Cameroon with Egbert

by Dervla Murphy

  Mohamed advised us that Tourak would be a good starting point for our return to the eastern Tchabal Mbabo and promised to provide a guide to show us the beginning of the ‘very difficult’ path.

  For three hours our track to the motor-road switch backed through rugged, lightly forested hills, their grassy slopes golden brown. A cool breeze tempered the heat, white cloudlets drifted across a deep blue sky, capuchin monkeys were numerous and much of the vegetation was unfamiliar. We met only two men, of the same tribe as Kamga Kima – judging by the incisions on their cheekbones. Each carried a bow in his left hand and several sharp-tipped arrows in a cow-hide quiver slung over his left shoulder. Our siesta-site, where the track reached its highest point, was one of the most beautiful of the entire trek with the Tchabal Mbabo filling the sky beyond the Garbaia valley and the Tchabal Gangdaba ahead, north of Tignere.

  By three o’clock we were on the Tignere-Koncha motor-track, another ‘international highway’ which continues beyond the frontier village of Koncha into Nigeria. The hard red stony surface was tiring to walk on and fiercely reflected the heat; soon we took a second siesta beneath a grove of mango trees. As we lay gazing at the inaccessible fruit a youngish man arrived with a long forked stick. He glanced at us but showed no surprise and ignored our greetings. Then he removed his Fulani gown, revealing a powerful torso and a new pair of thick corduroy trousers. Walking twice around the tree, he noted the position of the few ripe fruits. An instant later he had swung himself into the dense foliage with baboon-like agility and become invisible. It took him some time to knock down all the marked mangoes: about a dozen. He gave us two, still making no effort to communicate, then replaced his gown and strode away.

  During the afternoon there was no troublesome flow of traffic – a vehicle every hour or so – but the terrain was dull: mile after dusty mile of undulating grey-green bush. We passed quite a few compounds, singly or in pairs, and were diverted by the activities of another Census Officer – tall and willowy, in knife-creased khaki slacks and silk shirt and cravat. Two attendants, a short burly youth and a little boy, were herding his dash: three cocks, one sheep lunging wildly at the end of a grass rope and two kids hysterically bleating for their mothers.

  ‘Why dash a Census Officer?’ mused Rachel. But it is easy to see how census-taking can be abused; such a figure, with his embossed briefcase of formidable documents, could profitably cow most peasants. Compounds are often empty by day and the willowy one wasted no time winkling Cameroon’s citizens out of the bush. Firmly he chalked the closed doors and went on his way. So much for Third World statistics.

  This area’s water shortage was serious. At most wayside compound entrances, covered earthenware cauldrons stood on wooden trestles with a gourd or mug on top, for the benefit of passing strangers unable to find local water sources. One was not expected to leave dash; this was a truly disinterested service to humanity, a symbol of all that is best in African rural traditions.

  All afternoon we passed only one small stream, far below the road, and as I was about to scramble down the difficult slope a woman insisted on emptying her own hard-won bucket into Egbert’s – thus adding to that mosaic of spontaneous kindnesses which is our most precious souvenir of Cameroon.

  At 6.30 p.m. we camped by the remains of the Mayo Wolkossam, a sluggish trickle in a wide bed. The grazing was poor and something odd in the dense growth along the river scared Egbert badly. We heard inexplicable grunting/coughing noises but saw nothing.

  Being by now expert enough to load in the dark, we set off at 5.30 a.m., hoping to get to Tignere before brutal heat time. The humidity was extreme and soon we were commenting on the eerily subdued quality of the light. For the next fortnight visibility was down to about a mile; the hammadan was upon us, though we didn’t then recognise it as such.

  It was market-day in Tignere and a colourful group of jewellery-laden women and optimistic umbrella-toting men overtook us, all carrying massive loads. Their splayed feet moved fast over the hard gritty road; a packed bush-taxi had just passed and nowadays those too poor to afford motor-transport are at a disadvantage, if the demand for their produce is limited.

  Soon after, we came to a derelict shed and two thatched huts: the Customs Post and Immigration Office. Tignere, though some sixty miles from the border, is the first town on this international highway. A tree-trunk barrier left ample room for small vehicles and foot traffic to bypass it.

