Bafoussam

Bye bye Foumban, art and culture jewel of Cameroon! Take care of your heritage and make your treasures more easily accessible to travelers. The 80 km trip from Foumban could be called uneventful, if you don’t consider the habit of adding another passenger per row when the bus is already full.

I was placed next to the driver and filmed some of the trip with music in the background. See FB! Picturesque cattle herds share the road with the traffic.

On the taxi ride all over Bafoussam it turns out that the hotel we booked is not where google maps shows it but some 60 km further out of town where nobody goes. Our taxi driver takes us to several not really recommendable looking hotels and then drops us off in a really fancy one.

You go to Bafoussam to see the historical Bamiléké Chefferies (chief’s compounds) in the area …

… and when they happen to be closed your taxi “chauffeur” helps you find a really good guide to make up for that. We are told about the fon (King), the father of his people, with supernatural powers that enable him to turn into an elephant, a lion, a leopard … about his 150 queens and several hundred children, about his eight nobles, his advisers, about secret police and secret societies, about long and complicated funerary rites according to which two years after a person’s death his skull is exhumed and buried in the house of his family. Although the Bamiléké are mainly Catholic now, witch doctors and sorcerers are still sought after by the people. Later that day we unexpectedly come across  a live example of that. It’s probably quite enough to see one or two chefferies: the one in Baffoussam

… and the one in Bandjoun:                                    oh no, not tourists again

oh no, not tourists again

talking drum, playing music and I love my calabash

dressing up European style, my little handbag, le chef c’è moi

Relax from all the culture talk and watch a soccer game in the village or go and see the Métchie waterfalls.

All along the walk down to the waterfall you come across sacrificial offerings like salt, sauce, beans and biscuits and right on top of the waterfalls there is a spiritual healing place.

A naked woman, her body covered with mud, is sitting on a very low stool calmly looking over the flowing water. A man and a woman take her, slowly lead her into the river where the current is not too strong and start washing off the mud. At the same time two  men bring two sacrificial animals, a rooster which is already dead and a little goat that seems to be sensing what is in store for it and bleats and struggles in desperation. We are asked to leave and not take any pictures because otherwise the ritual wouldn’t work.

Leaving Bafoussam, by the way the only place where I wouldn’t have minded to have a cardigan to put on,

leaving the town by bus … means you have to go through a seven hour limbo, waiting for a coach with the letter H not written anywhere. Experience tells you not to drink because the driver won’t stop on his (as it turns out 5 hour!) run to Douala. The trip is further delayed by someone who gets on the bus trying – and succeeding – to sell a remedy that cures everything from a mere cold to Aids and cancer and I am seriously tempted …

… to report

And you are forced to do things you never wanted to, i.e. travel after darkness, during rain, on one of the most dangerous roads with the bus almost tipping over twice because of the enormous wholes in the narrow road. The driver goes too fast with equally reckless trucks oncoming and the bus is not in good condition. I’m not complaining but I won’t do it again.

You leave the hotel at 9.30 in the morning and you geht to your hotel in Douala at 23.30 at night with the hotel kitchen closed and a merciful barman pouring his last peanuts from a bottle for you. But the room has all the services …

Cheers Gerburg  (63 since April)