The army commander stepped into the road and flagged down our taxi. Tall and barrel-chested, he peered at us suspiciously, the gun at his waist clanking against the car. There were already four of us squeezed in the back so he flung the passenger door open and sat down — on top of the slim, elegantly dressed woman in the seat.
The small Toyota sank on its suspension, creaking pitifully. The driver persuaded the car to move but it threatened to turn up its wheels and die at every pothole.
Suddenly the commander told the driver to stop and ordered him out of his seat and into the boot and wedged himself behind the wheel. We took off at speed, our army chauffeur grinning. Disconcertingly, every time I looked into the rear-view mirror one of his eyes was staring at me, the other at the road. We slowed at army checkpoints, but only enough for the commander to shout a joke at the bored squaddies.
PHOTO: EPA
I think the Forest Whitaker/Idi Amin looky-likey was as surprised by our encounter as I was. Cameroon, tucked below Nigeria in west Africa, gets almost no Western tourists. But a quick look at the only guidebook available had promised beautiful beaches, gorgeous landscapes and friendly people.
My friend Nick and I flew into the city of Douala. The only hotels in town seemed to be either fleapits or international business-style hotels. Neither appealed so we had booked ourselves into the German Seamen’s Mission, as you would.
I scanned the lobby and bar for melancholic German sailors, stranded in Africa and drowning their sorrows. No luck, not an anchor tattoo in sight. A few young black couples sipped Fantas and a group of middle-aged white men glugged beers and sweated into their linen suits. A woman lounged in the pool, wearing a vast pair of knickers underneath her bikini.
We left Douala the next day and headed north with guide Benjamin and driver Solomon, passing through rubber and palm tree plantations. Benjamin tried to explain the intricacies of Cameroon’s politics and the tribal system while I tried to ignore the carnage on the roads. Barely a few kilometers would pass without our seeing another wreck. One overturned truck was still smoking, its stunned driver and passers-by pulling clear what survived of its cargo of melons.
We came to Bandjoun, the biggest of the Bamileke tribal chiefdoms. Despite Benjamin’s best efforts, I was struggling to get my head round Cameroon’s ethnic make-up. There are more than 275 distinct groups, from the “pygmies” of the southern forests to the Muslim sultanates of the north. Then you have to factor in the colonial impact. First came the Portuguese, then the Germans who were kicked out by France and Britain after World War I. The French and British carved the country in two and full independence and reunification did not come until 1972. Even now, there are distinct Francophone and Anglophone areas.
But the tribal system still underpins Cameroonian society and the Bamileke hold much of the power. That power was clear to see at Bandjoun. The palace compound was vast, a wide road leading us through a tall gateway and down to the chief’s reception hall — a giant building, with a thatched witch’s hat of a roof.
The hall was being rebuilt — the previous building had burnt down in suspicious circumstances after a new, and unpopular, chief took the throne. Totem pole-like columns circling the building were carved with monkeys, forest spirits, tribal figures, missionaries and, er, Samuel Eto’o and other members of the Barcelona football team. The striker is a hero in his football-mad home country.
What I really wanted to do was poke around in the palace grounds. The chief now lives in a concrete building but dozens of smaller cone-roofed traditional huts are used by his wives. Shy female faces had peeked out at us as we arrived. But exploring was strictly forbidden and instead we were ushered into a museum in the barn-like treasury to look at dusty thrones, weapons, pipes and skulls, when I just wanted to ask wife number 12 about the big man, wife number 11 and Barca’s starting line-up.
Never mind, Solomon had sensed the limits of our cultural thirst for knowledge and took us to a crunch football match in Bafoussam, the nearest town. Fovu de Baham lined up against the University of Ngaoundere on a red dirt pitch. We watched as the players slowly disappeared in clouds of dust. Spectators, most of whom seemed to be of the rank of captain or above, beckoned over small boys hawking nuts and sweets.
The half-time team talk was conducted by the touchline, the players sitting in the dirt to be harangued by their coach as a crowd gathered around, nodding in agreement. Fovu won, I think, although it was hard to tell through the dust.
As we wandered the streets of Bafoussam that night, blaring TVs in bars showed games live from Milan to Manchester. Smoke drifted from food stalls, the meat and fish cooked on fires set in car wheels. We had delicious fish, washed down by Castel beer. We were conspicuously the only foreigners around but drew barely a second glance. That proved to be the same throughout the country — we weren’t treated as oddities, gawped at by children or latched upon as a money-making opportunity. Here, in this small town, we were just another couple of blokes, having a beer, watching the game. Nick and I put it down to Cameroon’s lack of tourists — our rarity had made us invisible.
Solomon took us back on the road, exploring more tribal kingdoms. The palace at Foumban was built by King Njoya to a German design in 1917 and wouldn’t have looked out of place in Bavaria. Njoya was clearly a bit of a Renaissance man: he created his own alphabet and started his own religion so he could get round the Muslim ban on drinking and the Christian ban on polygamy (he ended up with 600 wives).
The current king, a former government transport minister, sitting beneath a shady porch and settling disputes brought by chiefs from surrounding villages, seemed to be having much less fun.
The roads deteriorated until we spent most of one day pushing the Toyota up steep stone tracks, rocks flying past our heads as the smoking tires scrabbled for grip. There were punctures and the car filled with thick dust. We finally arrived at the tiny town of Wum and emerged from the car shaking ourselves into a red cloud and sneezing red snot. We ate at a restaurant called God’s Grace Dietary Supplement.
Our final stop on the tribal trail was Bafut. The complex here was put on the map by Gerald Durrell in his 1954 book The Bafut Beagles. The chief — or fon — put him up in a guesthouse at a respectable distance away from the palace, parts of which are more than 600 years old. That guesthouse is now a museum, with reminders of the tribe’s violent past and macabre superstitions. I felt overloaded by information but a small incident at a roadside cafe nearby was a keen reminder not to dismiss traditional beliefs as altogether of the past.
The young waitress had two scars under each eye — Benjamin explained that when she was a child a soothsayer said she had “double vision” — the ability to see spirits. The soothsayer had cut her, put traditional medicine in the wounds and cured her.
Solomon dropped us at the coastal resort of Kribi, clucking at the state of his car. Chilling out with a drink at our hotel, looking out over a vast expanse of white sand, we saw foreigners for the first time — not tourists, but diplomats and aid agency workers from Douala and the capital, Yaounde, looking for a bit of R ’n’ R. I finally managed to wash away the last of the red dust in the sea, surrounded by decorously clothed Muslim women, giggling as they splashed in the surf.
We spent our last night back in Douala, at the seamen’s mission. The barbeque was fired up and slowly the bar filled up with an eclectic mix of locals, expats and, yes, seamen. Crews at tables ranged from boisterous Germans to Filipinos, quietly getting drunk on Guinness. And I spied at least one anchor tattoo.
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