  When I banged on the door of the nearest hut a sleep-stupid gendarme stumbled forth in gaudy striped pyjamas. He was cramming his peaked cap on his curls and looked hung-over. ‘No wonder!’ said Rachel, pointing to a nearby pile of empty beer bottles.

  ‘Passports!’ demanded the gendarme, squinting at me with bloodshot eyes and licking parched lips. I handed them over and he pressed them to his heart. ‘I keep! You get back at gendarmerie in Tignere.’

  Menacingly I moved forward; only the maternal instinct is stronger than the ‘keep passport’ instinct. ‘Give back!’ I ordered. 'We keep! We show gendarme in Tignere.’

  The officer blinked uncertainly. I seized the passports and told Rachel, ‘Move on, pass the barrier!’

  As we advanced the officer yelped, ‘Your baggage! You come from Nigeria with baggage, you show baggage!’

  ‘We come from Bamenda,’ I said. ‘Forget our baggage!’

  The officer dived into the hut, grabbed a ‘33’, opened it with his teeth, took a long swig and drew a deep breath. ‘Bamenda no!’ he said. ‘This is road from Nigeria, you come from Nigeria with baggage, you show baggage!’

  ‘He’s only doing his duty,’ said Rachel compassionately. ‘By now our coming from Bamenda really must sound like a tall story!’

  Infected by this tolerance, I stepped forward and patted our adversary on the shoulder.

  ‘We stay in Tignere,’ I said. ‘You come meet us Tignere and we drink beer, plenty beer!’

  The gendarme took another swig, patted me on the shoulder and agreed excitedly. ‘Yes, yes! We meet again, we drink, we talk, we are good pals! You are good man! White men are good pals, rich men, brave men – why you come from Nigeria with this horse? You are brave, you have beautiful wife, why you take this beautiful wife with horse from Nigeria?’

  From the second hut two customs officers emerged, dressing themselves. Both were polite, sober, friendly; one spoke fragments of English. It seemed the gendarme had wished to keep our passports merely because ‘the stamp’ was inaccessible. For a moment I imagined this to be another of those fiscal stamps beloved of too many governments. But no. A rubber stamp was in question – the rubber stamp, Tignere’s only rubber stamp, the imprint of which should be on our passports before we entered the town. Or so the theory went. Both customs men agreed that since the stamp was inaccessible we would have to proceed unstamped. They then zoomed off towards Tignere on their motor-bicycle.

  When the straggling town came into view, below the track on our left, it was evident that marshy ground by the dried-up riverbed precluded a cut-short. Tignere looks smaller than Mayo Darle but has several new bureaucratic-looking buildings around the edges.

  The customs officers now zoomed back with a young woman sandwiched between them. They stopped, the English speaker dismounted, the motor-bicycle continued and we spent twenty minutes sitting on the ditch ‘giving all particulars’, which our friend transcribed into a school exercise book. The stamp was inaccessible, he confided, because it had been left in a room to which no one could find the key. His taking down ‘all particulars’ was designed to soothe his superior, should it ever be discovered that we had entered Tignere unstamped. He had a round, innocent, worried young face and we warmed to him. Unsurprisingly, he failed to notice that our visas had expired the day before.

  In the Restaurant Bar Faro Hotel the proprietor, Gabriel, was snoring on a plastic-covered bench amidst an ocean of empty bottles and tins and cigarette packets. Greasy bits of paper, which the evening before had wrapped kebabs, were being pushed around the
floor by excited cockroaches. The hotel was a row of six breeze-block rooms around the corner. In No. 4 a fairly clean single bed took up most of the space and the window wouldn’t open; but a small table and chair brought joy to my literary heart. There was no Faro Restaurant, despite the garish lettering on the facade.

  By 8.30 a.m. we had tethered Egbert on reasonably good grazing and were sitting outside the bar having beer for breakfast. The USAF who don’t mark Tignere – told us that the highest point of the long, narrow Tchabal Gangdaba is at 5,060 feet. The area west of the range soon drops to about 2,500 feet; the area to the east seemed more tempting at 4,000 feet.

  Fate then caused an elderly Fulani motor-cyclist to approach in a cloud of dust and stop beside us; he wore an apricot gown and looked dignified even on his machine. The USAF chart fascinated him but having discovered our plans he looked anxious. The path from Tignere to Mana was hard to find and little used. He reckoned we needed help and – it was the will of Allah! – he could provide it. On the following morning, two youths were beginning a journey to the northern end of the range and he would ensure that they collected us from the Faro at dawn. It was characteristic of Tignere that we so soon acquired an anonymous guardian-angel.

