CERTAIN INTERLUDES SEEM quite separate from the rest of one’s life. They have the simple perfection of a Tang lyric, a Chopin etude, an Inuit carving. And they do not drift away, becoming blurred by time; mysteriously they continue to give sustenance. For me that first day of our trek was one such interlude. I experienced pure happiness – something quite different from the everyday underlying contentment which is my fortunate lot.
Following Rachel and Egbert down the red-earth track from Doi’s compound, life seemed wondrously simple. The sun shone warm, the breeze blew cool, Mount Ocu beckoned. My daughter had become a congenial adult, our horse was charming and amenable, the Big Bad World (including my latest troublesome typescript) could be forgotten. Time was meaningless; it didn’t matter when we reached where – or, indeed, if we ever reached it. Should there be no habitation in sight, our tent would go up at sunset. Should we feel like lingering for a few days here or there, or turning east instead of west, why not? Uncomplicated months stretched ahead, or so I then imagined. Hundreds of miles of glorious unknown territory also stretched ahead, populated by warm-hearted people not condemned to hopeless poverty. With difficulty I overcame an impulse to skip, instead of walking.
From Doi’s compound there was nowhere to go but down. Below that bare, over-grazed mountain we crossed an alleged main road which becomes virtually impassable during the big rains (October to December). Here a bush-taxi gave us our baptism of dust; from that moment, until our return to Bamenda, we and all our possessions were permanently ochre-tinged. Egbert loftily ignored the swaying, hooting vehicle and its yelling, waving passengers.
Our narrow path to the Forbidden Ranch led down a grassy slope, scattered with rotund yellow-blossomed bushes and a variety of trees, most of them unidentifiable since we had been unable to find any guidebooks to the flora and fauna of Cameroon. On the valley floor, beyond several neat compounds, a tiny mud church, filled with roughly made wooden benches, stood isolated amidst dense bush. Here we met two young men, carrying machetes and balancing tall piles of prayer-books on their heads. They stared at us, transfixed, then fled into the bush.
All around, contrasting colours glowed and shimmered under a deep blue sky: richly red new-dug fields, glossy banana and plantain groves, mighty mango trees, coppices of young burgundy-tinted eucalyptus, flowering bushes – red, white, orange – long tawny grass on the slopes, short bright green grass by the streams.
Each turn of the path revealed a new combination of topography and vegetation. As Rachel observed, there is a miniature quality about this corner of Cameroon. She of course was looking at it with the eyes of one recently returned from trekking in the Himalayas, but I could see her point – though Cameroon’s mountains don’t feel miniature while one is ascending or descending.
At noon clouds piled up in the west. We lunched on a high ridge under a solitary, towering, gnarled tree; its visible root system extended for many yards and housed many ants. The grass was meagre and tough yet not despised by Egbert who rolled ecstatically when the load came off. Picketing him, I discovered that a picket well suited to damp Ireland is less suited to Africa at the end of the dry season. Meanwhile Rachel had been discovering that Cameroon’s large black ants, though omnipresent and hyperactive, do not bite unless molested. (Driver ants are another and later story.)
The rain came as we reloaded: gentle steady rain, not a tropical downpour. The landscape ahead differed dramatically from the shallow fertile valleys behind us. Tall clumps of rough grass covered an expanse of apparently uninhabited hills, broken by frequent outcrops of volcanic rock. As we descended towards a tree-filled cleft the rain became a chilling deluge, driven by a strong cold wind.
‘This is no one’s idea of trekking in West Africa,’ commented Rachel. Then she wondered, ‘Are we on the right track?’ – because the cleft presented an Egbert-barrier.
The foot-bridge over a tumultuous mountain stream consisted of two wobbly eucalyptus poles; I didn’t much fancy it myself. We sought an animal ford, but there was none. Then I examined more closely the banks beside the bridge. Both looked negotiable by an agile horse and the water was only about six feet wide and two feet deep. A ford could be created by the clearing of some vegetation – an easy task, if one had a machete, though with bare hands it took fifteen rather painful minutes. And after all that Egbert refused to approach the noisy torrent. Had we continued patiently to persuade him he would certainly have crossed; later he took on many more alarming obstacles. But we were then ignorant of his prowess and reluctant to nip a beautiful friendship in the bud by being too insistent.
The sun returned as we climbed a steep grassy hill. Then a broader path appeared; it proved to be the right one and led to a two-hut Fulani compound where a strong-featured woman – high cheek-bones, slightly hooked nose, square chin – slowly approached and formally greeted us. She refused however to shake hands with me; virtuous Muslim wives don’t shake hands with men and 90 per cent of rural Cameroonians mistook my gender. Evidently she assumed us to be connected with the Forbidden Ranch. Pointing through a pathless tangle of tall trees she said, ‘Fence! Fence!’
As we continued, somewhat hesitantly, two little girls came running after us, doubtless instructed by Mamma. They were enchanting, with the sort of gracious good manners and dignified friendliness that we were coming to recognise as Fulani traits. The elder insisted on leading Egbert, the younger took the empty bucket from me and placed it on her head. (I had been carrying it since the handle broke.)
