Cameroon album

We had a great trip to Cameroon.  It was very relaxing apart from the climb to the summit of Mount Cameroon and great to spend some time with Dad and the rest of the family.  Grace and Bisi looked after us superbly and the staff at the house were brilliant as usual - the ever-smiling Mr Zachs and Aya at the house and Valentine and Mbella behind the wheel on Cameroon's challenging roads.

As usual the country delights and frustrates at the same time and as we left people are speculating about whether the revolutions in the north Africa will spread further south and spell the end of the 28-year rule of President Paul Biya.  The Government is nervous and putting out messages saying "why would anyone protest in a country as well run as this?".  Zero out of ten for self-awareness there - the country's potential is not being realised and lack of good leadership is largely responsible.

At the family level we have our issues too.  Dad has envisioned and started many projects but, especially at his age, needs more help than he has been getting recently.  I'm optimistic that we are starting to change that.  Again there is real potential and hopefully over the next year our major property development in Kribi will start and the nearby conference centre business will get on its feet.  We also have work to do on the internet front to get the site for Dad's foundation, Global Health Dialogue, running properly and to help him develop another webpage on the regulation of medical training, which remains an active area for him.  A new farm in the village and the successful reclaim through the courts of our palm tree plantation (ownership claimed by our tenant) are in process too.  Oil exploration is also going on in the village which could change its rural tranquility and have Dad swap his chief's cap for a JR Ewing 10 gallon hat!  It should be an interesting next year before we visit again.

Discretion prevents me commenting on some of the family politics that have been getting in the way of these projects, but suffice to say that life there is never dull.  As my sister Silo said, we need to find a good publisher for the book.  We have added some pictures to the blog entries and here is an album of additional photos of the places and people we met in Cameroon.

Cameroon top 30

Cameroon - Land of Contrasts

As you have probably realised I have left Paul to write all the blog entries so far (he writes so well and types much quicker than me!). However, having spent the last three weeks in Cameroon I finally feel the need to put pen to paper and try to describe a country that is so completely different to anything in the developed world and can feel strangely confusing as it is so full of contrasts. The fact that it is English speaking in the west and French in the east, Christian in the south and Muslim in the north is only the start of it.

On the subject of religion Cameroonians are the most devoted, God-fearing and church-going Christians I have come across but this is mixed with the continued worship of traditional gods (mainly related to nature and the agricultural cycle) and a healthy dose of witchcraft and sorcery. Paul’s grandparents and uncle are buried in the garden of the family home in graves bedecked with Christian crosses but in the same village the use of curses is not uncommon.

The contrast that struck me the most, however, was the simultaneous high levels of chaos and stillness. The chaos is a result of the fact that much of daily life takes place on the street. Everywhere you go women sit under the shade of an umbrella selling produce, a huge range of goods is sold from rickety wooden stalls, ‘shops’ display all their wares outside and food is cooked and sold at the side of the road. Add to this the fact that what we might consider semi-industrial processes, such as car repair, furniture manufacture and wood cutting, also take place at the side of the road and the huge number of motorbikes, shared taxis and minibuses on the road, the result is an incredible level of noise and commotion.

However, once you get used to the chaos and look through the madness it is amazing how many people are not doing very much (or more accurately how many men are not doing very much). Stall holders lie in the shade of their canopy, people are drinking beer in bars most of the day and groups of unemployed people sit around in small groups keeping each other company. Most Cameroonians appear to live life day by day in survival mode so once the small amount of fresh produce they have is sold or a stall holder has sold enough to feed his family that day there seems to be little desire to do any more. There is a high degree of enterprising spirit to ensure survival but this is not extended to building long term sustainable businesses that could support families in the longer term.

Another big cultural difference that struck me is that Cameroonians are not big communicators. Within our family people regularly fail to talk to each other, either to make simple arrangements or discuss more fundamentally important issues. On a previous trip we went to several parties but were advised by one family member that it is impolite to ask questions as people will think you are prying, making it quite difficult to strike up conversation with a simple ‘So, what do you do?’. Yet despite this, one thing that has changed significantly in the last few years is the incredible rise of mobile phones. It has gone from there being virtually no landlines (Paul’s dad used to have the telephone number ‘10’) to everyone having a mobile phone and most of them are far more advanced than my (somewhat old) Nokia. Although this could be seen as a major development and present many opportunities quite what they use them for, given the lack of communication, is unclear!

Douala - life amid the chaos

In need of a good shower after a couple of days with only buckets of water we departed for Douala.  Suzanne was keen to experience the big city for the first time in many years.  After the first hour from Kribi to Edea, we joined the main road from Yaounde for a journey that is hard work.  The bendy single track road is busy with slow-moving lorries and the occasional fast-moving lunatic which kept Mbella, our driver, on his guard all the way.  At one point as he waited patiently to get past two slow lorries, a maniac overtook all of us on a bend at high speed tooting his horn and hoping for the best.  He avoided a head on collision but the wrecks on the side of the road show others were not so lucky.  As Dad says when he sees such driving, “he must have been in a hurry to get to his accident”.

