by Nigel Barley
On the day of the festival all local worthies turned up at the football ground. I took advantage of the occasion to harass the Old Man of Kpan who appeared in Fulani robes and carrying a sword. All the other tribes had sent in dancers who stamped and shrieked in choking dust. The big men of the administration had put on their best uniforms; the sous-préfet’s looked suspiciously like that of an Air France steward. Flags were hauled up and down, the gendarmes stamped about with their most offensive weapons, party officials availed themselves of the opportunity to beat people. The national anthem was sung. A radio was solemnly placed on a chair and saluted as the speech of the President filtered through with generous static accompaniment. Children performed marches and played games. No one was allowed to leave before the sous-préfet and we all wilted visibly in the heat. A large number of children accompanied by their mothers began to scream, obliging them to leave early; it was rumoured the women were deliberately pinching them. Among the few Whites the conversation centred on the slaying and mutilation of two missionaries in the North. The Americans were nervous, the French performed extravagant displays of what had happened to the bodies, joyfully increasing their disquiet. As the sole Englishman it fell to me to keep a stiff upper lip; that this character is inevitably slain half-way through the second reel of all old films was neither here nor there.
All beer and soft drinks in town had been commandeered by the sous-préfet, so I limped off to the mission to join Jon and Jeannie and wait for the evening’s entertainment – a beauty contest.
On this particular evening Poli was very much in a mood for overstatement. People were required to express their pleasure at independence with hysteria in the streets. There was a subtle distinction made between those invited to the sous-préfet’s party and those who were not; the police underlined it by charging the crowd of onlookers and beating them from time to time.
The whole main street was a solid mass of people, singing, dancing, shouting greetings. Many, if not most, were cheerfully drunk. Perhaps this was the occasion for which my suit had been intended; if so, I would have melted in the heat. It being an official party, everything was extremely formal. Serried ranks of stiff, very uncomfortable chairs were drawn up. There was clearly some arcane system for their allocation according to strict rules of precedence, but whatever it was eluded me. The doctor was there with his enormous wife. The bureaucrats were there. The police chief stared at me pointedly; the postmaster stonily ignored me – doubtless the result of my inquiring why all mail posted in Poli arrived in England without stamps. A large number of kinsmen of the man checking invitations seemed to have turned up.
The beauty contest had been organized by the simple expedient of sending official letters to all chiefs instructing them to send a certain number of young women to town on a certain day. Quite what was made of this in the hills, I shudder to think. The Fulani, in former times, were in the habit of levying slaves and concubines from these people; perhaps they feared the resumption of this system. Whatever the precise interpretation, the women had a uniformly oppressed look. Many had doubtless been made to walk long distances and were decidedly travel-stained. The Fulanis of course disdained to exhibit their own women in this fashion, but were delighted at the opportunity to view the women of other races. The ladies were obliged to walk, or in most cases slouch, past the spectators in a wide circle. They had the resentful air of goods at a slave market and stared tearfully down at the ground or glared and hissed at their tormentors. The spectators rose to the occasion admirably with hoots of derision mingled with enthusiastic offers of all manner of unions short of marriage. A minor dispute broke out between those invited and the throng that pressed in upon them. Some had climbed into the trees for a better view; these fell to the lot of the party officials who shook the trunks until they came tumbling out to tears of popular approval. After some discussion, Miss Poli was announced – alongside her Miss Poli Two and Miss Poli Consolation. The sous-préfet’s new young assistant was delegated to present each with a prize, embrace them modestly and dance with the winner. The winner was clearly from way out in the hills and terrified of the whole proceeding. She recoiled in horror when the noble young assistant offered his chaste embrace. When urged to dance, she clenched her fists tearfully and refused. Embarrassed smiles gave way to whispered threats. She stamped her feet in their new blue plastic shoes. Two gendarmes swooped down on her and threw her out. The crowd cheered. The aptly named Miss Consolation stepped into the breach. The party had begun.
The music consisted of a mixture of the latest Western hits and endless Nigerian offerings. It was my extreme misfortune to be required to dance with the doctor’s wife during one of the latter; it lasted about twenty minutes. We circled the floor almost in splendid isolation as others were either overwhelmed by the heat or dumbstruck by our graceful passage. She was a big woman and after some ten minutes exhibited clear signs of strain, bumping into chairs and tripping over her feet. Neither of us wished to offend the other by giving in, so we continued to lurch around, streaming with sweat and gasping until some kind spirit handed us two beers. It is not easy to drink beer from the bottle while dancing but we acquitted ourselves fairly creditably and were rewarded by cheers from the crowd.