Beyond the trees we crossed an unpleasant acrid-smelling area of burnt scrub, descended to a swift shallow river – the girls observed our white feet with interest – and ascended a jungly slope to a wide, brilliantly green plateau encircled by forest. Here our guides pointed to a large Fulani compound of thatched huts, then smiled goodbye and raced away.
Outside the compound three men in long robes and embroidered pill-box hats were talking animatedly. As we approached they fell silent and stared at us with, I sensed, some unease. If we were being associated with The Fence we could scarcely expect warm welcomes hereabouts. They were however civil, though distant. One indicated an almost invisible pathlet on the green turf and said, ‘Go to gate.’ Then abruptly they all turned away.
On the edge of that plateau we suddenly found ourselves directly overlooking a volcanic crater, some two miles in circumference, with a smooth pale green floor fringed by dense forest. Here we rested, eating bananas while peering – awestruck – over the 500-foot crater wall. Several tree tops were swaying far below and we heard for the first time those half-eerie, half-comic monkey calls which were to become so familiar.
Continuing through woodland grievously vandalised by fire – hundreds of fine trees had been destroyed – we were impressed by Egbert’s jumping, without encouragement, four mighty obstructing trunks. Then a rider emerged from the shadows ahead, followed by an unsaddled horse. ‘It’s Danieli!’ exclaimed Rachel. ‘Egbert must know this path well!’ When we paused to shake hands Danieli congratulated us on the load’s being still in place.
Next came the day’s toughest climb. Strangely rutted volcanic soil made for exhausting walking up a brutal gradient closely covered with small grey scratchy bushes. Near the top we heard a distant shout; Danieli was urging his sweat-flecked horse up the slope to give us the name of ‘the man with the key’. When Rachel had written it down phonetically he cantered away and we stood watching. To me the partnership of a Fulani and his horse is more beautiful than any ballet. Danieli rode downhill with one arm outstretched for balance, his wide blue sleeve flowing in the breeze. At the edge of the burnt wood he paused, looked up at us, pirouetted his horse in farewell and disappeared beneath the trees.
‘They’re such kind people!’ said Rachel. ‘But it’s one thing to have this man’s name – how do we find him?’
Below that crest lay many miles of rough pasture and woodland – a jumble of long ridges set at eccentric angles to one another and divided by shallow valleys. No compounds were visible but soon we heard maize being pounded and around the next corner saw yet another beautiful young woman in an unfenced two-hut compound. Like most Fulanis she spoke no English or French but was an excellent sign-linguist. The Fence was over that way, the gate was down that way, the man with the key lived up that way. We were moving off when she signalled us to wait, hurried to cover her maize from marauding hens, adjusted her baby-blanket (the huge infant was sound asleep) and beckoned us to follow her. She too insisted on leading Egbert and carrying the bucket.
For a mile or so we were guided across scrubby grassland, liberally fertilised by old cow-pats and horse droppings. In all this area there was no trace of a path. Then the barbed-wire fence appeared – an odious sight, some eight feet high and constructed with non-local thoroughness. To defy it without a wire-cutter would be impossible. Our guide pointed to a spot on a distant hillside and made a key-turning movement. Staring hard, we could see a compound; then my binoculars revealed scores of cattle nearby. But this compound was on the far side of The Fence, from which we deduced that the as yet invisible gate was not person-proof but that Egbert would have to wait while one of us fetched the key.
When our friend left us only forty minutes of daylight remained. To Rachel’s eyes the key compound looked easily accessible before sunset; to my older and (in this case) wiser eyes it didn’t. From where we stood, on a level with it, it seemed close enough; but much of the intervening terrain was down and up.
‘Let’s find a camp-site,’ said I, in the no-nonsense voice so often used before my daughter became an adult. (Such habits are not easily dropped.) Rachel obviously had her heart – or stomach – fixed on compound fufu; yet she gave in gracefully, perhaps also out of habit.
Soon a level woodland glade offered ample grazing, ample firewood and soft ground for the picket. We dithered about putting up the tent; the sky was indecisive, mostly clear but with cloud around the edges. Recalling the previous night’s downpour, we chose to play for dryness rather than comfort. The tent was a veteran of our Andean campaign, a high-altitude one-(wo)man job weighing three pounds including poles. In Peru Rachel had of course been less than half her adult size, but we had parsimoniously decided that our old friend would be tolerable for a trek during which we did not expect to camp every night.
Our fire caused a mild personality clash. The wood, being surface-wet, was slow to light – with damp grass as a starter – and Rachel impatiently accused me of ‘wasting matches on a doomed enterprise’. I however was trebly motivated: by hunger for dehydrated vegetable stew, by a romantic addiction to camp-fires and by pride in my ability to light one under adverse conditions. Sure enough, a tiny glow at last appeared and after much skilful blowing became a tiny flame – and moments later a dance of many big flames.
Complacently I settled the saucepan on three logs (there were no adequate stones around) and opened the stew packet. As we supped a gusty wind blew smoke into our faces wherever we sat. Between coughs Rachel wiped her watering eyes and said, ‘Some people know about camp-stoves – very light and cheap.’
