This piece was written in 2008 and since then has languished on a hard disc. It has been rescued after turning up in a disk search for another file entirely, so has been converted to HTML and made available online for historical interest! Processed in Somié March 2016
It was all going so well. My meetings in the capital had
finished and I had managed to get out to the village for three
nights. Once there I had been able to get much more done than I
had dared hoped for and I had even managed to make some
linguistic recordings for a colleague. The final task was to
deliver a text book and a memory card to a PhD student 100 km to
the north. This is not too far to travel even on the dirt roads
of Adamaoua Province so we set off mid-morning.
It all started with a noise and a vibration as if we were
bouncing over not ordinary corrugations in the dirt road but
specially deep ones. Then there was a bang from under the car
and series of loud thumps. Dieddonné the driver stopped
hurriedly. The drive shaft had broken (strictly, as I was told
later, a joint had broken so the main shaft disconnected itself
and fell off).
We walked back along the road
for several kilometres looking for fallen nuts in the dust but
couldn't see any so we called for roadside assistance. This
consists of flagging down the first motor bike or vehicle which
passes and sending someone to the nearest town to return with a
mechanic. It was Friday and the mechanic was at prayers so it
was mid-afternoon before they returned. The mechanic was able to
remove the loose connecting piece once he had flagged down
another motorbike to borrow the correct spanner. Then we were
able to engage four wheel drive and limp into Banyo using front
wheel traction. I was dropped off to keep out of sight since my
presence would increase the price, and Dieudonné took the car
off to be repaired while I drank beer with the student and tried
to help him with his research. I had hoped that that was my
breakdown for this trip. All that remained was to go drinking
with my Mambila friends and we had all of Saturday to get back
to Yaoundé in time to meet a colleague flying in from the UK for
my second meeting. So we set off at 630 am in order to get off
the dirt road back onto tarmac before it started raining. But 10
km out of town the engine started racing, and producing clouds
of black smoke. Worse, it wouldn't stop when Dieudonné turned
off the ignition. We stopped he opened the bonnet and ripped out
the battery cables and told us to run. The engine carried on
racing. We grabbed the bags out of the back and waited, fearing
the whole car would catch fire. Eventually it stopped. I still
have no idea why. Once it had stopped we started scratching our
heads about what caused it. We called for help by stopping the
first motorbike and sending for help. When it returned with a
mechanic he sorted us out incredibly quickly. It was either a
broken piston or piston-ring (although how that could produce
the racing we experienced is part of mechanical etiology which
escapes me). He explained what to do if it recurred but said
that we could get back to Yaounde . So having lost only an hour
we set off again.
Five minutes later we hit the cow.
So here I am back back in bush
taxis with plenty of time to think about what I've done and all
the things I've not done. The taxi might go in 5 minutes or 2
hours, it is impossible to tell. There is no one who can say. I
have learnt to enter an odd state of mind in which I try to sit
and let the journey happen. The fear and discomfort are apiece
with the scenery, random thoughts or childhood memories.
Motorbikes often carry three or sometimes four people. What I
had never seen before until today was another motorbike being
held between the driver and the pillion passenger. As long as I
continue I am making progress. The car is behind me so I have
lost nothing. Yesterday a team of water engineers visited the
village unannounced. They are going to bid for the contract to
repair the water supply. So we had an entertaining time trying
to explain the complexities (and the beautiful simplicity) of
the gravity water system, and what the outstanding problems are.
No sooner had they left than the forestry delegate arrived with
his entourage which included the incredibly venial local
forestry officer who wanted to be paid for his travel. I refused
and later he didn't want to shake hands with me when they left.
The Fulani, FulBe or Peulh are famous
not only for the complexity of their nomenclature (I wont even
start on the Pulho vs Mbororo distinction). Over the last
millennia they have spread from the far west to the centre of
Africa (crudely from Senegal to Chad) along the southern edge of
Sahara. There is a not inconsiderable amount of work_
that has been done on different aspects of their life and
culture.* Closely associated with pastoralism and
cattle, one of the FulBe stereotypes (held by both them
themselves and their neighbours) is of a nomad following their
cows, going north with rains, and following the rain south in
the dry months around New Year. Cows are also walked still
further south to the major conurbations, to market. Roads make
good droving tracks and it is not uncommon to drive round a bend
and find a small herd being driven along the road by a couple of
young lads who will walk their cows to market then ride a bus
home before starting all over again. Some of these herders are
paid in cattle; this is how a young man can get a break and
establish his own herd.
