At first Chief Foto had seemed a little distant – even brusque – probably because of gender confusion. But now (a woman having observed me stripped to the waist while washing) he was graciously attentive. A well-built man in his mid-fifties, authoritative yet not domineering, he had served for ‘many years’ in the Nigerian army before being selected as Fon in 1975. He emphasised that he had only nine children all from the same mother despite 250 (again!) wives. We took this to mean that though many females were dependent on him he was a one-woman man. Later his brother confirmed this: ‘Our Fon loves only one wife.’
We sat at the table while Chief Foto, now formally enstooled, received a succession of supplicants with worries. The Aku (people of Mukuru) clap their hands three times to greet their Fon and address him when seated on the floor near the entrance. They don’t speak through cupped hands with bowed heads, though I noticed none actually meeting his gaze. He was assisted by a young man, introduced only as ‘my sub-chief’, who afterwards explained, ‘In daylight our Fon solves “official” problems, after sunset he listens to “traditional” problems.’ When I asked how often the two categories overlap the sub-chief looked so perplexed that it seemed kind to change the subject.
During these palavers our page reappeared with the drinks tray: three brands of beer, two versions of Top. He came first to us: ‘What is your choice?’ Then, having served the others, he noticed us absentmindedly drinking from our bottles, off-licence style, and hurried forward to fill our glasses.
When the last of the supplicants had departed backwards, bowing gratefully, it was fufu and jammu-jammu time; this fufu’s lightness suggested that grinding produces a finer flour than pounding. We ate at the table, by the light of the only lamp, while our host dined on his throne in the shadows. Only when he had finished did the sub-chief begin.
After the hand-washing ritual a young woman showed us to our hot windowless room, one of a tin-roofed row. The door was ill fitting and the mosquitoes were energetic though not numerous. Garments hanging around the walls indicated that we had displaced a female – or more likely two, though the bed was single with a lumpy mattress of grass stuffed into nylon sacking. We slept soundly until the crowing of a cock – roosting in the rafters but hitherto unobserved – woke us at 4.20 a.m.
The Fon wished us to breakfast before departing but that would have involved at least an hour’s delay. At sunrise women were only beginning to beat batter for puff-puffs (crisp buns made of maize-flour and deep-fried). And the USAF had warned that Benikuma, unavoidable en route to the Aghem highland, is at a hellish 1,000 feet, our lowest point since leaving Douala. When the situation had been explained Chief Foto understood and we left him waving and smiling benignly, standing outside his office in his nightgown.
For a few hours we were gradually descending through a brilliant rain-washed world of greens and reds. Near the scattered tree-rich village of Modele (also known as Ide) an ancient woman, shaven-headed and naked to the waist, was quite overcome when she met us. Falling to her knees in the mud, she beamed toothlessly but joyously and, saying nothing, clapped her hands three times as though we were Fons. It seemed she had happy memories of the colonial era.
Scores of pupils, each bearing a hoe and a bouquet of wild flowers, were converging on a school that looked older and better built than most. They greeted us unshyly – indeed, everyone in Modele radiated friendliness. But remembering the ordeal ahead, we prudently declined a 7.45 a.m. invitation to ‘Drink with us some native liquor!’
Beyond Modele, amidst densely forested hills, we were agitated by evidence that some ruthless, bulldozing logging company had recently been at work. These are the forests which once inspired good relations between the Ide (Modele’s people) and the clans of the Aghem Federation (centred on Wum), whose men were generously entertained when they came down to hunt. This was soon after the Aku and Ide clans settled here (circa 1840), to become rival exploiters of the Metchum valley’s resources. Then, as the Ide became stronger, through killing or absorbing earlier settlers, Aghem grew envious and uneasy – especially about the Ide establishment of complex trading links with the Benue lands. When it began to look as though they might take control of the Metchum valley trade Aghem declared war, towards the end of the nineteenth century, and reduced Modele to tributary status.