When the wind dropped after dark we piled on more wood and discussed our dash dilemma. (In Cameroon ‘dash’ is used loosely to mean a rewarding tip as well as a softening-up bribe.) Should we have dashed Danieli when he followed us? Should we have dashed our guides, in either or both cases? I thought not; money is a dangerous substance that quickly corrodes human relationships unless handled with care. The modern practice of parents (or other relatives) paying young children for help in everyday tasks is to me abhorrent. And everyone knows what the economics of mass tourism have done to human relationships world-wide. Clearly the two little girls, who so rapidly left us, expected no tip. They might have been gratified to receive one; but then, in the unlikely event of other Whites straying past their compound, would the prospect of dash have insidiously tainted the atmosphere? It is reviving, for us denizens of an evilly materialistic society, to be among people who offer help simply because they have generous hearts.
Rachel didn’t entirely agree with me. Some temperaments find it harder to receive than to give and she had been quite upset when our guide with the heavy baby left her urgent chore (pounding maize for the evening meal) and walked far from her compound to show us The Fence. I admired this scrupulousness about not being a nuisance, not taking advantage of people’s good nature. Yet it would have been inappropriate (quite apart from my personal inhibition) to dash that dignified young woman with money. But should we have given her one of our standard cheap ‘travellers’ gifts’ – a lipstick, or gaudy hair-slide, or card of safety-pins? That ploy uncomfortably recalls European traders bartering almost worthless (to them) coloured beads for gold, ivory and slaves. Yet those beads were not worthless to the Africans; many are still in use as admired and envied necklaces. So is it wrong to allow White hang-ups to deprive Black villagers of baubles they would prize? Before ‘settling in’ to Cameroon, I took this and related questions seriously. But such soul-searching about inter-racial attitudes or motives soon came to seem superfluous. One couldn’t go far wrong by spontaneously responding to the differing expectations and personalities of individual villagers.
Although dashing one’s host is a clear-cut obligation, the manner of fulfilling it may be far from clear-cut. In rural Cameroon, and I believe elsewhere in West Africa, a sponger could live well, indefinitely, by accepting the hospitality traditionally offered to strangers of every colour. He or she would be given the best available food and shelter without any hint that recompense was expected. Even nowadays a few hosts – usually Fulanis – are offended by dash from a departing guest. Others consider a gift, but not cash, acceptable; the majority welcome any form of dash that may be received without loss of face. A useful ruse for us, we had been advised, was to pay on departure for ‘the horse’s food’ – which of course costs nothing.
We left the tent flap wide open; at 6,000 feet there were no mosquitoes or other winged undesirables. Rachel was soon asleep, I lay watching a half-moon glimmering behind a frieze of big-leaved branches. Bird chirrupings and distant monkey yells and Egbert’s munching wove a pleasing pattern on the deep silence of the bush. It seemed rather a waste to become unconscious when being conscious was so enjoyable.
In fact that night’s unconsciousness was productive. In a dream I recalled something that for years had been totally forgotten: the loading technique taught me in 1975 by a Balti trader. Then our luggage also consisted of two sacks and the trader’s method of roping them together before loading was, once mastered, far simpler than my own convolution of knots.
At sunrise Rachel watched incredulously while I tied complex loops at intervals along the rope, then arranged it on the ground in a meticulously measured esoteric-looking design. ‘Seems to me,’ she said, ‘your brain works better when you’re asleep!’
By 7.15 a.m. we were viewing The Gate, an anticlimactic arrangement of wooden poles not at all in keeping with that Iron Curtain-type fence. Two small padlocks secured it but anyone keen to get stock through could have done so quite easily. Nor did it even pretend to be human-proof; leaving Egbert grazing and Rachel reading, I wriggled under without difficulty.
That was a magical walk – the early sky pale blue, the cool air faintly herb-scented, the forested slopes vibrant with bird-calls. And then, as I crossed a red-brown meadow, the still hidden sun filled the valley with an ethereal golden haze, an almost unbearably beautiful light.
After a short climb up a new-burnt ridge I found myself amidst some two hundred ear-tagged cattle, the ranch’s experimental herd of zebu-Holstein half-breeds. In March all Cameroonian cattle look skinny, but they do not look unhealthy. This lot did. Some were lame, some had suppurating udders, some had oozing sores around their eyes, all were listless with starey coats. I began to understand why the ranch was forbidden to visitors.
Danieli’s friend came to greet me, a tall, lithe, elderly man who had evidently been expecting us. He held my hand tightly, smiling down at me and murmuring the Fulani litany of greetings, to which I murmured incoherent responses. His face was sad; to the Fulanis a herd of healthy cattle is the most important thing in the world. Strong emotions often transcend language barriers and Rahim must have picked up my own distress; gesturing towards those wretched animals, all overcrowded on their dusty ridge-top, he conveyed that they were starving and looked as though he were about to cry.
In a tiny windowless hut I sat on an unsteady bed covered with a straw mat. The only other furniture was a crudely made wooden cupboard on which stood a row of brightly patterned enamel bowls. Uncovering one, Rahim presented me with a litre of warm, foamy milk. When I hesitated he said, ‘Plenty! Plenty!’ and pointed through the doorway. His pitiably kyphotic wife had just finished milking three healthy zebu – presumably Rahim’s own – and was hobbling across the tree-shaded compound carrying another bowl.