Benskin drivers waiting for customers

The tension of the journey lowers on reaching the outskirts of Douala but the welcome to the city is unpleasant.  The last few miles are through the huge and growing manic shanty town suburb of Village, which is not an apt name.  As the one lane each way traffic slows down, all of a sudden there are four cars abreast going into town as yellow shared taxis compete with each other to gain a few metres.  The mushrooming number of cheap Chinese made motor cycles adds to the chaos and pollution.  The only way for young men to make money here is operating motor-cycle taxis carrying as many as three other people and their goods.  The bike-taxis are known as “benskins” because when you fall off you burn (pronounced “ben” locally) your skin.  There is even a Benskin ward at the local hospital!  In the road-side dust a huge informal market goes on and behind the wooden shacks sit hunched together next to some foul-smelling streams.  There is no planning, no infrastructure and lots of pollution from the overloaded lorries.

We were relieved to arrive at Bisi’s flat on Saturday morning with its hot water, air-con, satellite TV and access to European style restaurants and supermarkets.  But Sunday brought a power cut from 9am to 730pm followed by six further cuts which rather disrupted the evening.  However Africa is rather less reliant than Europe on power and life continues pretty much as normal.  We walked for an hour in the morning in the sapping heat and humidity and I showed Suzanne the market in the neighbouring poor suburb of New Bell where you can buy pretty much anything.  Judging by some of the looks of surprise, they don’t get too many white female visitors. 

Samuel Eto'o mural, New Bell's national hero

An evening drive around the centre of town to buy our supper completed Su’s tour of Douala.  It is hot, humid, crowded, mostly poor and not very pretty but it is the beating heart of Cameroon, very much alive even in the darkness of a Sunday power cut.

Down on the Beach

Last Wednesday we left Buea for a five day road trip to explore and experience more of the country together at a rather more relaxed pace than our usual flying visits here.  We spent the first night in Bonapriso, Douala with my sister Bisi, consuming some cheese and wine brought with us from France and enjoying Arsenal’s comeback victory against Barcelona on the TV.

Next morning Mbella, our driver, arrived to take us and my cousin Lobe to the beach town of Kribi where we stayed with my elder brother Edube at Dad’s conference centre.  He lives there with his family including his 3 year old daughter, Suzanne who is named after my grandmother who died shortly before she was born. It is customary here to “replace” people when they die by naming new born babies after them and consequently like all families we have many mbombos (namesakes).  In memory of Grandma we now have three Suzannes (as Bisi’s Christian name is also Suzanne she and my Suzanne are also mbombos).

Su with mbombo number 1, Bisi 

...and mbombo number 2, Suzanne

 The highlights of Kribi were walking and sitting on the beach, occasionally cooling off in the warm Atlantic Ocean, and going out for the legendary Cameroonian institution of beer and fish in the evening.  Edube took us to a good bar which plays African music and shows football while outside on the street women cook fish over hot coals.  It arrives perfectly cooked and steaming hot with delicious fierce chilli sauce, fried plantain and mionda (rubbery strips made from cassava).  Eaten with the fingers and washed down with beer it was a real contrast to the night before’s cheese and wine.

The bars here are filled mostly with groups of local men supplemented by a sprinkling of middle aged male French ex-pats sitting with considerably younger Cameroonian women.  We had an amusing time catching up with Edube and trying to bridge the language barrier with Lobe (the overlap between his French and Douala and our English and Spanish is small but growing).  When Lobe couldn’t understand our English, Mbella would translate which usually meant (although he speaks French) simply repeating what we had just said in English but with a heavy African accent!

The beach 2 mins from our house in Bebambwe

The beaches north and south of the town are idyllic with white sand and palm trees.  To the north a local builder is doing a great job of refurbishing Dad’s house at Bebambwe and we also visited Grand Batanga down the dirt road south towards Equatorial Guinea. 

On the beach at Grand Batanga with Lobe, Edube & Mbella

Hopefully these havens will be preserved if the Government’s plans for a new airport, major tarmac roads, deep see container port, airport and aluminium plant come to fruition (don’t hold your breath!).  Meanwhile our own grand plans are not progressing too well locally.  The conference centre still isn’t running properly and we had no running water for most of our stay there.  We briefed Dad on the latest developments at a family meeting he called on our return (another new experience for us) and hopefully we now have agreement on the way forward for the centre – let’s hope it works. 

