid French, it sounded like gibberish through my fright. One of them yanked my blue Teva sandals from my feet, and another pulled my pants down to my knees. They’re stealing my good pants, I thought. The terrifying idea that their intentions in removing my pants might be far worse came no sooner than it was laid to rest by one of the men searching my crotch for money. They were hateful two-bit thieves, and nothing more.
Satisfied that they had gotten everything of value, they turned away, leaving me shoeless, with my pants to my knees. One of them reached down to pick up my bottle of water, which had gone flying when they hit me from the back. Unhurried, he threw back his head to drink as he walked away. As I watched the three silhouettes saunter into the darkness, I tried to register as much information about them as I could. The one who held the knife on my throat was short and muscular, and he wore a red jacket. The two others—one tall, one of medium height—wore dark clothes. I knew I wouldn’t be able to identify them.
As soon as they were out of sight, I stood up on the unforgiving gravel and began searching for my truck keys and my flashlight, trying to estimate where they would have landed. My heart raced as I looked about frantically, fighting an irrational fear that the bandits would come back. From within the sphere of dim light, I peered into the surrounding darkness and wondered if they were watching me. When I saw blood on the rocks, I realized that the broken glass of the gin and tonic bottle had sliced my foot, but I hardly felt it. After several minutes, during which I found my flashlight but couldn’t find my keys, I banged on the hotel door and called to the attendant. I couldn’t bear to be out there alone anymore. It took him several minutes to come, and I spotted my keys just as he tentatively opened the door. I had intended to ask him to go to the police with me, but I was suddenly suspicious of him. He had left me alone with the bandits. Was he simply afraid, unwilling to risk his own life for mine? I could understand that. He couldn’t have even called the police during the attack, because Bélabo had no phone service. However, as he stood before me, it occurred to me that he might have cooperated with the bandits, and suddenly he seemed as sinister as they were. I fled in the truck as quickly as I could.
Alone in the pickup cabin, bumping along the forest road on my way back to camp to get Kenneth, intense feelings of relief vied with anger. My body was beginning to ache, but I had not been damaged in any lasting way. I was sure the thieves were quite disappointed with their booty. My money belt had contained the equivalent of $47, and my watch was an inexpensive Casio, the band of which they had broken when they yanked it from my wrist. I really needed my shoes and was upset about losing them, but the thieves wouldn’t profit much—they probably couldn’t sell them for as much as $20 on the str
eets. My biggest concern was the loss of my passport, which had been in my money belt.
I harshly berated myself for forgetting my many years of martial arts training. By the time I was on the ground with a knife at my throat, it was too late to respond. I should not have been caught by surprise. Seeing the hotel attendant rendered me complacent, and I didn’t even look around before getting out of the truck. I screwed up, and I was lucky the price I paid wasn’t much higher.
Kenneth and I drove back to Bélabo to pick up Estelle and volunteers Claudine Erlandson and Nicholas Bachand, and to file a police report about the bandit attack. A derailment, not a rare occurrence on our railways, had delayed the train by ten hours. It was on our way to the office of the military police that we spotted the blue passport book lying in the middle of the road several blocks from the hotel. The bandits had made a choice to discard it in the road, where someone might see it, where I might get it back. Although I was compelled to file the report, I was not optimistic about the bandits ever being captured. The military police also suspected that the hotel attendant was involved—if only due to coercion and fear. They would investigate.
When we returned to camp in the afternoon with Estelle and the new volunteers, nursery caregiver Ndele Chantal informed us that four-year-old Njode was sick. In fact, he was critically ill with pneumonia, and all my emotional energy for the next twenty-four hours was focused on saving him. Estelle and I passed the night in the nursery with him, one or the other of us watching his every breath. I was able to sleep for a few hours only because she was there. I trusted Estelle to detect even the slightest changes in Njode’s condition, just as I would. She stayed another two days, until we knew he would survive.
I had no time to nurse my own psychological wounds, although I knew I had been affected by the bandit attack. I was more nervous than usual, constantly looking around behind myself, taking stock of my surroundings, visibly jumping when anyone walked up behind me. This fearfulness that came afterward was the worst part of the attack for me. For a few minutes the thieves had terrified me with their power over me, and now I was letting the memory of them terrorize me. It made me furious with them and with myself for not having more control.