Among the Fulani’s many agreeable customs is an eagerness – almost a compulsion – to provide passing strangers with as much milk as they can drink. In theory (the sort of theory that makes total sense as one studies Hints for Tropical Travellers, pre-journey) one should politely decline this potentially lethal liquid and go ascetically on one’s way. In practice however trekkers see fresh milk not as a health hazard but as the best possible fuel for the day ahead. When I had emptied the bowl Rahim gave me two tiny padlock keys, tied to a grubby, illegible label, and reminded me that my daughter must also have milk.
By 9.30 a.m. Rachel had emptied her bowl and Rahim was showing us the wide track to Ranch Headquarters. Not far from his compound stood a baffling two-storey cattle-trailer of the type associated with intercontinental trucking. Judging by the invading vegetation it had been idle for some time – but how had it got here? Then we realised that this was a motorable track, comparatively recently bulldozed through the bush.
We walked parallel to a long, low, rocky ridge, nearby on our right, with miles of flat stony scrubland stretching away on our left. Even after the rains this would provide poor grazing; now the red earth was naked and cracked between brownish-green bushes.
Where the ridge ended the track swung right and dropped abruptly to well watered green pastureland, amply shaded by tall spreading trees and close cropped by hundreds of sheep and goats – none as yet cross-bred and all in good condition. Very far below lay an immense expanse of cultivated land with Mount Ocu conspicuous beyond.
‘We’ve got our timing badly wrong,’ I observed. ‘We’ll hit that hot spot during the afternoon.’
Soon after the track divided, one branch continuing down, the other climbing towards a jagged escarpment. ‘Let’s go up!’ I urged.
‘And eat what?’ enquired Rachel. ‘More instant stew? How many miles are we supposed to walk on tiny packets of dehydrated vegetables?’
I consulted the USAF and suggested, ‘That up track could be the right one. We don’t know we must go down to get to Mount Ocu. The map only says it’s 9,879 feet high.’
At that moment we noticed the shepherd, a tall skinny youth lurking nervously behind a tree. In response to my greeting he took refuge in a hut amongst bushes. When I followed and peered through the doorway he joined his hands together, as though in prayer, and whispered something inaudible. It took time to reassure him. Then he emerged and conveyed that the upward track went nowhere.
‘Good!’ said Rachel.
That descent was spectacular: from about 7,000 to 3,000 feet in a few memorable miles. We were still quite high when a Range Rover appeared some fifty yards ahead. It had of necessity been travelling slowly (this track was only just motorable) and it went even more slowly when the occupants observed the Murphies on the march. Then it stopped. A small, stout, sallow Frenchman was driving. His companion – also small and stout but very black – wore a fawn lounge suit, an Edwardian solar topi, several gold rings and a pompous angry expression. Neither man spoke English. The driver asked, with a snarl in his voice, how and where we had entered the ranch. The man from Yaounde (for such he must surely have been) accused us of trespassing on private property.
This seemed a suitable moment to test David’s ju-ju. Ritualistically unfolding the Attestation I presented it to Monsieur Topi with the air of someone solving a problem. He looked at it uneasily – very uneasily. Then he passed it to his companion who pointed to one of the seals and muttered something. They looked at each other … The Frenchman returned the document to me, nodded curtly and drove on.
‘Marvellous ju-ju!’ I enthused, carefully replacing the fetish in my passport.
Soon after, our descent was broken by a level fertile shelf, a couple of miles wide and several miles long. Here dozens of Fulani brood mares grazed in paddocks with First World fencing; their foals all looked half-bred. In one field, some 200 yards from the track, a mixed-sex work-gang was briskly clearing stones – so briskly that I studied them through my binoculars. All were youngsters, being supervised by a man carrying a long stick. We went quietly on our way, glad not to have been observed.
Ahead lay the unpeopled Ranch Headquarters. Apparently an ambitious ‘development’ had been abandoned, or at least had had its completion postponed. Four extra-outsize brand-new tractors stood in a spacious yard enclosed on three sides by wire fencing and on the fourth by a high mud wall like the first stage of a medieval fortification. In the centre of this entirely irrelevant obstruction, a tractor-wide corrugated-iron gate stood open. Beyond were a few inexplicable breeze-block buildings (stables? granaries?) and several fancy bungalows set in unsuccessful gardens. On either side of the track stood long rows of what can only be described as roofless, mud-brick terrace houses with quasi-Moorish archways instead of doors and quasi-Gothic embrasures instead of windows.
‘An embryonic tourist centre?’ I speculated. ‘With horse-trekking as the centre-piece?’
This suspicion was strengthened when we came upon the weed-infested foundations for some colossal structure – a Holiday Inn?
We were puzzling over the absence of people when a burly shouting man, barefooted and pock-marked, pursued us. Mysteriously, one of his trouser-legs had been cut off at the knee, which gave him a misleadingly clownish air. At first his manner veered oddly from subservience to truculence: then he settled for the latter. He spoke a mixture of Pidgin and broken English but his intentions were clear. We must report to the office – we had caused offence by not greeting anyone – we couldn’t leave the ranch without his permission because the road out was blocked and guarded by his friends …
‘He just wants dash,’ diagnosed Rachel. ‘Give him something and let’s get out of here!’