Relations were never good between Modele and Essimbi (also known as Age). Their frequent forest ambushes and slaughterings of each other must have done a lot to control population growth throughout the area. Yet the Ide traded with the Age, in the intervals between killing them. The former were unusually dependent on fish and the latter were the most skilled net-weavers around. So the Ide captured Ndo women and exchanged them for Age nets.
The forenoon’s two vehicles were pick-up trucks, delivering for rival breweries and doubling (like Andrew’s) as bush-taxis. At brutal heat time we reached hell – a flat unshaded stony track, running for miles between cultivated fields. Soon I was showing symptoms that reminded Rachel of our hen, en route from Sambolabbo. Ingeniously she attached the umbrella to the rucksack, enabling me to walk in the shade of my own mobile verandah with both hands free to collect mango windfalls.
An hour later we were in Benikuma, where the sword of Damocles fell at last. In this cul-de-sac village the motor-track ends, some twelve miles from the Nigerian border. Yet it boasts another of those Customs and Immigration posts that dotted our route, this one presumably for the control of smuggling pedestrians and illegally bush-bashing vehicles. As we had to pass the little building, and planned to spend the hot midday hours in the village, it would have been foolish to pretend not to notice it.
Boldly I marched into the Immigration Office with passports extended. Then, seeing the officer in charge, I knew our bluff would be called. This was no semi-literate, semi-inebriated buffoon but a very together and articulate gentleman who didn’t imagine we came from Germany because we had Irish passports and who wasted no time cogitating over our 1973 vaccination certificates. Within seconds he had found our visa pages and within a few seconds more he was saying, ‘I’m sorry, sir, very sorry … But you must know your visas are no longer valid. They have not been valid for some time. Why is this?’
I beamed unconcernedly and corrected him. ‘Not “sir” – “madam”!’
Mr Itoe stared at me incredulously, then leant back, chuckling. ‘ Wonder-ful! You women who go walking in the bush, carrying big weights, quickly get to look like men!’ But he soon stopped chuckling and lent forward again, picking up my passport. ‘So, your visas?’
I came clean, grateful for an immigration officer who spoke English as well as I do. Starting in the Holland Park Embassy, I ended in the Bamenda Immigration Office.
Mr Itoe listened attentively, then nodded sympathetically. ‘This fellow in Bamenda, I know him – a good man but new to his job. So, for me you are now a problem! You should return to Bamenda for extensions, but this you have tried … It is very irregular, but I must let you continue. You have done your best. I hope you meet no others who take advantage of your difficulty. And your daughter? She is well?’
I nodded towards the window and Mr Itoe peered through the mosquito-screen at Rachel, sitting on the verandah devouring unripe mangoes. ‘But she is beautiful! Why do you drag her through the bush? And I think she is too hungry – green mangoes will give her colic! You must take her quickly to the market and feed her!’
Benikuma’s weekly market was a busy yet unexciting affair smelling strongly of rotten fish. Despite being surrounded by rampantly fertile land, this dusty, sun-tormented village seemed one of the poorer places on our route.
Rachel unsuccessfully quested about for baguettes and chocolate spread. I sat outside a crowded, noisy off-licence drinking tepid beer in the grudging shade of tin eaves. The only available alternative was Top. And after the fate suffered by our water-bottle (and myself) in Galim, I had taken a vow of lifelong abstinence from Top.
An overweight Presbyterian minister, exhaling a
chu fumes and gnawing at a kid’s skull, settled beside me. I was, he said, ‘plenty lucky to belong to government that pays for travelling to study other religions’. (I wondered by what bizarre deformation of logic he had identified me as a student of religions.) His less enlightened government would not pay for him to study American Presbyterianism. Mopping my face with my shirt-tail I let him burble on and he proudly informed me that there are one million children in the local school: ‘Many are good Christians who fight for Christ every day in their hearts.’