  In the bar four senior government employees, exiled to the ‘administrative capital of Tignere’, were sitting behind a long row of bottles as they might be in Ireland at 9.0 p.m. They rejoiced to have the Sunday morning monotony broken by foreign company. From behind the bar Gabriel yelled cheerful greetings to everyone above the din of his giant Nigerian cassette-recorder. A youth was raising opaque clouds of dust as he swept garbage onto the street for the next gust of wind to blow it all over Tignere. A very young Anglophone couple with a baby sat in a distant corner sharing a bottle of mild Beaufort and being physically demonstrative – an unusual sight in Cameroon, where intimacy in public is frowned upon. An aggressively drunk man demanded that I buy him a drink and was verbally ejected by Gabriel who then apologised ornately to me, almost beating his breast.

  Then Sama arrived – a large, jolly, off-duty gendarme from Yaounde, wearing a pale blue cotton suit. Without consulting us, he added to our rows of open beers. ‘You had problems,’ he said, ‘on the road at the barrier. I am sorry, that man is stupid – he is born in the bush, without education. In Cameroon we like to treat guests nicely …’

  Another Census Officer, exhausted and distraught, hurried in and beseeched us to be ‘enumerated’. He was excruciatingly conscientious – not, we felt, a collector of livestock. He failed to grasp that the Cameroonian government would not want to know whether our home was ‘thatched with grass or leaves’, whether we got our water from ‘a well or a stream’, whether we cooked on ‘wood, charcoal or sawdust’, whether we used ‘a private latrine or a common latrine’ (i.e., the bush), whether my husband had ‘four or more wives’ and how many children Rachel had given birth to ‘since her twelfth birthday’.

  Towards noon Sama announced that we must pay our respects to Tignere’s Lamido, a traditional title of Fulani emirs. Allegedly, he had decreed that television must never come to Tignere, believing the aerials to be magic devices which could spy on activities within his compound. We all laughed uproariously at this primitive superstition. Yet I sensed the usual ambivalent uneasy undercurrent about a Chief’s powers and status; these are certainly not disregarded by the majority of citizens, whether their background be urban or rural. (Cameroon’s national television service was then new-born and all its pictures seemed to be shots of a severe blizzard. But it was arousing intense excitement in towns with electricity.)

  That two-mile walk to the palace, through hellish heat, made me aware of our new friends’ excessive hospitality. Tignere seemed blurred by more than the harmattan.

  ‘Do you realise,’ said Rachel, sounding justifiably censorious, ‘that you’ve had five beers and it’s only noon?’

  I did not reply; I was too busy trying to walk in a straight line.

  We were escorted by Sama and a charming local youth, named I think Tikela, who was also somewhat the worse for drink. He giggled and hiccupped while telling me, ‘This Lamido has four wives, thirty-nine children and many concubines. But eleven children are dead. He wants one hundred children alive. But many of his young followers and some of his children are leaving his compound because he is so strict.’

  We were then about half-way down Tignere’s main street: hilly, dusty, stony, narrow. Tikela nodded towards Le Metro, a small bar/ disco/night-club/brothel with rows of coloured electric light bulbs crisscrossing its verandah. ‘Some of the Chief’s followers,’ he said, ‘would like to enjoy themselves there – not drinking alcohol, only dancing. But if he hears he flogs them.’

  The palace was an impressive complex of sandy-floored, uncovered corridors winding between high-ceilinged rooms in one of which stood a gaily caparisoned horse. Within those massively fortified walls, all was cool and shadowy. This helped Tikela and me to sober up as we waited, hunkering against a wall, to be summoned to the Presence. (The others had been told to wait outside the main arched entrance.) A few senior court officials in colourful gowns passed through the corridors, eyeing us with some disdain: perhaps they could smell our fumes. Several graceful young women appeared, then rushed away on seeing the White ‘man’. Numerous children peeped around corners and were so beautiful one felt the Chief couldn’t be blamed for wanting a hundred of them.