Then the Land Rover reappeared; I waved at it and our companion cowered. The Man from Yaounde leant out and yelled something as the vehicle turned off towards a bungalow. Our companion discarded truculence, cordially shook hands and wished us ‘Bon voyage!’
Moments later we heard thundering hoofs; eight little boys were galloping after us, riding bareback and shrieking ferociously to urge on their mounts. Hastily I led Egbert into the trackside scrub. As the stallions raced past we glimpsed exultant faces: ‘The only cheerfulness around!’ noted Rachel.
Volcanic landscapes are magnificently unpredictable. From the ranch shelf our track plunged into an arid red chasm, too irregular to be called a valley, a ravine or a cleft – an eerily unfinished area, as though Nature, like the Men from Yaounde, had postponed completing this development. The track, gouged out of cliff-faces by people rich enough to acquire bulldozers but ignorant of road-building, had already been so eroded that no truck could possibly use it. ‘Now we know,’ I remarked, ‘why that cattle-trailer has been abandoned.’ Here the cruel gradient, combined with sharp loose surface stones and deep cracks, caused poor Egbert some distress.
The noon heat radiated relentlessly from fissured precipices and chaotic rocky gullies. Then, as we slowly climbed from the chasm floor, a watercourse appeared ahead: a dramatically green thin line on the flank of a vast parched mountain. A road-block also appeared, looking more like an international border post than most such do in Africa. My binoculars revealed a heavy pole, stretched between two smartly painted red and white sentry boxes, and three men sitting on camp-chairs.
Where the stream crossed the track, out of sight of the sentries, we watered Egbert, washed, and filled our bottles. As we approached the men I made ready to flourish my fetish but they insolently ignored us. All looked moronic and wore vaguely military tattered tunics. One was abstractedly masturbating and didn’t bother to button up when we stood beside him requesting the lifting of the barrier. At last the co stirred himself and sauntered around Egbert, eyeing the load. He scowled, made a ‘No pass!’ gesture, and seemed to be insisting, in Pidgin, that we return to Ranch Headquarters. I was about to argue when Rachel moved forward decisively, raised the barrier with one hand and led Egbert through. Quickly I followed, then turned to wave to the co. He was staring after us, looking comically nonplussed. When I congratulated Rachel she observed, ‘It’s too hot for palavering!’
It became hotter still as we descended. All around us angular black and red rocks, a few hundred feet high, stuck out of the ground looking oddly like peaks without mountains. Not until 12.30 p.m. did we come to a few warped dwarf trees. Unloading, we left Egbert to make what he could of a straggle of wiry grass and collapsed in sweaty heaps. The trees afforded only minimal shade and were pullulating – every trunk and branch – with giant black ants. These fell upon us in showers – accidentally, but none the less irritatingly. Minute black flies bit us savagely and incessantly. That was the first of many unrelaxing midday ‘rest’-stops.
An hour later we rejoiced to see a fleet of dark rain clouds come sailing over the mountains. We were about to load when another Range Rover appeared, going towards ‘Headquarters’. Two of the passengers were German-Swiss cattle experts; the third was a polite but wary-looking Cameroonian in jeans and a facetious T-shirt. When we had introduced ourselves the senior expert, leaving his companions standing by the vehicle, walked with me towards Egbert. He looked more than slightly demented and suddenly turned aside to sit under a tree.
‘So you have seen this ranch!’ he said. ‘So you can believe my frustrations – right? All this, it is what you I think call arseways on – AI to make big animals before they have food for them! So the cattle become sick, right? And when calves are born many cows die. Zebu cows are narrow, calves with Holstein daddies are broad – right? Years ago I come, study everything, tell them, “First you spend time and money making new, richer pastures. Then you have Holstein semen for some cows, for those who can carry such calves.” But no! no! no! At once all cows must have big calves! Then I come back and look again and tell them, “Now you have made half-European cattle, you must give them European feed! In the dry season these animals need brewers’ grains, rice bran, cotton seed cake, bone powder, trace minerals.” But no! no! no! They want only to see big animals, not to spend big money – only to make it … For them AI is White Man’s Magic, never they connect big breeds with scientific feed! When animals go sick or die they say we give bad semen – you see I have frustrations? Why do I come back here wasting time? Never will they listen – not these Big Men. The Fulanis they would work with me, they could learn. These rich men, they are all from areas without cattle, they think this is just one more way of quickly getting richer.’ He looked around as his colleague called impatiently. ‘Now I go back to my frustrations! Some day maybe we meet again and I can tell you more. Much, much more! But only when I am leaving this country for the last time – you understand? Ha, I see you do! You are an old lady of the world, yes?’
As we continued I felt a twinge of sympathy for the Men from Yaounde. It is largely our fault that so many Africans are confused about the application of White farming methods to Black countries. For decades agricultural aid advisors have been preaching totally impractical gospels. Our Swiss acquaintance was right to assume that Fulani cattle-men would have co-operated with him; but how many ‘experts’ from USAID, the FAO or the World Bank appreciate the intelligence, common sense and inherited wisdom of Third World farmers?