I felt that I had made my contribution to the festivities and collapsed quietly in a corner, urged on to drink by the doctor who should have known better. The festivities continued with copious drink and food of the burned intestines sort. About midnight I fell into the company of two young schoolteachers from the bush, Patrice and Hubert. It was Patrice’s peculiarity that, wherever he went, he bore with him a folding chair. It seemed that he had lived for a year among the Voko in the total absence of furniture. This condition depressed him deeply, so with his friend he had gone to Garoua and bought a folding chair from which, he vowed, he would never be parted. He even danced with the chair until remonstrated with by the gendarme cousin who had secured him admittance. By now beer was running low and many had switched to red wine. I knew from experience that this would not be a good idea and was quite happy to coast for a bit. Others, however, demanded more drink. It seemed that there was only one source, an illegal drinking-hall at the far end of town run by a strict Muslim. A male nurse, who was gleefully paralytic, was engaged to fetch it on his motorbike. He had to be carried to the machine, being incapable of walking, and roared off into the night. I could see no way that he could even stay on the machine let alone bring back beer. However, five minutes later he roared into the compound on his machine. Once more, he had to be carried from the motorbike to his seat and resumed drinking, a hero. Patrice, the chair and I went off to listen to some Dowayos who were happily singing-a song about adultery outside. Graciously, he offered me the chair. The joyful singing was soon disrupted by a prison guard who had decided to: record the music on his tape-recorder. I was aghast at their treatment of him when he omitted to offer them a small sum for the recording. The men set upon him with a will – still singing – the women trod on his machine; little boys bit his legs and seemed to be trying to insert sticks into his ears. Patrice was alarmed for his chair; I was concerned that my own behaviour on so many occasions had so closely resembled the guard’s. I resolved to have a word with Zuuldibo the next day and establish what it was that had preserved me from similar treatment. It is never wise to be the witness to a crime in West Africa; police method consists largely of gathering witnesses, friends of the aggressed, etc., and beating them until one confesses. It is surprisingly effective. Patrice and the chair and I moved on.
We returned to the sous-préfet’s party, now taken over entirely by the police, who were dancing with each other. After one rather coy dance with a sergeant I felt it was time to leave, and crept back to the mission at about five in the morning to be greeted by a chuckling Jon who refused to believe anything but the worst of my nocturnal activities.
Having now more or less finished up all serious research, it was time to deal with practicalities. I had been told that leavi
ng the country was a rather more testing operation than reaching the airport with a valid ticket. It seemed I needed a permit to leave; until I had it, I was a prisoner in the country. This filled me with a sense of outrage. The precise moves to be made had been explained at the mission. Once again, it seemed incredible that any administrative process so cumbersome and pointless could ever be taken seriously; I was to learn otherwise.
The first shot of the campaign was fired in N’gaoundere. It was an unfortunate coincidence that I wished to apply for a visa to leave at the same time as my visa to stay expired. No one at the government office could be made to understand why I wanted both at the same time: either I was staying or I was going. I knew from experience that to be found without a valid visa during one of the numerous identity checks that punctuate any journey can be a time-consuming and expensive business. I should return in three days.
The next step was the tax office. Here too there were problems. It was unclear whether I should have gone to the one in N’gaoundere; my research permit had been issued in the capital, Yaounde. The area where I had worked was in the North and therefore administered through Garoua, but my last residence visa had come from N’gaoundere. They would have to consider the matter. I had to fill out a tax form containing the question ‘Number of children. Are any still alive?’ – a sad reflection of rates of infant mortality. I spent several days hanging around the office trying to see the inspector. Finally, I gained admittance. He agreed to deal with my case. The fact that I had paid British income tax all year was another major stumbling block. Was there a tax agreement between Cameroon and England? he asked. I confessed my ignorance. He closed my file with finality. Very well, I should have to bring a letter from my Embassy explaining the law on taxation. I very much doubted whether the Embassy could be cajoled into making any such declaration; moreover, I had no desire to go to Yaounde so we pushed arguments back and forth. He was adamant.
I hung around for another few days, hoping my residence visa might have come through. At the end of that time, I was told the radio was broken; it had been broken for a month. There was no possibility of a visa without talking to the capital.
I spent the next month oscillating between Garoua, N’gaoundere and Yaounde at huge cost to my finances and constitution. At the end of that time it was clear to me that there was no way I could ever legally get out of the country, being split as I was between three administrative areas. I discussed the matter with my French friends in Yaounde. Being of French nationality, they were much less troubled by these matters and could travel more or less as they pleased with a simple identity card. They put me in touch with a documentation expert from the French paymaster’s office who gravely listened to my complex ills. There was no problem, he explained smilingly; I should adopt the standard ploy they all used. My story would be that I had lived all the time in the capital. I would need an address; I should borrow my friends’. Since I was white, I would need servants, Since I had servants I would need documents proving I paid them at least the government minimum salary and social security contributions. I should also borrow these from my friends. My story would be that we all shared a flat together and had put all the documents in the name of a single person for simplicity’s sake; this would explain why my name did not appear on any document. This technique, it seemed, was regularly employed by all sorts of organizations to side-step the horrendous complexity of the bureaucracy. The only danger was that they would insist on visiting my domicile. This was not a great risk but the servants should be bribed and told what to say.
The plan was put into operation. Slowly, over the next few weeks, I crawled round the circuit collecting the nine necessary pieces of paper with stamps on. This involved much of the same treatment that I had endured when I first arrived; it no longer surprised or bothered me much.
My borrowed documents worked splendidly. The Inspector of Social Security did indeed decide to pay me a visit, but swiftly abandoned the idea when he learned that I had no car to drive him to my address. It was the rainy season; he refused to walk anywhere. I collected my stamps and plodded on.