I cheered up when Mr Itoe appeared, probably to check that all was well with the dotty Irishwoman. He wouldn’t accept a beer because ‘I have much work in my office and I must be a good example to these people who drink from breakfast time!’ But he got himself a Top and then said, ‘It makes me happy that you two can travel so securely in my country. This area is now easy to administer, though too hot for comfortable living. I cannot ask my family to live here so I see them only at weekends. But in times past, before the Germans and the British, there was serious trouble up and down the Metchum. These tribes quarrelled and killed about land, hunting, fishing, trading, women. Life was dangerous then. Now we have peace and prosperity, everyone can move around safely, there is little crime. Some old people say good traditions died in colonial days – and they are right. Now young people can be very confused, going from bush to city. What is good? What is bad? For them nothing is certain – they seem to need our lost traditions. But when the bathwater goes it is not always possible to keep the baby!’
When Mr Itoe had shown us the start of our cut-short to the Aghem highland we said goodbye. Then I looked at the hilly track ahead and groaned and lay under a mango tree and went into a heat coma. Soon after I heard a woman telling Rachel that she, Rachel, was the double of the woman’s daughter, Jacqueline, now studying in Mexico. This all seemed so outrageously improbable that I decided I must be asleep and dreaming. But hearing the soulful comparison being made for the third time, I opened one eye. A buxom, very black woman was staring fixedly at Rachel with transferred affection. Had it been less hot I would have pursued the matter of Jacqueline in Mexico. As it was, I quickly shut my eye.
During the next half-hour I listened but didn’t look, not wishing to be conversationally embroiled. A kind youth presented Rachel with three ripe mangoes. A gang of rowdy youths verbally molested her – which unpleasantness was unique in our experience of Cameroon. An amiable gendarme conversed with her in French. A less amiable gendarme interrogated her rather aggressively and implied that her husband was in a drunken stupor. Whereupon I opened both eyes, claimed to be a sober Mamma and, by way of proving sobriety, heaved on the rucksack and strode off purposefully. It was only two o’clock, but mitigating clouds had gathered.
By 5.50 p.m. we were in impossible camping terrain – precipitous, heavily forested mountains – and beginning to wonder if we would in fact come to a village by sunset, as Mr Itoe had guaranteed. Then, on a steep descent, we overtook three women carrying colossal loads home from the market. In sign language they urged us to follow them and stay with their Fon. Moments later we met him: a handsome young man carrying a fine antique firearm, a type of weapon still much used in this area. He was accompanied by an older man and, having no idea that this was our host-to-be, we offered our hands. Only when these were ignored by the hunter did we realise who he was. Neither man spoke any but local languages, yet it was somehow agreed that we should continue with the women and await the Fon’s return outside his palace.
An exhausting half-hour later – the upward path was another of those boulder-stairways so popular hereabouts – we panted onto a small cleared ledge. There our guides smiled goodbye before disappearing into lush greenery. A tiny, tin-roofed, one-window hut, with weather-warped door and shutters, was made to look even tinier by the height of the surrounding palms, mango trees and plantains. Even by local standards it didn’t seem palatial.
On the climb up we had been joined by an unusually tall brother of the Fon, returning from school and looking rather absurd in his blue shirt and shorts. At first he viewed us with extreme unease but as he spoke a sort of English we assiduously curried favour. Relaxing slightly, he brought from behind the but two eighteen-inch-high bamboo stools–the most uncomfortable form of seating ever devised. Then he too vanished into the greenery but was soon back, wearing threadbare jeans and a woman’s blouse and accompanied by three elders. One was the Fon’s present ‘father’. His biological father had died two, three, maybe four years ago – no one could remember exactly when. (Or, more likely, they would not risk misfortune by revealing the date to us.) One of the elders seemed deeply suspicious, almost hostile. But Father was tentatively welcoming, though naturally bemused. He produced a few phrases of German, which at the time bewildered us. Meanwhile the word was spreading and soon thirty-two small, silent, round-eyed children were sitting in a row on a fallen tree-trunk at the far side of the ledge. When I stood up to fetch our malaria pills from the rucksack some of the toddlers shrieked with terror and clung to their minders.