Of course, the nice
wide roads or droving tracks leading to the conurbations tend to
be busy with other road users and conflicts and accidents do
occur but mercifully few. One Catholic missionary who worked
with nomadic Fulbe spent a long time trying to persuade them to
follow the highway code and walk on the 'other' side of the
road. There was something wonderfully bizarre, old fashioned and
completely ineffective about an aging white man telling
professional herders how to drive their cattle. They habitually
drive the cows on the right so that they are not facing the
oncoming traffic. Except the roads are generally used as if they
are single track: you drive where there are the fewest holes,
and traffic is still sufficiently light that it is normal to
drive in the middle of the road and then to pull over when a
vehicle arrives in the opposite direction. All in all it doesn't
seem very important or to matter on what side of the road the
cows are driven. Come what may they will face some vehicles and
not others.
In our case they were
facing us; there were just three cows and two herders. Not a
herd at all, but a few stragglers. However, one cow behaved as
if it were a chicken, and as we were passing it made a break
from one side of the road to ours, it very nearly got across but
caught our off side, breaking the radiator, horn and headlights
as it did so. One herder fled with the cows the other produced
his mobile phone to call the patron when the driver stopped him
from running as well. In the end I left them waiting for the
cattle owner, Mr Big, Monsieur le Patron. I had to get to town
for the next morning so we flagged down a taxi bus which slowly
got me southwards but not after itself being in an accident -
overtaking it pulled in too sharply and clipped the truck it
was overtaking. There followed another half hour of shouting as
is customary before we continued. Eventually we got to the
tarmac by dusk after a pause to catch up with one of my friends
who I would not otherwise have seen when the taxi stopped for an
hour in a small town on the way. I continued on to Bafoussam
where there were people waiting for me hoping for a ride to
town. Having disappointed them by traveling in taxis I got a
night bus to Yaoundé, arriving soon after midnight. Everyone
tells tales of how dangerous Yaoundé is at night especially
around the taxi parks, I got straight into a legitimate taxi and
get to the hotel safe and well albeit frazzled. As I write this
I am about to leave for the airport. The car and most of my
luggage is somewhere on the road limping towards
Yaoundé.
Coda. Yaoundé is full
of roadworks to improve the arterial routes. Of course while
these works are underway the traffic just gets worse. In the
rainy season there is always congestion after a downpour when
everyone who was waiting until it has passed tries to get going
again. As my luck would have it, it turned out that Cameroon is
hosting the regional gathering of Heads of State (CEMAC). So the
evening I was booked to return to UK, four heads of states were
flying in to Yaoundé airport (closing it to air traffic). The
Hilton hotel was full of glamourous shapely women standing
(svelte in red dresses with starched white shawls) for hours by
a red carpet, waiting to applaud as a president walked by. I got
a taxi to the airport in the early evening after rain had
fallen. We got about half way to the airport when we struck
gridlock. The main road to the airport was closed so all the
side roads leading to it were blocked solid. Both plane and
passengers arrived hours late. To my delight Dieddonné was
waiting for me with my bags so I was able to sort out my baggage
although the bags had got soaked. Since I had gone off in taxis
he had had more breakdowns and then two tyres had burst near to
Yaoundé. But he was there in one piece and unhurt. So we shook
our heads and were thankful for what we had got away with. The
cow owner had refused to fix the car, so he had used he petrol
money I had left with him to braze the radiator and then the
extra money I had sent enabled him to get home. No question of
any being left. The important thing was that we were in one
piece and back where we started.
* An interesting example is Moi un Mbororo translated from the French by Phil Burnham (Bocquené, H., O. Ndoudi, P. Burnham & G. Gorder. 2002. Memoirs of a Mbororo: the life of Ndudi Umaru, Fulani nomad of Cameroon (Cameroon studies; v. 5. Oxford: Berghahn Books).