CAMEROON- MONTH TWO



CAMEROON – MONTH TWO                                  

I am happily settled into my new house in Bamenda, just a ten minute walk from my CRAT office.  My new family member consists of Cammy the Kitty.  I have a huge home that could easily sleep about 300 Peace Corps volunteers.  I have front and back verandas, the back one with a view of the hillside and waterfall.  Papaya trees are dripping papayas all around my yard, and naturally, there is a local rooster that crows the morning wake-up.  I had a house-warming party mostly for my staff members.  They did all the shopping and cooking, which was nearly an all-day affair. We were rich in local cuisine with plenty of left-overs to go home with the cooks.

Since my arrival I have had some interesting work-related and leisure-related outings.  A training in Kenya was in an exceptionally beautiful location with giraffes, monkeys and waterbucks wondering all around the grounds.  Most recently, I spent ten days in Yaounde with a CVT staff and CRAT employees doing much planning for the upcoming year.  Just outside of Yaounde is a primate reserve, Mefou, which was a delightful shift from the congested and busy city.  The reserve houses a variety of primates to include gorillas, chimps, drills, baboons, and several others.  They all found there way there because they had been orphaned or donated from a zoo.  Although these animals are legally protected, poaching is a big problem in Cameroon and the animals are often killed for bush-meat.  The focus of the reserve is to rehabilitate the animals so they can return to a safe place in the wild.  They are kept behind electric fences but are not shy about coming up to the fence for interaction.  I was able to play a little bit with a few of the chimps who wanted to pass things back and forth to me through the fence wires.  I could have spent the whole day there with them.

Cameroon has a history of Chiefdoms, or Fondoms, as they are called here.  The chiefs/fons still carry weight within their villages and territories.  In fact there are still land and property issues that have resulted in intertribal warfare, with one village attacking another. (These villages are part of the target populations that CRAT has chosen to work with.)  The Fon history has been recorded back to the 1300’s, and there continues to be many of the traditions that existed centuries ago.  The Fons may have multiple wives and some have been known to have over 100.  They still have Secret Societies and many sacred and secret rituals.  When the Germans were here in the early 1900’s, the human sacrifice was outlawed, but animal sacrifice still continues.  The Fons also dispensed there own justice systems with hands and heads being chopped off for a variety of crimes. Vigilante justice is still known to occur in Cameroon.

In the past month I have visited two communities with Fon Palaces and legendary traditional festivities.  I visited Bafut, just an hour from Bamenda,  and was given a tour of the Fon’s Palace by one of the queens.  It has been given World Heritage Site status and it is truly a lovely and photogenic place.  More recently, I had a quick look-see at a traditional festival in the Foumban area with the indigenous Bamun people.  Originally all of these fondoms were animist, but Foumban has an interesting story originating from their 17^th King in the late 1890’s.  He was forced to invite a Nigerian tribe to save him from being conquered by another tribe.  He inquired as to how they found their power and they reported that they believed in Allah, so the King converted to Islam to have a stronger fighting force.  Later he saw that the Germans were stronger than some of the tribes so he asked the Germans.  They replied that they followed Jesus Christ.  So the King converted to Christianity.  But then when he was to be baptized, the priest told him that he could not have more than one wife, so he returned to Islam.  Then the Muslims told him that he couldn’t drink wine and alcohol.  At that point, he created his own religion, taking teachings from both the Bible and the Koran and wrote his own bible.  Eventually, in the 1970’s, he converted to Islam while promoting free-choice  between Christianity and Islam for his people.  Today, the population of the Bamoun Kingdom (700,000) are 80% Moslem and live in harmony with the Christians.   This is just one of many unique stories and history that each  Fondom carries to include a history of slave trading with their tribal neighbors.

Politics is an interesting and dicey adventure here in Cameroon.  The current president, Biya, has been in office for 28 years.  The region in which I live, the Northwest, is the only place in the country that has an opposing party to the president’s ruling party.  Elections are coming in 2011 and the country is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the military, so he is making his first visit to this area in over 20 years.  I hear that over 30,000 military and police have been deployed to this area.  Curfew has been on for weeks (don’t go out after 8pm), construction for the grandstand is taking up the major commercial area, business schedules are compromised so that everyone has time to clean their street area, and the presence of police and military are everywhere.  Just prior to his visit, there was a tragic helicopter accident involving his security minister and one of his generals.  So his trip here was delayed and now it is a little mysterious when he actually will arrive. But meanwhile businesses are on hold, markets will be shut-down, and everything in Bamenda will come to a standstill for the two days he is here.  Stories of  Cameroonian politics remind me to count my blessings for the protections we have in the US.

There are often delightful and unexpected events around and when I stick my head out of my home I can find them.  Recently, I was on my back veranda enjoying a good book, when I heard drumming and singing.  After awhile I had to follow the sound to see what I was missing.  I discovered that my neighbors were having a burial celebration which involved dancing and drumming and singing and traditional  masks.  As soon as they saw me approach, one woman danced over to me and brought me into the circle where I joined-in, giving my best imitation of an African shuffle.  On another Sunday, I took a walk and stumbled into a huge Catholic dance procession down one of the nearby streets.  There must have been 1000 people in procession with drums, xylephones (the wooden type), bells and a great deal of “getting down”.  Disguising myself as a Catholic, I joined in the celebration of Corpus Christi Day.

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