In 1985 the World Bank analysed the results of seventeen massive agricultural aid projects in Africa: thirteen were failures. The economic returns on livestock projects averaged minus 2 per cent, compared with an 11 per cent gain in Asia and Latin America. Those projects were the idiot brain-children of doctorate-laden academics keen to save Africa’s illiterate peasantry from the consequences of their own ignorance. It was assumed that results obtained in high-powered research stations could be duplicated by villagers. Chemical fertilisers were introduced and promptly increased the soil’s acidity in humid regions while making almost no difference to yields in dry regions – and thus failing to cover their considerable costs. Monocropping was encouraged at the expense of intercropping. Imported heavy machinery destabilised frail fields. Rainfall variations were ignored. New technologies, seed varieties and crops were introduced, regardless of the disastrous effects they might (and usually did) have on delicately balanced systems. Over the past quarter-century I have heard a lot about – and quite often observed – the crassness of Western aid ‘experts’ on other continents. But nowhere have they been so destructive as in Africa.
Approaching the big village of Kikfuni, we attracted much amazed/ amused attention. No less amazing, to us, was a youngish man wearing a lime-green track suit, expensive runners and a white Panama hat. He welcomed us to his village, introducing himself as George Charles Akuro, home from Hamburg on a two-month holiday. His swaggering progress was attended by several adult ‘followers’ – male relatives and family connections, all no doubt dependent on the rich exile’s largesse – and by half a dozen children clad in garments of German provenance. He had been working in Hamburg as ‘an import businessman’ for ten years.
‘I am home to arrange more business and marry my new wife – we have four children and many others will come!’
I asked how and why he had settled in Germany. Vaguely he replied, ‘My missionary friend wanted me to go.’ When I provocatively enquired if he would bring his new wife and their four children to Europe he looked quite shocked. ‘They would be unhappy and cold! It is very, very cold in Germany. There I have another wife who is used to the weather.’
George stayed with us when we stopped at the first suitable off-licence – suitable because of a lush patch of grass nearby. It was crowded, as village off-licences often are from breakfast-time onwards, and a shiny Nigerian cassette-player rendered conversation impossible. Beer and soft drinks were the same price: 200 CFA (about 44p) per half-litre. Cameroonian soft drinks (brand-named ‘Top’) are loathsome ersatz ‘fruit juices’, dyed a sinister orange or green. Cameroonian beer, on the other hand, is of a consistently high standard.
We sat outside the door, on sharply uncomfortable plastic beer crates, and at once George commanded the bar girl to bring a chair. As it appeared I murmured ‘Thank you,’ being not as yet fully attuned to Cameroon’s social mores. I was about to move when George swung the chair around to face us and settled himself comfortably, looking expectant. We had however learned one lesson: never offer a drink to a casual acquaintance. Too many other customers then expected free drinks from the rich White.
George quickly gave up hope and ordered for himself and his followers. ‘This is a bad country!’ he complained. ‘A poor bad country where the people are very lazy!’
‘Why do you say that?’ I asked. ‘We think it’s a good rich country where people are kind and mostly have enough to eat and the landscape is beautiful. There are more homeless and hungry people in the USA than there are here!’
‘Cameroon is very bad,’ insisted George. ‘All these bush people, they don’t know how to live – they are backward stupid people! In Hamburg I have everything – big home, big car, deep freeze, fridge, cine-camera, television, stereo-system, swimming-pool for my kids. See! I show you!’
He drew a thick wallet of photographs from his briefcase and the children crowded eagerly around to marvel yet again at his achievements. There was George, leaning nonchalantly on the roof of a Mercedes by the open driving door – and George removing a silver-foil-wrapped dish from a face-level microwave oven – and George posing by an open refrigerator taller than himself and packed with colourful goodies – and so on. There were dozens of photographs, all of a professionally high standard and looking remarkably like advertisements for the objects illustrated. I wondered … George somehow lacked the aura of a wealthy import-export merchant.
Watching the children staring with awed incomprehension at these emanations from another world, I remembered those who are working hard and patiently, without publicity or luxury funding, to introduce ‘appropriate technologies’ to rural Africa. Ease of communication, when it means bright pictures of the enviable unattainable circulating in Cameroonian villages, is not necessarily beneficial. On being shown how well a jiko can work, young Africans might understandably ask, ‘Why is an ex-tar-barrel oven appropriate for us and a microwave oven appropriate for you?’
Questioned about The Ranch, George was uninformative. ‘These are good rich men, making good plans for this area.’
‘But who are they?’ I persisted. ‘And what are their plans?’
‘It is not known,’ said George.
Kikfuni is a widespread village of prosperous compounds embedded in greenery; it took ten minutes to walk from that off-licence to the big eight-day-market place in the village centre. The many rows of roughly constructed thatched stalls were empty, but a line of small shops by the side of the track sold a few basic goods. We left loaded with the cheapest Cameroonian foods: bananas at 5 CFA each and giant avocados at 10 CFA each.