  When a retainer had brought Rachel to join us we were ushered into the Reception Hall – large and dimly lit, with a scattering of good carpets and many chairs around mud walls brightened by a large poster of Mecca, several posters of Cameroonian wildlife (issued by Cameroonian Airways) and a sprawling, hectic-hued tapestry of the Peacock Throne.

  The Chief – middle aged, courteous, soft spoken (in Foulfoulde only) – sat on a high throne-like carved wooden chair, regarding us with a slightly quizzical expression. He invited us to sit and Tikela knelt unsteadily before him with downcast eyes, mumbling reverent greetings through cupped hands. Our boots had been left outside but now the chief ordered Tikela to fetch them and graciously gave us permission to put them on – which was later interpreted as ‘a big honour’. After twenty minutes of conversational hard work – answering questions about our trek – Tikela gave the signal to withdraw. Having met this Lamido, it was hard to imagine him flogging anyone. As for television diktats – I could only applaud his campaign to protect his people from that medium, whatever his motives might be.

  Tignere’s mini-colony of urban exiles has caused a nasty rash of jerrybuilt ‘gentlemen’s residences’ to break out around the town’s edges. But it has also inspired the opening of what looked to us like a supermarket: a new shop, some eight feet by twelve, stocked with vividly packaged consumer goods imported from Nigeria by an enterprising Hausa merchant. These alas! were mainly inedibles: washing-powder, shampoo, face-cream, hardware. However, we bought big tins of Bournvita and Ovaltine, a box of sugar lumps, several packets of noodles, more tins of sardines and a few tubs of excellent chocolate spread (made in Cameroon) for instant consumption with crisp baguettes. (Tignere’s French bread, always new-baked and light, was the best we tasted in Cameroon.)

  After a large blotting-paper lunch I left Rachel sleeping and hastened off to water Egbert: but all the stand pipes were dry. Wandering around with horse and bucket, I was soon coated in a reddish muck of sweaty dust. When petrol is available – often it isn’t – the bureaucrats create frequent sandstorms by racing around in government jeeps. On Egbert’s behalf I was beginning to panic when a kind young woman directed us to a deep well on the southern edge of the town. There a kind young man – a born-again Christian from Bamenda – drew us two buckets and asked me if I was saved. Cravenly I said ‘Yes’, being by then too heat-exhausted to embark on metaphysics with a zealot.

  Tignere’s status as ‘an administrative capital’ has given it a strong Alice-in-Wonderland flavour. Among its new buildings are a Department of Industry and Commerce (the n
earest factory is hundreds of miles away) and a transparent all glass electricity generating station in which Abe could be observed tending the machinery after dark – and producing electricity, too, though not many locals chose to avail of it. This futuristic construction, when first we came upon it amidst a group of thatched huts, gave us quite a turn.

  Another incongruity is the vast, high-ceilinged Central Post Office with mock-marble walls and floor. (‘Central to what?’ Rachel wondered. ‘We haven’t seen too many peripheral post offices en route.’) During our three visits to Tignere we never saw anyone using this criminally extravagant building, where the three clerks were united in their conviction that Ireland is part of ‘the continent of England’. Its stamp supply was proportionately limited. However, we heard a rumour that some of the ‘exiles’, and a Peace Corps ‘Community Developer’, do regularly use it with irregular success.

  The Department of Tourism also has its local Headquarters, a phoney thatched hut in the litter-strewn grounds of the colonial Palais de Justice. The Tourist Officer was said to ‘have literature’ but we couldn’t find him. Someone told us he was lion-hunting with Spaniards.

  Towards sundown we strolled to a distant ‘suburb’ to visit a friend of Franz: Father Walter, from the Tyrol, who ran Tignere’s Catholic Mission single-handed and had been in Cameroon for twenty-two years. During a future drama, he was to become significant in our lives.

  The generator doesn’t run to street lighting and we got lost on our way back to the Faro, where Sama and Tikela awaited us. Having absorbed more ‘33’ at their expense, I invited them to sup with us. Not until we were sitting in Tignere’s only ‘restaurant’ – a cramped, lamp-lit shack down an alleyway off the main street – did they explain that they had already supped. It was then 8.45 p.m. and we received the evening’s left-overs, meagre portions of soggy luke-warm rice and a few necks and wings of geriatric hens. For this – by far our worst meal in Cameroon – we were charged 1,700 CFA (almost £4).