Finally, I arrived at police headquarters where visas were actually given out. As usual, the day began with me being sent from one office to another as if no one had ever heard of the idea of giving out visas. I started at nine in the morning. By three in the afternoon I had got as far as the office of the chief of police. Only he could decide what to do since I was now in the position of having neither a visa to stay nor one to go. He listened to my tale with bored superiority. ‘Give him a visa!’ he snapped to a subordinate. No one asked to see the documents I had so painfully collected over seven weeks at such huge cost and involving a cast of dozens. I staggered from the office, weak with incredulity. So Moses must have felt when God handed him the tablets.
I began a phased withdrawal from Poli, relying once again on missionary aid to haul my kit to N’gaoundere, where my Laocoön-like wrestlings with bureaucracy had by now become a standing joke.
After the sous-préfet’s party I had decided, largely at the urging-of Matthieu, to hold my own farewell party in the village. To this end, some forty bottles of beer had been obtained by devious means and Mariyo had agreed to brew a quantity of millet beer. This, of course, became a major problem in true Dowayo fashion. The money for the millet had gone to a man whose brother felt Zuuldibo owed him a cow. This man had taken it, but his brother was owed millet by his wife’s parents who would get it from the woman’s uncle, etc. The upshot of it all was that it was only at the very last minute that the millet was brought and the beer made. For two days the village was buzzing with excitement. Zuuldibo wove mats for the guests to sit on. Mariyo could be heard singing grinding songs as she crushed the millet. Children ran hither and thither borrowing calabashes and jars and generally getting under everyone’s feet. They were especially keen to snap up anything I threw away. Aerosol spray cans were transmuted into musical instruments, matchboxes became receptacles for secret objects in granaries, the label being carefully peeled off to serve as cigarette paper. Empty tins were highly sought after as cooking vessels. I had to take surplus medications out into the bush and bury them to stop children raking through them and eating them. Men kept dropping by just to look at the beer and spread the word.
All in all, the party was a wild success. Matthieu was annoyed that I refused to make a speech as the sous-préfet had, but gloried in being entrusted with the distribution of the beer. He made everyone line up and commanded his assistant in this enterprise to hand each person from the village a bottle of beer and informed them precisely who was giving it to them and why. I seemed the only one embarrassed at this proceeding. Soon the whole village was riotously drunk. Musical instruments appeared, one old man began shuffling his feet, another picked up the rhythm. A dance rapidly developed. Night fell, people still kept turning up from the fields, but miraculously the supplies held out. Two of the Chief’s wives crouched at my feet and began to weep; the drummer knelt before me and pounded out an ever more insistent beat in the flickering firelight; the dancers circled, clapping their hands and stamping. It seemed to me that some response was being called for. It was clearly impossible to make a speech; I could not move for the press of the throng, so joining in the dance was out of the question. Miraculously, Matthieu appeared behind me with a handful of hundred-franc coins. ‘Press a coin on each forehead, patron!’ he hissed. I did as I was bid. Getting rather into the mood, I intoned a blessing, ‘May your forehead be lumpy’ – a sign of good fortune.
It seemed that this was exactly what was required. The Dowayos were delighted at this traditional benediction and danced away to attack the rest of the beer.
Matthieu and I retired to the hut where Zuuldibo and other worthies were assembled, and I finally ended up stumbling through a little speech of thanks and farewell; we then had to sit drinking for several hours although I desperately wanted the hard solitude of my bed. It amused me to note that in my service Matthieu had switched fro
m total abstinence to being a considerable drinker, whereas I had been rendered virtually teetotal through hepatitis. Outside, the party continued to rage unabated; inside, we all fell into silence and listened to the music. One by one they crept off. Soon I was alone and tumbled gratefully into the bed. It began to rain. The roof began leaking again.
The next day I heard out of the blue that the car I had so successfully put out of my mind was ‘almost repaired’. Investigation revealed that progress had indeed been made. It stood on four wheels, albeit with a rather raffish lean to one side. Actually getting it as far as my village took three attempts. Twice the engine seized up. The third time it burst into flames as I turned on the lights. All these, however, were relatively minor matters compared with actually laying hold of petrol, which I finally bought from an employee of the sous-préfet’s garage through the mediation of Augustin. Where he obtained it I pointedly refrained from asking.
All was ready for departure. Once I had started the car it was wiser not to stop it, given the state of the starter. A small group had turned out to see me off. Dowayos smiled vaguely and shuffled their feet, Barney the dog wagged his tail, Jon and Jeannie tried not to laugh as they assessed my chances of reaching N’gaoundere. A wave, a crunch of gears and I drove away from the mountains where I had spent so many months in so odd a pursuit. Every parting leaves an empty feeling, a slight touch of cosmic loneliness. It is hard not to begin at once forgetting that fieldwork consists largely of intense boredom, loneliness and mental and physical disintegration. A golden haze descends, the savages become more noble, the ritual more stirring, the past is restructured as leading inexorably to some great purpose of the present. It is only by reference to the diary I kept that I now know that my feeling was primarily one of hysterical joy to be done with Dowayoland.