The local weather, we were beginning to realise, is Irish-capricious during the little rains. We had been expecting an afternoon downpour but although the sky clouded over and the temperature dropped perceptibly no rain fell.
Here the level land was densely cultivated – an apparently untidy, uncontrolled jungle of crops: kolanut, pawpaw and mango trees, coffee bushes, beans, groundnuts, sugar-cane, bananas, plantains and young maize already a foot high. Such areas give the impression of a land so rich and lush, so smiled upon by Nature, that merely scattering a few seeds around ensures super-abundant food. This false impression has an echo in one of Britain’s most offensive racial stereotypes: ‘Those lazy Blacks! Trouble is no one has to work where they come from, they just lie around in the sun all day watching things grow!’ In fact such ‘unruly’ regions are agricultural works of art, the result of sophisticated planning based on centuries of precise observations and imaginative experiments. But unfortunately such intensive cultivation is not the rule in Cameroon, being found only in heavily populated areas where the surrounding terrain makes shifting cultivation impossible.
The track was busy as women and children went to and fro from their fields, laughing and gossiping and occasionally quarrelling. The adults greeted us cheerfully, the teenagers giggled shyly, the children seemed half-scared. In maize plots women hacked vigorously at tangles of weeds; where crops flourish, so do their weed competitors and insect foes. One motive for burning fields is to kill weed seeds and insect larvae, another is to reduce soil acidity. The ill-effects of indiscriminate burning are not yet understood.
Some 75 per cent of Cameroonians remain on the land, growing over 90 per cent of the country’s food. Moreover, the land is their own. Outside of Zimbabwe and Kenya (for obvious reasons) there are few landless peasants in Black Africa. This may partly explain why rural Cameroonians seem so much more self-confident, relaxed and contented than their fellow peasants in Peru or India. Life is hard, but they are independent. The disadvantages of a rural economy based on subsistence smallholdings are of course considerable, though less acute in Cameroon than in most Black African countries. One snag is the lack of an influential ‘farming lobby’ organised by large landowners. Many villagers complained to us about the government monopoly on cash crops (notably coffee) which are bought for scarcely half the world market prices. Yet Cameroon has been comparatively lucky; her individual smallholders know that they are people of consequence on whom the national well-being depends. Both President Ahidjo and President Biya have emphasised the importance of agriculture for Black Africa. Neither was lured by outside interests into giving priority to industrial development: hence Cameroon’s minute national debt, at a time when most of her neighbours have been ruined by the need to import expensive foodstuffs. Yet red lights are flashing. The population has recently been increasing at about 200,000 a year and, since the mid-1980s, there has been a need to import grain to feed villagers newly settled in the cities. President Biya has stated, ‘Agriculture must and will remain the priority sector within the context of the National Development Programme.’ But he is ominously silent on the subject of birth-control.
The average Cameroonian holding is less than three hectares (about seven acres) yet throughout our journey we noticed much cultivable land to spare, apart from what was lying fallow. A shortage of labour is one factor limiting Africa’s food production; there are no swarms of landless peasants. This situation could be partially remedied if men’s working habits became more flexible. Traditionally they confine themselves to clearing new land, turning the soil and growing cash crops: coffee, cocoa, palm oil. The cash is usually kept by the men for their own use. Women are expected to grow enough to feed the family; and what they earn by selling surplus food locally will, with luck, pay for the children’s clothing. Meanwhile they also have to bear and rear those children, fetch water and gather firewood (often from considerable distances), prepare and cook meals (a lengthy and tiring process when all the grain has to be pounded), do the laundry, wash-up and clean the compound. Not only ardent feminists condemn this division of labour.
By 6 p.m. we were climbing gradually between hilly fields. Some carried sugar-cane and others – just dug, in readiness for planting – were scattered with high cairns of stones. This was unpromising camping terrain but we rightly guessed there must be a village nearby.
Acha (much smaller and less attractive than Kikfuni) lay at the base of an alluring jumble of mountains: Mount Ocu’s foothills. Rectangular tin-roofed mud huts straggled on either side of the track and Mr Nomo Zambo, the only person in sight, hurried from his doorway to invite us to stay. His wife was away in Kumbo, waiting to have her fifth baby at the Mission Hospital, but his nieces were looking after him and could also look after us.
When Mr Zambo and Rachel had led Egbert away, to look for good grazing, a twenty-year-old nephew escorted me to the off-licence. Neuke was small, slight, handsome; he had clear bright eyes, glossy black skin and an open eager expression. The off-licence, furnished only with a few benches and a stack of crates in one corner, was empty of customers.
‘Here there are many Muslims who don’t drink beer,’ explained Neuke. He himself had become a Muslim quite recently, when he married – but he was not, he emphasised, teetotal. The family, we later discovered, were Bamunka; but Mr Zambo wore Fulani dress because ten years ago he had gone over to Islam after quarrelling with Christian relatives about land. To us this seemed something of a non sequitur, but that merely reveals our ignorance of local affairs.
Neuke took two ‘33’s from a crate, since there was no one around to serve us. ‘I am lucky!’ he said. ‘Every morning I walk to study carpentry in Kikfuni and come home late. But not today because my teacher has fever. So now I talk to you and it’s good to talk English with White people because at school we have bad teachers. Last year two White people came in a Land Rover, to Lake Ocu, but they slept in a big tent in the bush. My uncle was sad and angry. To say “No” when you are invited is bad. We like to look after travellers and share everything we have.’