On the Tourist Trail

Yesterday we travelled an hour or so north of Buea to Kumba, the economic centre of the South-West province of Cameroon.  That the journey is only around an hour is a tribute to a major improvement in the road infrastructure.  The old dusty road that went up hill and down dale has been replaced by a new one cut through the hill sides and covered with smooth tarmac.  It even has white lines in the middle and drains on either side of the road which puts it way ahead of the main road between the two main cities (Douala and Yaounde) in terms of quality.

Lake Barombi Mbo

The reason for the journey was not to marvel at the new road but to travel through the forest region and especially to visit Lake Barombi Mbo, a crater lake to the north of Kumba.  We had read in our guide book that it was a beautiful and peaceful place and we were not disappointed.  The lake itself is incredibly still and is set in a basin completely surrounded by thick forest.  The trees are effectively inside the lip of the crater and the water, while only 2.5kms across is 120m deep in the middle.

The only other people there were a couple in their sixties travelling alone from London to Johannesburg by road.  They were on Day 103 of their journey and with typical British understatement said they had very few problems getting through the various countries undergoing upheaval at the moment.  They have another six weeks to go before reaching South Africa and we marveled at their bravery.  We are not tempted to emulate them!

It is not surprising that, apart from a couple of locals bathing at the lake, the only other people were Europeans.  Cameroonians show very little interest in what in Europe or North America would be described as natural tourist attractions and consequently the many such sites of natural beauty here are hard to find.  We had to pay someone on a motor-bike to lead us to the lake, even though it is the area’s principal attraction. When we got there the road down to the lake was just about accessible by four-wheel drive.  The guide book lists untold numbers of similar gems around the country so Cameroon could have a very good network of tourist sites, earning much needed income.  Most are unspoilt although many are endangered by logging activity, so tourism could provide the alternative source of income needed to stop the logging.  The secondary effect of logging (beyond the link to climate change) is that by driving roads further into the forests, animal habitats are endangered and poaching is made easier.

Hopefully now it would also be possible to protect the sites while making them more accessible and to earn money for the local population, dissuading them from activities such as logging and poaching.  On Mount Cameroon for example some of the ecotourism guides are former poachers who know the mountain trails well but who now have the opportunity to earn their money a different way.  This sustainable “ecotourism” approach is the way forward.  Expect to see more of it if Suzanne ever becomes Cameroon’s Minister of Tourism!

The Last Day

As in October we visited our home village in Dibombari for a relative’s funeral which is culturally very important.  With an average life expectancy of just 46 (compared to over 80 in the UK) and huge extended families, funerals come around with stunning regularity.  They are highly visible as they are held outdoors and involve hundreds of people.  The Saturday burial can be preceded by a wake lasting for days and culminating in an all night vigil on the Friday. 

Dad went for the Friday wake-keeping while we followed the next morning just in time for the advertised 11am start. Being Africa we needn’t have rushed as we sat baking under a canopy, waiting for things to begin.  We saw the body of Ngondedi, the deceased, on display in the coffin.  She had been beautifully made up and dressed in white wedding-type dress.  The cost of this, the service, the flowers, the hiring of the tents, chairs, choir, and the provision of food and drinks for the guests is astronomical.  But people save all their lives for this Last Day – sadly instead of saving for health insurance that might delay it a good while.  The emphasis on having such a funeral plays a part in Africa’s many problems and seen through western eyes this expense looks absurd.  But this isn’t the west.

At precisely midday two men dressed in black smocks approached slowly but purposefully down the dusty street.  Being (high) noon it had the feel of a spaghetti western but of course they were the pastors clutching bibles.  Once they had performed a blessing, the now closed coffin was brought outside.  Then there were a number of tributes, including one by my Dad who spoke at some length (not unheard of) in the Douala language.  When I asked him later what he had said, he just said it was “the usual stuff”.  Some of the other speakers drew spontaneous outbursts of crying and wailing from the choir and from groups of women in their clan uniforms.  By 1pm we were very hot and the service adjourned to the church.  We skipped that bit and returned to our family house where Suzanne had a nap on the veranda and I had a chat for an hour with my uncle Emanuel under a tree just a few feet from where my grandparents (his parents) are buried. 

Soon Dad and Grace and my uncle Isac returned from church and took us to the VIP section of funeral reception (we may all be equal in death but while we are alive we’ll have a dedicated table, the best food and a plentiful supply of booze, thank you very much).  Some very good Douala food was washed down with a surprisingly drinkable carton of Spanish red wine.  Isac looked relaxed in Dad’s company having been worried earlier this week when the national TV channel ran a documentary about Dad’s life, which he assumed was an obituary!

My grandparents' graves next to the house in Dibombari

For many, funerals are the main reason to go back to the ancestral village. Because of that and because our house there is full of pictures of those no longer with us, such as Grandma, a visit to Dibombari always brings back memories for me.  Whatever the future holds for such rural villages we can be sure it will continue to fill the well of nostalgia.

