Cameroon - Same, Same, but different

On Sept 11, 1994, I landed on the African continent, for the first time since 1975 when I finished up my one year of boarding school at Good Shepherd School in Ethiopia.

This time I was arriving in Cameroon as an adult (30 years old) at the very start of my career in Africa, ready for our Africa Orientation Course. I had a year of french study under my belt and I was good to go. The next three months brought

• adventures in shopping in the market, slip sliding down the hill in the mud.  
• lectures on African culture, staying healthy in Africa
• camping on the beach which included the infamous (an totally pointless) "killing a chicken" exercise and learning to use a machete to hack through the jungle. 
• an example of how NOT to do community development, in which 25 expats go to a village and work on a well digging project
• 3 weeks in a "village phase" in the extreme North
• insects
• and, of course, eating lots of unusual food.

So here I am back in Yaounde, Cameroon, after 18 years in West Africa.
I am here for some training to prepare me to take up a new role here in January. It is strange to have come full circle.
They say that the first weeks in a new place are when you should take a lot of pictures, write a journal, etc, because after that time, the new wears off and you do not notice as much.

So here we go - Cameroon 2.0
There is much that is familiar. The buildings on the workshop center all look pretty much the same. But walk outside the center and you are astounded at how much the city has grown up around us. Where there was formerly hills covered with jungle, there are now houses and taller buildings and Total gas stations convenience stores with ATMs and fancy self-serve coffee machines. Just to remind you that you are in Africa, the coffee machine has a sign on it telling you not to use it. I ask it if is broken and find out that it isn't. You pay at the counter and then they come around and punch the buttons for you. There are also books for sale with a sign telling you not to touch them!

I successfully made a trip downtown, which in 1994 was a place with piles of garbage and a high degree of crime. The trash is gone and many of the open areas have little parks. Apparently the crime is down as well. I made the trip back home in 2 taxis - different from what we have in Mali, but similar to those in Abidjan. You share the taxi with 4 or 5 others and pay 40 cents to go anywhere in the same direction as the others. I had to take 2 to get back home. 


There is much here that reminds me I am in Africa but then much that is strikingly different from the part of Africa where I have lived so long.

Cameroon is much more Christian. There are a plethora of church choices, a big cathedral right in the middle of the downtown circle. The country has more money and the church does as well. I was surprised last week to find that the church I visited had a projector and was putting the worship songs up on the wall.
Somehow being a Christian country in Africa nvolves a lot more alcohol and alcohol abuse. In the villages, they produce home grown alcohol and there are problems with drunkenness.  This was also the case in Burkina. I commented on it in one village in Burkina  where they told me it point blank it was because they were Christians, not Muslims.

Cameroon has a 20% Muslim minority. I have not seen any mosques, probably because most of the Muslims are in the North. I landed on the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adah, called Tabaski in West Africa. Here they call it the "Fête des Moutons" (Holiday of the Sheep) which is somewhat akin to calling Thanksgiving "Turkey Day". Not much of a holiday for the sheep! In any case, I saw none of the signs of Tabaski I was familiar with - sheep being slaughtered in the street, streets blocked off for the big prayer, people dressed in their best clothes going out and visiting each other.

One thing that really surprise me here is the lack of bicycles. I went out for my first ride a week ago and rode for 2 hours and did not see a SINGLE person riding a bicycle. After a week, I have seen only ONE person riding a bike. In West Africa, you see a lot of people riding to and from home on bicycles, often carrying racks of eggs, loads of hay, or even small animals on the back of their bikes. For many people, this is their only form of transportation.

One of my favorite signs in Mali - "watch out for headless cyclists"

On my ride, I was looking for a store selling a bike pump, and figured I could ride a kilometer or so and find a shop with bike tires and other parts hanging out in front. Never did see one. I stopped at a lot of moto shops, and hardward stores, and finally found one hardware store that had a pump. I may seriously have to bring innertubes with me from West Africa.

I think the lack of bikes here comes down to:

• more money, allowing people to buy motorcycles. 
• it is very hilly, enough so that your average person would be put off by cycling. 
• there is a huge amount of traffic on the paved roads during the week.

Speaking of cycling, I have gotten out a few times now, and is wonderful riding out in the jungle. Beautiful trees, packed down mud roads that are not rocky, but made difficult by the number of hills, one right after another. Another difference I noticed out in "the bush" was the number of nicer, cement homes with proper roofs, even satellite dishes in the little village areas. That and a number of quite nice schools.

Sunsets are beautiful here as is the lush vegetation. There are swathes of undeveloped jungle here and there, including in the valley just behind where I live.

A tropical climate means an abundance of fruit and vegetables. I bought a giant pineapple today. There are the sweetest little clusters of manadarin oranges. Plump Avocados, bananas, tomatoes.

The meals include a lot of plantain. We had corn fufu once, not unlike the balls of dough made out of millet flour we have in West Africa, though made from corn flour here. Several times the cafeteria has served a sauce made out of greens, which i did not care for. We are not too far from the coast and so that means fresh fish and shrimp.

Peanuts come in whiskey bottles, for $2/bottle. they are better than the ones in Ouagadougou, but not as good as the Malian ones.
Eggs are a bit more expensive (90 CFA = 18 cents each)
The baguettes cost a bit less but are a strange mushy consistency, leading me to pine for the  crispier ones from Mali. At least, they are available in the little boutiques here, unlike in Burkina Faso where you have to go to the bakery to get it,

Clothing: Dress is more formal here. The director-types wear a tie every day. And it is not uncommon for higher-placed Africans to be wearing suits and ties. It seems that people do NOT wear dress shirts untucked here as much as they do in Mali. You do not see people wearing Boubous but there is plenty of "pagne" cloth from different associations made into shirts and dresses.


Language: There is a decent segment of the Cameroonian population who are anglophone (English speaking), though the majority of the country uses French as the language of wider communication.  So on center and off, you never know whether to speak English or French to folks.  I had a long conversation with a guy out on the street the other day in french and he finally said "My name is Jackson and I'm English speaking".

Bambara Blessing - May God Bless you!

What I find really difficult is not being able to talk to people in Bambara. I was out on the street the other day at a little table where someone was selling bananas. But no one was around. I kept trying to find words to ask those around where the vendor was but all that would come to mind was "Namasa tigi bɛ min?" French or English would have worked fine, but my brain is wired to function in Bambara in that environment.

 In spite of all the differences, there is much to remind me I am in Africa: friendly people who value relationships and have ingenious solutions to problems.

The other day out on a bike ride, I came across something that I did not understand. It was the end of the day, so the site was unoccupied but there were large granite boulders with fires built on top of them. The fires were sheltered by large logs on each side, to keep the fire concentrated in one place. There were three fires on each boulder. Next to the boulders were piles of large granite rocks.
I finally realized they must heat the rock until it splits and then somehow break them apart into granite rocks to sell. On the way home, I saw the aforementioned "Jackson" working on a site he was clearing for the landowner, who would use the granite to build a home. Once the rock is split, Jackson uses hammers and wedges to split it apart.
It was dark and so I could not get a good picture, but the next day I came back and saw that he had shaved off about 2 feet of the boulder.

The rock splitting site. Note the charred remains of three logs used for the fires.