Neuke deplored the war in Chad. ‘It makes me sad – too many dying and starving! But this is a peaceful country – you see how we have plenty, plenty food and no guns and fighting. If we like we become Christian, Muslim, pagan – no one makes trouble about it. No one asks questions about religion or politics. We are lucky, happy people!’
It would be misleading to describe Cameroonian villagers as ‘politically aware’, yet most seem proud of their country’s record since Independence. Neuke was the first of many who expressed to us a genuine appreciation of Cameroon’s stability and prosperity.
When I offered Neuke a second beer his response was unnerving – ‘I wait for your wife and my uncle, then we all drink together!’
I am used to being misgendered at first glance, when clad and equipped for trekking, but never before had I sat talking to someone for half an hour without their diagnosing my sex. Moreover, it was hard to convince Neuke that Rachel and I are in fact mother and daughter – and even harder to convince Mr Zambo, when he and Rachel joined us.
Throughout Cameroon this confusion persisted, not only in remote villages but in little towns where even government officials, or police and army officers – some from cosmopolitan Yaounde – invariably assumed me to be male. We decided that the problem was twofold: physical and psychological. My appearance did not conform to the Cameroonian image of elegant, fragile White women, an image derived mainly from magazine illustrations, or glimpses of expatriate wives swanning around the capital. Also, they could not conceive of two women wandering through the bush and camping out in the (to them) menacing loneliness of the night.
Mr Zambo evidently took his conversion seriously, whatever its motivation, and though he stood Rachel a beer he would accept only Top from me. ‘Now I am Muslim, I don’t have strong drink.’
Irish potatoes thrive in Cameroon and are now popular as a ‘special dish’, often spelt ‘Iris’ when chalked up on menu-boards in eating houses. So Mr Zambo and Neuke were much perplexed by our Irishness; to them being Irish meant being a potato – not a human being. I was tempted to tell them that Murphies are sometimes known as ‘Spuds’, which is another name for potatoes, and that potatoes are sometimes known as ‘Murphies’. But that would have intolerably confused the issue.
We tried to describe Ireland but soon realised that our friends, like most of the Cameroonians we were to meet, could not visualise the world beyond their own region. They were vague even about Cameroon’s neighbours – except Nigeria, which is within walking distance of the Grassfields and not regarded as ‘foreign’.
Before supper we were shown into a small yard behind the main hut. The latrine was on the far side, behind a raffia screen – a deep, wide, odourless hole criss-crossed by bamboo poles on which one squatted. On the ground in another corner a deep basin of hot water (four feet in circumference) had been provided for our ablutions, complete with a fresh cake of soap and a giant sponge. Cameroonians – unlike the Murphies when trekking – are almost obsessional about washing their bodies and their clothes. Apart from a few homeless semi-idiots, I cannot recall seeing one unclean individual in three months. Yet we were travelling in areas where tap water is virtually unknown.
In the largest room, measuring some fifteen feet by eighteen, half the floor space was taken up by a four-poster bed – ours for the night. Here Neuke’s sister, an attractive fourteen-year-old wearing a BVM medal around her neck, served supper by lamplight. Uncle and nephew sat watching as she struggled to push aside the heavy raffia door-curtain while carrying a laden tray. She was followed by the eldest Zambo boy, a doted-on nine-year-old who stayed by his father for the rest of the evening but didn’t eat with us. The fufu was heavier than at Doi’s and rather gluey. Instead of jammu-jammu we had a mess of bony dried fish in a sauce not spicy enough to conceal the fact that the fish had decayed before being dried. We sat on home-made wooden chairs, bending over the low table to eat from the communal dishes and piling our bones on a communal saucer.
Discussing our route, we discovered that this village, known as Acha in Kikfuni, was called something quite different by its inhabitants, who in turn called Kikfuni something beginning with ‘Mb’ – and so it went on, even towns like Kumbo having two or three names. ‘But what else can you expect,’ remarked Rachel afterwards, ‘when villagers living five miles apart don’t understand each other’s languages?’
As we sipped our post-prandial Ovaltine, I casually enquired about The Ranch and its development. Neuke asked excitedly, ‘How did you get in? Did you see the Big Men?’ But Mr Zambo looked sharply at him and said, ‘We don’t know about these people.’ Whereupon Neuke said no more.
By nine o’clock we were comfortably abed, sharing a blanket but each with a little pillow in a freshly laundered blue cotton cover. Overhead was a wickerwork awning, between us and the cobweb-laden rafters. Both inside walls were of cane and through their cracks lamplight shone faintly. Most Cameroonians won’t sleep in total darkness and Mr Zambo had been astonished when we assured him that no lamp need be left in our room.
We speculated about our bed’s usual occupants. Mr and Mrs Zambo might seem a reasonable assumption – except that Cameroonian husbands do not normally share sleeping-quarters with their wives, merely visiting them briefly (though frequently) in their own huts or rooms. More likely this de luxe bed was shared by our host and his small sons.