Mountain Madness

Some said we wouldn’t make it.  Some said we were mad.  But we did it – we made it to the summit of Mount Cameroon, the huge lump of active volcano that looms behind the house here in Buea.  This is something I’ve wanted to do since as a kid I saw pictures of the mountain in a book that Dad left me on one of his trips to London - but I never realised how hard it would be.

Mt Cameroon from below in Buea

At 4,095 metres it is the highest point in central and west Africa and the sides of the mountain are so steep that the trail is like an endless step-machine rather than a walking trail.  Much of the terrain is tricky too – sharp volcanic rock and loose gravel, tree roots, tufts of grass and mud in places all make footholds difficult.

The weather was sunny all the way up so there were good views all the way to the second camping hut (called Hut 2 despite being the third hut up) at 2,850 metres where we were to spend the night.  We made it there in around six and a half hours including a few stops and relaxed in the sun enjoying the view of the upper slopes while we rested our tired legs. 

Still smiling on reaching Hut 2

When night fell and we had eaten our food, the temperature started to drop and with it the fun element.  We had an early start next day so we went to “bed” at 8pm.  To describe the Hut 2 facilities as basic would be a great exaggeration.  It has accommodation in the form of a wooden platform in a dirty, graffiti-covered hut with a corrugated iron roof with a mixture of straw and rubbish underneath that was clearly to the liking of the local rats.  They rustled around during the night and tried to find ways to get at our food without success.  The toilet facilities were holes in the ground within two further small huts and there was a kitchen – another hut with space to set a fire.  We zipped up our sleeping bags, used our rucksacks as pillows, left all our clothes on and failed to sleep for hours on the hard wood surface.

The inside of "the Buea Hilton" - Hut 2

The second day was unbelievably hard.  In order to get up to the summit and down in the day we left at 4am and walked for 2 hours in the dark with one torch between two of us.  The whole route is steep but after a virtually sleepless night in the cold of Hut 2 it seems vertical.  Walking without having eaten at 4am in the dark with limited light and air with low oxygen content was low on laughs.  Around 6am the sun came up – we pushed on and we were at the summit by 8am, very tired but happy to have made it. 

Made it! Now just 3,000 metres back down...

The downside of being at the summit was that we now faced a 3,000 metre descent back to Buea in an already exhausted state.  As we know from our mountain walks in Spain, coming down is faster but technically more difficult.  We found it hard to concentrate on where to put our feet and the legs weren’t really responding.  We both took tumbles on the way down but got home in one piece to a warm welcome (and quite a lot of admiration as hardly any of the locals have been up).  I can’t describe how stiff we were the next morning (and even worse today!).

Incredibly some people do actually run up to the top.  Every year in late February around 300 people run up the hill from the stadium in Buea to the point where we started our walk and then complete the same course as we took, up and down the best part of 4,000 metres, in just a few hours. 25 miles in all – incredible!  Unfortunately the mountain race has been postponed by a week and will be just after we leave so Suzanne and I can’t join them.  Shame!  Once is definitely enough.

Welcome (back) to Douala

After three weeks in Spain we left Monte Pego and headed to Cameroon via Valencia and Paris.  When we touched down in Paris it was incredibly foggy and zero degrees – a far cry from what was to await us in Douala, Cameroon’s biggest city.  It is a long and tiring journey and slightly frustrating to be flying directly back over Valencia on the way from Paris to Douala some eight hours after we had left there painfully early that morning.  But by 8.30pm we were on the tarmac in Douala and the captain announced that it was still 32 degrees Celsius two hours after sunset.  It turned out he meant that it was 32 degrees in the city as opposed to the baggage hall in the airport where it felt nearer 50!

As a welcome to a country this one is way down there at the bottom of the list.  How it can take an hour and a half to get the one and only plane load of people through passport control and baggage reclaim is beyond belief.  I suspect it is all part of a cunning plan.  The reason why the bags take so long to come out is that by the time you have got your case you are so hot and bothered that you are easy pickings for the customs man who gleefully pounces on you as you try to leave.  By locking the “nothing to declare” exit the only way out is via the “something to declare” door.  He lifted my case and said “she’s a bit heavy sir – I bet you have something in there” before making clear that I could avoid having my case opened if I “had something for him”.  Much as I dislike corruption and the corrosive effect it has on Africa’s development, at that point handing over the equivalent of ₤2.50 is a small price to pay for getting out of the most unpleasant room either of us have had the misfortune to be in for a long time.  

At the flat with Bisi, Penda & cousin Lobe

That over we melted into the arms of Penda and Bisi my brother and sister who had come to collect us.  They spirited us away from the mob of taxi touts, porters and general chancers that inhabit the waiting area outside the terminal building, into Penda’s car and off to Bisi’s (air-conditioned) apartment for some very welcome local roast fish.