Not until the Fon arrived did we accept that that but was the palace all of it. We were ushered into a tiny room furnished only with his stool, in this case an ancient, high-backed, elaborately carved chair set on a wooden platform with two steps. The uneven mud floor was filthy. Inside the door stood two iron cauldrons of water with tin jugs and mugs on their lids. On the wall above the stool hung a wooden drinking vessel in the shape of a zebu horn, with a cock’s head most realistically carved at its base. This, Brother explained, was used only when the Fon made sacrifices for the protection of his people. Below it, somewhat disconcertingly, hung a large framed photograph of the Fon’s elder son (now aged seven) as a baby. This was the Fon’s everyday living-room; it had not been opened up specially for us.
As we dumped our rucksack by the cauldrons a storm broke: one of the Big Uns. For twenty minutes the lightning was brighter than the lamp and the thunder – and rain on the roof – made conversation impossible. During this drama, a basin of warm washing-water was provided behind the palace. However unswept floors may be, bodies – always and everywhere – must be scoured at the end of the day. No latrine was indicated; presumably the jungle serves.
Back in the palace beer was flowing, to our delighted astonishment. Getting it to this ledge must tax even Cameroonian muscles and I insisted on paying treble the Benikuma rate. When the storm had passed over the night was very still; this fortunate village seemed to be trannie-free. Then someone in the next but began softly to play an ndengi. Noticing our interest, the Fon summoned the musician, a gentle young man who stood by the door drawing a poignantly sweet melody from his clumsy-looking instrument. Brother translated ndengi as ‘guitar’ but it more closely resembled a zither, made of special wood, velvety to the touch, with the addition of a few bent twigs and strings of fine wire.
This was our most enigmatic stopping place. We never discovered the name of the village, or of our charming host. Next morning, seeing its full extent, we realised that the palace was the meanest dwelling; most other huts were of the biggish square sort, with pointed thatched roofs. According to the Fon, the population was fifty-six. ‘That means,’ explained Brother, ‘fifty-six tax-payers. We don’t count women and children.’ From this we calculated a population of about five hundred, assuming nine or so dependents to each male.
The clan language is so peculiar that it was studied ‘about ten years ago’ by a German who lived in the village for ‘about five months’. (Hence Father’s German phrases.) Elsewhere we discovered that of the eight main Metchum valley clans, only the Aku and Ide are mutually comprehensible though all eight languages have a common origin. But our nameless village is, linguistically, a place apart. Possibly, hidden in dense forest on a hard-to-reach ledge, its people survived the depredations of the Bafut (and other) raiders and have been in situ for longer than the majority now living along the Metchum.
A multiplicity of wives, desired or not, is obligatory f
or Fons. Yet our rebel host had only one and wanted no more. She was a beautiful young woman, shabbily dressed in a ‘Western’ frock but slender and poised, with a quietly forceful personality. This marriage reminded us of Mr and Mrs Kami; the Fon and his wife even slept together, with their two daughters, in a double-bed which almost filled the little room that formed the other half of the palace. As we talked before supper, Mrs Fon arrived with a restive baby girl, handed her to Pappa and told him to get her to sleep and put her to bed. One didn’t have to understand the unique local language to know exactly what was being said; the scene was startling in its modern-Western familiarity. And the Fon accomplished his task with the skill of one much-practised. Fifteen minutes later a peacefully sleeping infant was being tenderly tucked up. Then Pappa collected the five-year-old daughter, who screamed with terror when she saw us. At once Pappa took her into the bedroom and sang her to sleep. Oddly, we didn’t see either of the sons, aged seven and three.
Meanwhile there was the usual to-ing and fro-ing of supplicants; and here, despite the Fon’s unorthodoxy and the unpalatial nature of his palace, cupped hands, hoarse whispers and downcast eyes were the order of the evening. One wrong-doer, come to seek forgiveness, crawled on hands and knees from the door to lay his head on the steps of the stool. As this wretched creature was being pardoned and reassured, a drunk stumbled in, like the Fool in Lear, and stood unsteadily before his Fon, loudly mouthing what sounded like abuse. Then he turned to face us, fell over his feet, picked himself up and began to speak English.
Cameroon with Egbert Page 29
